by Melanie Rawn
DAW Books Presents
the Finest in Fantasy by
MELANIE RAWN
EXILES
THE RUINS OF AMBRAI (Volume One)
THE MAGEBORN TRAITOR (Volume Two)
DRAGON PRINCE
DRAGON PRINCE (Book One)
THE STAR SCROLL (Book Two)
SUNRUNNER’S FIRE (Book Three)
DRAGON STAR
STRONGHOLD (Book One)
THE DRAGON TOKEN (Book Two)
SKYBOWL (Book Three)
TALES OF ART AND MAGIC
THE GOLDEN KEY (with Jennifer Roberson and Kate Elliott)
THE DIVINER
Short Stories in:
ANCIENT ENCHANTRESSES
WARRIOR ENCHANTRESSES
RETURN TO AVALON
HIGHWAYMEN: Robbers and Rogues
RETURN OF THE DINOSAURS
Copyright © 1997 by Melanie Rawn.
All Rights Reserved.
Cover art by Michael Whelan.
ISBN: 978-1-101-66632-6
Map by Marty Siegrist.
DAW Book Collectors No. 1051.
Published by DAW Books, Inc.
1745 Broadway, New York, NY 10019.
All characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is strictly coincidental.
The scanning, uploading and distribution of this book via the Internet or any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage the electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.
First Paperback Printing, March 1998
DAW TRADEMARK REGISTERED
U.S. PAT. OFF. AND FOREIGN COUNTRIES
—MARCA REGISTRADA.
HECHO EN U.S.A.
Version_1
for
Nora Kathryn MacClelland Lott
and
Joanne Kathy Drucker Okumura
Table of Contents
Also by Melanie Rawn
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Map
Timeline
PART ONE
WRAITHS
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
TWINS
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
PRENTICES
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
PART TWO
THE HUNT
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
THE CHASE
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
THE KILL
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
EPILOGUE
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Selective Genealogy
Index of Saints
Author’s Note
THE TALE THUS FAR: TIMELINE
Previously I have employed the Prose Synopsis Method and the Body Count Method of reminding readers what went on in the last book. I am not particularly fond of either; the latter presupposes a bloodthirsty author (who, me?) and the former annoys me because if I could have told the whole story in three pages, I would have.
Below is a timeline of events in the previous volume (near as the author can recall, anyway).
YEAR EVENT(S)
942 ♦
Collan Rosvenir sold to Scraller Pelleris
Glenin Ambrai born
946 ♦
Sarra Ambrai born
950 ♦
Council proposes Mageborns hold government office; Ambrai leads protests; proposal withdrawn; Council proposes to register all Mageborns and offspring
Auvry Feiran returns to Ambrai from Ryka Court; Cailet Ambrai conceived
951 ♦
Maichen Ambrai and Auvry Feiran divorced; Feiran takes Glenin to Ryka Court
Rioting in Ambrai; Gorynel Desse takes Maichen and Sarra to Ostinhold
First Councillor Avira Anniyas cripples Bard Falundir
Ambrai destroyed; 32,000 die
Cailet Ambrai born prematurely; Maichen dies
Desse takes Sarra to Roseguard, Collan to Falundir in Sheve Dark
956 ♦
Collan, Desse, and Falundir leave Sheve Dark
Golonet Doriaz becomes Glenin’s tutor
960 ♦
Malerris
Castle destroyed; Doriaz dies
964 ♦
Glenin marries Garon Anniyas; Cailet and Sarra meet in Pinderon
968 ♦
Sarra addresses the Council at Ryka Court
969 ♦
Purge begins; disturbances escalate into spontaneous Rising in Neele, Renig, Domburr Castle, Isodir, elsewhere
Cailet becomes Captal
Collan captured by Feiran at Crossroads of St. Feleris
Taig Ostin killed by Vassa Doriaz at Octagon Court; Doriaz dies
The Rising declared in Malachite Hall; Ryka Court riots; Anniyas, Garon, Feiran die in Ambrai
Sarra marries Collan at the Octagon Court
Autumn Equinox: Glenin’s son is born
PART ONE
969–988
WRAITHS
1
CAILET Rille leaned back against her bedchamber door, grateful for the quiet—and the lock. Too tired to call up any additional Wards to augment those permanently in place around her Ryka Court quarters, she unbuttoned the high collar of her regimentals and wondered if she should take a nice, long, soothing bath. No, too much effort. And if Tarise—who was right across the hallway in Sarra’s suite—heard the tub spigot running, she’d come in, Wards or not, to “assist” Cailet’s ablutions. According to Tarise, no Lady of Importance and Position ever even trimmed her own nails.
Though Tarise Nalle was officially Sarra’s personal maid (and auxiliary eyes and ears), she had set herself the task of convincing Cailet that she, too, required a servant to attend all her needs—an idea as alarming as it was amusing. There had been servants at Ostinhold while Cailet was growing up, of course—dozens of them to clean the sprawling house and cook the meals and wash and mend and clean some more. But everyone at Ostinhold made her own bed, tidied her own room, dressed herself, and did her own hair (except First Daughter Geria, whose first action on attaining her majority and a yearly allowance at eighteen was to hire a maid). Sarra, having shared Tarise with Lady Agatine, was used to having things done for her. She saw no reason—nor did Tarise—why Cailet should be made uncomfortable by similar attentions.
She was, though. And not just because it felt silly to have someone wait on her. She said nothing about the deeper reasons, the secret reasons, for wanting total privacy in her person and personal belongings. Instead she told her sister that she was perfectly capable of keeping her rooms neat, she’d been dressing herself since the age of two, and her hair was hopeless anyway. Tarise’s sharp references to the exalted status of Mage Captal fell on deaf ears. Cailet wanted simply to forget her position most of the time, and the best way to do that was to be alone as much as possible.
Or so she’d thought.
She prowled the bedroom, sourly cataloging luxuries that made her feel as if she lived in a birdcage. Quite literally; sun-silvered oak furniture was inlaid with ebon-wood in patterns of feathers, and fitted with golden goose heads as drawer pulls, cabinet handles, and finials on the bedcurtain rods. Thick Cloister rugs intricately figured with a whole improbable aviary splashed bright colors underfoot. The bathroom, visible through the open stained-glass door (birds splashing in a sylvan pond), was a marvel of malachite and marble and gold-beaked faucets. Birdcage it might be, but the view through beveled windows was of the gardens and Council Lake beyond, and unequaled in all Ryka Court.
Cailet stubbornly preferred her Ostinhold bedroom—which no longer existed, except in memory: bleached pine bedframe and clothes closet, cool stone floor, faded blue curtains woven long ago by some Ostin husband or son, windows overlooking the courtyard’s cheerful chaos. At Ryka Court, the sight of Council Lake—so much water out in the open—made her nervous.
She knew what Sarra would say with a smile and a shake of her head: “Waster!” Well, she was. Bred an Ambrai in Ambraishir she might be, but she’d been born and raised in The Waste. No matter that she hated the place. It was the only home she knew.
How good it would be to return there. To sit in her old room, snuggled into the sagging old armchair, reading an adventure novel; to climb up the watchtower and gaze out on miles of Saints-forsaken wilderness beyond the security of Ostinhold. To saddle her horse and ride out completely alone. She liked being by herself. She’d been solitary as a child, partly through choice and partly because she was a practically Nameless orphan and such things had been very important back in the days of identity disks and Bloods and Tiers. Her new position as Mage Captal guaranteed that she continued to be set apart. But the solitude she craved was not to be found at Ryka Court. She could be anyplace—eating dinner in a tavern, shopping, sitting on a park bench, strolling the windy shoreline—and people would recognize and approach her. Most were respectful, wishing only to express admiration and gratitude. Some wanted something from her: patronage of their Web’s products, her influence to settle some difficulty, a word to Sarra on their behalf. A few—and these she treasured—ventured the hope that a Mage might visit their homes to meet a young cousin/daughter/niece/grandson/friend who showed signs of being Mageborn.
But all of them, no matter how they tried to hide it (and some didn’t bother), were shocked to find her so young.
They’d just have to get used to it, she told herself. And if they didn’t—well, time was a sure cure for youth. Eventually she might attain as many years as she felt weighing her down now. She couldn’t remember ever having felt so tired. There was something vaguely amusing about that. Not yet nineteen, and she felt older than Gorynel Desse was when he died.
Crossing to the gigantic bed (she’d tried without success to have a smaller one substituted for this silk-hung monstrosity), she lay down and kicked off her boots. Several deep breaths later, while staring at the coffered ceiling (also gilded, with birds lurking amid polished timbers), she began consciously un-tensing from the toes up. No one had taught her the technique—no one now living, anyway. Like everything else she had absorbed from three dead Mage Guardians and a beloved Ladder Rat, it worked perfectly.
Except on the stubborn knots in her shoulders that had been there since word came that on St. Chevasto’s Day a certain cottage in Sheve Dark had burned to the ground. A little message from her eldest sister Glenin, of course; just a little reminder that the Malerrisi could still reach out from the castle in Seinshir. These last days of the old year, worry had taken up residence in Cailet’s body and mind; waking, dreaming, in company or in solitude —though the Mage Captal was rarely permitted to be by herself.
She’d needed Falundir’s cottage, damn it. When Collan had suggested a sojourn there, peace had stolen gently over her spirit. She hadn’t even chafed at the winter storms that made taking ship from Ryka impossible; the cottage had been there forever, it would wait for her. Word had been sent to Sleginhold to have the place made ready; probably that was how Glenin had found out. Even in her self-imposed exile, she retained her sources of information. Which meant there were Malerrisi still at large. No one would ever know what they were unless they openly worked magic.
Sarra had been upset and Collan downright shaken by news of the fire. Falundir only shrugged, giving Cailet a look of rueful compassion. He of all people knew what it was to need a place to heal in solitude. To assess the damage, to let go of what had been lost. To work out what was possible for the future.
But the urgencies of politics made Cailet’s needs unimportant. Sarra sympathized, but, truly told, she was the most insistent of those who had schemes for the Mage Guardians and their Captal. There were certain things only Mages could advise about, or do, or explain, or whatever. For Sarra, simple logic dictated that her sister the Captal thus advise, do, explain, or whatever. Full of plans and proposals was Sarra, especially for the “whatever” part—even though it had been impressed upon her that neither Cailet nor the Mages would ever work hand-in-hand with the Council.
Collan, m
ercifully, let Cailet alone. When she wanted company, he had the grace to just sit and talk—about music, books, his adventures as an itinerant Minstrel, anything but politics. Still, every so often Sarra would infect him with a scheme, and Cailet was too polite not to listen when he told her about it. As a grown woman, she had every right to order him to shut up; as a grown man, he had no right to take offense. As Mage Captal, she could decide what was worth hearing and what wasn’t, and let people know it in no uncertain terms. But as herself, scarcely out of childhood, she had yet too much respect for her elders of both sexes to tell any of them to go away and leave her alone. And Collan Rosvenir was the very last man on Lenfell to bend his head in submission to any woman’s command—even Sarra’s.
“Cailet? Are you hiding in there again?”
A childish denial sprang to her lips—“I’m not hiding!” She bit it back. She didn’t lower the Wards; Sarra invariably just ignored them. Cailet wasn’t sure if it was determination that got her through, or if family were immune to family-cast spells. But she didn’t have the nerve to make the Wards Sarra-proof. She could have; the knowledge was in her. Saints, so easy, even though she still didn’t understand how it all worked. Did knowledge really count if you’d never really learned it?
“Come in, Sarra,” she said, and sat up.
Even though she was now quite visibly pregnant, Sarra’s movements were as graceful as ever. She walked to a nearby chair and sank into its green velvet depths with a sigh. Cailet knew immediately that for once she hadn’t spent the day in meetings: her clothes were too casual, wide-legged black silk trousers and a loose matching tunic embroidered with a rainbow of tiny flowers. Sarra’s clothes were always elegant, her hair was always tidy, and she always looked beautiful—even pregnant. Sarra did everything with grace and style. Sarra was, in fact, perfect. And for this, for just an instant, Cailet cordially detested her. The next moment, though, she smiled. Had Sarra really been perfect, Collan would never have married her.
Sarra smiled back. “Have you thought any more about what I said?”
“No,” Cailet replied with a deliberately cheerful grin.
“You don’t even know which idea I’m talking about!”
“And I don’t want to know either. Whatever it is, right now I’m not interested. I think—” She broke off as Sarra turned slightly green. “Are you all right?”
