Dragon Prince 03 - Sunrunner's Fire Read online

  Chay snorted. “One of my best studs and three of my best mares I gave you last year, and you greet us riding a cow.”

  “ ‘Gave’?” Pol laughed. “Sold!”

  Sioned fixed her green eyes on her son. “Where’s this glorious set of chambers you’ve been promising?”

  He pointed to a fretwork of girders and chimneys. “See that?”

  Rohan squinted down the valley to the palace complex. “What happened? I thought the crafters had orders to finish by now.”

  “It was a choice between living quarters and the Princes Hall,” Pol said cheerfully. “Mine are up there somewhere, too. Or so my architects tell me.”

  Rohan peered at the empty air divided off by stone and steel. “Sleep well at night, do you?”

  “Sorry, Father. For now you’ll have to make do with the Guard Tower.”

  Sionell knew the plans for Dragon’s Rest as well as she knew the ancient walls of her home castle, Remagev. Her brother Jahnavi was Riyan’s squire at Skybowl; Riyan often visited Sorin at Feruche; Sorin had helped with the design for Dragon’s Rest; Jahnavi had made a copy of the plans for Sionell. She knew what the finished palace would look like down to the last gravel pathway and fountain. Most of it she approved; some of it she would have altered for the sake of comfort, convenience, or charm. As if she had any right to say a single word about Dragon’s Rest, or share in it as anything more than a guest. She’d known that while riding down the valley to the Princes Hall, and the days that followed had made it even more painfully clear.

  Well, so what, she thought, digging her bootheels into the soft, damp soil. Who needed him, anyway? She’d been surrounded by young men of wealth and position all during the Rialla, men eager to claim her attention and, if possible, her heart. Not to mention my dowry, she added cynically.

  One thing was certain: Pol would never Choose a wife for her wealth. He needed more money the way dragons needed more teeth. Dragon’s Rest was ample proof—built, in fact, to impress within a hair of overawing.

  Two buildings had been completed in time for the Rialla. The Guard Tower, five floors high and perfectly round, was constructed of pale silvery-gray stone, its roof of gray-blue Kierstian tiles. It would be matched on the other side of the Princes Hall by a similar tower for the masters of horses and hawks and vines and harvests, with all their assistants and gear. For now, the Masters Tower was only a circle of flagged stakes in the ground, making the whole place look lopsided.

  The Princes Hall was a masterpiece of dazzling Fironese crystal windows and graceful proportions, round on the approach side and flat where it faced the water gardens. In time, two more buildings would face each other across the fountains, hollow and curving like halves of a Sunrunner’s ring. One was the iron-and-stone skeleton Pol had pointed out to his parents, and would become his private domain. The other was for servants, guests, reception chambers, and the machinery of Princemarch’s government. Of course the palace would be beautiful; it wouldn’t dare be anything else. It was Pol’s.

  Sionell got to her feet, pacing restlessly toward the central fountain. The pool was quiet now. Water had blossomed there during the Lastday banqueting, but she supposed that since there was nobody left here to impress, Pol had ordered it stilled. That night, he’d called and extinguished Fire to racks of torches in sequence, constantly changing the direction of light thrown onto the water. It had been a spectacular show as seen from the dining chamber of the Princes Hall, culminating in his casual gesture that had illuminated hundreds of white candles around the pool at the same time all the torches went out. The glow had spread from candles outward to ignite the torches once more, until the whole of the water garden was ablaze in Sunrunner’s Fire.

  And Pol had reveled in it. A season away from his twenty-first winter, he was taller than Rohan by a hand’s span, his hair a darker blond, his eyes green and then blue and then both as he smiled with a not-quite-innocent pleasure in his own skills. Wearing a shirt of Desert blue and a tunic of Princemarch’s violet, his shoulders beginning to broaden toward maturity, he had been a prince to his fingertips.

  But no faradhi rings sparkled on his fingers. Nor had Lord Andry offered them. Only the moonstone that had been Lady Andrade’s, reset into a ring sized to his hand, told of his Sunrunner gifts. The unspoken, unacknowledged antagonism between Pol and Andry had not been allowed to spoil the work or the festivities of the Rialla, but everyone knew it was there. Only a matter of time before they clashed, Sionell’s father had muttered one evening, shaking his head. She hoped it wouldn’t happen. But she also knew who would win.

  Seating herself on the blue tiles at the fountain’s rim, she trailed her hand through the water to wash leaf-stains from it and smiled grimly at her own unadorned fingers. Like Pol, she would never wear faradhi rings. But, unlike him, she had no choice in the matter.

  “What are you doing out here all alone, Ell?”

  She glanced around. Pol strode lithely toward her from the shell of his future home, long legs encased in tan riding leathers and tall black boots, white shirt open at his throat. His waist was circled by a belt dyed blue and violet, decorated with the gold buckle of his new knighthood and by a dagger set with amethysts that had been Chay and Tobin’s gift. Energy and power rippled from him; sunlight crowned his sun-bleached head with bright gold.

  How can I want him and hate him at the same time? Then, chiding herself disgustedly, Oh, grow up! You’ve always known it was hopeless—

  “It’s quiet here,” she said aloud. “After all the fuss, I was enjoying the silence.”

  “If it’s quiet you want, why are you staying to watch the dragons? Goddess, the racket they make! You will stay until they get here, won’t you?”

  “Of course. My mother wouldn’t miss them.”

  Pol chuckled and propped one boot on the fountain rim. “Feylin’s almost as scared of dragons as she is fascinated by them. But they don’t frighten you, do they? Remember years ago at Skybowl, when you nearly fell out a window trying to fly after them?”

  Sionell laughed easily. “As if you never wanted to do the same thing!”

  Grinning wry agreement, he gestured to the Princes Hall. “I haven’t had the chance to ask you how you like my two-fifths of a palace.”

  “It’s magnificent—as you don’t need me to tell you. Now that everybody’s gone, I suppose you can get back to work on the rest of it.”

  “Only until the rains. That was our big mistake—we never considered how much time we lose to winter. But no snow, thank the Goddess.”

  “Better to thank the Storm God. But I’d like to see it snow someday. I’m told it’s beautiful.”

  “I’ve ridden through it, walked on it, and even slept on top of it, but I’ve never seen it fall, either.”

  “From what Princess Iliena says, it’s rather like a freezing sandstorm—only it blows down, not across.”

  “Down, if you’re lucky,” Pol corrected. “Across, with a vengeance if you get stuck in a blizzard.”

  Such polite, social conversation; they might have been friendly strangers. “Iliena must find Graypearl a nice change after Snowcoves.”

  “Strange, isn’t it? That she and her sister married brothers.” He hesitated, then shrugged and went on, “And that Ludhil and Laric visited Snowcoves and fell in love at exactly the same time.”

  He sounded wistful. Perhaps his parents were hinting that with Dragon’s Rest livable, if not finished, he ought to start looking for a wife. If she steered the talk away from love, he might suspect—no, he had never suspected a damned thing. Arrogant, insufferable, and blind.

  “I think Iliena got the better geographical bargain by marrying Chadric’s heir,” she replied lightly. “Lisiel may be Princess of Firon now as Laric’s wife, but she’s still in blizzard country.”

  “Do you know what Firon means in the old language? ‘Silent hoof.’ A tribute to the snow, no doubt.” He paused again. “I’m supposed to go find myself a princess, you know,” he finis
hed irritably.

  So he wasn’t ready yet. Interesting. “In your position, they’ll come looking for you.”

  “Don’t I know it. In a way, I’d like it to happen quickly—it’d save me years of nonsense. Trying to find the right person must be awful. I haven’t even started yet.”

  “But they have,” she said before thinking, remembering all the highborn maidens who had clustered around him during the Rialla. Sionell had removed herself from the vicinity as often as possible, accompanied by her own clutch of admirers—who for some reason only annoyed her.

  “I just hope she’ll be somebody I can talk to the way I can to you. It’s wonderful, Ell, finding out you’ve grown up sensible!”

  She smiled wryly at the backhanded compliment.

  “I mean it. The girls here, the ones at Graypearl—gigglers and gawkers, all of them. I can talk to you like I’d talk to Riyan or Maarken or Sorin. It’s a relief to find there’s at least one intelligent woman my own age in the world.”

  How nice of him to categorize her as one of the boys.

  He had fixed his gaze on the delinquent flowers nearby. “Damned roses,” he muttered.

  Sionell laughed at him. “As if all you had to do was wave your hand for them to appear! Prince and Sunrunner you may be, but not magician.”

  “But I wanted them to be spectacular. My grandmother Milar loved messing about with gardens, too, you know. I think I inherited it from her.” Glancing down at her and then away, he asked, “Ell, what do you think of Tallain?”

  “I think very highly of him,” she responded. “He’s very capable, as he’s shown since his father died last winter.”

  “He’s determined to keep the Cunaxans and the Merida pent up in the north so we won’t have to worry about them ever again.”

  Sionell nodded, wondering why he’d mentioned the young lord of Tiglath. An additional honor for him, perhaps? Tuath Castle had no direct male heir; perhaps Pol and Rohan were considering a union of the two holdings.

  “Tallain’s a fine man—he was my father’s squire for years,” Pol went on.

  “I know.”

  “I like him a lot. A prince is only as good as the people who support him, the athr’im who’re loyal to him. Tallain’s one of the best.”

  “I like him, too,” she said, a trifle impatiently, wishing he’d either tell her why he wanted to discuss Tallain of Tiglath or go away and leave her alone.

  Pol did not enlighten her. She did, however, receive her second wish. From the Princes Hall came a young maidservant, black-haired and slender; she paused just long enough in the sunshine to make sure Pol had seen her, then stretched her arms wide, as if she’d just slipped out for some fresh air. Pol excused himself a few moments later—not even having the grace to enter the Hall by a different door.

  Sionell watched him disappear, stunned. Right in front of my face, too! All the subtlety of a rutting dragonsire!

  Then: Fool! Idiot! He’s the High Prince’s heir, the great Sunrunner Prince—he can do as he likes and—damn him! I am not going to cry!

  And, finally: Very well, then. If that’s the way the wind sets, so be it. I’m not twelve anymore. If he doesn’t want me, lots of others do. He can find a convenient Hell and rot in it for all I care.

  The next afternoon the High Princess enlisted her namesake’s help in packing presents for Andry’s son and daughter. He had not brought them to the Rialla. Rumor had it that this neglect earned him an interview with his parents that acquainted him intimately with their blistering views on the subject. Their anger was not that the children existed; they were furious and hurt that Andry had left them behind at Goddess Keep. Sionell and everyone else knew why. He intended little Andrev and Tobren to be raised as faradh’im only, with no ties and thus no second loyalties to the Desert. She could just imagine what Lord Chaynal—not to mention Princess Tobin—had said to that.

  The latter had indulged her thwarted grandmotherly instincts with a buying spree at the Rialla Fair. It was this collection of toys, clothes, and trinkets that Sionell helped wrap and label for the children—while Tobin fretted at not having had them ready for Andry’s departure two days earlier.

  “He would ride out in a hurry, wanting to make good time back to Goddess Keep, when he knew I had things for the babies! I swear that one of these days I’m going to skin that boy alive.”

  Surveying the piles of packages—and the things yet to be wrapped—Sioned laughed. “Smart of him to escape while he had the chance. Honestly, Tobin, it’s going to take two wagons and four pack horses to get all this to Goddess Keep.”

  Sionell said innocently, “The pony cart she bought them ought to hold quite a bit.”

  “Goddess in glory, don’t remind her!” Sioned begged. “She’ll go after the departing merchants and load that up, too!”

  “Go on, tease me,” Tobin invited, making a face. “You just wait until you become a grandmother, High Princess!”

  Sionell prudently did not comment that if Pol kept putting off marriage while doing what he was doing with the maidservants, Sioned would have grandchildren long before she had a daughter-by-marriage. His bedchamber exploits were no one’s business but his—not even his mother’s. And certainly not any of my concern—the graceless swine—

  She glanced up from folding a stack of shirts to find that both Tobin and Sioned had run to the windows. An instant later the whole tower seemed to shake as an arrogant roar shattered the morning stillness.

  Dragons.

  Sionell was first down the stairs. She arrived breathless outside the tower and stared up at the flight of dragons heading for the lake. Training her mother had given her in the intellectual study of the beasts warred briefly with the sheer delight of watching them. Emotion won, as ever. The day it didn’t, she’d order up her funeral pyre—for surely she would be near death.

  “I never get over it,” Sioned murmured at her side, as if she’d heard Sionell’s thoughts. “All these years, watching them everywhere from Remagev to Waes, and I’ve never gotten used to their beauty.”

  Others joined them on the grassy slope in front of the Princes Hall—Sionell’s parents, Maarken, Hollis, Arlis, and the High Prince himself. He was shirtless and barefoot, his damp fair hair indicating he’d leaped from a bath and barely remembered to pull on trousers. He looked his son’s age as he turned his face skyward, rapt and ecstatic.

  “Sionell!”

  Turning, she saw Pol ride up on one of his golden horses. He reined in, eyes brilliant, and gestured. She grabbed his hand and used his booted foot as a stirrup to swing up behind his saddle.

  “Faster!” she urged as he kicked the mare to a gallop, and laughed into the wind.

  Some of the dragons were already at play along the lakeshore. Others, hungry after a long flight, pounced on the terrified sheep kept penned for their refreshment. A three-year-old gray female with gorgeous black underwings swept down in a controlled glide, plucked up a woolly lump with one hind foot, snapped its neck with a twist of front talons, and landed neatly on the opposite shore. She snarled at a sibling who attempted to steal her lunch and settled down to devour the sheep with dainty greed. The entire operation took less than twenty heartbeats.

  Sionell slid to the ground before Pol brought the mare to a full halt. He was right beside her after slapping the horse back toward the stables—having no wish to see one of his prizes become dragon fodder.

  “Start counting!” Sionell cried. “My mother will kill us if we don’t!”

  “Five russet hatchlings, seven green-bronze, ten black—Ell, just look at them! As alike as if they’d shared the same egg!”

  “Four grays, three more black—I don’t see the gray-blue sire who was at Skybowl. He must’ve died in mating battle—but there’s the black one, and the worse for wear! How does he fly with that scab on his wing?”

  “Where’s Elisel? Can you see her?”

  They searched the lake and the skies, but could find no trace of Sioned’s russet dr
agon.

  “She has to be here,” Sionell fretted.

  “Maybe she went to Skybowl.” Pol tried to be soothing, but his face betrayed his worry.

  Sioned ran up, winded. In silence she scanned the shore, biting her lip. At last she whispered, “She’s not here.”

  If anything had happened to Elisel—the only dragon any of the Sunrunners had been able to talk to. . . . But Elisel might have been one of the females who died each mating year. There were insufficient caves for all the she-dragons; if they did not mate and lay their eggs, they died.

  Sionell glanced up at Pol, seeing the same worry in his eyes. He muttered, “We have to coax them back to Rivenrock. We have to tell them it’s safe there.”

  “How?” she asked bleakly. “If we’ve lost Elisel, then—” She broke off, mindful of Sioned nearby.

  “Maybe Maarken and Hollis just chose the wrong dragons to touch,” he mused.

  “Trying it had them unconscious for a whole afternoon,” she reminded him. His lips twisted as he gnawed on the inside of his cheek, his eyes narrowing as he focused on a single dragon. She knew what he was going to do as surely as if they’d thought it at the same time—and didn’t say a word to stop him.

  The others had arrived at the lake by now, occupied with the count or speculating on Elisel’s absence or simply staring awestruck at the dragons. Only Sionell saw Pol take a deep breath to steady himself, fix his gaze on a large blue-gray three-year-old with silvery underwings, and close his eyes.

  The young dragon stood with wings spread out to dry after his swim. Well-grown for his age, as an adult he would be a sire of formidable size. His head with its long face and huge eyes turned toward Pol, then away, then shook as if insects irritated him. Shuffling to one side, he bumped into another youngling who growled at him.

  Sionell held her breath, willing Pol to succeed. How could he not? Nothing had ever been denied him; the world and all its dragons were his by right.