“And that’s what it’s about for you in the end, isn’t it?” Rohan asked softly. “She chose Andry to succeed her because she could choose none other—and was just as trapped into accepting Pol as her faradhi prince.”
The old Sunrunner got to his feet and said with dignity, “Your own schemes mesh with hers, my lord High Prince.”
“Not necessarily.”
“Lying to yourself was never one of your vices.”
“I have others more interesting,” Rohan said smoothly, “but this is hardly the time to discuss them. I tell you now, my lord, that what Pol learns he will use as he sees fit. Sunrunner arts or sorcery, neither you nor Andrade’s memory nor anything else will rule him in their use.”
“Just like Andry,” Urival snapped.
“With a subtle difference.” He gave the old man a hard smile. “You trust Pol.”
5
725: Dragon’s Rest
“The roses had not performed to expectations. Everything and everyone else had, this first Rialla at the new palace, but not the roses. Pol had been extremely irritated. How dare flowers not bloom precisely when and as he wishes them to? Sionell asked herself acidly as she paced the water garden. Ruler of Princemarch, High Prince’s heir, Sunrunner—thwarted by uncooperative roses. Serves him right—arrogant swine.
Reaching a little hillock at the garden’s edge, she sat with her back to a sapling and began shredding the leaves of an inoffensive bush. It needed a trim anyway, she thought—just like Pol’s conceit. Newly knighted, awash in compliments for the beauty of the Princes Hall—and hip-deep in pretty girls—he’d had a lovely Rialla. Just lovely.
She had seen him at least once a day for the past twenty days. He positively oozed self-confidence for all that this was his first year as a ruling prince, mingling with his highborn guests or striding purposefully to yet another meeting (where he was undoubtedly brilliant, tactful, and wise, she told herself snidely). Everyone’s model of perfection, was Pol of Princemarch.
Who had come to greet his parents riding on the back of a cow.
Sionell felt her mouth defy her mood by twitching upward at the corners, remembering her first sight of him after six years. Any romantic notions about his riding back into her life (or, more accurately, she into his, through the narrow gorge that protected the valley of Dragon’s Rest) on one of those golden horses had crumpled like old parchment. Rohan had blinked in astonishment, Sioned had sighed and rolled her gaze skyward, and Pol had smiled innocently.
“You caught me in the middle of trying her paces! Actually, she’s quite comfortable, once you get seated right. I may start a new fashion. No, really, I’m trying to teach her to take a path that doesn’t involve trampling the crops. Where she goes, the others follow. I thought if we nudged her in the right direction, we wouldn’t have to replant every few days.”
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.