A troop of fifty was left behind to secure Snowcoves— mostly Pol’s soldiers from Dragon’s Rest, a reminder that the High Prince was Laric’s kinsman and would not look kindly on any further difficulties. Nearly a hundred men and women from Snowcoves had volunteered to join the march to Balarat. Laric chose only thirty of whom he was absolutely certain: they were either kin to his own trusted retainers, or had been imprisoned by Yarin’s adherents—or both. The people of Snowcoves had fallen all over themselves declaring their loyalty. Except for those actually wearing Yarin’s colors, no one could be found who admitted sympathy with his cause.
Laric merely shrugged when Arlis remarked caustically on it. ‘There are two sorts of people in Snowcoves. The crafters don’t care who’s in power se long as glass ingots come from the Desert and they’re left alone to create. The merchants don’t care so long as they can import the ingots and they’re left alone to create profits. Yarin had a way of prying into their books in search of unpaid taxes.”
“Have they always cheated, then?”
The older prince looked surprised. “Of course. So do the silk and pearl merchants on Dorval. I asked Grandfather about it once. He said if you let them be, they only hold back enough to make themselves feel clever at outwitting you. But if you go after them, they think up ways to hold back even more.”
“Hmm. I’ll have to remember that the next time my own grandfather complains about—“ He stopped abruptly. “More than a hundred days, and I can’t believe that when I sail home, Volog and my parents won’t be there...”
The sail back to Kierst-Isel was scores of snowy measures away. Still, Arlis was in a more or less cheerful mood as a halt was called while scouts rode ahead. Laric unhooked his wineskin from his saddle, and Arlis toasted him.
“Here’s to drinking the New Year beside your own hearth.”
“I’d better! It’s thirty days to the New Year and only eight or so to Balarat.” Laric squinted into the gray-white distance. The weather had held, insofar as the clouds did nothing worse than threaten, but those same clouds made Rohannon useless.
“How long do you think it will take to recapture Balarat?” Lane asked.
“Depends.” Arlis took a long swig and recapped the spout. “It won’t be easy, the way Snowcoves was.”
“Then my tally of wins without having fought a battle will stand at two.”
“Two? Oh—you mean that little dance you did with Edirne and Camanto on either side of the Ussh. Tell me, do you think Isriam is really Camanto’s son and not Sabriam’s? Because if it’s true, and Pirro accepts him, Isriam may end up Prince of Fessenden one of these days.”
“I’d be in favor of it. I’d rather have him at Fessada than wasted at Einar. Rohan had a good opinion of him as a squire. And it would be infinitely preferable to having Arnisaya as regent until her son comes of age. There’s something a bit slimy about that woman.”
“We’ll see what Pol thinks after this is all over. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if you had to leave Balarat fairly soon after you get it back again. All of us will have to gather to confirm him as High Prince—formally, I mean, with the oaths and all that—and figure out what we’ll do about resuming trade and so on. Things have changed since the agreements signed at the Rialla.”
“It seems a thousand years ago, doesn’t it?” Laric mused. “If only I hadn’t stayed at Dragon’s Rest—none of this would have happened.”
Recognizing the start of a What if? conversation—a com-;-ete waste of time as far as he was concerned—Arlis gave hearty laugh. “Oh, but then I wouldn’t have had the plea- sure of freezing my balls off on this little trip through your charming countryside!”
Laric grinned back at him. “We’ll have you and your wife to our Midwinter Hunt. You’ll love it—we spend five solid days galloping around no matter what the weather, and at night thaw out before the fire having learned—if somewhat drunken—discussions about the forty-six different words for ‘snow.’ “
“I beg your pardon? Forty-six?”
“According to when, how, and where it falls, how long it will take to melt, the texture of it from dry powder to sloppy footing, if it forms good ice for the cold-cellars—need I go on?”
“Please don’t,” he begged. “You’d have to be drunk to discuss it! And don’t invite us, either!”
The scouts came back with nothing to report but a gradual rise in the land that would slow them down. There was another route to Balarat that involved few hard climbs and several easy passes through the hills, but this was the most direct road. And it was no use being subtle; Yarin surely knew they were coming.
On this, the second day of the journey, they continued to make good time. There had been some neglect of the road— many farmers and village folk along the way had neither cleared the snow nor laid down salt. Laric frowned at that. One of his concerns was to keep as much of his princedom accessible during Winter as possible. There was nothing to be done about the upper reaches of Firon, but few lived there anyway and those who did enjoyed their isolation. When they came down from ice-field and mountain to sell the furs that were their livelihood, they wilted in sweltering summer heat—which on Dorval would have been called a chilly day.
The army stopped at noon for a meal and a well-deserved rest. A third of the troops were mounted, and took the lead to trample down the snow for those on foot. Arlis did not believe in sparing horses’ legs in favor of human ones— horses might carry soldiers into battle, but they didn’t carry swords or spears or bows. This march would be difficult enough on foot soldiers without exhausting them unnecessarily.
They had barely formed up again when scouts sent ahead came pelting back, yelling for Prince Laric. He looked around from checking his saddle girth to find two riders heading for him at a full gallop, snow fountaining with every hoofbeat.
“Good Goddess, Yarin’s sent a force out to meet us,” he breathed.
“If he did, he’s not as smart as I thought,” Arlis retorted. “He’s better off inside Balarat. Let’s see what’s what before we worry.”
The scouts leaped from their horses and ran to where the princes stood waiting. “My lord!” one of them cried. “Your son!”
Laric suddenly couldn’t breathe. “Dead?”
“Oh, no, my lord! Here!” The woman—one of Arlis’ own household guards from Zaldivar—gulped in air and smiled widely. “He and his squire—your squire, I mean—they left Balarat six days ago!”
Laric leaned his brow to his saddle, closing his eyes. The Goddess had smiled on him. Tirel was safe.
“Don’t fall over,” Arlis advised. “Come on, let’s ride out to meet them.”
Laric felt no shame that he had to be helped to mount. Any father would feel the same—weak with joyous relief, so weak he couldn’t keep his hands from shaking. But as he crested the hill, and saw in the hollow beyond it a small black-haired boy on a large gray horse, he vaulted from the saddle and started to run, his legs working perfectly now.
A short while later, when he had heard the story (traded back and forth in garbled order between Tirel and Idalian), he finally reacted to his son’s squirms and loosened his embrace. The army had caught up now and was marching past, smiling and saluting—and Tirel was very conscious of the picture he made. Laric smiled and rested his hand on his heir’s shoulder as the volunteers from Snowcoves came by, cheering as loudly as they could.
“You didn’t say where you got the horses, Idalian,” Laric said.
“I—I’m sorry, your grace—I stole them.”
“We borrowed them,” Tirel corrected. “It was fun, Papa! In the middle of the night, sneaking into the barn and getting to know them first so they wouldn’t be scared when we took them, we couldn’t find the saddles at first and then a bridle broke and we had to find a rope, and it was almost daylight and the farmer almost caught us—“
Laric interrupted this breathless recital. “I hope you re- member who you ... um ... borrowed them from, so we can pay for the use of the horses.”
MOh, yes, my lord,” Idalian said earnestly. “I know exactly. Tirel wanted to do it the honorable way, and tell them who he was and let them help us of their own will. But I didn’t think that was especially wise, in the circumstances.” He cast an exasperated look at his charge. “It took me a while to convince him.”
“I’m sorry,” Tirel said, genuinely contrite. “I know I promised to do everything you said and not to question anything—but it just made me so mad to know I had to steal a horse like a common thief!”
“Well, don’t make a habit of it,” Arlis said, smiling. He looked up at the gloomy clouds overhead. “I hope this clears soon, so Rohannon can get word to Ferache that you’re all right.”
“Is that where Mama is?”
Laric shook his head. “She’s still at Dragon’s Rest with your new brother. Prince Arlis means that they’ll send from Feruche to let her know.” He couldn’t help it; he caught the boy up in his arms again and hugged him tight. “We’ve been out of our minds with worry,” he murmured into the thick black hair. “Thank the Goddess, you’re safe.”
“And thank Idalian, too,” Tirel said loyally.
“But no thanks to Lord Yarin,” the squire added. He turned to Arlis. “Your grace, pardon my way of putting it, but I’m so frustrated I could spit. What in all Hells has been happening?”
“It’s a long story,” Arlis answered with a sigh. “Let’s find Rohannon and ride with him, and the two of us will try to get it straight for you.”
It was early afternoon before Meiglan stitched together every scrap of her courage and demanded to see the High Warlord. The difficulty of getting her point across frustrated her nearly to tears. In the end, it was not her words or gestures or even the imperious tone of her voice that brought success; it was the High Warlord’s simple curiosity about the source of the commotion at her tent.
When he was before her, she steeled herself and said, “I would ask a favor of you.”
He canted his head slightly. “Favor? What is your need? You know that to walk outside is not permitted. As for food, it is made changed for you now—no spices.” He ran his gaze down her figure. “No wondering that you are so small and have no sons, you do not make your health with good food: What can you want? All is comfort within this tent,” he reminded her, gesturing. “More than all but my own.”
“I have no complaints.”
He considered. “No bath. There is not water.”
“Within Stronghold there is,” she said unwisely.
“And we carry it all here to you?” He snorted. “Or let you go there, to call up dragons from their sleeping stones?”
This made no sense to her, so she only shook her head. “I wasn’t going to ask that.”
“Not walking, not eating, not washing—what, then?” He gave an indulgent smile, the kind one would offer a child. “Ah, yes. A woman loves clothes. From Radzyn we take silks to make our wives smile. You wish other things to wear.”
“It does have to do with clothing, but not for me.” Meiglan consciously relaxed her hands that wanted to clench in tense fists. “You seem to know much about us. There is one thing you do not know, but you should—it has to do with what we must do when a prince is—when he dies.”
“The burning? We know this. We share it.”
“You send your dead to the sea. We send ours to the wind and the sky.”
“And so?”
She had thought up her lies very carefully. He was no fool. Many times during the night she had despaired of making it all sound plausible—but then, toward dawn, she had remembered about Sioned.
“You seem determined to kill my husband. I’ve seen how many you are here, and you’ve said how many more will come.” She met his gaze placidly. “In my lands, when a prince dies, his wife and daughters—if he’s lucky enough to have daughters—use the time between his death and his ritual to sew a cloak for him. It’s made of his color, and on it they embroider words recalling his great deeds in silver and gold thread.”
“Yes! I understand!” He nodded vigorously. “So that when the cloak burns, his deeds are made into smoke and ash to rise on the wind with his soul!”
Meiglan thanked the Goddess for making this easier. She hadn’t thought of it that way. “That’s right. It’s to remind the Goddess and the Father of Storms that he did many good things in his life, that he was powerful.”
The High Warlord considered. “She must ache in her heart that this was not done for the old Azhrei.”
There was only one she in the man’s vocabulary; that had been obvious from the first day. He had talked of Sioned since, asking questions about her, praising her beauty and intelligence and strength (even though he regretted she had borne only one son). She fascinated him. Meiglan had no idea why.
“She made his cloak of her own hair,” Meiglan said.
“Ah!” He reached within his shirt and pulled out a tiny leather pouch. From this he slowly extracted a long strand of red-gold hair, tied around the clasp of a topaz earring. Recognizing both, Meiglan blinked. “This was found by me,” he announced. “Beside where he burned. I knew it hers, and his.”
She said nothing as he tucked away his prizes,
“And now you wish for silk and thread? You wish to make a cloak for the new Azhrei?”
The corners of Meiglan’s mouth lifted in Sioned’s tiny, mocking smile. “No,” she replied. “For you.”
For a moment she didn’t know whether he would laugh, choke, or strike her. Courage borrowed from memories made her go on.
“Your wives and daughters are far away. For all that I hate you for what you’ve done, you’ve treated me almost as a civilized man would. I should not like to see you burned without a proper—“
“Silent!” he bellowed.
Instantly four guards crowded into the open doorway of the tent. He spun on them and gave a guttural order. They withdrew.
“You will make this cloak!” he shouted at Meiglan. “But for him! You will sew onto it all the evils and crimes of your people done against mine! You will finish in seven days! In seven days I will send it to him and he will know that he will die!”
Meiglan cringed back, genuinely frightened. “No! I won’t! He’s not going to die!”
“He will! By the work of my hands! And by the work of your hands he will know it!”
He stalked out of the tent, calling commands that included a part of her name: meig, which meant silk.
She wilted into her chair, shaking badly. Seven days. What would happen in seven days? No, more—three days at least to get the cloak to Feruche, another three for the return of the courier. Unless he planned to begin the march within that time, and all his people converged on Skybowl— where Rislyn lay, fevered and sick—nov Lady Feylin was so clever, Rislyn would be all right.
Seven days? Ten? Pol would march from Feruche, how many days to Skybowl from Feruche? An army on foot moved more slowly than a rider on horseback. Two days to Skybowl from Feruche. Two days from Stronghold to Skybowl.
Twelve days? The eighty-second day of Winter?
Seven, ten, twelve, fifteen—her mind skittered, trying to make sense of how many and when. Pol had never been any good at numbers, either...
She gave a start as shadows shifted on the tent wall; the guards had been doubled. Did they expect one woman to escape their whole army? She giggled, then clapped a hand over her mouth; the sound was not entirely sane. But something inside her went on laughing in honest delight, for he had not only sipped the wine, he had drained it to the dregs.
Saumer’s arrival had been anticipated by Tilal’s sentries. He was escorted straight to the prince on the afternoon of the seventieth day of Winter, welcomed for himself as much as for the troops he brought with him. His reunion with the pearls, including the one he’d recovered himself, occasioned vast amusement: he pretended to be Lady Karanaya in the same circumstances, madly clutching the gems to his heart as he alternately gave thanks for returning them and railed that it had taken so long.
When their high spirits settled, Tilal brought out a map of Radzyn drawn from memory. Nyr held it for him, peering over the top as he detailed his plan.
Saumer, while not precisely battle-hardened, had fought enough engagements with the enemy to consider himself justified in saying, “I beg your grace’s pardon, but—are you out of your mind?”
Nyr blinked wide eyes; Andrev boggled. Tilal only laughed.
“I’m hoping the Vellant’im will think so, too! It’ll work. Now that we have you and Andrev both, it’ll work just fine. Besides, Chay would roast me to a turn while Tobin basted me in cactus juice if a single stone of their castle gets chipped.”
“Yes, but—“
“Take a little while to imagine it,” the elder prince suggested. ‘Think how it’ll look from their side of things.”
Saumer tried it out in his head. “I still don’t—“
“If you can’t believe, then at least trust me.” He rolled up the map. “I don’t want to lose any more people,” he added more seriously. “I’m fed up to the teeth with watching my soldiers die. Amiel agrees with me, and I’m sure Ludhil will, too. Get some rest, Saumer. Andrev will wake you at sunset.”
Not that he slept. Not much, anyway. Over and over again he pictured the scene and his own part in it. As a warrior who had led an army, he had his doubts. As a Sunrunner who barely knew what he was doing, he had more than doubts.
Lord Andry’s son arrived at dusk, as promised, to begin his lessons. They walked a little way from the camp, where bedrolls were being tied shut and armor was being donned— not in a hurry, but efficiently. With luck, everyone would sleep under Radzyn’s capacious roofs tomorrow night. But between then and now lay a long night of Fire.
“From what you said about Faolain Lowland, Prince Saumer, you know how to burn things.”
Andrev kicked at a rock beside the path—hardly dignifiable with the term, as it was merely a depression in the sand. This was not the true Desert, this coastal strip with goodish farmland a few measures away toward the sea, but even in the gloom Saumer could sense the bleak dunes.
“The cold sort of Fire is different,” Andrev went on. “You just—I don’t know, think it. Like this.”
Saumer jumped as a tiny blaze appeared a few paces ahead of them. “It—urn—certainly seems like fire,” he said.
“But you can put your hand through it and not feel a thing. Try it.”
“No, thanks. Let’s see if I can manage it.”
He thought about what a fire looked like, imagining a hearth back home at New Raetia. Red and orange and white-gold, flames licking upward, bending a little in a thin draft, leaping higher as they found fresh fuel—
Nothing happened.
“Nothing’s happening,” he told Andrev.
“Well, conjuring is hard,” the boy admitted. “Some people aren’t very good at it, even if they’ve studied for years.” They paused on either side of his own cold Fire. “You just have to think about it really hard.”
Once more Saumer tried, and once more he failed. “I don’t think this is going to work, Andrev.”
“We’ve only been at it a little while.”
“But we don’t have that much time. Maybe you’d better take the Fire part of it, and I’ll join the regular troops.”
“My lord says that you’re to call Fire with me,” Andrev replied stubbornly.
“I can’t.”
“That’s not a word a Sunrunner uses—or a prince.”
“Did your father tell you that?”
Andrev shrugged. “Are you somebody else who doesn’t like my father?”
“I don’t know him.” Saumer was forthright about it. “But he’s done things that—“
“He does what he has to!” the boy exclaimed, and the Fire blew higher and brighter with his vehemence. “Just like everybody else! If you’re going to come to Goddess Keep and learn from him, you’d better start understanding that!”
“Settle down. Nobody’s insulting him. But does everybody have to agree with him all the time?”
“Sunrunners do.”
Saumer knew he shouldn’t but he said it anyway. “You didn’t, when you ran away to become Prince Tilal’s squire.”
Andrev drew himself up straight. “We’re talking about Sunrunners. That was family—and not your concern.”
He deserved the rebuke, but didn’t acknowledge it. Not to a thirteen-year-old boy.
“Try cold Fire again,” Andrev said.
By the time the combined armies—Syrenes, Ossetians, assorted soldiers from Princemarch, and Amiel’s contingent of physicians—were ready to march, Saumer had succeeded only in frustrating himself and Andrev.
“No luck?” Tilal sighed. “Seems they’ll get their beards singed after all.” He turned to Nyr and Chegry, her attending physician. “I don’t want to see either of you within ten measures of Radzyn until I send someone back for you. Is that understood?”
“Can’t I watch?” Nyr complained.
“If you can turn into afaradhi in the next little while, you can watch,” he told her. “Except for the fact that I chose tonight because the moons won’t rise until nearly dawn.”
“Men,” Nyr announced, “are incredibly tedious. And bad-mannered, too. Andrev, take note and grow up nicer.”
Close to four hundred men and women started for Radzyn, initially at a rather slow pace, for they paused now and again to gather up what scrub branches they could find along the way. It made for a messy and noisy march as every fifth person bundled the gleanings together with a rope. Long before midnight the foraging stopped and the bundles were tied to horses. When the army set off again across the sand, there was almost no sound at all. A few twigs rustled, boots shuffled softly, horses nickered—but no battle gear creaked and not a single bridle jingled. Everything had been oiled, muffled, or wrapped to stifle all sound.
At midnight the army began to split up into smaller groups of twenty and thirty each. These vanished into the Desert darkness. Tilal, surrounded by his own Athmyr guard, Andrev, and Saumer, took up a position on a hill overlooking Radzyn Keep at a three-measure remove. One part of his mind counted to itself, following the groups who had the longest walk. Another part worried for the two boys at his side and the hundreds of other lives that were his responsibility. Yet another reviewed his battle plans over and over, looking for flaws—and finding several. Still, his forty-five winters (Goddess, nearly forty-six now) had taught him that nothing was ever perfect before it started. Only afterward, when it was over and he had won.
And he would win. His heart was given over to bitter rage every time he thought about Radzyn, proudest jewel of the Desert, in the hands of the enemy. He had guested there a hundred times—as Rohan’s squire, as the young athri of River Run, as Prince of Ossetia—and always as a loved kinsman and welcomed friend. To see the windows of its eight towers lit now by Vellanti torches was almost more than he could bear. It was worse than Stronghold—he knew it was gone but he hadn’t seen it yet, and so did not have to believe. But Radzyn Keep was before him now. Had it been up to him, had it been his life alone, he would have gone through every room and slaughtered every Vellanti with his own sword.
“Think again, my lad! I won’t have you getting blood all over my rugs!”
He swallowed sudden laughter at Tobin’s imagined scold. Very well, then, he’d herd them all outside to the beach and kill them there, where the waves would wash away the stain.
If things worked as they should tonight, he wouldn’t have to kill anybody personally at all. The sea would do it for him.
Pity. He owed them for Rihani.
Cunning against brute force, he mused, near the end of his counting and aware that those around him were restless. Saumer thought his plan insane. Nyr probably did, too, although she was too polite to say so. Amiel had been willing to go along with whatever Tilal told him to do. As for Ludhil—it would be interesting to see how Chadric’s bookish elder son had changed after two seasons of living in the hills and raiding Vellanti camps.
Chadric’s bookish younger son came to mind, and Tilal wondered briefly what was going on up in Firon these days. The last time Andrev had asked for news, none had been available. Clouds. Poor Sunrunners. He was glad he wasn’t one.
Which led him to think of his daughter, Sioneva. Athmyr was locked up tight, the court Sunrunner gone back to Goddess Keep. But Andry knew how to reach Sioneva. If anything happened—
It wouldn’t. Cunning against brute force, he reminded himself. The Vellant’im had done very well with the latter, but were sadly deficient in the former. Look how they’d lost at Swalekeep.
And Swalekeep hadn’t even mattered. He knew that now. For that alone, every one of the whoresons deserved a slow and painful death. Swalekeep meant nothing to them. It had been a feint, just as Goddess Keep and New Raetia and Gray pearl and marching up the rivers had been. Nothing mattered but the Desert.
So many dead. So much destroyed. It would take years to recover—for those who made it through this next year.
Ossetia had not been ravaged as Gilad and Syr and parts of Grib had been, but Ossetia could not feed everyone. And Tilai was damned if he’d give so much as a rotten apple to Cabar or Velden.
Ah, but that wasn’t right. Neither of those princes would suffer in a famine. It was their people who would starve. And, truth to tell, their sons and daughters had shown cour-age and honor enough for ten of their craven fathers. Amiel had defied Cabar and come to war; poor crippled Elsen had done the same by riding to Goddess Keep (though he’d best watch his back, Tilal thought sourly). Elsen’s wife Selante, Amiel’s sister, had supported her husband’s decision to answer the faradhi summons and shamed Velden into letting him go. And as for Norian of Grib—word was that she, too, was at Goddess Keep, helping her brother and furious with their father for his cowardice.
Tilal sighed softly. It seemed he’d have to help Velden and Cabar. How annoying. Then he cheered up; Pol doubtless had something exquisite in mind for them. Tilal could hardly wait.
An alarm sounded in his head, signaling that the current bout of waiting was over. No one had ridden back breathless and bloodied to tell of encounters with Vellanti sentries; no one stirred but the usual guards walking Radzyn’s walls and towers. The night was quiet, serene.
That was about to change.
“Prince Saumer, Lord Andrev,” he murmured.
The formality straightened them up in their saddles. “Yes, your grace,” each replied.
“You have the map in your minds. Everyone should be in position by now.” He smiled a little in the darkness. “Please try not to incinerate any stragglers, Saumer.”
“I’ll try, my lord.”
They were on a hill to the west-southwest of Radzyn Keep. Between them and it were pastures empty of horses and a few barns probably just as empty. Tilal didn’t dare risk that—Chay would run him through if he was wrong. Beyond the keep was the small port town, and he couldn’t be sure who might or might not be in those buildings, either.
So, deprived of interesting things to burn, Tilal had organized his own little bonfires.
Andrev’s work would be the hardest. All Saumer had to do was ignite one by one the piles of brush gathered for his convenience—the troops had been warned to back away a quarter of a measure after placing them, since the inexperienced Sunrunner would be working in the dark. Andrev, however, must augment those Fires with cold ones of his own, jumping from place to place, advancing ahead of the soldiers here, extinguishing the flames to move them to some other spot. Tilal’s vision had been of an army of Fire marching in on Radzyn, bringing them out of the castle if he was lucky—and if he was luckier, they would panic and move down to the beach.
For at the first sign of Fire, Amiel and Ludhil would sail their two laden ships around from hidden shelter behind one of the Small Islands. It would take a little while, but soon enough they would appear in the harbor, and the Vellant’im would do one of two things: jump in their longboats and go out to them, or cheer the arrival and expect them to come ashore and join the festivities.
Either way, they would come out of Radzyn then if the Fires hadn’t already brought mem out. Reinforcements would make them think a victory guaranteed; if they had already been unnerved, they would want to escape. In the first instance they would be sorely disappointed. In the second, they would be shot down in their longboats from on board ship.
Tilal supposed it was crazy. But he couldn’t retake Radzyn by brute force. He didn’t have the troops for it. Radzyn was a formidable objective designed to daunt even the most determined commander. The Vellant’im had won the first time due to sheer numbers, and because Chay’s duty had been to protect Rohan, not the castle. But Tilal could not throw soldiers against the walls until the walls came down; he’d be here until next Summer. And Chay really would kill him if he tried it—for colossal stupidity if nothing else.
So, cunning. And because cunning and insanity were close kin...
He saw the first fires. Saumer’s. Thirty of them, in an arc about two measures from the keep, they lit with slow, almost stately regularity. Tilal pulled out the long-lens from his belt and had another look at the walls. Yes, they’d noticed. He smiled.
Those who had stealthily left their bundles of brushwood and scrub had gotten well out of range. Tilal knew because none of the Fires sprouted smaller ones mat moved. What he saw now, with the lens tucked away for the moment, was Andrev’s work—flames the size of a small cottage seeming to break off from first one and then the other of Saumer’s bonfires. They moved forward, shifting quickly and without pattern, and if Tilal hadn’t known better he would have sworn they were being set by some invisible being that kept changing its mind.
They had really noticed within Radzyn now. Lights blazed all over the keep. Tilal chuckled to himself.
“We seem to have woken them up,” he said. “Wait a while, Saumer, before you light the nearer ones. I want them to get the full effect.”
Using the long-lens once more, he peered out to sea. No, not quite yet. Give it another little while. Amiel and Ludhil had stationed lookouts on the island to tell them exactly when to hoist sail, but it would take some time.
Timing, of course, was crucial—and would have been impossible without the astonishing revelation that Princess Iliena was a Sunrunner. Tilal wondered how Sioned had broken it to her in such a way that her understandable stupefaction was pushed aside in favor of making herself useful. Perhaps she had reacted as Sioneva had, with wonder and delight. Tilal hoped she hadn’t been like Alasen, and afraid.
Well, that didn’t much matter to him right now. Andrev had told Sioned, and Sioned had told Iliena, what was planned for this night. Our web of Sunrunners spinning light gets bigger all the time ... Hells, some days it must be hard for them not to bump into each other, the way Sioned and Maarken bumped into that dragon years ago...
Turning back to Radzyn, he caught his breath. The walls were crammed with soldiers now. Some large, bulky personage in white—& nightshirt, Tilal thought, until he saw the glint of elaborate gold embroidery on the robe—stood atop the tallest tower. He flung his arms up to the sky, gesturing madly.
“Saumer! Now!”
Fuel sneaked in even closer—the riskiest job, Goddess blessing that it had been accomplished without incident— began to light. Andrev’s Fire leaped and danced all over the place, making it seem in the darkness and at a distance as if the arc of flames teased the castle.
Vellant’im poured out of the gates, swords aloft.
“Here we go,” Tilal muttered. Giving the lens to one of the three Ossetians detailed to guard Andrev, he turned to Saumer. “Nice work. Let’s go finish it before we can’t see for the smoke.”
The young man grinned from ear to ear. “At once, my lord!”
Saumer was thrilled by the prospect of a fight. Tilal was angry with the enemy for not succumbing to terror and fleeing. But his disappointment was premature—for it was not the soldiers of Syr and Princemarch and Ossetia and the physicians of the Giladan school that the Vellant’im fought. It was the Fire.
They cried “Azhev’im!” with one voice as they ran for the flames, swords slashing like scythes. Tilal could hear them even over his horse’s hoofbeats and even at this distance. Hundreds and hundreds of them, racing every which way to battle the Fires as if they were alive. They showed no discipline, no cohesion—and the first one Tilal cut down didn’t even have gold in his beard. Half of them weren’t even warriors. Even fewer wore armor. Tilal didn’t know who or what they were, and didn’t care. He killed them as they ran. And run they did, intent on killing the Fires.
Too easy, he told himself, jerking his sword from yet another unprotected chest. Much too easy. Saumer was over there having himself a wonderful time, laughing uproariously and slicing off heads neat as melons on poles in the practice yard. No conflict there, Tilal thought; no misgivings, just honest enjoyment of battle skills. Not like his own Rihani.
He pushed the grief aside and reined in, pausing to lop off a sword arm that dared come too close to his horse’s neck. The big Kadari beast kicked out with hind legs, making Tilal lurch forward in the saddle. He slapped the stallion’s neck a good one, yanking his head around. Things were well in hand here. He wanted a look at the beaches.
Galloping to the end of the fiery arc Saumer had first set, he squinted out to sea through thai, drifting smoke. Nothing— nothing—there! Two full sets of white sails, just coming around the headland at a dangerous speed. He urged his horse up a rise, and yelped with delight as a stream of white-robed Vellant’im poured from Radzyn’s seaside postern gates.
“Lovely, lovely,” Tilal crooned. “Yes, get into the boats, you cowardly bastards—row like all Hells to where you’ll be safe while others do your fighting for you against the Dragon Fires!”
When the sword got him in the side, all he had time to think was that Elsen at Goddess Keep wasn’t the only one who needed to watch his back.