Dragon Prince 03 - Sunrunner's Fire (23 page)

Suspicions roiled in his own mind, though, as he left the castle and walked through town. Where
did
Rohan’s wealth come from? Miyon’s reasoning appeared sound, but exacerbated curiosity rather than satisfying it. Reaching the precincts of the merchant district with its shops and public houses, he glanced at the sun and decided he had time for a contemplative wine cup before meeting Mireva at their lodgings in the poorest section of town. He chose a tavern and sat in a corner with a crudely made glass container of sweet, potent wine made from pine cone resin, ignoring all around him as he thought the matter through.

One of his few really clear childhood memories—other than the horror of the night Feruche had burned—was of gold. Ianthe had taken him to the deepest level of the keep one night to show him their wealth: square, palm-sized gold ingots stacked on shelves in a locked room. He remembered touching one with almost superstitious awe, taking as many as he could into his hands, feeling their heaviness, flinging them up into the air to make a glittering rain by torchlight. He could still hear echoes of his mother’s delighted laughter.

But should it not have been minted coin in sacks, rather than ingots?

He scowled into the golden-brown wine. Sediment had gathered at the bottom, leaving the liquid almost clear. A swift glance told him that the few patrons were paying him no attention. He spun the necessary mental threads and plunged his thoughts into the wine, cupping his hands around the glass.

Ruval pulled in a deep breath and looked up. No one gave him so much as a glance. He poured the wine down his throat and left a coin in the cup to pay for the drink.

After a long, aimless walk through the streets to clear his head, he allowed himself to remember what he’d seen. Peripherally he was aware that the question of paying for rebuilding Feruche was answered; Sorin must have found the treasury in the rubble. He also knew that his mother’s increasing bulk had meant she was pregnant with her last child, Rohan’s son who had died with her that terrible night. But something else concerned him now, something a little boy had seen but not recognized.

The ingots had been carried to Feruche in leather sacks left tidily folded in case of future need. By law all raw materials and finished goods indicated place of origin. Crafters had their various hallmarks, holdings and princedoms their colors or ciphers. Cattle and goats were branded; pottery, furniture, ironwork, and other manufactured items were stamped. Foodstuffs were labeled on packing crates, wine on bottles. The gold ingots at Feruche had been no exception: on those sacks had been the image of Skybowl.

But it was
silver
they took from the ground near Skybowl. Ruval kept walking, distracted by his thoughts, and annoyed honest citizens by pushing peremptorily past them in the crowded residential section of Castle Pine. Threadsilver Canyon was named for the metal mined there for a hundred years—yet the leather sacks of gold had been stamped with an outline of Skybowl. Not Stronghold, not Radzyn, not Tiglath, not any of the other important keeps of the Desert. Had Rohan been clever enough to arrange this bit of misdirection if anyone noticed the sacks rather than the gold? Or had this been an oversight?

Ruval left the gates of the town and walked out beyond the first fields. Torrential winter rains had washed away topsoil in buckets, and farmers were trying to encourage the crippled land into its yearly yield of grain. He walked past their ponies and wains and anxious conferences, up a hill and in among the trees. Over the rise was a ravine likewise stripped bare by the rains, where not even enough grass grew to sustain sheep. The place was deserted, and it was from this privacy that he worked a hated but useful Sunrunner spell.

Skybowl crouched like a brooding dragon on the shores of its perfectly round lake. The crater had filled way past its usual level, and a trench had been dug to drain the water. Ruval paused, noting that bags had been filled with sand to guide the course of the runoff; these bags bore the outline of Skybowl. With Lord Riyan absent, his blue-and-brown pennant did not fly over the keep. But there was plenty of activity and a line of pack horses just disappearing over the crater rim on the route to Threadsilver Canyon. Ruval followed on sunlight to where perhaps thirty men and women went about the business of hacking silver from the walls of long-abandoned dragon caves. At the bottom of the canyon light flickered from within a large cavern; the smelter, Ruval guessed. But no evidence of gold.

Frustration gnawed at him. Returning to Cunaxa, he reached into his pocket and pulled out a small, thin, hexagonal gold coin. He turned it in his fingers for a moment. Mireva had given him this coin. It depicted an outline of Castle Crag on the obverse, his grandsire’s profile on the reverse: both proud, regal, commanding. Rohan had recalled all money minted by Roelstra, replacing it with coins stamped with his own crowned dragon. But Mireva had kept this one and when he had become adept enough had presented it to him. But it was more than a souvenir.

This coin was dated 703, the year before Roelstra’s and Ianthe’s deaths had splintered Ruval’s world, and it had been struck from some of the gold Rohan had paid for
dranath.
And if he was fortunate, contact with Fire would release a vision of where it had been minted and, earlier even than that, where it had been forged.

He conjured a gout of pallid Fire in the dirt and knelt beside it, glad he had imbibed enough
dranath
that morning to facilitate the spell. Dropping the coin in the flames, he spared a moment for appreciation of his own disciplined mind, working with Fire he’d created to gain a picture of fire many years dead. The primal attraction of each element for itself functioned with smooth swiftness; he was soon looking at the thin, sweat-streaked face of the artisan who had made coins of liquid gold. Ruval squinted at the sudden brightness, his eyes tearing. But he forced the spell back further, seeking the flames from which the ingot had sprung.

His vision was limited by the dazzle that stung his eyes. But there, just beyond the glowing run of molten metal into molds, he saw them. Faces—a man and woman, wearing Skybowl’s colors. Harsh fire-thrown shadows behind them on cave walls. And stacks of finished ingots—not silver, but gold.

Smelted at Skybowl after all—

An excruciating blaze made him cry out. He was drawn farther back, to another fire.

Dragon fire.

Seared by a hatchling’s breath that dried his wings, shining flecks trapped in broken shells melded together in another elemental bonding.

Dragon gold.

Ruval cried out again as he wrenched himself from the spell. The Fire vanished, leaving a blackened patch of earth. The coin was still hot when he picked it up.

With shaking hands he scooped dirt to hide the scar. It was a long time before he could stand. But when he did, he began to laugh very softly.

Skybowl. Dragon caves. Dragon gold. How sweetly, perfectly logical. That he had promised Skybowl to Prince Miyon bothered him not at all. It had never been planned that his grace of Cunaxa would live long enough to take possession.

 

 

Mireva stepped out the kitchen door into the squalid back court. Towns, even one as small as Castle Pine, offended her. The dirt, the stench, the crowds, the closeness—all were poisonous to her senses and exhausting to her mind. She hated the tiny, cramped upstairs room she had slept in for two nights now, hated it almost as much as she hated the greasy-haired slattern who ran this place. They had just concluded a stormy passage featuring Mireva’s opinion of the slop the woman had the gall to term “dinner.” Only her own prohibition against use of power and the fact that she, Ruval, and Marron had nowhere else to go prevented her from blasting the woman to quivering jelly. The foray into the back courtyard was an attempt to calm her nerves. It did not succeed.

The first stars had appeared in the dusk, barely visible over the eastern wall. Mireva gazed at them longingly, their light burning into her eyes. So clean, so beautiful and diamondlike, so welcome after a long, irksome day of bright sun outside and dim corridors within.

She heard Ruval’s soft footstep a few moments before he spoke. “If not for the prize to be won, I’d say let’s get out of this swine-wallow and go home.”

She kept her gaze fixed on the emerging stars. “If not for the prize to be won, I would agree with you.”

“You haven’t said what you thought of Meiglan.”

“She’ll do.”

“But what’s she like?”

“Small, frail, spineless, and fascinatingly beautiful. She accepts me as Thanys’ friend.”

“Not as her relative?”

Her jaw clenched at the biting mockery in his voice. He knew how she prided herself on her pure
diarmadhi
blood and how she hated admitting that any of her family had polluted that blood by marrying common folk. Thanys was indeed related to her, and not as distantly as Mireva would have liked. The woman was her grandniece. But this was not the time to renew her anger, useless at this late date anyway, over the stupidity of her family. Besides, Ruval and Marron were talented enough, even though only quarter-breeds like Thanys.

She ignored his question. “It will be easy enough to go with her when her father takes her to Stronghold. I assume you’ve presented the idea to Miyon?”

“Of course. I’m more interested in the girl, though. Can she be trusted?”

Mireva gave a snort. “She only knows how to be afraid, and her fear cancels any wits she may otherwise have. She’ll be useful only as long as she’s afraid of her father.” Ruval knew as well as she did the inevitable fate for those who were no longer of any use. This reminded her of someone else. “Marron has many soothing things to say about Chiana.
She
can be trusted only so long as her imagination stays within limits. But I fear that when military maneuvers begin, she’ll start scheming again.”

“Not even you can be in two places at once. We’ll keep an eye on what goes on at the Princemarch-Meadowlord border.”

“So will Rohan, through Sioned. It should make him good and nervous.” She chuckled, bad humor easing at the thought of Rohan’s discomfort. “He’ll recognize the tactic, of course—‘training exercises’ was the excuse used by Roelstra in 704. I must remember to ask Marron to tell me how he got her to think of it on her own.”

“It’s so obvious a copy of grandfather’s ploy that Rohan won’t suspect our interference. But Chiana still has ambitions for Rinhoel. They may be more or less submerged, thanks to your time with her in Swalekeep, but she still has them.”

Mireva shrugged and walked the broken cobbles over to the well. The water level was only a few handspans below the stone rim, its underground source saturated over the winter. She reached down and trailed her fingers through the water. “I don’t like having to use her. But Miyon is even more unreliable. They each have their own grudges and their own ambitions which could be dangerous if indulged. There are limits even to what
we
can do, Ruval. We have no army of our own, and so we must make it seem as though we have the resources of others to draw on. But it’s such a risk.”

Ruval stared down at her in the gathering dark, “What need do I have of an army? Or are you losing faith in me?”

“Listen to me, you fool!” She swung around, her words low and vicious. “You may know almost—and I stress
almost
—everything I do about the ways of our ancestors. And with those ways you will defeat Pol and take us back to our rightful place. But Rohan and Pol are different from us. They think like princes, of armies and politics. So we will use those things to distract them. Chiana will provide the army, Miyon the politics. We’ve already given them knowledge of your identity—and that at the back of their minds all spring will make them ever more anxious about Chiana and Miyon. We’ve presented things they understand and will try to counter in their usual ways. But when you appear with your
un
usual challenge, on
our
terms, they won’t know how to deal with it. They’ll try to use their accustomed methods—which won’t work.”

Ruval nodded slowly. “I understand. But there’s another factor here: Andry. If rumor and our observations are correct, then
he’s
the one thinking like us.”

“Dangerously so. But this business of the Sunrunner in Gilad is a wonderful stroke of luck. Rohan will have no choice but to support Prince Cabar’s right to punishment—and thoughts of you and the
diarmadhi
threat you represent will be on his mind in this, too. He’ll be thinking of the support of the other princes against us. But his problem is to give the appearance that there’s not one law for Sunrunners and another for ungifted folk. He must come down on the side of general law, consistent with his policies and mindful of the other princes—and your presence. Idiot!” she spat suddenly. “He entertains the conceit that we who are gifted with power are subject to the same legality and morality as the common herd!”