Stronghold Page 22

And then something truly shocking took place. She found herself in love with her husband.

  At eighteen, falling violently in love was as natural as breathing. At her age, it was ludicrous. At least, this was how she viewed her feelings at first. After a time, though, she didn’t care if she made a fool of herself in front of the whole court and the island’s entire population lined up to watch.

  That autumn of 737, Hevatia and Latham celebrated the thirtieth year of their union, with ample cause for rejoicing. Arlis had succeeded his grandsire Saumer as Prince of Isel, was married to a charming girl, and had children of his own. Young Saumer was squire to Prince Kostas and would one day rule the important holding of Port Adni, which on Lord Narat’s recent death had reverted to Kierst. Alathiel at fourteen was smart, pretty, and the light of all eyes—especially those of her aged grandfather Volog. She was with her aunt Alasen at Castle Crag, learning about the management of vast estates in anticipation of the holding or princedom she would help rule someday, for none doubted that she would make a splendid marriage.

  At the celebration banquet, an old joke was dredged up by a minstrel: “Their graces are celebrating fifteen years of happy marriage—and fifteen out of thirty isn’t bad!” They laughed heartily over that; for them, it was true.

  While Graypearl and Riverport and Seahold burned that autumn night, Latham took Hevatia to a little cove some ten measures up the coast, where a cottage had been readied with every luxury. They had just fallen asleep after making love when stout boards were nailed across the door and windows. They never saw the men who swarmed ashore from longboats, or the dragon-headed ships anchored in New Raetia’s harbor. They never knew of the battle, never rejoiced when the enemy was driven back onto the beaches and took flight for their ships. Latham and Hevatia burned to death in their huge, soft feather bed.

  • • •

  It had been Baisal of Faolain Lowland’s lifelong dream to build a stone keep. For services to Rohan and Sioned in the war with Roelstra, he had been granted his wish. He had lived to see the completion of the outer walls and inner towers, and on his deathbed made his elder son and heir, Baisath, promise to finish the castle exactly as he had envisioned it. This Baisath had done, but he added an embellishment of his own. A great admirer of moats, the new athri had made it his business to dig one around the magnificent new keep, wide enough to make a perfect mirror for golden-brown stone formed into airy spires.

  The broad wreath of water was practical as well as pretty. At harvest time, river and moat were undammed so that fresh, swift water could do its cleansing work; the moat was naturally the destination of all the keep’s refuse, and into it the middens emptied all year long. During the torrential rains of 727, Baisath and his family watched with held breath as the moat overflowed the dam and the fringe of grassy ground around the walls disappeared underwater. Even the narrow cobbled road leading halfway across the moat to the drawbridge vanished. Scraping up the mud left behind took all spring.

  The annual cleansing rush of the river was never allowed to rise so high. When Mirsath led the refugees from Riverport to the castle the day after the invasion began, the water to either side of the causeway was a tidy three handspans from the edge—deep enough to deter a mediocre swimmer, but simplicity itself for a man on horseback.

  Mirsath noted this with dull eyes. He must do something about it, he told himself. He was the new Lord of Faolain Lowland. His father was dead at Riverport with all his family, but for his cousin Karanaya, who rode with him, and his brother Idalian, safe at Balarat in Firon. Rage and grief and fear had sustained him through the wild night’s ride from the burning town, but now that he was home his strength had run out. The resident Sunrunner, Johlarian, caught him as he toppled from his saddle.

  “We heard,” the faradhi said simply. “I’ve ordered everyone inside the walls, and everything that can be done is being done, my lord. No one will grudge you some sleep. I’ll wake you at sunset.”

  Mirsath hobbled up the steps of the manor house, leaning on Johlarian’s bulky shoulder. The glancing blow on his left leg had long since stopped bleeding, but the wound and the muscles around it had stiffened.

  “I could sleep for days,” the young man admitted. “Goddess, you’ve no idea what it was like—” Gulping back the memory, he glanced around distractedly as they entered the hall. “Karanaya?”

  “Attended by your mother’s women.” Instantly the Sunrunner regretted mentioning Lady Michinida. “Lie down, my lord, and rest,” he said even more gently, and steered the stumbling athri into a guest chamber off the main hall. Suddenly horizontal, Mirsath gave in to exhaustion and shock, and slept.

  Johlarian watched his slumber for a few moments, grieving for his new lord and his old one dead at Riverport. There would be more deaths soon. The handful of guards Mirsath had brought with him, combined with a second handful resident here, plus the two hundred or so castle retainers and farmers, would be no fit match for the army he had glimpsed on sunlight at the High Princess’ bidding. Sighing, the faradhi left the tiny chamber and found a kitchen boy to stand guard over his new lord’s sleep.

  Karanaya stood before the empty hearth in the hall, draining a wine cup. She was still in her betrothal finery, but it was a sorry mess after the frantic ride. Her yellow silk gown was in shreds from the knees down, expensive lace in tatters. She’d lost one gold earring and the matching armband in the crush of fear-crazed people left far behind. But she was wide awake, feverishly angry, and when she caught sight of the Sunrunner threw the empty cup to the floor.

  “What’s been done in our defense?” she demanded. “Don’t tell me to go collapse like my cousin, either. He earned it by fighting our way free last night. I did nothing but sit a horse. Tell me what’s going on here, faradhi.”

  Johlarian had never been an intimate of the family. Having been trained by Lady Andrade in aloof impartiality, isolation had never bothered him. He reported what he knew and what he saw, but never what he thought.

  The lady heard him out, and swore under her breath. “All the farmers within the walls . . . . Goddess, we’re going to be cramped.” Then, sharply: “What did they bring with them?”

  Johlarian blinked. “Why—I couldn’t really say, my lady. Their household goods, I suppose. Anything they don’t want to lose.”

  “In other words, their best cook pots but nothing to put in them! Does no one understand we’ll have to survive a siege?”

  The Sunrunner cleared his throat. “My lady . . . I think it unlikely.”

  “Survival, or a siege? Or both?” Not waiting for his answer, she beckoned to a guard wearing Riverport’s colors. “Come with me,” she said, and Johlarian could do nothing but follow in perplexed worry as she marched out into the courtyard, collecting men and women to her with imperious gestures.

  “Strip every bit of food from your cottages and every blanket from your beds. And hurry up about it!” Johlarian stared at her. She turned to him and added, “And once we’re done, faradhi, you’re going to Fire the stubble in the fields. The enemy will find no living off this land.”

  “My lady—I cannot do that without an order from Lord Mirsath!”

  Her pale blue-gray eyes were the color of flint. “Did I tell you what they did to our faradhi? They cut off his fingers and threaded his rings through their beards as decorations. While he watched and bled to death.”

  No one had ever threatened Johlarian, obliquely or otherwise, in his life. Sunrunners were always treated with the most scrupulous dignity and respect. He gulped back nausea and nodded obedience.

  “I’m glad we understand each other. But understand something else, faradhi. Whatever is required of you, you will do. If my cousin or I tell you to call Fire, you will do so at once. Whatever we order, you will perform. I don’t care a damn for your oaths or your vows and I especially don’t care what Lord Andry would say. You will obey, or you will be given to the enemy and your rings will shine from their ugly faces.”

  She strode away,
calling for the drawbridge to be lowered. Johlarian stood in shock for some moments, trying to tell himself she was overwrought and didn’t mean it. She meant it. Every word.

  He trudged up to the top of the curtain wall, waiting in dull misery for her signal. If invasion was inconceivable, a Sunrunner coming to harm was unthinkable. Both had occurred yesterday. He had thought that when the keep fell, as it inevitably must, he would be spared and could bargain for as many lives as possible. That was part of the rules of war. Haunted by the vision of a faradhi slaughtered and defiled, he stared blankly out at the shorn fields, beginning to understand that in this war, there were no rules.

  Karanaya’s frightened little army marched back to the castle leading sheep and goats and pigs, and laden with blankets crammed with food. She raised her arm to signal Fire. He summoned his energies and set a blaze in the stubble for a square measure all around.

  “Spare our homes!” someone cried piteously from the courtyard below. And when Karanaya joined him on the walls, she confirmed the plan—but not for the reasons the peasants wished.

  “When they come, and look into the cottages, you will call Fire to them and burn them inside.” When he took an involuntary step back in horror, she gave him a grim smile. “Your rings are at present secure on your fingers, faradhi—and your fingers are securely attached to your hands.”

  “Yes, my lady,” he whispered.

  • • •

  A south wind blew at moonrise, and the enemy positioned their great square sails to take advantage of it, skimming straight across the channel toward Radzyn port. Chadric and Audrite stood at the prow of the ship Chay had sent to rescue them, watching white enemy sails fill.

  “As if the Father of Storms exhaled on purpose to take them there,” fumed the captain. “We can’t risk it, your grace. My Sea Spinner is fast, but she can’t outrun them.”

  “Whitecliff?” Audrite suggested, but the man shook his head.

  “Lord Maarken’s holding has no harbor. We can’t put in at the Faolain, nor anywhere along the southern coast.” He eyed Meath, who was prone on the deck with his head in Alleyn’s lap. “Pity your faradhi isn’t up to taking a look—or to warning Radzyn. I’ve never seen any of them caught so bad with it, not even Lord Maarken. We’ll have to go back around your island and north to Tiglath. It’s not much of a port, but at least there’s no word of enemy landings.”

  “They came upon Graypearl from the north,” Audrite said, frowning. “Surely they’ll have patrols along the coast.”

  “I doubt it, your grace. It’s my thought that they came in three fleets—one at the Faolain, one for Kierst-Isel, and a third for Graypearl and Radzyn.”

  Chadric nodded. “There’s little to be had by seizing Tiglath. The way is shorter and easier to Dragon’s Rest and Stronghold from the Faolain.”

  “Exactly. No sand to hinder them.” He snapped his fingers and a boy came running out of the moonlit darkness. “A warm cloak for her grace, at once. Her own is soaked through.”

  “Is it?” Audrite looked down at her bedraggled wrap. “From last night, I suppose.” Shrugging, she looked once again at the huge ships crossing the ink-and-silver sea. If only Meath had recovered and gotten word to Radzyn earlier. If only the wind had allowed the Sea Spinner to arrive yesterday evening instead of well after dark. If only their second boat had not been pierced by wave-hidden rocks on landing at the Small Islands, forcing them to make two trips out to Chay’s ship instead of one. Then at least they would have been at Radzyn by now. As it was, they could not even signal the keep that the enemy would arrive sooner than expected. Shivering, she thanked the boy for the thick wool cloak, and as she exchanged it for her sodden one she met her husband’s gaze.

  “Chay knows what’s what when it comes to fighting,” Chadric said. “Radzyn has never fallen.”

  She managed to smile, tried to match his confidence—forced though she knew it to be. “I don’t give a damn if that idiot son of yours is past forty and taller than I am. When I catch up with him, I’ll blister his behind for that trick he played.”

  “My son, eh?”

  She nodded and turned her head from him to hide sudden tears, knowing that if she said another word, it would come out as a sob.

  Chadric pulled her tight against him as the ship came around and headed out to sea. It would be a long voyage to Tiglath, and a tense one—for there might still be enemy ships waiting and there could be no news of family and friends with Meath incapacitated by seasickness. Fear and isolation and aloneness lay ahead, and awful uncertainty.

  “About my son,” Chadric said.

  “Yes?” She was relieved that her voice held reasonably steady.

  “If you’re intent on taking him across your knee—I’ll hold your cloak.”

  • • •

  “But—they’re beautiful,” Pol whispered.

  “Instruments of destruction usually are,” Rohan mused. “Swords, knives . . . the elegant balance of a well-made ax, the perfect curve of a scythe . . . .”

  They watched the dragon-headed ships make stately progress toward shore, and in Radzyn Keep there was a sudden, breathless silence. Beautiful the ships certainly were, gilded with the first pale glow of a cloudy dawn. Gorgeously painted heads rose from long, curving necks, winged sails arching in the wind.

  “Azhdeen saw them,” Pol said, still marveling at the magnificence of the enemy ships. “I didn’t believe him. Are you sure we can’t burn their ships with Sunrunner’s Fire, Mother?”

  Sioned didn’t look up from lacing her quilted velvet tunic. “Meath says not.”

  “Even if we could,” Rohan told him, “I would forbid it.”

  Pol stared at his father just as everyone else was doing—everyone but Chay, who nodded in quiet agreement. “Why?” Pol exclaimed.

  “Do you want them here forever?” Rohan’s eyes were bleak.

  Chay said, “Without ships, they can’t go home. We’d have to hunt down and kill every single one of them. Without ships, they must stay and fight to their last soldier—and possibly ours, too.”

  Rohan sighed. “Goddess alone knows what they covet here, or why. But if we spare some of the ships, the common soldiers will see there’s a way to go back, and once enough of them start dying . . . .” He shrugged. “I will allow you your Fire, Pol. But not against the ships.”

  “Then let’s try the landing boats. Hollis, you take the ones in the rear. Maarken—” Their stricken faces stopped him. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

  “I can’t,” Hollis whispered. “People would die.”

  “Your Sunrunner oath? Is that it? You were eager enough to learn the Star Scroll spell—a thing outlawed years ago!”

  Hollis stood her ground. “Rohan and Sioned gave permission—or you never would have been allowed to teach it.”

  “You can’t be serious! How can you scruple to use everything we’ve got against these people? You saw what they did at Seahold and Riverport—”

  Maarken circled his wife with one protective arm. “We made a vow, Pol. So did Sioned. The ros’salath, that we will help you do. But not this.”

  Incredulous, Pol began another protest. But his father interrupted. “Leave be. They swore an oath.”

  “Honor makes a wonderful shield against swords and arrows!” Pol snapped. “You may have sworn, but I didn’t.” He extended both hands, cloak billowing and rings glinting dully in the thin light. Sunrunner’s Fire sprouted from the lead boat, then the ones behind it, flames that ran eagerly over wood. A cheer went up from the walls of Radzyn as the Sunrunner Prince worked.

  But the dragon ships continued on their graceful course, while their hatchlings trailed tails of Fire like the homeless stars that sometimes fled through the night sky.

  “Those burn,” Pol muttered. “Perhaps Meath didn’t try hard enough.” And he directed Fire against the sails.

  One sail became a sheet of Fire—but did not burn. All he accomplished was to make the ship even more terrifying: a
dragon ablaze, like the one his mother was said to have conjured long ago.

  Shock rippled through the group assembled on the battlements. Sioned stepped forward as Pol’s hands fell to his sides. “Let me,” she said, and fixed her fierce green gaze on the sails.

  “So much for oaths,” Pol muttered.

  A greater Fire raged, angry red instead of Pol’s deep golden blaze, but with the same result. Murmurings threaded through the sudden silence, dark whispers countered by a single bright hiss as Chay drew from its tooled scabbard the sword that had not tasted blood for the length of Pol’s life.

  “I swore an oath, too,” he said. “I ask my prince to release me from it.”

  Rohan’s answer was slow in coming. But after a time, after he searched his friend’s quicksilver gray eyes, he unsheathed the blade he carried, borrowed from Chay’s armory—shining, lethal, beautiful. “I release us both.”

  Pol forgot anger and humiliating failure. Standing before him were the architects of his peaceful, pretty life at Dragon’s Rest—men he worshiped, men he wanted to emulate—men who now held swords with the easy assurance of trained warriors and the sorrow of awakened dreamers.

  They were too old for war. Lean and fit as they still were, with the swords comfortable—too comfortable—in their hands, yet Rohan was sixty and Chay nearly seventy. Where once their coloring had contrasted, golden and dark, now they were both silver. For the first time Pol’s throat was gripped by fear. They were too old for this. It should not be happening, not to them. We’ve lost before it has begun, Pol thought. Whatever happens, we’ve lost something they spent their lives building—Father, I’ll get it back for you, I promise!

  The old friends gazed into each other’s eyes for a few more moments, acknowledging between themselves everything Pol had been thinking. Then each turned to his son.

  Nothing was said. But Maarken straightened as if his father had given an order, and, beckoning to the commander of the guard, vanished down the stairs. Pol followed his mother and Hollis to a vantage point at the side of the tower.