Skybowl, p.16
Skybowl, page 16
And that one face that would appear when Fire was called to unlit candles beside the mirror. The three-lobed crystal lantern hanging over the table glowed with traditional flames, but he couldn’t help the feeling that those strange dark eyes watched. He glanced involuntarily to his left, where the mirror tilted slightly forward above the hearth.
“Don’t worry, it looks lovely there,” Sioned told him, leaning forward to speak around Evarin and Chayla. “I’m glad you brought it up from Skybowl to be properly admired. I meant to tell you that when we first arrived.”
“A beautiful piece, my lord,” Evarin commented.
Maarken asked Andry to pass the salt.
“It belonged to Riyan’s mother, my childhood friend Camigwen,” Sioned explained. “I suppose she’s long forgotten at Goddess Keep.”
“Not at all, your grace! I have her to thank for the still-room, in fact. It’s a marvel of logic. And someone told me it was her good, clear hand that copied the simples books from the scrawls of former physicians.”
“Her project when she was quite young. Doubtless you’ve found her spelling an entertainment in itself.”
“More wine, my lady?” Kierun inquired of Tobren, who sat between Riyan and her father.
“Watered,” Andry said firmly, reaching for the pitcher.
There, Riyan thought; the mirror had been commented upon and the subject neatly turned in Sioned’s inimitable style—though he’d have to remember to choose a date for its appearance.
At Riyan’s end of the table, Chayla and Evarin predictably talked medicine while Meath engaged Tobren and Andry in reminiscences of Goddess Keep then-and-now. Sioned became as quiet as Tobin, directly across from her, but Riyan had the feeling that a whole conversation was going on between them in total silence. Which was impossible with the sun down and the moons not yet risen, and the windows too far away to give light from either in any case. But the impression lingered all the same.
He heard only a little of the talk at Ruala’s end, but snatches of sentences indicated that topics ranged from children (whose were the most rambunctious: Pol’s, Sionell’s, Alasen’s, or Maarken’s; Chay finally settled it by snorting that he defied anyone to present pestilential sons to match his) to Alasen’s hilarious description of Princess Chiana’s private bathroom. At Pol’s and Maarken’s urging, Draza refought the Battle of Swalekeep using condiment dishes, winecups, and cutlery.
Every so often Riyan caught his wife’s eye, and once caught her glancing over at the mirror much as he had done. Toward the end of the meal, while the two squires cleared away empty plates before taze and the sweets arrived, Chay turned to Pol.
“It’s getting dark in here. Make yourself useful.”
Pol gave a start, then gestured with his right hand. From the tall swirls of wrought iron in the corners to the pair of sconces flanking the mirror, every unlit candle in the room flared to life.
“Much better,” Chay said glibly. “I was embarrassing all these pretty women by squinting at them. And at my age, all I can do is look.”
Tobin turned her head and arched an eloquent brow.
“Well, mostly,” he amended, grinning.
The gathering broke up slowly. At last there were only six left: Pol, Sioned, Meath, Riyan, Ruala, and Chay, who rose to his feet and cast a sour look at his nephew.
“I won’t stay for your discussion—I wouldn’t understand it. But you should know that there’s very little my son the Battle Commander doesn’t tell me.”
“So you deliberately had me light the candles,” Pol murmured.
He snorted. “That piece of pious fraud about when that mirror got put on the wall—as if I hadn’t seen Riyan unload it as if it was worth more than every bolt of silk that ever came through Radzyn port.”
“Nothing gets past you, does it, my lord?” Sioned asked sweetly.
Eyes dancing, he accused, “Sunrunner!” and she laughed.
When he was gone, she turned to Pol. “You were a little flamboyant about it, you know. Have fun?”
“Absolutely. There’s nothing in the mirror for Andry to see.”
Riyan took his cup and moved to a chair facing away from the mirror. “Well, I can, even though I haven’t looked—but I can feel him watching us.”
“Like somebody’s ghost,” Ruala agreed.
“Well, my lady,” Meath said, “you’re the only one who can tell us anything about it.”
“It’s not much,” she apologized. “I’ve been trying to remember what my sister and I used to pretend to read when we were little. Grandfather despaired of teaching us anything. Neither of us had the makings of a scholar. And the scrolls were mainly histories, like stories you tell children at bedtime. All imagination and no substance.”
“You were both very young for such knowledge,” Pol said. “Maybe he thought the way we’re having to think now, with Jihan. Learn it early so it’s part of you and you don’t get knocked over by your own power later on.”
“Maybe. But I wish now that I’d paid more attention.” She finished off her taze and stared into the empty cup. “I remember that the way to use any mirror was to call Fire, but Rossana and I experimented with every mirror at Elktrap, from the ones in our pockets to the big one in Mother’s dressing room. Not a glimmer.” She smiled. “We were very disappointed.”
“I’m not surprised your grandfather didn’t keep any around,” Riyan said. “They sound risky things to have, for a diarmadhi who didn’t want to be known as such.”
Pol rose and approached the hearth. “Have you looked into this one yet? No? Then come tell me what you see.”
She joined him; they all did, even though Sioned and Meath would never see any reflections but their own. Ruala’s head tilted back, and she gazed into the mirror—and her milk-white complexion turned the color of ashes.
Riyan put a hand around her waist to steady her. “What is it, love?”
“I–I know him,” she breathed. “He looks like my father!”
“Your father died of Plague the year after you were born,” he reminded her gently. “You were too young to recall his face.”
She shook her head violently, backing away from the mirror. “Grandfather liked to draw. He did that picture of you and me the day we married, remember? It was to match a portrait of my parents.” A shaking finger pointed to the face in the mirror. “He looks the way my father looks in that portrait. Thinner, and a little older, and his eyes are unhappy, but I tell you the face is the same.”
Sioned had pulled a chair out from the table and sat down in it, hands clasped quietly in her lap. “An ancestor,” she said. “You may be looking at the face of a man who lived when Lady Merisel lived.”
Shaken, Ruala asked, “But if that’s true, why did the mirror belong to Camigwen?”
“Possibly she was of the same family.”
“Of diarmadh’im,” Pol added.
“Or,” Sioned went on, “possibly someone in her family was an enemy of this man, and kept the mirror as a token of victory.”
Meath peered up at the glass, then shook his head. “Nobody but me in there. Pol, you can see him. Does he look like Riyan?”
Pol studied the proud face, moved again by the ancient, patient sadness. “Only around the eyes, like most Fironese.” He glanced at Ruala. “No resemblance to you at all. Your eyes are green, not dark brown or black, and don’t tilt upward.” Those eyes glared at him, and he added hastily, “I’m not calling you a liar, you know I’m not. It’s just an observation—”
“You never met my twin sister,” she snapped.
“No,” Sioned told them, “but I did once, when she was about twelve or so. Your grandfather brought her to a Rialla. You were sick and had to stay home. Rossana could have been Camigwen’s daughter—Fironese to her eyelashes.” Rising, she glanced at Meath and finished, “We’re useless here. It’s time to relieve Hollis on the watch, anyway.”
The three diarmadh’im were left alone with the mirror—and the man inside it. Ruala refused to look at it again. Riyan and Pol exchanged helpless shrugs.
“What do we do now?” Pol asked. “Ask him questions?”
Ruala straightened abruptly and started for the door. “If he answers, I don’t want to hear it. Good night.”
She slammed the door. Riyan whistled softly, a low, descending note. “This has really upset her. She’s not usually like this.”
“Pregnant women are notoriously unpredictable,” Pol replied idly. “Shall we start?”
“Start what?”
“Damned if I know.”
• • •
Long past midnight, weary and discouraged by an utter lack of success, Riyan stripped and fell into bed. Ruala wasn’t there, but he didn’t worry much; she was probably helping in the search for Meiglan. He curled up beneath the velvet quilt and was immediately asleep.
The next morning, however, they heard him all the way downstairs when he read the note left on his wife’s pillow.
Gone to Elktrap for Grandfather’s scrolls. Back in a few days.
Nothing more—but enough to make him shout for servants, soldiers, and a horse.
A short while later, down in the courtyard, his guards commander informed him that Lady Ruala had ridden out a little after midnight with a contingent of twenty—under his strenuous protests, of course, but she was sovereign lady here. Riyan strangled the urge to strangle the commander.
As he was about to order a troop of his own to ride out and bring her back, he felt familiar and cherished colors dance around him on the morning sunlight.
Riyan, don’t you dare.
He was so angry he couldn’t form coherent thoughts.
I’ll be perfectly safe, she went on. It’s not very far. Pol told us yesterday that the hills have been scoured of Vellant’im. And we need Grandfather’s scrolls or we’ll never know what that mirror really is.
Damn all strong-willed, independent, intelligent women—especially when they were right.
Very well, then, she told him, sensing what he would not say. I’ll talk to whoever’s in the light whenever I can. I hope it’s someone who’ll condescend to talk to me.
Ruala—
But she was gone from his thoughts as surely as from their castle, and all he could do was stand there like a fool.
• • •
Tilal rested his back against a tree overlooking the Faolain River, watching a dragon float its stately way to its own death.
His army, made up of his troops and Amiel’s, had shadowed the great ship along either side of the river, and would wait here until the Vellant’im came down on it from Lowland. Midmorning, he guessed, taking a swig of water from a skin, and he squinted at the shadows cast onto the river by trees on the opposite bank. A while yet to relax and contemplate his advantages in this coming battle that he hoped would be no battle at all.
Lovely, having half an army of physicians at his disposal. For one thing, what they lacked in fighting technique they made up for in sure knowledge of the vulnerabilities of human anatomy. He’d inspected the Vellanti corpses at the mouth of the Faolain and the precision of the death-wounds impressed even him. No flailing about with a sword, hitting anything they could; they seemed to approach each kill with surgical deliberation. Thrusts to the neck cut directly through the vital artery; those to the heart, up and under the leather chest-armor and between the appropriate ribs as if the blade had eyes. Few trained warriors tested in a dozen battles were more efficient.
The physicians were not trained warriors, of course. The fever that came over most of them had nothing to do with the veteran soldier’s battle-lust that banished all fear. They fought as they did because they were terrified and wanted out as quickly as possible. Young Chegry, who attended Princess Nyr, had admitted as much to Tilal on the ride here.
“Some really do like it, my lord,” he’d said, “but most of us are scared to death.”
One would have thought that men and women dedicated to healing injuries would balk at inflicting them. Some did, of course. They were the ones who stuck to their trade and stayed out of the fray. But it surprised Tilal that so many turned their knowledge to taking life instead of preserving it.
After further consideration, he decided it was entirely understandable. They had homes and families; they were part of the princedoms like everyone else, battling the Vellant’im who had despoiled the lands. Tilal himself didn’t much like slashing his way through a hundred bearded savages all bent on killing him, but it had to be done.
He thought again of Rihani—as capable as any man and more so than most, but in the end too sensitive for the brutality of war. Brooding over his son’s death in the empty days at High Kirat, Tilal had come to understand that it had not been the festering wound or the sickness in his lungs that had killed Rihani. He had warred inside himself, and lost.
There were people who would consider Rihani a coward and a weakling. His inability to adjust to the horrors of what he had been forced to do would have been seen by some as a flaw in his character. Tilal knew he had only been born into the wrong time, a civilized prince in a world of barbarians.
Like Rohan. But Rihani had lacked the toughness that maturity had given Rohan, which allowed him to survive the battles he fought within his own soul.
Chegry had interrupted Tilal’s bitter musings by saying something else about the physicians: that not only did they know where to strike for a quick kill, they also knew what enemy thrusts to avoid at all costs. “That’s why we haven’t lost many, my lord. We know which way to turn to keep a blow relatively harmless. Our technique may not be pretty, but it works.”
“But you’re frustrating the spit out of the Vellant’im,” Tilal smiled. “You don’t play by the rules and you don’t make the usual moves. You don’t waste energy by engaging them in swordplay, but wait until you can get in a really good hit. You don’t have the decency to stand there dazzled by their brilliant maneuvers, but slide out of the way however you can. ‘Pretty’ belongs in the practice yard to impress girls, Master Chegry.”
The third advantage to their presence was morale. The usual ratio of battle physicians to soldiers was along the order of seventy to one. In this army, it was more like ten to one. This produced a certain serenity on the part of the regulars, who knew their wounds would be treated almost immediately, with a correspondingly greater chance of total recovery.
So, as Tilal presided over the west bank of the Faolain and Amiel over the right, it was a remarkably cheerful army that waited for the Vellant’im to sail downriver into the trap.
They would have been downright festive if they’d known what that trap really entailed.
Tilal glanced at his squire, and even though the plan had been set firmly yesterday, felt it incumbent upon him to voice the usual caution about using his gifts to kill.
Andrev looked surprised for a moment, then shrugged and replied with a circumvention worthy of his father’s highly flexible reading of the faradhi ethic. “All I’ll be doing is calling Fire to whatever will catch on board the ship. The sails and hull won’t—they learned that at Graypearl and Radzyn. But there should be other things to work with.”
“Not their clothing.”
“No, my lord, of course not. Just whatever’s around them.” He shrugged. “Even if they get singed by accident, they’ll be free to jump if they want.”
The river was cold and ran swift and high this time of year, but it was probably possible to swim for shore—where the army would be waiting. Fire or sword: no choice at all, really. Tilal’s conscience didn’t bother him. He’d seen Maarken set Fire to bridges across this very river—in truth, not so very far from this spot—back in 704. It hadn’t done Maarken any irreparable moral harm. But as Andrev’s lord, as a prince, as a fond substitute parent, and as a man who had lived with Sunrunners much of his life, he’d had to mention the Sunrunner vow. Especially to a boy who was the son of the Lord of Goddess Keep.
“Soon now, my lord,” Andrev murmured a few moments later.
“Really? Has it gotten that late?” He sat up a little straighter, peering upriver. “Can you see them?”
“On what little sunlight there is since the mist cleared. The ship is about two measures off, carrying a full load of Vellant’im.”
“Ha! Then Nyr’s idea about beards worked.”
“Yes, indeed.” Andrev grinned. “I didn’t know the Fironese were so hairy! Torien must have to shave twice a day!”
“Well, our little group of them have been working on theirs for three or four at least. Smart lady, the Princess of Grib. I’m going to enjoy doing business with her.”
“Oh, you mean after Prince Velden dies and Prince Amiel inherits.”
Tilal’s voice was bland as milk. “And do you really think Cousin Pol will let an obvious incompetent remain as ruling prince? Don’t be too surprised if Velden suddenly decides he’s earned a peaceful retirement and hands things over to Amiel.”
“Then Prince Cabar had better give us some help, too,” Andrev said. “And Prince Pirro, and—my lord, what’s Pol going to do about Rinhoel?”
“Whatever it is, there’ll be a long line of those eager to hold his cloak while he does it.” He eyed the boy. “You, on the other hand—what would you like to do after this is all over?”
“Continue in your service, my lord,” Andrev replied promptly. “If you want me, that is.”
“I have no complaints,” Tilal assured him. “But what about after that? You could do just about anything, you know. There are plenty of holdings throughout Pol’s lands. As his kinsman and a great-grandson of Prince Zehava, you could take your pick. Do you see yourself ruling a castle?”
