“Goddess in glory, don’t remind her!” Sioned begged. “She’ll go after the departing merchants and load that up, too!”
“Go on, tease me,” Tobin invited, making a face. “You just wait until you become a grandmother, High Princess!”
Sionell prudently did not comment that if Pol kept putting off marriage while doing what he was doing with the maidservants, Sioned would have grandchildren long before she had a daughter-by-marriage. His bedchamber exploits were no one’s business but his—not even his mother’s. And certainly not any of my concern—the graceless swine—
She glanced up from folding a stack of shirts to find that both Tobin and Sioned had run to the windows. An instant later the whole tower seemed to shake as an arrogant roar shattered the morning stillness.
Dragons.
Sionell was first down the stairs. She arrived breathless outside the tower and stared up at the flight of dragons heading for the lake. Training her mother had given her in the intellectual study of the beasts warred briefly with the sheer delight of watching them. Emotion won, as ever. The day it didn’t, she’d order up her funeral pyre—for surely she would be near death.
“I never get over it,” Sioned murmured at her side, as if she’d heard Sionell’s thoughts. “All these years, watching them everywhere from Remagev to Waes, and I’ve never gotten used to their beauty.”
Others joined them on the grassy slope in front of the Princes Hall—Sionell’s parents, Maarken, Hollis, Arlis, and the High Prince himself. He was shirtless and barefoot, his damp fair hair indicating he’d leaped from a bath and barely remembered to pull on trousers. He looked his son’s age as he turned his face skyward, rapt and ecstatic.
“Sionell!”
Turning, she saw Pol ride up on one of his golden horses. He reined in, eyes brilliant, and gestured. She grabbed his hand and used his booted foot as a stirrup to swing up behind his saddle.
“Faster!” she urged as he kicked the mare to a gallop, and laughed into the wind.
Some of the dragons were already at play along the lakeshore. Others, hungry after a long flight, pounced on the terrified sheep kept penned for their refreshment. A three-year-old gray female with gorgeous black under-wings swept down in a controlled glide, plucked up a woolly lump with one hind foot, snapped its neck with a twist of front talons, and landed neatly on the opposite shore. She snarled at a sibling who attempted to steal her lunch and settled down to devour the sheep with dainty greed. The entire operation took less than twenty heartbeats.
Sionell slid to the ground before Pol brought the mare to a full halt. He was right beside her after slapping the horse back toward the stables—having no wish to see one of his prizes become dragon fodder.
“Start counting!” Sionell cried. “My mother will kill us if we don’t!”
“Five russet hatchlings, seven green-bronze, ten black—Ell, just look at them! As alike as if they’d shared the same egg!”
“Four grays, three more black—I don’t see the gray-blue sire who was at Skybowl. He must’ve died in mating battle—but there’s the black one, and the worse for wear! How does he fly with that scab on his wing?”
“Where’s Elisel? Can you see her?”
They searched the lake and the skies, but could find no trace of Sioned’s russet dragon.
“She has to be here,” Sionell fretted.
“Maybe she went to Skybowl.” Pol tried to be soothing, but his face betrayed his worry.
Sioned ran up, winded. In silence she scanned the shore, biting her lip. At last she whispered, “She’s not here.”
If anything had happened to Elisel—the only dragon any of the Sunrunners had been able to talk to. ... But Elisel might have been one of the females who died each mating year. There were insufficient caves for all the she-dragons; if they did not mate and lay their eggs, they died.
Sionell glanced up at Pol, seeing the same worry in his eyes. He muttered, “We have to coax them back to Rivenrock. We have to tell them it’s safe there.”
“How?” she asked bleakly. “If we’ve lost Elisel, then—” She broke off, mindful of Sioned nearby.
“Maybe Maarken and Hollis just chose the wrong dragons to touch,” he mused.
“Trying it had them unconscious for a whole afternoon,” she reminded him. His lips twisted as he gnawed on the inside of his cheek, his eyes narrowing as he focused on a single dragon. She knew what he was going to do as surely as if they’d thought it at the same time—and didn’t say a word to stop him.
The others had arrived at the lake by now, occupied with the count or speculating on Elisel’s absence or simply staring awestruck at the dragons. Only Sionell saw Pol take a deep breath to steady himself, fix his gaze on a large blue-gray three-year-old with silvery underwings, and close his eyes.
The young dragon stood with wings spread out to dry after his swim. Well-grown for his age, as an adult he would be a sire of formidable size. His head with its long face and huge eyes turned toward Pol, then away, then shook as if insects irritated him. Shuffling to one side, he bumped into another youngling who growled at him.
Sionell held her breath, willing Pol to succeed. How could he not? Nothing had ever been denied him; the world and all its dragons were his by right.
But not today.
The dragon shrieked, head lashing toward the sky. Pol cried out at the same time, a terrible groan that shuddered his whole frame. Sionell flung her arms around him to keep him upright, calling his name.
“Pol! You idiot!” Rohan gathered him from her and lowered him to the grass. His eyes were open and he mumbled incoherently, the muscles of his legs and arms quivering. Sionell knelt, shifting Pol’s head to her lap. Rohan framed his son’s face with his hands and called his name.
The dragon howled again and took wing, circling the lake in panicked flight. All at once Pol’s eyes opened startled and wide. He gave a great sigh and went bonelessly unconscious.
“Idiot,” Rohan said again, but in a relieved tone this time. “Maarken, Tallain, get him out of here and put him to bed.”
The young Lord of Tiglath gently assisted Sionell to her feet. “He’ll be all right now, my lady. Let us take care of him.”
She nodded numbly, grateful for his strong supporting arm as he gave her over to Arlis. Pol was slung between the two young men and carried away, utterly oblivious.
“Whatever possessed him to try such a thing?” Hollis asked. “He knows how difficult it is—”
“You just answered your own question,” said the High Princess. “If he’d gotten tangled in that dragon’s colors—”
“He wanted to ask about Elisel,” Sionell murmured.
“Perhaps,” Sioned conceded. “But what he really wanted, what he’s always wanted, is to touch a dragon himself.”
Rohan rubbed a hand over his face. “If he wasn’t already to be punished by a sore brain for the next two days, I’d take him over my knee.”
“I’d take him by the ears and shake some sense into him—if I could reach up that far,” Sioned countered. “Has that poor dragon settled down yet?”
“Sunning himself and having a snack,” Arlis reported. “Are you all right now, my lady?”
Sionell managed a shaky smile for the future Prince of Kierst-Isel. “Thank you, my lord.”
Pol woke in time for dinner, sat up, moaned, clutched his aching skull, and collapsed back into the pillows. Tallain came downstairs to inform them that the prince had wisely decided to stay in his room.
“How long did it take you to bully him into it?” Rohan asked curiously.
Tallain grinned. “Two tries at standing, one at getting his pants on, and some very creative cursing, my lord. I hardly had to say anything at all.”
“Good man. Let him convince himself. Walvis, I assume Feylin is lost in her statistics again, and won’t be joining us for dinner?”
They were a small group that night, seated around a table in what would one day be the guards mess. Sioned had chosen to stay upstairs and wait for first moonlight to contact Riyan at Skybowl; he would know about Elisel. Chay, Tobin, and Maarken were at the stables tending a mare suspected of colic. So Arlis served Rohan, Walvis, Sionell, Tallain, and Hollis from a cauldron of stew made of leftovers from the Lastday banquet. When sweets and taze were presented at the end of the meal, the young prince was dismissed to his own dinner.