The Star Scroll Part 20

"The man ahead of you must've-"

"I don't think so. Not and risk his own life in the process. Pol, untie the rope connecting us."

He realized what she was asking. "No! If you lose hold, you'll fall!"

"And if I fall with the rope tied to the ring and to you, I'll take you with me. Do as I say."

"Maeta-I can climb up to you-"

"No!" The force of her exclamation shifted her body, and pebbles trickled down from the slender purchase gained by her left boot. "Listen to me, kinsman," she said more softly. "This is no accident. The ring that just fell had been dug loose. I was a fool not to see it before. I apologize, my prince."

"Maeta, just hold still. I'll come up to you. Neither of us will fall-"

"d.a.m.n it, untie the rope! I don't intend to fall! But if I do, you and Maarken won't be able to hold me, not with that ring ready to come out of the rock! Do it, Pol! The longer you take, the longer I have to stay as I am."

He choked back another protest and did as told. Maarken, still on the ledge below, called up, "Stay put, both of you! I'll get the rope around the rocks!"

"Maarken-don't let her fall!"

Although what he thought his cousin might do was beyond him. His gaze fixed on Maeta, willing her to find a more secure grip. She found a crevice, then another, groping for holds that would take some of the strain from her muscles.

"Pol, don't move." Maarken was just below him. "I've lashed the rope to some rocks and alerted everyone below us. Let me past you and I'll tie the other end to Maeta."

Pol flattened himself against the cliff as Maarken maneuvered past his legs, finding holds where none had been carved into the cliff. "She's more secure now," the boy said, amazed at the calm voice he didn't recognize as his own. "What do you want me to do?"

"Climb back to the ledge, get a grip on the rope, and brace yourself." Maarken paused to pat his leg rea.s.suringly, then slid by and started for Maeta.

It had been much easier to stretch upward with his arms than it was to grope downward with his feet while his fingers dug into the crevices. He was nearly to the narrow ledge when he heard a thin hissing sound that made him flinch with reaction. The steel tip of an arrow struck a spark off stone an arm's length from his head.

"Maarken!" he yelled.

"Get behind the rocks!"

Another arrow brought a flash near Maarken's feet. Pol scrambled to safety and stared across the gorge at Castle Crag. The arrows had to be coming from there, loosed by a viciously powerful bow to reach all the way across. But the towers were too far away for him to see the bowman, who might have been hidden in any one of a hundred windows. Pandsala, he thought irrelevantly, was going to be furious.

Maarken was right below Maeta now, his fingers within reach of her ankle. The climbers above her had tossed down a fresh rope, and she tried to grab it as they swung it closer to her hands. Maarken shouted to her to keep still. Another arrow and then another hit the stones with faint ringing sounds. Pol curled as small as he could get behind an outcropping of stone, fists clenched, salt sweat burning in his eyes. "Come on, come on," he whispered. "Please-" "Please-"

Maarken pulled himself up nearly beside Maeta, his arm reaching for her waist. She coughed and gave a start of surprise. Very slowly her hand reached back to fumble at the arrow embedded next to her spine, an arrow fletched in brown and yellow. Merida colors.

Her fingers loosened. Her tall body arched over backward, giving Pol a view of her already dead face, her sightless black eyes. It took forever for her to fall away from Maarken's desperate grasp, away from the gray cliff, past Pol, drifting down to brush against jagged stones and finally disappear into the dark depths of the canyon.

There were no more arrows. Pol turned tear-blurred eyes to Castle Crag and saw a bright flame rising from the upper battlements. Like a torch flame at this distance, a single light against the shadowy bulk of the keep-but a flame that grew arms that thrashed in futile agony as Sunrunner's Fire immolated human flesh. The torch flared, then sank out of sight.

He felt Maarken's hands on his shoulders, heard sobbing breaths. "Pol-are you all right? Not hurt? Talk to me!"

He looked at Maarken without comprehension. Sweat and tears streaked his cousin's face, and there was a gash circled by a swelling bruise on Maarken's forehead. "I'm not hurt," he heard himself say. "But you are."

"Just a scratch. Never mind me. We'll stay here for a while until you stop shaking." Maarken's strong arm went around him.

"I'm not shaking," Pol said, then realized he was. He buried his face against his cousin's shoulder.

"Shh. She's worth more than our tears, Pol, but that's all we can give her right now. Even though she'd scold us for it."

"If-if she hadn't made me untie the rope-"

"Then we would've lost you, too," Maarken said thickly. "Sweet G.o.ddess, to have that woman's courage-"

After a time they quieted, and Maarken's embrace relaxed a little. "All right now?" he asked, wiping his own cheeks.

Pol nodded. "I'll find who did it, and I'll kill him."

"Pandsala already has. You saw the Fire. She killed with her gift."

Shock warred with fierce joy that the archer was dead. But stronger than either, outrage stiffened Pol's spine. Pandsala had acted peremptorily, killing the a.s.sa.s.sin before he could be questioned.

"She'll answer to me, me," Pol corrected. "I am prince here, and I'm the one they wanted dead. If the loosened rings didn't do it, then the archer was there to finish me off. Why didn't Pandsala order the man subdued and held?"

"I'm sure she'll have a good explanation." He waved to the rest of the climbers, who were making their way swiftly to the ledge. "Meantime, it seems we're arguing with her for saving our lives. Would you rather be dead?"

"No. But she didn't have to kill him-especially not that way."

"Remember whose daughter she is."

"And whose son I am." Pol knuckled his eyes and took a deep breath to steady himself. "Did you see the arrows, Maarken? Brown and yellow. Merida."

"Who else?"

Pandsala was not merely furious. In her father or her sister Ianthe, this rage would have brought further executions. She wanted to find someone else to punish, someone on whom to vent this terrible fury of shame and fear. She watched the Merida burn down to ash in Sunrunner's Fire and only the presence of the High Prince prevented her from calling the captain of her guard and killing him, too, for allowing a traitor to invade Castle Crag.

Rohan, set-faced, turned away from the writhing, stinking flames. His gaze sought the cliffs opposite, where Pol and Maarken were being helped up to the clifftop. He walked around the smoldering corpse and stood with his hands flat on the wall, the stone cool and gritty beneath his palms. The canyon gaped below him, magnificent and lethal. The Faolain River seethed white foam against the rocks. Had this been the Desert, scavenger birds would already be circling. But this was not the Desert, and they would find Maeta's broken body far downriver or wedged among the crags-if they found her at all. Death in dark water was not suited to a woman of bright sands and endless skies.

He was aware of Pandsala's presence behind him. Her rage made him marvel at his own deadly calm. He ought to be roaring out his fury, ordering reprisals against the Merida hidden in the valleys of Cunaxa. Twice now they had attempted Pol's life; by rights he should be claiming a hundred Merida lives for each threat against his son. His northern levies under Walvis' command were already near the border. He had only to send word to Sioned via Maarken on the sunlight, and the invasion would begin.

He knew why he would not. All the evidence was gone: arrows with their telltale colored fletching, face with its probable chin-scar, mouth with its secrets of ident.i.ty and infiltration silent forever. The law was the law, and to act without evidence would be to become like Pandsala's father Roelstra, a High Prince who did as he wished and shrugged at the law.

Rohan saw Pol and Maarken safely hoisted up to the clifftop, knowing they would rest for a time before making their long way around to the path to the crossing upriver. It would be past nightfall before their return to Castle Crag, before he could look on his son's living face again.

"My lord," Pandsala began.

"No." He glanced briefly at her, then at the pathetic heap of gray-black ash on the stones. "Not now." He walked slowly down the spiraling stairs to the main part of the castle, his goal the crystalline oratory sparkling in the sunlight. The etched and faceted gla.s.s threw rainbows over the white carpet and furnishings, across gold and silver on the table. Rohan went to the far wall and sank to the floor, legs folded up, spine pressed against the stone where it merged with clear crystal. From here he could see the cliffs and watch his son's progress down the canyon road and know that Pol was safe.

For how long?

Rohan bent his head, covering his face with his hands. What good was all his power if he could not protect his son? He ought to crush the Merida now, and Prince Miyon of Cunaxa as well for giving them shelter. Tobin would see this a.s.sa.s.sination attempt as the perfect excuse for invasion, even better than a Cunaxan encroachment onto Fironese soil. Why couldn't Rohan do it?

And there was more he ought to do. Accept the Fironese invitation and claim the princedom now. Order his wife's brother Davvi to have the heiress Gemma instantly married to either of his sons, thereby securing part of Pol's future through his kinsmen. No, Rohan reminded himself dully. Not kinsmen. Sioned was not Pol's blood mother.

Ianthe was. Ianthe, daughter of Roelstra, High Prince and tyrant. And here in the environs of Castle Crag, Pol had nearly died. Did Roelstra's malignant spirit linger here, as Rohan had vaguely sensed the other night?

He turned his face to the sunlight, felt its warmth on his body. Neither Roelstra's presence nor Roelstra's example would taint Pol. Rohan would not order the invasion of Cunaxa; neither would he seize a princedom, nor play politics with a young girl whose only crime was to be born a princess. He had watched Roelstra use his daughters as bargaining points, seen Roelstra's armies on Desert soil during a war based on flimsy pretext. He would not be the kind of High Prince Roelstra had been. If this was seen by some as weakness-he shrugged, for he cared about very few opinions in this world.

He looked around at the rainbows on the white carpet, smudges of color against colorlessness. The oratory was finer for the sunlight, for the colors that spoke of its Sunrunner prince. But the things with which Roelstra had filled this oratory would have to be replaced.

Rohan got to his feet, walked slowly around the perimeter of the gla.s.s cage to the table with its rich ornaments. His fingers clenched around one gold-and-amethyst goblet. An instant later a crystal pane shattered, and the priceless trinket vanished down the canyon to the dark water.

Pol held himself with the stiffness of abused muscles and utter exhaustion. His body was reluctant to obey the order of his pride to stand straight and behave as the son of his father and mother ought. He walked into the huge banqueting hall without looking at any eyes other than those that were so like his own in a face as sternly controlled.

Relieved murmurings chased each other through the a.s.sembly of va.s.sals, amba.s.sadors, and retainers. Pol was dimly aware of them, but most of his attention was focused on his father and on controlling a shameful need to be folded in strong arms. At this moment when he must conduct himself as a man, he had never felt more like a boy in need of his father's embrace.

Rohan descended the four steps from the high table and met Pol with a hand on his shoulder and a slight smile. The gesture and expression appeared casual, but Pol felt the long fingers tighten with fierce possessive love. Then Rohan looked over Pol's head to the crowd. Then they both turned and faced the gathering.

"We thank the G.o.ddess and the good people of Castle Crag for the safety of our beloved son. With such protection, he will surely govern long and well over Princemarch."

A cheer went up, and Pol felt his father tense as if trying not to hug him close. He understood; they were not father and son right now but High Prince and Heir. He looked around him, surprised at the real joy and relief on most faces, intrigued by the careful smiles on others. No one here wanted his death, he was sure of it. But there were those who would not mourn too long.

He and Maarken followed Rohan up to the dais, where Pol took the chair between his father and Pandsala. Her face was pale and expressionless; she would not look at him. Maarken sat on Rohan's other side, as weary and aching as Pol but just as determined not to show it.

The hall was silent. Rohan said, "Tell us what happened."

Pol did. They had not stopped to wash or change clothes; he wanted everyone to see their bruises and dirt. He made especially certain that all knew of Maeta's sacrifice, and if there was a catch in his voice as he spoke, no one blamed him. When he told of the colors on the arrow that had killed her, a low rumble went through the hall. His account ended with praise for those who had helped him and Maarken to safety; he had made sure on the way back to learn their names. He paused then, ending with, "I'm grateful for your care of me today, and I'm sorry I didn't complete the climb and failed in my-"

They did not let him finish the sentence. "Failed?" someone cried. "We were the ones who failed you!" And above similar protests another called out, "It's a stupid custom that nearly cost us our prince!"

"I'm going to try again," Pol insisted. "And next time I'll make it to the top and earn the flight back down-and I'll do it all on my own, too!"

"Not if I have anything to say about it!" The large, burly form of Cladon, athri athri of River Ussh, stomped forth from chair to aisle. "You proved your courage and that's what the climb is for! We'll not risk you again, young prince!" of River Ussh, stomped forth from chair to aisle. "You proved your courage and that's what the climb is for! We'll not risk you again, young prince!"

"But it's the closest I'll ever come to flying like a dragon!" Pol was instantly aware of how childish that sounded, and felt his cheeks burn. But though laughter rippled through the hall, it was kind, understanding, even admiring. He was confused until he heard his father whisper, "Well done! You have them now, my hatchling." And he realized that without meaning to, he had done something very clever. The highborns of Princemarch would have been duly impressed with a completed climb-but the attempt on Pol's life had done more to increase his value in their eyes than anything else could have done. And he had sealed their commitment by vowing to do the climb again. He was theirs now, claimed by them all as their prince.

It was an odd feeling, vaguely reminiscent for a moment of his reaction on arrival, a little like being offered up on a golden plate. But then he understood. In claiming him, they had also given themselves. His father was right. He had them. If he was theirs, they were also his.

"We'll discuss it some other time, Lord Cladon," Rohan said, with a sidelong glance for Pol that combined paternal firmness and princely order. Another chuckle went through the a.s.sembly and Cladon bowed, satisfied as to Rohan's cautionary instincts. "For the moment," the High Prince went on, "we're happy to have him back safe and sound."

"I-I have something else I'd like to say." Pol was amazed when the sound of his voice commanded instant silence. "When we find Maeta-she told me how beautiful she thought this land. I'd like to hold her ritual here, so that a little of her will remain in Princemarch, before her ashes are returned to the Desert."

"Well said, your grace!" Lord Dreslav of Grand Veresch stood, his cup lifted high. "To our young prince!"

Later, when the royal pair were alone in Pol's chamber and they were only father and son again, Rohan clasped Pol tight to his chest. Pol clung to him, trembling with weariness. After a time he calmed down and pulled away.

"You don't mind, do you? About Maeta's burning?"

"No. It was a good thought, politically as well as personally. I know she'd like becoming part of this land you'll rule one day. They say here that the ashes of the dead become flowers." Rohan sat heavily in a chair and rubbed his eyes. "But I want the wind off the Long Sand for myself, Pol. Promise me that wherever I end, you'll bring me back home."

"Father-you can't die! Don't talk that way." He knelt beside the chair and grasped his father's arm.

"I'm sorry." Rohan smiled fleetingly. "I'm very tired, and watching you on that cliff wasn't calculated to add years to my life."

"I shouldn't have gone. Maeta would still be alive."

"And there would still be a Merida here to threaten you. Don't ever second-guess life, Pol."

He rested his cheek on Rohan's knee. "Mother's not going to be happy," he murmured.

"Maarken will know how to explain it to her. She'll understand."

"Even the way Pandsala killed the archer?"

"Your mother . . . has done similar things. She'll understand that, too."

Pol tried to imagine his mother doing what Pandsala had done-and it was only too easy to see her green eyes blazing as she called down Fire in defense of what she loved.

"That's why she and Lady Andrade don't get along," Rohan said suddenly. "Speaking of whom, she'll have quite a bit to say about this and I don't think Pandsala will enjoy any of it. But I doubt Andrade will even attempt to punish her. She broke the vow, but she also saved your life."

"Father, do you approve of what she did?"

"The man should have been taken alive and questioned. He might have given me the excuse I needed-in front of witnesses-to invade Cunaxa and destroy the Merida once and for all." He stared at the dark, empty windows.

"But you're tempted to do it just the same?" Pol ventured.

"Without justification, I can do nothing." He looked down at Pol. "Do you understand? Do you see that dearly as I love you, and afraid as I am for you, I can't go against the laws I myself helped to write?"

"Of course I understand," Pol said, hiding astonishment that his father should be saying such things to him. "Besides, it might not've been the Merida behind this at all. It might be the man who claims to be Roelstra's son."

"Perhaps." Rohan rubbed his eyes. "It'll be worse at the Rialla. Rialla."

"I'll be careful."

"I doubt there'll be another attempt before then. They'd have to be more subtle. Not everyone is happy that one day you'll rule two princedoms and probably a goodly chunk of Firon as well. I don't mean to worry you with it, especially at your age, but you must know what we're up against."

Pol said softly, "Thank you for saying 'we.' You never have before."

Rohan blinked. "Haven't I?"

"No. It's always between you and Mother, or Chay, or Maarken-never me included as an active partner."

His father looked bemused. "It seems as if you've impressed me me as well as everyone else today with the fact that you're growing up. Very well. as well as everyone else today with the fact that you're growing up. Very well. We, We, meaning you and I, have a great deal to talk about. But meaning you and I, have a great deal to talk about. But we we also need to sleep until at least noon tomorrow. And that is an order that also need to sleep until at least noon tomorrow. And that is an order that we, we, as the High Prince and your father, will hold you to obeying." as the High Prince and your father, will hold you to obeying."

Pol made a face, then laughed. "I'm going to climb that cliff and fly down one day. I'm not the Dragon's Son for nothing!"

"But still a hatchling. Fly over to your bed and get some sleep."