by Melanie Rawn
“That should pass in a little while.” Evarin put a waterskin to his lips. “Be glad you can’t see all of this,” he added quietly. “I wish I couldn’t.”
Andry drank, rinsed his mouth, and squinted at the physician. “How bad?”
“No one is alive here but us.”
Surely he’d heard wrong. “What?”
Evarin was rummaging in his medical kit. “All dead, my Lord.”
“Where’s Alasen?”
“Gone. Bite down on this.” He slid a wafer between Andry’s lips. “Have some more water to wash it down. That’s right. It’s just something to take the sting from your bruises. Evidently you fell off your horse—and don’t think I’ll ever let you forget it, either! A rib got cracked on the left. I’ll strap it now that you’re sitting up and I can get to it. Take off your shirt.”
“Let’s get out of the rain first.”
Evarin hesitated, then shook his head. “I’m sorry, my Lord. We can’t just yet. You can’t carry yourself, let alone me.”
He noticed then how Evarin’s right leg was extended limply, awkwardly in front of him, his cloak tied in a pad at the thigh.
“A sword punched right through to the bone. I’ll be all right,” Evarin assured him. “It’s not serious, just a puncture. The artery wasn’t hit and the hole isn’t even that big. I cleaned it and took something for the pain.”
“Are you sure it’s not bad? It looks awful.” He grimaced. “Stupid question to ask a physician. Damn it, Evarin, I don’t remember any of what happened!”
“That’s the knock on the head. It’ll come back to you.”
“Tell me what you know,” he demanded, wincing as he struggled out of his tunic and shirt. He ripped the latter into strips as Evarin talked.
“We were ambushed. I was back with Lord Draza while you rode up to Princess Alasen. All of a sudden there they were, swarming like bees. I got this pretty early on—and I’m not ashamed to say I fell off my horse when it happened, too. I’m no hand with a sword, and being trampled wasn’t my idea of how I wanted to die, so I sneaked off the road into the scrub to wait it out. Here, sit up very straight and I’ll wrap those ribs. Beautiful bruise you’re going to have there, my Lord. All the colors of the faradh’im. Anyway, about all I really saw was Miyon go up in flames on the hillside. Your work, I suppose.”
“If it wasn’t you, then it must have been me,” he said through clenched teeth. “Goddess, Evarin, leave me some room to breathe!”
“Sorry. Well, then one of those bastards galloped past me, riding behind Princess Meiglan’s saddle with her and one of the little girls caught in front of him. Those who were left of his fellows grabbed horses and took off after him. Those who were left of Alasen’s and Meiglan’s people did the same, and that was that. I think they probably left you for dead. Everyone else here is.”
Andry rubbed his eyes with thumb and forefinger, then pinched the bridge of his nose. “How many? And how do you know?”
“I made it here to you, but you weren’t going to be waking up for a while. So I had a look around.”
He stared at the young man, who shrugged one shoulder deprecatingly. “You went around to all of them? On that leg?”
“Like everyone, my Lord, I learned to crawl before I learned to walk. Not exactly dignified, but nobody noticed. There are fifty-eight corpses. Thirty-two of theirs, twenty-six of ours, and one Prince of Cunaxa charred to a crisp.” He tied off the last strip of Andry’s shirt and sank back, propped on one hand. He was sweating, and despite whatever he’d taken for the pain his young face was drawn taut. “That’s got it. We’ll rest a bit, then find shelter for the night.”
Andry opened his mouth to protest, then closed it again. Neither of them would be going anywhere until tomorrow. Evarin couldn’t walk; Andry could hardly breathe.
His vision finally steady again, he looked around at the carnage and instantly wished he hadn’t. Whatever shelter they found must be soon, and stout; the scavengers would come now, even though the misting rain dampened down the stench of fresh blood.
“Alasen didn’t ride past you, did she?”
“No. Just the High Princess, and the Vellant’im, and then our people chasing them back the way we rode in. I heard that young lord—Draza?—yelling at a woman wearing Pol’s colors, something about getting Princess Alasen to safety. Probably back to Elktrap. Oh—Hildreth’s son Feneol is dead. Gave a good account of himself by the look of it. Be sure to tell her that.”
“Anyone else you recognized?”
“Two highborn women I didn’t know.”
Andry jostled his memory back to the moment he’d ridden toward Alasen. Near her had been two other women besides Meiglan. “One very dark and small, the other blonde with brown eyes?” When the physician nodded, Andry finished, “Rabisa and Lyela—Jahnavi’s widow and Tallain’s cousin. Poor Sionell. First her brother, then her husband, and now she’ll be lucky to come out of this with any family left.”
“So will Pol,” Evarin pointed out. He wiped mist off his face and drank from the waterskin. “What do they want with his wife and daughter?”
“If Miyon was still alive, I’d ask him. But I can make a pretty good guess.”
After a moment, the young man said diffidently, “I don’t like to say this.”
“But?”
“Prince Miyon.”
Andry thought it through, trying to remember. He shook his head. “If you say he’s dead of Sunrunner’s Fire, then I must have done it.”
Evarin looked anywhere but at him. Andry understood.
“He was a traitor. Deserved to die.”
“Yes, my Lord.”
He’d killed before with his gifts. Those memories sparked a matching one. “I know what happened now,” he said slowly. “Miyon was calling for them to take the princess and not to harm her. Alasen drew their attention—she cried out ‘Father’ as if she were Meiglan. They would have taken her—”
“So you killed him.”
“Yes. Before he could identify her as a second prize. I killed him with Fire because I was too far away to kill him with my bare hands. If you don’t approve, too damned bad.”
Evarin met his gaze then, and his voice trembled with intensity. “You’re the Lord of Goddess Keep. It isn’t for me to question your decisions. But . . . such use of what we are as Sunrunners. . . .” He was almost pleading for Andry’s understanding. “I’m a physician. I use my gifts to save lives. It’s not easy for me to see that the opposite is possible, too.”
“I’ve had do to a lot of hard things in my life, Evarin. Killing a man who sold his own daughter and grandchildren to the enemy doesn’t even make the list.” But he hadn’t done it because of Meiglan.
Gathering his legs under him, he put a hand on Evarin’s shoulder for leverage. “I feel stronger now. I’ll help you get out of the rain. Just let me stand up, and—”
“—and fall over. Sit down, Andry.” Evarin gestured around them. “No one here will mind.”
• • •
Kazander spent a good part of the morning in the bathtub, sluicing the long night’s ride from his body, knowing exhausted muscles needed the water’s soothing heat. Then he wrapped himself in a thick woolen robe Lady Ruala had provided from her husband’s closet. He paused to stroke the soft nap, liking the swirl of dark green leaves against a black background. What luxury these castle-dwellers surrounded themselves with; though it was a pleasure to partake of it, for some time now he had been missing his own tent.
Still, he must be sure to bring his family on a visit to Feruche. They would enjoy it so. He smiled to himself as he imagined his children splashing in the huge tub—always assuming their mothers allowed them to set their grubby little selves in such a quantity of clean water. He sighed at the thought of his wives, and lay down on the bed, and slept until dusk.
When Visian crept into his room, he was already awake and dressed.
“They are all at dinner, my brother. I said I would find o
ut if you still slept, but they do not expect you.”
“Then they will not miss me.” He finished wrapping his headcloth—black as night, as his clothes, as the horses he had ordered Visian to select from the stables for their use. “Everything is prepared?”
“Nineteen ros’eltan’im wait for us at the appointed place. Each departed singly. Nothing is known.”
“Nineteen?”
“With you and I, the ritual number, my lord.”
Kazander gave him a sharp glance, but said nothing.
Visian hesitated. “My brother, will not the Azhrei be angered by this?”
“It doesn’t shame me to admit that I don’t care if he is. It does grieve me to keep him in ignorance, but he is a stubborn man, Visian. They all are.” He took up the band of beaten gold that secured the headcloth and set it carefully into place. White jade studded the flat, shining strip, like dull stars within a streak of sunlight across a blackened sky.
“I understand why you wear that, but. . . .”
Kazander smiled. “But it makes me visible. I know. I promise I’ll remember to take it off when the time comes. Allow me my little vanities.”
Visian smiled back. He unfurled the black cloak he carried and set it about Kazander’s shoulders. “Ros’eltan,” he said. The Black Warrior. “You are he, in truth, my lord.”
Kazander blinked at this second reference to a very old legend. “No one was surprised when the word was given?”
“We have expected it since we learned that the Lady Chayla had been stolen.”
“But the way it was said—it was your word.”
Visian’s gaze lowered. “It is written, my lord.”
“But not spoken for a hundred years.” Kazander sighed. “Do you think it so necessary?”
“They are Merida kin. Unspeakable vermin, like them. It is written—”
“Yes. I know. Very well. Ros’eltan’im we shall all become, then. And the stronger for it, my brother?”
Visian gestured to the gold around Kazander’s head. “You knew that, too.”
“I won’t claim what comes after,” he warned suddenly. “I am not a legend, nor the embodiment of a word on parchment, nor certainly the Ros’eltan come alive. Pol is our prince—now and always.”
“It is enough that when the Lady Chayla is safe, we will know that the claim could be made.”
“Just so that’s understood.” Kazander fastened the neck-clasp of his cloak. “Besides, we’d have to go find it first, and the White Crown hasn’t been seen since Lady Merisel’s time.”
“If anyone could find it—”
“I don’t want it,” Kazander snapped. “It is enough that I believe in it.”
“No matter what the song says?”
He had to smile at the sly, knowing look Visian gave him. “Not to believe is not to go looking. The opposite doesn’t hold. I choose not to search, my brother.” He ran a finger over the gold circling his head. “This is crown enough for me.”
Chapter Twenty-seven
Dinner was all ghosts and echoes, absent voices more audible than present ones. Eight people clustered at one end of the Attic’s long table, leaving the bottom half abandoned like a child. Everyone pretended to eat and no one said more than three words at a time.
Halfway through a meal no one wanted in the company of people who never met each other’s haunted eyes, Chay suddenly slammed one hand down flat on the table, making the crystal rattle.
Everyone jumped, startled out of private worries. Chay saw this with satisfaction and leaned back in his chair.
“All right, then,” he said. “Somebody say something. Pol, tell me about what happened down at Skybowl.”
“Uh—yes,” Pol answered, and gathered his wits. Not an easy task; he was seated next to Sionell, so close that their arms occasionally brushed. Every touch went through him like a flash of lightning.
He talked, drank wine to ease his throat, and talked some more. He stammered a little when it came time to tell of Maarken’s injury, and around the table felt everyone else flinch along with him. But when he spoke of teaching Jeni how to talk to her dragon, they all seized on it as the only light note in the whole proceeding.
“A damned good thing there weren’t any dragons at Graypearl while I was giving you your first Sunrunner lessons,” Meath told him. “Otherwise you’d never have learned to add two and two.”
“I can’t anyhow,” Pol replied with a shrug. “Never could. Audrite did her best, but I’m hopeless.”
“Never mind,” Chay said. “A prince should never do himself what others can do better and faster for him.”
“A lesson well-learned,” Sionell remarked, so softly that only Pol heard.
She means Tallain. He turned crimson and stared at his plate.
“—about the mirror, Pol,” Maarken was saying at the same time.
He grabbed at the words like bricks for a wall. “Yes, the mirror. The one that hangs in the entry at Skybowl, Mother, that belonged to your friend Camigwen.”
“What about it?” Sioned looked up from rearranging broiled vegetables with her fork.
“It’s . . . kind of hard to explain, but—”
“Give it a try,” Sionell murmured.
She’s not just angry. She hates me for what I’ve done. Goddess help me, I deserve it. Tobin’s prediction about Sionell’s temper had been right. It was just the timing that was wrong.
He began to tell them about the mirror, even while his brain argued with itself. I can let her slice me up into dragon fodder, or I can do the smart thing and run like all Hells. Neither prospect held any appeal. What he wanted from her was . . . was. . . .
What did he want from Sionell?
“Alleyn and Audran really did see it. There’s something in that mirror. Someone.”
“Preposterous,” Chay snapped.
“I agree,” Meath said. “But then again, I thought the same thing when we started learning what the Star Scroll really is.”
Sioned was tapping a finger against the rim of her cup. “What did he look like?”
Pol thought for a moment, calling up the picture in his mind. “Thin, high cheekbones, longish hair. Definitely Fironese. Black hair, dark skin, the tilt to the eyes. About my age, between thirty and thirty-five.”
“What was he wearing?”
“All the mirror showed was his face.”
His mother regarded him narrowly. “What was in his eyes, Pol?”
“His eyes?”
“Fear? Anger? Sadness? Pride? Come, your father and I taught you to read faces. What was in his?”
Again he was quiet for a moment, considering. “I think . . . I think he was resigned. As if there was no hope, and he’d even forgotten what hope is. And loneliness, no, that’s wrong.” He frowned. “It was as if he’d always been alone, and had never known anything else. It wasn’t a sad face, though he’d known grief. It was more . . . tired. Accepting that he was utterly alone and hopeless. He’d gotten used to it because he had to. Because there was nothing else.” He shrugged again, embarrassed. “You’ll have to ask Riyan when he gets here tomorrow.”
“But I’ll never see him,” Sioned mused. “Only you, Riyan, Ruala, and Maara will be able to see this man. Whoever he was.”
Pol kept his muscles from tensing. Sionell, so close to him, felt it anyway.
“Most of us know,” she said aloud. “And those who don’t—well, it’s time they found out. How can you Sunrunners fix what went wrong at Stronghold if half of you are ignorant of what kind of power you have to work with?”
He made himself look at each of them in turn. His mother and Chay looked back calmly. Maarken stared at the wine cup in his remaining hand. Hollis seemed puzzled; Ruala nodded gently to herself as if a suspicion had been confirmed. Meath wore no expression at all.
Sionell spoke again into the silence. “Pol is Rohan’s son by Ianthe of Princemarch—which makes him Lallante’s grandson and diarmadhi.”
Hollis gave a m
uted gasp and turned accusingly to her husband. “You never—and you knew—”
“It wasn’t my secret to share, not even with you,” he replied, gray eyes opaque as a cloudy sea.
“Which doesn’t seem to have stopped you,” Pol rasped, glaring at Sionell. “Perhaps now you’d care to review your version of my character as well as the circumstances of my birth. Or shall I tell them myself what you think of me?”
“I told them the truth,” she said heatedly. “As you should have done a long time ago. They deserve to know.”
He sprang to his feet, her words further infuriating him. “Then tell them the rest of it, Sionell—all the vicious details of what Ianthe did to my father while she kept him here, what my mother went through. If you can wait a moment, I’ll find you a map so you can show them exactly how she came here from Stronghold to claim me!”
“Stop it!”
“You began it! Finish it! Give them the whole story, Sionell!”
“That’s enough!” Chay thundered.
“More than enough,” Pol agreed. Kicking the chair out of his way, he strode blindly from the room.
Sioned leaned back, wine cup in hand, a sardonic smile on her lips. “You’re subtle, the pair of you,” she said. “I’ll give you that.”
Hollis began to rise, then sank back down again. “No, I think I’d rather hear it from one of you. Chay?”
He lifted one shoulder. “It’s not my story to tell, either.”
“Nor mine,” Meath said quietly. “But I saw most of it.”
“Then tell me!” Hollis demanded. “You can’t just leave something like that hanging in the air like smoke.”
Meath glanced at Sioned, who nodded permission and rose to her feet. “But you’ll forgive me if I leave you now and find Pol. If both of us were younger, I’d take him across my knee. Goddess, but he can be stupid.” She smiled again and drained her wine cup. “I wonder who he gets it from.”
That silenced them all. She glanced at each tense face, her gaze finally meeting that of her Namesake. “As for you—”