new logs on the fire. “You lied to him. You believe.”
“He led me by the nose where he wanted me to go!” She backed off a step as the flames rose hotter. “Urival—I didn’t even sense it. He deceived me completely with his fine little show.”
“He’ll make a properly devious Lord of Goddess Keep.”
“Yes, he is as we’ve all made him. Especially me. He’s good, is young Lord Andry. Very good. When he’s ruling here, from my chambers and my chair—” Sinking into her chair again, she closed her eyes. “Goddess be thanked that I won’t be around to watch.”
For all the privileges due to his kinship with Lady Andrade, Andry wore only four rings and took no special precedence at Goddess Keep. Officially he was an apprentice, though he hoped that by summer’s end he would earn the fifth faradhi ring, marking him as a fully trained Sunrunner. The sixth would signify his ability to weave moonlight with equal skill; the seventh, that he could conjure without Fire.
He closed the door of his chamber behind him and sat on the bed, staring at his hands, seeing them empty of the honors he knew one day would be his. But in all honesty he knew he would have to learn much before he was worthy of the rings, including the eighth and ninth he intended to earn. He had botched his ploy for convincing Andrade and Urival about the scrolls. Their belief had been within his grasp, but he had made a mistake. If he ever hoped to wield real influence among faradh’im, he would have to learn subtlety.
For the first time he dared to imagine the tenth ring, the gold one on his marriage finger and the thin chains that would lead from it and all the others to bracelets clasping his wrists. Lord of Goddess Keep. Master of this place and all Sunrunners—and of the princes and athr’im who possessed the gifts. The number was very small now, but would grow. He intended that it should grow, for he believed wholeheartedly in Andrade’s long-term scheme.
Andry bit his lip and tried not to see all ten rings on his hands. Yet part of him argued that there was nothing wrong with aspiration to high position. Certainly his siblings were not shy about their abilities. Maarken with his six rings would one day be Lord of Radzyn and military commander of the Desert and Princemarch. Andry’s twin brother Sorin was to be knighted this year at the Rialla, and had made no secret of the fact that he wanted an important keep of his own, which their uncle the High Prince would undoubtedly give him. But Goddess Keep was the only place Andry wanted, the only honor he coveted, the only life he had ever believed would suit him. He had the gifts in stronger measure than Maarken, and no desires toward Sorin’s knightly accomplishments. He wanted ten rings and this castle, the right to govern all farad-h’im, and the privilege of guiding the princedoms as Andrade had done for so long.
He heard footsteps outside in the hallway. It was time to go down for the evening meal, yet he made no move from his seat by the small brazier that barely lit and rarely warmed his chamber. He never felt the cold; the joke at the keep was that he had soaked up so much Desert sun and heat in his childhood that nothing short of a winter at Snowcoves would ever chill him. But he did regret the feebleness of the brazier’s light that did not allow him to read until all hours, and looked forward to the fifth ring that would bring with it a larger chamber, one floor below, complete with its own hearth.
“Andry! I know you’re in there, I can hear you thinking,” a familiar voice called from outside his door. “Hurry or you’ll be late.”
“I’m not hungry, thank you, Hollis,” he replied.
The door swung open and his elder brother’s unofficial Chosen stood there, hands on slim hips, braids like twin rivers of dark sunlight falling down past her waist. She gave him a grimace of good-natured exasperation, and he smiled. He liked Hollis and approved of his brother’s choice—the two of them were certain to produce not just handsome, intelligent children but faradhi-gifted ones as well. But he wondered how his parents were going to take to the idea of Maarken’s marrying a woman without family, possessions, wealth, or anything else to recommend her