In the spring of 705, Saumer of Isel informed his offspring that there would be marriages with Volog of Kierst’s children; who wed whom was up to them. The two families were dutiful inheritors of a generations-old animosity; when his vassals raided Kierstian lands, Saumer laughed and rewarded them handsomely; Volog was equally gleeful and generous when his athr’im returned the favor. But it had been strongly hinted by the new High Prince Rohan that they cease picking away at one another’s property. Because of his power, and because his princess was not only a Sunrunner but Volog’s cousin, Saumer accepted the inevitable —though with very poor grace.
Obram, his heir, was obviously expected to marry the elder of Volog’s daughters. Being an amiable young man, he presented himself to Birani, said and did everything pleasant and agreeable, and in 706 married her. The younger sister was her father’s favorite and the real prize, but she was too young for Obram. Irony would have it that Alasen eventually wed Ostvel of Castle Crag, a man twenty years her senior.
No one, not even Rohan, had realized that for all the bickering that went on, the vast majority of people living along the border between the two princedoms got along nicely and conducted trade honestly. Rohan had thought that peace had to be built from the top down: that princes and lords must settle their differences and impose their will on the common folk. Kierst-Isel taught him how wrong he was. The islanders had been ready for peace long ago. It was their rulers who balked.
The marriage of Obram and Birani was the first step toward reconciling the families. They turned out to like each other, and were happy. He died tragically a mere five years later, without a son to inherit Isel. Obram was mourned by both princedoms—Isel, which would have been his, and Kierst, which had grown to value him for his goodness to their gentle princess. And the two families’ common grief was more unifying than any decree of the High Prince. It was cruel that this should be true, but it was.
Hevatia of Isel had not had to think very long before deciding which princess Volog’s heir would marry. While Obram wooed Birani, she fixed Latham’s regard on herself. Her two sisters were prettier than she, but she had one quality that Latham, possessing it himself, appreciated. She was ambitious.
At the Rialla of 698 she had looked over the men from whom she would Choose her husband, and found none to her liking. Not even Rohan, who seemed weak and foolish. In later years her mistake in judgment afforded her grim amusement. Hevatia understood and admired the High Prince’s tidiness of mind even while resenting his use of her family to his own ends. It would have shocked her out of five winters of her life had she known how ashamed he was of it; she never noticed that no one had been similarly suborned since.
Being a young woman of ambition, she decided that Latham, and all that went with him, would be hers. Love, or even compatibility, had nothing to do with it. It helped that he was reasonably good-looking, possessed a tolerable degree of charm, and was ambitious enough himself to value that in a wife. They struck a bargain in the summer of 706, and at the Rialla of 707 were married, with all princes witnessing as new bonds were forged between the formerly opposing lands.
She did not love him, nor did he love her. She bore their first child, a son they named Arlis, three years after their union. The next year, Obram died and Arlis was heir to both princedoms. It was bitter fulfillment of an ambition neither Latham nor Hevatia had ever dreamed of, but once it was fact it became necessary to raise the boy with his future importance in mind.
Not only would Arlis rule the united island one day, but he was cousin to Sioned and therefore to Pol. Other kinsmen were the princes of Syr and Ossetia. If only through his relations, Arlis would one day be a very important man.
The parents agreed that their son’s consequence must not depend on blood ties alone. Latham trusted Rohan more than Hevatia did, but neither of them wished to see Kierst-Isel become little more than the High Prince’s vassal state. So Arlis was trained to understand and enjoy princely power. There was no better way to learn it than as Rohan’s squire.
Until he was old enough to be fostered at Stronghold, Arlis spent every autumn at Zaldivar. Hevatia’s two unmarried sisters doted on him; his grandfather Saumer spoiled him disgracefully. Hevatia never had the heart to chide them. True, she had to spend part of every year mending his ways, but he was a good-natured child and soon understood that what was permissible at Grandsir’s was not a good idea around his parents.
If Obram’s death united the families in sorrow, Arlis united them in love. Volog was only a trifle annoyed when Hevatia Named her second son after her father. At young Saumer’s birth hi 720, she was thirty-eight and could reasonably expect that she was done with childbearing—and creditably so, having produced an heir and a spare, as the saying went. But three years later she had the shock of her life. Not at the birth of her daughter Alathiel, but at the circumstances that produced it.
After sixteen years of marriage, her husband had fallen in love with her.
This confused Hevatia and embarrassed her profoundly. She could not imagine what had caused this aberration in a man she thought she knew inside out. She had grown no prettier; she showed him no special favor; she encouraged his new attentions not at all. They had evolved a comfortable relationship based on their children, their duties, their expectations for the future, and respect for each other’s privacy. Each enjoyed a few brief, discreet dalliances through the years, with the usual understanding between civilized persons of high rank that any children Hevatia bore would be Latham’s, and any sired by him on other women would be raised away from court. It was eminently practical, agreeable to both, and paid tribute to two rational minds.
But suddenly he shared her bed more nights than not, and, after the necessary number of gestational days, Alathiel was born.
And then something truly shocking took place. She found herself in love with her husband.
At eighteen, falling violently in love was as natural as breathing. At her age, it was ludicrous. At least, this was how she viewed her feelings at first. After a time, though, she didn’t care if she made a fool of herself in front of the whole court and the island’s entire population lined up to watch.
That autumn of 737, Hevatia and Latham celebrated the thirtieth year of their union, with ample cause for rejoicing. Arlis had succeeded his grandsire Saumer as Prince of Isel, was married to a charming girl, and had children of his own. Young Saumer was squire to Prince Kostas and would one day rule the important holding of Port Adni, which on Lord Narat’s recent death had reverted to Kierst. Alathiel at fourteen was smart, pretty, and the light of all eyes—especially those of her aged grandfather Volog. She was with her aunt Alasen at Castle Crag, learning about the management of vast estates in anticipation of the holding or princedom she would help rule someday, for none doubted that she would make a splendid marriage.
At the celebration banquet, an old joke was dredged up by a minstrel: “Their graces are celebrating fifteen years of happy marriage—and fifteen out of thirty isn’t bad!” They laughed heartily over that; for them, it was true.
While Graypearl and Riverport and Seahold burned that autumn night, Latham took Hevatia to a little cove some ten measures up the coast, where a cottage had been readied with every luxury. They had just fallen asleep after making love when stout boards were nailed across the door and windows. They never saw the men who swarmed ashore from longboats, or the dragon-headed ships anchored in New Raetia’s harbor. They never knew of the battle, never rejoiced when the enemy was driven back onto the beaches and took flight for their ships. Latham and Hevatia burned to death in their huge, soft feather bed.
It had been Baisal of Faolain Lowland’s lifelong dream to build a stone keep. For services to Rohan and Sioned in the war with Roelstra, he had been granted his wish. He had lived to see the completion of the outer walls and inner towers, and on his deathbed made his elder son and heir, Baisath, promise to finish the castle exactly as he had envi- sioned it. This Baisath had done, but he added an embellishment of his own. A great admirer of moats, the new athri had made it his business to dig one around the magnificent new keep, wide enough to make a perfect mirror for golden-brown stone formed into airy spires.
The broad wreath of water was practical as well as pretty. At harvest time, river and moat were undammed so that fresh, swift water could do its cleansing work; the moat was naturally the destination of all the keep’s refuse, and into it the middens emptied all year long. During the torrential rains of 727, Baisath and his family watched with held breath as the moat overflowed the dam and the fringe of grassy ground around the walls disappeared underwater. Even the narrow cobbled road leading halfway across the moat to the drawbridge vanished. Scraping up the mud left behind took all spring.
The annual cleansing rush of the river was never allowed to rise so high. When Mirsath led the refugees from Riverport to the castle the day after the invasion began, the water to either side of the causeway was a tidy three handspans from the edge—deep enough to deter a mediocre swimmer, but simplicity itself for a man on horseback.
Mirsath noted this with dull eyes. He must do something about it, he told himself. He was the new Lord of Faolain Lowland. His father was dead at Riverport with all his family, but for his cousin Karanaya, who rode with him, and his brother Idalian, safe at Balarat in Firon. Rage and grief and fear had sustained him through the wild night’s ride from the burning town, but now that he was home his strength had run out. The resident Sunrunner, Johlarian, caught him as he toppled from his saddle.
“We heard,” thefaradhi said simply. “I’ve ordered everyone inside the walls, and everything that can be done is being done, my lord. No one will grudge you some sleep. I’ll wake you at sunset.”
Mirsath hobbled up the steps of the manor house, leaning on Johlarian’s bulky shoulder. The glancing blow on his left leg had long since stopped bleeding, but the wound and the muscles around it had stiffened.
“I could sleep for days,” the young man admitted. “Goddess, you’ve no idea what it was like—“ Gulping back the memory, he glanced around distractedly as they entered the hall. “Karanaya?”
“Attended by your mother’s women.” Instantly the Sunrunner regretted mentioning Lady Michinida. “Lie down, my lord, and rest,” he said even more gently, and steered the stumbling athri into a guest chamber off the main hall. Suddenly horizontal, Mirsath gave in to exhaustion and shock, and slept.
Johlarian watched his slumber for a few moments, grieving for his new lord and his old one dead at Riverport. There would be more deaths soon. The handful of guards Mirsath had brought with him, combined with a second handful resident here, plus the two hundred or so castle retainers and farmers, would be no fit match for the army he had glimpsed on sunlight at the High Princess’ bidding. Sighing, thefaradhi left the tiny chamber and found a kitchen boy to stand guard over his new lord’s sleep.
Karanaya stood before the empty hearth in the hall, draining a wine cup. She was still in her betrothal finery, but it was a sorry mess after the frantic ride. Her yellow silk gown was in shreds from the knees down, expensive lace in tatters. She’d lost one gold earring and the matching armband in the crush of fear-crazed people left far behind. But she was wide awake, feverishly angry, and when she caught sight of the Sunrunner threw the empty cup to the floor.
“What’s been done in our defense?” she demanded. “Don’t tell me to go collapse like my cousin, either. He earned it by fighting our way free last night. I did nothing but sit a horse. Tell me what’s going on here, faradhi.”
Johlarian had never been an intimate of the family. Having been trained by Lady Andrade in aloof impartiality, isolation had never bothered him. He reported what he knew and what he saw, but never what he thought.
The lady heard him out, and swore under her breath. “All the farmers within the walls... Goddess, we’re going to be cramped.” Then, sharply: “What did they bring with them?”
Johlarian blinked. “Why—I couldn’t really say, my lady. Their household goods, I suppose. Anything they don’t want to lose.”
“In other words, their best cook pots but nothing to put in them! Does no one understand we’ll have to survive a siege?”
The Sunrunner cleared his throat. “My lady ... I think it unlikely.”
“Survival, or a siege? Or both?” Not waiting for his answer, she beckoned to a guard wearing Riverport’s colors. “Come with me,” she said, and Johlarian could do nothing but follow in perplexed worry as she marched out into the courtyard, collecting men and women to her with imperious gestures.
“Strip every bit of food from your cottages and every blanket from your beds. And hurry up about it!” Johlarian stared at her. She turned to him and added, “And once we’re done, faradhi, you’re going to Fire the stubble in the fields. The enemy will find no living off this land.”
“My lady—I cannot do that without an order from Lord Mirsath!”
Her pale blue-gray eyes were the color of flint. “Did I tell you what they did to our faradhil They cut off his fingers and threaded his rings through their beards as decorations. While he watched and bled to death.”
No one had ever threatened Johlarian, obliquely or otherwise, in his life. Sunrunners were always treated with the most scrupulous dignity and respect. He gulped back nausea and nodded obedience.
“I’m glad we understand each other. But understand something else, faradhi. Whatever is required of you, you will do. If rny cousin or I tell you to call Fire, you will do so at once. Whatever we order, you will perform. I don’t care a damn for your oaths or your vows and I especially don’t care what Lord Andry would say. You will obey, or you will be given to the enemy and your rings will shine from their ugly faces.”
She strode away, calling for the drawbridge to be lowered. Johlarian stood in shock for some moments, trying to tell himself she was overwrought and didn’t mean it. She meant it. Every word.
He trudged up to the top of the curtain wall, waiting in dull misery for her signal. If invasion was inconceivable, a Sunrunner coming to harm was unthinkable. Both had occurred yesterday. He had thought that when the keep fell, as it inevitably must, he would be spared and could bargain for as many lives as possible. That was part of the rules of war. Haunted by the vision of a faradhi slaughtered and defiled, he stared blankly out at the shorn fields, beginning to understand that in this war, there were no rules.
Karanaya’s frightened little army marched back to the castle leading sheep and goats and pigs, and laden with blankets crammed with food. She raised her arm to signal Fire. He summoned his energies and set a blaze in the stubble for a square measure all around.
“Spare our homes!” someone cried piteously from the courtyard below. And when Karanaya joined him on the walls, she confirmed the plan—but not for the reasons the peasants wished.
“When they come, and look into the cottages, you will call Fire to them and burn them inside.” When he took an involuntary step back in horror, she gave him a grim smile. “Your rings are at present secure on your fingers, faradhi— and your fingers are securely attached to your hands.”
“Yes, my lady,” he whispered.
A south wind blew at moonrise, and the enemy positioned their great square sails to take advantage of it, skimming straight across the channel toward Radzyn port. Chadric and Audrite stood at the prow of the ship Chay had sent to rescue them, watching white enemy sails fill.
“As if the Father of Storms exhaled on purpose to take them there,” fumed the captain. “We can’t risk it, your grace. My Sea Spinner is fast, but she can’t outrun them.”
“Whitecliff?” Audrite suggested, but the man shook his head.
“Lord Maarken’s holding has no harbor. We can’t put in at the Faolain, nor anywhere along the southern coast.” He eyed Meath, who was prone on the deck with his head in Alleyn’s lap. “Pity your faradhi isn’t up to taking a look—or to warning Radzyn. I’ve never seen any of them caught so bad with it, not even Lord Maarken. We’ll have to go back around your island and north to Tiglath. It’s not much of a port, but at least there’s no word of enemy landings.”
“They came upon Graypearl from the north,” Audrite said, frowning. “Surely they’ll have patrols along the coast.”
“I doubt it, your grace. It’s my thought that they came in three fleets—one at the Faolain, one for Kierst-Isel, and a third for Graypearl and Radzyn.”
Chadric nodded. “There’s little to be had by seizing Tiglath. The way is shorter and easier to Dragon’s Rest and Stronghold from the Faolain.”
“Exactly. No sand to hinder them.” He snapped his fingers and a boy came running out of the moonlit darkness. “A warm cloak for her grace, at once. Her own is soaked through.”
“Is it?” Audrite looked down at her bedraggled wrap. “From last night, I suppose.” Shrugging, she looked once again at the huge ships crossing the ink-and-silver sea. If only Meath had recovered and gotten word to Radzyn earlier. If only the wind had allowed the Sea Spinner to arrive yesterday evening instead of well after dark. If only their second boat had not been pierced by wave-hidden rocks on landing at the Small Islands, forcing them to make two trips out to Chay’s ship instead of one. Then at least they would have been at Radzyn by now. As it was, they could not even signal the keep that the enemy would arrive sooner than expected. Shivering, she thanked the boy for the thick wool cloak, and as she exchanged it for her sodden one she met her husband’s gaze.
“Chay knows what’s what when it comes to fighting,” Chadric said. “Radzyn has never fallen.”
She managed to smile, tried to match his confidence— forced though she knew it to be. “I don’t give a damn if that idiot son of yours is past forty and taller than I am. When I catch up with him, I’ll blister his behind for that trick he played.”
“My son, eh?”
She nodded and turned her head from him to hide sudden tears, knowing that if she said another word, it would come out as a sob.
Chadric pulled her tight against him as the ship came around and headed out to sea. It would be a long voyage to Tiglath, and a tense one—for there might still be enemy ships waiting and there could be no news of family and friends with Meath incapacitated by seasickness. Fear and isolation and aloneness lay ahead, and awful uncertainty.
“About my son,” Chadric said.
“Yes?” She was relieved that her voice held reasonably steady.
“If you’re intent on taking him across your knee—I’ll hold your cloak.”
“But—they’re beautiful,” Pol whispered.
“Instruments of destruction usually are,” Rohan mused. “Swords, knives ... the elegant balance of a well-made ax, the perfect curve of a scythe...”
They watched the dragon-headed ships make stately progress toward shore, and in Radzyn Keep there was a sudden, breathless silence. Beautiful the ships certainly were, gilded with the first pale glow of a cloudy dawn. Gorgeously painted heads rose from long, curving necks, winged sails arching in the wind.
“Azhdeen saw them,” Pol said, still marveling at the magnificence of the enemy ships. “I didn’t believe him. Are you sure we can’t burn their ships with Sunrunner’s Fire, Mother?”
Sioned didn’t look up from lacing her quilted velvet tunic. “Meath says not.”
“Even if we could,” Rohan told him, “I would forbid it.”
Pol stared at his father just as everyone else was doing— everyone but Chay, who nodded in quiet agreement. “Why?” Pol exclaimed.
“Do you want them here forever?” Rohan’s eyes were bleak.
Chay said, “Without ships, they can’t go home. We’d have to hunt down and kill every single one of them. Without ships, they must stay and fight to their last soldier—and possibly ours, too.”
Rohan sighed. “Goddess alone knows what they covet here, or why. But if we spare some of the ships, the common soldiers will see there’s a way to go back, and once enough of them start dying...” He shrugged. “I will allow you your Fire, Pol. But not against the ships.”
“Then let’s try the landing boats. Hollis, you take the ones in the rear. Maarken—“ Their stricken faces stopped him. “What is it? What’s wrong?”
“I can’t,” Hollis whispered. “People would die.”
“Your Sunrunner oath? Is that it? You were eager enough to learn the Star Scroll spell—a thing outlawed years ago!”
Hollis stood her ground. “Rohan and Sioned gave permission —or you never would have been allowed to teach it.”
“You can’t be serious! How can you scruple to use everything we’ve got against these people? You saw what they did at Seahold and Riverport—“
Maarken circled his wife with one protective arm. “We made a vow, Pol. So did Sioned. The ros’salath, that we will help you do. But not this.”
Incredulous, Pol began another protest. But his father interrupted. “Leave be. They swore an oath.”
“Honor makes a wonderful shield against swords and arrows!” Pol snapped. “You may have sworn, but I didn’t.” He extended both hands, cloak billowing and rings glinting dully in the thin light. Sunrunner’s Fire sprouted from the lead boat, then the ones behind it, flames that ran eagerly over wood. A cheer went up from the walls of Radzyn as the Sunrunner Prince worked.
But the dragon ships continued on their graceful course, while their hatchlings trailed tails of Fire like the homeless stars that sometimes fled through the night sky.
“Those burn,” Pol muttered. “Perhaps Meath didn’t try hard enough.” And he directed Fire against the sails.
One sail became a sheet of Fire—but did not burn. All he accomplished was to make the ship even more terrifying: a dragon ablaze, like the one his mother was said to have conjured long ago.
Shock rippled through the group assembled on the battlements. Sioned stepped forward as Pol’s hands fell to his sides. “Let me,” she said, and fixed her fierce green gaze on the sails.
“So much for oaths,” Pol muttered.
A greater Fire raged, angry red instead of Pol’s deep golden blaze, but with the same result. Murmurings threaded through the sudden silence, dark whispers countered by a single bright hiss as Chay drew from its tooled scabbard the sword that had not tasted blood for the length of Pol’s life.
“I swore an oath, too,” he said. “I ask my prince to release me from it.”
Rohan’s answer was slow in coming. But after a time, after he searched his friend’s quicksilver gray eyes, he unsheathed the blade he carried, borrowed from Chay’s armory—shining, lethal, beautiful. “I release us both.”
Pol forgot anger and humiliating failure. Standing before him were the architects of his peaceful, pretty life at Dragon’s Rest—men he worshiped, men he wanted to emulate— men who now held swords with the easy assurance of trained warriors and the sorrow of awakened dreamers.
They were too old for war. Lean and fit as they still were, with the swords comfortable—too comfortable—in their hands, yet Rohan was sixty and Chay nearly seventy. Where once their coloring had contrasted, golden and dark, now they were both silver. For the first time Pol’s throat was gripped by fear. They were too old for this. It should not be happening, not to them. We’ve lost before it has begun, Pol thought. Whatever happens, we’ve lost something they spent their lives building—Father, I’ll get it back for you, I promise!
The old friends gazed into each other’s eyes for a few more moments, acknowledging between themselves everything Pol had been thinking. Then each turned to his son.
Nothing was said. But Maarken straightened as if his father had given an order, and, beckoning to the commander of the guard, vanished down the stairs. Pol followed his mother and Hollis to a vantage point at the side of the tower.
Hollis surveyed the beaches, her voice as calm as ever. “We’ll wait for full sunrise. The clouds should blow away soon on this wind.”
Pol watched his father and uncle, who stood side by side, together as they had always been. Grief had not left their faces, but Pol was startled to see something fierce and feral in their eyes. Old they might be, but beneath the serenity of age were two young men who had bathed their hands in enemy blood. This was what won wars, this elemental anger. Pol did not know whether to feel ashamed or relieved that he could find none of it within himself. He knew only sadness and pain, and a terrible weariness.
Far from Radzyn, on a lonely stretch of Ossetian road between the Pyrme and Kadar rivers, Andry and his escort of Medr’im were awake and in the saddle at dawn. It was cold, gray, the kind of morning Sunrunners hated, for it rendered their skills useless. Which was undoubtedly why the enemy had chosen autumn as their season for invasion, Andry told himself. Still, with rain there could be no battles or advances through downpour and mud. Which was undoubtedly why the strike up from the coast had been so sudden and so deadly. And why they sought to take the Faolain River to cut off help to the Desert—where it rained perhaps once in a hundred years. Autumn and winter could be brutally cold on the Long Sand, but ground could be covered and castles taken. If Radzyn fell, and Faolain Lowland with it, a token force could be left in the south to hold it secure and the bulk of the army could be moved to the Desert before the heaviest rains.
Andry had glimpsed Lowland before moonset the night before. The enemy had spent a day making sure Riverport was utterly destroyed, every home and shop and warehouse and inn up in smoke. And where is Brenlis, in all this horror? he asked himself again, shaking inside. Hidden away somewhere, little love? Find me, and soon, for I cannot find you—
Soon the enemy would be at Lowland. It was already shut up tight, fields blackened by Sunrunner’s Fire. The drawbridge was up, the moat overflowing. That puzzled Andry until he saw that the sluice gates to the river had been demolished to let the water rise. All well and good—but if the enemy could not get in, neither could the defenders get out to harass troops Andry knew must soon invade the Desert. A small force left behind could ensure Lowland’s isolation while the main army marched past. Even so, at least Lowland would be denied them as a staging area.
Though they rode west, Andry’s thoughts continually turned eastward to Radzyn. He would not be able to see things for himself until the sun finally made its appearance. If he was lucky and the Goddess was good to him today, the clouds might blow off in a strengthening wind by midmorning.
/ should be there. I should be at my father’s castle, giving the only help I can offer. Sioned had worked at a colossal distance to shield Rohan during his battle with Roelstra— almost the same number of measures as to Radzyn from here—but she had had help. She had seized the strength of every Sunrunner she could find, from Tobin at her side at Skybowl to Andrade and Urival and even Pandsala at the combat scene. Andry had no one but himself. It galled him to admit it, but there was nothing he could do—not at this distance, not alone.
So he rode west while his heart and mind yearned east, and cursed the clouds that kept him helpless.
Alleyn stroked Meath’s thick hair and tried to screen the hot sun from his face. Her grandmother had told her to try and get thefaradhi to drink a little, but it was a losing battle against water-sickness. Alleyn didn’t see why the element that had felled him should revive him, in any case. There wasn’t any logic to it.
Audran came with a dipper filled from the fresh water barrels. “Is he any better?”
“No, and not likely to be until he’s on land again.” Angling Meath’s heavy head, she helped her brother pour water down his throat. He moaned and coughed, but kept it down,
“Why didn’t you let me tell him?” Audran whispered.
“He’s got more to worry about than us,” Alleyn snapped. She settled Meath in her lap again and glared at Audran. “Besides, maybe we just imagined it. We’re not Sunrunners. Nobody in our family is a Sunrunner.”
“I didn’t imagine anything!” he retorted. “I felt it and so did you!”
“Hush up!” she hissed. “Who cares, anyway? If we can’t make it to Tiglath, it’s not going to matter if we’re Sunrunners or sorcerers or both—or neither! And anyway, I don’t see you getting sick.”
“Not everybody does. Maybe we’re special.” Audran scowled and looked as if he’d pursue the subject, but his sister’s fierce blue eyes stopped him. He gulped, lowered his gaze and mumbled, “I wonder where Papa and Mama are.”
“I don’t know,” Alleyn said, her voice quivering a little. “But whatever you do, don’t say anything to Grandsir. Or about what happened with us, either.”
“He’d only worry,” Audran sighed. But he squinted up at the sun with a speculative expression on his face anyway.
Pol forced himself to relax, allowing his mother to guide his strength into the weaving of the ros’salath. As he submitted, all information from his outer senses faded away. He knew there were shouts and battle cries, wind whipping his face and hair, salt spray stinging his nose, enemy troops wading ashore from the small boats, the lingering taste of blood in his mouth where he’d bitten his lip at his mother’s first commanding touch. But all he really knew was the feel of her colors, strong and sharp. And for the second time in his life he recognized the difference between the faradhi gift and that of the diarmadh’im. That it indeed was the second time confused him.
Sioned had told him once that it was like pressing one’s hand to its exact match on the other side of a thin mesh screen: alike yet never touching. He hadn’t felt that when fighting Ruval nine years ago, but now he knew what she meant. As she drew what she needed from him, he imagined one of the hands turning to clasp hers, while Hollis held onto Sioned’s other hand with both of her own. But try as he might, Pol could not make the image of that second, different hand reach and grip and give of that other strength.
Stop that. You’re distracting me.
He let the mental picture dissolve and concentrated on the colors whirling around him, in him. Sioned, Hollis, himself—a whole bright rainbow of jewel tints that threaded around and through each other to form a complex pattern. Usually Sunrunners likened their colors to a stained glass window, unique to each person. It was the easiest way to explain the inexplicable to a non-faradki mind. But it wasn’t that simple (he could hear his father’s dry voice telling him that nothing was ever that simple). Patterns in colored glass, woven tapestry threads, sun and shadow on water—shifting subtly throughout life, changing with mood or stress, but always the same.
Pol gave himself over to Sioned’s skill, curious at his lack of amazement. He was sure he had never felt anything like this before—as if he no longer had a body, as if everything he was had concentrated in the strange and beautiful thing she had made of herself and him and Hollis.
But to some deeper part of him, it was oddly familiar. And that other hand, the one that belonged to the sorcerer, turned its palm to show him a single gold coin. On it was his grandfather’s profile: High Prince Roelstra. There was no similarity between them, no cant or contour that linked him to his blood-mother’s sire. But all at once the face of gold turned, took on the colors and shadows of living flesh—and the leaf-green eyes laughed at him, eyes the color of his own in certain lights, or when he wore certain clothes.
He felt no fear of this man. But it was an eerily familiar face that grinned at him now, a face from his own memories. And that was impossible.
The hand closed over the gold coin with its living face, clenched into a fist raised as if to strike him for rejecting the vision. He couldn’t help it—he claimed his other hand, the faradhi part of him, and tried to break through the finely woven screen, smash that fist into oblivion.
Or lace his fingers with it, and become whole.
The idea flashed and was gone so fast that he barely knew it had formed. In his shock he felt sick, rent in pieces, as if the very thought of wholeness shattered him. The colors surrounding him fragmented, paled to shards of acid rime, needles of white slicing into his brain. The blankness of his physical being was now an agony of sensation having nothing to do with the logic of reality. He could hear whiteness, smell cold, taste lightning.
“Pol!”
Opening his eyes, he winced at shreds of sunlight. Hollis knelt beside him.
“Talk to me,” she ordered.
He coughed, sat up, and wondered when he had fallen to the stones. “Everything still works—I think.” He reclaimed one hand and rubbed his forehead. “Goddess in glory—my head’s about to split open.” Then he looked around. “Mother!” She lay senseless nearby, pale and spent.
Hollis soothed him with a touch and a tired smile. “She’ll be all right—I have her word on it. She told me so after she finished stitching us both back together.” She flung her thick, tawny-gold braid back over one shoulder. “I’ll take care of her. Your father wants you downstairs. Hurry.”
“But what happened?”
“I think we lost you, or most of you, and then I had the impression of ... of swords.” She paused to compose herself. “I’ve felt it before—only that time, it was a knife. I think they used iron against the ros’salath, Pol. Cut into it with swords.” She attempted to help him up; they ended by helping each other, neither steady enough to stand alone just yet. “When you can, go to your father and Chay. Don’t worry about Sioned. I’ll make sure she’s safe.”
“Iron—“ He swallowed hard. “You felt this before? When?”
“When Pandsala died.”
He remembered the agony of it, and his mother’s frantic work patterning the colors of a score of stricken faradh’im. But he also remembered that while iron was fatal poison to Sunrunners, it had a lesser effect on sorcerers. Like him. Diarmadh’im could work around it—painfully, but they could function. He had not. He had simply fallen apart. “I failed again, then,” he said bitterly.
“You couldn’t know. None of us knew. It’s not in the Star Scroll.”
He’d forgotten Hollis was there—Hollis, who knew nothing about the true source of his power. “Damn Lady Merisel to all Hells! She must have known—yet she wrote nothing!”
“As with other things, perhaps she thought it too dangerous.”
“She was fond of making other people’s decisions for them.” He tried out his legs, found them reasonably useful, and glanced over the walls. It seemed he’d be feeding his sword fresh blood today after all. With a last worried look at his mother, he ran headlong for the stairs, and forgot to wonder why submission to her weaving felt so familiar.
“Listen to them,” Chay muttered. “Listen to their battle cry. Andry was right—Goddess help us, he was right.”
The shout went up again from the enemy ranks: “Diar-madh’im!” It echoed off the eight towers of Radzyn Keep, all the way up to where Chay and Rohan stood watching the battle. Rohan wanted to put his hands over his ears to shut it out. They bellowed as if they had but one voice—and the discipline this implied was confirmed by the efficiency of the assault.
“As if it was the name of their lord, or their keep,” Chay went on. “The way our people are shouting,’Radzyn’ and ‘Azhrei’ and our names.”
“Maarken’s breaking through,” Rohan said, pointing to the wedge of mounted warriors slamming into enemy foot soldiers.
“That horse’s ass—if he’s not careful, they’ll circle around and—“ Chay ground his teeth, then beckoned to Daniv. “Run down and have my horse saddled, quick! And get me thirty riders—“
“Don’t bother,” Rohan interrupted. “Maarken’s following the plan, Chay. Reinforcements are right behind. He won’t be cut off.”
Chay squinted and gave a snort of laughter. “In other words, he doesn’t need the old man galloping up to his rescue! I don’t know whether to be proud or disappointed.”
Rohan divided his attention between glancing over his shoulder at the stairwell door and peering anxiously down at the fray. With the collapse of the ros’salatk, he had been expecting Pol to show up in one place or the other—and went a little weak-kneed when the young man finally arrived at his side.
“I’m sorry, Father—we failed,” he panted. “They used iron—slashed right through it. It’s a wonder we aren’t all dead.”
“It’s no wonder magic is forbidden to Sunranners in combat,” Chay said. “Damn—there’s that word again. Magic. I’m beginning to sound like my son.”
Rohan suddenly remembered what Chay had said earlier. “What did you mean, ‘Andry was right’?”
“He knew,” Chay muttered, looking anywhere but at Rohan and Pol. “Saw this in some sort of vision. You know how I feel about faradhi seeings—“
“He knew. And said nothing, except to you.” Pol’s voice was lethally quiet.
“I should have believed him. It was my fault you weren’t told. Don’t blame him, Pol.” Chay glanced at him then, with an expression as close to pleading as would ever appear on his face.
Pol was silent. Rohan pulled in a deep breath and, against all his protective instincts, said, “Arm yourself, Pol. Maarken needs you.”
“I might as well go someplace I can do some good—or harm, as the case may be!” The deadly glitter in his eyes found an object that was not Andry, which had been Rohan’s purpose. “I’ll order Dannar up here—keep him with you. He’s too young for this.”
“And we are too old,” Chay murmured when Pol had left them. “But if they can’t push these bastards back onto the beach soon, our swords may drink today after all, Rohan.”
Maarken had taken no wounds of any note—a slice here, a shallow puncture there—and he was only a little tired. But he knew the battle would have to be won soon. His right wrist, crushed in combat eighteen years ago, throbbed with pain. He had exercised it assiduously, making sure it was as strong as it ever would be again, but despite skilled physicians the broken bones had never mended properly. He could move his wrist certain ways but not others—and sword-play demanded supple joints, especially in the wrist. He had accounted for more than his share of enemy dead, but muscles and tendons shrieked at the ill-usage. He could feel the wrist swelling inside his gauntlet. He figured he was good for a little while yet, but not much longer.
So it was all very simple. He had to win in order to get the wrist iced before it was damaged beyond help and crippled him forever. He could not swing his sword two-handed when on horseback, so he jumped off and, with a battle roar of “Radzywnn!”, led his troops forward.
Within moments his leather battle-harness was slick with blood. A dark-eyed warrior with a score of gold beads threaded through his beard managed to cut into Maarken’s forearm, and the damaged wrist soon went numb. He still had the strength of his upper arm and shoulder. So he wrapped his left hand around his right to keep it steady, and hacked his way through five more bearded soldiers.
Screams, battle cries, calls for help, and the almighty crash of steel on steel deafened Maarken now that he was down here in the thick of things, rather than above it on his horse. He fought better on foot; proficient as a mounted knight, his real talent was face-to-face combat with a sword.
But this couldn’t go on much longer. The first attack had come at dawn. It was now noon. The battle had gone pretty much as Chay had expected, the sheer numbers of the enemy more or less matched by the Radzyn defenders’ knowledge of the terrain—and the, fact that it was their land they were righting for. But casualties were mounting on both sides. Maarken groaned when he saw the corpse of the young woman who had taught his children how to ride. There were others he recognized—too many. This couldn’t go on much longer.
“Maarken!”
He took care of his current opponent and swung around at the sound of Pol’s voice. His cousin was on horseback, cutting a swath through the enemy line to Maarken’s left— doing a damned good job of it, too. He reined his big golden stallion around toward Maarken.
“Get up here behind me—we can get clear and call Fire!”
“No!” A hiss over his shoulder warned him just in time; he whirled, gutted the swordsman, and shouted to Pol, “I kill with my sword, not with my rings!”
“You idiot!”
And nearby three enemy soldiers became living torches.
“Stop it, now!” Maarken bellowed. “You’ll get yourself killed!”
Suddenly the bearded warriors gave another roar of “Diarmadh’im!” Maarken had no time to think. He fought for his life as wave after wave swept down on him inexorably as a storm-tide.
He collided with a horse and someone grabbed his arm to steady him. He looked up into Pol’s face, half-hidden by his helm.
“You don’t have a choice this time—climb on!”
His cousin’s strong arm hauled him up. It wasn’t until he was perched behind the saddle, his legs at an awkward angle, that he realized his thigh hurt like all Hells. Pol pivoted the stallion and rode for the rear of their lines. Maarken hacked at a few enemy heads along the way with his left hand—and pushed his numb right fist into the bleeding wound just above his knee.
Some of the enemy had advanced nearly to Radzyn’s walls, a knot of them assaulting the main gate, repulsed by arrows and kettles of boiling water from above. Pol galloped for a postern gate. It opened, Pol reined in, and Maarken slipped from the horse into his father’s arms.
“Pol! Come back here!” Chay yelled.
But Pol was gone in a thunder of hooves back to the battle.
“Where are you hurt? Maarken, talk to me!”
With Chay’s help, he limped inside the gate, heard it slam shut behind them and the iron bolts slide home. The passage through the thick walls was black as pitch; Maarken conjured a finger-flame to light their way.
“A couple of scratches, and this damned gouge in my leg. Nothing serious, Father—just enough to take me out for a while,” he added angrily.
“For the duration—on my order,” Chay growled. “I was watching. When you loosed your horse, I thought you’d gone down.”
Maarken laughed in genuine amusement as they climbed the inner stairs. “Your son? You not only insult me, you insult yourself!”
They gained an inner chamber and Chay left him in Sioned’s care. She looked ghastly pale, but her fingers were sure and steady as she tended Maarken’s wounds. “You didn’t happen to see that imbecile I’m married to, did you?” she asked as she worked.
“Rohan’s out there?”
“He and your father were protecting each other’s backs. Then Chay saw your horse running free—and making free with his hooves along the way, I might add. How do you train those brutes, Maarken? Set them to knocking down inconvenient trees?”
A well-trained horse could take a man’s head off with its hooves as surely as a whetted blade in a strong warrior’s hand. Radzyn horses were very well-trained. Sioned knew that as well as anyone. She was talking to hide her fear.
“Father must be back with him by now.” He flexed his wrist, which had been wrapped in cold cloths, and hid a wince behind a grin. “He’s pretty quick for an old man.”
“Say that to his face, you impudent child.” She tightened the bandage on his thigh until he yelped. “There. It’ll heal up just fine. But you’re through for the day. Let’s go see what’s brewing outside.”
She gave him a slim wooden stick to lean on and accompanied him across the courtyard. Horses crowded there thick as ripening grain, for every animal not needed to carry a soldier had been herded within the walls, The courtyard, big enough to encircle Maarken’s whole house at Whitecliff, seemed shrunken. Once atop the walls, they looked down on the battle in silence for some time. At last Maarken swallowed hard around the lump in his throat.
“We’ve killed a lot of them, Sioned. But—“
She nodded slowly. “But they have killed many of us. If it stops at dusk, it will only begin again tomorrow at dawn. And it will continue until—“
“We’re going to lose this, aren’t we?” he whispered.
“You’re the warrior. You tell me.”
He turned blind eyes to the carnage below.
“We have two choices. Three. We can stay and fight— and die. We can stay and lock ourselves in and wait for help—and starve. Or we can leave.”
“No,” he said. “This is my home. My inheritance.”
“To inherit a place, it is necessary to be alive.”
“If we leave, there won’t be anything left to inherit!”
“There will be no help,” she said quietly. “The Faolain is theirs. Tilal and Kostas can’t raise their armies in a day.
Ships can’t get past the enemy along the southern coast. Graypearl is ashes.”
“Remagev—“
“—is three days’ march across the Long Sand. Walvis’ little army is there, but...”
When she said no more, he faced her again. Her green eyes lit with an unholy glow.
“The Long Sand,” she repeated.
“What are you thinking?” he demanded.
“The Goddess is good to us, Maarken. Never doubt that she is very good to us.” Before he could question further, she ran to the stairwell and vanished.