Pol was huddled over maps with Maarken, Chay, and Andry when the Attic door burst open, propelled so hard that it rattled the cabinet crammed in behind it
“Papa, Papa!”
Jihan raced across the room and grabbed his arm with both fists. The pen in that hand dragged a thick black line across a map of the Veresch spread on the table.
“Papa, it’s Linnie, she’s hurt!”
The four men exchanged quick glances. Pol dropped the pen and took his daughter’s shoulders. Her blue eyes were huge and wild, her cheeks so sickly pale that the freckles stood out greenish-yellow like bruises. “What is it, sweetheart? What’s the matter?”
The two other twins in the room came to her at once, kneeling on either side of her. Maarken spared a glance for Pol, but Andry wasted no time on someone who could never understand. In a soft voice he asked, “What does it feel like, Jihan? Something you can’t quite see from the corner of your eye?”
She shook her head violently. “No! I felt it—all hot and achy and scared, and they won’t let her sleep—they just keep riding and riding, and it’s cold and hot all at once—“
“Jihan,” Andry said firmly. “Tell me what you’re feeling right now.”
She froze in Pol’s gentle grasp. After a moment she shook her head again, frustrated, tears welling. “Papa, she’s not there anymore!”
“Of course she is, darling,” he said, gathering her in his arms. Her head burrowed into his shoulder. “It’s just the feeling that’s gone. Rislyn is still there.” But his gaze met Andry’s, begging for reassurance.
“She’d know,” Maarken mouthed silently. Andry nodded confirmation. They rose to their feet, looking only at each other now, twins who knew what it was to lose a twin. Pol rocked Jihan, trying to soothe her, watching his cousins. All at once Chay spoke behind them,
“Rislyn’s a Sunrunner, too.”
Pol frowned his confusion. But Andry was nodding, and Maarken bit his lip before nodding, too. Then he understood: neither Sorin nor Jahni had been gifted. Both Rislyn and Jihan were..
“So the connection is stronger?” he asked, finishing the thought aloud.
“Probably.” Maarken hesitated, then went on, “Andry, do you think—?”
“Could be.”
Pol was following them now—a bit belatedly, most of his concentration on the shivering child in his arms. He walked over to the windows to give Maarken and Andry freedom for a whispered consultation.
“Shh, it’s all right,” he crooned. “You and Rislyn are very special, did you know that? You’re twins, like Chayla and Rohannon are twins, and both Sunrunners just like them, too. That means you have a special bond with each other. You’ve felt it before, haven’t you?”
She nodded against his shoulder, sniffling. “Little bit. More since Granda Sioned and all the light at Stronghold.”
He could feel his cousins listening even as they spoke to each other in low voices. “And you can tell when Linnie’s happy, or upset—“
“Or cold, like in the stone house.” She raised her head, sniffling, no longer crying. “I can see colors, too, if I try really hard in the sunshine.”
“Can you see mine now?” He moved into the wedge of light coming through the window. She smiled slightly, touching his hair.
“You’re all kinds of colors, Papa. More than Princess Alasen—and all swirling around through each other.” She wriggled around in his arms and looked at Andry. “I saw him, too, just before Mama—and Linnie—“ She trembled again and he held her closer.
“Shh. It’s all right, sweetheart. We’ll find them.” He paused, meeting Maarken’s eyes. The older man nodded. “In fact, I think you might be able to help us.”
Jihan came up with the obvious very quickly. “I don’t know how to go Sunrunning. Are you going to teach me?”
“Not just yet,” said the Lord of Goddess Keep, with an easy smile. “But you know what, Jihan? I think I’d like to see your colors on sunlight. May I?”
She nodded shyly, clinging a little tighter to Pol. Andry came to them, standing with them in the sunshine. After a moment Jihan gasped softly in wonder. Andry caught his breath, too. Pol was tempted to enter the weaving, but did not. Not just yet.
“My lady,” Andry said at last, “you will make a fine, strong Sunrunner one of these days.”
“I know,” Jihan agreed proudly, and Pol hid a smile.
“But you have much to learn, and I’ll enjoy teaching you some of it,” Andry went on. “For now, if you can, I’d like you to think about your sister for me.”
“You mean find her on sunlight?”
“No. Just think about her.”
Pol said, “Think of Rislyn’s colors, and how she might be feeling right now.” A quiver coursed through her, and he smoothed her hair. “It’s all right if you don’t want to, love. And it’s all right if you can’t.”
“I can do it.” She closed her eyes, delicate pale brows knitting over her nose. Pol sensed Andry thread the sunlight around her, so gently and unobtrusively that even he was impressed by the subtlety of Andry’s touch. Pol did enter into it then, sliding himself into the loosely woven fabric, watching the colors that skirted each other with exquisite precision.
All at once Jihan stiffened and cried out. The sunlight unraveled so swiftly that Pol was momentarily blinded. Jihan was crying again, sobbing against his shoulder. Andry took several steps back out, of the sunlight, looking stunned.
“Papa! Papa! It hurts!”
Frantically he tried to soothe her, rocking her, whispering, holding her to his heart. But she shook as if her small bones would shatter. At last he gathered up bits of light and wove sleep around her. She resisted for a moment, then seized on the refuge and went limp in his arms.
“What in all Hells did you do?” Chay demanded.
Andry, still shaken, managed, “It—it wasn’t me. It was her. She connected for just a moment—I know that much. But having me there seemed to intensify it. She wasn’t feeling Rislyn’s fever at a remove—she was feeling it as if it were her own.”
“Fever?” Maarken asked.
“Rislyn must have caught what the other children have,” Chay said. “Did you see anything? Any indication of where they are?”
Andry shook his head. “I just felt the fever. I’m sorry, Pol. I shouldn’t have put her through that, just on a chance that it might work.”
“We had to try it,” he muttered. “I’ll be back in a little while.” And he left the room, his sleeping sorcerer-child cradled in his arms.
Chayla spent the day within the cave—sometimes sleeping, sometimes simply curled around herself, around the body she loathed. She could hear them outside, sheltered from Sunranner eyes amongst the trees, arguing with each other. But not with him. She did not hear his voice at all.
They left her alone.
She had resigned herself to the fact that by now her brain had taken up permanent residence inside her body again. Being a brain—and an intelligent one, at that—it thought and kept on thinking. Sleep was her only escape. Given a choice between waking thought and sleeping dreams, she settled on the former. At least she had a little control over it. Not much—every time she moved there was a new ache to remind her—but she could consciously distract herself. Dreaming, she was at the scant mercy of her own mind.
Thinking, then, she found distraction in the cave around her. It was not a place of dragons. No claw-gouges on the walls, no ground-up shell shards or marks of ancient flames on the ceiling indicated past use as a hatching cave. The chamber had been carved by the river many hundreds of years ago on its slow, inevitable course between mountains, pushing at softer rock until it collapsed. Though Water was the Storm God’s Element, caves had ever been the special places of the Goddess. Wombs of the Earth, where dragons—creatures of Air and Fire—were born.
Long ago, during the conflict between Sunrunners and Sorcerers, faradh ‘im had met secretly in caverns. Perhaps even this one. For a moment she imagined her ancestors crouched around Fire, plotting the destruction of their enemies. They had faced people with powers as great as their own. How ashamed of her they would be for allowing these savages to defeat her.
Outside, they seemed to be trying to decide what to do with her now, with no one winning and thus nothing being done. Every so often one of them spoke the names of her father and grandfather; she wondered what they thought the Lord of Radzyn and the Lord of Whitecliff could pay in ransom, with both rich holdings in Vellanti hands. But she doubted they wanted gold or anything else. She was worthless to them now.
Did they speak instead of what Maarken and Chay would do to them if they were caught? A fearsome vengeance, exacted by redoubtable warriors—and for nothing. She was not a princess, not a Sunrunner, not diarmadhi, not a virgin. Net anymore.
“My father will kill you...” There were two things wrong with that. Her father mustn’t risk his life—and why must she rely on him? She could kill them herself. She was no weak and timid woman to wring her hands and beg some big, brave man to protect her. There was Fire in her. She could kill them herself.
Practically speaking—the physician in her thought in cool, reasoned practicalities—if she didn’t get all of them at once, the ones who remained would kill her for a faradhi witch.
That was a remarkable thing, really. She didn’t want to die. It would have been very easy to accomplish. She was a physician. She knew exactly how to get the work done with a minimum of pain and fuss.
But why should she? He was the one who deserved death for what he had done. And with that small spark of anger that she had even for a little while wanted to die, she began to live again. Only a little, and reluctantly at first. Yet she was alive, and meant to go on being alive, if only to see him dead.
She was a physician, as inevitably as Andry had become Lord of Goddess Keep—a Sunrunner forbidden to kill with the gifts. But he had. She was a physician, dedicated to pre- serving life, who had just rediscovered her own in the fierce need to kill.
She wondered wearily if being an adult was to glimpse, every so often, the Goddess smiling behind her hand.
The Vellant’im would die, and before she returned to Feruche. There must be none left for her father to risk himself in killing. But Maarken—gentlest and most civilized of men—Maarken’s rage would be the greater for being deprived of its primary object. He would ride out to slaughter the rest of them for what one of them had done to his daughter.
So he must never know.
She pushed herself upright, leaning back against the rock wall. No one must know. Not for the shame of it, but for their lives’ sake. And she had better start practicing her portrayal of scared-but-unharmed former captive right now.
It was dusk outside; astonishing. It had taken her a whole day to come to one obvious conclusion. She was disgusted with herself.
Rising and righting her clothes, she yanked on her boots and strode outside into the gloom. The Vellanti guarding the cave blurted with surprise and grabbed for her. She eluded him with a swift step and an icy glare.
“I want food and something to drink and I want it now,” she snapped. “Food, you imbecile!” She pointed to where the others were crouched around a tiny fire, roasting some hapless bird caught for their dinner.
The guard gestured her back into the cave. She ignored him and marched to the clearing, and forbade herself to tremble as he turned to look at her.
A slow, secret, almost reminiscent smile began on his face. “Princess,” he said mockingly, and his flame-shadowed gaze ran over her body.
Fury took her unawares, part fear and part anger and part hatred that this worthless carrion could have made her want to die. She imagined him eaten by Fire, screaming as it licked at his hair and clothes and beard.
And the flames circled by stones on the ground leaped in response.
The men tumbled backward, crying out. She stood perfectly still, knowing she had betrayed herself as faradhi, but curiously satisfied. He scrambled to his feet, and there was fear in his eyes. Goddess, how satisfying that was, to see him afraid of her. She began to understand a certain kind of power, and called the Fire higher.
Behind her, without warning, a gurgling choke of pain. Before her, lean black shadows drifting through the twilight. All around her, swift death.
Chayla stood still as a stone. Nothing touched her but the silent breeze of the shadows’ passing. She watched him, held him with her gaze and would not relinquish him, the way legends said the dragons—and Lady Andrade— captured souls with a single glance.
A sword point burst like a small silvery flame below his breastbone. The steel gleamed, blood wiped clean by his skin and shirt. The blade was withdrawn with a wet, sucking sound. She watched him, keeping him alive through the sheer force of her eyes, wanting him to feel himself mortally pierced by that swordthrust. Violated. Rent asunder.
His lips parted in agony. No sound came from him, no cry. Only blood, leaking from his mouth as terror leaked from his eyes. He knew he was already dead. Chayla smiled.
She chose to let him go then. He fell on his face in the dirt.
Behind him where he had toppled stood Kazander, in black from head-cloth to boot heels, his teeth sparkling white as he smiled at her.
“My lady!” He gave her a bow and a flourish of his sword. Straightening up, he glanced once around the clearing, to the cave behind them, the road and the huge pine, barely visible now. Visian approached—she had trouble recognizing him, so alike were all the shadows around her— and saluted, brow-lips-heart.
“My brother, not one lost.”
“Truly the Mother of All Dragons has watched over us this night.” He sheathed his sword. “It helped that they are stupid—and most of all that my lady called Fire. The Goddess guided your gifts. You’ve taken no hurts?”
“None.” There: the lie successfully told for the first time. “But I-I’d like to go home now, Kazander.” Suddenly she began to shake, hating herself for it. Any moment now she’d start crying, and that would make him ask questions, and she hadn’t told the lie often enough yet to make it completely natural...
“At once. Visian!”
A horse was brought, and she suffered Kazander to lift her into the saddle. Her knees wouldn’t work. She kept herself from flinching as his hands circled her waist—not because a man touched her, but because what this man touched nauseated her. Surely he would smell it on her body, sense it in her flesh.
He settled her on her horse, then paused and looked up with searching eyes. “They did you no harm? None?”
“None,” she said once more. But the saddle chafed the welts on her thighs, and it took all the strength she had left to meet his gaze calmly.
Nodding, he mounted his own horse and led her down to the road. There were black-clad Isulk’im everywhere. So many, risking their lives for her. It shamed her; it shamed her greatly.
“Kazander?”
“My lady?”
“Thank you.”
He was shocked. “It is I who must thank you, my lady, for your Fire that made so easy the killing of the enemies of our prince.”
“Pol!” Chayla’s heart gave a sick thud. “Oh, Goddess— Kazander, I saw Meiglan yesterday! The Vellant’im have her and Rislyn!”
Visian heeled his horse over to them. “My lady, this cannot be true, they would not dare—the High Prince’s wife and daughter—“
Kazander said through his teeth, “How did this happen?”
“I don’t know, how could I know?” Memory of Meiglan’s stricken face swirled in her mind. “It was yesterday morning, not quite dawn. They—“
“Riding south? To Stronghold?”
“I think so. They must be, mustn’t they? To the High Warlord.”
He nodded shortly. “Visian. Take my lady and eight ros’eltan’im back to Feruohe. Tell the High Prince that I will reclaim what was stolen from him.”
“There are at least twenty of them, maybe more,” Chayla exclaimed. “I can ride back alone. I don’t need—“
Kazander smiled. “Your courage is surpassed only by your beauty—and your stubbornness. Six of us will ride with you just the same.”
“Absolutely not! I forbid it!”
“Six,” he repeated dangerously, his smile gone.
“One,” she shot back. “Or the instant we’re out of your sight I’ll order them to follow you and—and call Fire to their horses’ backsides if I have to!”
Kazander chewed the ends of his mustache, eyeing his brother-by-marriage. “You are half an army in yourself when you put your sword to it. Guard her.”
Visian’s shoulders straightened proudly. “If any dare to threaten the lady, I will become five hundred swords.”
Kazander reached into the breast of his tunic and extracted a thin, beaten gold circlet set with pale stones. “You know who I would have wear it.”
The younger man bowed his head reverently and tucked the coronet against his heart. “Yes, my lord and my brother.”
With a final nod, he wheeled his horse around and gave an order to form up for a long, hard ride. Chayla suddenly felt alone, bereft.
“Kazander!”
“My lady?” He turned in his saddle.
“Be careful.” She reached for the right words, and found them in the tradition of the Isulk’im—his people that once had also been hers. “May—may the Goddess fold you in the shelter of her wings.”
He paused a moment, then touched his fingers to his heart. “Your life is my life, Zabreneva,” he murmured for her alone to hear.
And then he rode away, a black-garbed man on a black horse, vanishing into the night.
Tobin was long since in bed, scolded there gently but sternly by her Namesake granddaughter. Shortly before midnight, Maarken left Andry’s room for his own to take over the moonlit watch from Hollis. So it was in that curious suspension of time between midnight of one day and dawn of the next that father and son spoke, and were silent, and spoke again as the need occurred.
Family things, most of them. Tobin’s illness. Maarken’s injury. Brenlis and Rusina, mothers of two of Chay’s grandchildren, dead at Vellanti hands. The children themselves: Chayly, Joscev, and Merisel, safe at Goddess Keep. Tobren, growing up too fast. Chayla. Rohannon, sailing the Dark Water, a Sunrunner on his feet because of dranath. Andrev.
“He won’t come back to me. I can’t order it of him.”
“The contract was freely made between him and Tilal,” Chay replied. He stared into flames that burned without need for fuel.
“Was it like this for you? When all I wanted was to become a Sunrunner?”
“Some. You never openly defied me. You just got everyone else to do your arguing for you.” He smiled briefly. “But it taught me something I should’ve learned long before that. Denying a person’s true nature is struggling against a sandstorm. It can be done, but it’s a fight every step of the way, using energy better spent elsewhere. We are what we are, Andry. We become what we must.”
They spoke of other men’s sons—Rihani, who was dead; Saumer, who was discovering his abilities as a faradhi. Dannar, Ostvel’s son who might have been Andry’s (though neither said that aloud). Kierun, Sethric; Daniv, now Prince of Syr. Jahnavi, killed defending Tuath Castle. Edirne who had died in a senseless accident; Camanto, murdered by a sorcerer. And Tallain.
“Except for Rohan, that’s the worst of all,” Chay murmured. “I’m glad Rohan didn’t have to bear the hurt of it. We loved him as if he were our own blood.”
Andry’s turn to speak to the Fire. “Tallain was more like you than I am. More like Rohan than Pol is.” Chay canted a curious look at him. “How so?”
“Pride without arrogance, honor without ostentation, laughter without mockery—his strength came from himself, not from power. A truly noble man. He ... he always reminded me of Sorin.”
“You view yourself and Pol rather harshly.”
“So does he. We’ve spent years denying we’re anything alike. But we are each other’s mirror in many ways. I look at him and recognize parts of myself. What I am, what I might have been—what I have no wish to become. It’s the same for Pol when he looks at me.” He shrugged. “We’re very frank about it.”
Sionell was less than frank with Alasen when the latter came upstairs with breakfast for two, intending a private talk. Separated in age by twelve years, the women knew each other as parts of the vast interlocking kinweave spread across the continent: relations and friends of Rohan or Sioned or both. They met every three years at RiaU’im, exchanged occasional letters, and liked each other well enough. But they had never been enough in one another’s company to know each other intimately, or to become close friends.
So it was that Sionell took some time to recognize Alasen’s tactics, but immediately thereafter knew what they maneuvered her toward.
“I don’t know how Hollis does it,” said the princess as they settled to the meal. “She goes about her duties, tends to what Ruala has no time for—not as if nothing had happened, but as if it can’t be allowed to interfere with any life but her own.”
“Meiglan’s example,” Sionell replied. “I’m told that when she got to Stronghold, she insisted on continuing the children’s lessons, making life as regular as possible for them. She did the same here. It does help. It’s at least one hand grasping something firm.”
“Goddess, this taze is strong enough to fell a dragon! Perhaps a little honey to sweeten it... Maarken is just as grimly occupied with military matters. But while there’s much to be said for routine, it’s rather mindless, isn’t it? The hands are busy, and part of the mind, but the fear is still there. And in spite of all their pretending, neither sleeps at all.”
She paused, stirring another dollop of honey into burning, bitter taze. Here it comes, Sionell thought.
“As for Pol—he looks dreadful. Sionell, you don’t think he’ll do anything insane, do you?”
She tore a piece of bread into crumbs. “There are plenty of people ready and willing to tie him down if he tries it.”
“Yes, but he’ll have to be untied eventually, and then he’ll just figure a way to avoid us. What he needs is to be convinced that he can’t risk himself.”
“Sioned is very good at convincing.”
The princess snorted inelegantly. “My children haven’t listened to me since they were five winters old. Have yours?”
“Meig’s only four, but I can already see the signs,” she admitted.
“Well, then. We really can’t keep the High Prince locked up for his own good. He’s always been stubborn. One can’t tell him anything. Someone has to tell him without telling him, if you catch my meaning.”
Sionell dipped a spoon into her bowl of hot grains, making patterns in the raisins that sweetened the mix. How much did Alasen know? Or did she merely suspect? No one had breathed a word; no one had so much as cast a speculative glance in Sionell’s direction. She had guarded her own feelings well enough. Pol was another matter, but she dismissed the idea that he was childish enough to reveal through look or speech what had happened that night. That wild, mad night when he had said he loved her...
No, Alasen could not know. She must be remembering Sionell’s girlhood infatuation, believing love enough was left to make her make the effort.
Resenting it, Sionell said with deliberate purpose, “He won’t hear it from Andry, that’s certain.”
Alasen didn’t even blink. “I agree. It must come from someone who cares for him—but who doesn’t have any political motive. To almost everyone here, he’s not just Pol. He’s the High Prince.”
“The Sunrunner High Prince,” Sionell agreed pleasantly.
“Exactly. Much as we love him for himself, what he is never escapes our minds. It has to come from—“
“Jihan,” Sionell interrupted, tired of the dance. “It’s cruel, but we can use his own daughter against him.”
Alasen was genuinely surprised. But she seized on the idea quickly. “Jihan. You know, I think you’re right. After she tried to find Rislyn—yes, that’s the way to do it.” She rose from the table. “I’ll go talk to Sioned and see what she thinks. As you say, it’s cruel, but it’ll work.”
Sionell met the Kierstian green eyes calmly. “Who you were considering,” she said, “was me.”
“Yes,” Alasen replied. “Forgive me.”
“No need. That was all a very long time ago.”
“As it was for me,” Alasen murmured. “Or so one must remind others. Tiresome, isn’t it?” She smiled and left Sionell to her untouched breakfast.
In the event, it had nothing to do with Jihan. Or Sionell, either.
Maarken and Riyan were having it out with Pol in the sunlit courtyard. A fine highborn disdain for the astonishment of the servants led them to conduct a shouting match in full view of anyone who cared to watch. Grooms guards to maids who gaped from the windows, they all watched as their lord, their Battle Commander, and their High Prince fought like hatchling dragons.
“Have you lost your wits? ‘Seems to be their purpose’— you’d throw your life away on a ‘seems to be’?”
“There’s no guarantee they won’t just kill you and march on us anyway! I forbid it!”
Sioned and Alasen arrived, drawn by the noise, just as Andry took up position on the castle steps to watch. He waved them to seats near him, saying, “All we lack now is my father, who can yell louder than any of them. Happily, he’s sound asleep and his windows overlook the Desert.”
Tobin, however, was up and about. She and Hollis emerged from a storage shed, the latter holding a parchment inventory. The instant Tobin was within sunlight, she halted her limping progress and scowled in ferocious concentration. All three arguing men abruptly fell silent.
“Well, that’s a relief,” Sioned remarked.
Andry nodded. “Nice of them to conduct the battle out here, where she’s free to be eloquent. Look at Maarken’s face! Takes me back to our childhood.”
“Can’t you stop them?” Alasen asked Sioned.
“Why should I? Pol and I had this discussion before, as I told you. Evidently he didn’t listen to a word I said.” She gave a shrug and sat down beside Andry. “I’d make a wager, but it’s obvious Maarken will win and none of you would take the bet. I rather miss the late Prince of Cunaxa that way.”
Alasen was still standing, dividing a bewildered stare between them and the three men, who were still mute as Tobin used sunlight on them. “They’re making fools of themselves!”
“Just so,” Sioned told her. “And right out in public, too, where it’ll do them the most good.”
Andry eyed Sioned sideways. “Them, or the rest of us?”
“All of us,” Alasen said suddenly, comprehension quickening her voice. “They get it all out of their systems. Pol shows he’s willing to sacrifice himself, which appalls everyone. Hasn’t anyone thought to remind him that if he dies, Jihan becomes High Princess?”
Sioned grimaced. “Yes. It doesn’t seem to have made a lasting impression.”
“So you’re going to trust that Maarken and Riyan can argue him out of it—“
“—with a good deal of help from Tobin,” Sioned added. “Whoops, she’s given up on them. Look.”
“Not given up,” Andry corrected. “Had her say!”
Tobin had turned her back on them and was stamping across the courtyard for the main steps. She caught Sioned in a sunweaving and fumed, Children! And yours the worst of the lot!
You think I don’t know that? Come sit down and be comfortable. We ‘re likely to be here quite some time, for all your efforts.
The volume had decreased fractionally, but the fight raged on. Maarken was gesturing with both arms, instinct to hide the left one forgotten. Tobin settled awkwardly on the stair, helped by Andry and Alasen. Hollis hovered near Maarken, the parchment twisted in her hands. Her anguish sobered Sioned. Reaching out on sunlight, she said, Come away, my dear. This had to happen.
Sioned, make them stop! Please! I can’t bear it!
She rose, well and truly worried now. Andry followed her to where Hollis stood trembling.
Pol caught sight of him. “Well?” he challenged, flushed beneath his tan. “What has the great Lord of Goddess Keep to say?”
Sioned held her breath. Andry merely shrugged.
“Whichever I choose—go or don’t go—you’ll think I’m trying to gall you into doing the opposite for my own purposes. Being damned whatever he says, the Lord of Goddess Keep says nothing.”
Pol stared at him for some moments. Then he burst out laughing. “Beautiful! Perfect! Andry, what would I do without you?”
Incredibly, they grinned at each other. Hollis sagged with relief. Maarken looked chagrined; Riyan, suspicious. Sioned sighed in disgust and opened her mouth to order them all into the keep where they could discuss this as if they were rational adults.
“Open! Open the gates to the Lady Chayla!”
Sioned was the quickest. She caught Hollis as she lurched on her feet, held her up while Riyan and Pol performed the same service for Maarken. Every eye in the courtyard and watching from windows above fixed on the massive gates as frantic guards fumbled with heavy iron bars and hauled the gates open.
An Isulki warrior, all in black on a black horse, rode in first. Right behind him, drooping over her horse’s lathered neck, was Chayla. Dirty, exhausted, alive. She slid from the saddle into her uncle Andry’s arms and looked both surprised and annoyed when she fainted.
“... and so we came to the place of the tree and the cave, and waited in silence and secrecy for nightfall, and killed all the Vellant’im.”
Visian never paused in all his long tale—not for interruptions, for no one else spoke, and not even to moisten his throat with wine. He had humbly declined all comforts offered—bath, fresh clothes, food, even the chair Pol himself pulled out for him at the oval table—until he said his piece.
But now that the recital was nearly done, he swayed a little on his feet. “Forgive me, your grace,” he said, fingers clenched around the chair back. “There’s not much more to the telling—only that we rode all night, and that Lord Kazander and my brethren now seek the High Princess and your daughter.”
Pol nodded. “A few questions, my friend, and then you’ll give yourself over to my squire’s care—and no argument,” he added as Visian opened his mouth to protest. “You’ll only have to tell it once. We’ll explain to Lord Maarken and Lady Hollis while you’re resting.”
“How did you know where to look?” Ruala asked.
Sioned answered for him. “Because I told Kazander what Andry saw.”
“Chayla,” Pol added succinctly.
Andry narrowed sharp blue eyes in Sioned’s direction. “But I thought you said you couldn’t—“ he began, then subsided.
“Yes,” she agreed. “That’s what I said.”
“Couldn’t what?” Sionell frowned, as confused as Ruala and Meath. Neither did Pol fully understand, and he cast a suspicious look of his own at his mother.
Sionell persisted. “But how did you know where she was? And how did you tell Kazander about—“
“Sunrunner means.” Sioned folded her arms on the table. “Visian, does he know where he’s looking?”
The young man was bewildered. “Did I not say that part of it?”
“No, and that means you’re half-asleep on your feet,” she told him. “Answer this and then go to your bed, you foolish boy.”
A blush stained his skin the color of strong taze in crimson crystal. “I’m sorry, your grace. I forgot to say what the Lady Chayla told me. Those who stole the High Princess and her daughter rode by two dawnings ago. They—“
“Chayla saw them?” Pol’s voice was strangled.
“She did, your grace,” Visian affirmed. “Whole and unhurt, though afraid—as is easily understood. Upon seeing the Lady Chayla, the newcomers scorned those who had taken her, and rode away south to where the High Warlord befouls the sands outside Stronghold.”
“So much we guessed, about where they’re going,” Sionell mused. “But do you think Kazander will be able to catch up with them?”
“If anyone can,” Ruala said. “But why were they—what did you call it?—scornful about Chayla?”
“Theirs was the greater prize,” Visian said bitterly. “The Lady Chayla is not a princess herself, merely the granddaughter of one.”
“Worthless, compared to my wife and daughter,” Pol added in the same tone. He gestured to Kierun. “See Lord Visian to his room and make sure he stays there.”
The young Isulki’s eyes widened at the title. “Your grace, I—“
Pol arched a brow. “Even had you not done us this service—and don’t talk to me about your duty—in Kazander’s absence you’re the leader of your people here. I suppose you won’t allow me to make you an athri. You Isulk’im have no walls but those of your tents. But I can give you the authority. Kierun, push him, trip him, or have Meath carry him, but put Lord Visian in his bed.”
Despite exhaustion, Visian was very much on his dignity. Meath proved unnecessary. When the warrior and the squire were gone, Pol rose, shoving his chair back so hard it toppled to the carpet. “What they want, they can have.”
“Damn it!” Ruala exclaimed. “What’s wrong with you? Didn’t Riyan and Maarken convince you? You can’t!”
“Everyone in this castle wails the same damned tune!” he snapped. “I’m tired of listening!”
“You haven’t listened to a single word!” Ruala got to her feet, squaring off against him across the length of the table.
“Which of you listens to me? It’s my fault they were taken—“
Sionell’s voice was cool acid. “And what do you think will happen once you’ve sacrificed yourself?”
“That’s not for you or anyone else to say!”
They had at it for some time. Sioned didn’t even hear them. Sacrifice. Dragon sacrifice...
Of course.
The Vellant’im would do exactly what the legends dictated. It was why they’d seized Chayla, why she had been rejected as worthless, why Meiglan and Rislyn—
The virgin princess, the pious invocations, the sacrificial murder by ceremonial knife, the whole barbaric, superstitious, brutal, meaningless ritual...
They would do exactly what Feylin’s dragon book told them to do. The book Sioned had left them at Remagev: facts burned, legends intact.
She had left them instructions!
Her heart pounded insanely, nearly throttling her. She had shown them how to kill. If not Chayla, then—
No. Kazander would find them, as he had found her. Sioned could not imagine him failing. Besides, Meiglan had borne two children, she—
But Rislyn.
They wouldn’t kill a child. They couldn’t.
Pol’s wife and daughter had been taken to draw Pol to battle. It must be that. It had to be that. They wanted the Azhrei. Nothing anywhere told of a little girl being used as the sacrifice, all the stories were about older—
They wouldn’t kill a child.
But if the Vellant’im did believe the superstitions, they’d need a virgin of royal blood. Not a child—please, not a child!
Jeni?
She was not a princess any more than Chayla was. But did the Vellant’im know that—any more than they had known with Chayla?
She rose to her feet, and the others fell silent. She was aware of Meath’s worry-dark eyes searching her face.
“Enough, all of you!” Sioned told them, the words splinters of ice. “Try what you like, Pol—the gates will not open to you and no one will show you any other way out of Feruche. By my command. I am still a High Princess. And I say you will stay here until I say you may leave.”
Pol got as far as “How dare—“ before Sionell deliberately knocked over the pitcher, startling them all. The red wine stained the table like flowing blood.
Sioned left the room. Out in the corridor she sought a window overlooking the Desert. There was light enough and to spare. She twisted it with swift, expert turns of her mind and sent it to Skybowl.
There was no gentleness in the way Sioned grasped Jeni’s colors. The girl fell to her knees in rough lakeshore sand, two hundred paces from her dragon.
Hear me, child Named for my childhood friend. This is a command of the High Princess Sioned. Never again venture outside the keep at Skybowl. Not even to the lake. Do you understand?
Yes—I—Goddess, it hurts!
I mean it to. Obey me, Camigwen. It may mean your life.
But my dragon—Lainian will—
The Vellant’im no longer fear dragons. Stay within the keep. Swear it!
I swear, your g-grace. Please, I can’t breathe— Colors trembled and frayed with pain.
Sioned eased her grip. Forgive me. But you must understand that you are in danger. You specifically. If they can, they will take you the way they took Chayla, and this time we may not be so lucky as to get you back.
Then she’s—
Yes. Returned to us safe and unhurt.
But why did they want her?
Because she is like you—a young woman descended from princes. I know you don’t understand. It’s not necessary that you understand, only that you obey me. Tell the others about Chayla, and that Kazander rides to find Meiglan and Rislyn. But this promise must be kept between us. There’s no reason to alarm anyone if you have a care for your safety.
But Lainian! How do I talk to him? I have to be near him to share colors.
Talk to him from the walls. Do anything you like, as long as you don’t go outside. Not a single step, not afingerspan.
I promise, your grace.
Go back inside now, Jeni. Hurry.
She waited to make sure the girl did as told, then returned to Feruche. Meath stood at her elbow, watching her with a iVown
“Where?” he asked.
“Skybowl. I didn’t think Pol had told them, and I was right.”
Meath caught and held her gaze the way Andrade used to. She glared back irritably. “Oh, stop it!” Hurrying to the stairs, she climbed quickly, heading for Chayla’s room. Meath followed. “And don’t hover like Elisel does, either!”
He paid no attention to the rebuke, merely opened the door for her. Within the antechamber, Master Physician Evarin was resting in the depths of a soft, upholstered chair. He tried to rise and sank back down with a rueful smile.
“Your pardon, High Princess,” he said, flicking a finger against the bandage around his leg. “No one ever told me Feruche had so many stairs.”
“How is Chayla?” Sioned asked.
“Her parents are with her—sitting on either side while she sleeps, counting every breath. There’s no need for it, of course. A strong girl, like all her breed. Bruised in spirit more man body. But that will heal now that she’s back with her family, and safe.”
“Meath, go in and share Visian’s telling of it. I’ll be there in a moment” When the bedchamber door closed behind the Sunrunner, Sioned took a step closer to Evarin. “You’re good, my lad. You’re very good. But there’s something foul wrapped in those sweet words. Out with it.”
The physician, caught off guard, abruptly lost the confidence of his accomplishments and looked exactly like the twenty-two-year-old youth he was.
“Quickly,” Sioned insisted. “It will go no further than me.”
Gulping, he tried to pull his professional dignity together. “Your grace—I didn’t want to tell her parents—“
“Tell me, instead.”
Dark head bent, he began. “I came up earlier, to tend the children. Andry carried her into her room—I saw him running along the hall with her, heard him shouting for me. She was unconscious. Lord Maarken and Lady Hollis were still below. Andry put her on the bed and took off her boots, her tunic. She was shivering and her hands were like ice. We had to get her warm.”
He shook his head, absently rubbing his leg above the bandage. “First I saw the bruises on her shoulder. A strong hand—Goddess, I could almost see the fingertip swirls imprinted on her skin. Her tunic and shirt were torn, and—oh, your grace, the bruises and welts, and—and marks of teeth on her breasts—“
“No,” Sioned breathed. “No.”
“Andry got a nightdress to slip over her head and hide her wounds, saying that if her father saw, he would be neither to hold nor to bind. When she was covered, I pulled her trou-, sers off and saw the blood. That was when I knew.”
She stumbled against a wall, staring down at him.
“I was brewing simples when I was seven winters old,” he murmured. “People came to me for healing when I was thirteen. I’ve seen all manner of illness and injury, young as I am—but I’ve never before seen this. And I never even knew anyone among all the physicians at the Giladan school who’d seen rape!”
“No,” she said again.
“We heard the others here in the anteroom. Andry went to his brother, kept him back for a moment so I could make sure there was nothing for her parents to see. She was asleep by then, so it was only a matter of reassuring them and hoping her sleeve didn’t slide down to show the bruise on her shoulder. Those on her arms are easily explained. The rest ... are all too obvious.”
“No.” It seemed the only word her lips were capable of forming. Her thoughts grated against each other, groaning and screaming.
Evarin’s voice dwindled to a whisper. “They raped her. Not just once. Many times.”
The words repeated again and again between her ears, behind her eyes, throbbing down into her chest and belly until she begged them to become meaningless sounds, not words, not pictures, not memories.
Not just once. Many times. Raped not just once. Many times. Not just once—
“They violated a Sunrunner, Lord Andry’s own kinswoman, one of the Goddess’ faradh’im chosen to receive her gifts of light and power. They will be utterly destroyed for their sin.” many times. Many times. Raped not just once but many ... many ... many...
Evarin waited for her to speak, grieved that he had to tell her but glad the knowledge was not just his and Andry’s. Men knew horror at this crime, anger, pain for the woman’s pain. But all physicians were agreed that the best help for a victim was the comfort and counsel of other women.
He knew this woman’s history—who did not?—and though she had never been raped, High Prince Roelstra had attempted it. He thought he saw remembrance of it in her eyes. The black centers were so huge that all the bright fierce green was nearly obliterated. She was white to the lips, and for a moment he thought that she would slide to the floor in a faint. Then she gathered herself together. Her steps were slow, as if she must order each one from a body that had forgotten the knack of it, but by the time she reached the door she was steady enough.
“Your grace?”
If she heard him, she gave no sign,
“Lady Chayla will heal,” he said gently. “With help, and time, and in die safety of Feruche—“
The castle’s name sent a spasm through her, shoulders to knees. She braced herself against the door with both hands.
“Your grace?” If she fell, as she looked near to doing, she might injure herself—and his wounded leg made him helpless as a child for all his physician’s skills. He called her name, thinking it might reach her. “Sioned?”
Her head turned so swiftly he thought it would snap on her neck. And in her eyes that were black in her face that was the color of bleached silk, he saw that whatever her memories were, they were of madness.
“Andry!” he shouted, struggling to gain his feet.
She ran then, stumbling and blind.
“Andry!”