by Melanie Rawn
Chay beat her to it. Striding up to his wife, he picked her up and carried her to the Great Hall—protesting vehemently all the way, of course—with young Kierun following to escort Tobin through the passage. Myrdal grunted her satisfaction and turned her attention elsewhere.
The wounded were taken across the courtyard, scores of them carried on litters or helped by more ambulatory companions. Myrdal saw Dannar run up to Feylin, question her, and head for the gardens with something she gave him from her coffer of medicines. Myrdal caught her attention, waving her over.
“What did the boy want?”
“Pain killer. That old wound in Rohan’s shoulder took a hell of a beating this morning.”
The last she’d seen him, he’d been rubbing his left arm, not his right. “Get up front and send Beth back to close the passage. The rest of us will leave by the grotto.”
Feylin glanced around. “Remagev was difficult enough,” she murmured. “I never thought I’d see this.”
“This is my doing, not Rohan’s.”
“I’d like to hear you convince him of that.” She strode away, calling for one of the pages to carry her medical case.
With the departure of the wounded, the inner ward was eerily quiet and empty. Myrdal shivered. Only once before had Stronghold felt so hollow, during that long summer and autumn when Sioned had paced the silent stones and waited for Ianthe to give birth at Feruche. Then, they’d only been marking time before everyone returned. Myrdal wondered if there would be a Stronghold to return to.
Zehava would never have left the castle he’d killed thousands to possess; the home Milar had civilized and made gracious; the place where his children had been conceived and born. Would he blame Rohan for failure? Was his spirit now cursing his only son?
Myrdal glanced up at the sky. The responsibility was mine, as you charged me in his childhood: keep him safe, she said to the tall, black-haired ghost of her kinsman. He did everything possible. Could you have done more? Could anyone?
There was no answer—not that she had expected one.
• • •
Maarken became aware of Isriam’s strong arm keeping him upright—more or less—in his saddle. The young man held an arrow in his other hand, its tip coated in blood.
“What in all Hells—?” he managed, sick and dizzy but no longer in pain. The he realized that the blood was his, and what Isriam had done by tugging that arrow from his flesh. Shaken, he gripped the young man’s shoulder. “Thank you. More than you can know.” Confusion glimmered in the brown eyes; Maarken didn’t have time to enlighten him. The sight of Pol fighting at the rear of the Vellanti army while that huge banner advanced on him flared in his memory, and he said swiftly, “Take fifty warriors and go to Pol’s aid. Hurry.”
Isriam’s jaw set in fury. He threw down the arrow and spurred his horse, shouting, “To me, for Prince Pol!” as he went. Maarken glanced briefly at the bleeding hole in his sword arm and swore luridly. His wrist had been giving him trouble since noon, wrapped in supporting bandages though it was. Now he was unable to fight at all. Yet he had to lead his main force back to Stronghold, defend its gates, make a path for his army to safety within.
And then? A siege such as had not been known since his grandfather had surrounded Stronghold, trapping the Merida within, starved them out, and slaughtered them as they emerged under a flag of truce. Zehava had avoided blame for this gross dishonor by claiming he had been at dinner, hadn’t seen the flag, and overzealous warriors had acted without his approval. Maarken had always known what a lie that was—for Zehava’s troops had been very careful to keep the chief Merida lord alive. His name, scrawled unsteadily at the bottom of the parchment, had given the title to the Treaty of Linse. He’d lived long enough to sign in High Prince Roelstra’s presence, then succumbed to an “accident” on the way to exile in Cunaxa.
Maarken saw the same thing happening again—only this time it would be his family and his people caged within Stronghold. There would be no surrender. Aid was many hundreds of measures away, across a Meadowlord given over to the enemy and a Syr whose ruling prince was dead. The northern Desert was under siege from the Merida and the whole Cunaxan army. Everyone within Stronghold would die before help came. All the warriors of Radzyn and Remagev and Stronghold itself would be pent up, useless but for brief and meaningless skirmishes against the overwhelming host outside.
He made the only decision possible, understanding at last Rohan’s until now incomprehensible theory about how and when to act.
• • •
“He’s pulling half his own forces and the whole right flank away,” Meath said incredulously. “What does he think he’s doing? Trying to make them follow him into the Desert?”
Chay shook his head. “He knows that if he’s locked up in here, he’ll never get out. His best bet is to save enough of his army to lift a siege later on. He’s leaving enough to defend Stronghold until our people get back in and the gates can be closed. It’s exactly what I’d do,” he added.
Sioned nodded numbly. Meath’s back-and-forth Sunrunning had drawn a horrifying picture of what was going on out there. Myrdal had just informed her that all the castlefolk and all the wounded were now fleeing through the passage, carrying with them everything they could. Some of it was useful—food, clothing, blankets; some of it frivolous, compared to lives—books, precious objects, jewels. Betheyn had come back to report that Feylin had gone ahead to lead. Sethric, the Remagev youths, and nearly fifty other mounted soldiers had left through the grotto; they would meet up with the others to protect against Vellanti ambush. Walvis was fighting his way up the canyon now toward the tunnel. Once his troops were through, the gates would be shut tight and he would follow Sethric. By nightfall there would be nothing and no one left in Stronghold to make it needful of defending—except that it was Stronghold.
Chay lifted Sioned’s face gently with a finger at her cheek. “It’s over,” he murmured. “For now, it’s over.”
She knew what he wanted. “I can’t.”
“You must.”
A flinch crossed her face as the first of Walvis’ soldiers clattered through the inner ward, bloodied and exhausted. She raked her hands back through her hair that had long since come loose of its pins and braids. “He won’t leave, don’t you understand that?”
“Then neither will I.”
“Nor I,” Meath seconded. Myrdal nodded her agreement.
Sioned turned away in defeat. “Meath, tell Maarken what we’re . . . tell him,” she said shakily, unable to speak the words. “Get Meiglan and the children out of here, Myrdal. And Dannar. You follow them, Meath. No arguments.”
“Yes, my lady,” he responded.
“Chay,” she began, but then a terrible despairing cry went up in the outer courtyard. A moment later a single flame soared across the sky, long and bright and almost floating. It was followed by another and then another.
“The gate’s been breached!” Chay exclaimed. “Goddess help us, there’s no more time!”
• • •
Maarken swayed once more under the impact of a powerful faradhi mind. For the instants it took Meath to communicate the frantic message, he saw nothing but the older Sunrunner’s blazing colors. When Meath left him, he found he’d had sense enough to fling his arms around his stallion’s sweaty neck to keep himself in the saddle.
Straightening, he cut to the outside of the riders thundering their way across the Desert and reined in. The work of a single thought allowed him to see the enemy that had forced their way up to the gatehouse along with Walvis’ last troops. But their fiery arrows could only destroy the empty shell that was Stronghold. Tears stung his eyes. He tasted salt and blood and the Desert itself on his lips.
Isriam had fought his way to Pol—and Pol was no fool. The left flank of Rohan’s army was now heading into the Desert, archers clinging to mounted troops, almost every horse carrying a double load. They could make no real speed that way. But the hundreds gathered now beneath
that lightning banner showed no interest in the chase. They were marching with awful resolve for the keep now open to them.
He turned to Stronghold once again. Flames shot on enemy arrows sprouted in both inner and outer courtyards; the gatehouse was ablaze from the inside. But they were careful to direct their arrows away from the main keep. Radzyn, Whitecliff, Remagev—even Faolain Lowland, that they could have destroyed instead of trying to capture—what was it the Desert possessed that these barbarians wanted so much?
Coming back to himself, he cast one last agonized glance at the great castle with his own eyes, then swung his stallion around and galloped away.
• • •
Someone said she’d heard he was in the Great Hall, helping the wounded enter the passage. Someone else thought he’d been seen near the grotto, urging balky horses through. A servant, carrying Sioned’s casket of jewels and cursing for not remembering them earlier, said he’d been upstairs but that had been some time ago.
She found him in the dimness near the stream that meandered out from the grotto pool. He lay on his back on the brittle yellow grass, and his face and hands were wet, as if he’d bent to cup water to his cheeks before starting back to the grotto.
She sank to her knees beside him. His skin was still warm beneath the cool droplets of water. His eyes were open, reflecting the Desert sky. There was no blood, no wound, no pain on his features. All age was smoothed away. She stroked silver-blond hair, fine as silk over his brow. Traced the proud line of his jaw from ear to cleft chin. Brushed a fingertip along the sensitive curve of his mouth.
Her head tilted back and her lips parted and her lungs filled and she gave a single howl of anguish that shattered her very bones.
Chay turned back from the grotto path and ran. He saw Sioned; then he saw Rohan. A strangled cry of grief and denial clogged in his throat and he stumbled to his knees at his prince’s side, tears running down his face.
Still blood, cold bones, lifeless flesh. He had known Rohan almost all his days and now there would be no more days. Looking on that serene face, he saw his own youth. Gone.
He closed Rohan’s eyes, feeling the lashes soft and thick against his fingertips. He gently slid the topaz-and-emerald ring off Rohan’s finger. For Pol. The High Prince. Then he reached across the body and put one hand on Sioned’s huddled shoulder.
“Come, heartling,” he murmured. He heard the sounds of battle out in the courtyard. He said her name, and again, and still she bent over Rohan, unknowing and uncaring.
“Sioned! For the love of him, we’ve got to—”
“No,” she said, quite clearly. “No.”
He smelled smoke and glanced up at the keep. But the plumes rose from the gatehouse and the outbuildings; the Vellant’im wanted Stronghold intact, too, just like every castle in Rohan’s princedom.
Pol’s princedom now.
“Come away, Sioned. We must.”
She had placed her hands on his chest, feeling for a heartbeat that was no longer there. Chay took her wrists, pulled her roughly to her feet. Her green eyes were wild, tearless, glaring at him as she struggled against his strength. He caught her close, holding her head to his shoulder.
“He’s gone. He doesn’t need us now. Pol does. Sioned, don’t fight me—”
“‘For the love of him—’” she echoed suddenly in a queer, high-pitched voice. And she broke away, swooped down like a hawk, slipped Rohan’s belt-knife from its sheath. Chay cried out in horror—but the knife sliced only through her loose, heavy hair. She hacked it off in short, sharp strokes and it spread over Rohan’s chest, gold and red and silver gleaming in the last sunlight.
Ablaze with Sunrunner’s Fire.
She spun around, threw back her head, raised both hands toward the Flametower. Fire overflowed its pointed windows. It spilled white-hot down walls, streamed across roofs, flooded every room and hallway and stair. Beyond the garden wall flames leaped in the shadowy courtyard. And people began to scream.
Chay staggered back from the Fire consuming Rohan. He grabbed Sioned in his arms and ran for the grotto. Flames flowed across dry grass. Fire and Water became one, the stream and pool and even the thin trickling waterfall ablaze.
He carried her through the narrow gap in the rock wall, barely ahead of the flames. Then somebody took her from him, put her on one horse and pushed him onto another, and they were riding for their lives while behind them, all through the night, all Stronghold burned as a funeral pyre.
Index of Characters
ALASEN of Kierst (696-). m719 Ostvel. Mother of Camigwen, Milar, Dannar.
ALLEYN of Dorval (724-). Daughter of Ludhil and Iliena.
ANDREV of Goddess Keep (724-). Andry’s son by Othanel.
ANDRY of Radzyn Keep (699-). Lord of Goddess Keep 719-. Squire at High Kirat 711–713. Father of Andrev, Tobren, Chayly, Joscev, Merisel.
ARLIS (710-). Prince of Isel 727- (regency to 730). Squire at Stronghold 722; knighted 730. m730 Demalia. Father of Roric, Hanella.
ARPALI (704-). Court Sunrunner at Tiglath 725-727; Balarat 730-.
AUDRAN of Dorval (728-). Son of Ludhil and Iliena.
AUDRITE of Sandeia (670-). m692 Chadric. Mother of Ludhil, Laric.
AURAR of Catha Heights (715-). Daughter of Patwin and Rabia. Fostered at Swalekeep 732-.
BETHEYN (707-). At Radzyn 731-.
BIRIOC of Catchwater (716-). Miyon’s bastard son. Trained at Remagev 735–36. Half-brother of Meiglan, Ezanto, Zanyr, Duroth.
BRENLIS (718-). Mother of Andry’s daughter Merisel. Fostered briefly at Stronghold 730.
CAMIGWEN of Castle Crag (720-). Daughter of Ostvel and Alasen. Fostered at Stronghold 734-.
CATALLEN. Bard, tutor, and Miyon’s spy at Dragon’s Rest.
CHADRIC (664-). Prince of Dorval 720-. m692 Audrite. Father of Ludhil, Laric. Squire at Stronghold 677; knighted 683.
CHAYLA of Whitecliff (722-). Daughter of Maarken and Hollis. Fostered at Remagev 736-.
CHAYNAL (668-). Lord of Radzyn Keep 689-. m690 Tobin. Father of Maarken, Jahni, Andry, Sorin. Battle Commander of the Desert 695-.
CHIANA (698-). Roelstra’s daughter. m719 Halian. Mother of Rinhoel, Palila.
CLUTHINE (695-). Halian’s niece; Isaura’s sister.
DANIV of Syr (721-). Son of Kostas and Danladi. Squire at Stronghold 734-.
DANNAR of Castle Crag (726-). Son of Ostvel and Alasen. Squire at Dragon’s Rest 737-.
DENIKER (705-). Devri. m735 Ulwis.
DONATO (671-). Court Sunrunner at Castle Crag 720-.
DRAZA (709-). Lord of Grand Veresch 732-.
DUROTH (718-). Miyon’s bastard son.
EDREL of River Ussh (715-). Squire at Dragon’s Rest 727; knighted 735. m737 Norian of Grib. Brother of Kerluthan, Paveol.
EVARIN (716-). Physicians School in Gilad 733–735; Goddess Keep 735; Master Physician 736.
FEYLIN (684-). m706 Walvis. Mother of Sionell, Jahnavi.
GEMMA of Syr (694-). Princess of Ossetia 722-. Fostered at High Kirat 704–719. m719 Tilal. Mother of Rihani, Sioneva, Sorin.
HALIAN (680-). Prince of Meadowlord 722-. m719 Chiana. Father of Rinhoel, Palila.
HEVATIA of Isel (682-). m707 Latham. Mother of Arlis, Saumer, Alathiel.
HOLLIS (691-). m719 Maarken. Mother of Chayla, Rohannon.
IDALIAN of Faolain Riverport (718-). Son of Baisath and Michinida. Fostered at Balarat 732-.
ILIENA of Snowcoves (697-). m721 Ludhil. Mother of Alleyn, Audran. Sister of Lisiel, Yarin.
ISRIAM of Einar (721-). Son of Sabriam and Isaura. Squire at Stronghold 734-.
IZAEA of Catha Heights (711-). Daughter of Patwin and Rabia.
JAHNAVI of Remagev (711-). Lord of Tuath Castle 734-. m732 Rabisa. Fostered at Skybowl 722; knighted 730. Father of Siona, Jeren.
JAYACHIN (702-). Waesian merchant.
JIHAN of Princemarch (730-). Daughter of Pol and Meiglan.
JOHLARIAN. Court Sunrunner at Faolain Lowland.
JOLAN (702-). D
evri. m722 Torien.
KARANAYA of Faolain Lowland (711-). Cousin of Mirsath and Idalian.
KAZANDER (711). Korrus (battle leader) of Isulk’im. Trained at Remagev 728–729.
KERLUTHAN (706-). Lord of River Ussh 729-. Brother of Edrel, Paveol.
KIERUN of Lower Pyrme (725-). Son of Allun and Kiera of Einar. Squire at Dragon’s Rest 737-.
KOLYA (696-). Lord of Kadar Water 701-. Father of Malyander.
KOSTAS (687-). Prince of Syr 724-. m720 Danladi, daughter of Roelstra. Squire at Kadar Water 700; knighted 708. Brother of Tilal. Father of Daniv, Aladra.
LARIC of Dorval (698-). Prince of Firon 719-. m721 Lisiel. Squire at High Kirat 710; knighted 718. Father of Tirel.
LATHAM of Kierst (683-). Regent of Isel 727–730. m707 Hevatia. Father of Arlis, Saumer, Alathiel.
LISIEL of Snowcoves (699-). m721 Laric. Mother of Tirel.
LUDHIL of Dorval (694-). m721 Iliena. Squire at Fessada 705; knighted 714. Father of Alleyn, Audran.
LYELA of Waes (709-). Tallain’s cousin. Resident at Tiglath 720-.
MAARKEN of Radzyn Keep (693-). Lord of Whitecliff 719-. Squire at Graypearl 702; knighted 712. m719 Hollis. Father of Chayla, Rohannon.
MALYANDER of Kadar Water (725-). Son of Kolya. Squire at Athmyr 737-.
MEATH (673-). Court Sunrunner at Graypearl 698-.
MEIGLAN of Gracine Manor (710-). Miyon’s bastard daughter. m728 Pol. Mother of Jihan, Rislyn.
MEVITA (714-). m731 Rialt. Mother of Polev.
MICHINIDA (688-). m708 Baisath of Faolain Riverport. Mother of Mirsath, Idalian.
MIRSATH of Faolain Riverport (716-). Son of Baisath and Michinida. Squire at High Kirat 728; knighted 736.
MIYON (689-). Prince of Cunaxa 701-. Father of Ezanto, Zanyr, Birioc, Duroth, Meiglan.
MORWENNA (680-). At Stronghold 724-.
MYRDAL (645-). Commander of Stronghold guard 675–703. Rohan’s bastard cousin.
NAYDRA of Princemarch (673-). Roelstra’s daughter. m705 Narat of Port Adni.
