Dragon Prince 02 - The Star Scroll (25 page)

Her fingers closed around his and she took the pottery jug from him. She drank deeply. Segev’s hand slipped as she gave the jug back and wine spilled onto his knees. He heard a whimsical, misted laugh from very far away as she coaxed him back up onto the bed.

When the morning chime sounded outside in the hall, he woke with a spasm of terror. She was gone. He was limp and exhausted, barely able to roll onto his side and sit up. Carefully he called a little Fire into the brazier and by its light inspected the wine jar. Most of the liquid was gone.

Had he gulped down too much? Had she swallowed enough? Anger burned along his tired nerves and he swore aloud. Why hadn’t Mireva warned him that Sunrunner arts were so potent?

He drained off the last of the drugged wine and lay back, gradually relaxing as it did its work. Perhaps Mireva had not known; perhaps he was now in a position to learn things she would never know. Perhaps, using such things, he could easily take Ruval’s place when it came time to defeat Prince Pol.

Perhaps Segev no longer needed Mireva at all.

Today he would go to the tree circle in the forest and seek his future in the Fire. The original plan had been that he only go through the motions, but he decided that he would indeed summon the magic—for if other things
faradhi
were as powerful as what had occurred last night, he might see things even Mireva could not.

The Sunrunners had taught him all the ritual words and all the correct things to do. He had paid attention for curiosity’s sake, for he had never intended to carry out the private ceremony in fact. But now he jumped from the bed and dressed in haste, eager to find out if the
faradh’im
possessed other, equally potent, spells. Combined with what Mireva had taught him he could—

Suddenly he stood still, his hands on the door latch. He would not be going to the forest as a true Sunrunner. In his
diarmadhi
blood throbbed an herb they feared as nothing else in the world. If the spell around the woman last night had been that of the Goddess Mireva had always taught him to deny, then was it possible that there might be vengeance on him for what he had done—and for what he planned to do?

He made himself open the door, shrugging off his superstitious fears. He had succeeded thus far. There was no reason to suppose he would not succeed with everything.

And he began to believe that he could have powers even greater than those Mireva possessed. He could take Princemarch and the Desert for his own, and become High Prince like his grandsire.

With Hollis at his side? He reminded himself to watch her and Jobyna and Eridin closely today for signs of
dranath
intake. He went downstairs smiling.

S
ioned frowned with concentration, weighing the flat stone in her palm. Her audience waited nearby—Sionell holding her breath, Pol sorting through his own collection of rocks, and Walvis grinning as he stroked his neat black beard. The Lord of Remagev gestured invitingly to the calm surface of the lake. Sioned angled her arm carefully and sent the stone skimming out over the water.

“Eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen!” Sionell cried excitedly. “Can you make it skip that many times, Papa?”

“Easy as sliding down a sand dune,” he assured her. He sent a rock flying out across the lake, and his daughter counted off fifteen tiny splashes before it sank. “Best three out of four?” he challenged Sioned.

As they gathered up suitable stones, Pol and Sionell tried their hand at skipping rocks. The older pair exchanged smiles as Sionell made six on her first try and Pol only two.

“Like this,” Sionell said, giving instruction that Pol accepted with poor grace. “Watch me do it.” A moment later she called out, “Eight! I got eight!”

Sioned turned in time to see Pol’s second try. The stone he sailed struck the water three times, then vanished.

“Try again,” Sionell urged.

“No, thanks.”

The little girl gave him a disgusted look. “How’re you going to learn if you won’t even try? You can’t be good at
everything
the first time you do it, you know.”

Sioned caught Walvis’ eye and they waited while Pol engaged in an internal struggle that was plain on his face. Pride won—not unusual at that age. He shook his head and piled all his selected stones into his mother’s palms.

“I’ll practice some other time.”

Sioned and Walvis lined up for their competition. Her first stone skipped twelve times, as did his; her second made sixteen splashes. Walvis groaned as his own second try brought only ten.

“Best five out of seven?” he ventured hopefully.

“A deal’s a deal,” she retorted, and flicked her wrist. The stone skipped fourteen times and Sionell applauded.

Walvis glared down at his daughter in mock affront. “Whose side are you on?” he demanded, and she giggled. He let fly his third stone. “Twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen—”

All at once a shadow swooped down, wings stirring a ripple of breeze across the water. A blue-black dragon dipped his hind claws into the water, beat the air with powerful strokes, and craned his neck around as he rose into the sky. His snarl of frustration echoed around the crater.

“He thought it was a fish!” Pol exclaimed, laughing. “Look at them all!”

A flight of about forty three-year-old dragons settled in on the far shore for a drink. Wings folded gracefully, long necks bent to the water, they paused as the one who had mistaken a skipped stone for a fish arrived late. He was jostled from side to side and they sang out in derision as he snarled again.

“Walvis,” Sioned murmured, “I could swear they’re making fun of him.”

“I was thinking the same thing. Do dragons have a sense of humor?” He closed one hand on his daughter’s shoulder as she moved at his side. “No, you may
not
go closer to look,” he ordered.

“But they wouldn’t hurt me! They’re so beautiful!”

“And they’ve got teeth half as long as your arm. We’ll watch from here and hope they’re feeling friendly.” He cast a worried glance at Sioned, sharing her thought; they must stay still and not attract the dragons’ attention, for stories abounded of people who had been plucked from the ground by dragons when they attempted to run away.

Sionell squirmed. “They’ve already eaten, Papa. Look at their stomachs.”

She was correct; bellies usually lean before a meal were rounded, and a few of the dragons even paused in their drinking to belch. Sioned wondered how many sheep and goats had gone to feed this hoard, and reminded herself to ask Rohan again about cultivating herds for the dragons’ sole use.

Thirst quenched, some of the dragons bounded into the air. They flew to a tremendous height, then folded their wings and plunged straight down into the water. Diving, rolling, flinging water at each other with sweeping wings, calling out to the ones onshore, they resembled nothing so much as playful children.

“You see?” Sionell said. “They wouldn’t hurt anybody. Besides,” she added slyly, “I’m not a princess, and everybody knows dragons prefer princesses!”

“Hush,” Walvis said, tightening his grip on her shoulder.

Sioned looked at her son. Enchanted love was in his eyes—exactly the expression that shone on his father’s face when dragons were around. The gold mattered nothing to either of them; they loved the dragons as part of the Desert, part of their blood.

Eventually the creatures climbed out of the water to sun themselves. Sioned admired the varied hues of their water-glistening hides, each dragon a different color. She picked out a reddish one, smaller than the rest, who shook diamond-drops from her wings. Sioned watched for a moment, wondering if she dared. Dragons definitely had a sense of fun, and she knew they had thought-colors. She threaded a few strands of sunlight together, cautiously extending the silken gold weave toward the little dragon.

The female arched her neck, fanning out her wings with their dainty golden undersides, and shook her head to clear her eyes of the water still trickling down her face. Her head turned question ingly and she shifted her shoulders, tucking her wings back along her body. Sioned displayed her own colors—emerald, sapphire, onyx, amber—and their pattern, long engraved in her memory. The dragon tossed her head, droplets spraying out as she shook herself all over. Sioned sought a closer contact and the dragon whined through her long nose, shivering a little.

Suddenly the sunlight exploded into a rainbow of color. Sioned cried out at the same time the little dragon threw back her head with a howl of terror. All the other dragons sprang up into the sky, keening a chorus of fear and warning as they fled.

“Mother!”

Pol tried to hold her up as she crumpled, Walvis and Sionell right beside him to cushion her fall. Sioned gulped in several breaths, trembling all over with the shock, and managed a faint smile for her ashen-cheeked son.

“I’m fine,” she whispered.

“The dragons aren’t,” Walvis said grimly. “Listen to them.”

The wild music echoed down from the cluster of dark shapes in the sky. Sioned pushed herself upright and winced.

“I was too clumsy. I frightened her.”

“What are you talking about?” Walvis demanded. “My lady, what did you do?”

Pol, kneeling at her side, answered. “She used the sunlight to touch a dragon.”

 

“You did
what?
”

Rohan’s eyes blazed down at the woman who sat sipping iced taze as casually as if she’d just returned from an afternoon stroll around the lake.

“Please stop scolding. You can’t say anything I haven’t accused myself of.”

“When I asked if you could touch a dragon, I didn’t mean for you to risk your life at it!”

“I’ll be more careful next time.”

“There isn’t going to be a next time.” He crossed to the windows of their chamber and looked out at the quiet water. “We heard your scream all the way from Threadsilver.”

“Mine, or the dragon’s?”

“Weren’t they one and the same?” he countered.

That gave her pause. “You may be right,” she admitted.

Rohan swung around. “You
faradh’im
talk about being shadow-lost. What if you got lost inside a dragon’s colors and couldn’t remember your own? It would amount to the same thing, wouldn’t it?”

“But that didn’t happen.”

“This time!”

She set her goblet down and folded her hands in her lap. “You’re thinking about forbidding me to try again, aren’t you?”

“I’m thinking about having you swear a promise,” he corrected.

Sioned bit her lip. “I’ve never lied to you—”

“But you omit things when it serves your purposes. Oh, you’re far too honest to lie—and far too clever to put yourself in a position where you’d have to. After twenty-one years of living with you, my lady, I know you very well indeed.”

She said nothing.

“Sioned, there are too many ways I could lose you just in the normal course of things. I won’t add another to the list just because of my stupid notion about dragons. It won’t do me any good to forbid you outright, and we both know it. I won’t make you promise, either. But that means I’ll have to trust to your good sense—and to the fact that you want to see your son grow up.”

She flinched. “That wasn’t fair, Rohan!”

“No,” he agreed. “But neither are your little omissions.”

She glared at him. “Very well, I’ll make you a promise. I won’t try it again unless Maarken is with me to back me up and set my colors again if I start to lose them.”

“The way you did for Tobin, the night she was caught in the Moonrunning?”

“Yes. I knew her colors and I could bring her back. I promise I won’t touch a dragon again without being in the same kind of contact with Maarken. Will that content you, my lord?”

“It’ll have to, I suppose.” He folded his arms. “You’re a dangerous woman, High Princess.”

“No more so than you’re a dangerous man, High Prince.” She smiled a little. “That makes us very well mated, doesn’t it?”

Rohan snorted.

 

Dragon shrieks woke everyone in the middle of the night. Rohan and Sioned threw on their clothes and hurried to the courtyard, where the entire population of Skybowl had assembled by torchlight, confused and more than a little frightened. Ostvel, sleep-rumpled and worried, shouldered through the crowd to Rohan.

“I’ve never heard them scream like that at this time of night! What do you think is going on?” He winced as another high-pitched howl split the air. “Goddess! Listen to that! What’s the matter with them?”

“I don’t know,” Rohan replied, glancing around. “Where’s Pol? Sioned, do you see him?”

“No—and if he’s run outside to watch dragons, so help me I’ll blister his backside for him! Walvis!” she called out, catching sight of Remagev’s lord. “Have you seen Pol?”

He mounted a few steps and scanned the crowd, then shook his head. “Nor Maarken, either.”