*l Then Sioned was three years old, the death of her Vw parents left her brother Dawi, her elder by twelve winters, Lord of River Run. Within a few years he married. His bride was a girl whose father had no other heirs, and when the man died, everything that was his became his daughter’s. Dawi found himself the athri of two fine keeps and lands that stretched for twenty measures along the Catha River. But the new Lady of River Run was the possessive sort, begrudging Sioned not only the share of wealth that would have been her dowry but even the fondness between brother and sister. Thus she purchased—at a price far less than marriage to a suitable lord—Sioned’s entry into Goddess Keep. Unhappy at home, twelve-year-old Sioned had gone gladly to the great castle on the cliffs edge in Ossetia. There she found companionship among the other students and knowledge enough to feed her ravenous appetite for learning. The small oddities that her sister-by-marriage derided as “fey” turned out to be indications that she had thefaradhi gift and could become a Sunrunner.
Not everyone who went to Goddess Keep became faradhi, and Lady Andrade did not tolerate arrogance among those who could or envy among those who could not. But there were certain distinctions involved in becoming a Sunrunner: the rings of earned rank and periodic visits to the grove of pines near the keep. In the year 693, when Sioned was sixteen and had earned the first silver circle on her right middle finger, she went to this place where, if her talents were strong and the Goddess was disposed to revelations, she might glimpse her future.
After a long walk through the woods, she emerged into
32
DRAGON PRINCE 33 brilliant sunlight that warmed her body and danced over the waves far below. Towering coastal pines formed a ring around a small rock cairn from which water bubbled up and splashed its way down to the sea. Sioned paused outside the circle, removed all her clothes, and stepped lightly across the carpet of blue and purple flowers to the spring.
Each of the five pines had a name: Childtree, Maidentree, Womantree, Mothertree, and Hagtree. Clad only in the cloak of her long red-gold hair, Sioned knelt beside the cairn and caught water in her hands, spilling a few drops for the first two trees before turning to the Womantree. She had come here twice before—first as a little girl to offer some water and a lock of her hair, then a year later when her first bleeding meant she was no longer a child. Now she was ready for the next step: declaring herself a woman. For the previous night she had known the embrace of a man for the first time.
She returned to the spring and knelt, facing the Womantree. The sea whispered against the cliffs at low tide, reminding her of the soft sounds of flesh against flesh last night. There had been no words spoken and in the total darkness she had not known who the man was, nor did it matter. No girl ever knew, for the spell woven was a powerful one. Care was also taken that no children would come of the woman-making night; when Sioned chose her husband, then she would come to the grove and ask the Mothertree for a glimpse of the children she might bear.
She could wait for that. It was some years off, and she was barely sixteen, after all. A smile crossed her face as she thought about the silent encounter, all warmth and excitement and potency in the darkness. But she also knew that something had been missing. There had been affection, learning, and joy, but it had lacked the communion her friend Camigwen told her she’d found with her Chosen, Ostvel. Sioned wanted the same thing for herself. Perhaps the Womantree would show her the man with whom she would find it.
Tossing her hair back, she gazed at the tree and wondered what the boys and young men of the Keep felt during their own rituals here. For them, the trees had different names: Child, Youth, Man, Father, and Gray-beard. No one ever spoke of what occurred at such times, but she hoped that others heard the water singing and their names sighing through the pines. She smiled as she listened, then lifted both hands.
Her first ring had been given the previous day, when she had formally proved her ability to summon Fire, and tiny flames burned at her call atop the rock cairn. The Air of her own breath fanned them higher, brighter, until they were clearly reflected in the Water. She plucked a single hair from her head to represent the special portions of the Earth from which she had been made, and floated the strand on the still water. Her own face was mirrored there—pale, big-eyed, soft with girlhood and framed in a tumble of bright hair. She slid her hands into the water and gazed at the Womantree, holding her breath.
The Fire leaped higher on the rocks, startling her, and her fingers clenched around silky water. Her face had changed: her cheeks were thinner, the high bones and delicate jawline in proud relief. The green eyes were darker, their expression more serious, and her mouth had lost its childish curve. This was the woman she would become, and her vanity was pleased even as she chided herself for the conceit.
Sioned memorized the face she would one day wear, eager to become this woman with her confident eyes and composed features. But while she gazed into the reflection of her future, the Fire flared again. Another face was next to hers in the water now, burning with a light of its own through the mirrored flames. It was a man’s face, fair hair sweeping across a wide brow to shade river-blue eyes, a face with strong bones and an unsmiling mouth. Yet there was tenderness in the curve of the lips, gentleness to balance the stubborn line of the jaw.
Fire slid down the rocks then, igniting the pool, and Sioned drew back her hands with a cry of fright. The single red-gold hair floating on the water writhed, became a thin rivulet of flame that crossed the man’s forehead like the circlets worn by princes—and then extended to form the same royal crown for her.
DRAGON PRINCE 35
It was a very long time before Sioned rose from her knees. Even after the Fire died away and the picture in the Water vanished, after the Air had ceased to sing in the pines and the Earth was calm beneath the pool, she stared wide-eyed at the cairn and the spring. At last the chill of oncoming night wrapped around her naked body and she shivered, the spell finally broken.
The next day she sought out Lady Andrade, troubled by what she had seen. “Was it true?” she asked urgently. “What I saw yesterday—will it come true?”
“Perhaps. If the vision disturbed you, it can be changed. Nothing is written in stone, child. Even if it were, the stones can be shattered.” The Lady gazed musingly at the brilliant sunlight outside. “When I was about your age, I looked into the Water and saw the face of my husband. He was not the man I would have Chosen for myself, so I did everything I could to make the vision change. I know now that what the Goddess showed me was a warning, not a promise. Perhaps she did the same for you.”
“No,” Sioned murmured. “This time, it was a promise.”
A wry smile played over the Lady’s mouth. “Just so. But remember that a man is more than a face and a body and a name. Sometimes he’s a whole world within himself, even if he isn’t a great lord or a prince.”
“I think I saw the whole world in his eyes,” Sioned admitted, frowning. “Is that what you mean?”
“How young you are!” Lady Andrade said indulgently, and the girl blushed.
Now, five years later, Sioned knew her own face had changed until it was very nearly the version of herself she had seen that day. Only the royal circlet was missing, and her first real sight of the man. She had spent the last years looking carefully at every blond, blue-eyed man who came to Goddess Keep, but had not found anyone like him. Who was he?
The answer had come to her very suddenly as she’d helped Lady Andrade pack for her journey to Stronghold. Fair hair, blue eyes, certain angles of bone—Sioned had been amazed and appalled that she’d never seen it before. Then she had realized that “before” had not been the right time, not for knowledge like this. She saw at last the echoes of that masculine face in Lady Andrade’s, remembering the royal circlet and the fact that the Lady’s nephew was a prince. Though she had said nothing, Andrade had seen the shock in her eyes and nodded silent acknowledgment of the truth.
One thing still puzzled Sioned. The circlet had been formed of herself, the hair floating on the Water. Yet he was already royal, already the heir; how could his becoming Prince of the Desert have anything to do with her? She was thinking about it as she walked the sunswept battlements of Goddess Keep one afternoon. The sea was a placid blue beneath a cloudless sky, sunlight reaching deep into the water to warm the new life there, and around the cliffs otters laughed uproariously as they played with their young. Sioned was fascinated by water, whether it was the ocean below Goddess Keep or the Catha River where she had spent her childhood. But she had a Sunrunner’s wariness of it as well, for few faradh’im were able to set foot on anything that floated without becoming sick as a gorged dragon.
Sioned unplaited her hair and ran her fingers through it, feeling the sunlight warm each strand. Soon she would have to go back inside and help with the evening meal— not that anyone ever let her near the cookpots except to taste their contents. She was hopelessly inept at the skills Camigwen practiced with a decided flair, and had never even learned how to blend herbs and cloves for a decent cup of taze. Sioned laughed ruefully to herself with the whimsical hope she would indeed marry the prince—for then she would never have to worry about her total lack of practical skills. His servants would take care of everything, and—
Sioned.
She whirled around, looking to the east from whence the call had come. She automatically opened herself to the colors brushing against her mind. There was always a Sunrunner on duty to receive messages sent on the light, but it was not Sioned’s turn today. Someone was calling specifically for her.
She wove rays of light back across fields and valleys, over rivers and the vast grassy sea of Meadowlord. The threads met and her own colors tangled with those of Lady Andrade. There was a second presence, like yet unalike, oddly familiar in some of its shadings and strong in ways very different from Andrade. Sometimes when the light was chancy—at sunset or sunrise especially— faradh’im worked together. But Sioned was certain that the person with Andrade was not trained, though there were unmistakable gifts in the bright colors of amber and amethyst and sapphire swirling with the pattern of a powerful mind.
Thank you for coming to meet me, child. But I need you to come even farther, in person. Arrange an escort of twenty, Sioned. This will be no pleasure trip. You must be here within six days. But before you enter Stronghold, make yourself stately and beautiful. You come here as a bride.
Though she had been waiting for this for five years, the shock was still profound. All she could think to ask was, Does he know?
Not yet—but he will, the instant he sees you. Hurry here to me, Sioned. To him.
Andrade and the mysterious other withdrew down the faltering rays of sunlight, and Sioned raced along her own weaving back to Goddess Keep, not pausing as she usually did to appreciate the beauty of the lands below her. She found herself almost too abruptly back on the battlements, and caught her balance mentally and physically. Below in the fields, wide-shouldered elk were being unharnessed from the plows and the sun had nearly disappeared into the sea. Sioned trembled, knowing that had she delayed her return, she might have become shadow-lost, falling into the Dark Water along with the sun.
“Sioned? What are you doing way up here? And what-ever’s the matter?”
Camigwen approached from the stairwell, scowling in response to what Sioned knew must be in her face. They had come to Goddess Keep at the same time, were only a year apart in age, and had become fast friends their first day here. Camigwen was the only one besides Andrade who knew what Sioned had seen in the Water and Fire, and so the explanation Sioned gave was a simple one.
“It’s time, Cami. I’m to go to him.”
A flush darkened the older girl’s taze-brown skin. Her eyes, large and dark and slightly tip-tilted in her pretty face, held a hundred questions. But all she did was grasp Sioned’s hands.
“Will you come with me, you and Ostvel?” Sioned pleaded. “I need you both—I don’t know what I’m to do or say—“
“You couldn’t keep me from a sight of this man if there were a thousand dragons in my way!”
Sioned gave a nervous laugh. “Well, you have the dragon part of it right.”
“The Desert! But who—?”
“The young prince,” Sioned replied, strangely unable to say his name.
Camigwen stared at her for some time, unable to speak a single word. But when she finally recovered her voice, it was to give a moan of dismay. “Oh, Goddess—and there’s not a single stitch sewn on a bride-gown!”
Tension dissolved into laughter and Sioned hugged her friend. “Only you could be so practical at a time like this!”
“Somebody has to be, with you standing there like a scattershell! Oh, Sioned! It’s wonderful!” Camigwen drew back and regarded her friend narrowly. “You do think it’s wonderful, don’t you?”
“Yes,” Sioned whispered. “Oh, yes.”
Camigwen nodded, satisfied. “I’ll tell Ostvel at once to arrange the escort. How many do you think we’ll need?”
“Lady Andrade said twenty. And we have to be there within six days.”
“Six?” She groaned and shook her head. “We’ll never make it. But we must, and on time, too, or I’ll never get my sixth ring and Ostvel will be demoted back to stable-boy instead of Second Steward of the Keep! We’ll leave tomorrow at first light. I can cut cloth tonight and sew along the way!”
Between Camigwen’s efficiency and Ostvel’s authority, all was arranged so quickly that Sioned’s head spun. She found herself on horseback before dawn the next morning, riding east toward the Desert. She turned only once to look back at the castle on the cliffs. Blue-gray veils of mist swirled around it, and the sky beyond was stifl night-dark over the sea. She knew she should have taken time to ask her future of the Mothertree, but there bad been no chance. She felt only mild regret, however; the things of Goddess Keep were past now, and she was riding to her future.
A future with a man she didn’t even know.
The first night they stopped before dusk beside a branch of the Kadar River, having made excellent progress during a hard day’s riding. With Sioned were lifelong friends— Antoun, Meath, Mardeem, Palevna, Hildreth, all around her own age and with whom she had gone through faradhi training—as well as several others with relatives along the way who would be glad of a sight of their faradhi kin and would provide shelter for a night. There were younger men and girls who were responsible for the horses and provisions, making the ordered total of twenty. Sioned was amazed that so many people had been willing to ride so far for her sake on such ridiculous notice.
Most of them sat around the fire after their meal, Mardeem idly singing a love song and glancing slyly at Sioned whenever he reached a particularly suggestive lyric. Camigwen sat within the secure circle of Ostvel’s arm and fretted that there wasn’t light enough left to continue sewing the bride-gown. Sioned joined in the laughter as Ostvel teased her, wondering if the same kind of loving, playful relationship waited for her with him. She didn’t know him, had only seen his face years ago in the Fire. She was still a girl enchanted by blue eyes and her own fantasies of what she thought was in them. Why was she riding so many hundreds of measures to marry a man she didn’t know?
“Are you tired or just thinking?” Ostvel asked with a kind smile.
“A little of both,” Sioned replied. “And dreading the idea of crossing the Faolain in a few days.”
“It’s the last river you’ll have to cross for a good long while,” he reminded her, amusement making his gray eyes sparkle in the firelight. “The Desert is just the place for you Sunrunner types. Tell me, Sioned, are you like Camigwen, who gets queasy looking at a bathtub?”
Cami fisted him in the ribs. “Watch what you say or I’ll be sure to get sick all over you when we cross!”
Grunting, Ostvel gathered long legs under him and stood. “Come on, Meath, Antoun—let’s go check the horses before my dainty and gentle beloved decides to break my arm.”
Mardeem, unable to cause more than a blush in Sioned with his songs, declared himself out of voice and in need of sleep. Most of the others followed his example and rolled themselves in blankets on the ground nearby, tactfully out of earshot of the fire where Sioned and Camigwen lingered. It was too quiet without music. Sioned reached for a twig, pulling it from the fire, moodily watching the little flame.
“Cami—will you and Ostvel stay with me there for a little while? After I’m—“ She couldn’t bring herself to say married, and the word princess was for the woman she’d seen in the Fire years ago. “I think I’m going to need somebody to ialk to,” she finished lamely.
“We’ll stay as long as you like. But you won’t need us, Sioned. You’ll have him.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of,” she muttered.
“What’s the matter? You’ve hoped for years that this would happen, and you’ve been so happy all day today.”
“What if we can’t talk to each other?” Sioned burst out. “What if we find we have nothing to say? Cami,, look at me. I’m nothing. A six-ring Sunrunner who barely knows her craft, born in a holding nobody’s ever heard of! Can you seriously see me as a princess?”
“You’re shadow-fearing, Sunrunner,” Camigwen said briskly. “Stop being so silly. Of course you’re going to love each other.”
“But what if we can’t? I don’t know him, and he certainly doesn’t know me. I don’t want to tie myself to a man I can’t love.”
“Listen to me, Sioned. Look into the Fire. There aren’t any shadows to lose yourself in and never come out. There’s only the light.”
At her friend’s coaxing, Sioned dropped the twig back into the fire and faced the flames, and within them was his face. She flinched at the grief that clouded his eyes and scarred his sensitive mouth. Her hands reached involuntarily and she cried out as Fire seared her fingers and her mind.
“Sioned!”
She was scarcely aware of the cold water Camigwen poured over her burned fingers or of the worried voices around her. The pain had raced up her hands and arms to her heart, and deep into that portion of her brain that knew how to ride the woven threads of sunlight. She rocked back and forth, gasping around the agony until it gradually began to fade and she could see clearly once more.
Her friends had gathered in a circle of concern. “I’m sorry,” she murmured, ashamed, and bent her head, cradling her burned fingers in her lap.
“The fire blew sparks, that’s all,” Camigwen told the others.
“Be more careful, Sioned,” Meath cautioned, patting her shoulder with rough affection. She nodded wordlessly, unable to look at any of her friends.
“Yes,” Ostvel drawled. “We owe the prince a bride who doesn’t wince with pain when he kisses her hands. Everybody get some sleep. We’ve got a long way to ride tomorrow.” When they had gone, he crouched down beside Sioned, tilting her face up to his with an insistent finger beneath her chin.
“I’m sorry,” she repeated.
“No, I’m the one who’s sorry,” Camigwen said. “I only wanted you to look at him again and realize you don’t have to be afraid.”
“You lost control of a Fire-conjure?” Ostvel asked, and when Sioned nodded miserably, he whistled. “I can hardly wait to meet this prince of yours. Any man who causes a Sunrunner of your rank to make a mistake like that—“
“It wasn’t him, it was me,” Sioned told him, then burst out, “and Cami tells me I have nothing to fear!”
“If you do,” Ostvel murmured, “it’s fear of too much bnghtness. Too much Fire. Not the shadows, Sioned— never those.”
“I could get as easily lost in the one as in the other,” she whispered, staring down at her hands.
Rohan managed to elude his aunt successfully until the evening after the dragon hunt. Andrade, after sending Tobin to rest and recover from the drain on her energies, had sought the young prince but had not found him. Her dignity forbade asking anyone for his whereabouts. She had a reputation to maintain, after all, and refused to admit that she was unable to find one man in a finite area. Irked at his ability to vanish when he wished—and entirely familiar with it from his childhood—she decided to stubborn him out, knowing full well that he would choose the time and place of their meeting.
She spent part of the day with Tobin, giving her niece a deserved explanation. Chay was sleeping off physical and emotional exhaustion—and all the wine he’d drunk on an empty stomach, trying to forget the sight of Zehava being gored by the dragon—when Andrade appeared at the door of Tobin’s chambers late in the morning. The two women went down into the gardens for a private talk.
“It was very strange,” Tobin admitted when Andrade asked her reaction to what they had done the previous evening. “I always wondered how faradh’im worked with the sunlight.”
“Don’t think that because you helped me once you’ll be able to do it on your own,” Andrade warned. “The balance is a delicate one, and control of it takes a good deal of training.” She paused as a groundskeeper bowed his way out of their presence near the roses. “But I think I’ll have Sioned teach you something about it when she arrives.”
“Is that her name? Sioned?”
“Yes, but accent the second syllable more. ‘Sh-«ed,’ “ she repeated.
“It’s a lovely name,” Tobin mused. “Does Rohan know yet that he’s expected to add ‘princess’ to it?”
“I thought you’d figure that out. Yes, she’s going to be his wife. He doesn’t know it yet, but he soon will.”
“I liked her. It’s as if I touched her somehow. There were—colors, almost as if I could hold them in my hands. Beautiful colors.”
“I don’t think this kind of touching is completely new to you.” She cocked an eyebrow at the princess.
“Sometimes with Chay I feel something of the same thing,” Tobin said slowly. “Almost as if I’m looking into him and he’s all sorts of colors. Does that mean I can learn to be faradhiT’
“Sioned can teach you a little—but no more than that. It’s dangerous.”
“I remember when Kessel got shadow-lost,” she replied quietly. “Mother and I took care of him until he died.”
Andrade glanced away, remembering the handsome young Sunrunner who had been posted here for a time. He had misjudged the light late in the day. Shadow-lost was the most fearful risk faradh’im could run, for thoughts unraveled in darkness never rewove, and colors forgotten in the night never knew sunlight again. The mindless body soon died, its essence having following the sun into the Dark Water.
“Then you know the consequences of overconfidence,” Andrade said. “And speaking of arrogance, Rohan seems to be making-quite a game of avoiding me.”
“Mother says he was in Father’s room late last night for a little while. But I don’t know where he is this morning.” She sank down on a bench in the shade. “And before you ask—yes, I know most of his places, and I’m not going to tell you. He’ll appear when he’s ready. Don’t push him, Aunt. Not now. I’m worried about him.”
Andrade sat beside her, shrugging irritably. It was probable that Rohan was in no state to talk to anyone, not even his family, and especially not Andrade. “He’ll have to face me sometime.”
“How dare you imply that he’s a coward!”
“I didn’t. But why isn’t he with Zehava?”
Tobin sighed. “I suppose he’s like me, and can’t believe Father’s dying—not so quickly, or so slowly. Does that make any sense?”
Andrade understood. A strong and vigorous man one day, Zehava was dying the next. Yet life lingered painfully in the ravaged body, refusing to relinquish its hold on flesh.
“In any case, it’s forbidden for the next prince to watch his father die,” Tobin went on.
“That’s a very bad idea. Rohan must watch or all his life Zehava’s image will be in front of him, never really dead and burned.”
Tobin’s black eyes sheened silver with tears, like rain at midnight. “You are the cruelest woman I ever knew,” she whispered.
Andrade bit her lip, then grasped her niece’s hand. “Never think I don’t grieve for your father. Zehava is a good man. He gave me you and Rohan to love as I would have loved children of my own. But I am what I am, Tobin. And you and I are both women of consequence with responsibilities. When we have time for it, we feel. But there is no time. Rohan must be told.”
Yet he eluded her for the rest of the morning and afternoon. Andrade grew furious at the dance he was leading her and was reduced to the humiliation of setting one of her Sunrunners outside his chamber door, with orders to report instantly if and when the young prince appeared. Her other faradh’im she posted at various places around the keep with identical instructions. But none of them came with news during the whole day.
With the evening, Andrade was exhausted. She had attended Zehava twice, hoping but not really expecting him to awaken, and had sat vigil with Milar for several hours in the suffocating heat. At dusk she decided to go up to the Flametower, where there might be a breath of air to cool her. She opened the door of the uppermost chamber, panting after the climb, and cursed viciously— for Rohan was in the huge circular chamber, alone.
The light from the small fire in the center of the room turned his hair fiery gold and glistened on the sweat that beaded his forehead and the hollow of his throat. As Andrade entered, he glanced up without curiosity from his seat before the little blaze.
“It took you a long time to find me,” he observed.
She resisted the impulse to blister his ears with her reply. Choosing a chair from the few stacked against the far wall, she placed it opposite his at the fire and stared into the flames. “Gracious of you to wish at long last to be found,” she told him in a rigidly controlled voice. “Although this isn’t the most agreeable place for a talk—or the most comfortable.” She gestured to the fire that was kept burning year round.
“Comfortable?” Rohan shrugged. “Perhaps not. I keep seeing Father in the flames.”
“A trifle premature. He’s not dead yet.”
“No. But when I don’t see Father, I see myself.” He rose and paced to the windows, pointing arches left open to whatever wind chose to blow. They circled the room at regular intervals, each one surmounted by a sleeping dragon carved into the stone. Rohan made the circuit slowly, stray gouts of fire-sent breeze ruffling his sweat-damp hair.
“They’ll signal his death from here,” he said musingly. “Build up the fire so high and hot that this room will turn to flames. You can still see the soot from when my grandfather died, and all the other princes of our line, back three hundred years or so. ...” He swept his fingertips along the walls. “And then I’ll take the spark from here that will light his pyre, and this fire that was his will be put out. Mother and Tobin will clean the floor themselves—did you know that? It should be my wife, but I have no wife. I’ll come up here and light new flames that will eventually become my pyre.”
The shadows licked at his face as he talked, a proud and elusive face, not easy to know. But Andrade knew him, and kept silent.
“Someday my son will do for me what I’ll do for Father in a few days. And on it will go, for more generations. All that’s ever left is this.” He held up his blackened fingertips with an unpleasant smile. “Goddess, what a morbid thought!” The smile crumpled as he whispered, “Why does he have to die?”
It was the cry of a boy for the loss of a beloved father, but it was also a moan of dread. There had been a time like this for Andrade, too, over twenty years ago, when the Lord of Goddess Keep had died and she had been chosen to wear the rings in his place. She had been alone.
But there was someone for Rohan to turn to in his need. She caught his gaze and drew it to the flames by the force of her powerful will. Stretching forth one hand to the fire, she whispered Sioned’s name.
Rohan tensed, the pulse beating faster in the hollow of his throat. A face coalesced in the glowing flames, a pale oval of fine bones and green eyes framed in red-gold hair. Andrade held the conjure for a few moments, allowed it to fade, and sank wearily back into her chair.
“Who is she?” the young man breathed.
Andrade said nothing, almost too tired to care if he had any instinct for seeing into his own heart. It was a long while before he spoke again, and when he did his tone was deliberately casual.
“I haven’t seen you do a conjuring since I was eleven years old. You did it then to please a child. I think you did it now to promise me something. What will she be to me, Andrade?”
How odd that he had used Sioned’s word: promise. “You already know.”
“You want me to marry a Sunrunner witch?”
“Does the thought of a Sunrunner witch like me frighten you, boy?” she snapped.
“You don’t frighten me, and neither do your kind. But I can’t marry a faradhi woman.”
“Isn’t her blood pure enough for you, princeling?”
Rohan’s lips curved in a feral smile she had never seen before. “First let us clarify something. I am neither a ‘boy’ nor a ‘princeling.’ I honor you as my aunt and for your position, but you will remember who I am.”
She gave him an ironic little bow. “And forget whose nose I wiped and whose skinned knees I bandaged.”
All at once he laughed. “Oh, Goddess—I deserved that, didn’t I?” He sat and put his elbows on his knees, hands clasped between them. “Very well, Andrade, let’s talk things over like rational people instead of arrogant prince and Lady of Goddess Keep. I need an alliance as well as a wife when I marry. What do I gain by taking one of your famdh’im?”
“You could do worse. Much worse.” She hid her pleasure at what had just passed between them. Never having suspected him capable of such hauteur, she was glad he could not only use it but laugh at it. Arrogance—or its appearance—would help him rule, but laughter would keep him sane while he did it. “You don’t have any other women in mind, do you?”
“I was bemoaning their lack only yesterday.” He shrugged again. “You know, I’m not quite sure what to feel. I don’t want my father to die. I know I should be terrified of becoming ruling prince—but I’m not. Goddess help me, Andrade, I want the power of it. There’s so much I want to accomplish. But why does Father have to die in order for me to do it?”
“You’re tired of being one step away from the power that is your right. It’s only natural, Rohan, especially when you have dreams. One fire goes out and a different one is lit. You’re eager to try your wings and that’s a very fine trait—“
“In the son of a dragon?” he interrupted.
She grunted her appreciation of the remark. “Let’s leave them out of this for now, shall we? What I meant was that caution in flight is also a good idea.” She paused a moment, then rapped out, “Does the girl repel you?”
“No!” was his quick response. “She’s beautiful!” Then he blushed. “Any fool could see that. Men my age are usually fools abqut women.”
“So she doesn’t disgust you physically. That’s a start,” Andrade said wryly. “Now that we’ve established her as a woman and not a witch—“
“Have we?” He gave her a tiny smile. “I have your word for it, but the face in the flames said otherwise. If not a witch, then certainly something enchanted. What comes from Goddess Keep that is not?”
“Oh, very pretty,” she mocked, restraining laughter with difficulty, more and more pleased with him. “Have you studied charming phrases, or do they come naturally? As for the girl—she’s a fit mate for a dragon’s son. Your children should be the wonders of the world.”
The hot color came back to his cheeks, the sight an education to Andrade. He rose and went to the windows again, saying with an attempt at nonchalance, “We’ll tithe one of them to you for playing matchmaker.”
“Don’t be facetious.” Waiting until he faced her again, she went on, “Your mention of an alliance is something I’d expect. But you’re so rich that very few could aspire to your hand and your bed.” He did not blush at this reference to sex, and Andrade rightly concluded that the prince could consider such things but the man was shy about them. “Of the great lords and princes, only a few of them have daughters of marriageable age. Most of these are out of the question, being either promised or too ugly or stupid for consideration. None of us wants you tied to a fool.”
“Is that a polite way of saying I’m going to need all the help I can get?”
“You were lonely as a little boy,” she said with a gentleness that surprised her. “I don’t want you to live your manhood lonely as well.” To cover the emotion she continued more briskly, “Of the few eligible ladies, most of them are the High Prince’s daughters.”
Rohan’s face pulled into a grimace. “Thank you, no. The son of the dragon has no wish to marry a daughter of the lizard. I would gladly live my manhood lonely, as you put it, in exchange for the assurance of living it at all.”
“And what do you mean by that?” she asked, wondering if he had figured it out for himself.
He gave her much the same reasoning she had given Milar, and Andrade sent heartfelt thanks to the Goddess. Rohan would not have an easy time of it as ruling prince, but neither would he be the victim of those more clever than he. There would not be many. When he had finished a succinct summation of why his life would be worth less than nothing after he had gotten an heir on one of Roelstra’s daughters, Andrade smiled her approval.
“Your wits -are in working order, at any rate,” was all the verbal praise she gave him. “Now that you’ve had a chance to think about it, tell me why you should marry my faradhi witch.”
Rohan took several moments to answer, but when he did it was with growing enthusiasm. “Information, for one thing. A network of faradh’im all over the princedoms would be very useful.”
“And what makes you think I’d allow you to use them?”
“The same thing that makes me think you’ve got some grander plan for me that doesn’t preclude using anyone or anything you can get your hands on. I know why you pushed your sister into marrying my father, and I know all about your spies—I’m not talking about the official Sunrunners, Andrade.” The line of his jaw hardened. “What is it you really want? Why show me that face, knowing I’d find her beautiful? How do you plan to use us?”
“If I live long enough—if you live long enough—we may all find out. I do only what the Goddess bids me.”
“Dragon shit,” Rohan said in a pleasant tone, his eyes blue ice. “She tells you what you feel like hearing. You’re setting me up in direct opposition to Roelstra. Why?”
“You mean that with all your studies and all your deep thoughts, you haven’t yet seen it?” she taunted, angry and a little frightened by his perceptions.
He took a step toward her, the fire between them, and there was nothing boyish or gentle about him now. “What do you plan for me, Andrade?”
Years and responsibilities, old hates and hopes and even a few dreams settled on her like a cloak of iron. “Rohan—it’s all as you’ve said about Roelstra’s daughters. I was afraid the offer would come before I could speak to you. Your father would never listen to a word I said. He doesn’t entirely trust me.”
“Should I?” he asked, his voice cold.
“If not me, then Sioned.”
“So she has a name. I’d wondered.”
“She’s very dear to me, Rohan. What I want doesn’t matter. She was the one- who saw you years ago in the Fire.”
“Did she?”
“Couldn’t you feel anything when you looked at her tonight?”
“What I feel isn’t your concern. Have you sent for her?”
50 Melanie Ra\vn
“She’ll be here soon “ u call me arrogant! It runs in the blood—like t. gifts that Tobin has and I don’t. That’s what you wanted from my parents, wasn’t it? Afaradhi prince. Sony to have disappointed you. But now you’re about to try the same thing, aren’t you? Does Sioned know it, I wonder?”
Andrade met his gaze stoically, not reacting to his sarcasm—for she heard how he tasted the girl’s name as if schooling his tongue to its syllables and his ears to its sound. “You need not marry her if she doesn’t please you. When she arrives, you’ll both know one way or the other.”
“Haven’t you planned it all out?” But in the next moment his expression changed and he murmured, “I’m sorry.”
She watched him, this manchild with the deceptively gentle eyes, this princeling who would soon rule over the vastness of the Desert—and perhaps one day, if her misted visions were accurate and the Goddess had not teased her with lies. ... It would be enough if Rohan and Sioned could be together. They were right for each other; she knew it. “I apologize for my sharpness,” she said. “You’re right—I really ought to keep in mind who you are.”
“No, it was the right way to do it. I can’t sit up here feeling sorry for myself. But it’s awkward, you see. Waiting for Father to die. Being afraid and having to hide it. Being—alone. I can’t really admit things to anyone but you. Do you understand?”
She nodded, thinking that the day he could admit everything to Sioned would be the day he was no longer alone. “Go downstairs and get some sleep. Zehava will live for some days yet. He’s too stubborn to let death have him quickly. Your mother will need you to be strong.”
Rohan smiled sadly. “No one will need me for anything until it comes time to acknowledge me as prince. And then they’ll need even more than I can give. What I have to offer won’t seem like much to them—not compared to my father.”