The rush of wings startled Pol. It was not the sound of dragon wings, strong and sure in the dusk, but the swift feathery strokes of a dozen hawks. Independent like all predators, the hawks clung together now like timid waterfowl fleeing winter. Tiny golden bells on their jesses flashed with the last sunlight as they sought to climb higher and higher into the sky.
Escaped, was Pol’s first thought. His second: Released—and panicked. They don’t know where to fly when they’re not flown at prey.
Maarken watched, too, absently picking at the crusted blood on his tunic. A mere pinprick in his shoulder, it might have taken him; he had been Sunrunning when the arrow struck his flesh. Only its quick removal had saved his life. “They’ll find it hungry living in the Desert. I wonder how they got out of the mews.”
Pol steadied his horse as the tired animal stumbled. “Their hoods are gone. Someone freed them.” Turning in his saddle, he watched the remnants of an army trudge past. “Maarken...”
“Yes?”
“It hurts.”
Faradh’im usually possessed an excellent sense of direction. The scent of Water, the sighing of Air, the sun’s Fire, the feel of Earth—all these things combined to tell a Sunrunner precisely where was where without having to think about it, even in unfamiliar territory.
No one had ever taught Hollis how to discern direction underground.
Elemental presences there were, but she could make little of them. Moisture oozed at intervals from cool, smoothly hewn walls, and a breeze from somewhere bent the candle flames and torches. But it was the profound silence of rock that seemed to change her perceptions of all else, a quiet extending for measures all around her. In the world above, sky made of wind and light arched overhead, and the ground was divided by rivers. Here, Earth had complete dominion. Water slid stealthily from stone, and Air crept past, and even Fire seemed to hunker warily. Hollis did not know where she was, with the familiar balance of forces gone and only one Element surrounding her: brooding, silent, massive Earth.
She had called a halt to their journey through the passage, knowing that while there must be others as unnerved by this place as she, they must also all catch up with each other. They had been walking—sometimes up gentle slopes and occasionally a series of four or five steps, but mostly down—for what seemed like years. Hollis’ only indication of the time was the fat candle Betheyn had taken from a storeroom, one of those marked with dark lines and made to burn in precise time to the levels of a water clock. It had descended five lines of the night—or at least what was night up above. Here there was always darkness.
The idea made her shiver slightly. She refused to think about it, just as she refused to think about Rohan and Sioned and Chay and Pol and most especially Maarken. And about the weight of the Earth pressing all around her, stifling Air and Fire and Water.
“Hollis?” Beth’s soft voice was welcome distraction. “Take this, please?”
She was given the wide, round candle. It was down to nearly the sixth line; past midnight, she thought, although she couldn’t be sure.
“You should try to sleep, Beth. I can help, if you—“
“No, but thank you. I’m going to go back and make sure all the stragglers have caught up.” Betheyn’s thick plaits had come undone, and she scraped the dark hair from her face with a bruised hand. “Maybe you’d better use some of your Sunrunner magic on Chayla, though. She’s up front making her third round of the wounded. She looks ready to drop.”
Hollis nodded, and the younger woman threaded her way amid the people crowding the passage—slumped with their backs to the stone, curled up in sleep, holding injured limbs at awkward angles, lying flat on stretchers with spouses or children or friends watching over them. Hollis went farther up the narrow tunnel, searching in the gloomy golden glow of torchlight for her daughter’s fair head.
Chayla was bent over a litter, applying a fresh dressing to a sword-slashed leg. A fingerflame of Sunrunner’s Fire hovered at her shoulder. Hollis wondered when she had learned to do that. Then she realized that it wasn’t Chay-la’s Fire at all; it belonged to Camigwen, who knelt beside Chayla with the coffer of medicine.
“Jeni, if you can spare a moment?” Hollis said quietly, and Alasen’s daughter looked up. As another little flame appeared, Jeni relaxed and allowed her own to fade. Rising as if she were seventy instead of seventeen, she shook long brown hair from her face and waited for orders like a good soldier.
Chayla hadn’t even glanced up from her work.
Hollis drew Jeni aside. “I’d like you to watch Jihan and Rislyn so their mother can get some sleep.”
“Of course. I think I saw them somewhere up front.”
“How did they get there? They were almost the last through.”
Jeni’s smile, for all its weariness, held her father Ostvel’s quick humor. “With Jihan wanting to lead the way into the magical maze, can you wonder?”
Hollis shook her head, momentarily amused. “That child! I didn’t even notice them get past me. Doubtless she’s giving her mother no peace at all, for wanting to continue on. See what you can do—and try to get some rest yourself, my dear.”
The girl nodded, turned, then turned back. “Hollis
“... I know it’s not the right time to ask, but when we’re safe somewhere, will you tell me what happened to me in the courtyard?”
She kicked herself mentally. Jeni—along with Jihan, Rislyn, and Tobren—had been caught in Sioned’s weaving. For children completely untrained as Sunrunners, the shock must have been terrible. “I ought to have asked before how you were feeling.”
“Tired, and I’ve got a bit of a headache—but I’m all right. Mainly it’s...” She trailed off and shrugged. “I just don’t understand, that’s all.”
“Sioned will be better able to explain it than I.”
“Hollis—“ Her voice was hushed now. “They died, didn’t they? Morwenna and Lord Walvis’ Sunrunner.”
“Yes.” Hollis pushed away the memory of Meath’s knife, ending heartbeats in bodies whose minds had already fled.
“And we could have, too. If not for Sioned.”
“Yes.”
“No wonder Lord Andry doesn’t like her much.” Then, abruptly recalling that she spoke to the wife of Lord Andry’s brother, her eyes went wide. “I’m sorry, my lady, I—“
“It’s not important, Jeni. But as it happens, you’re right. Go find Princess Meiglan and the girls.”
When Chayla had finished her work, Hollis placed a hand on her shoulder. The girl glanced up, startled, squinting by the light of the fingerflame.
“I don’t have time to lie down and sleep, Mother,” she said before Hollis could draw breath. “There’s a head wound I should check again.”
Hollis drew her to her feet, alarmed when Chayla swayed a little to catch her balance. “Later. Come with me.”
“I can’t. I’m needed.”
“You’re needed strong and well yourself, so that you can help others become so.” Hollis readied herself to weave sleep. A useful trick, and one she would use on others once Chayla was resting. A line of the candle and they could start out again, to Skybowl or Feruche or wherever they could find safety. Part of her worried about feeding and housing so many in either keep; most of her was so weary that she wished she could perform the gentle witchery on herself. She found a clear spot against one wall and coaxed Chayla to sit down, prepared to drape soft threads of sleep around her daughter’s thoughts.
“Don’t—please! I can feel what you’re trying to do—”
“Chayla! Don’t fight me, heartling,” she added more softly. “You’re exhausted. You’ve done enough for—”
“It’s never enough.” All at once she was not the accomplished physician but a frightened fifteen-year-old girl. Hollis gathered her close and rocked her, murmuring wordlessly, strangely glad that the grim mask of adulthood had fallen away and she could be a mother to her child again.
“Hollis?” The whisper behind her turned her head. Betheyn stood there, reluctant to interrupt but urgent nonetheless. “Myrdal’s asking for you both.”
“Is she hurt?” Chayla drew away and raked her hair back from her face.
When there was no answer, Hollis abandoned hope of getting Chayla to rest. “Where is she? Take us to her, Beth.”
Myrdal sat with her back against a ragged boulder. There was a tiny Fire before her, called by Tobren to warm ancient bones. Its glow put false color into a withered face that proudly refused to show any pain. But Hollis knew suddenly that something had broken inside the old woman. Something that had always looked out from her eyes was gone.
Tobren knelt at her side, eyes huge and frightened. Hollis touched her hair in a reassuring caress as Chayla crouched by Myrdal.
“Don’t bother yourself, my dear,” the old woman said, her voice a whisper of Desert breeze across sand. “Although if you can strengthen me so there’s time to tell you what you must know, I’d be obliged.” Chayla delved into the coffer that had not left her side since that dawn. “I can help a little. But you must tell me where the pain is.”
“Everywhere and nowhere. Give me what you judge best, child. And then let me speak.” When Betheyn started to leave; Myrdal lifted her cane to block her path. “Stay.”
Hollis nodded at Beth and the two women knelt opposite Chayla as she sifted herbs into a cup filled from the waterskin at her belt. They waited while Myrdal drank, coughed harshly, and eventually nodded.
“Thank you, child. That’s much better. Now listen, all of you. These secrets came to me through my mother, whose mother bore her to Zehava’s grandsire. My own daughter should have kept the knowledge after me—but Maeta is long dead.” Black eyes still sharp as obsidian chips regarded each of them in turn—Chayla and To-bren, Hollis, Betheyn. “I give it now to descendants of Zehava, and one who bore children to his line, and one who would have done so.”
Hollis suddenly knew what Myrdal was going to tell them: the secrets of every castle in the Desert, and some outside the Desert. Traps for enemies, like those at Re-mage v; passages, like the ones at Stronghold; perhaps other things no one had ever guessed at. Hollis disciplined her mind to techniques learned in her youth at Goddess Keep. What she heard, she would remember exactly, and for the rest of her days.
Her Sunrunner memory was the reason she had been summoned to hear this. As for Betheyn, who would have been Sorin’s wife—she was the daughter of an architect. She would understand the intricate machinery of such secrets. Chayla was of Zehava’s blood; thus the knowledge would stay in the family. The inclusion of Tobren gave Hollis a qualm that instantly shamed her. But this was Andry’s daughter who huddled beside her. Tobren would tell her father whatever he wished to know, whenever he asked it. Perhaps sharing the secrets was Myr-dal’s way of trying to bring Andry back to them. Hollis hoped the old woman wasn’t making a mistake.
Myrdal coughed again, one hand touching briefly at her chest, then began. “Pay attention. At Skybowl...”
*
Chay squinted into the distance, trying to see the spires marking the entrance to the Court of the Storm God, where they should have hidden this night. But the Vel-lant’im had not followed—had, in fact, stood in stunned amazement as Stronghold went up in flames like a grease-soaked torch. Chay had decided that between his people, Walvis’, and the ones led by Sethic of Grib, there were enough to stand guard while the rest of them stole a little sleep from this long winter night.
For himself, he was too tired to sleep, too tired to think or feel. He rose from the folds of a cloak laid out on the sand and left the encampment, not knowing where he walked and not caring.
Sentries nodded to him; he knew it rather than actually seeing it. He climbed a short hill, forcing himself to suppleness despite the rasp of air in his lungs and the ache in his thighs. Old fool, fighting half the day as if you were twenty again—
From the rise he could look down on the tiny fires that dotted the camp, bright islands in a black sea. But so few. He shivered at that thought. Sparse, scarce fires in the darkness—it was the way Rohan would have seen them, he told himself dully. Rohan’s influence that made him see the same way.
But Rohan would have seen hope in those flames. Chay could not.
I have seen the Fire take two of my sons, one of them before his eighth winter and the other in the prime of his manhood. Now the Fire has claimed my prince, my brother, my friend. No man should outlive his children. Neither should a man outlive his prince.
Kept tight in his breast until now by urgency and fear and exhaustion, the agony finally broke through. He stumbled, unable to see, flung out a hand to brace himself on a boulder the size of a dragon. The cold stone bruised his knuckles, clawed back at his fingers as he tried to support himself. Sliding down, he bent his head to his drawn-up knees and wept like a child.
A long time later, when his eyes were empty, he heard footsteps below. Walvis climbed the hill and without a word sat beside him on the ground. Shoulder to shoulder they watched the stars, until the younger man finally spoke into the silence.
“Someone will have to tell Pol, when we find him tomorrow.”
Chay nodded, knowing who would have to do it. He took the topaz ring from his pocket, staring at the bright stone surrounded by emeralds. Walvis made a small sound and turned his head away.
A dragon’s cry shook the Desert stars. Chay shuddered, fresh tears stinging his eyes. He’d thought his heart dry as the sand, but the sound of a dragon—
“I’ve been waiting for it,” Walvis murmured, his voice thick.
Dragoncry before dawn, death before dawn. Chay nodded blindly. “They mourn one of their own.”
*
“Stay with her,” Meath had been told. “Stay with her.”
He kept watch that night as he had done nearly all their lives, one way or another. Since her first day at Goddess Keep, on the journey to the Desert to become a princess, at RiaU’im, and from Graypearl, he’d watched over her. He knew everything about her. He knew all her secrets. And he had helped her to keep them.
He sat beside her where she lay wrapped in someone’s cloak, ready to warn off anyone who approached. But no one did. Her sleep was respected even as her grief had been. They all knew—or thought they knew—what she had lost.
Suffering aged most people. Not Sioned. There was an aching purity to her, like a young girl, as if Fire had burned away all evidence of her years. She murmured in her sleep, her hands twisting around the cloak. He put his fingers over hers and she quieted. Perhaps she thought he was Rohan.
The huge emerald was cool beneath his palm. Meath had watched Rohan give her that ring.
“... kept safe the two young lords who are our heirs— until we can get one of our own. It is our desire that you wear this as a reminder of the debt we owe you.” And the emerald ring sparkled from her hand while he grinned into her furious green eyes, daring her to refuse the gift.
Meath coughed discreetly behind his hand. Oh, the young prince was a match for her right enough, despite his bland blond looks. They’d lead each other a merry dance...
The emerald had left her finger only once, stolen from her along with her Sunrunner rings. That she had taken back the one but not the others never surprised him, as it had everyone else.
The woman paced the battlements, stroking her belly and gazing out at the Desert with glowing greedy eyes. She braced both hands on the stone wall and glanced down, her attention caught by the glint of green on her finger. Raising her fist to the moons, she laughed softly, admiring the shine.
Meath fled down the moonlight, back from Feruche to Graypearl, and stumbled into the ancient faradhi oratory he had helped unearth and rebuild. When his heartbeats settled again, he cursed his weakness and vowed no one would ever know what he now knew—even as he wondered what kind of child would come of Rohan’s mating with lanthe.
He had kept watch that long summer and autumn, claiming the right from all other Sunrunners. No one had thought anything of it. Not even Andrade. He knew who had worn the emerald during that time, and what had happened the night Sioned had recovered it, and how she had come home.
She trudged through sand piled high by a recent storm, yielding as water beneath weary feet. The three were a long way from Feruche—from the smoldering ashes of Feruche—and longer still from Stronghold, but it seemed she would risk a stop at Skybowl. What would she say to explain her presence there? Meath winced away from the hard glitter of her eyes that warned Tobin and Ostvel back without words as she gathered the infant closer. What in the Goddess’ Name would she tell them at Skybowl?
Doubtless she would think of something. And be believed. Or at least no one would question—and even if they did, who among Rohan’s people, her people, would not keep the secret? Like Stronghold, Skybowl was nearly empty, all the able-bodied men and women gone north with Walvis or south to their prince. Sioned was their sovereign lady; her words would be accepted without comment.
He would return to Skybowl tomorrow and receive news of the child’s birth, and her explanation of it, and disseminate it on sunlight as if it were the truth before anyone had the chance to wonder. It was all he could do for her, but perhaps it would be enough.
He smoothed back stray wisps of her shorn, ragged hair. Deprived of its length and weight, the strands curled softly around her face. He had always wanted to touch her hair, feel its warm silk in his fingers. He rolled a lock around one finger, fire-red and sun-gold, and by the glow of distant stars saw starlight woven through it. The years showed silver in her hair.
Meath opened the door silently when there was no answer to his second knock. The scene within made him smile. They were already dressed in the finery each had ordered made for the other, commissioned through Meath himself in secrecy. She sat at her mirror, and he stood behind her brushing out her long hair. She wore it loose tonight, bound only by the circlet of her rank across her brow.
He cleared his throat tactfully. “I’ve been sent by your sister to say, and I quote directly, ‘If you aren’t down here in two swipes of a dragon’s claw, I’ll skin you for saddle leather.’ “
“Late to our own celebration—terribly tasteless,” Rohan drawled. “Doesn’t anyone respect the privileges of age?”
“Find a better excuse.” Meath chuckled. “You’ve never not made an entrance in your life!”
“Don’t encourage him,” Sioned pleaded. “Honestly, Rohan, none of us is getting any younger, waiting for you to pick your moment!”
“None of us except you.” And he smoothed the thick hair cascading down her shoulders.
The wealth of it was gone now, an offering of living fire. He stroked the unruly curls and his hand brushed her cheek, an unintentional caress. He allowed himself the gesture because it brought a tiny smile to her face. He had watched sometimes from Graypearl, just to make sure she was happy. He need not have worried. Rohan had known what a treasure he’d won.
She stood on the steps, firegold hair piled in braids like a crown. In her arms was the child. Rohan caught sight of her and froze. In his slow movements were reluctance, self-hatred, resentment that she should force the issue here in public, with the whole of Stronghold and the Desert armies watching.
Meath held his breath as he watched Rohan climb the steps to where wife and son awaited him. Sioned’s eyes burning with challenge. She held out the baby, and Rohan’s fingers trembled slightly as they pushed aside a corner of the blue velvet blanket. He gave the boy a cursory glance—and Sioned a bleak one.
But when he faced his people, he drew her with him, one arm around her waist so that she and the infant shared the roars of the crowd with him. Meath felt his heart begin to beat again.
Sioned turned her cheek into his caress, her lips curving. “Rohan?”
Meath took both her hands in his. “Go back to sleep, Sioned.”
But the sound of a voice that was not his voice woke her. Not that she had ever been truly sleeping; he saw it in the green eyes that were colorless in the starshine. She gazed up at him for a long moment with no expression on her face at all.
Then: “Hold me. Please, Meath.”
He lay beside her in the chill sand, taking her into his arms. There was no possibility she could pretend he was Rohan; Meath was half again his size. But he felt a soft, guilty happiness that she turned to him, to no one else. He would keep watch, and protect her, and stay with her. He had promised Rohan, true, but long ago he had promised himself.
*
Tobin shifted irritably as Feylin sat down and spread half her cloak across her shoulders. “Not cold,” she rasped.
“That’s odd. I am, and so is everyone else. Do you have liquid sunlight running in your veins instead of blood?” Leaning her head back against the wall, Feylin closed her eyes and let all the breath sigh out of her. “I wonder if we’ll be going back, or going on.”
Tobin shrugged. When she was tired like this, it was even more difficult to get words around her tongue. She cursed this underground tunnel where there was no light save that of torches. Still, even if there’d been sun, she couldn’t have spoken to Feylin on it anyway.
“The servants brought the oddest things out of Stronghold,” Feylin mused. “Tibalia is staggering under the weight of Sioned’s jewel coffer, and some of the maids are eye-deep in blankets—which at least will be useful. Kierun, bless him, has a sack of cheeses from the pantry that’s twice as big as he is.”
“Mmm,” Tobin responded drowsily. She had been cold, and now that she was warming up, tension was draining out of her. She knew what Feylin was doing— the low, steady words were meant to soothe her into sleep. She couldn’t bring herself to struggle against it.
“A few of them are even trying to wrestle that dragon tapestry along. They ought to put it on a litter—it must weigh at least five silkweights. As I was passing, they dropped it again and I swear that dragon was staring at me—“
Tobin heard herself say, “Dragons.”
“Yes, it’s a pity Azhdeen didn’t see fit to come visit Pol today from the Catha,” Feylin went on in the same soft tones. “It would’ve been nice to have the Vellant’im on their knees so their heads could be conveniently lopped off. I wonder why they’re so terrified of—“
“Dragons,” Tobin said again, not knowing why. Feylin watched her narrowly, her eyes dark gray in the dimness, framed with lines acquired from years of squinting over charts and statistics and manuscripts. Those lines had been etched deeper since the death of Jahnavi, her only son.
Dragons.
Tobin grasped her arm. “Feylin—th-the book!”
“What book?”
“Your book!”
“Sweet Goddess! Stay here, don’t move.” She scrambled up and fled around a bend in the passage, back toward the entry into Stronghold.
Tobin tried to gain her feet. Failed, of course. She glared down at her exhausted, useless body. What good was a mind inside a body that would not do its bidding? Then she sobered. Better to live like this than become shadow-lost like Morwenna and Relnaya: whole of body, mind gone.
It seemed forever before Feylin returned, Dannar with her. The boy carried something large and heavy, wrapped in a bedsheet. “He remembered,” Feylin said. Dannar knelt beside Tobin to show her a corner of the book. “After what the High Princess and I did to the one at Remagev, I couldn’t forget this one.”
Feylin nodded. “If they found it, they’d know what’s true about dragons, instead of what we want them to believe. You’re Pol’s squire, I know, but I don’t think he’d mind my stealing you for a little while. Whatever happens, Dannar, that book’s safety is your only concern.”
“Yes, my lady.”
Tobin reached out her good hand to pat Dannar’s knee. As trustworthy and solid as his father Ostvel, and as devoted. She made a mental note to tell Rohan that Dannar deserved special recognition for his quick thinking.
Feylin plucked a torch from a nearby guard and gave it to him. “Go up to the front now, where Princess Meig-lan and the girls are. And on your way, start everyone moving again.”
“Are we going back to Stronghold, my lady?” Below the shock of red hair, Kierstian green eyes regarded them solemnly amid layers of dirt and sweat.
“No.” She managed a tired smile. “Not yet, anyway. It’s just that I’d like to keep moving. This hole in the ground makes me nervous.”
But there was that in her voice that frightened Tobin. When the squire had left them, Feylin knelt and whispered, “I missed Dannar at first—I went all the way to the last person in the line. But while I was back there I smelled smoke, Tobin. We’ve got to get out of here in case it gets thicker.”
Stronghold in flames? Impossible. But as Feylin helped her to her feet and gave her over to the guard’s care, Tobin felt a stinging in her eyes.
*
Isriam had wept during the night, but was too proud to acknowledge it. Daniv, his companion as Rohan’s squire, rode beside him in the dawn and made no remark on his friend’s swollen eyes and thickened voice. He had cried himself dry the day Sioned had told him his father was dead and he had become Prince of Syr. He had no tears left, not even for the friends they had lost yesterday in battle. Isriam would have to weep for them both.
“There’s a sand cloud coming up from the south,” Isriam said. “We’d better go have a look.”
“Let’s,” Daniv agreed, reining his tired horse around. “Goddess, what I wouldn’t give for a tubful of water right now—though I wouldn’t know whether to bathe in it or drink it.”
“You fly high,” Isriam observed as they made their way down the columns of soldiers to the rear guard. “I’d settle for half a flask.”
“As long as you’re dreaming, why not my father’s Syr-ene goldwine?”
It was Daniv’s wine now. Both of them thought it, neither said it. They looked at each other, sharing the memory of an evening last winter. Rohan, catching them getting mildly tipsy on a stolen bottle, had added to their education by matching them cup for cup of Syrene gold until both boys were cross-eyed. They remembered most of the evening, anyway—and certainly recalled with agonizing clarity the morning after, and their lord’s amusement as he lectured them on knowing one’s limits when it came to wine as all else.
“When this is over,” Daniv said abruptly, “come to High Kirat with me and we’ll drink ourselves stuporous.”
“When this is over, we’ll deserve it.” A measure or so behind the last of Lord Maarken’s army, the two young men reined in and squinted at the little roil of sand on the horizon. “Storm, or soldiers?” Daniv asked.
“Whichever, we should warn them.” Isriam chewed his lip. “But I’m betting on Vellant’im.”
“I hope you’re wrong. Did you look at our people, Isriam? There’s not enough fight left in them to bring down a lame plow-elk.”
They rode directly for the blue Desert banner—tattered now, but with the golden dragon still gleaming atop the staff in the dawnlight—that signaled where Lord Maarken and Prince Pol were.
“The prevailing winds argue against a storm,” the former mused after the squires had spoken. “But the only thing certain in the Desert is that the Storm God always changes his mind. What do you think, Pol?”
“I’ve lived too long in Princemarch. Kazander?” The korrus of the Isulk’im lifted his head, licked his lips as if tasting the air, and nodded. “Enemy troops, my prince. One can smell their filthy, infested hides, the oil slathered on their hair that my wives would scorn to grease a rusted hinge with—“
“Very well,” Pol said, interrupting Kazander’s eloquence. He regarded the two squires. “Find each of the captains and tell them to make ready. There’s a flat stretch just west of—“
Maarken cleared his throat. “Pol...”
He met the Battle Commander’s gray eyes. “Ah,” he said softly. “Your pardon, my lord.”
The older man inclined his head. “Daniv, Isriam, please inform the captains that we’ll be turning due west for the Court of the Storm God.”
The pair nodded and rode off. Kazander effaced himself, effectively leaving the cousins alone.
Maarken said, “I’m sorry, but we’re just not capable of a fight.”
“You’re right, of course. And you needn’t be so careful, Maarken. When I’m being an idiot, just tell me.” He smiled a little. “Your father always gives mine a good swift kick when he needs it. Your job is to do the same for me.”
“My father outweighs yours by two silkweights and can get away with kicking him,” Maarken answered wryly. “You and I, on the other hand, are the same size—and you’re eleven winters the younger.”
“Strange you should say so,” Pol murmured. “I feel a hundred years old.”
*
Meiglan held firmly to her daughters’ hands. Rislyn’s she held for comfort; Jihan’s she gripped more firmly, to prevent the child from racing forward into the thin winter dawn. Meiglan gulped in fresh air, the first she had tasted since the previous dusk, but despite its welcome dryness she was curiously reluctant to leave the tunnel. It had been safe in there, despite the damp and the blackness between torches.
Jihan tried to free her fingers. Meiglan held on more tightly. “No. Stay with me, both of you.”
“You’re hurting my ring, Mama,” Jihan complained, and Meiglan let go. The girl did not dart off through the crowd, but instead went to Rislyn’s side and took her other hand. “It’s all right, Lynnie, Papa will come get us soon. You can ride on his horse if you ask.”
Rislyn nodded, her eyes huge. She had been the defiant one last evening, refusing to leave Stronghold now that her grandsir had given the twins rings and made them his athr’im: Jihan of Rosewall and Rislyn of the Willow Tree. But now Rislyn was exhausted and frightened. Meiglan knew just how she felt.
Jihan kept talking as they moved forward into the frail sunlight. “I hope we go to Skybowl—Lady Betheyn says the lake is much bigger than at Dragon’s Rest, and on top of a mountain! Do you think that’s true, Mama? And there aren’t any trees at all, not even fruit trees or Granda’s willow like in the garden at Stronghold.” She gave her sister a quick smile. “Your willow tree! I want to see Feruche, too, and Tiglath—Mama, will you ask Lady Ruala to let us visit her at Elktrap? I want—”
“Oh, be still!” Meiglan snapped. Kierun wove his way through the people trudging from the passage’s mouth, his sack of cheese given over to someone better able to carry it. “My lady, I’ve found a place where you and the princesses can rest.”
“Thank you, Kierun.” She followed, grateful for his polite but adamant urgings of “Make way for Princess Meiglan!” that freed her and the girls from the knotted crowd.
He had left a boy of about six to watch the area made ready for them—flat rocks to sit on, a waterskin and a small loaf of bread and a round of cheese waiting for their breakfast. On seeing them, the child jumped up and said, “I didn’t touch any!”
Meiglan realized that he was as hungry as they, and smiled reassurance. “Thank you for keeping this place for us. Why don’t you stay and share our meal? Kierun, you too. Sit down, girls.”
They had barely finished when Stronghold’s head maidservant approached to ask if anyone had seen Lady Feylin. Tibalia cradled Sioned’s jewel coffer to her breast, looking as if she had locked her arms around it so tightly for so long that her bones and flesh had melded to the silver.
“No, I don’t know where she is,” Meiglan replied. “Why don’t you sit down and rest for a little while, Tib-alia? Have something to eat.”
She shook her head, locks of gray hair falling into her eyes. “I must find her, my lady. Lord Walvis has ridden in from the Court of the Storm God.”
“Is that where we’re going?” Jihan asked eagerly.
Meiglan barely heard her. He must have news of Pol. She almost sprang to her feet, then thought better of it. She was a princess; she could not very well go running to find Walvis herself. “Kierun, bring him here to me, please.”
To keep herself occupied while she waited, she unbound Rislyn’s hair and finger-combed it before plaiting it once more. Getting Jihan to sit still for the same was more difficult. She had just finished making sections for braiding when Walvis approached. Her fingers faltered slightly, then again took up the soothing rhythm of twisting her daughter’s golden hair.
The older man’s eyes were red-rimmed in his grief-haggard face. He bowed low, startling her. “I am glad to see you safe, your grace.”
Not my lady, as she had always been addressed by Pol’s friends and family. Your grace. How strange.
“Thank’you. And—my lord? He’s well?” she asked, trying to keep her voice from shaking.
“Also safe, and uninjured as far as I know. I’ve come to take you to the Court of the Storm God.”
“Are we going to Skybowl?” Jihan demanded. “Are we?”
“No—to Feruche. We’ll meet your father there.” He glanced around him, eyes narrowing. “With all the wounded and the children, it’ll be slow going. I’ve brought horses. And more troops to guard our backs. Are you ready, your grace?”
She nodded, and he bowed again. She wondered why.
Hesitating a moment, he said, “Meath asks if you will permit the High Pr—Princess Sioned to ride with you and your daughters today.”
When had Sioned ever needed anyone’s permission to do anyth—then she belatedly heard the slip and its correction, and her jaw fell open. No wonder he bowed. No wonder he called her “your grace.”
Rohan was dead. Pol was High Prince. And that meant she was—
Walvis saw it in her face. He went white beneath his tan. “Forgive me,” he whispered. “I thought you knew—“
She stared up at him, her fingers clutching Jihan’s hair. It was only when the little girl tugged away and said, “That hurts, Mama!” that she realized there was anyone else in the world.
“Forgive me,” he said again, awkwardly. “I’ll—I’ll go get the horses.”
“Yes,” Meiglan replied mindlessly, and barely saw him bow again and move off. A long time later she dragged herself up onto the horse Kierun held for her. Let someone else give the orders, make the decisions. She could not.
It wasn’t until they were nearly at the ravine leading to the Court of the Storm God that she understood why Walvis had treated her with so much ceremony. It was a subtle reminder, given with great gentleness, of her new position. Her new responsibilities. She was High Princess now. But she also knew what it must have cost him— how cruel a reminder it would be of the man they had lost, each time they addressed someone else as “High Prince.”
Did Pol know yet that his father was dead? Sioned met them—straight-backed and composed, as always, but her eyes were lifeless. Meath, riding at her side, bowed wordlessly to Meiglan. She wondered if she should speak to Sioned. She kept silent. What in the Goddess’ Name could she say?
Hollis rode up to them, looking too stunned even for grief. “Sioned,” she murmured, and Meiglan learned her own wisdom in staying silent. Green eyes stared straight ahead, not even acknowledging Hollis’ presence—or indeed that anyone else existed at all.
The Sunrunner cleared her throat and turned to Meath. “There is something you must know. Myrdal died last night.”
“But she was uninjured—“ Meiglan began.
“In her body, perhaps,” Meath said quietly. He closed his eyes for a moment, looking unbearably weary. Sioned did not seem to have heard anything. “Where will she be burned, Hollis? We can’t take her all the way to Feruche.”
“Skybowl. Chay will meet Maarken and Pol there— Tobin hasn’t the strength to ride much farther.”
Meiglan leaned forward. “I’ll go with them. I should be with my lord.”
Hollis glanced at Meath, who said, “I think that would be unwise, your grace. You and the princesses will be safer under Lord Walvis’ protection.”
“But I must go to Pol! He’ll need me!”
Hollis touched her wrist. “It’ll be only a few days—“
“I’m going to Skybowl,” she stated. She was High Princess. Nobody could stop her.
“No,” Sioned murmured, and though her voice was soft they all flinched at the sound of it. “You will not go to Skybowl. You will come with me to Feruche. Feruche,” she repeated, with a strange, frightening smile on her lips.
Meath looked at Sioned as if she might crumble to dust right before him.
Meiglan bent her head. “Yes, my lady.” There could be no doubt about who was still High Princess here.
Pride and anger had sustained Pol through half the night and uncounted measures of open Desert. But he no longer knew what was keeping him in his saddle. Stubbornness, perhaps. Maybe pain. Though physically unharmed—a few scratches, plenty of bruises, but no wounds to signify—he was utterly exhausted. But the pain was a thing of the heart and bowels. If, as Maarken had told him, this was characteristic of true princes, then he wasn’t sure he wanted to be a prince anymore. It hurt too much.
During the night, he’d kept glancing back over his shoulder to the eerie glow that was Stronghold. He knew he shouldn’t, but was unable to stop himself. It was Sunrunner’s Fire, unmistakably so. But why? At dawn he could not look with his other sight, for an uncertain haze drifted over the sun.
Part of the ache was seeing Maarken, riding beside him. The straight spine was curved now, not as a branch bends under a weight too heavy to bear, but in the manner of a bow drawn taut and ready to release deadly tension in arrow flight. But there was no enemy before him now, only hundreds of warriors to lead to safety, and without target for the strain Maarken would soon snap. Pol rode closer to him, not knowing what comfort he might offer or receive, but needing the closeness.
Both men suddenly sat straight, instinctively drawing rein. The army around them was too numbed with defeat to notice—until the dragon’s shriek snapped every head up and all eyes turned to the milk-pale sky.
Recognizing the dragon’s voice, Pol kicked his weary horse to a trot. A rush of wings nearly enveloped him. The horse was too familiar with dragons to shy away, but when Azhdeen howled once more the animal quivered and dug his hooves deep into the sand.
The dragonsire landed, folded his wings, and paced forward. He squinted as he inspected Pol, as if to make certain his human was unhurt. Pol slid from the saddle and approached, hands held out. Andrade’s moonstone and the dark amethyst of Princemarch winked dully as he touched Azhdeen. The dragon’s head craned around, supple neck half-encircling Pol.
“I heard you last night, my friend,” he murmured.
“Why are you all the way up here in the north? Aren’t your ladies lonely for you? Or did you feel something, and get worried about me?”
The dragon growled, the sound rippling from his chest all the way up his throat to his jaws. Pol was held in a firm embrace now: not captive, but supported with amazing gentleness. Above the sand nearby, like a shimmer-vision on a brutal summer day, an image formed. Stronghold by night as seen from the air, dripping with flames—not brought by flint on stone, but Sunrunner’s Fire. The castle, the stables, the outbuildings, even the slopes of the rocky hollow where Pol’s ancestors had found water and refuge—all of it was ablaze.
It was Sunrunner’s Fire—but not the sort that burned without burning. It might take days, but Stronghold would char down to ashes. Pol cried out. The dragon arched more closely around him, humming low in his throat with sympathy. What he had seen continued to play out before Pol’s anguished eyes.
Two bodies burned in the courtyard. Morwenna and Relnaya, dead of sorcery—dead saving the lives of other Sunrunners. He blinked away tears and vowed that when there was time to mourn, to stand in silence with a candle flame in hand as a reminder that fire was everyone’s destiny, he himself would speak the words to honor their lives.
Azhdeen showed him the gardens. His grandmother’s fountain and the grotto cascade splashed Fire, not Water. He shuddered, knowing which faradhi had gestured all this into being, powerful enough to let it continue on its own. He knew the touch of those elegant and ruthless fingers.
The images continued. Beside the stream he saw a man lying on the dry grass: slimly made, pale-haired, eyes closed as if in sleep. From his unmoving chest sprang flames that had not yet touched him, and would not— nor the masses of silken hair that spilled red-gold across his body. Only when the other Fire reached him would he be consumed.
A low rumble vibrated through Azhdeen’s body as he was caught in Pol’s grief; he unfolded one wing and cloaked it protectively around his human. Pol huddled against the dragon’s shoulder, too stricken even to weep.