/Tkfter all the years it had taken Walvis to transform a broken-down castle into one of the most prosperous in the Desert, he might have been expected to sit back and enjoy life. By any standard, he was a successful, powerful man. He adored his wife. His son and daughter had married well, and given him five grandchildren. Former squire to the High Prince, he was honored with Rohan’s friendship; victor of the Battle of Tiglath and the canny ruler of a difficult holding, he had earned the respect of his peers. After more than thirty years of concentrated toil, Remagev now produced the finest glass ingots in the Desert, and in the last few years Walvis had gotten rich on, of all things, cactus seeds coveted for their incomparable aroma in taze. No one had to lift a finger to grow pemric plants; harvest was simply a matter of getting a good hold on the cactus—avoiding the dagger-long needles—and shaking.
But for all his sleek prosperity at the age “of fifty-two, he did not equip a cool room in his keep with a cozy chair and a few good books. Instead, every autumn he conducted a minor war.
Walvis sat his stallion as easily as he had at nineteen, watching a spectacle not unlike the one over which he had presided at Tiglath at that young age. The two armies were much smaller, of course, and both were under his command this time, and there were no chin-scarred Merida to be killed. But the battle cries and the flash of swords and the thunder of hooves were all the same. The young men—and even a few highborn young women—who came to him hoping to learn pretty tricks of riding and swordplay were always in for a shock. End-of-training exercises were no genteel final examinations of horsemanship and of skill with blades and bow.
Despite emphasis on military matters, a year spent at Remagev was not for the purpose of creating warriors eager to prove their prowess by doing battle with neighbors at home. Chay had established the school with the idea of educating all that out of them. It was his belief, eventually supported with reluctance by Rohan, that if everyone had everyone else’s measure as a soldier, there could be no wars to test skills and wits. Naturally, not all the youths were of equal accomplishment—but they all knew the basics of battle and tactics, and how to work with their own limitations. They might discover each other’s weaknesses, but they also knew each other’s strengths.
This was the cynical, practical reason Chay had originally given. Rohan would have preferred that the use of sword and bow be confined to the hunt, but had agreed to Chay’s plan after realizing something else. Comradeship and mutual respect were the major results of a year spent in such training. Even sons and daughters of hereditary enemies teamed to work together at Remagev. The companionship of training field and barrack went a long way toward negating traditional rivalries. Waivis had seen it happen a dozen times, most notably between two young men from Syr.
Their families had sparred since time’s beginning over precisely five and one-half square measures of pastureland. Kostas, weary of seeing them in his law court, took his brother Tilal’s advice and sent a son from each holding to Walvis. Bloody noses and black eyes were shared pretty equally between them during the first season of their residence. Walvis then used the oldest trick in anyone’s book and sent them off on a six-day survival trek through the Desert. They returned exhausted, filthy, and with still more bruises, but also with the beginnings of respect for each other. By the end of their year at Remagev, they fought on the same side in the mock war and returned home friends. One of them had even married the other’s sister.
Walvis grinned beneath his beard to remember the ironic end of their story. No longer fighting each other, the fami-hes united to turn on a neighbor who had long been a uree of irritation to both. A thoroughly exasperated Kostas had gritted his teeth, descended on them with fifty of his household guard, and told them to behave or be gone from his princedom. On the ride back to High Kirat, he’d laughed himself out of breath.
Despite the absurd comedy of that particular incident, the school was an overall success. It had the same foundation as Rohan’s carefully slow insistence that squires not be fostered exclusively with those princes and lords with whom their fathers were on good terms. People who knew each other, who had ties of respect and affection, were reluctant to make war.
He stroked Pashtul’s glossy neck and from a tall dune watched his little war unfold before him down on the plain. He had chosen a simple strategy today—cavalry only, no bows. Each side was split into two wings with instructions for an orderly fight. Order had long since vanished in the excitement of battle. Walvis shook his head, wondering when and if anyone would have the sense to withdraw and regroup. The instant any action disintegrated into chaos, it was usually problematical which side would lose. Discipline brought victory. He had proved that himself at Tiglath.
Discipline learned here helped these youngsters in later life. When some hardship or difficulty faced them, they always looked back to their year at Remagev—with its searing heat and glare, days away from cool shade and water, let alone anything that could honestly be called a tree—and thought, “I did that, therefore I can do this.” Walvis often had the same reaction. He’d won the Battle of Tiglath at only nineteen; not much had given him pause since.
He heard hoofbeats behind him and turned in his saddle. Another grin lit his face, and this time his eyes kindled as well, for it was his wife who rode up the dune on a gray gelding. He didn’t know who had first called Feylin “Lady Azhben”—mainly behind her back, sometimes to her face— but today especially it fit her. The folds of her cloak blew back from her shoulders like dragon wings, pale green lined with yellow. A daughter of the northern Desert, up near the border with Cunaxa that had seen more skirmishes against the Merida than any other area of the princedom, she had been with him at Tiglath all those years ago and was a discerning critic of his annual war.
“What a mess!” she pronounced as she drew rein beside him and surveyed the field. “Are you sure you told them what to do? Or did you just saddle them up and turn them loose?”
“They’ll learn,” he replied complacently. “I’m going to try out your maneuver tomorrow. What did you call it? ‘Dragon Claw’?”
“ ‘Winged Dragon.’ If it doesn’t work, I’ll let you take the credit.”
They observed the disaster below for a while. Swords were blunted and no one was ever seriously injured, but when the discipline of ranks was forgotten, the combatants tended to forget the niceties of not wounding their fellows. Happily, Feylin’s mother had been a physician and had taught her daughter most of what she knew. Walvis suspected that part of the reason they called his wife Lady Dragon-woman came from the scant sympathy she gave to the wounded.
Walvis sighed and waited out the chaos, wondering if the masters at the physicians school in Gilad and the scriptorium on Kierst-Isel had similar problems. Andry didn’t, of that he was sure. No one would dare defy a man who did not discourage the notion that he enjoyed the constant and favorable attention of the Goddess.
“Ah, look,” Feylin said. “Sethric has rallied some of them.”
“Perhaps I’ll put him in charge of one of your wings tomorrow.” Walvis squinted at the sunlit plain, seeing the blazing red pennant Sethric had raised to signal his leadership. It was difficult to follow the battle for the sand kicked up by the horses, but many on the red team were wheeling around, gathering near Sethric, massing for a thrust through the thick of the fray.
“A pity he’s the younger son of a younger son,” Feylin mused. “He’s shown some initiative now that he’s out from the shadow of his father and brothers.”
That was the dilemma faced by many young men: what to do with themslves. Heirs presented certain problems of their own—and he frowned as he remembered the scant summer Rinhoel of Meadowlord had spent here—but those without expectation of place or property beyond what they might marry troubled Walvis considerably. A year’s training here provided occupation for youths who would otherwise have almost nothing to do. But though most families were pleased to send out boys and receive back men, what was there to occupy the lives of extraneous sons?
Before giving final approval to the school, Rohan had told Chay and Walvis either to come up with a plan for helping such landless young men after training at Remagev was completed, or to scrap the idea altogether. Three things were recommended. First, that wealthier fathers with lands to spare should be persuaded to give their younger sons manors or other responsibilities to keep them busy. Second, those youths from poorer places should be offered positions in their prince’s guard. Third, if neither of these was appropriate or acceptable, they could join a company which, from its base here at Remagev, ranged out through the Desert, keeping order and settling disputes.
This idea was completely new. Walvis had had the rare satisfaction of seeing Rohan’s jaw actually drop open in astonishment when he and Chay had proposed it. The concept of representatives of the High Prince, armed but traveling in unthreatening groups of five, riding the land to keep the peace was so compellingly outrageous that it had taken Rohan only enough time to recover his powers of speech before he agreed to it.
“But not one of them sets foot out of Remagev until fully versed in the law,” he warned. “If they’re going to uphold it, they’re damned well going to know what it is.”
The first six of these groups had been sent out as an experiment in the spring of 734. They had ridden Prince-march as well as the Desert, returning in time for the Riatta at Dragon’s Rest that year. Pol reported himself and his vassals pleased with the results—Kerluthan of River Ussh especially, who told the princes that outlaws who had eluded his own punitive expeditions had been caught at last by the High Prince’s men.
The other princes, even Rohan’s allies, greeted this novel idea with skepticism. Their obvious fear was that he would propose to send these Medr’im, as Chay named them—“the Fives”—into their lands as well to uphold the High Prince’s laws. Something else troubled Tilal, however, which he told Rohan in private. If each prince established his own corps of Medr’im, he might end up with a small but very well-trained army that could become bored, restless, and dangerous. Twenty armed horsemen could easily seize and hold a fair-sized manor; sixty could lay successful siege to a keep. Once a princely army took the field, they would not retain a conquest long—but why tempt fate?
Rohan’s response was that the Medr’im were not to be copied by other princes, and for one of the few times in his long rule as High Prince he issued a summary decree to that effect.
“I’m not going to use my money in pursuit of your justice,” he told the princes, thus allaying their fears that he would expand the Medr’im’s sphere of influence. “I have no objection to giving these young men something to do for a few years, until they marry or settle to some occupation. By taking them off your hands and out of their families’ hair, I’m doing you a favor and we all know it.” He grinned briefly, then shrugged. “But my investment is in the Desert and Princemarch. I claim the right of the High Prince to exclusivity on this matter—just as Volog has sole rights over the scriptorium and Cabar over the physicians school. The Medr’im are my solution to a problem faced by us all, but they are my resource—no one else’s.”
No one argued with him. They were too busy congratulating themselves that the High Prince’s people would not be riding their lands and superceding their laws with his own.
The Medr’im had proved a resounding success. They made sure that criminals were taken to the proper authority for justice—whether it be the local athri or the High Prince. Walvis chose them with great attention to their maturity, character, and understanding of the law as well as their prowess at arms. Fifteen groups rode the two princedoms, seventy-five men total, but he could have fielded twice that many. He dreaded the day he would be faced with a mistake in his own judgment, but tried not to worry overmuch about it. The beginning had been made.
He had spotted a few likely candidates in this year’s collection of young blades, but two had been promised manors on their return home and one was needed to succeed his brother, who had died that summer without an heir. But Lord Sethric of Grib, youngest son of Prince Velden’s youngest brother, was showing himself an effective leader today. Remagev had taught him he had much of value to offer; he might make a very effective Medri.
Currently he was rallying troops to the red banner. He took them into a retreat, regrouped, and charged. The blue forces split neatly down the middle—neat not because of any tactical plan, but because Sethric’s riders sliced through them like a knife through a ripe apple. The reds pivoted in good order, trapped the blues, and pushed them across the field in a frantic retreat.
“Nicely done,” Feylin said. “But I’ll be busy tonight stitching up their foolish hides.”
“Do try to be a little sweeter to them, my love,” he urged, laughing. “They have their pride, after all.”
“I’m very sweet to them. I rate their scars on a scale of probable allurement to young ladies.”
“How comforting. They get no sympathy from Chayla, either.”
“She’s perfectly nice to them—as long as they don’t flirt too much,” Feylin laughed. “And she’s an excellent pupil. Maarken and Hollis will have a hard time deciding whether to send her to Goddess Keep or Gilad.”
Chayla was fifteen, and had been renewing memories of her great-grandmother Princess Milar’s golden loveliness practically since her cradle. Her mother was tawny as a topaz, but Chayla was all the colors of dawn, like Milar: pale gold, soft blue, rose pink, cream white. Her beauty was matched by her instinctive feel for medicine—and her faradhi gifts. Her Sunrunner parents had acceded to her plea to spend this year learning the basics of healing from Feylin. But a decision would have to be made soon about her future. Goddess Keep, for training as Sunrunner and physician? Stronghold, to learn faradhi skills from Sioned as Pol had done, and then Gilad for medical schooling? It hinged on Maarken’s evaluation of Andry’s intent.
Being unable to trust his only living brother rent Maarken’s soul. He’d spoken of it when he brought Chayla to Remagev this spring, and from certain clues, Walvis guessed that Maarken would send her to Andry if only to prove that his fears were unfounded. After all, had not Andry given his eldest daughter Tobren into Maarken’s care at this year’s Rialla? Surely this was a sign of love and trust between them. Surely that was what it meant—to anyone who did not know him.
It was Maarken’s undeserved Hell that he must always doubt his own brother. Walvis gave grateful thanks that his own loyalties were so simple. He had been Rohan’s man all his life and would be until one of them died.
Sethric was about to claim victory for the reds over the blues. Walvis chuckled as his horse blew out a long sigh; Pashtul fretted when not allowed to join in the fun. Grandson of Rohan’s own great war stallion out of one of Chay’s best mares, Pashtul liked nothing better than to show off his training by lashing out with hooves and teeth in the annual mock war. Tomorrow he might get his chance when Walvis experimented with Feylin’s new tactic.
All at once the stallion bellowed a challenge. Walvis hung on hard to keep Pashtu! from bolting down into the cloud of sand on the field. A second cloud rose in the north, a charge accompanied by the most bloodcurdling howls this side of a battle between dragonsires.
Walvis laughed so hard he nearly fell from his saddle. Feylin whooped with glee beside him as fifty men mounted on fifty identical gray horses swept across the sand and surrounded the thunderstruck young warriors as easily as a wedding necklet clasps the throat of a happy bride. When red and blue banners had been confiscated to the accompaniment of more savage shrieks, one of the gray horses galloped up to where the Lord and Lady of Remagev were trying without success to regain their composure.
The young man was tall and lean, his brown eyes snapping with excitement in a sun-darkened face, his white teeth gleaming in a broad grin beneath a hawk’s beak of a nose and a fierce black mustache. His head was covered by a white cloth held in place by a band of beaten gold set with white jade, and a white cloak billowed back from broad shoulders. He reined in ten paces from Walvis, planted red and blue banners in the sand, and touched the fingers of his right hand to his eyelids, his lips, and his heart.
“I have the honor to spit in your face after my great victory, once-mighty athri, former lord of all you survey!” he announced.
“Kazander! You simpering goat-footed idiot!” Feylin laughed in delight. “Trust you to make a grand entrance!”
“And scare those poor children out of a year’s growth,” Walvis added. “I didn’t expect you until tomorrow evening. Rude as usual, coming early when the wine hasn’t been poisoned for you yet! Not that anything could possibly be more lethal than that sheep-piss you had the gall to serve me. How are you?”
“Refreshed by my victory, renewed by your regard, and resentful at the sight of the Lady Feylin’s loveliness.” He grinned. “She has not yet seen fit to leave you, you pathetic excuse for a goat’s backside, for the obvious charms of my person.”
“Stop flirting with my wife, or I’ll tell the three you already have,” Walvis chided. “You didn’t bring the lovely ladies with you, by any chance?”
“So that you might seduce them? May the Goddess in her wisdom dry up my seed if I was ever so foolish as that!” He settled into his saddle, pleased with the exchange of insults, and looked mournful. “But my heart is wounded, I may die of it. You are holding a war and didn’t invite me!”
“A thousand apologies, Kazander. Would you like to play tomorrow? My eighty against your fifty. You always said one of your warriors unarmed is worth two of mine with sword and bow, so the odds are in your favor.”
Kazander’s dark eyes narrowed. “Your words are silk covering a stinking corpse. What are you planning to shame me with now, mighty athri?”
“Don’t ask me, ask my lady wife. It was her idea.”
The man moaned and rolled his eyes skyward. “Goddess witness it, a woman with a brain is more dangerous than a whole army!” He waggled a long finger at Feylin. “And it is your fault I have wives with more between their ears than praises of my name! Association with you in my boyhood caused me to value women with wits. Why did I never realize that when that sort of woman belongs to another man, she is a delight—but when she is your own, you live in misery?”
Feylin gave him her sweetest smile. “Oh, yes, you seem desperately miserable, Kazander—complacent as a dragonsire watching his get, and looking as if you’d said farewell to your wives so fondly that you rubbed all the skin off your—“
“Feylin!” Walvis exclaimed.
Kazander was roaring with laughter. “I adore you! Come away with me, Lady of the Dragons, I will make you first among my wives!”
“Make me the only one and I’ll consider it.”
“But what would I do with the others?” he wailed. “They would surely die if deprived of my presence!”
“That’s the bargain, you honey-tongued devil,” she purred.
“You think it over while you sleep in the stables tonight You really are the most inconvenient and inconsiderate guest,” she went on in disgruntled tones. “There’s nothing ready for you yet.” This was a bald-faced lie and they al knew it. Remagev was ready at all times for visitors, anc twice the fifty Kazander had brought could be housed ir luxurious comfort.
“To be within seeing distance of your splendor, even the korrus would sleep in a dung heap,” Kazander replied, hanc once more over his heart.
Feylin gave an appreciative giggle, then resumed her role “It offends me to honor you with even that much. You’ve deliberately shamed me, and for the insult you’ll bed dowr with your horse tonight.”
Walvis grinned. “That’s no hardship, Feylin—he prefen his horse.”
He rode down the hill to reorganize his troops before Kazander could frame a reply. He greeted those among the Isulk’im he knew, told his fuming young warriors to escorl their guests back to Remagev, and waited for Feylin and Kazander to join him.
Walvis always looked forward to these encounters with the young man he’d fostered during boyhood. The same age as Walvis’ son Jahnavi, Kazander was the korrus—“battle leader”—of the agglomeration of Desert nomads known as the Isulk’im. Although Zehava’s line had sprung from them and fifteen generations ago they had seized Stronghold and made it their capital, the original prince’s brother had had no taste for politics and settled living. He had taken those oi their people who longed for the old life and returned to the vast wastes of the Long Sand, there to herd goats and relish their freedom. They were, as Walvis’ teasing implied, mad about horses, some of which looked very like certain Radzyn stallions that had vanished mysteriously over the years. Isulki raiders sometimes stole a particularly fine stud from Chay’s very stables and then, once their own mares had been serviced, sent the stallion home. They were never caught; the name did not mean “swift ones” for nothing. But neithei was there any retaliation for these occasional thieveries; it was longstanding tradition that Radzyn supplied its ruling family with the finest horses, and the Isulk’im were only claiming their share.
Inevitably, the Isulki population had split into factions as it grew. With equal inevitability, they warred over who had rights to which endless ranks of sand dunes. But ever since 695, when Zehava had been helped by his distant kin to victory over the Merida, they had organized into a loose confederation of tribes. Kazander’s great-grandsire had become their korrus. Though formally submitting to Zehava’s leadership and sovereignty, he and his people kept to themselves in the vastness of the Long Sand, an isolation that had spared them the Plague of 701. They sent several warriors to fight with Rohan against Roelstra in 704, and every so often an emissary arrived at Stronghold or Radzyn or Remagev with a gift of gorgeous blankets or carved jade.
“Just to let the High Prince know we’re still out here,” Kazander’s father had said once, blithely, when presenting Walvis with a fabulous necklace for Feylin in celebration of Jahnavi’s birth. “I have a new son myself, by my favorite wife. She is as wild as a she-dragon, so I worry about the boy’s capacity for civilization. Perhaps when he is of an age for it and has learned what manners I can beat into him, you might consent to receive him here.”
Thus, casually, they had agreed to Kazander’s sojourn at Remagev. He had arrived ten winters ago, a lanky, wide-eyed boy of sixteen who had learned to ride before he had learned to walk. In him were embodied the things Walvis liked best about the Isulk’im: their mastery of the affectionate insult, their fierce pride, and their humor. To that list Feylin always added their love of dragons and their hatred of the Merida. She was from the north, where the descendants of the assassins’ league were more familiar enemies than here in the south. But her undying loathing paled beside the rage mere mention of the Merida could excite in the Isulk’im. Their songs and tales told of shocking atrocities and it was the sworn duty of the tribes to butcher any Merida unlucky enough to encounter them.
Kazander had stayed at Remagev through the autumn of 729, and despite his youth had insisted on being trained in the ways of battle. The annual little war had seen him fight all day long with a broken collarbone and two cracked ribs; Walvis had been given undeniable proof that claims of Isulki valor were not in the least exaggerated. Since then, Kazander had appeared at Remagev every so often, sometimes alone and sometimes, as now, with an escort—just to let the High Prince know the Isulk’im were still out there.
He had succeeded his father two years ago. Walvis had not seen him since that time, though he received news occasionally. As they rode back to the castle, he looked the young man over and nodded to himself. “Marriage and new fatherhood agree with you,” he commented.
“How did you know I am a father again?”
“Because if you didn’t keep fathering children, you wouldn’t still be korrus,” Walvis replied with irrefutable logic. “How many is it now?”
“Three sons, two daughters,” came the proud answer. “Another will be born next spring.”
“However do you manage it?” Feylin asked indelicately, then made a face as Kazander gave her a long, slow smile. “I didn’t mean that! And don’t you dare offer to teach me, you wicked boy. I meant, why is it that your women bear so many children? I can’t think of anyone who’s had more than four.”
“The late unlamented Lady Palila birthed six,” Walvis reminded her.
“One of whom inflicts herself on us as Princess of Meadowlord,” she agreed. “But she only has two.”
“It’s quite simple,” Kazander said. “Our women have more children because our men prove the strength of their siring. The more children, the more wives—if he earns them in battle and in bed. Sometimes I wonder which can be the most dangerous.” Then he grinned. “But I have a special secret. My girls are twins!”
Twins were uncommon among the Isulk’im. Walvis congratulated his young friend warmly. “Tell my wife you named one of them after her or she’ll be heartbroken.”
“One? Both! Feylani and Feylina I called them, and alike as dragons hatched from the same shell.” Kazander shook his head sadly. “If I cannot have you, then at least I can torment my soul with hearing the echoes of your name.”
“I truly am honored, Kazander,” she said sincerely. “And for that, you’ll get a decent bed after all. How old are they now? And what about the boys?”
Discussion of his growing family took them all the way to the walls of Remagev. As ever, Walvis felt his heart lift at the sight. He had first come here in the spring of 704 with Rohan. That royal progress had ended near Skybowl when lanthe’s men had kidnapped the prince to Feruche. But before the horror of Rohan’s imprisonment, they had spent several days with his distant cousin Hadaan—a fiery old warrior whose many battles with the Merida had cost him an eye. Hadaan had no children, and although Walvis had not known it at the time, the old man had a mind to making him the heir. In early 705 Walvis had been named the future Lord of Remagev and, once it had been made clear to him that he was going to marry Feylin, had done just that and taken up residence.
The keep had been built in days long past by Zehava’s ancestors. It was one of what had once been a string of castles reaching all the way to the Sunrise Water. The encroaching Desert had gradually made all of them but Remagev insupportable. But it had been in terrible shape, for Hadaan was more warrior than athri.
“I’m no good at peace,” Hadaan had said frankly. “Give me a sword and I’m a happy man, but this business of glass and smelters—bah! Rohan’s taught you the trick of it, and welcome. You’re athri here from this moment on, boy. Just send your pretty wife to flirt with me sometimes, and otherwise forget I’m here.”
They had done no such thing—though Feylin flirted with great enjoyment. For all his professed lack of interest in peaceful pursuits, what Hadaan didn’t know about Remagev and the surrounding sands wasn’t worth knowing. In the years remaining to him he involved himself in rebuilding the keep, supervising improvements, cheerfully harassing everyone, and watching proudly with his one good eye as Remagev turned into a thriving castle. His death, when Sionell was six and Jahnavi three, had been deeply mourned.
Remagev was and always would be only a minor keep on the fringes of Desert civilization. It had no fine, proud towers like Radzyn, no bustling town like Tiglath, no elegance of design like Feruche. It was a squat, square defensive castle, hunkered atop one rocky hill and abutting another like a huge sandy dragon. But it belonged to Walvis, and he loved it fiercely.
His eighty men and Kazander’s fifty lined the road to the main gates, each faction taking one side, to honor the two lords and the lady who rode past. Walvis met his guards commander at the gate and gave instructions for the comfort and housing of their guests. Feylin promised to make short work of tending the wounds acquired in today’s battle and join them later.
Remagev did boast one architectural excellence. The double staircase branching up from the main hall was a miracle of grace in this otherwise undistinguished keep. Steps rose in wide arcs that met on a broad landing, whence five more steps led to the second floor. Walvis and Kazander mounted the right-hand stairs just as a girl ran down the left side, frantically pinning up her long golden braids. Walvis grinned as his guest frankly stared.
“Gentle Goddess, Mother of Dragons,” Kazander whispered as he turned to watch the girl vanish through the main doors.
“I see the Lady Chayla has supplanted my wife in your affections,” Walvis murmured.
“The Lady Chayla would blind a sighted man and cause the sightless to see! Who is she? Who is her father? When may I beg him for her hand?”
“You don’t change, do you? Even at sixteen years old you tried to seduce every woman within a hundred measures! Don’t waste your time with this one, my friend. She’s the daughter of Lord Maarken, the granddaughter of Lord Chaynal, and the great-granddaughter of Prince Zehava. Not to mention the niece of the Lord of Goddess Keep and the grand-niece of the High Prince himself.”
Kazander’s face grew longer with each addition to the list of Chayla’s exalted kin. “I obey, mighty athri. I will not touch. I would not dare! But you wouldn’t be so cruel as to forbid me to look, would you?”
“Go right ahead. Not that she’ll notice you looking. Come, let’s take our ease in Feylin’s chambers. I recently had a shipment of a rather good mossberry wine from the High Princess’ own home of River Run.”
“You are planning to poison me!”
Soon they were alone in the solar, with full goblets and a selection of fruit and cheese to hand. Kazander complained for a few moments about gutless Syrene wines, but Walvis saw that his heart wasn’t in it. And suddenly the young man became too serious for Walvis’ peace of mind.
“There are signs,” he said in answer to Walvis’ inquiry, “and though I know you hold little with magic other than that of Sunrunners, I know you will hear me. A three- legged goat was born at New Year. It bleated three times and died. A cloud was seen like a sail over the Sunrise Water, all afire. It advanced over the cliffs and swallowed them up in flames. From Dorva! came a great gust of wind that blew down a hundred tents, killing eight people. Shimmer-visions in the Desert have been not of the usual water or green grass, but of blood.”
Walvis knew he ought not smile at Isulki superstitions. He had witnessed Sunrunners and sorcerers do too many incredible things to joke at other beliefs. Still, he had always heard these portents of the Desert tribes with a certain degree of amusement. Kazander’s dark solemnity was something new in his experience.
“And to your wisest ones, all this means ... ?” he asked.
“The goat—that terrible things await, and will last three seasons or three years, depending on who one consults. The cloud is interpreted as disaster descending upon the Desert in the form of fire.” He paused, and a hint of a smile touched his mouth. “Although I remember that ten springs ago, Sunrunner’s Fire very nearly incinerated us all!”
Walvis smiled back, remembering how Pol had ignited the very sands in his battle against lanthe’s son Ruval. The young prince had been teased ever since about a tendency toward arson. In fact, it had been this inconceivable occurrence that had brought Kazander and his father to Remagev to find out just what in Hells had caused it.
Kazander went on, “The great wind tells us that the danger and death will come from Dorval.”
“Impossible, Kazander.”
“The noble Prince Chadric can have no possible quarrel with us here. Unless the mighty atkri, husband to the legendary Princess Tobin, has been cheating him on the silk revenues again.” They both smiled at the old joke, but Walvis saw that Kazander was only going through the expected motions. “The final sign, that of blood-visions, I have seen myself. I am not ashamed to admit that while any one of these might be dismissed, taken all together they frighten me.”
“Only a fool ignores the warnings of the Goddess. Is it your wish that I inform the High Prince?”
The korrus nodded. “Yes. There is one other thing. A star was seen rising—not falling, mind you, rising—into the constellation of the Father of Dragons. This can mean only one thing.”
“Pol.”
“None other.”
“So despite these horrors to come, Pol will prevail.”
Kazander hesitated, then shrugged. “I would be serving him and you badly if I did not repeat the caution our wisest ones gave me. Whereas most are agreed that this star means ascendency, there are some who warn that it may mean the opposite. That Prince Pol will indeed ascend—but on Desert winds, his ashes to join with those of his azhrei ancestors.”
Walvis took a long swallow of wine. “This is not an interpretation I favor, Kazander. And I don’t believe the High Prince will like it much, either.”
There was no banquet that night. One had been planned for the following evening to celebrate the conclusion of the annual little war, and Feylin declined to upset her household by destroying their careful arrangements. The Isulk’im ate in the mess, their korrus with Walvis, Feylin, and Chayla. Kazander was as flamboyant in his praise and as outrageous in his suggestions to Feylin as ever, but hardly addressed a word to Chayla. He did, however, look. Constantly.
After he left to check on his men and horses, Chayla asked Walvis, “What in the world is his problem?”
“What do you mean?”
“Have my teeth turned green? Doesn’t he like me? He wouldn’t talk to me at all—just stared!”
Feylin covered laughter with a fit of coughing. Her preemption of that ploy—it would have seemed odd if they’d both choked on wine simultaneously—left the time-honored “I dropped something on the floor” for Walvis. He searched the carpet beneath his chair until he could control his features, then sat up again and smiled, the deliberately jettisoned spoon in his hand.
“Believe it or not, Kazander is rather shy around young ladies.”
This brought another spasm from Feylin. Chayla turned to her. “Are you all right, my lady?”
“Swallowed—the wrong way—“ she gasped, covering her mouth with a napkin while tears streamed from her eyes.
“I don’t know much about the Isulk’im,” Chayla went on.
“We never see them at Whitecliff. The korrus seems nice enough, if a little...”
“Overly eloquent?” Walvis suggested. “Something you have to understand about them is that while other men’s wives and girls under twelve or so are fair game for their flattery, an unmarried woman is left strictly alone until one has approached her father for permission to speak to her. You’re not a child, and your father isn’t here, so—“ He finished with a shrug.
Feylin had recovered. “You should have heard Kazander’s father when Sionell was little. He swore up canyons and down dunes that when she was old enough, he’d carry her off on his saddle to become his sixth wife—or was it the seventh?”
“Seven wives?” Chayla’s blue eyes widened. “I don’t like that much!”
“Neither did Sionell.” Feylin was at last able to indulge herself freely in laughter. “I can still see her, planting both feet in the sand with her fists on her hips, telling him that while she was very honored to be considered, no woman but herself would rule in her home—be it castle, cottage, or tent!”
After Chayla bid them good night, they conducted a little business with their steward in the cool of the evening, then went for a stroll around the upper walls of the castle to watch for dragons. The creatures seldom ventured this far into the Long Sand, which Walvis regretted but which was just fine with his wife. She loved them—but at a safe distance. This was the time of year for it, though, if they were to see dragons at all. After the triennial mating in the Desert, after the caves had been walled up with eggs inside to bake through the summer, after the hatchlings had flown, dragons lingered for a while before flying south to the Catha Hills and their wintering grounds. They sometimes ranged east to Remagev and west to the city of Waes. Every summer except mating years, they were a common sight from Syr to Fessenden, with their main precincts in the Veresch. Now that they were no longer hunted as adults or butchered as hatchlings, and the caves at Rivenrock Canyon were in use once more, the dragon population had increased to a number Feylin considered safe. This year more than eight hundred dragons—sires, mature females, three-year-olds and new hatchlings—had been seen in flight.
The Lord and Lady of Remagev watched the skies until night was full upon them, but they saw no dragons. “Perhaps we should have asked Chayla if there are any in our area tonight,” Feylin mused.
“I don’t think she’s picked up the knack of it yet. Pol came to it late, though, so I suppose she might, too.”
Chayla had not yet shown signs of having inherited the odd family trick of sensing dragons before they could be seen. Rohan had it, and Tobin, and Pol and Maarken and Andry. It was said of old Prince Zehava that he could tell merely by glancing at the clouds when the dragons would appear on the wind. Walvis hoped the trait would not be lost; it was always amusing to watch outsiders blanch and stare when Zehava’s descendants turned their faces as one toward the sky. It was almost as much fun as observing the reactions of those who had never before seen a Sunrunner at work.
“Busy day tomorrow,” Feylin said at length. “Will you explain Kazander’s part to him in the morning?”
“Yes—to give him as little time as possible to work out his own variations on it. You know how he is.”
“Scamp,” she grumbled fondly. “Speaking of which, you didn’t have to make me laugh so hard! I nearly choked to death when you told Chayla that Kazander is shy!”
“Except, you know, I think he really was shy around her.” He slipped one arm around her waist and they started back to the inner stairs. Torches in iron holders along the parapets lit their way. Walvis occasionally came home from a hunt after dark, and the sight of Remagev with its glowing crown of light was always an impressive one. He nodded to the sentry on duty and continued to his wife, “He hasn’t met any highborn young ladies now that he’s of an age to appreciate them. Ell was always just that bit too much older than he.”
“Oh, don’t be silly! Chayla’s barely fifteen!” She laughed and ducked around the door he held open for her. “Can’t you just see her living out on the Long Sand in a tent?”
“Now that you mention it, no. But I’ll keep an eye on him just the same. He’s still young enough to be dealt quite a wallop by a pretty girl.”
Feylin gave him one of her patient looks. “The man is thrice a husband and five times a father. Really, Walvis, you can be absurd at times.”
“Attack,” Kazander had been bidden. “Attack—but don’t damage my younglings unnecessarily. They may get irritated and forget to check their own blows. Goddess forfend that any of your great warriors go home to their mothers with so much as a bloody nose.”
He almost wished this could be a real battle. The Lady Chayla—to whom, in the way of his people, he had already given a secret name to be whispered only when her body graced his sleeping silks in the marriage tent—was watching from the crest of a dune nearby. He wished he could show her all his prowess, all his strength and cunning. Failing that, he could almost hope to take some small wound of valor, so that he might know the touch of her hands healing him.
Kazander knew how preposterous—not to mention dangerous—such thoughts were when excited by the granddaughter of Chaynal of Radzyn. But the girl enchanted him. It was not that he didn’t cherish his wives. All three of them were strong, beautiful, intelligent women. But Chayla—young as she was, he had found in her the proverbial ricsina, the knife that pierces the heart. He had no hope that time and knowledge of him might allow the same to happen to her.
Her life would be elsewhere. Sunrunner, physician, wife to some great lord with a castle and a hundred servants, bedecked in silks and jewels, an important force in the princedoms. The Isulk’im had rejected that sort of life many generations ago, when the faradh’im had come and sorcerers had been banished. It was too much to hope that somewhere in Chayla there lingered a few drops of ancestral blood that might cause her to hear the Desert’s call of passion and freedom.
However futile Kazander knew his desires to be, still he wanted to impress her. So he bade his warriors attack as the athri had commanded—mentioning that any man who disappointed him would be taken back to the Long Sand flung across his saddle like a sack of grain.
Kazander’s fifty would defend the red flag against Remagev’s eighty and attempt to seize their blue banner. Simple enough, but Kazander knew the mischievous workings of Lady Feylin’s mind and understood that whatever move the blues made was to be countered at once, spontaneously, as in the heat of real battle. That was the lesson she intended him to provide these children.
Only the blue center charged. Kazander yelled and swung his sword—careful to bruise, not break—and urged his gray stallion deeper into the fray, keeping an eye on the two flanks that waited for some signal to attack. The blues fell back to regroup. Kazander sighed, knowing he was supposed to pursue and let the flanks set upon him from either side—Feylin’s “dragon wings.” He gave the order, but with a variation. The Isulk’im shrieked battle cries like enraged dragons, cloaks streaming behind them, as the west flank of the Remagev forces descended on them. But the blues found a third of their prey taking off at a full gallop across the plain. As he fought, Kazander snatched glances at the merry chase his horsemen led the frustrated blues, and grinned.
All at once the eastern cavalry began driving the Isulk’im back. The blue center pushed forward, led by a tall youth who bellowed “Eztiel Grib!”—“All victory to Grib.” Kazander shouted a warning at his youngest wife’s brother, who carried the red banner. But it was too late. Sethric of Grib grabbed the pennant and galloped away with it behind the lines.
The rules said Kazander should give in, for his flag had been seized. He only smiled. Battles were not fought over trophies. He turned in his saddle as a youth challenged him from the right, and casually unhorsed the boy with a thrust of blunted sword against armored chest. A sore backside and a shallow pinprick would be humiliating but not fatal souvenirs.
Kazander broke free of the battle and called to his galloping warriors. They wheeled their horses with instant obedience and followed the sound of the konus1 voice. Sixteen riders were not quite enough for this, but they would have to do. In a variation of the maneuver used the previous day, the Isulk’im escaped their pursuers in a blinding whirl of sand and formed a half-circle outside the blue half-circle. Now the Remagev troops had to fight both forward and backward. Kazander hoped Feylin would forgive him for ruining her little demonstration, but the lesson he intended to teach was the more important one. Capturing a banner had nothing to do with winning a battle.
His smugness evaporated as he heard thunder on the ground behind him. Sethric had come back. Cursing, Kazander assessed the situation once more while chewing on his mustache and fending off a determined young man who seemed to have forgotten that his thrusts should not have lethal intent. Growling, Kazander taught him a painful lesson with the flat of his sword and shouted another order. The Isulki half-circle split in the middle, creating a pathway for their beleaguered comrades. All Kazander’s men were soon free. They regrouped, turned, and waited for the blues to charge them once more.
Exhilarated by the return of Sethric’s wing, the Remagev forces did not pause to organize themselves but instead rode whooping and cheering toward the Isulk’im at top speed. Kazander exchanged a grin with his brother-by-marriage.
“The girl is mine, Visian,” he cautioned—and then led his men in a single line through the oncoming blues and up the slope of the dune. Before Walvis or Feylin or Chayla could react with more than disbelief, all three were lifted from their saddles and clutched to the chests of Isulk’im.
“Put me down!” Feylin raged. “Kazander! How dare you!” But Walvis was laughing uproariously as they were carried away.
Kazander had plucked the Lady Chayla from her horse with exquisite care. She did not struggle the way that spitfire Feylin was doing, merely settled on his thigh, supported by his arm around her waist. Otherwise he kept his hands to himself. Her coiled golden braids were at his shoulder, within easy reach of his lips; he could smell the fresh scents of herb soap and Desert wind in her hair. Her buttocks were surprisingly well-muscled against his thigh, but he supposed that was to be expected; after all, as the granddaughter of Radzyn’s lord, she would have been in the saddle from early childhood. It was a sweet, firm, supple armful he held, and he wondered if he could persuade Walvis to persuade Lord Maarken not to slay him for daring to touch her.
He slowed his horse and finally stopped. Chayla was still relaxed against him. He turned to Visian, who was losing his grip on the taller, heavier athri. With a grin Kazander was about to claim victory—for he had stolen the real prizes of this little war.
AH at once the air left his lungs in a painful gasp, pro- pelled out of him by Chayla’s elbow in his stomach. She slid neatly down to the sand, glaring up at this man who had been the first in her life ever to lay hands on her. She said nothing. She didn’t have to. It was all in her eyes. He was incapable of responding in any case; he was too busy remembering how to breathe. But once his lungs had filled and there was only a dull ache in his belly, he could not help grinning down at her. Goddess, what a woman!
Late that night, after the banquet had been devoured and the battle analyzed a dozen times and the Isulk’im had taught Remagev’s youthful warriors the steps of a traditional victory dance—and enough wine had flowed to make everyone feel very brotherly—Walvis and Kazander took a tour of the walls.
“You went to a lot of trouble to get your hands on her,” the athri scolded, laughing. “And after you swore not to touch!”
Kazander, knowing he’d been forgiven and greatly relieved that he would not be facing Lord Maarken across the latter’s sword, gave a deep sigh. “For those sweet moments, I knew all the glories of the world. Although she may never forgive me.”
“That’s what the High Princess would call an absolutely certain bet—the kind she wagers the whole princedom on.” Walvis chuckled, leaning his elbows on the stone and looking out over the Desert night. “I hear you put yourself in the way of being treated by Chayla, not Feylin, afterward.”
“A trifling cut that I didn’t even feel until later. Not even a scar will be left—but no gratitude to her for it! I swear to you, she pummeled my bruised and bleeding leg as if I were made of bread dough!”
“Well, let that be a lesson to behave yourself. Actually, I’m surprised she didn’t pull a knife on you. Like all her family, she takes her cue from the High Prince and carries one in each boot. She knows how to use them, too.”
He smote his forehead with the flat of his palm. “With her temper, I would sing like a virgin girl for the rest of my life!”
“Her restraint in the matter may indicate that she likes you—either that or she hesitated to geld a friend of mine.”
“She-dragon,” Kazander muttered.
“Unlike her sweet and ladylike mother, but entirely reminiscent of Princess Tobin. I was proud of her—if she’d gotten free while you were still at a gallop, she might have hurt herself in the fall. Why did you pull such a stunt? Aside from getting around your promise not to touch her, I mean.”
“The red pennant was taken—and these children thought this was all there is to war,” he answered forthrightly. “If prizes are the goal, then one should go for the most essential ones. But prizes are not the goal in battle. They should think about that over the next few days.”
“That’s so.” Walvis put a hand on his shoulder. “And you’re right to have taught that lesson. But my little wars are just skirmishes, Kazander. I never expect them to fight the real thing. No one does. That’s what Rohan’s being High Prince is all about.”
The younger man nodded. “He is greatly revered among us, even more than his father who drove the Merida from Stronghold.” Kazander hesitated. “But—and I would say this to no one but you, mighty athri—it surpasses my understanding and that of our wisest ones why Prince Pol should take to wife the daughter of the snake who has given shelter to the Merida these many years.”
“I would say this to no one but you, mighty korrus—but I’ve never understood it, myself. Princess Meiglan is beautiful and gentle and innocent of her father’s wickedness. And marriage to bring alliances and peace is not uncommon. Still...”
“The vermin still raid in the north. My great-grandfather fought them and killed many. My grandfather fought them and killed many more. My father was young but remembers your victory at Tiglath, where you killed hundreds. And yet they still raid in the north.” Aware that his temper was seething, as always at the mere mention of the ancient enemy, he made an effort and said, “But perhaps it is as you say, and this alliance will bring peace one day.”
“Is it true, do you suppose, that Prince Miyon has no sons to follow him?”
“That is the rumor. It’s said there are bastards, but he keeps none of them at his court. If he dies without naming an heir, there will be war.”
“Not if Pol claims Cunaxa on his wife’s behalf,” Walvis said musingly. “Rohan once told me that her marriage to Pol was a stroke of genius. But he never said whose.”
“It is beyond my poor powers of understanding,” Kazander sighed.
Walvis changed the subject. “How long can you stay this time?”
“As long as it takes the Lady Chayla to forgive me.” He grinned.
“I thought we agreed that would take forever! I’m not contributing my substance to feed your ravenous hordes or your flea-bitten horses while you make large eyes at her! You have ten days, and then I’m packing you back to your long-suffering wives.”
“As you command, mighty athri.” Kazander gave him the eyes-lips-heart salute once again, with a low bow.
Walvis snorted. “I thought I told you to stop calling me that.”