I couldn’t stop her,” Evarin said for the third time. “I couldn’t even move! She must be found, my Lord. The look in her eyes—“
“But what caused it?” Maarken asked.
When a swift glance passed between the physician and Andry, Meath tensed. Whatever had been said, it wasn’t something they wanted Maarken to know. He touched the younger man’s shoulder. “We’ll find her. Take care of Chayla. Go on, go back in to her. It’ll be all right.”
Meath wasn’t particularly subtle about closing the bedchamber door. In fact, he leaned back against it as if to keep Maarken separated from whatever knowledge Andry didn’t want him to have.
“Tell me,” he ordered softly.
There was another silent exchange before Evarin said flatly. “Chayla was raped—and I beg the Goddess that her parents never find out. I told the High Princess because it’s said Roelstra attempted the same crime. I thought she would be able to help the girl.” He shook his head and finished miserably, “I didn’t know she’d—I’m sorry.”
“Roelstra. Yes, that must be it,” Meath lied, his veins running with ice. “It’s no fault of yours, Evarin. People look at her and see only strength. We forget sometimes...”
Andry nodded. “We’ll find her. But as quietly as possible. There mustn’t be a general alarm. Meath, take the lower floors. I’ll take the upper. Enlist whoever you think wouldn’t frighten her.”
“Or be frightened by her,” Evarin added. “What was in her eyes—I never want to see anything like that again.”
Meath left them, grateful that he hadn’t been forced to ask specifically for the nether regions of the castle and thus rouse suspicion. He had a very good idea of where Sioned was, and he wanted no one but himself to find her.
But as he descended the stairs—wanting to take them two and three at a time, prevented by knee joints that weren’t what they had once been—he changed his mind. Riyan stood on a landing with his steward, talking over some detail of running the keep. Meath waved the man away and took Riyan aside.
“Find Pol. Bring him downstairs to the cellars. Hurry.”
Black brows knitted together, accenting the tilt of his eyes—eyes just like his mother Camigwen’s, she who was dead these thirty-six years. As he grew older Riyan grew to resemble his father more and more, but for those beautiful Fironese eyes. Sorcerer’s eyes. “Meath, what is it? What’s wrong?”
“Sioned is ill. That’s all I can tell you for now. No, don’t ask me anything else,” he warned. “And don’t talk to anyone but Pol. Find him!” Meath kept going down the stairs, ignoring Riyan’s worried call of his name.
In the kitchen, casual inquiry confirmed that the High Princess had indeed come through and disappeared down the cellar stairs. No importance was attached to it; she must have behaved normally, then—or passed so quickly that no one noticed what Evarin said was in her eyes.
Meath was almost certain of what she remembered, and it was not Roelstra.
He paused at the first landing, summoning a tiny fingerflame to light his way. He listened for her footfalls. Silence, but for the faint scrabWings of mice. His own steps sounded unnaturally loud, his heartbeat even louder.
In the Feruche that had been, this staircase had descended to the dungeons.
Musty, pungent smells wafted upward, stinging his nose. He paused again when he reached a wooden floor braced by massive iron beams stretching from wall to wall, support for storage rooms containing staples and spices and huge crates of bottled wine. The stairwell continued and he began to think it endless, this wide stone spiral down into the dark.
It was colder now. Still there was no sound but his own boots, his own heart, his own breath. Fire hovered at his shoulder, showing him the next few steps and the blackness below them, around and around in a slow descending circle, the rich spice-scents lost now in the chill.
He climbed down past another storage floor, this one for meats that must be kept cold. The great hooks for hanging sides of elk and deer were empty. With so many to feed, an animal slaughtered was an animal eaten that same night.
At last he reached the bottom. Sioned was there, huddled in a corner. Meath’s fingerflame, the only light, reacted with a flutter as he realized she had come down all this way in absolute dark.
She didn’t look up as he approached. Her face was ash-pale, her eyes black and empty, but for all of it she seemed strangely calm. He had seen that expression before, during the seasons at Stronghold while she waited for Pol to be born: doing nothing, thinking nothing, feeling nothing.
He glanced aroundIGreat cisterns bulked into the darkness, water for times of drought. More crates of wine aging to maturity were stacked among them. Nothing else. No cells, no doors, no iron bars, no reminders of the Feruche that had been. Yet she was here, as he had known she would be, and as he stepped carefully near he saw that her eyes saw no farther than where the walls of a cell had been.
“Stay with her,” Rohan had told him. But where she had gone now, no one could follow. Meath must bring her back.
He crouched down a few arm-lengths away from her. The fingerflame settled in midair, close enough to illumine her face but not within her self-circumscribed range of vision.
“Sioned.”
His voice was soft, steady. She didn’t hear him.
“Sioned, look at me.”
Her eyes did not blink. For a moment he wasn’t even sure that she was breathing.
“It’s Meath, dearest. You know me. Look at me. You’re safe, Sioned.”
She stared at nothingness. It seemed he must follow her into her prison after all. Rising, his knees stiff with the cold, he eased closer, bringing the light with him.
It caught in her eyes and she flinched. The fingers of her right hand began rubbing at her left, rubbing at Sunrunner rings that were no longer there. She had told him once that she could still feel them, like scars. If she kept chafing her fingers this way, blood would flow and there would be scars.
“Sioned, listen to me. No one’s going to hurt you. You’re safe.”
She watched the light, trembling, ringers convulsively moving—skin rasping against skin, bone grinding against bone.
He had only made things worse. He knew where she was—but how did he find her? How did he bring her back? He knelt within touching distance and sat back on his heels.
“Sioned, please. Look at me.”
She looked, and saw him, and screamed.
The shriek echoed up from the cellar depths. Pol clattered the last fifty steps at a run, bracing himself with a palm slapping the wall when he stumbled. Riyan was behind him, the torch he carried casting wild shadows in the gloom.
Meath slumped helplessly near Sioned, who had wedged herself into her corner as if she wanted to hide within the wall. She cried out again and wrapped her arms around her head as Riyan’s torchlight washed over her.
Meath spasmed upright. “Get rid of that, damn it! She thinks you’re here to attack her.”
Riyan blanched and extinguished the Fire. He said nothing, but his gaze begged to be told why.
Pol thought he knew. “She’s back at the old Feruche, isn’t she?” he asked Meath, who nodded, dull-eyed with misery.
“Chayla was raped. Maarken and Hollis don’t know—and don’t tell them. But Sioned learned it from Evarin, and—“ His head bent again. “Being here in this castle was always an act of defiance for her. This time the memory won.”
Chayla. Fifteen winters old. Raped. Pol couldn’t face that; not yet. Not with Meiglan in enemy hands. He watched his mother for a few moments, unable to equate this cowering, terrified creature with anyone he had ever known. “Wh—“ His voice caught and he cleared his throat. “What can we do?”
“Wait for her to come back to us. Hope that she does.”
“Do you mean she’s remembering when she was—“ Riyan could no more say the word than Pol could. He looked as if he would be sick. “I didn’t know. That—that lanthe had done this to her.”
The sound of his voice, or perhaps the sound of that name, brought her head up. Her fingers twisted, stilled. Squinting into the dimness, she whispered tentatively, “Ostvel? Is that you?”
Riyan flung a shocked glance at Pol, who nodded. Taking a deep breath, OstvePs son went to her, crouched down, took one of her hands. “Yes, Sioned. I’m here.”
Her smiled was sweet, radiantly youthful. Pol saw her again as she had looked when he was a little boy. An instant later, that woman vanished behind a bewildered frown. “But ... you shouldn’t be here. He’s not born yet, it’s not time to take him from her.”
“I’ve come to take you home.”
Her eyes sought the darkness beyond the fingerflame, wary and searching. “It’s not time yet. And you mustn’t stay. They’ll find you. They were here just a moment ago, I can still smell them—“
“There’s no one here but us.”
She shook her head. “No! They were here. They leave me shut in the dark except when they come and—and—“ She clutched his shoulder with her other hand, peering at him. “Ostvel? Why are you here? It isn’t time yet. Hurry, you must go before they come back and find you—“
“We’ll leave together, Sioned.”
Pol held his breath. Her mindless terror was gone. There was sense of a sort in her eyes, anguished concern, knowledge of why she was afraid. But her worry was for a man who wasn’t even there, from a time before Pol was born.
“No, Ostvel. I must wait until she lets us go, and then I must wait for the child. We’ll come back, don’t you remember? You and Tobin and I. We came to Feruche and he was there in the cradle and—and you—“
Suddenly her features contorted and she went for his face with fingers like talons. Riyan struggled to grab her wrists before she clawed his eyes out.
“You\ Damn you for stealing her death from me! It was my right to kill her, not yours!”
Pol heard this in stunned unfeeling shock. He’d always thought lanthe had died in the Fire. They’d allowed him to believe it.
“Sioned, stop it!” Meath slid forward. He held on to one arm, Riyan to the other. “Sioned!”
Her eyes found him, flaring with new rage. “And you! Watching me, all that time—sneaking across the sunlight, too much of a coward to speak openly! But I knew it was you, I felt you watching me, spying on me for Andrade—“
Meath turned his face away.
“Sioned!” Riyan snapped, catching her attention again. “That’s not true and you know it. Listen to me! lanthe is dead. You’re free. We have to leave now, and take Pol home.”
“Pol?” Her face crumpled into confusion with the pull of memories back and forth in time. One instant she had already lived it; the next, it had not yet happened. “But how do you know what I’ll Name him? It was at Skybowl...” Memory solidified for her and her eyes softened, her voice almost dreamy. “You remember, Ostvel. Nothing but the Desert and the stars ... you and I and Tobin, and him so small and new ... but I felt the power in him. Goddess, what a Sunrunner he’ll make, and what a prince—you can’t feel it, of course. I know Tobin did. When I gave him his Name, and the stars with it ... and when—when I used the st-stars to—“ Horror flooded her face. “Rohan!”
“No, it’s all over, he’s—“ Meath choked on the rest. He couldn’t do that to her. Not even to bring her back could he give her that lie. Rohan—safe, waiting for her at Stronghold—Rohan was dead and Stronghold was a blackened gaping ruin.
“Rohan!” Sioned’s voice had changed, trembling now with joy. She freed her hand from Riyan’s grasp and held out both arms, and the smile that curved her lips now was one of transcendent love.
She was looking straight at Pol.
“Rohan—oh, please, take me away from here, take me home—“
Pol couldn’t move. He felt the contours of his own face as if they had become a stone mask, and he within made of malleable flesh, invisible behind the carved semblance of his father.
Sioned caught her breath. “Don’t you see, it doesn’t matter that it was lanthe! She’ll bear the son I couldn’t give you! Please, don’t look this way, beloved! I don’t care that you were with her. She’ll give us your son, just as I saw in the Fire—“ She broke off, and her fingers began to chafe madly at each other. “Midwinter, Rohan,” she continued feverishly. “She told me so—laughing, she was laughing as if the victory was hers. But it’s not. It’s mine. She’ll bear your son and then she’ll die.”
His knees would no longer support him. He put out a hand to brace himself on Meath’s strong shoulder.
His mother was begging him now—begging Rohan. “You told me once that you couldn’t bear looking at a child that didn’t have me in his eyes. Don’t do that to him, Rohan. Please, beloved. He isn’t hers, he’s yours and mine.”
Her arms formed a cradle against her breast. He realized with a jolt that it was himself she held in memory. Himself, newborn of a woman they had all hated, who had died by Ostvel’s hand.
“He’s innocent. If it’s guilt you want, we can both carry it. Blame yourself and blame me—but not him.”
When he stayed mute, tears formed in her eyes. Green eyes, the color his own turned sometimes in certain light.
“I know you don’t want to touch me. What they did to me—I remember it all, every hand, every—she watched sometimes, I’m sure of it. Watched and laughed. But it doesn’t matter. There’s Pol. I would go through it all again, to have him in my arms like this. Won’t you look at him? Please?” She held the invisible child up for him to see. “He’s nothing like her. There’s only you in his face, in his eyes. Rohan, look at him!”
He could endure no more. Sinking to his knees, he wrapped his arms around her and rocked her as if she were the child. She whispered his father’s name and began to cry very softly, still holding her memory of a baby to her breast.
After a time she wilted against him, senseless with exhaustion. He lifted her, appalled at how light she seemed, how fragile.
“Will she—“ Riyan couldn’t find words for it. He gestured helplessly.
“I don’t know.” Meath pushed himself to his feet. “Take her upstairs, Pol,” he said in a voice like death. “Riyan, go up ahead of us. Make sure there’s nobody to see.”
“How? What do I say—“ He stopped, swallowed hard, and nodded. “I’ll think of something.”
Meath lit their slow, silent way back up the stone spiral. Pol climbed, a dull mindless agony clutching his chest. In the kitchen, they immediately saw how Riyan had cleared the room: Sunrunner’s Fire still blasted from the main hearth as if a hatchling dragon had exhaled down the chimney.
“It was just the cook and a couple of maids. I didn’t singe anybody,” he explained as he let the flames die back. “They didn’t even know it was me. I hid behind the door. Take her up the back way.”
It was Meath who went ahead then, to tell Andry that Sioned had been found. Pol followed Riyan up the narrow well of the servants’ stairs, lit by tall, thin windows like arrow-slits. It wasn’t much past noon; the sunshine hurt his eyes. He had expected it to be night, as lightless black as the cellar below.
Alasen and Tobin were waiting in Sioned’s bedchamber. They asked no questions, merely removed the outer layers of her clothing and put her to bed. When Alasen moved to pull the curtains, Pol said, “No. Don’t let her wake in a place where there’s no light,” and Tobin’s eyes filled with tears that told him she understood. All of it. She always had.
Pol hadn’t. Not all of it. Not until now.
“We’ll take care of her,” Alasen told him.
“Yes,” he answered, and went away.
He wanted solitude. He wanted to hide. But just down the hall from his own chamber door he saw Sionell. Her name left his lips before he even knew he had spoken. She hurried to him, searching his eyes. A soft, wordless exclamation escaped her and she urged him into the privacy of the anteroom. He moved unsteadily, chafing his hands as his mother had done, to hide their shaking.
“Pol.”
She touched his arm, the warmth of her palm branding his skin. Turning, he reached for her blindly.
“She thought—she thought I was Father—Goddess, what lanthe did to her—“
“Hush.” She surrounded him with her arms and her strength.
“She was raped, over and over again—I knew it had happened but I never—she thought I was Father, spoke to me as if she saw him, not me—what will it do to her when she remembers he’s dead?”
“Pol, no. You mustn’t.”
But he couldn’t stop. “She said she’d go through all of it again, it didn’t matter because—because of me! Ell, what am I that she would say such a thing?”
“Her son. Not lanthe’s. Don’t you know that by now? Pol, look at me.”
He lifted his head. Her eyes were dark with grief, yet the quiet certainty in them touched a place in his soul he had never known was there.
“Your father was Rohan, and your mother is Sioned. They had the making of you—they and all the others who taught you and loved you. Who are you to doubt such love and trust? They know who you are when they look at you—and it’s the son of Rohan and Sioned they see.” All at once she smiled a little, and brushed the tousled hair from his eyes. “I told you all this a long time ago. Why do you make me keep repeating myself?”
“You ... believe it,” he said, not quite a question.
“Yes. And you’d better, too. I really am getting tired of saying it.”
She offered her arms again. He and she fit each other like seal and matrix. Gradually a subtle peace seeped through him. Suspicious of it at first, soon he relaxed into it and closed his eyes. This was something new in his experience of Sionell. The challenge of her he had often seen; her anger, her intelligence, her pride were all familiar to him. He had always known that passion was in her, and when he had awakened it the other night—
But he had never thought that he would find such sweet tranquillity in her arms. She was as close to him as his own heartbeat. He listened to their slow, twinned breaths and was at rest.
“Can you tell me now what happened?” she asked softly.
They sat on chairs in the anteroom, close together but not touching. Yet he felt her all along his body—not with desire, but as if her presence was his second skin—warm and supple and protective. That strange, gentle quiet stayed with him even through the pain of what he must say.
“I don’t know what Riyan told the others,” he finished. “I’ll have to ask him and Meath so we can get our stories straight. Maarken and Hollis mustn’t know what really caused this.”
Cautiously, she asked, “Is it fair to keep it from them?”
“Think what Maarken would do if he found out Chayla was raped,” he countered, shaking his head. “I agree with
Andry and Evarin. If Chayla wants her parents to know, that’s her choice. Not ours.”
“Yes. All right.” Sionell gazed at her folded hands for a long moment. “Pol ... about Sioned. She might remember nothing or everything. But if it’s as you said, and she’s kept this locked in for so many years—“
“Not just that. She’s always said she didn’t recall much of the last part of that year. That maybe she’d been a little mad.”
“She’s remembered now. She lived it again.”
Pol frowned. “And survived it? Is that what you mean?”
“I hope that’s how it will be. She was afraid to remember, and didn’t. Couldn’t, perhaps. But now she has, and it didn’t destroy her.”
He mulled this over, and at last nodded. “I can’t be there when she wakes up. She might think it’s Father with her again, not me.” Pausing a moment, he ventured, “Ell, it was—I felt as if I really was wearing his face for a time.”
Her head tilted, sunlight glowing in her dark red hair. “It’s a face very like his, but it’s your own. With you inside it.”
“Yes, but—I felt trapped. Into looking like him, being him. And I’m not. Everyone expects me to be as wise and clever as he was, and I’m not.”
She regarded him with patient blue eyes, deep-set in the pale triangle of her face. “You know, that’s about as stupid as thinking that everyone expects you to be like lanthe. You’re forcing me to say the same things again. All that changes is the name. You’re not Rohan. People don’t look at you and see him. For one thing, you’re a lot taller,” she added with another small smile.
He felt his lips curve hesitantly. Thank the Goddess for a woman who could make him smile in spite of everything.
“And for another,” Sionell added deliberately, “he was losing this war.”
Pol stiffened in his chair, his serenity shattered. This was the Sionell he knew. He wanted the other one back.
“I loved him as if he were my second father,” she went on. “But he was fashioned to make peace. Have you realized yet how angry you are with him for not teaching you how to make war?”
He was too exhausted to rise and pace and shout at her. Too exhausted to deny it. All he could do was nod.
“It wasn’t his fault, Pol. And it doesn’t make you less than he—or more, for that matter—that you’re getting rather good at war. You hate it as much as he did. But where it made him sad, it makes you furious. That’s what people see in you, the power of your anger. And that’s why you’ll win.”
He shrugged his irritation, aware that his interviews with Sionell always did this to him. “I’m not my father. I couldn’t be if I tried, and I intend to stop trying. Is that what you want to hear?”
She sat back, looking smug.
He scowled, understanding her now. “You are an impossible woman. You know that, don’t you?”
She gave him an unrepentant smile. “My prince, I rejoice in it.”
“Do you always have to make me angry?”
“Yes—when you use it to accomplish things, instead of ripping up yourself or someone else with it.” She stood. “Go get some rest. You look like you need it. I’ll talk to Riyan and Meath. And don’t worry too much about Sioned.”
“You didn’t see her today.”
“No. But she lived through it once in reality, and once again in memory, and survived both. Do you know anyone else who could?”
Sioned slept until early evening. Pol had ordered that no one who had known her back then should be near when she woke, so the first face she saw was Alasen’s, She frowned a little, then sat up and stretched. Alasen brought her a bowl of soup kept hot over the bedchamber hearth. As she ate, she asked about the children—including Siona, who had died several days earlier. Alasen replied that everything was fine and there was nothing to concern her. She went back to sleep.
She woke again around midnight. This time it was Sionell who sat with her, reading by the considerable blaze of two candle branches. Pol had been specific about that, too. The two women were quiet for a long while. Then Sioned’s eyes filled with tears.
“Rohan is dead,” she murmured, as if saying it for the first time. Her Namesake held her close while she wept, and stayed with her through the night.
In the early morning of the next day, Pol was in Meath’s room, talking with him and Riyan. A knock at the door turned their heads; the entrance of their topic of conversation made them start guiltily.
“Oh—all of you together,” she said, nervous and trying to hide it. “I wanted to—I said and did some terrible things yesterday. I—“
“Mother, it’s all right. You were—“
“More or less insane. Yes, I know. Please don’t interrupt, Pol. I need to apologize.” She looked at Riyan. “I thought yea were your father, as you know. I’m sorry I came at you like a raving madwoman.”
Riyan bit his lip. “You’re all right. That’s all any of us cares about.”
“Thank you,” she said, and the quiet, bruised gallantry of her manner cut Pol’s heart in pieces. She faced him next, hesitating, fingers moving at her sides and then stilling as if she recognized the action.
“Pol ... I’m afraid you learned things yesterday that you shouldn’t have. It’s true that your father couldn’t look at you—but you mustn’t blame him. He hadn’t seen you in Fire the way I—all he could see was lanthe, and what happened to both of us at the old Feruche.”
“Mother, you don’t have to—“
“Yes, I do,” she insisted. “I want you to know that the first time he looked at you, he forgot everything except that you were his son, and mine. From that instant onward the rest didn’t exist.” Again she paused, glancing at Riyan and then away. “Ostvel ... did what he did. But you have to understand why. It was the same reason he tossed a knife to Lyell of Waes so that he and Kiele could die quickly, before Andry’s Fire killed them.” She shrugged. “Andry was a long time forgiving him for it. So was I, about lanthe. But to Ostvel, it was very simple. We mattered and he didn’t. He kept their blood from our hands by taking it onto his own. But the truth of it remains that lanthe died because of me. I just—I don’t want you to look at Ostvel any differently because of it.”
Pol made himself say, “No. I won’t.”
At last she turned to Meath, who had risen when she came into the room. Her head tilted back so she could look into his face. Her lips parted, but he forestalled her words with a gesture.
“Don’t.”
“I have to,” she repeated.
“No.” And he started to leave his own chamber.
“Meath, please!”
He stopped, his back to her.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “You must know that I never believed what I accused you of yesterday. When you watched over me, it was for my own sake. I always knew that. And I remember that it comforted me, feeling the nearness of a friend. Will you forgive me for what I said?”
“For the Goddess’ sake, Sioned! Stop it!” he rasped, swinging around. “It kills me to hear you—“
“I’m sorry,” she said again. “But I had to.” She drew herself straighter and ran a hand back through her hair. Pol was startled to see how much of it was stark white. “I won’t talk about any of it again. Can any of you tell me—I don’t like to intrude, but—is Chayla awake? Do you think she’d see me?”
“Thank you,” Chayla said, sighing her relief as the door closed behind her parents. “They mean well, but they’ve been staring at me as if I’ll disappear if they don’t. You won’t scold if I get out of bed, will you, Sioned?”
“Of course not.”
The girl threw back the covers and went immediately to the window. She opened the casement and gulped in several deep breaths of fresh air, then sank onto the embrasure seat with one foot tucked under her.
“They treat me like a hothouse flower,” she said wryly. “Too fragile for air and sunlight. But I swear I’m perfectly fine. Sore from riding so far so fast, but otherwise—“
Sioned, still feeling a bit fragile herself, nodded noncom-mittally and tried not to hurt too much for Chayla. She looked made of sunlight, sitting there in the window, clothed in a white lacy shift and her unbound golden hair and the brightness of the morning. Fifteen summers old—one could not count winters when faced with this shining girl.
“Is there any word of Meiglan?”
“None. Chayla...” Sioned pulled a chair from beside the small hearth and sat down. But she couldn’t think how to begin. “Has Master Evarin been to see you?”
“Yes, and told Mama I’m fine—which she doesn’t believe from him any more than she does from me.”
“What did he say to you?”
“Nothing. Just physician-talk. As equals,” she added with a pleased smile. “I’m glad he’s here. I can learn a lot from him. And he doesn’t speak to me as if I were a child and my only experience was setting a bird’s broken wing. He used to, you know, when he was younger than I, and—“
“Chayla,” Sioned murmured, staring down at her hands.
“Is something wrong?” Her eyes sharpened. “It can’t be me, I know as well as Evarin does that my bruises and scrapes will heal. Is it Meiglan?”
Her heart cringed. “No, I’m sorry. It’s just—“
“Please. Tell me what’s the matter.”
Sioned stared at the emerald ring on her finger. “I was a captive, too, you know. In the castle that once stood here. You’ve heard the story, I’m sure, I could never bear to think of that time. I was afraid of it. But it’s better to face what one fears. Even the things that are too terrible to remember.”
“Oh, Sioned!” Hands warm with sunlight reached to enfold her own. “I brought it all back—I’m sorry!”
“Don’t be, heartling.” She clasped Chayla’s fingers and searched her clear blue eyes. For someone who had felt queasy at the very sight of the ocean when a child, Chayla’s eyes were ironically the exact color of a sunlit sea. “It was like lancing a wound, painful but necessary. The poison of it is gone and I’m all right now. And so shall you be.”
The girl went very still.
“You mustn’t do what I did,” Sioned told her gently. “You mustn’t build a wall. Keeping it intact will use up your strength. It will never be the past. It will always be now. You’ll probably dream about it, as I did at first. But the dreams must fade on their own—not because you force every memory behind a wall. Do you understand, Chayla?”
“I think so,” she said after a time, and for an instant Sioned thought she would talk about it. Chayla’s next words negated that hope. “I hadn’t considered bad dreams. Thank you for warning me.”
Sioned gathered herself, her own memories clawing at her mind. But the poison was gone. Not the pain, not yet. Perhaps never. But she had known worse. She was no longer afraid—not for herself. For this bright-haired girl made of sunshine.
“Chayla ... if you want... if it’s something you can’t tell your parents or anyone else ... I know what it is to—to be frightened that way.”
She was caught in a fierce hug. “Thank you. You’re very good to me. I’m sorry all this reminded you.”
Coward, she accused herself as she stroked Chayla’s long hair. But I can’t force her to tell me. I just can’t. Not even for her own good. No, I’ll just keep an eye on her, and if she seems to be all right, then—
I “seemed to be” for over thirty years. But it was waiting for me. Always waiting...
“My dear,” she began.
Chayla pulled back and sat again in the window seat. “You mustn’t worry, Sioned. I’ll be fine once I’m not reminded every time I move.” She smiled, rubbing a shoulder ruefully, and Sioned’s heart broke.
Courage or denial? Sioned had argued Rohan into rebuilding Feruche, which could be construed as bravery—but the castle formed visible walls to match those inside her. Tangible denial. At least Rohan had been honest about it; he had never set foot inside this keep. Not for lack of courage, but because he could not deny what had happened to them here.
I’ll keep an eye on her, she told herself again. That’s all I can do for now. Maybe she’s stronger than I. The young are more resilient. More prideful, as well. And maybe she’s right, and the memory of it will fade naturally once all the bruises are gone. I might do more harm than good by forcing her to talk about it now.
A pretty excuse.
War or no war, and perhaps especially in time of war, castles must function. The usual deliberate rounds of stewards, cook, master of horse, guards commander, and all the other retainers who oversaw a keep’s daily life must be maintained. Sometimes Riyan found his conferences with his servants comfortingly normal, and sometimes so unreal that he was tempted to pinch himself awake. But it was an obvious fact that rigid routine soothed. While no one was fooled into believing life was as it had always been, still the appearance of it was there: something of order to hold fast against chaos.
But it was still like walking with one leg injured—a sure and easy step, then a painful limp.
The Lord and Lady of Feruche customarily met over the noonday meal in their joint office—a trick borrowed from Rohan and Sioned at Stronghold, with a similar pair of desks facing each other. From Feruche, their main seat and favorite castle, they governed the substantial triangle of mountain and sand, Princemarch and Desert, formed by their three major holdings. In fact, their lands were only a little smaller than the whole princedom of Isel, though not as populous.
Some concessions to the unsettled times were necessary, but abandoning the daily conference was not one of them. Ruala had complained the other day that the only time she ever saw her husband was at noon and in bed. Today, after sharing the reports of various stewards and deciding that hunters must be sent out to find what deer and elk they could, the pair fell silent and gazed at each other for long moments. Finally Ruala began to laugh.
“You’d think we’d each forgotten what the other looks like!”
“Ah, so that’s why you gave yourself a little tour of me last night in the dark!” He grinned.
“I’d like to try it sometime when I can actually see you.”
“I miss having the time to look at you,” he said, abruptly serious, gazing wistfully across the expanse of polished fruitwood. A thin streak of white hair twisted from her left temple back to the knotted braid at the crown of her head, delicate lightning in a starless night sky. This was the only difference between the woman she was and the woman he had first seen nine years ago at Elktrap. Her fine, pale complexion had defied Desert sun and wind; there wasn’t a line on her face, not even around green eyes that made him think of secret forest glens. “I really do forget sometimes how beautiful you are, Ruala. Why don’t we lock the door, clear off the desk, and make good use of the daylight?”
“The mother of your children deserves better, my lord!”
“Oh, all right, the rug, then. It’s s-soft...” The plural suddenly clubbed him over the head.
“Damn it, this isn’t how I planned to tell you.” She sighed her regret. “It’s an insane time for it, the middle of a war, but we’ve waited and hoped for so long. Just please don’t behave the way your father always did with Alasen, as if she were made of glass—“
“Stop right there,” he commanded. “What are you telling me?”
The corners of her mouth tucked into a crooked smile. “Take a guess. You can count. Permission to use your fingers if you have to.”
“Ruala!” He wanted to leap to his feet and seize her in his arms and dance her around the room. His legs did not cooperate. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I just did.” She peered at him. “Riyan, are you all right?”
“You’re pregnant?”
“Well, yes. Sometime around early summer, or so Master Evarin says.”
His jaw dropped halfway to his lap. “You told him before you told me?”
“He told me, yesterday morning. Don’t ask how he knew when I didn’t know myself—or at least I wasn’t sure. And don’t act so injured! I would’ve said something last night if you hadn’t fallen asleep so fast.”
“I’m sorry,” he said reflexively.
“Don’t mention it.”
They spent a while staring at each other again, a little bewildered, before an arch of Ruala’s brows brought a twitch to Riyan’s lips, and all at once both were laughing again.
“Well, well,” came Pol’s cool voice from the doorway. “If it’s that funny a joke, tell me at once. I could use a good laugh.”
Riyan sobered on the instant, feeling a little guilty for his joy. Ruala did not share the emotion. She smiled at Pol, saying, “Only the joke every wife loves to play on her husband when telling him he’s going to be a father.”
“Really?” Pol’s eyes lit, chasing away moodiness. “But that’s marvelous! What do you think—boy or girl this time?”
“How should I know?” she retorted. “How does any woman know? Men!”
Pol grinned and went on, “Congratulations, Riyan.”
“Thank you,” he said, a bit helplessly. “I’m wondering how I’m going to tell my father, though. No Sunrunners at Swalekeep.”
“Oh, leave that to me.” Pol made a casual gesture. “I’ve been meaning to have a talk with Princess Naydra anyway.”
Of course. Lallante’s daughter, as Pol was Lallante’ grandson. She might not know how yet, but weaving light was her birthright as much as it was Pol’s and Ruala’s and his own. Diarmadhi, all of them, as his daughter Maara was, as the new child would be. Heirs to starlight, and sorceries, and .mirrors—
“Pol,” he said urgently, “does Andry know about that mirror?”
“Mother of Dragons—I’d forgotten all about it!”
“Not surprising,” Ruala commented.
“Riyan, find a place for it, a room where we can work undisturbed.”
“Work?” he echoed, bewildered.
“It has a purpose,” Pol said grimly. “I’m going to find out what it is.”
“If Andry learns we have it, he’ll learn that only diarmadh’im can see into the thing—and then he’ll know about you.”
“What if he does?” Pol shrugged. “What can he do? Denounce and execute me for a wicked, sinful sorcerer? I’d like to see him try it. Besides, he seems to have mellowed. We have a rather good understanding between us now.”
“Lady Merisel decreed that any of their mirrors must be destroyed,” Riyan warned. “And you know he takes her words as though they came straight from the Goddess herself.”
Pol walked slowly past the bookshelves, one finger brushing the spines of fine tooled leather printed in gold. “If it comes to diarmadh’im against faradh’im, then we’ll lose everything, Riyan—including this war. Andry will have to understand that. If he doesn’t—“ Again Pol shrugged. “He’s proud and stubborn, but he’s not an idiot.”
“No, he’ll just wait until after we’ve won,” Ruala warned. “You’ll give him a reason to condemn you publicly. And if he succeeds with the High Prince, none of us will be safe.” She put a hand over her waist. “Damn it, I don’t want to see him as an enemy to my children! But if he makes himself into one—“ She paused, then shook her head. “Grandfather was right. We’re safe only when we hide what we are. Andry mustn’t find out about that mirror.”
“He won’t,” Pol assured her. He leaned a shoulder against the window frame. “But we can’t go sneaking about or Andry will be sure to notice.”
Riyan shrugged. “So hide it in plain sight. It hung in the hall at Skybowl for thirty years and nobody ever saw anything but themselves in it.”
“We can’t put it right out in public like that. We need a place we can work in—undisturbed and unremarkable.”
Ruala toyed with a stick of Hue sealing wax. “We haven’t had dinner in the Attic since Andry arrived. Would that do?”
“Perfectly. He’ll only notice that you’ve added a decoration—“
“—and what more natural than a mirror that belonged to my mother?” Riyan finished. “Some of us usually linger in there after dinner anyway, and it’s convenient for strategy sessions. Yes, that will do very well indeed.”
“The Attic, then,” Pol agreed.
Riyan hesitated. “Maarken will never lie to his brother.”
“If Andry doesn’t know what to ask about the mirror, he can’t question. And if he doesn’t question, Maarken won’t have to lie.”
“But—“
“Then Maarken will just have to choose,” Pol said softly. Glancing out at the courtyard, he added, “Chayla’s up and about. I’m surprised she was kept from her patients this long.”
Another secret, Riyan thought. And this one must be kept even from his wife. Did secrets define people, make them who and what they were? Pol’s had. Chayla’s might. And what was the real secret of that mirror?
Pol turned for the door, then turned back. “Oh, I almost forgot what I came to tell you. All the patrols have returned, and it’s the general opinion that the mountains are clean of Vellant’im. They’ve covered every square handspan for fifty measures around. So I think we can send to Elktrap for supplies and let the hunters go about their work without too much worry.”
“Good. We need the food.” Ruala got to her feet, and Riyan couldn’t help looking her over for signs. She made a face at him. He grinned, abashed. Catching the byplay, Pol laughed at them both.
But there was an edge to it, as there had been to every word and look since Meiglan’s capture. No, Riyan amended as he tidied his desk, since Rohan died. All the easy grace of speech and manner had vanished. Lean, tense, all angles, Pol had become a living sword.
Riyan found himself hoping that he didn’t carve himself up along with their enemies.