by Melanie Rawn
It didn’t occur to Laric until they were well out to sea that Rohannon was a Sunrunner who wasn’t sick on water.
They had spent the previous night slowly sending those of their troops housed inside the residence at Einar down to the docks, with orders to have everyone on board by dawn. Rohannon’s frantic warning had not been discounted by Arlis, but he had pointed out that no one, not even Sabriam or a diarmadhi, was insane enough to kill three princes and the son of the Desert Battle Commander in one night and claim that all the deaths were accidents.
But that Sabriam and his ally—or allies—were stupid was obvious. “They would’ve done better to kill me,” Laric said. “After all, I’m the one bound for Firon with an army to dislodge them.”
Arlis agreed, and thought it highly likely that something might happen on the way to Snowcoves. So despite concurring with Rohannon that haste was essential, he took time to make certain that every man and woman on each ship was known to him personally. Laric vouched for those brought with him from Dragon’s Rest. And sure enough, four young men were discovered who had no good reason for being among the troops other than an avowed desire to fight. These were summarily ordered to return to their homes.
They might have been telling the truth. Arlis didn’t risk it. Just before dawn, he called for the sails to be set and all speed made from Einar.
If Sabriam knew of it, there was no sign. No one came to the docks to protest, much less to give them the athri’s farewell. Laric thought this suspicious, and said so, but Arlis only shrugged.
“I left him a letter. What more does he want? If he has a problem, he can bring it up at the next Rialla.”
“Besides,” Rohannon put in, leaning into the breeze, “you’re princes. He can hardly forbid you to go where and when you like.”
It was at this point that Laric noticed the oddity: a Sunrunner on water and still on his own two feet.
Rohannon spread his hands in an eloquent gesture. “I don’t argue with it, my lord. I just savor it while it lasts. Because it won’t. I learned that on the way here.”
Arlis grinned. “By noon our poor little Sunrunner will be crumpled in a miserable heap, retching his guts out. I’ve got a bucket all ready for him.”
The squire made a face. “You’re too good to me, my lord.”
“I know.” He ruffled Rohannon’s windblown hair. “While you’re still upright, take a look ahead and tell me what the sea’s like.”
A few moments later, Rohannon said, “Now I know why Sabriam isn’t worried. His Sunrunner must’ve told him we won’t get far. There’s a storm coming right through the strait between Isel and Fessenden.”
“Bad?” Arlis frowned.
“The kind that blows all the way to Lake Adni and sets windows rattling at Zaldivar. I don’t think even you could sail through this one, my lord.”
Arlis looked tempted. But a storm of this kind was the most dangerous on all the seas around the continent, for the strait acted like a funnel to concentrate the force of wind and rain.
“Bet I can outrun it,” the prince said.
“All the way around your island?” Laric asked.
“All the way around,” Arlis confirmed. “It’ll take us a few more days to reach Snowcoves, and I’m sorry for it. But better to get there late than not at all.” He moved off to give the orders.
Laric watched Rohannon speculatively. “I was a little boy when your father came to Graypearl as my grandfather’s squire. Maarken used to be sick just thinking about the trip to Radzyn and back.”
“Oh, I know what’s coming, my lord,” the boy said glumly. “And it makes me the same kind of queasy. But I’ve got until around noon, as Prince Arlis says. After that, I probably won’t know my own name until we get to Snowcoves.”
“It’s a long journey. If you can’t keep food or water down you really will get sick, and not just from the sea. Perhaps we should stop at New Raetia and put you ashore.”
“No, my lord, please. I’ll be all right. I promise.”
Laric frowned and was about to say more when Arlis yelled for Rohannon from the upper deck. The squire escaped gladly, appalled that his stupid Sunrunner weakness might cost him this adventure. He’d just have to be stronger than it was.
“I nearly forgot about those damned Vellanti ships we sent running before. Rohannon, tell me where they are.”
“Yes, my lord.” Rohannon was a little ashamed of himself. His chance for excitement counted for nothing compared to his lord’s need for a Sunrunner. He ranged south over Brochwell Bay, but with the dranath fading he didn’t feel confident enough to go as far as Goddess Keep. So he returned and asked for something to drink, saying with a smile that though it might not look it, Sunrunning did give a man a thirst.
While Sabriam’s court Sunrunner examined Camanto’s body last night, Rohannon had sneaked out a quick hand and snatched up one of the leather pouches of herbs in the man’s coffer of medicines. All the bags were conveniently tagged. The one he drew surreptitiously from his pocket now was, of course, dranath, its label removed. While Arlis conferred with the ship’s master, Rohannon sprinkled a pinch of dried leaves into the water a page had brought him.
When, in due course, he reported back to Arlis about the Vellanti fleet, it was to say that they were settled off the coast of Goddess Keep, threatening no one for the moment. And if the drug in his bloodstream slurred his speech just a trifle and put a flush in his cheeks, everyone assumed it was only the beginnings of the usual Sunrunner seasickness.
• • •
Jayachin would have disagreed vehemently with Rohannon’s estimation of the danger posed by the Vellanti ships. But Jayachin was not in charge of defenses at Goddess Keep. Torien was. And Torien, having tested the ros’salath and grown more confident in its use—and knowing that Prince Elsen of Grib was on his way with soldiers to defend Goddess Keep—was not overly worried.
Until he discovered that Valeda was not in the castle.
She had sent word two days ago that she wasn’t feeling well and would remain in her chambers. The next morning he’d sent someone to inquire after her health, and was told she’d left orders not to be disturbed. Now, tonight, he let himself into her rooms with the master key and stopped in his tracks.
Her bed was tidily made, her books and personal things in place, her wardrobe door shut. But the hearth was long cold, and tacked to its wooden mantle was a folded piece of parchment with his name on it.
I’ve gone to help Andry if I can. If he’ll let me. The past few days I tested a few of those he tested before, after Oclel and Rusina died. Teach Martiel and Linis to be devr’im. Their colors are right, and Martiel is diarmadhi, which may help. Take care of my daughter. And for the love of the Goddess, don’t let that fool Jayachin bully you.
Chapter Twenty-two
Lisiel had no interest in the news that the courier from Swalekeep had ridden out at dawn. She was a trifle irritated when Meiglan’s servant—whose name she could never remember—could not be found when needed. But when Ullan told her that Master Evarin seemed to have vanished from Dragon’s Rest, too, the princess used an oath that her mother would have slapped her for even thinking.
“But I’ve run out of the salve he gave me for Larien’s rash. What can the man be thinking of? Where is he?”
“Wherever he’s gone, he’s not coming back,” Ullan said. “His clothes and medical supplies are gone.”
Lisiel swore again, and went to soothe her fretful child.
Evarin had no intention of returning to Dragon’s Rest. His talents, as he informed Andry when he caught up to him at noon, were worth more than cooking up ointment for a baby’s sore bottom.
Both had taken the hard way out of the valley, up past the remains of the little cottage Andry referred to as Pol’s Folly. It was the path Alasen had ridden three mornings ago, scarcely more than a goat-track along the hillsides above the creek that fed the lake. Eventually even this narrow trail gave out, and one must urge one’s ou
traged horse up a steep slope and pray to the Goddess that it didn’t start a landslide. Previous rockfalls had choked the ravine, diverting the watercourse in some places and damming it in others; otters and flat-tails found good fishing in the pools.
But it was winter, and all sensible creatures were snugly nested. As Andry applied his boots yet again to his stallion’s ribs, he told himself that sense had nothing to do with what humans did. Loose stones underfoot were covered with alternating layers of snow and ice that in spring would melt down the canyon in a million small rivulets to swell the creek. For now, frozen water turned to slush in the noon sun. With every lunge his horse took, Andry felt hooves slip. It needed no riding skill to negotiate this horror; all he had to do was give the horse its head, cling to the saddle with his knees, and try not to fall off.
It was a long way down.
When he reached the top, having let Evarin go first for the best footing—such as it was—he glanced over the rim and blanched.
“I know,” the physician said, teeth chattering and not from the cold. “It’s a g-good thing I didn’t look before I g-got up here, or I’d never have m-made it.”
It took Andry a try or two before he could speak. “No wonder Pol feels so secure here. Can you imagine trying to bring an army down that?”
“I don’t even want to imagine bringing me d-down that.” With shaking fingers, Evarin unstoppered the wineskin at his belt and took a long swig. It restored him at once. “From Pol’s own cellars. I made friends with the winemaster.”
Andry had long since let his borrowed face fade, so his grin was his own. “I haven’t the least doubt of it. Hand that over.”
They sat easy in their saddles for a time, letting their horses recover. It was a fine, bright day on this side of the Veresch, but to the east thin wisps of fog slunk between snow-crowned mountaintops, indicating cloud cover across the Desert.
“Now where?” Evarin asked. “As if I’d have any idea what you’re talking about when it comes to this part of the world.”
“It’s simple enough. We’re about midway between Stronghold and Skybowl. There’s a series of passes we could take to either, rather like Sorin’s little garden maze at Feruche. But if we head due north, it’s a fairly straight route to Elktrap Manor through a succession of valleys, and from there only one serious climb before Feruche.”
Evarin jerked a thumb over his shoulder to the canyon. “That serious?”
“Relax,” Andry laughed. “There’s a road.”
• • •
Meiglan was nearing the end of that road, with twenty more measures to Elktrap and a night of rest in a real bed to look forward to. When Riyan married Ruala, old Lord Garic decided that for his own convenience in visiting his granddaughter at Feruche, he would build a series of shelters along this road. The established ones, constructed of wood and used by trade caravans, gave protection from the rain but little warmth. Garic’s three small stone cabins were snug against the wind and heated by cunning little iron stoves specially made for him in Cunaxa. But Meiglan longed for clean sheets and a soft mattress, and a night’s rest uninterrupted by the sounds of animals outside and the changing of the watch.
More than anything else, however, she longed for her own bed at Dragon’s Rest. Pol’s need to know that there could be one unchanging thing in their world had struck a chord deep within her, hardly heard until she was actually on the road back home. Her own bed, her own hearth, her own food served on her own plates—why had she left? She had accomplished nothing, proven nothing. She was what her father had jeeringly called her years ago—nothing but a witless little ornament who made pretty music on the fenath and looked charming at Pol’s side.
She was useless on this journey. Laroshin commanded the twenty guards, and Lyela organized everyone else with quiet efficiency. Meiglan had only to stay in the saddle, scold Jihan when she pestered poor Dannar, eat what was given her, and curl up in Pol’s cloak at night with her daughters beside her and her husband a hundred measures away.
Futile as her existence seemed, at least she had the wit to be aware of it. Meiglan shuddered every time she looked at Rabisa—silent and pliable and no more conscious of the world around her than a drifting snowflake. Maybe it was better to be like her, and not have to think.
Occasionally her pride rebelled. If she had done nothing else, presiding over her half-brothers’ executions was enough. But somehow, the very fact that she had acted as High Princess had injured Pol in some strange way.
What did he expect of her? What did he want her to do? Pretend the war didn’t exist? Make believe that Rohan was not dead, that she wasn’t High Princess now, and that after all this was over they could go back to their sweet, peaceful life at Dragon’s Rest with nothing changed?
What a fool he was.
Instantly on the heels of that thought came an almost physical shock. Never in the nine years of their marriage had she criticized anything about him, even in the privacy of her own mind, let alone called him a fool.
He was right: she had changed, and not for the better. He wasn’t the fool. She was. High Princess . . . simple murderer, that’s what she’d become. She had used the power of her position to rid herself of men who meant her father to her. Men she had never even seen before that day. How many times had she heard Rohan or Sioned or Pol himself speak of the dangers of any kind of power?
She held the authority of the High Princess in her hands. And her first use of it had been to kill.
It was best that she return home, and protect the children from the kind of warping changes that had overtaken her. At Dragon’s Rest she could forget the battles and the wounded, the fear, the dead men at her feet—and the sight of Sioned’s eyes.
And Sionell’s.
Her friend’s agony had been somehow worse, more cutting and desperate than Sioned’s. After all, she and Rohan had had almost forty years together, a whole lifetime. They had ruled wisely and well, raised a son to manhood, rejoiced in their grandchildren. Sionell and Tallain had been married only eleven winters. He would never see his daughter married, his elder son knighted—he wouldn’t even see Meig, his younger son and her own Namesake, learn to ride. And Sionell—every morning for the rest of her life she would wake up alone.
Meiglan had gone to her that first night, thinking to give comfort. A few words, an embrace while she wept—but there had been no tears, not a sign of them. Sionell merely sat in a chamber lit by a single candle, watching her children sleep, needing nothing and no one. Meiglan had entered silently, waited to be noticed, and after a time crept out again without receiving any indication that Sionell even knew she had been there.
Returning to her own rooms, she’d cursed herself for thinking there was any comfort to be offered a woman who’d lost a beloved husband. And, stealthily, the other thing had come to her, the passionate gratitude and the shame for it that it had been Tallain who died and not Pol.
No, she had too much time to think. And there would be so many days of it, at least five more to Dragon’s Rest. She supposed she ought to be grateful that at night she was so tired that sleep came quick and deep and dreamless.
At Elktrap she would bathe herself and the girls, enjoy a hot meal, and sleep from dusk until dawn. And tomorrow she would climb back on her horse and continue on the road back to her home. To her old life. Her real life, the one Pol had said he must believe in and hold in his heart. She would make sure it was there for him when this war was done and everyone went home and all was as it had always been.
Yet she knew it was impossible. Meiglan was the person Pol needed, but only the High Princess had power and strength enough to do what he wanted done. She could not be both at the same time, so she must switch back and forth from one to the other—from wanting to hide to ordering death.
She wondered how she would keep her balance. She wondered if she could create the illusion for Pol that nothing had changed.
Everything had changed. She had seen it haunting Sioned’s eyes,
and Sionell’s—and especially Pol’s, no matter how he wished it otherwise. But he must never see it in hers. Never.
• • •
“Sit still, close your eyes, and don’t move. In a moment you’ll feel a sort of tingle at the edge of your mind. Locate it and concentrate on it, just as you do when Hollis speaks to you on sunlight. Ready?”
Jeni nodded, gray eyes wide, and Pol smiled. When Meath had taught him this, he’d been as breathless with nerves as she was now. He supposed it happened to all Sunrunners at their first real lesson. Even Sioned. Even Andry.
She closed her eyes as bidden. Pol stretched, settling more comfortably on the rag mat. They were seated beside the lake, morning sun shining clear. The crisp breeze that had blown early haze away now ruffled the water. With Riyan giving orders in the keep, Feylin giving orders about the wounded—and Azhdeen growling his own commands to the younger dragons on the opposite shore—Pol had nothing to do. Much better to spend his time teaching Jeni instead of brooding over what he would do next. What he could do next. His choices were somewhat limited.
He could not allow any of that to shade his colors while giving this lesson. Calming himself, he relaxed and let his eyelids drift shut. Delicately, his instinctive skills refined over the years, Pol wove light.
Jeni’s mother had resisted this all her life, this expansion and alteration of senses that allowed a faradhi to taste and touch and smell and hear colors in an initially confusing but ultimately gorgeous profusion. Alasen had been assaulted by her gifts in ways that had terrified her. Jeni’s introduction had been no less frightening; the power of Sioned’s working at Stronghold had caught the girl against her will, trapping her in a pattern of pain and danger. Yet their reactions were completely different. Alasen had rejected her Sunrunner abilities to avoid Andry; Jeni had no desire to avoid her dragon.
The contrast was an interesting one, but Pol didn’t waste time analyzing it. Into the sunlight he threaded his own colors—icy clear diamond and deep emerald, iridescent pearl and golden topaz—and wrapped Jeni in them, waiting for her to sense him and respond.