Dragon Prince 02 - The Star Scroll (82 page)

“I’ve been in meetings all day with more people than I could count. But nobody I really wanted to see. I couldn’t get away to come talk to you. Everything’s been happening so fast. There wasn’t any time before this for me to receive the princes formally as the new Lord of Goddess Keep.”

“It’s a very great honor to have been chosen by Lady Andrade.”

“I know. It scares me some,” he confessed. But more than anything else he was angry. The hostility in some eyes had confirmed his suspicions: if certain people did not like the idea of a Sunrunner as High Prince, they liked a prince’s grandson as Lord of Goddess Keep even less. He would have to make them understand that he would not be ruled from Stronghold. Andrade had been too partisan. He could not be. His honor forbade it. His position as Lord of Goddess Keep came from his gift of
faradhi
powers, not his kinship with Pol.

“I know you’ll do well, Andry,” Alasen was saying.

With you beside me, I will,
he thought hungrily. But he couldn’t say that aloud. Not yet. “I finally got the chance to talk to my brother today as well.” He smiled suddenly. “I thought he was going to hit me when I told him he had to ask my formal permission to marry Hollis. Until he realized I was joking, that is. You should have seen his face!”

She smiled sidelong at him, a hint of laughter in her green eyes. “Shame, my Lord! Your own brother! I’m surprised he
didn’t
break something for you.”

“But he would’ve been disappointed if I hadn’t teased him!” Andry chuckled. “Besides, he was being so serious. It was fun to watch him turn red, with his mouth moving and no words coming out!”

“I still say it wasn’t very nice. After all he’s been through—”

Andry saw her sudden distress and said hastily, “That’s why he needed to laugh. My father says it’s the sovereign remedy.” He rubbed his shoulder ruefully. “Maarken got in a good one anyway, once he figured it out and I let my guard down!”

Alasen chuckled. “If you expect sympathy from me, forget it.”

They fell silent as they descended the gentle slope to the river, the crunch of their boots in the gravelly bank rhythmic counterpoint to late-afternoon birdsong. They took the direction opposite from the place where Masul and Kiele and Lyell had burned that morning, heading downriver past the bridge. A breeze off the nearby sea brought the tang of salt and the threat of early autumn rain from the clouds hovering offshore.

At last Andry could wait no longer. “Alasen—”

“Please. Don’t.” She leaned her palms against a huge gray boulder. He stared at the scarlet and blue and white flowers woven across the black shawl, saw her shoulders shift nervously. “I have to tell you this my own way, Andry,” she said.

“All I want to hear is that you love me and you’ll come with me and—”

“You want me to become a Sunrunner, like you.”

“You
are
like me. I’ve held your colors in my hands, Alasen, felt how strong your gifts are, how powerful you could become with training. Come with me, and I’ll teach you everything.”

Alasen said nothing. Andry went forward, silent sand beneath his boots now, and his hand hovered for a moment near the hair coiled at her nape. But he did not touch her. Not yet.

“Only say you love me,” he murmured.

“You already know. We’ve seen into each other, Andry. Something like that couldn’t stay hidden.”

“I need to hear it.”

“You’re very young,” she said indulgently.

Pride stung, he took a step back. “Old enough to be Andrade’s choice for Lord of Goddess Keep!”

“I didn’t mean it like that.” She would not turn and look at him. “I meant that I must be very young, too—because I want to hear the same words.”

He put his hands on her shoulders, felt her slenderness and her strength. “I love you, Alasen.”

“Those words are so easy for you,” she whispered, her head bending. “What I have to say isn’t.”

Andry turned her to face him, bewildered until he saw her eyes. “You’re not going to come with me. You’re afraid of me.”

“Please try to understand! I always suspected what I was. I think I always knew. There were reasons I didn’t want it known, because of Pol, what he’ll be when he’s grown—I don’t want to be wanted just because my children have a chance of being
faradh’im.
I have a right to a happy marriage and a life with a man who loves me, don’t I?”

“That’s what I’m offering you. And Sunrunner children as well.”

“I know. And it’s impossible.”

He broke away from her. “But why? You love me—”

“Yes. I love you,” she replied hopelessly. “Ah, Goddess, I don’t want to hurt you, Andry.”

“Then—”

“No. I can’t.” Her hands twisted together, slender and ringless. “I
am
afraid. What I’ve seen and felt of power terrifies me. I can’t live with it. I won’t.”

“But it’s not like that. What happened here—”

“No!” she repeated, pressing back against the stone like a hunted doe. “I won’t go with you.” She hesitated, then went on softly, “Andry, if you were only your father’s son, with an inheritance like Sorin’s or Riyan’s, it would be different. But you’re Lord of Goddess Keep. It’s what you were meant to be—anyone who doesn’t see that is a fool. Don’t offer to give that up for me. I can see it in your eyes. I’d never ask that of you. It wouldn’t be loving you to make you deny what you are. Just as I’d never be happy or at peace trying to be something that frightens me.” Alasen touched his cheek briefly, regretfully. “I’ve thought about nothing else today. I try to see myself wearing the rings, doing what you can do—and I can’t. You understand power. I’m afraid of it.”

“What are you afraid of?” he whispered, and her face went ashen in the twilight at the deadly quiet of his voice. “That I can do such things?” A tiny gout of Fire flickered on the stone beside them, wafted over the river. It flared as he reacted to the fear in her eyes.

“Andry, please—this is hard enough for me. Don’t make it ugly.”

“So we’re to be civilized about it, are we?” He nearly lost control of the hovering flame, furious emotion shaking in his chest and half-strangling him. She loved him. But she was not going to come with him.

“Stop it! Andry, why can’t you understand? I don’t want to be a Sunrunner! It frightens me!”

“
This
is what frightens you!”

Fire roared up from the river, Fire swirling in a whirlwind of Air and thick with brilliant diamonds of Water and dark clots of Earth caught in the influx of power. The column of flames leaped up to the dusky turquoise sky, glared into the depths of the Faolain. Narrow as a swordpoint at its base, it swelled river-wide and high as the trees.

“This is what you’re afraid of!” he called out above the rush of wind and flames. The wind whipped at her shawl and her hair, stung crimson into her white face. “How can you say you love me when you hate what I am?
This
is what I am, Alasen—
this
is what power is about!”

He saw the horror in her eyes. Had he been anyone else, she would have loved him. Well, then, let her see exactly what he was, he thought bitterly, raging at a life that in giving him everything he wanted had taken her from him. He pulled her inside the maelstrom of spinning colors, forced her to create wild beauty with him. He lifted both arms and the fiery vortex burned higher, brighter, fed by their intertwined gifts. Windborne sparks plummeted into the water, shone and hissed before vanishing. Trees bent and shivered on either side of the river; birds startled to frantic shrieks fled their perches, some of them flying into the flames and their deaths. Water roiled, heaved, a shining red-gold wave crashing against the opposite bank.

Alasen stumbled away, clutching her shawl to her breast. Andry reached out with all his mind’s force, showed her a fantastic spectrum of color, hues no eye had ever seen or named, made her feel the awesome strength of Sunrunner arts. But things that were glorious and beautiful to him horrified her. She screamed in terror as wind lashed at her body and power at her mind.

“Andry, please!” she sobbed. “It hurts! Let me go!”

The whirlwind guttered out. “Alasen—forgive me, I’m sorry! I didn’t know it would hurt you! I only wanted—Alasen, please!”

But she was stumbling headlong up the slope, and vanished into the shadows of the wood as he called her name one last time, without hope.

 

There was little light to see by as she ran; the sun huddled behind the western hill, the trees ragged black silhouettes knifing into a sickly yellow-gray sky. And then there was no light at all while she stumbled through the wooded slope. She nearly sobbed aloud when she saw the watchfires, hurried toward them before realizing what her face must reveal to anyone with eyes to look. The flickering watchfires blurred and she wiped her eyes repeatedly, mortified as guards stared. At last she recognized her own scarlet tents, and the large one that was her father’s. She burst into the pavilion, swaying.

Strong arms caught her and she slumped gratefully, hiding her face in a soft velvet tunic. But as her heart calmed from its frenetic racing and her mind gradually blotted out the flames, she realized it had been a mistake to come here before she had regained control of herself. She should never have let her father see her in this condition. He would blame Andry with the implacable anger of a parent protecting his dearest child. A new terror flayed her raw nerves as she thought of what might be said or done, what enmity might be created because of her.

She made an effort, pulled away from him. But it was not a Kierstian scarlet tunic that was damp with her tears. The velvet was dark blue with a black yoke, and covered shoulders broader and more muscular than her father’s. Horrified, she found herself looking up into the deep gray eyes of Lord Ostvel.

“My lady,” he said awkwardly, his face crimson in the bright lamplight. “Forgive me. Your father summoned me here, then was called away. He asked me to wait for his return. I didn’t mean—but you were so—I only thought to help—forgive me,” he finished.

He was stammering like a schoolboy, and she realized he was as embarrassed as she. Strangely enough, his discomfiture brought back a measure of her poise. “Thank you, my lord. I’m very glad you were here.”

He looked down at his hands that still held her arms in a gentle grip, and swiftly released her. “I—your father said you were talking with Lord Andry,” he said irrelevantly, taking a step back from her.

As he met her gaze again, the small grace of composure deserted her. He knew, or at least suspected. But he would never say anything. She saw that in his eyes . . . and something else. Through her stunned surprise she wondered why she had never seen it before—not in him, or in herself.

Alasen watched her hands touch his shoulders. She felt the warmth of him, the strength beneath the soft velvet. If Andry was Fire, quick and brilliant and dangerous, this man was Earth—enduring, patient, safe. Here was power that did not frighten her, eyes that demanded nothing. Only waited, aware now that she knew a thing only just admitted to himself.

With him there would never be the wild swirl of colors through her mind and heart. There would never be the shattering joy of first youth’s passion. She would never know what it meant to be a Sunrunner and fly down ribbons of woven light. There would never be the glory of powers fully realized, gifts nurtured to fruition. Part of what she was would never find fulfillment.

But with him, there would be warmth, quiet strength, enduring tenderness, and peace.

Very gently, she slid her hands into his, a silent offering. His long figures closed around hers almost convulsively. Ostvel bent his head.

It was a long time before he spoke, and the words came slowly. “My lady . . . Alasen . . . my life scattered on the wind with my Camigwen’s ashes eighteen years ago. I became . . . my son’s father, my prince’s friend, Skybowl’s lord. But I had no life. I did not know how . . . how empty I was, until you.”

She moved closer, still holding his hands, seeking his warm strength, resting her weary head against the hard muscles of his chest. She could hear his heart like the beating of silken wings. She waited until the rhythm slowed, then stepped back and smiled serenely up into his wondering eyes.

“Come,” she murmured. “We should tell my father.”

 

Tobin, in the way of all ruthlessly practical people no matter what the circumstances, ordered dinner served in Rohan’s tent—and ordered her family and friends to attend or else. The Lastday banquet would have been held that evening, the feast that was more spectacular with each successive
Rialla.
But not this year. Kiele’s elaborate plans were forgotten, her servants and the splendid plates and crystal remained at the residence in Waes, and Princess Gennadi had the food distributed among the poor.

Only Chiana saw any reason for celebration. Cheated of her triumphant entry to the feasting on Halian’s arm—and her chance to show off the grand banquet she had worked on with an eye to costing her sister a full quarter of Waes’ yearly revenues—she settled for giving her own elegant dinner for those highborns who did not dare refuse her invitation.

Tobin surveyed her own arrangements, knowing full well that no one would appreciate them and that this food, too, might just as well have been given to the poor. Loaves of fresh bread, bowls of fruit, meat on silver trays, piles of vegetables—she expected almost all of it to stay right where it was on a long table to one side of the pavilion’s main chamber. Watching her brother methodically peel, seed, section, and put a marsh apple aside untasted, she sighed with irritation. But she said nothing. He wouldn’t have listened to her, anyway.

She had more success with her nephew and one of her sons. Though at first Pol seemed disinclined to eat, he succumbed to the demands of a healthy young appetite; Sorin had never willingly missed a meal in his life. Maarken, busy trying to tempt Hollis with food, was hopeless. So was Sioned, though she rallied enough to give Rohan a look of mock horror when he offered her a slice of the marsh apple; the fruit gave her hives. One never worried about Meath; he had been born hungry and ate enough for two. As for Chay—like Rohan and Urival he ignored the food in favor of vintage Syrene wine.