It was Prince Tilal’s personal good fortune that he cared about his soldiers enough to organize roving medical help during battle. At Goddess Keep and again at Swalekeep, casualties were kept down by the swift treatment of the wounded. In fours—one person with a field kit, three to guard and carry—they darted in and out of the fighting on agile Radzyn horses, killing the enemy only to get to wounded friends.
When Tilal’s army combined with Amiel’s, physicians from the latter replaced rough bandaging with surer skills. Faolain River had been their first test, but it was nothing like the Firelit chaos of the Second Battle of Radzyn Keep.
One of these twelve patrols—lacking a member who was wounded literally keeping a Vellanti off the physician’s back—saw Tilal go down, his horse collapsing under him as a sword plunged into its heart. They didn’t know the prince was wounded until they got to him, galloping up just as the Vellanti freed himself from the dying stallion. The sword had caught in the Kadari’s massive rib cage. Had he been a lighter Radzyn breed, sheer weight wouldn’t have brought the Vellanti down with him—and sheer bad temper wouldn’t have kept him there. As the man scrambled up, leaping to one side to avoid bared teeth hungering for his flesh, the physician arrived and skewered him through one terrified eye.
Three days later, fever gone and wound healing and body aching with every heartbeat, Tilal heard how his life had been saved. That physician would be welcomed at Athmyr with all honors whenever he chose to visit. As for Kadari horses, Tilal vowed to ride none other and to defend their superiority against all Chay’s boasting about his Radzyn breed.
A rather inhospitable thought, for it was in Radzyn that Tilal was recuperating, and in Chay’s own bed. There were worse places to be confined, he supposed. But something was not quite right about Radzyn, and eventually he realized this was because its lord and lady were not here to rule it. He kept waiting to hear Chay’s deep laugh and Tobin’s light, not-quite limping step.
Princess Nyr and Master Chegry attended Tilal, giving him the details of the battle and the three days he’d wafted in and out of consciousness. The first thing he wanted to do, of course, was get up, get dressed, and get busy. Chegry told him fine, he could do whatever he liked.
Tilal got one knee free of the quilt before stabbing ribs and lack of air felled him onto the pillows. The Vellanti swordthrust had punctured him between the bottom of his chest armor and the thick leather of his belt, angling upward to nick his lung. The fall from his horse had cracked two ribs, wrenched his shoulder, and bruised almost everything else.
“It’s much more effective,” Chegry observed as the prince gasped in pain, “to let you find out for yourself that you won’t be going anywhere for a while.”
Nyr clucked her tongue and resettled the quilt. “You’re as bad as Amiel—he thought he could climb down all these stairs on a broken ankle.”
Tilal looked a question at her; he didn’t have the breath to ask aloud.
“He tripped jumping into shallow water,” she explained. “Just as well he did, too, and was out of the fighting—when their priests found out they wouldn’t get much welcome on board ship, they got very nasty.”
“If you’ll excuse the language,” Chegry commented, “they fought as if their balls were made of iron—even though they have none at all.”
“What?” Tilal’s breath exploded out of him.
“The ones in white are priests, something to do with their rituals and so on. And all of them are castrated.”
“Good Goddess,” he whispered.
“Utterly barbaric,” Nyr agreed. “I’m trying to figure out how they still manage to grow beards.”
“I’ve read about it, at the school,” Chegry said. “If it’s done after a boy becomes a man, and if enough is left of—“ he stopped and grinned, seeing the involuntary shift of his patient’s thighs. “Yes, it does give one a certain vulnerable feeling, doesn’t it, my lord?”
Nyr giggled, a deliciously wicked sound. “Amiel says it makes him long for a steel codpiece!”
“It’s not funny,” Tilal said, finding that if he inhaled with exquisite care, he could manage to speak without too much trouble. “Women can’t possibly understand. Let’s talk about something else. Has Pol been told?”
“Andrev has been working hard, my lord. And so have the rest of us.” Nyr lost her smile. “I’m glad Princess Tobin and Lord Chaynal weren’t the first back into Radzyn. It would break their hearts.”
“Why? What’s wrong?”
“Nothing that a lot of money won’t cure,” Chegry reported dourly. “They used furniture as firewood. The tapestries are mostly in shreds. They made the silk sheets into new robes for themselves—and I don’t want to describe what state the great hall is in.”
“Tell me.”
Chegry paused. “Blood, my lord. Everywhere. And the— the entrails of a mare and twin foals. Ritually slaughtered, it looks like, and left to rot. Either that, or we interrupted them before they cleaned it up.”
Tilal swallowed hard. “Don’t ever tell Chay.”
“No. Anyway, we’ve begun to put things to rights. It gave the soldiers something to do after they finished burning all the Vellanti dead. And there were a lot of them,” he said with satisfaction.
“How many of our own?”
“Over a hundred,” Nyr murmured. “Thank the Goddess you weren’t among them.”
Tilal forced a smile. “I’m too ornery to kill. Now, if I’m stuck to this bed, and it seems I am,” he paused for breath, “send Andrev to me and—“
“Andrev is otherwise occupied,” Nyr told him, serenely disregarding his scowl. “Everyone else is, too, so don’t bother to ask. It’s time you got some more sleep. Chegry?”
“I’ve two sorts of wine here for you, my lord—and you could weep at the shambles they made of the cellars.” He held up two dented silver cups. “The first is an excellent Giladan red—724 was a fine year on their coast. Unfortunately, I’ve had to spoil the taste with a sleeping draught. The second is pure Ossetian white, from your very own vineyards around the Kadar River valley.” He smiled; Tilal glowered. “Which will it be?”
Meiglan’s fingers were cramping more and more often. Each stitch was like the dripping of a water-clock—and time was filling up. She had three days left to finish the cloak. The garment itself was done, though not to her usual standards. It was difficult for her to abandon care and pride in her work, but she had no time to make the stitches nearly invisible or to fit the lining so precisely to the outer material that it seemed all one piece of cloth.
The cloak was dull, nubby violet silk lined with slick and shiny blue that folded over to make front plackets and a handspan trim around the hem. She busied herself embroidering the blue in gold-and-white wreaths that would border words not yet stitched. She would leave those for last. But time was running out, and she was no closer to learning the Vellanti purpose at Skybowl than when she started the cloak.
The High Warlord had not been back. He had not come to see the material delivered—probably still too angry. But she understood enough about him now to be certain that when his temper cooled, he would return to watch her sew what he intended to be her husband’s shroud.
The silk had come from Radzyn, but not because of her request. It had pleased the priests—of which she had yet to encounter even one—to bring the finest, costliest silks with them for future use in whatever would be done at Skybowl. It seemed that they, too, were sewing these days, in their little enclave set apart from the rest of the army—but the High Warlord, though he had commanded material enough in Pol’s colors for the cloak, had not explained exactly what the ritual entailed.
She would find out. She was beginning to understand him. She must play on that combination of the pride he seemed to expect of a High Princess, the meekness he demanded of a woman, and his own need for her to know the “truth” of what had been done all those generations ago. She would find out about the ritual. And then she would find a way to warn Pol.
But as the fourth day of her work wore on, and she had to pause more frequently to flex her aching hands, she began to think the High Warlord would not come back until the cloak was finished. And if that proved true, all her work would be for nothing.
At least she now had something to occupy herself during the long, empty days. But as her fingers moved with expert skill through the silk, she found her mind wandering down worrisome paths. She did not think beyond finishing the cloak. She dared not. But she could not finish until she knew what the High Warlord intended.
She had so little information. Sitting outside her tent in the mornings and afternoons, she had been careful to move her chair with the light and thus view most of the encampment. Yesterday she’d had a bit of luck. Their horses—no, not theirs, Chay’s—had been led in groups of ten up to Stronghold for a good, long drink. Evidently someone had grown tired of lugging buckets, or decided no dragons would rise out of the ashes. Meiglan counted, and counted, and went on counting—and knew they’d drink the grotto spring dry. Almost six hundred horses—and Pol with barely six hundred troops total. She considered the masses of foot soldiers she could never number accurately from where she was placed, and couldn’t pretend that the tears in her eyes were from a pricked finger.
After that, she concentrated on working out exactly how she would send her message. Never mind that she had practically nothing to tell yet; she would. She must.
The High Warlord was clever. He thought she was clever. But she was also a mere woman, fit only for bearing sons, minding her needle, and keeping her mouth shut. Still, she was the High Princess. And that, she reasoned, put him in something of a quandry. She must play both parts to perfection, keeping him off-balance enough to let information slip. Because he considered women inferior, he would not suspect her capable of making use of it But because he considered her clever, he would expect her to try.
Thus she was faced with a problem to drive anyone mad: give him something to satisfy both attitudes. Her effort to communicate with Pol could not be too obvious, but it must be there for him to see. He must admire her ingenuity while at the same time laughing at her pathetic attempt to outwit him.
And she must accomplish all this while distracting him from what she wanted Pol alone to see—which she also must make sure Pol saw and understood.
Meiglan thought she knew how it might be done. Valeda had sewn gold coins into her cloak. Meiglan would sew a letter made of silk. She had already finished it, stitching in the privacy of her tent by candlelight until her eyes swam with weariness. It was a brief and rather remarkable missive, proud and pleading, a pathetic entreaty to be rescued couched in complaints and demands. It was the way the High Warlord would expect her to write—as the Kir’reia and as a woman.
Meiglan would give him something to find, and beseech the Goddess that he would stop looking.
As for what she would tell Pol, and how—those problems must wait until she knew more. And she must know soon.
During the afternoon she finished the last of the wreaths and had no excuse not to begin the words that would tell of Pol’s great deeds as High Prince. She started at the right corner of the hem, and for pleasure’s sake made the initial capital of her husband’s name a beautiful scrollwork of vines and leaves all in gold.
She’d stitched the silken letter in an irregular style—few capitals, no punctuation except where absolutely necessary. She didn’t have time. A frown had occasionally crossed her face while sewing, for she took as much pride in the elegance of her writing as she did in her needlework, and labored mightily to instill the same in her daughters.
The High Warlord could read her language as well as speak it—though with odd lapses in fluency. It hadn’t surprised him that the Kir’reia could read and write, though he considered such skills in a female rather akin to legs on a fish. He probably wouldn’t even notice the mistakes in her letter. But if it somehow escaped his inspection and Pol actually found and read it, the raving illiteracy alone would convince him that her wits were scattered to the winds.
Her thumb, raw from plying the needle, stroked the first letter of her husband’s name. The threads blurred and she blinked, knowing she ought to rest her eyes before she went blind. She could not rest. She had so little time.
But when would she learn what she must know, what Pol must know? And how could she convey the information?
Surely the High Warlord would inspect the completed cloak to learn—and ridicule—the Azhrei’s deeds. If she finished a day early, then after he found the silk hidden in the lining she would have a night to repair it and write a second letter. He would not think her so brainless as to try the same trick twice.
Or perhaps he would think her so clever that she would try it twice.
Worse, he might sit with her while she resewed the cloak.
It was hopeless. Give him something to find so his opinions of both her cleverness and her stupidity were reinforced. Give him something to find so he would not see what she meant for Pol alone to see—which must remain hidden yet not so obscure as to be missed.
Not even Sioned could have done it.
The High Warlord appeared very suddenly, blotting out the afternoon sunlight. He was nearly of a height with Pol and Chay and Maarken, but none of those men came to her mind as he loomed above her. Though he was bulkier in the shoulders with warrior’s muscle, he was exactly as tall as her father. She knew that this association would defeat her before she even began. She banished it to a corner of her mind. But when he stood over her like this, the way her father used to, it was all she could do to remember she was the High Princess.
“Is this all your women are good for?” he demanded, and his usually melodious voice grated on her ears.
She lowered her gaze to her work and said nothing.
“What is your want? All you have asked is this of me— silk for a cloak! No books, no walking, no bath, nothing but this!”
“You seem eager to be thought generous.” Meiglan startled herself with that. “What I want, you can’t possibly give me. Because you don’t have him and never will.”
He snorted and began to pace, his shadow passing over her again and again. At last he caught up the trailing length of silk from the sand.
“No words. No lies of his great deeds.”
She indicated the hem with its elaborate initial capital. “I’ve only just started. And I don’t have to lie about my lord’s power.” She placidly began to sew again, sliding bright needle and luminous thread through dark silk.
“He is your want. In fifteen days, you may have him— one piece at a time.”
She’d been wrong about the date.
“You think he will win? Fool of a woman! Stupid as a priestl I should give you to them now and not wait for the day!”
The eighty-ninth day of Winter.
“You will be theirs, but he is mine! They will have their ritual—and I will have mine!”
Two ritual murders, of the Azhrei and the Kir’reia.
“He will die,” the High Warlord said. “I will kill him—my own hand, my own sword!”
She met his gaze for the first time. Amazingly, her heart kept a calm rhythm and her face was serene. His was anything but. Something had happened to annoy him mightily. She gave him a pleasant smile. “You can try.”
His fists clenched. Meiglan held herself immobile, knowing that if she flinched he would know the suddenness of her terror.
“You are only a woman. You know nothing. You are without worth. You have no sons. Your husband is a fool to keep yo.u. You are no use to him!”
Something really wonderful must have happened. It was much easier now to smile.
“Clever!” he snarled. “Be clever, Kir’reia! It is all you know! At dawn that day he will die, and clever will not save him!”
He strode off, calling for attendants. She listened carefully and heard him say Radzyn several times. Had someone besieged it? Or even retaken it? The former, she decided; had the keep been lost, he would be roaring with fury instead of merely taking out his irritation on her.
When the light failed, she returned inside and lit candles. There were enough left for three or four nights of sewing. If Radzyn was no longer a source of supply—well, Pol’s need for information was more important than her need for light.
She had finished Pol’s name and title on the cloak when a commotion outside distracted her. Voices shouted questions and orders. Gliding to the tent flap, she twitched it open enough to see. Torchlight and cookfires glowed. And her guards were gone!
For an instant she pictured it—a swift horse galloping into the hills—she could lose herself in gulleys and canyons where they would never find her— From which she might never emerge alive. Sioned would have risked it, and Tobin before her illness. Meiglan wondered dully if comparisons to them would ever find her anything but lacking.
A straggle of horses limped past, broken-winded, heads hanging. On their backs, riding without saddles or bridles, were exhausted men in white tunics, some of them stained with blood. They left her limited field of vision, but she could hear very well as the High Warlord bellowed a demand in their language—with the word Radzyn falling like a boulder into a well.
Meiglan had to know. If she waited to tease information out of him, there would be nothing to tell Pol but guesses and speculations. Smoothing back her hair, she strode straight out of the tent toward his angry voice.
But by the time she reached the knot of warriors around him, he had recovered his temper. “Tilal,” he was saying, almost softly. “Rei Ossetia Tilal. Rei Ludhil. Rei Amiel.”
Meiglan stepped deliberately into his view. “You’ve lost Radzyn,” she said on a bold guess. “Stop this now, before you lose your lives.”
One of the white-clad men slid to the ground, staggered for a moment against the horse, then approached her with a hand uplifted. “Dare your lips open, woman?”
“Kir’reia,” the High Warlord snapped. The man’s arm fell. “Kir’reia!” he jeered. “Yes,” Meiglan answered, never for a moment believing she was in any danger. Not with the High Warlord there. “The Azhrei will destroy you. Leave us in peace, and he will leave you with your lives.”
“Peace he will have, Kir’reia—in death!” He laughed raucously. Everyone else joined in. The High Warlord deigned only to smile. At first Meiglan felt thoroughly the fool. But after a few moments she realized the laughter was forced and false. They were stung by defeat, these proud barbarians. Gathering herself, she gave them all a superior smile, turned, and went back to her tent.
He came to her shortly thereafter, tautly controlled in speech and gesture. “Speak again in hearing of warriors and priests, the words will be your last.”
She glanced up briefly from her needlework. “You need me alive.”
“Alive,” he agreed, “A tongue is not needed.”
“Alive and unmarked,” she challenged, remembering the warriors’ reluctance to hurt her and Valeda. “No bruises and no wounds.” Talcing an even greater chance, she went on, “Do you think I don’t know what those priests plan for me? You don’t dare harm me.”
His dark eyes flared and he swore under his breath. Then, grasping her arm, he dragged her upright. “You are truly the Kir’reia—unlike any woman I know!”
If she hadn’t been so frightened she would have sobbed aloud with laughter. The women of his experience must be fools indeed, if she shone so brightly by contrast.
He let her go, and her knees would not hold her. She landed in the chair, the cloak spilling onto the carpet.
When he spoke again, he was as calm as if his outburst had never occurred. “You will write to Rei Ossetia Tilal. You will say he will die for what is done. You will say the Fire will not touch warriors as priests. You will write this now.”
Meiglan clenched her fists and folded her arms.
“You will do this,” he murmured, “or I will kill you—and find another virgin of clean blood for the priests.”
“Virgin?” The word made her laugh with incredulity. “I’ve been a wife for nine years! I have two children!”
He shook his head. “Daughters.”
“But I—“
“Daughters,” he repeated, and this time he smiled, his clean-shaven face oddly shadowed by candlelight. “No sons.”
The rooms Sionell shared with her children were only a little way down the corridor from Pol’s. He could hear laughter, and her fondly exasperated voice as she tried to scold them into bed. He wanted to go in to them, to forget the pain of remembering similar scenes of his own family in the warmth of Sionell’s. He had just kissed Jihan good night, where she slept now on a cot in his mother’s room, and the echoes of the past had been almost too much to bear. Something strange had begun to happen to him over the last several days. He supposed he had learned how to wait. His mind functioned just as usual—observing, considering, reasoning, thinking, planning—but the impatience was gone. And that was curious, for with Meiglan in Vellanti hands he ought to have been frantic to do battle, to win her back.
But because the Vellant’im had taken her, he was compelled to admit they were real.
Killing an Enemy was not the same as killing a man. The Enemy he faced on the field had no reality beyond their swords. They were faceless, without name or personality or family or history. He was just as unreal to them: not Pol, but the Azhrei. Not a man, but a thing: Enemy.
Now, in taking Meiglan, these unknowns had ripped a portion of him away. She was part of what made him Pol. The High Prince and the Azhrei were not what she loved; it was him. Pol. Husband, lover, father of her children.
They were husbands. Fathers. Brothers. Sons. They had names and faces, the love of their families, lives that had brought them here to seize a part of his life. They would look on Meiglan and think of their own wives, their own children. Through her, they would know a part of the man Pol was.
For they were the same as he.
It was not required to mourn the deaths of those he had killed in battle. They were Enemy: alien and other, unreal, inhuman. But those who held his wife captive—he and they were real to each other now. No differences, no alienness, no otherness. Real; human.
He must believe that they were human. He must believe that they would see their wives in her, and know him as more than the Azhrei. Imagining his gentle Meiglan in the power of monsters could not be borne.
But if they were men, just like him, then—
“All right, you’ve made me curious enough to ask. Why is that door so fascinating?”
He started violently. Sionell stood nearby, mildly amused, no trace of mockery in her smile. Her eyes were sparkling, her dark red hair disordered with the rambunctious bedtime antics of her offspring. And even with Meiglan called to his mind and his heart, he felt his insides knot at the sight of this woman. I love you both. Goddess help me, what can I do?
“I was just thinking,” he said curtly.
“Don’t snarl at me,” Sionell warned in a soft voice, all humor dying in her eyes. “I’m almost cured of disliking you. Don’t give me new reasons.”
And loving me? Are you cured of that, too?
Despair helped him master himself. “Sorry. But there are plenty of reasons without my having to say a word.”
“Oh, I don’t know. You’ve changed recently—or at least you’re less obnoxious.” She leaned a shoulder against the wall, folding her arms. “What were you thinking about just now?”
He hesitated, then opened the door of his chambers. “Come talk to me for a little while. I never see you except in glimpses down the halls or across the courtyard. Even at dinner we never really get to talk.”
Sionell hung back, wary. “There are lots of other people to discuss things with.”
“Too many other people. They all hear bits and pieces of it and put it together when they talk among themselves—well, except An3ry, of course. There are things nobody tells him.”
“Rightly so. He makes me uneasy, Pol.”
“You? Why?”
She preceded him into the anteroom. “Close the door.” When he had done so, she said, “Even with all he doesn’t know, I think he feels power gathering around you. And that’s not something he relishes.”
Pol sat down, sprawling his legs, frowning absently at the scuffs on his once immaculate boots. Strange how that bothered him, where before he wouldn’t have given it a thought.
“I sat wife the diarmadh’im for a while today in the gardens,” he said with seeming irrelevance. “Asking questions and getting very few answers. But one thing Thassalante said stuck in my head like a thistle barb. ‘Every good sorcerer knows how to steal power.’ “
She nodded. “That’s exactly what I sense in Andry. What you’ve got, what you’re going to have, he’s on the alert to steal.”
“It’ll be the other way around,” Pol replied grimly. “And he won’t like it. I just hope the fight he puts up doesn’t rip Maarken to shreds.”
Sionell perched on a chair opposite him. “You’re not worried for yourself?”
“He doesn’t know about me.”
She was quiet for a time. “He’ll have to, sooner or later. That’s what all this is about. Sorcerers. I had a talk with your mother,” she added when he arched a brow.
“Good. I won’t have to explain it to you.” Restless, he stood and began to pace. “Goddess, isn’t that the Hell of it? The Vellant’im have come to take their revenge on people who haven’t held any real power in hundreds of years.”
“Life’s full of ironies,” she said with a shrug. “Do you think telling them would make any difference?”
“Of course not. They hate Sunrunners, too.”
“But once Andry learns of the distinction...”
“It’ll give him one more excuse to purge the princedoms?” Pol’s turn to shrug. Sinking into the chair again, he eyed her quizzically. “I can’t talk to anybody else like this. Oh, they’ve all got good brains, but they’ve also got their own goals. Andry’s concerned with his own power. Chay thinks only in military terms—and that’s good, I need him for that and there’s none better. Maarken is waiting for Andry and me to have at each other again, while Hollis holds her breath and begs with her eyes. And then, of course, there’s my darling, devious mother.”
“But all their goals combine into yours—don’t they?”
“In a way. Only Mother’s hiding hers. She knows something, I can feel it.”
“I’m surprised you haven’t wrung it out of her.”
“It’s funny, isn’t it? But I find I can wait. I trust her—the way I should have trusted her and Father to begin with over this war.” Pol sighed. “You’re the only one who doesn’t have an aim larger than going home. I don’t mean you don’t care about the rest of it—but you don’t let what you want get in the way of listening.” He paused, then risked it. “I need that, Ell. I need to know you’re here.”
She gestured with one hand. “Do you see me packing to leave?”
“You know what I mean.”
Her shoulders stiffened fractionally. “Not really—and not interested.”
“Ell—“
“Stop it, Pol! Why do you have to ruin it? Why can’t we just sit here and talk as friends? Damn it, stop needing me 50 much!”
“I can’t!” he cried. “And even if I didn’t, we have to talk about this. Don’t pretend you didn’t feel anything, I know you did—I know it!”
“If you were so almighty certain of it, you wouldn’t be yelling at me.”
For an instant his temper came near to igniting. Then he gave a tired smile. “Do you know how much I hate you when you’re right?”
“Hold that thought.” She got to her feet and started for the door.
“If you didn’t feel anything, you wouldn’t always be walking away from me,” he called softly to her back.
She stopped with her hand on the knob. After a moment she turned, her face expressionless. “You,” she said, “are a son of a bitch.”
“And a bastard as well.” He spread his hands wide. “Both of them, in fact as well as action. But whatever I am, we’ve got to clear things up, not pretend they don’t exist.”
Sionell resumed her chair. “You wanted to talk. So talk.”
He couldn’t think of a single word to say.
Her lips twisted in disgust. “All right. It happened. It shouldn’t have, but it did. We can do one of two things: forget it and be friends, or remember it and be unable to speak a civil word to each other for the rest of our lives. I’ve been trying to show you which I want, Pol. Evidently you don’t agree.”
“Isn’t there another choice?”
“I won’t be your mistress. Even if I wanted to be, which I don’t, we both have children and you have a wife. I won’t hurt any of them—and I certainly won’t repeat the mistake of dishonoring Tallain’s memory.”
“Are those your reasons?” he asked softly. “Or your excuses?”
“What do you want from me?” she exclaimed. “All right, let’s talk about it, shall we? Until there aren’t any more words left, and then maybe you’ll leave it dead where it lies!”
“Stop it, Sionell.”
“You wanted it to start,” she shot back. Her voice took on an ugly sneer that made him wince. “Need me, do you? What you really need is an imagination, Pol. Let’s see— shall I have my own chambers at Dragon’s Rest, where you’ll come to my bed when you feel the need? Will Meiglan and I sit on either side of you at the law courts when you need our advice? Just think of our happy family evenings! Her children and my children playing oh-so-sweetly around us—and perhaps our children, Pol? Yours and mine? Do you need a son, High Prince?”
“I’m not my grandfather!” he cried. “Damn it, Ell—do you think I’d do that to you and Meiglan? Or to myself?”
“Don’t like that version?” She rose, pacing as he had just done. “How about this one? You give me some quiet little manor convenient to Dragon’s Rest, and I’ll wait breathlessly for your visits—in secret, of course, so Meiglan doesn’t know. My parents can raise Talya and Jahnev and Meig, so not even the children will know! Would that suit your need, High Prince?”
Springing to his feet, Pol took her by the shoulders and shook her. “Shut up! You know that’s not what I want, not any of it!”
“What in the Name of the Goddess do you want, then? I won’t be kept, Pol! I won’t do anything that makes me hide my face from my own mirror!” She paused, then with lethal softness inquired, “Or were you thinking of putting Meiglan aside to marry me?”
He gasped as if she had driven her fist into his stomach.
“No, I suppose not,” Sionell said. “Murder isn’t your line of work—and we both know it would kill her.” She pried herself from his grip. “All right, we’ve talked. It’s settled. We’ll forget our mistake and try to—“
“Ell.” He put a hand very gently on her arm. “I love you.”
She shook him off. “You’re beginning to bore me, Pol.”
“I love you,” he murmured again.
“That’s your problem,” she said with a shrug. “Get over it.”
“You wouldn’t fight me so much if there was nothing inside you to fight.”
“What I’m fighting is the urge to kick you into the middle of next Summer.”
“Perhaps.” He let her go. “Do you know why I’m certain that I love you? Every time I’m with you, it’s like when I stood in the sand with Azhdeen at my back and watched the Vellant’im advance on me. I’m convinced I’m going to die—and at the same time I feel invincible, and safer than I’ve ever felt in my life.”
Blue-gray eyes flinched. “I don’t mean—that’s not what I want, Pol. You know it isn’t.” She stuck her hands into her trouser pockets. “It’s just that you make me so damned mad. Always demanding things of me. Always knowing where to put the knife, then twisting it just because you can. You hurt me—not like when I was young, but you can still hurt me. If that’s your definition of love, then maybe I should go home to Tiglath before we do end up hating each other.”
He took a careful step nearer. “You’ve never let me show you what I mean by love.”
“And if I did? What about Meiglan? Do you think I’d take what’s hers?”
“You don’t understand. It’s not the same sort of love.”
“Oh, and that makes it all right? What in all Hells is wrong with you?”
“I don’t know!” he burst out. “Do you think I asked to feel this? Now, when it’s too late? I’m ashamed—because I’m not ashamed! What kind of man does that make me?”
“The usual kind,” she answered, with a wry gentleness that was the very last thing he’d expected to hear. “Did you think you were special?”
All he could do was give a weary laugh and a shake of his head. “I’ve tried very hard not to be—while being convinced all the time that I am.”
“It’s why you love Meiglan, you know,” she said seriously. “She’s your refuge from all the other things you have to be.”
“And it’s why I love you,” he replied. “You force me to be—‘usual’—but at the same time you never let me forget that I’m not.”
“She’s better for you than I ever would have been, Pol.”
“We’ll never have the chance to find out, will we?” he asked. “You’re right, we’ve talked—and this is the end to it.”
“Yes. With our customary knack for slicing each other up with the truth.” She opened the door, glancing over her shoulder. “Friends?”
“Friends,” he acknowledged.
She nodded. “Get some sleep.”
To his surprise, he did—falling into bed and a deep well of velvety rest.
But toward dawn he dreamed. He walked through the charred gardens of Stronghold, tears stinging his eyes. At the grotto, he knelt to wash the ache away with cool water. Floating on the pond were two royal circlets. One was woven of living flowers, brilliant purple and gold and blue; the other was of silver studded with a rainbow of living jewels. The sun blazed down, igniting both in Fire. He reached out, not knowing which he would take—but he wasn’t swift enough. The fragile crown of flowers withered and vanished. He woke sheened with icy sweat and calling Meiglan’s name.