by Melanie Rawn
The fire in the Flametower had been built up at sunset, as always. Someone would come at dawn to replenish it for the day. It had been thus for a very long time now. He’d lit these flames himself from a torch carried back from his father’s funeral pyre.
The day Zehava died, his fire was allowed to burn out. Rohan’s mother and sister had cleansed this room with their own hands. Incredibly, Andrade had helped them. That same day, Rohan had killed his first, last, and only dragon, the one that had killed his father. That day, too, he had seen Sioned for the first time. And the next morning, just after dawn, he had climbed the spiral stairs to find fresh kindling stacked and waiting. His fire had burned here for nearly forty years.
He walked slowly around the outer edge of the room, close to the windows, remembering. He’d come here often as a little boy, needing a high, light-filled place to be alone—or needing only to gaze out at the land he loved. In this room he had seen Sioned’s face for the first time, conjured in Fire by Andrade. From here he had watched princes arrive at his command in 70S, come to acknowledge him as High Prince. He smiled suddenly—over on the floor was an inkstain from a bottle spilled by Chay during that wild dragon-counting of 719.
But foremost in his mind was the single morning of his life when no fire had burned here at all. The day after his father’s death; the day of the battle with the dragon. Lack of sleep, the panic of Tobin’s joining with the faradh’im, and the exhaustion of that long walk back from the pyre had made his grip on the torch shaky at best. It had suddenly felt much too heavy, and he’d had an irrational fear that he would drop it or its flame would die. That morning the floor, walls, and ceiling had been scrubbed to gleaming whiteness. The window arches had been cleaned of soot accumulated during his father’s long reign, and the sleeping dragons carved at the point of each window had seemed ready to stir to life, lift their wings, and fly.
The dragons were black again. He ran a finger over the wall, felt the gritty residue of his own long fire. Sighing, he wiped his fingertip on his trousers and wedged himself into one of the windows, spine against the stone. Out beyond Stronghold was the Desert; where he sat, the night breeze met the fire’s heat and the scents were oddly the same, fierce and wild. He closed his eyes and breathed of his princedom.
I am afraid.
Always better to admit it than to pretend otherwise. Lately his actions—or lack of them, Pol would say—had felt . . . not wrong, but as if there was something out of balance. Radzyn had been a disaster. That the keep still stood was no work of his. Remagev had been no better. He knew the Desert would not betray him, would do his killing for him. But the Long Sand required time, and though Sunrunners had reported no immediate march on Stronghold yet, he could feel Vellanti footfalls like the thud of his own heart.
What have I done wrong? Where am I failing, that my people die and my lands are beneath enemy boots? That the failure was his was a thing he never questioned. He was High Prince. That made it his fault.
Yet through all of it—and even because of some of it—there was Pol. The Goddess’ recompense for finally learning not to play people like chess pieces? Pol’s existence wasn’t simple chance. Rohan didn’t believe in chance.
Neither did he believe in flying against the storm. You waited it out, or died with shredded wings. Any hatchling dragon knew that. His own wings were a little battered. His own fault; he should have learned sooner.
In his youth, in the first rush of arrogant determination, he had sought to mold people and events to his own ends. Not because it amused him; not because he enjoyed the flex of power. He knew his ways were better. He had faith in himself and his goals. But there had been no patience, no understanding. And greater than his belief in the Tightness of what he wanted was his belief in his own cleverness.
He’d played princesses off against each other, kept everyone guessing, pretended to be a callow idiot. He’d bought off the Merida one year and crushed them in battle the next. He’d thought he could control events—and ended up at their mercy.
Roelstra’s hunger for his death had increased tenfold after Rohan had made a fool of him. Ianthe’s vengeance had been for pride’s sake, too, as well as power’s. The Merida had become even more poisonous, reasoning that if they could not regain the Desert, they would gain Cunaxa through Miyon and come to power as lawful princes. The diarmadh’im had been able to murder Andrade because Rohan had not murdered the pretender to Princemarch at once, as he should have. They had nearly murdered Pol because Rohan had waited too long.
Yet he had come to believe that things happened as they were meant to, for reasons he might or might not understand. Events played out until there was only one correct, necessary action. When all had come down to the pretender’s life or Maarken’s, the knives had been in Rohan’s fingers before he even had to think about them. By the time they were embedded in the pretender’s throat, the time for thought had passed. In Pol’s battle against his own half-brother, Rohan’s interference would have been utterly wrong. Pol had to prove himself to himself—and to everyone who had ever doubted him.
Rohan supposed that in many ways he had ruthlessly used challenges to Pol’s claim in order to strengthen that claim. Using people was nothing new to him—but only to do for him what their own natures led them to do anyway. At least he didn’t manipulate people, didn’t bend souls awry to his own ends. That had been the lesson of his first Rialla, when he’d ended up loathing himself and nearly losing Sioned. He’d learned to use the strengths and selfishnesses of other princes to gain what he wanted. He justified himself with what Chay had told him years ago: “You have the courage of your dreams—when most of us don’t even know how to dream.” He told himself he was teaching the others how—ah, but only when their dreams coincided with his.
He’d explained himself to Pol as best he knew how—but Pol’s instincts were different. The irony was that the usual complaint of younger generation to elder, the complaint he’d had about his own father—“You don’t understand me!”—was in this case turned on its tail. Rohan understood Pol perfectly. It was the son who did not comprehend the father.
I’ve done what I thought was right. I was put into this place and decided better me than someone who doesn’t know himself for the barbarian he is. It was a supreme arrogance—but I could do none other. I’ve ruled by laws and broken only a few of them—for which I’ve paid dearly in my own heart blood.
But Pol saw patience as indecision, and waiting as cowardice.
Rohan felt salt sweat sting his eyes, tasted it on his lips. A sudden gust through the window dried the moisture on his face and neck to chill pinpricks, while the fire burned hotter in response to the wind. When brightness flared against his closed eyelids, he turned his face to the night. Strongly as his fire might blaze now, one day it would go out. Pol’s would replace it. Pol, who was impatience and quickness and action and three kinds of power personified.
A creature of instinct. Thus far, gut reactions had served him reasonably well. He was alive—quite an accomplishment, considering some of the events in a life not half over. But instinct was not enough. Any savage could lash out at a threat to survival; any animal preserved its own life at almost any cost.
Rohan believed with all his soul that to act on sheer instinct without knowledge was folly. It was the mark of the barbarian, the triumph of belly over brain. Yet to know and act, but not to understand the consequences, could be worse. One must wait for alternatives to develop, then choose which action to take. Sometimes there was only one, and life resolved itself into the simplest possible choices. Sometimes there were many, and he had to trust himself to pick the right one. Or at least the one he could live with.
Pol saw his ways as an invitation for events to force him into a corner. For all the sobering experience of learning his Sunrunner and sorcerer powers, Pol still didn’t understand that power of any kind was to be used as little as possible. There were two reasons for that. The first was outward perception: when others saw
that there was no other choice, they were unthreatened by power when it was finally used. The second was a far graver reason. The more one used power, the more one wished to use it—until it ended by using the user.
Look at Andry—setting himself up as a prince, thinking that he’s the one making the decisions. His power is doing it for him. He understands even less than Pol.
It was their peculiar tragedy that in standing as rival to Pol, Andry would be Pol’s most stringent lesson.
As Roelstra was mine. He, too, was trapped by his power—by what he could do as opposed to what he should do. He began a war simply because he could. Power wasn’t his tool, it was his master. He hoped for Tobin’s sake, and Chay’s and Maarken’s—and especially Andry’s—that Pol would learn that without the Lord of Goddess Keep as disastrous example.
And yet . . . if Pol wasn’t already aware of it, Rohan had failed. He was High Prince, responsible for what the next High Prince would be and do and become. What manner of light would shine when Pol’s fire burned here?
He must trust the past to protect the future, trust Pol’s training and experiences and nature. But this future was unlike anything Rohan and Sioned had envisioned. He stared out at the Desert night, telling himself that he could hardly be blamed for failing Pol simply because he was not prescient.
When the torches appeared in the Desert, hundreds of them like fatal golden flowers converging on Stronghold from west and south and east, he nodded quietly, unsurprised. This, at least, he had expected. This choice had been coming for a long time now. He was done with waiting and with patience. Now he would fight because he must, use power because he must.
Picking his way through the maze of sleepers on the floor of the Great Hall, he awakened no one—not even when he lifted his long-unused sword from its place on the wall near the dragon tapestry. It felt curiously light, as if all the blood that had weighted it down years ago had sheened away.
• • •
By morning everyone knew that the Vellanti army was camped outside in daunting numbers. From Faolain Lowland and Radzyn and Remagev they’d come, now under the single flag of the lightning bolt, more than two thousand of them.
“They can attack and keep on attacking,” Hollis said worriedly, but Chay wore a tight grin.
“And spend themselves against the walls until there aren’t any of them left. Why do you think they called this place ‘Stronghold’?”
Maarken nodded. “Judging by the preliminary count, I estimate five to seven days before they’re down to a force we can defeat in pitched battle.”
“I don’t know that I care to wait that long,” Rohan commented mildly, earning himself a stare from his son.
Meath exchanged a glance with Sioned and murmured, “It’s when the dragon’s roar is softest that he’s most dangerous.”
“Noticed that through the years, have you?” she replied. “My lord,” she went on, addressing him not as his wife and princess but as his Sunrunner, “tell us the when and the how, and we’ll be ready.”
Rohan nodded. “Maarken, as Battle Commander, you are excused from their working. Sioned, you’ll have Meath, Hollis, Morwenna, and Relnaya to work with. Pol, what part you take in this is up to you.”
“Whatever you wish, your grace,” said the next High Prince.
Rohan inclined his head in acknowledgment—both of his son’s submission to his will and of the circumstances that had prompted it. “Maarken, I’ll expect plans of attack and defense by this evening, taking into account all the means at our disposal.”
“Rather formidable means,” Chay observed.
“Yes,” Rohan said. “We won’t be using their fear of dragons against them—at least, not as our primary weapon, as at Lowland. I don’t want these people fleeing for their lives. I don’t want them to survive and try again.”
Maarken nodded his understanding and agreement.
“I have only two requests,” he continued. “First, that you give Walvis and Daniv commands of their own, but place someone cool-headed with each. Grief breeds the need for vengeance, but I don’t want either of them endangered by that need. Second, that you treat my other squire, Isriam, as yours.”
“My squires, too,” Pol put in. “Jihan has plagued Kierun long enough, and he and Dannar will be more use to you than to me right now.”
“Accepted with thanks,” Maarken told them with a slight bow. “I’ll make this room my headquarters, if that’s all right.”
“Perfectly.” Rohan stood, paused to study their faces. “It’s always been one of my principles that I should never do myself what someone else can do for me better and faster.” He let a smile touch his mouth. “Therefore, I leave you to do all the work while I go take my ease on this splendid morning.”
When the door of the Summer Room shut behind him, Chay snorted derisively. “Listening to him, you’d think any idiot could be High Prince.”
“Many idiots have,” Meath remarked.
“As if all it took was a group of admittedly brilliant people to advise him,” Chay went on. “As if he’s not going to examine everything we present to him tonight with one of those lenses of his—and then make every single decision himself.”
Sioned chuckled. “Tell me something new. Hollis, if Dannar’s still out in the hall, would you have him bring Myrdal here, please? There’s more than one way into and out of Stronghold—and she’s the only one who knows them all.”
• • •
Rohan frowned slightly at his granddaughter. “I thought you liked having lunch by the grotto. What’s wrong? Why aren’t you eating?”
“It smells like goats,” Jihan said, pointing to the cheese.
“Hardly surprising, as it’s goat cheese. Try some.” He cut a slice off the crumbly round—served on a gold plate because Rislyn liked the glitter of pretty things—and extended it to Jihan.
Her nose wrinkled. “No, thank you.”
“Then have some fruit.”
“I don’t like that kind, Grandsir.”
“At least drink your milk.”
“It smells like goats, too.”
He sighed. “The goat is a noble animal and I’m sure the ones who contributed to our meal would be highly insulted that a princess scorns them. Drink your milk.”
“No.”
“Jihan, you’ve got to eat something.”
She glanced over her shoulder at Rislyn, who had finished her meal and sat on a rock near the little pond, tossing pebbles and singing to herself. Jihan said, “I want to go play now, Grandsir.”
“Eat some fruit first.”
“I don’t want any.”
He put a marsh apple on the blanket in front of her. “Eat some fruit,” he repeated.
Her jaw set and her brows rushed together. He fixed her with a stern gaze, feeling slightly ridiculous. Here he was, a High Prince who had stared down powerful men and women all his life, locked in a battle of wills with a seven-year-old.
“Don’t try to outstubborn me, hatchling,” he said at last. “I’ve got more than fifty winters on you.”
Narrowed blue eyes regarded him in resentful silence for a long moment. Then she picked up the apple and bit into it sulkily.
“Thank you,” he said, feeling a terrible urge to laugh.
“Welcome,” she muttered.
“You can go play now if you like,” he offered when she finished.
“I don’t want to. I want to ride my horse but nobody will let me, except in the courtyard and that’s no fun. Why can’t I go out in the Desert, Grandsir?”
“Because—” He hesitated, then decided that this hatchling was capable of hearing the truth. “Because there are some nasty people out there who’d jump on you like a dragon on a lamb.”
“Oh, I could ride away fast enough so they wouldn’t catch me—just like we rode away from Grandsir Miyon.”
“I don’t think you could outride these people, Jihan.”
“I bet I could,” she challenged.
He
knew brewing mischief when he saw it. “Kneel,” he commanded. She blinked. “I’m the High Prince, and you’ve been ordered to kneel.”
She was so startled that she did as told.
“Now, on your honor as a princess, swear your oath to me.”
“My oath?”
“Yes. Promise to obey the High Prince in all things.”
She gulped. “I—I promise, Grandsir.”
“Not Grandsir. Your grace.”
“I promise, your grace,” she whispered.
“I accept your promise, Princess Jihan. And the first order you will obey is not to ride out into the Desert.” He softened his expression with a smile. “The second is to go play with your sister.”
But she made no move. “Am I your athri now, Grandsir?”
“I suppose you are.”
“But I don’t have a holding.”
Good point; she was a sharp little beastie, no doubt about it. Feeling suddenly whimsical, he said, “Athri means ‘wall lord.’ Your name means ‘noble rose.’ Well, I give you those walls over there, covered in roses—which is appropriate to your name. Jihan, athri of Rosewall.”
She bounced, delight shining in her face. “And I get a ring, too, don’t I? Like your other athr’im? And what about Rislyn?”
He got to his feet. “Wait here. I’ll be right back.”
He returned to find Rislyn wide-eyed at the prospect of being made an athri of the High Prince. He repeated the little ceremony with her, naming her Rislyn of Willow Tree. In Sioned’s collection of gifting jewelry he’d found two rings that would fit the girls, and gave the emerald to Rislyn and the ruby to Jihan.
“Grandsir . . . .” Rislyn gazed in awe at the sparkle of her new ring. “Does this mean that part of Stronghold is ours now?”
“It always was, heartling. AH of it. Now it’s just a little more official.” He was amused and oddly touched that his impulse was so very serious to them. Much too serious for being seven years old. He made them a low bow and they bent heads and knees to him in return—and then he had them. Grown-up solemnity dissolved in giggles as he swept them up in his arms and threatened to dunk them in the grotto pool.
