Ronannon fought his way out of a vivid and explicit dream. Hoping it had been acted out only in his mind, his stealthy fingers explored. No luck. The sticky dampness on his belly mortified him. Such dreams were normal, and not what brought the flush of hot color into his face. It was that he knew he wasn’t alone. He could sense people around him, feel them—just the way seeing a swarm of crawling insects made his skin itch.
But it wasn’t just his skin. His whole body itched from the inside out. As he got his breath back, each inhalation seemed to intensify the jumpiness, freshened blood teasing and tickling every nerve. It was maddening.
He slit his eyelids open. Large, worm-eaten beams supported a sloping low ceiling, fitfully illuminated by a hearth somewhere to his right. He could smell smoke; the chimney didn’t draw properly, and to judge by the smoky stains on the ceiling, never had. Turning his head, he squinted into the semi-darkness and was momentarily startled to see that beyond a waist-high wooden railing the room simply ended. Oh—of course. A loft. But he’d never heard that Arlis owned a holding like this—and he knew he wasn’t in the Desert, where high ceilings let warm air rise above living level.
The intent here was to warm the sleeping loft, but the result was a tingle of wood smoke in his nose that made him want to sneeze. Hells, his whole body wanted to sneeze. The squirmy feeling got worse. He scratched at his chest, then wriggled on the rough woolen blanket beneath his back. This couldn’t be one of his lord’s holdings—a prince and his squire would have been given silk sheets in private rooms. But he had no idea where he was. His memory had blanked like a parchment scraped clean of mistakes. He twitched again, this time involuntarily, and again, and it was bad enough to scare him into a muffled exclamation.
Someone’s hand rested on his forehead for an instant, then brushed his cheeks and lingered at the pulse in his throat. “Stay still. You’re coming out of it. Just relax.”
Not a particularly pleasant voice, or reassuring—a sound almost as scratchy as he felt. He forced his eyes open and saw a shadow bending over him, no light from the hearth below touching the featureless face at all.
“Who—?” he tried to say, and coughed.
“My name is Aldiar, and you’re going through the first dranath hunger. It’s only going to get worse, so you can make up your mind right now. You can yell your throat raw early on, and have no voice left later when it really hurts, or you can keep silent as long as you can.”
“Hurts? It doesn’t hurt.” And it didn’t. If only these stupid nonexistent crawly things would get out and leave his skin to its rightful owner.
“Not yet,” Aldiar told him. “Personally, I think there are advantages to the first choice. If you shout yourself hoarse to begin with, Prince Arlis might be fooled later that you’re not as bad as you will be. And the other way, you use up a lot of strength keeping it all in. But it’s up to you.”
Aldiar made no sense, and Rohannon was about to say so when it did begin to hurt. Just a little, just twinges. But he recognized them.
And finally understood. Dranath. He wanted it. Needed it. Was addicted to it, just as his mother had been. Only she had been tricked and used. He had taken it by choice.
It had happened just as his father had warned him.
“I suppose you thought you were smart enough or strong enough,” Aldiar was saying. A damp cloth landed across his brow and stuck there. “Can’t happen to you. Not so young, and so immortal. And surely not to a son of your parents, grandson of a princess, kinsman of the High Prince and the Lord of Goddess Keep. And a Sunrunner besides. Yes, I icnow who you are—and that you think nothing bad ever happens to people like you. You’re thinking otherwise now, aren’t you? And it doesn’t make sweet fodder for your pride to chew.”
The cloth was removed, moistened, replaced. He loathed Aldiar for reading his thoughts and his humiliation.
“Never fear, you’ll get more than your share of punishment for being so stupid. You’re going to scream like all Hells were promised you, and puke your guts up as if you were back on board ship with no dranath to protect you, and you’ll wish me dead—and yourself, too. But neither of us is going to die. Understand?”
He glared feebly at the shadow looming over him. “Shut up.”
“Not just yet. This is the part where you have to stay awake. There’s not much difference between sleep and unconsciousness right now. So you’re going to listen to me, and keep your eyes open—and start hating the sound of my voice.”
“I already h-hate you.” The catch in his voice had come from a spasm of pain through his legs. He gritted his teeth.
“Not a screamer yet, eh? Well, never mind. Let’s see— where shall I start? What do you remember about getting here? Do you even know where ‘here’ is?”
He didn’t, and that galled him even more.
“Well, it’s a start. You sailed with Prince Arlis to Einar, where Prince Camanto fell over a balcony rail—and by no accident, believe me. I know all about it.” The cloth was taken away yet again, and this time the blanket was pulled down to his waist as hands began to wash him. He pushed them away. “Don’t be so silly. I know what the dream was. I watched for it all afternoon. It’s how I knew what stage of this you’re in.”
All afternoon? He’d lost a whole day in sleep. “Leave me alone!”
“To die? Not likely. Hold still. You stink up the whole loft, and if I’m to spend the next three days with you, I don’t want to faint from the stench.”
Three days of this? And it would get worse? He bit his lip and a shudder wracked him.
“Don’t fight it so much now. You’ll use up your energy.” The hands made short work of his chest and stomach, and he was expertly flipped over. Aldiar talked all the while. “So after you left Einar, yon sailed around Kierst-Isel and on up to Snowcoves. Anything sound familiar?”
“Yes!” he said through gritted teeth.
“Good. The dranath may have eaten a temporary hole in your judgment, but at least it hasn’t made a sieve of your brains. Snowcove surrendered without a fight. Prince Laric was very clever about that, by the way. You set off for Balarat, and on the way found Prince Tirel and that blithering fool Idalian. Then the storm blew up, and I sent the good folk of Pimanost to bring you in, and here you are. Turn over.”
He did so, washed clean from nape to heels, loathing this awful young man with all his soul. The cloth swiped between his thighs.
“Stop that!” He grabbed for Aldiar’s hand.
“Modest, or just shy? Whichever—get over it.” The soiled cloth was replaced with a fresh one, dripping wet and laid across his forehead. “Tell me what you want right now.”
“You gone!”
“What else?”
“My sword in your guts!”
“What else?”
Rohannon gasped as a cramp twisted his vitals and let go. “Dranath,” he muttered, knowing it was what Aldiar was waiting to hear.
“Wait a while—and when that’s your first answer, wait a while longer than that, and maybe I’ll oblige. You can’t give it over all at once, you see. It has to be done gradually. But we don’t have the days your father did with your mother. So it’ll be harder on you by the way of time as well as the strength of its hold. But you’re not going to die, Rohannon. I won’t allow it.”
He could feel another wrenching pain begin in his belly, and before it robbed him of air he managed, “Arlis—would kill you—“
“Quite right,” Aldiar admitted readily. “And I’m much too young to die. Almost sixteen, like you. But a lot smarter. Did you know I’m royalty, too? Also like you. Let me tell you the story.”
“Not—interested—“
“I know, but you’re going to hear it anyway.” There was a shifting of clothes, as if Aldiar resettled himself for a long telling. Rohannon had still not seen his face. He had a vague impression from the night before of a lot of unkempt black hair and two big black eyes set in a scrawny face. But the rest of it eluded him. Just as the dranath had eluded his scrabbling fingers—oh, Goddess, the memory of the picture he’d made was itself enough to make him want to die now, and not wait for the hunger to kill him.
“Fifteen or sixteen generations ago, the diarmadh’im ruled this whole continent, and Kierst-Isel besides. The only place they didn’t hold was Dorval, where thefaradh’im had their ancient keep. Everybody kept out of everybody else’s way. Mainly because there were many thousands of us, and much fewer of the Sunrunners.”
“Us?” j
“Didn’t I mention that? I’m a sorcerer.” ‘
Rohannon turned his head away. Now he knew he was going to die.
“You really are the dumbest—“ Aldiar sighed in exasperation. “If I’d wanted to kill you, I would have. It’s not that , difficult, especially killing a Sunrunner who doesn’t really i know what he’s doing.”
How did this strange person always know what he was thinking? It was uncanny, and it unnerved him. I
But Aldiar hadn’t expected what Rohannon did next. He didn’t let himself think about it past the first wild impulse. He called a fingerflame, and it lit the thin, intense face—and flared dangerously as he cried out.
For the face was familiar. He’d seen it raised to the stars on an icy night not long ago, after these very hands had placed a twisted cord around Yarin of Snowcoves’ shoulders.
“You!” he cried, trying to scramble off the bed. Aldiar lunged for him, but not in time. He tumbled onto the wooden floor. “Get away from me, you’re in it with him, I saw you—oh, Goddess!”
Agony took him from his throat to his groin, and tied his insides around themselves, around his skeleton, around the little Fire that jumped and quivered and died as he lost consciousness.
When he came to, it was with the taste of wine in his mouth. He was back on the bed—Aldiar was stronger than he looked—with the blanket tucked firmly around him. He felt too weak to move.
“Where did you see me?” The question was calm, and the eyes lit by a candleflame were only mildly curious.
He stared at the sixteen-year-old face, high-boned and proud, remembering it in that circle of Fire and stone. “On ... the stars,” he managed, too exhausted to resist. “That night.”
“What night? Oh. You mean the Circle of Ninety-and-Nine. You saw that?” Aldiar chewed his lip for a moment, then shrugged. “I remember now. I felt something. You, it seems. Well, that’s just one more thing to explain. Do you feel better?”
“Some.”
“I gave you a little dranath to take the edge off. But you’ll get less and less, and the pain will get worse and worse.”
He glared feebly. “You’re ... enjoying this.”
Thick lashes shaded the boy’s eyes. “No,” he said softly. “I watched my older brother die of it. But you’re not going to die, Rohannon.”
“You ... won’t ... allow it...”
“No. I won’t allow it.”
Rohannon sighed. He was helpless, and he knew it, and there was nothing for it but to submit. His own imbecilic pride had gotten him into this; if Aldiar could get him out, then —
“Tell me ... the rest,” he murmured.
“We sent out ships, for we do not share the Sunrunner weakness, and explored the nearer parts of the world,” said Thassalante, chosen as spokesman for the nine diarmadh’im at Feruche. Being the youngest — at only seventy-three — he had the vocal stamina for the telling of a long, long tale. He had described himself as great-grandson of the Diarmadh’reia Lallante’s grandfather’s sister. This interested Pol only because if necessary, he could claim kinship and thus loyalty. Until such time, he wasn’t about to mention it.
They were again in the Attic, with the mirror empty and cold above the hearth. Thassalante had come alone. It had taken all of the last evening and most of today for the diarmadh ‘im to argue themselves into sharing their information with Pol. The wait hadn’t been easy on anyone, least of all him. Seventy-two days of Winter gone now; he recalled the portents Kazander had mentioned, that the war would last either three seasons or three years. Not, please the God- dess in her mercy, the latter. Almost forty days—only a third of the number that had passed since this began. Pol counted each day his enemy now. His and Meiglan’s. And the man trapped in that mirror? How many days had been his enemies? Thousands? Tens of thousands?
The diarmadh’im were polite and respectful to him, even though they thought him faradhi only. They knew about Riyan and Ruala—knew more about their ancestry than they did themselves, in fact—and were willing to speak to them. But Pol was another matter. They honored him for ending Andry’s incursions into Princemarch against their kind, but from respect to trust was a long step. This afternoon they had finally taken it, or at the very least decided they had no choice. In recognition of this, Pol told them to remove the iron from their flesh. He also asked them to wait for the conference until the sun was down and the moons not yet up. That way, he did not say, no one could watch who was not physically present.
They understood that the unspoken reason was Andry. And in Thassalante’s pale brown eyes was gratitude that Pol had chosen to sit at the long table rather than by the windows, where someone might watch on starlight and read the words as they left his lips.
There was no Fire but what Pol himself had kindled, in Thassalante’s presence, to the candle branch on the table. The sconces beside the mirror were unlit. Pol intended to save that until he’d heard the whole story.
And it had better be the whole story, he told himself. He was tired of guessing games and speculations. He needed knowledge, and he wanted it now.
Riyan and Ruala sat at either end of the table. Sioned and Meath flanked Pol on the side with a view of the mirror. Thassalante paused every so often for a sip of the Syrene gold Riyan kept for special occasions—and if learning why his mother had owned a Shadowcatcher wasn’t special, nothing was.
“You Sunrunners do not explore,” the old man went on, idly brushing a strand of longish gray hair back behind an ear. His fingers brushed the ruby earring hanging there, and he winced as the movement hurt the unhealed wound left by steel wire. “It’s said that once, one of you attempted to follow the sunlight all the way around the world. He died, shadow-lost.”
“Not exactly,” Meath said. “The way I heard it, when he lost sight of land he got disoriented, and kept going because he couldn’t do anything else. There’s a lot of open sea out there in all directions. Somebody went to find him and couldn’t. Sun-lost would be more accurate.”
Sioned nodded. “You’re the same as we are, you know— you need references of land in order to find your way home.”
“But we can sail without weakness. So we did. And of all the lands we found, only the Vellanti Islands were peopled. There are more than forty islands, perhaps as many as a hundred, although most are too small for more than a few families to live on. The Vellant’im were without gifts. They herded their animals, grew their crops, felled their trees for houses and ships, and knew nothing of how to call Fire or use the light.”
“In other words,” Pol murmured, “perfect victims.”
“They were weak,” Thassalante said. “That was how my ancestors saw them. For many generations we ruled over them. But eventually they learned how to be warriors instead of slaves. And they rose up, island after island, to fight against us.”
“How long did it take them to get rid of you?”
“I’m not certain. But during the last and most vicious of their wars against us, we made the mistake of bleeding the princedoms with taxes and levies of soldiers and food— clanmarches, they were called then. That was when the clanlords went in secret to Lady Merisel and Lord Gerik and Lord Rosseyn. And they defeated us.”
“You’d reached too far,” Pol said.
“Yes, your grace.” Thassalante sipped wine. “We took Vellanti goods and the produce of their lands, which included much iron. We made them build ships for us, vastly superior to those we made ourselves. We even showed them how to treat the wood against fire—of all kinds.”
“So that’s why—“ Meath interrupted himself. “Do your people still know how to do that?”
“No. It was lost, as much of our knowledge was lost, when-Merisel and her kind destroyed us.”
“And yet here you are.” Sioned met his gaze across the table. “Tell me, is this an offer to help my son, or to help yourself to his armies in order to gain vengeance?”
“Both, your grace,” Thassalante replied frankly. “He is faradhi, and though my people and I do not believe as those who followed Mireva believe, we have no love for the Sunrunners who all but obliterated us. Our time is past, our seasons of power and influence. And this is a good thing, for we were thoughtless, sometimes cruel, and, worst of all, careless in our pride. We never thought that a pack of weakling Sunrunners would sail as far as Radzyn, let alone to the place where Goddess Keep now stands.”
“But we did,” Meath said. “And I think we’ve done a little better than you.”
Bony shoulders lifted in a shrug. “Perhaps. History since has been filled with wars, all the princedoms Merisel created fighting with each other, usually over trifles. Until the High Prince Rohan.” He nodded respectfully at Pol, then Sioned. “A wise and noble prince. We honored him, and helped when and as we could.”
“One day you’ll have to tell me all about it.” Sioned poured herself a half-cup from the pitcher, then passed it to Meath. “Right now I’m more interested in the Vellant’im. You know them. We have our own ideas, but we’d like to hear yours.”
“Especially regarding that mirror,” Pol added. “Some of them decided there was profit in working with the diarmadh’im, and were sent back here. And those became the Merida.”
“Assassins,” Rohannon said. He knew now why Aldiar was talking. Not just to keep him awake, but to give him something to think about that would distract him from the spasms of pain and the occasional nausea. He couldn’t contribute much to the conversation himself, but had learned that if he didn’t say something every once in a while, he was asked that horrible question: “What do you want?” And he was damned if he’d make the even more horrible reply.
“Go on,” he said.
“The Merida bred among themselves but never with us. That’s why there were always so many of them. Women here usually have four or five pregnancies—nobody understands why, because we can tell when a woman is fertile and there’s nothing about our bodies that’s different from theirs. Diarmadhi women had more children by Vellanti men than they otherwise would have. But maybe it’s the men, too— because their women didn’t have as many children by diarmadhi men as they did by their own. Anyway, the point is that mixing the breeds makes for more children. So if you want a big family, Rohannon, find yourself a Vellanti or Merida .girl.”
“No thanks, I’ll—“ Rohannon closed his jaw tight around a moan.
“Well, Merida bred Merida, while at the same time getting more and more used to our land and our ways. Lady Merisel offered them a ship to go home, but they refused. They stayed and fought. And they’re still fighting, the stubborn fools. It’s your bad luck that it’s the Desert they want. I could never understand why, myself. It always sounded like a place somebody thought up as an especially nasty Hell for one of his enemies.”
Rohannon remembered the vast golden expanse of the Long Sand, the trees and pastures of his home at Whitecliff, the eight proud towers of Radzyn that would be his someday in the far future. He remembered the warm sun on his face and the breezes off the sea, and all the colors of the rainbow blooming on the coastal hills in spring. Hell? Quite the opposite. But he didn’t have the breath to say so.
“Let’s see, where was I?” Aldiar paused for a long swallow of wine. His voice had grown even rougher during the night, and every so often it broke upward as if he were thirteen instead of nearly sixteen. “Lady Merisel won the war, built Goddess Keep, and settled down to raise Sunrunners while the princedoms were established. She decided who got what according to who’d supported her. Your ancestor was one of them—so he got what he wanted, which was the whole Desert. He could have asked for Syr, or Meadowlord, but he wanted the Desert.” He snorted. “Insanity seems to run in your family.”
Rohannon said something incredibly filthy that he’d heard Arlis direct at a balky horse (a Kadari stud; no Radzyn horse was so ill-mannered). Aldiar only laughed.
“Physically impossible, but I take your meaning. I’ll have to remember that—Idalian will be irritating until I convince him I’m not here to incinerate the lot of you. In fact, my family sent me to keep an eye on Yarin. But Tirel was more important. They would’ve killed him either way, you know.”
“Too kind ... of you.”
“I know. I’m very softhearted. You’ll learn that, in the next few days.” He paused. “What do you want?”
“The rest of—the story,” he hissed between his teeth.
“There’s not much else. You know about Mirevarand lanthe’s sons. What Segev did to your mother, what Marron did to your uncle Sorin, and what Ruval tried to do to Pol. So now we’re up to the present time, and Yarin thinks that his little group of diarmadhi kinfolk are about to make him Prince of Firon. I’m here to stop them, and him.”
“How?”
“By helping Prince Laric, of course.”
“How?” Rohannon managed again.
“I’m not sure yet. Something will occur to me. This is my trial, you know—getting you through this. Which is another reason you can’t die.”
“K-kind,” he stammered again.
“Aren’t I?” He mopped Rohannon’s forehead. “That’s the thing about dranath—it makes you sweat like a horse and smell worse.”
“Not the thing—to s-say—to me.”
“Oh, yes, I forgot. Radzyn-bred, born in the saddle, and you’d bed down with the horses for preference? I rode one of your grandfather’s mares once. It was better than walking, but not by much.”
Rohannon squinted up at him. “You’re—scared ... of horses!”
“No, I’m not!”
But the reply was too quick to be the truth. Rohannon felt a smug little glow inside, knowing this rotten boy had at least one real fear. When this was over, he’d use that knowledge without mercy.
When this was over.
Three days, Aldiar said. If Rohannon had to listen to that scratchy, cracking voice for even one, he’d go utterly mad.
If the dranath didn’t get him first.
“Then they don’t shout ‘Diarmadhi’ as a battle cry—not the way we would ‘Radzyn’ or ‘Feruche’ or whatever,” Riyan was saying. “They use it as a curse.”
“But why kill Sunrunners? In a way, we solved their problem for them by defeating the sorcerers here, so they were too busy to fight for the islands.” Pol looked at Thassalante for an explanation.
The old man spread his hands wide. “This I do not know. It’s possible they have the two confused. It’s been a very long time—fifteen, sixteen generations.”
“Maybe they think we should’ve finished the job by coming to help them,” Meath put in.
“Or maybe they just hate anybody with our kind of power.” Pol raked his hair back with both hands. It pulled free of the thin black ribbon at his nape. He swore and set about relying it out of his way.
“I know only this,” Thassalante went on. “They will stay and kill until one of two things happens: either we are all dead or they are all dead. They will not stop. They cannot. Their warrior code does not permit it.” He hesitated. “It is something they learned from our rule,” he ended bitterly. “To fight and never give up.”
“Delightful,” Riyan said acidly. “What else did you teach them?”
“My ancestors—and yours, my lord—taught them to hate us. It is hate that drives them.”
“Why are they afraid of dragons?” Sioned asked suddenly.
“There we delve into legend. It is said, variously, that one was captured and taken across the sea to terrify them.”
“If so, it worked,” Ruala said.
“Well, it’s wnworked now,” Pol reminded her. “They killed Morwenna’s Elidi.”
“Please, I don’t understand,” Thassalante said. “A dragon?”
Pol explained it briefly. The old sorcerer pursed his lips, finally shook his head.
“I don’t know why this happened. Another of the legends says that certain of the Vellanti were brought here and shown dragons as proof of diarmadhi power. Yet another has it that a whole flight of them were persuaded to cross the sea along with diarmadhi ships, and their descendants linger in the islands to this day.”
“Is it cool or warm there? What about caves?” Sioned asked.
“Nothing I have ever heard tells me those things. I am sorry, your grace.”
“Whatever,” Pol said impatiently. “They’re not scared of dragons anymore. They kill them. If you’re thinking of risking them in battle, Mother, then forget it. Thassalante, I want to know about this mirror.”
Bracing himself against the table, the old man rose and turned, and walked to the hearth. Staring up at the mirror, he said nothing for a long time. Then: “Has he spoken to you?”
“Has he—?” Sioned swallowed the rest, and a long gulp of wine to help it down. “I can’t see anything in that mirror. Riyan and Ruala can. Tell us what you see.”
The sorcerer called Fire to the sconces on either side of the mirror. His body stiffened almost at once. The tiny flames died, and Thassalante turned, tears seeping down his face.
“It’s true,” he whispered. “May he forgive me for being of the blood that put him there.” Wiping his eyes, he moved slowly back to the table and sank into his chair. “That mirror, that daltaya, is the greatest shame of my family. For it was one of us who betrayed him, trapped him. Legends would have it that the mirror was buried in a secret place in the Veresch, or on Dorval, or under the deepest packed ice on the northernmost coast of Firon. It doesn’t matter now. He is here, within the daltaya my kinswoman of many generations ago fashioned for him alone. She bore him a son and then she betrayed him—because he had betrayed us.” He covered his face with one hand. “Why didn’t she just kill him?” he muttered brokenly.
Pol refilled the old man’s winecup and pushed it toward him. “Drink.”
Thassalante did, both hands wrapped around the silver, trembling.
“You knew the mirror.”
“From drawings. Legends describing—“
“You know the man,” Pol said quietly. “Who is he?” Who is this Shadow-caught sorcerer? Who is this man who might be my ancestor, too?
The diarmadhi drew in a breath that shook in his throat.
“Lord Rosseyn.”
“The circle,” Rohannon whispered. “That night.”
Aldiar stretched his shoulders before wringing out the eloth and returning it to Rohannon’s brow. “Did I forget that part? Sorry. It fell to me as the son of my mother—you’d only get confused by the bloodlines, so I won’t go into that now—anyway, the one who qualified. There’s a rope woven of gold, silver, and bronze, and when a diarmadhi claims leadership, and that claim is validated, then the rope is placed around the claimant’s shoulders. Yarin doesn’t understand all that it means, of course. He thinks it’s strictly a token of authority. But it also binds the person to the service of our people, and if something is done our elderfolk don’t like, then we have the right to strangle him with it. I’m looking forward to that part of it,” he added grimly. “If Prince Laric lets us have him, that is.”
“Not ... likely—“ He coughed again. “Damn it!”
“Have some water. You’ve sweated buckets tonight.” He sipped, and felt a little better. “You—the ceremony. Why?”
“Because it made Yarin feel important. Not to mention invincible. Everyone in the Ku’al—that means ‘mind circle,’ by the way—they were all Yarin’s loyal kin. Except me.”
“Why trust you, then?”
Aldiar laughed. “Because I’m the one who brought the rope!”
“No—I mean—us.”
“The reason you should trust me is that everything I’ve done was to benefit Laric. He should get around to that conclusion pretty soon, if he’s not there already. But the reason you have to trust me is that there’s no one else.”
They were both silent for a time, Aldiar presumably brooding on this truth, Rohannon concentrating on breathing as painlessly as possible. It was no good. He called up the sickening image of himself as he scraped frantically for the spilled dranath, but it didn’t work as well as it had. He gripped the blankets, trying not to shift with the restless demand of his muscles.
Aldiar pried his hands loose from the wool. “Here. Hold on to me, instead.”
“Break—your fingers—“ Rohannon gasped. “Tomorrow, maybe. Not just yet. I’ll knot a blanket for you to yank on. We’ll have to rip one up anyway, to tie you down with.”
There would be no limit to his humiliation, it seemed. But he had not yet cried out. That was something, wasn’t it?
He lost even that morsel of pride when cramps knotted his guts and the first of the real pain began.
“You know,” Sioned mused as she watched the moonlight dip into her winecup, “of all the things I’ve had to believe in my life, this is one of the easiest.” She tossed back the remainder of the Syrene wine. “And I can’t even see the poor man’s face.”
Meath took the goblet and set it aside with his own. The shelf carved into the crenellation was meant for arrows in time of war; Ruala had refused to clear it and the others like it of herb boxes placed there for color and scent. Leaning his elbows on the low wall between ramparts, Meath stared out at the silvery dunes and sighed.
“Lady Merisel,” he said mildly, “wasn’t entirely forthcoming in her histories, was she?”
Sioned gave a dry chuckle. “I’d love to have met her. She sounds like she was made up of best and worst, with nothing in between. No compromise to either her virtues or her faults. On second thought, I’m glad she’s long gone—she would’ve scared me to death.”
“Frightening people seems to be the only constant about her. Everyone either hated her or adored her—with nothing in between!” He smiled.
“I wonder how Gerik lived with her so long. If she scared him, too.”
“Probably. And just because she loved him, I don’t think she went easy on him. Or Rosseyn. People like that only demand more of those they love.”
She glanced sidelong at him. “Do I hear a rebuke in that?” Meath shrugged. “A respectful note of caution, maybe. I wouldn’t dare chasten you, my lady. I’m too scared of you.” Sioned gave a snort of derision. “Oh, of course.”
“It’s better than being scared for you,” he added softly. After a few silent moments, she shook her head. “That’s t over. It won’t happen again, not any of it. And don’t say that I you’re afraid of me, old friend. It hurts, even in jest.” |
“It wasn’t meant to be funny.” Meath straightened and faced her. “You’re holding something back. Something you know and Pol doesn’t. No, you don’t have to tell me, because I’m not asking. But I think you might consider telling f him. It’s his war to fight.”
“Not mine anymore, you mean?”
“He’s High Prince, not you. He’s the Sunrunner and the sorcerer.”
“And his useless, antiquated old mother should stay out of it. You’re the second person who’s told me that the last few days. Only that time, I was accused of too much meddling, not the reverse.”
“I won’t ask about that, either. But it sounds like you.” He smiled again. “Nothing in between.”
“Thanks so much,” she said, wrinkling her face up as if tasting soured wine. “I’ll tell you who else knows something and isn’t talking about it yet, and that’s Thassalante. He said the frame around that mirror had been described, and there were drawings of it. I’d like to know why, if they thought the thing was buried somewhere nobody could find it, they went to so much trouble to remind all good little diarmadh’im what it looked like.”
“Interesting point. Here’s another. The pattern I found at the old Sunrunner keep was set with jewels. If you’ve looked carefully at the frame, there are spaces left in it at the same intervals.”
Sioned clenched her left hand. Meath noted the movement but said nothing. “It seems the gemstone symbology goes back at least that far, then. But as for its meaning or function—“
“You do know something.”
She hesitated. “Put the torch out.”
He had lit it with a gesture and a thought when they’d come out of the stairwell. Now he extinguished it. The fire-thrown shadows vanished, and there was only starlight and :he brighter glow of the moons.
Sioned held up her hand. The emerald Rohan had given rier shone dimly. “Watch,” she said, and shielded the stone from all light with her other hand.
The secret green heart of it began to pulse with a soft, regular glow.
Sioned let the moons and stars touch the emerald again. “I’m tired, or I wouldn’t have slipped and said ‘function.’ “
“Good thing it was only I who heard it.” Meath managed to sound casual, even though he wished the winecups still had something in them. He could use a good long gulp about now. “How long has it been doing that?”
“A while. I seem to have blooded it. I’d bitten my lip, I :hink, and—well, it’s not important how. But ever since, when it’s completely dark, it does that.” She laughed unsteadily. “So it’s not just every mirror that’s suspect, it’s every pretty rock whose history we don’t know.”
“Why did Merisel conceal all this? Is it that dangerous?”
“I know why I would have,” she replied softly. “If the frame and the mirror and the gems are all connected in some way—if there are other stones like this one that have a heartbeat after they’re blooded—then knowing might get Rosseyn out of that mirror.”
“But she and Gerik loved him. He was their friend! Surely she’d want to set him free!”
“As what? A shadow without a body? Spirit without substance? We’ve both seen Sunrunners shadow-lost, Meath. The merciful thing to do is kill their bodies. Their souls are already gone. Lord Rosseyn’s body is dust and ashes, and has been for hundreds of years. What would we be setting free?”
“The ritual of Burning,” he said slowly, feeling his way through it, “releases the spirit. But that’s not really true, because at death the spirit is already gone. It’s just the body that’s left behind.”
“The ritual is for the living,” she agreed. “To give time for grief.”
“Yes. But with someone who’s shadow-lost, there’s only—I don’t know, a thread left, too fragile to weave the mind back into the body. It’s being half-dead—or mostly dead, except the body doesn’t know it yet.”
“So they are dispatched as painlessly as possible—not that anyone in that state could really feel pain, I think.” She wrapped her arms around herself. “But what about Rosseyn, Meath? His body is dead. But his spirit is inside that mirror. Shadowcaught, not shadow-lost.”
“Goddess,” he murmured, not really comprehending the horror of it until now. “Thassalante was right—why didn’t the woman just kill him?”
“Whatever he did, or whatever she believed he had done to betray the diarmadh’im, she must have thought he deserved it.”
“No one could deserve that. No one.”
There was another small silence before Sioned spoke again. “Lord Rosseyn, dearly loved of Lady Merisel and Lord Gerik, a sorcerer. Won’t Andry have a fit over that.”
“Speaking of whom—he’s bound to ask about the mirror. We didn’t fool him, you know.”
“I know. But if we’d said nothing, someone would’ve blurted out the whole thing. Andry needs to be kept ignorant a little while longer. We have to know exactly what it is and what can be done with it—if anything—before we let him in on it.”
“You think it’s going to be useful?”
“Oh, Meath!” She laughed again, with no more humor than before. “Didn’t you ever listen to Rohan? Things happen because they’re supposed to happen.”
“That doesn’t leave anybody any choices, does it?”
“But it does, you know,” she said more seriously. “We are what our lives make us. Because we are what we are, we can only act in certain ways. I could choose to tell Pol what I think I know now, instead of waiting until I’m sure—and until I think he can use it instead of being crushed by it. Do I obey what is ruthless in me, or what is compassionate—and which choice is weighted more on the side of each?”
“Crushed? Sioned, what is it you’re not telling him?”
She ignored the question. “I’m ruthless and compassionate because of natural inclination and the life I’ve lived. So you see I do have a choice.”
“Sioned—“
“You said you wouldn’t ask.”
“So I lied!” he snarled. “Wait—is it Meiglan? What do you know? Are they going to kill her?”
“They’ll try to kill her. We already knew that, more or less. It’s not the why of it, but the how. And that’s all I’m going to say.” Suddenly fierce: “And if you breathe a word of this to Pol—“
“You’ll what?” he challenged.
“Don’t push me,” she warned. “You’re the oldest and dearest friend I have, but do not push me.”
“Meiglan is his wife!”
“And his princess. His Azhreia.”
“As you were Rohan’s? She’s not like you, she’s not a—“
“—ruthless bitch? You think not? Underneath all that softness, there’s a woman—a High Princess—who ordered her own half brothers executed. I underestimated her, Meath. When she comes back to us, I intend to apologize.”
He breathed a little more easily. “Then you’re certain she’ll be coming back. You’ll tell Pol what you know in time for—“
Sioned stared up at him in shock, her eyes huge and colorless by moonlight. “What kind of monster do you think I am?”
“I don’t,” he said curtly. “But I told you before—at times, you scare me.”
As she turned wordlessly and went down the stairs, he thought, And I’ll bet Rohan felt the same way.