The Dragon Token

by Melanie Rawn

  “And watch out for the blue sword, even with your gloves,” she added. “It’s got—”

  “Yeeow!”

  “—spines.”

  As she worked, Chayla found she was singing under her breath. It was the lyric Kazander had sung for her at Remagev, the one about the white crown. A silly song, really, about a skeptical prince who, when told of the crown’s power, politely declined to believe in it, much less seek it out. The lesson, according to Kazander, was that one could not find what one did not have faith enough to look for. One of these days she must get him to sing her the other version, where the prince did believe and went on the quest.

  She rather wished Kazander was here now. Mad as he was, at least he was amusing. Even if sometimes she wanted to slug him.

  She made a face as she found she’d ripped up a woollylamb by the roots. Well, there were plenty, and the loss of this one wouldn’t obliterate them from Ivalia. She repeated the caution she’d given Zakiel, and went back to singing, this time consciously choosing a song Princess Meiglan had played at the Rialla this year on her impossible wall of strings. Chayla remembered watching her at the fenath, swaying delicately back and forth, her fingers choosing this string and then that. It was a bit like what Chayla was doing now: move to one side, bend, select a plant, pluck, straighten, turn to the other side. All the drawings studied for years flashed before her eyes as if they were musical notations—which made this wet meadow her instrument, this harvest a song of healing.

  The image amused her. She’d have to remember to tell Kazander.

  Him again, she thought, irritated once more without quite knowing why, and stopped singing.

  But only for a little while.

  • • •

  The spill of midday sunlight down the snowy slope mocked Andry with a million tiny glistening rainbows, sharp and cold and nearly painful to a Sunrunner’s sense. He could use that light to watch Alasen, but not to touch her. He tried to tell himself it didn’t matter, that once they were both at Feruche, she could not run away from him. But it still angered him that she refused him so utterly—and that she had been taught a means of refusal that he would have to hurt her to overcome.

  He paced away from the horses, held by Evarin as they drank reluctantly of icy runoff that stung their mouths. Three more summits, and they would be on the Desert side of the Veresch. There, only dry morning frost would whiten the rocks and at least he would not be freezing wet as well as freezing cold. Unless, he thought glumly, a particularly clever storm had sidled down the mountain passes from Cunaxa, in which case the snow would be almost as deep there as it was here.

  Delightful thought, one to warm his heart and bones. He stamped his feet to get the circulation going again. It was an old joke at Goddess Keep that their Lord was never cold, having soaked up so much sun in his Desert childhood that nothing short of five winters in Firon could so much as make him ask for a cloak against the chill. It now seemed he’d run out of hoarded warmth.

  Squinting up at the switchback trail they would have to climb this afternoon, he followed its vague outlines beneath the snow up to the top of the ridge. Ragged as a dragon’s spine, it cut into the blue sky so piercingly white that the clouds beyond looked tarnished.

  And then the rocks moved.

  Andry cursed and shaded his eyes with one hand, peering up at dark, shifting shapes far above him. Riders, no more than four or five. Not Alasen and Meiglan, not this soon. Who?

  “Evarin!” he hissed, mindful of how sounds carried in the chill stillness. “Quick, find cover!”

  The Master Physician asked no questions. He dragged the horses across the rivulet to the stony shelter of a boulder. Every clatter of hooves made Andry wince. He had crouched down, motionless, hoping that if anyone looked down the slope he would present the perfect imitation of a rock. But he was still in the sunlight, and that was the important thing.

  Swiftly he wove a path upward. Five men, all wrapped in plainspun brown wool cloaks, hunched into their saddles as their tired horses threaded between snags of white-draped stone. Damn you, look up and let me see your faces! Andry thought furiously.

  One of them did. Thick stubble darkened the narrow jaw, as if he’d forgotten to bring a razor. Or as if, Andry told himself in bitter comprehension, he’d left his shaving things with the rest of his party, which was placidly on the road to Rezeld Manor without him. For Miyon of Cunaxa’s real destination must be Feruche.

  Andry withdrew, using his eyes to judge when it was safe to move. When the last of the riders vanished, he pushed himself stiffly to his feet.

  No tracks here, no marks in the pristine snow. But this was the easier trail, not the swifter one that began two measures back and compelled horses to lurch up a rocky defile. That Andry and Evarin had come so close so quickly was sheerest luck. Proof enough that the Goddess was with him today.

  He gestured to Evarin, who brought the horses out of hiding. “Miyon,” Andry said. “He wasn’t expecting to see anyone, so he didn’t.”

  “But how did he—?”

  “What does that matter? It must’ve taken some time to circle back and avoid Dragon’s Rest. But he’s going to Feruche. He’ll catch up with Alasen tomorrow.”

  Evarin handed him his reins. “My Lord . . . why would he want to be where Pol is?”

  Andry frowned, caught in the motion of swinging up into his saddle. “What do you mean?”

  “His sons all died fighting with the Merida against Pol—who hates him to begin with.”

  “So? He probably wants to convince Pol that he’s been a good little prince all along.” Mounting, he settled his cloak around him. “He can’t do that at Dragon’s Rest. He has to be where things are happening, where he can make large noises about his unswerving loyalty.”

  “Put another way, my Lord, why did he say he was going to Swalekeep?”

  “Because he could hardly say he was going to Rezeld Manor. That’s where I told him to go in my role as courier. Come on, mount up. This hill is half an afternoon’s climb.”

  But Evarin stayed stubbornly on his own two feet, looking up at Andry. “You were wearing a Merida face. You told him what the Vellant’im and the sorcerers wanted him to do. My Lord, why did he lie to you?”

  The chill that took him this time came from the inside.

  • • •

  “Mama?” Dannar blushed slightly, and corrected himself. “I mean, my lady—or should it be ‘your grace’?”

  Alasen refrained from laughing at the question. Dannar’s dignity as a squire did not permit it. “I’ve no idea. I’m afraid I’m not current with proper forms of address to one’s mother when she’s also a princess. Meiglan? What’s your view?”

  “We’re hardly formal here,” Meiglan replied with a tired smile. “I think we can be just family, Dannar.”

  “Oh,” he said, nodding, “that’s all right then. Anyway, Feneol sent me back to say that you’ll have to dismount and lead your horses for a ways. There’s a big rockfall ahead. It’s blocking the trail.”

  “But we were only through here yesterday,” Alasen exclaimed.

  Her son gave a shrug. “This isn’t called Tumblewall Canyon for nothing. Feneol says it won’t slow us down much, but we’ll have to go single file to be safe, my lady.”

  “Very well. Thank you—my lord,” Alasen said, unable to keep from teasing him. He grinned at her—Ostvel’s grin below her own green eyes and that mass of fiery red hair—and sketched an elegant bow that made her laugh.

  Half a measure up the road, she saw the reason for Feneol’s caution. Far up the canyon, a brown gouge showed where stone had collapsed under the weight of snow. The resulting slide had collected on the flat of the trail, making a new and dangerous cliff. She must remember to tell Pol so it could be cleared away and the route to Elktrap made safe again.

  Nothing could make it easy. She didn’t envy Meiglan the mountain passes between here and Dragon’s Rest, but neither did she begrudge doubling back for a day to
accompany her. Tonight they would all camp at another of Lord Garic’s stone shelters—for Pol’s convenience when he visited Feruche—and she would have a long talk with her son. Dannar had grown and changed so much just since the Rialla. She wanted to get to know her little boy again while he still was a little boy, and hers.

  She slid from her saddle and waited her turn to be led across the clattering stones. The sunlight made her nervous and she cursed Andry yet again. He’d try it again, she was positive. The tension of waiting for him to do it was maddening.

  While she was at it, she directed a curse at herself as well. If she’d been clever, she would have at least found out where he was. Nobody knew.

  A terrible idea slithered into her mind then. What if the Vellant’im had captured him? What if he’d been trying to ask for help?

  No; ridiculous. There were a hundred other Sunrunners he could go to, people who knew how to get word elsewhere. And besides, if he’d been taken, one look at those ten rings and wrist cuffs, and he’d be dead.

  She had just received ample proof that he was still very much alive. How dared he try that with her? Damn him. Her renewed anger communicated itself to Tiba, the silvery Radzyn mare at her side, and the reins slackened in her hand as the horse nudged her. She scratched a black ear in apology, and tried to calm her thoughts.

  It had been a very long time since Andry had approached her on sunlight—fifteen years, in fact, the morning her daughter Milar had been born. All he’d wanted was to congratulate her. Harmless enough—but he could have written it in a letter. Damn him. He knew what the abrupt assault of a Sunrunner’s colors did to her.

  It was a reaction not in keeping with her new resolve to do everything she could to help end this war. Like it or not, frightened of it or not, she was faradhi. What possible use this could be to Pol, untrained as she was, escaped her. Yet her decision was somehow symbolic. She had left the peaceful, sheltered world Ostvel had created for her at Castle Crag. She must leave behind her terror as well. Otherwise she would be as useless as Meiglan.

  An unfair, unworthy, and untrue thought, just as automatic as her fear of her gifts. But who would have guessed that shy little Meggie could order her own half-brothers executed? Alasen made silent apology even as she wondered whether this new and unexpected turn in Meiglan’s character was the very reason Pol had sent her back to Dragon’s Rest.

  Alasen had a suspicion that it was. From some of the things Meiglan had said since they’d met on the road, she guessed that while Pol wanted her and their daughters out of harm’s way, he also wanted Dragon’s Rest readied for his triumphant return. Meiglan spoke of clearing out the burned shell of their hillside cottage before the New Year, and seeing to the gardens—even though Alasen had assured her they were not neglected.

  “No, of course not,” Meiglan had replied earnestly. “But my lord wants everything to be as it was, and Princess Lisiel doesn’t know what orders to give about the plantings.”

  At first it struck Alasen as absurd, worrying about herbs and flowers in the middle of a war. She supposed it symbolized to him that there would be a life after all this madness, a return to home and family and normalcy. Which was even more absurd. Pol could ask Meiglan to do it, and Meiglan would try her best, but nothing would ever be the same.

  Alasen got the nod from Laroshin and scrambled up loose rocks, tugging her mare behind her. Everything had changed—including her, if someone took her up on her determination to use her faradhi gifts. Had Andry been just a little gentler in weaving his colors about her mind, he might have been the one to change her. He might have—

  Alasen! Listen to me! Please—

  His strength was terrifying, grasping her mind in precisely the manner she feared most. Her reaction was instantaneous; instead of pushing him away as she had that noontime, she hid behind a wall of light and power. Hers was the Kierstian faradhi gift, just like Sioned’s and Pol’s. He had taught her well, testing her thoroughly until she commanded this shining, adamant structure as easily as most Sunrunners called Fire.

  Andry didn’t have a chance.

  Someone was calling her name. She heard it with her ears, not her mind—although there was an odd rushing sound, too, like water. Her muscles ached as if wrenched from her bones and her palms were burning even through the tough leather of her riding gloves. Opening her eyes, she gasped to find she was sprawled on her side across stone and snow, hanging onto the mare’s reins for dear life.

  “Don’t move!” Meiglan screamed. “Alasen, don’t move!”

  She lay still on the bruising rocks, catching her breath. Laroshin was making his way toward her. She wondered at his slowness until she looked down. There was nothing below her extended right leg but empty air. She was dangling by four thin strips of leather over the sheer side of the rockfall.

  Sweat slicked her hands inside the gloves. She tightened her grip, shoulder muscles tearing. Tiba stood absolutely still, neither trying to pull her back up nor coming toward her in an attempt to ease the terrible strain on the bridle. Alasen blessed Chay and a hundred generations of his ancestors for breeding horses like this one.

  “That’s it, your grace, keep very still,” Laroshin murmured as he crept nearer across the rocks. “You’ll be fine. I have a rope, tied to my horse above. Your mare slid a bit before she dug her heels in. She’ll keep you steady. I’m going to get the rope around you, your grace, and my horse will pull you right up the hill. When I tell you, let go of the reins. Do you understand, your grace?”

  She wanted to tell him that, of course she understood, she was neither deaf nor an idiot. But her mouth was so dry and her throat so constricted that try as she might, she couldn’t utter a single word. She blinked instead, hoping he would comprehend. Laroshin nodded and smiled at her. Quite stupidly, considering her situation, she thought what beautiful eyes he had. Wonderful eyes. Blue and smiling and reassuring. She kept watching them and listening to his low, gravelly voice as he slid sideways on his belly toward her. But when his foot moved and a little avalanche of stones skittered over the edge of the rockslide, she flinched.

  “Don’t mind that, your grace. Just a little farther. That’s the way. You stay quiet, and I’ll be there before you know it. I don’t want you to reach for my hand, I just want you to hold on to those reins. Your mare will keep you safe. She’s a smart little lady, that one. I wish I had a dozen like her in the stables at Dragon’s Rest.”

  He was beside her. If she had been able to move, she would have kissed him for having such wonderful eyes. He draped an arm carefully around her ribs, pushing the end of the rope beneath her outstretched arm.

  “I beg your pardon, your grace,” he said as his hand brushed her breast while pulling the rope around. Alasen felt an insane urge to giggle. “I’ll tie a knot in this and then you can let go of the reins. I’ll bet your hands hurt. There. That’s it. You can let go now.”

  She couldn’t. Every muscle in her body had seized up. She lay helplessly on her side, tears of frustration stinging her eyes.

  Laroshin put his arm around her again. “I’ve got you. You can let go.”

  Suddenly she knew whose eyes his reminded her of. They were younger, and the color was wrong, and the lashes were golden-brown instead of black, but the kindness and the steadying smile were very like Ostvel.

  Alasen tilted her chin up and stared at her fingers. One by one she forced them to release the lengths of leather. When the terrific pressure on the bridle eased, Tiba backed up, turned, and scrambled up to stand trembling and wet with sweat.

  Alasen swallowed hard. “My husband is going to kill me for this,” she heard herself say. Better me than Andry. Goddess, how am I going to explain this?

  She was dragged up the rocks, hardly feeling the scrapes and bruises. When she was on safe ground, she pushed herself weakly to her knees. Looking back over her shoulder, she saw that Laroshin had climbed back up and was being helped to his feet. If he’d been within reach just then, she really would have kisse
d him.

  “Mama!” Dannar made no pretense of grown-up reserve; he threw his arms around her. She bent her head to his bright hair and clung to him.

  “Princess Alasen, what happened?” someone asked in a hushed voice. She glanced up. Lyela of Waes held out a cloak that looked blissfully warm. “Here, you’re shaking.”

  How strange to recall as the cloak was wrapped around her that Ostvel had thrown a knife to Lyela’s father so he could kill his wife and himself before Sunrunner’s Fire got them. Andry’s Fire. She remembered begging him not to do it, and her shock at Ostvel’s act, and—she felt her hold on reality slipping.

  “Dannar,” she said thickly. “Help me up.”

  Her son unknotted the rope and supported her unsteady rise to her feet. “Are you all right, Mama?”

  “I will be. Thank you, Lyela. I—I’m not really sure what happened. I suppose I just put a foot wrong. I don’t know.”

  “I saw,” said Jihan the irrepressible—and irritatingly observant. “Your face got all tight and angry, like my Papa’s does when somebody’s giving him bad news on sunlight—”

  “Hush!” Meiglan snapped.

  “But I saw it, Mama—”

  “I said hush!”

  Jihan stared, then folded her arms to sulk.

  “Princess Alasen slipped and fell,” Meiglan stated. “Thank the Goddess, she’s all right.”

  Alasen blessed her silently. Meiglan knew, of course, why she had fled to the shadow of a tree earlier today. Alasen had told her, and no one else. Although Meiglan didn’t know Andry very well, she knew enough to have guessed that he would try again.

  And that brought Alasen up short. Why had he tried again? Why that urgent command to listen?

  If only he’d been more subtle. If only he hadn’t frightened her. Shame made her bite her lip. Whatever his reasons for the attempt, she knew the cause of its power. He had known she would resist. Sudden force was his only hope of catching her. None of this had been his fault.

  She turned her face up to the sun, sorry as she’d never been before in her life that she’d never learned how to weave its light on her own. To find Andry, apologize, hear what he had been so anxious to tell her.