Dragon Prince 02 - The Star Scroll Read online

Don’t be ridiculous. And whatever you say, I’m going to marry you.

  Could you go against your parents’ wishes?

  Just see if I don’t, if it comes to that, which it won’t! I’ll wait for the Rialla if that’s what you want, but the Lastday marriages are going to be led by us, my love.

  Ah, Maarken—damn, I can hear Andry yelling for me. I have to go. Take care, beloved. Goddess keep you.

  He became aware of Pol beside him, tugging his sleeve, and sighed. The threads unraveled and he was back in the Desert, and Pol was whispering, “You were Sunrunning, weren’t you?”

  Maarken nodded. “Yes.”

  “Where to? How far? Who did you talk to?”

  “Taking your questions in order—a long way, very far, and none of your business.” He softened the words with a smile. Getting to his feet, he stretched the stiffness out of his muscles and saw that everyone else was doing the same. Pol, with all the supple resilience of early youth, jumped up and ran to his parents to share his excitement at witnessing the sand-dance. Maarken joined his own parents, grinning as Chay heaved himself to his feet and rubbed his backside.

  “How can I be numb and still ache?” he complained. “I’m too damned old for this nonsense.”

  “The walk back to the horses will take the kinks out,” Tobin said. “Pol and Rohan are going to the caves, Maarken. Do you want to go with them?”

  “I promised Sionell and Jahnavi a full account before dinner tonight, so I’ll ride back with you to Skybowl.”

  “And to enough bottles of Ostvel’s best cactus brew to soothe my old bones,” Chay added. To Rohan he called out, “If you’re back late, don’t expect me to save any for you!”

  “Not even for your prince?”

  “Not a thimbleful. It’s your fault I’m out here roasting like a prize sheep in the first place.”

  “Not just any old sheep, darling,” his wife said sweetly. “Definitely a ram.”

  “Tobin!” He took one long braid in each hand and tugged her to him for a kiss. “You’re shocking the children.”

  Maarken grinned as he pictured himself and Hollis similarly “shocking” their own children. One day people would say their names in the same breath, the way they said “Chay and Tobin” or “Rohan and Sioned.” One day very soon.

  Chapter Nine

  The people of Skybowl were close-mouthed, even with their prince and his heir, when it came to gold. Men and women who had given warm welcome the day before had only polite nods as Rohan and Pol tethered their horses in Threadsilver Canyon. They had ridden up into the hills from the dragon plain, then cut north through a narrow gulley to join the trail leading to Skybowl and the gold caves.

  Wind and sand had worn down the rocks into odd shapes; huge cacti grew here and there along the canyon, broad green platters bristling with needles the size of spikes. There was water deep underground still, but nothing remained of the river that had long ago gouged out the softer stone.

  The lower caves of Threadsilver were used for refining gold mined from the upper ones, something Pol deduced from the faint glow of firepits within. His father confirmed his guess as they dismounted for the climb on foot to the higher caverns, but volunteered no other information.

  The boy squinted up at narrow shelves connected by a path just wide enough for a single pack horse. Work had nearly finished for the day and most of the men and women were on their way down. They favored the two princes with those slight nods of recognition and respect; one or two smiled, but there were no verbal greetings at all. Pol wondered about that, and the fact that his father seemed undisturbed by the silence. Curiosity was near to killing him.

  As they waited for the last horses to come down, Pol could contain his questions no longer. “We’re supposed to be mining silver here, aren’t we? I mean, that’s what everybody thinks—including me.”

  “That’s the story, yes. And there really is a vein of it running through these hills. Hence the name Threadsilver.”

  “And we pretend this is an extension of it, to make everybody think our wealth comes from silver.”

  “Of course. Occasionally we do hit silver around here. It’s useful.”

  Rohan started up the trail and Pol hurried to keep pace. “But why keep everything secret?” he asked.

  “It’s a complex arrangement,” his father replied cryptically.

  Pol paused, allowing a young woman carrying waterskins to get by him, and caught up to his father. “How do we hide the fact that we take gold and not silver from the caves?”

  “We have ways to disguise the yield. Lleyn helps. So does Volog.”

  Pol wanted desperately to hear the full details of this ongoing fiscal fraud, but his father had signaled to a bandy-legged man up on the first shelf of rock. The boy held his peace during the climb, and was introduced to one Rasoun, who managed the whole operation for Ostvel. The miner bowed his respects and gave quiet welcome.

  “Thank you,” Pol replied politely, “Are you going to show us the caves?”

  “I think I’ll let his grace have that honor.” Rasoun smiled. “I was about your age when my own father gave me my first sight of the gold caverns. He was overseer for Lord Farid, who held Skybowl for your father’s father Prince Zehava.”

  Pol did some fast calculations in his head. Farid had died the summer before Pol was born; Zehava had died six winters before that; tack on another few years of work under his grandfather’s rule and factor in Rasoun’s probable age—and the caves must have been in production for at least thirty years. How had they managed to keep so much gold so secret for so long?

  “Can you suggest a cave for us to explore, Rasoun?” Rohan asked.

  “The far middle one should do, my lord. We plan to start up there next spring, so there should be a lot to see. You’ll want a torch.”

  “Thank you, no. My son has another type of Fire at his disposal.”

  Pol’s jaw dropped slightly. Rasoun looked a little startled, then murmured, “Ah, yes. Of course, my lord.”

  As they climbed the switchback trail to the indicated cave, Pol asked, “Father, do you really want me to call Fire for you?”

  “Your mother says you’re quite competent. Why? Does it make you nervous?”

  “Well . . . yes. Some.”

  “We won’t need a conflagration, you know,” Rohan told him, amused. “Just something to see by. But wait until I tell you, and be careful.” He lowered his voice to a conspirator’s whisper. “And don’t tell Lady Andrade!”

  Pol shook his head emphatically, and Rohan grinned.

  The path was steep, not yet graded to allow easier access for workers and pack horses. Pausing halfway up to catch his breath, Pol looked out over the emptying canyon. Neither as long nor as wide as Rivenrock to the south, and with only a quarter of the number of caves there, it was still an impressive sight in the late afternoon glow. The walls were gilded with the rosy light that came to the Desert in late spring and autumn, deepening to purplish shadows where the canyon curved and narrowed to the north.

  “Father? Don’t we set guards at night? And why aren’t all the caves being worked instead of just a few? And nobody I’ve seen so far looks big and strong enough to dig gold out of rock.”

  “You’ll have to let me tell this my own way, Pol,” his father said moodily.

  “But when?”

  “Patience.”

  At last they reached a narrow ledge, having to scramble on all fours the last few paces. After taking a moment to brush off his hands and clothes, Rohan said, “Did Maarken ever tell you about the day a hatchling dragon nearly fried him and his brother for dinner?”

  Pol nodded. “He and Jahni went to look in a cave without permission.”

  “That they did. And they got the fright of their lives when that dragon popped out of his cave. It was the last Hatching Hunt ever held,” he went on softly. “A hideous custom—not sport but wholesale murder.”

  “Why didn’t Grandfather ever outlaw it?”

&
nbsp; “Because he thought there would always be enough dragons. No more questions now, not until I’ve told you the whole thing.”

  Pol nodded, holding his breath, staring into the dark hole of the cave.

  “That day Maarken and Jahni went exploring—that was the same day your mother and I first went into a dragon cave. It was the summer she spent at Stronghold before we were married. We found out that day what my father had known for years and never told me.”

  They went into the cave. Impenetrable shadows swallowed up all light in a chamber at least three times the height and breadth of Pol’s room at Stronghold. The ceiling and walls formed a ragged arch above a sandy floor that extended back into a darkness that might have ended there or reached a whole measure into the hillside. Rohan gestured Pol forward until they stood just inside the shadow curtain.

  “Now you may call up a little Fire, please.”

  He did so, centering the finger-flame on the sand a few paces ahead of them. As it steadied, the cave began to shimmer. Pol tried to plant his feet more firmly into the sand, confused by the sensation of movement—but it was only the light that moved, striking a glisten of gold all around him.

  Rohan went to the nearest wall, stooped down, and returned with a hand-sized shard of what looked like pale pottery. It, too, shone.

  “It’s part of a dragon shell,” he explained. “And this is where we get our gold.”

  The little Fire flared as Pol reacted, and he hastily got control of himself.

  “They breathe fire to dry their wings after hatching. When the shells are seared, some of the gold is freed. Over the years it’s all ground down into the sand. There aren’t many shells left here, but at Rivenrock I could show you big chunks left by dragons not much older than you are.” He handed Pol the shard. “It’s not rock we dig out of the caves at all, you see. No one uses a pickaxe, and no one has to be all that muscular to sift the sand that goes into the pack horses’ bags. That was a very astute observation of yours, by the way—I’ll have to talk to Rasoun about it, and get some heftier men up here to create the right impression. The gold is taken down to the smelting caves below, and everything important is done where not even Sunrunners can get a look at it.”

  “Father . . . ?”

  “Let me guess. What happens to the gold, right?”

  Pol nodded, turning the glistening fragment over and over in his hands.

  “Most of it is made into ingots, much like the glass we trade with Firon and elsewhere. It goes into the treasury—not the one at Stronghold, but the secret one here.”

  “And the rest?”

  “We send some to Lord Eltanin at Tiglath, where crafters make various items—plate and jewelry that are sold in the usual way. But we can’t get rid of much using that ploy. An influx of gold would make people suspicious about its source, and ruin the market value of the work. So some of it goes on Lleyn’s ships to Kierst, where Volog has a gold mine—a real one.” He smiled and shrugged. “It’s nearly played out, though. We have a few people there who . . . shall we say it took us years to figure a way to make the gold seem like it comes directly from that mine.”

  “But how many people really know? About the dragons, I mean.”

  Rohan crouched down and dug up a handful of sand. Grains slid between his fingers like dried sunlight. “Lleyn only knows that he’s paid handsomely for Radzyn’s exclusive right to the silk trade. Volog doesn’t know that the gold isn’t really his. And don’t think it’s sentiment for an old friend or your mother’s family that makes me do it, either.” He glanced up with a smile.

  Pol thought furiously, trying to recall everything he knew about Kierst and any changes made there in recent years. But the shock of the gold, the shard of dragonshell in his hand, and the sand sifting slowly through Rohan’s fingers slowed his thought processes. All he could come up with was, “Volog’s an important ally.”

  “Indeed he is. But there are greater reasons than that, Pol. In the four years we’ve been supplying his mine, he’s had the wealth to support some valuable work—woodcrafting, improving his herds, parchment-making, planting new orchards. He never had the money to spare before, you see, and while a good bit of it goes to what some people might call frivolity—well, that keeps other crafters fed and happy, too. But if it was anyone other than Volog, I wouldn’t be doing it. He’s not a greedy man, or one who sees wealth as a means to making mischief. He wants to improve his princedom, and our gold lets him do it.”

  Another palmful of sand was gathered and Pol watched it trickle down, enthralled by the golden stuff that had financed his father’s dreams.

  “It’s the parchment I’m especially interested in, and the herds he’s raising. This year I’m going to suggest that he establish a scriptorium. Can you imagine it, Pol? Books at a price affordable not only to princes, but to all the athr’im—and eventually to almost everyone. If I’m lucky, the scriptorium will evolve into a school. We’ll have people trained in the arts and sciences just the way faradh’im are trained at Goddess Keep, who can take their knowledge to every princedom and teach others. People who’d never get the chance to learn to read can be educated as far as their minds can take them.”

  The little Fire leaped gently again as Pol caught his father’s excitement. “All the stories and history and music and everything can be written down and shared—”

  Rohan was laughing again. “Father of Storms, you’re my son, all right! Any other boy your age would moan at the thought of still more schooling!”

  Though Pol blushed a little, he laughed, too. “As long as it’s other people doing the hard parts, I’m all for it!”

  “The hardest part is really our responsibility as princes. Soaking up words out of books is fairly easy, you know. Applying them to the world around you. . . .” He shrugged and gave a self-mocking grimace. “I learned that at my first Rialla. Come and sit down, Pol. There’s more.”

  “There is?” he asked, amazed.

  “Oh, yes. Much more.”

  He settled near his father in the sand, still holding the shell. “Wouldn’t Prince Volog understand about the scriptorium and the gold and everything?”

  “He’s a good man, basically. But like all the others, he’d see only the gold. Besides, even a High Prince can’t simply order a thing done when it’s so closely involved in another princedom. I can only suggest things, try to make it seem as if the idea was Volog’s, not mine.”

  “And then praise him for his cleverness—while reaping the rewards.” Pol nodded sagely.

  “I just hope none of them are clever enough to puzzle it out about the gold. If they ever do. . . .” He shook his head, light from the Fire playing off his fair hair and turning it almost the same red-gold as Sioned’s. Pol watched his father’s face, as familiar to him as his own. In time he hoped it would be his own, for it was a proud face, strong, unafraid of the hard work demanded by dreams.

  “It really started the year of the Plague. Your mother and I had discovered the gold in Rivenrock earlier, but I was still trying to find a way of extracting it in secret. Then the Plague came. So many died, Pol—your grandmother, Jahni, Ostvel’s wife Camigwen. . . .” He stared down at his now empty hands. “There was an herb called dranath that could cure the Plague. It grew only in the Veresch, which meant that High Prince Roelstra controlled the supply. The dragons were dying, too—scores of them. I was here at Skybowl and Lord Farid and I came up with the notion of putting dranath beside the bittersweet plants on the cliffs. That way, when the dragons ate, they couldn’t help but get a dose of the herb as well.”

  The muscles of Rohan’s face drew tighter, deepening the thin lines framing his mouth. “But first we needed dranath—a huge supply of it. Roelstra was selling it through his merchants at an incredible price. There wasn’t that much money in the world. In some places he held back the supply until an enemy was dead. I could never prove it, but I knew it was true.”

  “You should’ve killed him then,” Pol whispered. “Not wai
ted for later.”

  Rohan glanced up, startled, as if he’d suddenly remembered he had an audience. After a long moment’s hesitation, he finally said. “I wanted to, Pol. Perhaps I should have. But then Farid showed me the caves here, and the gold my father had taken from them but never told me about.” He shook his head at that, still bemused after so many years. “He didn’t want things to be too easy for me, my first years as prince. If I’d known about this wealth, I might have tried to buy my will with the other princes. They would’ve found out about the gold if I’d used it foolishly, and landed on us like a hawk on a sand rat.

  “But we had to have the dranath. So we emptied the treasury here and paid what Roelstra asked. Over the next years we had to make it seem we’d beggared ourselves to do so. The gold had to remain secret. But after Roelstra died and we took all of Princemarch, people expected us to be rich and we could start building again. Tiglath and Tuath Castle were improved. Baisal of Faolain Lowland got his new keep. And a great deal of the money went to reclaim Remagev from the Long Sand.”

  “And you paid back a lot of what Roelstra had demanded of the others for dranath,” Pol deduced, based on sure knowledge of his father’s character.

  Rohan smiled slightly. “A portion of it, yes. Tobin convinced me that to pay any more would be foolish—after all, it was my gold that had bought enough dranath to distribute through the princedoms, so she said they owed me for their lives. In any case, Ostvel and I started the operation you see here today, as large as we dared, and put out word that a new vein of silver had been found.

  “So, Pol, as rich as you’ve always known we are, we’re very much richer even than that. But the real source of the gold must remain a secret.”

  Pol heard himself say slowly, “It’s bad enough that I’m going to inherit two princedoms. It’s worse that I’m going to be a faradhi as well as a prince. But put the gold on top of that—”

  “Exactly. There are perhaps fifty people who know the whole truth of it. Not even everyone here at Skybowl knows; few of them realize the connection between dragons and gold. The people who supply the Kierstian mine don’t know where the gold really comes from, nor does Lord Eltanin. As for who does know—your mother, Tobin, Chay, Ostvel, Riyan—but Sorin and Andry and Maarken don’t, and neither does Andrade. We funnel some of the gold to Prince Davvi’s crafters at High Kirat, but he doesn’t know the source either.”