Rohan had been expecting frustration over the escape of Sorin’s murderers, grief and guilt at his cousin’s death, any number of things. But not this. “Go on,” he said.
“It just—it seems we always react to things, rather than act.”
“Ah. You want to hunt down this Ruval by any means at your disposal and execute him as he so richly deserves.”
“Don’t you?” Pol swung around from the far windows.
Rohan considered a light answer to relieve the tension that fairly crackled from his son’s body. But to say that he himself was too old to go racing about the countryside would be to insult Pol’s feelings and treat him as the child he had not been for many years. Still, Rohan had begun to feel twinges of his own age recently, though fifty-one never seemed much different from thirty-one until he was faced with Pol’s youth.
But his reply was, “It’s the curse of our position and our principles. We have the power to act, but we’re condemned to wait until others have acted first.”
It was not an answer Pol was ready to comprehend. “I won’t sit around polishing my sword until Ruval decides to reappear!”
“I understand.” He sat down and lifted the wine cup left for him on a table. “But consider, Pol. The greatest temptation of any kind of power is to use it.”
“What good is power if you don’t use it?”
Rohan sighed. “Think of the laws written the past seven Riall’im. Very few involve prohibitions of one sort or another. They simply state what will occur if a certain thing is done. People do what they wish to do, and saying it’s not legal usually won’t stop them. But if the consequences of a particular action are clear, they may do the thing anyway, but they also know exactly what will happen if they’re caught.”
“I don’t see what that has to do with—”
He rapped his knuckles on the arm of his chair. “Pay attention. The old ways commanded that one must not do thus-and-so, end of law. For instance, Sunrunners were forbidden to use their gifts in battle. If I were to rewrite that one, it would be to the effect that faradh’im who do so would die if pierced by iron, as is very likely to happen in battle, iron being incompatible with the functioning of those gifts. Present the consequences and allow people to make the choice as adults, rather than simply forbid a thing, which treats them like children. To take a more common example, the law used to read that a person must not murder. Very precise, but punishment was arbitrary and differed from princedom to princedom. The law now is that if a person commits a willful murder, his own life is forfeit and all his possessions go to the family of the person he killed. People don’t obey a law just because they’re told to. But if they know the consequences of an act and do it anyway, then that’s a conscious and informed choice and they have no cause to protest the punishment.
“Certainly we could go off hunting this man, and we’d be right to do so. You heard from his own lips that he knew exactly what he was doing by killing dragons and what the penalty is, and did it anyway. And Sorin. . . .” Rohan had a sudden, poignant vision of a little boy with whom he’d played at dragons. “But there’s more to this than his death and the deaths of three dragons. And that’s why we have to wait for the next move.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You’ve got a good brain, Pol. Use it! Until he and his brother come out into the open again, we don’t know who else might be using them or hiding behind them—or, what might be worse, working with them. If we use our considerable resources of princely and faradhi power to administer the swift justice we both want, it’s entirely possible we’ll miss a larger threat. And you know very well what that threat probably is.”
“The diarmadh’im,” Pol said reluctantly. “The way we would have missed—the boy who infiltrated Goddess Keep.”
Rohan noted the editing of what Pol had been about to say, and frowned.
“But isn’t it also possible that if we deal with this pair now, we’ll be removing some very useful tools from their hands? Ruval and Marron really do have a claim to Princemarch in the strict sense. They’re Roelstra’s grandsons.”
“Yes. But in killing Roelstra in fair combat, and by all the rules of war, I won Princemarch.”
“Why did you give it to me, Father? I’ve always wondered.”
Again he was tempted to a light answer, and could not bring himself to turn aside the young man’s question. But neither could he tell Pol the truth. Not yet. And not without Sioned’s agreement. “All I ever wanted was the Desert. Becoming High Prince was something necessary, if I was to make the kind of world I wanted for you. Quite frankly, I didn’t want Princemarch on top of all the rest of it.”
“So you gave it into Pandsala’s care as regent for me.”
“Under her and now under Ostvel, the people there have grown used to the idea of you as their prince. Not me. I was never theirs. You are.”
“Well, that ploy worked, anyway.”
“Your faith in my wisdom is comforting,” Rohan replied wryly. “You also have to remember that at the time our family was growing more powerful—your mother’s brother Davvi Prince of Syr, Volog cousin to them—it seemed wiser to keep Princemarch separate from the Desert until my death unites them under you as High Prince.”
“Do me a favor and live forever, will you?”
“I’ll do my best.” He smiled briefly. “Actually, I only worry about it every three years.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Didn’t you ever notice? Ruling princes of the Desert are always born in a Dragon Year—back five generations. We always die in a Dragon Year, too. Take care of me until next New Year, my boy, unless you’re eager to inherit.”
“Thank you, no,” Pol grinned. “Princemarch is quite enough to handle!”
“I’ll try to expire at your convenience,” Rohan responded with a slight bow, then grew serious again. “But you have to understand why we can’t act until Ruval does. We must wait and find out exactly who else is involved.”
“I suppose.” Pol sank into a chair at last, long legs sprawled. “What I finally understand is why you waited to kill Masul. He was a threat, but you wanted to find out how serious. It was only when Maarken’s life was in the balance that you acted. But, Father, if you’d killed Masul right away—”
“Andrade might still be alive.”
Pol flushed. “I didn’t mean—”
“Oh, it’s quite true.” He rolled the wine cup between his palms, staring into the cloudy red liquid. “I know it seems that I act only when I’m forced to. And I suppose that’s so. And it also seems that I don’t use power because I’m afraid of it—and that’s true, as well, but not for the reasons most people think. It’s fair to say that I don’t wish to antagonize already suspicious princes and I have a horror of conflict, armed or otherwise. Everyone knows I haven’t touched my sword since I hung it in the Great Hall at Stronghold just after you were born. We’ve all lived pretty much at peace, with no widespread wars and only a few messy private situations since I’ve become High Prince. That’s exactly what I wanted. It gives the flowers a chance to grow—and me the chance to watch them.” He smiled. “But do you see that all this has come about precisely because I don’t use my power? It’s not that I’m afraid of it. In fact, there are times when I relish it. And that’s what really frightens me. Power is ... an interesting feeling. Once you get accustomed to it, you go looking for chances to use it. It’s the difference between an arbitrary prince in love with his own power, and a thoughtful one who understands its responsibilities.”
“We can act as we please, and everyone knows it,” Pol mused. “But by not acting—”
“We indicate that we’re so powerful we don’t have to pounce on people like a dragon on a lamb. And when we do use power, it’s not just for specific punishment. It provides a really necessary demonstration of what we could do if we chose. Sweet Goddess, with the armies at my disposal I could have taken this whole continent by now. But I haven’t, and everyone knows I won’t. I don’t have to prove my manhood or my power by making everyone feel the strength of my sword.”