Riyan felt his stomach lurch. “You’re saying it took that dragon three days to die?” he whispered. “Sweet Goddess.”
“This ‘Aliadim’ killed the dragon on purpose, you know,” Garic mused. “He deliberately broke the law.”
“But why, Grandsir?” Ruala pleaded. “Why would anyone want to kill anything as miraculous as a dragon? The wisest thing the High Prince ever did was decree their protection!”
Riyan glanced at her with interest; most people were terrified of dragons and thought Rohan’s law the stupidest thing he had ever done.
“The dragon was killed in challenge, to flout the law,” the old athri replied. “To bring investigating Desert lords into the Veresch, as has happened. But—no disrespect intended, my lords—I believe this man was hoping not for those of Skybowl and Feruche but Stronghold and Dragon’s Rest.”
“You have to tell them,” Sorin said some time later, when they were alone in the pleasant, well-lit chamber allotted to them.
Riyan came out of the bathroom, rubbing his face with a towel. Elktrap Manor was a well-appointed place with many modern conveniences. Lord Garic had kept his wealth secret during Roelstra’s rule for fear of its being legally confiscated, but in the years Rohan had been High Prince he had gleefully used his hoarded treasure to make improvements in his beloved holding. Unlike Roelstra, Rohan believed that as long as the contract between lord and prince for supplies in return for protection and shrewd bargaining with other princes was upheld, an athri’s goods and lands belonged to an athri. Unlike Roelstra, Rohan was not a thief—legal or otherwise.
“I suppose I will have to let them know,” Riyan said. “But you know Rohan, you know Pol—and you know what will happen.”
Sorin nodded. “They’ll be here like arrows shot from a single bow. But there’s a nasty section of that law saying that anyone who fails to report a dragon’s killing immediately is judged as guilty as the one who did the deed.”
Tossing the towel onto a chair, Riyan laughed. “Can you seriously see Rohan stripping us of half our wealth?”
Sorin did not find this particularly amusing. “There have been rumblings lately that there’s one law for the highborns and Sunrunners, and another for the common folk. Frankly, I don’t want to be caught in the middle of the same kind of dispute.”
Riyan sobered. “I suppose you’re right. Very well. At moonrise I’ll contact Sioned and then Pol. But I can’t help hoping that clouds will blow up so I can’t work. I think Lord Garic is right. ‘Aliadim’ isn’t interested in us. He’s out to provoke Rohan and Pol.”
“And knew exactly how to do it.” Sorin picked up a rolled parchment borrowed from Elktrap’s surprisingly fine library. “A treatise on dragons,” he explained as Riyan’s brows arched. “I’ll try to borrow it for Lady Feylin, but right now I want to do a little reading myself. Did you get a look at the dates on some of Lord Garic’s books? Right back to the year Goddess Keep was established. As old or older than the scrolls Meath found on Dorval.”
“But not as dangerous, I hope,” Riyan murmured to himself. He sat in a deep armchair by the windows and stared at the purple mountains, waiting for the moons to rise.
After a time he heard the rustle of parchment that meant Sorin had rerolled it. “Interesting enough to borrow for Feylin?” he asked.
“Yes.” Sorin’s voice was strained, and Riyan glanced around curiously. “But that’s not what I want to talk about. I didn’t want to mention it until you did. But you don’t seem to realize how that dragon was killed.”
“What do you mean?”
Sorin raked pale brown hair out of blue eyes, an impatient gesture. “Don’t you see? You’re a Sunrunner. Could you bring a dragon down from the sky? You told me that’s what happened, and for all my admiration for faradh’im, I don’t think any of you could have done it. You probably have the power—but not the right spell.”
Riyan felt himself go absolutely still, mind and body and spirit.
“Which means Andry should be told about this, too,” Sorin continued stubbornly. “I know you don’t much like what he’s done the last nine years, but you would’ve told Lady Andrade, wouldn’t you? My brother is Lord of Goddess Keep now. He needs to know this.”
“The law is Rohan’s,” Riyan heard himself say.
“But the spell was diarmadhi.”
“No proof.”
“Oh for the love of—Riyan, you were the one who communicated with that dragon! And by the way, Pol’s going to be crazy once he hears. He still hasn’t managed it and neither has anybody else. But did the man who killed that dragon wear Sunrunner’s rings? Yet he yanked the creature right out of the sky! Andry has to be told.”
“I’ll mention it to Sioned,” was as far as Riyan was willing to go, and with that Sorin had to be content.
9
Dragon’s Rest: 4 Spring
Pol hung on as best he could, but the effort was in vain. Daylight opened up between him and the saddle. The next instant he was flat on his back in the lush spring grass with the wind knocked out of him. The filly, with fine regard for his comfort now that it no longer depended on her, sidled over and poked her delicate nose into his ribs. Propping himself on his elbows after he’d caught his breath, he frowned up at her in disgust. “I’m fine, thanks for asking,” he growled.
A young man leaning on the paddock rails had been laughing uproariously all this time. “I don’t see what’s so damned funny,” Pol complained as he regained his feet.
“Don’t you? From where I’m standing, it was hilarious.”
“You have no respect for your prince’s dignity, Rialt—let alone his sore backside.”
“If your dignity depended on your backside, you’d have a problem,” Rialt replied as grooms loosened the filly’s saddle girth. She was perfectly reasonable now without a man’s weight on her back. “I just hope the mount you bring to your marriage bed is easier to ride than this lady here,” he teased.
“And no respect for your prince’s privacy, either,” Pol snapped.
“Temper, my lord,” Rialt grinned. Marriage was an increasingly irritating subject for Pol, who had just finished his twenty-third winter and was being delicately pressured by almost everyone but his parents to find a wife. “Come, a nice hot bath will—”
“Don’t try to manage me the way you manage my palace, Chamberlain,” came the sharp reply, and Rialt shut up. Pol’s bad humor righted itself by the time the filly had been led away, and as he closed the paddock gate behind him he apologized with a rueful smile. “Sorry. But it seems that everything, including my own horses, gets the better of me these days.”
“Cheer up. There’s excellent news that I came down here to tell you. We lost only half the sheep we originally thought in the winter floods, and saved most of the vines and young trees.”
Rialt chattered on about their domestic state as they walked the long road from paddock to palace, and Pol’s mood improved. Livestock and crops were doing better than initial word had indicated. Torrential rains that winter had endangered Dragon’s Rest; other holdings had been all but ruined. Pol hoped to use some of his own stock to replenish herds drowned in floods or dead of resulting disease, and the information heartened him. It had the added benefit of taking his mind off the tedious business of preparing to Choose a bride.
He hoped he would have as much luck in finding a wife as he had had in finding a chamberlain. Rialt, encountered by chance many years ago at an inn below Graypearl, was the youngest son of an important Dorvali silk merchant. He had often appeared at Prince Chadric’s court during Pol’s last years there as a squire, representing his father and a small group of other merchants. Pol had gotten to know him, liking what he saw. But an invitation to visit Stronghold and further his education in the economics of trade was reluctantly declined; Rialt was married by that time, with one daughter born and another on the way. Two summers ago his wife had died in childbed and a son with her, and Rialt had written a respectful letter asking if the offer still held. By then, though only three winters Pol’s senior, he had a successful trade of his own in both silk and pearls. But he found home insupportable with its memories of his beloved wife.