Dragon Prince 03 - Sunrunner's Fire (14 page)

What he’d really wanted, though, were the rest of her rings—or what remained of them. Maarken had reset the chunk of amber into his wedding necklet; Sioned sometimes wore the emerald on a chain around her neck; the ruby now graced Tobin’s coronet. Chadric had inherited the sapphire, given to old Prince Lleyn who had been Andrade’s friend. Chay, Rohan, and Pol had the other stones—the last being the most irksome to Andry. Pol wore the moonstone as unsubtle reminder that he was a Sunrunner, even though he hadn’t been trained at Goddess Keep.

Andry sometimes took out the garnet Urival had given him after Andrade’s death, but had never quite been able to bring himself to wear it. The old man had left the tenth ring on Andrade’s finger, token of the wedding ring he would have put there himself if they had been ordinary folk. But the chains that had connected all the rings to bracelets on Andrade’s wrists had been fashioned into a delicate, unobtrusive necklet worn for the rest of Urival’s life, and burned with him in the Desert.

Andry wanted those rings back. Years of studying the Star Scroll and the histories unearthed with it on Dorval had convinced him that there was more to the symbolism of gemstones than pretty tradition. But to ask for them would alert Pol to their possible significance, and this he refused to do.

And then there were the mirrors, the most frustrating of all Merisel’s enigmatic little hints.
“If you find a sorcerer who possesses a mirror, exile the sorcerer
—
but shatter the mirror.”
Just that one sentence. No explanation, no elaboration. Andry, who had fallen a little in love with Merisel through her vivid writings, had long since decided that at several hundred years’ remove, she was fascinating—but that face-to-face she must have been several hundred different kinds of Hell to deal with.

Nialdan waited placidly beside him for Torien to come up and announce that everyone was assembled and all was in readiness. Anyone else would have been fidgeting by now; Nialdan merely planted both big feet on the floor and stood as motionless and patient as a pine. Andry found the man’s solidity soothing, especially after the long night behind him and in view of the tough work ahead.

Valeda had given him a daughter just before dawn. Hollis, here with Maarken on a visit all hoped would help heal the troubles no one ever talked about, had assisted in the birthing room. Andry had seen her holding the new baby earlier today, and his heart filled with compassion. One of her reasons for coming to Goddess Keep was to consult the Mother Tree. Her twins, Chayla and Rohannon, were five winters old and there were no signs of more children. But, judging by her determinedly cheerful expression after a brief disappearance the other day, the tree circle had not shown her what she wished to see. Andry still remembered being shown what he wished to forget.

He shut his eyes and let the visions form behind his lids, dyed red with the sunlight streaming onto his face, awash in the color of blood.

It was Sorin who woke him, running headlong into the circle where no one not
faradhi
was allowed. “Andry! Andry, wake up!” He was shaken roughly, opened his eyes, and saw his brother’s fear-paled face. He clung to Sorin, grateful for the warm strong arms around him and the presence that, but for the one vital gift, was twin to his own.

How Sorin had felt it was a mystery to them both. They had heard of how Maarken, after his own twin died of Plague, wandered Radzyn lost and haunted, calling for the second self always there and now gone. But what they shared was stronger—perhaps because they were older, or because Andry was a Sunrunner even more powerful than Maarken.

Since then, Andry dreamed occasionally of what the Goddess had shown him. Once it happened while Sorin was at Goddess Keep, on a quick visit before sailing for Kierst to supervise the making of tiles for Feruche. Andry had been shaken from the dream as he’d been from the vision, his brother’s hands frantic on his shoulders and his brother’s voice crying out his name.

“What does it feel like?” Andry had asked as they waited for dawn beside the hearth, wrapped in blankets and gulping mulled wine.

“Like when we were little, and one of us had a bad dream.” Sorin’s brows arched speculatively. “You never told me the details then—”

“Neither did you. We were a prideful little pair, weren’t we? Never could admit to being that scared.” Andry smiled.

“—and I don’t suppose you’re going to talk about it now, are you?” Sorin finished as if he hadn’t been interrupted.

“No. Sorry. It’s bad enough that
I
see—what I see. If I told you, you might start dreaming the same thing. And it might bounce between us all the way to Feruche and back—and neither of us would ever get any sleep.”

Andrade had always emphasized that the Goddess showed what
might
come to pass. “Nothing is written in stone—and even if it were, stones can be broken.” He wondered sometimes what she had seen of the future.
Did the Goddess tell her to marry her sister off to Zehava? Or was that to change a future she didn’t happen to like? Did she ever see Pol? Or me? Did she realize what work I have in front of me? Is that why she chose me as her successor? Or did she see someone else, and pick me by default?

Not what he ought to be thinking right now. As for what everyone else would think—he couldn’t bring himself to care about any of them but Maarken and Hollis. They had to understand. The Sunrunners here could be frightened, horrified, shocked, or awestruck. It didn’t much matter which. His brother had to understand and explain it to Rohan and Sioned and Pol.

But he admitted to himself that he didn’t much care what
they
thought, either. If Rohan considered him power-hungry, and Sioned was affronted by his uses of power, and Pol felt threatened—too bad.
They can look on this as they like, so long as they don’t hinder me. I can keep that vision from becoming real. This is my work to do, my warning from the Goddess. Only—please, Gentle Lady, let Maarken understand.

He gave a violent start when Nialdan cleared his throat. The big man shrugged an apology. “Sorry, my Lord.”

Andry smiled thinly. “Uproot yourself from the floor and go see what’s keeping Torien.”

“Yes, my Lord.”

With Nialdan gone, Andry could give in to nerves and pace. He was used to circling a room; the gatehouse was long and narrow, and the change in pattern unsettled him even more. He stopped by the table again and poured wine into the goblets for something to do with his hands. The
dranath
sifted down from his rubbing palms, fine powder vanishing instantly into the green-gold wine.

“My Lord?” Nialdan came back in, leaving the staircase door open behind him. “Torien says they’re about ready. He’ll be up in a moment. Oclel’s making doubly sure about the swords and arrows.”

Oclel was Nialdan’s good friend and the only man at Goddess Keep big enough to give him a decent workout with a sword. Born in Princemarch of a huntsman’s daughter and a soldier who had fought for Roelstra in 704, Oclel had married the mother of Andry’s elder daughter. Andry preferred it so. Rusina had not wanted the child he’d given her on her first-ring night. Already in love with Oclel, she bore Tobren grudgingly and had wanted nothing to do with her from the day of her birth. Another woman had nursed the child, and Valeda took care of Tobren’s need for affection.

Othanel, mother of his only son, was another matter entirely. Triumphant in her pregnancy, she kept little Andrev close and barely allowed him to play with other children, as if fearing contamination. She was possessive and jealous, barely able to hide her fury when first Rusina and then Valeda bore Andry’s children, and not bothering to hide her glee when both women birthed daughters.

Contemplation of Rusina’s anger and Othanel’s ambition brought an uncomfortable memory of his mother’s stinging rebuke at the last
Rialla.
When he’d tried to explain that both babies were too young to travel, Tobin had exploded like heat lightning across the Desert sky.

“What are you afraid we’ll see? Children conceived not because you care a damn about their mothers—which you don’t—but because you want your own little brood of Sunrunners? Not even Andrade went that far!”

“Didn’t she? What are you and Rohan but her experiments in
faradhi
royalty? Not to mention Pol!”

Maarken had come by later that night. Man-to-man reasoning left Andry unmoved, but when Maarken’s temper flared he capitulated. He had never gone against his adored eldest brother’s wishes in his life.

And, truthfully, he didn’t regret the meeting last summer in Syr. Time spent with Andrev and Tobren had softened his mother’s wrath. Sorin made the journey from Feruche to High Kirat, Maarken came with his family from Whitecliff, and Tilal from Athmyr. Kostas, a father now himself, presided over the whole noisy crowd with a sardonic grin. The eight children—Andry’s, Maarken’s, Kostas’, and Tilal’s—had seemed bent on demolishing anything that got within reach of their fists, including, on occasion, each other. For ten days it was almost as if they were any ordinary big family.

Rohan, Sioned, and Pol had sent their regrets. Andry understood perfectly. They would let the others make the initial moves toward peace. Thus this current visit by Maarken and Hollis.

It fit in perfectly with Andry’s own plans. He knew now the method by which he would change that future of horror and blood.

Maarken had to understand.

Torien appeared at last, visibly annoyed by the delay. “But everything’s ready now, my Lord. They’re waiting for you to begin.”

He nodded and gestured to Nialdan, who emptied his goblet in two large gulps. Andry took a little longer at it, savoring the slow pulse of the drug in his body. He had been careful to use only enough for an increase of power—he’d heard from Maarken how Hollis had suffered after her addiction to
dranath.
He didn’t want that for any of his people, and certainly not for himself. But the augmentation of gifts was too important to reject
dranath
completely.

When he could feel its effects—soft heat in his cheeks, a tingling in his groin, a flush of energy through his body—he straightened his clothing and went to the balcony that overlooked the courtyard. Taking another lesson from Rohan, he had chosen his clothes carefully: wool trousers dyed red, white shirt and short white tunic. Radzyn’s colors, meant to remind Maarken that whatever he might witness today, they were of the same place, the same heritage.

“Your cloak, my Lord?” Torien murmured behind him, and he shook his head. A breeze off the sea quickened the air, but he wasn’t cold. He never was, except in the depths of winter. The joke around Goddess Keep was that he’d soaked up so much Desert sun in childhood that he’d never feel anything but the worst blizzard the Father of Storms exhaled from the icy heart of the Veresch.

Many of those below him were in warm woolen gowns and tunics, with cloaks against the wind. Several wore the hoods pulled up—perhaps to keep their ears warm, and perhaps to hide their reaction to whatever shocking innovation Andry was about to present. He shrugged, but made mental note of them anyway. They could be sent elsewhere for duty and cease to trouble him. Again he thought of Urival, whose removal from Goddess Keep had been no guarantee of lack of trouble. Whatever Pol now knew of
faradhi
arts, it was too much—because Andry had not been the one to teach him.

This wasn’t the time to think about
that,
either. He rested his hands lightly on the smooth balcony rail and surveyed the assembly with justifiable pride. The Sunrunners, students, and servants of Goddess Keep numbered over four hundred—two-thirds of them
faradh’im
at various levels of expertise.

In Andrade’s time there had been as many non-gifteds here as Sunrunners. The reason was not talent, but money. Prior to Andry’s rule here, students were required to give to Goddess Keep that share of their parents’ wealth that would have dowered them. No prejudice was attached to the gift’s size; the price of a few sheep, all Nialdan had brought, weighed equally with the substantial slice of Radzyn’s wealth that had been Andry’s portion. Indeed, it was this princely sum that had allowed him to cancel the dowry custom. Parents loath to sell off goods for the stipulated cash were now perfectly happy to send gifted sons and daughters to become Sunrunners; the other children benefited through increased dowries. Andry had brought with him more than enough to make up for any loss of income. It afforded him a certain grim amusement to wonder how Rohan would have worked it out if Pol had come here;
he
was dowered with all Princemarch.