Stronghold Read online

  By sunset Sioned was so weary she could barely stand. The usual Sunrunner’s headache—a sensation that one’s scalp had become too tight—had burgeoned into a throbbing agony in her brain from the inside out. She trudged into the main hall of Radzyn Keep and winced as torchlight knifed into her eyes.

  “Aunt Sioned!”

  She barely recognized Daniv’s voice, and certainly could not see him in the painful blaze of the hall. He put his arm around her waist and helped her to a chair. Sinking into it, she shut her eyes.

  “Can I get you something? Wine? Food?”

  “A new skull would be nice,” she whispered.

  “Will I do instead?” asked Rohan from nearby.

  She opened her eyes—a vast mistake. They watered uncontrollably, as if she wept but was too exhausted to sob.

  “Daniv, go make her grace’s chamber ready. You, my love, are going to bed.”

  “Can’t—too much to do—”

  “And plenty of people to do it. Don’t even dream of arguing with me. Can you climb the stairs, my feeble faradhi, or must I pretend I’m twenty-two again and carry you?”

  “You’d give yourself a spasm.” The whole world was falling in around them, and tomorrow or the next day they’d be in the middle of a battle, and still Rohan could make her laugh. She squinted up at him, knuckling tears. His face was gray with pallor, there were dark bruises beneath his eyes, and his shoulders slumped with a weariness as profound as her own. And yet—and yet there was about him that quality he had bequeathed to his son: always shining, never tarnished, that mysterious brightness she loved so much.

  “Did Chay order every damned torch and candle in the place lit?” she complained, wiping her eyes again. He helped her to her feet and they started climbing the stairs.

  “The halt leading the blind,” said Pol from the landing. “I don’t know which of you I should offer to carry.”

  “Mind your manners, boy,” Rohan said, “or I’ll mend them at the point of my dagger. You don’t look all that blithe yourself.”

  Sioned peered through tear-tangled lashes. The stairs were darker than the hallway below; she could see her son’s face without fresh tears springing to her eyes. Pol looked almost as bad as she felt. Still, as with the father, the shining of him was undiminished. She wondered with a twinge of annoyance how in all Hells they did it.

  “I’d sleep for three days if I had any sense,” Pol replied cheerfully. “But I didn’t inherit any and certainly never learned from your example.” He came down to lend an arm to each, walking between them, and Sioned found herself having to make no effort at all in the climb.

  Pol went on, “Radzyn port’s empty, the masts and sails have been tossed, and everyone with the least claim to knowledge of one has been given a sword or bow.” He hugged her tighter around the waist. “We’re ready for them, Mother.”

  “And Meath? Have they all been rescued yet?”

  “Soon. I don’t envy them the sail—the wind’s come up and it’s getting blustery in the channel. Here’s your room. Beth sent food up a while ago.”

  Sioned sank onto the bed and kicked off her boots. “Oh, Daniv, snuff those candles, please! My head is about to split wide open.” Lying back, she stared up at the carved and painted ceiling that darkened into strange shadows as the light dimmed. “Is Tobin asleep?”

  Daniv answered, “Lady Betheyn says she’s fretful now that the sun’s gone down. She’s been out Sunrunning like the rest of you.”

  “And now she’s going to rest, like the rest of us,” Pol said. “Cousin, come share a cup with me before bed, if you would. I spoke to your father’s Sunrunner earlier and she gave me messages for you. Sleep well, Mother.”

  Sioned gave a sarcastic snort. “Oh, of course.”

  Rohan sat down on the bed, a cup of wine in one hand and a slice of bread smeared with meat paste and cheese in the other. “Eat, drink, and don’t argue.”

  “I will if you will,” she challenged.

  They shared the meal slowly, silently. At last Rohan stood and pulled the light quilt up from the foot of the bed. “Believe me, my lady, when I tell you that you are going to rest. Chay says everything’s coming along nicely, Pol’s right when he says we’re ready, and Hollis is taking the moonlight watch, so you’re unnecessary until morning. You’re much too intelligent to refuse to rest when things are so well in hand.”

  “Don’t patronize me,” she said quietly, gazing up at him in the shadows. “I have enough wit to know when things are desperate.”

  “They may become so,” he admitted reluctantly. “But they aren’t yet. All we can do now is wait, Sioned. And remember, Radzyn is like Stronghold—neither has ever fallen to any invader.”

  “But who are these people, Rohan? What do they want with us? I went to look for myself and it makes no sense. They’re not after spoils or riches or captives for ransom. They’re just destroying. If you’d seen what I have along the Faolain and the Pyrme—”

  “I thank the Goddess I have not.” He drained the last of the wine down his throat and sat beside her, holding her hand. “Sioned . . . there’s nothing more we can do tonight. And there aren’t any answers. Not yet.” He paused a moment, then asked in a colorless voice, “Have you talked with the other faradh’im about defending Radzyn?”

  “If you mean about using spells from the Star Scroll—yes.”

  Rohan tightened his grip on her fingers. “If we stop the enemy here, we can march east to reclaim what they’ve taken. Kostas will attack from the north, Tilal from the west once he calls up his Ossetian army. If Volog’s ships stay safe, we can use them to retake Dorval.”

  “Tidy,” she remarked. “I doubt they’ll cooperate.”

  “One’s enemy so rarely does. But what else can I do but make plans based on the very little I know?”

  “It gives you something to do,” she murmured. “But we have a chance here, Rohan. Tomorrow. I’m not talking about military things. I mean that we can terrify them. With sorcery.”

  A breeze sneaked through the castle and ruffled the tapestries gathered at the bedposts. Rohan pulled the velvet quilt closer around her shoulders. “What did you have in mind?” he asked finally.

  With a thought, she lit a few candles near the bed. “It needs three of us, according to the Scroll. But that’s only a ritual number.”

  “The diarmadh’im are very fond of three and its multiples,” he mused. “They have a third deity, don’t they? The Nameless One, or something of the sort.”

  “Three is only ceremonial as far as I can tell. I could probably do it all by myself, as I did when you fought Roelstra. But I’ll have Hollis with me.”

  “Pol, too. I don’t want him in the battle, Sioned.”

  “Neither do I. But it would be better to have him there than with me.” She hesitated. “We must be protected, you see. If iron pierced us while we worked . . . an arrow, a sword—”

  “Ah. I’d forgotten. But surely it would be safer for him to be with you and Hollis, surrounded by a wall of soldiers, than to ride into battle.”

  “Not with you,” she murmured.

  He was silent.

  “Rohan—”

  He shrugged. “I swore not to use my sword again . . . and I’m too old for this sort of thing. I felt that today, believe me. All the preparations—it was just like the campaigns against the Merida and Roelstra. It should have made me feel young again, shouldn’t it? An old man reliving his youth . . . . But I felt a hundred years old. Maybe a thousand.”

  “Promise me. Please.”

  “Don’t worry. Chay and I will direct things from the battlements. Or, rather, Chay will direct and I’ll stand there looking princely and confident. Which reminds me, wherever you decide to work, everyone’s got to be able to see you. My Sunrunner Witch weaving her protective spells. It’s an argument for having Pol with you—so they’re reminded of his power.”

  “But how do we keep a natural-born idiot from charging out to do battle?”

>   “It seems to me it’s an even bet as to where he’d be safest. And whichever he perceives as being more dangerous, that’s where he’s sure to be.” Rohan sighed irritably. “He’s never been to war. I’m wagering he’ll behave as stupidly as I did when I was eighteen and disguised myself as a common soldier to go fight the Merida.”

  She sat up and regretted it as her head spun—regretted, too, the bitterness that made her say, “Maybe we should have arranged a little war or two for him when he was young, so he’d know what it’s like.”

  “No. Neither he nor I needed those skills. I had Chay. He’s got Maarken.” Rohan tucked one foot under him, careless of his dirty boots on the velvet. “Chay and I will supervise from here while Maarken takes the field. All you need do is gain us some time and confusion.”

  “And fear.”

  “You can’t protect us long, I know that. If it was something like Fire that you could set and then not have to think about, that would be one thing. They aren’t going to give up and go home, Sioned. Not until we kill so many of them that further battle is unprofitable. Give Maarken time to get the soldiers out and the gates locked up tight again. Cause as much havoc as you can.”

  “It’s a pity we can’t set those damned ships on fire.”

  He frowned. “What do you mean, ’can’t’?”

  “Meath told me he tried and failed at Graypearl. The sails just wouldn’t light—not with cold Fire or the kind that burns candles and torches.”

  “Another spell?” he guessed. “One against Sunrunner’s Fire?”

  “I don’t even want to think about it. Andry believes they’re Merida, doing diarmadhi work. But if that’s true, why have there been no spells?”

  “Maybe it wasn’t necessary until now. And maybe you’re going to be in the kind of battle Pol fought with Ruval.”

  Sioned watched his haunted eyes for a moment, then went into his arms and held on tight. “I hate this,” she whispered. “I want our life back the way it was. Today when I saw Riverport—I wanted to run to you and tell you to make it right again, to put the world back the way it should be—” But in the next instant she said, “Listen to me—I sound like a spoiled child.”

  “I wanted to spoil you,” he murmured, smoothing her hair. “I wanted to make a life of beauty and grace, where we could love each other in peace, and grow old and smug at what we’d accomplished. Up until now I thought I hadn’t done too bad a job of it.”

  “Oh, love . . . .”

  “If I wasn’t so damned tired, I’d make love to you so we could forget the last few days and not have to think about what happens tomorrow.”

  “If I wasn’t so damned tired, I’d take you up on it.” She made an effort and produced a reasonably honest chuckle. “I know you, azhrei. You don’t care about peace for anything but uninterrupted leisure for your lusts.”

  “I beg to differ,” he responded, blue eyes shining again. “I have only one lust, not several. Well,” he amended, “it finds several modes of expression, but has only one form—red-haired and green-eyed.”

  “‘Modes of expression’? Rohan,” she protested as his fingers framed her face and his lips brushed her cheeks and brow, “I thought we were exhausted!”

  “Haven’t you learned by now that you and I never do things the right way around? We celebrated our marriage somewhat in advance of the event—why not celebrate victory the day before we win it?”

  “Do remind me sometime to lecture you on your improprieties,” she murmured, twining her arms around him.

  But they neither celebrated nor slept that night, for only a short while later Daniv shouted from the antechamber that contrary to expectations and their best information, dragon-headed ships rode brisk night winds from Graypearl to Radzyn.

  Chapter Ten

  In the spring of 705, Saumer of Isel informed his offspring that there would be marriages with Volog of Kierst’s children; who wed whom was up to them. The two families were dutiful inheritors of a generations-old animosity; when his vassals raided Kierstian lands, Saumer laughed and rewarded them handsomely; Volog was equally gleeful and generous when his athr’im returned the favor. But it had been strongly hinted by the new High Prince Rohan that they cease picking away at one another’s property. Because of his power, and because his princess was not only a Sunrunner but Volog’s cousin, Saumer accepted the inevitable—though with very poor grace.

  Obram, his heir, was obviously expected to marry the elder of Volog’s daughters. Being an amiable young man, he presented himself to Birani, said and did everything pleasant and agreeable, and in 706 married her. The younger sister was her father’s favorite and the real prize, but she was too young for Obram. Irony would have it that Alasen eventually wed Ostvel of Castle Crag, a man twenty years her senior.

  No one, not even Rohan, had realized that for all the bickering that went on, the vast majority of people living along the border between the two princedoms got along nicely and conducted trade honestly. Rohan had thought that peace had to be built from the top down: that princes and lords must settle their differences and impose their will on the common folk. Kierst-lsel taught him how wrong he was. The islanders had been ready for peace long ago. It was their rulers who balked.

  The marriage of Obram and Birani was the first step toward reconciling the families. They turned out to like each other, and were happy. He died tragically a mere five years later, without a son to inherit Isel. Obram was mourned by both princedoms—Isel, which would have been his, and Kierst, which had grown to value him for his goodness to their gentle princess. And the two families’ common grief was more unifying than any decree of the High Prince. It was cruel that this should be true, but it was.

  Hevatia of Isel had not had to think very long before deciding which princess Volog’s heir would marry. While Obram wooed Birani, she fixed Latham’s regard on herself. Her two sisters were prettier than she, but she had one quality that Latham, possessing it himself, appreciated. She was ambitious.

  At the Rialla of 698 she had looked over the men from whom she would Choose her husband, and found none to her liking. Not even Rohan, who seemed weak and foolish. In later years her mistake in judgment afforded her grim amusement. Hevatia understood and admired the High Prince’s tidiness of mind even while resenting his use of her family to his own ends. It would have shocked her out of five winters of her life had she known how ashamed he was of it; she never noticed that no one had been similarly suborned since.

  Being a young woman of ambition, she decided that Latham, and all that went with him, would be hers. Love, or even compatibility, had nothing to do with it. It helped that he was reasonably good-looking, possessed a tolerable degree of charm, and was ambitious enough himself to value that in a wife. They struck a bargain in the summer of 706, and at the Rialla of 707 were married, with all princes witnessing as new bonds were forged between the formerly opposing lands.

  She did not love him, nor did he love her. She bore their first child, a son they named Arlis, three years after their union. The next year, Obram died and Arlis was heir to both princedoms. It was bitter fulfillment of an ambition neither Latham nor Hevatia had ever dreamed of, but once it was fact it became necessary to raise the boy with his future importance in mind.

  Not only would Arlis rule the united island one day, but he was cousin to Sioned and therefore to Pol. Other kinsmen were the princes of Syr and Ossetia. If only through his relations, Arlis would one day be a very important man.

  The parents agreed that their son’s consequence must not depend on blood ties alone. Latham trusted Rohan more than Hevatia did, but neither of them wished to see Kierst-Isel become little more than the High Prince’s vassal state. So Arlis was trained to understand and enjoy princely power. There was no better way to learn it than as Rohan’s squire.

  Until he was old enough to be fostered at Stronghold, Arlis spent every autumn at Zaldivar. Hevatia’s two unmarried sisters doted on him; his grandfather Saumer spoiled him disgracefully
. Hevatia never had the heart to chide them. True, she had to spend part of every year mending his ways, but he was a good-natured child and soon understood that what was permissible at Grandsir’s was not a good idea around his parents.

  If Obram’s death united the families in sorrow, Arlis united them in love. Volog was only a trifle annoyed when Hevatia Named her second son after her father. At young Saumer’s birth in 720, she was thirty-eight and could reasonably expect that she was done with childbearing—and creditably so, having produced an heir and a spare, as the saying went. But three years later she had the shock of her life. Not at the birth of her daughter Alathiel, but at the circumstances that produced it.

  After sixteen years of marriage, her husband had fallen in love with her.

  This confused Hevatia and embarrassed her profoundly. She could not imagine what had caused this aberration in a man she thought she knew inside out. She had grown no prettier; she showed him no special favor; she encouraged his new attentions not at all. They had evolved a comfortable relationship based on their children, their duties, their expectations for the future, and respect for each other’s privacy. Each enjoyed a few brief, discreet dalliances through the years, with the usual understanding between civilized persons of high rank that any children Hevatia bore would be Latham’s, and any sired by him on other women would be raised away from court. It was eminently practical, agreeable to both, and paid tribute to two rational minds.

  But suddenly he shared her bed more nights than not, and, after the necessary number of gestational days, Alathiel was born.