by Melanie Rawn
She had never learned anything but how to wall herself away.
After a little while she insisted that the journey resume. As she rode, she stayed alert for any quiver that might mean Andry was nearby again, vowing that next time she wouldn’t behave like such a fool.
But though she waited hopefully until dusk, there was no next time.
• • •
Shadows blanketed the watery hollow of Ivalia Meadow, the last of the sun gilding the treetops high up the ridge. The wind swirled in chill earnest now, every leaf and branch whistling, the horses tethered at the far end of the meadow whimpering with cold and nervousness.
Chayla felt like echoing them. Her spine was permanently bent as she foraged, her legs aching, her shoulders knotted. She didn’t glance up for fear that that darkness would compel her to leave. She didn’t notice when the horses quieted. Just a little more, just a little farther, just a little longer before she returned to Feruche.
A peculiarly sharp gust ended in three sharp cries, three muted thuds into soggy green mire. She straightened with a groan of effort and looked around just in time to see Lissina struggle up for a moment and then topple forward, facedown in a wealth of purple flowers with an arrow sprouting from her back.
Chayla stood alone in the meadow, frozen, dumbstruck, her thoughts sluggish with bewilderment at the silence. Even the wind seemed to have died.
Lissina was a barely discernible shape in a blue cloak amid the tall grasses. Zakiel was nowhere to be seen. Forty paces away, an arrow showed her where Romanto had fallen.
A shudder took her, swayed her on her feet. She locked her knees. Her gaze darted in every direction. Nothing.
Silence.
A bird screamed high overhead, making her shy back and nearly lose her footing again. This time her whole body went rigid as stone.
The man rode one of her grandfather’s horses, a dark man whose beard was flecked with gold. The mare’s hooves made soft sucking sounds in the fetlock-deep marsh. He had a grip on the reins that had bloodied the animal’s mouth. He rode across the meadow slowly, in no hurry. As he neared, she saw that the mare was quivering, her ears laid back. The man was smiling.
Icy wind rushed into Chayla’s throat as breath sobbed into her lungs. With the air came knowledge equally cold that because he had not killed her, he must intend to take her.
She even knew why she had been chosen, why she was still alive. She was the anomaly. The other three wore cloaks of Desert blue, as did all castle guards when called to the service of their prince. Hers was bright red wool, hemmed in orange silk. The Vellant’im had faced Maarken of Whitecliff often enough in battle to know his colors. They were not fools. This one must know what a prize he had found.
Chayla felt her knees wilt. She sank down into the cushiony soil, her hands clutching slender stalks of seep-spring, crushing them. She couldn’t seem to take any breath at all, her heart strangling air halfway down her throat.
He was beside her now, his smile even wider. His teeth were very white, like exposed bone. She stared up at his face, struggling to breathe, and he stared down at her, smiling.
He gestured at her to stand. She couldn’t move. Again he waved his arm, more emphatically. When she stayed on her knees, he stopped smiling.
She managed to make her fingers unwind from the plant stems. Small victory. It gave her the courage to drag air into her lungs. It burned with the cold.
He dismounted. Standing over her, he rapped out a few words she didn’t understand. The meaning was clear enough. She flattened her palms on her knees, bending her head so that her loosened hair fell forward almost to the ground, hiding her face.
Hiding, too, her fingers as they snaked to her boots.
When he grabbed her left arm and yanked, she used his strength and her own upward surge of muscles and drove the knife in her right hand toward his groin.
He yelped in surprise and pain, shoving her away from him. She fell onto her side and echoed his cry as strained muscles stretched the wrong way, cramping in her back and legs. But even through her moan and his curses, she heard the muffled hoofbeats splashing across the meadow. And she moaned again at her stupidity, for no single archer could fell three people so swiftly. Of course he had companions. She’d been a fool to think he was alone.
They were upon her, one holding her ankles and another her wrists, while a third found the knife in her left boot and took it. She was bitterly disappointed that the other was stuck in the fleshy part of the first man’s thigh. When he wrenched it out there was a small fountain of crimson and she wanted to laugh. She didn’t know which was funnier, watching him fumble to tie up the wound, or his expression as he realized how close the knife had come to his more precious assets.
A fifth man, who stayed on horseback, loomed over her now. He was not smiling. His thick brows nearly met over his nose, every line of his face above his beard angry. She wanted to laugh at him, too. Five brave Vellanti warriors, just to subdue one girl!
But when he growled orders and she was hauled to her feet, she began for the first time to believe that this really was happening to her. Her, Lady Chayla, daughter of Lord Maarken and granddaughter of Lord Chaynal and great-granddaughter or Prince Zehava—her. Their hands were on her, imprisoning her wrists behind her back, clamped around one shoulder. But it was the look in their commander’s eyes that turned her to stone.
He leaned down from his saddle so that their faces were almost on a level. His eyes were an endless blackness and now he was smiling a terrifying smile. The word he spoke was a soft snarl. She had never heard it before, never read it. But as the other four repeated it, and all of them spat on her, she understood perfectly.
Faradh’reia. Sunrunner Princess.
And everyone knew what the Vellant’im did to Sunrunners.
Chapter Twenty-five
Except for the Princes Hall at Dragon’s Rest, there was no corridor in any highborn residence longer than the barrel-vaulted vastness that ran from one side of Faolain Lowland to the other. Wide enough to march fifteen armed soldiers abreast, taller than a dragon rearing to full height, its distance was numbing. On first seeing it, Rohan had told Sioned that just looking at it was exhausting. He hadn’t bothered to whisper; the merest breath echoed from one end of the passage to the other.
Karanaya, standing in its exact middle and speaking in a normal tone, could be heard over half the keep.
“Absolute nonsense,” she announced. “Grandfather Baisal was a crafty old bird, to get a whole castle’s worth of stone out of Rohan and Sioned, but secret passages? Hidden doors?” She snorted. “Bedtime tales for children.”
She and her cousin Mirsath flanked Johlarian on the gorgeous tiled floor. The Sunrunner held the architect’s drawing of the castle. On the large parchment page there appeared not the vaguest indication that there might be more to this pile of Cunaxan stone than met the eye.
“I agree,” Mirsath said. “You were born right at the top of these stairs, I spent half my childhood here, and we both know the place upside down. Lady Hollis must be wrong, or old Myrdal was making up stories.”
“Or she was cracked as a dragon’s egg,” Karanaya seconded. “After all, how old was she? Ninety-something?”
Johlarian turned bright eyes on them, his cheeks flushed, looking like a little boy on a treasure hunt. “I took the liberty of consulting the account ledgers last night, my lady. Your grandfather used to make note of all his guests in it—”
“—and how much he spent on them,” Mirsath added with a grin. “So he could charge their princes where possible. As you say, Karanaya, crafty.”
“Cheap,” she corrected, grinning back at him.
“That’s as may be,” Johlarian said impatiently. “But Myrdal was here twice while the castle was going up.” He dug into a pocket of his tunic for a slip of parchment on which he’d written Hollis’ directions. It had been a long time since lessons in memory at Goddess Keep. “Now, from here it should be twelve sections
to the door of the great hall.”
He turned smartly left and started walking. The other two followed, more tolerant than curious, sharing an amused glance as the faradhi tilted his head back to count the stone arches above.
“And now six of these tiled patterns to the right,” Johlarian said, consulting his notes. He paced across the dizzying polished floor.
“That brings you smack up against the wall,” Karanaya told him, “which is two solid handspans of stone through to the great hall on the other side. Look at the plans. There’s no room for a secret mousehole, let alone a staircase.”
“Lady Hollis didn’t say it was in the wall, my lady, only that the trigger was here. A dragon’s eye.”
On either side of the great hall doors were wooden panels ten handspans wide by five tall, painted to show a pair of sleeping dragons copied from carvings in the Flametower at Stronghold. One was red and the other green in the colors of Faolain Lowland. Their talons and spines had been gilded. The crimson dragon looked uncannily like the one Sioned had made from Fire to frighten the Vellant’im away. Karanaya’s fingers went involuntarily to her breast, where the remaining Tears of the Dragon dwelled in their little pouch. Goddess, how she still regretted the loss of that pearl. . . .
Johlarian was running his fingertips over the painted dragon. He pressed on one closed eyelid, then the other. Nothing happened.
“You see?” Mirsath said. “Ridiculous.”
“No—wait,” Karanaya said. “Look here, along the tail, where it’s all curled around and the scales are picked out in gold. Is that another eye?”
All three peered at it, and so it was. Almost unnoticed in the pattern of the dragon’s red hide was a single open eye.
“It’s staring at us,” Karanaya said, and shivered a little.
Johlarian held his breath and pushed his thumb against it.
The huge tile beneath his feet began to move.
He leapt back, stumbling against Mirsath. “By the great green eyes of the Goddess!” he exclaimed. “Look, my lord! Look!”
Some mechanism concealed within the wall continued to slide the underlying stone downward, slowly enough so that anyone standing on it would have fair warning, but so smoothly and silently that the device might have been put in yesterday instead of nearly thirty years ago. When the stone was out of the way, sunlight shafting through the upper windows showed them a few dusty stone steps. Below was utter darkness.
“I’ll be damned,” Mirsath breathed. “Johlarian, light us down there. Let’s see what’s at the end of it.”
“One of us must stay here, my lord. The tenth step is made of wood, and triggers the stone closed if it’s open, and open if it’s closed. But if it’s not working as well as the dragon’s eye, we might be stuck down there.”
Mirsath turned to Karanaya. “I’ll go. You stay.”
“May I remind you that this was my father’s castle before you decided that you would inherit it? If anyone goes, it should be me. This is my home, and—”
“I’m the last in the male line, except for my brother Idalian. Of course I inherit Lowland!”
“While leaving Riverport to me,” she snapped. “Delightful. A stack of broken stones that would still be smoldering if not for the rain! Or are you planning to give even that away, and to your poor unsuspecting brother, leaving me with nothing?”
Johlarian cleared his throat. “This is hardly the time or place—”
“Don’t be tiresome, Karanaya,” Mirsath growled. “It’s not your place to go.”
“And was it my place to stand up there on the battlements, an easy target for their arrows, and save us all from certain death? If not for me and these pearls—”
“That was Sioned’s doing, not yours!”
“Children!” The Sunrunner said in disgust, and they rounded on him. But he was climbing down the narrow stairs, a fingerflame poised at his shoulder to light his way.
Karanaya glared at her cousin. “If you leave me here, can you be sure I’ll open it up again?”
“If you go, I can promise I won’t!”
The stone began to move again. Johlarian had reached the tenth step. Karanaya started to jump into the darkness, but Mirsath stayed her with a hard grip on her arm. The opening disappeared with the same silent ease as it had been revealed. He gave her a triumphant grin and pushed the dragon’s eye once more.
“Now we can both go.”
“Wonderful,” she snarled.
Johlarian waited on a small landing where the stairs began a long spiral downward. “Better stop a moment,” he advised as Karanaya trod the tenth riser and light from above began to dim. “Let your eyes adjust. When you get down here to me, I’ll have a candle for each of you.”
“Thinking ahead. You really did believe in this, didn’t you?” Mirsath asked.
“It would be foolish not to put in something of the sort, no matter how peaceful the times in which one builds.” He rolled up the parchment plan and stuffed it in his tunic. “A castle, after all, is basically for defense.”
“I’d love to know exactly what Prince Saumer intends to do once he’s inside,” Karanaya said. She took a slim wax taper from the Sunrunner, who lit it with a single thought. “I don’t suppose anybody thought to leave torches down here.”
“No, but the next best thing. See for yourself,” Johlarian told her, gesturing to a wooden shelf projecting from the wall. On it were stacked tier upon tier of candles. “It wasn’t me who thought of it—Sunrunners don’t worry much about lighting their way. I’m willing to wager there’s another stash at the entrance.”
“Well, let’s find it, then!” Mirsath moved forward eagerly to lead the way.
Steep stairs wound down a narrow shaft, so tightly spiraled that it was a constant struggle not to grow dizzy. The air was chill, with an undertone of mold and damp that grew stronger as they descended. At one point Karanaya stopped and touched the wall. Her fingertips came away moist.
“We must be below the moat.”
“Then we’ve gone too far,” Mirsath reasoned. “How did they expect to get in—by swimming underwater?”
“Patience,” Johlarian said, patting his chest where the drawing nestled. “Remember how deep the cellars are here? Your grandfather had to set a solid base of rock, since you’re so close to the river and the ground is soft with it. Only a little way—aha!”
There was a final landing, and ten more steps down into a circular room as wide as two horses were long, two very small horses. There was no door and no hint of one. The walls were featureless stone, each block the size of a child’s bed. Karanaya stood in the center of the chamber, head tilted to stare up into the blackness. Her throat worked as she gulped nervously.
“I don’t like this,” she said. “Get us out of here.”
“As soon as I can, my lady.” Johlarian looked again at his notes. “This is the tricky part. It’s not a dragon this time, nothing so obvious. We’ll have to count foundation stones.”
At his direction, Mirsath stood on the bottom step, turned to the right, and approached the wall. He touched each stone as Johlarian named it.
“Three up, two left, one down, two left—”
“Why is this so complicated?” Karanaya demanded.
“Hush! You’ll make us lose count! Two left, Johlarian?”
“Yes, my lord. Then two up, one back—did your grandfather play chess?”
“What in all Hells does that have to do with anything?”
“This is a classic gambit, my lord.” The Sunrunner smiled. “It’s called Dragon’s Tail for the shape it makes on the board. He probably used it to remember the sequence. All right now, push. Hard.”
Nothing happened.
They worked the Dragon’s Tail over the whole rest of the wall, all the way around the chamber. They worked it backward and upside down and sideways.
Nothing happened.
“I told you Myrdal was in her dotage!” Karanaya exclaimed. “How could she possibly reme
mber all the secrets of all the castles in the Desert?”
“One last time,” Johlarian pleaded. “I may have gotten it wrong.”
“We’ve tried every damned stone we can reach!” Mirsath sat disgustedly on the stair. “It wouldn’t be practical to put the keystone too high. Face it, Johlarian. The damp has rotted the mechanism and it doesn’t work anymore.”
The faradhi looked helplessly at his notes. Then he walked slowly around the chamber, from the bottom step to the rise of the staircase that hugged the wall as it circled up into darkness. Had this been made of wood, a storage closet might be concealed beneath the steps. He traced once again the pattern of the Dragon’s Tail on these much smaller stones, and pushed hard.
A doorway cracked open with a squeal of half-rusted metal, right under the final landing.
Speechlessly, the three of them piled through and down the long, low-ceilinged corridor. Water seeped between the mortar and dripped onto their heads, but had not rusted the steel torch sconces set every fifty paces.
If Johlarian expected an apology, he was doomed to disappointment. All Mirsath said was, “We’re under the moat! Where does this give out? The woods? There aren’t any outbuildings. The entry would be miserably exposed.”
Karanaya held her candle aloft and walked faster. “I don’t care where it ends. It stinks in here and I want fresh air and sunlight now.”
The floor slanted upward to meet a final set of twenty or so steps. Mirsath climbed them first and pushed at the heavy trapdoor above his head.
“Damn!” He spluttered and shook his head violently. “The dirt’s coming right through, and there’s a tree root blocking it.”
“Hack it away,” Karanaya ordered.
“With my belt knife?” he inquired sarcastically. He climbed down, brushing damp loam from his shoulders and hair. “I’ll come back later and see to it with an ax.”
“Fine,” said his cousin. “You do that. I’m getting out of here.”