by sun sword
"She has her son, and she has Faida with whom to share joy, and Serena from whom to take advice.
"I am not a mother," Ruatha added, staring a moment at hands that seemed, for all her strength, curiously unblemished and unhardened. "I don't know how to share what she has to offer. I'm happy that she's happy. I would kill to protect her baby." She raised her head, met Diora's eyes with eyes that were just as dark. "But you need me. So I'm here."
Awkward silence filled a room that would have been still if Ruatha had not picked up the large fan and begun to use it to send a gust of warm air across Diora's fevered face. Diora broke it because she was the better taught of the two. "You wouldn't have done this before."
"No."
"Why then? Why now?"
Hair fell down her shoulder and silk-clothed back as Ruatha en'Leonne shrugged tightly. "I don't know. What you did—we all saw it. We haven't spoken about it. Serena won't let us. But even if she didn't forbid it, I don't know that we would. You were—you seemed like the Lady's hand, Diora. Faida says you were sent to us by the Lady as an act of mercy." She smiled awkwardly, looking at the fan and not at the woman to whom she spoke. In anger, she was direct and forceful. But here—it was almost as if she dared not meet Diora's eyes, not because of what she might see in the harem's Serra, but rather, because of what Diora would see in her.
"I told her we deserve you. Or maybe she does. I'm not—I haven't been kind. To you. I'm—I didn't know what you'd do."
"Ser Illara?"
"He's been—occupied. Samanta is desperate because Deirdre's given him his first son; she has something to prove, and we've let her. We—Serena, that is—told him that you were unwell because of the heat, and that you did not wish to disgrace yourself by being less than the Serra that he had the right to expect. Or something like that. He seemed to accept it, so we've all been left alone.
"Especially Deirdre."
"But the baby," Diora said softly. "The baby is a boy."
Ruatha met her eyes again. "Yes," she said, oddly gentle. She reached for Diora's cup, filled it, and then moved closer, placing the back of her hand across Diora's forehead. "Diora—you're too hot. Are you certain—?"
"Yes. If they come," Diora replied, feeling lucid but oddly detached, "they'll call the healers. If the healers come, they'll know what it is that I—that I suffer. They'll know what the fever means." Ah, no—Ruatha was right. She could feel the cold building within as her hands started to shake and droplets of precious water flitted across the sleeping silks like wasted tears. "That I'm gifted, somehow. The Lady's gift or the Lord's—it makes no difference. If they know, they'll take me away, or they'll give me to the Radann for cleansing, or worse, they'll make a weapon of me, and nothing more than a weapon."
The words stopped as her teeth began to chatter. Ruatha brought blankets and pried the cup from between her hands before the water was completely spilled by her short, jittery movements.
"Sleep," Ruatha said. "There will be no healers here."
Diora believed her. And because she did, she slept peacefully.
Two days after that, Diora rose for the first time. She was exhausted by the fevers but hungry; her search for food brought her into the largest of the rooms: the harem's center, where Serena en'Leonne usually held court. But it was not Serena who occupied the place of honor beneath the artist-rendered golden sun on the high ceilings above; it was Deirdre, and in Deirdre's arms, wrapped tight and bound into stillness—which looked uncomfortable at best—was the babe.
"Na'dio!" Serena rose at once. "Where is Ruatha?"
Diora smiled. "Asleep. And she should be. I don't think she's slept for close to six days."
"She'll be angry if you left while she was sleeping," Deirdre offered, a tired smile tugging at the corner of her lips.
"Oh. But she was exhausted."
"Well, yes." Deirdre looked down at the bundle in her arms; arms that were, now, a mother's arms, and strong enough to carry the weight for as long as the Lady allowed.
"Diora," Serena said, beckoning quietly.
Diora smiled wanly, but she did not look away, not yet. She had eyes for the mother and the child, as if they were not quite real; as if they could be taken from her in a moment because they had crossed a threshold that she herself had never even approached. Deirdre made this life.
"Would you like to—to hold him?"
She said yes before she spoke; her arms made an awkward cradle as she approached Deirdre en'Leonne, she who seldom made any movement awkwardly. Deirdre smiled, but Diora heard, clearly, the catch of her breath as she placed her newborn son into another woman's arms. Any other woman.
"Hold his head," she said, although she knew that Diora had grown up within the confines of a clan's harem, and had seen infants before.
"Does he have a name?"
"Danello."
"Na'dani," Diora said quietly. The child slept on. "He's beautiful, Deirdre—although I don't think he looks much like you yet."
"No. Only tell me he doesn't look too much like our husband, and I'll be grateful."
Diora laughed—but Serena clearly considered this inappropriate. "Na'dio, Na'Deir, that is quite enough. Your husband is the man who will rule the Tor, and he must be treated with respect, gravity, and dignity. Is that clear?"
"Yes, Serena," Deirdre said, not in the least repentant.
Diora had the grace to blush. But when she gave Na'dani back to his mother, she whispered, "He's already far more beautiful than our husband could ever be."
Which, of course, set Deirdre to giggling, which in turn set Serena to frowning. Life was returning—would return, if Diora had any say at all—to normal.
She joined Serena by the screen doors that had been opened to let in light and a view of the rippling lake a full building's height and more beneath their feet. They sat in the silence the view created, feeling peaceful, hopeful.
Diora spoke first, but that was often the case when these two sat alone. "I need your aid," she told the older woman quietly.
Serena waited, listening to the muted whisper of the waters as they moved between rushes and lilies, over rocks and plants and a bank of sand. This was the voice of the Tor Leonne, because it was a symbol of life in a land that seemed to care so little for it. The Lady's gift to men bred by the desert winds.
"If I have no child this year, no one will notice," Diora continued, speaking so that only Serena might hear.
"True. But next? I think next year, it would be remarked on, and not in our husband's favor."
"Then I would have that child next year, not this one."
"Why, Diora?"
The younger wife glanced over her shoulder at Deirdre en'Leonne and the babe she held so close.
"Because I believe that my child will be the death of that one. Not now, not for many years—but it is coming. It always comes when the Tyr feels his hold on his clan is weak." She spoke now with the Marano voice, her father's crisp and dry precision informing every word.
"And what will waiting a year or two do?"
"In a year or two, many things can change, Serena. Before the Lady came to these lands, the Lord's lands, it is said by many that there was only the desert and the desert winds. Nothing stands against those winds when they howl across the open plain.
"Yet the Lady stood. And if not for the Lady, there would be no life in Annagar."
"So it is said, yes. And you see yourself as the Lady come to the Lord's Dominion?"
"To bring life, yes. Or to preserve it. I believe that I can change our husband, Serena. I believe that I can help him rule—that I can, in a year, maybe only a little longer, make him confident enough that he need not raise my son to be quite so… cautious."
"Delicately put, Na'dio. You could offer to have no children at all."
"But, as you say, that would hurt our husband's reputation, and I have no desire to do that. His loss of face would no doubt be blamed, by Leonne, upon his Serra, or his wives, and his heir would be, would have
to be, the child of a mere wife, a concubine.
"And even if I decided to have no children, and he was forced to choose among his wives' children for one son to elevate, do you not think that single son would have to be far more ruthless to survive? Each and every one of his brothers would know that if it were not for a slip of the finger, a mistaken gesture on their father's part, they would be ruler of this vast domain instead of merely elevated serafs, or Tyran, if their brother so desired.
"Oh, no. If that were to happen, I would say that the son so chosen would be foolish indeed not to have the rest of his brothers killed because he would have justification in so doing."
"And your child would never need to take such drastic action."
"No."
Serena offered Diora a measured smile, one of the few. "You are wise, Diora en'Leonne; wiser, I think, than many have given you credit for. I will aid you in this endeavor for the course of a full year—although there is risk in the timing. Illara is… a young man, with a young's man's sense of himself. I believe he already considers it a slight that you do not carry his child."
Diora shrugged elegantly. "I will bear the Leonne heir in time, and I will make that child and this house stronger than either already are."
"I believe, having delivered Danello into his mother's arms, that you will do just that," Serena said. But there was something in her eyes, some distant sadness, some lingering sorrow, that Diora could not understand.
"Be careful, Na'dio," Serena said softly. "Remember that the heart is a dangerous land, and there is not one more painful to have to leave once it is full entered."
But Diora did not hear her elder; she had already turned toward Deirdre, her ear caught by the slightly off-tune hum of a cradle song. Dusk was approaching.
* * *
CHAPTER TWELVE
Month of Scaral, 426 AA
The Tor Leonne
The preparations for the Festival of the Moon once again changed the face of the Tor Leonne. Where the Festival of the Sun was powerful, political, the Festival of the Moon held a hint of the Lady in everything; in the flowers planted in beds by the palace and the pavilions, in the blossoms, that came as if by unspoken decree to pinken the skirts of the red-leaved foreign trees, and in the loons that stopped to water in the lake itself.
Masks were made and masks sold, and in the streets of the lower city—a city that the wives and the Serra of the kai Leonne were never privileged to see, wines were being pressed in preparation for the festival of the following year, and the previous year's vintage, for the less discerning of the revelers, being carted through the streets.
No Tyr missed the Festival of the Sun, for it was by its nature a gathering of men who claimed power. But Moon-night was different, a door into the hidden world, a place where the power they spent their lives, and their family's blood, building afforded them no purchase. The Tyrs who chose to make this trek—and this year there were only two, the Tyr'agnate of Oerta and the Tyr'agnate of Sorgassa, had begun to arrive with their retinue. Diora saw their approach clearly because she recognized the banner of clan Lorenza, with the rising sun and its clearly marked distinct rays bordering its lowest edge, and the horse of the Tyr'agnate Eduardo kai di'Garrardi. She prayed, although it was full noon, that she would not have to look upon his face at any closer proximity than this—but it was Festival time, and much about the Festival was unpredictable.
The Tyr'agnate was the only unpleasant ripple in the tide of the day. Her husband, Ser Illara, had come and gone several times, sneaking past his wives when he thought they might otherwise be occupied to gaze upon the face of his infant son. The child was young and had only very recently started to smile, and the father—the angry and sullen father—had become captivated in some small way by that display of unaffected joy.
If joy it was. No one could quite say what would make Na'dani smile—and many things had been tried, most with so little dignity it might seem the Festival of the Moon had already arrived within the harem's heart and merely waited the chance to spread its wings wide over the rest of the Tor.
Deirdre was happy, if nervous still, and Ruatha took great pains to absent herself from her husband's side when he chose to visit this previously unwanted child. They held their breath—Deirdre, Faida, Ruatha, and Diora—as if it were drawn by a single person, waiting. Hoping.
The Serra Amanita also chose to visit the harem, but where her son was cautiously affectionate, she was quite cold; it put them all on their best behavior immediately, her visit, and it did not let go of them for days afterward. Her shadow was long and dark when it fell.
It fell heavily.
Of the women of the harem, only the Serra Diora en'Leonne was requested to avoid most of the revelry of the Festival itself, and she found this a bitter, bitter blow—although it wasn't unexpected. During a Festival night, many things, unasked for, could happen—and some things must not involve the Serra of the kai Leonne. The Tyr'agar could not, of course, command her absence—it was the Festival of the Moon, and she was no criminal— but his request held the force of law. Of the Lord's law. Of all the men in the realm whose bloodline must be unquestionable, it was his.
Still, if she was to acquiesce graciously to captivity, she was given her choice of companions, each of whom would then bear the weight of a similar "request." She hovered between selfish and selfless, and settled upon selfish with both guilt and hesitation. She wanted Ruatha and Faida and Deirdre to remain at her side. Deirdre was still often tired; for a small and completely immobile infant, Na'dani seemed to rule as much of her life as she let him. And, given her reluctance to place him with even the serafs who had been trained in such things, that was much.
Faida and Ruatha, on the other hand, had much more to lose, for the Festival of the Moon was the single night of absolute freedom that any of them might know. But they agreed willingly enough, setting only a single condition upon their voluntary captivity: that they might plan their own small celebration within the Leonne garden. Such permissions as were required were not withheld.
Unfortunately, such permissions not being withheld, they went about their plans with zeal and determination— and without Diora. They knew her strengths well; they did not speak in her presence and if conversation turned, in a sudden pivot of words, to the Festival Night, they would fall just as instantly silent.
The plans of the great and the powerful had never been of as much interest to Diora as the plans of these three women, these sister-wives. Had the days ever passed so slowly?
22nd Scaral, The Festival of the Moon, 426 AA
The Tor Leonne
It had started here. Sendari often thought it would end here, by the lake, with the moon full and hanging in a clear, cool sky. He knelt to touch the water's edge, remembering the shallower ponds of a boy's youth, where mosquitoes nested. They did not nest here, although perhaps it was because the dragonflies that hovered over the lilies were more efficient.
He doubted it.
He was a man of knowledge, and not a man of mindless superstition; he did not, as many of the Widan did not, believe in the Lord and the Lady. But this lake… this lake tested his lack of faith, and in the darkness of night, much to his great bemusement, it often won.
He stood alone this eve. Last year, just one year past, he and Na'dio had skirted the edge of the lake together. In the moonlight, the waters were shimmering, pale light into which one might descend forever—a door into the Lady's realm, a place of peace. Her hand was on his arm; he could feel it still, resting delicately against the raw silk robes he wore; she bowed her forehead into his shoulder and spoke a moment of childhood. Her childhood.
His own was far enough behind him that hers did not evoke it—but the days of her childhood woke in him memories that only the moon stirred now. He let her speak, interrupting seldom, before time's passage called them to descend into the city.
But even then they had been forced to part ways, she to go to the demiwall to join the gathered spectators, and
he to join the Widan in their display of finery: the fireworks by which the Festival was celebrated, the single gift which the Sword of Knowledge offered to anyone, be they Tyr'agar or common clansmen. He had thought, then, that this year, this year he would escape that duty although his fires were the brightest and his dragons the most fearsome, so that he might have some time with his daughter on the one night when it was not a weakness to do so.
But that was before the clan Leonne had made an offer which he had been either too wise, or too cowardly, to refuse. It was done. Even if Alesso's plans prevailed, it would not be undone; he wondered how much of a wedge it would drive between them, and if that wedge might be removed over time.
Or if she would continue to be a part and parcel of offers that he, as father, could not easily refuse. There were hints of that now; he faced them squarely, hearing the barely veiled desire in Eduardo di'Garrardi's voice. Hearing the anger at being first refused so that the Flower of the Dominion might be passed, untouched, to the kai Leonne.
You have already given her in marriage to one man, Alesso said. And she is known throughout the Dominion for both her beauty and her song. If she is desired, and she will be, might she not be given to wife again?
Yes.
It was too dark for Alesso to cast a shadow, but a shadow was cast across the lake's surface, and the waters, where the shadow touched them, seemed to bubble as if at sudden, scouring heat. He turned, angered, knowing who he would see.
Isladar, self-styled Lord. "Well met, Widan."
"What are you doing here?"
"I have been summoned for the revelry, I believe."
"I do not profess to have much of a sense of humor."
"Very well. This is the night of the Festival Moon, but it is not coincidence that our Lord sought this night for his own purpose and his own worship. More than that, oh, scholar of the antiquities, I shall leave to you to better understand."
The Kialli lord was dressed like a man, albeit a tall and slender one. Sendari found him profoundly beautiful for moments at a time—when he could see with human eyes, and not with eyes trained to magic's use. "You are not so respectful as your Sword's Edge."