by Melanie Rawn
Disappointment could not compete with total shock.
“Gentle Goddess, man, don’t you think I knew? I inherited you assassins along with my princedom! If his mother wanted to conceal what she was, she shouldn’t have had the physician cut the cord with a glass knife. Oh, yes, I heard about that. Pity the sweet girl died before I could execute her for tricking me. But, you know, after I thought about it a while, I decided not to kill Birioc. A Merida son isn’t a bad thing to have. It rather binds you to me, doesn’t it?”
“Your grace’s perceptions—”
“—astound you. Yes, I know that, too. Remember, my lord, very little goes on in my princedom that I don’t know. And, as we agreed before, it’s the little things—like my future heir’s bloodlines—that matter. Prepare my escort. I leave at dawn for Dragon’s Rest.”
The Merida effaced himself and hurried from the chamber. Miyon sank into his chair again and stroked the carved armrests. It would be a bitch of a journey, but he had no choice. He had to get out of Cunaxa, separate himself from the Merida and their plots. Kin to the Vellant’im they might be, through some arcane connection, but he would not count them victorious until both Rohan and Pol were dead and Miyon saw them burned before his own eyes.
The Merida thought him trapped into countenancing the invasion and acknowledging Birioc as his heir. He was just as trapped into this trip to Dragon’s Rest. But once there, a gratifying array of options awaited. If the Vellant’im lost, Miyon was covered. If they won, he would deliver Dragon’s Rest into their hands. Whichever, he would siphon off some of Pol’s troops if he could, to retake Cunaxa for him as a good son-by-marriage ought. Should that fail, Miyon would still be in an excellent position. If Pol won, he would play loyal grandsire to the princesses and share the spoils (specifically, the obliteration of the cursed Merida). If Pol lost, Miyon would have Meiglan and her daughters and their claim to Princemarch under his thumb.
His only difficulty was deciding which he most wanted to lose this war: the Merida, who had been a dead weight around his neck all his reign, or Rohan and Pol. A pretty problem—and highly amusing to let the Merida think he favored them while he convinced Meiglan he was committed to Pol. He would choose which to betray once the smell of victory was in the wind for one side or the other. He would decide at leisure, safely ensconced at Dragon’s Rest.
• • •
Tallain arrived at Tuath Castle before dawn. But it seemed the sun had already risen, and not from the eastern sea. The red-gold glow came from the north. Tuath was in flames.
Only the memory of Sionell’s comment about his cooler head kept him from leading a charge over the last rocky hills. His scouts reported grim news: though the castle had not fallen and the gates were still secure, an unheard-of night assault had caught Jahnavi by surprise. Not sleeping—he had been up on the walls, fretting away the time until dawn when he would sweep out of his holding and attack. The battle was over and the Merida commanded the flat plain on three sides of the keep and it wasn’t even dawn.
Tallain swung down off his horse—Zadal, a golden Dragon’s Rest breed Pol had given him—and paced the stony defile while his troops waited him out. There wasn’t much time, and not nearly enough soldiers. The scouts had reported heavy casualties among the Tuathi in defense of their castle. Fully half Jahnavi’s warriors lay dead or dying in blood-soaked sand, being stripped of swords and other valuables. The scavenging Merida would be easy enough to slaughter. Tallain was looking forward to it. But if Tuath was well and truly ablaze in this climate that leached water from stone, his main task would not be fighting but rescue. And the Cunaxan regulars would arrive soon.
He sucked in a breath as raucous shouts signaled the start of the Merida celebration. Swinging around on his heel, he strode back to his small army.
“They’re congratulating themselves,” he said tightly. “Not for long.”
One of the women stroked the hilt of her sword thoughtfully. “Begging your pardon, my lord, but aren’t there more on the way? I’m all for butchering this herd, but we shouldn’t waste our edge.”
Before Tallain could answer, a man standing nearby cleared his throat. “Lord Jahnavi may take some persuading to give us charge of the main battle. The rest of you are too young to recall that time, but I was with Lord Walvis back in 704 and the son is just like the father.”
Tallain snorted. “You don’t need to tell me about stubborn. I sleep with the daughter.”
Bracing laughter greeted this remark. Though Tallain had not intended to be funny, he grinned too. Swinging back up into the saddle, he stroked the sleek sweating neck of his horse and raised one arm high to urge his troops forward. They rode from the defile and around an outcropping of varicolored sandstone, readying themselves to sweep down onto the battlefield like dragons on a flock of sheep. A freshening gust from the north stung smoke into Tallain’s eyes and he tightened his hold on the reins as the stallion began to tremble.
“Just a little while,” he crooned softly, and an ear tipped in white swiveled back to listen. “Just be patient—”
The wind swept down on Tuath as if a living thing hungry for flames. The firestorm nearly blew the castle apart stone from stone. Tallain heard faraway screams as wooden buildings within the keep exploded into flame. Heat seared his face even at this distance; the roar of fire was unimaginable. Rising twice and thrice the height of a dragon above the walls, sheets of fire were flung toward the sky, ripped by the sudden wind. It was as if the Storm God had exhaled a burning breath, igniting the very stones.
The Merida fled as the gates burst apart and gushed fire. Frenzied animals darted forth; their backs ablaze, there was no escape in running. Horses thundered past, trailing manes and tails of flame like some faradhi conjuring. As the wind flared once more, the stench of charred flesh smote Tallain in the face and he nearly vomited.
Nothing could survive that Hell. The Merida who had caused it were out of his reach, galloping to join their Cunaxan fellows still on the march. He wiped his streaming eyes and tasted smoke on his tongue.
“We’ll—we’ll look for survivors,” he managed, and no one dared say the obvious: no one had survived. Tallain led his people slowly across the plain, detailing some to gather corpses for a pyre to honor them.
Tuath burned quickly. By midmorning there was no fuel sufficient to feed those ravening flames, and they wavered down below the line of the walls. By dusk Tallain could enter the smoking ruin. Leaving his horse outside, he walked through the courtyard, heat rising up through the soles of his boots. He had no way of knowing if beneath the scorched litter of planks and stones were corpses he might recognize. No—he would see no familiar faces here. On the bodies lying free of the rubble there were no faces at all.
He heard a child crying and tore his way through the blackened remains of a stout wooden door, down a stone staircase to a wine cellar. The little girl lay trapped beneath a dead woman, protected by voluminous silk skirts from the smoke that had killed her savior. Tallain freed the child, who wept louder and threw a stranglehold around his neck.
“There may be others still alive,” Tallain said to the archers who had come with him. “Those familiar with Tuath can organize the search. But be careful—things are likely to collapse on top of you.” He stroked the girl’s dark hair, stinking and greasy with smoke. “It’s all right, little one. You’re safe now.”
Back upstairs, he tried to hand her to one of his women soldiers but she would not be budged. Tallain shrugged and let her be. She was no weight at all—and it was a pathetic grace in the midst of this horror to feel her warm, living body against his chest, her soft breath against his neck.
“My lord? We’ve found them.”
Tallain froze. “Alive?”
“Lady Rabisa and the children, yes.”
“Jahnavi?” His voice caught on the name.
The man lowered his gaze to the ground.
Tallain pried the little girl’s arms from around his neck. She gave a p
iteous cry and reached for him as he gave her over to the soldier. “I’ll come back,” he promised absently, “don’t be afraid.”
The main tower was at the northernmost angle of Tuath. Winds bringing the sudden firestorm had come from that direction, and the flames had been blown away from the tower for the most part. The lower floors and all walls but the northern one were blackened, but the upper chambers were largely untouched. Gusts of fresh hot air off the Desert had kept the smoke away.
Jahnavi lay on his own bed, his wife and two small children keeping watch. He was covered to the neck by a silken quilt stitched in an alternating blue and orange pattern, Tuath’s colors, bordered with the blue and white of Remagev to which he had been heir. The strip of blue silk above his heart was matted to his body by blood. His face was pale and solemn, with a slight frown between his brows, as if trying to understand why he was lying here when there was a battle to be fought. Tallain swallowed hard. Sionell’s hair curled back from her brow just that way; had Jahnavi’s eyes been open, they would have been the same clear blue as hers.
Tallain knelt beside Rabisa and took her hand. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “Rabisa, I’m so sorry—”
Black-haired and blue-eyed, she was a dainty little thing built along the same lines as Tobin. She gazed down at him dry-eyed, shifting her two-year-old son on her lap. “There’s not a mark on him, but for the Merida arrow,” she said softly. “I had them save it, to light the fire with. I’m glad you came to honor him, Tallain. He was so fond of you. He admires you so much.”
The switch in tenses from past to present unnerved him. Gently he said, “Rabisa, perhaps you’d like to come to Tiglath with me. Sionell will want to see you and the children.”
“Thank you, but no,” she replied calmly. “I must stay here. He’d want me to. And he’ll need me to help him arm when he rides out tomorrow.” She slid her son from her lap as if she had forgotten who he was, and went to a nearby chair where someone had left Jahnavi’s sword and battle harness.
A hand touched his shoulder. He glanced at it—livid with burns, trembling. Turning, he looked up at Tuath’s elderly chief steward. Tears had cut pale pathways through the soot on her cheeks.
“She’s been like this since they brought my lord home,” the woman whispered. “Sun and shadow.”
A north Desert phrase for the shock of any wound. Tallain nodded. “Get her and the children downstairs as soon as you can. The Cunaxans will be here any time now. We’ve got to hurry.”
“Poor hatchlings,” she said, gathering Jeren up into her arms. Siona, just four winters old, was staring at Tallain with huge gray eyes—Feylin’s eyes, his own son Jahnev’s eyes, all smoke and silver.
Riyan, my old friend, he thought as he caressed Siona’s cheek in gentle reassurance, this will be the finish of the Merida forever. You and I are going to make Cunaxa run red with blood.
• • •
“Gone?” roared Birioc, and lunged to his feet, nearly toppling his personal physician. “How can they be gone? Is Tuath not in flames?”
“It is,” his half-brother Duroth replied shortly. “If you’d rallied your Merida kin instead of counting yourself the victor too soon—”
“Don’t lecture me, boy,” Birioc warned.
“If you’d kept them in line instead of running away like a coward when that fire hit—”
“If you weren’t my brother, I’d show you why the Merida bear that name!”
“A touch of your ‘gentle glass,’ brother? You’re not Father’s heir yet. And may never be, after this disaster.”
“Tuath is mine.” He slapped the physician’s ministering hands away from his injured leg. “Get out!” he snarled, and the man fled the tent.
“Tuath is burning to foundation stones!” Duroth leaned forward. “And what’s more, clever brother, Tallain was here—and got away!”
The sting of the arrow in his leg was forgotten. “He’s a dead man.”
“A charming sentiment, succinctly expressed,” Duroth sneered. “I can’t wait to see you storming the walls of Tiglath. How many does Tallain have there? Two hundred? Three?”
“If he commands five thousand, we’ll still destroy him!” Birioc calmed himself with an effort. “Besides, little brother, those hundreds out there are my own from Castle Pine.”
“And what about Riyan, coming from Skybowl? Rohan might be a hunted dragon now, abandoning threatened caves. But the gathering of dragons to come—” He gave a worried shake of the head. “I don’t like it, Birioc. You don’t corner someone like Rohan.”
“He’s old and feeble. Whatever courage he had is gone.” The half-Merida prince gestured Rohan away with a scornful hand. “He runs instead of fighting. We’ll be in Stronghold by winter’s end.”
“And what about Pol?”
“What about him?” Birioc grinned. “Oh, don’t worry—I’ll give him a very pretty burning. A courtesy between princes.”
Duroth shrugged. “You’d better hope your barbarian kin keep Rohan busy in the south. If Maarken is free to come after you—”
“Me? Don’t you mean ‘us’? You’re in this with me, Duroth, and Zanyr and Ezanto as well. Father might not have chosen among the four of us yet, but when he does—” He bared his teeth in a smile. “Tallain is dead. He just doesn’t know it yet.” And neither do you, brother mine—you and Miyon’s other superfluous sons.
Chapter Twenty-three
Rohan could feel Sioned watching him as he paced their chambers. He was unable to sit still, even less to lie in bed beside her. He could sense her deciding what tactic to adopt, and though part of him was resentful, most of him wanted her to hurry up about it. Fortunate men had wives who knew how to listen; he had one who knew what to say.
At last she broke her meditative silence. “That first winter we were married, your mother told me I was the best possible wife for you. With me, you felt so much that you forgot to think so much. She said you’d always been too aware of yourself. No, don’t give me that look, Rohan, you know what she meant.”
“Perhaps.”
“Don’t equivocate, either. There’s nothing wrong with looking into yourself—just so long as you come back out again.”
He stopped pacing. “Sioned . . . what I’ve tried to be, what I’ve tried to do with my life . . . those things demand self-knowledge.”
“I’m not arguing with that.”
“But you’re saying I’m getting in too deep?”
“It’s possible.”
“For your comfort?”
Sioned’s reply was serene. “You always come back to me, beloved.”
“Then it’s Pol again.”
“You’ve hardly spoken to each other since Remagev.”
“It seemed the more prudent course.”
“He needs you, Rohan. And, quite frankly, you need him.”
“To tell me again that I’m a coward? Thank you, no.”
“He said that?” Her composure wavered.
“He said many things before he stopped saying anything at all.” He began to pace again, caught himself at it, and settled into a chair. “Several of them were rather perceptive. That I internalize conflict, fight it out inside myself, rather than taking the battle to the enemy where Pol feels it belongs.”
“He’s right, you know,” she murmured. “You’ve always done that. I suppose that’s part of what your mother meant.”
He considered this for a time, then burst out, “The only real enemy I ever had was Roelstra. The others have been opponents. There’s a difference. Enemies require hatred. All I ever felt for everyone but Roelstra was—contempt. And annoyance that they take up my time.”
“What about the Vellant’im? They frighten me, Rohan. I can’t think of them as anything but enemies.”
He stared at the silk tapestries on the bedchamber walls—cool blues and greens depicting a forest waterfall and flowers that did not exist. Usually the gentle fantasy delighted him. Tonight it seemed morbidly symbolic of a wo
rld that did not exist. The world he’d tried to make.
“Is it me, Sioned? Is it some freak of my character that makes me think that if we can understand them, why they’re here, then we can find a way to defeat them that costs the fewest lives? I may be fighting this inside myself—but better my heart blood than my people’s.”
“That’s my heart you’re ravaging, beloved,” she said softly. “The heart that belongs to me. When you bleed, so do I.”
“Goddess knows I love you more than my life—I don’t mean to hurt you—”
“Come here to me, my love.” She held open her arms to him and he lay beside her on the bed, wrapped in her embrace. “I wouldn’t change you,” she whispered. “I loved you the instant I saw you and I’ve never stopped. But you’re more than my heart and my life, Rohan. You are my honor, my pride, and my lord. If you’d ever allow it, I’d bend my head and my knees to you in front of the whole world. Not because you’re High Prince and could command it of me—but because you’d never command it.” She smoothed his silvering hair. “Do you remember that first Rialla, when Roelstra’s barge arrived—and everyone was at the dock but you? They’d all bowed or knelt to him—and then you came running up, insolent and innocent all at once—” She chuckled softly. “Cami and I laughed ourselves silly. You never did bow to him. He didn’t dare command it—you’d already made him look a total fool. He should have known then that he’d never win. Not against you.”
He smiled at the memory, youthful satisfaction at his trick stirring even now. “You saw it all?”
“It was worth the rest of that awful Rialla, watching you outsmart him. If I hadn’t already been in love with you, it would have happened the moment you used those big eyes on him. And I told myself, ‘this man is going to be mine.’”
“But he almost won, you know. I got caught up in trying out his tactics, his way of being a prince. Deliberately creating conflict, making others fight just to watch the show—”
