The Dragon Token Read online

  “You’re needed strong and well yourself, so that you can help others become so.” Hollis readied herself to weave sleep. A useful trick, and one she would use on others once Chayla was resting. A line of the candle and they could start out again, to Skybowl or Feruche or wherever they could find safety. Part of her worried about feeding and housing so many in either keep; most of her was so weary that she wished she could perform the gentle witchery on herself. She found a clear spot against one wall and coaxed Chayla to sit down, prepared to drape soft threads of sleep around her daughter’s thoughts.

  “Don’t—please! I can feel what you’re trying to do—”

  “Chayla! Don’t fight me, heartling,” she added more softly. “You’re exhausted. You’ve done enough for—”

  “It’s never enough.” All at once she was not the accomplished physician but a frightened fifteen-year-old girl. Hollis gathered her close and rocked her, murmuring wordlessly, strangely glad that the grim mask of adulthood had fallen away and she could be a mother to her child again.

  “Hollis?” The whisper behind her turned her head. Betheyn stood there, reluctant to interrupt but urgent nonetheless. “Myrdal’s asking for you both.”

  “Is she hurt?” Chayla drew away and raked her hair back from her face.

  When there was no answer, Hollis abandoned hope of getting Chayla to rest. “Where is she? Take us to her, Beth.”

  Myrdal sat with her back against a ragged boulder. There was a tiny Fire before her, called by Tobren to warm ancient bones. Its glow put false color into a withered face that proudly refused to show any pain. But Hollis knew suddenly that something had broken inside the old woman. Something that had always looked out from her eyes was gone.

  Tobren knelt at her side, eyes huge and frightened. Hollis touched her hair in a reassuring caress as Chayla crouched by Myrdal.

  “Don’t bother yourself, my dear,” the old woman said, her voice a whisper of Desert breeze across sand. “Although if you can strengthen me so there’s time to tell you what you must know, I’d be obliged.”

  Chayla delved into the coffer that had not left her side since that dawn. “I can help a little. But you must tell me where the pain is.”

  “Everywhere and nowhere. Give me what you judge best, child. And then let me speak.” When Betheyn started to leave; Myrdal lifted her cane to block her path. “Stay.”

  Hollis nodded at Beth and the two women knelt opposite Chayla as she sifted herbs into a cup filled from the waterskin at her belt. They waited while Myrdal drank, coughed harshly, and eventually nodded.

  “Thank you, child. That’s much better. Now listen, all of you. These secrets came to me through my mother, whose mother bore her to Zehava’s grandsire. My own daughter should have kept the knowledge after me—but Maeta is long dead.” Black eyes still sharp as obsidian chips regarded each of them in turn—Chayla and Tobren, Hollis, Betheyn. “I give it now to descendants of Zehava, and one who bore children to his line, and one who would have done so.”

  Hollis suddenly knew what Myrdal was going to tell them: the secrets of every castle in the Desert, and some outside the Desert. Traps for enemies, like those at Remagev; passages, like the ones at Stronghold; perhaps other things no one had ever guessed at. Hollis disciplined her mind to techniques learned in her youth at Goddess Keep. What she heard, she would remember exactly, and for the rest of her days.

  Her Sunrunner memory was the reason she had been summoned to hear this. As for Betheyn, who would have been Sorin’s wife—she was the daughter of an architect. She would understand the intricate machinery of such secrets. Chayla was of Zehava’s blood; thus the knowledge would stay in the family. The inclusion of Tobren gave Hollis a qualm that instantly shamed her. But this was Andry’s daughter who huddled beside her. Tobren would tell her father whatever he wished to know, whenever he asked it. Perhaps sharing the secrets was Myrdal’s way of trying to bring Andry back to them. Hollis hoped the old woman wasn’t making a mistake.

  Myrdal coughed again, one hand touching briefly at her chest, then began. “Pay attention. At Skybowl. . . .”

  • • •

  Chay squinted into the distance, trying to see the spires marking the entrance to the Court of the Storm God, where they should have hidden this night. But the Vellant’im had not followed—had, in fact, stood in stunned amazement as Stronghold went up in flames like a grease-soaked torch. Chay had decided that between his people, Walvis’, and the ones led by Sethic of Grib, there were enough to stand guard while the rest of them stole a little sleep from this long winter night.

  For himself, he was too tired to sleep, too tired to think or feel. He rose from the folds of a cloak laid out on the sand and left the encampment, not knowing where he walked and not caring.

  Sentries nodded to him; he knew it rather than actually seeing it. He climbed a short hill, forcing himself to suppleness despite the rasp of air in his lungs and the ache in his thighs. Old fool, fighting half the day as if you were twenty again—

  From the rise he could look down on the tiny fires that dotted the camp, bright islands in a black sea. But so few. He shivered at that thought. Sparse, scarce fires in the darkness—it was the way Rohan would have seen them, he told himself dully. Rohan’s influence that made him see the same way.

  But Rohan would have seen hope in those flames. Chay could not.

  I have seen the Fire take two of my sons, one of them before his eighth winter and the other in the prime of his manhood. Now the Fire has claimed my prince, my brother, my friend. No man should outlive his children. Neither should a man outlive his prince.

  Kept tight in his breast until now by urgency and fear and exhaustion, the agony finally broke through. He stumbled, unable to see, flung out a hand to brace himself on a boulder the size of a dragon. The cold stone bruised his knuckles, clawed back at his fingers as he tried to support himself. Sliding down, he bent his head to his drawn-up knees and wept like a child.

  A long time later, when his eyes were empty, he heard footsteps below. Walvis climbed the hill and without a word sat beside him on the ground. Shoulder to shoulder they watched the stars, until the younger man finally spoke into the silence.

  “Someone will have to tell Pol, when we find him tomorrow.”

  Chay nodded, knowing who would have to do it. He took the topaz ring from his pocket, staring at the bright stone surrounded by emeralds. Walvis made a small sound and turned his head away.

  A dragon’s cry shook the Desert stars. Chay shuddered, fresh tears stinging his eyes. He’d thought his heart dry as the sand, but the sound of a dragon—

  “I’ve been waiting for it,” Walvis murmured, his voice thick.

  Dragoncry before dawn, death before dawn. Chay nodded blindly. “They mourn one of their own.”

  • • •

  “Stay with her,” Meath had been told. “Stay with her.”

  He kept watch that night as he had done nearly all their lives, one way or another. Since her first day at Goddess Keep, on the journey to the Desert to become a princess, at Riall’im, and from Graypearl, he’d watched over her. He knew everything about her. He knew all her secrets. And he had helped her to keep them.

  He sat beside her where she lay wrapped in someone’s cloak, ready to warn off anyone who approached. But no one did. Her sleep was respected even as her grief had been. They all knew—or thought they knew—what she had lost.

  Suffering aged most people. Not Sioned. There was an aching purity to her, like a young girl, as if Fire had burned away all evidence of her years. She murmured in her sleep, her hands twisting around the cloak. He put his fingers over hers and she quieted. Perhaps she thought he was Rohan.

  The huge emerald was cool beneath his palm. Meath had watched Rohan give her that ring.

  “. . . kept safe the two young lords who are our heirs—until we can get one of our own. It is our desire that you wear this as a reminder of the debt we owe you.” And the emerald ring sparkled from her hand
while he grinned into her furious green eyes, daring her to refuse the gift.

  Meath coughed discreetly behind his hand. Oh, the young prince was a match for her right enough, despite his bland blond looks. They’d lead each other a merry dance. . . .

  The emerald had left her finger only once, stolen from her along with her Sunrunner rings. That she had taken back the one but not the others never surprised him, as it had everyone else.

  The woman paced the battlements, stroking her belly and gazing out at the Desert with glowing greedy eyes. She braced both hands on the stone wall and glanced down, her attention caught by the glint of green on her finger. Raising her fist to the moons, she laughed softly, admiring the shine.

  Meath fled down the moonlight, back from Feruche to Graypearl, and stumbled into the ancient faradhi oratory he had helped unearth and rebuild. When his heartbeats settled again, he cursed his weakness and vowed no one would ever know what he now knew—even as he wondered what kind of child would come of Rohan’s mating with Ianthe.

  He had kept watch that long summer and autumn, claiming the right from all other Sunrunners. No one had thought anything of it. Not even Andrade. He knew who had worn the emerald during that time, and what had happened the night Sioned had recovered it, and how she had come home.

  She trudged through sand piled high by a recent storm, yielding as water beneath weary feet. The three were a long way from Feruche—from the smoldering ashes of Feruche—and longer still from Stronghold, but it seemed she would risk a stop at Skybowl. What would she say to explain her presence there? Meath winced away from the hard glitter of her eyes that warned Tobin and Ostvel back without words as she gathered the infant closer. What in the Goddess’ Name would she tell them at Skybowl?

  Doubtless she would think of something. And be believed. Or at least no one would question—and even if they did, who among Rohan’s people, her people, would not keep the secret? Like Stronghold, Skybowl was nearly empty, all the able-bodied men and women gone north with Walvis or south to their prince. Sioned was their sovereign lady; her words would be accepted without comment.

  He would return to Skybowl tomorrow and receive news of the child’s birth, and her explanation of it, and disseminate it on sunlight as if it were the truth before anyone had the chance to wonder. It was all he could do for her, but perhaps it would be enough.

  He smoothed back stray wisps of her shorn, ragged hair. Deprived of its length and weight, the strands curled softly around her face. He had always wanted to touch her hair, feel its warm silk in his fingers. He rolled a lock around one finger, fire-red and sun-gold, and by the glow of distant stars saw starlight woven through it. The years showed silver in her hair.

  Meath opened the door silently when there was no answer to his second knock. The scene within made him smile. They were already dressed in the finery each had ordered made for the other, commissioned through Meath himself in secrecy. She sat at her mirror, and he stood behind her brushing out her long hair. She wore it loose tonight, bound only by the circlet of her rank across her brow.

  He cleared his throat tactfully. “I’ve been sent by your sister to say, and I quote directly, ‘If you aren’t down here in two swipes of a dragon’s claw, I’ll skin you for saddle leather.’”

  “Late to our own celebration—terribly tasteless,” Rohan drawled. “Doesn’t anyone respect the privileges of age?”

  “Find a better excuse.” Meath chuckled. “You’ve never not made an entrance in your life!”

  “Don’t encourage him,” Sioned pleaded. “Honestly, Rohan, none of us is getting any younger, waiting for you to pick your moment!”

  “None of us except you.” And he smoothed the thick hair cascading down her shoulders.

  The wealth of it was gone now, an offering of living fire. He stroked the unruly curls and his hand brushed her cheek, an unintentional caress. He allowed himself the gesture because it brought a tiny smile to her face. He had watched sometimes from Graypearl, just to make sure she was happy. He need not have worried. Rohan had known what a treasure he’d won.

  She stood on the steps, firegold hair piled in braids like a crown. In her arms was the child. Rohan caught sight of her and froze. In his slow movements were reluctance, self-hatred, resentment that she should force the issue here in public, with the whole of Stronghold and the Desert armies watching.

  Meath held his breath as he watched Rohan climb the steps to where wife and son awaited him. Sioned’s eyes burning with challenge. She held out the baby, and Rohan’s fingers trembled slightly as they pushed aside a corner of the blue velvet blanket. He gave the boy a cursory glance—and Sioned a bleak one.

  But when he faced his people, he drew her with him, one arm around her waist so that she and the infant shared the roars of the crowd with him. Meath felt his heart begin to beat again.

  Sioned turned her cheek into his caress, her lips curving. “Rohan?”

  Meath took both her hands in his. “Go back to sleep, Sioned.”

  But the sound of a voice that was not his voice woke her. Not that she had ever been truly sleeping; he saw it in the green eyes that were colorless in the starshine. She gazed up at him for a long moment with no expression on her face at all.

  Then: “Hold me. Please, Meath.”

  He lay beside her in the chill sand, taking her into his arms. There was no possibility she could pretend he was Rohan; Meath was half again his size. But he felt a soft, guilty happiness that she turned to him, to no one else. He would keep watch, and protect her, and stay with her. He had promised Rohan, true, but long ago he had promised himself.

  • • •

  Tobin shifted irritably as Feylin sat down and spread half her cloak across her shoulders. “Not cold,” she rasped.

  “That’s odd. I am, and so is everyone else. Do you have liquid sunlight running in your veins instead of blood?” Leaning her head back against the wall, Feylin closed her eyes and let all the breath sigh out of her. “I wonder if we’ll be going back, or going on.”

  Tobin shrugged. When she was tired like this, it was even more difficult to get words around her tongue. She cursed this underground tunnel where there was no light save that of torches. Still, even if there’d been sun, she couldn’t have spoken to Feylin on it anyway.

  “The servants brought the oddest things out of Stronghold,” Feylin mused. “Tibalia is staggering under the weight of Sioned’s jewel coffer, and some of the maids are eye-deep in blankets—which at least will be useful. Kierun, bless him, has a sack of cheeses from the pantry that’s twice as big as he is.”

  “Mmm,” Tobin responded drowsily. She had been cold, and now that she was warming up, tension was draining out of her. She knew what Feylin was doing—the low, steady words were meant to soothe her into sleep. She couldn’t bring herself to struggle against it.

  “A few of them are even trying to wrestle that dragon tapestry along. They ought to put it on a litter—it must weigh at least five silkweights. As I was passing, they dropped it again and I swear that dragon was staring at me—”

  Tobin heard herself say, “Dragons.”

  “Yes, it’s a pity Azhdeen didn’t see fit to come visit Pol today from the Catha,” Feylin went on in the same soft tones. “It would’ve been nice to have the Vellant’im on their knees so their heads could be conveniently lopped off. I wonder why they’re so terrified of—”

  “Dragons,” Tobin said again, not knowing why. Feylin watched her narrowly, her eyes dark gray in the dimness, framed with lines acquired from years of squinting over charts and statistics and manuscripts. Those lines had been etched deeper since the death of Jahnavi, her only son.

  Dragons.

  Tobin grasped her arm. “Feylin—th-the book!”

  “What book?”

  “Your book!”

  “Sweet Goddess! Stay here, don’t move.” She scrambled up and fled around a bend in the passage, back toward the entry into Stronghold.

  Tobin tried to gain her fee
t. Failed, of course. She glared down at her exhausted, useless body. What good was a mind inside a body that would not do its bidding?

  Then she sobered. Better to live like this than become shadow-lost like Morwenna and Relnaya: whole of body, mind gone.

  It seemed forever before Feylin returned, Dannar with her. The boy carried something large and heavy, wrapped in a bedsheet.

  “He remembered,” Feylin said.

  Dannar knelt beside Tobin to show her a corner of the book. “After what the High Princess and I did to the one at Remagev, I couldn’t forget this one.”

  Feylin nodded. “If they found it, they’d know what’s true about dragons, instead of what we want them to believe. You’re Pol’s squire, I know, but I don’t think he’d mind my stealing you for a little while. Whatever happens, Dannar, that book’s safety is your only concern.”

  “Yes, my lady.”

  Tobin reached out her good hand to pat Dannar’s knee. As trustworthy and solid as his father Ostvel, and as devoted. She made a mental note to tell Rohan that Dannar deserved special recognition for his quick thinking.

  Feylin plucked a torch from a nearby guard and gave it to him. “Go up to the front now, where Princess Meiglan and the girls are. And on your way, start everyone moving again.”

  “Are we going back to Stronghold, my lady?” Below the shock of red hair, Kierstian green eyes regarded them solemnly amid layers of dirt and sweat.

  “No.” She managed a tired smile. “Not yet, anyway. It’s just that I’d like to keep moving. This hole in the ground makes me nervous.”

  But there was that in her voice that frightened Tobin. When the squire had left them, Feylin knelt and whispered, “I missed Dannar at first—I went all the way to the last person in the line. But while I was back there I smelled smoke, Tobin. We’ve got to get out of here in case it gets thicker.”

  Stronghold in flames? Impossible. But as Feylin helped her to her feet and gave her over to the guard’s care, Tobin felt a stinging in her eyes.

  • • •

  Isriam had wept during the night, but was too proud to acknowledge it. Daniv, his companion as Rohan’s squire, rode beside him in the dawn and made no remark on his friend’s swollen eyes and thickened voice. He had cried himself dry the day Sioned had told him his father was dead and he had become Prince of Syr. He had no tears left, not even for the friends they had lost yesterday in battle. Isriam would have to weep for them both.