Dragon Prince 03 - Sunrunner's Fire (25 page)

Pol and Maarken both would be caught up in this. And both of them would lose. The only thing Pol could put his hopes on was Andry’s abiding love and respect for his eldest and now only brother. But that was placing the entire burden on Maarken—and as a prince, Pol knew the responsibility must be his.

And his father’s. Relief swept through him, swiftly followed by guilt. He had no right to dump all this on his father. Rohan was High Prince, and the matter of the Sunrunner would be taken to him for judgment. To wish he could leave everything to his father was a coward’s way, and he was ashamed of himself for even thinking it. Nearly as ashamed as he was that while he had been caught up in the dragon’s colors, Sorin had died by Marron’s hand.

He felt knowledge run through him like a spark down his spine. That was the answer: the
diarmadhi
threat would be his leverage with Andry. For if Pol was defeated, Andry would be next.

Join with me in destroying Roelstra’s grandsons, cousin, or fear for your own power. You can have Marron, since he was the one who killed your brother. But Ruval is mine.
But he despaired that he should have to bargain from Andry’s cooperation with promises of vengeance and death.

Sorin had been wrong. Pol
did
understand Andry, and he wasn’t sure this was to his credit. His promise to be tender of Andry’s feelings and position would be difficult to keep. As he watched the flames consume the flesh and bone that had been his cousin, he knew that perhaps the most important link between Andry and himself would soon be ashes.

 

 

“Father. . . .”

Rohan glanced around from the windows. It was early morning, and he had been watching Feruche by sunrise It was a lovely castle, very different from the one that had clung to the cliffs twenty-four years ago. But he would not enter its precincts. Ever. Not even if his life depended on it. Looking now at the life that had resulted from time spent at Feruche, he turned away from the castle and his memories. “What is it, Pol?”

They were alone in the commander’s rooms at the garrison built by Rohan’s great-grandfather, Prince Zagroy. A squat, functional, inelegant barracks, it had guarded the pass through the mountains to Princemarch for more than a hundred years. Sioned, Chay, Tobin, and the others had returned to the comforts of Feruche, but Pol had accompanied his father back here. For some time now Rohan had been waiting to hear whatever it was Pol wanted to say, reflecting that if age had brought him nothing else, it had supplied patience.

Not a quality Pol possessed yet; he had been prowling the long, narrow room, obviously trying to find the right words. He opted for directness, as usual. “Why is it that we always have to wait for something to happen before we can do anything?”

Rohan had been expecting frustration over the escape of Sorin’s murderers, grief and guilt at his cousin’s death, any number of things. But not this. “Go on,” he said.

“It just—it seems we always
react
to things, rather than
act.
”

“Ah. You want to hunt down this Ruval by any means at your disposal and execute him as he so richly deserves.”

“Don’t you?” Pol swung around from the far windows.

Rohan considered a light answer to relieve the tension that fairly crackled from his son’s body. But to say that he himself was too old to go racing about the countryside would be to insult Pol’s feelings and treat him as the child he had not been for many years. Still, Rohan
had
begun to feel twinges of his own age recently, though fifty-one never seemed much different from thirty-one until he was faced with Pol’s youth.

But his reply was, “It’s the curse of our position and our principles. We have the power to act, but we’re condemned to wait until others have acted first.”

It was not an answer Pol was ready to comprehend. “I won’t sit around polishing my sword until Ruval decides to reappear!”

“I understand.” He sat down and lifted the wine cup left for him on a table. “But consider, Pol. The greatest temptation of any kind of power is to use it.”

“What good is power if you
don’t
use it?”

Rohan sighed. “Think of the laws written the past seven
Riall’im.
Very few involve prohibitions of one sort or another. They simply state what will occur if a certain thing is done. People do what they wish to do, and saying it’s not legal usually won’t stop them. But if the consequences of a particular action are clear, they may do the thing anyway, but they also know exactly what will happen if they’re caught.”

“I don’t see what that has to do with—”

He rapped his knuckles on the arm of his chair. “Pay attention. The old ways commanded that one must not do thus-and-so, end of law. For instance, Sunrunners were forbidden to use their gifts in battle. If I were to rewrite that one, it would be to the effect that
faradh’im
who do so would die if pierced by iron, as is very likely to happen in battle, iron being incompatible with the functioning of those gifts. Present the consequences and allow people to make the choice as adults, rather than simply forbid a thing, which treats them like children. To take a more common example, the law used to read that a person must not murder. Very precise, but punishment was arbitrary and differed from princedom to princedom. The law now is that if a person commits a willful murder, his own life is forfeit and all his possessions go to the family of the person he killed. People don’t obey a law just because they’re told to. But if they know the consequences of an act and do it anyway, then that’s a conscious and informed choice and they have no cause to protest the punishment.

“Certainly we could go off hunting this man, and we’d be right to do so. You heard from his own lips that he knew exactly what he was doing by killing dragons and what the penalty is, and did it anyway. And Sorin. . . .” Rohan had a sudden, poignant vision of a little boy with whom he’d played at dragons. “But there’s more to this than his death and the deaths of three dragons. And that’s why we have to wait for the next move.”

“I don’t understand.”

“You’ve got a good brain, Pol. Use it! Until he and his brother come out into the open again, we don’t know who else might be using them or hiding behind them—or what might be worse, working with them. If we use our considerable resources of princely and
faradhi
power to administer the swift justice we both want, it’s entirely possible we’ll miss a larger threat. And you know very well what that threat probably is.”

“The
diarmadh’im,
” Pol said reluctantly. “The way we would have missed—the boy who infiltrated Goddess Keep.”

Rohan noted the editing of what Pol had been about to say, and frowned.

“But isn’t it also possible that if we deal with this pair now, we’ll be removing some very useful tools from their hands? Ruval and Marron really do have a claim to Princemarch in the strict sense. They’re Roelstra’s grandsons.”

“Yes. But in killing Roelstra in fair combat, and by all the rules of war, I won Princemarch.”

“Why did you give it to me, Father? I’ve always wondered.”

Again he was tempted to a light answer, and could not bring himself to turn aside the young man’s question. But neither could he tell Pol the truth. Not yet. And not without Sioned’s agreement. “All I ever wanted was the Desert. Becoming High Prince was something necessary, if I was to make the kind of world I wanted for you. Quite frankly, I didn’t want Princemarch on top of all the rest of it.”

“So you gave it into Pandsala’s care as regent for me.”

“Under her and now under Ostvel, the people there have grown used to the idea of you as their prince. Not me. I was never theirs. You are.”

“Well,
that
ploy worked, anyway.”

“Your faith in my wisdom is comforting,” Rohan replied wryly. “You also have to remember that at the time our family was growing more powerful—your mother’s brother Davvi Prince of Syr, Volog cousin to them—it seemed wiser to keep Princemarch separate from the Desert until my death unites them under you as High Prince.”

“Do me a favor and live forever, will you?”

“I’ll do my best.” He smiled briefly. “Actually, I only worry about it every three years.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Didn’t you ever notice? Ruling princes of the Desert are always born in a Dragon Year—back five generations. We always die in a Dragon Year, too. Take care of me until next New Year, my boy, unless you’re eager to inherit.”

“Thank you, no,” Pol grinned. “Princemarch is quite enough to handle!”

“I’ll try to expire at your convenience,” Rohan responded with a slight bow, then grew serious again. “But you have to understand why we can’t act until Ruval does. We must wait and find out exactly who else is involved.”

“I suppose.” Pol sank into a chair at last, long legs sprawled. “What I finally understand is why you waited to kill Masul. He was a threat, but you wanted to find out how serious. It was only when Maarken’s life was in the balance that you acted. But, Father, if you’d killed Masul right away—”

“Andrade might still be alive.”

Pol flushed. “I didn’t mean—”

“Oh, it’s quite true.” He rolled the wine cup between his palms, staring into the cloudy red liquid. “I know it seems that I act only when I’m forced to. And I suppose that’s so. And it also seems that I don’t use power because I’m afraid of it—and that’s true, as well, but not for the reasons most people think. It’s fair to say that I don’t wish to antagonize already suspicious princes and I have a horror of conflict, armed or otherwise. Everyone knows I haven’t touched my sword since I hung it in the Great Hall at Stronghold just after you were born. We’ve all lived pretty much at peace, with no widespread wars and only a few messy private situations since I’ve become High Prince. That’s exactly what I wanted. It gives the flowers a chance to grow—and me the chance to watch them.” He smiled. “But do you see that all this has come about precisely because I
don’t
use my power? It’s not that I’m afraid of it. In fact, there are times when I relish it. And
that’s
what really frightens me. Power is . . . an interesting feeling. Once you get accustomed to it, you go looking for chances to use it. It’s the difference between an arbitrary prince in love with his own power, and a thoughtful one who understands its responsibilities.”

“We can act as we please, and everyone knows it,” Pol mused. “But by
not
acting—”

“We indicate that we’re so powerful we don’t
have
to pounce on people like a dragon on a lamb. And when we do use power, it’s not just for specific punishment. It provides a really necessary demonstration of what we could do if we chose. Sweet Goddess, with the armies at my disposal I could have taken this whole continent by now. But I haven’t, and everyone knows I won’t. I don’t have to prove my manhood or my power by making everyone feel the strength of my sword.”

“Manhood? So
that’s
Miyon’s problem—and Halian’s! Of course, with a wife like Chiana—”

“Granted.” Rohan smiled suddenly. “Not everyone is blessed with a woman the caliber of your mother. Be careful when you Choose, Pol. What you want is not just a wife, but a princess.”

“I know.” He shifted in his chair, obviously uncomfortable with the subject of Choosing a bride, and Rohan stifled a chuckle. “But going back to Ruval and Marron—”

“They committed crimes, and will be punished. But I suspect a larger crime, Pol, against not just the law and our family, but against everyone. Andry’s been very possessive of the historical scrolls Meath found on Dorval, but Urival told me quite a lot of what’s in them. The oppression, the rule of fear, the suffering caused at the whim of these
diarmadh’im
simply because they had power the common folk did not—their time was all I loathe about power. Lady Merisel and her Sunrunners made a commitment never to grasp for princely power to augment their other gifts, a reassurance to the people that wasn’t broken until your mother’s grandmother married a Prince of Kierst.”

“And now there’s me. But the
diarmadhi
times are long forgotten, Father.”

“Do you think so?
They
haven’t forgotten. And with Roelstra’s grandsons pressing a princely claim with sorcerer’s power, everyone else is likely to remember very clearly and very soon.”

Pol gave a grim chuckle. “Will I start to look better to the other princes, do you think?”

“Perhaps. But anybody who can do what they can’t makes them uneasy.”

“So we wait and see.”

“Or
not
wait and
not
see. You comprehend the frustration, I take it.”

“Of being a civilized man with principles, yes. It’d be a lot easier on my nerves to behave like a barbarian.”

“I’ve given in to the impulse many times. And had to live with myself afterward.”

He looked up as Pol’s squire, Edrel, entered the room. Rohan smiled encouragement to no avail; although the boy had grown used to serving Pol, he still paled around the High Prince. After a bow much more formal than any of Rohan’s own squires ever gave him after their first few days of service, Edrel spoke in a voice barely above a whisper. “Lord Tallain is here, your graces, asking if you have a moment to see him.”

“Always. Send him in, Edrel.” Turning to his son after the boy gave another deep bow and left, Rohan sighed, “
Do
something about that, will you?”

Pol only grinned and rose to welcome Tallain.

The responsibilities of the most important holding in the northern Desert suited Tallain—as did marriage and family life. Rohan saw much of the father in the son, the way Eltanin had looked for the tragically few years of his marriage to Antalya of Waes. She was evident in their son’s face, as well, her sweet smile and self-possessed calm which in Tallain was a serene charm quite unlike Pol’s occasional fire.

“Sorry to disturb you,” Tallain said. “But there are a couple of things I think you ought to know about.”