“I watched Ianthe grow big with the son she had stolen from me. From him. Her time came early. Ostvel and Tobin and I rode to Feruche.” She looked up then, memory swirling in her darkened eyes. “I took you from her in secret, reclaimed what was mine. I brought Feruche down around itself with Fire. Everyone thought that the child she bore died with her. But he did not. You are that child, Pol. We went to Skybowl. Few saw us there—the workers had all become warriors in defense of the Desert. Skybowl was nearly as empty as Stronghold. For those who did see, there was ... an explanation.”
“A lie,” Pol said in a toneless voice.
“Yes,” she agreed steadily. “That I had expected the birth of my own son to occur in midwinter. That I had started for Skybowl on whim, Tobin and Ostvel in attendance. I ... was not myself that summer and autumn. I don’t remember much about that time—not from the night Ianthe took me, put me into a cell without light. . . I think perhaps I went a little mad.” Her hands twisted around themselves. “My actions were understood to be part of this. It was plausible. Women with child have strange fancies sometimes.” A deep breath to calm herself, and she went on, “We told them at Skybowl that you were born along the way. That night I Named you with Ostvel and Tobin witnessing. And also that night—”
“I killed Roelstra,” Rohan said curtly. “You’ve heard how it happened. A dome of starfire constructed all the way from Skybowl, catching into it every faradhi-gifted mind there and at the battleground—including you. Roelstra knew you had been born. He didn’t know his daughter was dead.”
“Wh-who killed her?”
Rohan met Sioned’s haunted eyes.
“Oh, Goddess,” Pol breathed. “Mother—”
“No!” Rohan exclaimed.
“I didn’t kill her.” Sioned looked at Pol and her eyes were hard. “But I wanted nothing more in the world. She imprisoned us, tortured your father, shut me away from the sunlight—and she would have raised you to be as foul as she was. I couldn’t let that happen, Pol. She had the bearing of you, but you were never her son.” Her voice held a note of pleading now. But Rohan recognized that even in her anguish she had managed to avoid revealing another truth: that Ostvel was the one who had killed Ianthe. They could never tell Pol that.
“Then . . . then Ruval is my half-brother,” Pol said slowly, as if awakening from a long sleep to find that even words were strangers. “And my life is a lie.”
“Pol!” Rohan went to him, grasped his shoulders. “You are no different now than you were before you knew! What’s changed? You were born of princes, you are faradhi, and you are my son. And Sioned’s.” He stared into his son’s face, willing Pol to say words that would free Sioned of her terror.
“No different?” the young man asked incredulously. “Knowing I’m diarmadhi, that I’m the child of rape, that my father killed my grandfather, that my mother—” He gave a small, choking laugh. “Which mother?”
“Pol—”
“No different?”
“Are you anything less than you were before you knew?” Rohan snapped.
“I’m more,” he replied in soft, deadly tones.
Rohan stood away from him. “This can only change you if you let it. Ianthe may have birthed you, but you were never her son. Never. Do you feel any kinship to Ruval? Any pull of brotherhood? Who was it who nursed you, raised you, loved you, taught you—”
Sioned moaned low in her throat. Rohan turned to her, stricken by the look in her eyes. What she had always feared had come to pass. Pol was blaming her, rejecting her—for something Rohan had done.
He faced his son once more. “This is no easier for us than it is for you. If we’d had a choice—”
“You never would have told me. That’s obvious. You would have gone on letting me believe a lie!” He surged to his feet.
“That you’re Sioned’s son? Is that truly a lie? Pol, look into yourself. Are you Ianthe’s?”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Pol cried. “Why did you keep it secret?”
“If you need to blame someone, blame me,” Rohan said.
“Do you know what they planned for him, Pol?” Sioned spoke with deliberate harshness. “Do you know what they would have done, your birth-mother and her sire? He and Ianthe were to marry. Once an heir was born, Rohan would have been killed. The Desert would become part of Princemarch. Ianthe’s son would rule both as High Prince once Roelstra was dead. Do you want to claim such people for your own? They had nothing to do with your life!”
“Except that they gave it to me! And things haven’t worked out too differently, have they? I’ve got Princemarch, and eventually I’ll have the Desert and be High Prince—Goddess, it’s all happened as if my—my grandfather was still alive!”
“Stop it!” Rohan commanded. “I killed Roelstra because he needed killing, not because I wanted his power for either of us. If you believe otherwise after so many years, you’re a fool! All this was my doing, Pol. All of it. It’s my fault that they plotted against me, my fault that your mother was captured and shut away in the dark and—” Sioned made a small, animal sound, her hands lifting as if to ward off the memory of rape, darkness in her eyes that would devour her if the words were spoken. He bit his lips closed and dug his fingers into his palms, speaking again only when he could do so with relative calm. “I raped Ianthe and I killed Roelstra and I allowed you to think you’re what everyone believes you are. All these things you may blame me for. But Tobin knows the truth of your birth, and Chay, and Myrdal, and Ostvel—and so did Maeta. Would she have given her life for you if she believed you to be truly Ianthe’s son? Do any of the others watch for signs of Roelstra in you? Your real mother is here before you, not in the ashes beneath Feruche!”
At last Pol looked at Sioned. She had wrapped her arms around herself, shivering, eyes huge with pain and pleading. He stared at her a long, silent time, without accusation or understanding. Then he turned and left the room.
He didn’t know he was running until there was nowhere else to go.
The door to the uppermost chamber of the Flametower stopped him. He stared at the carved wood without comprehension for some moments, then slammed it open with one shoulder, colliding instantly with a blast of searing heat from the constant fire. The door reeled on one hinge; he shoved it closed, leaned back, tried to catch his breath. Intense firelight stung his eyes and all the colors he had ever seen or dreamed whirled in the center of the windowed room, reaching out as in faradhi vision to assault his senses.
Air rasped into his lungs. He staggered to a window, unable to breathe around the ache in his chest. Lied to, betrayed, deceived—and by the two people he loved and trusted and honored more than anyone in the world. He cried out a wordless, mindless protest. This could not be happening to him. It wasn’t right, it wasn’t fair—how could they have lied to him? They were supposed to love him, to want the best for him. And yet they had done this thing to him.
The cool scented darkness of the Desert spread beyond Stronghold. Above, the night sky was drenched with stars. He clenched his fingers on the stones as if he could tear them asunder, push them into the placid garden of roses and water below, then take flight like a dragon into the sky.
That was what had brought him up here. The need to escape, to find freedom, solitary and wild, to flex the muscles of his wings and fly. He stared down at his useless hands and a low groan of rage broke from his throat.
Fire blazing behind him soaked him in heat and sweat, and he knew that if he turned he could conjure visions in that Fire. He could bring into being scenes of the past.
The Star Scroll had taught him that today. A rape, a stolen child, a castle gutted by Sunrunner’s Fire. Scenes to bear silent witness to the lie that was his life.