by sun sword
Ah, Lady, if only Adano had been the second son.
If. If only. He frowned at the direction of his thoughts; they were pathetic and unworthy. The Lady's presence was obviously heavy on his mind. And why not? It was the Festival of the Moon, after all. He turned his gaze away from the lights upon the hill; the Tor Leonne was not for him this night.
Not this one.
Musicians played in the streets of the Tor Leonne, some good, some bad, and some, Sendari thought, who deserved the Lady's harshest judgment. Men's voices were raised in loud and boisterous song, and the drunken boasts of old soldiers destroyed the quiet that usually settled over the city at night. The young men were out roving, and one or two lives were certain to end in some imaginary contest of "honor"; the young boys were out, listening with rapt attention to the sounds of their first Festival. Eating the fruits and the confections and the sweet foods, drinking poor wine and sweet water, watching the comings and goings of clansmen whose deeds they hoped, one day, to rival.
He could hardly remember the days when he had been such a child; they were another country, and the ways to it had long since been destroyed. But he found it unexpectedly poignant to see two young boys together, the younger self-consciously aping the actions of the elder, the elder cautioning the younger and attempting to keep him safe. To watch them, thinking of the days when par and kai had such very different meanings.
Sendari could not pause for long, however; the crowds were thicker, and they surged around him, moving him forward inch by inch. Shaking off the webs of youth, he began to move in their direction.
He found a place to sit beneath the awnings of the silvered trees, a spot which, imbued by the lively atmosphere of the Festival, lost all of its lovely mystery. A fountain, old and slow to move at any but Festival time, gurgled at his back as he sat upon its marble shelf, thinking. And trying not to think.
Alora.
Adano.
Diora.
The Festival of the Sun made the Tor Leonne an easier place to rest one's feet and gird for battle. Not so this Festival, a half-year away. Moon-touched, he thought night thoughts, too melancholy to be properly grim, which would have been more acceptable to a man of Sendari's character.
"Sendari!"
He started to smile before he realized that he recognized the voice; there were some things that were lodged in places deeper than conscious memory. Lifting an arm, he curved his fingers in greeting.
Captain Alesso par di'Marente, looking very much a child of the night, lifted a goblet in return. "Wine?"
"Not from that vineyard," Sendari said, grimacing as his friend shrugged and half-emptied the glass.
"Then I'll drink yours."
"I'd guess that you already have."
As he tilted his head back, his hair gleamed as if the back of a raven's wings were brushing the nape of his neck. He was a tall man, and his bearing was one of quiet confidence. He could wield a sword better than most of the warriors that Sendari had seen take the Festival Challenge, and he could handle a mount as if the line that separated horse and rider could be severed at will. Sendari knew this, and accepted it without rancor.
Because Captain Alesso par di'Marente was also a politically canny man, one who understood power. Or rather, he thought, one who understood that power was not necessarily the ground gained by standing like a common oaf and planting one's sword into another's chest. Not necessarily.
"How will you spend the Festival Night?"
"I? In study, old friend. I have much to learn, and it is, after all, a night like any other. You?"
"I shall spend it as always, in the arms of those women who could never come to me willingly otherwise. Come," Alesso said, tossing the goblet aside. "I've had enough of the Festival crowd."
"Oh?"
"I want peace and a moment for thought."
Sendari laughed.
"What?"
"You, Alesso. When it is quiet, it is too quiet; you must drink or ride or fight to escape the consequence of a moment's peace. But here—here, where you should be in your element—you want peace, and you ask me why I laugh?"
Alesso di'Marente smiled, a sure sign that he had had enough drink for the evening. "If you wish to remain here, remain here."
"You lead, di'Marente."
"As always."
Peace was not, in the end, the quiet that Sendari usually associated with the word. Nor was it the meditative stillness, the silent companionship in which friends need not speak to be understood. Alesso's smile, rare, had obviously not been due to drink alone.
"I should have known," Sendari said, panting slightly from the exertion of the forbidden climb.
"Yes," Alesso replied quietly. "You should have."
They stood together, gazing at the Lady's face as the waters of the lake of the Tor Leonne rippled it. Music came from across the lake; the sound of muted merriment.
"We're not young men anymore."
"No."
Silence. Sendari did not need to tell Alesso what their transgression here would mean; he knew it. He always understood the risks of the tasks he chose to undertake. And yet he did not shy away from risk; indeed, as he grew older, he grew both less cautious and more cunning.
"I've heard a disturbing rumor, Sendari."
"Ah. You as well?" Sendari listened to the lap of waves against rocks and rushes; it was such an uncommon sound in the South that he had to stop a moment to savor it. "Do you know when war will be declared?"
"The war?" Alesso shrugged. "After the Festival, no doubt. But it wasn't war that I spoke of."
"What else is there to speak of—or not to speak of? It is in the air, Alesso. The Tyr wishes to advance beyond the cradle of Averda; it has been two summers with very poor harvests in the plains, and he is pressed hard on all sides by the ramifications. There are reasons why I wish to take the test."
"That is the rumor I wished to discuss."
"That—ah." A momentary surprise, and a slightly longer annoyance, flitted across Sendari's features. The decision should have been a private affair; he had spoken to no one save Teresa about it. He knew how she felt about Alesso di'Marente; it was not from her that the information had come. From who, then? What weakness was there in his household? One of his wives? The serafs? He wanted to ask, but let it drop as he met his companion's dark gaze. "I should have known. How long?"
"How long have I been watching—and watching over—you?" Alesso looked into the darkness that the full moon kept at bay. "In one way or another, since you were eight." Alesso himself had been ten, an older boy whose daring greatly impressed the child that Sendari had been. The adult that he had become. This continuity, unlooked for, between his childhood self and his adult self caught him off guard, as no doubt Alesso had intended.
"Why?"
"Why," was Alesso's response, "will you take the test? Years ago, when invited to do so by Widan Cortano himself, you refused."
Sendari knew that Alesso already knew the answer, and he was angry a moment; the sound of the waters calmed him by slow degrees. "Does it matter?"
His companion spoke again. "She is truly gone."
"This is not the night to discuss her," Sendari said softly, a warning in his voice.
"There will never be such a night," was Alesso's reply. "Tomorrow, when the Festival Moon is at her fullest, you will wander the streets like any other stranger, reveling in your choice of freedoms.
"She stood between us a long time, old friend."
"And still does," Sendari surprised himself by saying. "Do not speak of what you do not understand."
"Then let me speak, instead, of what I do understand.
"You will take the test of the sword, and you will survive it. You will be marked as a Widan, in the service of clan Marano. Your kai, Adano, will offer your services to the clan Leonne, and with your cunning, your rise through the ranks of the counselors will be swift."
Alora's ghost melted into the recesses of his night thoughts, leaving him space to
smile. It was a thin smile. "Will you always plan my life, Alesso?"
"Plan? Not I. I merely predict."
Silence again. Uncomfortable, the unsaid between them like a veil or a wall. Sendari gazed at the lake, listening for the sounds of the streets that seemed so far removed they might be imagination.
"Let me ask you a question, Sendari. Let us pretend, for the moment, that the Lady's Moon holds sway. Let us take no responsibility for the things said here, between us; they are moon thoughts, night thoughts. They exist outside of the natural order; they will travel no farther."
Sendari raised a hand to stem the tide of words; Alesso stood silent for as long as it took that hand to fall, shaking slightly, to Sendari's side.
"Have you never considered killing Adano?"
Because Alesso was his friend, and because the pledge that had been uttered was so unusual for Alesso, Sendari did not respond the way honor—the way blood— demanded he should. The insult in the question would have been death for a lesser man; it darkened Sendari's cheeks.
With anger.
With shame.
"You take your risk," he said at last. "And I take mine. Of course I've considered it. Adano cannot lead Marano where I could have led it, had I been born first."
Alesso might have laughed, had he been another man; there was no triumph at all in his expression as he met, and held, Sendari's dark eyes. "And yet Adano lives."
"Corano kai di'Marente lives as well. Or would you tell me that I am alone in my desire?"
"Oh, no. Why would I tell such a useless lie to you?" he asked, placing his cloak against grass and rock alike, as he stared at the moon's reflection as if, Sendari thought, it were a mirror. He spoke to the moon's face, to the waters of the lake, to the wind that carried no man's words. But he spoke in Sendari's hearing, and that was enough. "I could have killed him. I almost did, twice. It would have been so simple. And then I would be kai, my brothers par; Marente would be mine, and it would be a great clan."
"It is not inconsiderable now."
"No? But neither is Marano." Alesso's smile creased the line of his profile ever so slightly. "But the risk is high, old friend." And it was. Blood did not shed blood in the Dominion of Annagar without great danger—but the worst of the kin crimes was the killing of the kai. Only a handful of times in the history of the Dominion had such a crime occurred, and because of it, the rule of the Lord of Night had finally been brought to an end.
By the clan Leonne. Wielding the Sun Sword in the name of Justice.
"And is it only the risk?"
"Is it only the risk that holds your hand?"
"Mine?" Brooding silence; after a moment, Sendari joined Alesso on the incline, sitting more carefully. "No. Not risk alone. But I had—"
"Her."
"Yes. I have already shown myself open to weakness of that nature."
Alesso ignored the pointed comment. "The others, I would kill. My sisters. My younger brothers."
"Would you?"
Grim smile. "Let us not put it to the test, then. But I believe that I could, if the cause were right."
"But not Corano."
"No. And what does that leave me?"
"The rank you attain in the service of your kai—or the service of the Tyr, if you are so offered."
Alesso spit.
Had he been a different man, Sendari would have joined him.
"One weakness. Am I to be judged by history for one weakness? I think not. There are always other options; there are always other opportunities.
"We are not beasts of burden, to be prized and sold. I am Alesso di'Marente. You are Sendari di'Marano. Take the test. There is nothing left to stop you. Take the test, make yourself known." The older man stood suddenly, raising his face to the moon. "And I tell you, Sendari, that if we so dare, our children will not be of Marano or Marente."
Sendari was silent, swept away a moment by the breadth of the captain's vision.
"They will be di'Alesso and di'Sendari."
Diora's fingers stretched across the samisen's strings as if it were a loom and she the threads from which whole cloth would be made.
Serra Teresa watched her at a discreet distance. Watched her mutely touching and pulling music from a samisen when she had no song of her own to offer. The Festival was not yet finished, and a child—even a child with Diora's will—could not so easily shake the compulsion that she had placed upon her. Not easily, no. The risk was there. But although Diora frowned as if in pain, she made no song.
Serra Teresa felt a satisfaction and a profound self-loathing that mingled poorly; she made her way back down the halls of the small residence that Ser Sendari occupied, thinking that she had seen deaths less wrong than this.
And then she set it aside. It was the day of the Festival Moon.
There was much to plan.
* * *
Kallandras received the message in the rooms that were reserved for visiting dignitaries. It was carried by a seraf who spoke so softly and so smoothly, his voice was almost without inflection. A sign, that.
As much a sign as the fact that the message was written, and tied in three places with strands of golden twine that might have been better used for silk. The Annagarians did not trust the printed word for anything but unwieldy treaties; they rarely consigned messages to it, choosing instead those serafs, or cerdan, whom they trusted to be their mouthpieces. He stared at the scroll, wondering idly who had sent it, and why. There was a wrongness about it that was not immediately evident. And it should have been. It should have been.
Oh, it had been a mistake to come here. Annagar was not Essalieyan; it was seductive in its stark simplicity, its complex dance of death. For in the midst of this wellspring of life, in the center of the Tor Leonne, death made a man powerful—the death of his enemies. Kallandras understood death too well.
Sioban would have listened had he demanded she send another in his stead. He smiled softly, thinking of the bard-master. Perhaps she would have listened. Perhaps not.
I send you into the heart of pitched battle, and you sing your way out—there's no other way to explain just how much you can survive. There was, of course, a question in the words, but it was casual. She knew that he wouldn't answer it; he knew that she accepted the ignorance as gracefully as anyone who led could. And I don't give a damn about explanations. I send you, you return; I send out another, and I worry at it for the months that he's gone. I'm old enough now not to need that worry if I don't absolutely have to carry it.
There's rumor that the troops are gathering along the border; there's rumor that the Tyr'agar needs a war. The Festival of the Moon is coming. Go to the Tor Leonne. Find out. Find out the truth, Kallandras, and sing it home.
At the ebb of the day—as the Annagarians reckoned it— the air was pleasantly cool; the chill of the night gave way quickly to the bite of the sun. In Essalieyan, it grew hot, but never so hot as in the southern clime; and it grew cool, but again, never so cold as in Raverra, the Terrean which held the Tor Leonne. The winds in Essalieyan—unless one were a seaman—were part of the weather, no more, no less. But in Annagar, the winds scoured a man's soul and swept the life from the land, some harbinger of either the Lord's or the Lady's displeasure. The wind blew the Lady's name across the stretch of sands and empty waste, reddening his cheeks.
Today, the air was deceptively still. The day was pleasant. There was no rain to mar it. But there was a storm on the horizon; by what was not said, what was not done, what was unsigned, Kallandras could feel it gathering in the air. War, he thought. But not now. Not for at least one more day.
The Festival of the Moon was a sacred thing to the Annagarians, a wild night, a hidden place in which one could say all that one felt without fear. And he thought the Annagarian court, with its strict rules of behavior, its silence, its manners, might destroy itself completely without that single evening of freedom. And he, bard-born, but trained by the brotherhood of the Lady, to wear any mask, and to mask any desire from all
but his brothers themselves.
His brothers.
Throughout the history of the Dominion, even during the dark years in which the Lord of the Night sought to eradicate the Lady's following, the Festival of the Moon had been celebrated. Not so the Festival of the Sun—but then again, the Festival of the Sun had been forgone for the call to war, something the Lord was certain to appreciate. The Lady. The Lord.
The universe of the Annagarians was divided into these polarities, as if the gods that they worshiped were real. They weren't, of course; Kallandras, as a bard who studied legend lore, knew that the only true god to have held dominion in these lands was the Lord of Night— Allasakar.
He did not speak the name aloud. It had been seven years since he had—almost—gazed upon the face of that death, that god; he did not wish to recall it clearly, although he was not a man who turned away from the terrors the darkness held.
The priestly Radann listened to the whisper of the Lord of Day; listened hard enough that they occasionally heard things. Something. But the god-born children who became the guiding priests of the Essalieyanese Churches were butchered here at birth, for it was commonly understood that these golden-eyed children were changeling creatures of great evil.
And it was also commonly understood that the women who bore them were unclean, and fit only for that death as well.
Ah, Lady.
Kallandras' musing, followed appropriately by the directionless hum of strings, stopped abruptly. He set Salla aside and quietly picked up the rolled scroll.
There, in a hand that he did not recognize, was a message that was short and pointed, yet for all that beautifully penned.
If you wish to discover the truth of the Tyr Leonne's intent, come alone to the Eastern Fount of Contemplation one hour past the setting of the sun.
It was not signed.
* * *
CHAPTER THREE