Iney took the back stairs three at a time, Pol in the lead. Halfway up he heard his daughter’s cries and increased his pace. Maarken knew nothing more than that Jihan had been with him and Chayla in the library when she began to tremble and then to scream.
“I couldn’t get through to her on sunlight,” Maarken panted as they turned a narrow landing. “Damn you for whatever you were trying to do to each other!”
Pol didn’t even glance over his shoulder. Andry said, “Never mind that—it won’t happen again. Was she within sunlight?”
“This time of day the whole room is filled with it. She—“
Pol sprinted down the corridor. He could hear Jihan’s words now—crying for her mother, for him, for Rislyn.
Sionell stood sentinel at the library door, and her expression of stark fear crumpled when she saw him. He nearly collided with her; she steadied him with both hands, then gripped him more tightly to keep him back.
“Chayla’s trying to give her something to calm her down. Wait until she—“
He wrenched free and darted around the central table to the window. Jihan cringed into the tapestry pillows of a large chair, her blue eyes nearly black, her face ashen and streaked with tears. Chayla knelt beside her, offering a little ceramic cup that the child didn’t even see.
Pol reached past Chayla to take his daughter into his arms. He rocked her, murmured to her, stroked her sweat-damp hair. Fine tremors shuddered through her small body, and all at once she gasped out, “Papa! Oh, make it stop, please, Papa, please! Make it stop!”
“Shh, shh,” he crooned. “It’s all right. I’m here now. Make what stop, heartling?”
“The c-colors—they’re all gone—Papa, I can’t see!”
He wove sunlight around them both—and cried out when the whole world went black. Only Andry’s strong arm around his shoulders kept him upright, brought him back to awareness of his body—brought back his sight.
“She’s caught in—something—I don’t know—it’s all blind—“
“Get Sioned!” Andry called over his shoulder.
Pol sucked in a deep breath, holding Jihan tighter. “I’m here, love, I’m here,” he said shakily. “It’ll be all right. We’ll make it stop. Don’t cry, my darling, Papa’s here.”
Chayla sidled around behind him, trying to coax Jihan into drinking. “Just a little, and you’ll feel better—“
“No,” Andry said. “Her mind must be clear.”
Pol’s eyes sought everything in the room and everything outside it—all the lamps and chairs and rugs on the floor and the pattern of plain brown tiles between them, the books someone had dropped, the fierce bright gold of the dunes and the limitless Desert sky. The memory of blackness, the knowledge that Jihan still saw nothing but that blackness, thundered through his body and left him weak—and hungering for the sight of things. Any things.
He heard Sionell’s voice, and then Sioned’s, and soon his mother was beside him, her hands cradling Jihan’s head. A few moments later, his daughter went limp in his arms.
He rubbed his cheek to her hair and met his mother’s gaze.
“I’ve ... untangled them,” she said slowly. “Wait.” She turned so the sunlight was full on her face and for the first time he could remember, the strain of Sunrunning showed. When her lips parted in a soundless moan, his heart stopped.
“Goddess,” she whispered. “Jeni says—she says Rislyn’s fever was bad, there were seizures—infection—“ She looked up, tears luminous in her green eyes. “Pol, Rislyn is blind.”
“No.”
He didn’t recognize his own voice.
“Jihan must have been trying to find her, the way she tried before—even Sunrunning, perhaps—“ She smoothed
Jihan’s bright hair. “Oh, sweetheart, little one, what it must have done to you—“
“You’ve separated them?” Andry asked.
She nodded. “She’ll sleep for a little while—I made sure of that. When she wakes, make sure it’s in a bright room with plenty of things to look at. What she’ll remember is—is her sister’s blindness.”
“No,” Pol said again.
“Put her to bed, Pol,” said his mother. “Go on. Maarken, Sionell, help him.”
They coaxed him to walk. He clasped Jihan tightly to his shoulder. Dimly, he heard Sioned still speaking behind him.
“Chayla, how did this happen? It wasn’t silk-eye, you told me it doesn’t work like that. It was only a fever—children get them all the time—“ Her voice broke.
“Pol,” Maarken said at his side, “do you want me to carry her?”
He glared at his cousin through tears.
“All the time,” Chayla echoed hollowly. “And we use what we have to treat them, and they recover. But Meiglan had nothing. Oh, Goddess, if only they’d let me help—talk to her for just a moment, tell her what she might use—“
“Don’t,” Sioned ordered. “Jeni says Feylin is blaming herself as well and I won’t stand for it from either of you.”
“Pol’s rooms are closer,” Sionell said to Maarken. “Come on, Pol. This way. Jihan will be all right.”
Jihan, yes. But Rislyn?
Somehow, he was in his own chambers. Somehow, they had pried his arms loose from around his daughter. They had found a chair for him, put it beside the bed where she slept. He thought Maarken might have said something, or that Sionell replied. He wasn’t sure, and didn’t care. He didn’t take his eyes off Jihan.
His eyes that could see. Rislyn’s never would again.
It could have been years before he heard his own voice speak again. That strange, hard, remote voice.
“Everyone but me.”
There was a rustling sound, as if someone had given a start. “What?” asked Maarken. “Pol, what did you say?”
“Everyone but me,” he repeated. “You, Father, Tallain, Jahnavi, Rialt, Mevita, Kostas—“
“Pol. Stop it.” Sionell again.
“—Rihani, Volog, Latham and Hevatia—“
“Pol!”
Shocked, Maarken said, “They’re dead. I’m not.”
“You paid.” He stared at his daughter’s pallid face. “You and more whose names I know—and whose names I’ll never know. One way or another, you’ve all paid. Chayla, Meiglan, now Rislyn and Jihan—everybody but me.”
“Maarken...” Sionell whispered.
“Yes.”
Pol felt sleep begin to stitch itself around him, and fought back furiously. “No! I have to be here for her when she wakes!”
“You have to be sane,” Sionell told him harshly. “Maarken, do it!”
The arms that caught him as he toppled were Sionell’s.
The face he saw when he woke was Sionell’s.
“Jihan—“ He struggled to sit up.
“With your mother and Hollis. She woke up, and she’s all right. Stay put. Drink this.” She put a cup to his lips.
“Drugged, of course?” As his mouth opened, she deliberately spilled wine down his throat. He coughed.
“No, as a matter of fact.” She sat back in the chair he had been in earlier, and drank from the goblet herself. Her hair, backlit by the late-afternoon glow through the windows, shone like dark fire.
“Find a Hell and rot in it,” he snarled.
“Been in one, thanks. Several, now that you mention it. Oh, not to compare with the ones you’ve made for yourself, but the tour convinced me I like it better here.”
“With me?” He gave an unpleasant laugh. “When it snows on Radzyn Keep!”
“Or floods on the Long Sand,” she agreed. Her tone changed. “You hurt Maarken very badly, you know.”
“It was all true.”
“Not with what you said—that just confused him, then made him angry. I’m talking about what you and Andry did, or tried to do. I’m not very clear on it, frankly.”
“Andry said it won’t happen again. I think he might even believe it. But it will.” He leaned his head back and closed his eyes. The darkness made him open them again at once, to stare at the carved wooden beams of the ceiling. A beautiful room, exquisitely detailed, warm and elegant. The tapestry had been rehung on the wall. No evidence.
But how could Sionell be in this room again?
“Why are you here?” he asked rudely.
“To make sure you’re all right. It was your mother’s idea.”
“Goddess forbid it should be because you give a damn about me.”
“You are without a doubt the most self-centered man who ever drew breath.” But the observation was mild, without rancor. “Even when you anguish over what other people have lost, it’s always in relation to you. They paid, you haven’t. I’d like to know what in all Hells you think you did that was so wrong you had to lose your father, so many of your friends—“
“Don’t try to be compassionate, it doesn’t suit you.”
“Compassion? Not really,” she said calmly. “Curiosity, maybe. I’m wondering when you’ll think you’ve paid enough. When you’re dead, too?”
“Get out.” But then his hand reached for her of its own accord. “No—stay. I’m sorry.”
She didn’t touch him. Neither did she leave, “We’ve all been hurt, Pol,” she said, and now her voice was soft. “No one escapes. Even those who try to keep out of the war— Pirro of Fessenden lost both sons, Halian of Meadowlord lost his life. It’s not your fault.”
He didn’t answer directly. “It’s just that everything has always been so easy for me...”
“Killing your half brother was easy?”
“That’s not what I meant. My father used to say that you have to wait for a course of action to present itself, until you had to do the only thing you could do. Events were in control. He was helpless, really. Forced to do things. That’s how I always saw it.”
He glanced at her then, saw her face, serious and attentive. She listened to him with her mind—but not with her heart. Not the way Meiglan did. Then again, would Meiglan have understood what he was trying to say? He wasn’t sure he understood it himself.
“I wanted to use whatever power I had—Sunrunner, Sorcerer, prince—to control events. Keep them from controlling me. I saw Father as helpless, only using power when he was forced to.”
“But the more you’ve tried, the more everything escapes your grasp.”
“Exactly. And I think I know why, now. There was nothing missing in my life, you see—everything was easy, all the decisions made for me. Dragon’s Rest isn’t mine the way Feruche was Serin’s. My father built it, other people ran it for me. All I had to do was live there. It was the same with my whole princedom. I made the decisions, but—do you know what I’m talking about?”
“Go on.”
“And then there was Meggie.” He saw the merest tightening of her lips, regretted it. “She was something else that just happened to me. She was so different from the rest of you. I was supposed to love her—Miyon arranged it, and Mireva—and I knew all that and loved her anyway. No control. So there I was with my position and my palace, a wife and children I adored, a life that suited me perfectly—and I didn’t have to work for any of it. All of it was so easy. It just fell into my lap.”
“Nothing missing in your life,” she repeated.
“I didn’t think so. I know better now,” he said, unable to look at her anymore, staring at the pattern of the thin silken quilt across his knees. “It’s what my parents had all their lives, after they met each other. Not the love. The passion. Commitment to a purpose. Always trying to create something better and finer—but using their power sparingly, because they knew how simple it would be to abuse it. That’s something else that’s always corne easily to me. Mother would be happy to hear me say this, because it’s what she and Father warned me about for years. Power scares me. Looking into that mirror, that face trapped inside—that scares me to death. And it’s something I could do if I knew the right spells. Andry can’t. No Sunrunner can. But I could.”
She was quiet for a time. Then, in a neutral voice: “These spells—do you want to learn them?”
“For a little while I did. Then I called Fire and saw him again, and—Goddess, Ell, they called that kind of mirror a Shadowcatcher. Shadowcatcher,” he repeated, repressing a shiver.
“You don’t want to know,” she murmured. “Neither would I. Does that make us cowardly, or wise?”
He glanced at her again and smiled slightly. “Both.”
“I don’t find that comforting.”
“You think I do?”
“Pol? Are you awake?” Sioned came in, and arched a brow to find them in each other’s presence without furious words lingering in the air. “Maarken said he had to be rather adamant about sleep-weaving. Jihan’s asking for you, Pol.”
He got up, found his boots, and pulled them on. “She’s all right?”
“Chayla got some sort of potion down her, so she’s a little groggy, but for now that’s a good thing. I’ll send dinner up for you both, and you can sit with her until she falls asleep again.”
“Does she remember?”
“Yes. So do I. I wish I didn’t.”
“What was it?” Sionell asked.
“A strange combination of things—not really Sunrunning, because she doesn’t know how.” She folded her arms. “More as if she was attempting the eyes-and-ears spell without knowing how to do that, either.”
“And there was nothing to see,” Pol whispered.
Sioned changed the subject, saying to Sionell, “Meig and Jahnev and I spent part of the afternoon turning your rooms into a mountain fortress, so don’t go in without a candle to light your way. There’s a lot of furniture to climb over to get to your bed tonight.” She paused, her gaze barely flickering to each of them in turn. “If you go to your bed tonight, that is.”
Sionell and Pol both turned crimson with embarrassment. Sioned divided a serene glance between them and left.
“What in all Hells—“ Pol began.
“No. Don’t say another word.” Sionell hurried out, leaving him to stand there in mid-sentence like a tongue-tied fool.
“How dare you!”
The hissed accusation made Sioned turn on the stairs. She eyed her infuriated Namesake, who stood just above her on a landing.
“What did you mean by that?” Sionell demanded.
“What did you think I meant?”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Probably,” she conceded.
“Nothing happened.”
“If you say so, my dear.”
Sionell hesitated a moment, then burst out, “You didn’t used to be so malicious—or so cruel!”
“And is it kindness to let you gnaw at this ‘nothing happened’ like an animal chewing off a leg to get free of a trap?”
Sionell caught her breath. “Stay out of it, Sioned,” she warned, and fled.
Rohan would have lectured her half the night for this little piece of interference. But-it’s necessary, she argued. They’re hurting themselves and each other. And Meiglan, too, if she ever learns about it—which she’s bound to do when she comes back if they haven’t resolved this.
No stern voice spoke to chide her. With a sigh and a shrug, she continued down the stairs.
He did not come to her tent again until the second morning after Thanys’ murder. Leaving the flap tied back for fresh air, he smiled and held up a bottle of cool wine and a pair of blue crystal goblets.
“Good drink,” he told her, pouring out the almost colorless liquid. “From Radzyn,” he added. “I commanded priests for these. You are Kir’reia, not a peasant.”
Evidently the priests—whoever and whatever they were— had fulfilled the minimum of the order: Meiglan recognized the glasses as Tobin’s second-best set, and the wine’s label as an everyday vintage provided for guests who wouldn’t appreciate a truly fine wine and wouldn’t know the difference. Pol kept a few hundred bottles of it at Dragon’s Rest for exactly that purpose.
“Drink, Kir’reia.”
She set the wine on the carpet beside her chair.
A little smile touched his lips. “You hate me. For the killings. Yet your people kill mine. That’s war.”
“A war you started,” she observed, using Sioned’s coldest voice.
“A necessary war. You hate, we hate—but ours is stronger, and we will win.” He sat down in the other chair, sprawled out his booted legs, and regarded her for a silent moment. “You have daughters. No sons?”
If she said nothing, he would talk for a time and then leave. But she needed information. What Sioned had done for Rohan on light, she would now do for Pol by more ordinary means.
“No sons,” she replied sullenly, aware that after so much silence, sudden chatter would be suspect.
“And you are so old,” he marveled. “Past twenty, past twenty-five. With your years, our women have borne many sons. Five, six, seven. Were you injured in childing, then?” He paused, and corrected himself, “Birthing.”
“No.”
“Your husband no more desires you?”
Meiglan’s head snapped up indignantly.
“Then he is the weakling, not you, to put no sons into your body?”
“Don’t be absurd! You’ve met him in battle—he’s no weakling!” She blushed furiously; this was not the sort of conversation she had imagined having with this man. “How many children do you have?”
He smiled proudly. “Of sons, eighteen.”
Good Goddess. “And daughters?”
“They do not count. My five wives know their duty to me—all but the third, a bad choice. Only one son and four daughters, but the daughters have sons by their husbands, so I will not complain.” He drank wine. “I will return and take more wives, if I find some worthy of my bed and my sons. Tell me why does the Azhrei not do this? Only two daughters—but you say you are well, he desires you, so what difficulty? What worth in a woman who does not have many children?”
“If that’s all your wives mean to you, then I wonder you have any at all!”
He frowned in bewilderment. “I chose them. They are mine.”
“And they had no say in the matter?”
“Why should they? I am who I am. Say to me now why women are in your armies, and fight with men.”
“Why shouldn’t they?”
“The strong should not risk strength. The old and the bar-
,. ren work, and free men for war and strong young women for bearing.”
“That is not how it is here.”
“You have many strange ways.” He paused for a sip of wine. “Who among you has the most sons?”
She thought for a moment. “My husband’s aunt gave birth to four.”
“This is Princess Tobin, yes? Daughters?”
“No.”
“I admire her. And other women? How many are their childings?”
“Four, sometimes five.”
“All sons?”
“Not always.”
He mused en this for a while. Meiglan retrieved her winecup and drank; her throat was getting dry from all this talking.
“It is clear,” the High Warlord said. “Your people had few children, except when they mated with mine.”
The goblet nearly slipped from her hand. “Th—they did?”
“Their men got sons and more sons from our women, and their women bore sons and more sons by our men.” His jaw hardened. “When we find any left, we kill them, of course.”
“But—it’s not their fault they were born!”
“They show taint,” he replied bluntly. “They are killed. As all who spin Fire shall be.”
“Why?”
“You do not remember.” His voice was soft, menacing. “But you will.”
“Not if you don’t tell me.” She forbade herself to be frightened by his eyes.
“You ground our faces in dirt so we could not breathe. You chained our feet so we forgot how to run. You bent our heads with shame so we lost the sky.” He drained the wine down his throat and rose. “Yes, our women breed until they die of breeding—but this thing they do with pride. They look on their tall, strong sons and know they are chains to bind you. And then we will go home, and breathe freedom at last, and run for the joy of it, and embrace the sky.”
Meiglan said what she knew Sioned would have. “You will never succeed.”
“No?” He smiled down at her. “You are my success, Kir ‘reia. Precious jewel of Princemarch, sweetwater spring of the Desert—what will the Azhrei not do to have you back, even if you have borne him only daughters?”
To have her back—? Wasn’t he going to kill her? She pushed wild hope aside. “I was wrong. You do value your own wives—else you could not understand why my husband values me.”
He looked startled, then gave a roar of Jaughter. “He would be a fool not to! You are a clever woman, Kir’reia!”
She lowered her gaze to her hands. Sioned was clever; so were Tobin and Hollis and Sionell. Meiglan was only beau-tiful. His own women must be stupid indeed if by compar- I ison he found her clever.
“I wonder,” he said suddenly, “what your sons would be like.”
“One day I’m sure I’ll find out,” she replied, and her | voice shook only a little. “But you won’t be around to see them.”
Laughing again, he took the bottle and his cup and left her alone.
“It’s been twenty days.” Chiana sat at the window of a miserably damp chamber that the hearthfire did nothing to warm, and said again over her shoulder, “Rinhoel, it’s been twenty days.”
“Do you think I can’t count?”
“You’re drinking too much,” she scolded.
“Is there anything else to do around here?” He finished emptying the pitcher into a cup—ceramic, and chipped into the bargain. Chiana ground her teeth. That common drudge Ostvel was drinking from her gorgeously expensive crystal goblets, eating off her exquisite gold plates, and sleeping between her cloud-soft silk sheets while she had to make do with glazed clay, dull pewter, and thin wool. Woolen sheets, for the Princess of Meadowlord!
She was positive that little bitch Avaly, who ran Rezeld, had all her fine things stashed away in cupboards somewhere and wouldn’t share them. No one could possibly live like this all the time. It wasn’t civilized.
And the clothes she had been given—Goddess in glory! Even if the Vellant’im did arrive today, how would they know her for who she was, dressed in such rags?
But they were not coming. She was sure of that now. Damn that lying son of a whore—he’d pay for this. They all would.
To her son she said, “You might try getting ready for our journey to Castle Crag.”
Rinhoel almost choked. “In the snow? You complained to the skies for the ten or twelve days it took us to get here— and it’s twice that to Castle Crag!”
“Where else is there?” she shouted. “OstveFs in Swalekeep, we can’t go back there! Pol still holds the northern Desert—and the Vellant’im hold the south! Is there anything to choose between them?”
“You think we’d be welcomed at Castle Crag?” he sneered.
Appalling, how closely he resembled his grandsire these days. “There are plenty left in Princemarch who still long for my father. You look enough like him to be his brother instead of his grandson. They’ll look at you and see him. We’ll send out a call as we march, to tell everyone that Roelstra’s daughter and Roelstra’s grandson are coming home.”
“You’ve lost your wits, Mother,” Rinhoel said.
“I want out of here, Rinhoel! The Vellant’im won’t come, you know they won’t! I can’t stay here any longer—and I want Castle Crag! OstveFs troops are all in Meadowlord, there’s no one left to defend it! It can be mine—finally mine!”
He loomed over her, scowling. “I am the prince here, not you.”
“Then act like it!” She snatched the cup from his hand and dashed it to the floor. “I will go to Castle Crag!”
“By yourself?” He laughed.
“Do you have any suggestions about where else we can go? Or do you intend to stay in this hovel and drink yourself to death because you don’t have the courage to fight? Are you Kalian’s son, or mine?”
“I don’t see that it’s any honor to be either,” he snarled. “Very well. Fine. We’ll go to Castle Crag. I’ve got nothing better to do.”
“What’s wrong with you, Rinhoel? When we left Swalekeep, you led the soldiers like a true prince—“
“All fifty-two of them! What chance do we have with fifty against Castle Crag? What’s wrong with me is that I lack an army, a real army.”
“The people of Princemarch will rally to you. Pol is a stranger, he’s not of the true royal line. You are.”
“That and a copper coin will get me a swig of ale at any filthy inn on the road to the Faolain.”
Chiana nearly screamed with vexation. “Do you want to sit here and rot?”
“I’ve already said I’ll go.” He flung himself down in a chair. “What more do you want?”
“I want my son to be High Prince. I want him to believe that he will be High Prince. You’ll see, Rinhoel. They’ll flock to your banner, they’ll march on Castle Crag with us—“
Someone perfunctorily thumped a fist on the door, then swung it open without waiting for permission. Avaly came in, glanced at the shattered cup on the floor, and frowned. Chiana rose, shaking with rage. The cold and the dirt and the shabby clothes were bad enough, but this woman’s manners were the foulest thing about her. As the days passed, and no army of bearded warriors turned up, Avaly had abandoned courtesy along with belief in Chiana’s claims.
“There’s someone outside the gates calling for you, my lady.”
“How many times must I tell you to address my mother as her grace?” Rinhoel demanded. “Well? Who is it? What do they want?”
“To speak with you.” She shrugged. “They’re not Vellant’im, if that’s what you want to know.”
“What I want to know,” he said, advancing on her, “is not who they aren’t, but who they are.”
“I don’t know. How should I know? You’d better go talk to them yourselves.” She departed, leaving the door open.
Chiana picked up her cloak from a chair. The dark green velvet had been cleaned and from a distance would look as fine as ever, even if the gold embroidery was snagged in places. “If they’re Pol’s soldiers, or Ostvel’s, then let me do the talking.”
“Anything you like, Mother.”
A frigid wind swept down the valley of Rezeld Manor, making an instant wreck of Chiana’s hair. She stood on the walls with archers on either side of her and Rinhoel. Below were close on sixty men and women, all dismounted from decent-looking horses, none of them dressed for war and no banner with identifying colors whipping overhead in the wind. All her enemies were too much the honorable idiots to disguise their troops to trick her. She had no idea who these people were.
“We are the Princess of Meadowlord,” she called down, shivering in the cold. “Say what you came to tell us!”
A tall young man stepped forward. “Only this, your grace—that we beg the privilege of following the true Lord of Princemarch, and of Castle Crag, and of this place and all others in this land—the noble grandson of Roelstra, the Prince Rinhoel!”
Her son let out a gasp. She slanted a quick look at him—I told you, I told you!—-and leaned forward. “You are welcome, then—and all who believe as you do! Are there more?”
“Many more, your grace! Many more, who will join us along the way!”
She laughed in delight. But Rinhoel pushed her aside and shouted down, “And where do you think we’re going?”
“Why, to Castle Crag, of course! To claim your grace’s rightful place!”
“You see?” Chiana hissed. “It’s already started! It just needed a little time for the word to spread—“
“I don’t like it,” he muttered.
“Don’t be a fool!” Moving forward again, she cried, “The gates will open to you good people, and you may rest and refresh yourselves! You’ve come just in time, for tomorrow we begin our march to Castle Crag!”
They cheered down below. Chiana snapped an order to one of her own archers, who yelled at someone else to unbolt the gates.
“I don’t like it,” Rinhoel insisted as they made their way back down to the small courtyard.
“I don’t care whether you like it or not! This is what we’ve been waiting for! I knew it would happen, I knew it! This is our chance, Rinhoel—no, more than a chance! A certainty! Twenty days from now, twenty-five, and you and I will be at Castle Crag!”
He accompanied her as she welcomed the new arrivals, and said all the right things, but there was a shadow in his leaf-green eyes that almost spoiled her triumph.