Dragon Prince 03 - Sunrunner's Fire Read Free Page B

closed his eyes. “Which isn’t much.”
    “But everyone’s all right.”
    “Yes. Still stunned, I think, but not from anything Andry did.” He looked at Alasen, touched her free-flowing hair. It was an unusual shade of gold-lit brown, straight and fine as silk thread. Her cheeks were pallid with worry and her green eyes, the same shape and color as Sioned’s, were strained. He made himself smile at her. “Don’t look so grim. There’s plenty of power among us to use against these sorcerers, you know.”
    “Riyan doesn’t much like the idea of being of their blood.”
    “But we learned something very useful last night.” He explained his son’s experience with his rings. “So at least we can know when they’re working their spells.”
    Alasen shivered. “I can understand why they’d be watching tonight, with Andry’s ritual taking place. But why here? Why not Goddess Keep?”
    “Perhaps they consider what happens here more important. I don’t know. Sioned says there was no contact, no communication. Besides, can we be sure they weren’t watching Goddess Keep as well?” He drank again and set the cup aside. “We missed the last part of it,” he added idly. “I would have liked to see him conjure with light from the stars.”
    “With knowledge gained from the Star Scroll?” Alasen shook her head. “He’s doing dangerous things, Ostvel. And there will be more.” She rose and went to the windows, where dawnlight seeped across the Desert far below Stronghold.
    Ostvel gazed at her for a long, silent time. It would be difficult to find a woman more different from his first wife in either looks or character; where Camigwen’s personality had been all angles and bright light, Alasen was made of intriguing spirals and a more subdued glow hinting at shadows. In Camigwen there had been no fear, but Alasen had that summer discovered absolute terror. What for Cami had been joyous and exhilarating gifts were to Alasen things to flee from as fast as she could. Both Sunrunners, one trained and one who would never be trained. That he loved both women was no surprise. That both loved him was a blessing from the Goddess. And he knew that Alasen’s love for Andry had nothing and everything to do with the fact that she had Chosen him instead.
    He rose and stretched, then went to slip an arm around her slender waist. “I do love you, you know,” he murmured.
    She tilted her head back and smiled up at him. “And I love you. So no more chatter about how scandalous it is that I’m half your age, hmm?”
    He laughed. “Well, it is a scandal. A little one, anyway. But I’m feeling younger all the time.”
    Alasen pressed closer to him. “Rohan left orders that no one was to be disturbed until noon at the earliest. Are you feeling that young, my lord?”
    “My lady, by the time we get to Skybowl for the winter, you’ll have made me eighteen years old again.” The sunlight rippled along her hair and he buried his lips in its silken thickness. Alasen’s hands skimmed up and down his back, lingering over the muscles of his shoulder. Ostvel smiled into her hair and bent his head to take her mouth with his own.
    All at once she broke away from him and cried out. Sun flooded her white face and sank its light deep into her green eyes. “No,” she whispered. “Andry, please—no!”
    Ostvel caught her up in his arms and carried her to the bed. Once out of the direct glare of the morning sun, she stopped trembling. He smoothed back her hair and waited for the terror to fade from her eyes.
    “I’m sorry,” she breathed. “It was Andry—he—”
    Ostvel cursed himself. He ought to have remembered, and kept Alasen out of the sunlight. At dawn after the ritual, the new ruler of Goddess Keep wove the colors of all faradh’im present into one vast fabric of light, spreading it across the continent and as far away as the islands of Kierst-Isel and Dorval. With Andry dominant, directing the flow, every Sunrunner