The Dragon Token

by Melanie Rawn

  He breathed shallowly, trying to store up enough air to be able to speak. He was so tired, and the weight on his chest was an iron circle now, slowly squeezing his ribs against his heart.

  “. . . Father. . . .”

  “Yes, my dear?”

  He waited, hoping that his hand had obeyed him and pressed Tilal’s fingers. When he could, he said, “I’m . . . sorry.”

  “Rihani, listen to me,” said the gentle voice, and he felt the movement of lips against his head. “I know what war is. I would have spared you the knowledge of it, but not because I thought you couldn’t face it. I’m your father and I love you, and I want the world to be a sweet place for you. But it isn’t. You’ve seen that now. Listen to me, Rihani. Only a madman enjoys war. Only a fool goes into battle unafraid. You hate and fear war—and that makes you the only kind of man I want to call my son. You are the man and the prince I always knew you would be. Your mother and I are so very proud. And we love you so much.”

  Whatever had been shaming him—and he couldn’t quite remember what it was—it was all right now. His father had said so. Smiling, he turned his cheek to the warm strength of his father’s chest, listening to his heartbeat, and closed his eyes.

  • • •

  Andrev didn’t recognize the colors that swirled around him in the chill winter air. He was walking the battlements of High Kirat not because he expected anyone to need him as a Sunrunner—Diandra took care of all that here—but because he didn’t know what else to do. There was no comforting Prince Tilal, who had come from his son’s deathbed this morning shattered.

  He closed his eyes and concentrated, opening himself tentatively to the unfamiliar colors. Goddess blessing, Sunrunner, he said politely.

  And to you, Sunrunner—and cousin. I hope you don’t mind too much, but I asked your aunt Hollis to show me your colors. We haven’t spoken before. I’m Pol.

  Andrev almost fell over. Pol! The sunlight steadied around him, woven by a masterful mind.

  Trust me, I won’t eat you alive, said the High Prince. Andrev heard the humor, but somehow knew it wasn’t himself being laughed at. Quite frankly, Pol went on, you’re stronger than you know. I wouldn’t care to have you find that out at my expense if I did something you didn’t like.

  I-I would never dare, your grace.

  Then you’re not your father’s son. Bitterness, anger, immediately shadowed with contrition. Forgive me, Andrev, that wasn’t fair—or true. It’s just that I’ve been hearing those words about myself recently. . . .

  I don’t understand, your grace.

  That makes two of us. Andrev, I have a favor to ask of you. Will you ask Prince Tilal if he’ll be so good, as to march on Faolain Lowland and rid Lord Mirsath of some pesky Vellant’im? It seems they want a set of pearls they call the Tears of the Dragon, and are being rather persistent about it.

  I can’t, your grace. I can’t bother my lord right now. He—his son died this morning.

  Pol’s colors—clear diamond and bright topaz, dark emerald and misted pearl—quivered with the shock. Rihani? Oh Goddess, no. How?

  His wound was getting better. Princess Danladi said it was. But then something happened with his lungs, and—

  No, you mustn’t trouble him with this, you’re right. If there’s anything I can—no, of course there’s nothing I can do. There’s never anything I can do.

  Had Andrev’s eyes been open, they would have opened even wider. The High Prince, son of Rohan and Sioned, admitting to helplessness?

  Pol had sensed his astonishment. What did your father tell you about me—that I have icewater in my veins and snow where my heart should be? Ah, but that’s not fair, either. Andrev, forgive me.

  Stranger and stranger: the High Prince asking twice for his pardon. That’s all right, your grace. And—and I’ll mention Faolain Lowland as soon as he’s ready to hear it. He was almost the same as this after Prince Kostas was killed. Not as bad, but—

  —but after a few days, after the shock wore off, he felt a need to go out and do some killing. Yes, I know the feeling, Andrev. It helps a little. Not much, but a little.

  Andrev didn’t really understand, so he let it pass and asked, Your grace? Have you—is there any word of my father?

  He’s left Goddess Keep. That’s all I know, Andrev. He may be coming here. The rest of the family is well. Tobren is becoming quite a good nurse, helping Chayla with the wounded. I think we may have another Sunrunner physician in the family. It’s a shame they’re getting so much practice.

  And more before this is over.

  I’m afraid so. Take care of yourself, Andrev. And of Tilal.

  When Andrev was alone again with the sunlight, he looked around and found he was not alone on the battlements.

  “I saw that you were Sunrunning,” Tilal said quietly. “I didn’t want to disturb you.”

  Andrev had to look away from the prince’s eyes. He could have seen grief, pain, anger, despair, without being frightened. But Tilal’s Kierstian green eyes were empty.

  “Who was it?”

  The boy’s gaze followed the steep switchback road that made High Kirat so easy to defend. Back and forth, back and forth for nearly two measures up the hill, lined and paved with stones taken from terraced fields that in spring would be thick with ripening grain. Tell him or not, tell him or not, his mind nattered in time to the shift of his eyes as they traced the twisting road.

  “Andrev? Is anything wrong?”

  “Nothing, my lord.” He lied to his prince for the very first time. “It was Tobren. She just wanted to talk.”

  Joining him at the low stone wall, Tilal said, “I don’t know how to tell Gemma. Not the words or the method. Diandra looked for our court Sunrunner at Athmyr and couldn’t find him.”

  “Didn’t you say that your daughter is faradhi, my lord?”

  “Sioneva? Oh, yes, I’d forgotten. But the only one who’s ever spoken to her is your father. No one else knows her colors.”

  Andrev slanted a quick look upward, then away. Tilal’s eyes were still frightening. “I could send to Aunt Hollis,” he offered. “And she might be able to find my father, and he could tell Sioneva.”

  Tilal’s brief, bitter laugh made the boy flinch.

  “Why does everyone hate my father so much?” he burst out. “None of you talk about him except to say something unkind!”

  There was life in the green eyes now, and sorrow. “I’m sorry, Andrev. It’s a very long story. And painful.”

  “He’s my father. I have a right to know.”

  “Perhaps you do.” Tilal braced his hands on the wall and stared unseeingly out at the hills crowned with deep woods. “Andry never wanted to be anything but a Sunrunner. For quite a while, your grandfather didn’t much like the idea. And neither did the other princes. You know recent history, I hope—resistance to faradh’im being allied with any one princedom, and so on. Andry never cared for the politics of it. I think he refused to see that politics were involved at all. What he saw was that Chay didn’t want yet another son becoming a trained faradhi.”

  “But my uncle Maarken—”

  “Yes. You have to remember, though, that both Maarken and Riyan were experiments of a sort. They knew they’d be coming back to the Desert, taking their places as powerful athr’im. Andry wanted none of that. I think even then he knew he’d become Lord of Goddess Keep.

  “But nobody expected it to happen so fast. He was so young, barely twenty. Only seven years older than you are now. He hadn’t even earned all his rings yet. But Lady Andrade chose him to rule Goddess Keep after her—only she thought she’d live long enough to train him in the responsibilities.”

  “Nobody trusted him,” Andrev said.

  “They were afraid for him,” Tilal corrected. “He was afraid, too. Imagine being twenty years old and having the ten rings and the armbands put onto you—like shackles, I’d find it.” He shook his head. “He made changes in the way things were done. And there was Sioned, who hadn’t
been ruled by Andrade and wouldn’t be ruled by Andry.”

  “Like Pol.”

  A quiet nod. “Like Pol.”

  “But that doesn’t explain why people hate my father.”

  Andrev clenched his fists. “He only does what he thinks is right. Just like everyone else.”

  “True enough,” Tilal admitted. “But you forget that he has the power to compel people to do what he thinks is right.”

  “Like Pol,” Andrev repeated.

  “Not exactly.”

  “How is it different?”

  Tilal chewed his lip for a moment, then said slowly, “Andrev, what your father is . . . is all bound up in what we believe. It has to do with the Goddess, and needing to feel close to her without having to think about it. There are only three rituals in life—Naming, Choosing, and Burning. For you Sunrunners, there are one or two more. But for the rest of us, for our everyday lives. . . .” He sighed. “I’m not explaining this well. The new rituals, those your father introduced, make us feel as if not saying the words keeps the Goddess from hearing us. It puts something between us and her.”

  “But it’s only songs and things at sunrise and sunset,” Andrev protested. “I don’t understand why that should make people hate my father.”

  “Some of us feel that Andry is trying to stand between the rest of us and the Goddess.”

  Andrev drew back in shock. “That’s not true!”

  “Whether it is or it isn’t, that’s how some people feel. Me among them.” He glanced over, then away. “But there is a ritual I would have you help with tonight, if you would.” He closed his eyes. “Will you stand with me while . . . while my son. . . .”

  “Yes, my lord,” Andrev whispered.

  Tilal nodded. A long time later he spoke again—to himself, not to the boy. Not to Andry’s son.

  “He would have been the kind of prince Rohan always wanted. Careful and wise, hating war, wanting only the best for his people. . . . It ravaged him, the fighting. The killing. But the time isn’t here when a prince can be what Rihani was. Warriors are still necessary, may the Goddess have mercy on us.” A tremor ran through him. “He wasn’t even eighteen—my firstborn, my son—how am I going to tell his mother? How do I tell Gemma that our son is dead?”

  Andrev saw the tall body bend, heard the choked sounds of grief. All at once he understood Pol’s feeling of helplessness. “. . . nothing I can do . . . never anything I can do. . . .”

  But there was one thing he could do. He left his prince alone, and searched for other sunlight, and on it, the towers of Feruche.

  • • •

  “It needs a delicate touch,” Hollis said worriedly. “I don’t know if I can do it.”

  “No sign of Andry?” Maarken asked.

  “None. He could be anywhere from Ossetia to Princemarch to Syr.”

  He paused to pick dead leaves off a bush. They were in the west garden, where it had been Sorin’s elegant whim to plant a maze. Waist-high now, the hedges would take ten more years to grow tall and lush enough for the solid arcades he’d had in mind. There were other mazes at other castles, but Maarken knew where Sorin had gotten the idea for this one. As children, they’d spent whole days in the cellars at Stronghold, cisterns and crates making a lovely maze for little boys. The one Sorin had planned here was definitely the work of a Desert lord; instead of the usual bench-and-bower at its center, those who threaded the maze were rewarded with a pond of cool, clear water.

  “Andry’s coming here,” Maarken said.

  “Whatever for? And how do you know?”

  “I know my brother. It’s obvious by now that the really important part of the war is happening in the Desert. Do you honestly think Andry would or could stay away?”

  Hollis searched his eyes. “Because this is his home,” she said firmly.

  “Oh, that too, I’m sure,” Maarken replied. “I just hope the damned fool doesn’t take the southern route past the Vellanti army and try to set them all on Fire.”

  “You can’t be serious!”

  “Perfectly. I hope somebody’s told him that their tents, like their sails, don’t burn.” He went on ripping at yellowed leaves. “So what are we going to do about Sioneva?”

  “Maybe Pol or Meath could—”

  “Maybe. But you know which Sunrunner among us has the finest control and the gentlest touch.”

  Hollis shook her head. “I don’t want to bother her.”

  “Nobody does. I’m beginning to agree with Pol. It’s been twenty-five days. She’s got to stop this before she kills herself.”

  “I know how much wine goes up to her rooms. In the last few days, it hasn’t been. Will you stop shredding that bush and look at me!”

  He did, only to look away again and start down the path toward the center of the maze.

  “Maarken!”

  Swinging around, he demanded, “Are you going to tell Sioned what she has to do, or am I?”

  His wife’s soft blue gaze turned cold and remote as distant mountains. But only for a moment. Maarken hated himself for causing the sorrow that brimmed in Hollis’ eyes.

  “You’re worried about Rohannon, aren’t you?” he murmured.

  She nodded, bending her head. “They’re so close in age . . . their names . . . both called after Rohan—oh, Maarken, I’m sorry for Gemma and Tilal but all I can think about is our son.”

  Taking her in his arms, he buried his lips in her hair and said, “I know. I know. And I can’t bear being afraid for him and useless to everyone else—” Suddenly it poured from him, like poison from a wound. “Chayla looks like a shadow, Sioned might as well be one—so many children sick and the castle so silent with it—and those whoresons living in our Whitecliff, our Radzyn—and Meiglan, sweet Goddess, Meiglan ordering executions—and the hurt in your eyes that I can’t cure, that I only make worse—”

  She cradled his face in her hands. “Don’t, love. You mustn’t. Please.”

  “You see?” he demanded bitterly. “I’m only hurting you more by telling you this, but there’s no one else.”

  Hollis gave him a tender smile. “I will be your thyria, my love. Every dragon needs one for shelter in a storm.”

  Startled, he asked, “How did you hear about that?”

  “Lord Kazander was singing about it the other night.” She paused, then added thoughtfully, “Actually, Lord Kazander was singing to our daughter.”

  Maarken snorted. “When she starts singing along, then I’ll worry. I haven’t heard mention of the thyria tree in years. It’s only legend.” He held her tighter. “But you’re right. You are mine.”

  “And no legend,” Hollis murmured, rubbing her cheek to his.

  “Oh, I don’t know. A legendary beauty, certainly, to hear everyone tell it.”

  “Mmm,” she purred. “I could learn to like this.”

  He laughed, glad to do so. “After eighteen years, you’re still only learning?”

  “After eighteen years, I’ll still rise to the lure.”

  “And so will I, which is indecent in the middle of the morning. I—” He broke off, his head turning instinctively to the southern tower. Hollis didn’t share the perception, but after eighteen years she knew the signs well enough. And it wasn’t just any dragon that soared over Feruche, but Maarken’s own Pavisel, black as night against the blue sky, silvery underwings gleaming like gathered stars.

  The flight of dragons led by Azhdeen had more or less taken up residence at Skybowl. They fed in the nearby hills, drank of the clear lakewater, and nested at night on the slopes of the crater. Every so often one or the other would fly up to Feruche as if to check on things—but none had ever slid down the wind to perch on the curtain wall before. Pavisel did just that, and trumpeted an unmistakable summons to Maarken.

  He and Hollis ran for the main courtyard. They passed Meiglan on the way, standing white and still as ice as she stared at the dragon. Maarken was curiously pleased—and felt a little guilty because of it—that at least t
his was the Meiglan he knew, with her terror of dragons. Then he forgot everything else as Pavisel caught him in a powerful weave of light.

  The picture was clear, distinct, and sharply colored by a ferocious anger. Vellanti troops on the march, over four hundred of them, leaving their camp outside Stronghold’s ruin and heading due north for Skybowl. Pavisel growled then, as if to demand, Well? What are you going to do about it?

  Maarken gazed up at the dragon where she balanced daintily on crenellated stone. So you don’t much like the bearded ones, eh? No more do I, my lovely. He responded with a conjuring of their own soldiers, adding Pol’s dragon banner. She liked that, and hummed low in her throat while making an addition of her own: Maarken’s orange and red pennant, Sunrunner’s Fire on a silver staff. And flying higher than Pol’s own flag, he noted with amusement.

  Having done what she came to do, Pavisel launched herself back into the sky. Maarken watched her go, aware of the awed silence in the courtyard. From behind him, Riyan broke it in sardonic tones.

  “If your dragon is quite finished digging dents in my castle walls, maybe you’d like to tell us what that was all about.”

  • • •

  Meiglan knew by now how to make ready for war. She knew what orders to give Pol’s two squires about his armor, and what clothing to lay out, and to pack an extra shirt into his saddlebags herself after she sent the boys down to the kitchens for his share of food. But never, ever, would she know how to tell Pol good-bye.

  She knew the outward forms by now. She had used them to excellent effect. They all looked at her differently since her half-brothers had died, and when they said “your grace” or “my lady,” High Princess was in their voices. She had used power, and that made her powerful.

  But the change went no deeper than the looks and words. They were different. She was not. She was still only Meiglan. For that brief, deadly while she had thought of herself as the High Princess. Now she was only herself again—but what they saw when they looked at her was what she had been as she ordered the executions.

  “Meiglan” shared a father with those three men. The High Princess could not allow them to live. So she had stopped being “Meiglan” and become High Princess. It had been that simple, that obvious. She must not be herself, for that woman had no power.