Michelle West - Sun Sword 01 - The Broken Crown

by sun sword

  "Speak it, then," he said, shaking his head ever so slightly at the man who stood to his right.

  "You are a half-day's ride from the capital of the Empire."

  "We are aware of that."

  "If you continue at your present speed, you will make it by evening."

  "Indeed."

  "And you will arrive too late." She looked beyond his shoulders, at the horses in the farmer's run. "There is a messenger run in the town five miles North on the road. They will not let you take the horses without a significant bribe. Pay the bribe—do not attempt to kill the keeper— and take fresh horses."

  "And our own?"

  She shook her head softly. "I know what they mean to you," she said softly, "and if you will, you may risk one of your own as a guard, although I would not, if I were you."

  Her face grew pale, as if the sun were harsher against it. "The hostages in the Tor Leonne—the Essalieyanese Imperial hostages—were killed publicly and, by Essalieyanese standards, brutally, by the order of the powers that now rule the Tor. If you not not arrive in Averalaan Aramarelas before sunset tonight, you had best not arrive at all."

  * * *

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  The Great Hall was so crowded that The Terafin was surprised to find it cool and pleasant within until she noticed, in the farthest reach of the upper gallery, three men standing in the triangular form that she saw so seldom among the Magi. It meant that they were cooperating at some venture; some movement of air, of ice, of wind.

  If this meeting were to last as long as the Council of The Ten—and there was every indication that it would be longer—the activity of these mages would be boon and blessing. No doubt, she thought wryly, it would also be expensive.

  The ceremonial chairs—the ten and the six—had been placed along the northern side of the crowded gallery, with lesser chairs in which to position the advisers that each of The Ten brought, and with standing room for their personal guards. The ten and the six had been elevated, and several of the ten were already occupied. The Princes, and their escort, Astari all, were in the lowest of the six thrones, an echo of their fathers in their youth. At fifteen and sixteen, Prince Reymar and Prince Cormar were handsome and grave; they had no youthful peccadilloes, no youthful, mispent passions, no secrets by which they could be embarrassed at strategic points in their later rule. The god-born never did, at least, not those born to Reymaris and Cormaris. She smiled as she saw the glower that had etched itself in Prince Reymar's face; his forehead was creased, and his brows drawn together in a single red line that matched the flush of his cheeks. Prince Cormar was more subdued in his raging. An echo, she thought, of the conflict between the Kings.

  The Kings and the Queens would arrive last; a runner— no, two—sat beside their thrones, guarding their boredom with carefully schooled expressions as they kept track of who had arrived, and who had not.

  Two runners.

  Which meant, of course, that either the Kings and Queens were not together, or more likely, the Kings themselves were divided upon the issue that was to be decided by this gathering. Not for the first time, she wondered which way it would fall. She disliked not knowing, for she was in the habit of being able to draw upon her information sources to avoid the appearance of ignorance. The Terafin was not a woman who enjoyed surprises.

  Gabriel offered her an arm and she smiled at him, accepting his grace. The Terafin throne—and that was, in truth, what it was—was high, and not perhaps as easily gained as it had been a decade ago. He took the seat to her right, as was his duty; Jewel took the seat to her left. She looked down upon their heads, wondering briefly what the allure of a tall chair was. Wondering, and to her chagrin, knowing at the same time. Torvan and Alayra took positions directly behind them, although Alayra had protested her position in the, honor guard. She was a weapons master now; a woman with a sharp eye and a sharper tongue—but she felt her skills too slow and too blunted by age to make her a worthy guard.

  Which is why, The Terafin had said dryly, it's called an honor guard. Now go to the quartermaster and requisition yourself a dress uniform if you don't fit the one you used to wear. I will not take no for an answer.

  Captain Arrendas stood beside Torvan ATerafin. These three were a part of her Chosen, and they had proved, over this last decade, that her choice was more than sound.

  Enough musing. The Berriliya had entered the hall moments after The Terafin party had; he assumed his seat with a minimum of fuss and pomp. She noted that Severn ABerriliya and Garth ABerriliya were his chosen advisers. No risks there; both of these men, Severn ten years the Berriliya's junior and Garth almost twenty, were military born and bred.

  The Tamalyn looked as if he'd been in the hall from the moment it was opened, which was good, because he had a tendency to be late for most Council meetings—in fact, for any of his meetings—and the Crowns did not look well upon such flagrant disregard among The Ten. Not, of course, that any of the rest of The Ten thought it flagrant disregard. Absentmindedness, yes.

  But such a trait in a man who held power…

  The Kalakar arrived, Vernon AKalakar and Korama AKalakar at her side. Where most of The Ten chose ceremonial garb, or at the very least a somber, courtly gown which would serve the throne well, The Kalakar wore a variant on a dress military uniform. She also carried a sword, and The Terafin knew it was not merely for display.

  Ellora had only one other adviser—Terlin AKalakar— but it came as no surprise to The Terafin that Terlin had not been chosen as part of this group; Terlin was both young and as devoted to the Mother as she was to The Kalakar—an uneasy alliance, that. Such split loyalties were usually not tolerated within Kalakar.

  Or, if she were honest, in any House.

  "Terafin."

  She turned, and Gabriel whispered quietly. The Exalted had arrived.

  "Soon," she told him softly, lowering her head deferentially as the three made their way to the southern chairs which were theirs by right. The golden eyes of the god-born daughter of the Mother were fragments of sunlight seen through thin glass; warm, but not hot, and very lovely. They swept the gathering, and The Terafin knew, from past experience, that each and every person in the room who could see her face felt, for a moment, that she met and held their gaze with an equal measure of affection and sternness.

  Likewise with the other Exalted: the son of Reymaris and the son of Cormaris, the Lords of Justice and Wisdom. They were like the Kings, almost brothers to them—which was as it should be, for they shared a parent. They appeared serene, even calm, as they took their seats and adorned themselves with the emblems of their office. But they, unlike the Kings, had the luxury of keeping their own counsel and steering their own course.

  The bardmaster of Senniel College came next, and she came alone, which was unusual. The Terafin thought that Sioban would have loved this pomp and ceremony—but her successor, Solran, did not. Still, she knew how to convey the appearance of such an appreciation; she wore Senniel's colors in a sash that crossed shoulder to waist, over an elegant white shift. Her arms were empty; the harp for which she was famed had been left, as if it were a weapon or a child, at the College.

  She took her place with the aid of the elderly Anduvin ANorwen, at sixty-seven years of age one of the most powerful men in the Empire. He was the Master who, in the absence of an Artisan, ruled the maker's guild; he did so with guile, cunning, and a genuine passion. His gift was metalwork in all its forms. The years had been as kind to him as one might expect of a man who was, in his own words, fond of his food and his drink.

  And there, Meralonne APhaniel. Platinum-haired, slender mage, the man who by his own choice represented the often fractious Magi. Seventeen years had done very little to change him, although the signs were there in his step and the line of his shoulders.

  Jewel straightened her back and sat up very correctly in her chair; The Terafin smiled softly and did the same a moment or two before the doors rolled open for the final time that day. Seeing The T
erafin's expression, Jewel smiled in return.

  "I didn't see it," she said softly, "I was paying attention to the runners."

  The Kings, and their Queens, entered the great hall. The sands began to run in earnest.

  Valedan expected the Kings' Swords to come for him, and he was not disappointed. As they entered the enclosure, moving in a grim silence, made shiny by unsheathed swords and gleaming helms, he bowed to the Serra Marlena, and then in turn to the Serra Alina. But he did not linger long; he feared his mother would embarrass both herself and him by crying or weeping in front of the Imperial guards.

  Guards who, until these last few days, he had never feared or thought of as truly foreign. As he stepped out into the long passage that led to the footpath, he lifted his chin, knowing who he had to be, and feeling it settle upon him like a thin, weak silk.

  The Kings' Swords closed ranks around him; he could feel their hostility, and while it frightened him, he knew that in their position, he would feel no less angry. He wished for finer robes, for the crown, for the very Sun Sword; they would bolster him on his long walk, where no cerdan, and no other compatriot, would be allowed to.

  But he had none of these things, and when you had nothing, you did without as gracefully, gravely, and strongly as you did if you had them. Who had said that? Not his mother. He thought a moment as his steps reverberated in the silence of stone and breath and anger. Serra Tonia. Not the Tyr's wife, but the woman who coordinated the concubinage in which his mother lived, the second harem. He remembered her; her hair was pale white, gossamer and thin like a spider's web. Her skin was lined by sun and wind—the wind, his mother told him, had been so unkind to her—and her eyes were like the blue of the cloudless sky, when the Lord's face was clearest, but not harsh. She was not the Tyr'agar's concubine, but rather the concubine of his father, yet the Tyr'agar respected her, and his whim granted her power, where her husband's passing granted nothing at all.

  They said, in whispers, at moon's height, that it was she who had raised and coddled Markaso di'Leonne as a small boy. Valedan somehow doubted it; he could not imagine the grim, cold man his father was as anything but Tyr.

  What is a Tyr'agar? He'd asked it once, and only once, perched upon the august throne of Serra Tonia's lap.

  You must never ask that question, Valedan. You must never be ignorant of so important a fact. He had nodded; he could feel the reluctant motion in the tension of his neck, as if movement had echoes. But how can you not be ignorant if you do not ask the question? She relented, as she often did, when there were no witnesses. The Tyr'agar is the man chosen by the Lord of the Sun. He must be as harsh as the desert sun, for his enemies will be harsher still; he must know when to let the rains come, or the valleys will die; he must grant the Lady passage, although he is the Lord's man, when it is wise and right to do so, for there is no day without night.

  He said nothing, and she must have known what it meant, for he felt the whiffle of a sigh across the top of his head before she rested her fragile chin there a moment. The Tyr'agar is the clansman most beloved of God.

  That he understood.

  Or he thought he had.

  He stumbled, because he could almost smell the sweet and delicate perfume that Serra Tonia wore that day, and every day, even though time and wind had long since carried it away. She had hugged him. Not even his mother had made him feel so safe.

  And she was dead. Killed by treacherous hands just as surely as he and his compatriots would be if he failed.

  If the Tyr'agar was the clansman most beloved of God, then Valedan was no Tyr. He felt small, beneath the Lord's notice, as the sound of his steps grew heavier and heavier, as if he were walking, not to an audience of Kings, but to a harsher and older Northern judgment—the embrace of the turbulent waters which surrounded the Holy Isle.

  The music buoyed him.

  Oh, there were no words, no song, and the notes were faint, faint tendrils of sound that should never have carried over the step of so many armed and armored men— but they did, they did.

  As he came into the open light, the Kings' Swords stopped, but the music did not. He heard the Primus step forward, and heard, of all things, a familiar female voice.

  "Primus Gaeton."

  "ACormaris."

  He could not see her; the backs of too many men blocked his gaze, and he did not wish to crane to and fro like a spectator too young to understand the importance of decorum.

  "We have come to join your escort, if you will permit it."

  We?

  "Primus Sivari sent word, ACormaris. We would be honored. Will you take the front?"

  "No," she said softly. "We will stand beside."

  Mailed gloves made such a full clangor when they struck breastplate. The Swords moved to either side as one man, or one living tunnel. At their end, he saw Mirialyn ACormaris and her companion. Her companion played the lute quietly, quietly. Kallandras of Senniel.

  Why, he thought, although his courage failed him and he did not dare to ask, are you helping me? You saved my life when the demon first attacked. You saved it today, when you came with Ser Kyro's sword. If you walk beside me, everyone in the Council will know that you support me? Why?

  The bard's music answered, faintly, softly.

  The moon song.

  The lullaby.

  He spoke Weston as if he were a native; spoke it without accent, without inflection, without blemish. He wrote it with a perfect, steady hand, and understood its nuances—or was beginning to—better than he understood the tongue he was born to.

  There were fewer words for death, fewer words for battlefield, fewer words for weaponry and war.

  No, that wasn't true. Old Weston had easily as many words—maybe more—but it was called Old Weston for a reason. People didn't use the words that much anymore. To most of the Essalieyanese, war was distant, a Southern blight.

  Or so he had been taught.

  But when the doors to the Council Halls rolled open, when he stood beneath their height, dwarfed, as even a god might have been, by their vast recessed arches, he felt the anger in the silence as if it were the call of the ancient horn, the whistle of the crescent sword descending too quickly against the wind. Had he thought the Kings' Swords angry? He forgot it. The Kings' Swords were weapons, no more, no less. Gathered here were the hands that held them.

  These men and women were finely attired, and they sat in rows of softly cushioned chairs that rose steeply toward the heights, that no one might miss what took place upon the floor. They were his judge and his jury, not his peers.

  And they had to be his peers, or he had already failed.

  "Tyr'agar," Princess Mirialyn ACormaris said. She bowed, low, the gesture Imperial. "The Crowns and The Ten await your petition." She stepped back, and then said softly, "Stand on two feet."

  Something about the words felt strange; it was a moment before he realized what. The Princess was speaking in Torra, the tongue of the Annagarians. He wanted to thank her, but knew it would have to wait; she stepped away, falling to the side as if he, and not she, were the one who was moving. The Kings' Swords did the same, as did Kallandras. He stood alone.

  And on two feet.

  The whispers started; he heard them as if they were the gale itself. Anger, sibilance, reflective debate. He recognized many of the men and women who sat here, waiting. To the Triumvirate, he bowed. It was not his plan, or even his intent, but as they, golden-eyed, met his gaze and held it, measuring him, he felt compelled to bend. In the Dominion, he knew that each of these three would have died before they drew a second breath. And he knew, as they watched, that they knew, and they judged.

  The golden-eyed were demons' get, or so his mother oft whispered, but Valedan was no child to be scared by the tales of the harem. Eight years, almost nine, he had lived here; surely, if these were demons, then in the afterlife, hell was no punishment.

  Or was it? In their stern faces, he saw no pity.

  But he remembered, because he was not
so very far from the time when he could listen to the tales of the valor of Leonne the Founder, that the Lord himself had said that the Northern Kings—and the Kings alone—were not of tainted blood; their eyes were the color of the sun's light and the sun's justice. And those Kings had proved true to the Lord of the Sun—they had ridden, at the behest of Leonne the Founder. They had fought, and many, many of their people had died. How, he thought, could one tell when the blood was tainted or the blood was blessed?

  The Lord's words, his mother would say, and she would be stern.

  "Courage, Valedan," someone said. The voice carried from the heart of the gathered crowd, but although he searched, he could not see the person who uttered those two words.

  Courage.

  He took a breath. Another, deeper. He was here. If he failed, he and his compatriots would die—but that sentence hung above them regardless. At worst, his actions here would change nothing. Almost too numb to think of anything but that sentence, those failures, he stepped forward into the circle that lay against the darkwood floor as if held there by golden, moving light.

  King Cormalyn, dark-haired and golden-eyed, sat in robes of a midnight blue such as the Lady's servants might wear, at evening's fall, in the Tor Leonne; King Reymalyn wore white and gold, with a cape the color of the sea at dawn thrown back over broad shoulders. He was fire-haired and fire-jawed, although his beard was silvered with time, and his eyes were so cold they seemed black for all of the gold about their center. To either side, in thrones less high but no less regal, sat the Queens Marieyan and Siodonay; he met the eyes of the eldest Queen, the Queen Marieyan, and almost faltered at what he saw in them. Compassion, regret. And steel. She looked to him to be the age that Serra Tonia had been so many years ago. Queen Siodonay wore the ceremonial sword of her office, and more; a glittering of chain beneath a silken hauberk. The crown that rested upon her brow was her face's perfect adornment. Beside each of the Queens sat a young man. One was red-haired and clean-shaven, the other dark-haired; they seemed to be, both in mood and demeanor, the youthful image of the men who ruled the Empire. Even their eyes were the same liquid gold. The Princes Reymar and Cormar. At fifteen and sixteen they were barely his junior, and in bearing, they had always seemed adult by comparison. He felt that comparison keenly now.