Michelle West - Sun Sword 01 - The Broken Crown

by sun sword

  He was tired.

  Four days had passed since the crowning glory of the Festival's Height; four days since the Radann kai el'Sol had chosen both his death and his weapon.

  This man was not a man with rank or station that allowed him to witness the event, and he had no desire to do so.

  But someone had to. Someone had to bear witness, bear it with honor, and carry it home.

  So he had done something that he knew the Radann kai el'Sol would never have approved of: He had stolen a set of Radann's robes from the temple, and he had come to the water's edge, as the rest of the clansmen had come, both to witness the crowning of a Tyr—and its aftermath.

  After this, he had done the second of three things that he knew the Radann kai el'Sol would not approve of. He had taken the liberty—and it was a liberty punishable by death, although death was fast approaching regardless— of filling three skins with the waters of the Tor Leonne. Because the waters contained all that remained of his master—the waters and the wind.

  He had then returned to the temple, put away his needles, his shears, his crystals and pearls—those things which, as a master with little funding, he would have found difficult to replace. He took soldi as well, gold coins and silver, although he privately thought Fredero would forgive him that trespass.

  What he would not forgive, what he would never forgive, was the third of the three things.

  Jevri el'Sol, born Jevri kep'Lamberto, had taken the sword, Balagar, from its place of honor. If it objected, it did not make its voice known—not even when Jevri had, cautiously but with quiet determination, unsheathed the blade, wielding it. It was not the Lord's way, and he understood this, but he had never served the Lord; he had served Fredero. And while he understood that Fredero forgave the Radann Peder par el'Sol his treachery and his betrayal for the greater good of the Dominion, Jevri was under no obligation to do any such thing.

  This sword had belonged to his master; the master of his adult years, and the master of his choosing. He had been blessed and privileged, and he would honor that privilege before he sought another master.

  If he ever did. He was not a young man.

  The sun was hot during the day; the nights, cold. Not until he was well quit of the Terrean of Raverra did he sleep without the terrible ache in the bones of his fingers, his feet. But the roads were safe for an old man such as he, bearing the crest that he did. He stayed with men who accepted coin for hospitality, and he walked, cane in hand, watching the merchant caravans as they fought for space on roads that would soon see rain.

  He expected pursuit. There was none.

  When, he thought, would Peder par el'Sol—he could not bring himself to even think of the name kai el'Sol as any man's but Fredero's—notice the loss of the sword?

  It was in the Lord's hands.

  And the Lord did not choose, this time, to hinder. The days passed; he walked through them all, keeping a steady, a stately pace. The three skins, he did not touch, nor the sword, but he ate traveling rations, honeyed wheat and nuts and dried fruits. There were rivers and brooks as he proceeded North, into the plains that produced the finest horses in the Dominion.

  Jevri el'Sol crossed the Mancorvan border.

  To reach the city of Amar was less easy than he expected it would be; at every point along the road that a man could be stopped, he was stopped; if it were not for the symbol of the Lord across his shoulder, he thought his detention might have been rougher and lasted longer.

  Hard times, but he was calm; he expected no less.

  Lamberto was not a friend of the new Tyr'agar. How could it be, when the man ruled by treachery, by darkness?

  Politics, Jevri thought. And he continued to walk. Because this was his gift to Fredero kai el'Sol, the youngest of the Lambertan Tyr's brother's—youngest and most loved.

  Days passed. He thought the sun etched lines more deeply into his hands, his arms; he could not see his face, and was not particularly sorry for the lack. But he missed Fredero, perhaps because he carried so many responsibilities with him.

  Perhaps because they were friends.

  But Jevri el'Sol was patience personified in everything but his craft, and his craft was behind him; his past before. He walked from the heart of the Tor Leonne to the heart of the city of Amar, the home of the clan Lamberto, and although the road and the wind and the weather slowed him down, nothing stopped him.

  The gates were not as he remembered them, and he felt a twinge at that, a stab of surprise. There were Tyran here, bristling like angry boars.

  This was, however, Amar, and the Tyran here served the Lord with honor. They did not—a single one of them—recognize him, although he thought he recognized a few of their faces; it was hard to tell, the years changed men so.

  "I have come," he told the oathguard who barred his way, "to speak with Tyr Mareo kai di'Lamberto."

  "The Tyr is a busy man," the Tyran replied.

  "Yes. And he is a man who serves the Lord. He will hear what I have to say."

  But these men, they were determined, and in the end, Jevri had become curt. "I am tired, I am road weary, and I have come from the side of the Radann kai el'Sol to speak with Mareo. I will not be put off by young, self-important men. Do I make myself clear?"

  "You most certainly do," a familiar voice said.

  And the Tyran parted at once, as if they were a tunnel and not a wall. At the end, flanked by them, stood the Tyr'agnate who ruled Mancorvo.

  "Jevri," he said, with a broad smile, "welcome to our home."

  But Jevri did not return the smile. "Tyr'agnate," he said, although he had called him a good many things when they had lived under the roof of Serra Carlatta's harem together, and none of them had been that. "I have come from the Tor Leonne to deliver to you the tale of the last day of the Radann kai el'Sol."

  Mareo's face grayed at once, turned grim and dark. He waved the Tyran away, and said, simply, "Follow." As if he spoke to a seraf, a familiar seraf.

  And Jevri, born kep'Lamberto, obeyed.

  In the privacy of the harem—the same harem in which he had watched Fredero grow up—he told the Tyr his story. He was quiet as he spoke, as was his wont, and Mareo did little to interrupt.

  "I will do my penance," Jevri told him, "for the theft of the robe, but I have served the Lord faithfully these many years, and it is in the service of the Lord that I have come."

  But Mareo said, "It was in the service of Fredero that you came, and you came to Lamberto. You know that my brother forswore his family, to my father's dismay, and joined the Radann."

  "Rather well," Jevri replied, almost dryly. "But he thought of you often, and he would have wanted word of his fate to travel.

  "He drew the Sun Sword, Tyr'agnate, that all clansmen of honor might see for themselves the Lord's wrath, and make the honorable choice."

  "And you wished me to understand what my brother felt the only choice to be."

  "Yes. And more." He knelt and unstrapped the sword at his back. "This is Balagar."

  Mareo paled. "You stole the sword of the Radann kai el'Sol?"

  Jevri nodded grimly.

  "But why?"

  "Because when the armies ride, they will ride through Mancorvo. And it was the kai el'Sol's fervent belief that the demons who once served the Lord of Night will ride at their head. This sword was a sword that could stand against those creatures; it was a lesser sword than the Sun Sword, but it is a sword of right, one meant to be raised in defense of the Lord of the Sun.

  "Had he lived, he would have wielded it, taking the war to the kinlords and their master. But he did not live. And I have taken the sword," Jevri said softly, "to the only other man I consider worthy of bearing it, Lord forgive my presumption.

  "You need it, Tyr'agnate."

  The Tyr'agnate was silent a long time. At last, he said, "Do you know what they offered me?"

  Jevri felt a cold, sharp sting, as if something had passed through his heart. He said nothing.

  "The choice of
the Captain of the Tyr'agar's Tyran. And a war with the Northern Empire and its demon kings."

  They stared at each other, these two men, and it was Mareo di'Lamberto who looked away. He had aged.

  "What news you have brought us, Jevri. What terrible news. And the rites?"

  "We could not say them without risking the wrath of the new Tyr'agar. But here," Jevri said, removing the first of the skins. "This is water from the lake of the Tor; his ashes were taken by water and wind.

  "With these, we can offer the Lady's blessing."

  And then, weary, Jevri el'Sol closed his eyes and leaned back into the cushions that Mareo di'Lamberto had provided for the oldest of his family's serafs. He made no pretense of freedom, did Jevri, although by Lord's law, it was his.

  "Thank you, old friend," Mareo told the sleeping man as he rose, and very quietly ran a hand along his eyes. "Thank you for bringing my brother home."

  Jevri, sleeping, did not answer.

  "I'll speak to you again in the morning, after we have performed the Lady's rites for our fallen."

  Again no reply.

  But Mareo di'Lamberto knew that Jevri el'Sol, that Jevri kep'Lamberto, was awake because, from beneath the lids of wrinkled eyes that had seen far too much, came a thin trail of tears..

  He set Balagar beside the old man, and said, softly, "You guarded this all the way home, Jevri kep'Lamberto. Guard it for one more night."

  And Jevri lifted an aged, wrinkled hand and placed it gently upon the scabbard of Fredero kai el'Sol's sword. For the heart and the soul of a man was his sword, and he would guard this sword with his life.

  But he would much rather have guarded the man who had wielded it, and in the silence of an empty harem, he heard that man's young voice.

  And he thought that it would be fitting and merciful if it was the last voice he heard.

  But he was faithful, was Jevri kep'Lamberto, and when he woke, and knew that no death would take him yet, he prepared to pay his respects.

  And to continue living for as long as the Lady decreed.

  Table of Contents

  Acknowledgments

  Dramatis Personae

  Prologue:

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE.

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  Unnamed