The Sand Prince (7 page)

They look so fine, they smile so politely, but they're just here to see if the rumors about you are true
, she thought, looking down at her child. He, as usual, looked back up at her with a steady and somewhat suspicious gaze.
Well, let's get on with it.

She'd stood up—hoping she looked like a proud new mother and not terrified and alone—and let them all see the baby, who despite his odd shaped eyes was the image of his mother and of his grandfather. She tackled the unanswered question before anyone could whisper it behind a hand. She gathered herself and took a deep breath.

"This child was born a year ago," she told them. "A time we all remember too well. This child belongs to the ones we lost—the men in the fields, the women at their tables, the Mages at their books. This child comes to us from the brave and the proud and the vanished. We will never forget those who went before, but we thank Light and Wind for the gift of this day, and of this child. He is the son of Eriis, and Eriis is his father. His name is Rhuun, Prince of Eriis and Heir to the High Seat. Thank you for helping to make him welcome here today."

She sank into her seat and pressed her forehead against Rhuun's. There was a generous and genuine round of applause and even some cheering.

There, that ought to hold them. For now.

"He really does resemble your father, rest him now." Counselor Yuenne leaned over her shoulder to examine the child more closely. "And I must say, Your Grace, it's almost an act of what those human friends of yours used to call 'magic,' the way you produced this child, at a time when your people need it most. How very clever of you." He smiled thinly.

"Yuenne, you've known me nearly my whole life. Please dispense with Your Grace." Yuenne had been one of her father's most trusted advisors. It had been the sheerest luck he and his wife had been spared by The Weapon.

"Funny thing, though. I believe it was our very last conversation, your dear father and mine, when he was telling me he was concerned for you. Spending so much time with those people. The ambassador’s boy he disliked in particular. Well, you wouldn’t know that. Your father never wanted to trouble your mind. But the humans, he never really trusted them—and for good reason, as we all know to our own grief. The eyes, you know. He never got used to the shape of their eyes." He lifted his
sarave
in a toast and called to the assembled:

"To our queen and to Prince Rhuun, given to us, it seems, as if by magic."

The roomful of party goers echoed his words. Her throat had gone dry and she was glad for the sip of
sarave
to gather her thoughts.

He knows. Any fool could see it and Yuenne is no fool. What now?

She rose to her feet.

"Counselor Yuenne, everyone in this room knows your name and how my father (
rest him now
, murmured the crowd)—how my father relied on your bravery. Well, I say the time for bravery is not past. It is one year since the Weapon was unleashed on us. And look! We live. We thrive. We increase our numbers." She indicated the baby in her arms, the families with children, and the handful of women who would soon join her ranks. "We know we will live, but we don't know about the world beyond the mountains. Where are our brothers and sisters? Are they gone? Is Eriis alone? Counselor Yuenne, I call on you to lead an expedition into the Vastness. Seek our people, or at least find the footsteps of their passing. Counselor Yuenne, will you take up this quest?"

Yuenne wasn't smiling anymore.

He lifted his glass again.

"I shall leave at once. It is my honor to do your bidding, as I did your father’s. I will travel to the Vastness," he paused. "And I will come back, Your Grace. That's a promise."

The cheers and applause were heartfelt.

Hellne clutched the child to her chest
. I made this boy, and whether he's an embarrassment or a weapon or takes my seat one day, he is mine to use, Yuenne. Think on that as you head into the Vastness.

Infuriatingly, Yuenne had returned from that journey and made a hero of himself. Hellne noted the only thing worth celebrating from his trip was the fact that he survived it. He found nothing.

"Only sand, I'm afraid, and plenty of it," he told her in private. "Hard to imagine there was ever anything there."

The Zaalmage's pet hypothesis was that the cities had been moved somewhere else, and they and their people were trapped just out of sight. It gave off a scent of hope, and had many proponents who referred to it as The Hidden Kingdom Theory. The popularity of their notions gave the Mages renewed enthusiasm.

"Human blood, Your Grace, even a small amount, and we could begin to turn our theories into proper experiments." The Mages had a mania for blood, human blood from which she couldn't seem to distract them. And the debt, unpaid, always at the back of her mind. But if the Zaalmage knew what she’d done, surely he would have come to claim what was owed. The Zaal was not subtle, not like advisors at her court.

When Hellne spotted Yuenne having a serious discussion with a then two-year-old Rhuun, crouching down to talk with him eye to eye, she did her best not to panic.

"And what are my gentlemen and heroes of the court talking about today?" she asked brightly.

"Wings, Mama," Rhuun told her. "When do I get mine?"

"Yes," said Yuenne with his little smile, "It shouldn't be long before this young man fledges. How old is he? Only two? He's as big as a child twice his age. I imagine he'll manifest in all sorts of interesting ways."

Hellne sent him back on his second grand expedition to the Vastness shortly thereafter, feeling only a moment's hesitation that she might be making Yuenne's wife a widow and leaving his young daughter fatherless. Then she thought about Yuenne smiling, smiling and having an interesting conversation with the Zaalmage, and sent him on his way.

And now Rhuun was five and already more than a head taller than his playmates. And what would happen when there was no fledging? (For she had all but given up on that idea.) And worse yet, what if he never manifested fire? She'd had a
chlystron
made for him, tied with a ribbon in her family's color, and it just sat in his little hand. He looked confused and then threw it on the ground, saying it burned him, and he couldn't be persuaded to try again.

One part of her wanted to hide him, stuff the basket under a chair, throw a blanket over him and never let him come to harm. But this was foolish and weak, and she put it aside in favor of the part that remembered how she'd grown from a silly girl to a queen practically overnight. She had made him, and the making would continue. She resolved to let him grow without her hand holding him up. It might be unpleasant but it would give him the strength that didn't come from fire or flight.

Ugly, on the other hand, well, no one called her child ugly.

Back to the Vastness with you, Counselor. Maybe this time you'll find some manners out there in all that sand.

––––––––

E
riis City

8 years after the War of the Door, Eriisai calendar

40 years later, Mistran calendar

Royal Library

Rhuun spent much of his time in the royal library, finding it both quiet and safe. It wasn't much of a collection of books, the Queen wasn't a big reader, but it seemed to her to be a thing one ought to do. It was mostly an under-lit collection of half-desiccated texts and cast-off furniture in a largely undamaged series of connected rooms. The boy didn't read the books, and he didn't know a silk cushioned, wood framed couch imported from Mistra from a cheap Old City imitation, but he liked the way the room smelled. And it was dark and even a little cooler. The constant baking heat made him feel a little faint sometimes. No one knew that, not even his mother.

He was in the library hiding—no, he told himself—he was sitting and
thinking
after lessons one afternoon when his mother found him. She had a small girl demon in front of her, and gently pushed the child forward.

"Look, Rhuun," she said. "This is Aelle. She is the clan daughter of our friend Counselor Yuenne. You like him."

The boy looked suspiciously at the pair. Like all of his kind, they looked quite similar, slender and poised— one just a larger version of the other. The girl had silky black hair loose around her shoulders, his mother's was tightly coiled and dressed with sparkling black and white beads, as was proper. He knew Counselor Yuenne. He smiled all the time. Rhuun had seen him kick another boy down a flight of stairs for walking in front of him too slowly. And this was his daughter. She wasn’t smiling, at least.

"Aelle will be taking lessons with us for a while."

"My father is traveling. I am to stay here," the girl said. She looked indifferently around the library. "Can we go outside? I want to practice." The Queen crouched down so she was eye level with the child.

"Rhuun prefers to stay in here. Perhaps you can convince him to go outside with you. Now, have a nice afternoon."

She turned and vanished, leaving a bright spot in the air. That was one of her favorite abilities, she'd told him, one of the nicest things she could do. Be in one place and then suddenly be in another. You never knew who you'd surprise, and that was great fun. And if anyone ever said anything you didn't like, well, you could just leave. Then they'd have to think about what they'd said and why. He'd understand when his own abilities manifested. There was plenty of time, she said.

The boy imagined she would reappear—poof!—sitting on her High Seat at Court, startling and surprising her councilors. She was very important, his mother. It was easy to understand why Counselor Yuenne handed his child off to her. But what was he supposed to do with the girl?

Aelle had crawled into a once-handsome wing back chair which someone had pushed up against his favorite couch. Her feet stuck out in front of her. The chair might have been designed for a giant or a human, she nearly vanished into it. She scooted herself forward and looked around at the rows and stacks of books. They were mostly historical documents, along with some memoirs of those who had survived the War of the Door. In other words, boring.

"Can you talk?" she asked. "I heard you were simple in your wits."

"Of course I can talk," he answered testily.

She reached out and poked him in the arm. A tiny jet of flame shot from her finger. He yanked his arm away.

"Don’t do that."

"So you can talk, but you are simple." She nodded as if that explained everything.

He scowled. "Where’s your father?" he asked. "I bet he’s dead. I bet he got sucked up by the Crosswinds. That's why Mother is being nice to you."

Aelle looked furious. Tears stood in her eyes. He would learn Aelle never cried unless she was angry.

She said, "He is not dead. At least I have a father."

He immediately felt sorry for her. Why was he so stupid? "I’m sorry. Don’t cry. He’s not dead."

She rubbed her nose and got up, wandering around the dark room.  "Let’s go out. It’s boring in here."

"I don’t like it out there. I can’t fly. I can’t do fire. And Niico is there."

The first time he'd been scorched, he figured he'd been no more than 5 or 6. He'd been burned across the backs of his legs by Niico, who had recently fledged and was showing off his new little wings. He'd stumbled home to tell his mother, who'd taken a look at him and said, "Can you walk?" He nodded, trying not to cry. (She hated when he cried.) "Then you will heal."

She turned her attention back to her maid, and continued planning the evening meal. It wasn't the last time Niico had gotten a strike on him, but it was the last time he'd cried to his mother.

Aelle nodded. She'd been a target as well, as they all had at one time or another.

"They get you. The bigger ones. They used to get me too, until I fledged." She brightened. "And I got my fire last year, so I can blast some, too. But Niico is the fastest. He's the best."

"He's the worst." There was a pause. "Mother says I’ll get my fire soon. I don’t think that’s right, though. I don’t think I’ll ever get it." He had never told anyone this, although he was certain it was true. He wasn’t simple, far from it, but he was different. And here, that was worse.

He wasn’t sure why he was telling Aelle. Maybe because she had cried in front of him?

Aelle took his arm, taking care to avoid grabbing a still healing burn. "Come on. Let’s go out."

"But I can’t—"

"But I can."

The bigger ones didn’t get him that day. Aelle was around a lot after that.

***

S
he
was
around a lot, but she wasn't always, and besides, it would have made him feel like a baby to have someone standing in front of him all the time. So, after lessons about heroes from before the Weapon, the geography of cities that no longer existed, and the names of the mountains that no one could see anymore (they were still there, of course, hiding behind a sky full of dust), there were still days when the bigger ones caught him.

This particular day, he'd done his best to avoid ruining another tunic, but still ended up with a tear on one knee. At least the leggings were black, that way no one could see the bloodstain.
It was because I got mad
, he told himself.
That's why they came after me. If I was invisible, they'd leave me alone.
But he had yelled after them in a rage, and they'd left off picking on some other pre-fledged victim and come at him.

He ran for it.

He headed for the Streets of the Pearl Suspended in
Sarave
(which in the ornate, old language of Eriis referred to the Pearl Moon adrift in the
sarave
of the night sky, but these days everyone just called the Quarter) where the buildings were close together and there wasn't room to fly, and sure enough, after several twisting alleys, they got bored or lost him, because he was alone.

His mother told him to stay out of this part of the Old City, but like so many other things she said, there was never an explanation. He hated it when he didn't understand something, and finally, he decided he'd obey his mother
if
he could figure out why she gave the order. So far, the Quarter was just little kids playing in the dust, shops, people hurrying and talking and laughing, and
(
sometimes) loud voices. No one bothered him, and while there were just as many furtive stares, there were far fewer whispers.