by Melanie Rawn
Everyone clustered around Maarken. Hollis ran to him first, of course, but not far behind were Chay and Tobin; Ruala hurried up bearing a large goblet of heated wine. Pol looked around slowly for Meiglan, then recalled that he had sent her back to Dragon’s Rest. Well, if he couldn’t have the welcome of his wife, then at least his mother might have come down to greet him.
Instead he saw Sionell.
Nothing had ever hurt so much as the sight of her. Her stride was sure and easy, her hands steady around the wine cup meant for him, her face composed. But her eyes were bruised beneath with weariness, her face all hollows and stark, proud bones. Dark red hair straggled around her brow and temples from a braid knotted around itself at the crown of her head; it shocked him to see there were a few strands of gray in it. Her frightening calm was a mask of self-possession cast in steel that to him looked as thin and brittle as glass.
“There’s been no word,” she said, her voice deep and slightly husky. He heard it someplace in his chest that twisted with pain at her weariness. “Chay sent out more people to search for her. Meath has been Sunrunning since daybreak. The others watched on the moons last night, and after that your mother used the stars. She’s upstairs sleeping now—and you should be, too. You look horrible.”
He nodded and drank. The warm spiced wine immediately made his head spin.
“When the—the bodies were brought back, they also brought the satchels of herbs Chayla went to collect. Most of the children will get better soon, now that there’s enough medicine for them.”
“Most?” He coughed thickness from his throat.
“Jahnavi’s daughter Siona died just before dawn.”
“Oh, Goddess,” Pol breathed. “Ell, I’m so sorry—”
She interrupted briskly. “A delegation from Cunaxa arrived yesterday evening—merchants, mostly, with nothing useful to say but apologies. They’re rather at a loss at Castle Pine. You may want to send someone back with them to take things in hand up there. Oh, they did bring four crates of swords and ten of arrows—hastily refletched in blue and violet. But Chay says they’re among the finest he’s ever seen, and the swords the same. So we’re well-armed.”
She paused, waiting for some sort of response. Pol gave a mindless nod. Looking at her hurt; he could not look away.
Sionell continued. “Another caravan of supplies—food and so forth—came from Elktrap. They passed Meiglan and the girls on the road a few days ago, all serene. She should be with Alasen by now.”
Again he nodded, because she seemed to expect it.
“Finish your wine, Pol,” she advised. “It’ll give you legs enough to make it upstairs. We’ve done everything there is to be done—and there’s nothing you can do until you can think straight again.” She smiled just a little. “I must say the look in your eyes is not encouraging.”
He went meekly, unable to do otherwise. Anguish cramped inside him like the sudden onset of a fatal disease.
It was a terrible thing to realize he was in love with a woman who was not his wife.
• • •
The mare sidled under Alasen, nearly crushing her right leg against Laroshin’s stallion. Guards cried out warnings punctuated by the harsh music of steel on steel and a persistent, high-pitched shriek that ended in a sickening thick gurgle. Rabisa toppled to the ground, a scarlet necklet half-circling her throat, gushing blood.
Tiba backed and turned again and again, teeth bared as she snapped at anything that got too close. Alasen didn’t know it, but this was what all Radzyn horses were schooled to do in battle, especially in the absence of recognized signals from the rider: move constantly, find room, bite and kick at anything that got too close, and above all give the rider space to swing a sword freely. All Alasen knew was a dizzying whirlwind of bodies and horses and flashes of deadly silver as swords dug into flesh and came away dark with blood. Meiglan was a slender cloaked and hooded shape huddled protectively over Rislyn; Lyela reached for her reins to pull her horse from the battle. Feneol launched himself right out of his saddle, knife uplifted, at a Vellanti whose sword turned for Dannar. Alasen screamed her son’s name just as Feneol was impaled. But arms already dead completed the embrace, embedded the knife in the enemy’s back.
Alasen lurched forward as Tiba’s rear hooves lashed out. She scrabbled frantically for reins that were clutched in Jihan’s fists. The girl’s legs pumped as she kicked the mare with all her strength. Alasen added her own heels to the effort. Jihan yanked on the reins, turning for her mother and sister. But neither she nor Alasen knew how to overcome the horse’s training. Tiba continued to turn and retreat, biting what she could reach, moving sideways when she could to crash against Vellant’im who staggered and fell stunned.
Hooves trampled something soft and yielding. Alasen looked down and choked on a cry of horror. Lyela, one arm outstretched, the other missing at the shoulder, sprawled in the mud, brown eyes staring and dead.
“Mama!” Jihan shrilled, and Meiglan looked up. Her hood had fallen away, her cloud of pale soft hair wild about her white cheeks and stricken dark eyes.
Alasen gripped Jihan’s fingers in her own and hauled back on the reins. Tiba stopped, absolutely motionless. Someone yelled practically in Alasen’s ear as she urged the mare toward Meiglan.
“Your grace, no! Not that way!” Laroshin, bleeding from a wound at his hip, booted one attacking Vellanti in the face and stabbed another in the chest. “Follow me!”
“But—Meiglan—Dannar—” She searched frantically for her son.
“Lord Draza will take care of them! Hurry!”
Alasen dug her heels into Tiba’s ribs and tried to follow, but the writhing knot of battle thickened around her. “We can’t get through!” She saw her son’s fiery red head lift into view. He straightened in his saddle, tugging hard at the sword he’d just sunk into a Vellanti skull. Sweet Goddess, he was only eleven years old—
She pried Jihan’s fingers loose from the reins. “Laroshin! Take her! Get out of here!”
“No! I want Mama! Let go of me!” She fought the captain’s strong arm, kicking and clawing like a hatchling dragon breaking from its shell. Laroshin swung her free of Alasen’s saddle and tucked her under his elbow, freeing his hand for the reins, his other hand still swinging his sword.
Alasen didn’t wait to see them gallop away. “Dannar! To me!”
The boy’s head snapped around. There was a wide streak of blood on his cheek. “Mother!” he shouted, and cut his way through to her side. “Are you hurt? Mother, tell me you’re all right!”
“Dannar, take me out of here!”
He cast a single glance at Meiglan nearby; that was where his duty lay.
Alasen damned Pol for making so conscientious a squire of her only son. “Draza is already with her. Dannar, hurry! Please!”
A man’s rough voice, somehow familiar, shouted from beyond the battle noise. “The princess! Take the princess! Damn you, there she is! Take her!”
She looked past the fighting and saw him, standing between two clean-shaven guards safely up the hillside. His long, thin arm projected like a drawn arrow. His black eyes were afire.
“The man who harms her dies! But take her! Now!”
She would never understand how it came to her so quickly, how the knowledge cut through the terror like a sword stroke. But she shook back her hood so her own golden-brown hair would show, and sat straight in the saddle, and screamed, “Father! Father!”
For just an instant, everything seemed to stop. Then a man’s anguished voice shouted, “Alasen! No!” and three things happened.
A bearded dark face appeared at her mare’s head and a hand darted out to grab the bridle. Two fingers were bitten off by Tiba’s vicious white teeth. The Vellanti crumpled to the ground, yelping with pain.
Another man leapt onto Meiglan’s little mare just behind the saddle, arms wrapping around her and Rislyn to seize the reins.
And Miyon of Cunaxa stumbled howling down the hillside, every piece
of his clothing and every hair on his head engulfed in Fire.
Dannar slapped the flat of his sword against Tiba’s rump. The mare leapt into a gallop. Alasen half-turned and cried out her son’s name. In the morass of battling soldiers beyond him, she had the insane impression of Andry’s face.
Then all she could do was bend low over Tiba’s silvery neck and hang on.
• • •
Chay told his son much the same thing Sionell had told Pol: that all that could be done was being done, and he must go upstairs and rest.
“No,” Maarken replied. “They can’t stay hidden forever. I’m going to look for them on sunlight again.”
“Meath is doing exactly that right now,” Chay said.
“We all have,” Hollis added. “Come upstairs with me, Maarken, please.”
No one said what they were all thinking—that the Vellant’im must know how Sunrunners worked, and would use the scant time between starshine and sunrise as their only chance to move. There were forests to hide in, of course, but on the Desert side of the Veresch these were few and far apart. And they had had a whole night and a day to ride in any direction from Ivalia Meadow.
Or not ride very far at all.
Chayla and her captors could be just about anywhere. And all of them knew it.
Maarken shook his head stubbornly. “I know these hills better than Meath. I was up here constantly while Sorin was building Feruche. I’ll find her.”
“And then do wh-what?” his mother inquired in her slow, halting voice. She sounded worse than at any time since the first seizure had come upon her. “Don’t be a fool,” Tobin went on, every word a struggle to make the ruined side of her face help form the syllables. “Rest. Now.” She smacked her cane on the flagstones for emphasis.
Maarken started to reach for her, to embrace her. Instantly he caught sight of his maimed arm. No one had said anything about it. No one had even looked at it after the first horrified shock. He tucked his arm back against his chest and glanced away.
“Fool,” Tobin rasped again, and with her stronger hand clutched the stump of his wrist. “Darling fool,” she said more softly, and shook him weakly. “Just like your f-father.”
Maarken forced himself to smile. “Thank you.”
Tobin gave a snort and released him.
Upstairs, Hollis insisted on looking at Maarken’s arm herself. Unbandaged.
“No,” he said again, even more flatly.
“Your mother’s right about you, though I’m surprised she insulted your poor father that way. Sit down. Shut up. Let me see your arm.”
“What’s left of it.”
He suffered her to unwrap Feylin’s work. Her breath caught slightly in her throat and he closed his eyes, not wanting to see horror on her face.
Hollis’ voice was pure and steady. “Feylin did the main work—I recognize her stitchery. But who cauterized it?”
“Pol. Almost immediately.”
“Pol? Oh. I see.” She touched the great ugly scab. “I must remember to thank him.”
“He also got the one who did this to me.”
“Pity. I would’ve enjoyed killing him myself. Pol was undoubtedly too quick.” Hollis bunched the soiled white silk into a ball and stuffed it in her pocket. “Tobren ran up to start baths for you and Pol and Kazander the moment you got into the courtyard. Why don’t you have a long soak while I get you something to eat? You look starved as well as exhausted.”
He looked up at her. “Hollis—”
Delicate hands, glittering with Sunrunner’s rings, stroked his cheek, his hair. She was smiling. “They didn’t hurt any of the really essential parts, did they? You were riding astride, and you walk perfectly well, so—”
“Hollis!” he blurted, and she laughed softly.
“Well, then, what’s the difference? Go have your bath, love.”
He clutched at her with his right hand. With this woman, he need not pretend strength he didn’t feel. With her, he could be weak and afraid, without fearing loss of her love.
“Hollis, don’t leave me.”
She knelt before him, clasping his fingers between her own. “Listen to me, my darling,” she whispered. “I won’t start crying the moment I’m out of your sight. I took care of all that last night. Yes, it will take time to heal this—not only your arm, but your heart. But it makes no difference to me, Maarken.” She pressed her lips to his palm. “If you’d come home to me lacking both hands, blinded, and unable to walk for the rest of your life, it would be just the same as if you’d come home whole. I love you. You are my husband, and my lord, and the father of my babies. And you are alive for me to hold in my arms. That’s all that matters to me. If it takes the rest of our lives to prove it to you, then you’re more of a fool than even your mother thinks you are. But you are my fool, beloved,” she ended with a smile, blue eyes liquid with tears. “All mine.”
Maarken knew this wouldn’t be the last time he’d wish he could cradle her face in both hands. He didn’t think he’d ever get used to that. All the same, he smiled and murmured, “I suppose if I said ‘what’s left of me,’ you’d hit me. So I won’t.”
Hollis nodded. “Good choice.”
• • •
In the silence and solitude of Ruala’s solar, Sionell plunged her needle over and over into blue and yellow silk, stitching the slippery lengths into a battle flag. Tallain’s people would fight in the next and final battle. And she intended that all should know it by this banner, snapping in the wind alongside those of Stronghold and Radzyn, Remagev and Skybowl and Feruche.
And Tuath Castle, she reminded herself, glancing at the bright pile of silk waiting for her needle. Jahnavi’s people too would be there, following an orange-and-brown banner made by his sister’s hands. Tuathans and Tiglathis, they would march under their own flags—
—leaderless, their athr’im dead.
There were two new lords whose names they would shout as they fought. The names of children. Her brother’s son Jeren was two winters old. Her own son Jahnev was just seven. Digging skeins of yellow thread from Ruala’s sewing box, tears clouded her eyes so that she couldn’t tell which color matched best.
Her brother and his wife and their daughter were dead. Her husband was dead. She must serve as athri for both castles until the children were grown. The years stretched ahead of her like an unknown landscape beyond a dark river. How to cross that river and get to those years from where she was now?
However it happened, she knew she must do it alone.
“Mother?”
Sionell glanced up, badly startled. Jahnev had never called her that in his life. But as Lord of Tiglath in his father’s stead, he had evidently decided he must leave childhood behind.
At seven winters old, leaving childhood behind.
“Yes, love?” she said gently, letting the silks drape over her lap. “What is it?”
“Mother,” he said, slowly and deliberately. “We should go back home now.”
“Once everyone’s rested, we shall. It’s a long, hard journey to do twice in the space of a few days.”
“No, I mean now.” He came toward her, tall for his age, long-legged and whip-thin. His eyes were gray and his hair was a sunny brown, and he resembled his grandfather Eltanin down to the arching quirk of his brows. Still, at this moment Sionell saw Tallain in him, that quiet strength so often hidden by wry humor. But Jahnev wore no smile, and would not for a long time.
“Now?” she echoed, pushing the half-finished flag from her lap. “Why?”
“Because our people will be safer at home. But mainly because we’ll have to bring our troops back to help the High Prince.”
“Ah.” Her hands and her knees were empty, and she abruptly understood why. She had been preparing to take him onto her lap and cuddle him, not for his own comfort, but hers. He was still her little boy—but it would be the worst possible thing to do when that little boy was trying so hard to be grown up.
“You agree, don’t you?�
� Jahnev asked—not as if he needed her to, but more by way of consent between equals. “He’ll have to have everyone, Mother, against the Vellant’im.”
She nodded.
“And we’ll have to start rebuilding, too. Tiglath is going to be a major port in the north, now that Cunaxa belongs to the High Prince.”
She supposed she shouldn’t have been surprised. Tallain had taken the boy with him on inspection tours for the last year or so, while he talked with merchants and watched ships being loaded and unloaded into landing boats. Tallain had always wanted to make Tiglath a better harbor. Jahnev was right; now that the Cunaxans would not be forced by enmity to transport their goods overland, Tiglath might one day rival Radzyn as a port town.
Seven winters old.
“Yes, I agree,” she said at last. “But let everyone rest another few days, Jahnev.” She hesitated, and because she wanted to be mother again to a little boy, she told him, “Especially me. I don’t know if I can go home just yet—”
She hadn’t meant to say that much, or that honestly. But it got her what she needed—and what Jahnev needed, too, judging by his swiftness in embracing her. She didn’t draw him onto her knees, but sat with her head cradled against his thin shoulder, trying not to cry.
• • •
“. . . can see me, your eyes are open. Come on, talk to me. The bump on your head isn’t bad enough to addle your brains. Andry!”
“Stop shouting,” he mumbled. Evarin was a rainy blur of pallid skin, blue eyes, and brown hair. “What hit me?”
“I haven’t the slightest idea. I wasn’t in the fighting more than three shakes of a dragon’s tail myself. Can you sit up? Tell me if you’re dizzy or sick to your stomach.”
He was neither, although his vision was framed in wavering black for a few moments. His right shoulder and hip ached fiercely, and when he tried to take a deep breath, something stuck him in the left side of his back. When the blood stopped rushing in his ears and he could hear himself think, he said, “I can’t see clearly. Nothing’s in focus.”