Well, that was a nice piece of work,” Sioned commented to her son over breakfast. “After all that poor child went through to get here, you snarl at her. I trust you’ve apologized.”“Meggie did a stupid thing, leaving Dragon’s Rest where she and the children were safe—”
“I disagree,” Rohan told him quietly. “I think it was very clever of her.” Pol set down his cup. “Clever? It was absolute insanity!”
“And you’ll thank me to let you manage your own wife, is that it?” Rohan arched a sardonic brow at him. “Before you manage to make her cry by scolding her for doing the only thing she could do, there’s something else you ought to know. Jinan had very interesting things to say last night about Grandfather Miyon at Dragon’s Rest.”
“What?”
Sioned rose from the table, her blue bedrobe swirling around her, and began snatching clothes from the closet. “Yes, just think about that for a moment.”
“In what context?” Pol asked warily. “We know that his Merida bastard has taken over the princedom—naturally he fled.”
“Goddess give me patience!” she cried. “After all this time, don’t you understand him yet? His son has led his armies against Tuath—and is likely to meet up with Tallain and Riyan any day now.” She threw one shirt at Rohan and another onto the bed for herself, giving the impression that if they’d stayed in her hands one more instant she would have shredded them. “Do you think Miyon disapproved? Do you honestly believe that after everything he went through to gain sole rule of Cunaxa that he’d slink away now, when he’s got a chance of grabbing the northern Desert?”
“But he did leave,” Pol pointed out stubbornly.
“And for where? Dragon’s Rest!”
Rohan said, “Meiglan rightly fears her father. And now that she’s removed herself and the children, Miyon has nothing to bargain with. No hostages.”
“Hos—? No. Impossible. Not even he would dare.”
“What would you not do to keep your wife and daughters safe?”
Pol swallowed hard. “So now my palace, instead of my family, is in his hands. What do you suggest I do about it?”
“Nothing.”
Sioned paused on her way into the bathroom with an armful of clothes. “Rohan...”
“Oh, come!” he chided. “What does Miyon have now? Dragon’s Rest—filled with people loyal to Pol, not to mention his former squire who happens to be married to a princess of Grib, and another prince who’s his kinsman. I’m betting our cousin of Cunaxa will be at Swalekeep rather quickly. So you see that Meiglan was very clever in escaping— and I must say that my heart warms when I think of the welcome Chiana will give her empty-handed ally.”
“So once again you counsel no action at all,” Pol said, his voice dangerously soft. “This is my princedom we’re speaking of, Father.”
Rohan shrugged. “Do as you like. My experience tells me one thing. Obviously you trust yours more. But I do insist that you apologize to your princess. Through her bravery and daring, she’s spared you more than you know.”
Meiglan heard all this from the antechamber, ashamed to be listening in secret but unable to help it. Flinching when Pol condemned her action, amazed when Rohan and Sioned attributed her flight to cleverness rather than fear, at last she realized that although fear had been her primary motivation, she had indeed recognized the danger from her father.
She crept from the outer room and hurried back down the hallway to her own chambers. Perhaps she wasn’t hopelessly inadequate after all—hadn’t Rohan called her Pol’s princess instead of just his wife? Pride, pleasure, and sudden confidence flushed through her, and so when Pol appeared a little while later in her room, she told him the whole tale without fearing his reaction. She had done the right thing; Rohan and Sioned had said so. And Pol—his initial anger had only been that she had risked herself and the children. He said as much when he apologized, and then praised her cleverness. It was only later that she remembered how seldom anyone in the High Prince’s circle complimented anyone else on their intelligence; everyone was expected to have wits, and to use them.
Jihan had slain the dragon—as usual. Remarkable, the way she moved in for the kill, her blue eyes glittering and her sword held defensively close to her body, the way squires were taught. She planted a bare foot on the fallen dragon and laughed aloud, waving her sword in the air.
The dragon suddenly came to life. A hand closed around her ankle and toppled her. Jihan shrieked and fought for possession of her sword, but the dragon tossed it away and grappled with her on the carpet. Rislyn came to her rescue, grabbing up the sword and attacking the roaring dragon. At last they had defeated the beast, and stood on his back yelling their triumph at the top of their lungs.
“Jihan! Rislyn! You should be in bed! Stop all this noise at once!”
The dragon peeked out from under his woolen wing. “I’m afraid you’re too late, Meiglan. They’ve done me in right and proper, and now I expect they’ll make necklets of my teeth and talons. Poor dragon!”
Meiglan gave a little gasp of surprise. “Your grace!”
Rohan shook off his granddaughters, snatched up one under each arm, and groaned to his feet. “Goddess, what do you feed these two? It’s only the first of Autumn since I’ve seen them and already they’ve grown half a silkweight!” He shook the giggling pair, set them on their feet, and discarded the cloak with a flourish. “Your dragon has had enough for one night. He’s not as young as he used to be!”
“No, Grandsir—again!” Jihan demanded.
“Please?” seconded Rislyn.
“Your mama says it’s bedtime, and so it is. Whup, wait a moment—hands and faces washed? Jihan, don’t rub the dirt off on your clean nightgown! Rislyn, I will allow you one glass of water, and then get to bed.”
“And a story,” she suggested slyly, big green eyes dancing.
After a glance at Meiglan, who nodded and smiled, he said, “Very well. A story. No, don’t tell me—you want one about dragons.”
He told them one of the less bloodthirsty tales about a village maiden who outsmarted a dragon by dazzling him with a handful of jewels, although where a peasant girl would get such things or why a dragon would react so to them was beyond him, and the story never elucidated. Unfortunately, Rohan was very good at telling stories; the twins were wide awake and begging for more by the time he finished, and he cast a guilty look at their mother. Meiglan tried to suppress a smile, failed, and moved in to exert some parental discipline.
“You may have another story tomorrow, if you’re good and ask Grandsir politely. And do your lessons well. But it’s long past time you were asleep.”
“Lessons?” Jihan wailed. “But we’re at Stronghold, we never have lessons at Stronghold!”
“This time you do.”
She kissed them and stood back while Rohan tucked in the sheets and then had the breath hugged out of him, which necessitated a retucking. At last the adults left the room, nodding to the maidservant on duty in the outer chamber.
“It’s wise of you to establish a routine for them as quickly as possible,” Rohan commented.
“It’s not wisdom, my lord. It’s certainty of what Jihan would get up to, running around here without six eyes on her at all times.”
He grinned. “I saw poor Kierun and Dannar chasing after her today. Rather wicked of Pol to assign them guard duty.” He slipped an arm around her waist and walked her to the door of her rooms. “I think perhaps it’s time you got some sleep, too. That was a hard ride, my dear. You still look tired.”
“I slept most of today, my lord.”
Her blush told him that not all of her time in bed had been spent in slumber, but Meiglan was not a girl one teased about such things. “Just the same, why don’t you have a good long bath? I’ll have taze and cakes sent up.”
“That would be lovely, my lord,” she sighed.
After nine years, Rohan had given up trying to get her to call him by his name. It was enough that he no longer frightened her—though he’d never understood what she found so awesome about him. He kissed her cheek lightly and bade her good night, and started down the hall.
“My lord?”
He turned and saw fear in her wide, soft brown eyes. “What is it, Meiglan?”
“Will there be battle?”
“I hope not.” Then, because she needed more reassurance than that, he added with a smile, “That’s the beauty of Stronghold. It’s the Desert they’ll be fighting, not us. Don’t worry, Meggie.”
“I won’t, my lord. Good night.”
He considered going down to the kitchens himself to order Meiglan’s taze, then decided against it and snagged a passing servant. “Nothing elaborate—but she didn’t eat much tonight.”
“At once, my lord. And the High Princess said that if anyone saw you, to tell you she’d be waiting for you in the Summer Room.”
“Mmm. Tell the High Princess—“ That no one can find me. “—that I’ll join her in a little while.”
“Very good, my lord.”
Sioned would not think it “very good,” but she would also understand that he needed some time to himself. But where could he be alone in his overpopulated castle? He watched the servant pause to replace a faltering torch in a wall sconce, and as light blazed anew turned resolutely for the stairs.
The fire in the Flametower had been built up at sunset, as always. Someone would come at dawn to replenish it for the day. It had been thus for a very long time now. He’d lit these flames himself from a torch carried back from his father’s funeral pyre.
The day Zehava died, his fire was allowed to burn out. Rohan’s mother and sister had cleansed this room with their own hands. Incredibly, Andrade had helped them. That same day, Rohan had killed his first, last, and only dragon, the one that had killed his father. That day, too, he had seen Sioned for the first time. And the next morning, just after dawn, he had climbed the spiral stairs to find fresh kindling stacked and waiting. His fire had burned here for nearly forty years.
STRONGHi >!_:.< 5JV
He walked slowly around the outer edge of the room, close to the windows, remembering. He’d come here often as a little boy, needing a high, light-filled place to be alone—or needing only to gaze out at the land he loved. In this room he had seen Sioned’s face for the first time, conjured in Fire by Andrade. From here he had watched princes arrive at his command in 705, come to acknowledge him as High Prince. He smiled suddenly—over on the floor was an inkstain from a bottle spilled by Chay during that wild dragon-counting of 719.
But foremost in his mind was the single morning of his life when no fire had burned here at all. The day after his father’s death; the day of the battle with the dragon. Lack of sleep, the panic of Tobin’s joining with the faradh’im, and the exhaustion of that long walk back from the pyre had made his grip on the torch shaky at best. It had suddenly felt much too heavy, and he’d had an irrational fear that he would drop it or its flame would die. That morning the floor, walls, and ceiling had been scrubbed to gleaming whiteness. The window arches had been cleaned of soot accumulated during his father’s long reign, and the sleeping dragons carved at the point of each window had seemed ready to stir to life, lift their wings, and fly.
The dragons were black again. He ran a finger over the wall, felt the gritty residue of his own long fire. Sighing, he wiped his fingertip on his trousers and wedged himself into one of the windows, spine against the stone. Out beyond Stronghold was the Desert; where he sat, the night breeze met the fire’s heat and the scents were oddly the same, fierce and wild. He closed his eyes and breathed of his princedom.
/ am afraid.
Always better to admit it than to pretend otherwise. Lately his actions—or lack of them, Pol would say—had felt ... not wrong, but as if there was something out of balance. Radzyn had been a disaster. That the keep still stood was no work of his. Remagev had been no better. He knew the Desert would not betray him, would do his killing for him. But the Long Sand required time, and though Sunrunners had reported no immediate march on Stronghold yet, he could feel Vellanti footfalls like the thud of his own heart.
What have I done wrong? Where am I failing, that my people die and my lands are beneath enemy boots? That the failure was his was a thing he never questioned. He was High Prince. That made it his fault.
Yet through all of it—and even because of some of it— there was Pol. The Goddess’ recompense for finally learning not to play people like chess pieces? Pol’s existence wasn’t simple chance. Rohan didn’t believe in chance.
Neither did he believe in flying against the storm. You waited it out, or died with shredded wings. Any hatchling dragon knew that. His own wings were a little battered. His own fault; he should have learned sooner.
In his youth, in the first rush of arrogant determination, he had sought to mold people and events to his own ends. Not because it amused him; not because he enjoyed the flex of power. He knew his ways were better. He had faith in himself and his goals. But there had been no patience, no understanding. And greater than his belief in the tightness of what he wanted was his belief in his own cleverness.
He’d played princesses off against each other, kept everyone guessing, pretended to be a callow idiot. He’d bought off the Merida one year and crushed them in battle the next. He’d thought he could control events—and ended up at their mercy.
Roelstra’s hunger for his death had increased tenfold after Rohan had made a fool of him. lanthe’s vengeance had been for pride’s sake, too, as well as power’s. The Merida had become even more poisonous, reasoning that if they could not regain the Desert, they would gain Cunaxa through Miyon and come to power as lawful princes. The diarmadh’im had been able to murder Andrade because Rohan had not murdered the pretender to Princemarch at once, as he should have. They had nearly murdered Pol because Rohan had waited too long.
Yet he had come to believe that things happened as they were meant to, for reasons he might or might not understand. Events played out until there was only one correct, necessary action. When all had come down to the pretender’s life or Maarken’s, the knives had been in Rohan’s fingers before he even had to think about them. By the time they were embedded in the pretender’s throat, the time for thought had passed. In Pol’s battle against his own half-brother, Rohan’s interference would have been utterly wrong. Pol had to prove himself to himself—and to everyone who had ever doubted him.
Rohan supposed that in many ways he had ruthlessly used challenges to Pol’s claim in order to strengthen that claim. Using people was nothing new to him—but only to do for him what their own natures led them to do anyway. At least he didn’t manipulate people, didn’t bend souls awry to his own ends. That had been the lesson of his first Rialla, when he’d ended up loathing himself and nearly losing Sioned. He’d learned to use the strengths and selfishnesses of other princes to gain what he wanted. He justified himself with what Chay had told him years ago: “You have the courage of your dreams—when most of us don’t even know how to dream.” He told himself he was teaching the others how—ah, but only when their dreams coincided with his.
He’d explained himself to Pol as best he knew how—but Pol’s instincts were different. The irony was that the usual complaint of younger generation to elder, the complaint he’d had about his own father—“You don’t understand me!” —was in this case turned on its tail. Rohan understood Pol perfectly. It was the son who did not comprehend the father.
I’ve done what I thought was right. I was put into this place and decided better me than someone who doesn’t know himself for the barbarian he is. It was a supreme arrogance—but I could do none other. I’ve ruled by laws and broken only a few of them—for which I’ve paid dearly in my own heart blood.
But Pol saw patience as indecision, and waiting as cowardice.
Rohan felt salt sweat sting his eyes, tasted it on his lips. A sudden gust through the window dried the moisture on his face and neck to chill pinpricks, while the fire burned hotter in response to the wind. When brightness flared against his closed eyelids, he turned his face to the night. Strongly as his fire might blaze now, one day it would go out. Pol’s would replace it. Pol, who was impatience and quickness and action and three kinds of power personified.
A creature of instinct. Thus far, gut reactions had served him reasonably well. He was alive—quite an accomplishment, considering some of the events in a life not half over. But instinct was not enough. Any savage could lash out at a threat to survival; any animal preserved its own life at almost any cost.
Rohan believed with all his soul that to act on sheer instinct without knowledge was folly. It was the mark of the barbarian, the triumph of belly over brain. Yet to know and act, but not to understand the consequences, could be worse. One must wait for alternatives to develop, then choose which action to take. Sometimes there was only one, and life resolved itself into the simplest possible choices. Sometimes there were many, and he had to trust himself to pick the right one. Or at least the one he could live with.
Pol saw his ways as an invitation for events to force him into a corner. For all the sobering experience of learning his Sunrunner and sorcerer powers, Pol still didn’t understand that power of any kind was to be used as little as possible. There were two reasons for that. The first was outward perception: when others saw that there was no other choice, they were unthreatened by power when it was finally used. The second was a far graver reason. The more one used power, the more one wished to use it—until it ended by using the user.
Look at Andry—setting himself up as a prince, thinking that he’s the one making the decisions. His power is doing it for him. He understands even less than Pol.
It was their peculiar tragedy that in standing as rival to Pol, Andry would be Pol’s most stringent lesson.
As Roelstra was mine. He, too, was trapped by his power—by what he could do as opposed to what he should do. He began a war simply because he could. Power wasn’t his tool, it was his master. He hoped for Tobin’s sake, and Chay’s and Maarken’s—and especially Andry’s—that Pol would learn that without the Lord of Goddess Keep as disastrous example.
And yet... if Pol wasn’t already aware of it, Rohan had failed. He was High Prince, responsible for what the next High Prince would be and do and become. What manner of light would shine when Pol’s fire burned here?
He must trust the past to protect the future, trust Pol’s training and experiences and nature. But this future was unlike anything Rohan and Sioned had envisioned. He stared out at the Desert night, telling himself that he could hardly be blamed for failing Pol simply because he was not prescient.
When the torches appeared in the Desert, hundreds of them like fatal golden flowers converging on Stronghold from west and south and east, he nodded quietly, unsurprised. This, at least, he had expected. This choice had been coming for a long time now. He was done with waiting and with patience. Now he would fight because he most, use power because he must.
Picking his way through the maze of sleepers on the floor of the Great Hall, he awakened no one—not even when he lifted his long-unused sword from its place on the wall near the dragon tapestry. It felt curiously light, as if all the blood that had weighted it down years ago had sheened away.
By morning everyone knew that the Vellanti army was camped outside in daunting numbers. From Faolain Lowland and Radzyn and Remagev they’d come, now under the single flag of the lightning bolt, more than two thousand of them.
“They can attack and keep on attacking,” Hollis said worriedly, but Chay wore a tight grin.
“And spend themselves against the walls until there aren’t any of them left. Why do you think they called this place ‘Stronghold’?”
Maarken nodded. “Judging by the preliminary count, I estimate five to seven days before they’re down to a force we can defeat in pitched battle.”
“I don’t know that I care to wait that long,” Rohan commented mildly, earning himself a stare from his son.
Meath exchanged a glance with Sioned and murmured, “It’s when the dragon’s roar is softest that he’s most dangerous.”
“Noticed that through the years, have you?” she replied. “My lord,” she went on, addressing him not as his wife and princess but as his Sunrunner, “tell us the when and the how, and we’ll be ready,”
Rohan nodded. “Maarken, as Battle Commander, you are excused from their working. Sioned, you’ll have Meath, Hollis, Morwenna, and Relnaya to work with. Pol, what part you take in this is up to you.”
“Whatever you wish, your grace,” said the next High Prince.
Rohan inclined his head in acknowledgment—both of his son’s submission to his will and of the circumstances that had prompted it. “Maarken, I’ll expect plans of attack and defense by this evening, taking into account all the means at our disposal.”
“Rather formidable means,” Chay observed.
“Yes,” Rohan said. “We won’t be using their fear of dragons against them—at least, not as our primary weapon, as at Lowland. I don’t want these people fleeing for their lives. I don’t want them to survive and try again.”
Maarken nodded his understanding and agreement.
“I have only two requests,” he continued. “First, that you give Walvis and Daniv commands of their own, but place someone cool-headed with each. Grief breeds the need for vengeance, but I don’t want either of them endangered by that need. Second, that you treat my other squire, Isriam, as yours.”
“My squires, too,” Pol put in. “Jihan has plagued Kierun long enough, and he and Dannar will be more use to you than to me right now.”
“Accepted with thanks,” Maarken told them with a slight bow. “I’ll make this room my headquarters, if that’s all right.”
“Perfectly.” Rohan stood, paused to study their faces. “It’s always been one of my principles that I should never do myself what someone else can do for me better and faster.” He let a smile touch his mouth. “Therefore, I leave you to do all the work while I go take my ease on this splendid morning.”
When the door of the Summer Room shut behind him, Chay snorted derisively. “Listening to him, you’d think any idiot could be High Prince.”
“Many idiots have,” Meath remarked.
“As if all it took was a group of admittedly brilliant people to advise him,” Chay went on. “As if he’s not going to examine everything we present to him tonight with one of those lenses of his—and then make every single decision himself.”
Sioned chuckled. “Tell me something new. Hollis, if Dannar’s still out in the hall, would you have him bring Myrdal here, please? There’s more than one way into and out of Strongiiold—and she’s the only one who knows them all.”
Rohan frowned slightly at his granddaughter. “I thought you liked having lunch by the grotto. What’s wrong? Why aren’t you eating?”
“It smells like goats,” Jihan said, pointing to the cheese.
“Hardly surprising, as it’s goat cheese. Try some.” He cut a slice off the crumbly round—served on a gold plate because Rislyn liked the glitter of pretty things—and extended it to Jihan.
Her nose wrinkled. “No, thank you.”
“Then have some fruit.”
“I don’t like that kind, Grandsir.”
“At least drink your milk.”
“It smells like goats, too.”
He sighed. “The goat is a noble animal and I’m sure the ones who contributed to our meal would be highly insulted that a princess scorns them. Drink your milk.”
“No.”
“Jihan, you’ve got to eat something.”
She glanced over her shoulder at Rislyn, who had finished her meal and sat on a rock near the little pond, tossing pebbles and singing to herself. Jihan said, “I want to go play now, Grandsir.”
“Eat some fruit first.”
“I don’t want any.”
He put a marsh apple on the blanket in front of her. “Eat some fruit,” he repeated.
Her jaw set and her brows rushed together. He fixed her with a stern gaze, feeling slightly ridiculous. Here he was, a High Prince who had stared down powerful men and women all his life, locked in a battle of wills with a seven-year-old.
“Don’t try to outstubborn me, hatchling,” he said at last. “I’ve got more than fifty winters on you.”
Narrowed blue eyes regarded him in resentful silence for a long moment. Then she picked up the apple and bit into it sulkily.
“Thank you,” he said, feeling a terrible urge to laugh.
“Welcome,” she muttered.
“You can go play now if you like,” he offered when she finished.
“I don’t want to. I want to ride my horse but nobody will let me, except in the courtyard and that’s no fun. Why can’t I go out in the Desert, Grandsir?”
“Because—“ He hesitated, then decided that this hatch-ling was capable of hearing the truth. “Because there are some nasty people out there who’d jump on you like a dragon on a lamb.”
“Oh, I could ride away fast enough so they wouldn’t catch me—just like we rode away from Graedsir Miyon.”
“I don’t think you could outride these people, Jihan.”
“I bet I could,” she challenged.
He knew brewing mischief when he saw it. “Kneel,” he commanded. She blinked. “I’m the High Prince, and you’ve been ordered to kneel.”
She was so startled that she did as told.
“Now, on your honor as a princess, swear your oath to me.”
“My oath?”
“Yes. Promise to obey the High Prince in all things.”
She gulped. “I—I promise, Grandsir.”
“Not Grandsir. Your grace.”
“I promise, your grace,” she whispered.
“I accept your promise, Princess Jihan. And the first order you will obey is not to ride out into the Desert.” He softened his expression with a smile. “The second is to go play with your sister.”
But she made no move. “Am I your athri now, Grandsir?”
“I suppose you are.”
“But I don’t have a holding.”
Good point; she was a sharp little beastie, no doubt about it. Feeling suddenly whimsical, he said, “Athri means ‘wall lord.’ Your name means ‘noble rose/ Well, I give you those walls over there, covered in roses—which is appropriate to your name. Jihan, athri of Rosewall.”
She bounced, delight shining in her face. “And I get a ring, too, don’t I? Like your other athr’im? And what about Rislyn?”
He got to his feet. “Wait here. I’ll be right back.”
He returned to find Rislyn wide-eyed at the prospect of being made an athri of the High Prince. He repeated the little ceremony with her, naming her Rislyn of Willow Tree. In Sioned’s collection of gifting jewelry he’d found two rings that would fit the girls, and gave the emerald to Rislyn and the ruby to Jihan.
“Grandsir...” Rislyn gazed in awe at the sparkle of her new ring. “Does this mean that part of Stronghold is ours now?”
“It always was, heartling. All of it. Now it’s just a little more official.” He was amused and oddly touched that his impulse was so very serious to them. Much too serious for being seven years old. He made them a low bow rad tfcejr bent heads and knees to him in return—and then be had them. Grown-up solemnity dissolved in giggles as he swept them up in his arms and threatened to dunk them in the grotto pool.
Meath slouched low in his chair, elbows propped on its arms and fingertips pressed together in front of his face. His forefingers stroked the bridge of his nose with the same steady rhythm as the water dripping through the clock in the corner. Even Sioned had forgotten his existence as she proposed and argued and doubted and approved ideas. Meath didn’t really know why he was here at all, but didn’t mind. This conference gave him the chance to study anew people long familiar to him. People he loved.
Chay had similarly withdrawn, but not into the half-ghostly oblivion Meath had achieved. He still injected the occasional comment, though in general seemed content to let his son lead the discussion. No, not merely content, Meath corrected himself: proud—and for good reason. A leader Maarken certainly was. The leader Chay, Rohan, Lleyn, Chadric, and Meath himself had taught him to be. There was a certain sadness in his having to become Battle Commander at all—but his easy confidence in himself and in those around him fulfilled all their hopes. Meath remembered a young squire at Graypearl, and smiled.
Another former squire sat opposite Meath, another boy he’d guarded and schooled and watched grow from child to man. Pol was on speaking terms with his father again, Goddess be thanked, but the circumstances of it were bittersweet at best. They were so different; though they wanted the same things, believed in the same things, they approached these goals from sometimes opposing directions. He hoped Pol would grow into Rohan’s wisdom with time. Yet events had made Pol question that wisdom—and not in the way he questioned Maarken about tactics, to clarify and understand. He doubted his father, a thing Meath comprehended in no way whatsoever. His own trust in Rohan had never wavered since the day he’d given it, the day he’d watched a prince walk with a Sunrunner across the sand and return to their horses trying to hide how the Goddess had stunned them with each other.
His gaze strayed to that Sunrunner now. The years had paled her hair to make a finer frame for those green eyes, but the flush of color in her cheeks made the crescent scar whiter by contrast. Pol had a similar scar in almost the same place. Meath knew how both had come about. He had seen Sioned stumbling across the Desert with her bleeding cheek forgotten as she held another woman’s child in her arms; he had seen Pol staggering under the attack of another sorcerer’s conjuring. He wondered if Pol, looking into a mirror, saw it as the warning Sioned did: that power was a terrible thing to possess. That Fire—called to raze a castle or blaze across the Long Sand—could scar more than the skin.
Meath was taken from his thoughts as Relnaya came around the table, filling their cups with cool wine. Sitting straighter, he wrapped his hands around his brimming goblet—blue Fironese crystal, one of a set of Goddess knew how many dozen—and saw old Myrdal’s eyes on him. He had the uncomfortable sensation that she knew every thought in his head. Andrade used to do that same thing with that same look; he knew it wasn’t a product of age, because he was living his own sixty-fifth winter and he couldn’t do that.
“So we’re agreed on most things,” Myrdal said, her voice as whispery-brittle as the hands resting flat on the table before her. “Maarken, perhaps you’d care to go over it one last time.”
“Just to clear up a few points,” Morwenna added.
Meath watched Pol glance rapidly at all of them, thinking that one thing he hadn’t inherited from Rohan was that uncanny ability to draw everyone’s immediate attention without effort. That wasn’t an acquisition of age, either; the first time he’d seen it, Rohan had been barely twenty-one.
“I have something to say first.” Pol sat forward, fingers laced in front of him. “It has to do with what will be required of the Sunrunners.”
Here it comes, Meath thought, his gaze flickering to Sioned. She met his eyes, then stared for a moment at the great emerald on her hand. He understood the message: she was Rohan’s, not Andrade’s.
“Those of you who were trained at Goddess Keep face a difficult choice. Maarken glossed over it because it wasn’t the time to talk about it. But we have to discuss it now. Will you be breaking your vow not to use your gifts to kill? Indirectly, yes. You’ll be enabling the soldiers to kill more easily.” He looked each—Hollis, Morwenna, Sioned, Relnaya, and Meath—in the eye and finished quietly, “If any of you has a problem with this, please say so now.”
Sioned spoke first. “What we plan is something I’ve done before. All of you know it. When my lord fought Roel-stra...” She gave a soft sigh. “Lady Andrade never said anything, never censured me for it. That was to be expected. It was her dream of a Sunrunner High Prince that I was protecting. But even if she had attempted to punish me, if she’d said a single word—I wouldn’t have listened.
“There’s precedent in the Star Scroll,” she went on. “Lady Merisel recorded several instances of what we plan to do. But it was used as a protection for those who observed from the outside a battle by sorcery. Not for this. It’s a pretty question, and rightly saved for the last, as Pol says.
“But there’s something else.” Sioned looked down at her hands again. “I’ve killed, using my gifts. Most of you know that. For those of you who don’t—“
“Mother, this isn’t necessary,” Pol urged.
“I think it is. It’s been many years—but I have never stopped feeling the weight of those deaths. It could be argued that... what I did ... was the only possible choice to make each time. I believe this to be true. But while I don’t regret what I did, I also know why I did it.” Her head lifted. “I had no thought in my head for Goddess Keep, or its laws, or my oath, or anything else. I did what I did for my husband and my prince. The commitment was easy, but with hard consequences. Any of you who feel unable to make that same kind of commitment will not be blamed. I understand your conflict only too well.”
Meath repressed a sigh of relief that she hadn’t felt the need to confess her kills in specifics. He thought of the Firestorm she’d created at Feruche and all those who died there, knowing it was in her mind and Pol’s, too—though they had no notion that he knew what had happened that night.
Morwenna cleared her throat. “I have this to say. The rale we’ll really be breaking is one none of us swore: Lady Merisel and Lord Gerik’s rule about not using the gifts in battle. This was the original vow. I’ve seen it in the scrolls. We’re vulnerable to iron while conjuring—and a battlefield is a blizzard of arrows and swords, any one of which could kill us. It was a wise rule—prompted by sheer self-preservation. All the best rules are.” Her dark Fironese eyes glittered with irony, then with humor. “But I made my commitment, too—not as long ago as Sioned, and not for her reasons, though one has only to look at the High Prince to—“
“Mind your shameless tongue, Morwenna,” Meath interrupted with a smile. “We all know what duty you most preferred at Goddess Keep!”
She laughed aloud, not even bothering to blush. “I was damned good at it, too, and I miss it!” She sobered. “I have a qualm or two about this. No faradhi with a conscience could not. Especially no faradhi trained by Lady Andrade. But—and forgive me, Chay, Maarken—I broke with Lord Andry a long time ago.”
Pol nodded. Meath noted that he avoided looking at either uncle or cousin. He was startled to find those blue-green eyes regarding him instead. “Meath?”
“What’s asked of me, I’ll do,” he replied simply, hoping he wouldn’t be required to elaborate.
He was not. Pol turned to Hollis, who bit her lip, hesitated a long moment, and finally nodded.
“There are too many lives in the balance,” she whispered.
“I know how difficult this is for you,” Pol told her gently. “Thank you.”
Relnaya was the only one left. Fair hair long since bleached white-blond by the Desert sun was raked back by nervous fingers. At last he burst out, “I know nothing of consequences or balance or qualms, my lord. All I can see is Jahnavi lying dead. He gave his life—my oath means nothing compared to that.”
Meath realized suddenly that this was the first breaking of Goddess Keep’s hold by sworn Sunrunners in a group. It saddened him but he knew there was no alternative. What he found fascinating was that Pol had been wise enough not to mention that Andry himself had broken the vow, and quite spectacularly—surely a powerful argument in favor of doing the same thing without worrying about it. Too, both Pol and Sioned were powerful enough to draw on the other Sunrunners’ gifts and do this with or without their permission. And everybody knew it.
Myrdal tapped one finger on the table. “If you’re quite finished,” she said, evidencing scant patience for the ethical wranglings of the faradh’im, “then I’ll hear Maarken repeat this grand plan in some sort of order. Make it good, child. I’m the least critical audience you’ll face with it. A few more lines up on that infernal device over there—“ She waved a hand at the water clock. “—and you’ll have to sell all this to the Dragon.”
After the others were gone, Maarken and Pol bent over the map of Stronghold and environs one last time.
“It’ll work,” Pol said.
“It had better.” Leaning back in his chair, Maarken regarded him musingly. “You can’t conceive of its not working, can you? Is it lack of imagination or simply confidence in yourself?”
“In you,” Pol smiled.
“But not in him.”
No need for further identification. Shrugging, Pol emptied a wine pitcher into his cup and slouched back to drink.
“You have no idea why he’s done what he’s done,” Maarken went on. “You think he’s failed. I tell you now, Pol, it’s we who’ve failed him.”
“What are you talking about?”
“He trusts in his Sunrunners, his soldiers, and his Desert. Is it his fault that none have lived up to his faith in them?”
Pol was silent for a long while. Then, very slowly: “I know this about him—that he’ll preserve his people’s lives at any cost, including his own pride. That’s why he ran. Why he didn’t fight. But now he must—and don’t think I can’t see how it eats at him. But being High Prince means making hard choices.”
“Sometimes it means not choosing at all.”
“Oh, he’s taught you well, hasn’t he? Maarken, leadership is decisions and risks. An effective leader knows which to take.”
“And successful leadership is knowing which to avoid.”
“I can never make you understand.”
“Pol, I understand you perfectly. Your problem is you’ve never been really hurt. You’ve never known the kind of pain that goes to your heart and makes you think you’re going to die of it. And you’ve never said to yourself, ‘I’m not going to die.’ All that’s ever happened to you is you’ve been wounded enough to make you angry. All you’ve ever said in response is ‘I’m going to win.1 “
“I will win.” Pol finished his wine and stood. “And I’m going to take all the rest of you with me.”
Maarken’s brows arched. “I was wrong. Not confidence —arrogance.”
“Don’t confuse me with your brother.”
“In many ways, you’re just like him. Neither of you has any room in his head for thoughts of failure. Neither of you believes that anyone or anything could harm what’s yours. Gentle Goddess, Pol, up until Meiglan and the girls arrived, I heard you mention them four times! It wasn’t your faith in Dragon’s Rest that kept you from worrying—it’s your damned arrogance. Nothing would dare threaten your possessions. Andry doesn’t think I know it, but he lost a girl he loved from just such blindness.”
“And who did I learn it from? My father—who still can’t believe that his Sunrunners and his soldiers and his Desert haven’t won this war for him!” He began to pace, circling the wide table with short, angry strides. “Oh, he lets me play at being High Prince—leading the little dance we princes do at the Rialla to arrange other people’s lives—only because he’s there to make sure I do it right. Has it ever occurred to you that he doesn’t really trust me?”
“Pol!’ Maarken sat up straight, gripping the arms of his chair.
“Sorry to shock you,” he replied, not sounding it in the least. “But don’t you see? He’s made a system that can survive just about anyone—even a very bad High Prince.”
“That’s insane.”
“Maarken, you’re my kinsman and my friend and I love you dearly, but you don’t see beyond Whitecliff and Radzyn. Look at those who held Princemarch before me. Goddess, what a collection! Even if I turn out reasonably well, what about my sons and grandsons?”
“All right, then, what if he has created something that will work despite who’s running it? Something that will outlast all of us—“ He stopped, gaze narrowing. “That’s it, isn’t it? You can’t stand that you’ll have to fit yourself into what he made. You think everything ought to conform to you.”
“If that’s how you want to see it, go ahead,” Pol responded coldly.
“I really do understand you now,” the older man said quietly. “Some people think they can make room in time for themselves—strangle all the clocks and stop the sun in the sky so they can fulfill their visions. Andrade was like that. So is Andry. So are you. But that’s not how it works, Pol. Time itself makes the room, the space—and for good or ill, somebody fills it. And you’re eager to fill a place still occupied.”
“You’re where your own father used to be, Battle Commander.”
Maarken rose slowly to his feet. “Yes. I am. And the prince I serve is waiting to hear about a battle that’s going to tear his heart out.”
Pol took a few steps toward him. “I didn’t mean that— Maarken, I’m tired and angry—“
“I know what you meant.” He sighed his own exhaustion. “I’m sorry, too. But this doesn’t hurt you the way it does him. You’re not watching your life’s work being destroyed.” He shook his head. “You won’t be the same kind of High Prince he is. You’re different men, with different work to do. But until the same kind of pain shows in your eyes, you’re not going to understand what it is to be High Prince at all.”
Chapter Twenty-eight midnight a contingent of Desert warriors filed silently out the grotto passage. They waited behind a northern outcropping of the Vere Hills, calming their restive horses and trying to repress their own fierce anticipation. Radzyn and Remagev had been fought for and lost; Stronghold would be different.
The day broke clear and free of haze, for which grace the Sunrunners thanked the Goddess. They would be able to work with sunlight today, not be forced to the sorcery all had learned but none felt comfortable with.
At dawn, while the Vellant’im were still arming themselves, Kazander’s men rode full tilt in an insane charge from the tunnel, bellowing Isulki war cries and “Azhrei!” Angling for the right flank, they sliced off a section of the startled enemy host. Instantly the hidden troops swept down to attack the isolated Vellant’im, some to engage them, the rest to form an adamant circle around the fighting.
And then a very odd thing happened. Within the protective ring of Desert warriors, springing up between them and the concentrated battle, was cast a thin bright circle of Fire, like a huge and empty crown. It rose, arcing dragon-high, then curved inward to meet in a graceful goldfire dome.
Inside it, Desert warriors grinned—and slaughtered the stupefied Vellant’im.
Outside it, Desert warriors laughed—and protected the faradhi weaving from enemy iron.
Maarken thundered down from Stronghold with the main Desert force to engage the bulk of the Vellant’im in more traditional battle. Kazander again carved off a manageable portion; another squadron, this one secreted by night slightly to the south, rushed forward to attack while the Sunrunners constructed another sunfire dome.
It was gorgeous work, and Tobin was half-mad with wanting to see it for herself.
She had fought in the last battle at Stronghold, tucked in a canyon niche with a bow and full quiver, happily picking off Merida warriors. This time age and infirmity condemned her to the safety of the keep. She strongly suspected husband and brother of making deliberately certain she couldn’t even vent her frustration in curses; Tobren, Meiglan, and the twins were with her, and the face she presented to the four innocents had to be a serene and confident one.
It might not have been so infuriating if she’d been able to go Sunrunning. But the ground floor room faced west; sunlight wouldn’t touch it before noon. At least Betheyn took pity on her; at mid-morning she slipped away from her duties as physician’s assistant to whisper a report.
“It’s a little like butchering a stag,” Betheyn murmured as she fussed with a tray of taze and fruit, her excuse for coming in to inform Tobin of the battle’s progress. “Lord Kazander makes the main cut and the others do the finer carving.”
“Armies move to the right,” Tobin observed, low-voiced, keeping one eye on the children’s game and the other on Meiglan. She’d heard of a battle in which that instinctive shift to protect the sword arm had ended by reversing the opposing armies’ positions entirely.
“Maarken took that into account. Prince Daniv and Commander Laroshin will charge soon from the tunnel to the enemy’s right flank, to drive them back toward the main battle. The High Prince doesn’t want any of them to get away.”
Tobin grunted her approval.
“Lord Walvis has killed nearly sixty so far,” Beth went on. “Nobody’s ever seen anything like it.”
“Chay?” she asked, knowing that her idiot lord had assigned himself the duty of keeping Walvis alive.
“Trying to equal Lord Walvis.” Beth smiled reassurance. “With Lord Kazander’s brother-by-marriage stuck to him like sap on a pine.”
“Hmph. Old fool.” Tobin wished the sun would hurry its journey across the sky so she could see things for herself. Damn Chay and damn Rohan, caging her with three prattling children and that timid little doe Pol had married.
After Beth bowed to Meiglan and left the room, she reapplied herself to her pretense of reading a book. Conversing with Meiglan was always a trial. She was a sweet girl—but in Tobin’s lexicon that equated with “colossally boring.” She knew she intimidated Meiglan at the best of times, though she had never figured out why. Now her halting speech and the tension of the day made her totally unequal to sustaining even the most rudimentary talk. So she took refuge in a book, lest Meiglan think she required other entertainment and try to engage her in conversation.
The water clock dripped liquid time. The refreshment was served and consumed. The children tired of one game and began another. Meiglan sat in pallid silence, stitching methodically at a tapestry pillow. Tobin strained her ears for the sound of battle., but heard nothing.
A hell of a good fight, Chay reflected, but if he didn’t rest soon he’d return to Stronghold across his saddle rather than in it. He fought his way to his guards captain, gave over command to him, told Visian to go find Kazander and make himself useful, and declined assistance out of the fray.
“No, my dear,” he grinned at the young woman who had volunteered to be his escort. “You’ll have much more fun without me!”
Fun? he asked himself suddenly as he left the battle and its heat behind him. That’s a thought for a young man, not an old fool like you. But the instincts of war, honed many years ago, had kept him alive. That was their purpose: to preserve his life while his enemies found death at his sword.
Chay glanced back over his shoulder as he rode up the approach to the tunnel, skirting litters bearing the wounded. Maarken’s plan was working, as far as he could tell. It would be slow and many would die, but they’d win.
He scowled suddenly, uncomfortable with the aftermath of a battle fever that felt different from previous wars. Not as clean or light-headed giddy—just sad. When he was the young Battle Commander of the Desert, presiding with Zefaava over victory banquets, he’d lifted his wine cup with fierce satisfaction to announcements of how many Merida had died. He turned in his saddle, glancing briefly back at the field. But he didn’t really see the hundreds of Vellanti corpses. What Chay saw instead was the courage and determination of his own people. Sudden as a sword stroke, he knew that this time he would raise his glass to the living. The offering desired by the Goddess was not enemy deaths, but that people could triumph over fear in defense of what they loved.
“My lord! Are you hurt?”
He had ridden right through the tunnel to the outer courtyard without even knowing it. Looking down at Kierun’s frantic face near his stirrup, he shook his head and smiled. “No. But I have a hellish thirst, and the need to ease my ancient bones.”
He swung down off his horse, finding that last comment truer than he’d thought. Another thing about cooling blood after a fight: a young man stretched young muscles and grinned, but an old man was stiff and sore for days. Repressing a wince, he accepted a clay pitcher of water from Kierun, poured half of it down his throat, then dumped the rest over his head to clear the sweat from his hair and face.
“Where’s my wife?” he asked suddenly, adding to himself, She’d better be exactly where I left her.
“I don’t know, my lord. Shall I find her for you?”
“If that stubborn little bitch sneaked out, I’ll—“ He grinned at the squire’s shocked expression. “Never mind, Kierun. I’ll go find herjnyself.”
It was Jeni’s turn next to bring news, with the excuse of gathering used dishes. Typical of Meiglan, Tobin thought, not to find this unusual, that someone came to serve her needs even with a battle raging outside. A kinder part of her chided the sharpness; Meiglan wasn’t meant for this kind of day.
“Lord Walvis took a leg wound and is out of the fighting,” the girl whispered. “Lady Feylin is binding it now— and I don’t think she’d be scolding him half so much if it was serious. And Prince Rohan wrenched his shoulder again, so he’s returned as well.”
“Too old for such nonsense anyway,” Tobin muttered.
“Not according to their men, my lady.” Jeni hesitated. “I’ve had the oddest feeling. It doesn’t make any sense. It’s as if somebody’s touching me, but not touching me.”
“In sunlight?”
Gray eyes the color of smoke-stained pearls went wide. “How did you know?”
Alasen’s daughter—and Ostvel’s, Tobin thought. It would take too long to explain. “Stay in shade,” she ordered, her good hand gripping the girl’s arm for emphasis. “Sioned ... is powerful.”
Tobren noticed their conversation and asked, “Can’t we go see what’s happening? I could help with the wounded or—“
Shaking her head, Jeni told her, “I’m sorry. I know it must be dreadful to be cooped up in here, but believe me, you’d get trampled outside in the courtyard. I’d better get back now.”
The child looked rebellious, then shrugged. Tobin watched Jeni leave, then said to her granddaughter, “My eyes are tired. Read to me, please?”
That kept her occupied and out of mischief while Tobin closed her eyes, pretending to listen. She remembered the first time she’d been caught up in a faradhi working—the night of her father’s ritual. Sunrunners had spread moonlight over the whole continent; she had gone with them, untrained as she was, and only Sioned had been able to bring her back whole. There had been other times when power had entangled her, but clearest in her mind was Sioned’s first attempt at what she and the other Sunrunners were doing right now. She felt again her initial fright, then absolute trust, then the outpouring of everything she was in response to Sioned’s need. There had been thin starlight and strange, distorted impressions of a fiery translucent dome, and a ringing like a gigantic silver bell. She learned later that the sound had come from a knife hitting Sioned’s starfire weaving.
A knife. Worked metal. Steel. Specifically, iron ore smelted with other metals to make it strong, rustproof, gleaming. Iron that poisoned Sunrunners, that had slashed into the ros’salath Pol had tried to use as protection at Radzyn, that had disrupted his work with sharp pain.
There had been no such hurt that night. The knife had clanged harmlessly against Sioned’s woven dome. Tobin heard it again in memory, clear and fine. She remembered Sioned’s overpowering will, the raw force that was Pol, the other Sunrunners caught up in the working—Andrade, Urival, Pandsala—
Pol. Urival. Pandsala. Diarmadh’im who were resistant to iron, though not immune to its effects.
There had been no effects that night.
Her mind seemed to ignite. She ruthlessly ordered the rush of thought into coherence. Pandsala had been pure diarmadhi. Not a hint of sickness ever came to her when crossing water. Urival had been a half-breed, possessing both kinds of power. So did Pol. In theory, they had inherited the sorcerers’ resistance to iron. But Pandsala, the purebred, had died of a steel knife in her leg—no! She’d died of poison, Merida poison—not iron. The knife might have hurt, but it hadn’t killed her. Nine years ago, Mireva, who had raised lanthe’s other sons, had projected a conjuring at a distance of fifty measures with steel wires piercing her flesh. Whatever pain there had been, it hadn’t crippled her.
Yet that night of Roelstra’s death there had been no pain when iron struck the weaving of starfire.
Had Pandsala, caught in Sioned’s power, been their protection? Not by herself, Tobin guessed, recalling the others who had been there. Urival had lent added strength; Pol, day-old infant though he’d been, had provided the last link. The Star Scroll specified workings of three—and those three diarmadh’im had been part of Sioned’s weaving.
She had only two of them to bolster her work today, Pol and Morwenna—both of whom were also Sunrunners, with a Sunrunner’s fatal vulnerability to iron. Maarken was protecting them as best he could, by using part of the army to keep steel from their woven dome. But if there could be a third sorcerer involved in the working, would they be completely protected from any assault by iron?
The presence of Riyan or his wife Ruala—both of diarmadhi blood—would have proved Tobin’s idea one way or the other. But he was leading his troops to meet Tallain against the Merida, and she was far away at Skybowl. Still—Sioned had amassed the powers of Sunrunners and sorcerers hundreds of measures away on the night of Roelstra’s death. Jeni had sensed the pull of power today; could Sioned expand her range, draw in Ruala, and gain virtual omnipotence?
“Tobren!” she interrupted, and her namesake started with surprise. “Find Rohan. Bring him here.”
“But I don’t know where he is, Granddam.”
Meiglan looked up from her sewing. “What is it, your highness?”
Nothing you’d understand, she thought impatiently. “I—I want—f-find—“ Speech chose exactly the wrong time to desert her. She slammed her cane down on a nearby footstool, incoherent with frustration. Damn the sun for not moving more quickly, for trapping her.
Jihan abandoned the game she was playing with her sister. “What do you need, Aunt Tobin?”
“She wants me to find the High Prince,” Tobren said, puzzled and alarmed by her grandmother’s urgency.
“I’ll do it!” Jihan leaped to her feet. And before Tobin could work a protest around her tongue, she had raced from the room.
Into the sunlight.
“Jihan!” she cried. “Meiglan, st-stop her!’
There was no mistaking the panic in her voice. Meiglan’s huge eyes were dark smudges in her blanched face. Rislyn, just as pale, called her sister’s name and ran after her. Tobren followed at her heels.
Tobin dug her cane into the rug, staggering to her feet. “No—“ she moaned, aware that all three of them were now in danger because of her.
Morwenna had never suspected what she was until, on the long journey to Stronghold in 724, Urival had explained it to her. The shock had been eased by his revelation that he was another such as she, with Sunrunner and sorcerer blood both. “We are uniquely qualified to teach Pol,” he’d said over a campfire on the shores of Lake Kadar. His explanation of how Rohan’s heir had come to possess diarmadhi blood, and thus why they must be especially painstaking in his education, had left her thunderstruck. They had never spoken of it again—and, indeed, she had never revealed to anyone that she knew. But as Sioned wove the six Sunrunners together, Pol felt familiar and the famdh’im felt strange, and it was like learning about herself and him all over again.
She saw a hand wearing the ring of Princemarch extend toward her, and laced her fingers easily with his. It was more difficult to clasp the other hand held out to her, the one wearing Sunrunner’s rings as her own did. The strength of her shared grip with Pol was astonishing; the touch of Relnaya’s fingers was barely discernible.
The images had been suggested by Pol during their long discussion of this technique. Sioned had listened, shrugged her shoulders, and told them that if it helped, they could visualize anything they liked—just so long as their power was accessible to her without hindrance. Relnaya had been taken aback by the whole operation, having only five rings and not being accustomed to Sioned’s ways. But she was a Sunrunner and High Princess; he obeyed. Morwenna consciously tightened her grasp on his hand to bring him more deeply into the working, so that he would continue to obey. She didn’t fear a wavering of loyalty—but Sioned in full flight, as it were, could be awesome.
At her direction, they hovered in readiness and waited for Kazander to carve off a section of Vellanti troops. It was an outrageous thing to be so peripherally aware of oneself, to merge one’s colors into a gleaming wholeness, nearly blind but for what Sioned chose to see, and subordinate in all things to her strength. Morwenna’s own awe of the woman had source in her youth; she had been a Sunrunner of two rings and seventeen winters when Sioned was summoned to the Desert to marry a prince. An astounding thing, never before done—Morwenna had known Sioned was skilled, but Andrade’s choice of her had staggering implications. Now that Morwenna had lived at Stronghold for a dozen years, reverence had been tempered by fondness and shared purpose. But when Sioned functioned solely as a faradhi, Morwenna could only offer in all humility her own gifts for her use. Not even Andrade had inspired that.
Yet there was a portion of her that Sioned could not use to its fullest. It allowed her, after a time, to see with her own eyes. She watched the battle within the gleaming shell of sunfire, and the fierce struggle going on without to keep Vellanti swords and arrows from getting within reach. She felt it when some got through, and the pain startled her, but it wasn’t the rending agony she’d been led to believe. Meath had described what it had been like to get hit by a steel arrowhead while conjuring—but the metal had been in his flesh, not in a structure woven of his mind. Morwenna felt the shock, gritted her teeth the way one did during a muscle spasm or an attack of joint stiffness, and went on with her work.
The dome shifted to encase another small and deadly battle. There was relief from the sting of iron for a time, but as Morwenna watched the outer conflict she saw a group of Vellant’im break free and hurtle toward their besieged comrades. Young Prince Daniv’s troops pursued, their swords like silver feathers fluttering on the wind, running scarlet. They would not intercept the enemy in time. Without knowing quite what or how she did it, Morwenna repositioned herself directly in the path of the oncoming warriors. She sensed startled outrage and imperious command from Sioned, and ignored her.
When the steel struck, Morwenna cried out, a silent howl of agony. But she held firm, she must hold her part of the weaving steady, she must spare the vulnerable Sunrunners from shattering by iron. She understood Meath’s experience now, for it was as if those swords slashed her body to ribbons. Her mind began to fragment, her colors to grow dim and brittle.
And then the pain eased, subsided entirely. It was several moments before she could see again, yet she knew what she’d find. Daniv had pounced on the Vellant’im, and they had more urgent use now for their swords.
The sun felt stronger as the day wore on toward noon— that was Morwenna’s only clue to time. She felt little weariness, thanks to the dranath she and Meath had taken in wine at dawn—secretly, and wary of Sioned’s finding out. Maarken’s tactic worked over and over, and now that Morwenna knew how to protect the other Sunrunners, she loosened the diarmadhi part of herself from the weaving and concentrated on defense. The stab of iron was at times a mere pinprick, at times hideous, but she endured.
There was an abrupt shift in Sioned’s tactics, a reordering of her stance. Morwenna and the others were drawn in tighter—not in terms of their powers, but in the working’s physical distance from Stronghold. The change told Morwenna that Maarken had begun the maneuver designed to drive the Vellant’im up the canyon toward the keep. Out of range of iron, she relaxed, almost drifting as the pain vanished entirely. Sioned had comprehended by this time what she’d been doing, and positioned her and Pol accordingly—smack in the middle of the road leading to Stronghold. Morwenna sensed an apology circle quietly through the weary Sunrunners, and smiled, Sioned would use them until they dropped—but she asked nothing of them she didn’t demand of herself. The difference, perhaps, between her and Andrade.
Maarken had spent the morning fighting two battles: one against the swords wielded by Vellanti warriors, and the other against the sunlight wielded by Sioned. She had warned him that he might be caught up in the weaving if he wasn’t careful. Pol had shared a trick or two for keeping other Sunrunners away—without saying how he’d learned them, but there was only one Sunranner Pol could possibly wish to avoid at all costs. Maarken figured if such things worked on his powerful little brother, then they would keep him from being snared by this working.
But he hadn’t counted on Sioned’s ability to take power wherever it presented itself. There’d been many frenzied moments when the force of her mind sought his while he was in the middle of defending himself against enemy attack. Rohan would have characterized it in his mild, amused way as being one Hell of a confusing morning.
Even so, it was all going pretty much as planned. Sometimes the Vellant’im broke through a protective ring of Desert troops and assaulted the weaving, but that never lasted long. Three and then five and then eight lumps of dead enemy warriors scattered the sandy plain. Maarken rejoiced in the decrease of their numbers and ordered his culminating stroke.
Harassing the rear guard to maneuver an enemy army to a desired location was a tactic hoary with age. Splitting one’s main force so the advancing troops had somewhere to go was slightly less ancient. But Maarken had an advantage in the structure of the castle behind him. He planned to herd the Vellant’im into the canyon where archers could pick them off even as his soldiers closed in behind them to cut off their escape. Much the same thing had been done at Dragon’s Rest nine years before. The river course leading into the valley provided a like bottleneck.
He’d felt fairly confident that the wooden frames with their stone-throwing arms would not be used. The actual walls of the castle were out of range, for one thing—and for another, the Vellant’im had destroyed no Desert keeps and he very much doubted they’d start with Stronghold. Yet as he guided his careful plan to fruition, he glimpsed one of the machines being cranked into readiness.
For a moment his jaw sagged open against the chinstrap of his helm. What were they doing? The flow of the battle was now such that any stones directed at the Desert army would also rain down on Vellanti warriors.
Maarken shrugged at enemy insanity and returned his attention to the fray. He hoped Sioned would know that it was time. The opening moves were well underway when the tug he’d been righting was suddenly gone. He staggered mentally, as if he’d been straining to hold up a stone wall that simply wasn’t there anymore. The shock nearly overbalanced him physically and he missed his stroke at a man with what seemed like a hundred gold beads decorating the thick black hairs of his beard.
A Radzyn veteran parried the Vellanti’s eager thrust toward Maarken’s vitals. Gasping out thanks, he reined his warhorse around and fought his way to the rise of a sand dune, where he could be relatively safe from harm. There, despite all cautions to the contrary, he wove the few rays of sunlight that penetrated the roiling dust of battle and surveyed the field.
There was no more protective dome leaping to encase group after group for slaughter. He’d suspected as much, and blessed Sioned for recognizing that it was time for the final push. Confidence bubbled up in him—he knew such elation was dangerous, but couldn’t help its escape from his throat in a sharp, satisfied laugh. He had succeeded in conbining all Stronghold’s resources—Sunrunners, warriors, and military lore learned from a sire who had been the finest commander of his generation. Quickly he unthreaded himself from sunlight and shook a defiant fist at the enemy, still laughing.
The Isulk’im, hidden from the rest of the battle by clouds of dust, were busy portioning off yet another section of the enemy, herding them like sheep toward troops commanded by Sethric of Grib and young Isriam of Einar. But this time there would be no shielding enclosure of light to trap the combatants and cut off outside aid. Maarken spurred his horse down the rise and caught up with them, bellowing Kazander’s name.
The korrus instantly wheeled his own horse wooed and galloped to Maarken’s side. He was breathing bad, hn teeth gleaming in a wide grin below his mustache. “Great and valiant lord!” he greeted Maarken. “A thousand thanks for this perfect day!”
“Glad you’re enjoying yourself,” Maarken responded. “But it’s time to regroup. You remember your part?”
“It is engraved upon my soul, mighty lord, in letters aglow with Sunrunner’s Fire.”
“Then get to it.” When Kazander grinned widely with excitement, Maarken couldn’t help laughing a bit in reply. He was actually growing fond of his verbal embroidery. “Have a care to yourself, you madman!” he yelled after him.
As Maarken rode back to the main battle, he sobered on seeing how many Vellant’im were still left. He missed the effervescent confidence, but knew it could only have hindered him. This had to work—it would work. But so many were going to die at his command. He drew in a long breath.
“And now,” he murmured to himself, “we find out if I’m even half as smart as my mother says I am.”
Chay strode through the outer courtyard, catching a fleeting glimpse of Chayla’s bright head. People hurried purposefully about, anxious but not frightened. Rohan’s influence, he thought approvingly. The man could calm a flight of raging dragons.
The inner ward was less populated. He had not far to look before he found his wife’s slight figure, standing in the sunshine near the circle of famdh’im. Chay scowled, ready to march up and carry her back to her rooms if she even looked at him in a way he didn’t like.
But then he saw Jihan. She stood motionless on the cobbles, her little face gone blank and blind. Jeni was over by the wall, her expression just as vacant, her bleeding fingers dug into the mortar between stones. Tobren and Rislyn huddled next to Myrdal, who was holding them up with an arm around each.
Chay stopped dead. He knew what the look on those faces meant. His first instinct was to grab the children away, shake them out of it. But that might send them into a shock so deep they would never recover. Goddess help her, what has Sioned done?
He approached Myrdal, who looked at him with bleak eyes. “We can only wait,” the old woman whispered. “She’ll use what she needs of them, and then weave them back together. She forgets her own power.”
He took his granddaughter carefully from Myrdal’s frail arms. The blue of the child’s eyes had been nearly swallowed by their black centers. She looked just as Tobin had on the night of Zehava’s burning, when she’d been snared by Sioned’s hungry, powerful mind.