Trie wonder of it was that it all happened so quickly. Chay had spent more time over a single cup of wine than elapsed between the first glow of the selej and the moment the Vellant’im began to fall.
And the horses, too. His horses. Those moving at a canter or gallop went tails-over-ears; the rest stumbled to their knees or simply toppled over. Scores of riders were trapped, and many crushed, but it wasn’t their legs Chay was thinking of when he told himself, If there’s even one bone broken, I’ll take it out of those boys’ hides. The oath was hollow, like the feeling in his chest ever since Andry collapsed.
Chay had started forward then, but Sionell’s grip on his arm warned him back. Now, with the glow of power gone from the air, Maarken sank to his knees in the sand, slumped, head hanging.
It was incredibly quiet after the din of the Vellanti charge. Chay heard only the muted rattle of harness and a few whispers behind him, and the heavy snorting exhalations of felled horses well beyond Pol and Andry. Chay knelt beside Maarken and cradled the sweat-damp head against his shoulder.
“They’re ... not dead,” Maarken whispered. “Tell Walvis ... disarm them...”
“Yes,” Chay said mindlessly.
“Bind ... but don’t kill...” He struggled upright, groping for support with a hand no longer there. “Mustn’t kill them—Pol’s order—“
“They won’t be killed,” Sionell said. She touched Chay’s shoulder. “I’ll tell my father. You take care of your sons.”
She scrambled up onto her mare—one of the golden Dragon’s Rest breed, given her by Pol years ago—and galloped off. On the bright horse, jewels and polished armor gleaming, she seemed a star hurtling across sun-drenched sand.
Maarken was steadier now, having received Sionell’s assurance. “Andry,” he murmured. “See to him, Father, I’m all right—“
Chay got him onto his horse, and waved Daniv over. “Take him to Lady Feylin,” he said, not knowing what else to do for him. “And send somebody to help me with Andry.”
“NOr
The guttural cry warned the High Warlord an instant too late. He dragged the knife from Meiglan’s heart and let her slide from his embrace, but the young man had already launched himself through the air. Turning, he was just in time to take the brunt of the charge in the stomach.
He grunted, breath driven from his lungs. The two of them went sprawling and only swift battle reflexes allowed him to twist in midair so he didn’t take the worst of the fall as well.
Still, he felt ribs crack on a ragged stone. Pain momentarily blinded him. The boy lay beside him, stunned but still moving. He brought up his hand—but the gold knife had flown from his fingers, slick with the Kir’reia’s blood.
Wriggling free, his vision clearing as he sucked in air beneath stabbing ribs, he pushed himself to his knees. Below him lay his dream and his duty, spreading lifeless down the mountain, across the sand.
Once more his lungs emptied of breath, this time in sickening shock. He could not be seeing this. It was not possible. He rose by sheer force of will, as if by rising he could bring them all to their feet again to attack the Azhrei where he stood alone and triumphant in his Desert.
Horses stirred. They gathered long legs, snorted, shook proud heads as if wakening from sleep—or ensorcellment. But the spell was mine. Now they are free, and I am left with nothing.
She is dead, and for nothing.
The horses trotted away, fastidiously avoiding fallen bodies. When they were clear of obstacles, they headed for their stablemates at a gallop, manes flying like battle flags.
The banners of fifty clans lay in the dirt. His own wallowed across the rocks down the slope, seeping away from him.like water. The lightning bolt struggled feebly in the wind and then subsided, strengthless, as dead as all his warriors.
His sons, easily identifiable in their white clothes—his sons, pride of his loins, his own in feature and form as if they’d had no mothers—his sons lay motionless at his feet.
The Azhrei stood alone, victorious, his dragons circling overhead.
The High Warlord stared at the wreckage of his duty and his dream. He could not comprehend what he saw. Had he been wrong? Had he made a mistake?
No. Never. As much as he scorned the priests he had used, the superstitions he had worked to his advantage, it was not a failure of faith that had led to this. He was High Warlord, and his faith was in the righteousness of his dream. Not for him a priest’s pleas to the Father of Winds for favor.
Neither was it a failure of his belief that such favor was still his. He was still standing. So was the Azhrei.
The failure was not his. It belonged to those who had believed too much in superstition and not believed enough in him.
He roared challenge, fists raised to the sky. “Fight me, Dragon Prince! I killed your wife—now try to kill me! Take up your sword! Fight me!”
Isriam braced himself on one elbow, sickness clenching his belly, storms thundering in his head. There was a warm, wet pain above his right eye; he had to smear blood from his lashes before he could see.
What he’d hoped to find—the High Warlord as limp and helpless as himself, preferably soaked in blood—was instead the bitter sight of the man standing white and defiant above him.
Oh, Goddess, why wasn’t I faster? He killed her, the son of a whore killed her—she’s dead and it’s my fault—
He battled his aching body, his rebellious stomach, and swayed to his feet. Lightning exploded behind his eyes. If he could just make himself move, he could reach the High Warlord and push. At best, the man would split his skull and spill his brains on the stones below; at worst, Isriam might fall with him.
He lurched forward, stumbling on rocks. The High Warlord had claimed Meiglan’s life; Isriam would claim his. Almost close enough, another few steps—please don’t let me fall, please, not until I can take him with me—
The sudden rush of heat, the sudden scream of animal pain, nearly toppled him. Lightning again—right in front of him, a blinding column of Fire the height and width of a man. This man.
The High Warlord did not scream again.
Isriam reeled back and put one shaking hand in front of his eyes. The stench of charring flesh sickened him even more than the nausea from the wound in his head. He wilted against a jagged stone and retched until there was nothing left in his stomach.
A day dragged by. Perhaps a year. He turned his cheek instinctively into soft cloth. A voice murmured his name; fingers stroked the blood from his face. He opened his eyes. “M-my lady?”
“Hush. You’re all right.”
His head was cradled in Betheyn’s lap. He’d been moved down to the place where Princess Meiglan—he gulped back the memory and looked up at Beth, pleading with his eyes.
“She—“ It was all he could say. All that was needed. Her fingers trembled against his skin and she bent her head. Lifting one hand as if to push the knowledge away, he saw that his sleeve was singed, the fine hairs burned from the reddened backs of his palms.
“You were ... very close to the Fire,” Beth said, a small tremor in her voice. “I dragged you back before it could ... it was an angry Fire,” she finished dully.
“You—“ —saved my life, he wanted to tell her. But I couldn’t save hers. Once more he could not meet her eyes. He turned his head, biting his lip.
Alasen and Ruala were kneeling nearby on either side of a slender whiteness crowned in golden hair. Ruala’s back was to him, and her body hid the wound from him, but he could see Alasen’s face—too stunned even to weep. Isriam was passionately glad none of them had seen her die. He had. The knife had found a quick, shining path into her heart, and he knew even before her blood stained the white robe that he was too late.
Sioned alone was on her feet, standing before the massive fountain of Fire. It still burned, though there was nothing now within the flames and the rocks below it had melted to black glass. She glanced over her shoulder. Isriam flinched. Her green eyes were ablaze, her fury as bright and hot as the Fire. When she directed her glare down the mountain, he knew what she was seeing, for he had seen it himself: the piled bodies, the gloss of helpless steel, the tall golden figure of her son.
“It’s not you she rages against,” Beth said softly. “You mustn’t think that, Isriam. It’s Pol.”
He frowned, regretting the expression as it tugged the gash in his brow. “Pol? Why?”
“The Fire isn’t hers. It’s his.”
Chay cursed the sliding sand as he climbed up the dune, dragging his horse behind him. At the top, he released the reins and the stallion stood quietly, though his nostrils quivered with the scent of newly returning mares.
Crouching beside his son, Chay felt for the pulse in the throat. Wildly erratic beneath chill skin—he swallowed hard and looked up at Rohan’s son.
Pol stared at him as if he’d never seen him before. The man who had refused to slaughter his enemies with the deadly madness of the ros’salath was perilously near madness himself.
Chay held himself from recoiling from the savagery of those blue-green eyes. It took everything of strength and determination he possessed to meet Pol’s gaze. He gathered his son in his arms.
“I killed him,” Pol said.
For one hideous moment Chay thought he meant Andry. But Pol had turned that fierce gaze up the mountain to the Fire burning there. Chay hadn’t even noticed it. But he knew who it must be.
Had been.
“Pol.” He kept his voice low and soft. “Help me.”
“I killed him. Too late.”
“Pol.”
The eyes that looked at him now were stricken by a more human but no less terrible emotion. Tears welled, bitter and luminous.
“She’s dead.” Madness once more sheened his eyes. “Meggie—she’s dead—“
Sensitized now to power, he felt the hairs on his nape rise when the selej glowed with light. Very slowly, Pol’s eyes closed and he slumped to his knees. As he curled on the sand like a sleeping child, the glimmer faded and the white stones were only stones.
Chay glanced up at the sky. “Whoever did that for him, thank you.”
Holding his son more closely in his arms, he called out for help.
Ostvel cradled the baby, careful to stay within sunlight. With half Dragon’s Rest, he’d woken at dawn to an incredibly emphatic yowling and was unsurprised when Naydra arrived at his door, begging him to spare them all deafness by singing Larien back to sleep. Goddess, how he wished the noise would return. No child with eyes wide open should be so silent, so still.
Pol was only a day old when it happened to him. Ostvel wondered what it did to a baby’s mind, to experience so much power while still so new to the world.
Later, he would judge that Larien’s silence lasted no longer than it would take to sip the morning’s first cup of taze. Certainly the shadows had not lengthened significantly when he gave a sudden gasp and began to shriek.
Naydra blinked and shook her head to clear it. Lisiel was slower to recover, but the first to ask the obvious.
“What happened?” Then, wincing as she reached for her squalling son: “Gentle Goddess, what an uproar!”
Ostvel handed Larien over, smiling. “Yes, I know. Isn’t it wonderful?” the trembling hand hidden in her skirt pocket. Meig had hold of the other one, not quite dragging_ her up the stairs.
“Princess Audrite!”
“I’m here, Jahnev. Meig says you need my help,” she began. The sight of the children, washed in sunlight beside the window, took all her voice away. She was frightened, even more than when Tobin whispered, “Pol,” and her expression changed from quiet concentration to quivering strain. Tobren had caught her breath and nearly fallen. Audrite was horrified to see that whatever had taken them had also seized her grandchildren.
“Alleyn? Audran?” she breathed, fingers tightening convulsively around Meig’s. He gently tugged away. “Dear Goddess, how can Pol do this to them?”
Meig’s reply was matter-of-fact. “Don’t worry, my lady. If it’s Jihan and Rislyn there, it won’t hurt.”
She looked down at him, not understanding for a moment. The gray eyes were serene as a distant, drifting cloud. Shame made her glance away. Pol would never endanger his daughters—or anyone else, she reminded herself. She of all people should know him; she had helped raise him.
“You’re right, Meig. We’ll just wait for them to come back.”
“Oh, we don’t have to wait,” he said, looking past her to the window.
Audrite followed his gaze. Maara had put out a hand to brace herself against the wall; Alleyn’s knees went weak, too, and Audran held her up. Rislyn reached up a quivering hand as if to touch the sunlight she could not see—not with her eyes. Antalya took a few shaky steps and Jahnev leaped to steady her.
But it was Jihan who drew Audrite’s eyes. Her head turned, bright hair aglow in the morning sun, face shining with excitement, blue eyes incandescent with ... Power, Audrite told herself, and shivered.
“Jahnev,” Meig asked, “is it all right if I go into the sunlight now?”
Jahnev was waiting for Audrite at the open door, frantic worry uncannily controlled for a boy his age. He was doing better than she was, she admitted, and once more clenched i
At Goddess Keep, the wait was much longer.
Norian and her brother watched from the windswept battlements, unease at the effects of the ros’salath giving way to horror when it collapsed. Opposing forces crashed together without hindrance now.
Elsen shouted for horse and sword. Norian clung frantically to his arm, ordering the young page who attended Elsen to stay where he was.
“Don’t be a fool!” she cried as her brother shook her off. “You hardly made it up the steps!” Against her better judgment, he’d insisted on being where his troops could at least see him. To ride into battle would certainly undo all the Sunrunners’ healing work—assuming he survived Vellanti swords.
“Damn it, Norian, those are my people down there!”
“And my husband! I won’t risk you, too!”
“If Sethric could ride and fight with one leg useless, so can I!”
Norian did not point out that Sethric had spent time at Remagev honing the skills in which he’d been trained since boyhood. It would only exacerbate Elsen’s lifelong sense of inferiority, something hidden so well that she only saw its full bitterness at this instant.
What she did say, just as blunt and even more cruel, was, “I’m sure that will comfort your wife and son when you’re dead!”
Selante and Vellanur were the keys to his conscience as a man and as a prince. His death would break their hearts and make a five-year-old boy the immediate heir to Grib.
It was a near thing. Norian watched Elsen hover on the brink, his anguished glance at the battlefield evenly matched by his fingers twisting the ruby ring on his thumb—a gift from Selante to celebrate the birth of their son. She had her husband to thank for what pushed her brother back from the edge: Edrel broke free of Vellant’im and rallied his soldiers with a raucous cry. Those around him echoed it, made it a banner and a weapon against their enemies.
“For Elsen! Prince Elsen and Grib!”
Not Andry, not Pol, not Azhrei or Goddess Keep or his own holding of River Ussh. Norian’s eyes filled. But it was only when the battle was over, late in the morning, and Edrel lay bleeding and senseless in her arms, that she allowed herself to weep.
There was no fighting at Balarat.
The gates opened a few moments after Rohannon. Tirel. and Aldiar were stricken mute. Arlis wasted no time. He shouted for the charge and galloped up to the castle with his army behind him.
The swords, dull gray in the sharp, cold dawn, were unnecessary. Arlis sheathed his, only the chin-strap of his helm keeping his jaw from hanging open. The vast courtyard was packed with castle folk who made not the slightest sound. Not a cough for the wind, not a scraping of boots on cobbles, not even a child’s bewildered whimper. At first Arlis thought they imitated statues for fear of how their returning prince would punish them. As his gaze flickered from face to blank face, he realized they were silent because they were simply too stunned to react. Hells, they were barely breathing.
Then he noticed subtle differences between one pair of eyes and the next. Scanning the crowd, he initially rejected what his experience told him must be true. But there was no denying that out of the hundred or so he had glanced at thus far, fully a quarter of them wore the glazed, glassy expression Sunrunners acquired when they worked.
The place was littered with sorcerers.
“Damnedest thing I’ve ever seen,” Arlis muttered.
Suddenly Laric was beside him, saying nothing, staring up at the wide balcony of his great hall. It, too, was packed with people, fifty or more crammed from the stone balustrade to the tall crystal windows. Nobody moved up there, either. Arlis tried to ignore the trickle of ice down his spine that had nothing to do with the morning chill.
Massive bronze, doors opened and a little knot of high-borns and court.functionaries emerged from the great hall.
“Your grace,” one began, her voice high-pitched with nervousness. Laric cast one quelling look at her, and she subsided.
A round-faced woman whose apron declared her calling pushed her way from behind the nobles. She descended the six steps and bobbed a curtsey to her prince. “Goddess blessing on you, my lord, and it’s more than welcome you are back to your own castle!” She flung a look of fury over her shoulder. “You’ll be looking first for that whoreson Yarin. He’s likely cowering upstairs with his lickspittles.”
Arlis gestured to one of his own Iseli soldiers, who dis- mounted with twenty of his fellows and went inside to search.
“Nolly?” Laric gave her a faint smile. “Lord Idalian told me how you helped him and my son. I thank you for it with all my heart. Can you tell me what happened here today?”
“Your grace!” said another of the contigent on the stairs, trepidation overcome by outrage that a prince should ask a cook for information. Laric ignored the man utterly; Arlis distributed his best feral smile all around.
Nolly shook her head. “What I heard, my lord, was this. They were all ready to sorcel up their tricks when every misbegotten one of them turned to stone. And so they still are,” she added, gesturing to the balcony overhead.
Arlis knew enough about power to believe it. Aldiar would be able to tell them more, he hoped, but Aldiar was still outside with Tirel and Rohannon, all three of them oblivious.
“Secure the castle,” Laric ordered suddenly. “I want everyone out here in the courtyard immed—“
One instant, silence; the next, pandemonium. Arlis would later learn that the number of people who collapsed was exactly one hundred—fifty-three of whom were subsequently killed. This was simple mercy; they raved in broken-minded madness, and it was kinder to cut their throats.
But in those first few moments after their release, it seemed the whole courtyard had gone mad. Arlis’ soldiers and Laric’s quickly moved among the screaming castle folk, separating them from the sorcerers who either dropped to the cobbles in shock or were flailing and moaning in agony. Up on the balcony, feeble shrieks combined with the crash of breaking glass.
Stewards and ministers tumbled down the stairs toward Laric, babbling of sorcery and the foul and wicked spells that forced them to disloyalty. Arlis wondered if they’d taken lessons from Chiana.
Laric’s mare suddenly flattened her ears, displayed her large white teeth, and lashed out with one hind hoof. The functionaries beat a hasty retreat. Arlis smiled again. Although he’d missed seeing the twitch of Laric’s boot against his gelding’s flank, he, too, had been riding Radzyn horses all his life.
Things had just begun to settle down when the erstwhile ruler of Firon was carried out a side door. Yarin flopped like a child’s puppet, mouth soundlessly agape, wide-open eyes screaming in silence.
“We’ll need help bringing the others down, my lord,” said the Iseli to Arlis. “But I thought his grace would want this one first.”
“Are they all like—this?” Arlis asked, his throat dry.
“Many are, my lord. Others are just lying there.”
Laric’s face turned white but for splotches of wind-burned color high on his cheekbones. “Good Goddess—is this happening to my son?”
Arlis wheeled his horse without a word, and everyone between him and the gate scrambled out of his way. Rohannon—after everything else, now this! Maarken and Hollis will take me apart piece by piece—Hells, I’ll sharpen my own sword and knife for them to do it with—
Three horses were cantering toward him. He reined in, grateful that his own Radzyn mare responded to the faintest of signals, for all the strength seemed to leave his body when he recognized his squire.
Tirel waved from his perch on Idalian’s knee, calling out, “Did we miss the fighting, Prince Arlis?”
“Th-there wasn’t any to miss,” he managed. “Are you all right?”
“Fine!” the child confirmed, then complained, “Except Idalian wouldn’t let me ride up here by myself. And I did not fall off my horse, either!”
Arlis barely heard him. Rohannon did not look “fine.” He looked exhausted. Aldiar seemed near to fainting. But both wore expressions of satisfaction,
“It was Pol,” Rohannon said. “He needed us at Skybowl.”
“Skybowl?” Arlis echoed weakly.
“It’ll take some time to explain, my lord,” Aldiar murmured.
“Uh ... yes.”
“It’s all right, you know—at Skybowl,” Rohannon said as they rode back to the gates. “The Vellant’im were defeated.”
“I can’t wait to hear how.” Arlis paused. “... I think.”
Andrev toppled from his horse before Tilal could catch him. Because Saumer and Iliena were also insensible, neither he nor Gemma thought much of Andrev’s state. But when Volog’s grandson and Yarin’s sister began to mumble their way back to consciousness, Andry’s son stayed silent and unmoving.
Gemma called the boy’s name. Tilal unstoppered his wa-terskin and poured a palmful to drizzle over Andrev’s forehead.
“Maybe it hit him harder because he was already Sunrunning,” he said.
“I don’t like this, Tilal.” She placed her fingers to the pulse in Andrev’s neck, and gave a little gasp.
Tilal pulled the light cloak away from Andrev’s body. Soft material stuck and tangled at the shoulder pin: Tilal’s spare, given when Andrev lost his. The wheat-sheaf facing dangled free, but the sharp pin itself had hooked into the boy’s shirt.
Into the boy’s flesh.
“Goddess, no—“ He yanked it out. “Andrev!” He tore the shirt from the wound—hardly even that, only a ragged puncture, not even bleeding much—but the pin was stained red. Still attached were a tiny scrap of cloth and a piece of Andrev’s skin.
He shook limp shoulders. “No, damn it—Andrev! Andrev.1”
“Tilal—“ Gemma’s voice broke.
He sat down hard on the sand. “No,” he whispered. “Not you, too—I can’t—this isn’t—“
But it was true. Andrev was dead. He’d been Sunrunning and had fallen and the steel pin had pierced his skin and he was dead. Senselessly. Meaninglessly.
A hand grasped his shoulder. He looked up: Chaltyn, tears streaming down weathered cheeks. “My lord,” he said thickly, “we’re summoned to Skybowl.”
“To Hells with Skybowl!” Gemma cried.
The captain nodded agreement, but duty compelled him to speak. “Saumer has been told by High Princess Sioned that we’re needed. The Vellant’im must be guarded while they are disarmed, else when they wake—“
“Wake?” Tilal heaved himself to his feet. He stared down at Andrev, and saw another boy dead of a wound that should not have killed him. He knuckled his eyes with one gloved hand, the dry sting worse than tears. “By the Goddess, I’ll see to it personally that none of them ever wakes again.”
Sioned leaned wearily against the rocks, eyes closed. She could hear them gathering up the white cloth to wrap Meiglan in, hear Beth and Alasen and Ruala weeping softly. I wonder why it is that I can’t seem to cry, she thought. Surely I ought to.
Someone approached, limping slightly: Isriam. She said, “Tilal will be here soon to help down below. But he’s not happy. He wants so much to kill them...”
“My lady ... can you tell me why they’re still alive?”
She looked up. He was wiping blood from his forehead, and she told herself they really ought to use some of that pristine white cloth to bandage him.
“It was Pol’s doing,” she said. “You’d better ask him.” Once he wakes from the sleep that woman spun around him. Whoever she is, Goddess bless her for her kindness.
“For now,” she continued, “if you’re up to it, I’d like you to go down and find Lord Chaynal. Tell him to send someone out to meet his infuriated grace of Ossetia. Make it somebody Tilal will listen to. Daniv can go along and take charge of his Syrene troops.”
“Yes, my lady.” He limped away.
She shut her eyes to the sight of Meiglan’s frail body vanishing within the billowing white silk. She was so tired. Never in her life had she felt such deathly emptiness. Perhaps that was why she couldn’t weep.
She couldn’t even be angry anymore. She had been a little while ago, when Pol had killed the High Warlord. The first time Pol had ever killed with his gifts. Let it be the first and last. Let it be the only.
His action had enraged her. Now she couldn’t seem to remember why the feeling had been so familiar. A death denied her, claimed by someone else ... oh, yes. Ostvel. That night at the old Feruche, Ostvel had taken lanthe’s death from her. She’d hated him for thwarting her vengeance. She supposed she’d hated Pol, too. It all seemed very far away now.
Hollow weariness brought with it a remarkable clarity of understanding. She ought to be too exhausted to string three words together in her own mind. But she knew without having to think about it that she was as wrong about wanting the
High Warlord’s death for herself as she’d been about wanting lanthe’s. Much more than Sioned, and for more desperate reasons, Pol had needed that kill. He would never have been able to look at his own face in a mirror again—or anyone else’s face.
But above all, it was imperative that he learn what it was to kill that way. To know that with the power of his mind, with a single thought, he could destroy life and breath and flesh, leaving behind nothing but ash to drift away on the wind.
Well, it was over now. Considering what he’d chosen not to do to the Vellant’im, she supposed that the shock of what he’d done to their High Warlord would be both lesson and warning. He’d needed the death, but he’d also needed to learn.
Sioned couldn’t work up much concern over it. Maybe later. Right now I’m too tired. It’s been one Hell of a long day—and not even midmorning yet.
Alasen and Beth were conferring quietly nearby. She heard her own name, and then Ruala’s voice.
“No, leave her be. She’s done enough—too much, by the look of her.”
Enough? Too much? No. She had done what Pol needed her to do. She had sorted out hundreds of individual minds, separating them back into their distinct colors and patterns. Some had splintered like stained-glass windows, and she doubted their sanity, but couldn’t feel any compassion. They had done it to themselves, fighting the awesome strength of Pol’s weaving.
Those who yielded survived. She had stitched them back together and left them whole—an impossible task on the face of it, but most had been able to help her. The children had been the most difficult, especially the wiMul and powerful Jihan. Jinan, though, had been the only one untouched by fear. Audrite is there, andTobin, and others who will help the children—and they’ll all be here with their parents in a few days anyway. They’ll be all right.
As for the dragons—they’d withdrawn without her assistance, obeying Azhdeen just as they had when he commanded them into the ros’salath. Had they held the whole thing together? Possibly. She didn’t know, and right now didn’t care.
The hardest task had been Andry, for his was the mind through which all at Goddess Keep had come. She had assumed he would do for them what she had done for the others, but when she finished her work they were all still tightly woven into the sunlight. The strain was too great; he wasn’t unconscious, down there in his father’s arms, but neither was he capable of the work on his own.
So Sioned did it for him, unthreading each half-trained faradhi mind first, and then those who had sorcerer blood, equally inexperienced. Next she found the more knowledgeable, who worked with her as best they could. Finally she turned to the devr’im who had given Pol the technique he needed. Antoun had helped a little, knowing them as he did. He had wept, but she had not, at the two lightless deaths at Goddess Keep.
So it was over now. A few dead, many dying—all of them of their own resistance. She wondered, without much interest and no real concern, how it must have felt to be Pol during that brief time. To know the power of an entire continent was his to weave into whatever he liked.
Her light-raw senses told her the third white moon had emerged from behind her larger sister. Sioned leaned back a little more, into a shadow. So very little time it had taken; but it felt like a thousand years.
She wanted never to move again. She sat there in the morning sun, a breeze rising from the Desert to caress her face, and thanked the Goddess for her weariness. She had used up the last shred of her strength in finding Saumer and making things clear to his groggy, power-drained mind. She had searched for Andrev, unable to find him, too exhausted , even to grieve when she realized why. She was incapable of doing anything more. She could not weave the sunlight to Feruche. So she would not have to be the one to tell Tobin that her grandson was dead, and her son was dying.