Stronghold Page 5

  “One dose isn’t enough to cause any serious harm,” Rusina said. “I’ve taken it before, as part of the devri training.” She gave a resigned sigh. “But I can already feel the headache beginning.”

  “Serves you right,” Andry said “Tell me what you had to do to look exactly like Valeda.”

  She pursed her lips, frowning, then shrugged. “Making changes at random, the way I did the other day—that was hard. I didn’t have a specific picture in my head of what I wanted to look like. And, of course, there was no dranath. This morning it was difficult in another way. I had a model to base the changes on, and I had the dranath, but—” She stopped, frustrated. “I don’t really change, you see. I project an illusion. When I wear the guise of the Goddess on a man-making night, I conjure a haze to obscure my identity. Coloring, voice, size—I don’t assume some other shape, I just hide my own. When I was making random changes, it was just four or five things—the color of my hair—”

  “Blonde,” Oclel interrupted in a casual drawl. “I rather liked it.”

  Andry was grateful for the teasing that lightened the atmosphere and took some of the tension from Rusina’s face.

  “Oh?” she asked. “And what did you think of my hands?”

  Oclel shuddered. “If I wanted to be clawed by a dragon, I’d go live in the Desert.” To Andry he said, “Fingernails like talons!”

  “Was it difficult to sustain?”

  “Yes. I didn’t have any specific image in mind. Just vague things, like the hair. But when I became Valeda, it was both easier and more difficult.” She paused, searching for words. “It’s a set pattern, you see. Like our own colors. We know them and they don’t change. I know what Valeda looks like and it was simply a matter of repatterning myself—making a conjured illusion much the same way as we conjure in Fire.” Rusina hesitated again. “It felt odd. It was—uncomfortable. She didn’t fit. I can’t think how to explain it. Beneath it, I was still me. But it was like—like I was trying to wear someone else’s skin.”

  Evarin leaned forward and said, “I have an idea about that. Subtle changes superimposed on our own bodies are one thing. Creating an illusion to fit around ourselves is quite another.”

  “I see,” Andry said, although he didn’t, quite. “Will this be a problem?”

  “Not once we get used to it. I think.” He gave a rueful smile. “Rusina was Valeda for only a short while. She didn’t have time to learn how to move comfortably inside the illusion.”

  “Do you think you could get used to it?” Andry asked her.

  “How’d you like to be wearing someone else’s clothes?” She thought for a moment, then added, “Underwater.”

  Andry tried to imagine it, could not, and said so. Evarin shrugged.

  “It’s only a curiosity, after all, my Lord,” the physician said. “It’s like that mirror you found in Princemarch years ago. No real use for it. But we all wanted to figure out how the sorcerers do it, and now we know.”

  “No, it’s not like the mirror,” Torien said suddenly. “The mirror simply is. This could be mischief if the wrong people learn it.”

  “Well, they won’t,” Evarin stated. “Besides, it takes dranath to accomplish it, and that’s strictly controlled.”

  “But not by us,” Oclel reminded him. “Prince Pol owns its source. We take what we can in secret, but he harvests most of it against the day when there might be another Plague. How well does he guard it, Andry?”

  “Very—if only to keep me from getting my hands on it.” Andry leaned back in his chair and folded his arms over his chest. “My cousin is as possessive of his power as I am of mine. We are worthy adversaries.”

  “I don’t see why you have to be,” Rusina said. “He has his area of influence, and you have yours.”

  “You truly don’t understand?” Oclel stared at his wife in amazement. “Don’t you see that those areas overlap—to our detriment? He’s a Sunrunner, not just a prince.”

  “He should have been truly one of us,” Torien mused. “But his parents had other ideas—prompted by his all-too-talented mother, who taught him everything she knows.”

  “Don’t forget the lessons Urival gave him in his so-called ‘retirement,’” Oclel said. “And Morwenna. They went to Stronghold to train him in things Sioned didn’t know.”

  “Which wasn’t much.” Andry gave an annoyed shrug. “What’s done is done, and cannot be undone. I won’t waste time or energy on it at this late date.”

  “But can’t you make him see that he shouldn’t be at odds with you?” Rusina clung to her absurd objections. “If you worked together—”

  Andry laughed harshly. “We’re both far too old to change now. He’d never submit to my rule, and I would betray the Goddess and everything we faradh’im are if I bowed to him.” Pol would find out soon enough how much he needed Andry. When the ships came and the battles began, he would call out for help. Andry knew he would give whatever help he could—considerable help, with his devr’im. But Pol would pay for that help. Dearly.

  “It’s a pity things can’t be different,” Rusina said.

  “It’s really no different from the days when Andrade contended against Roelstra. Perhaps it’s meant to be that way.” Andry got to his feet. “As it happens, I agree with Torien. There’s potential danger if the wrong people learn this. Write nothing down, and discuss it nowhere but in a room as secure as this one. I needn’t add that only the devr’im and Evarin should know this exists at all. I want all of you to consider for a few days, and then we’ll meet here and talk in more depth. For now, however, we’ve heard enough to keep us busy.” He pointed a stern finger at them and added, “But if you ever, and I do mean ever, give me such a fright again, drowning will be too good for you.”

  They wore properly guilty expressions—Rusina’s still tinged with smugness—as they filed out. Andry grinned, shook his head, and decided that the very thing to get the taste of words about Pol out of his mouth was a morning spent with his children. He whistled as he made his way to the nursery, and earned an exasperated scowl from Valeda when he disrupted routine, declared a holiday, and took the four of them—even little Merisel—outside to play dragons.

  Chapter Three

  After all the years it had taken Walvis to transform a broken-down castle into one of the most prosperous in the Desert, he might have been expected to sit back and enjoy life. By any standard, he was a successful, powerful man. He adored his wife. His son and daughter had married well, and given him five grandchildren. Former squire to the High Prince, he was honored with Rohan’s friendship; victor of the Battle of Tiglath and the canny ruler of a difficult holding, he had earned the respect of his peers. After more than thirty years of concentrated toil, Remagev now produced the finest glass ingots in the Desert, and in the last few years Walvis had gotten rich on, of all things, cactus seeds coveted for their incomparable aroma in taze. No one had to lift a finger to grow pemric plants; harvest was simply a matter of getting a good hold on the cactus—avoiding the dagger-long needles—and shaking.

  But for all his sleek prosperity at the age of fifty-two, he did not equip a cool room in his keep with a cozy chair and a few good books. Instead, every autumn he conducted a minor war.

  Walvis sat his stallion as easily as he had at nineteen, watching a spectacle not unlike the one over which he had presided at Tiglath at that young age. The two armies were much smaller, of course, and both were under his command this time, and there were no chin-scarred Merida to be killed. But the battle cries and the flash of swords and the thunder of hooves were all the same. The young men—and even a few highborn young women—who came to him hoping to learn pretty tricks of riding and swordplay were always in for a shock. End-of-training exercises were no genteel final examinations of horsemanship and of skill with blades and bow.

  Despite emphasis on military matters, a year spent at Remagev was not for the purpose of creating warriors eager to prove their prowess by doing battle with neighbors at home.
Chay had established the school with the idea of educating all that out of them. It was his belief, eventually supported with reluctance by Rohan, that if everyone had everyone else’s measure as a soldier, there could be no wars to test skills and wits. Naturally, not all the youths were of equal accomplishment—but they all knew the basics of battle and tactics, and how to work with their own limitations. They might discover each other’s weaknesses, but they also knew each other’s strengths.

  This was the cynical, practical reason Chay had originally given. Rohan would have preferred that the use of sword and bow be confined to the hunt, but had agreed to Chay’s plan after realizing something else. Comradeship and mutual respect were the major results of a year spent in such training. Even sons and daughters of hereditary enemies learned to work together at Remagev. The companionship of training field and barrack went a long way toward negating traditional rivalries. Walvis had seen it happen a dozen times, most notably between two young men from Syr.

  Their families had sparred since time’s beginning over precisely five and one-half square measures of pastureland. Kostas, weary of seeing them in his law court, took his brother Tilal’s advice and sent a son from each holding to Walvis. Bloody noses and black eyes were shared pretty equally between them during the first season of their residence. Walvis then used the oldest trick in anyone’s book and sent them off on a six-day survival trek through the Desert. They returned exhausted, filthy, and with still more bruises, but also with the beginnings of respect for each other. By the end of their year at Remagev, they fought on the same side in the mock war and returned home friends. One of them had even married the other’s sister.

  Walvis grinned beneath his beard to remember the ironic end of their story. No longer fighting each other, the families united to turn on a neighbor who had long been a source of irritation to both. A thoroughly exasperated Kostas had gritted his teeth, descended on them with fifty of his household guard, and told them to behave or be gone from his princedom. On the ride back to High Kirat, he’d laughed himself out of breath.

  Despite the absurd comedy of that particular incident, the school was an overall success. It had the same foundation as Rohan’s carefully slow insistence that squires not be fostered exclusively with those princes and lords with whom their fathers were on good terms. People who knew each other, who had ties of respect and affection, were reluctant to make war.

  He stroked Pashtul’s glossy neck and from a tall dune watched his little war unfold before him down on the plain. He had chosen a simple strategy today—cavalry only, no bows. Each side was split into two wings with instructions for an orderly fight. Order had long since vanished in the excitement of battle. Walvis shook his head, wondering when and if anyone would have the sense to withdraw and regroup. The instant any action disintegrated into chaos, it was usually problematical which side would lose. Discipline brought victory. He had proved that himself at Tiglath.

  Discipline learned here helped these youngsters in later life. When some hardship or difficulty faced them, they always looked back to their year at Remagev—with its searing heat and glare, days away from cool shade and water, let alone anything that could honestly be called a tree—and thought, “I did that, therefore I can do this.” Walvis often had the same reaction. He’d won the Battle of Tiglath at only nineteen; not much had given him pause since.

  He heard hoofbeats behind him and turned in his saddle. Another grin lit his face, and this time his eyes kindled as well, for it was his wife who rode up the dune on a gray gelding. He didn’t know who had first called Feylin “Lady Azhben”—mainly behind her back, sometimes to her face—but today especially it fit her. The folds of her cloak blew back from her shoulders like dragon wings, pale green lined with yellow. A daughter of the northern Desert, up near the border with Cunaxa that had seen more skirmishes against the Merida than any other area of the princedom, she had been with him at Tiglath all those years ago and was a discerning critic of his annual war.

  “What a mess!” she pronounced as she drew rein beside him and surveyed the field. “Are you sure you told them what to do? Or did you just saddle them up and turn them loose?”

  “They’ll learn,” he replied complacently. “I’m going to try out your maneuver tomorrow. What did you call it? ‘Dragon Claw’?”

  “‘Winged Dragon.’ If it doesn’t work, I’ll let you take the credit.”

  They observed the disaster below for a while. Swords were blunted and no one was ever seriously injured, but when the discipline of ranks was forgotten, the combatants tended to forget the niceties of not wounding their fellows. Happily, Feylin’s mother had been a physician and had taught her daughter most of what she knew. Walvis suspected that part of the reason they called his wife Lady Dragon-woman came from the scant sympathy she gave to the wounded.

  Walvis sighed and waited out the chaos, wondering if the masters at the physicians school in Gilad and the scriptorium on Kierst-Isel had similar problems. Andry didn’t, of that he was sure. No one would dare defy a man who did not discourage the notion that he enjoyed the constant and favorable attention of the Goddess.

  “Ah, look,” Feylin said. “Sethric has rallied some of them.”

  “Perhaps I’ll put him in charge of one of your wings tomorrow.” Walvis squinted at the sunlit plain, seeing the blazing red pennant Sethric had raised to signal his leadership. It was difficult to follow the battle for the sand kicked up by the horses, but many on the red team were wheeling around, gathering near Sethric, massing for a thrust through the thick of the fray.

  “A pity he’s the younger son of a younger son,” Feylin mused. “He’s shown some initiative now that he’s out from the shadow of his father and brothers.”

  That was the dilemma faced by many young men: what to do with themselves. Heirs presented certain problems of their own—and he frowned as he remembered the scant summer Rinhoel of Meadowlord had spent here—but those without expectation of place or property beyond what they might marry troubled Walvis considerably. A year’s training here provided occupation for youths who would otherwise have almost nothing to do. But though most families were pleased to send out boys and receive back men, what was there to occupy the lives of extraneous sons?

  Before giving final approval to the school, Rohan had told Chay and Walvis either to come up with a plan for helping such landless young men after training at Remagev was completed, or to scrap the idea altogether. Three things were recommended. First, that wealthier fathers with lands to spare should be persuaded to give their younger sons manors or other responsibilities to keep them busy. Second, those youths from poorer places should be offered positions in their prince’s guard. Third, if neither of these was appropriate or acceptable, they could join a company which, from its base here at Remagev, ranged out through the Desert, keeping order and settling disputes.

  This idea was completely new. Walvis had had the rare satisfaction of seeing Rohan’s jaw actually drop open in astonishment when he and Chay had proposed it. The concept of representatives of the High Prince, armed but traveling in unthreatening groups of five, riding the land to keep the peace was so compellingly outrageous that it had taken Rohan only enough time to recover his powers of speech before he agreed to it.

  “But not one of them sets foot out of Remagev until fully versed in the law,” he warned. “If they’re going to uphold it, they’re damned well going to know what it is.”

  The first six of these groups had been sent out as an experiment in the spring of 734. They had ridden Princemarch as well as the Desert, returning in time for the Rialla at Dragon’s Rest that year. Pol reported himself and his vassals pleased with the results—Kerluthan of River Ussh especially, who told the princes that outlaws who had eluded his own punitive expeditions had been caught at last by the High Prince’s men.

  The other princes, even Rohan’s allies, greeted this novel idea with skepticism. Their obvious fear was that he would propose to send these Medr’im, as Chay name
d them—“the Fives”—into their lands as well to uphold the High Prince’s laws. Something else troubled Tilal, however, which he told Rohan in private. If each prince established his own corps of Medr’im, he might end up with a small but very well-trained army that could become bored, restless, and dangerous. Twenty armed horsemen could easily seize and hold a fair-sized manor; sixty could lay successful siege to a keep. Once a princely army took the field, they would not retain a conquest long—but why tempt fate?

  Rohan’s response was that the Medr’im were not to be copied by other princes, and for one of the few times in his long rule as High Prince he issued a summary decree to that effect.

  “I’m not going to use my money in pursuit of your justice,” he told the princes, thus allaying their fears that he would expand the Medr’im’s sphere of influence. “I have no objection to giving these young men something to do for a few years, until they marry or settle to some occupation. By taking them off your hands and out of their families’ hair, I’m doing you a favor and we all know it.” He grinned briefly, then shrugged. “But my investment is in the Desert and Princemarch. I claim the right of the High Prince to exclusivity on this matter—just as Volog has sole rights over the scriptorium and Cabar over the physicians school. The Medr’im are my solution to a problem faced by us all, but they are my resource—no one else’s.”

  No one argued with him. They were too busy congratulating themselves that the High Prince’s people would not be riding their lands and superceding their laws with his own.

  The Medr’im had proved a resounding success. They made sure that criminals were taken to the proper authority for justice—whether it be the local athri or the High Prince. Walvis chose them with great attention to their maturity, character, and understanding of the law as well as their prowess at arms. Fifteen groups rode the two princedoms, seventy-five men total, but he could have fielded twice that many. He dreaded the day he would be faced with a mistake in his own judgment, but tried not to worry overmuch about it. The beginning had been made.