It had been many years since Tilal and Danladi had spent any length of time together—almost eighteen years, in fact, ever since the Rialla of 719.
All that seemed incredibly long ago, nearly another life. Tilal had a hard time remembering the days at High Kirat when his father was alive and they’d all been young together. Danladi now spoke of it sometimes, when they sat together late at night in her solar. She would say, “Do you remember... ?” and relate some incident when he was Lord of River Run, Kostas was the heir to Syr, and Gemma supervised the castle with Danladi following close at her heels. He wondered sometimes as he listened if she talked of those times to convince herself that they had really happened, or to confirm that they were gone.
Only once did she say anything about Kostas’ death. That had been on the night he arrived, before he went upstairs to. see his son. She had told him what Rihani had told her about how Kostas died—how he had spoken of Gemma, how his last words had been for herself. Composed and quiet, her delicate pallor made fragile by grief, she had talked as if it were only natural that her dying lord’s thoughts had turned for a moment to another woman.
Tilal had remembered then what had never been spoken of, and marveled at the passionate angers of the past. His encounters with Kostas had been friendly enough these last ten years or so, but they had never regained the easy intimacy of brothers. It all seemed so stupid and pointless now. And he felt so old, at least twice his forty-five winters.
He watched Danladi now as she poured taze for them both, thinking that she looked much as she always had. Never beautiful in Gemma’s breathtaking, vivid way, still there were subtle graces about her: the soft curves of white-blond hair back from her temples, the low, sweet voice, the gentle way her head tilted to one side on her long neck. It pleased him to think that his brother had come to appreciate this shy, silent woman he’d married.
But she looked too young to be his widow.
“Where will you go now, my lord?” Danladi asked as she handed him a cup.
“I beg your pardon?” Startled, he grasped the silver handle but not the question.
She folded thin fingers in her lap, staring down at them. “Forgive me. But your son is dead. Mine still lives. I had to ask.”
For just an instant he hated her. Seven long days since Rihani had died in his arms. Six since he’d watched through a blur of tears as Andrev called Fire to a slim young body draped in Ossetia’s battle flag. The pain pierced his chest and he waited until he could breathe past the ache in his throat.
“Forgive me,” she whispered again, shining head bent.
“I understand,” he replied.
“Then ... where will you go now?”
Home to my wife and the son and daughter who remain to me. Away from death and war, home to Athmyr where I can shut my gates against all this horror that steals sons and brothers and makes widows. Where I can keep safe what’s mine.
“The Desert, I suppose,” he heard himself say. Where the battle will be fought that wins or loses all. Where Walvis has lost a son and Sioned was made a widow. Where Rohan died.
Danladi nodded, still not looking up. “Then I think you had better go, my lord. To the mouth of Faolain, where the Vellanti ships are now, and where Prince Amiel soon will be.”
“What? How do you know—“ He broke off. “Of course. Your Sunrunner.”
“Yes. Diandra told me just a little while ago what she saw at daybreak. Will you do me the honor of taking the leadership of Syr’s remaining troops?”
“I can’t leave High Kirat unprotected.” He said it automatically, his brain abruptly busy with a thousand questions. What was Amiel doing so far from Medawari? How long would it take to march from here to the sea? And why were the dragon-headed ships gathering?
Rohan would be appalled at how quickly and efficiently his mind turned to war. The very pattern of a fine barbarian prince.
Danladi lifted her head with the grace that made one think her bones were woven of silk. But the lines of her brow and jaw were stone as she said, “If Pol is lost, so shall the rest of us be. I would prefer that you take with you whomever you feel will make a soldier, my lord.”
Tilal nodded, a little numb.
She rose, gray skirts rustling around her ankles. “I wish Kostas could be here to go with you. He was happy, you know, fighting this war. May I ask another favor? That you use his sword, that was your father’s? I remember that you gave it to Prince Davvi a long time ago.”
He remembered, too: the Rialla of 719. Maarken had used it against the pretender, defending Pol’s right to Princemarch. But before that, Tilal himself had used it against his own brother, defending Gemma.
Danladi had followed his thoughts without difficulty. She was smiling a little. “It’s all right, you know,” she murmured. “I never minded. She’s so beautiful, everything a princess ought to be. I always knew I was second with him. But it was me he thought of at the last.”
As she rose with gentle dignity and left him, he reflected that there were many ways of being what a princess ought to be.
*
Not knowing any differently, it would be natural to assume that the elder of the two women Andry watched was the High Princess. It was not merely for reasons of age, or even the way she held herself. There was something indefinable about her green eyes that was missing from the other woman’s dark and fawn-soft gaze, some promise of power.
Forever unfulfilled.
I could have shown you, if you’d let me. Oh, Alasen, what we could have been together—if only you’d let me.
Andry watched on drowsy noon sunlight as they took their meal by the side of the road. Alasen and Meiglan sat apart from the others on a blanket laid atop a snowbank. They talked as they shared hard cheese and bread and slices of cooked meat, presumably from the previous evening’s hunt. There were plenty of rabbits and nesting birds in the hills, even deer if the archer was quick and skilled. The soldiers had all dismounted to stretch their legs, eyes flickering constantly from the road ahead to the road behind and all the snowy rocks and crags between. Another woman walked up the road a little way, keeping an eye on three energetic children who gamboled ahead. Andry thought she bore a resemblance to someone, but couldn’t place it.
Nearby, a man wearing a violet tunic over a blue shirt to combine the colors of Princemarch and the Desert stood gnawing on a half-round of bread as he and a younger man regarded a map held by a redheaded boy of perhaps twelve winters. Andry didn’t know Pol’s man, but he assumed the other was Draza of Grand Veresch, even though the athri’s clothes were nondescript brown and there was no clue to his rank. Alasen’s gaze strayed to them every so often. Andry realized that the young boy was her son, Dannar. It had been a long time since he’d taken a look at the boy; he wouldn’t have known him, so much had he grown.
Gently, oh-so-cautiously, Andry centered the sunlight on Alasen. He had done this many times over the years, though not since Brenlis had come into his life. Now he approached Alasen once more, hovering just beyond her consciousness of his presence.
She looked tired, and there were a few lines at the corners of her eyes from squinting into the snow glare.
Gold-lit brown hair, fine as silk thread, was tucked into a neat coil at her nape, seeming to tilt her head back slightly with its weight. There were strands of silver in it, sweeping back from her forehead and temples.
Well, there was gray in his hair now, too. He had a son just about Dannar’s age. Years and other people and her fear of what they both were all lay between them, but they did share one thing: the determination that the Vellant’im would be defeated.
Alasen.
Her head jerked up and it seemed she was looking straight into his eyes.
Alasen, it’s Andry.
He felt like a fool for saying it.
No! She flung him away from her with a ferocious strength. Stunned, he gathered himself and sought her again. She had moved from the blanket into the shade of a tall pine, where he could not get to her.
Meiglan was staring, slack-jawed and frightened. When Alasen spoke to her, she cringed and glanced around as if someone lurked in the shadows. Alasen stayed out of reach of the sunlight. Andry cursed bitterly and withdrew.
The expression on his face must have told it all, for Evarin said nothing for quite some time. Their horses plodded on through the slush and mud, and at length the young physician spoke.
“You can talk in person when we catch up to her, my Lord.”
“Yes, I can grab her by the arm and force her to listen, and won’t that be charming of me,” he rasped. “Damn it to Hells! How did she do that?”
Evarin looked a question at him.
“She shoved me away with both hands—something she shouldn’t be able to do. I want to know where she learned that.” He already knew why. Would he ever convince her that she needn’t fear his touch on the sunlight?
“Will you try again?”
Andry didn’t answer. He could get past her resistance; he knew he could. There was no one stronger than he, only one faradhi he acknowledged as his equal—and one diarmadhi. Alasen, untrained and afraid of her gifts to begin with, was no match for him. He could fight her and win. Upon reflection, he knew that that Sunrunner— or that sorcerer—had probably shown her how to block him out. Sioned or Pol would be sympathetic to a plea to be taught such self-protection. Especially against him.
“There is more than one Sunrunner with them, my Lord,” Evarin pointed out.
“Jihan? Rislyn?” He shook his head. “I’m not in the habit of frightening children. Besides, it’s not necessary. No, we’ll just ride on, keep out of Meiglan’s path, and look in on them every so often to make sure they’re all right. When we get to Feruche there’ll be time enough to explain things to Alasen.”
But, Goddess, how it galled him
*
Chayla had hoped to postpone her foraging after she discovered a large sack of an unlabeled herb in the spice room. She recognized the pungent, crackly dried leaves as seep-spring, perfect for breaking a fever. But it was very dry, and the whole mess of it, boiled and simmered and strained, produced an infusion so weak as to be almost worthless.
So a harvesting was necessary. Applied to for directions, Ruala thought for a time and then described a trail, no more than a deer path, leading up to a hollow tucked in the hills. “It’s a steep climb, but the horses should make it without too much trouble. And it’s on our side of the Veresch so there won’t be any snow, although it’s freezing up there. Ivalia Meadow is as round as Skybowl, and the wind circles just the same way.”
“Ivalia Meadow, then. I’ll need about a dozen sacks, and—“
“Wait. You’re not going yourself?”
“I have to. I’m chief physician around here. My mother and Feylin always say to make sure of your herbs yourself from the picking to the final recipe.”
“There may still be Vellant’im out there in the hills.”
“Nobody’s seen any for days and days,” she replied impatiently. “I’ll take some guards with me.”
“You’re not going anywhere, Chayla.”
She argued because Ruala expected her to. But inside she was already making plans. It wasn’t as if they could lock her in her room to prevent her from leaving; she was chief physician here, and was needed almost every moment of the day and night. All she needed were a few of those moments, and she’d be on her way to Ivalia.
Not without escort—she wasn’t that headstrong.
Near noon on the fifty-fifth day of Winter, at about the same time Alasen escaped Andry by scrambling into the shade of a tree, Chayla made her own escape by using knowledge the Goddess, through Myrdal, had provided. Just before the old woman died, she’d shared the secrets of every castle in the Desert—and some beyond it. Chayla had been there to listen. Now she sought an exit from Feruche that ran underground for half a measure from its concealed doorway in the cellars. It was the work of a moment to find the sigil, spring the catch, slide through, and close it behind her.
A fingerflame accompanied her through the darkness. She was surprised not to sense the weight of the Earth above her head; the stone passage was as finely hewn as any at Feruche. She wondered if her uncle Sorin had himself been inclined to build these little secrets or if Myrdal had ordered their construction. Certainly it was traditional by now; certainly the advantage during danger was obvious to anyone who had escaped Stronghold by the route Chayla had taken.
After a long walk and a steady climb up a flight of steep stairs, she emerged into a circular chamber hidden in the side of a hill. It was no dragon cave, this, carved out by water and clawed by huge talons. The walls had been smoothed and painted in soothing dark greens and browns, and the floor was bare rock carefully leveled. Two cots with close-woven rope webbing, an iron brazier for warmth, a few cookpots, and a torch sconce on either wall gave the impression that this was only a handy shel- ter for someone caught out in a storm. Once she had pushed the stone door shut, if she hadn’t known where to look for the seam she would never have found it.
Once outside in the brisk midday air, Chayla hiked quickly down to the main road and waited for the morning patrol to return. She was who she was; three of her grandfather’s people readily volunteered to accompany her. Another Radzyn retainer mounted double behind a friend so Chayla could have his horse. The patrol continued back to Feruche while she and her three new companions started for Ivalia Meadow.
Nobody asked if her mother knew what she was doing. Chayla was who she was.
“Any sign of stray Vellant’im, Lissina?” she asked the ranking soldier.
“None, my lady,” the young woman replied, “though Zakiel would dearly love to find some.” She threw a teasing glance at the taller of the two men. “It offends him mightily to think of them sitting in his saddles.”
“I only want one” he corrected. “Just one, so I can tan his miserable hide while he’s still wearing it.”
Chayla recalled that Zakiel was not a regular in the Radzyn guard, but a master leathercrafter. His father had made her own first saddle. It was still in the tack room at Whitecliff—unless the Vellant’im in occupation had destroyed it as they seemed determined to destroy everything else.
“Then,” Zakiel went on, warming to his theme, “I shall make of him a leather bag, with his guts for drawstrings and his teeth for decorations, stuff him with manure, and throw him off the Radzyn cliffs into the sea.” Lissina grinned. “Ah, the soul of a poet and the instincts of an artist—that’s my Chosen, Lady Chayla.”
“Is he? Congratulations. When do you wed?”
“After all this is done with,” Zakiel told her. “Very soon, now, Goddess be merciful to us.” He shifted in his saddle. “What will we be looking for, my lady?”
Romanto, the third of her escort, nodded. “Tell us what you want, and we’ll find it for you.” She began the list, with descriptions of how the plants would appear in winter, answered their questions, and wished she’d worn a heavier cloak. Romanto, Lissina’s uncle and a grizzled veteran of the war against Roelstra, saw her shiver and offered her his own thick woolen cloak, dyed dark blue and cut in a style worn in her great-grandsire Zehava’s day.
“Thank you, but I’ll be warm enough when we start work. It shouldn’t be too much farther now. Are you clear on exactly what I need?”
They nodded. They would work as hard at this as they would in battle, for they served their fellows as much by this harvest as by slaughtering enemies.
Ivalia Meadow was as windy as Ruala had warned. Chayla’s fingers remained stiff with cold inside her gloves as the sun dipped lower over the western mountains. It seemed she and the guards had been at this for days, and her back muscles were beginning to protest every move. But Ivalia was an open treasure box of medicinal herbs, and they were only halfway across it.
The cup of wetland, soaked by a spring with no outlet, was almost painfully green after a ride through winter-bare hills. No more than two hundred paces from one side to the other, they were two hundred very squishy steps. Chayla’s good dragonhide trousers were sopped to the knees and her feet were frozen numb, but every flower she picked and every sprig of leaves she slid into her satchel meant another fever cured, another wound eased.
Zakiel was being more careful now, after Chayla’s admonition about tearing up plants like a sheep devouring a grassy hillside. They must make sure that enough was left behind so the precious greenery would reseed this spring.
“And watch out for the blue sword, even with your gloves,” she added. “It’s got—“
“Yeeow!”
“—spines.”
As she worked, Chayla found she was singing under her breath. It was the lyric Kazander had sung for her at Remagev, the one about the white crown. A silly song, really, about a skeptical prince who, when told of the crown’s power, politely declined to believe in it, much less seek it out. The lesson, according to Kazander, was that one could not find what one did not have faith enough to look for. One of these days she must get him to sing her the other version, where the prince did believe and went on the quest.
She rather wished Kazander was here now. Mad as he was, at least he was amusing. Even if sometimes she wanted to slug him.
She made a face as she found she’d ripped up a woolly-lamb by the roots. Well, there were plenty, and the loss of this one wouldn’t obliterate them from Ivalia. She repeated the caution she’d given Zakiel, and went back to singing, this time consciously choosing a song Princess Meiglan had played at the Rialla this year on her impossible wall of strings. Chayla remembered watching her at the fenath, swaying delicately back and forth, her fingers choosing this string and then that. It was a bit like what Chayla was doing now: move to one side, bend, select a plant, pluck, straighten, turn to the other side. All the drawings studied for years flashed before her eyes as if they were musical notations—which made this wet meadow her instrument, this harvest a song of healing. The image amused her. She’d have to remember to tell Kazander.
Him again, she thought, irritated once more without quite knowing why, and stopped singing. But only for a little while.
*
The spill of midday sunlight down the snowy slope mocked Andry with a million tiny glistening rainbows, sharp and cold and nearly painful to a Sunrunner’s sense. He could use that light to watch Alasen, but not to touch her. He tried to tell himself it didn’t matter, that once they were both at Feruche, she could not run away from him. But it still angered him that she refused him so utterly—and that she had been taught a means of refusal that he would have to hurt her to overcome.
He paced away from the horses, held by Evarin as they drank reluctantly of icy runoff that stung their mouths. Three more summits, and they would be on the Desert side of the Veresch. There, only dry morning frost would whiten the rocks and at least he would not be freezing wet as well as freezing cold. Unless, he thought glumly, a particularly clever storm had sidled down the mountain passes from Cunaxa, in which case the snow would be almost as deep there as it was here.
Delightful thought, one to warm his heart and bones. He stamped his feet to get the circulation going again. It was an old joke at Goddess Keep that their Lord was never cold, having soaked up so much sun in his Desert childhood that nothing short of five winters in Firon could so much as make him ask for a cloak against the chill. It now seemed he’d run out of hoarded warmth.
Squinting up at the switchback trail they would have to climb this afternoon, he followed its vague outlines beneath the snow up to the top of the ridge. Ragged as a dragon’s spine, it cut into the blue sky so piercingly white that the clouds beyond looked tarnished.
And then the rocks moved.
Andry cursed and shaded his eyes with one hand, peering up at dark, shifting shapes far above him. Riders, no more than four or five. Not Alasen and Meiglan, not this soon. Who?
“Evarin!” he hissed, mindful of how sounds carried in the chill stillness. “Quick, find cover!”
The Master Physician asked no questions. He dragged the horses across the rivulet to the stony shelter of a boulder. Every clatter of hooves made Andry wince. He had crouched down, motionless, hoping that if anyone looked down the slope he would present the perfect imitation of a rock. But he was still in the sunlight, and that was the important thing.
Swiftly he wove a path upward. Five men, all wrapped in plainspun brown wool cloaks, hunched into their saddles as their tired horses threaded between snags of white-draped stone. Damn you, look up and let me see your faces! Andry thought furiously.
One of them did. Thick stubble darkened the narrow jaw, as if he’d forgotten to bring a razor. Or as if, Andry told himself in bitter comprehension, he’d left his shaving things with the rest of his party, which was placidly on the road to Rezeld Manor without him. For Miyon of Cunaxa’s real destination must be Feruche.
Andry withdrew, using his eyes to judge when it was safe to move. When the last of the riders vanished, he pushed himself stiffly to his feet.
No tracks here, no marks in the pristine snow. But this was the easier trail, not the swifter one that began two measures back and compelled horses to lurch up a rocky defile. That Andry and Evarin had come so close so quickly was sheerest luck. Proof enough that the Goddess was with him today.
He gestured to Evarin, who brought the horses out of hiding. “Miyon,” Andry said. “He wasn’t expecting to see anyone, so he didn’t.”
“But how did he—?”
“What does that matter? It must’ve taken some time to circle back and avoid Dragon’s Rest. But he’s going to Feruche. He’ll catch up with Alasen tomorrow.”
Evarin handed him his reins. “My Lord ... why would he want to be where Pol is?”
Andry frowned, caught in the motion of swinging up into his saddle. “What do you mean?”
“His sons all died fighting with the Merida against Pol—who hates him to begin with.”
“So? He probably wants to convince Pol that he’s been a good little prince all along.” Mounting, he settled his cloak around him. “He can’t do that at Dragon’s Rest. He has to be where things are happening, where he can make large noises about his unswerving loyalty.”
“Put another way, my Lord, why did he say he was going to Swalekeep?”
“Because he could hardly say he was going to Rezeld Manor. That’s where I told him to go in my role as cou- rier. Come on, mount up. This hill is half an afternoon’s climb.”
But Evarin stayed stubbornly on his own two feet, looking up at Andry. “You were wearing a Merida face. You told him what the Vellant’im and the sorcerers wanted him to do. My Lord, why did he lie to you?”
The chill that took him this time came from the inside.
“Mama?” Dannar blushed slightly, and corrected himself. “I mean, my lady—or should it be ‘your grace’?”
Alasen refrained from laughing at the question. Dan-nar’s dignity as a squire did not permit it. “I’ve no idea. I’m afraid I’m not current with proper forms of address to one’s mother when she’s also a princess. Meiglan? What’s your view?”
“We’re hardly formal here,” Meiglan replied with a tired smile. “I think we can be just family, Dannar.”
“Oh,” he said, nodding, “that’s all right then. Anyway, Feneol sent me back to say that you’ll have to dismount and lead your horses for a ways. There’s a big rockfall ahead. It’s blocking the trail.”
“But we were only through here yesterday,” Alasen exclaimed.
Her son gave a shrug. “This isn’t called Tumblewall Canyon for nothing. Feneol says it won’t slow us down much, but we’ll have to go single file to be safe, my lady.”
“Very well. Thank you—my lord,” Alasen said, unable to keep from teasing him. He grinned at her—Ostvel’s grin below her own green eyes and that mass of fiery red hair—and sketched an elegant bow that made her laugh.
Half a measure up the road, she saw the reason for Feneol’s caution. Far up the canyon, a brown gouge showed where stone had collapsed under the weight of snow. The resulting slide had collected on the flat of the trail, making a new and dangerous cliff. She must
* remember to tell Pol so it could be cleared away and the route to Elktrap made safe again.
Nothing could make it easy. She didn’t envy Meiglan the mountain passes between here and Dragon’s Rest, but neither did she begrudge doubling back for a day to accompany her. Tonight they would all camp at another of Lord Garic’s stone shelters—for Pol’s convenience when he visited Feruche—and she would have a long talk with her son. Dannar had grown and changed so much just since the Rialla. She wanted to get to know her little boy again while he still was a little boy, and hers.
She slid from her saddle and waited her turn to be led across the clattering stones. The sunlight made her nervous and she cursed Andry yet again. He’d try it again, she was positive. The tension of waiting for him to do it was maddening.
While she was at it, she directed a curse at herself as well. If she’d been clever, she would have at least found out where he was. Nobody knew.
A terrible idea slithered into her mind then. What if the Vellant’im had captured him? What if he’d been trying to ask for help?
No; ridiculous. There were a hundred other Sunrunners he could go to, people who knew how to get word elsewhere. And besides, if he’d been taken, one look at those ten rings and wrist cuffs, and he’d be dead.
She had just received ample proof that he was still very much alive. How dared he try that with her? Damn him. Her renewed anger communicated itself to Tiba, the silvery Radzyn mare at her side, and the reins slackened in her hand as the horse nudged her. She scratched a black ear in apology, and tried to calm her thoughts. It had been a very long time since Andry had approached her on sunlight—fifteen years, in fact, the morning her daughter Milar had been born. All he’d wanted was to congratulate her. Harmless enough—but he could have written it in a letter. Damn him. He knew what the abrupt assault of a Sunrunner’s colors did to her. It was a reaction not in keeping with her new resolve to do everything she could to help end this war. Like it or not, frightened of it or not, she was faradhi. What possible use this could be to Pol, untrained as she was, escaped her. Yet her decision was somehow symbolic. She had left the peaceful, sheltered world Ostvel had created for her at Castle Crag. She must leave behind her terror as well. Otherwise she would be as useless as Meiglan.
An unfair, unworthy, and untrue thought, just as automatic as her fear of her gifts. But who would have guessed that shy little Meggie could order her own half-brothers executed? Alasen made silent apology even as she wondered whether this new and unexpected turn in Meiglan’s character was the very reason Pol had sent her back to Dragon’s Rest.
Alasen had a suspicion that it was. From some of the things Meiglan had said since they’d met on the road, she guessed that while Pol wanted her and their daughters out of harm’s way, he also wanted Dragon’s Rest readied for his triumphant return. Meiglan spoke of clearing out the burned shell of their hillside cottage before the New Year, and seeing to the gardens—even though Alasen had assured her they were not neglected. “No, of course not,” Meiglan had replied earnestly. “But my lord wants everything to be as it was, and Princess Lisiel doesn’t know what orders to give about the plantings.”
At first it struck Alasen as absurd, worrying about herbs and flowers in the middle of a war. She supposed it symbolized to him that there would be a life after all this madness, a return to home and family and normalcy. Which was even more absurd. Pol could ask Meiglan to do it, and Meiglan would try her best, but nothing would ever be the same.
Alasen got the nod from Laroshin and scrambled up loose rocks, tugging her mare behind her. Everything had changed—including her, if someone took her up on her determination to use her faradhi gifts. Had Andry been just a little gentler in weaving his colors about her mind, he might have been the one to change her. He might have—
Alasen! Listen to me! Please—
His strength was terrifying, grasping her mind in precisely the manner she feared most. Her reaction was instantaneous; instead of pushing him away as she had that noontime, she hid behind a wall of light and power. Hers was the Kierstian faradhi gift, just like Sioned’s and Pol’s. He had taught her well, testing her thoroughly until she commanded this shining, adamant structure as easily as most Sunrunners called Fire.
Andry didn’t have a chance.
Someone was calling her name. She heard it with her ears, not her mind—although there was an odd rushing sound, too, like water. Her muscles ached as if wrenched from her bones and her palms were burning even through the tough leather of her riding gloves. Opening her eyes, she gasped to find she was sprawled on her side across stone and snow, hanging onto the mare’s reins for dear life.
“Don’t move!” Meiglan screamed. “Alasen, don’t move!”
She lay still on the bruising rocks, catching her breath. Laroshin was making his way toward her. She wondered at his slowness until she looked down. There was nothing below her extended right leg but empty air. She was dangling by four thin strips of leather over the sheer side of the rockfall.
Sweat slicked her hands inside the gloves. She tightened her grip, shoulder muscles tearing. Tiba stood absolutely still, neither trying to pull her back up nor coming toward her in an attempt to ease the terrible strain on the bridle. Alasen blessed Chay and a hundred generations of his ancestors for breeding horses like this one.
“That’s it, your grace, keep very still,” Laroshin murmured as he crept nearer across the rocks. “You’ll be fine. I have a rope, tied to my horse above. Your mare slid a bit before she dug her heels in. She’ll keep you steady. I’m going to get the rope around you, your grace, and my horse will pull you right up the hill. When I tell you, let go of the reins. Do you understand, your grace?”
She wanted to tell him that, of course she understood, she was neither deaf nor an idiot. But her mouth was so dry and her throat so constricted that try as she might, she couldn’t utter a single word. She blinked instead, hoping he would comprehend. Laroshin nodded and smiled at her. Quite stupidly, considering her situation, she thought what beautiful eyes he had. Wonderful eyes. Blue and smiling and reassuring. She kept watching them and listening to his low, gravelly voice as he slid sideways on his belly toward her. But when his foot moved and a little avalanche of stones skittered over the edge of the rockslide, she flinched.
“Don’t mind that, your grace. Just a little farther. That’s the way. You stay quiet, and I’ll be there before you know it. I don’t want you to reach for my hand, I just want you to hold on to those reins. Your mare will keep you safe. She’s a smart little lady, that one. I wish I had a dozen like her in the stables at Dragon’s Rest.”
He was beside her. If she had been able to move, she would have kissed him for having such wonderful eyes. He draped an arm carefully around her ribs, pushing the end of the rope beneath her outstretched arm.
“I beg your pardon, your grace,” he said as his hand brushed her breast while pulling the rope around. Alasen felt an insane urge to giggle. “I’ll tie a knot in this and then you can let go of the reins. I’ll bet your hands hurt. There. That’s it. You can let go now.”
She couldn’t. Every muscle in her body had seized up. She lay helplessly on her side, tears of frustration stinging her eyes.
Laroshin put his arm around her again. “I’ve got you. You can let go.”
Suddenly she knew whose eyes his reminded her of. They were younger, and the color was wrong, and the lashes were golden-brown instead of black, but the kindness and the steadying smile were very like Ostvel.
Alasen tilted her chin up and stared at her fingers. One by one she forced them to release the lengths of leather. When the terrific pressure on the bridle eased, Tiba backed up, turned, and scrambled up to stand trembling and wet with sweat.
Alasen swallowed hard. “My husband is going to kill me for this,” she heard herself say. Better me than Andry. Goddess, how am I going to explain this?
She was dragged up the rocks, hardly feeling the scrapes and bruises. When she was on safe ground, she pushed herself weakly to her knees. Looking back over her shoulder, she saw that Laroshin had climbed back up and was being helped to his feet. If he’d been within reach just then, she really would have kissed him.
“Mama!” Dannar made no pretense of grown-up reserve; he threw his arms around her. She bent her head to his bright hair and clung to him.
“Princess Alasen, what happened?” someone asked in a hushed voice. She glanced up. Lyela of Waes held out a cloak that looked blissfully warm. “Here, you’re shaking.”
How strange to recall as the cloak was wrapped around her that Ostvel had thrown a knife to Lyela’s father so he could kill his wife and himself before Sunrunner’s Fire got them. Andry’s Fire. She remembered begging him not to do it, and her shock at Ostvel’s act, and—she felt her hold on reality slipping.
“Dannar,” she said thickly. “Help me up.”
Her son unknotted the rope and supported her unsteady rise to her feet. “Are you all right, Mama?”
“I will be. Thank you, Lyela. I—I’m not really sure what happened. I suppose I just put a foot wrong. I don’t know.”
“I saw,” said Jihan the irrepressible—and irritatingly observant. “Your face got all tight and angry, like my Papa’s does when somebody’s giving him bad news on sunlight—“
“Hush!” Meiglan snapped.
“But I saw it, Mama—“
“I said hush!”
Jihan stared, then folded her arms to sulk.
“Princess Alasen slipped and fell,” Meiglan stated. “Thank the Goddess, she’s all right.”
Alasen blessed her silently. Meiglan knew, of course, why she had fled to the shadow of a tree earlier today. Alasen had told her, and no one else. Although Meiglan didn’t know Andry very well, she knew enough to have guessed that he would try again.
And that brought Alasen up short. Why had he tried again? Why that urgent command to listen?
If only he’d been more subtle. If only he hadn’t frightened her. Shame made her bite her lip. Whatever his reasons for the attempt, she knew the cause of its power. He had known she would resist. Sudden force was his only hope of catching her. None of this had been his fault.
She turned her face up to the sun, sorry as she’d never been before in her life that she’d never learned how to weave its light on her own. To find Andry, apologize, hear what he had been so anxious to tell her.
She had never learned anything but how to wall herself away.
After a little while she insisted that the journey resume. As she rode, she stayed alert for any quiver that might mean Andry was nearby again, vowing that next time she wouldn’t behave like such a fool.
But though she waited hopefully until dusk, there was no next time.
*
Shadows blanketed the watery hollow of Ivalia Meadow, the last of the sun gilding the treetops high up the ridge. The wind swirled in chill earnest now, every leaf and branch whistling, the horses tethered at the far end of the meadow whimpering with cold and nervousness.
Chayla felt like echoing them. Her spine was permanently bent as she foraged, her legs aching, her shoulders knotted. She didn’t glance up for fear that that darkness would compel her to leave. She didn’t notice when the horses quieted. Just a little more, just a little farther, just a little longer before she returned to Feruche.
A peculiarly sharp gust ended in three sharp cries, three muted thuds into soggy green mire. She straightened with a groan of effort and looked around just in time to see Lissina struggle up for a moment and then topple forward, facedown in a wealth of purple flowers with an arrow sprouting from her back.
Chayla stood alone in the meadow, frozen, dumbstruck, her thoughts sluggish with bewilderment at the silence. Even the wind seemed to have died.
Lissina was a barely discernible shape in a blue cloak amid the tall grasses. Zakiel was nowhere to be seen. Forty paces away, an arrow showed her where Romanto had fallen.
A shudder took her, swayed her on her feet. She locked her knees. Her gaze darted in every direction. Nothing. Silence.
A bird screamed high overhead, making her shy back and nearly lose her footing again. This time her whole body went rigid as stone.
The man rode one of her grandfather’s horses, a dark man whose beard was flecked with gold. The mare’s hooves made soft sucking sounds in the fetlock-deep marsh. He had a grip on the reins that had bloodied the animal’s mouth. He rode across the meadow slowly, in no hurry. As he neared, she saw that the mare was quivering, her ears laid back. The man was smiling.
Icy wind rushed into Chayla’s throat as breath sobbed into her lungs. With the air came knowledge equally cold that because he had not killed her, he must intend to take her.
She even knew why she had been chosen, why she wa? still alive. She was the anomaly. The other three wor; cloaks of Desert blue, as did all castle guards when called to the service of their prince. Hers was bright red wool, hemmed in orange silk. The Vellant’im had faced Maarken of Whitecliff often enough in battle to know his col- ors. They were not fools. This one must know what a prize he had found.
Chayla felt her knees wilt. She sank down into the cushiony soil, her hands clutching slender stalks of seep-spring, crushing them. She couldn’t seem to take any breath at all, her heart strangling air halfway down her throat.
He was beside her now, his smile even wider. His teeth were very white, like exposed bone. She stared up at his face, struggling to breathe, and he stared down at her, smiling.
He gestured at her to stand. She couldn’t move. Again he waved his arm, more emphatically. When she stayed on her knees, he stopped smiling.
She managed to make her fingers unwind from the plant stems. Small victory. It gave her the courage to drag air into her lungs. It burned with the cold.
He dismounted. Standing over her, he rapped out a few words she didn’t understand. The meaning was clear enough. She flattened her palms on her knees, bending her head so that her loosened hair fell forward almost to the ground, hiding her face.
Hiding, too, her fingers as they snaked to her boots.
When he grabbed her left arm and yanked, she used his strength and her own upward surge of muscles and drove the knife in her right hand toward his groin.
He yelped in surprise and pain, shoving her away from him. She fell onto her side and echoed his cry as strained muscles stretched the wrong way, cramping in her back and legs. But even through her moan and his curses, she heard the muffled hoofbeats splashing across the meadow. And she moaned again at her stupidity, for no single archer could fell three people so swiftly. Of course he had companions. She’d been a fool to think he was alone.
They were upon her, one holding her ankles and another her wrists, while a third found the knife in her left boot and took it. She was bitterly disappointed that the other was stuck in the fleshy part of the first man’s thigh. When he wrenched it out there was a small fountain of crimson and she wanted to laugh. She didn’t know which was funnier, watching him fumble to tie up the wound, or his expression as he realized how close the knife had come to his more precious assets.
A fifth man, who stayed on horseback, loomed over her now. He was not smiling. His thick brows nearly met over his nose, every line of his face above his beard angry. She wanted to laugh at him, too. Five brave Vel-lanti warriors, just to subdue one girl!
But when he growled orders and she was hauled to her feet, she began for the first time to believe that this really was happening to her. Her, Lady Chayla, daughter of Lord Maarken and granddaughter of Lord Chaynal and great-granddaughter or Prince Zehava—her. Their hands were on her, imprisoning her wrists behind her back, clamped around one shoulder. But it was the look in their commander’s eyes that turned her to stone.
He leaned down from his saddle so that their faces were almost on a level. His eyes were an endless blackness and now he was smiling a terrifying smile. The word he spoke was a soft snarl. She had never heard it before, never read it. But as the other four repeated it, and all of them spat on her, she understood perfectly. Faradh’reia. Sunrunner Princess. And everyone knew what the Vellant’im did to Sunrunners.