The only problem with sneaking into Faolain Lowland was the only thing that allowed Saumer and his troops to sneak in at all.
Rain.
He’d waited two nights for this storm that would obscure the army’s movements. He could, however, have done very nicely without the deluge that obscured absolutely everything. He couldn’t see more than a handspan from his nose. Torches were a sodden joke, and he didn’t know much about conjuring a fingerflame. So he directed his people down an access tunnel dark as a Sunrunner’s nightmare, listening to curses that told him feet had slipped on the ladder. A nice little shower to keep the Vellant’im in their shelters, some convenient concealing mist—that was all he’d wanted. Instead he sent his troops through an entry in the forest floor that reminded him forcibly of a rabbit hole, and huddled into a sopping cloak that weighed more than if he’d simply draped the wool around his shoulders while the sheep still wore it.
At last everyone was through the chimney Lady Hollis had described on sunlight—a thing Saumer was convinced he would never see again—and he began his own descent. As he reached up to shut the wooden covering, soil around it gave way. A silkweight of muck dumped on his head.
“Lovely,” he grumbled, spitting grass, mud, and a few rocks. “Thanks.”
But at least the torrents of rain were closed out. Sliding the iron bar home to lock the entry—Mirsath had had it opened a couple of days ago—he climbed down, jumping the last rungs to land in water halfway to his knees.
Havadi, Prince Kostas’ captain and now Saumer’s own second-in-command, was waiting, having already sent the rest of their people on ahead. “Lord Mirsath left a few dry ones for us, my lord,” he said, holding up a lighted torch. “The passage is through there.”
Saumer pushed mud-thickened hair from his face and eyed the darkness of the low tunnel uneasily. “Under the moat. We might as well have swum the thing.”
They started off, following dim flashes of fireglow ahead and the sound of more swearing. The young prince tried to take his mind from the closeness, the cold, and his incredibly soggy self by concentrating on the torch Havadi held. Having only recently learned that he was faradhi like his aunt Alasen, Saumer wondered if he could sense anything different about fire. But he saw only a torch made of wood and pitch, and the flames were like any others he had watched in his life.
The sudden glowing quiver on the edge of his mind was made of another kind of Fire entirely.
Saumer straightened abruptly and bumped his head against the low ceiling. Havadi turned when an annoyed exclamation left his lips.
“My lord?”
Saumer was running his gloved fingers over the dripping overhead stones. “There’s something here. Just above the rock...”
“Urn ... yes. The moat.”
“No, something in the moat.” He heard what he’d said and blinked. “Why would I think a crazy thing like that?” But in the next breath he ordered Havadi to douse the torch. “The light’s distracting me.”
He stripped off his gloves in total darkness and blew on his hands to warm them. Searching with only his eyes, he saw no telltale fiery flicker. So he closed his eyes, and, biting his lower lip, explored the ceiling with his fingertips. The shining itched at his mind stronger here, weaker there. He followed its pull, all formless black-rainbow iridescence, and all at once snatched his hands back as if they’d been burned.
“Saumer! What is it?” Havadi grasped his arm.
“I don’t know—but it’s powerful, whatever it is.” He touched the spot again, gingerly, and again his fingertip felt burned. “How thick is this ceiling, do you think?”
“I don’t know, and unless you want the moat flooding in to drown us, we’re not about to find out.” Flint struck stone, and the torch flared to life again. “Come upstairs, my lord, before you catch a chill.”
“But—“ He sighed. “Oh, never mind. I’ll ask Mirsath about it when I see him. But I want to mark that place.” He groped in his pockets and came up with a hoofpick. He jammed it into a seeping crack in the rocks near the source of the glow.
They continued down the tunnel, and the water dripping through from the moat began to rival the rainstorm outside. Saumer wouldn’t have minded so much if it hadn’t smelled so foul. Curiosity about that strange black-fire shimmer gave way to the pure and simple desire for a long, hot bath and clean, dry clothes.
They emerged at last into a circular room. The tallest staircase Saumer had ever seen spiraled upward, lit by torches and candles. A man and woman waited for them, prudently standing a few steps up from the ankle-deep water on the floor. Both were young, finely dressed, and had the look of family sameness stamped on their features.
“Lord Mirsath, Lady Karanaya,” Saumer said politely, glad to stretch his backbone straight again. “Lovely weather we’re having, isn’t it?”
“Welcome to Faolain Lowland, your grace,” Mirsath responded in kind, his eyes dancing with humor at the casual exchange of pleasantries. “I hope your journey wasn’t too tiring.”
Karanaya gave a snort. “Next you’ll be asking after the comfort of your horse. At least one of us is practical here, your grace. Have some wine.”
She turned, and from a candle-shelf took a crystal goblet footed in silver and set with gems. The deep ruby liquid in it steamed in the chill. Saumer drank gratefully as Mirsath remarked, “I notice you got out the princely guestcup, cousin.”
“I hope I know what’s due a Prince of Kierst-Isel, and a kinsman of the High Prince into the bargain.”
Saumer handed the goblet to Havadi. “Here—warm your bones with this. As it happens, Lady Karanaya,” he went on,
“my horses are being well seen to. We left people to guard them, and as soon as this rain lets up a little they’ll be herded to a safe place.”
“After which we’ll herd the Vellant’im to an wnsafe place,” she finished with determination. “If you’ll come with us, your grace. We’ve already had your people seen to, and now the most important thing is to get you dry and warm.”
Saumer mounted the steps to get out of the water, wishing he could upend both boots; he was fairly sloshing his way up that daunting staircase. “Wet and warm would be better,” he smiled at her. “I stink of your moat and need a bath. By the way, Lord Mirsath, when I was going through the tunnel, I—“
A rumbling from the black mouth of that very tunnel presaged a crash that shook the foundation stones. Havadi dropped the priceless goblet and raced up the steps, arms spread wide to shove the other three ahead of him. Karanaya stumbled against Saumer; he held her upright and dragged her with him as they fled the gush of rainwater and moat mud and shattered rock.
Saumer went to his knees on a riser, cursing, and looked over his shoulder. Debris-laden water surged eight steps below him, seven, six—then seemed to pause and consider, lapping flirtatiously at the next step. He caught his breath and sat down to watch, earning amazed looks from his companions.
“What are you—“
“My lord, we really must—“
“Prince Saumer, there’s still danger from—“
“Just wait,” he said, and closed his eyes.
Ah. There it was. He fixed it in his mind and scooted down the steps, heedless of his boots—full to the knees anyway—and the leaden drag of his cloak. Standing on the bottom step, chest-deep in smelly muck, he plunged a gloved hand into the gently rocking waves.
A few moments later he climbed back up to the others and opened his fist. In the stained and sopping leather rested a tear-shaped lump of filth. Saumer scraped the mud from it as best he could so they could see it. But he knew that Havadi, Mirsath, and Karanaya (who gasped in delighted recognition) saw only a black pearl, not its magical sheen of rainbows.
“What I don’t understand,” said Mirsath to Johlarian a little while later, “is why you didn’t see it before.”
The Sunrunner gave a shrug. “Perhaps it’s in the way of children—which Prince Saumer is when it comes to faradhi things. They see what’s there, not what education and experience tell them to see. And I was concentrating on the fingerflame, my lord, while I was down there. That might have something to do with it.”
Mirsath peered into the gaping hole in his hall floor, wrinkled his nose, and strode over to push the Dragon’s Eye that closed it. “Well, that’s lost to use, anyway. Ours or theirs.” He watched the stone slide shut. “You know, it bothers me a little that Saumer was so smug. Totally unsurprised that the Tear should snuggle right into his hand.”
“Again, my lord, like a child. Why shouldn’t it happen that way? Reason and logic tell us it’s absurd. Impossible. But it’s the privilege of the young to believe that even if they leap into a midden, they’ll come out holding a rose. Or a pearl.” He smiled. “Perhaps the hand of the Goddess was in it.”
“Don’t start sounding like Lord Andry,” Mirsath warned as they climbed the stairs. “Reason and logic tell me that the collapse of the moat had an even chance of washing the pearl either direction down the tunnel. It was luck.”
“As you say, my lord. Good night, and sleep well.”
The next morning they met in a room Mirsath’s grandfather had rather pompously termed the Hall of Petitions. Because most consultations were done out in the fields or in the village, and rarely through so formal a method as a petition, everyone at Lowland simply called it “the office.” They ignored the ranks of chairs posted along the walls and gathered around the fruitwood table that old Lord Baisal had fondly pictured awash in respectfully worded parchments pleading for his favor.
Saumer was bright-eyed and refreshed after half a night’s sleep in a real bed—and a second hot bath before breakfast this morning. At Mirsath’s request he explained the logistics of the Battle of Catha Heights while they waited for Karanaya. Eventually she arrived, dressed in a plain, high-necked gown of bright red wool. The Tears of the Dragon, all six of them bound in silver wire, hung from a short chain around her throat.
Johlarian watched Saumer carefully for reaction. The young man didn’t even blink. He complimented Karanaya on the jewels; she thanked him prettily for retrieving the missing one; they settled down to business.
Or would have, if Mirsath hadn’t asked, “Your grace, do you see anything now when you look at the pearls?”
“Certainly,” was the ready reply. “Don’t you, Johlarian?”
The Sunrunner concentrated. Then he stopped concentrating. He pushed all his education and logic aside, opening himself as he had not willingly done since the night some unknown woman had come in the guise of the Goddess to make a man of him.
The pearls began to shine.
Not as the single one had when he searched for it by Sunrunner means in the moat. Then, the lost gem had worn an angry greenish shimmer. Now all six were strangely serene, luminous, darkly iridescent.
“Gentle Goddess,” he murmured. “The High Prince showed me what to look for, and the one of them alone—but all of them together—“
“It looks like you’re wearing a black rainbow, Lady Karanaya,” Saumer told her. “It spreads in a sort of burst over your head. Too bad you can’t see it.”
She fingered the pearls. “They’re beautiful just as they are. Thank you again, Prince Saumer.”
“No trouble,” he answered with a grin. “As you saw. Now, let’s see what kind of support we can give Prince Tilal when he arrives. The flood wasn’t such a disaster after all, you know—I heard about the bath the Vellant’im took in the moat. Mud will keep them out as surely as water. I’m worried about that causeway, though. Can you show me the plans of the castle, please?”
The childhood accident that had crippled Prince Elsen of Grib made walking painful and riding a torment. This had not prevented him from climbing into a saddle for the journey to Goddess Keep when the call went out for help. Now, within sight of the great seaside castle on this fifty-ninth day of Winter and the fourteenth of his journey, his long agony finally caught up with him.
He had been thinking of it as comparable to childbirth. Weak as his wife Selante was after two days of an exhausting and dangerous labor, she had found that final reserve of strength that allowed their son to be born. Surely, Elsen thought, surely if she could endure such wracking pain through her entire body, he could outlast one knee.
It mortified him that the first glimpse of Goddess Keep nearly toppled him from the saddle. He would dredge up a last determination, he would endure the pain, he would ride into the courtyard as a prince and not a cripple—
Whatever his mind’s resolve, his body knew that respite was close. His body wanted that surcease now.
“Your grace!”
When he fell, it was very slowly. His bad leg, foot twisting in the stirrup, gave a sickening crack. Oddly, it didn’t hurt at all. He didn’t remember hitting the ground.
Elsen woke in darkness. He turned his head and then turned it away from a sharp rectangle of light.
“Mama? He moved. I think he’s awake.”
He didn’t recognize the young voice, nor the one that answered. “Hush now, Ondiar. We mustn’t startle him. Your grace? Prince Elsen? It’s all right, you’re with friends. My name is Jayachin, and you’re in my tent just outside Goddess Keep. No, don’t try to move. I’ve splinted your leg and your shoulder. You took a nasty fall.”
He opened his eyes and squinted up at her. She was white-skinned and black-haired, and very beautifuL “How long—?”
“It’s just gone noon. They’ll be here from Goddess Keep in a little while with a litter to carry you in.”
“My people? Where are they?”
“Within the keep, your grace, and made more than welcome.” She settled on a low stool beside the cot. “I had them bring you here to rest and recover yourself before you meet Lord Torien. A few of your guards are outside.” She hesitated. “Before I call them in, your grace, I must thank you for your goodness in coming to our aid. I speak for thousands driven from their homes who came to Goddess Keep seeking Lord Andry’s protection. But he is gone, and Lord Torien refuses to do the necessary Sunrunner thing against the Vellant’im who wait to attack us. You stand between us and destruction, your grace.”
She paused, as if giving him time to speak. When he did not, she went on, “They will land soon, your grace. They must be attacked. It is not enough to defend Goddess Keep—the battle must be taken to them. I’ve tried to find a way of teaching these people to fight, but they’re farmers and townfolk, your grace, not warriors. And Torien impedes me at every turn. He thinks only of his vow not to kill. But I was made athri of these people by Lord Andry himself, and I cannot afford such qualms. Help us, your grace. Please.”
A thoroughly uncharacteristic anger competed with the agony in his knee. Had his people come all this way only because the Sunrunners were squeamish? What in all Hells was the matter with them? He would not watch his army fight and die as Prince Tilal’s had for the sake of a faradhi vow.
But he owed it to the faradh ‘im to hear their side of it. He said to Jayachin, “I will speak with Lord Torien.”
She nodded and clasped her hands together. The gesture was oddly possessive, as if she held within her palms a promise of love or war.
He had no right to demand that the Sunrunners forswear their most sacred vow. He had come when they called for aid; it was his duty. He had never deluded himself about leading the charge, but at least he could have stood on the ramparts, urging his people to victory. Now he was worse than useless; long familiarity with pain told him it would be spring before he could so much as set his feet to the floor.
But he must do something to fight this horror that had overtaken the continent and killed High Prince Rohan, who had befriended him with letters and gifts of books. The demands of his own honor and his affection for a man he had never met were no less binding on him than the Sunrunner oath was to them. It was what they were.
But why should his people have to die for them? Or for him?
Later, after an unspeakable journey in the litter, he swam out of slow, hot waves of pain to hear voices discussing him.
“... how he managed to sit a horse at all, with that leg,” a man said.
“Yes,” a woman replied, “but the break is the best thing that could have happened.”
Elsen struggled to understand. How could his injury benefit anyone? Slitting his eyes open, he saw the pair standing at the foot of the bed he lay in. The man was tall, long-boned, about a dozen years Elsen’s senior, his Fironese blood strongly proclaimed in his dark features. The woman was younger, delicately made with black hair and smoky-gray eyes.
She continued, “We’ll have to keep him immobile for quite a while. It depends on what I can do with that knee. I’d like to find the fumble-fingered excuse for a physician who had the original setting of the bones. Goddess, what a mess!”
“Should we find Evarin on sunlight and consult him about proper treatment?”
“Torien—“
“I know, my love—you’re wearing the same ring he is, and you’re almost as good. But we’re going to need his advice.”
She replied grudgingly, “All right, yes. For now, we’d better just let the prince rest quietly, with no distractions.”
Elsen closed his eyes again and tried to breathe around the panic in his chest. Unable to leave this bed, he would be unable to give orders. He wouldn’t even know what was going on unless they told him. He had fought physical helplessness since childhood. This was worse. This was so much worse. It wasn’t just him—it was all his people, who had followed their crippled prince because they loved him.
“I wonder,” the woman mused, “if Jayachin was as clumsy with words as she was with her bandaging.”
“Meaning what?”
“Meaning she had him alone long enough to say just about anything.”
“Jolan! She’s not that much of a fool.”
“You think not? Well, just consider how lucky it is that Prince Elsen is here with us, and not camped outside with her.”
“I see what you mean. Come, let’s leave him to his sleep.”
“You realize, of course,” Sioned was saying quietly as the children gathered in the Attic, “that this is a case of hiding the sheep after the dragons have feasted.”
Meath gave her a shrug. “They have to learn.”
“Granted.” She leaned against the door frame and folded her arms. “I’d like to get Audran and Alleyn up here from Skybowl, too. And Jeni, if she can be persuaded to leave her dragon.”
“You know we don’t dare let any group smaller than an army ride anywhere. Not until Chayla’s been found, and we can be sure we’ve cleaned out all the lingering vermin from the hills.”
“I’d like to have them here all the same.” Sioned nodded to the table, where five children stood behind chairs. At each place was a white candle rising from a small crystal holder. “Do you see the look on Tobren’s face?” she went on in a murmur. “She knows as well as you and I that her father’s not going to appreciate this at all.”
“Since when have you ever worried about what Andry thinks?”
“Since I’ve had the feeling that we’re going to need his help.” Sioned ran a hand back through her short curls and moved from the door to the head of the table. “Good afternoon, ellitev’im,” she greeted the children with a smile. “For those of you who don’t recognize that word, it means ‘little friends-in-Fire.’ It’s what every First Teacher at Goddess Keep calls young Sunrunners. Tobren, please tell the others whatfaradhi means.”
“ ‘Silent knowledge’,” the girl responded sullenly. Her grandmother had told her to be here, and so she was. But as Sioned had observed, she didn’t approve.
“Exactly. And since none of you have much knowledge yet, you can do me a favor by taking to heart the silence part of it!” She smiled again, then looked at Meath. He stood at the other end of the table, waiting for his cue. “We’ll begin with our rather large friend-in-Fire down there.”
“This is the way Sunrunners greet each other before a lesson.” He held both hands out before him, palms flat. “I am Meath, son of Keriv and Aldannaya, and my rings are six. Goddess blessing to you, Sunrunners.”
Sioned gestured to Antalya, who stood at Meath’s right. “Your turn.”
SionelFs daughter blinked huge blue eyes and stammered, “I—I am Antalya, daughter of T-Tallain and Sionell, and I don’t have any rings. Goddess blessing to you, Sunrunners.”
Jihan was next. She spread out her hands and identified herself by saying, “I am Jihan, daughter of High Prince Pol and High Princess Meiglan, and I’m a princess and the athri of Rosewall at Str—“
“Jihan.” Meath spoke her name softly.
“But if we’re saying who we are—“
“Your name, the names of your parents, and the number of your rings is enough,” he replied. “We know who you are.”
“Then why—“
“Because that’s the way it’s done,” Tobren said sharply.
Across the table, Jihan gave her a look to incinerate stone. “I am Jihan,” she said again, deliberately. “I am the daughter of Pol and Meiglan, and I have one ring. See?”
“It’s not a Sunrunner’s ring,” Tobren challenged.
“All right! I don’t have any rings! Goddess blessing!”
Sioned and Meath exchanged a glance of mingled amusement and exasperation.
Maara, like Jihan, was diarmadhi. Unlike Jihan, she was quiet and serious as she named herself the daughter of Riyan and Ruala, without rings, and gave the traditional ending.
Then it came Sioned’s turn, and the first part of the greeting took her back more than forty-five years. She could almost feel Camigwen nearby—indeed, Cami’s granddaughter stood right next to her. So strong were the memories that the last words, which honesty compelled her to say, tasted strange. “I am Sioned, daughter of Daniv and Riaza, and I wear none of my seven rings—“
This reminder was Tobren’s limit. “This isn’t Goddess Keep,” she exclaimed. “We shouldn’t be doing this at all— and especially not with you! You don’t even wear your rings!”
Meig, four-year-old face poking around the ladder back of the chair he stood behind, wrinkled his brow. “Don’t yell!”
Sioned sighed. “Hush, Meig. Tobren, you’re right, of course. This isn ‘t Goddess Keep. I don’t wear the rings Lady Andrade gave me.”
Meath stripped off all his rings and put them on the table. “Neither do I.”
Tobren caught her breath. “Put them back on, Meath!”
“Will they make him a Sunrunner again?” Jihan asked, all innocence and gleeful blue eyes.
Sioned cast her a quelling glance. “All of you know why you’re here. There are things you must leam for your own safety. It has been decided that Meath and I will teach you. If any of you choose not to participate—“
A soft voice interrupted from the doorway. “I am Alasen, daughter of Volog and Gyula, and I have no rings. Goddess blessing to you, Sunrunners.”
She glided gracefully into the room to stand at an empty place between Meath and Meig. Her long, gold-lit brown hair was undone across her shoulders, and she was pale and hollow-eyed with weariness. She looked worse than when she’d arrived at Feruche yesterday.
“I need to learn how to use what the Goddess has given me,” Alasen said, staring down at her hands. On the left was the ring Ostvel had given her in token of their marriage—the only one she had ever wanted to wear. “Will you teach me? May I leam with you?”
“You may,” Sioned told her. “Will you join us, too, Tobren?”
“You know so many things we don’t,” Antalya contributed shyly. “We’ll need your help.”
Tobren was silent for a time. Then, reluctantly: “My name is Tobren, I am the daughter of Andry and Rusina, and I have no rings. Goddess blessing to you, Sunrunners.”
Meig spoke the formula, looking bored. Alasen repeated it, completing their circle. Meath brought a candle for her from the sideboard, and when they all stood quietly behind their chairs once more, Sioned made a slow, graceful gesture. Her candle lit with a pure, golden flame.
“The next time we greet each other,” she said, “we will each call Fire in turn. Yes, Jinan, I know you already can. And you, too, Tobren. You must wait for the others to catch up. Please sit down now. And while Meath gives you this first lesson, you must all remember that part of a faradhi’s name is silence.”
If Jihan expected to learn spells—and if Tobren expected some revelation of Goddess Keep’s secrets—it was a disappointing afternoon. Meath gave them a history lesson. After lighting his own candle, he began with the beginning of Lady Andrade’s rule in the Dragon Year of 677—the year of Sioned’s own birth, ancient history to everyone but her and Meath. He stayed away from politics and wars, merely recounted how Goddess Keep was governed, what a typical day was like, and what the basic duties and functions of Sunrunners were. He spoke of Sunrunners who resided at
Goddess Keep, those who were assigned to specific courts, and those who rode the princedoms as itinerants.
As he talked, faces appeared in Sioned’s candleflame— not by her conjuring, but called up by memories and visible only to her. Camigwen, Meath himself, their other friends of the same age and level of training. Urival, striding around the keep with Ostvel hurrying at his side and making frantic notes on parchment scraps as he was taught the duties of Chief Steward. Kleve, who had roamed Princemarch and the Desert and Meadowlord for so many years, who had died so horrible a death. Crigo, setting off so proudly to become a court Sunrunner, lost to Roelstra and dranath, his death even more hideous. But the strongest vision was of Andrade: pale and stern and acid-tongued, and loving them all in her own arrogantly demanding way. Loving Rohan and Pol so much that she died trying to save Princemarch for them.
What do you think of all this, I wonder? Sioned mused as Meath began to detail the changes Andry had made. Are we right in teaching these children? And Alasen—what about her? It isn’t mind-hunger that brought her to learn, but fear. Not a good start. But I think Meath and I can cure her of it, show her that she needn’t be afraid...
Jihan, now—there’s not a quiver of fear in the child. Her mother and sister were taken in a battle she saw with her own eyes, but I’ll wager she wasn’t much frightened then, either. This is the best thing for her, I suppose—occupy her mind, give her something to do besides fret. But after what Sionell said about last night and the candle branch, she’ll bear watching.
Are you watching me, my Lady? Are you somewhere out in the Desert sky, with Zehava and old Prince Lleyn, cursing our stupidity?
Rohan, are you there, too? Am I doing what you would have done?
And what in the Name of the Goddess shall I do about Pol and Sionell?
It was near dinnertime when Meath finally dismissed his students. Sioned collapsed back in her chair with a grimace of relief.
“Goddess! What a group!”
“At least they all kept their mouths shut. Want some wine?” He handed her a cup and she drank gratefully.
“Sioned, I’m not sure we should include Meig in this. He’s so young. And I think I just about sent him to sleep.”
“Sionell wants it done. Frankly, I think she’s wise to begin getting him used to faradhi things early. Did you notice how nervous Antalya was?”
He sat where Maara had been and sprawled long legs under the table. “That took me back a few years, I can tell you.”
“More than I care to think about.” She met his gaze with a slight smile. “Ghosts?”
“Cami, especially. And Mardeem—remember the way he sang? A voice to make the Goddess weep for the beauty of it. And Palevna—do you know that Andrev’s her grandson? Her daughter Othanel was his mother.”
“How about two more ghosts for the collection?” she said, her smile growing wider. “That great big lump of a Sunrunner lad, and a freckled red-haired stick of a Sunrunner girl... Goddess, Meath, how did we ever get here?”
“They’re almost all gone now, you know,” he mused. “Those of us who shared lessons, the ones who came with you to the Desert. Just you and me, Hildreth and Antoun. I haven’t talked with either of them in a long, long time. He’s still at Goddess Keep, isn’t he?”
“Yes. And a devri now, in case you hadn’t heard.”
Meath stared at her. “One of Andry’s—T
“Yes, one of Andry’s.” She lifted one shoulder and drank more wine.
“How do you know?”
“They had to train people to replace those who were killed. As you know, Antoun is extremely gifted—if extremely antiquated, like us,” she added wryly.
“How did you find out that he’s joined Andry’s cause?”
“I have a source.” She opened her eyes to their widest and most innocent.
“And that’s all you’re going to tell me.”
“You know me so well,” she purred.
Meath snorted.
She pushed herself to her feet. “I’m going to take a nap. The moons will set early tonight, and I’ll be up all the rest of it on starlight.”
“How’s Hollis?”
“Pretending to be brave. Maarken thinks he has to hold her together, and she’s the same way about him, so they’ve both been lying to each other and everyone else for three solid days now.”
“If only we’d taught Chayla—“
“If only she’d been interested in something other than medicine,” Sioned reminded him. “All she wanted to learn was how to use a fingerflame to give her light to work by. It’s nobody’s fault, Meath. Oh, Maarken and Hollis think it’s theirs, for not forcing her to learn how to go Sunrunning. Right now Chayla is probably damning herself for the same thing. But Tobren keeps telling us what we’ve been trained to think: faradh ‘im can only be taught at Goddess Keep.”
“Something you ignore when it suits you.”
“Who gave Pol his first lessons?” she challenged.
“At least I asked permission. You never bothered.” He made a little gesture of apology. “That wasn’t fair. You did what you thought was right.”
“Not right, necessarily. Expedient. They aren’t always the same thing.” She paused, smiling again. “Meath, put your rings back on.”
He stared at his naked hands for a moment, then quickly replaced the six circles of silver and gold. “Goddess—I didn’t even feel they were gone!”
“I haven’t missed mine in years. Jihan was right. You don’t need rings to be a Sunrunner.”
“There’s a dangerous idea in that somewhere.”
She almost laughed. “Somewhere? It’s right out in the open! If any gifted person can set up a school for others of our kind, what need for Goddess Keep?” She started for the door. “Andry would call that a sin. Which is why it occurs to me more and more often.”
Meath frowned his confusion. “But you said we’re going to need him.”
“Did I?” She gave him a curious glance over her shoulder.
“Sioned! Stop playing chess games with words!”
“Better words than lives—the way Andrade did,” she answered with sudden vehemence,
“She’s eighteen years dead. Don’t mistake Andry for her,” Meath warned.
Sioned tightened her fingers around the door handle. “No fear of that. He’s worse. Andrade believed in what she did as a servant of the Goddess—the most important one, to be sure. But Andry, he believes in himself. He doesn’t serve the Goddess—he thinks of himself as her lover.”
“Sioned!”
“It’s true and we all know it,” she said, and shut the door behind her.
All during the afternoon, while two of her children began their paths to becoming Sunrunners, Sionell prowled Feruche. When she appeared in the kitchens for the third time, the cook had compassion on her nerves and kindly allowed her to help wash vegetables. As the sun vanished and torches were lit, Hollis arrived and was similarly provided with something to do.
It was absurd, really. Two highborn ladies, scrubbing and peeling and chopping as if they were servants. But it was good, honest work, it demanded their attention if they weren’t to lose parts of their fingers to sharp knives, and it had the virtue of being useful.
Which was at the heart of each woman’s unease. Useless-ness.
“Ell, we’re out of whitespice,” Hollis said, up to her elbows in a cauldron about to be put on the hearth. “Will you run down to the storeroom for me, please?”
“Whitespice?” The cook sniffed disdainfully on his way past. “Better to bring up enough strong wine to get everyone drunk, so they won’t taste this slop. Ah, Goddess, for the old days at Skybowl!”
The butcher, who stood next to Sionell shredding meat into a pot, whispered, “And now he’ll treat us to the full list of his triumphs. Escape while you can, my lady.”
Sure enough, the cook had launched into tender reminiscences of a rolled roast—featuring kid wrapped in lamb wrapped in venison, the whole of it covered in liver paste, baked in a pastry shell, and “crowned with the merest drizzle of berry compote that we made ourselves, for only a fool trusts an apprentice with a sauce. And it was stupendous. A masterwork, even for us. We created this marvel for the occasion of Lord Riyan’s marriage. Such was its success that we were invited to prepare the Lastday banquet at the next Rialla. Still, even we cannot perform the same feats of art- istry for three hundred as can be accomplished for a small party of, say, fifty or sixty, such as the time when we...”
Sionell escaped down the steep cellar stairs, a torch lighting her way. She recalled Riyan and Ruala’s wedding feast very well; it set her stomach growling. Opening the heavy wooden door of the storeroom, she took a deep breath of the spicy air and immediately sneezed.
Her nose began to clog as if she had caught a cold. Quickly she located the canisters of whitespice amid boxes and barrels of taze, nuts, dried fruit, and other pungent seasonings that made her eyes water. Thanks to that madman upstairs, their meals were tasty, but it was tricky work feeding an army. While measuring out careful spoonfuls of spice, Sionell mentally tallied the sheep and goats in their courtyard pens, the dressed carcasses hanging in a coldroom deep underneath the castle, and supplies of flour and other staples. Elktrap was supplying Feruche as best it could, but fear of other marauding bands of Vellant’im had stopped shipments for a while. What was here would have to last until they were certain that no one else would be captured as Chayla had been.
Sionell pushed the big door closed with her hip, the torch in one hand and the bowl of whitespice cradled in her other arm. She wanted desperately to wipe her eyes and rub her itchy nose. Another sneeze echoed in the cool stone cellar. “Damn!” she muttered—and froze as footsteps not her own sounded softly in the’ far darkness.
Children, even ones caught playing where they shouldn’t, would have made more noise. Anyone with a reason to be here ought to have seen her and spoken by now. Sionell placed the bowl at her feet, freeing her right hand for the long dagger at her belt. With fire in one hand and steel in the other, she told herself she could fight her way to the stairs and give warning.
She edged toward the stairs, trying to see into the dimness. Cisterns of water and barrels of wine formed a maze that began just within the reach of torchlight. Anyone could be hiding there.
But how would the Vellant’im know any of the secret ways into Feruche? Had they forced Chayla to reveal—
“Put up your weapons, my lady,” said a mocking voice she recognized. “I’m not dangerous. I promise.”
“Lord Andry?” She could have killed him then and there for giving her such a fright.
He stepped out from behind a cistern and bowed. “The same. You brandish fire as if you were a Sunrunner to command it, Lady Sionell. And I don’t doubt you’re capable of making at least a dozen good-sized holes in my hide with that knife. Can you do something else with it, please, besides pointing it at me?”
“How did you get in here?” She knew it was a stupid question the instant it left her lips, and answered it herself before he could do more than raise an amused brow. “Of course. Serin shared the plans with you. But why have you come?” Another idiotic inquiry; how could he assert his power tucked away at Goddess Keep?
Andry sauntered forward, and now that he was fully in the light she saw his travel-stained riding leathers, the glinting of his rings and wrist cuffs. A dark stubble of beard shadowed his jaw and cheeks. New lines at the corners of his eyes were filled in with dirt, and there was a bruise on his left cheekbone.
“Well, for one thing, I came to see my daughter.”
“And for the rest of it?”
“I’m not your enemy, my lady,” he said softly.
“Not mine, no,” she said just as sweetly.
His head jerked up a fraction. “You forget yourself, Lady Sionell. And you forget who I am.”
Blue eyes met blue eyes squarely. “Not for a moment, my Lord. And because you are who and what you are, why all this sneaking around in the cellar? Why not ride up to the front gates? Unsure of your welcome, perhaps?”
“You don’t like me, do you, Sionell?”
“No more than you like me, Andry.” Her hand clenched on the knife hilt, thumb rubbing the amber chunk at its tip. It had been a gift from Tobin, who had taught her how to use it.
“Ah, well,” Andry sighed. “At least you’re not afraid of me anymore. You were when you were a little girl.”
“Afraid of you? No. But I used to feel sorry for you.”
That found its mark. “You pitied me? Why?”
Because you lost Alasen, and I came to understand how much that must have hurt. But you could have gone on from that, as I did, as hundreds of people do. Instead it made you bitter, and I have no patience for that.
“Oh, don’t worry,” she replied, “I don’t pity you anymore, so you don’t have to resent me.” She put away her knife and retrieved the spice bowl. “When you’re ready to come out of the cellar, you’ll find Maarken with your father and Pol—if you dare face any of them.”
“You don’t fear me, and you don’t pity me,” Andry said. “You hate me.”
“Wrong again,” she told him. “What I feel for you—to be perfectly honest, I rather despise you.”
Andry nodded, as if he had expected nothing less. The torchlight played over his coolly handsome face, revealing nothing of his thoughts. So his next words startled her badly.
“I was sorry to hear about your husband,” he murmured. “He was a good man.”
Sionell headed for the stairs, unwilling to let him see the tears that sprang to her eyes. Her husband, a good man whose memory she had betrayed. What had gone so wrong with the world that she could do such a thing?
“Shall I tell them you’ve arrived, or do you want to slink around down here a while longer?” she tossed over her shoulder.
“Actually, you might send someone with a litter. I left my Master Physician in the little chamber where this passage lets out. He wasn’t up to the walk.”
Sionell turned, gazing down at him from the steps. “You did want to sneak in, didn’t you? Why?”
Andry shrugged. “The truths one overhears when one is not recognized are occasionally interesting.”
“Oh, and here I’ve spoiled it-for you.”
“You’re not sorry. Not that I expect you to be.”
“In fact, I am. You’ll hear the truth either way—it’s just that now there’ll be at least an attempt to polish it a bit. I’m sorry everyone will have to make the effort.”
Andry smiled up at her. “Pol won’t.”
“For your sake? Certainly not. For Maarken’s and Chay’s.”
She continued up the stairs. By the time she reached the main cellar door, she was shaking so hard the torch quaked in her hand. She did despise him, for being smug and powerful and for what his presence would do to a group of people already strung taut as the fine wire strings of a fenath.
Dousing the torch and leaving it on its shelf, she entered the kitchens. “Whitespice,” she said to Hollis, setting the bowl on the table.
“Thank you. You didn’t have to bring so much, but— Sionell?” The older woman frowned, searching her face. “What is it?”
“Nothing. I’ll tell you later,” she evaded, turning for the dor-‘
“its not- -oh Goddess, is it Chayla? Have you heard—“
“now would I learn anything down in the cellar? . Hollis.” Sionell replied, trying to smile.
“then”
“It’s Andry.” she blurted. “He’s here. Downstairs.”
Hollis closed her eyes briefly, nodding. “Yes, he would come here,” she murmured at last.
“He brought the Master Physician with him. I have to go warn Pol.”
“Warn?” Hollis frowned. “As usual, Andry is condemned before he even says a word.”
“He condemns himself,” Sionell told her. “I know he’s Maarken’s only living brother, and I know you both love him. But he’ll be nothing but trouble, Hollis.”
“If everyone takes that view, we can be sure of it.” Reaching for a towel, she wiped her hands meticulously clean. “Even if he were not my husband’s brother and my own friend, I welcome the Lord of Goddess Keep because he can help find my daughter. And that’s how I intend to present it to Pol. You can go tell Sioned and Tobin. Leave Pol to me.”