Stronghold Read online

  In 728, a young faradhi trained but not perfected in medical arts had failed to cure a Giladan master weaver. Had Andry paid the death-price according to Giladan law, the whole unfortunate business could have been forgotten. But he had insisted that the woman had been acting as a Sunrunner, under no jurisdiction but that of the Lord of Goddess Keep.

  Cabar of Gilad had been furious. Rohan had been forced to decide between essentially equal claims. He chose neither, citing ancient law that Goddess Keep was held of the High Prince; thus ultimate authority over Sunrunners was his. Andry’s rage was beyond repairing. Cabar had been placated—barely—by establishment in Gilad of a school for physicians, whose training until then had been unregulated. Sunrunners received basic medical education, but could not be expected to see to the needs of the whole continent. Physicians took on apprentices, as in any other trade, but there were vast differences in skills and methods. Rohan had hoped to remedy this by creating a school where learning could be shared, new techniques devised, and training standardized to provide a higher degree of competence.

  In large part, it worked. Medical care improved. Those who lacked apprentice fees paid for the education with a year’s service to an established master and a tax on earnings for the first three years of practice. Tobin had forbidden Rohan to pay all expenses himself; such blatant use of dragon wealth was unwise and, practically speaking, the school must be self-supporting.

  At first the older physicians balked. But then they began to receive assistants who, already well trained, worked for room and board and moreover knew the very latest treatments. It became a matter of prestige to have such an assistant—as long as he or she decently deferred in public to the opinions of the senior physician—and to boast that one had been sought out for training that not even the Giladan school could provide.

  Then Andry decreed that the eighth faradhi ring would signify a Master Physician. Sunrunners who had earned it prior to this rule had three choices: qualify for it, give it up, or break with Goddess Keep. Very few had the courage for the last.

  “It is not your fault!” Sioned fumed that summer morning. “Competition was never the idea, damn it! This is Andry’s doing. All these rituals and—and incantations!—they use Sunrunner’s Fire to light a sickroom candle!”

  Rohan shrugged. “Which of us, when we’re ill, won’t try almost anything to recover? If a few rituals could have eased the pain in my back tooth last year, I might’ve called in a Sunrunner physician myself.” He grinned at his furious wife. “Instead, my Sunrunner witch insisted I have the damned thing pulled.”

  “And you howled like a wounded dragon, too. Disgusting.”

  Pol gestured impatiently. “But what Andry’s doing is a fake. The cures are the same and they either work or they don’t—but people think they’re more effective because of the show that goes along with them.”

  “Appearances can be most effective,” Rohan murmured. “I’ve indulged in a few manipulations myself from time to time.”

  “That’s different,” Sioned snapped.

  “Why? Because I’m a dear, sweet, charming, nice man?” He laughed, but Pol heard a bitter undertone. “Or because you happen to agree with what I do, but not with Andry?”

  “Superstition is wrong,” Pol said flatly.

  “And it’s not just the medicine,” Sioned agreed. “It’s all Sunrunner things. I talk every’so often with a friend at Goddess Keep—”

  “Who obliges you with information on the sly,” Pol interpreted.

  “Of course. I’m told of ceremonies and a great deal of formality—even when no envoys or ambassadors are there to impress.”

  “Which they seem to be more and more often.” Pol frowned. “Does your friend let you know who sends ranking representatives to Andry these days?”

  “As faithfully as Andry’s eyes and ears at Stronghold advise him of our doings. Although I flatter myself that what Andry knows of us is only what we wish him to know. More or less.”

  “Mother!”

  Rohan laughed again at Pol’s shock. “The game dictates that we all spy on each other. The zest of playing is making sure you control information. How can you have ruled this long without realizing so simple a truth? Your dealings with fellow princes demand accuracy in what you know about them and inaccuracy in what they think they know about you.”

  “It shouldn’t be like that,” Pol said stubbornly.

  “Of course it shouldn’t. We all ought to be honest with each other—in an ideal world. But do you trust, say, Velden of Grib?”

  “Not past spitting distance,” Pol admitted. “But it’s demeaning to live like this.”

  “I have two answers for you,” Rohan replied more seriously. “The first is that I agree. It’s a waste of time, energy, and resources to worry about managing information. What to believe, what to make others believe—it’s not my pride that twinges, it’s my conscience. And yet—how else do you think I’ve managed to keep peace all these years? With your mother’s invaluable help, of course,” he added, nodding to Sioned.

  “Nice to know I’m appreciated. Pol, when I married your father, Sunrunners were cast into politics as never before. Andrade wanted me to represent the faradhi point of view, and advance her notions of how the world should be run.”

  “But you didn’t,” Rohan said softly, and smiled.

  “I was a vast disappointment to her,” she acknowledged, not sounding at all unhappy about it. “But when Andrade chose us against Roelstra, a partnership of Sunrunners and High Prince was established—”

  “Which might exist today if Andry and I hadn’t started loathing each other,” Pol finished.

  “It’s far more complex than personal feelings.” Rohan sighed. “We’ve gone back to what used to be before our marriage—a network of Sunrunners reporting exclusively to Goddess Keep. But this Goddess Keep behaves much as if it, too, were a seat of government.” He brooded over this for a moment. “Andry’s an able man. If he’d stayed in the Desert to rule a small holding, or even married a girl with a large one, I doubt he would’ve been content. Limited scope.”

  “Yes,” Sioned drawled, “one can hardly weave mysteries when one is worried about the goats.”

  “What about your other answer?” Pol prompted.

  “What? Oh. My first being that I find spying an exercise in irritation, the second is that it’s a necessary part of civilized life.”

  Even Sioned stared at him. “You’ll have to explain that one.”

  He gave them a patient look. “If I am a barbarian, I make war. That kind of information is easy. How many horses and swords does my enemy have? Will he use them against me before I can use mine against him? Very simple. Very direct.”

  Pol sat forward, intrigued. “But if what you’re trying to do is live in peace so the crops can grow—”

  “—you need much more complex information.”

  “My clever azhrei” Sioned observed sardonically. “So intricate spying is one of the privileges of civilization, is it? Such a comfort to know I’m contributing to ongoing enlightenment.”

  “But Andry isn’t, and that’s just the point,” Pol said. “He’s creating mysteries around things that aren’t mysterious at all.”

  “Not to you, perhaps,” Rohan answered. “But I’ve lived with a Sunrunner most of my life and I don’t even pretend to comprehend what it is she does. People believe what those powerful enough to affect belief demonstrate is believable. Convoluted, but it’s the idea that counts,” he smiled.

  “But what Andry’s doing is wrong!” Pol insisted.

  “Anything that promotes superstition instead of truth is wrong. Yet how do you explain the way you talk to your dragon? How do you make Sunrunner skills comprehensible? Your mother hasn’t been able to make it clear to me in almost forty years, and I’ve even got the—what’s Andry calling it now? The ‘halfling gift.’ What amazes me is that all this hasn’t appeared before now.”

  “Andrade would never have allowed it,”
Sioned told him. “None of the other rulers of Goddess Keep would have, either. But Andry’s cultivating it.”

  “An apt description, Mother,” Pol remarked. “Seeing as how what he spreads on it to make it grow stinks to the high Veresch.”

  • • •

  “Papa! Papa, come be the dragon!”

  He abandoned memories of a conversation that had yielded no solution. Pol liked solutions. He had limitless faith in his parents’ ability to provide them—one way or another. But where Andry was concerned, Tilal was right: everyone complained in private, but no one did anything. What was there to do?

  He forgot his impatience with his cousin and his nagging wish that Rohan would do something, anything, about Andry, and dutifully donned a sweeping cloak for his performance. He had been vanquished three times—twice by Jihan, once by Rislyn—and was filthy from head to heels when their tutor arrived to collect them for afternoon lessons. Catallen had been sent by Miyon, and everyone knew he was a spy. Pol instinctively put Rohan’s principles into practice: he chatted with the tutor every so often, dropping half-truths here and there to keep Miyon contented—so he wouldn’t send someone Pol might not recognize as being in his father-by-marriage’s pay.

  Tilal had called out encouragement and tactics based on many similar games with Walvis or Rohan himself as the dragon. Now, as the children accompanied Catallen back to the palace, the older prince grinned at the younger.

  “Not bad. Nice flourish to the wings, but I’d work on the death flutter. Go relax, Pol. You look frayed around the edges—like a cloth that’s mopped up one too many spills.”

  “After my hellions mopped up the paddock with me, you mean?” He laughed and went to his chambers to wash, reflecting that a wrung-out rag was exactly what he felt like after a Rialla, no matter what his triumphs. Maneuvering the other princes into doing what he wanted while making sure they thought it was all their own idea; scrupulous attention to their privileges and personal conceits; the jaw-grinding he had to hide when what was perfectly obvious to him remained perfectly obscure to them—no wonder his father had turned the bulk of the work over to him. He cleaned up messes and polished self-images and soaked up any spills of ill-feeling among the princes, and sent them home convinced that they alone were responsible for all this peace and good will.

  At times he longed to tell them exactly what he thought of them—and to show them the path he had chosen and tell them to start marching. But he suspected that if they allowed him to do such a thing, he would have even more contempt for them than he did now.

  Not all of them, of course. In fact, he liked most of the men he worked with. Tilal, Volog, Arlis—not surprisingly, they were his mother’s kin and in theory his own as well. Laric of Firon and his father, Chadric of Dorval, were two others he liked and respected; they really were kin to him through Rohan.

  But he hadn’t his father’s patience with the others. Cabar, Velden, Halian, Pirro, especially Miyon and even at times Kostas of Syr, Tilal’s brother—the difficulties they often presented were annoyances that Rohan saw as creative opportunities. He listened, considered, consulted, and suggested solutions agreeable to all. Pol’s impulses were either to tell them to stop bothering him or to settle the whole thing himself with a single command.

  “You’re too direct,” Sioned had lectured. “You don’t think things all the way through. You want to act too fast.”

  “And who’d I learn that from, Mother mine?” he’d countered, grinning, and she’d had the grace to blush.

  At times he despaired of ever being half the prince his father was. Then again, Rohan had had nearly forty years of practice; Pol, only a little over ten. Well, he was learning. He’d watched his father carefully at the past six Riall’im, trying to adapt Rohan’s style and methods to his own character. He’d done very good work this summer, work to be proud of. He was learning his father’s techniques; eventually he’d learn Rohan’s patience as well.

  • • •

  Pol stood obediently still as his squires scrutinized him. He never cared what he wore. His father had the knack of impressive personal adornment—probably because at first glance he was physically rather unprepossessing—and had been known to take a whole afternoon dressing for a banquet. Pol put on his back whatever was handed to him. That he was always elegantly clothed was a tribute to a succession of servants and squires much more concerned with their prince’s appearance than he was. Rialt had trained Edrel, who had trained Amiel, who had recently laid down the law to Dannar and Kierun. Privately, Pol suspected Amiel of having given them an instructional treatise. It amused him endlessly.

  He’d had the pleasure of knighting Amiel at this year’s Rialla, and giving him the black elkhoof cup rimmed in gold that was Princemarch’s gift to a new-made knight. The choice of the Giladan heir to join Edrel of River Ussh as his squire in 729 had been a frankly political one. After Edrel’s knighting in 735, Amiel stayed on for two years’ further training in statecraft.

  Though politics had brought him to Dragon’s Rest, he also found a wife. People were shocked when Cabar’s heir threw himself away on a nobody. Granted, Princess Meiglan had fostered her for a year, which was how the unsuitable attachment had begun, but Nyr was barely highborn and came from someplace in Fessenden no one had ever heard of. Amiel married his bronze-haired lady in a double ritual with Edrel and his Chosen—even more shocking, for though fast friends, one was a prince, the other a mere younger son.

  This younger son had won one of the finest prizes in the princedoms. Norian of Grib was blithe, blonde, and as besotted with Edrel as he was with her. That she should waste herself on him was the talk of the Rialla. Her father, Prince Velden, threatened to forbid the marriage. Norian announced publicly that she would wed Edrel or no one. Pol chose a more private moment to hint that the young man would one day rule an important holding in Princemarch; this had almost reconciled Velden to the match. Thus Pol discovered the fun of being powerful enough to make a future for a deserving friend.

  He liked arranging things. It was his mother’s opinion that in this he took after Andrade. But, unlike her, he would never have maneuvered anyone into so important a Choice for political aims. People met, fell in love, married, had children. That was life, from cottage to castle. For highborns with wealth, property, and titles to pass along, the process often overwhelmed the personal. Fosterings were politics enough for Pol, and he frankly distrusted people who married for anything but love.

  His selection of two new squires this year had nothing to do with politics at all. One of them, in fact, he accepted out of curiosity. Kierun was the son of Allun of Lower Pyrme, a man Pol wryly admired for being committed to his own square measures and absolutely nothing else. He had attended only two Riall’im in his life: one to find a wife and the other to deliver his heir to Pol. Otherwise he never set foot off his own property. Allun intended a more active part for Kierun in the affairs of the continent, however, and to this end gave the boy into Pol’s care. Kierun was black-haired, gray-eyed, barely twelve, and unable to believe he was squire to the next High Prince. He had lived in a state of perpetual wonderment since the Rialla and barely dared to breathe.

  Pol’s second squire was a choice of pure affection. Dannar of Castle Crag was Ostvel and Alasen’s son. Though a year Kierun’s junior, he was perfectly relaxed around Pol. They knew each other very well. From his mother, Dannar inherited the Kierstian green eyes—like Sioned’s and Tilal’s—and his red hair came from that side of the family as well. But his features and strong build were Ostvel’s. Except for the difference in coloring, Dannar and his much older half-brother Riyan looked quite a bit alike.

  The pair conducted their inspection as if the fate of princedoms hung on the color and cut of Pol’s tunic. Amiel must have been incredibly stern with them. Pol sighed and kept his impatience to himself, knowing Kierun would look like a startled kitten if he said anything. The child was completely overawed and it made him nervous.

  “It want
s something, my lord,” Dannar said at last. “What do you think, Kier? Something black, to offset the boots?”

  “A belt?” the other boy ventured.

  “Exactly! Remind me to add it to Prince Amiel’s list.”

  Pol laughed so hard he had to sit down.

  The belt was produced—a bit tight in its usual notch, due to lavish Rialla meals—and an onyx earring for good measure. Finally Pol was pronounced presentable. As the squires accompanied him down the hall to the stairs, he asked about their morning swim.

  Dannar shrugged. “Jihan got mad when I dunked her, my lord.”

  “Princess Jihan!” Kierun exclaimed, shocked out of his usual shyness.

  Pol grinned. “So she’s made that clear, has she? Let me tell you something, Kierun. Jihan is a miserable little brat, as Dannar knows very well. Next time she pesters you, you have my permission to remind her that though she may be a princess, one day you will be Lord of Lower Pyrme with two fine castles, four rich manors, and four hundred square measures of the best farmland on the continent.”

  “Oh, she won’t let on she’s impressed by that, my lord,” Dannar told him. “Kier, just let her know that when you grow up, your wife will be much prettier than she is. Worked for me.”

  Pol heroically kept a straight face. It was more difficult to keep the suspicious quiver from his voice as he said, “You’d better go get ready to serve. And by the way, tell that madman in the kitchen that if he so much as thinks a dessert in my direction, I’ll have him trussed up and thrown in with the sheep to feed the dragons.”

  Kierun cast a startled look at Dannar, whose grin reassured him. The boys ran off to their duties—leaving Pol free to laugh himself out of breath.

  • • •

  “Meiglan, won’t you play for us this evening? Please?” Gemma’s smile was warmly cajoling, and Pol leaned over to whisper, “For me?”