Dragon Prince 03 - Sunrunner's Fire (24 page)

“Andry will be furious,” Ruval mused. “He won’t give Pol any substantial support. Not that he would have, anyway. They’re jealous of each other’s power.”

“And this will only make it worse. After we’re finished with Pol, Andry will be next. And he does
not
think like a prince,” she warned.

“Leave Andry to me, just as I’ll take care of Pol. Besides, we’re providing other distractions, too.” Ruval smiled. “And I’m assuming you have one or two more in reserve.”

“One, certainly.” She smiled back.

“I can almost feel sorry for Pol. But at least he’ll be well-educated before he dies.”

“T
ell me.”

Pol sent a pleading glance at his mother, unable to deal with Tobin’s quiet, desolate command. Sioned met his gaze solemnly, said nothing, and from the compassion in her eyes he realized that this was one of the terrible times, when being a prince meant taking responsibility even when one was helpless. He nodded slightly and touched his aunt’s shoulder, drawing her from the tapestry room that had been Sorin’s pride out to the broad balcony overlooking the Desert. The others remained indoors—Sioned, Chay, Hollis, Tallain. Rohan, true to a vow Pol neither understood nor dared ask about, had not and would not set foot in Feruche itself, and was staying in the refurbished garrison quarters below the cliffs. Sionell and Ruala were with Hollis’ son and daughter and Sionell’s own little girl in the hastily arranged nursery, away from the grief that children could not understand. And Maarken and Riyan were readying the ritual that would take place that night.

The dunes spread out in heaped gold before them. Pol stared out at the endless Desert, wondering how he should begin. Tobin had said very little since arriving yesterday evening. She had spent the night beside her son’s body, and though all preparations had been made by Ruala, she had insisted on washing Sorin once more and dressing him herself in the colors of his holding and his heritage. The blue and black of Feruche in his tunic; the red and white of Radzyn around his waist; the fierce blue of the Desert in the cloak covering his body—silk and velvet she placed on her son, her eyes dry and her face set in stone.

“Tell me,” she said again, and for the first time he heard her pain, like a low moan of thunder in the distance. He faced her, took both her hands, and made himself look down into her lusterless black eyes.

He told it slowly, completely, leaving out nothing but Sorin’s dying agony. He spared himself not at all, filled with bitter self-hatred for losing himself in communion with the dragon while Marron attacked. He let her see the scene as Riyan had described it to him. Ruval scrambling to his feet, lifting his blade to take Pol’s life. Sorin’s desperate intervention. Marron seizing Edrel’s slight form, throwing the squire bodily at Riyan. Ruval’s defenses weakening, the talon slashes across his back crippling his sword arm. Marron plunging his sword into Sorin’s leg, shattering the bone as well as severing the large artery. And the burning of Riyan’s rings that meant sorcery had been used somehow.

“Riyan . . . Riyan says he and Edrel had to pull the sword with all their strength to get it out of the wound. He thinks it was some binding spell, something—oh, Goddess, and all the while—it’s my fault. He saved my life and I was—if I hadn’t been caught up in the dragon—”

“Hush.”

“But it’s true.” He forced his gaze to meet hers. “Andry was right. If I’d been able to help, Sorin would still be—”

She pulled her hands from his and he flinched. But the next instant she reached up, framed his face with small, delicate fingers. “Andry had no right to say such a thing to you. He was hurt and grieving, Pol. He needed someone to blame. When a twin loses his second self. . . .” She paused, shaking her head. “I saw it in Maarken when Jahni died of Plague. Andrade felt the same thing when my mother died. Don’t blame him for what he said on moonlight. And don’t blame yourself. It wasn’t your fault.”

“Wasn’t it?” he asked bleakly. “Sorin said that I should try to understand Andry.”

“And you promised that you would.” Tobin stroked his forehead, and then her hands dropped to her sides. She turned from him, folding her arms atop the carved stone balustrade. Her voice was soft, tired, wistful. “I bore my husband four sons. Four strong, proud, beautiful boys, grandsons of a prince. I watched them grow and learn and play at dragons. I saw one of them dead and burned before he was nine winters old. Now I’ve lost another of my sons.” She was silent for a long time. Pol watched her head slowly bend, her shoulders rounding as if grief would crush even her indomitable spirit. At last she straightened again and glanced up at him. There were tears in her eyes, unshed. “Thank you for telling me, Pol. It can’t have been easy for you.”

“For
me
—
?
” he began incautiously, then gulped back the rest. She didn’t need his guilt and sorrow added to her burden.

“You’re Sorin’s cousin, his friend, and his prince. And I think losing him is teaching you things you’d rather not learn about the pain of your position.”

How had she known? He stared at her in awe, knowing he would never have her wisdom. Her compassion. Her understanding of what it was to be a prince.

She looked back out at the Desert. “Something astonishing is going to happen this spring,” she mused. “Something that happens only once in a hundred years. My father heard of rains like these from his father, who saw them once in his youth. I can already feel it beginning, Pol. The land is still in shock, I think, from so much water after so long a drought. But I feel the restlessness. It’ll happen soon.”

Pol looked down at her, puzzled. She glanced up, smiling slightly.

“Those not of the Desert marvel that we can find our empty sands so beautiful. So compelling to the spirit. They think that because it doesn’t bloom or bear fruit it’s a dead land, a place the Goddess forgot to give life. But what she gave us is so much more miraculous than the bounty that comes to others every year. They take their riches for granted. But we of the Desert understand how precious life really is, how it blesses us and seems to vanish, but always returns, always lives anew.”

He struggled to understand. “Like—like the sun each day, or the dragons every three years.”

“I hadn’t thought of it that way, but yes, like the sun and the dragons. Always returning.” She stared blankly at the dunes. “Jahni and Sorin will never stand before me again. Never smile at me again, never—but they are alive in this land, just as my father and mother live here still. Earth and Air, Fire and Water, all of what they were lives in this Desert that seems so lifeless to those who cannot understand.” She sighed quietly. “Go back inside now, please. I want to be alone for a little while.”

He nodded, feeling more helpless than ever, and hesitated a moment before bending down to kiss her cheek. Her arms went around him and he was startled as always by the strength in her tiny frame. When she released him, the tears had spilled over and he had enough wisdom to leave at once.

Sionell had come downstairs from the nursery, and was helping Edrel pour wine. She glanced over as Pol entered, nodded slightly, and continued speaking.

“—so we finally got them to sleep. Ruala’s going to sit with them for a time and make sure they
stay
asleep, and a little later their nurses will take over the watch. Hollis, I can’t tell you how lovely Chayla has grown since I last saw her.”

Pol was impatient with the ensuing talk of children, and only gradually realized that Sionell had deliberately introduced the topic as a soothing counterpoint to grief. Hers was another form of wisdom, he thought: she was wise in the ways of people and their needs. But he could not enter into the give-and-take of anecdotes and tales of baby tricks. He was as restless as Tobin had said the Desert was, like an itching deep in his blood and bones that demanded—something. He made an excuse to his mother and left the room to prowl the halls and towers of Feruche until nearly dusk.

Sorin’s corpse was burned that night in the sands below Feruche. Oils and piles of sweet herbs and spices thickened the air, borne upward with the smoke of the pyre. Pol stood alone in the silence, waiting for dawn when he and the other Sunrunners of his family would call up a breath of wind to scatter the ashes across the dunes. As the moons made their stately way across the star-strewn sky he knew he should be thinking of Sorin: the friendly squabbles they’d had as children, his pride in his cousin’s elevation to knight and
athri,
the affection and respect they’d shared as young men. But with every scene that came to him, Ruval’s face intruded. His might not have been the sword that killed Sorin, but his was the responsibility.
He wants my princedom—and my death. What he’ll get instead is—

Andry!
The swift assault of angry color, only slightly paled from being woven with moonlight, startled him. Andry’s fine control, his sleek subtlety, were things Pol only aspired to. But the Lord of Goddess Keep, daily practitioner of skills Pol used only occasionally, already possessed an easy grace in the use of power that Pol both admired and resented. He riposted quickly, keeping his emotions hidden, telling himself he should have been prepared for this.
I thought you might be here tonight.

The only way I could be, considering your haste to see my brother burned.
Andry’s grief and fury were almost palpable.
You couldn’t wait for me to be there, could you? I’ve been in the saddle since I felt him die—

You’re too many days from Feruche.
With deliberate and slightly guilty cruelty he added,
Would you have your brother’s flesh corrupted by days of waiting, rather than cleanly burned by fire?

There was a vast silence for some moments.
I felt it when he died. Like half my soul had been ripped from me. You can never understand.

Tell me about them,
Andry said—and before Pol could form words he felt his memories fingered, examined, and discarded as casually as he might have picked through a pile of fruit.
So. I see.

Pol shook with anger at the invasion.
How dare you! Sorin asked me to go gently with you, try to understand you—Tobin asked me to forgive you for blaming me. But now I’ll be damned if I’ll—

He knew he should not do this. He did it anyway. Using an obscure spell learned from the Star Scroll, he closed his eyes and flicked a knife of thin, bright Fire toward Andry—not strong enough or sharp enough to sever the moonweaving but sufficient to give fair warning. He sensed Andry’s gasp of startlement, his angry suspicion, sudden certainty—and hasty retreat.

Pol glanced at his mother where she stood beside Tobin, knowing she would not relish the mistake he’d just made. He was ashamed of himself for giving in to the taunting. He should be above such things. He must be, in order to function as a prince.

Or
a Sunrunner. Andry’s words had lanced his pride. He was as much a
faradhi
as Maarken or Hollis or Riyan. Urival himself had trained him, Morwenna continued to give him lessons when he was at Stronghold. But unlike the others, he had never been to Goddess Keep, never lived there in the Sunrunner community, absorbing its atmosphere of long tradition and ancient honor. The rest of the
faradh’im
in his immediate circle had known that union, discipline, fellowship. Not even Sioned had entirely rejected it, though she had long ago removed her rings and chosen to be a princess first and a Sunrunner second. Pol knew that Maarken feared having to make the same choice one day, rendered even worse by the fact that his brother was Lord of Goddess Keep. What if Andry one day asked something of Maarken as a
faradhi
that conflicted with his duties as a vassal?

And that was bound to happen very soon, Pol realized. This business of the Sunrunner in Gilad was sure to have Andry claiming Maarken’s support—and that of Hollis and Riyan as well. He would not bother with Sioned; challenging the Sunrunner loyalties of the High Princess was something not even Andrade had dared do. But because Pol was not officially
faradhi,
Andry would use the matter to delineate even more sharply the rift between Princemarch and the Desert on one side and Goddess Keep on the other. Pol hated to think what the other princes would make of this, especially Miyon, Cabar, Velden, and Halian.

He couldn’t win. If he supported Andry, he would be untrue to laws he believed in. If he supported Cabar as he intended, the princes would be reassured about his commitment to the law—and worry even more about his refusal to come under traditional
faradhi
discipline. Few approved of Andry’s power. Which would be the stronger—satisfaction that Andry could not influence him, or fear of a Sunrunner prince without loyalty to Goddess Keep?

It had been wisdom on the part of Lady Merisel and the other long-ago
faradh’im
to discourage the mating of Sunrunners with princes; the potential conflict was a terrible one. Andrade had taken the chance with Sioned—and, by her lights, failed. Pol had been trained without ties to Goddess Keep except the powerful one of blood-kin. He wondered suddenly if Andrade had planned that, too, chosen Andry to succeed her for just that reason.