Andry knew what Pol was doing, though he could not sense it and had no part in it—yet. Sunlight was alive with power that dranath let him feel with heightened intensity. He could practically hear colors seething around Pol, colors previously glimpsed only in a now splintered mirror.
In the end, what matter if Pol didn’t draw him into this? He was at Pol’s side. It was enough. It was Andrade’s vision: Lord of Goddess Keep standing with High Prince. If the actual sharing of authority was an illusion—well, hadn’t Rohan always said that it was the impression that counted?
He tried not to let it rankle. Pol needed him for show if not substance. It did him and the Sunrunners no actual harm. And if victory was the result, he would be churlish indeed to quarrel with the manner of it.
And yet... and yet it was to him the Goddess had shown dreams of what might be, warning him. From his belief— tormented as it had been, unsure of the right of it, his logic protesting despite his faith—had come the ros’salath. Because of years of his work, it existed for Pol to copy and use.
I won’t fight him, Andry told himself, even as the drug burned impatiently in his blood, crying out for the spell all around him, to take it and make it his. He’s keeping my oath for me: no more killing with my gifts. Sioned had been uncomfortably accurate in pointing out his selectivity. In truth, much as he’d enjoyed immolating Marron, who had murdered his brother, and the treacherous Prince of Cunaxa, he understood the peril. Others might think themselves simi- larly justified—and that was the reason for the vow, the only reason Sunrunners were trusted. As for Andry himself ... Rohan had been right as well that each use of power made the next use easier, more inevitable.
Andry supposed he ought to thank Pol for sparing him.
But if anyone should take the burden of that shattered vow, it was the Lord of Goddess Keep. Pol might be able to say that because he had never sworn it, he could not break it—but he’d never killed with his gifts. And now he was about to kill more than two thousand.
Andry glanced at his cousin; frowned; looked closer. A trick of the sunshine, it had to be—or else the power whirling in the air around him was potent enough to invade stone. The selefs white jade glowed. Subtle, elusive, seen for an instant and then vanishing—it was like trying to focus on one star’s shimmer that flickered teasingly away in the surrounding brilliance. He fixed his gaze just above Pol’s blond head—and the whole circle of gold and jade quivered with light.
Fire invading the gems? Or gems remembering Fire, as Pol said those around the mirror had done?
A mirror that contained a face Andry could never see.
This was another issue to be avoided for his own peace of mind. He wove threads of sunlight, careful to keep away from Pol, and sent them up to Skybowl. The High Warlord was watching the second moon. Meiglan was watching Pol. She was beautiful, serene, seemingly oblivious to the barbaric sprawl of teeth and talons draped across her shoulders. The black pearls—Merisel’s pearls—glistened at her throat, pure droplets distilled from the midnight sky.
Beyond the white partition, Sioned stared at nothing. Ru-ala looked ready to collapse. Alasen, he noted proudly, was composed—even with steel piercing one palm and both arms bound halfway to strangulation.
Isriam was anything but calm. He gazed at Betheyn with dark, desperate eyes, as if he knew he was about to die and wanted his last sight to be her face. Andry pitied the boy, whose infatuation was as inappropriate as it was hopeless. Beth was thirty; Isriam not quite seventeen. Well, he’d get over it.
But Andry would never get over the look Beth was giving Isriam.
Sorin’s castle belonging to another was bad enough.
Sorin’s Chosen Choosing another man—a boy!—was intolerable. Isriam, nameless and landless, bastard of a prince rejected as heir to Fessenden—beloved by Sorin’s intended wife?
Andry wished either or both were Sunrunners so he could blister the light between them— and half-kill himself with iron poisoning in the process.
Never mind. Once this was finished, he’d have plenty to say out loud.
He saw the High Warlord jump lightly to where Meiglan stood, placid as a lamb in the feeding meadow at Dragon’s Rest. Her dark eyes shone down on Pol. Andry doubted she even saw the High Warlord approach, knife like a golden snake poised to strike.
Andry’s colors danced with laughter as the knife flashed out—and struck a wall of woven sunlight as solid as it was invisible.
Torien was not laughing.
Steel bit again and again into the ros’salath. Despite his struggle to protect the others while keeping the weave intact, the pain grew worse with each swordthrust.
The spell was working; Vellan’tim flung their bodies forward and had their minds riven by indescribable horrors. Each fell writhing and screaming to the muddy ground. They died by the hundreds soon after, raving.
But Ulwis was screaming, too, silently and steadily. Martiel reacted as Torien had feared he would: protecting Linis at the expense of the others. Antoun tried to shield the young woman so Martiel could return to his task, but Torien could sense the old man’s agony. Crila held firm, as did Torien; their diarmadhi blood protected them even with Martiel effectively gone from the working. But Man and Deniker and Nialdan, Sunrunners only, were hurting. And it would only get worse.
They needed Andry. Torien cried out silent despair, cursing his Lord and his friend for leaving them. I’m not you! Andry, help us!
Suddenly he felt a surge of blinding color. Man, his mind told him dully. Presenting him with Sunrunner after Sunrunner. They were within the sunlight, crammed into the courtyard with merchants and farmers and herders. She had seized them all, and now thrust them into his hands as if skeins of every color in the world were his to weave as he would.
He worked frantically, knowing their cries against iron were terrifying the common folk. The agony was eased by sorcerers scattered among them. None had more than a few rings; none knew what the devr’im knew about power. But their power was his to use. Fear strengthened the weaving, spun new horrors into it.
He tried.
He wasn’t Andry.
He was shield, not sword arm. Strong foundation, not keystone.
He could almost hear Man raving at him for admitting defeat. He ignored her. Selecting a thin thread of sun, he sent it darting toward the Desert.
Sun, sky, and merciless Desert were forgotten. He and she alone existed, inhabiting a world where he bestrode the rocks and she glowed white against white silk, her eyes dark stars, her hair a golden cloud promising dawn. Forgive me, he whispered, and was quick with the knife— against a wall that wasn’t there.
It rang deep and long, like a priest’s bronze bell. The shock of impact quivered up his arm. He recovered balance quickly, warrior’s muscles responding. He did not make the mistake of trying the knife again—it would only emphasize his helplessness.
She had tricked him—the clever Kir’reia had tricked him with beautiful, harmless gold in place of shining deadly iron.
She must die. Now.
But he could not kill her.
And a shameful secret voice inside him rejoiced.
She hadn’t even flinched.
On your knees! he wanted to shout. Be a woman, and afraid! For he had thought of a way to spare her, but only if she submitted. Only if she humbled that enormity of pride and believed that he would save her, not her lord.
Yield! Cry out in fear! When the moon comes from hiding I will say that the threat of death was enough, your White spirit called the moon forth with the power of your fear. I will say that you did this not for the Azhrei but for me.
For me—and your fear will bind you to me more surely than your love binds you to him.
She deigned to glance up at him, with serene dark eyes and a small, sweet, pitying smile.
She will not. She will never. Somehow, she must die.
He held aloft the golden knife one last time, and to his warriors called out that the Azhrei had so befouled the woman with his evil that it wrapped her like a shroud. She would not die until the Azhrei died. And he must die now.
Andry saw the enemy readying a charge. He and Pol stood on a lonely sun-baked rise of sand, completely exposed, directly in the path of the coming onslaught. Drawing sunlight around him, Andry prepared to weave the ros’salath.
Pol had beaten him to it. Demanding colors—shining diamond, dark emerald, burning golden topaz, pearl-white laced with lightning—caught him, used him. He felt others, Sunrunner and sorcerer, similarly captured. Some struggled. Andry exerted his strength to calm them as he had calmed skittish Sunrunners for half his life.
But it won’t kill!
It took him a moment to identify the furious cry. Ckayla—? Yes, his brother’s daughter: all healing green and Desert blue and bloody red, and words resounding through the ros’salath that would terrify but not kill.
They deserve to die! They murdered Kazander—they murdered hundreds, hundreds—I watched them die and I couldn’t save them—AND NOW YOU WON’T KILL!
It was true. Pol had fashioned a weaving powerful enough to withstand any assault of iron, but there was no killing strength in it. The images were nebulous, feeble; they would threaten but not cripple minds that would soon encounter it.
Are you High Prince for them, too? Andry thought bitterly, rage shaking him. You puling, miserable coward—
He wrenched himself from the fabric, ready to turn on Pol and fell him with a fist in the jaw, not caring what it might do to a mind woven into the light. But another alternative surged into his thoughts with new colors, long familiar and tinged with the peculiar sensation of other he associated with a sorcerer.
Torien!
Andry—help us! They’re attacking, it’s falling apart, I can’t do it—
Beyond Torien, tied to him by the thinnest of sunlit threads, was a true ros’salath. One that would kill. Andry sensed it, and seized it.
Edrel’s heart leapt half out of his throat. The Vellant’im were clambering over their fallen comrades’ bodies—and advancing straight for him. There was nothing between him and the enemy now. Nothing but his sword.
Yes that’s it ride to the wall sense it before you touch it slow down feel the warning you can’t get through any more than he could use your swords no more than pinpricks fall back now fall back that’s it you can’t get .through but you won’t die you won’t— —ANDRY!! NO!!
Get out of my way! Stop this! You’re killing them!
How clever of you to notice!
Don’t force me to fight you Goddess damn you STOP!! Take your pathetic whining and huddle around your wife protect her as you will but leave this to me to someone with the courage to do what must be done how dare you all you’d do is slap their wrists don’t you understand they’ve killed hundreds thousands they’ll kill us and everyone else GET OUT OF MY WAY!!!
NO! I won’t let you do this! Try to stop me!
From far down the hillside, beyond the taut white wall between her and the rising moons, Sioned heard death. She knew the sound well. She also knew how and why they were dying.
Steel rang, but not against other steel. Not with battle-clangor. This was hollow music, stones rattling in an empty metal bowl. The Vellant’im cried out, but not because of sword-torn flesh. This was a different agony, one that would leave them whole in body and shattered in mind.
So, she thought, curiously remote from the emotions she knew she ought to feel. He decided to kill them after all. I wonder what changed his thinking.
She’d sensed Pol guarding Meiglan, the way Rohan and Tobin and their blood-kin could sense the first hint of dragons in the wind. Pol’s touch was careful, delicate after Andry’s earlier mistake. Still, she had felt his weaving hover in the morning air. The Tears of the Dragon shimmered in response around Meiglan’s neck. And the needle was a sliver of fire in Sioned’s hand.
The pain of poisoning iron reminded her of something ... long ago ... ah, of course: the poison of crossing Water. The Faolain River—so very long ago, when she’d been so very young, and lives had depended on her overcoming the Sunrunner weakness. She’d used pain then, made it help her regain and hold onto consciousness. The trick was not to fight it or let it rule her—like any kind of power, she thought suddenly. Pain, like power, could be used.
So she did.
How in all Hells was Andry doing it? Scores of Sunrunners, hundreds, mixed with diarmadh’im—where had they come from?
Where would he find power to regain control of the weaving?
Pol let go, despising himself for allowing Andry supremacy. The Vellant’im broke their minds against the ros’salath. Flesh succumbed to fear, and they died. He could hear them screaming, smell their terror on the wind—
Pol.
Weak, stitched with pain, yet it was Sioned. He caught her, wrapped the taint of iron away from her, and felt her sigh.
Pol, why is it that Andry kills them, not you?
You, Mother? You can ask that?
Ah. I see. Tenderness seeped through him like sunlight itself, rich and nurturing and strong. What is it you want, then, Rohan’s son?
Alasen stiffened sharply, green eyes blank, blood oozing from her pierced palm as her body jerked once and then froze. Ruala had time for only a startled glance before Sioned took her, too.
And gave them both to Pol.
Thus empowered, his reach expanded.
Near Skybowl, Tilal had called a brief halt to stretch saddle-cramped legs and swallow a little water. He wanted everyone as loose and refreshed as possible for the coming fight. Andrev, Sunrunning to check on events a mere ten measures away, caught his breath and spasmed in every muscle. At the same instant, Saumer and Iliena abruptly turned to stone. After exchanging a worried look with Gemma, Tilal told Ludhil to lift his wife from her horse before she fell. Saumer was more difficult to maneuver; by the time Tilal had him safely down, Andrev had toppled from his saddle, oblivious to the world around him.
Tobin hovered near Skybowl on a cautiously aloof skein of light. When Pol found her and drew her in, he had access to Feruche. Tobren, so close to her grandmother; his own Jihan and Rislyn. Maara. Alleyn and Audran. Antalya was more difficult, for she was pure faradhi. But he gathered them all, gently and inexorably. None was afraid.
Now his range doubled.
At Dragon’s Rest, Ostvel was trying his best lullaby on small Prince Larien. Suddenly the child stopped crying in mid-breath, dark Fironese eyes fixed and sightless. Ostvel broke off the song with a curse. Neither Lisiel nor Naydra heard him; they sat frozen in their chairs.
In another part of the palace, Camigina and Perchaya stumbled into each other and nearly through a sun-bright window. Hildreth jumped to help them, into the light. She immediately recognized Pol and felt her colors join in a working more extensive than any but those announcing Lady Andrade’s death and Lord Andry’s accession. At last!
Hildreth thought, giddy with the release of long tension. At last he needs me for more than telling half-truths to Andry.
This time, with two highly trained, full-blooded sorcerers added to his weaving, Pol’s grasp extended across the whole of the continent. And, because they knew their own kind, he felt the shimmer of power at Balarat.
More, he thought, frowning. I need more.
It was easy at first. Rohannon knew and trusted him. But he could not guide Pol to the wellspring within the castle walls. These diarmadh’im were not like Naydra, untrained but familiar with his colors; they were not like Iliena and Lisiel and her son, untrained but incapable of resistance. Nor were they willing to give him all their strength, like the two unknown women at Dragon’s Rest. These were men and women of knowledge and bitter pride who had plotted his destruction, who fought him with all that they knew and all that they were.
The boy, Tirel, was like his mother and little brother: shining raw colors that accepted Pol without fear—without knowing enough to fear. Perhaps Yarin could be reached through him, and with Yarin, the others—
What about me, then?
Blinding white—all shining diamond and glowing moonstone and lustrous pearl—swirled around him. A diarmadhi mind, although he wasn’t sure how he knew that, and one of rare beauty.
Rohannon says you’re the High Prince.
And power. Goddess, the power!
I know them. All of them. Use me.
Pol seized the gleaming whiteness and followed it into the castle. He found them like coins scattered on a rug. He gathered them with one hand, adding to his treasure of power.
They fought him, there in Firon on the morning sunshine, and those who fought him too frantically were discarded. But most yielded. Almost a hundred of them.
No—more than a hundred—twice, three times a hundred. The sudden glut of force staggered him. From outside Balarat, from snowy hills and ice-shrouded mountains of the Veresch, from places not even a pinprick on any map, power came to him. Freely given now, it was a blood-burning rush like the first moments of dranath in his veins.
Use us, it called in triumph. You are Diarmadh’rei, you are ours and we are yours.
From Balarat to Skybowl, the air seethed with color from dazzling white to purest black. All the shades of green and blue and red and yellow ever imagined, some of them tender as dawn and some of them blazing with fire, patterned in impossible complexity and stark simplicity. And as they formed in his mind he touched them all, knew them all. They were his. He was the center of a whirlwind of color tamed to his hand.
His alone.
High Prince for everyone.
Sionell knew she couldn’t be seeing this. She wasn’t a Sunrunner. She was only a halfling; any gift in her was stunted.
But from the tall dune where she stood with Dannar and Kierun, with the great dragon tapestry spread behind them, she saw colors streaming around Pol. Around his head, the crown of gold and white jade shone like Fire.
“Dannar,” she said, her throat dry, “do you see—“
“Yes,” he breathed. “It’s—shining.” .Of course; a son of Alasen and Ostvel, though not a Sunrunner like his sister Camigwen, would see it.
“What’s shining?” Kierun asked, puzzled.
“But where’s it coming from?” Dannar asked, looking around wildly as if he could see its source, flaming red hair tossing around his head like Sunrunner’s Fire.
“I don’t know.” But she intended to find out. “Stay here,” she ordered. “Don’t move for anything. If anybody sees that dragon tapestry fall or even waver—“
“It won’t,” Kierun stated flatly.
No. She didn’t suppose it would, not this crowned dragon with the emerald ring in his talons, nor the other one, crowned in light.
Then Dannar cried out, and flung an arm northward. “My lady!”
A storm of dragons darkened the sky. come on you whoresons come to me and die as you deserve as you killed Brenlis and Oclel and Rusina and Valeda and a thousand others come to die in madness—
NO! You can’t it’s impossible where did you find such power—
Come on Andry fight me now fight the Sunrunners I hold in one hand and the sorcerers in the other—
They’ll follow me not you give to me not YOU they want the strength only I can give them the strength to kill—
You still don’t understand you can fight me and lose and have all know it or yield and share in the victory you can’t escape me can’t win DAMN YOU ANDRY YIELD!!! and he almost had it almost gathered every skein of the gigantic tapestry of light into his hands one for the Sunrunners and one for the sorcerers with Sioned keeping each mind distinct and whole as only she could and he was preparing to knot the glowing incandescent silk of the faradh’im to the tough bright thickness of the diarmadh’im when his senses reeled and the dragons screamed and the whirlwind became a tempest of sheer primitive fury reeking color and power and blood.
Jahnev, seven winters old and as blind to Sunrunner light as Rislyn was to the sun that dazzled him, gave up trying to pull his sister from the window. Talya was just like the others: as white and frozen and unreachable as the faraway Veresch. He had to get help—but he couldn’t leave them.
“Meig!”
His little brother curled more deeply into the shadows of the chair, grumbling in his sleep. Jahnev shook him.
“Meig! Wake up!”
“Hmm?” Gray eyes blinked drowsily. “What? Did they find Mama?”
“Not yet. Listen to me and do exactly as I say. Go downstairs and find Princess Audrite, and bring her up here.”
Meig nodded, unperturbed. “What should I tell her?”
“That—that we need her help.” He gestured to the six children at the window. “They’re all caught up in some kind of Sunrunner work.”
Meig peered at them, frowning slightly. He stood, stretched, and took a step toward the window.
“No!” Jahnev grabbed his arm. “Whatever you do, don’t go into any sunlight or it might catch you, too!”
“Oh.” The frown cleared to a smile. “All right, Jahnev. I’ll remember.”
They wouldn’t realize it for many years, but the pattern of their lives formed spontaneously in that instant. It would be that way always: the elder brother compelled to ask the younger to do what he could not, warning meantime of danger; the younger brother obeying without question, while smiling a little at the elder’s caution.
“Hurry,” Jahnev said. “And be careful.”
“I will.”
The dragons were an infinitely more formidable enemy to Pol’s control than Andry. The shock of his first contact with Azhdeen was nothing compared to the assaulting colors of nine utterly enraged dragons who perceived their humans to be in danger.
Images flashed—but through the weaving, not into the air between him and the dragons. Sioned-Hollis-Riyan-Ruala-Jeni—Andry? Pol thought, senses battered. The single unnamed dragon had now decided which human to claim. Pavisel alone held back, having found Maarken was not part of the working; a picture of her landing nearby to protect him was instantly followed by Elisel’s demand to have Sioned similarly brought beneath her sheltering wings. Azhly shrieked, clawing the ros’salath as he looked for Ru-ala; tangled and insensible as he was, Pol’s outer as well as inner hearing rang with the cry.
Silent Lainian was no less fierce in searching for Jeni. Abisel, frantic for Hollis, shot fire-rimmed images through the sunlight that faded only at Sadalian’s more vivid—and more painful—conjuring of Riyan. Even Lir’reia, though Rislyn was safe at Feruche, contributed to the drowning madness of color and sight and emotion.
Pol fought them, and with every instant sensed Andry re- gain another fingerhold on the ros’salath. The nameless dragon flung himself joyously into Andry’s grasp, and the others bellowed triumph as they learned that his influence meant death to the Vellant’im. The killers of dragons.
All but Azhdeen.
The familiar colors slid past, as if ashamed. Pol snatched at them, missed, moaned in agony. And fought back, battling the dragons and their savagery that Andry was using to strengthen the lethal working.
Fighting them—no, I can’t! They’re not the enemy! But if I don’t win them back, if I can’t control them—THEY’RE NOT THE ENEMY!
Years ago he’d battled his half brother for control of Azhdeen himself. Ruval had used all the force of a strong and malignant will. Pol had used his own soul. He had chosen, that night of the Firestorm, to reject the rape and hate and violence of the night he was conceived. He would not be such things, nor use them against anyone, human or dragon.
“What we choose to do comes of what we are. But we are so many things, Pol—so many!”
Yes, Father—so many. And together they form the whole.
He found Azhdeen—somehow—and for a moment became the dragon. Primal blood-lust, murderous rage, a mindless need to kill—sweet, so sweet, and terrifying. He trembled, fighting himself now as well, his own fear and his answering need that shrieked for the kill, and knew he would lose—for what chance had reason or mercy or his soul against this?
No. If I die infighting it, then I die. But I won’t allow this. I won’t be this!
[KILL!]
Images slashed at the weaving in response to Azhdeen’s raging emotions. Pol surrounded them, extinguishing each as he would a Fire conjuring.
No.
[PREDATORS! KILLED WINGSISTER!]
No.
[MAKE PREY! BONES BLOOD FLESH CLAW TEETH KILL!]
No! Human. People. Like me.
[NO COLORS! NOT YOU!]
Like me. Legs arms head mouth eyes mind—
[PREY! KILL!]
NO!
[... no?]
Andry had been told what happened when a dragon decided on a particular human: crashing, mind-numbing, total possession that stunned for days afterward. It wasn’t that way for him. His dragon submitted gleefully to him, adding inestimable force to the ros’salath that killed.
The sheer savage beauty of it intoxicated him. This was what his gift was for, why the Goddess had chosen to show him the dreams and the castles and the danger—this glory of power in which his faith and his intellect agreed, that was his to do with as he pleased. And it pleased him to kill Vellanti minds. They bled terror as they died; had there been real blood, he would have bathed in it, laughing.
So many Sunrunners! So easy to spin them into a tapestry of fear and death! Insignificant that in the course of his struggle with Pol, so many sorcerers had sided with their Diarmadh’rei’, those he could grasp through the Sunrunners had mostly negated the sting of iron, and now that he had the dragons there was no pain at all. The dranath sang in him, the colors, the gorgeous thing he had woven of terror and vengeance and fury.
When it began to shred, he hardly even noticed.
Sioned had long since dropped to her knees on the broken stones. There was no air, no sound, no light. Pain that was not iron-born burned in her chest and behind her closed eyes. Some remote part of her mind wondered if she was dead.
Where there’s pain, there’s life. Goddess, what a depressing definition...
She couldn’t quite understand why she was able to think at all.
She forced her lids open, though they seemed weighted with the foundation stones of Skybowl. White, everything was white, edged in blood-red and black, with tiny darting stars like fish in a pond—but what was she doing underwater? And such strange, pale water, at that? She was a Sunrunner, and she’d drown in no time.
Beloved idiot. BREATHE.
Both hands lifted involuntarily, and the rope circling her neck loosened a fraction that allowed her to breathe. It took several deep inhalations, but soon enough the red and black faded and the odd little fish swam away. The whiteness was revealed as that damned banner between her and where Meiglan and the High Warlord stood above.
Ruala was still on her feet, trembling to the roots of her night-black hair. Isriam and Beth were trying to keep Alasen from falling over and strangling. Their Vellanti guards seemed to have vanished.
Sioned straightened her back. Aching weakness flowed like a river down her spine and in tributary streams to every nerve. She coughed out Isriam’s name and his head turned, dark eyes blazing with equal parts anger and effort. He’d half-choked himself in his contortions as his shoulder supported Alasen’s back.
“Hold still,” Sioned rasped. “I’m going to burn your ropes.”
“You can’t! The needle—“
“—won’t kill me that fast. Just don’t move—I’m not very clear yet and I don’t want to set Fire to you.”
Betheyn cried out, “No! Sioned, don’t!”
Sioned ignored her. Isriam was her first and only choice. She was too weak to move. Ruala, the same. Alasen was practically unconscious. Beth was too slender to heft a sword, let alone use one.
If there’d been a sword available. She cursed, then told herself Isriam would just have to figure something out.
Goddess, .how it hurt! So tiny a Fire, .only a thin little knife of it to cut Isriam’s bonds, and it was as if the needle pierced every nerve in her body. Long ago, Meath had told her what it felt like; she’d experienced it at Meath’s own hand. But this time it went on and on and on, all the colors of sand and rock and crag and clothing brittle, too bright, quivering like glass about to shatter in a thunderstorm.
“Enough!” Isiram shouted. “My lady, stop!”
Sioned had to mist him. She damped the flame and felt herself falling into a blackened pit.
Pol didn’t let her.
He had all of them now.
With Naydra, the two nameless diarmadh’im at Dragon’s Rest—and with them, twoscore others called willingly to his service and his need.
With Tobin, Rislyn and Jihan, and the other children’s pure young strength.
With Rohannon, that dazzling white mind, shining like snow in sunlight—and close on three hundred more sorcerers, some still feebly straggling, most offering themselves gladly.
And with Andry, Goddess Keep.
He had seen how the ros’salath there was connected by merging colors—like yarns dyed in different vats, or gem-stones not quite matched in a necklet. For an instant he thought he must examine each pattern individually, shuffle and rearrange them, like to like. The colossal impossibility of it resolved into despair. Then he saw two things: that instinct had guided them to each other, without regard for faradhi or diarmadhi, and that the whole elaborate structure was supported by nine radiant rainbows.
With Azhdeen, the dragons.
He worked quickly now, curving the long wall into a vast circle, layering power and color upward—just as Sioned had done the length of his life ago. He remembered it now, the fierce beauty and desperate strength of his mother’s mind; remembered the tense, sweating faces of his father and grandfather limned in starshine and the thin Fire Sioned raised around them.
Colors and patterns he had never seen before were as familiar and distinct as those he had known since his first forays on sunlight. Yet as he drew each into the larger whole of light and power, identities blurred. He saw all, and he saw none. Concern was dismissed in an instant; Sioned would unravel the weaving as only she could and see them all safe once he was finished here.
One mind, through which so many Sunrunners were brought to him, resisted still. Don’t fight me. I need you. Please, Andry—
Silence.
Later, they would realize that the dawn had provided a useful tool in determining who had faradhi blood.
Feylin and Walvis knew that one of them did—otherwise Sionell could not have made two Sunrunner children with Tallain. They’d never known exactly which until now. What she saw was Pol and Andry standing alone on the rise; what he saw was a bright glimmer of Fire and a glowing white crown.
Chay saw, too—no surprise, with two faradhi sons. But there were those who, like Dannar, had never suspected themselves halflings. One was the young man Meath had wondered about while teaching Chayla her colors; another, to his eternal shock, was Sethric. Of the nearly seven hundred men and women who waited to see if they would have to fight and perhaps die that morning, nearly one hundred saw much more.
Maarken saw it all, of course. When the High Warlord struck at Meiglan with the golden knife, his whole body flinched. At his shoulder, his dapple-gray stallion sidled, bumping into Andry’s big gelding; he tightened his grip on their .reins and planted his own feet more firmly in the sand.
Hoofbeats slurred behind him. “What’s going on out there?” Chay demanded, swinging down from the saddle.
“Pol forbade me the sunlight.”
“Wise of him, frustrating for you,” his father observed. Squinting up the crater’s slope, he went on, “Ah. The whoreson just found out he can’t kill Meiglan. Wish we could hear what he’s shouting to his troops—“He broke off with a blurt of surprise as the Vellant’im began the charge. “Maarken—“
“No. We stay put.” He stared at where the ros’salath marked the sand and murmured, “Pol took the choice from me. Deliberately. He didn’t trust me to—“
“Nonsense!” Chay snapped. “You’re his Battle Commander. If this fails he’ll need you for the work I trained you to do.”
Maarken shook his head. “I’ve known all my life it would come to this. He took the decision away. He either loves me too much to force it on me, or he’s scared I wouldn’t choose for him.”
Chay grabbed the stump of Maarken’s left arm. “I don’t know how a son of your mother could be so stupid!” he hissed. “You listen to me, boy. You made your choice when you were eleven winters old!”
His remaining hand clenched tight around two horses’ reins. Beneath the leather gauntlet was a silver ring set with a garnet, once worn by Prince Jastri of Syr. Rohan had given it to him after he called Fire to Roelstra’s makeshift bridge across the Faolain. His first Sunrunner ring—given not by any Lord or Lady of Goddess Keep, but by his prince.
“Yes,” he murmured. “I suppose I did.” His choice had been made before Pol was born. But it didn’t prevent him from feeling he had betrayed his brother.
Vellant’im began to crash into the wall and fall back shrieking. Maarken feared for the horses—Radzyn horses— ridden by the enemy, whose cavalry had held back behind the foot soldiers. Would the ros’salath madden them, too? The horses behind him were trembling now, not with fear but with the battle-fervor bred into them. Maarken watched the warriors writhe in the sand and knew there would be no work for Radzyn’s finest today—including him. The ros’salath would do the killing today.
“Gentle Goddess, Mother of Dragons,” Chay whispered, and Maarken wondered if he knew he used Kazander’s habitual phrase.
The thought whirled away on an instinctive leap of his heart. He turned, knowing what he would see: dragons, as if summoned by Chay’s muttered oath. Joy in their flight was immediately replaced by fear for their lives. They came on powerful wingbeats that pushed the measures behind them at five times the speed of the fastest horse’s hooves.
No! he wanted to scream at them on sunlight. Go back! They’ll kill you!
The Vellant’im surged down from Skybowl, bellowing their defiance of the Azhrefs spells and the Azhrefs minions.
More hoofbeats, at a hard gallop this time, and a moment later Sionell was leaping down from her saddle, shining and sweaty in her Merida armor.
“Don’t say it,” she warned. “I have just as much right to be here as you do. I want to know what’s going on.”
Maarken gestured with his left arm. “They’re hitting Pol’s weave—I assume you can see it?—and they’re going mad.”
“Yes,” she replied tightly. “I can see it. But it’s not Pol’s doing.”
“Sorcery’s there, or the swords would collapse it,” he said. “Thassalante and his people are there—and they wouldn’t be if Pol wasn’t in control.”
“No!” she insisted. “He never planned to kill! It must be Andry, it has to be. You’ve got to stop him!”
Chay’s quicksilver eyes were dark and lightless. “Andry.”
Dragons howled their rage. Maarken staggered against his horse’s neck as Pavisel, still in flight, demanded his colors. He was helpless in her frantic grip, incapable of freeing himself. Dimly, he understood that she was trying to protect him, and for an unknown time he felt himself enfolded as surely as if she had wrapped him in her wings.
But when Azhdeen roared an imperious summons, Maarken found that he was woven along with his dragon into the ros’salath.
This time, it did not kill.
Isriam’s fingers were so numb he could hardly bend them. The rope at his back had only frayed with Sioned’s Fire, not burned through, but he’d seen pain in her eyes and knew he must lie to her to save her life. Fumbling at the cords with clumsy fingers, at last he took in a deep breath, tensed the muscles of his neck, and jerked.
The result was freedom—and a burn on his throat that would scar him for life. As quickly as he could, he untied his other hand and yanked the needle from his palm. The trickle of blood was nothing. He spared a moment to rub circulation back into his hands, then worked on Betheyn’s ropes.
“Don’t bother with me,” she said, and he shook his head.
“You have to untie the others.” His voice was raspy and every breath hurt his braised windpipe. “Take the needles out first, so they can work. I’m going after Princess Meiglan.”
Her hands were loose. He extracted the needle, cursing the Vellant’im anew. Chafing her fingers as he had his own, he suddenly couldn’t look at her. Only a little while ago he’d been unable to look away.
“Isriam.” Beth’s hands clenched around his. “It was wrong from start to finish—but I do love you, my dear.”
Stupefied, he couldn’t even breathe. Then he understood: she thought they were going to die. She could tell him, now that she was sure neither of them would live to regret it.
Before he could tell her how wrong she was, she let him go and hurried to Sioned. He would never remember scrambling up the rocks, but he would relive in nightmares the moment he saw High Princess Meiglan.
It was the sweetest peace Sioned had ever known, being free of pain. Dulled to a nagging ache by the presence of sorcerers, still it had sieved away her strength. Now she was whole again, the poison was gone, and she was free.
Caught in Pol’s gigantic glowing web of Sunrunners and Sorcerers, but strangely free.
This was partly due to Pol himself. He kept her slightly separate, drawing on her but not draining her the way he drained the others. Some of it was Elisel, shielding her in a different way despite Azhdeen’s demands, just as the other dragons protected their humans as much as they could. But Sioned realized it was her own doing as well: that, given distance by her son’s and her dragon’s care, she’d put yet more distance between herself and the ros’salath.
When she looked on it as a whole, and saw what Pol had built, and how, and why, she was as stunned by awe and pride as she was by fear.
Elisel, dragon-sensitive to emotion, felt it and slid a little more of herself between Sioned and the weaving. Sioned couldn’t spare the time to soothe her; she knew what Pol would want of her when this was over. The slight remove allowed her to inspect the web, to see and identify all those within it. Swiftly, knowing she must sort all the shining, shifting patterns before he finished his work, she called on the memory trained so ruthlessly by Lady Andrade. Many of these people she knew. But the rest—
Merciful Goddess! Over four hundred of them—from Saumer and Iliena near Skybowl to the children and Tobin at Feruche, from the steady glow of Dragon’s Rest to the sunburst of power over Firon.
And one solitary mind that seethed amber and amethyst and ruby-red, with a hundred more refracted through him.
He was the glass through which all at Goddess Keep shone, the lens that focused their light.
Andry—
The dragon was helping him, sharing the tremendous burden directed through one formidable mind. Pol was taking more than this from Andry, however. Without the Lord of Goddess Keep and the polished skills of the devr’im, Pol could never have done this. They were the foundation, as solid as the stones of Remagev—and on them, as at that castle, the trap was built.
Not elegantly—Sunrunners were crammed together with sorcerers, those in Firon taking the astonished Saumer into their midst, Jeni and her dragon within a group that included sorcerers from Dragon’s Rest as well as Antalya and Tobin up at Feruche. No, not at all elegant—but it worked. She wasted a moment appreciating the magnificent chaotic reasonableness of it. Rohan, you would’ve loved this!
Then she saw Thassalante. The old man’s colors blazed in a gleeful amethyst-ruby-sapphire dance of pleasure in using his gifts to serve his people and his prince. He didn’t care if the ros’salath killed or caressed. His was the pure joy of a young “dragon’s first flight, a colt’s first wild gallop, a boy’s first kiss from a girl he adored.
But—Thassalante shouldn’t be in this at all—
Andry fell to the sand, a smear of white and silver far below her. Pol still stood, golden, shining, his head lifted to the mountain and the dragons wheeling through the sunlit sky at his command. Meiglan smiled. He was tall and strong and beautiful, and more powerful than anyone who had ever lived-^-even the exalted Lady Andrade, even Andry’s precious Lady Merisel, even Sioned.
She saw only him, was aware only of him.
From somewhere very far away, she heard the silvery clang of the poles onto the rocks as those who held the white cloth behind her rushed down to join the fighting. Equally remote, she heard the scramble of boots as the youth carrying the High Warlord’s own banner followed them. Someone shouted despairingly behind her.
She did hear the High Warlord say in her own language, “Forgive me, Meiglan. I am sorry.”
She did not hear the ringing of the gold knife on invisible Fire, for there was no Fire left. She never felt the heartstroke that killed her.
Remembering the mirror, Pol imagined that the dome was his cupped hands—one diarmadhi, one faradhi—and brought them together, fingers lacing, clasping tight. The Vellant’im toppled like storm-crushed trees.