The woman had been beautiful in her youth. Yet even with the marks of sixty winters on her face and her black hair gone iron-gray, there was about her an eagerness that the years normally stole when youth was irretrievably gone. Ambition shone in her gray-green eyes, and malicious amusement for its certain culmination. This absolute faith in her eventual success gave her the look of a woman half her age. Her body was still lean-fleshed and supple, though the quick grace of her youth had been replaced by a deliberate elegance. She was stately now, impressive with consciousness of her worth, the kind of woman who should have been ruling a princedom rather than a tiny settlement in a remote mountain valley. But in her eyes was sureness that she would not be here forever—and would indeed rule one day, and not just a single princedom but all of them.
Dusk in the Veresch brought a chill. The woman waited, facing the cairn that marked the eastern arch of a circle of stones. The rocks were tipped by the last fiery rays of the setting sun, and soon the first stars would appear directly above them. It had pleased her to assemble everyone while there was still sunlight; the swift descent of darkness and the sudden appearance of the stars was powerful, primal drama, especially here. Let the far-adh’im have their sunshine, their trees, their three pale moons. She and her kind had known for uncounted generations the potency of stones and stars, and a different kind of fire.
A full circle of ninety and nine ringed the glen outside the flat granite markers, hands clasped and breathing nearly stilled in the silence. In times past it had been difficult to gather so many, but rumors this spring were as plentiful as newborn lambs, and had brought people to her. Waiting for the last sunlight to vanish, she mused on the magic of this multiple of three, a special number since the beginning of the world. Three moons in the sky, three winters between dragon matings, three great divisions of land in Mountain, Desert, and River Meadow. The princes met once every three years. The ancients had honored three deities: The Goddess, the Father of Storms, and the Nameless One who dwelled in the fastness of these mountains. The faradh’im had long ago denied the power she would call on tonight—the more fools they. For there were three kinds of light as well: sun, moons, and stars. With ninety-and-nine here, she became the one hundredth, representative of the Nameless One who ruled all.
Three was also the number Princess lanthe’s sons, each poised a third of the way around the circle at the hip-high standing stones. She could sense their raw, half-trained powers, inherited from a grandmother who had been among the last purebred diarmadh ‘im. Lallante, a simpering coward who had rejected her true heritage, had nevertheless used it to ensnare High Prince Roelstra. The marriage had produced lanthe, who had in turn produced three boys both ambitious and malleable. They were the cornerstones of the power she would call on tonight, and they were the reason she was certain of eventual triumph.
Fourteen winters past, victory was a word for other people. There had been only survival for her, as there had been for all her people through hundreds of winters, ever since the return of Sunrunners to the continent from their island exile on Dorval had destroyed the diarmad-h’im, their power and their language and their way of life. Driven to the remote mountains, they had been hunted down and slaughtered by ruthless Sunrunners led by three—that number again, she thought bitterly—whose names were even now forbidden lest their wind-borne spirits find these last hiding places.
But now she had three of her own, she told herself, sensing lanthe’s strong sons all around her. They would do her work and her will, and she would triumph. Youth had begun anew for her the day they were brought to her in the shelter of the mountains.
The sunlight was gone and darkness brought the first star. The woman spread her hands wide so that the single pinprick of light was centered between her splayed fingers. The starshine stretched between her uplifted arms and she clenched her fists, half-closing her eyes as she wove the cool fire, centering the weave before she wrapped the fabric of light around and through the stones.
Her anchors, lanthe’s sons, began to tremble. Their shivering raced through the ring of hands and bodies around them, and the woman’s strength increased as she drew in the energy of ninety-nine lives joined by starfire. This power she directed into the circle of stones. And an instant later the source of her kind’s name was revealed: diarmadh’im, Stoneburners.
She became as the unmoving rock of the cairn, watching a scene form in the cool glow of tiny white flames. Long, fine fingers were what she saw first, held out to a hearth. Ten rings studded with gems circled the fingers; thin chains of gold or silver led from each ring to bracelets on bony wrists. Sight of a sharp-featured, proud face came next. The hair had once been blonde. The eyes were still fiercely blue, narrowing slightly as fire found fresh wood and burned more brightly. But the thin hands moved closer still to the blaze, rubbing together for warmth. Lady Andrade of Goddess Keep was feeling the cold.
A man only a little younger than she placed a heavy fur-lined cloak around her shoulders. The man was Lord Urival, Master of Sunrunners and Lady Andrade’s steward. Beautiful eyes of a curious golden-brown were set into a craggy face of no beauty at all. He pulled a table over between their chairs and sat down, chafing his nine rings before pulling the folds of his brown woolen robes around him.
They exchanged a few words, inaudible from the stone circle, and then their heads turned as one. Into the vision came the tall, wide-shouldered, dark-haired Sunrunner who had narrowly escaped death only two days ago on the road to Goddess Keep. His face was pinched with exhaustion and pain. He held one arm awkwardly to his side, instinctively protecting the bandages that bulked at his shoulder. He bowed, spoke, and placed his saddlebags on the low table.
The watching woman hissed in frustration. Her minions had failed to stop this man; by the Nameless One, it was hard to see the precious scrolls bulge within the leather bags. She fixed her gaze on them hungrily. When she turned her attention to the larger scene, the wounded Sunrunner was gone.
Lord Urival opened the saddlebags and extracted four long, round cases. A moment later he had the first of the scrolls spread out on the table before him, turned so Lady Andrade could see. The woman in the stone circle caught her breath as she saw the exquisite script. Much of the old language had been lost, and she was one of the few who knew more than a smattering of its words. But given enough time, the scrolls would be translated, and that must not happen.
Lady Andrade peered at the writing, shaking her head. She said something to Urival and he bowed, leaving the frame of vision. Soon he returned with a youth of no more than twenty winters who wore four rings, each set with a tiny ruby. He directed his attention to the scrolls, bending over them with a look of dawning fascination on his face. After a moment he straightened and rubbed his eyes with a comical grimace that brought a small answering smile from Andrade.
But all at once Lord Urival whirled, his fingers rubbing spasmodically at his rings, and stared into the flames-straight at the woman in the starlit circle, it seemed. The youth turned as well, blue eyes wide with astonishment beneath a shock of light brown hair.
She broke off the conjure with desperate haste, unthreading the weave of stars between her hands. The fire along the circle fled back to the cairn, which flared bright and fierce for an instant. Then it darkened, an uneven stack of granite rocks in the night, nothing more.
Some of those in the circle swayed and moaned at the abrupt termination of the vision. The woman scowled, reminding herself that next time she would have to test them all for strength and not just the willingness brought by fear.
“Bring to me the young man named Masul, who lives at Dasan Manor in Princemarch. Bring him however you must, but make sure he is alive, well, and in possession of his wits. I don’t want him damaged.”
All but three of the ninety-nine bowed to her and melted away into the woods, many of them leaning on their fellows for support. The woman flexed her hands, rubbing her palms where they felt slightly burned. This had been a potent working; she would need time to recover.
“Why do you need him?” the eldest of lanthe’s sons asked resentfully. “You have me.”
“Us,” his next youngest brother corrected smoothly.
“It is not your time yet,” she said firmly.
The youngest of them smiled slightly. “Yes, my Lady Mireva. Of course.”
She looked them over, remembering the three dirty, barbaric little boys she had turned into young princes. Ruval, at nineteen the eldest, had reached his full height but had yet to acquire the muscle and firm flesh of manhood. Dark-haired and blue-eyed, he favored the late High Prince his grandfather in features, but the shape of his eyes was lanthe’s. Marron, a year younger, was still awkward and bony with late adolescence. Of the three, he looked the least like his mother, having inherited his father’s heavy-lidded eyes and fiery red hair. The youngest, Segev, was barely sixteen and still a child in most ways. His eyes were gray-green like Mireva’s own and shaped like lanthe’s, but his hair was as black as Roel-stra’s had been. He was the most intelligent—and, paradoxically, the most biddable. Mireva understood that, and valued it; he trusted her wisdom and would do exactly as she bade him, for there was a hunger in him that her promises and power fed most adequately.
“Why him?” she asked suddenly, echoing Ruval’s earlier question. “Because none of you is old enough yet. You have much to learn about the powers your grandmother gave you. For now, this Masul is an amusing feint who will cause interesting trouble for Rohan.”
“Especially once you get your hands on him,” Marron remarked with a smile.
Mireva chose to ignore the mockery beneath the admiration. “More important right now are the scrolls. You saw them, of course, though no one else did. When our people ruled here, the faradh’im stayed on their island and did nothing. Then, without warning, they were here, opposing us. They spent years watching us in secret, learning our ways for their own ends, using them against us. They drove us from power and chased us into these mountains. And then they erased all memory of us from the minds of the people, causing us to be forgotten along with our ways. But what they knew of us was written down. And now someone has found the scrolls and put them into Lady Andrade’s hands.”
“It didn’t seem as if she understood a word of them,” Ruval commented.
“But she will. She’s clever—and ruthless. She will want the faradh’im to know the power we once had.”
“So the scrolls must be destroyed,” Marron surmised. “That’s easy enough to do, even at this distance. A little starfire, nicely directed—“
“No! I must know what’s in them! I must know how much has been lost!”
“They they must be stolen,” Segev said. “As the knowledge was stolen from us. What if. . . ?”
Mireva narrowed her gaze at him in the starlight. “What if?” she prompted.
“Someone with the gifts could go to Goddess Keep to be trained, gain their confidence, and steal the scrolls.” ‘ ‘Who did you have in mind?” Marron asked silkily. “Not you,” his youngest brother shot back. “You have all the subtlety of a rutting dragon.” “And you think you could do it?” Ruval scoffed. “I can. And I will.” A smile stole across his sharp features. “And maybe I can even things up with dear Aunt Pandsala as well for betraying Grandfather during the war with Prince Rohan.”
“Your primary concern must be the scrolls,” Mireva said. “Leave the Princess-Regent to me—and to Masul, who may or may not be her brother.” She laughed softly with excitement. “Excellent, Segev! A scheme worthy of a prince and a son of diarmadh ‘im. But there are things I must teach you before you leave. Come tomorrow night to my dwelling.”
They understood this as dismissal, and left her. She heard the clink of bridles as they mounted the horses left deeper in the forest, and Marron’s voice as he taunted his brother about becoming a weakling faradhi. When their arguing had faded, she began the long walk back to her house, relishing the touch of cool starlight through the trees.
She lived in a low stone dwelling much larger than it looked, seemingly built out from the side of the hill but in reality dug deeply into it by generations of her forebears. There were two outer rooms that appeared to be the whole of the place, but the wooden planks that formed the back wall hid a door leading into the important part of the house. Mireva paused to build up the fire against the night chill, then went to the rough paneling and pressed a catch concealed in a seam. Grunting a little with effort, she pushed on the door and it swung open with a protesting creak. The hallway beyond was black as the night outside. Mireva struck iron to flint—she could call Fire if she wished but never used Sunrunner ways if she could avoid it—and a flame burned obediently atop a slim column of wax. She plucked the candle from its niche and walked down the packed earthen floor, not even glancing at the low-ceilinged corridors that branched off from the main one. At last she reached the door she wanted, and set the candle into a holder within.
There was the glint of golden things and silver, and gems that stained the room with rainbow colors. A massive mirror stood in a corner, shrouded in midnight-blue velvet sewn with silver thread in a pattern of stars. Most of the space was taken up by huge chests and boxes resting on tables. Mireva took a small coffer and opened it, removing a piece of parchment folded around something minced and brittle. There were only five similar packets left, she noted; she would have to go harvesting soon, high in the mountains where the herb grew strong and potent.
She returned to the outer rooms then, sliding the heavy door back into place. There was no indication that it even existed. Gathering a bottle and winecup, she settled into a soft chair before the fire and stirred the contents of the packet into the bottle. She waited for the herb to mix, then poured a measure of the wine and drained it in three long swallows. Earlier today she had consumed a similar cup, but the effects had worn off and she needed more. A smile touched her face as the drug began its work in her blood. How stupid the faradh ‘im were to be so afraid of this. But perhaps their powers of sun and moons were too fragile for dranath. The ancients had found it a source of sure and sustained strength, addiction to it an assurance of potency.
Mireva drew in a deep breath to prolong the lightheaded glow and closed her eyes. No, the Sunrunners were weaklings who could not tolerate use of dranath. The one enslaved to it by Roelstra had burned out after only a few years. She remembered very well the day she had presented the herb and knowledge of its addictive properties to Lady Palila, Roelstra’s last mistress. Mireva had been young then, and only playing the part of old wisewoman from the hills. Her bedchamber mirror told her that far less effort would be required to sustain the image these days, and the opposite deception would be needed tomorrow night. She sighed, then shrugged. She had the ability. And she would win. The Sunrunner corrupted and used by Roelstra had been an amusement. But now she would play the game in earnest. The gambit with Masul would test her opponents, Segev would gain her the scrolls, and in only a few years Ruval would bring her final victory.
The rush of dranath peaked, centered in her belly. She shifted slightly, enjoying the tingle of sensual pleasure. Andrade might have her ten rings and her position as ruler of all faradh ‘im, but Mireva knew she had never know the sheer glut of power brought by dranath. To ensure that she never would, Mireva took out pen and parchment, closing her eyes the better to remember the words of the scroll. After a few moments her hand began to move, copying what she saw in her mind.
* * *
Urival accepted the glass of wine Andry gave him, nodded his thanks, and drank deeply. Setting the cup down, he sagged back in his chair and exhaled. He rubbed the ring on his left thumb absently. “I’m too old,” he muttered. “I haven’t the strength anymore.”
“At least you felt it,” Andrade said. “I didn’t even catch a flicker.” She looked up at her grand-nephew and namesake. “You either?”
“No, my Lady.” Andry stared down at his four rings, each set with a small ruby token of his status as son of a powerful athri. Chay’s colors were in his clothing, too, his tunic decorated around the throat with interlocking red and white knots. “I thought I saw the fire jump, but.
Urival said, “That had nothing to do with what I sensed. Someone was watching us. It was subtle, but it was there. And it had no basis in the fire—not Sunrun-ner’s Fire. It’s night, the moons aren’t up—there’s only the stars.”
“You’ve said what it wasn’t,” Andrade snapped. “Tell me what it was. “
Andry crouched down with his back to the hearth, sitting on his heels. With his lithe body curled up thus, and his too-long hair drifting untidily around a nearly beardless face, he seemed much younger than his twenty winters—except for the sharply intelligent eyes, a deeper blue than Andrade’s. “We conjure with Fire to show us things, but we can’t actually watch events except on woven light of sun or moons. Yet Urival says we were being watched.
If not in the usual ways, then how?”
Andrade tapped the scroll with one long finger. “Not us, Andry. This.” She traced the title page with its two ominous words and its strange border design. “Look at this and tell me how it was done,” she added grimly. Urival stared. “Impossible!”
“Sioned did it,” she reminded him. “She used starlight.” She met his gaze and they shared the memory of the night Rohan had killed Roelstra in single combat. The two had been protected from interference by a dome woven by Sioned of shining silvery starfire. She and Urival had both been caught up in the powerful conjuring. Pandsala, present at the scene, had been trapped into it, and Tobin, who had been with Sioned far away at Sky-bowl. And, though barely a day old, Pol too had been woven into that dangerous, forbidden fabric of light.
“Aunt Sioned has done it?” Andry looked up, frowning. “But it’s not possible, and even if it were—“
“If it were not possible, why bother to forbid it to us?” Urival asked. “It’s not something we do, but we know it can be done because Sioned did it.” “Whoever it is must have powers beyond ours.” “Not necessarily.”
“Look at this page.” Andrade traced the pattern of night sky with stars again. “On Sorceries. “
“No wonder Meath was frightened by it. And no wonder somebody tried to kill him in order to get it. Knowledge left behind on Dorval by our ancestors—things they didn’t want remembered?”
“And somebody doesn’t want us to discover, that’s certain,” Andry said.
“The temptations must be very great.” The Lady of Goddess Keep folded her beringed hands tightly together. “/ am tempted. I choose to give in to that temptation. I must know what the scrolls teach. Others know it. So must I.”
“They had reasons for leaving this behind,” Urival warned. “Reasons for the prohibition against using starlight. Andrade, the danger—“
“—would be in not knowing,” Andry interrupted, rude in his excitement. “The Lady is right. We must know what’s here and how to use it. If only to know what to guard against.”
His attention was on the scroll, and thus he did not see the glance that passed between his elders. Through no special power but long years of familiarity with each other’s thoughts, Andrade and Urival shared reaction at Andry’s use of the plural. He had counted himself among those who must know. Andrade had summoned him here tonight because he was her kinsman and extremely gifted, but he did not yet know what she and Urival had decided this winter: that when she was dead, Andry would be Lord of Goddess Keep. Young as he was, he was the only possible choice. His relationship to the High Prince had only sealed what his talents would have earned him had he been born in a cottage instead of a castle.
“Use their own weapons against them, whoever they may be?” Andrade asked him now. ‘ ‘Ways our ancestors thought best forgotten? Ways dangerous and forbidden to us?”
Andry rose fluidly to his feet, and there was nothing boyish about him as he looked down at her. There was the look of his father about him now, strength of will, clear-sightedness, and firmness of purpose adding maturity to his face. But more than his sire, Andrade suddenly saw his grandsire in him, saw Zehava’s single-minded acquisitiveness, his drive to possess. Zehava had wanted land and unquestioned authority over it; Andry wanted knowledge. Both ambitions were perilous.
Andry’s eyes shone with ambition as he said, “How do you think our ancestors won in the first place?”
Urival gave a muffled exclamation. Andrade did not react outwardly at all.
“Go on,” she said quietly.
“You said that long ago they left Dorval and came here to involve themselves in the world. Why? It can’t have been for the sake of power, for they didn’t take over as princes, and our history hasn’t been one of meddling in the affairs of the princedoms.” Until recently, his eyes said, until you, Aunt Andrade. “Thus it must have been not for their own gain, but for the people. Because they were needed. And yet they left certain knowledge behind on Dorval. Why didn’t they want us to know these things?
More importantly, why didn’t they want us to know how to use starlight, the ‘sorceries’ this scroll implies? Tonight we learned that others know what these Sunrunners wanted forgotten. Is it so great a leap of logic to think these were the people our ancestors came here to oppose?
“And why learn the ways of the enemy in the first place? Knowledge is to be used—else why learn it? They must’ve carried it with them inside their heads and once the others were defeated, never taught it again, so of course it’s been forgotten.”
Urival roused himself from appalled reaction to An-dry’s words and said, “That’s a long way from saying they used what might be in this scroll to battle these unknown enemies—existence of which hasn’t even been proved!”
“Hasn’t it?” Andry faced his great-aunt. “You saw, when you first became Lady here, that High Prince Roel-stra was too powerful.”
The jewels of her rings quivered in the firelight, betraying the sudden tremor in her hands. “I knew long before that what he would become. He came to my father’s keep as a youth, looking for a bride.”
Andry’s eyes widened, for he had never heard that part of the story before. “But you must already have been a Sunrunner.”
“Yes. Home to visit my father and my twin sister— your grandmother Milar. I know what you’re about to say, Andry. I saw the power of the faradh’im dwindling, our influence threatened as Roelstra’s power grew. So I married off my sister to Prince Zehava, hoping one of their children would be a son with the gifts, someone I could train up to be the first Sunrunner prince.”
“Only it didn’t turn out that way,” Urival murmured.
“No. Your mother showed the gifts instead, Andry. And so I arranged for Rohan to marry Sioned, whom I knew to be powerful.” A twinge of bitterness crossed her face.
“And now Pol will be the prince you wanted,” Andry went on. “But it’s happened even before him, my Lady. Sioned is High Princess, with no hesitation in using her gifts as she sees necessary to governance. Pandsala does the same as Regent of Princemarch. My brother Maar- ken, and Riyan of Skybowl—and maybe others we haven’t identified yet—they’ll all be Sunrunner lords, just like Pol will one day. Faradhi ways are merging with those of princes, because you decided they must.”
“And must our ways now merge with those of our enemies, because you decide they must?” she snapped.
“Not merge. But why shouldn’t we do what our ancestors probably did?”
“Because they had good reason for leaving that knowledge behind and forbidding us the starlight.” She leaned back in her chair, looking very old. “Talk with Rohan sometime about using methods you despise to gain something you know is right. Why do you think his sword has hung idle in the Great Hall of Stronghold since he defeated Roelstra?”
“Yet he did battle, and he won! And because of it, he’s had the chance to make this a world of laws instead of blood brought by the sword.”
“Would you make us into users of dark stars rather than the clean light of sun and moons?”
“By your own admission, Sioned used starlight—and even though she wears no faradhi rings now, there can be no doubting her heart.”
Urival pushed himself to his feet. Andry was too clever by half and had learned logical argument all too well. “Leave us now. You’ve made your case. And I don’t need to tell you not to speak of this.”
“No, my lord. You needn’t tell me.” The words were spoken without rancor, but the blue eyes were shaded with defiance. He bowed to them both, and left.
Andrade was silent for a time, then said, “If I don’t live long enough to instill some caution in that boy, we’re lost.” She tilted her face up to Urival’s. “Do you think I’ll last?” she asked almost playfully, but her eyes were bleak.
“You’ll drink to the sight of my ashes floating away on the breeze,” he told her. “But not if you don’t get some rest.”
“I won’t argue. Put the scrolls away somewhere safe.”
“I will. And then come back to make sure you’re sleeping.” He smiled. “Stubborn old witch.”
“Foolish old bastard.”
After the scrolls had been put in a place only Urival knew about, he returned to her chambers. She was seated on her bed, long silver-gilt braids undone and forming a pale, rippling cloak around her. She had changed into a nightrobe, but seemed too listless to finish the job by sliding between the sheets. Urival had seen her like this more and more often in the last two years, and fear for her health was a stab of anguish in his breast. He drew back the covers and helped her into bed, feeling how light and frail she had become. Extinguishing the candles, he moved silently to the door.
“No. Stay.”
From any other woman it would have been a command to offend even the most loving heart. From her, it was as close to a plea as her pride would ever allow. Urival was frightened.
“As you wish, my Lady.” He stripped down to his long undertunic and lay down atop the covers, dragging the quilt up from the foot of the bed to drape around him. He did not touch her, only waited, the hearthlight playing soft shadows across the room.
“If it were Maarken instead of Andry, I wouldn’t be worried,” she said at last. “He was born with a sense of honor as strong as Chay’s or Rohan’s. But Andry is cursed with the wrong kind of cleverness. Why do all my relations have to be so intelligent?” She sighed. “There’s something different about him from his father or his uncle or his brothers. Perhaps he gets it from Zehava.”
“Or maybe even from you.”
“Yes, I’ve always been terribly clever, haven’t I?” She gave a harsh laugh. “Andry’s going to be even more dangerous than I. And I beg the Goddess I’m not doing wrong in making him Lord of this place once I’m dead.”
“He’s young. He’ll learn.”
“And he’ll have you to guide him.”
“Always assuming I outlive you,” he bantered as lightly as he could manage, not wanting to think about a world that did not have her in it. “Besides, there’s Ro-han, his parents—and don’t underestimate Maarken’s influence or Sorin’s. Andry adores his brothers.” She shifted beneath the blankets and her fingers closed around his. “Not the first time we’ve shared a bed,” she remarked. “Do you remember?”
“Of course. I always knew it was you who made a man of me that night.”
“I do good work,” she replied, real laughter in her voice now. “Had to fight Kassia for you, too. It was to be one or the other of us. I don’t think she’s ever forgiven me.”
‘ I would never have forgiven you if it had been her.” “But how did you know? None of my others ever did.” He did not tell her that because it had been him, she had not woven the Goddess’ illusions as carefully as she should have. Forty-five years later, she still did not realize that she had wanted him to know. “Gift of the Goddess,” he replied, meaning it.
“And all the nights since. That must be how you recognized me. Repetition of the experience. Did Sioned ever know it was you?”
“She may have guessed. I don’t know. I must say, I’ve been tempted to collect my full share of gratitude from Rohan, though. I do good work, too.”
“Conceited old lecher.” She moved closer and he put his arm around her. “They’ve been good for each other. Will Maarken and Hollis be the same, do you think?”
“As good as you and I have been through the years.” He pressed a light kiss to her forehead. “And neither of us is so old that come morning, when we’re rested, there won’t be a way to prove it.” “Shameless.”
“You were the one who taught me,” he answered, smiling. “Go to sleep.”