Michelle West - The Sun Sword 03 - The Shining Court

by The Shining Court

  They lay, simply made, simply sharpened, in a black box.

  But the box, which he would have said was ebony at a distance, was something far harder than that; obsidian, cold and heavy as a rich child's casket. He approached the box, and stepped back, almost in a single motion.

  "Interesting," the mage said.

  "Meralonne, I am not your experiment."

  "Not as such, no." The mage shrugged.

  "What are these?"

  "They are daggers. For the moment. They are weapons."

  "And their manufacture?"

  "Old," he replied. "The actual forging of the blades themselves is something that has not been attempted since the last of the mad Artisans passed—quite thankfully—from our world."

  "These are Artisan's work?"

  "They are," Meralonne replied, in a voice with the consistency of steel, "the work of the man who once called himself Magellus." He snorted. "Magellus."

  "It is not so ridiculous a name as all that."

  "Not if you're a small child, it's not." He lowered the lamp.

  Kallandras shrugged. "He was an old Artisan."

  They both knew the fate of the Artisans. "Yes. And I will warn you that he made these at the zenith, not the nadir, of his power."

  "They look very… plain."

  "They do."

  "Have you handled them?"

  "I? Yes. I have." He was quiet a moment, weighing the words that would follow. "I created the box that contains them now. But it is not a safe containment."

  "And I am?"

  "Strange though it seems, Kallandras, I would trust the blades in your sheaths far more than I would trust them in my tower— and I have had in them in my tower since before I could legally claim it as my own."

  "You've never thought to give them to me before."

  "No. And I would not—but you go South, and I stay North, and I fear that we will not have this chance again."

  "Her words?"

  The pronoun, said with just the right emphasis, belonged to Evayne a'Nolan, even in this tower. Especially in this tower. There was a long pause, a thoughtful one.

  "No; I rarely take advice from my students, regardless of how well they've learned." His gaze was curiously intent; his eyes, silver-gray, flickered with orange lamplight, much as the surface of the blades did. "I will not press them upon you if you've the wisdom to avoid them."

  "You make me curious."

  "I? No. That is a function of the weapons."

  Kallandras reached out then.

  Reached out. Touched them. They were cool, steel and leather. "Be ready," he said, although he couldn't have said why.

  "I am," the mage replied softly.

  He gripped the daggers, left- and right-handed, and pulled them from their resting place.

  They shifted, writhing in his hands like solid snakes. His grip tightened, where another man might have let go in surprise or shock. There was a battle here, a fight, a contest.

  Steel bent itself up in twin arcs, reaching for the backs of his hands. He could not contain them, but he did not cry out; he stared at their bending curves, seeing in them liquid, gold, an iridescence and a magic that were at once familiar and chill. Darkness here; darkness beneath the surface of reflected light.

  But he had faced darkness before, and this darkness was contained, girdled somehow by form, by function. The blades edged up, and up again; the tips bent down.

  He was surprised when they touched his skin; more surprised when they breached its surface. But he held, and he held calmly, waiting.

  They went no farther.

  "Meralonne," he said, "these are—"

  "Not yet finished," the mage replied. "Watch."

  As if he could choose to do anything else. The blades shifted again, undulating and twisting, growing. Fascinated by it, awed by it in some fashion, Kallandras watched the conception of a crazed maker as it began its first work in centuries: the fashioning of a weapon. Of two.

  Steel melted, but without the heat that would scald or cripple a man fool enough to hold it; leather vanished, absorbed by form. The daggers did what they could not do: they grew in size, in weight, they changed in essential shape, blades lengthening, guards lengthening, handles growing.

  He recognized the weapons.

  How could he not? They were the brotherhood's weapons of choice when they faced each other, or when the weapons to be used were not prescribed by the men and women who offered the target.

  Meralonne said nothing for a long moment. Kallandras stared at his gift. "I… see. Kallandras, these present a danger. The magi have not seen them and they will not, I think, approve. Sigurne knows."

  "They are?"

  "Magellus, as far as we are able to discern, thought he might make use of demons." He offered no more.

  Kallandras said quietly, "and will these weapons fight me in a fight?"

  "Magellus was an Artisan, not a mad mage. They will serve their function."

  Kallandras bowed. "I will think long on accepting your gift, Meralonne."

  "You will not think at all. You have already accepted the gift, or the weapons would not have changed." The magi bowed. The pipe's embers guttered in a wind that was felt, but never seen. "And now, I am tired, and I have work to do. Take them South with you; you're inventive. You'll know when to use them—and why."

  Truth, there.

  He had known when to use them. And why.

  Yollana was injured. Margret saw it from a distance; the old witch would have to be injured to allow some man—some strange man, mind, not kin—to carry her into the encampment of a rival family. She was a Matriarch, after all, and she had her pride.

  But she was also known for pragmatism, and if she had never been loved for it—what Matriarch was, after all?—she was admired for it, and followed.

  Margret left, and returned with Donatella, and when Donatella had finished tending to Yollana's hands and legs—and her legs were a ruin that made the younger woman flinch, first with that momentary pang of recognized pain, and then with anger and a desire for vengeance—she sent Donatella away.

  "Matriarch," Yollana said quietly.

  "You've heard," was Margret's stark reply. Yollana knew that her mother was dead. It shouldn't have surprised her; it did. But worse, it shamed her. Yollana was Matriarch, yes, but she was Havallan, and she should not have known first what most of the Arkosans barely knew. Their Matriarch was dead.

  She bowed, half to cover the shame that stung her cheeks, and half because this was Yollana of the Havallans.

  Of the Voyani Matriarchs, Yollana was the oldest, and the one most feared. Margret was now the youngest; they were theoretically equals, but they did not meet as equals, not here. Although it was Margret's encampment, and although it was Margret's directive that had saved the Arkosans the fate of the Havallan Matriarch, Yollana was a breed apart, and she had come to Evallen on the morn of Margret's birth; had aided in it, as she had known she would have to.

  Evallen had some part of the gift, but it was weak; Yollana's was strong enough to need no embellishment. But the two older women had forged a bond that Margret felt, meeting the dark, inscrutable eyes of her elder, she and Yollana never would.

  Still, she nodded. "My wagon," she said quietly. "And my tent. Both are yours while you choose to stay with us."

  "I want more than that, Matriarch."

  "What did you have in mind?"

  "Privacy; the Lady's privacy. You can grant it, if you choose— this is your ground, and yours alone."

  "You want—"

  "I want the heart's circle," Yollana said starkly.

  Margret paled. "I—"

  "You were trained by Evallen of the Arkosans." Yollana's tone was a slap, stinging and sharp. "You were raised to be Matriarch. You are the heart of your people. Falter, for whatever reason, and they will pay the price." She drew a deep breath. "I ask you again, Matriarch: draw the heart's circle. We have seen enough this night to know that it is necessary."
/>   "You ask for this in front of a stranger?" Margret replied, changing tactics, attempting to buy herself time.

  "This stranger has already seen it; he has already been part of it; I myself cut and carried the blessed wood and drew the sigils. Will you do less?"

  "This is not Havalla."

  "You're stalling."

  Oh, the old woman could be a bitch. She wanted to tell her the truth, then: that she didn't have the heart of the Arkosans—that it was hidden in the keep of some highborn clanswoman, given to her by Evallen for reasons that Margret could not begin to understand. But she could not tell her that—not standing outside of the heart's circle. The words would carry on the night breeze, and they would reach every nook and cranny of every wagon before dawn's full light, weakening her.

  Just as the angry admission would weaken her. The Matriarchs were responsible for their own, after all—and family wars were not uncommon.

  After Nicu's poor display in the streets of the city, she knew that she could not afford to be seen as weak in any way. Ona Tamara knew the truth. Elena knew it as well.

  "I'll burn the circle's periphery," she said, struggling to keep the bitterness out of her words, "with heart's fire."

  "Good."

  * * *

  CHAPTER TEN

  She found wood easily enough; trees lived and died without falling, and the sun turned them into dried husks of former life, meant for burning and not much else. She carried her ax into a night brightened by a nearly full moon; the cutting of wood, time-consuming and menial, was hers. Had to be hers, if the circle was to be hers.

  Thus, her mother taught her, and she'd learned.

  This is the simplest of our magics, but it's the most valuable one you'll have, day to day. It proves your power, without actually costing much. You'll need it, if I die young.

  Only the good, she'd told her mother.

  The ax shook in her hands.

  She buried it in the fork of the fallen tree's branch. The wood was cut in fury because fury was the only comfort she would allow herself to take; she put her heart into the task, pausing only to set the lamp down on the ground so that her feet didn't become victims of her aim.

  Wood splintered cleanly; the ax was sharp, her aim true. This close to the moon's height, the wood had its own power—or so her mother had said—but she knew that without the heart in her hands, wood's power was dim and almost impossible to reach. Wood cut during the phases of the Festival Moon always held the strongest essence, the easiest to touch and invoke; they were the longest nights of the year—for the Matriarch—with good reason. Voyani wisdom.

  She gathered the fallen wood, dumped it in the cloth sack, bundled it tightly. The stars watched; she hoped no one else did. The cursing that accompanied the lifting robbed the moment of all dignity.

  Made her feel a bit better, though.

  In moonlight, she made the trek back from the forest, although forest was a poor choice of word for something so thin. The Arkosans traveled the heartland's ring; their road crossed the verdant plains of Mancorvo, the dimpling valleys of Averda where forests were so deep and thick they bruised the leg and scratched the face of men made careless by an evening's drink. She missed those forests now; it was there that she had first cut the wood by her mother's side.

  Her mother's side, while her mother's hands curled 'round the haft of an ax that had been passed, mother to daughter, since the beginning of time—or so Margret had believed then. The haft itself was plain, dark wood, and it had been replaced several times; it was the wedge of metal, something that never lost an edge and wouldn't condescend to bear a notch, no matter what wood it was set against, that was the heirloom.

  That ax had seemed so very much a part of Evallen that night. Everything had: the starlight, the full moon, the night's landscape, the trees themselves. In the darkness you could best make out the living from the dead, the wet from the dry, by smell, by touch. True then, true now. She'd peeled away bark, under her mother's watchful shadow, listening to her mother's sharp criticism and, more rare, her bare, stark praise—the rhythms of a speech that Margret had never thought she'd miss.

  She missed it now; missed the nervousness and the wonder of that first night. It had been important to please the Matriarch, more so for the girl who would become the clan's leader than for any other Arkosan, and she'd offered her hands to splinters and calluses, swallowing pain and failure in the search for success.

  She swallowed now.

  Because at the end of the first gathering, her mother had drawn the heart of the Arkosans out of the folds of her shirt. No one who did not bear Arkosan blood in their veins could see the heart if Evallen chose to conceal it, but even Arkosans could be shunted aside when the Matriarch chose to practice her power in privacy.

  That night was one of the few nights that Margret had been granted more than a passing glimpse of the source of her mother's power. People want other people's power if it's under their noses, Evallen would tell her. They can't think of a single good reason why you've got it and they don't. And frankly, most days neither can I. Don't lord it over your own with anything but force of personality unless you have no other choice. She'd pause, then. And any daughter of mine had better have enough force of personality that it isn't a problem.

  Wasn't a problem, now. She didn't have the heart to expose.

  She took the wood to the edge of the small brook that had been the deciding factor in the location of their encampment. Here, she gathered water in a bowl that she had fashioned out of clay with her own hands, had decorated with gold leaf, had painted with dyes that had been one of her mother's more practical secrets. She took a second and a third such bowl out of the folds of her shirt, unwrapping each carefully and setting it down in the clearing, beneath the open face of the Lady's Moon, three points of a triangle, or perhaps three points along the edge of a circle. Into the second bowl, she poured wine, the harvest of vine; into the third, she poured rice wine, the harvest of grain. She dedicated these to the Lady whose Moon lit her way, speaking slowly, trying to put the same passionate plea into the words that her mother had always managed.

  It wasn't there. She knew it; the heart that defined the Matriarch lay in the grasp of a clanswoman. How was she to continue without it?

  Yollana was cruel—but that was part of her character that was known by and to all. It would not be beyond her to set Margret a task that would end in failure because she'd decided that dealing with failure was also a test that needed passing.

  Was that what this was?

  Maybe.

  Margret's mother had laid the heart in the center of the three bowls, and it flashed a moment as it lay against earth, the Lady's element, drawing power and granting it. She spoke in a language that was Arkosan to the core—ancient and hidden and shadowed— before she touched forehead to earth. It was the first thing she'd done all evening that had shocked Margret because it looked so much like abasement, and the Matriarch was the source of all power.

  Her mother ignored her stiff-jawed open mouth. Lifting the heart, Evallen of the Arkosa Voyani placed the wood where the heartlight still burned the vision. Her prayers lapsed into silence, then, but they continued.

  Silence, Margret could manage—although it would have surprised most of the Arkosans who knew her.

  I have no heart, she thought, and for just a moment it meant something other than the Matriarch's stone. She did not know as much of the old tongue as her mother had; her mother's learning had been courtesy of Yollana of the Havallans, and it had come in bits and pieces when the Matriarchs met at Moon's height in the Tor Leonne.

  I have accepted all responsibility, and I have already begun to fail it. But I will not let that failure break me, Lady. We are not always lucky. The winds howl. The sun burns the shadows into last night's pleasant dream. The clans hunt us, the families war with us. We lost children to the harems and the houses of the powerful, and we endure. We lose our parents long before they've had the time to pass on the truth
and experience of their lives, and we endure. We lose our loves, our lovers, our partners, and we endure.

  But we die before we abandon the oaths we make with our blood.

  I have no heart to bespeak you, Lady, no power to be certain I have your attention. But I have this: and it is of me, part of all that I am, and that my mother was, and that my daughter, when she is born, will be.

  I vow, tonight, that we will endure.

  Margret of the Arkosa Voyani reached a shaking hand to the side of her hip and unsheathed her dagger. She ran it along the fleshy part of her palm, biting carefully enough to draw blood that would run without injuring muscle or reaching bone.

  The blood, she offered to earth, at the exact center of the triangle made by the spirits of the Lady's night.

  She'd hoped for some flash of light, some recognition of her offer. There was nothing but night and shadow, starlight and moonlight.

  Her hand stung as she lifted the wood, block by block, and placed it where her blood had been spilled.

  Her head began the long descent to earth, and when it reached the cool, moist dirt of evening forest, she inhaled deeply. Abasement.

  Yes, but more: Here, she could smell the dampness and the greenness of the forest floor, the sweet sharpness of wine, the fullness of cut wood, as if they were a part of her. Almost against her will, her back relaxed, and her arms; she fell into the posture of supplicant, completely devoid of the usual powerlessness it implied.

  And then, when she had swallowed the whole scent of a forest's peace and the Lady's libations, she emptied the three bowls carefully, taking a sip of each for herself, and offering the rest to the wood.

  "All right," she said. She was startled into silence at the sound of her own voice. She slung the wood over her shoulder; it settled there, a comfortable burden—for at least thirty yards. It was a lot longer than that to reach Yollana of the Havalla Voyani.