by Melanie Rawn
The woman smiled tiredly. “Better here than down there, my lord. We just got a little sidetracked, is all. But it’s like Prince Rohan said—the Desert takes care of her own.”
Feylin quickly checked them over, ordering a few to the makeshift infirmary and the others to their beds. Walvis watched them ride slowly down to the keep, shaking his head in grateful amazement. The Goddess must like him today, he thought; he’d done what he intended without a single casualty.
When everyone else had gone, Feylin at last approached Walvis. “Well? Are you going to be an ass about it, too?”
“About what?”
“Whatever wounds you’re pretending not to have.”
“I’m not pretending. What I am is insulted that you think so little of my prowess that you assume—”
“That’s my property they were mauling about down there.”
“Yes, my lady,” he said meekly. “That’s why I was careful of it.”
“You’re truly not hurt?” She frowned up at him, one hand on his knee.
“Why don’t you strip me and make sure?” he suggested, and, taking her hand, pulled her up behind him on the horse. “You see, I was right after all,” he added as her arms went around his waist and hugged tight, “there’s nothing like a war to make a woman realize how much she adores—ow! Feylin!”
• • •
Pol had once said that Laroshin, commander of the guard at Dragon’s Rest, was the perfect servitor: instantly present when required, always unobtrusive when not, and between times doing his job with a minimum of fuss and a maximum of skill. At Stronghold he had fought with the other soldiers, leading when necessary and keeping his mouth shut when Maarken was there to give orders. He had seen to the needs of his fellows on the way to Skybowl and Feruche without making himself noticed. Now he appeared when Meiglan summoned him, and made ready for the return to Dragon’s Rest with typical efficiency.
Meath, who was of two minds about the journey, watched from a corner of the main hall as Sioned bade farewell to her daughter-by-marriage and her grandchildren. They say Rislyn has the look of her, he mused as she knelt to embrace the twins. I suppose it’s the green eyes. And there’s something of the way she looked as a girl, back when she first came to Goddess Keep—the innocence, the shy smile. Who could guess then that she’d become High Princess?
And who would guess now that those girls are no more related to her than they are to me?
He was startled out of his thoughts when Rislyn and Jihan came to hug him around the knees. Bending, he gathered one in each arm and hugged back, flattered by the attention.
But then, he had been their “dragon” several times here at Feruche, and back at Stronghold. “A good dragon,” Jihan had announced then, “but not as good as Grandsir.”
“Take care of yourselves, my ladies,” he told them as he set them down again. “And of your mother.”
“We will,” said earnest Rislyn.
“Just please don’t tell us to be good,” Jihan added. “Everybody keeps saying that.”
“Did you ever think there might be a reason?” Meath asked, smiling.
“They always tell you, not me,” Rislyn teased.
“But I’m always good! Or at least I never do anything really wrong.”
“Girls! Come along now, we must leave,” Meiglan called from the doorway.
“Coming, Mama!” Looking up at Meath, her blonde head tilted way back, Jihan said seriously, “We’ll take care of Mama, but you have to promise to take care of Granda, Meath.”
“I promise, my lady,” he said, and bowed with one hand over his heart.
Satisfied, she nodded and took Rislyn’s hand. They trailed along in their mother’s wake, and after a moment Sioned joined him at a window to watch them in the courtyard.
“I don’t half like this,” she murmured. “For one thing, Jihan is very subdued—for her. She might be a little feverish.”
“Chayla and Hollis think they’ve escaped contagion. I’d say Jihan is just trying to be very grown up. What else bothers you?”
“Rabisa.”
She nodded to where Jahnavi’s widow was being lifted to a saddle. Physical habit straightened Rabisa’s back and made her take the reins that were put into her hands. But attached to the bridle was a lead-rope, the other end held by Tallain’s cousin Lyela, who would ride beside her and take care of her. Someone had to.
“She’s been like a shadow-lost Sunrunner ever since Jahnavi died,” Sioned went on. “I know how she feels. But one of these days she’s going to wake up and remember everything.”
“Won’t it be better for her to do it where she’s not surrounded by reminders of war?”
“Perhaps. But what happens when she realizes her children are at Feruche instead of with her?”
“They’re not well enough to leave. Siona came down with it in earnest the other day. And it’s not as if the poor girl even knows they’re ill. As you say, she doesn’t know much of anything.” Meath shrugged. “I agree with Hollis. Rabisa will be better off someplace quiet and protected.”
Sioned tilted her face up, giving him a curious smile. “Is there one?” Then, looking away again, she said too quickly, “Dannar is more like Riyan every day, isn’t he? Except for that insane head of red hair, of course. And I could swear he’s grown a handspan since Autumn. Alasen won’t know her own son.”
He waited a moment, then asked softly, “And do you know how that feels, too, Sioned?”
“Meath, my old friend,” she murmured, “you know that I love you dearly. But don’t presume too far.”
He backed off from the quiet warning, knowing that Rohan would have pushed. “Shall we go outside and see them away?”
“No, I’m a little tired. I think I’ll go upstairs and rest.”
He nodded and watched her go—not toward the staircase, but the kitchen. Where, Meath knew, a fresh pitcher of wine would be poured for her. She would drink it alone, he told himself in sudden anger, and find her bed tonight as best she could. These past days she’d come downstairs during the day, seeking her wine cup only in the evening. Meath had thought her over the worst of it. Evidently not. But even his seemingly inexhaustible supply of patience faltered at the thought of watching her drink herself close to oblivion again.
Close, but never quite there. No matter how her body tottered and stumbled, her mind and her memory remained steady. It was as if she ran an endless race and someone kept moving the finish line. She could match Meath cup for cup, and though he weighed twice what she did, she never got more than mildly drunk.
He wondered briefly what had set her off today. Then he shook his head and went outside to the back garden, seeking his own oblivion in a long, aimless ride on the sunlight.
As it happened, he had done Sioned an injustice. She went to the kitchen, true, but not for wine. Yesterday, helping tend the children who had come down with silk-eye, she had vaguely remembered something in Lady Merisel’s Star Scroll about a febrifuge more effective than the standard ones. Last night she had spent a long time concentrating very hard, using faradhi memory to call up each page, each recipe. Toward dawn, she remembered the whole of it—disgusted that it had taken so long, and vowing to curtail her consumption of wine. It was warping her memory.
The ingredients were fairly simple, but for a rare herb or two and a very long process of distillation. Claiming a kitchen boy to help her and a place at one of the huge iron stoves, she began the first part of the concoction by boiling strong taze for the base. Then she started down the cellar stairs, intending to rummage through the storage bins for what she needed.
She conjured a fingerflame to light her way. It fluttered gently at her shoulder, as clear and strong as any she had ever made. She stopped and looked at it for a moment, oddly surprised. It was the first Fire she had called since Meath forced her to stop the Fire at Stronghold.
Ten steps, turn at a small landing, ten more steps—the upper door slammed shut behind her, startling her. Remi
nding her.
There was nothing wrong with her memory. Nothing at all. It took her back more than thirty years. To the other Feruche. To a stumble down hundreds of steps just like these, to a cell shut away from the light—
It came upon her like a dragon’s shadow, talons reaching for her mind. The tiny fingerflame died into darkness and there was no light, no warmth, no hiding from the dark. She was alone in sick blackness and her mouth was sweet with blood.
Sound. Scrape of metal on rock. Her cheek was pressed to the cold wall, her body flattened against it, fingers clawing. But the sound, gold on stone—she slid her hand to her face and explored chill metal with her lips, the way a baby uses its mouth to identify objects. She ran her tongue over the gold, licked at the faceted gem.
She knew what it was, this coldness on her hand. The ring Ianthe had stolen. Here, on her finger. Here. Now.
Now, not then.
She began to breathe very carefully, very painfully, as if she had not breathed in a long time. Now. Not then. The emerald was on her finger. She tasted blood on it, sucked it away.
She lifted her bruised cheek from the wall and opened her eyes to a darkness so absolute that primitive terror, deeper even than a Sunrunner’s fear of a world without light, shook her heart and breath. But there was light: a deep, pulsing emerald glow on her hand.
She watched it, fascinated beyond fear, slowly realizing the throb of it was in perfect time with the stuttering of her heartbeat. Third finger, left hand; the heart-finger, where the pulse of the soul ran truest. She stared at the visible light of her own heart.
Emerald was the stone of hope and renewal. But this emerald had never shone from within. She had never felt power gathering in it, fed by the beat of her own blood.
By her blood.
“Your grace? Your grace, are you down here? Lady Chayla is looking for you. Your grace?”
A candle descended, illumining a small, worried face. Kierun, her mind identified automatically. Pol’s squire.
He clattered down the last few steps to the landing. “Your grace! What happened? Are you all right?”
Sioned pushed herself away from the wall, her gaze fixed hungrily on the candle flame. Light. Light she understood, that flickered only with the wafting currents of air and breath.
“Yes, I’m fine,” she lied. “I stumbled in the dark. Light me back upstairs, please, Kierun?”
“Your hand is bleeding,” he said.
She looked down. Her right hand was indeed scraped raw across the palm. Her left hand, however, was stuck deep in the pocket of her trousers. Instinct.
“It’s not serious. It’ll be all right.”
Back in the warm, bright kitchen, she suffered Chayla to tend her injured hand and kept the other hidden. She would see to that herself. After explaining what herbs were needed, she left the girl to puzzle over the recipe she’d written down this morning and returned to her chambers. Only then did she take her hand from her pocket.
There was a scrape on the heel of her palm, raw but not bleeding. What she’d tasted on the emerald must have been from a bitten lip, then. She turned her hand over.
The ring was just a ring. Only an emerald, surrounded by diamonds, set in gold. There was no sparkle to it but that given by the sunshine.
She ought to find darkness again, find out if it would change. But to be without light, to be shut away for even a moment—she couldn’t do it. Not yet.
Sioned turned to the table, where pitcher and cup waited as usual. Her hand reached, fell back to her side. The emerald glittered, heavy on her finger.
• • •
Everyone was in the great hall at Skybowl that night, even the wounded on their stretchers. “Not a single injury that won’t heal up just fine,” Feylin had told Walvis, satisfaction tinged with wonder at their luck. So he ordered up a feast to be attended by all, except for a few guards who watched the Vellanti camp by night. One had just come in to report that although the cookfires were mere pinpricks in the dark, the pyre was a considerable blaze.
“No way to tell how many we killed,” he observed to Chadric. “Still, it doesn’t much matter. We stopped them here. They have to stay and burn their dead. Pol ought to arrive tomorrow sometime—and then we’ll have them.”
“But not yet all of them,” Sethric grumbled. “Why did their Warlord send only half his army?”
“Thank the Goddess it was only half,” Walvis said. “We wouldn’t have had a chance with our Isulki imitation.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Chadric mused, shifting uncomfortably against the strapping around his bruised ribs. “Between the sandstorm and that dragon, we did all right. Alleyn, sweet heart, pour your old grandsir some more wine. My aches need numbing.”
Alleyn smiled and happily acted as squire. Prince Lleyn’s Namesake had changed greatly since autumn, her dark red hair lightened by the Desert sun with streaks of gold. That same sun had dusted an infinity of freckles across her nose and cheeks, much to her chagrin. But the most significant alteration was one that happened to all little girls of thirteen or so winters: she was no longer a little girl. Walvis felt sorry that Ludhil and Iliena would miss this transformation while it was happening. He smiled suddenly, remembering Sionell at that age: all elbows and knees and curses under her breath when she bumped into yet another chair. But coltish Alleyn would never be. She moved as delicately as a bird on the wing.
Before she resumed her chair, Daniv leaned over and whispered something. Alleyn shrugged and replied, “Audran went up to tell her dinner was ready, but she wasn’t in her room.”
Walvis hid another smile. If Jeni didn’t want to join them, that was her privilege. Still, he sobered on recalling the look in her eyes earlier. She had killed today, and knew that she had killed. Glancing at Feylin, he decided that his blunt, practical lady was not the person to talk it over with her. Daniv or Sethric would only tell her that a gently reared highborn girl shouldn’t be forced into such a position in the first place, and ought to be protected (volunteers at the ready). Walvis could imagine how that would be received; no fragile flower to begin with, Jeni had lived at Stronghold with Sioned’s vigorous example before her for three years. Audrite might do, even though she had never lifted sword or bow in battle. But she was intelligent and wise, and more sympathetic than Feylin. Yes. He’d mention it later.
Good wine and plenty of food did their work on tired bodies; it was early by most standards when people yawned their way to their beds. Well before midnight Skybowl was silent everywhere but the kitchen. The work of cleaning up after the feast was made easier—if slower—by drinking leftover wine. There was some activity in the infirmary as well, where Feylin made the rounds, giving final orders to those on night duty before she retired to bed.
There was no one to see Jeni slip into the keep just after midnight, shivering in the chill, and pause before the main staircase to rub some warmth back into her hands. No one but two little shadows who crept out from behind a long table and whispered her name.
She nearly jumped out of her skin. “Don’t ever do that! What are you doing up so late?”
“We waited up for you,” Audran explained, taking her hand. “Oh, but you’re cold!” He tucked her fingers against his chest.
She smiled down at her gallant little prince. “Thank you, that’s much better. But let’s go upstairs. It’s very late.”
“Why weren’t you there tonight?” Alleyn asked. “Daniv asked for you.”
“I had something else to do.”
“What?” Audran demanded, performing the same service for her other hand.
“Unless it’s a secret,” his sister added.
Jeni sighed. She really did want to talk to someone about it, before the frustration boiled over. She sat on the bottom step with the children on either side of her, an arm around each.
“It’s a secret among us three,” she said. “Do you promise not to tell?”
They nodded gravely. Misty golden light danced over their faces
from the candles on either side of the hallway mirror. It had belonged to Jeni’s father’s first wife, the Sunrunner for whom she was Named. The candle nearest the door had blown out when she and the breeze entered; she thought for a moment, then called Fire to light it again. Audran’s eyes rounded in awe.
“Did they tell you how we were led out of the sandstorm by a dragon’s call? All the while I kept having the strangest feeling. Like something tickling the edge of my thoughts.”
Audran caught his breath. “Was it the dragon? Like Prince Pol and Lord Maarken and them can talk to dragons?”
“Not ‘them,’” Alleyn corrected. “‘They.’ Oh, Jeni, did the dragon really talk to you?”
“I think he was trying. But I don’t know how to do it! After what happened at Stronghold, being caught up in Princess Sioned’s weaving—I know I’m a Sunrunner, but I don’t know how to do anything! And there’s nobody here to teach me.”
“Meath says some things are easy,” Audran said. “Like calling Fire, and hearing people on sunlight—”
“I can do both of those. And he’s right, you just have to think about it a little the first few times, and then it’s simple.” She nodded to the candle she’d just lit beside the mirror. “But the important things have to be taught. Like really Sunrunning, and talking to a dragon—”
“You were trying tonight.” Alleyn’s voice was hushed. “That’s where you were. Outside with the dragon.”
“His name’s Lainian,” Jeni said absently. He had come to her in a sandstorm, so calling him after sand and wind had seemed natural. “Tonight was just like this afternoon. I could feel him wanting to—I don’t know, it was almost like when Lady Hollis talks to me on sunlight. All the colors. But I don’t know how to go Sunrunning on my own, and unless I find out, I won’t be able to talk to Lainian.”
“And you have to know soon, or he might change his mind?” Alleyn clutched her arm. “Jeni, how awful! But Lord Walvis says Prince Pol will be here soon. He can show you, can’t he?”
She gave a sigh and got to her feet. “I can hardly ask him to postpone the fighting he has to do in order to teach me how to be a real Sunrunner. Come on, let’s get you two upstairs to bed.”