Dragon Prince 03 - Sunrunner's Fire (62 page)

She sobbed as she collided with a door. It had no lock, but in the dimness, with pain bleating along every nerve, locating the latch and shoving the door open was endless agony. She moaned with relief when she saw the hall stretch ahead of her, empty. No one had heard her shrieks or Andry’s cries. But this was the inhabited part of the keep, and she must be careful.

Mireva breathed slowly and carefully, wishing for just the tiniest pinch of
dranath
to clear her head. But the memory of the sweet invincibility was almost enough. She grabbed a torch from its sconce and wedged it under the door. It wouldn’t slow Andry down for long, but it was better than nothing.

Twisting her hair into a knot at her nape, she brushed off her clothing and walked down the hall as if she belonged there. She met no one until a footman came by, loaded down with Fironese crystal on a silver tray—for Pol’s victory banquet, Mireva thought acidly. She purposely stumbled into the man’s shoulder. He swore and almost lost his balance. Her hands were still clumsy, but she managed to grab one of the thin-stemmed goblets. The crystal broke very neatly against the wall and as the footman righted himself, catlike, without dropping his burden, Mireva slashed his throat.

The ensuing crash would bring people running. She must hurry. Racing down the main corridor, she climbed the servants’ stairs as fast as she could, encountering only an incurious maid carrying an armful of sheets. As she ran, she tried to pick the wire from her ear, gave it up as being too tightly wound, and started on the steel circling her wrists. By the time she reached Ruala’s chamber, the first bloodied wire had fallen to the floor.

There were no guards, not even a maid sitting in the shadowy bedroom. Ruala was asleep. As Mireva opened the curtains, the flinch brought by the rasp of steel rings on rods was forgotten in the blessed sight of new stars. She rummaged frantically through Ruala’s dressing table. Scissors at last to hand, she snipped the other bracelet from her wrist. Quickly, she must work quickly. She could draw on Ruala’s power once she was free of the steel and could work. She tried to still her tremors and leaned down to get a better look in the mirror as she worked on the wire in her earlobe.

“Put it down.”

She spun, astonished to find Ruala standing beside the bed, ready to kill her with the elegant jeweled knife clutched in her fist. She held the blade by its handle, not its tip, ready to throw it; she probably didn’t even know how. Thus she would have to come closer—close enough for Mireva to disarm her, with luck. While the wire was still twisted in her earlobe, she could not use sorcery with ease—and she was two and a half times Ruala’s age.

“Why isn’t your loving lord hovering over his precious darling?” Mireva asked sweetly.

“Put the scissors down,” Ruala said, just as quietly as before.

Long black hair swirled about perfect shoulders; the dark green eyes were reminiscent of Mireva’s own in some lights. The old woman saw herself as she had been over forty years ago: young, beautiful, with the promise of power in her eyes. “We’re the same, you and I,” she murmured.

“We’re no more alike than Fire and Water. Now, put it down.”

Mireva set the scissors on the dressing table behind her. “I know power when it’s near me. You’re
diarmadhi,
just like me.” She could almost feel Andry pounding on the door down below. Time, time—“Do you think Andry will let you live, knowing what you are? Or do you suppose your brave lord will protect you? How can he, when Andry will be after his blood, too?”

Ruala smiled. “You know power, do you? We’ll see.” She started slowly for the door, never taking her eyes off Mireva. But when she reached her hand to the knob, Mireva made a supreme effort—and what Ruala touched was a thing slimy and foul, a writhing piece of corroded flesh that oozed acid. She screamed and jerked her fingers away.

Mireva could hardly see. The pain was unendurable, spreading along her limbs from a brain that seemed to be on fire. But the torture was worth it. Ruala, stunned and terrified for that brief instant of sorcery, was vulnerable. Mireva threw herself blindly forward. They sprawled together on the floor, locked as tightly as lovers. Mireva dimly heard the knife clatter away.

She wrestled herself atop Ruala, gasping as fingers dug so deep into her lacerated wrists that she was sure the bones would shatter. Ruala was no fool; recovery from shock had been swift, and she knew exactly where to hurt Mireva the most. Mireva flung them over and hoped her pain-hazed sight could be trusted. The thud of the girl’s head against the stout wooden bedframe proved her correct. Ruala wilted.

Gulping for air, Mireva pushed herself to her feet and went for the scissors again. Her hands shook so hard that she drew blood from the side of her neck—but the wire dropped to the dressing table. She was free.

The stars beckoned. She wove their light swiftly, craving
dranath,
and hurled herself down the silvery skeins toward Rivenrock.

It was as she had feared. Pol and Ruval were already battling, Air and Fire whirling around them, hideous visions conjured and countered in a maelstrom of power. The ungifted onlookers were masked in horror at what they saw. Those who were sensitive to the arts—Sioned and Morwenna, Tobin, Maarken, and Hollis—were on their knees in the sand, faces contorted with agony. No
perath
had been woven to shield them. This suited Mireva perfectly. She could enter the battle without hindrance and the Sunrunners would feel the deathblow as if it had been directed at them.

Pol backed away from Ruval’s gambit—a blazing whirlwind that sprouted claws from which lightning spewed. The princeling looked frightened. Mireva laughed her satisfaction. It seemed Ruval was doing just fine without her. Still, she watched in wariness for Pol’s reply, for all she knew about him warned of cleverness.

His right hand groped in a pocket of his trousers, emerged fisted around some small thing. He flung it into the air as one might release a hunting hawk—and from a tiny bright glitter it indeed grew wings. Swirling with Sunrunner’s Fire, the thing became an immense golden dragon as tall as the canyon walls, wings aflame, eyes glowing white as if suffused with stars.

Mireva gasped out a curse and hastened her own work. For the trick to this illusion was that some of it was
not
illusion. Fire concealed the working until it was ready in all its awful details—so that the portions that were real could not he guessed from watching its construction. Any part of the conjured dragon might be made from that small glinting thing Pol had thrown into the air. She had taught Ruval the technique, shown him how stone gathered from the sands could form talons and teeth, or real fire could gush from mighty jaws. If Ruval could not discern fact from illusion, it would cost him his life.

It was almost as painful to work without
dranath
as it had been with iron poisoning her blood. She needed the drug, could feel its lack screaming shrilly inside her as she readied her weapon. But she did it: Pol’s dragon turned to glass. It cracked and splintered to the sand, and as it did the real portion of it—the lashing tail concealing the little golden carving—crumbled.

Pol fell back stunned as his masterwork vanished. Real fear flashed into his eyes. Mireva sobbed for breath, silently screaming at Ruval to be quick in his answering illusion. She could not sustain this for long, not without the drug in her veins.

She whirled then to stare at Ruala. The young woman was still unconscious, but her power was accessible. Without
dranath
it would be difficult, but if she did not try, Ruval might be dead before the next star appeared. She broke the threads of light and grunted with effort as she hauled Ruala over to the windows. The spell was arduous under the best circumstances; Mireva felt her head was ready to explode with the strain. But she probed and pushed, groping for the hidden core—and found it.

Swiftly she rewove the starlight. It was easier now, sustained by Ruala’s young strength that had never been taught how to resist this. She saw the sand and walls of Rivenrock much more dearly now, and the two combatants.

Now it was Ruval who fumbled with something in his hand. A new inferno appeared, a monster forming within it. When the thing leaped from its concealing blaze. Pol fell back involuntarily. Fully the size of the dragon, it was the entirety of what Mireva had used to terrify Ruala. Had she had strength, she would have laughed in delight; she had taught Ruval this beast herself, they had formed it together.

She was momentarily distracted by a quiver from Ruala’s mind. She was beginning to wake up, as if sensing the use to which her powers were being put, outrage and sheer terror rousing her from unconsciousness. Mireva groaned with the pain of keeping her under control, and returned her attention to the monster Ruval had conjured.

It was horned and crested and covered in livid scales of every conceivable color, like a stained glass window gone berserk. The gaping eyes oozed yellowish matter down to an open maw filled with endless sharp teeth. These dripped blood onto forelegs as big around as a horse that ended in thick, slime-coated claws like steel spikes. It reared back on its hind legs and plummeted down, ready to clamp its jaws around Pol.

Mireva knew the teeth were not real, nor the claws. It was the pus leaking from the eyes that was dangerous. Formed of sand mixed with a paste Ruval had learned to make as one of his first lessons, hidden in a pocket until he needed it, when it touched Pol’s skin it would sear him to the bone.

She saw him leap away from the hundreds of teeth. Now, it must be now. She could feel her strength waning, her control over the awakening Ruala fading, her heart beating with savage throbs, her brain on fire. A last effort, a gust of Air conjured at an impossible distance—and a spurt of poisonous yellow muck spattered toward Pol.

She did not see it hit him. She was wrenched back to Stronghold by an agony so horrible that the scream died before it left her throat. The cool starlight turned to needles of ice and fire stabbing into her eyes, matching the stabbing pain in her heart. Her fingers groped for the knife, felt the jewels on its hilt. Staggering around from the window, she expected to see Ruala’s white face as she fell.

“That’s for Sorin,” Riyan told her before she died.

I
nstinct screamed at Pol to wince away, but instinct was hampered by his mind’s cold calculations over what was real and what was not. Part of him was well and truly horrified by this hideous apparition. Curses and screams behind him told him he wasn’t alone. But another part of him writhed in a frenzy of analysis. What of this was real, and what not? The yellowish ooze might be only a feint, something to distract him while the true attack was mounted. Instinct and intellect interlocked in near-paralysis—but then he saw Ruval’s eyes flicker with sudden astonishment.

Ruval had not expected the gust of Air that flung the ooze onto Pol; therefore someone else had initiated it.

No one present would dare such a thing; therefore Mireva was free to work.

She had expended a vast amount of power in calling Air from a great distance—therefore this foul matter was real and to be avoided at all costs.

The reasoning took a split instant. Pol flung himself to one side, but not quickly enough. The filth splattered onto his tunic; a drop hit his face. He was about to wipe it away when his cheek tingled with sudden heat. Within moments the pain was excruciating. If he touched it with his fingers, the agony would spread. And if the pus had hit his eye—

Frantically, trying to avoid gaping jaws that might or might not be real, he pulled a knife from his boot to scrape off the sticky slime. He wished he could throw the contaminated blade into Ruval’s heart—but rules were rules, and if he broke them his honor would be forfeit. Stupid and possibly suicidal to have such scruples—but he could do nothing else.

He used the knife like a razor against his cheek, nicking the skin, groaning at fresh fire as a hint of the poison mixed into his blood. It felt as if skin and flesh had blistered black and peeled away to the bone. The pain half-blinded him, found outlet in a cry of sheer rage against Mireva’s treachery. The knife nestled with deadly familiarity in his fist. But he couldn’t use it. Rohan and Sioned—and Lleyn and Chadric and Audrite and everyone who had had a hand in raising him—they had all done their work too well. Roelstra’s grandson would have loosed the knife; the son of Rohan and Sioned could not.

But nothing prevented him from using the matter that clung to the blade. The gruesome monster loomed over him, slavering for his blood. Pol took a deep breath and decided on the basis of no evidence at all that the only thing real was the poisonous filth—and strode right through the illusory body toward Ruval. As quickly as he could, careful not to touch the ooze, he flicked it back at its maker.

Ruval dodged it, terror in his eyes, so desperate to avoid the yellow muck that he lost his balance and tumbled to the sand. Pol flung the knife away and used the moments of Ruval’s panic to catch his breath. His cheek still burned, but it was a goad now, not a crippling wound.

“Give it up,” he panted. “Your best has failed.”

“Best? That was nothing!”

Sheer bravado. “Give it up!” Pol shouted furiously. “I don’t want to kill you, damn it! Yield! Princemarch is mine! The Desert belongs to me by treaty made before we were born!”

“ ‘As long as the sands spawn fire,’ ” Ruval quoted mockingly. “I see no fire here, princeling, nor is anyone ever likely to!”

“No?” Pol asked softly. And smiled—because suddenly he knew what had to be done. The shift of facial muscles brought back pain in sickening waves. But he refused to feel it. He was tiring—it was harder to concentrate, harder to summon strength enough. He raised both arms slowly, his gaze never relinquished his half-brother’s. Starlight caught the topaz-and-amethyst ring, glowed from the moonstone that had been Andrade’s. Arms straight, fingers spread, he stood very still. His hands clenched slowly into fists. He called, and the Fire came.