Dragon Prince 02 - The Star Scroll (8 page)

“No. There’s no need for it.”

Chay knew his wife’s mind well enough to know there was no further arguing with her. He rose, drew her up beside him, and they started back to the keep.

“At least you’ll agree,” he said, “there’s a need for his physical protection right now. I’m going to set a special watch over him. Maarken’s perfect for it. He’s good with sword and knife, he’s a man grown, and a
faradhi
as well. Pol won’t be suspicious or resentful if it’s his cousin guarding him.”

Tobin smiled up at him. “The way you’ve guarded Rohan.”

“It’s another duty that Radzyn never cedes to any other Desert lord.”

 

The future Lord of Radzyn was at that moment some distance physically from his inheritance and even farther removed from it in his thoughts. Maarken had left the stables mounted on Isulkian, which in the old language meant “swift wind.”

Chay had named him for the nomadic Desert tribes that appeared and vanished as they pleased—usually to steal one of his studs. The Isulk’im never kept the stallions they spirited away, sometimes in broad daylight, and returned them in excellent condition after their mares had been serviced. He would have gladly given them a prize stallion, just to save the wear on his nerves from wondering when his horses would disappear, but the Isulk’im scorned all such offers. Borrowing a stud from under Chay’s nose was much more fun.

The stallion lived up to his name as Maarken guided him along the road leading south from the castle. At length the young man drew rein and smiled as the horse tossed his head, still eager to be racing the spring breeze.

“Just hold that thought, my friend. We’ll be racing in earnest at Waes, and for more than the fun of it. I have need of a few sapphires to grace a certain blue-eyed lady’s neck.”

Continuing at an easy walk, Maarken was not too surprised to find he’d instinctively chosen the way to Whitecliff. Some measures down the coast from Radzyn, it was where the lord’s heir lived after he took a bride. Chay had never inhabited it, for he had been Radzyn’s lord by the time he married Tobin, and for years Whitecliff had been run by stewards. But if Maarken had his way, it would be in use by autumn, and for the purpose for which it had been built.

He knew he should have said something to his parents long ere this. But somehow he did not feel equal to telling them that picking through the various maidens at Waes this year was not his intention, for he had already found the woman he wished to wed. Or perhaps she had found him. He was not entirely sure which, and did not much care. He was only glad it had happened. Just thinking about Hollis brought a smile to his lips—and that this attitude was slightly adolescent bothered him not at all. He had had plenty of examples of foolish lovers all around him since childhood, his parents being the prime culprits in unwittingly nurturing his ideas of romance in marriage. His father had passed his fifty-first winter and his mother was only a few years younger, yet the looks they exchanged when they thought no one was looking were unmistakable. Rohan and Sioned were just the same, as were the Lord and Lady of Remagev, Walvis and Feylin. Even serious Prince Chadric and Princess Audrite had provided an example. Maarken had always wanted the same things for himself: the smiles, the secret glances, even the flashfire of temper. He wanted a woman he could work beside as well as sleep beside, someone he trusted with his thoughts as well as his heart. Without that kind of partnership, wedded life would be little more than waking up each morning to a stranger.

His cheeks flushed as he recalled the many times he’d done just that—and the first morning he’d awakened to Hollis. He should not have, and Andrade had been livid when she found out. But he cared nothing for his great-aunt’s displeasure.

He had been nineteen, and by no means inexperienced. Indeed, his father had once shown him a letter from Prince Lleyn in which the old man wryly complained about Maarken’s propensity for attracting women of all ages at Graypearl.
Practically everything in my palace that wears a skirt has chased him quite devotedly since he turned fourteen, and of late I do not believe he has been running as fast as he might. In fact, I believe he enjoys being caught.
Chay had waited to show him that letter until Maarken had been knighted and was on his way to Goddess Keep for
faradhi
training. They had laughed over it, Maarken with crimson cheeks, Chay with smug pride.

But those encounters had been experiments only, quick desire and curiosity easily satisfied. Hollis had ignited in him a fire that had burned steadily for six winters now.

He had been at Goddess Keep only a little while when Andrade had decided that his unorthodox first ring was indeed valid. Rohan had given him the circle of silver set with a garnet during the campaign against Roelstra, when Maarken had called down Fire. He had proved to Andrade that he deserved the ring, and she had given him a plain silver band to wear with the garnet on his right middle finger. Looking into her pale blue eyes, he had heard her tell him that the next day he would go alone into the forest and consult the Goddess regarding his future as a man—but that before then, at midnight, a
faradhi
woman would come to him and make him a man.

In theory, one never knew who that first sexual encounter was with. It was considered very bad form to try to find out, and it never really mattered anyway. The Goddess herself shrouded the Sunrunner in mystery, concealing identity from the girl or boy who by morning would no longer be virgin. It was only
faradhi
men and women of seven or more rings who possessed this skill, only they who had the responsibility of making girls into women and boys into men.

Hollis had worn but four rings that winter night. He wondered sometimes if he would have guessed anyway. Even in total darkness, her hair had
felt
golden in his fingers. Maarken drew in a long breath as if to scent again the tender fragrance of her body.

It was forbidden to speak. They both knew that. Lips were only for kisses and caresses, voices for calling out in delight. Yet when it was over and he rested by her side, his heart still thudding in his chest, he whispered her name.

She gasped and went rigid. Maarken tightened his arms around her, holding fast when she would have escaped him. “No,” she whispered, “don’t, please—”

“You want to be here as much as I want you here.” But then, because he was only nineteen, he added hesitantly, “Don’t you?”

She trembled for a moment, then nodded against his chest. “Andrade’s going to murder me.”

Maarken felt slightly delirious. “She’ll have to get past me to do it,” he answered lightly, “and she won’t risk a hair on my head. Kinsman, future Sunrunner Lord of Radzyn—I’m much too important! She may rant and rave a little, but we’ve both heard her do that before!”

The tension went out of her. “There’s still a problem, though. This was supposed to be your man-making night. I have only four rings, so I can’t have instructed you properly. I’m afraid I haven’t done my duty by you, my lord.”

Maarken gasped in astonishment before he recognized the teasing note in her voice. In his silkiest tones he said, “You’ll have to lesson me again, my lady. I’m a very slow learner. In fact, it’s quite possible you’ll have to go on teaching me all night.”

They forgot that at midnight another woman would come to Maarken’s chamber. They forgot everything but the sweet joy of each other’s flesh. Her hair was a river of gold that seemed to glow with a light of its own in the darkness; almost blind, he brushed the delicate strands from her face, tracing the contours of nose and cheeks and brow with his fingers, learning her face with touch as he had long since learned it with his eyes. His hands learned everything about her, all the colors of her body as clear as the colors of her mind. He lost himself in the sapphire and pearl and garnet of her, deep shining colors that were flung around him like velvet, a perfect pattern of a luminous and beautiful soul.

They were lying together, trading idle kisses, when the door squeaked softly open, Maarken sat straight up in bed and Hollis gave a little cry of fright. A voice Maarken did not recognize came from a woman wrapped in silk shadows.

“Well, well, well.” Suddenly the woman laughed indulgently. “You might as well finish your night so well-begun. Peace, children.”

The door closed, and she was gone.

Maarken gulped. “Who—who do you think it was?”

“I don’t know. I don’t want to know. But whatever she said just now, we’re in trouble, Maarken.”

“I love you, Hollis. This was right.”

“For you and me, yes—but not so far as Andrade is concerned.”

“The hell with Andrade,” he said impatiently. “I told you, she won’t punish us. You heard what whoever that was just told us. The rest of the night is ours. I’m not going to give it up. And I’m certainly not going to waste it!”

“But—”

“Hush.” He silenced her with a kiss. Desire glided through his veins, turning his blood to slow molten sunlight. She resisted for a moment, then sighed and clasped him in her arms.

The next morning he went alone to the tree-circle where
farad-h’im
sought their futures. Kneeling naked before the motionless pool below a rock cairn, he faced not the Child-tree nor the Youth-tree but the Man-tree. One day he would turn toward the huge pines symbolizing his fatherhood and old age, but not yet. Today, in Sunrunner ritual, he was a man. He conjured Fire across the still Water, plucked a hair from his head to represent the Earth from which he was made, and blew the Air of his own breath to fan the flames. In them he saw a face: his own, matured and proud, with his father’s strong bones and his mother’s long-lidded eyes. The Fire flared then, and another face appeared beside his own. It was an older version of Hollis that he saw, her tawny hair sleekly braided around her head and bound with a thin silver circlet set with a single ruby, marking her as Lady of Radzyn Keep.

On his return, after more or less recovering from stunned happiness, he found a summons from Lady Andrade waiting. He was impervious to her wrath as she raged at him for disregarding the traditions of Goddess Keep. When she finally snapped out an angry question about his penitence, he smiled at her with perfect serenity.

“I saw Hollis in the Fire and Water.”

Andrade sucked in a breath and gave a terrible frown. But nothing more was said and neither Maarken nor Hollis had been punished. Still, he was heir to an important holding, a grandson of Prince Zehava, and cousin to the next High Prince. He could neither marry nor make a formal Choice without the consent of his parents and his prince. But he was only nineteen, Hollis was two years older, and there was time.

On receipt of her fifth ring that next summer, Hollis had been sent to Kadar Water in Ossetia. The holding was close enough to allow occasional visits and easy communication on sunlight between a trained
faradhi
and a mere apprentice, and the facilitation of such contact motivated Maarken to excel at his studies. The days were endurable, with the touch of her colors available to him on the sunlight; the nights were very long.

Hollis herself had been the one to plead patience. She was adamant that he not approach his parents or the High Prince until they each had a sixth ring, signifying they were capable of using moonlight as well as sunlight. “They have to know I can be of use to you and to them,” she told him quite frankly. “And you have to prove you’ve gained all the skills your gifts demand. I’m learning what I need to know about courts and manners, and how to run a holding—things I can only learn here at Kadar Water. I have to be able to function as your lady as well as a Sunrunner. Besides, if I’m to be at Radzyn one day, I’ll have to learn about horses—and where better to do that than at Kadar Water, the competition?” And though they had both laughed at this, she had quickly become serious again. “It’s important to me, Maarken—as important as your knighthood was to you.”

He had reluctantly agreed. Now, looking down at the six rings glinting on his fingers as he held Isulkian’s reins, he wondered why he still hesitated. He could tell his parents, or wait for the
Rialla
until they met her and saw her worth for themselves. Andrade had recalled Hollis to the keep with the understanding that the young woman would be part of her suite at Waes. Maarken was grateful but suspicious; he knew his aunt, and she never did anything without a specific goal in mind. If she wished him to marry Hollis, it was not for reasons of their love, although she would have no objections to their being happy. No, Andrade must have something else in mind, and it worried him.

He could not count on his parents as allies yet, no matter how often they said they wanted his happiness above all else. He was, after all, their eldest son and heir, a powerful position even without his blood bond with Pol. He would rule the only safe port on the Desert coast, through which all important trade passed: horses, gold, salt, and glass ingots going out; foodstuffs, manufactured goods, and especially precious silk coming in. Radzyn bred horses of a quality that brought higher prices every
Rialla,
but its real wealth was in the trade it administered. Maarken’s grandsire had been rich, his father was richer still, and he did not yet adequately appreciate just how rich
he
was going to be. By all the rules, he ought to marry a woman of birth if not fortune to match his own.

Hollis was an uncommon woman, but she was common-born of two
faradh’im
at Goddess Keep, who had themselves been of no recognized family connections. Her children with Maarken would certainly inherit the gifts, reinforced through both parents. Maarken had already had experience with the suspicion and envy attached to being both Sunrunner and son of a powerful family.

He walked his horse along the road to Whitecliff, stopping at the stand of trees his mother had ordered planted before his birth. The cool shade spread out around him, and he ignored Isulkian’s impatient prancing. He could see the manor through the trees, the solid stone walls gentled by flowering vines. Stables, pasture, gardens, a sandy beach below the cliffs, a comfortable and cozy home—all of it would be his, and he would bring Hollis here before the stormy season began. They would spend winter listening to the rain and wind, snug beside their hearth. He had always envisioned it so, ever since childhood when he and his twin brother Jahni had ridden here to play young lords of their own manor. They had been much too young to include anything so alien as the idea of wives in their games, but sometimes in the years since his brother’s death Maarken had wondered how it might have been, the pair of them and their wives sharing this fine old house, children overflowing its many rooms and playing at dragons in the courtyard. A small, sad smile crossed his face, and he rode nearer.