demolished, and it had taken years of study for Audrite to discern the proper placement of windows. The tiled floor had been painstakingly lifted from the soil and overgrown grasses on the far side of Dorval, and was marked with various symbols for the seasons and indicated the position and phases of the three moons on any given night of the year. Audrite had spent years checking its accuracy, and several new tiles had been fashioned at her direction to replace ones worn or broken long ago at the other keep. Her calculations on the exact relationship of ceiling to tiles, and the observations of Lleyn’s Sunrunners, Meath and Eolie, had awed everyone. For the original design of this oratory had been correct down to the slightest nuance.
Twenty-one years ago, Prince Lleyn had learned from Lady Andrade—she who ruled Goddess Keep and all Sunrunners—that the abandoned castle had once belonged to the faradh’im. Stone had been taken from it for hundreds of years to construct other places, including Graypearl, but on Lleyn’s return from the Rialla that autumn an excavation had begun in earnest. This master-work had been their most important find, save one. Audrite walked softly over the summer tiles, a smile on her face for the sheer beauty of the oratory and the sheer joy of understanding it. The structure had become again what it had been meant to be: the most remarkable calendar in all the princedoms.
She heard steps on the footbridge and turned. Meath entered the oratory and bowed a greeting. “Full moons tonight,” he said, smiling as he shared her delight at their knowledge.
“You can use them to contact Princess Sioned,” Audrite told him.
“You’ve talked to Pol, then?”
“Yes. I’ll have to give you my notes on the scrolls.” She frowned slightly. “Meath, do you think it’s wise to give them to Andrade now? She’s very old. It may be that she won’t have time to discover their meaning—and it may also be that the next Lady or Lord of Goddess Keep won’t use the knowledge wisely.”
The faradhi shrugged and spread his hands wide, rings glinting in the colored sunlight. “I’m convinced she’ll outlive us all, if only through pure cussedness.” He smiled, then shook his head. “As for the other thing—I agree that it’s a risk. But I’d rather have Andrade examine the scrolls now and decide what to do with them than wait and see who next rules Goddess Keep.”
“You were the one who found them,” she said slowly. “I’ve helped with as many of the words as I could—and, Goddess knows, there wasn’t much I fully understood,” she added regretfully. “But the responsibility for them is yours.”
“Well, it’s true that I dug them out of the rubble, but I’d prefer not to have the choice of what’s done with them. If they’re as important as we suspect, then it’s knowledge I’m not qualified to deal with. I’d rather see the scrolls in Andrade’s hands, not mine. She’ll either understand them and use them, or destroy them if they’re too dangerous.”
Audrite nodded. “Come by my library later tonight and I’ll give you my notes.”
“Thank you, my lady. Andrade will appreciate it, I know.” He smiled again. “I wish you could be there to see her face!”
“So do I. I just hope the shock isn’t too much for her.”
The hundred lines of verse duly copied and presented to Princess Audrite, Pol was free by late morning to ride to the harbor with Meath. Shops snuggled along the village’s narrow main street, not as varied in their wares as the stores in Dorval’s main shipping center down the coast or in Radzyn’s port. But there were interesting things to be had here—crafts native to the island and not much traded elsewhere: small items made of silk remnants, jewelry cunningly fashioned to hide defects in pearls not suitable for the general market. Pol and Meath tied their horses in front of a dockside inn where they planned to have lunch later, and walked up and down the street, window-shopping.
The merchants all knew Pol, of course, and were of two attitudes when it came to selling him things. Some, aware of his father’s great wealth, quoted outrageous prices in hopes of siphoning off a little of that wealth for themselves. Others cared more about royal favor, and underpriced their wares in a shameless bid for Pol’s further patronage. The young prince usually did his looking through the windows, then consulted with companions on the fair price of goods