And it would have, too, if not for the dragon. Dangerous enough at any other time, she was crazed by pain, terror, and her frantic consciousness of the eggs forming within her body. Increasingly through the spring and up until her chosen cave was walled up, she would focus more and more on the new lives slowly swelling her belly. Once she flew from her cave, she would forget all about them, and treat her own surviving hatchlings just as she would any others. Dragon parenting was a communal effort, shared by all females and sires. But until that wall was secured, she was concerned only with her instinct to protect her eggs—and right now that meant protecting herself.
Thus when Ruval abruptly released her, she went mad. With a terrifying roar she threw her head back, then came down with her good foreleg clawing for Ruval. He made the mistake of grabbing for his sword; talons ripped through his tunic and shirt, tearing long slashes in his back. He cried out with the pain and fell, rolling onto his back with the sword raised to hack at her if she went for him again.
But she turned her attention to Pol, raising up once more in preparation for disembowelment. It was how his grandfather Zehava had died. He thought this in the same instant he wove sunlight into a strong, tough fabric, not even lifting his sword. The dragon’s jaws opened wide and she bellowed her fury down at him, her massive body drawn to full height now and ready to descend on him.
He heard a harsh scream nearby; wondered in anguish if it was Sorin or Riyan or Edrel; hoped it was Marron. Ruval was near him on the ground, his sword pointed up at the dragon, frozen in horrified fascination as she reared up. Her tail lashed, the uninjured wing folded to her back, the broken one dangling at her side. Pol stared up at her, protected by nothing more than the offered sunlight. She was magnificent and beautiful and lethal, and he knew he ought to be terrified of her.
What felled him was not her talons or her dagger-sized teeth. He staggered as the full force of her sunwoven colors smashed into his. He went to his knees hard on the grass, gasping, using every bit of his strength to keep sane and whole. I won’t hurt you, I’d never harm any dragon—I’ll kill this other for you, I swear I will—The emotions flooded through him, undammed by contact with the pain-maddened dragon. Savage hatred, unspeakable agony, furious terror for her hatchlings’ safety—he tried to counter with his love for dragons, his fierce joy in their beauty, his determination to protect them—and to kill Ruval, who had done this hideous thing to her. He looked up, senses reeling, his mind close to shattering like fine Fironese crystal, expecting that at any instant those talons would gouge out his guts. The dragon never touched him. The contact gentled despite her terrible pain. Pol caught his breath as wordless questions tumbled over and over each other, pictures and feelings and demands all mixed up until he felt his grip on sanity weaken dangerously. She seemed to realize it and drew back a little. In the air between them his faradhi senses touched the brilliant pattern of her, more complex than anything he had ever felt before. His attempt at Dragon’s Rest had resulted in a shock that had well and truly scared him. Now he understood that there simply had not been enough time—or enough need.
Lost to all else in the intensity of the encounter, he never saw the battle that raged around him for a few brief moments. He showed her an image of the lake at Dragon’s Rest, the sheep kept there for the exclusive use of her kind. A low hum reached his ears and he smiled when she painted light in the form of his palace, the blue-gray stone all aglow in the dawn. He was aware of her agony, but as a remote thing now, not the shrieking fire in her wing and foreleg. But when he tried to convey help—a splint, salves, tender care for as long as it took for her to heal—tears ran down his cheeks at her reply: an image of her own lifeless corpse. She would never fly again, even with a mended wing. And a dragon without flight was as a faradhi shut away from the sun.
“My lord! My lord, please! Come back!”
He whimpered with pain as someone shook his injured wing. It passed, and his own arm was gripped in Edrel’s trembling hands. He looked up at the boy.
He said thickly, “Get Riyan—tell him to send the dragon into sleep, spare her any more pain—” All at once he remembered why he was on his knees in the grass, and twisted his body around. “Sweet Goddess,” he whispered.
Rialt and the guards had come, but not in time. Ruval and Marron were gone. There was blood on Riyan’s tunic, more on his hands; he rubbed his ringed fingers convulsively, as if he would chafe the skin raw. He stood over Pol with a stricken, desperate look in his eyes.
“Sorin—” he began, and choked.
“No,” Pol breathed. He hauled himself up with Edrel’s help and stumbled to where his cousin lay. The blood on Riyan’s hands had come from the gaping wound in Sorin’s thigh, the urgent pulse weakening. A frantically applied tourniquet was useless; the deep artery had been severed.
Pol sank to his knees and brushed the sun-streaked brown hair from his cousin’s eyes, and tried to swallow his sick fear.
Sorin met his gaze. “My prince,” he said softly, his voice steady. “Lost them—I’m sorry.”
“No. Sorin—”
“Let me speak, Pol.” The corners of his mouth turned up in a slight smile. “They’re a threat to you and need killing. Do that for me.”
He nodded helplessly, then flung a look at Rialt and Riyan. The latter had unashamed tears in his eyes that terrified Pol; the former merely shook his head and glanced away.
“Doesn’t hurt, really,” Sorin whispered. “Tell Mother that.” A sudden gasp negated his denial of pain.
“Easy, easy,” Pol soothed, taking the water skin from his belt. “We’ll get you back to Elktrap and—”
“No. To Feruche.” His eyes lost focus for a moment, then sharpened. “I know you can’t trust Andry as I do—but at least try to ... understand him. For my sake, Pol. Please. And for your own.”
“Promise. Never asked . . . anything of you, my prince . . I’m asking now.” . Pol cleared his throat. “Yes—anything, Sorin. Please—I need you.”
He smiled vaguely and his eyes closed.
“Sorin!”
The hand on his arm made him look around. Riyan was white with shock. He held out both shaking hands, the shining rings dark with Sorin’s blood. “Pol, there was sorcery at work here.”
“They’ll die for it,” Pol heard himself say. Then he wrapped his arms around Riyan’s trembling shoulders, and they both wept.
11
Castle Pine: 7 Spring
“Your grace!”
“My lord!”
A swift, wary embrace like that of two dangerous animals in an unnatural mating, and Miyon of Cunaxa stepped back. He was tall, leanly made, with deceptively lazy eyes and a mouth too wide for his narrow face. During the seventh winter of his reign and the nineteenth of his age, he had personally executed the greedy advisers who had thought to rule Cunaxa forever through him. For the last twenty years he had ruled with an authority that had challenged the considerable power of his fractious merchant class. He desired two things in life: safe, inexpensive trade routes, and the Merida out of his princedom. His lips parted in a smile over sharp white teeth as Ruval bowed to him, for here was the means to acquire both.
“Forgive the necessary secrecy of your reception,” Miyon said, waving the younger man to a chair. “I am not yet in a position to welcome you openly. But accept my congratulations on your recent accomplishments.”
Ruval laughed. “If you mean the dragons, thank you. But if you mean Sorin of Feruche’s death—my brother Marron was responsible. I wouldn’t insult my sword with the blood of anyone under the rank of prince.”