Melanie Rawn - Dragon Star 2 - The Dragon Token

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CHAPTER ONE
The rush of wings startled Pol. It was not the sound of dragon wings, strong and sure in the dusk,
but the swift feathery strokes of a dozen hawks. Independent like all predators, the hawks clung
together now like timid waterfowl fleeing winter. Tiny golden bells on their jesses flashed with
the last sunlight as they sought to climb higher and higher into the sky.
Escaped, was Pol's first thought. His second: Released—and panicked. They don't know where to fly
when they're not flown at prey.
Maarken watched, too, absently picking at the crusted blood on his tunic. A mere pinprick in his
shoulder, it might have taken him; he had been Sunrunning when the arrow struck his flesh. Only
its quick removal had saved his life. "They'll find it hungry living in the Desert. I wonder how
they got out of the mews."
Pol steadied his horse as the tired animal stumbled. "Their hoods are gone. Someone freed them."
Turning in his saddle, he watched the remnants of an army trudge past. "Maarken. . . ."
"Yes?"
"It hurts."
Faradh'im usually possessed an excellent sense of direction. The scent of Water, the sighing of
Air, the sun's Fire, the feel of Earth—all these things combined to tell a Sunrunner precisely
where was where without having to think about it, even in unfamiliar territory.
No one had ever taught Hollis how to discern direction underground.
Elemental presences there were, but she could make little of them. Moisture oozed at intervals
from cool, smoothly hewn walls, and a breeze from somewhere bent the candle flames and torches.
But it was the profound silence of rock that seemed to change her perceptions of all else, a quiet
extending for measures all around her. In the world above, sky made of wind and light arched
overhead, and the ground was divided by rivers. Here, Earth had complete dominion. Water slid
stealthily from stone, and Air crept past, and even Fire seemed to hunker warily. Hollis did not
know where she was, with the familiar balance of forces gone and only one Element surrounding her:
brooding, silent, massive Earth.
She had called a halt to their journey through the passage, knowing that while there must be
others as unnerved by this place as she, they must also all catch up with each other. They had
been walking—sometimes up gentle slopes and occasionally a series of four or five steps, but
mostly down—for what seemed like years. Hollis' only indication of the time was the fat candle
Betheyn had taken from a storeroom, one of those marked with dark lines and made to burn in
precise time to the levels of a water clock. It had descended five lines of the night—or at least
what was night up above. Here there was always darkness.
The idea made her shiver slightly. She refused to think about it, just as she refused to think
about Rohan and Sioned and Chay and Pol and most especially Maarken. And about the weight of the
Earth pressing all around her, stifling Air and Fire and Water.
"Hollis?" Beth's soft voice was welcome distraction. "Take this, please?"
She was given the wide, round candle. It was down to nearly the sixth line; past midnight, she
thought, although she couldn't be sure.
"You should try to sleep, Beth. I can help, if you—"
"No, but thank you. I'm going to go back and make sure all the stragglers have caught up."
Betheyn's thick
plaits had come undone, and she scraped the dark hair from her face with a bruised hand. "Maybe
you'd better use some of your Sunrunner magic on Chayla, though. She's up front making her third
round of the wounded. She looks ready to drop."
Hollis nodded, and the younger woman threaded her way amid the people crowding the passage—slumped
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with their backs to the stone, curled up in sleep, holding injured limbs at awkward angles, lying
flat on stretchers with spouses or children or friends watching over them. Hollis went farther up
the narrow tunnel, searching in the gloomy golden glow of torchlight for her daughter's fair head.
Chayla was bent over a litter, applying a fresh dressing to a sword-slashed leg. A fingerflame of
Sunrunner's Fire hovered at her shoulder. Hollis wondered when she had learned to do that. Then
she realized that it wasn't Chay-la's Fire at all; it belonged to Camigwen, who knelt beside
Chayla with the coffer of medicine.
"Jeni, if you can spare a moment?" Hollis said quietly, and Alasen's daughter looked up. As
another little flame appeared, Jeni relaxed and allowed her own to fade. Rising as if she were
seventy instead of seventeen, she shook long brown hair from her face and waited for orders like a
good soldier.
Chayla hadn't even glanced up from her work.
Hollis drew Jeni aside. "I'd like you to watch Jihan and Rislyn so their mother can get some
sleep."
"Of course. I think I saw them somewhere up front."
"How did they get there? They were almost the last through."
Jeni's smile, for all its weariness, held her father Ostvel's quick humor. "With Jihan wanting to
lead the way into the magical maze, can you wonder?"
Hollis shook her head, momentarily amused. "That child! I didn't even notice them get past me.
Doubtless she's giving her mother no peace at all, for wanting to continue on. See what you can
do—and try to get some rest yourself, my dear."
The girl nodded, turned, then turned back. "Hollis
"... I know it's not the right time to ask, but when we're safe somewhere, will you tell me what
happened to me in the courtyard?"
She kicked herself mentally. Jeni—along with Jihan, Rislyn, and Tobren—had been caught in Sioned's
weaving. For children completely untrained as Sunrunners, the shock must have been terrible. "I
ought to have asked before how you were feeling."
"Tired, and I've got a bit of a headache—but I'm all right. Mainly it's. ..." She trailed off and
shrugged. "I just don't understand, that's all."
"Sioned will be better able to explain it than I."
"Hollis—" Her voice was hushed now. "They died, didn't they? Morwenna and Lord Walvis' Sunrunner."
"Yes." Hollis pushed away the memory of Meath's knife, ending heartbeats in bodies whose minds had
already fled.
"And we could have, too. If not for Sioned."
"Yes."
"No wonder Lord Andry doesn't like her much." Then, abruptly recalling that she spoke to the wife
of Lord Andry's brother, her eyes went wide. "I'm sorry, my lady, I—"
"It's not important, Jeni. But as it happens, you're right. Go find Princess Meiglan and the
girls."
When Chayla had finished her work, Hollis placed a hand on her shoulder. The girl glanced up,
startled, squinting by the light of the fingerflame.
"I don't have time to lie down and sleep, Mother," she said before Hollis could draw breath.
"There's a head wound I should check again."
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Hollis drew her to her feet, alarmed when Chayla swayed a little to catch her balance. "Later.
Come with me."
"I can't. I'm needed."
"You're needed strong and well yourself, so that you can help others become so." Hollis readied
herself to weave sleep. A useful trick, and one she would use on others once Chayla was resting. A
line of the candle and they could start out again, to Skybowl or Feruche or
wherever they could find safety. Part of her worried about feeding and housing so many in either
keep; most of her was so weary that she wished she could perform the gentle witchery on herself.
She found a clear spot against one wall and coaxed Chayla to sit down, prepared to drape soft
threads of sleep around her daughter's thoughts.
"Don't—please! I can feel what you're trying to do—" "Chayla! Don't fight me, heartling," she
added more softly. "You're exhausted. You've done enough for—" "It's never enough." AH at once she
was not the accomplished physician but a frightened fifteen-year-old girl. Hollis gathered her
close and rocked her, murmuring wordlessly, strangely glad that the grim mask of adulthood had
fallen away and she could be a mother to her child again.
"Hollis?" The whisper behind her turned her head. Betheyn stood there, reluctant to interrupt but
urgent nonetheless. "Myrdal's asking for you both."
"Is she hurt?" Chayla drew away and raked her hair back from her face.
When there was no answer, Hollis abandoned hope of getting Chayla to rest. "Where is she? Take us
to her, Beth."
Myrdal sat with her back against a ragged boulder. There was a tiny Fire before her, called by
Tobren to warm ancient bones. Its glow put false color into a withered face that proudly refused
to show any pain. But Hollis knew suddenly that something had broken inside the old woman.
Something that had always looked out from her eyes was gone.
Tobren knelt at her side, eyes huge and frightened. Hollis touched her hair in a reassuring caress
as Chayla crouched by Myrdal.
"Don't bother yourself, my dear," the old woman said, her voice a whisper of Desert breeze across
sand. "Although if you can strengthen me so there's time to tell you what you must know, I'd be
obliged." Chayla delved into the coffer that had not left her side
since that dawn. "I can help a little. But you must tell me where the pain is."
"Everywhere and nowhere. Give me what you judge best, child. And then let me speak." When Betheyn
started to leave; Myrdal lifted her cane to block her path. "Stay."
Hollis nodded at Beth and the two women knelt opposite Chayla as she sifted herbs into a cup
filled from the waterskin at her belt. They waited while Myrdal drank, coughed harshly, and
eventually nodded.
"Thank you, child. That's much better. Now listen, all of you. These secrets came to me through my
mother, whose mother bore her to Zehava's grandsire. My own daughter should have kept the
knowledge after me—but Maeta is long dead." Black eyes still sharp as obsidian chips regarded each
of them in turn—Chayla and To-bren, Hollis, Betheyn. "I give it now to descendants of Zehava, and
one who bore children to his line, and one who would have done so."
Hollis suddenly knew what Myrdal was going to tell them: the secrets of every castle in the
Desert, and some outside the Desert. Traps for enemies, like those at Re-mage v; passages, like
the ones at Stronghold; perhaps other things no one had ever guessed at. Hollis disciplined her
mind to techniques learned in her youth at Goddess Keep. What she heard, she would remember
exactly, and for the rest of her days.
Her Sunrunner memory was the reason she had been summoned to hear this. As for Betheyn, who would
have been Sorin's wife—she was the daughter of an architect. She would understand the intricate
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machinery of such secrets. Chayla was of Zehava's blood; thus the knowledge would stay in the
family. The inclusion of Tobren gave Hollis a qualm that instantly shamed her. But this was
Andry's daughter who huddled beside her. Tobren would tell her father whatever he wished to know,
whenever he asked it. Perhaps sharing the secrets was Myr-dal's way of trying to bring Andry back
to them. Hollis hoped the old woman wasn't making a mistake.
Myrdal coughed again, one hand touching briefly at her chest, then began. "Pay attention. At
Skybowl. . . ."
*
Chay squinted into the distance, trying to see the spires marking the entrance to the Court of the
Storm God, where they should have hidden this night. But the Vel-lant'im had not followed—had, in
fact, stood in stunned amazement as Stronghold went up in flames like a grease-soaked torch. Chay
had decided that between his people, Walvis', and the ones led by Sethic of Grib, there were
enough to stand guard while the rest of them stole a little sleep from this long winter night.
For himself, he was too tired to sleep, too tired to think or feel. He rose from the folds of a
cloak laid out on the sand and left the encampment, not knowing where he walked and not caring.
Sentries nodded to him; he knew it rather than actually seeing it. He climbed a short hill,
forcing himself to suppleness despite the rasp of air in his lungs and the ache in his thighs. Old
fool, fighting half the day as if you were twenty again—
From the rise he could look down on the tiny fires that dotted the camp, bright islands in a black
sea. But so few. He shivered at that thought. Sparse, scarce fires in the darkness—it was the way
Rohan would have seen them, he told himself dully. Rohan's influence that made him see the same
way.
But Rohan would have seen hope in those flames. Chay could not.
I have seen the Fire take two of my sons, one of them before his eighth winter and the other in
the prime of his manhood. Now the Fire has claimed my prince, my brother, my friend. No man should
outlive his children. Neither should a man outlive his prince.
Kept tight in his breast until now by urgency and fear and exhaustion, the agony finally broke
through. He stumbled, unable to see, flung out a hand to brace himself on a boulder the size of a
dragon. The cold stone
bruised his knuckles, clawed back at his fingers as he tried to support himself. Sliding down, he
bent his head to his drawn-up knees and wept like a child.
A long time later, when his eyes were empty, he heard footsteps below. Walvis climbed the hill and
without a word sat beside him on the ground. Shoulder to shoulder they watched the stars, until
the younger man finally spoke into the silence.
"Someone will have to tell Pol, when we find him tomorrow."
Chay nodded, knowing who would have to do it. He took the topaz ring from his pocket, staring at
the bright stone surrounded by emeralds. Walvis made a small sound and turned his head away.
A dragon's cry shook the Desert stars. Chay shuddered, fresh tears stinging his eyes. He'd thought
his heart dry as the sand, but the sound of a dragon—
"I've been waiting for it," Walvis murmured, his voice thick.
Dragoncry before dawn, death before dawn. Chay nodded blindly. "They mourn one of their own."
*
"Stay with her," Meath had been told. "Stay with her."
He kept watch that night as he had done nearly all their lives, one way or another. Since her
first day at Goddess Keep, on the journey to the Desert to become a princess, at RiaU'im, and from
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Graypearl, he'd watched over her. He knew everything about her. He knew all her secrets. And he
had helped her to keep them.
He sat beside her where she lay wrapped in someone's cloak, ready to warn off anyone who
approached. But no one did. Her sleep was respected even as her grief had been. They all knew—or
thought they knew—what she had lost.
Suffering aged most people. Not Sioned. There was an aching purity to her, like a young girl, as
if Fire had burned away all evidence of her years. She murmured in her sleep, her hands twisting
around the cloak. He put
his fingers over hers and she quieted. Perhaps she thought he was Rohan.
The huge emerald was cool beneath his palm. Meath had watched Rohan give her that ring.
". . . kept safe the two young lords who are our heirs— until we can get one of our own. It is our
desire that you wear this as a reminder of the debt we owe you." And the emerald ring sparkled
from her hand while he grinned into her furious green eyes, daring her to refuse the gift.
Meath coughed discreetly behind his hand. Oh, the young prince was a match for her right enough,
despite his bland blond looks. They'd lead each other a merry dance. . . .
The emerald had left her finger only once, stolen from her along with her Sunrunner rings. That
she had taken back the one but not the others never surprised him, as it had everyone else.
The woman paced the battlements, stroking her belly and gazing out at the Desert with glowing
greedy eyes. She braced both hands on the stone wall and glanced down, her attention caught by the
glint of green on her finger. Raising her fist to the moons, she laughed softly, admiring the
shine.
Meath fled down the moonlight, back from Feruche to Graypearl, and stumbled into the ancient
faradhi oratory he had helped unearth and rebuild. When his heartbeats settled again, he cursed
his weakness and vowed no one would ever know what he now knew—even as he wondered what kind of
child would come of Rohan's mating with lanthe.
He had kept watch that long summer and autumn, claiming the right from all other Sunrunners. No
one had thought anything of it. Not even Andrade. He knew who had worn the emerald during that
time, and what had happened the night Sioned had recovered it, and how she had come home.
She trudged through sand piled high by a recent storm, yielding as water beneath weary feet. The
three were a long way from Feruche—from the smoldering ashes of Feruche—and longer still from
Stronghold, but it seemed
she would risk a stop at Skybowl. What would she say to explain her presence there? Meath winced
away from the hard glitter of her eyes that warned Tobin and Ostvel back without words as she
gathered the infant closer. What in the Goddess' Name would she tell them at Skybowl?
Doubtless she would think of something. And be believed. Or at least no one would question—and
even if they did, who among Rohan's people, her people, would not keep the secret? Like
Stronghold, Skybowl was nearly empty, all the able-bodied men and women gone north with Walvis or
south to their prince. Sioned was their sovereign lady; her words would be accepted without
comment.
He would return to Skybowl tomorrow and receive news of the child's birth, and her explanation of
it, and disseminate it on sunlight as if it were the truth before anyone had the chance to wonder.
It was all he could do for her, but perhaps it would be enough.
He smoothed back stray wisps of her shorn, ragged hair. Deprived of its length and weight, the
strands curled softly around her face. He had always wanted to touch her hair, feel its warm silk
in his fingers. He rolled a lock around one finger, fire-red and sun-gold, and by the glow of
distant stars saw starlight woven through it. The years showed silver in her hair.
Meath opened the door silently when there was no answer to his second knock. The scene within made
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摘要：

file:///D|/Documents%20and%20Settings/harry/Desktop/Melanie%20Rawn%20-%2Dragon%20Star%2002%20-%20The%20Dragon%20Token.txtCHAPTERONETherushofwingsstartledPol.Itwasnotthesoundofdragonwings,st ongandsureinthedusk,buttheswiftfeatherystrokesofadozenhawks.Independentlikeallpredators,thehawksclungtoget...

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