\Jn the thirtieth day of Autumn, Faolain Riverport prepared to celebrate two events. The first was the annual harvest festival presided over by the sons of old Lord Baisal of Faolain Lowland. Baisath, athri of the thriving port, was the younger son; his brother, Miral, had inherited the family’s main holding at Lowland. Good, tradition-bound farmers both, for all that one now lived in a town, they traded the festival back and forth between them. This year it was Baisath’s turn, and the whole clan gathered in his large, comfortable residence for the occasion.
The second celebration was more personal. Miral’s daughter Karanaya had finally Chosen a husband, and they would wed at the New Year. Naturally such an occasion warranted presents, and this touchy subject had brought together two ladies with very different aims. Michinida, Baisath’s wife, was determined to spend the least amount of money possible; Kemeny, mother of the bride, was just as determined to see her daughter splendidly gifted at Michinida’s expense.
They had been receiving merchants all morning.
“Too small, too flashy, too paltry,” Michinida enumerated as a silversmith proffered various pieces of jewelry. “I want something simple and elegant, you wretch. Have you nothing worthy of anyone but a peasant’s daughter?”
The man combed his beard and cast his dark eyes from side to side as if seeking spies. “Noble lady, if I show you my most precious things, I must respectfully beg that if you do not purchase them, you will not speak of them. Not their existence, and certainly not their price—“
“What insolence!” Kemeny exclaimed. “Are you insinuating that my dear sister-by-marriage would skimp money on my daughter’s betrothal gift?”
Michinida frowned her annoyance. The woman was so vulgar—and so perceptive.
“Show us these marvels,” Kemeny ordered, with a sidelong glance at Michinida.
The merchant sighed, fingering his beard, and placed a plain wooden box on the table before the women. He did not open it.
“Before viewing robs you of speech, gentle ladies, allow me to compliment you on the marvels of this place. Where I come from, we rarely see such magnificence. Why, there must be fifty rooms here!”
“Only forty,” Kemeny said with a sliver of malice that instantly found its way into Michinida’s breast and festered there. Lowland had forty-six rooms. “Open the box, be quick! I want to see my dear friend’s gift to my daughter.”
“Instantly, my lady. Only—“ His fingers toyed with the hasp. “I cannot imagine why this fair abode is not guarded better. I saw only five soldiers on my way in. I tremble for my person if anyone gets word of what I carry in this box, should you not be pleased with it.”
Michinida scowled. “The residence boasts a sufficient number of armed troops—almost seventy, I believe. But this is my husband’s business, not yours. Will yon open that box!”
He worked at the catch. “It hasn’t been opened in so long, it’s grown stiff. I beg patience.” His fingers fumbled and poked. “Seventy seems a small number to guard so rich a prize.”
“Who would dare attack?” Michinida laughed. “You are absurd, merchant.”
“Yet there, are stone ramparts on the river side, my lady. Ah, there, I think it’s coming.”
“So,” Kemeny observed, “is winter.”
“We have never considered it necessary to surround Riverport with walls,” Michinida said loftily. “Oh, that fool architect wanted to, but as we rightly pointed out to him, to our east lies our own princedom. Rohan would have to go mad and Chaynal and their armies with him before they would fall on us. We are the most important trading center on the whole coast.”
“Except for Radzyn, with its exclusive right to silk,” Kemeny reminded her.
“Does Radzyn see the variety of goods that pass through our warehouses bound for everywhere? It supplies the Desert. We supply three princedoms!”
“Lowland has the honor of supplying Stronghold itself,” Kemeny purred. “For which service Sioned granted of her own purse the stone to build the keep.”
“Oh, look, it’s open,” Michinida said, quelling the usual argument about whose was the more prestigious holding.
“Gracious ladies,” the merchant said, “I show you HOW the most beauteous objects ever beheld.” And he stood back from the table with a low bow, his eyes never leaving their awestruck faces.
Nestled on puckered white silk were six smooth, flawless black pearls. Not charcoal gray or purplish, as were sometimes found off Dorval, but black as night, overlaid with a hint of shining iridescence.
“Noble ladies,” the merchant whispered, “the Tears of the Dragon.”
Michinida was the first to recover her powers of speech, but even so her voice was hushed. “Where did you—were these lawfully obtained?”
The merchant stroked his beard and said nothing. When she dragged her eyes from the gems, he shrugged and very nearly winked.
“Not even the High Princess has such pearls,” Kemeny whispered. Her hand went out, one ringer extended as if to touch them, then drew back as if she didn’t dare.
“The Tears of the Dragon,” he repeated solemnly. “Nothing so magnificent exists anywhere. It is said they number twelve in all, and when together possess such power over any who see them that—“ He shrugged to indicate his inability to express the colossal import of a complete set. “It is further said that they were wept by the mother of All Dragons for some mysterious sorrow, and worn by the Goddess herself.”
“A pretty conceit,” Michinida remarked as casually as she could. “But I’m not interested in stories, merchant. I’m interested in the price. I assume it is equally outrageous?” She felt queasy at the thought of the cost. She had intended to make Karanaya a nice present, but these must be worth a year’s revenues. Two years’.
It was as bad as she’d feared. But with Kemeny there, she had no choice. As the bargaining commenced, the merchant wrung his hands, clawed his beard, clutched at his heart as if the sums she offered were physically painful. But at last she wore him down to a payable, if expensive, price. Thriee what she’d intended to spend, of course, but halfway through the negotiations she had an idea. When she called in her chamberlain to arrange payment, she explained it, beaming.
“I have the most cunning notion! These pearls will start a family legend! The first of the—what did you call them? The Tears of the Dragon?—I’ll give the first to Karanaya, and the second to your son’s wife, Pelida—belatedly, true, but the thought is what matters. When my sons marry, they shall have the next.”
Kemeny frowned and opened her mouth to protest breaking up the set—which naturally should go to Karanaya whole.
Michinida smiled sweetly at her. “Do you think it would be terribly selfish of us, my dear, to keep one each for ourselves?”
She looked at the pearls, thought of her daughter, and replied slowly, “We might keep one each ... ah, in trust, as it were.”
“I’m so glad you agree with me!” She didn’t like giving up even one, but this was better than handing all six over to Karanaya. They fell to discussing how best to set their pearls—ring, necklet, earring? They did not notice when the merchant departed, his pockets bulging with gold, his beard split by a contemptuous grin.
A placid family evening at Gilad Seahold was shattered by a single scream. Lady Paveol pulled the face of her young son against her breast and cried out, “Oh, Goddess, how horrible!”
Lord Segelin surged to his feet, livid. “Get out! How dare you bring such foulness into the presence of my wife and child?”
The young juggler lost his balance. Six cups nimbly aloft an instant before smashed to the stones. “My lord—please, I meant no offense!” On his knees now, he tried to scrape together the shattered fragments, babbling all the while. “It’s tradition in my family, we’ve always used cups made of—and now mine are broken! Where will I find more? These were given to me by my great-grandsire, who displayed his art in front of High Prince Roelstra himself, earning a gold coin and six silver buttons! I hoped to make my way with them, but now—“ He looked up hopefully. “Shall I sing for you, my lord? I have a fine and pleasing voice, and know all manner of songs—“
“Get out!” Segelin roared, and his son began to cry.
“A cradle song!” the juggler said desperately. “A soft song to soothe the young lord from his fright—“
“You and those horrible—things—frightened him!” He advanced from the sofa where his wife sat trying to calm the little boy, her face as bleached of color as the shards still littering the floor. The juggler scrambled to his feet and backed away, fingers tangling distractedly in his thin beard.
“My lord—please—don’t kill me—!”
“Get out, or I’ll do worse than kill you!”
He gave a high-pitched shriek and fled—not through the garden doors by which he had entered to amuse the family with his clever tricks, but out the main door and up the stairs.
“Goddess damn him!” Segelin yelled for his guards. The juggler led them a swift chase up to the top floor and across the wall, then disappeared into the stone tower that was the most ancient part of the manor.
“Wait, let me light a torch, my lord,” one of the guards panted. “Those steps are uncertain enough by daylight, and it’s gone dusk.”
“Hurry up about it. When I catch the whoreson—do you know what he was juggling with? Do you know what those cups were made from?”
He spat onto the ragged stones, as if to rid himself of an evil taste in his mouth. The guard lit the torch and gulped at the expression on Segelin’s face. No wonder the juggler had run headlong.
“I’m sorry, my lord, I didn’t see what he—“
“Skulls! Hollow skulls with the jaws wired shut and the eye sockets filled with clay!” Segelin grabbed the torch and made for the entrance to the tower.
Guards followed with more light. Some went down the narrow, crumbling stairs, but Segelin climbed to the top of the tower. He’d guessed correctly; his quarry was no field prey with the cleverness to run to ground, but rather a terrified bird trying to take flight. The juggler stood shivering on the roof, arms wrapped as far as they would go around a huge triangular crenellation.
“I ought to push you over the edge,” Segelin snarled.
“Oh, great lord, please! I don’t know what came over me, I’ve never had so powerful a man angry with me before and I panicked—please don’t kill me!”
Some of the shock had worn off by now, and Segelin’s primary emotion was one of scorn for this trembling craven. He held the torch higher and saw that the stupid fool had actually wet his trousers in his fear.
“Bah!” he said, disgusted. “It would insult my blade to stain it with blood like yours.”
“Oh, Goddess bless you, my lord, Goddess give you a hundred sons—“
“Pick yourself up, swine, and get out. And if I ever even hear of you within a hundred measures of my lands, I’ll hunt you down and have your hands cut off. Move!”
He lurched to his feet and stood there swaying. “It—it’s growing dark, my lord—I need a torch—“
Segelin took one from its bracket near the door and lit it from his own. It quivered and shook in the juggler’s hand. A few steps, and he tripped over an unevenness in the old stones. The torch went sailing over the wall and down to the beach.
“By the Goddess’ fiery eyes!” Segelin bellowed. “I never saw anyone so clumsy! Can’t you juggle your own bones, or only the empty ones of others? Find your way down in the dark for all I care! I want you out of my keep now!”
The youth flung himself down the stairs. Segelin shouted to the guards, telling them to throw him out the main gate. Then he went to soothe his wife and son.
Nobody saw the juggler tidy his clothes, make a face at the dampness of his trousers, drink off the rest of the water from a small pocket flask, and start off at an easy, graceful lope into the deepening night, chuckling as he ran.
The moons rose early, bright enough to light her way. Not that Brenlis needed to see where she was going; the paths were familiar to her from childhood. She stepped softly through the pale grass, wilted but making a lovely sibilant sound against her skirts, until she reached the rocky cliffs. The smell of the sea filled her and she crouched down, picking up small rocks to throw down at the waves.
Her parents understood nothing. Nothing. She was the mother of a child by the Lord of Goddess Keep, and they asserted that as the baby’s grandparents they ought to enjoy honors, land, wealth. Her influence with Andry should gain them favors from Prince Kostas—instead of being only lowly farmers, they could be important vassals, rich, powerful, intimates of their prince. They had been after her about it since her arrival, through the days it had taken to assure herself that her brother would recover from his illness.
Brenlis was nauseated by their greed, and had not scrupled to say so. But tonight they had used her brother against her.
We don’t ask for ourselves. We ask for him, for his future. Why shouldn’t he have the best? Why shouldn’t he become a great lord with a fine castle and the chance for a rich wife? The Lord of Goddess Keep loves you. He’d do anything for you. You’ve given him one child—give him another, and this time make him marry you!
She hadn’t cried until she had run through half a measure of drooping grass in the new moonlight. After wiping her eyes, she continued on to the cliffs, where she sat back on her heels to watch the glow of bonfires across the water at Faolain Riverport.
It was the harvest celebration tonight, she reminded herself. She was tempted to go, to lose herself in the crowds of laughing townfolk. She could pretend to be someone else, as she had done when she was little—as she had not had to do since going to live at Goddess Keep.
High Princess Sioned had understood. Brenlis had been brought to her attention by Lord Baisath, who had heard strange tales of a girl who sometimes saw the future. She had been invited to Stronghold and for the first time in her life Brenlis found someone who understood her. Sioned, too, had been looked on askance as a child, called fey and strange, something of an embarrassment to her family. Brenlis had warm memories of her sympathetic kindness. To hear some at Goddess Keep tell it, the High Princess drank dragon blood instead of wine and had taught her son the blackest sorcery. Brenlis felt guilty sometimes that she did not defend them, but who was she to contradict anyone there? Her two pitiful rings had been earned at great effort. She would never have any more, never achieve a rank that would enable her to speak of the gentle treatment she’d known at Stronghold, the understanding woman who had sent her to Goddess Keep where she need no longer be afraid. Brenlis knew why people told stories about Sioned. They were afraid of her power.
But Andry was afraid of nothing. She wished she could talk with him now, bathe her wounded spirit in his love. But she didn’t know how to reach out to him. The sun was difficult enough for her to use. Moonlight was completely beyond her. A part of her said that even were he with her now, within reach, she still would not know how to touch him.
He had worries of his own. She could not trouble him with her petty problems, not when he was frantic with concern for his mother. Brenlis had met Princess Tobin once during her brief time at Stronghold, and still could not quite believe that her own daughter was Tobin’s grandchild.
Bitterness curled her mouth at the thought of the other grandmother. Merisel, Named for the long-dead faradhi Andry revered, had one grandmother who was a princess and one who was a grasping peasant. Brenlis would not ask Andry for anything, not even for her brother. She couldn’t. He would do everything in his power—and she would have to give something in return.
Marriage. Though he had never asked outright, she knew he wished it. Lords or Ladies of Goddess Keep did not marry. But he would break that tradition as he had broken so many others. The power this gave her was frightening. She stared hard at the red-orange glow of the Riverport festival fires, and determinedly put him and her parents and everything else from her mind.
The last moonlight dappled patterns onto the intricate tiles of the oratory at Graypearl. Meath had never lost his amazement at this masterwork of the faradh’im who had lived on Dorval long ago. The floor and domed roof were a calendar, pure in function but not at all simple; it had taken Princess Audrite years of complicated calculations to replace missing or broken tiles accurately. The bulk of the oratory had been excavated from the ruins of an ancient keep on the other side of the island and transported here. It was during an idle dig through nearby remains that Meath had found the Star Scroll.
“First of Summer, First of Winter, moons don’t rise at all,” sang a little boy as he leaped from one tile to the next, his brown curls bouncing. His voice was sure and surprisingly rich for his nine winters as he recited the lesson Meath had brought him here tonight to learn. “Fortieth Spring, Fortieth Autumn, it’s early the moons fall!” He stopped on the Autumn tiles. “Meath?”
“Yes, O torment of my declining years?”
“The moons don’t really fall down, do they? Wouldn’t they break?”
“Audran, my pest, if they fell out of the sky we’d none of us be here to ask foolish questions.”
“Then the song is foolish, too,” Audran replied. “It says the moons fall, and they don’t. Where do they go?”
“The other side of the world. There’s more to the song— keep going. And don’t land too hard on the midwinter tiles—they’re very old.”
“Older than Granna and Grandsir? Older than you?
“Even older than I, and I am exceedingly old.” He grinned and gestured for the child to continue.
“Moons are full and white and clear,” Audran sang,, doing a complicated cross-step over to another set of tiles.
“Wait a moment. Where did you learn that? Not the song, the maneuver.”
“From the squires. They’ve been teaching me how to fight with a knife.” Suddenly Audran crouched and, wielding an imaginary blade, stalked Meath with exaggerated care. “I come in low and slow, and distract you with a feint—like this—then jump in and slash and slash until you’re ribbons!”
“Gaahh!” Meath staggered back and clutched his belly. “I’m wounded! Great prince, don’t finish me off!”
“Of course not,” Audran scoffed, pretending to wipe a blade on his shirt. “You haven’t taught me the rest of the song.”
All at once Meath toppled to the tiles—careful of his sixty-four-year-old bones—and gave a whimper. Audran darted to him. In an instant the boy was prone and captive and Meath held a thin knife in front of his startled eyes.
“My prince,” he said softly, “never leave an enemy merely bleeding. He may not be as badly hurt as he seems. And he may have other knives.” Meath replaced the blade in his boot. “And if the matter is serious enough to use your knife, it’s serious enough either to kill him or scar him forever.”
Audran barely breathed as the Sunrunner helped him up. “You scared me,” he whispered.
“I intended to. If you’re old enough to learn how to fight, you’re old enough to learn the rules—the real rules, not the ones that apply when you’re practicing with the other squires.” Meath smiled and ruffled the boy’s hair. “Forgiven?”
“Yes, I suppose so.” Audran hesitated, then said, “Meath? You never called me that before.”
“Called you what?”
“ ‘My prince.’ You call Papa and Grandsir that, but not me.”
Meath thought of the other little boys he’d had a hand in turning into men: Audran’s father Ludhil and uncle Laric; Maarken, Pol. “You’re growing up.”
“I wish somebody’d tell that to my mother!” Audran grumped.
“Princess Iliena is a sweet and loving lady, and you’re lucky to have her for a mother. But I understand.” He glanced at the domed ceiling. “Now look what’s happened. The moons have set and it’s too late to go on with the lesson. Is that what you had in mind?”
“Meath! I did not!”
Laughing, they left the oratory and paused on the little footbridge over the stream that circled it like a miniature moat. This part of the garden was dark, for it was impossible to use the calendar accurately if torchlight interfered with the moons. Meath gestured, and a row of flames blossomed from wrought iron sconces set at intervals along the path back to the palace.
“Meath? Do the ones around the water, too, please?”
Obliging and indulgent, the Sunrunner concentrated. Audran clapped his hands as light flickered from the hundred small lamps that followed the course of the stream. Meath lit them in sequence, as if Fire sped from treetop to treetop in a miniscule forest. Audran leaned over the railing of the bridge and laughed to see the water ripple gold and red and orange.
“I want to be able to do that someday! Can I be a Sunrunner, Meath?”
“I’m afraid not, my prince,” he replied gently. “There’s no trace of it in your family. I’m sorry.”
“Oh.” Crestfallen, Audran turned from the display and sighed. Then, with the unquenchable spirits of the very young, he danced down the pathway singing the song about the moons again.
Meath chuckled and shook his head. He followed the boy, hoping Audran would not choose to make him play seek-and-find in the gardens tonight; his bones were aching from a long ride this afternoon, and he didn’t relish the thought of trying to match pace with a nine-year-old.
He kept Audran in sight and as they neared the palace was astonished to see a guard hurry out, scoop the young prince unceremoniously up under one arm, and rush back inside. Other guards emerged, calling for Princess Alleyn.
“What is it? What’s wrong?” he demanded.
“His grace said to find the children and get everyone inside at once.”
A maidservant caught sight ~of Meath and cried out, “Do you know where she is? What’s happened to Alleyn?”
“Try the lily pond, or the shed where she keeps her animals,” he suggested. “Where is his grace?”
“Up top the walls, my lord.”
He took the stairs three at a time, then two, and finally had to heed the screaming muscles of his thighs and the pounding of his heart. At last he reached the palace roof and stopped to catch breath enough to call out.
“Meath! Over here!” Chadric shouted.
Ludhil and Audrite were with him, as well as several guards and their commander. Judging by the way they breathed; all had only just arrived. They stared north out to sea, where the channel between Dorval and the continent widened into the Sunrise Water.
“Ships by the last moonlight,” Ludhil said tensely, scraping the lank brown hair from his forehead. “The watch saw them clearly for only a moment.”
“They’re not ours?” Meath asked.
“We’ve none coming down from Tiglath, and none unaccounted for,” Chadric said. “I received the yearly tally from the portmaster only yesterday morning.”
“Port Adni?” Audrite guessed. “Einar? Waes?”
Her husband shook his head. “All in port for the winter. There won’t be any early storms coming down from the
Veresch, or so Donate tells us from Castle Crag, and things are calm to the south as well over the sea. But by this time of year everyone with any sense has furled his sails.”
Ludhil cleared his throat. “Father—the watch says he’s never seen sails like these on any ship. Great squares, three of them, looking as if they’re fixed in place. We use triangular, movable sails, and never more than two.”
“New design?” Meath guessed.
“Not that I’ve heard of. And no one builds so much as a flatboat that I don’t hear about.” Chadric tapped an arrhythmic beat on the top of the low balustrade with fingers almost as weathered as the stone. “We must assume these ships are something less than friendly,” he said with grim understatement.
“But who could they belong to?” Audrite exclaimed.
“I don’t think that matters, Mother.” Ludhil exchanged a glance with his father. “I think we’d better prepare ourselves.”
“For what?” Then she gasped. “Oh, Goddess!”
Chadric turned to the commander of the guard. “Give the alarm at once.”
Meath looked up at the sky and swore bitterly. “The moons are gone—and I can’t use starlight!”
“On purpose,” Audrite whispered. “This has been planned —timed.”
Chadric frowned in the dimness. “I hadn’t thought of that, but you’re right. Ludhil, see to the defenses of the palace. Audrite, we’ll need people to ride down to the port and reinforce the alarm. See to it, please. And Meath—“
“The useless Sunrunner,” he muttered.
“Stop that!” Audrite exclaimed. “We need your wits and your experience!”
“And your Fire,” Chadric said.
Meath had never kept count of how many times he’d told someone to sound the storm drum at Graypearl, warning of an approaching tempest. Now the drum began to thunder a different warning to the palace and the town below, and the beacon was lit atop Graypearl’s soaring slender watchtower. Meath searched Chadric’s eyes, the blue washed away in the dimness, and understood that he was about to break a Sunrunner’s most solemn oath. He was about to use his gifts to kill.
A faint pungent scent of smoke awakened Brenlis. Stiff and chilly, she shifted in the little hollow—much smaller now than when she hid here as a child—and raised her head. It was not yet dawn; the east was soft and milky-skied, but stars still pocked the night that lingered in the west. She sat up and grimaced at the unpleasant dampness of her clothes. Residual anger nipped at her, resentment at being forced to spend the night this way. But for her brother, she felt unwelcome in her own home. The smell tickling her nostrils annoyed her further. Only the leftover fumes from the celebrations at Riverport, she decided; a little strong, but perhaps someone had grown careless and a house had caught. Standing, stretching, grateful for the clean salt spray as she faced the sea, she scrubbed her hands over her face and yawned.
It was then that she saw the dragons.
At least twenty of them, huge and gleaming dark and gold and silver, heads rearing proud and fierce from long necks half-submerged in the waves, white wings unfurled.
Brenlis cried out, thinking this another vision. But there was no queasiness, no lightness of spirit, no sense of being in two places and two times at once. This was real.
They were not dragons, those immense creatures floating toward the river’s mouth. They were ships, lavished with bright paint that captured even this dim light. They picked up speed as the morning wind blew strong in the shoulders of their sails, these ships with the heads of snarling dragons.
She whirled around. Smoke billowed from the palely glowing Riverport, staining the eastern sky. Treachery there, faceless enemies mixed in with unwary townfolk, using the cover of festival bonfires to set the whole port ablaze. She sobbed with the horror of it, the deaths, the destruction. And she finally knew that she was living one of her own visions. She was standing on the cliffs near her home, just as she had done in the seeing—but the Goddess had not shown her enough.
“Andry!” she screamed, and fell to her knees on the stony ground. “Oh, Goddess, help me! Andry!”
But there was no light to use, no sun visible over the horizon. She covered her face with her hands and trembled, the cool wind fingering her dress as if to judge its worth as spoils of war. She begged the sun to rise, the Goddess to speed its passage into the morning.
Her need went unanswered. She looked up, tears streaking her face, and saw the last few stars winking mockery at her lack of skill. “I’ll do it!” she shouted at them. “You’re Fire, and I’m a Sunrunner! I can use your light, too!”
Now that she dared, now that she must, it seemed easy. Pale and silvery in a dark blue sky, the stars were made of cooler fire even than the moons. She felt chilled to the bone as she wove the delicate strands and cast them toward Goddess Keep.
Strangely, she forgot her terror and no longer smelled the thickening smoke. She flew along the starlight, enchanted. How beautiful the land was, mysteriously shadowed in the half-night. Here was the rich farmland she had passed through days ago, and there the dark ribbons of the Catha and Pyrme rivers, the gentle hills of Ossetia, the smooth expanse of Lake Kadar and its pretty manor and keep and pastures filled with horses. And then, finally, blessedly, the gray bulk of Goddess Keep.
But how would she find him? Surely he slept. Did the stars shine on him? They must. Otherwise she was lost. She searched frantically for his windows, looked within. The bed she had so often shared with him, richly hung with tapestries and covered in a white velvet quilt—his bed was empty, unslept-in.
She sobbed again and the sound jerked her painfully back to the coast of Syr. Where was he, how could she possibly find him? There was no hope for it—and the stars were almost gone. Her heart thudded sickly as she realized how close she had come to being shadow-lost. Shrinking into herself, she cursed her failure and her weakness, and whimpered Andry’s name.
There was other noise now besides the whisper of windswept grasses and the pounding of the sea. She heard horses and the crash of windows, shouts and shrieks and the terrible clamor of swords. Fists pushed against her eyes so she could not see, breath held so the scent of burning and blood could not reach her, she rocked back and forth in mute agony, trying to deny what the Goddess pressed upon her. But with the sound came the scene, and the stench. This was no seeing of the future, removed from her, having no connection to her life and mind but the Goddess’ power. This was real. She was seeing Faoiain Riverport die. Worse, she was there, drifting along the blazing streets as if she, too, were only smoke.
The enemy held the port. Their ships sailed in to safe harbor. Much of the town was ablaze, but they had been careful to spare the docks. From here they disembarked in their hundreds, tall bearded men with fierce faces. She saw them meet up with those who had gone around behind Riverport where there were no protecting walls, and with those who had joined the festival the night before to set fires that still burned. She heard them laugh, listened to their strange language that sounded a little like rituals sung at Goddess Keep. The words were slurred and rough, lacking the beauty of Jolan’s poetry. She heard screaming too, louder and louder until she knew she must echo it or go mad.
Her own voice terrified her. But the sound helped. Her ears responded—her own ears, not the Goddess’—and the giddiness of vision left her. She raised her head, sucking in shallow breaths. Long shafts of sunlight poked through clouds of smoke. Dazed, she stared as if written in the sky was something she ought to remember. Sunlight. Something about sunlight—
Andry. She must find him. He must be told so he could warn everyone, tell them to make ready for war, tell them to flee-On, Goddess—her family—her brother. She lunged to her feet as a faint cry came from the direction of the manor house. Running, stumbling as much as she ran, she topped the small rise and looked down into the sheltered hollow just as the torches were flung onto the roof. The dry thatch caught instantly. The door had been barricaded with boards torn from a fence. And there were more screams from inside, screams that gradually stopped.
Tall, bearded men paused to admire their handiwork. She counted twelve—too many for so insignificant a place. But then one of them called an order, pointed in the direction of the next small manor, and she knew they intended the same work at all the holds along the coast.
If it was Fire they wanted, then Fire she would give them.
A man bellowed in surprise and pain as flames sprouted from his chest. The one next to him was soon running like a wolf in a brushfire, trying to escape the blaze searing his back. She drew a circle of contracting Fire around one man and sent it writhing up the crimsoned sword of still another. She ignited this one’s hair, that one’s eyes. Power flushed through her as if the Fire she called spread through her blood, lit her very bones. She began to laugh as she turned to kill the rest who had murdered her family, her brother.
She was looking straight at an archer’s long, steel-tipped arrow. She set his drawn bow on fire in the same instant he released the string. And from a great distance she felt steel pierce her breast.
She knew there must be physical pain. But it was strange not to feel it as part of herself. What she felt instead was the fracturing of the pattern of colors that was hers alone, her unique identity. Her Self shattering, stained glass shards on the ground; her mind unraveling, threads picked from a tattered tapestry. By the time she felt the excruciating agony brought by iron in a working Sunranner’s blood, there was not enough of her left intact to scream, even with her mind.
The archer cursed and dropped his bow. The sorceress lay still, her eyes wide open to the smoke-filled sky. Her chest rose once or twice, rose no more. He knelt beside her, wiping sweat from his face, and tugged the rings off her fingers. Returning to his fellows—half of them dripping with hastily applied water, one of them curled in agony on the ground—he showed them the dainty circles and grinned. He’d wear them twined into the hairs of his beard, and gain high honor as being among the first to kill a sorceress.