1 ve never seen Stronghold,” Andrev murmured.
“You still haven’t.” Tilal jerked his horse’s reins and started back through the outer bailey, much to the animal’s relief. He didn’t like it here any more than Tilal did.
To be told what Sioned had done; to hear descriptions by Sunrunners who had looked; to know that the splendid castle of his boyhood and youth was nothing but a Fire-scarred ruin ... to see it with his own eyes. Nothing had prepared him for this. For the sickness that rose to his throat, the tears that stung his eyes. The fury.
He did not say to Andrev, You should have seen it when Rohan was alive. You should have been here that Spring of 705, when all the princes met under the dragon banner and swore to Rohan as High Prince. You should have heard the music of the fountain and the grotto waterfall on a lazy summer day, played dragons in your great-grandmother’s garden, stretched out on your back under the willow tree to watch green and gold shadows. You should have browsed through the library and listened to the servants flirting with each other and climbed the Flametower to see the whole of the Desert spreading out before you beneath the stars.
Andrev would never know the home of his ancestors as it had been. And Tilal could say none of those things to him. It hurt too much.
He rode through the tunnel, past the long line of riders leading their horses in for a drink at the grotto pool, and back out into the Desert. The signs of Vellanti occupation were everywhere here: the blackened circles of abandoned cookpits, the stench of latrines dug into the sand. But the Desert would take back its own, and cover everything in the next storm.
He wondered bitterly if eventually Stronghold would be buried, too.
Gemma was waiting for him, seated on her cloak in the sand. Cheese, bread, dried meat, a few wrinkled apples, and a bottle of the best in Chay’s cellars were spread out before her.
Sympathy gleamed in her eyes as he joined her, but she didn’t ask what he’d found within the keep. Instead: “Iliena saw the oddest thing, Tilal. Just the other side of that rise is a stone trough. What could they have meant, dragging it all the way down from the keep?”
“Damned if I know.” He sat, careful to keep his boots from the fine blue wool of her cloak. “We’ll start for Skybowl just before dusk, I think.” _ “Are you sure about the timing?” Gemma wielded her belt dagger against the half-round of cheese.
“It’s not like it was at Swalekeep. We’re not part of the main battle plan. All we really have to do is show up as close to dawn as possible. With luck, we won’t even have to draw swords.”
“Don’t patronize me,” she said, but with none of her usual quickfire temper. And she wouldn’t look at him, which worried him. Gemma never spared herself or anyone else when she had something to say. “If the Vellant’im turn and run, they’ll be heading straight for you. If Maarken’s in trouble when you get there, you’ll have to take the brunt of the fighting for him.”
“But if Pol and Andry manage that ros’salath or whatever they call it, there won’t be anybody to run or to fight.” He bit into an apple, chewed, swallowed, and added, “Too bad, really.”
She glanced up and then away, her eyes fierce. But her voice shook. “I lost my firstborn son. I don’t want to lose you, too.”
Tilal grasped her hand. “It’s for Rihani that I want to kill them. It’s not civilized of me. Rohan would be appalled to know what I’m thinking right now—that I wish to all Hells I was a Sunrunner, so I could blast every one of those whoresons to ashes for what they did to our boy.”
“Don’t you think I want the same thing?” Catching his hand in both her own, she stared out at the late-afternoon shadows pooling between the dunes. “I stopped at High Kirat on the way to Radzyn. Danladi told me—“ She choked and tears welled in her dark brown eyes. “She told me everything. What he said at the last. That’s what Rohan did to us, Tilal, to all of us. That’s why so many died—not just Rihani. We’re so accustomed to peace that we can’t believe in war even when it’s marching across our lands and burning our fields and killing our sons—“
“Gemma,” he said carefully, “do you think that Rohan’s way has made us weak? Is that it?”
“I don’t know!” she cried. “Rihani was ashamed that he hated war and death and killing—and Rohan did that to him!”
“What Rihani felt,” he replied quietly, “was shame that killing sickened him so. Would you have had him revel in it? Wash his hands in the blood of his slaughters?”
“No! But—“
“As a man and as a prince he wanted only peace. As a man and as a prince, he was forced to become a warrior. He knew he had to fight. He killed more than his share, according to Saumer. But he wasn’t meant for such things. He hated what he had to do. But he did it.” Drawing a deep breath around the ache in his own heart, he gazed earnestly at the mother of his son. “He understood, at the last, that it wasn ‘t a weakness, that he had nothing to be ashamed of. He wasn’t meant to kill. He knew he was the man and the prince we always hoped he’d be.”
The tears shone in streaks down her face. “Then I must be the barbarian. I want them all dead, Tilal—and I’m not ashamed of it!”
He put his arms around her, not caring who might see them, knowing that those who did would immediately glance away. “I know,” he murmured into her hair, “I know, love.”
After a few moments, she pulled away and knuckled her eyes. “I’m not making any sense,” she sighed. “First I tell you I don’t want you to fight, and then I say I want every last Vellanti dead. You must think I’m insane.”
“I have my own kind of madness,” he admitted. “I’d love to kill them all with my bare hands—but the thought of another day filled with death and blood nauseates me.”
“Rohan did a good job on you, too,” she remarked, but with less rancor. As he turned involuntarily to Stronghold, she reached over and coaxed his head back around. “Don’t think about it.”
“You were right. I should never have gone up there.”
“No, you shouldn’t.” She began picking the bread apart into crumbs. “I have to kill them, Gemma,” he said quietly. “For
Rihani, for Kostas—and for Rohan. I know what that makes of me. I know I should care about that. I probably will, later.
But right now...”
Sioned retied the gray scarf around her head, using a polished silver tray to make sure all the ends were hidden. “It’s not what it was,” she said as Alasen tucked in a few stray curls at her nape. “But still distinctive.”
“Not that anyone in his right mind would expect to find you here,” Alasen replied. “But we have to assume they know certain things about us, and the red-haired, green-eyed High Princess Sioned is famous. There, all done.” She was smiling a grim little smile as Sioned faced her. “Well, what shall we feed them tonight for dinner?”
Betheyn answered from the hearth. “Dragon-bane soup with cactus-needle bread.”
“Any black-cap mushrooms around?” Alasen asked. “We could make a lovely Nightmare Stew.”
“Don’t forget the ground glass in the wine,” finished Sionell.
“Ladies, ladies!” Sioned chided. “Subtlety in all things, if you please. Beth, do you know anything about cooking a few haunches of elk that have seen better days?”
“You mean how to make it edible?” she snorted. “Do you honestly think these people would know the difference—or even care?”
“Point taken. Do what you can with enough to feed us, then, and warn poor Ruala and Isriam not to have much appetite. Sionell, I’ll need your help with the soup. You make the basics, and then I’ll play with it a little.” Suddenly she laughed. “Oh, how Rohan would’ve loved it! Me, who can’t even brew a decent cup of taze, cooking for hundreds!”
“I’ll get started on the bread,” Alasen offered. “I’ve never baked for hundreds, either. I just hope I remember how much beer makes it rise—and how much makes it explode!”
Sioned exchanged a glance with her Namesake, who nodded and cleared her throat to gain the others’ attention. “After Sioned finishes with the soup, don’t go near it. Don’t taste it. Not even a drop. We have a little something planned. We worked it out at Feruche.”
“How little?” Beth asked.
“Let’s just say,” she drawled, with a feline smile on her face, “that the garderobes are going to be very crowded tonight.”
“Belmayce has that effect,” Sioned added.
“Bel—?” Alasen gasped, half on laughter and half on surprise. “Forget the garderobes, they’ll be using the bathtubs as chamberpots! Riyan and Ruala won’t thank you for this, Sioned. They’ll have to stay at Feruche or Elktrap until the stink airs out!”
“Sometime next Winter, I’d say,” Beth chuckled. “When will it take effect?”
“They should start to feel it around midnight.”
It was nearly dusk by the time Sionell pronounced the soup ready. “I’ve put enough whitespice into it to mask any flavor.”
Sioned nodded. Taking the sack of belmayce she’d removed from Ruala’s stores at Feruche, she began to measure it into the huge cauldron.
“One for health, two for a cure, and three for a purge to last all night long,” Sionell said as she watched the powdered herb sift into the soup. “At least, that’s what my mother used to say when she dosed anyone stupid enough to complain of an upset stomach. She used pinches, though.”
“I should hope so!” Beth said. “Alasen, do you need help with the bread?”
“Done by dinnertime. You know, if I ever get tired of being a princess, I may have a career waiting for me as a master baker.”
“You could name your wage and get rich in a year,” Sionell agreed. She looked at Sioned then, and caught her staring at the swirls of yellowish powder vanishing into the soup. “Wishing it was poison?” she murmured.
Sioned gave a start. “Actually, I was thinking about when Ostvel lived here. Years and years ago. I’ve always been a disaster at anything domestic—Cami ran Stronghold for me and Ostvel continued after she died. But when Rohan gave him Skybowl, he found that Lord Farid had two roasting pans and three kettles to his name, and that was all. So he ordered up everything you see here now, and sent us the reckoning—saying that if he absolutely had to become our vassal, we could damned well pay for the privilege of eating at his table.” She gestured at the array of copper and silver and steel. “I was remembering when all of this was new.”
“Sounds just like him,” Alasen chuckled. “And speaking of tables, I think it’s time we set them.”
The plates and cups were already stacked, waiting to be carried in. Sioned stayed behind while the other three went to the great hall. When their footsteps had faded, she again dipped the measuring cup into the sack of belmayce.
She had thought, back at Feruche, that she would do this for the living, that they might have their lives back to live in peace. But now she thought only of the dead. What she did was for them.
For Myrdal, who ought to have died peacefully in her own bed at Stronghold.
For Morwenna, killed by iron, and Relnaya, the same— and for Morwenna’s Elidi, butchered.
For Meath—oh, Meath, friend and protector...
For those from Faolain Lowland—Miral, Kemeny, Gevnaya, Pelida—who died with Baisath and Michinida at Riverport.
For Tallain...
For Lyela of Waes, who deserved better than to have Kiele for a mother.
For Jahnavi, son of Walvis and Feylin, brother of Sionell—and for his gentle Rabisa, too gentle not to break in this Vellanti storm, and for their little girl, Sioned’s Namesake, Siona.
For Segelin and Paveol and Edrelin, dead at Gilad Seahold.
For Latham and Hevatia, and for her kinsman Volog, who died of his grief at their deaths.
For Halian of Meadowlord—Parchment Prince, who deserved better than murder at his own son’s hands.
For Rialt and Mevita, executed at Swalekeep, and their Sunrunner whose name she did not even know, slaughtered in secret.
For Cluthine, Lady of Meadowlord, also dead by treach- ery
For Kostas, her brother’s son, fallen to a Merida knife.
For Rihani—son of her brother’s son, who killed the Me-rida who killed Kostas.
For Kerluthan of River Ussh, dead defending what Chiana and Rinhoel would have given away to the enemy.
For Brenlis, first of thefaradh’im to die, fey child of see-ings and dreams.
For Oclel and Rusina, Sunrunners, Sioned’s own kind, and for Valeda, whose courage had not saved her.
And even for Edirne and Camanto of Fessenden, who would be alive if not for this war.
For all whose lives were stolen—and for all the grief and pain these savages had caused.
She hesitated.
But not for Rohan.
Not for you, beloved. You would want no part in what I do here tonight. So this last is not for you.
It is for me.
She threw the empty sack onto the hearthfire. It caught, flared, and burned to ash just as Sionell, Alasen, and Betheyn returned to the kitchen.
Sioned turned to them and smiled. “That was quick work.”
“Power exists,” Aldiar snapped at Idalian. “Like everything else, it can be both good and evil. Dranath both kills and cures—but do we eradicate it for being guilty of the one and ignore that it’s essential for the other? Evil and goodness in the same substance. It all depends on how you use it.”
Idalian hunkered into his cloak as teasing fingers of chill wind stroked into their little tent. “You couldn’t possibly have thought up something so trite on your own. Is it standard diarmadhi teaching?”
“The way you were taught that all sorcerers are always evil?” he retorted. “Trite, is it? What do you know about power?”
Rohannon judged it time to intervene. “I understand what you’re saying, Aldiar. It’s the choices we make about using the good and bad parts of ourselves.” He shivered, and not entirely because he was the one nearest the open tent flap. “It’s hard to admit mistakes, especially when they’re based on our own flaws.”
“So you learned that, did you?” Black eyes smiled at him, taking the sting from the words. “I guess you’re not hopeless after all.”
“Thanks,” he said sourly. “But what you said about everyone being taught that all sorcerers are evil—that’ll be hard to get around after this is over.”
Idalian stiffened. “My attitude being evil in and of itself, you mean?”
“No,” Rohannon hurried to say. “Not at all. It’s how everybody else feels, too, you know.”
“And that’s what’s so stupid,” Aldiar burst out. “The ones with Yarin—they think the rest of us couldn’t take over an empty barn, let alone a princedom. But look at how they’ve gone about it. No more subtlety than a rabid wolf.”
“Whereas you” Idalian purred, “are past masters at—“
“Come on,” Rohannon interrupted. “He’s on our side, remember?” Jdalian only shrugged.
“Subtle,” Aldiar said. “Who do you think worked to get Lisiel married to Laric, and Iliena to Ludhil? The heirs to both Firon and Dorval are diarmadh’im. If we’d wanted, we could’ve put tutors and riding masters and any kind of servant you care to name within their households, and coaxed them in whatever direction we liked!” ! “How do I know you didn’t?” i “Because we don’t want that kind of power! All we want is to live in the open, in peace—“
“So that’s why you were so concerned with keeping Tirel alive!”
The younger boy fisted both gloved hands, looking murderous. Idalian’s fingers twitched toward his belt-knife.
Both of them got a snowball in the face.
“All right, that’s enough!” Rohannon exclaimed as they sputtered furiously. “Idalian, that attitude is going to get perfectly innocent diarmadh’im persecuted and maybe even killed! And as for you—“ He glared at Aldiar. “If this is your idea of ‘subtle,’ Goddess help you and all your people!”
1 “What’s the commotion? Any trouble?” I All three looked up as Arlis trudged through the snow to-I ward their shelter.
“None, my lord,” Rohannon said, with a quick glance at 1 the others to emphasize it.
“Snowball fights are good exercise for keeping warm, I suppose,” Arlis commented, not believing Rohannon for an instant but willing to let it go. “Maybe Laric should challenge Yarin to a duel.”
“Is there any response from Balarat. my lord?” Idalian asked.
“Nothing. We assemble for battle tomorrow at dawn. I’d appreciate it if you’d spread the word. Aldiar, Prince Laric would like to see you.”
“At once, my lord.” He scrambled up and crunched away through the snow.
“No trouble,” Arlis murmured, eyeing the two young men. “Good.”
Rohannon held himself from a guilty squirm, wondering at the same time what he had to feel guilty about. “Do you want me to tell my father about tomorrow’s battle, my lord?”
“Maarken has enough to worry about, I should think.” He chafed his fingers together and looked over his shoulder at the castle on the brow of the hill. “Tomorrow will be an interesting day all the way around,” he went on. “But I confess I have only one personal objective. I can’t wait to get warm again.” j
Getting to his feet, Rohannon flashed an impish grin up at ‘ his prince. “Will that make it into the ballads, too?”
Alasen practically skidded to a stop on the kitchen floor tiles. “Ell! Sioned! Hurry—you’ve got to see this!”
“The vegetables—“ Sionell began.
“—can wait! They won’t start eating for a long time yet. Come on!”
The two women dusted their hands on their aprons and followed Alasen through the torchlit passage to the great hall. She stopped just within the shadow of the door, in view of the high table and the assembled warriors beyond. Ruala, Beth, and Isriam were there, too, staring in silence.
“No bonfire this evening,” Sioned murmured.
“After last night’s, do you wonder?” asked Beth.
The High Warlord stood on the raised step before the high table. A white-garbed priest who had not been with the others the previous night stood beside him. Both his arms were raised, shortening his robe to expose skinny bare feet and ankles. Sioned bit back a smirk, then lost all urge to merriment as warriors began to separate from their fellows. Scores of them came forward from the disciplined ranks: mute, meek—and on their knees.
Sioned felt her eyes start from her head.
Ruala whispered, “He called down the gaze of the Storm God on them, to judge their worthiness in battle. I’m not clear on some of the words—I only reviewed what I had to in order to understand some of Grandfather’s scrolls. Then he described the Hells waiting for those who are unclean.”
“Something lingering, I hope.” Sionell’s voice was half-strangled with astonishment at the display before them.
As more and more Vellant’im crawled into line down the center of the hall, Ruala went on, “All those who are unclean—or maybe ‘guilty’—his accent is simply foul— they’re to come forward, ask forgiveness, and be cleansed.”
“Thus made worthy of killing the Storm God’s enemies,” Beth interpreted.
“That’s not all,” Ruala said. “The High Warlord told them that anybody who stays back knowing himself unclean will be executed on the spot. The priest will know.”
Alasen, who had slipped away to a window, returned and leaned close to Sioned. “The line of them stretches halfway around the lake!”
With a casual calm she didn’t feel, she replied, “Then somebody’d better go back to the kitchen and see that dinner doesn’t burn.” She had no intention of missing this herself; it was like reading the absurd legends in Feylin’s dragon book, only come to life before her eyes.
Isriam vanished down the hallway. A good lad, Sioned thought absently. If Pirro didn’t recognize that and recognize him as a Prince of Fessenden ... she’d personally convince him otherwise.
Four other priests stepped forward. One carried a golden fingerbowl—one of Ruala’s, Sioned noted, used at the high table—from which drifted a flower-scented column of white smoke. The second held a large pitcher of water. The one beside him grasped a fat white candle between his hands. The last bore a large plate heaped with thick crystals.
“Salt?” Alasen guessed.
“Air, Water, Fire, Earth,” Ruala murmured. “But what are they going to do with them?”
The first of the warriors reached the high table. The priest spread his hands, gripped the man’s head with his fingertips, and glared down into his eyes. Sioned saw the pallid marks left on the man’s dark forehead as the priest let him go. A nice trick, that, she thought; the white prints of the white priest. She was even more impressed—in a detached, intellectual way, she insisted to herself—as the High Warlord extended a hand to help the warrior to his feet.
You have been judged worthy, the gesture said. And I accept you as my servant in battle.
Signs and symbols, Sioned mused, even worse than the Isulk’im. As a second warrior took his place before the priest, the first did what she had guessed he would to. He inhaled incense, sipped water, passed his hand through the candleflame, and took grains of salt from a golden spoon onto his tongue. But his mighty grimace at this last set Sioned to wondering.
“Can you believe this?” Ruala muttered, shaking her head.
“They do,” Sionell replied.
The incense was obvious: Air to cleanse the mind. Water purified the body. The hand-through-the-flame had been the right hand, the sword-hand. That above all must be without taint for battle. But the reaction to salt, repeated by every man who partook of it, that one defeated her.
Why screw, up your face like that, with only a few grains on the tongue? It couldn’t have tasted that awful. The salt stood for Earth, that much was easy. It was white, and white was the priests’ color. But why so emphatic a reaction?
“The salt,” Sionell breathed at her side, and Sioned gave her a startled glance. “Of course. Salt is bitter.”
“What?” But in the next moment she understood. Bitter, sharp, a powerful jolt to a delicate and evocative sense.
“That’s why they’re exaggerating the taste. It’s a reminder of how terrible it was to sin.”
Beth nodded slowly. “What could be more bitter to a superstitious people than being unclean in the sight of their i priests and their High Warlord?”
“No—their god,” Ruala said.
Barbarians, Sioned thought. You could lead these people anywhere because they ‘re blinded by their superstitions. They believe in magic and sin and Pol’s influence over dragons—and, if we’ve read them right, in dragon’s teeth and blood and all the rest of it. And we have read them right. We can trick them using their beliefs.
It occurred to her suddenly that she’d love to hear their songs, their legends, their poetry. She was certain the complexity would dazzle her—as it undoubtedly dazzled them, but for different reasons. The stories she’d heard all her life were probably just as exciting, and just as improbable. But she ‘knew them to be stories. AH she needed for proof was the way Ostvel—who’d been there and knew perfectly well what really happened—had embroidered the tale of the Rialla of 698, justifying his fancywork by saying it was Sinar and Siona he sang about. “Never let the truth get in the way of a good story,” he grinned when she and Rohan reacted with embarrassed outrage on first hearing the ballad.
All songs and legends were like that. Moral or political lesson, cautionary tale or heroic saga, love lyric or drinking ballad, hilariously funny or poignantly sad—none was to be taken as literal truth. Everybody knew that.
The Vellant’im evidently believed everything. Well, they’d been given plenty to believe—Azhdeen’s appearance at Remagev and the use Rohan had made of it and the Sunrunners’ Fire; her own conjuring at Faolain Lowland; Pol’s visit here last night; the dragon book. They’d swallowed all of it whole.
Contempt dissolved when Sioned glanced at the High Warlord again. His warriors followed him blindly, unthinkingly. Not the way people followed Rohan and Pol, with their eyes wide open and believing with their minds as well as their hearts. But what did it matter why a leader was trusted, as long as the trust existed? It might disgust her that fear and superstition united these people, but they’d done damned well so far.
That, she told herself, was about to change. What united them would be their downfall.
She watched hundreds of Vellant’im kneel to their priest, be raised up by their High Warlord. They breathed incense, drank water, touched fire, and tasted salt, positive that by abasing themselves their deity would reward them with victory—just like in all the legends.
Ostvel wouldn’t have to embellish this for a ballad. Why bother? Life was usually more improbable than legends, after all.
Legends were just tidier.
Just after nightfall, with the stars shimmering across the moonless sky, seven hundred riders stopped for a brief rest and a hasty dinner. Pol and Maarken rode through the loose ranks with a word for every man and woman present, for between them they knew them all.
An odd quiet seemed to tag behind them at a dozen riders’ remove. At last, near the back, they heard the reason for the following silence.
Andry was singing. Softly, unobtrusively, but his voice carried in the clear Desert air. As Pol and Maarken returned to the front lines, the words were discernible.
He sang of the beauty of the day just ended and the dawn promised on the morrow. He sang of the Goddess and her many kindnesses, the welcome light of Fire and the sweetness of Water and clean Air and generous Earth. It was an old song and a lovely one, and Pol nearly added his own voice to it.
Andry had changed the ending verses.
Pol froze in his saddle. Maarken wouldn’t look at him. When Andry was finished, and a sigh breathed here and there, Pol rode forward to where his cousin stood.
A fingerflame danced gracefully at Andry’s shoulder, lighting one side of his face. He looked up at Pol, and all the serenity fled his eyes.
“It wasn’t for me, Pol. It was for them.”
Pol knew he was perfectly sincere. Andry hadn’t wanted to draw attention to his own position or his power. He truly wanted to give their people comfort.
Still, his voice was cold as he replied, “You weren’t asking the Goddess for victory. You asked her to help us kill.”
Andry arched a sardonic brow. “Considering what we must do tomorrow, is there any difference?”
Yes, damn you— no.
Pol jerked the reins around and rode away.
After the first hundred or so Vellant’im went by, Sionell returned to the kitchen. She told herself that it was boredom, and the demands of keeping the meal reasonably edible. “Go watch if you like,” she told Isriam, ‘Til take care of things here.”
Once she was alone with the bubbling cauldrons, Alasen’s stacked loaves of bread (only a little burned around the edges), and the eight huge wheels of cheese, she could admit that the spectacle in the great hall had made her sick.
It was impossible to imagine any man she knew on his knees like that. Her father, Maarken, Chay, Riyan, Tilal, Andry—they’d rather die.
But Pol would do it, she thought as she started slicing bread. He ‘d crawl on his knees all the way from Feruche to Skybowl. He’s more arrogant than any three of them put together, and yet he’d do it if it would save lives. They could never humble him, never break him. His pride could withstand anything. He simply vjouldn’t care. Look what he did last night—of all the damnfool hopeless stunts! And he meant every word of it, too.
Anybody else would have used the power of the mirror to terrify, even to kill. But not Pol. Oh, no. He must try to reason with the enemy, with their terror a result of Alasen’s Fire-calling and not his deliberate design.
Idiot. Hadn’t he been able to think up a more effective use of the mirror?
“ Tallain would’ve understood perfectly, she thought. Tallain would’ve approved what Pol said. He would’ve done the same thing himself, if he’d been able. But not because his arrogance was impervious to scorn. Tallain never experienced an instant of arrogance in his life. As unlike as he and Pol were, yet they would still have agreed on what must be done and said.
And this made her admiration for both men either completely logical or utterly insane. They arrived at the same place from opposite directions. Did that make them more alike, or less? Did it justify what she felt for Pol, or make mockery of her love for Tallain?
Bread finished, she started on the cheese, not caring if it crusted over by the time the Vellant’im completed their ceremony. She didn’t give a damn what they ate, as long as they ate the soup. It would keep them from any fight more serious than who got to the garderobe first.
She could have told Pol that reasoning with the Vellant’im was futile. Anyone could have told him that. And yet, in a perverse way, she admired him more for what he had tried and failed to do than for anything he had ever succeeded at. Alasen had been right: doomed as the attempt might be, at least he had tried.
She’d give good odds, though, that failure had surprised him. Not closely acquainted with personal defeat, was the sorcerer-Sunrunner High Prince. How it must gall him.
Dangerously close to compassion, Sionell impaled the last round of cheese with her knife and went to stir the soup. She had just dipped the long-handled spoon into the cauldron when once more Alasen raced into the kitchen, breathless and flushed.
“Oh, leave that!” she ordered. “If we climb the main tower, we’ll get the best view—“
“Let me guess—they’re imitating the dragons’ Sand Dance.”
“All right, then,” Alasen said tartly. “Miss this if you like. But your mother will never forgive you if you can’t tell her how it looked to see the legend of the dragon teeth come to life.”
A hasty climb later, they joined Sioned and Betheyn on the uppermost floor of the keep. Just visible over the crater’s rim, tiny pinpoint Fires were moving outward from a central conflagration as high as a dragon. In stately progression they spread to either side in an ever-widening line, and finally came to a halt when they spanned a quarter measure.
The Vellant’im lined the caldera, holding aloft torches and swords—like a single sinuous, fantastical creature with fluttering gold and silver feathers, Sionell thought, fascinated.
Each sorcerer—and there were well-nigh a hundred of them, all in dark colors—lifted something sharp and white. Sionell knew they were only pottery shards. But from a distance...
The individual Fires fell with the dragon’s teeth into the sand. Abrupt darkness ensued, but for the central flames. Then new Fires were kindled, several steps back. New shards were produced, displayed, and dropped with the tiny flames. The sequence repeated seven more times for a total of nine.
By the fifth, Vellanti warriors were screaming with rage that didn’t mask their fear.
Sioned was laughing quietly to herself. “Totally unneces- sary, of course, with what I’ve got ready—but it makes a delightful show, doesn’t it?”
“Where did they all come from?” Sionell wondered. “You only brought nine or ten to Feruche, didn’t you, Beth?”
“Nine. With another ninety left at Chaldona. I suppose they decided to join the fun.”
“They’re lucky the whole horde of Vellant’im isn’t descending on them,” Sionell said. “Or was Pol really that convincing as the Azhrei?”
Sioned leaned her elbows on the windowsill and cupped her chin in her palms. “Andry’s the lucky one, actually. I doubt that even with help he could conjure up—what, nine times ninety-nine warriors? Good thing he won’t have to.”
The diarmadh’im finished their work and the central Fire vanished as if it had never been. So did they, back into the starlit night whence they’d come.
“Dinnertime,” Sioned announced sweetly. Then she chuckled low in her throat. Something about the sound grated on SioHell’s nerves. “Rohan, my devious darling lord and husband, I do hope you’re watching this!”
One more ceremony was performed that night. At Goddess Keep, Torien and Jolan called for silence in the refectory and spent much breath and time honoring the Goddess and beseeching her protection. The chanted responses from hundreds of Sunrunner throats echoed long after the pair sat down again—Torien in Andry’s chair.
Edrel, four places down from him, maintained stony silence. Norian’s lips stayed closed in a thin line of sheer annoyance. They had been invited to share the meal, but both knew it was really to be impressed with the power and majesty of the invocation.
As, much later, they made their way back upstairs to El-sen’s chamber, Norian hissed, “That woman’s idea, surely as the sun rises!”
“I was talking with Antoun about her the other day,” Edrel murmured. “Jolan bore Torien a stillborn son about ten years ago, after someone caught her up in a working that went awry. She hasn’t conceived since.”
“And she blames Andry for it? But she’s one of his devr’im, married to his Chief Steward!”
He shrugged. “For an ambitious Sunrunner, what better place than Andry’s inner circle?”
Norian said nothing as they crossed from one wing into another through a long, open hallway. It wasn’t until they were outside her brother’s room over the library that she whispered, “Edrel—she wants Torien to be Lord of Goddess Keep. And this is her chance.”
“She wouldn’t dare.”
“No?”
He shrugged uncomfortably. “All right, yes. She’d dare. I’ll just have to be careful about falling into any traps.” He snorted. “Lovely, isn’t it? First I have to tiptoe the line between supporting Jayachin’s lies and the Sunrunners’, and now I’m defending Andry’s position against his own people. Nori, my love, when this is all over, would you mind very much if we went home to River Ussh and didn’t leave it for, say, twenty years?”
She slipped her arm through his. “Sounds perfect.”
THIRTY-ONE
LOOK at us, skulking around the fire,” Sioned mused. The six of them sat drinking taze and waiting for the Vellant’im to return—to a dinner none of them would want after the spectacle of the dragons’ teeth. “Two Sunrunners, a diarmadhi, the daughters of an architect and a dragon-counter, and a Prince of Fessenden, huddling beside a kitchen hearth.”
“No, my lady—somebody who might become a Prince of Fessenden,” Isriam corrected.
“I wouldn’t worry too much about it,” Sioned advised with a smile. “Your grandsire owes me a favor or three.”
Isriam had outgrown his last adolescent gawkiness at Chaldona, and his beard was heavy enough for daily razoring, but she had continued to think of him as a boy until this moment. He met her gaze with quiet dignity and said, “Thank you, your grace, but I’d rather have him acknowledge me because he wants to, not because he has to.”
“Of course. I’m sorry,” Sioned returned gravely. “However, Pirro isn’t stupid. Not only are you the son of his eldest son—and why he passed over Camanto in favor of Edirne always escaped me—but you’re eminently worthy.”
“Didn’t you know?” Alasen asked. “About Camanto, I mean. Pirro intended him to be the next ruling prince all along. But he didn’t think it should come easily, the way everything else did for Camanto.”
“Death didn’t,” Sionell murmured. “Not to hear Rohannon’s report of it.”
Ruala turned to him, her words low and intense. “Isriam, that’s going to have to be part of your job—to make sure Pirro doesn’t kill all the diarmadh’im he can find because of what one of them did to his son.”
“Your father,” Sioned added softly, watching the boy’s— young man’s—clear brown eyes.
He understood the look, and said what she’d hoped he’d say. “I came to know several diarmadh’im rather well at Chaldona and Feruche. And we all know now that there are at least three factions.”
“Three?”
“Those who killed Prince Camanto, rallied to Chiana and Rinhoel, and took Balarat. Those who work with us now— and seem to have worked for us in the past, even though we didn’t know it. And those who either don’t care or are too scared to choose either side.”
Sioned nodded, but did not praise his reasoning. Rohan always expected the people around him to use their brains. “A search must be made through Princemarch, Firon, and Fessenden for just those people—so they’ll know it’s safe to live in the open.”
“But what about the first group?” Beth asked worriedly. “After all they’ve done, how can they be allowed to go free? One of them killed Sorin, and another very nearly killed Pol. Those who believe with them are still at work—obviously. Look at Firon, as Isriam says.”
Isriam got to his feet “And how do we tell the difference? Excuse me, my ladies, it’s time somebody checked to see if the Vellant’im are coming back.”
Sioned watched him go, wondering why the notion had hit him so suddenly.
“You’re right of course, Beth,” Sionell was saying. “But try proving most of it. It’s a pretty problem, I grant you. Do we conduct a purge and hope we’re right, or simply pardon all of them and hope for the best?”
“Here’s another one for you,” Ruala put in. “They have power. Shall they be trained in their craft? How? And where? Goddess Keep?” She shook her head. “The Sunrunners will never stand for it.”
“By whom you mean Andry,” said Alasen. “But Riyan learned there—“
“—before anyone knew what he is. Torien, too, and Urival and Morwenna. Doubtless others are diarmadhi as well. But it’s never been acknowledged in public. Would Andry do that? I doubt it.”
“He’s not stupid, either,” Alasen defended. “Much better to have sorcerers within sight, learning what he wants them to learn, than hidden away. Besides, it’s obvious that the Sunrunners can also learn a lot from the sorcerers.”
Frowning, Sioned sat forward and leaned her elbows on her knees. “Rival centers of learning would produce exactly what goes on between Goddess Keep and the Physicians School in Gilad. I always thought that was one of our better schemes, Rohan’s and mine, until people began thinking there was a difference in Sunrunner medicine...” She sighed. “It seemed a good idea at the time.”
“It was, and still is,” Betheyn stated firmly. “It was only this—this ritualism and ceremony Andry introduced into all things faradhi—“
“Yes,” Ruala interrupted, “and now there are diarmadhi rituals to be dealt with as well. Can they be incorporated into Goddess Keep? Will the Sunrunners even want to try? And what happens when a Sunrunner student is told there are certain things he can’t do because he’s not a sorcerer?”
Sioned eyed her. “You’re making a very good case for keeping your own people out of the mainstream of our lives.”
“Not a bit of it!” She shook back her untidy black braids. “We’ve seen what that brings—Mireva and Ruval, and now this trouble in Firon, and Goddess knows what else besides. I’m only trying to identify the problems to come.”
“As if we didn’t have enough already,” Sionell observed wryly. “But I agree with you, Alasen. Andry’s a lot of things, but stupid isn’t one of them. He deigned to teach Maara and Jihan and Rislyn, after all.”
Alasen and Beth stared blankly at her.
“You didn’t know?” Sionell asked. “They’re all diarmadhi.”
“Not—not through Meiglan,” Alasen ventured.
“Pol,” said Sionell.
Sioned wrapped her hands around her cup. “It seems,” she murmured, “that it’s a night for secrets. The secret sins for which the Vellant’im are forgiven—but which you’ll note they did not confess aloud. The secret of the dragon teeth ... who we are, and what we’re about to do to these people, and what will happen to them tomorrow.”
“Pol?” Alasen’s green eyes, so like Sioned’s, asked to be told how such a thing could possibly be.
“Ruala knows,” Sioned told her. “And Sionell—you’ve known longest, except for me and a few others. I’m afraid you bore the brunt of his anger and hurt. He must’ve been very cruel.”
“To you,” she replied. “He told me what he said to you that night.”
“Nothing I didn’t deserve, in a way.” She glanced in turn at Alasen and Betheyn. “Pol is not my son. He is lanthe’s. That is one of the secrets I brought to Skybowl.”
Before they could react, Ruala said, “If this is a night for them, then I learned one at Elktrap that perhaps you should know. I suppose it’s what prompted my depressing little recital earlier.” She sipped from her cup and stared into the flames. “Grandfather’s grandmother was a Ruala, too. I was Named for her. She was ten when her great-grandfather Algroy died, and it was from him that she heard the tales she told my grandfather—to which my sister and I rarely listened. Algroy learned them from his grandfather Rossan. And he ...” She drew a deep breath. “Rossan was the great-grandson of Lady Merisel.”
“But—she was a Sunrunner,” Sionell said. “So was her husband. When did their descendants marry into a diarmadhi line?”
“They didn’t. Rossan’s grandfather, Merisel’s son, was a sorcerer. His name was Rosmer, and he wasn’t Gerik’s son. He was Rosseyn’s.”
“Good Goddess,” Sioned breathed. The face in the mirror, that Ruala had shied from because he looked so much like her own father—
“I thought about telling Andry,” Ruala went on meditatively. “Not that he’d believe me. But do you understand why I said what I did about the diarmadhi, and bringing them into the open? All of them? Do you see what Pol is? Not just High Prince, not just a Sunrunner, but diarmadhi as well—with every kind of power we know and respect. It makes him High Prince for all of us. And what he does with it tomorrow...”
“... will determine what kind of High Prince he’ll be,” Sionell finished.
“Almost by accident,” whispered Alasen. “If the Vellant’im had never—“
Sioned poured more taze with a hand that shook only a little. “Rohan would say that there are no accidents.” Andrade’s rings, for instance—or, more accurately, the stones in them. Everyone had seen them for years, they’d been worn by each successive Lady and Lord of Goddess Keep, until Andry chose to make new rings with new stones and Urival chose to distribute the old ones among Andrade’s friends and kin. Thinking of him, she spoke of him. “Urival always told me I was mind-hungry, and so I have been all my life. I’ve read and studied, educated myself—and been educated by experience—and now I sit here knowing that I know nothing at all.” She sighed. “Except that there are no accidents, and we all have our own work to do.”
“And Pol’s,” said Ruala, “is to be High Prince for everyone—Sunrunner, sorcerer, and commoner alike.”
Sionell broke the small silence. “I think ... I think he knows that, but he doesn’t really believe it Yet.”
“Tomorrow may educate him,” Sioned replied. She glanced around as voices and boot heels rang through the great hall. “It’s time we educated the Vellant’im. Ladies, our immediate work is at hand.”
Careful not to come within touching distance of Meiglan, the priest deposited her dinner tray on the single chair and departed in silence. The door snicked shut behind him. Meiglan decided she didn’t much like doors. Walls, either. In her tent she had been able to hear voices and see shadows. And there had been no locks.
They had brought her up here swathed in white veils so none might see her. She’d nearly tripped several times on the stairs, blinded by the silk swirling in front of her nose. She had never been in Skybowl’s western tower, identifiable as servants’ quarters by its convenience to the kitchen and the large common room on the first floor. She had never been so high in the keep, either—the very top of the tower.
The chamber was comfortable enough, considering the priests’ strictures. The bed was sheeted in white silk, the single wooden chair draped in the same material. Hooks high in one wall meant a tapestry had hung there—removed, of course, for being too rich with color. Two iron braziers provided warmth in morning and evening chill, but very little light. The window had been nailed shut, more white silk tacked around the sill. Set into the opposite wall, a whitewashed wooden door sealed the small garderobe. This amenity confirmed that the room belonged to a ranking servant.
But all of it was white, floor and walls and doors. Meiglan longed for colors like a Sunrunner gone suddenly blind.
Yes, she was comfortable enough. And trapped. Priests stood guard outside her door. Even if they hadn’t, there were over two thousand Vellant’im between her and freedom.
She’d grown used to that over the last eleven days.
Still, she’d had her little vengeances. She smiled slightly, shredding crustless bread in her fingers. Back at Stronghold, she’d once refused to eat the food brought to her until vvhitespice (naturally) had been supplied. Carefully loading one side of the bowl with the pungent powder, she tasted the other and enthused about how good it was—and wouldn’t her attending priest like to sample some? It had been in his black eyes that he hoped he’d finally managed to please her, and that he resented this emotion, as he dipped his own spoon into the colorless mess.
His eyes bulged half out of his head and for a few moments she expected steam to billow from his ears.
She had considered maiming herself in some way, flawing her skin with a cut or bruise, but what would be the point? They’d made it clear they wouldn’t waste an otherwise perfectly good sacrifice on a technicality. During the initial inspection—a hideously embarrassing process, worse agony than a physician’s examination—they’d found the small brown mark on her left hip. Scrubbing it off hadn’t worked; bleaching it with some stinging cream availed nothing. Finally they had given her to understand that they had decided it was the Storm God’s fingerprint or some other such nonsense. An indication of her fitness for the ritual.
She had only briefly thought of killing herself. But that would mean she had no faith in her husband’s abilities. Pol would come for her. He would make everything all right.
And even if he didn’t—treacherous, disloyal thought, but it had sneaked into her mind nonetheless—even if she died in this barbaric Vellanti ceremony, then afterward they would go home and leave her people in peace.
Her people. Not just Pol’s, or Rohan’s and Sioned’s, or the various athr’im’s. Her own. It was a strange realization, that instead of just being their High Princess, they were her people. And if she could do this for them, if her death would free them...
How noble I sound, she told herself, and how defeated. That won’t do.
But it would happen tomorrow. She would live or she would die. And in this, was she so very different from her people?
Or from the Vellant’im, for that matter.
No, there was all the difference in the world. They would all have swords. She had nothing.
Except ... the words she’d stitched (Oh, Gentle Lady, make Pol understand!) came back to her. Pol was her sword. He would come for her and kill all the Vellant’im and hold her to his heart and—
The door burst inward, the two priests outside gabbling in outrage. Meiglan jerked back in fear. A woman strode through and stopped dead in the center of the small room. For a moment, Meiglan recognized absolutely nothing about her. Then:
Sionell?
Blue eyes had no glance for her; they fixed instead on the tray set on the chair. Meiglan looked down, wondering in bewilderment what was so fascinating about it. The bread she’d picked apart, a goblet of water, a bowl of soup, a silver spoon—
Sionell fell to her knees on the rugless stone—not entirely of her own volition, Meiglan thought. “My lady,” she breathed. “Thank the Goddess—“
The priests were still protesting. One of them almost grabbed Sionell’s arm to haul her to her feet, but held back from soiling himself by touching a woman. Meiglan stared down at her friend’s pale, strained face, where relief and anguish battled to a standstill.
“Get out,” Meiglan told the priests.
None of her guardian priests spoke more than a few words of her language, but they’d heard this phrase often enough in the last eleven days to comprehend perfectly. This time they refused to budge.
“I told you to get out,” she said, again softly, remembering how impressed she’d always been that none of the great ladies she knew ever shouted at servants. Tobin, Sioned, and Sionell saved that for their husbands, mainly; Hollis never raised her voice at all. Only women like Chiana had the bad taste—and the fear of being disobeyed—to yell at underlings.
“Does this look like a man to you?” Meiglan asked the priests in a quiet tone etched with acid.
They hesitated, then muttered between themselves, then crossed the threshold to the hallway.
“Close the door,” Meiglan ordered.
They did. She decided she liked doors again.
Sionell pushed herself to her feet. Hand shaking, she picked up the soup bowl and spoon. The first she emptied into the white ceramic chamberpot; the second she held in her fist like a talisman.
“I got here in time,” she whispered, running a thumb over the clean, shining spoon.
Meiglan’s eyes widened as Sionell struggled with tears. Quickly she set the tray on the floor and rose, helping her friend to the chair. “What is it? And whatever are you doing here?”
“Not just me.” She wiped her eyes with her left hand, the right still gripping the spoon. “Alasen, Beth, Ruala, Isriam—and Sioned.”
It was Meiglan’s turn to wilt, weak-kneed. She sat down hard on the bed. “She shouldn’t—none of you should be here!”
“We had to. And it would’ve worked—it may still work— except that the soup was white, and given only to the priests, and that meant—“
“To me.” Meiglan groped for SionelFs icy fingers.
“I thought, we all thought, it would just make them sick. So they couldn’t fight. We were laughing about it—Alasen and I were laughing as we ladled it into the tureens—“ She shivered. “But then Beth ran in, almost screaming—one of the priests had made a tray for you—“ Clinging to Meiglan’s hand now, she squeezed her eyes tightly shut. “Sioned’s face—I thought she’d—it’s belmayce. She planned it all along and didn’t—“
“Are you saying they’re going to die?”
“By dawn. The priests. All of them.” Her thumb scraped against the spoon again, convulsively. “It was almost you, Meggie—“
“It’s all right. You got here in time.” Meiglan had never seen Sionell so jittery. She gently pried the spoon from rigid fingers. It had bent slightly with the power of her grip.
SKY BOWL
585
After a few moments, Sionell managed to compose herself. “I’m sorry. I just—I don’t even know how I got up here. Ruala said the priests are all in this tower, so I—but I don’t know how I remembered that.”
“It’s all right,” Meiglan said once more. “Oh, Sionell, it can’t be real that you’re here—for so long I’ve been—“ Tears washed her voice away. She bent her head, ashamed.
Sionell’s arms suddenly went around her. Meiglan felt the other woman tremble and knew that she was crying, too.
Ruala had seen Betheyn race headlong from the great hall. Wanting desperately to follow, she forced herself to remain seated between Isriam and the High Warlord, and continued the pattern of deception she had been weaving for two days.
“The source of the dragon gold,” she said, “is the innards of butchered dragons. The late Azhrei forbade killing them because he wanted to keep all the gold and jewels for himself.”
“Jewels?” The High Warlord cocked a skeptical brow. There was amusement in his black eyes, the tolerant half-smile of an adult for a child’s harmless flights of imagination.
“From the brain,” Ruala said. “Every year at Rivenrock Canyon near Stronghold, a dragon was killed in secret. The gold in its belly and the jewels from its head were gathered for Rohan’s coffers.” She paused for a sip of wine. “Of course, Zehava—who was azhrei before Rohan—was smarter than he. By choosing only the largest and most powerful of sires, he gained even more gold and gems. The bigger the dragon, the more battles he’d survived, and the greater his age, the more treasure.”
“Ah,” said the High Warlord, spearing another chunk of elk meat with his knife.
“My husband’s father, who held this castle for many years, had charge of the caves in Threadsilver Canyon. One has to dig, of course, but the generations of dragons who died in those caves left their bounty of gold and jewels along with their bones.”
“And none of us ever saw any of it,” Isriam put in resentfully. “No, all the riches went to the Azhrei, never to us. And if anyone was ever caught killing a dragon—“ He gave an artful shudder.
Though the High Warlord might be unimpressed, the priest sitting next to him was riveted. He said nothing, and Ruala wasn’t even sure how much of this little tale he understood, but “gold” and “jewels” and “dragon” registered on his face every time he heard the words.
There was no interruption by infuriated priests. Sionell and Meiglan sat together quietly now, the storm of tears over, their varying stories told.
Except for one or two omissions on Sionell’s part.
She steeled herself to speak of the one—for she would never confess the other and bring still more pain to Meiglan’s soft, fawn-brown eyes.
“I forgot to tell you that Rislyn has a dragon,” she said, keeping her hands easy and relaxed in Meiglan’s. “It happened here at Skybowl. A little black female. Rislyn named her Lir’reia.”
Meiglan smiled. “I suppose Jihan is jealous!”
She couldn’t do it. She couldn’t reveal the name’s tragic significance.
“Well, yes,” she admitted, grateful that her voice was steady, and that weeping had released so much of the tension. But none of the guilt... “She thinks that since she knows something about Sunrunning, too, she ought to have a dragon as well.”
Meiglan blinked. “Sunrunning?”
“There’ve been lessons at Feruche. After what happened with Chayla, we all felt that everyone who could be taught, should be. Even Meig!”
“He’s—?”
“They tell me so.” She sighed. “Goddess help me.”
Her smile returned. “Yes, my scamp of a Namesake will make your life even more interesting now!”
“Oh, he can’t do more than call a moment’s Fire to a candle. He’s too young to be concerned with learning to use power. Actually, Andry tends to bore him right to sleep!”
Children; a safe topic, now that Sionell had avoided Rislyn’s blindness. It was something better told by Rislyn’s father, anyway. Pol would know what to say, how to comfort Meiglan’s grief...
Pol was a topic Sionell had mostly avoided. She’d talked about Maarken’s injury, the deaths of Meath and Kazander, Chayla’s abduction. But briefly, just so Meiglan knew what had .happened. She’d concentrated on the better news: the victories of Ostvel in Princemarch, Ludhil at Graypearl, Laric at Snowcoves, Tilal at Radzyn; Gemma’s arrival with mere troops; the tricks already played on the Vellant’im, and those waiting for them tomorrow. Meiglan had listened in breathless silence.
And then had told her own story.
Sionell had marveled at her composure, her matter-of-fact detailing of all that had happened to her. She faltered only twice: when she described the courage of Valeda and Thanys, and their deaths.
“He gave them honorable burning. I wasn’t allowed to watch. And since I finished the cloak, I haven’t been allowed to see or be seen by anybody but priests.” She gestured to the bed, the chair. “White clothes, white sheets, white furniture, white everything ... I’ve been wondering if I’m invisible.”
Sionell pressed her hands. “You took a terrible chance with that cloak, Meggie — that we wouldn’t be too stupid to understand. We very nearly were.”
“No, I knew you’d see it. What I didn’t know to tell you was the pearls. I only found out about them yesterday from a priest. They were stolen from the Vellant’im long ago. A group was sent to get them, but the sorcerer who had them was dying — so taking them back was easier than they’d planned. That was in 701, you see.”
Sionell frowned, not seeing at all.
“They brought the Plague with them,” Meiglan said, her voice as colorless as her surroundings. “One of their people had never had it. They didn’t know he’d caught it from his children before they left — Ell, they brought it with them!”
“By accident,” Sionell heard herself murmur. But — “Rohan would say there are no accidents. “ For they’d all learned about dranath then, hadn’t they? Not everything, not what had nearly killed Rohannon, but —
“It’s only a childhood disease for them,” Meiglan went on t dully. “A few days of illness. He laughed as he told me. He said maybe they should’ ve saved the warriors the trouble of fighting us, because they could’ve sent children to do the killing and we’d be just as dead.”
But that wouldn’t have removed the Azhrei’s taint from the dragons. And sitting before Sionell was the means by which the Vellanti priests intended to accomplish this goal.
“What the priests have in mind is much more ambitious.” Meiglan had followed—anticipated?—her line of thought. “Tomorrow they plan to use me to free the dragons from Pol’s influence. I’ll be taken to the highest point overlooking the Desert, and they’ll use a golden knife. I told them gold is traditional. That way, if a Sunrunner comes near enough while working and they try to use the knife, it won’t have any effect.”
“You put us all to shame,” Sionell blurted. “Not one of us would have thought of—“
Meiglan tilted her head. “I was trying to think like all of you.” She hesitated, then lowered her gaze to their clasped hands. “I’ve ... learned a lot. I used to play at being like you, Sionell—like Tobin and Hollis and your mother, and especially Sioned. I’m High Princess now, I should—“
“Oh, Meggie—“
“But when I ordered my half brothers killed, I started to learn how to be High Princess, not simply behave as if I were. Do you understand?” She glanced up, then away. “Alone like this ... I found out what I can do. And—and I think that now ... now I can finally be the wife and the High Princess that Pol needs.”
Sioned couldn’t seem to get warm.
She sat so close to the fire that her cheeks felt scorched. She was sweating under the blanket draped around her shoulders. But she couldn’t get warm, not for a long, long time.
We’re all going to die for this, she kept thinking. They’re not idiots. They ‘II make the connection. Only the priests ... but not Meiglan, please, not Meiglan!
But they’ll kill us for it. Alasen and Beth and Sionell and Ruala and Isriam—I’ve killed them as surely as I’ve killed the priests. As surely as I showed the Vellant’im how to kill Meiglan. i
The warriors will live. And Pol will have to fight them tomorrow.
Clever High Princess. Clever Sioned.
Someone spoke at her shoulder. She ignored the sound, the words. A hand shook her into accepting them.
“—all right, she didn’t touch it. Sioned, listen to me. When I got to her, Meiglan hadn’t eaten anything. She’s all right.”
For now. They’ll only kill her tomorrow, just as the dragon book told them. Clever Sioned...
Another voice. Alasen’s, perhaps. She didn’t care. Meiglan’s present safety was cupped between her hands, cherished—and trickling away like sand in the surety of her death tomorrow.
But she heard Sionell’s reply as if the words were Fire in her mind.
“No, she’s not scared at all. I didn’t even think of it until she said it—but with all the priests dead, who’s going to perform the ritual?”
With the priests dead...
“And she’s right,” Sionell went on. “Would Andry allow anyone but faradh’im to sing the sun to rising?”
Blood surged to every fingertip, warm and alive. Warm again, and alive.
With the priests dead ... chaos by midnight ... Sionell now knew where Meiglan was being kept... Beth knew the ins and outs of Skybowl... riskier than her original plan but in her mind from the start...
Sioned looked up. “Neither can they perform the ritual if the victim disappears.”
Arlis wasn’t awake, but neither was he really sleeping. The fantasy he’d concocted to get him there had started out with all the ingredients for relaxation: a big bed, a soft mattress, piled quilts, and a hearthfire nearby in the darkness. Then half-dreams had taken over. A cascade of silky hair drifted over him, followed by a lithe form and a fragrance of starbriar. He sighed in luxurious delight and murmured his wife’s name. Only Demalia smelled so good, felt so good— and knew precisely when, where, and how to touch him. And touch him she did ... oh, yes...
But the hand shaking his shoulder wasn’t hers. He snarled into the lamplight and Laric’s tense face. His breath steamed in the tent’s icy air.
“My steward is here,” Laric said. “We’ll have to hear what she has to say.”
A short time later the woman who had overseen Balarat for Laric and now presumably did the same for Yarin shivered beside the meager warmth of an iron brazier. Laric stood on its other side, next to the folding map table, the fingers of his right hand drumming intermittantly on parchment. The sound grated on Arlis’ nerves.
“Well?” Arlis said, stamping his feet inside cold socks and colder boots. “Does Yarin yield?”
“I—I don’t know, your grace. I came here on my own.” The little fire underlit her face, sinking weird shadows into her eye sockets. “I don’t want to die at their hands. That’s what they said, my lord.” She looked an appeal at Laric. “Anyone who didn’t fight until he dropped would be killed where he stood. And by sorcery, not clean with a sword.”
“So you decided you couldn’t stand to serve them anymore?”
“I never did willingly, my lord, you must believe me. It tore my heart to see him treat the young prince so badly and seize his rights, and with those others to help him now—“
“How many?” Arlis asked.
“Hundreds,” she whispered. “Hundreds...”
“All diarmadh’im?”
“All.” Shuddering, she yanked her cloak across her chest. “Everybody’s frightened. That’s why they’ll fight, even though they don’t want to. The death waiting if—“
Arlis exchanged a glance with Laric.
“So you were finally so frightened that you braved the snows and the night to come here,” Laric said, fingers beating a rapid rhythm on the parchment. The annoyance was giving Arlis a headache. “You must believe very strongly that I’ll win.” He paused, his hand still. “Except, you know, I don’t think you believe anything of the kind.”
She gasped. “I’d rather die out here, clean, than by foul spells!”
“If you’ll forgive the term,” Arlis drawled, “dragon shit.”
Laric nodded. “You’re here to tell me I have no hope of winning. You’re here to spread lies of diarmadhi strength so we’ll be defeated before we raise our swords.”
She made no reply to the accusations. Her dark eyes glazed over with tears that dripped down her cheeks. Then her gaze slid away and she stared dully at the map table.
“I don’t blame you for it,” Laric went on more gently, and Arlis repressed an impatient sigh. “Doubtless you’re only doing what you were ordered to do, in fear of your life. Go back and tell them I’m not impressed. Tell them—“
Arlis interrupted, “Tell them they have until dawn to surrender or the death they promised will seem merciful compared to what I’II do to them.”
Still she said nothing, did nothing but stare blankly. Laric cleared his throat, and Arlis just knew he was going to say something imbecilic about giving pardons to those who refused to fight with Yarin’s troops. Still hoping to win without any battles at all, he thought. This happens to be war, cousin.
A small war burst into the tent in the skinny form of Aldiar. Black hair flying, knife in hand, the boy flung himself at the steward and toppled her. He had his knife at her throat before Laric could shout, “No!”
“Let her go!” Aldiar cried with total illogic. “Give her up or I’ll cut her, I swear I will!”
“What in all Hells—?” Arlis started for them, bumped into Laric on the same mission.
When they righted themselves, Aldiar was climbing to his feet. He extended a hand to help the steward up. She was shaking violently, sobbing without tears. The diarmadhi steadied her, then sheathed his knife and turned to Laric.
“I’m sorry, my lord. I fell asleep when I shouldn’t have. And I didn’t think they’d try this. I was waiting to sense a shape-change.”
Arlis stared at the boy, the steward, and Laric in turn. “I hope you’re going to explain that.”
“This woman was used by someone in the castle as their eyes and ears. Surely you know that the Sunrunners can do much the same thing?”
“Uh ... yes. But I don’t think it’s done anymore. Is it?”
“How should I know?” Aldiar stopped, and added a quick, “—my lord. Sorry.”
“Never mind. Go on.”
“I’d been expecting a shape-change,” Aldiar said again. “I would’ve felt that the instant she came into camp. But I didn’t reckon on this.” Raking lank hair from his face, he sighed and continued, “They wanted to see your battle plan. If you hadn’t brought her in here, she would’ve found some way to get in anyway.”
Laric glanced over at the map table. “I don’t think they saw much,” he said doubtfully.
“Even if they did, we can alter our plans,” Arlis told him. “Aldiar, why did you say what you did? Why the knife?”
“Because if I’d used steel—iron—on her while they had hold of her, it would’ve hurt.” He addressed the steward, who had shrunk back from him in stark terror. “I’m very sorry, but you must believe that it had to be done. You’ll be all right now. They won’t dare try to use you again.”
“Who was it who did this to you?” Laric asked her.
“She won’t be able to tell you, my lord,” Aldiar said. “Any more than Princess Chiana knew it was Mireva who used her.”
The steward had gone pale as death. “You mean—you mean those sorcerers—they—did something to me and—“
“You’re free of it now.”
That assurance didn’t keep her from sliding to the floor in a faint.
A little while later, when everything had been sorted out and a guard put on the steward for her own protection, Arlis stretched out on his bed of blankets and cloak once more. Laric extinguished the lantern. Only the soft glow of the brazier remained.
“Aldiar says that with luck, he won’t have to find whoever worked the spell,” Laric murmured. “Only that person can break it...”
“With luck,” Arlis agreed, “every damned one of them will be dead tomorrow. Had you given any consideration to how we’ll manage it?” When the other prince stayed silent, Arlis nodded to himself. “Just as I thought. Me, neither.”
“If they’re worried enough to make this attempt—“
“Uh-huh.”
“Arlis...”
“We’ve done all right so far, haven’t we? Something will occur to us between now and morning. Go to sleep, cousin.”
But Arlis lay awake until dawn, courting Demalia back into, his dreams without success.
The High Warlord had no time for sleep. At midnight he was still reviewing his own battle plans, sipping from a silver winecup and wishing Varek was with him. He understood his commander’s choice to die; after the failure at Swalekeep, even though it didn’t matter in the larger scheme, Varek could not in honor have chosen to live.
But he did miss the man. Boyhood friend, kin-by-marriage through his daughter and Varek’s son—who would, of course, have to die for his father’s shame. All his children would be killed, to remove the taint of failure from Vellanti blood. That was the way of things.
Still ... perhaps the priests could be persuaded otherwise. Much power would come to the High Warlord when the Azhrei was dead. And it hadn’t been Varek’s fault that Tilal, without honor, had tricked him so foully.
There was no such thing as an honorable defeat.
Pity, he thought as he fought the coming battle again in his mind, staring down at the map. His daughter would weep and plead, being fond of the boy despite his uselessness at the warrior’s craft. But someone had to keep the slaves working efficiently, and though Varek’s son had never been much good with a sword, he was a marvel with the whip.
This reminded him that Varek’s possessions and property would also be forfeit. A goodly portion would come to him through his daughter. The mines, he decided, and whichever of the wives it pleased him to make his own servants. He seemed to recall that one of them was a fine seamstress...
And that made him recall the Kir’reia.
Her slim fingers wielding the needle, her golden head bent over her work, her delicate face raised to his as he entered her tent... the velvet darkness of her eyes in the pale, milky dawn-glow of her skin.
A waste. Like Varek. A stupid, stupid waste. And all because the priests declared that the sin of defeat was on the commander’s shoulders—and the sin of the Azhrei’s power over the dragons must be cleansed with the White Sacrifice’s blood.
Yes, he told himself, a single ship for them, and an “accident” to sink it. Then all he would have to deal with would be those priests either too old and feeble or too young and unsanctified to have come here with him.
His head snapped up as someone had the temerity to pound on his door. He had barely parted his lips to order the intruder to be gone when a figure in a stained, foul-smelling white robe staggered in and collapsed on Lady Ruala’s bedchamber carpet.
“Dying—“ the man wheezed, and a spasm curled him double. The stench grew worse. “Storm Father, h-help us!”
“Who is dying? Tell me!”
“All—of us—“ The priest writhed in agony, arms clasped around his belly, his eye-whites blood-red.
“The priests? What of the warriors?”
He stared up at the High Warlord for a single lucid moment of shocked betrayal. “Only priests, only—ahhh—!”
Foulness gushed from his body. The High Warlord strode past into the hallway, avoiding the green-black liquid staining the carpet. He didn’t run; he would not be seen to run as if he had panicked.
Only the priests. No warriors.
It occurred to him that someone might just have done him a favor.
Long before he reached the western tower he could smell the stink of mortal sickness. Something had rotted the priests’ bowels—scant wonder, he thought, resisting the urge to cover his nose and mouth, when they ate only white bread and bloodless meats.. White.
He could see it as if it was before him again: the huge serving bowls carried out by Lady Ruala’s women, claimed by the priests...
The rest of the castle was stirring now. Clanmasters honored by rooms within Skybowl were waking, poking their heads from doorways. There were no guards; what need of them in a keep they controlled from towers to cellars?
A mistake much worse than Varek’s. A trick reeking of more dishonor than Tilal’s. A woman’s trick.
He saw several clanmasters drinking and dicing in the feast hall, and bellowed, “Lady Ruala and her people—bring them here!”
“At once, great lord!”
He reached the west tower and stepped over the dead and dying on the stairs. He didn’t hear their groans. He no longer even smelled their fetid leavings. Not the Kir’reia, not her, he thought, unable to bear that she should be convulsing in this same agony, this foulness.
The two priests outside her door were dead. The door it- i self was wide open. Terrible sounds issued from inside; thin, high-pitched wails like those of a dying animal.
She huddled in the far corner of her bed, as pale as the sheets she clutched in shaking hands. Her horrified eyes were black in the whiteness of her face. A priest lay on the stone floor in his own excrement and vomit. The stench was overpowering.
But she was untouched.
The priest opened death-dazed eyes. “Azhrei,” he breathed, blood smearing his mouth. “Spells ... evil ... sin to k-kill priest—“
“And she has killed a hundred,” said the High Warlord.
“Failed,” whimpered the priest. “... power ... too much...”
“Yes,” the Azhreia said in a clear, steady voice. She rose from the bed, slender and white and golden, like a pure candleflame. “My husband’s power is too great. It has killed them—but protected me.”
He prodded the weakly spasming figure with his boot. “Did she eat what you ate tonight? Did she?”
“He can’t tell you. He’s dead.”
He caught her gaze with his own. No defiance shone in her eyes, only a vast serenity that infuriated him.
“Poison, not power! You ate nothing!”
“Prove that to your warriors,” she answered. “Tell them that as they burn a hundred priests.”
Mindless gratitude that she was alive and unhurt became a raging need to tear her tongue from her throat and her eyes from her head. He had never wanted anyone’s death so much in his life as he wanted hers now.
Yet he did not move. Dared not think that perhaps he could not move.
They confronted each other for a fragment of eternity that shattered when a woman’s voice called Meiglan’s name. She spun, white silk robe swirling. Another fair-haired woman, older and green-eyed, slid halfway out of the garderobe, work-reddened hands gripping the wooden door.
“No!” cried the Azhreia. “Go back!”
The High Warlord leaped over the priest’s body, lunging for the door handle. He grabbed it with one hand and the woman’s arm with the other. She gasped, but not with pain.
“Ell, it’s him! Close it!”
He hauled her forward and squinted into the darkness be- hind her, wild speculation distracting him. Sudden light flared from a brazier behind him and he caught a glimpse of a tall, lithe form and masses of dark red hair. Not her—not the other Kir’reia, her hair is—
She vanished into the stone wall.
As the bonfire had done the night before, now the flames of the brazier surged and spat, filling the room with fire. Startled—and enraged by the emotion—he let go of the woman and flattened himself against the window. Seen through the flames between them, the Azhreia^s eyes shone like black glass flung still burning from Dragonfire Mountain.
The green-eyed woman sidestepped the corpse and took the Azhreia’s hand, urging her from the room. The High Warlord saw the imminent escape of his prize and roared denial. Magic and fire be cursed, they would not have her. He ripped his sword from its sheath. A careless elbow smashed back through the window. Ignoring the shards that pricked his flesh, he took two steps toward the flames—no heat, no substance—unreal? Unreal!—and lunged for the green-eyed sorceress.
She yelped with pain as steel scored her arm. The flames vanished, sucked into the brazier. The high Warlord gained the door in two more long strides and rammed the sword back into the scabbard.
They were trembling, both of them, well and truly frightened. But still proud. He admired that about the women of this land, even as he knew it was unnatural.
“Come,” he said in their language.
Frightened, helpless, bleeding—but proud, damn them for it—they followed.