by Melanie Rawn
After Beth bowed to Meiglan and left the room, she reapplied herself to her pretense of reading a book. Conversing with Meiglan was always a trial. She was a sweet girl—but in Tobin’s lexicon that equated with “colossally boring.” She knew she intimidated Meiglan at the best of times, though she had never figured out why. Now her halting speech and the tension of the day made her totally unequal to sustaining even the most rudimentary talk. So she took refuge in a book, lest Meiglan think she required other entertainment and try to engage her in conversation.
The water clock dripped liquid time. The refreshment was served and consumed. The children tired of one game and began another. Meiglan sat in pallid silence, stitching methodically at a tapestry pillow. Tobin strained her ears for the sound of battle, but heard nothing.
• • •
A hell of a good fight, Chay reflected, but if he didn’t rest soon he’d return to Stronghold across his saddle rather than in it. He fought his way to his guards captain, gave over command to him, told Visian to go find Kazander and make himself useful, and declined assistance out of the fray.
“No, my dear,” he grinned at the young woman who had volunteered to be his escort. “You’ll have much more fun without me!”
Fun? he asked himself suddenly as he left the battle and its heat behind him. That’s a thought for a young man, not an old fool like you. But the instincts of war, honed many years ago, had kept him alive. That was their purpose: to preserve his life while his enemies found death at his sword.
Chay glanced back over his shoulder as he rode up the approach to the tunnel, skirting litters bearing the wounded. Maarken’s plan was working, as far as he could tell. It would be slow and many would die, but they’d win.
He scowled suddenly, uncomfortable with the aftermath of a battle fever that felt different from previous wars. Not as clean or light-headed giddy—just sad. When he was the young Battle Commander of the Desert, presiding with Zehava over victory banquets, he’d lifted his wine cup with fierce satisfaction to announcements of how many Merida had died. He turned in his saddle, glancing briefly back at the field. But he didn’t really see the hundreds of Vellanti corpses. What Chay saw instead was the courage and determination of his own people. Sudden as a sword stroke, he knew that this time he would raise his glass to the living. The offering desired by the Goddess was not enemy deaths, but that people could triumph over fear in defense of what they loved.
“My lord! Are you hurt?”
He had ridden right through the tunnel to the outer courtyard without even knowing it. Looking down at Kierun’s frantic face near his stirrup, he shook his head and smiled. “No. But I have a hellish thirst, and the need to ease my ancient bones.”
He swung down off his horse, finding that last comment truer than he’d thought. Another thing about cooling blood after a fight: a young man stretched young muscles and grinned, but an old man was stiff and sore for days. Repressing a wince, he accepted a clay pitcher of water from Kierun, poured half of it down his throat, then dumped the rest over his head to clear the sweat from his hair and face.
“Where’s my wife?” he asked suddenly, adding to himself, She’d better be exactly where I left her.
“I don’t know, my lord. Shall I find her for you?”
“If that stubborn little bitch sneaked out, I’ll—” He grinned at the squire’s shocked expression. “Never mind, Kierun. I’ll go find her myself.”
• • •
It was Jeni’s turn next to bring news, with the excuse of gathering used dishes. Typical of Meiglan, Tobin thought, not to find this unusual, that someone came to serve her needs even with a battle raging outside. A kinder part of her chided the sharpness; Meiglan wasn’t meant for this kind of day.
“Lord Walvis took a leg wound and is out of the fighting,” the girl whispered. “Lady Feylin is binding it now—and I don’t think she’d be scolding him half so much if it was serious. And Prince Rohan wrenched his shoulder again, so he’s returned as well.”
“Too old for such nonsense anyway,” Tobin muttered.
“Not according to their men, my lady.” Jeni hesitated. “I’ve had the oddest feeling. It doesn’t make any sense. It’s as if somebody’s touching me, but not touching me.”
“In sunlight?”
Gray eyes the color of smoke-stained pearls went wide. “How did you know?”
Alasen’s daughter—and Ostvel’s, Tobin thought. It would take too long to explain. “Stay in shade,” she ordered, her good hand gripping the girl’s arm for emphasis. “Sioned . . . is powerful.”
Tobren noticed their conversation and asked, “Can’t we go see what’s happening? I could help with the wounded or—”
Shaking her head, Jeni told her, “I’m sorry. I know it must be dreadful to be cooped up in here, but believe me, you’d get trampled outside in the courtyard. I’d better get back now.”
The child looked rebellious, then shrugged. Tobin watched Jeni leave, then said to her granddaughter, “My eyes are tired. Read to me, please?”
That kept her occupied and out of mischief while Tobin closed her eyes, pretending to listen. She remembered the first time she’d been caught up in a faradhi working—the night of her father’s ritual. Sunrunners had spread moonlight over the whole continent; she had gone with them, untrained as she was, and only Sioned had been able to bring her back whole. There had been other times when power had entangled her, but clearest in her mind was Sioned’s first attempt at what she and the other Sunrunners were doing right now. She felt again her initial fright, then absolute trust, then the outpouring of everything she was in response to Sioned’s need. There had been thin starlight and strange, distorted impressions of a fiery translucent dome, and a ringing like a gigantic silver bell. She learned later that the sound had come from a knife hitting Sioned’s starfire weaving.
A knife. Worked metal. Steel. Specifically, iron ore smelted with other metals to make it strong, rustproof, gleaming. Iron that poisoned Sunrunners, that had slashed into the ros’salath Pol had tried to use as protection at Radzyn, that had disrupted his work with sharp pain.
There had been no such hurt that night. The knife had clanged harmlessly against Sioned’s woven dome. Tobin heard it again in memory, clear and fine. She remembered Sioned’s overpowering will, the raw force that was Pol, the other Sunrunners caught up in the working—Andrade, Urival, Pandsala—
Pol. Urival. Pandsala. Diarmadh’im who were resistant to iron, though not immune to its effects.
There had been no effects that night.
Her mind seemed to ignite. She ruthlessly ordered the rush of thought into coherence. Pandsala had been pure diarmadhi. Not a hint of sickness ever came to her when crossing water. Urival had been a half-breed, possessing both kinds of power. So did Pol. In theory, they had inherited the sorcerers’ resistance to iron. But Pandsala, the purebred, had died of a steel knife in her leg—no! She’d died of poison, Merida poison—not iron. The knife might have hurt, but it hadn’t killed her. Nine years ago, Mireva, who had raised Ianthe’s other sons, had projected a conjuring at a distance of fifty measures with steel wires piercing her flesh. Whatever pain there had been, it hadn’t crippled her.
Yet that night of Roelstra’s death there had been no pain when iron struck the weaving of starfire.
Had Pandsala, caught in Sioned’s power, been their protection? Not by herself, Tobin guessed, recalling the others who had been there. Urival had lent added strength; Pol, day-old infant though he’d been, had provided the last link. The Star Scroll specified workings of three—and those three diarmadh’im had been part of Sioned’s weaving.
She had only two of them to bolster her work today, Pol and Morwenna—both of whom were also Sunrunners, with a Sunrunner’s fatal vulnerability to iron. Maarken was protecting them as best he could, by using part of the army to keep steel from their woven dome. But if there could be a third sorcerer involved in the working, would they be completely protected from any assault
by iron?
The presence of Riyan or his wife Ruala—both of diarmadhi blood—would have proved Tobin’s idea one way or the other. But he was leading his troops to meet Tallain against the Merida, and she was far away at Skybowl. Still—Sioned had amassed the powers of Sunrunners and sorcerers hundreds of measures away on the night of Roelstra’s death. Jeni had sensed the pull of power today; could Sioned expand her range, draw in Ruala, and gain virtual omnipotence?
“Tobren!” she interrupted, and her namesake started with surprise. “Find Rohan. Bring him here.”
“But I don’t know where he is, Granddam.”
Meiglan looked up from her sewing. “What is it, your highness?”
Nothing you’d understand, she thought impatiently. “I—I want—f-find—” Speech chose exactly the wrong time to desert her. She slammed her cane down on a nearby footstool, incoherent with frustration. Damn the sun for not moving more quickly, for trapping her.
Jihan abandoned the game she was playing with her sister. “What do you need, Aunt Tobin?”
“She wants me to find the High Prince,” Tobren said, puzzled and alarmed by her grandmother’s urgency.
“I’ll do it!” Jihan leaped to her feet. And before Tobin could work a protest around her tongue, she had raced from the room.
Into the sunlight.
“Jihan!” she cried. “Meiglan, st-stop her!”
There was no mistaking the panic in her voice. Meiglan’s huge eyes were dark smudges in her blanched face. Rislyn, just as pale, called her sister’s name and ran after her. Tobren followed at her heels.
Tobin dug her cane into the rug, staggering to her feet. “No—” she moaned, aware that all three of them were now in danger because of her.
• • •
Morwenna had never suspected what she was until, on the long journey to Stronghold in 724, Urival had explained it to her. The shock had been eased by his revelation that he was another such as she, with Sunrunner and sorcerer blood both. “We are uniquely qualified to teach Pol,” he’d said over a campfire on the shores of Lake Kadar. His explanation of how Rohan’s heir had come to possess diarmadhi blood, and thus why they must be especially painstaking in his education, had left her thunderstruck. They had never spoken of it again—and, indeed, she had never revealed to anyone that she knew. But as Sioned wove the six Sunrunners together, Pol felt familiar and the faradh’im felt strange, and it was like learning about herself and him all over again.
She saw a hand wearing the ring of Princemarch extend toward her, and laced her fingers easily with his. It was more difficult to clasp the other hand held out to her, the one wearing Sunrunner’s rings as her own did. The strength of her shared grip with Pol was astonishing; the touch of Relnaya’s fingers was barely discernible.
The images had been suggested by Pol during their long discussion of this technique. Sioned had listened, shrugged her shoulders, and told them that if it helped, they could visualize anything they liked—just so long as their power was accessible to her without hindrance. Relnaya had been taken aback by the whole operation, having only five rings and not being accustomed to Sioned’s ways. But she was a Sunrunner and High Princess; he obeyed. Morwenna consciously tightened her grasp on his hand to bring him more deeply into the working, so that he would continue to obey. She didn’t fear a wavering of loyalty—but Sioned in full flight, as it were, could be awesome.
At her direction, they hovered in readiness and waited for Kazander to carve off a section of Vellanti troops. It was an outrageous thing to be so peripherally aware of oneself, to merge one’s colors into a gleaming wholeness, nearly blind but for what Sioned chose to see, and subordinate in all things to her strength. Morwenna’s own awe of the woman had source in her youth; she had been a Sunrunner of two rings and seventeen winters when Sioned was summoned to the Desert to marry a prince. An astounding thing, never before done—Morwenna had known Sioned was skilled, but Andrade’s choice of her had staggering implications. Now that Morwenna had lived at Stronghold for a dozen years, reverence had been tempered by fondness and shared purpose. But when Sioned functioned solely as a faradhi, Morwenna could only offer in all humility her own gifts for her use. Not even Andrade had inspired that.
Yet there was a portion of her that Sioned could not use to its fullest. It allowed her, after a time, to see with her own eyes. She watched the battle within the gleaming shell of sunfire, and the fierce struggle going on without to keep Vellanti swords and arrows from getting within reach. She felt it when some got through, and the pain startled her, but it wasn’t the rending agony she’d been led to believe. Meath had described what it had been like to get hit by a steel arrowhead while conjuring—but the metal had been in his flesh, not in a structure woven of his mind. Morwenna felt the shock, gritted her teeth the way one did during a muscle spasm or an attack of joint stiffness, and went on with her work.
The dome shifted to encase another small and deadly battle. There was relief from the sting of iron for a time, but as Morwenna watched the outer conflict she saw a group of Vellant’im break free and hurtle toward their besieged comrades. Young Prince Daniv’s troops pursued, their swords like silver feathers fluttering on the wind, running scarlet. They would not intercept the enemy in time. Without knowing quite what or how she did it, Morwenna repositioned herself directly in the path of the oncoming warriors. She sensed startled outrage and imperious command from Sioned, and ignored her.
When the steel struck, Morwenna cried out, a silent howl of agony. But she held firm, she must hold her part of the weaving steady, she must spare the vulnerable Sunrunners from shattering by iron. She understood Meath’s experience now, for it was as if those swords slashed her body to ribbons. Her mind began to fragment, her colors to grow dim and brittle.
And then the pain eased, subsided entirely. It was several moments before she could see again, yet she knew what she’d find. Daniv had pounced on the Vellant’im, and they had more urgent use now for their swords.
The sun felt stronger as the day wore on toward noon—that was Morwenna’s only clue to time. She felt little weariness, thanks to the dranath she and Meath had taken in wine at dawn—secretly, and wary of Sioned’s finding out. Maarken’s tactic worked over and over, and now that Morwenna knew how to protect the other Sunrunners, she loosened the diarmadhi part of herself from the weaving and concentrated on defense. The stab of iron was at times a mere pinprick, at times hideous, but she endured.
There was an abrupt shift in Sioned’s tactics, a reordering of her stance. Morwenna and the others were drawn in tighter—not in terms of their powers, but in the working’s physical distance from Stronghold. The change told Morwenna that Maarken had begun the maneuver designed to drive the Vellant’im up the canyon toward the keep. Out of range of iron, she relaxed, almost drifting as the pain vanished entirely. Sioned had comprehended by this time what she’d been doing, and positioned her and Pol accordingly—smack in the middle of the road leading to Stronghold. Morwenna sensed an apology circle quietly through the weary Sunrunners, and smiled. Sioned would use them until they dropped—but she asked nothing of them she didn’t demand of herself. The difference, perhaps, between her and Andrade.
• • •
Maarken had spent the morning fighting two battles: one against the swords wielded by Vellanti warriors, and the other against the sunlight wielded by Sioned. She had warned him that he might be caught up in the weaving if he wasn’t careful. Pol had shared a trick or two for keeping other Sunrunners away—without saying how he’d learned them, but there was only one Sunrunner Pol could possibly wish to avoid at all costs. Maarken figured if such things worked on his powerful little brother, then they would keep him from being snared by this working.
But he hadn’t counted on Sioned’s ability to take power wherever it presented itself. There’d been many frenzied moments when the force of her mind sought his while he was in the middle of defending himself against enemy attack. Rohan would have characte
rized it in his mild, amused way as being one Hell of a confusing morning.
Even so, it was all going pretty much as planned. Sometimes the Vellant’im broke through a protective ring of Desert troops and assaulted the weaving, but that never lasted long. Three and then five and then eight lumps of dead enemy warriors scattered the sandy plain. Maarken rejoiced in the decrease of their numbers and ordered his culminating stroke.
Harassing the rear guard to maneuver an enemy army to a desired location was a tactic hoary with age. Splitting one’s main force so the advancing troops had somewhere to go was slightly less ancient. But Maarken had an advantage in the structure of the castle behind him. He planned to herd the Vellant’im into the canyon where archers could pick them off even as his soldiers closed in behind them to cut off their escape. Much the same thing had been done at Dragon’s Rest nine years before. The river course leading into the valley provided a like bottleneck.
He’d felt fairly confident that the wooden frames with their stone-throwing arms would not be used. The actual walls of the castle were out of range, for one thing—and for another, the Vellant’im had destroyed no Desert keeps and he very much doubted they’d start with Stronghold. Yet as he guided his careful plan to fruition, he glimpsed one of the machines being cranked into readiness.
For a moment his jaw sagged open against the chinstrap of his helm. What were they doing? The flow of the battle was now such that any stones directed at the Desert army would also rain down on Vellanti warriors.
Maarken shrugged at enemy insanity and returned his attention to the fray. He hoped Sioned would know that it was time. The opening moves were well underway when the tug he’d been fighting was suddenly gone. He staggered mentally, as if he’d been straining to hold up a stone wall that simply wasn’t there anymore. The shock nearly overbalanced him physically and he missed his stroke at a man with what seemed like a hundred gold beads decorating the thick black hairs of his beard.
A Radzyn veteran parried the Vellanti’s eager thrust toward Maarken’s vitals. Gasping out thanks, he reined his warhorse around and fought his way to the rise of a sand dune, where he could be relatively safe from harm. There, despite all cautions to the contrary, he wove the few rays of sunlight that penetrated the roiling dust of battle and surveyed the field.
