Sun in Glory and Other Tales of Valdemar

* * *

She touched his face; his skin was clammy.

His eyes, wide and unseeing, did not turn toward her, but something beneath them did.

Kayla looked into the red eyes of the dragon.

And trapped within them, she saw a child. Or a mirror.

She had never dreamed of flight, although the other village children often spoke of it.

She had never dreamed of wings; the only time her feet left the ground in her dreams was when she rode a Companion who could cross the walls that darkness imposed upon her dreaming.

'Gregori,' she whispered.

He did not move.

But the beast did. It knew exactly where she was, and the waking world offered her no protection, no place to hide.

* * *

Gregori.

Dragon name. Prince name. Powerful name. He turned. You!

Yes.

I know you.

Yes. I am Kayla.

Despair washed over her. Despair and more: death, images of death. The loss of her home. The loss of her village-of Riverend, the home she had promised her mother she would protect. But there was more. She felt the death of her husband as the mines colapsed, as oxygen fled, slowly enough that fear and hysteria had time to build. She felt her father's death, the snap of his spine, saw-although not with her eyes-the pale whites of eyes rolled shut when no hands were there to gently drawn lids across them.

Her mother's death followed.

And after that, the deaths of her life: her sons. One by one, in the absence of Healers, in the winter when no one could travel through the pass.

She was alone. Terribly, horribly alone. Everyone that had ever loved her, gone; she was like a ship without anchor.

All that existed was this darkness. She wandered within it, weeping now, her arms so empty she knew they would never be full again.

But she was not terrified. She felt no horror.

How could she? The things she had feared, the things that made fear so visceral, that made her feel truly vulnerable, had already come to pass.

She could not speak; her lips trembled, her jaw; her shoulders shook as if she were caught in the spasms that collapsed whole tunnels dug in rock.

And because these things were truth, she accepted them as she had managed just barely-to accept them in the village of Riverend.

How? How had she done it? For a moment she could not remember, and then her mother's voice returned, distant and tinny: Promise me that you will care for Riverend.

Duty. Just that, only that, hollow and cold. Despair gave way to anger.

:Is that the worst you can do?: she asked the dragon, she so small she was almost insignificant.

:I killed them!: The dragon roared.

She almost believed him, the emotion was so compelling. So much, so very much, like her own. But she said, as she had said to herself over and over again for the last year, :Life killed them. Winter killed them. Work killed them.:

:How dare you! Do you not know who I am?:

:Oh, yes, I know you. Despair. Terror. Fear. I have lived with nothing but you for the last several months of my life.:

:I killed them!:

:No.:

:I killed them.: She could no longer feel her feet. She threw her weight forward because she had some hope that she could land on the bed instead of the hardwood floor.

:No, you didn't::

'I killed Rodri.:

:No.:

He laughed, and the laughter was terrible, the most terrible thing she had heard from him. In all of her nightmares, the dragon's voice had been a roar of pain. But this, this mirthless sound, was worse.

It was true.

She could not see for darkness, but sensation returned to her hands, and beneath her hands she felt the clammy warmth of his body, the fever of it; she could count his ribs as her palms traveled the length of his slender chest, child's chest. He was dying. He was dying; the fever-root had done nothing to drive the fires away, and he was burning from within. He-No. No.

:Tell me,: she said softly, as her hands touched his chin. :Tell me.: His hair was a tangle, matted and thin, child's hair. The sensation was almost more than she could bear, and only the fact that she knew he was too heavy for her to lift kept her from gathering his body to her.

She had carried her son.

She had carried him for three hours, in the cold, while her toddler wailed.

:Mother?:

She could not answer him; could not lie to him. Instead she continued to stroke his hair.

And after a moment, she sang, her voice a little too dry, a little too shaky. Song had been her gift. She had never found a person in Riverend who would not listen to her song, not be gentled by it.

:I wanted to help them. I wanted to help. I couldn't wield a sword. I tried. I tried for so long. I cut my legs, my arms; I cut Rodri's flank. I couldn't do it. And I couldn't pull the bow.

I could wind a crossbow. I-:

His hair.

She saw images of a child, thin and awkward, and she knew what that child represented. The Prince. Gregori. She saw the ghostly image of a mother, a specter composed of a child's loss, a child's longing; she saw the gray, distant ice of a father's disappointment and contempt. She felt his isolation and his loneliness so clearly she could not separate it from her own.

Nor did she try.

:Rodri loved me.

:Rodri found me when I was lost. He called me, and I came.

:They gave me Whites. They tried to train me. We were happy here.: She felt his terror building, and she knew the storm would return. But she had lived life in Riverend, and she had wintered there. There was no storm that she could not weather, not now.

:I could tell where the enemy was. I could tell them by what they were feeling. I-: They had not made a weapon of the boy. She saw that; he had made a weapon of himself.

She saw her mother.

She saw an assassin. She knew, then, when her mother had killed, and why: to save this boy.

He had begged her to teach him this Gift, and her mother had fled, taking her love-yes, even her mother-with her to the farthest reaches of the Kingdom's border.

That desertion had hurt him; she could feel the pain clearly. But she could also feel the determination that followed as he dismissed Magda Merton for a selfish, powermongering woman, like all the other women in court.

In silence, she let his story unfold. It was not neatly told; it was broken by storm and rage, by fear, by self-