arm. “Leave it be,” she whispered. “I’ll never know for certain.” She trod along in silence for a moment, then added bitterly, “With Ianthe, at least I would’ve known I’d killed deliberately, and taken the consequences.” She held the child tighter. “I wouldn’t have the luxury of pretending it was an accident.”
They separated from the crowd soon after that, melting into the rocks at the side of the road. When the last stragglers had gone past, they emerged again and headed down the stony trail to the garrison. It was nearly dawn before they reached it. Sheltering alone within, they stood at the empty windows and watched as Feruche burned high on the cliff. Sioned rocked the frightened baby close and would not give him up to Tobin or Ostvel, not even when the princess would have tended the wounds on her shoulder and cheek.
“No. It doesn’t hurt. Let me alone.”
Tobin was wise enough not to press her. Sioned sat cross-legged in the doorway, holding her son in her arms as he slept at last, and watched the castle burn. She could not think past the holding of her child. Let Tobin and Ostvel worry about getting back to Stronghold. She could not.
She glanced down at the emerald, back where it belonged on her hand. The clifftop flames plunged into its depths, gave it a life and fire of its own. Andrade had told her long ago that she could work to make a vision real if she wanted it enough. Well, she had wanted, and had worked, and now the child was here in her arms and there was a welt across her shoulder that would leave a deep, wide scar.
But there was another on her cheek that should not have been there, and it throbbed a stinging reminder that the power to make visions real did not necessarily include the wisdom to make them just.
Dawn was nearly as soft as spring over River Run, and as Urival wove its strands together he paused to let its gentleness caress his senses. There were tender colors to the morning, rose-gray and muted greenish gold, the blue of sky as fragile as Fironese crystal. He traveled across Syr and Meadowlord and the Vere Hills, the colors intensifying with the stronger light of day. Yet there was still a misted, almost tentative quality about them, beautiful and shy.
But the colors rising from a Desert cliffside were harsh: stark spirals of gray-black smoke stained the sky. He saw the smoldering ruin that had been the castle and his delicate weave of winter dawn nearly snapped with the violence of his shock. Casting about for signs of life, he found none. Here and there small flames fingered a few remaining timbers, but all else was charred and dead. Ranging outside the keep, he saw groups of hollow-eyed people trudging into the western mountains. Ahead of them by some measures were others on horseback. Three of those horses caught his eye, for there was no mistaking the points of Lord Chaynal’s breed. How would Ianthe come upon such animals? he asked himself—and then saw the distinctive blue saddle blankets of the Desert. Shock again threatened his control and he calmed himself, only to give a silent exclamation as he looked closer and found that the three horses were ridden by large, muscular guards, each one holding a sleeping child across his saddle.
Urival drew back, hovering in the morning stillness to quiet the turmoil of his mind. Then he returned to Feruche. He knew who those children must be, and was equally certain that their mother must be dead. Ianthe would never give over possession of her sons to anyone while she lived.
Urival again surveyed the blackened husk of the keep, circling around it. A flicker of movement caught his attention. Pale figures against pale golden sand, the trio walked in the direction of the road to Skybowl. The man was tall, broad-shouldered, his dark head left bare to the morning sun. One of the women was coiling her heavy black hair at her nape. The other woman was taller, her hooded cloak drawn close, arms crooked to carry something against her chest. Urival did not need to see her hair to know who she was. And he was afraid he knew what she had done.
He wove the sunlight south, over the Faolain and the salt marsh of Roelstra’s cruel making, and saw Rohan’s encampment well into its day’s work for all that it was only