by sun sword
The healer of the clan Caveras moved with the gale, his feet hurried against the silks and the cushions. Alana en'Marano huddled against the ground as his shadow passed above her; Illia cowered against the wall, beneath the light of the lamp that the wind's force did not touch.
"Send… them… away," Ser Laonis said, his teeth clenched tightly over the words as he forced his head round and glared at Serra Teresa. "Leave!" he added to his personal serafs. They were well enough trained that they stayed their ground in the storm, but his words cut them free and they flew.
The Serra looked at the Marano cerdan and then she nodded. Because she stood in the chamber of the wives, and not in any other room, they were obliged to obey her unspoken command. Obligation or no, they were wise enough to treat as commands each of the carefully worded requests she made of them; power has many faces, and not all of them wear obvious rank.
The cerdan sheathed their swords, shaken, and left the chambers, escorting Alana and Illia in their midst. The Serra stepped away from her seraf with a dignity that she did not feel, and he, too, she sent away—for if the healer did not wish his own serafs in attendance, he would most certainly not want hers.
Ramdan hovered until the healer's shaking white hands touched Lissa en'Marano's body, pushing the stained silks aside in a blind search for skin. Then he bowed to his Serra and walked quietly out of the room, his hair tossed by wind, his hems flapping in the gale.
Serra Teresa, Serra Diora and the masked stranger whose hand burned with a cold fire watched as Ser Laonis sank into the healer's trance, his hands stilling against Lissa en'Marano's white, white skin. Wind turned to breeze, and the breeze gentled his face, brushing away strands of his hair. His eyes were closed, his brow creased; sweat caught the light and softened his features.
Serra Teresa had never seen a healing so close to the edge before. In truth, she had only twice seen healers called, both times for Adano in his tumultuous youth. He would not speak of either now. Watching Ser Laonis' face become slowly more unguarded, she thought she understood why.
"Diora," she said, pitching her voice above the wind, although it was quieting. "It is time for you to leave us." She thought that Diora might demur, and was prepared for it, but the child raised her face without argument.
Serra Teresa bent down and hugged her niece tightly, planting a kiss upon either upturned cheek.
"Will he heal her?" Diora whispered into her aunt's ear, the voice, that special gift, undampened by wind.
"Yes," was the soft reply. There was no doubt in it.
She felt the tension leave Diora's body in a rush, as if it were water and Diora a broken vessel. She tightened her arms instinctively to catch her almost-child's sudden weight. "I'm very tired," Diora whispered.
And why wouldn't she be? She had spent herself fighting the compulsion placed there by a woman trained in the voice. Teresa lifted her, thinking it odd that her weight was so slight.
"Kallandras," she said, again folding her voice in privacy, although she doubted very much that anyone but he would hear it.
The white mask turned toward her, in silence.
"I must take my child to the sleeping chambers. Will you watch?"
"I will watch," he said, his voice smooth and completely uncluttered by expression, "for as long as is necessary."
She had never seen a healing so close to the edge before; had never been so close to having her curiosity satisfied. But Diora's arms were around her neck, the trust—and the need—in them implicit, a just weight. Perhaps this was the Lady's way of granting the healer some small measure of privacy, some peace from the voyeurism of the curious.
Or perhaps it was a test, a choice between the desire to be comforted and the desire to comfort. Only beneath the Festival Moon could she have been given two such choices in peace. She kissed the top of Diora's head, knowing the gesture for the luxury that it was.
But as she walked away, child in arms, she called upon the voice and sent it to the man who had brought the wind. "Why?" she asked him softly, knowing that he would hear all of the questions that single word contained.
The sound of her feet against the stones was her only answer for a long moment.
"I don't know."
It was almost a stranger's voice, and she understood in that moment why he was so guarded—for she heard a wild keening beneath the surface of those words, an enormity of loss that dwarfed any that she had ever felt, and she knew then that this was as honest as she wanted him to be.
He did not stay to the end, for he knew what Serra Teresa did not: that a healing of this nature, when one walked so close to death's edge, brought together two people in so complete a fashion that to sunder them again brought the healer only pain.
And the healed.
He had no desire to see such pain; it was a distant mirror that nonetheless reflected too much, too clearly. But his word, once given, he would not break again; he remained in the harem's open chamber until Lissa en'Marano's prone, red body began to rise and fall with the movement of easy breath.
He watched her hands tremble and flutter weakly, gaining strength as the seconds passed. And he watched those hands close around the neck of the reluctant healer, as if to hold him there forever. The healer's eyes, he could not see, and the healer did not move.
"Lady bless you," he said softly, gaining the window.
He sat there a moment under the Festival Moon, the sounds of merriment and freedom as loud as high waves against the sea wall of his home.
"They will kill you on the morrow," she said, her voice clear and strong although the sleeping chambers of the children surrounded her.
"I know," he told her. "There will be war this year, as there was a decade ago; we will survive it now as we did then. We will fight our way to peace over the bodies of the fallen, when neither side can afford to support such an effort; there will follow treaties, and there will be trade. And perhaps, then, you might come to Essalieyan and visit the college of Senniel."
"Perhaps," she said, but her tone said never.
"Teach her, Serra. Teach her as much as you dare. It is terrible to grow up with such a gift in isolation."
"As I can, I will." She paused. "I will not forget this evening."
"Nor I. May the memory not be a trap."
They were both silent a moment, and then Teresa said, "It so often is, isn't it? Lady watch you."
"And you."
He pushed himself off the side of the building and into the courtyard, rolling into the cover of shadow so reflexively it was almost more natural than breathing. He found Salla and his harp, fit one snugly over his shoulder and the other beneath his arm, and then bid a silent farewell to the Dominion of Annagar, and the vibrant streets of the Tor Leonne.
He had hundreds of miles to travel and an army to pass around to deliver his message. It was time to move on.
* * *
CHAPTER FIVE
Sunlight.
Bright and crimson with first light; the Festival Moon's ascendancy was over. The streets shrank into their normal lines, their hard-edged, dusty reality; people hid their masks, or buried them, or kept them as heart's ease against the coming days. The Lord held sway, and the Lord's will was no feckless freedom, no weakness, no childish utterances; in the Dominion, strength ruled.
The people of Annagar understood strength well.
In the morning, Serra Teresa rose as Ramdan played the chimes. She saw her mask on the cushion beside her bed and held it a moment, weighing its value. Then, gesturing, she handed the slender, simple face to her seraf. "To be kept," she told him.
"And the clothing?"
"To be discarded."
He bowed and then stopped as she lifted a perfectly graceful hand.
"No—keep it. Keep it for me." She seldom changed her mind; it was an open sign of hasty decision—or indecision.
He bowed again.
It was her custom to start the morning with the samisen or the harp, and the morning after the Festiv
al of the Moon was, in theory, a morning like any other. But he knew her well enough to bring no instrument on this particular morn; the night cast its shadows, and there was only one way to dispel them.
Her clothing was laid out for her, and after washing and gentle oiling, she felt ready to leave the night behind.
The brass bell outside of her personal room chimed. Ramdan bowed and left her, returning with a graceful haste.
Sendari, she thought.
"Ser Sendari wishes the pleasure of Serra Teresa's company at her earliest possible convenience."
"And he will be?"
"In the Chamber of Contemplation."
"Very well." She adjusted the swathe of the sari's silk and pulled the braided strands of her dark hair forward. Then, as a well-schooled Serra must, she obeyed her brother's command.
He did not bow when he saw her, and that lapse of grace was rare. So, too, were the circles under his eyes, the color of his face. His clothing was disheveled and dusty, his hands dirty, his lips cracked. She should have been shocked.
"Ser Sendari," Serra Teresa said, bowing very low.
Too low. His eyes narrowed at the implied criticism of his own lack of greeting. "Serra Teresa," he said, curtly. "I apologize if I have not yet had time to attire myself in the usual fashion—but I have received a most unsettling… message."
She waited; he kept her there, and silent, a full five minutes, as was his right. The night was gone, the moon dimmed; she was once again a woman, and he her superior. He began again. "The message was carried by a seraf of the clan Caveras. Does this mean anything to you?"
"No, Ser Sendari. Perhaps it has something to do with Ser Laonis?"
"Indeed it does." He clipped each word so sharply it almost sounded as if he were spitting. "And do you know what the gist of the message might be?"
She tired of his game, and her part in it, but she knew how to play it forever. "No, Ser Sendari."
"Lord burn you, Teresa—this is not the time!"
No one in the room moved; indeed, Ser Sendari's serafs froze in startlement at his outburst.
"At your command, then." The Serra drew herself up. "Have you been to your wives?"
"No—but I now know that Ser Laonis, for reasons that are entirely unclear to me, chose to heal Lissa."
"Yes."
"Do you know what the risks of that healing entail?"
"Yes, Sendari."
"Do you know what it costs?"
"No."
"Well, my clever, clever sister, let me tell you. Ten thousand soldi, payable immediately."
The lines of her face did not change at all; they had frozen in place. "Immediately?"
"That is what I said."
"I am not completely aware of the financial condition of this family." This was almost true. "Is this of grave difficulty?"
"That is," he replied, through teeth that were obviously clenched, "twenty times what we paid to procure Lissa, as you well know. If I could sell all of the serafs I have with me, and most of my wives, I might be able to raise two thirds of that price—but not in one day." He said it because in his sleepless exhaustion he was not completely certain that she knew it; he should have been. "How did you come to allow this?"
She said absolutely nothing.
His voice carried what lay between the words. For the Serra Teresa, the healing had already become a triumph of life over death, of hope over despair; for Sendari, it was a reminder of what lay between them, behind him. Of his failure to convince a long-ago healer to walk the same edge for his wife.
That healer was dead two years, in a riding accident in which he had instantly broken his neck—one of the few accidents a healer of any note could not survive. He had never told her, and she had never asked, if he was the hand behind that death, or if it was merely the Lady come in her time. Whichever, it was clear that that death had not assuaged the earlier one.
After a moment Ser Sendari straightened his shoulders. "Enough." It was not an apology—not quite. But it was as close as he could come in the presence of another. "I have sent a rider to Adano, and I have asked the aid of Captain Alesso di'Marente."
He did not need to tell her that Marente would be reluctant to intervene if Caveras made it clear that Marano was to suffer; very few crossed healers without paying a high price.
She bowed then. "With your permission, Ser Sendari, I wish to retire to the harem."
"While we have it," Sendari muttered darkly, but he nodded.
She found Alana outside of the morning chambers, ringing her hands in a most unattractive and unbecoming fashion. Her hair hung loose, and although it had been washed, it had not been braided or pearled; she wore a sleeping shift, and not a proper sari, and her hands and feet seemed rough and dry.
"Teresa!" Alana lifted her head and straightened her shoulders as she saw the Serra approach.
"Alana. Does something trouble you?"
"Yes, Serra." The relief in the oldest of Sendari's wives was evident; the Serra Teresa was here, and there was very little in the harem that did not bend to the Serra's will. Her hands fell to her sides, although Teresa was not certain that Alana was even aware of the change in her posture.
She should have been more severe, but it had been a long night, and there were no guests, no outsiders, to see such a poor display of schooling on Alana's part. "Tell me," the Serra said quietly.
"It's Lissa," the older woman replied, bringing her hands up and then, as if only suddenly aware of the motion, forcing them down again. "She's—she won't eat. She won't speak. Illia thought it was the baby—it's her first, and you've seen how it is, to lose the first. But I've just come from seeing her myself, and it's not the loss of the child."
"What is it? Was the healing not complete?"
"I—I don't know, Teresa. She won't speak."
"Stand aside, then. Let me go to her."
Serra Teresa had seen death before, her grandfather's first among them, but by no means the last. She knew what a corpse looked like, and knew what a difference there was between a living man and a man whose lips had passed their last breath, although that difference might be measured in seconds.
She knew that the healers, should they so choose, could call a man back from that last breath. And she had never seen it done, never once, although the clans had the money for it. But until she spoke, on that first morning, with Lissa en'Marano, until she saw the shattered grayness of the young woman's usually bright face, until she saw the lift of eyes, the slight tip of head, the nuance of gesture that was not—quite—Lissa's, she did not understand why.
To bring this—this half-wife back, I would have to become her.
He had told them the truth.
"Lissa," she said, and stopped as Lissa en'Marano came into view.
The girl's face was mired in tears; her hair, unwashed and untended, was matted to her shining skin. Her eyes, wide and dark, were unblinking and reddened, and they looked into a distance that was so far away, Teresa thought that walking all her life, she might never bridge the gap. Beside her, trays of food, untouched, and a full pitcher of clear, sweet water, showed that the serafs had been unsuccessful in their attempts to feed her.
There were no serafs now.
"Lissa," Serra Teresa said again, her voice less stern. "Alana says that you will not speak with her. What ails you?"
The girl did not answer.
Teresa walked quietly across the room, kneeling on the foremost of the cushions against which Lissa lay like a broken doll. "Lissa," she said again, but this time, the word carried her concern, her authority, the fear she felt, and the desire to protect this youngest of the wives.
If it carried compulsion, it was a compulsion that no magic could reproduce, no stranger's voice. Lissa en'Marano turned to face her.
She opened her mouth, but she did not speak; the words were too large for her lips, or so it seemed to Serra Teresa as she watched the girl struggle. After a moment, she gave up entirely on the words, and instead opened h
er arms and pulled the girl in as if she were still a child in the harem's private chambers. Lissa stiffened a moment against the brace of her arms, and then she collapsed there, crying in a way that no woman of any worth did—loudly, gracelessly, noisily.
At another time, she might have brushed those tears aside and explained to her that tears could be, if they were absolutely necessary, an embellishment to a woman's beauty—a hint of the vulnerability that some men found so appealing—if they were done gracefully and minimally. She knew that Lissa was beyond listening. Later, perhaps.
Or perhaps not.
"Lissa," she said, ignoring the stiffness in her neck and her shoulders, "please. Only tell me what ails you, and I will do what it is in my power to do to help."
Sobbing, choked and quieting as Lissa raised her head, was the only answer that Serra Teresa received for several minutes. She brushed strands of hair out of a wet, wet face, pulling it back, attempting to return to Lissa some of the beauty and the clean simplicity that she had been chosen for. Lissa did not resist her, but Teresa thought it might be because she simply didn't care. She waited, sitting within the circle of Lissa's privacy.
Then, words breaking as if they were vessels dropped a long distance onto the peaks of rocks and barren ground, Lissa said, "He left me."
Teresa knew better than to interrupt the words with questions. One of the most important lessons she had ever learned in life was when to wait.
"He's gone. Teresa—it was so dark and so cold—I was so tired—I wanted someone to come for me—I thought they would come—"
She knew that she would need cleaning herself; knew that the work of her serafs would be undone by such close contact with Lissa. But what, after all, were serafs for? She held the youngest of Sendari's wives as tightly as she could. Because no one else could do it. And because, yes, no one was there to witness it.