She did not see it hit him. She was wrenched back to Stronghold by an agony so horrible that the scream died before it left her throat. The cool starlight turned to needles of ice and fire stabbing into her eyes, matching the stabbing pain in her heart. Her fingers groped for the knife, felt the jewels on its hilt. Staggering around from the window, she expected to see Ruala’s white face as she fell.
“That’s for Sorin,” Riyan told her before she died.
29
Rivenrock Canyon: 35 Spring
Instinct screamed at Pol to wince away, but instinct was hampered by his mind’s cold calculations over what was real and what was not. Part of him was well and truly horrified by this hideous apparition. Curses and screams behind him told him he wasn’t alone. But another part of him writhed in a frenzy of analysis. What of this was real, and what not? The yellowish ooze might be only a feint, something to distract him while the true attack was mounted. Instinct and intellect interlocked in near-paralysis—but then he saw Ruval’s eyes flicker with sudden astonishment.
Ruval had not expected the gust of Air that flung the ooze onto Pol; therefore someone else had initiated it.
No one present would dare such a thing; therefore Mireva was free to work.
She had expended a vast amount of power in calling Air from a great distance—therefore this foul matter was real and to be avoided at all costs.
The reasoning took a split instant. Pol flung himself to one side, but not quickly enough. The filth splattered onto his tunic; a drop hit his face. He was about to wipe it away when his cheek tingled with sudden heat. Within moments the pain was excruciating. If he touched it with his fingers, the agony would spread. And if the pus had hit his eye—
Frantically, trying to avoid gaping jaws that might or might not be real, he pulled a knife from his boot to scrape off the sticky slime. He wished he could throw the contaminated blade into Ruval’s heart—but rules were rules, and if he broke them his honor would be forfeit. Stupid and possibly suicidal to have such scruples—but he could do nothing else.
He used the knife like a razor against his cheek, nicking the skin, groaning at fresh fire as a hint of the poison mixed into his blood. It felt as if skin and flesh had blistered black and peeled away to the bone. The pain half-blinded him, found outlet in a cry of sheer rage against Mireva’s treachery. The knife nestled with deadly familiarity in his fist. But he couldn’t use it. Rohan and Sioned—and Lleyn and Chadric and Audrite and everyone who had had a hand in raising him—they had all done their work too well. Roelstra’s grandson would have loosed the knife; the son of Rohan and Sioned could not.
But nothing prevented him from using the matter that clung to the blade. The gruesome monster loomed over him, slavering for his blood. Pol took a deep breath and decided on the basis of no evidence at all that the only thing real was the poisonous filth—and strode right through the illusory body toward Ruval. As quickly as he could, careful not to touch the ooze, he flicked it back at its maker.
Ruval dodged it, terror in his eyes, so desperate to avoid the yellow muck that he lost his balance and tumbled to the sand. Pol flung the knife away and used the moments of Ruval’s panic to catch his breath. His cheek still burned, but it was a goad now, not a crippling wound.
“Give it up,” he panted. “Your best has failed.”
“Best? That was nothing!”
Sheer bravado. “Give it up!” Pol shouted furiously. “I don’t want to kill you, damn it! Yield! Princemarch is mine! The Desert belongs to me by treaty made before we were born!”
“ ‘As long as the sands spawn fire,’ ” Ruval quoted mockingly. “I see no fire here, princeling, nor is anyone ever likely to!”
“No?” Pol asked softly. And smiled—because suddenly he knew what had to be done. The shift of facial muscles brought back pain in sickening waves. But he refused to feel it. He was tiring—it was harder to concentrate, harder to summon strength enough. He raised both arms slowly, his gaze never relinquished his half-brother’s. Starlight caught the topaz-and-amethyst ring, glowed from the moonstone that had been Andrade’s. Arms straight, fingers spread, he stood very still. His hands clenched slowly into fists. He called, and the Fire came.
It sprang to life in grass and flowers baked dry by the hot spring sun. It filled the mouth of Rivenrock Canyon, fountained up the sandstone watchspire, spread across the dunes. The sea of sand became a sea of Sunrunner’s Fire until it seemed the sand itself caught and burned.
Ruval conjured Air to bend the flames back toward Pol. It only fanned them higher. So great was Pol’s control, so sure was his power, that he appeared to glow in the perilous brightness.
“Illusion!” Ruval bellowed. “Unreal!”
Pol laughed. “Walk into the flames and see!”
“You’ll die by your own Fire, Sunrunner!” Ruval leaped for Pol. The physical attack was so unexpected that Pol went down in a tangle of limbs, feeling his knee wrenched nearly apart with the awkwardness of his fall. A long tongue of flame reached out nearby, licking across a growth of gray-green cacti, close enough to singe the two men as they wrestled on the sand. Pol felt beringed fingers lock around his throat, cutting off precious gulps of searing air. His vision began to go black around a raging wildfire. He tore at Ruval’s hands, then took a terrible chance and rolled them both toward the blaze.
Ruval scrambled away with a howl of pain. He dug his right arm into the sand to quench the flames that had caught on his shirt. Pol tried to gain his feet but his knee collapsed, sent him sprawling once more. They were encircled, caught in a tiny space of sand and rock as the inferno raged all around them.
Pol ripped off his shirt and wrapped it tightly around his knee, hoping the support would be enough. He swayed up on his good knee, glaring at Ruval. “Illusion?” he mocked, bruised neck muscles making his voice a rasp. Gathering himself to take advantage of the shock he was about to give, he forced a tiny smile to his lips. “Would you kill your own brother?”
The flames etched Ruval’s suddenly white face in red and gold.
“My brothers are dead!”
“What, no loving welcome? I distinctly heard you swear revenge on the High Princess for ordering your youngest brother’s death. I’m hurt, Ruval. Deeply wounded.” He summoned the words of the Star Scroll to mind. So simple, really, when one didn’t consider their implications or intellectualize over right, wrong, and justice. Power was there to be used; why else possess it? His father’s policy of acting only when action was necessary was a waste of resources. But then, Rohan had never experienced this kind of power. “I am Ianthe’s lastborn, Ruval. Sunrunner and diarmadh’im. How else would I be able to do this?”
The fire he called this time came from the stars, sweeping cold and white down Rivenrock Canyon. It mantled his own body in brilliant silver—and struck Ruval down in a flash of lightning.
What he had kindled exhilarated and terrified him. The way power should, he thought remotely. He watched with breathless fascination, caught between exultation and fear, between the thundering heat of Sunrunner’s Fire and the chill silver silence of a blaze called down from the stars. Having ignited flames across the Desert, he did not have to work to sustain it as with his dragon illusion. But neither did the sorcery require thought. Each came naturally to him, destruction from two opposing forces that met and merged within him. He throbbed with power and the terror of power, not knowing which kind and source of power he feared most.
Ruval lay writhing on the rocky ground. His screams split Pol’s skull like spikes. “Would you kill your own brother?” Pol could do it; he had only to twist starfire a little more tightly around Ruval, and the man would die. He would not even be breaking the Sunrunner’s oath he had never taken—never to kill using his gifts. For it was not a faradhi skill he used.