by Melanie Rawn
No need for hearing; the word was clearly formed on the man’s lips and he cried it out again and again: “Azhrei! Azhrei!”
The enemy advanced. Pol stood his ground, the dragon behind him. The one in white screamed in a frenzy of hate. Sunrunner’s Fire sprang up in a circle around him, and Pol laughed again as the Vellant’im stopped and the man inside the flames turned and turned and flinched with every turning. Screaming differently now.
The sand below Pol’s feet trembled. The moonlight and his own Fire showed him scores of mounted soldiers, clean-shaven, angry faces intent on the enemy threatening their High Prince. Their Azhrei. Pol started forward, knowing he had done a clever thing without being aware of it. He had bought time for Maarken to gather a charge, and with that time he had bought his own life.
And then all was familiar insanity around him. Sword-play in the practice yard had a rhythm, an elegance, a mannered pattern to thrust and parry and counterthrust. Battle lurched like a broken plow drawn by a lame elk.
But all at once he felt chaos order itself, his body’s instinct telling him to use a technique learned years and years ago. He turned his head slightly and saw Maarken’s sword defending his left side, just as he protected his cousin’s left. They had done this a hundred times in the practice yard. They were back-to-back, always moving, always turning, striking as one fighting unit with two swords.
Pol didn’t bother to demand why Maarken had abandoned his horse. He already knew. The Battle Commander’s duty was to protect the High Prince. Well, Pol thought, he owed the same to Maarken, from the same loyalty, love, and kinship. Through skill and determination they imposed their personal rhythm on the battle and worked their way through the Vellant’im like reapers scything wheat.
Kazander rode by, and a little later Sethric with ten of Walvis’ trainees from Remagev. Neither of them stopped to help the pair who were obviously doing just fine on their own.
Pol glanced to his left, where he figured Azhdeen would have come back into view by now. The dragon was stamping both hind legs in the sand, head thrown back as he howled again and again. Pol could almost hear him through the ringing in his ears. Azhdeen’s huge spiked tail had skewered a Vellanti; he shook it to rid himself of the weight, and lashed it back and forth to discourage any further vainglory. Pol laughed to himself at the sight, and returned his attention to the path he and Maarken were carving through the enemy forces.
Someone tried for Maarken’s left side; Pol ran him through. Another bearded face lunged in above a short blade toward Pol’s belly; Maarken stopped him well short of his goal with an almost casual slice to the neck. It was almost like dancing with a partner who anticipated one’s every move.
Suddenly Maarken lurched back against Pol’s shoulder, breaking the rhythm and throwing off Pol’s thrust at a Vellanti throat. The man took it in the shoulder instead, and collapsed. Pol didn’t pause to make sure of him. He turned around and held Maarken up with his left hand, the sword in his right a blood-soaked warning to anyone foolish enough to approach.
Pol saw a dead Vellanti at Maarken’s feet.
And the blood pulsing from what remained of Maarken’s left arm.
“Kazander!” Pol screamed. “To me!”
Maarken swayed against him, blinking slowly. Pol tried to hold him up while fending off more attackers with his other hand. His cousin wrenched from his grasp and knelt, bending over to make the smallest possible target. Pol fought off one enemy, then another, still shouting Kazander’s name.
“Here, mighty Azhrei!”
Kazander’s horse was almost on top of him. He caught the reins and cried, “Maarken’s hurt! Get him out of here!”
It was the same order Maarken had given earlier. Kazander obeyed it just as swiftly. He leaned nearly out of his saddle to help Pol raise Maarken to his feet. Then he righted himself and hauled the injured man up behind him.
“No—wait!”
Pol saw Maarken’s pale lips shape the words, saw him hold up the stump of his left arm. It was cleanly severed just above the wrist. He stared up into adamant gray eyes awash in pain. And he knew that what he had done to the Merida, he must now do for Maarken.
He called Fire.
Maarken’s scream cut into Pol’s heart. Kazander steadied him as he slumped forward, unconscious, then nodded curtly, his eyes pitying both of them, and dug his heels into the stallion’s ribs.
Pol didn’t watch them gallop away. He swung around once more, and this time when he killed, he was not laughing.
There was a sudden, inexplicable lull. No one came to be slaughtered. Pol didn’t understand it. Kierun appeared at his side, wiping blood from his eyes that dripped from a slash on his forehead. There was another cut on his cheek where the blood had already dried. He was leading a horse and pressed reins into Pol’s hand, saying something Pol didn’t quite hear.
“Louder. Azhdeen deafened me.”
The boy drew a deep breath and yelled, “It’s almost over, your grace! Lord Walvis begs you to return to Skybowl!”
“Over?”
Kierun nodded.
Pity. He climbed into the saddle and looked around for Azhdeen. The dragon was gone—back up to the lake, he hoped. He’d have to find Feylin and ask her how to heal the wound, for as surely as Sunrunners called Fire, she wouldn’t get within shouting distance of the dragon herself.
He let the tired mare take the slope at her own pace. At the top, he reined in and looked around him. There was scant light left, which meant it was past midnight. Only one moon remained in the sky, her sisters already sleeping, her face broken by the ragged thrust of the western hills. Behind him, down on the sand, the Vellanti cookfires had burned down to barely visible embers. The Vellant’im themselves would make another, much larger fire tomorrow night.
But for all of it, for all the victory here tonight, it wasn’t enough. The High Warlord lived, and the other half of his army with him. Pol’s own army was spent. He saw that as he and Kierun entered the courtyard. Feylin and Audrite and Jeni—the latter assisted by Daniv, who was not in armor and whose arm, strapped to his side, told Pol why—were directing three separate groups of servants to help the wounded. Feylin took the most serious cases, naturally; Audrite the next worst, and Jeni and Daniv the simple cuts that only needed cleaning.
Pol didn’t see Maarken.
He could hear again, not clearly, and with a buzzing as of a thousand bees muffling sound, but he could hear the calls for water and bandages and the exclamations of joy that a beloved was alive and the moans of grief that a beloved was dead. And the groans of the wounded. Those he heard most of all.
Chadric approached him, and said, “Upstairs, Pol, quickly.”
No, he thought as he slid numbly from his horse. No, he can’t be—
Maarken lay in an oaken bed, as white as the silk pillows behind his back. Riyan was with him, and Kazander at his other side. Pol gripped the door frame for support. No. No.
Someone’s fingers cupped his elbow. Pol recognized the touch from his boyhood at Graypearl a hundred years ago.
“It’s all right. He’s only asleep—and neither dead nor dying.” Chadric drew him into the room. “Do you think Feylin would be elsewhere if there was any danger to Maarken?”
Pol made his legs walk. Kazander stepped back so Pol had room at the left side of the bed, where the stump of Maarken’s arm was carefully bandaged and held upright by a silken gold cord tied to the post. Not a single drop of blood stained the white wrappings.
Riyan, leaning heavily against the footboard for support, said, “He’ll be all right, Pol. You called Fire in time.”
Pol reached out a shaking hand to brush the fine brown hair from Maarken’s forehead. There was gray in it, and he looked as old as his father.
All at once Pol glanced to the windows, where a flash of silver underwings had flickered by. Not Azhdeen; Pol had seen him draping his wounded wing in the coolness of the lakewater. Just as Elisel had hovered outside Sioned’s windows,
crying out plaintively in the night, Maarken’s Pavisel was doing the same.
• • •
After Arlis dismissed him for the night, Rohannon had gone to his chamber and stared at what remained of his supply of dranath. He’d have to use it up tomorrow to check the weather. But even though he knew very little about weaving the strands of the moons, he was tempted to take a look around Snowcoves and Balarat tonight. Things happened by dark that were hidden by day—and Camanto’s belief that sorcery was involved was darkness indeed.
He argued with himself, weighing the possibility of knowledge against the dwindling supply of the herb. Perhaps now that Sabriam was so cooperative, his court Sunrunner would knuckle under as well and Rohannon could get more from her. She had been unmoved by his entreaties to teach him something of their art, even when he invoked his Uncle Andry’s name. There was always a supply of dranath kept ready in case of Plague, stored with other medicines and overseen by the court physician. In this case, the physician and the Sunrunner were one and the same. Well, she’d just have to part with some of it, the way Sabriam was parting with goods and the money to pay for them.
He mixed dranath in wine, and after a few moments blushed with the pleasant glow that warmed his body. Had he been at Goddess Keep, he would have had his man-making night by now and known exactly what to do with this feeling. As it was, Rohannon’s sexual experience encompassed a few kisses and a marked preference for girls with very dark eyes. So he waited out the arousal, squirming a little with embarrassment, until the glow focused someplace other than his trousers.
Opening his window, he braced his hands against the frame and drank in a long breath of cold, sea-salted air. Sabriam’s residence was removed from the town, overlooking its own sheltered cove and a wide rocky beach. A brisk wind blew up from the south and tossed sparkling whitecaps on the shore by moonlight. Lifting his face to the three silver disks in the sky, he closed his eyes and let his senses tangle in their light.
He was above the sprawling pinkish stone of the residence. Then he was over the docks that swarmed with workers outfitting and repairing ships. He grinned inwardly as Arlis’ shipmasters paced their vessels, suspicious eyes on everything the crews from Einar did. Then he ranged north, across the snowy hills of Fessenden toward Snowcoves.
He followed skeins of light far above the clouds, enchanted by the billowing whiteness limned in silver. They looked like snowdrifts hovering in midair, as if one could travel across the sky on foot. But every so often they thinned and vanished, and the glimpses of ground below made him slightly dizzy. The dranath steadied him, kept his weaving firm and strong.
Snowcoves tucked into its harbor neat as a baby in the crook of its mother’s arm. Twin lighthouses marked the eastern and western boundaries, their fires sharply defined in the cold black air. Between, the frailer lights of the town glowed in irregular patterns, where people sat up late in their houses or crafters worked into the night over their glass-fires. Connecting the whole web was a grid of street corner lamps on high poles. These were marvels of the crystaller’s art, each one different, elaborately shaped to refract the flames inside to maximum brilliance. They were like huge diamonds of fanciful cut and blinding polish, and Rohannon spent more than a few amazed moments exploring from street to street.
His service to Prince Arlis had taken him far from his home—very much farther than most people, even highborns, traveled in a lifetime. But recently he’d come to know that as a Sunrunner, he could go anywhere. As long as there was sufficient light, the whole of the continent was open to his gaze. It was a wonderful thing—heart-filling, mind-dancing, magical.
But there was a drawback to seeing whatever he chose to look at, and it was that sometimes he must see what troubled him. For instance, Yarin’s flag flew over the residence at Snowcoves, and Laric’s did not. It should have, and it was insolence enough to bring any prince at the head of an army to demand explanation. Rohannon moved on from Snowcoves toward Balarat, certain that there, too, the usurper’s banner would spread solitary against the starry sky.
He was right—but on his way firelight had caught his attention and he returned to identify it. It came from a snowy woodland clearing, resolving as he neared to a broad circle outside of which about a hundred people stood handfast. They wore pale, hooded cloaks shaded orange and red and gold by firelight. Occasionally a bare hand would show the glisten of a ring, some set with gems that indicated position, or at least wealth. Their faces were hidden inside draped cowls. All faces but one—a tall, dark-haired man who wore Firon’s color and Firon’s jewel: clothes of solid black from neck to heels, diamonds draped around his neck. The gems sparkled like ice by Fire—ice that Fire could not melt.
Rohannon slid closer. The flames sprouted from large rocks poking up through the snow. If he’d had any doubts, he knew now what this was: a diarmadhi ritual.
A slight, lanky figure, shapeless in homespun robe and with dark head bared to the cold night air, stepped through the flames to meet the man in black and diamonds. They stood in the center of the circle, facing each other. The smaller man raised his hands, sleeves falling back, thin fingers clenched at either end of a curious rope. He pulled it suddenly taut, the three twisted strands of gold, silver, and bronze shining. Everyone else knelt as the cord was raised high and draped around the tall man’s shoulders. The Fire leapt around the circle of stones.
Rohannon fled, neither needing nor wanting to see more. Though he had never met Lord Yarin, Arlis had, and could confirm a description. Not that confirmation was required—who else could it have been, wearing Firon’s diamond collar and receiving a diarmadhi accolade within a circle of Fire on stone?
Back in his chamber, his eyes opening to a serene view of the beach below Einar, he shivered with cold and slammed the window shut. The sound made him flinch—too loud, just as the candles reflected in the glass were too bright. That was how it was with dranath; the senses intensified, and not just the Sunrunner ones.
So Camanto was right, and there was sorcery at work in Firon. When Arlis and Laric heard this, then no matter what the weather tomorrow they would sail for Snowcoves with the tide. Rohannon spared a grimace for the long days at sea, and hoped he’d be so miserable that he wouldn’t even know how much time passed. He was proud of his heritage and he had grown to love using his skills—untutored as they were—but there were definite disadvantages to being a Sunrunner.
It needed no dranath to sensitize his hearing to the shriek that echoed through the upper halls. Rohannon darted from his chamber, pausing to follow the echo back to its source. A terrible thud sounded, one floor down. He jumped on the wooden banister and slid its length to the landing, his expert technique learned from his grandmother long ago at Radzyn.
Catching his balance neatly, he started down the long arcade that linked two wings of the building on this floor. To his left was a wall of windows overlooking the sea; to his right, carved railings above the main entrance hall. Rohannon looked down. Prince Camanto, stark naked, lay on the flagstones, fair hair black with blood, dead of a shattered skull.
Later, after Arnisaya had been given a sleeping draught to calm her hysterics and the corpse had been taken away, Rohannon mulled wine for the two princes in Laric’s chambers. Sabriam had already sent a courier to Fessada to apprise Prince Pirro that his other son was dead; it was not, he declared, news best given by one Sunrunner to another.
Rohannon listened while Arlis and Laric talked over the death, but the one question that needed asking went unspoken. So Rohannon asked it, quietly.
“My lord, why is he dead?”
Arlis blinked. “Because he fell a dragon’s height and more onto the paving stones, that’s why.”
“No, my lord, I mean why? He doesn’t have the reputation of being a drunkard. There was no smell of liquor about him. . . .” He trailed off, frowning.
“What is it, Rohannon?” Arlis murmured. “What are you remembering?”
He seized on the word. “Remem
bering, that’s just it. Something about the smell.” He tried, then shook his head. “It’s not coming. I’m sorry, my lord.”
“Don’t chase it and it’ll come of its own accord. I’m more interested in your question. It sets me to some unpleasant thinking. Why, indeed?”
Laric nodded. “Isaura was wailing about what a tragic accident it is that he fell—but it occurs to me that he was pushed.”
Rohannon shook his head. “I don’t think so, my lord. I heard no footsteps in the hall but my own.”
“There are no doors within easy distance, no rooms to hide in.” Laric tapped a finger on the rim of his wine cup. “You slid down the banister barefoot?” Rohannon nodded. “So. No clattering footsteps on the stairs to warn anyone that there was need to hide. You heard the sound of his fall, and only moments later you saw him. And no one else. He wasn’t pushed, he really did fall. But why?”
“Not drunk,” Arlis mused. “Naked, so he’d been abed. No nightrobe, though, which might indicate he wasn’t exactly sleeping. Anyone see him take a girl into his rooms?”
“If he did, she was long gone by the time the body was carried back there.” Laric poured more wine all around. “And near as I can recall, the bed was fairly tidy, not rumpled as one would expect if he’d been making love in it.”
“She might have pulled the sheets back in order,” Arlis said. “But this doesn’t get us anywhere, really.” He put a hand on Rohannon’s shoulder where the boy sat next to him at the table. “And what were you still doing up, anyway? I thought I’d sent you to bed a long while before.”
“Yes, my lord, but—” He drew a deep breath, the dranath still singing softly in his blood. “I went for a look at Snowcoves and Balarat. Please don’t scold me, my lord, what I saw is too important.”
When he had finished the telling, Laric covered his face with his hands for a moment. “The man you saw is Yarin,” he murmured. “My wife’s brother.”