by Melanie Rawn
That other woman, though, her word and her lifted hand could cause death.
During that time she had made a mistaken equation between outward form and internal function. If she behaved as a High Princess ought, then surely that was what she would become. Appearances created reality.
For other people, perhaps. She had shown them a woman of power. They would treat her as such from now on. They would not know—and must not discover—that it was only something she had worn for a little while, like a cloak or a crown. It was real, but it wasn’t hers. The appearance was false, and the reality was just Meiglan.
She wished she could talk about it with Pol, but explaining it would expose her weakness. And he needed her to be strong. So she would be, for him. It was easier somehow when it was only for him.
As Kierun and Dannar finished the last buckles and bowed themselves out of the chamber, Meiglan called on the High Princess and wasn’t too surprised to feel a smile come to her lips.
“Kill a hundred of them for me.”
It wasn’t the right thing to say. Pol actually flinched. She tried again.
“But don’t you dare let them so much as bruise you, my lord.”
That was a little better. He smiled slightly and said, “Or you’ll go out and bruise them right back?” But his look was still dark. Earlier, before he’d been strapped into his armor, his eyes had picked up the Desert blue of his tunic; now they reflected the violet of his cloak. The tiny golden wreaths she had stitched over the yoke, like a collar around his broad shoulders, seemed dull compared to the gleam of his sun-bleached hair. He was a prince to his fingertips, a warrior, a Sunrunner. But the eyes that searched her own were her husband’s eyes: worried, tender, loving.
Meiglan suddenly found herself enfolded by his arms and the heavy cloak. She squeezed her eyes shut and inhaled his familiar scent, but the leather of his armor and the wool of his cloak spoiled the illusion. She couldn’t be his wife. She had to be the High Princess.
“Meggie,” he said into her hair, “Meggie, I want you to listen to me. I want you to go back to Dragon’s Rest with the girls.”
Every muscle in her body turned to stone. “Pol? No, I don’t underst—”
“Listen,” he repeated, and with one finger turned her face up to his own. “We’ve said before that Skybowl is the perfect place for the battle. Especially with the dragons there. I don’t know how we’ll use them, but we will. I think this will be the fight that pays for all.”
“And I’ll wait right here until you come back with your victory.”
“I’m confident that we’ll win. But if we don’t—”
“No!” she cried. “Don’t ever say that!”
“Meggie! I have to know that you and the girls are safe. Dragon’s Rest is the best place for you. Edrel is there to protect you. If it comes to it, Ostvel will march there with his army as well.”
“My father is there, too,” she reminded him, starting to tremble and hating herself for it. “What about him?”
Pol smiled down at her, stroking her cheek. “Any woman who can do what you did the other day can make kindling out of Miyon of Cunaxa. Besides, what can he do? His princedom is gone, and his sons. There’s nobody at Dragon’s Rest to help him—and everybody to watch every move he makes. He has nothing now, Meiglan. Kick him out of the palace if you don’t want to look at him. You needn’t concern yourself with him at all.”
“But—”
His smile died. She realized then that it had never reached his eyes. “I must know you’re safe, and far away from the fighting. And I want the girls out of here before they catch this sickness from the others.”
She stared up at him, unable to believe that he was sending her away. After all she had been through to come to him at Stronghold—
A thing she had done out of fear. The High Princess was never afraid.
“There’s another thing, too,” he said, and his voice had changed, hardened. “If something does happen to me, you’ll be regent for Jihan. She’s the elder. My heir. We’ve never talked to her about it, and I hope you won’t need to. But if the worst happens, everyone has orders to go to Dragon’s Rest. Chay is old, but he was Battle Commander until this year and what he doesn’t know about war isn’t worth knowing. But you’ll be the regent, Meggie. You’ll have to protect Jihan, and help her.” He hesitated. “She’s diarmadhi. That’s something we’ve never talked about, either. But if what Naydra says is true, then it may be she’ll have help from sorcerers who believe as this Branig did. It’s Jihan they’ll call Diarmadh’reia, Jihan they’ll fight for.”
“Andry won’t,” Meiglan heard the High Princess say.
Pol’s eyes lit with a cold fire. “Probably not. But Andry may decide to be reasonable.”
She had never liked the Lord of Goddess Keep. Andry intimidated her even when he was being kind. Especially when he was being kind. But the thought that he might refuse help to her daughter suddenly infuriated her. “He will decide what I tell him to decide,” she said grimly.
He stared for a moment, then smiled and hugged her tight. “The High Princess has said it, and it will be so,” he told her. “Goddess help Andry!”
“She won’t help the Vellant’im.” Meiglan heard noises outside in the hallway; the squires’ tactful warning that it was time to leave. “I’ll go to Dragon’s Rest, my lord. But it’s not necessary. You’ll drive them down the Long Sand into the sea.”
“I hope so. But it may take a little while. I promise that the moment this battle is over, I’ll send someone to let you know.” He paused again, rubbing his cheek to her hair. “Meggie, it’s selfish of me. Sending you home. I want to know that there’s someplace that hasn’t changed, something I won’t lose. I need you to be safe for my own reasons, love. I want to think of you there, and the life we’ve always had. What all this has done to us—what it might do to the girls if it lasts much longer—it doesn’t bear thinking about.” His voice took on a desperate passion. “I want our life back, Meggie. Our own life, where neither of us has to kill people no matter how necessary it is.”
She looked up, frightened. “Pol? Did I do wrong? Did I—”
“No, of course you did the right thing. They deserved to die, if only for the pain they caused you. But no one should be forced to do such things—certainly not you, my love. It broke my heart to watch you do it. And it scared me to death.”
“You? Never.” She simply couldn’t imagine it, and was more terrified than ever by his reply.
“Oh, Meiglan—almost all the time these days.” He gave a quiet sigh. “I want things back the way they were. I want to see you happy and safe, not ordering people killed.”
“But I had to, as High Princess,” she said slowly. “I never really thought about what would happen when you became—but now it’s here and—”
“It’s not what either of us expected, is it?”
“Pol, you can make everything right again. But will people let you?”
His jaw set. “I don’t know. But it won’t be because I haven’t tried.”
“You will,” she told him, and it was everything in her speaking now, going back to the first days she’d known him. He could do anything. “The Vellant’im will all die and you’ll come home to me at Dragon’s Rest and everything will be as it always was.”
At last she had found exactly the right thing to say. He smiled down at her, the softness of his eyes matching the curve of his lips. “If you believe it, then so must I.” He glanced around as someone knocked on the door. “It won’t be long, Meggie. I promise. We have the advantage of Skybowl—”
“Your grace?” Dannar called from outside. “I’m sorry, but—”
“In a moment!” he said over his shoulder.
Meiglan couldn’t help it; she clung tighter to Pol, knowing she shouldn’t. To cover her body’s treachery she made her mouth speak calm, reasoned words. “We’ll leave tomorrow, with Laroshin to command the guards and—”
Pol had no use
for words or reason. He lifted her off her feet and crushed her to his chest, and as always his passion broke over her like a summer storm. She was bruised by his arms and his lips and the stiff leather of his armor, and clung to him just the same.
He had just set her down when the door opened and their daughters burst through. Meiglan watched Pol gather them up in his arms and smile and kiss them, and admonish them to be good and not to plague poor Edrel to be their dragon and to take care of their mother.
And then he was gone.
“Can we go up to the tower, Mama, and see the army ride?”
“Yes, Jihan,” she said, “as long as you don’t get in anyone’s way.”
“We won’t! Thank you, Mama! C’mon, Lynnie!”
She closed the door behind them, and faced the empty room. The empty bed, where last night—
Quietly, efficiently, the High Princess began to pack.
Chapter Eighteen
“. . . washed and stuffed back in and stitched up—now, that’s the tricky part.” Feylin dried her hands on a towel and tossed it into the basket that served as laundry hamper. “I imagine you don’t see anything similar on Dorval.”
“We do, actually,” Audrite replied. They emerged from the infirmary into the courtyard at Skybowl, squinting in the bright noontime sun. “Pearl fishers sometimes get sliced up when the water’s murky. The marking poles can be pretty vicious. But I’ve never seen anyone survive the wounds you’ve been treating.”
“If I can get to them quick enough, they usually do all right.” Feylin paused at the well for a dipper of water. “That powder they came up with at Giladan school—that’s made all the difference with infections. It’s the damage to what’s inside that worries me. Sewing guts back together is long work, but it can be done. What I hate to see is a womb cut open, or a liver, or a stomach. I can’t do anything about those.”
“Almost all the cases here are like that,” Audrite observed quietly, shaking her head to the offer of a drink. “Those, and the amputees.”
“Yes—everyone who couldn’t walk, ride, or be carried to Feruche. A fine army we’ve got if the Vellant’im do decide to attack us.”
“You realize, of course, that if they do. . . .”
Feylin shrugged and let the dipper splash back into the bucket. “Half of those fools inside would march out holding their swords with one hand and keeping their guts in with the other. Half of the rest would hobble out on crutches or tie a sword to the stumps of their arms. And we’d have to tie the rest of them to their cots to keep them from following.” She stretched to ease the strain in her back. “Not so much to save Skybowl. To avenge Rohan.”
Audrite said nothing as they walked back to the main keep. Then, slowly: “Pol commands their loyalty, but not yet their love. He’ll have to gain it in ways his father never had to.”
Feylin held the door open for the princess and followed her into the dimness of the hall. “Oh, that’s better! You wouldn’t think the sun would be so blinding this time of year. Do you think Pol’s not capable of winning the same kind of devotion Rohan did?”
“Certainly he is! I had charge of him for all those years, remember. But Rohan fought wars for the Desert. He didn’t have to hold the hope of all the princedoms in his sword.”
“Today’s—what, the forty-eighth of Winter? Pol’s only been High Prince twenty-five days. Give him some time.” Feylin paused to splash some water on her face from the small basin below Camigwen’s mirror. “When he drives the Vellant’im back into the sea, they’ll all fall on their knees thanking him.”
Audrite shook her head. “After which they’ll wonder who he’ll turn those war-making skills on next. Rohan won his people—and everyone else’s—with peace. That’s not an option for Pol. He has to send them out to be wounded or killed. Once this is all over, he’ll have to begin in his father’s way, convincing them he’ll be the same kind of High Prince Rohan was.”
“Nobody said it would be easy. But do you think he has the patience for it? Or that he’ll be like Rohan—or even that someone like Rohan is necessary after an upheaval of this kind?” Feylin raked her hair back from her eyes and grimaced. “How did you get me around to such a depressing topic? You know I hate politics. And I’m terrible at it, anyhow.”
Audrite smiled. “You’re very good at asking uncomfortable questions the rest of us like to ignore!”
“Well, we see things differently, I suppose,” Feylin replied. “Just let’s get this war finished and let me go home to Remagev. You and Chadric and the other princes can worry about politics. That’s your job!”
Audrite laughed and started up the stairs to rest before the midday meal. At the upper landing she paused to look down on the courtyard, where servants went about their business as usual. With only a little imagination, one could believe that there was no enemy encampment nearby. That there had been no battles, no ruined castles, no deaths.
It was a daily series of shocks, living like this. Waking, washing, dressing, breakfasting—all as if she and Chadric guested here for pleasure instead of dire necessity. But then came the first visit of the day to the infirmary. After that, a walk near the lakeshore with her grandchildren to watch the dragons, or a brief rest before the midday meal—after which the guards drilled to keep themselves sharp. Hardly had she settled the children down for their naps when it was time to join Feylin in the infirmary once more. By late afternoon she was always exhausted, not so much from her years but from the constant jolt back and forth between placid pursuits and reminders of war.
In all her reading, and Audrite was a formidable scholar, she had never found a description of what she was living now. A castle besieged, a castle defended, a castle assaulted, a castle destroyed—she had read accounts of all these and lived through the latter two. But she had never read anything that matched this strange, unsettling combination of normal life and war.
It would have been easier if something happened: a battle or the immediate threat of one would give everyone a narrow purpose; a ring of enemy drawn tight around Skybowl would focus mind and feeling. But this was neither peace nor war. It was a precarious imbalance between. One or the other could be dealt with. Being jerked back and forth several times each day was maddening.
The respite of a quiet nap in her rooms was denied her today. Chadric and Walvis had chosen to spread their maps on a table by the bedchamber windows, making note of various landmarks to use if and when a battle came. Audrite sat in the corner with a book and tried to ignore them. She never knew what word it was she heard just that once too often, but without her conscious awareness of it she was on her feet and shouting at them.
“Do this somewhere else! Not in my rooms! Not in here!”
Her husband’s jaw fell open. Walvis’ blue eyes rounded to the dimension of soup bowls. Audrite tried to stop herself and simply could not.
“I won’t have your damned war in here, do you understand me? I’m sick of listening to you! Take your maps and get out!”
And then, to her everlasting mortification, she began to cry.
Chadric started toward her, arms wide in an offer of comfort. She snarled at him and batted his hands away.
“Get away from me! You and all your talk of battles and soldiers and where to hit the Vellant’im first! Get out!”
Walvis had already fled, maps clutched to his chest. Though Chadric backed off a step or two, he was stubborn enough to stay.
“Don’t you dare tell me to calm down!” she warned.
Perfectly seriously, he replied, “If I did, you’d break my arm. All I want to tell you is I’m sorry you’re upset.”
“You ought to be. It’s your fault.” She wiped her eyes, infuriated by the weakness. “Isn’t there one place left where I can have a little peace?”
“Evidently not,” he admitted ruefully.
Audrite scowled and sank back down onto the couch, exhausted. “Yell back at me, why don’t you? Why are you being so nice?”
Chadric hes
itated, then shrugged. “I’m worried about Ludhil and Laric, too, you know.”
She glanced up sharply. She hadn’t been thinking about their sons—but all at once she knew they were the undercurrent to her every waking thought. Dangerous, like the sea’s dark undertow. Fear for them was the thing she was the most determined not to feel. Hearing their names, she wanted to cry again. And not just for Ludhil, fighting on Dorval, and Laric on his way to battle in Firon. She was sick with terror for Laric’s little boy, all alone at Balarat, for Alleyn and Audran even though they were safe here at Skybowl.
Safe? Where was anyone safe these days?
“We would have heard,” she said, hating the quiver in her voice. “One of the Sunrunners would have seen if either was—”
“Yes.”
“So why don’t you tell me to stop worrying?”
“Because it wouldn’t do any good.” He sat beside her, draping an arm over her shoulders. “We’re too old for this, love. We should be dozing away our days in our own palace, watching the sea. Audrite, what are we doing here?”
She drooped against him, sighing. “A nice, comfortable doze is the last thing we can have around here.”
“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe if we squint, we can make believe it’s a sea of water out there and not sand.”
She felt her throat tighten, and whispered, “Chadric . . . I hate it here. I’m sorry, but I can’t help it.”
“It’s not Skybowl you hate,” he murmured against her hair. “It’s just that it’s not home. I’ll rebuild Graypearl for you, love. All of it, even more beautiful than it was.”
Thinking of their palace as it had been, she doubted that was possible. Still, she owed him her strength after he’d been so gentle with her weakness.
“Well,” she said, “it’ll certainly keep us busy in our old age.”
• • •