Michelle West - The Sun Sword 03 - The Shining Court

by The Shining Court

  "Perhaps. But I would counsel against the risk."

  "As you have always counseled us, Isladar. I would expect no less—or rather, no more. Were you less cautious, you might have ruled—"

  "Enough. We have had this discussion."

  Etridian's smile was obsidian. "I will accede. Air."

  "Air."

  "Air."

  "Air."

  Ishavriel nodded.

  Had they been trapped by the Shattered Hall in the same way they had been trapped by the Hells? They had never sought to question their use of that place. Of all the rooms the Shining Palace contained, none matched the Shattered Hall for grandeur; none made so plain the power of the Lord over the earth itself. Had His journey from the Hells to the mortal world injured Him? Had it weakened His power, denying Him the full force of the strength He had once displayed when He ruled this vast plain? Perhaps. But the Shattered Hall had been a work of power, and for that reason, they had chosen to grace it.

  They could not convene parliament within the halls themselves, although Etridian had suggested it. Such an act would do one of two things: destroy the hall, or force their Lord to expend His power to maintain it in the face of the wild element. Either outcome was not to anyone's advantage; implicit in their choice was the mountain's heights or the Broken Plains beyond the citadel.

  And once they had chosen the heights, they felt it: freedom. Memory.

  Lord Ishavriel wondered if they would ever enter the Shattered Hall again.

  Isladar convened.

  He called the wild air, and it came, fighting every inch of the journey. They watched; they watched in a silence made of memory, but sharpened by observation. Lord Isladar of the Kialli did not use the powers he now displayed in the Hells because the Hells were not elemental.

  Was he a greater power here? A lesser one?

  The millennia stretched out before them as it had behind, and they realized that the question was not, would no longer be, rhetorical. They were silent, measuring the power of an enemy. Understanding, truly, that if they made their demesnes in this new world, power would mean something different than it had in the Hells.

  Hunger, there. Lord Ishavriel felt its sudden bite. As the wild air washed over them, stinging and biting in a momentary rage, he wanted more than the Hells. Had he come here at his Lord's command? Yes. He had obeyed without choice, and with a cunning and a thought bent to the Lord's will, the Lord's purpose. But now…

  Hunger.

  Perhaps it had always been there.

  Perhaps they had missed it because they were no longer exposed to their only sustenance: the torment of the fallen; the justice of the damned.

  It made no difference; Isladar had called their attention to it, turning them at last from the insular world of the Hells and returning to them two truths. The first, the simplest, elemental power. Not in the way that they had used it since they first set foot upon the broken ground of the Northern Wastes. No, that had been simple—a tossing of fire, a slight puckering of the earth, a whispering of wind. Water, they had only touched to ward the fall of snow when they found it unpleasant or inconvenient.

  But they had wielded the elements as big clubs, clumsily and thoughtlessly. Here, now, they were asked to do something different: to find the heart of its wilderness, and to merge with it, succumbing to its voice while maintaining their own.

  To speak, to think, to act in their best interests while the elements attempted to destroy them.

  "Isladar!" Etridian cried, as the wind's voice threatened to destroy the fabric of simple words.

  "Not yet!" he yelled back, swaying, his feet two inches above the ground, his body at the eye of the growing storm. "But soon. Prepare yourselves!"

  The convener was not required to give warning. But this was so old, so distant, that it had become new; it was new to them all. They accepted what he offered without comment, and when the winds came, they forgot it. No warning could prepare them.

  The air itself tried to destroy them.

  The convener began to speak.

  The ground receded from their feet in a rush of light and swirling snow.

  Above the mountain's peak, above even the highest of the towers the Lord had built for his own amusement in the Shining Palace, the Fist of the Lord and the Lord's shadow stood. It would tire them to stand thus.

  But no Lord of the Hells could admit to such a weakness.

  Formality was lost to wilderness.

  Ishavriel spoke with the air's voice as if reacquainting himself with the niceties of speech. But snow and rock and fine, fine ice crystals could not obscure sight of his expression as he faced Lord Isladar and spoke.

  "I wonder, Lord Isladar, if you know where Kiriel is."

  Lord Isladar merely smiled and shook his head. It was clear that his understanding of the heart of the element had not dimmed with time; he spoke with his voice, and without apparent effort.

  "She is my charge," he replied evenly.

  "And have you been so careful with her?"

  "As careful, it appears, as you yourself have been with yours, Lord Ishavriel," he replied, showing a hint of a smile—a Kialli smile, "I have Anya. And perhaps it is best that things remain as they are."

  "Yes, Ishavriel. You've dropped the leash of the mage, and she runs too wild for the Lord's liking." Etridian paused. "And too wild for ours. Isladar's keep destroyed a Kialli Lord or two who had grown careless." He shrugged. "Your charge destroyed the pentagram that anchored the gate. The Lord caught and held the spell, but it was a test of His power. I am surprised you did not feel His anger in the South."

  "She has not been destroyed," Ishavriel replied, forced to defend the most cherished of his discoveries. Forced, in fact, to retreat from his attack on Isladar's.

  Kiriel was almost the pastime of choice for Lord Ishavriel in the lull between the battles of the Hells and the war that was— finally—to start in earnest.

  "No." Before Isladar could gain advantage from Etridian's words, Etridian added, "And perhaps we should not be surprised. There is some precedent. Isladar has shown a surprising inability to rein in his bastard, and she is still indulged."

  Alcrax snarled. "She is worse than indulged. The Lord has broken His covenant. He has handed her power, where all others are forced to prove their worthiness by earning it."

  "Which, in most cases means a simple baring of tooth and claw." Isladar's correction was cool. "If power is defined by the struggle, she will earn her place. And if it is defined merely by killing, she has already earned it."

  "We will never find out, will we? He has given her power."

  "He has done the unthinkable: He has weakened Himself. His power is not what it was, and hers is not what His was. The extent of her ability to control what she now wears has not been tested. We will," Isladar said softly, the sudden narrowing of his eyes a signal, "find out. If the Lord's work is ever completed. What, Lord Ishavriel, was the mage thinking?"

  "How can anyone know, with Anya?" Before he could be attacked for such an admission, he lifted a hand; ice swirled around it, drawing blood to the surface of skin without breaking it. Thus, the discourse of kinlords. "You have her, Isladar, has she not spoken with you?"

  "I have her in a protected place. As you are all well aware, I am capable of protecting sleeping mortals." He shrugged. "She has not finished with the human fevers; she will either perish or survive. The words she has spoken, as often happens at such times, make little sense. Can she truly see the color of words? Can she taste them?"

  Unspoken, the words hovered. Is this the creature upon whom the success of the Hells gate rests? And more, Is this creature truly the prize of your collection?

  Lord Ishavriel was furious. He forced the fury back, but the winds buffeted him a moment before he gained, and held, his footing. Hard to concentrate here.

  Isladar's face betrayed nothing; no hint of satisfaction, no amusement, nothing.

  Still, there was a contest here, as there had so often been
contests in the parliaments, hidden but deadly. The perfect game for Ishavriel and Isladar to play so casually.

  Nugratz, wings stretched from tip to tip, was nonetheless uncomfortable enough in the element that he did not attempt to speak. Flight was his strength, but the air in the Hells was not as wild—could never be as wild—as this.

  "Ishavriel," Etridian said, his arms stiff as he, too, fought the battle of wild air. "The question. Why did the mage breach the pentagram?"

  "She was tired. I was gone. She was, I believe, 'bored' with standing." He turned a moment to Isladar, and said coldly, "I will have her back."

  "If I so choose."

  "You go too far, Isladar."

  Etridian shrugged. "The question, Ishavriel."

  He had no desire to answer it. "I have not spoken with her, Etridian. I do not have an answer."

  "And you understand her so little you cannot surmise?"

  "I assume she wanted a chair. She was told—by Vantinir, the human Northerner—that a chair would disturb the gate; that she was not to bring anything but rock and herself to the pentagram.

  "From the spells at my disposal in her quarters—and they are few, as she tolerates so little—I surmise that she took him at his word, returned to her rooms, and removed the stretch of the wall that contained the throne. I admit my surprise that the Shining Palace itself survived." He paused a moment, then added, "She was wise enough to ask permission to shape the rock; she received it."

  "And how long will it take before the gate is fully restored?"

  "How long will it take for Anya to either escape or succumb to the fevers? There is a reason that we have allowed her her existence here, Etridian. The gate cannot remain anchored—could not have been opened—without her."

  "The Lord's power was not what it is now."

  "Then ask our Lord," Ishavriel said softly. "But as I said, He has not yet destroyed her, and He has destroyed two for failing him at the gate. We require her presence."

  "So you say."

  "If you wish it, challenge her. Unlike Kiriel, Anya has earned her rank, such as it is. She has power, and she has learned to wield it."

  "To move a chair, and collapse the gate. The armies will be delayed."

  "Perhaps you forget, Etridian, that I am a part of the Lord's Fist. I understand well the cost to the armies."

  Assarak finally spoke. "While I find this discourse amusing, it is pointless. We do not have the luxury of a full parliament; we are bound by mortal time. If Anya a'Cooper was not destroyed for her part in the gate's… interruption, she is obviously necessary.

  "And if Kiriel has not yet been destroyed, so much the better; she offered me challenge, and I will accept it at my leisure. If she lives that long. Isladar, is the mortal taint so strong in her that she will live—and die—in a limited span of years?"

  Isladar did not reply. They knew the answer to the question. She was mortal; the god-born were all mortal. And she would live a shorter span of years than one who had never been graced by the blood of the Lord of Night. It was for that reason, among many, that Isladar was so poorly understood by the Generals; Kiriel had commanded his time and attention from birth, and there was so little to be gained for it.

  "If you wish to discuss Kiriel, I am willing," Lord Isladar replied. "But it will take time."

  Time caught in the pull of the angry, exultant wind. Assarak shrugged broadly. "I care little enough for your pet. Ishavriel's at least serves a useful function." His expression shifted; he dropped ten feet and shored himself up by dint of will and expenditure of power. "The war will be fought, and it will end; we will rule here. The Covenant, and the mantle, were never meant for the planes of earth." He smiled, the muscles of his face giving the expression the nuance of menace.

  "Perhaps." Isladar looked up, lifting his head until his eyes were level with Ishavriel's. "Telkar ad'Ishavriel was killed in the streets of the Tor Leonne."

  Ishavriel cursed, but quietly. Word traveled far too conveniently. "I was aware of this."

  "I was not," Assarak said, speaking sharply. "Who killed him?"

  "Humans."

  "Mages?"

  "No."

  "Impossible."

  "It was seen."

  "And what of it?" Etridian broke in. "We have power now— perhaps it is time that we stop skulking in the pathetic shadows humanity casts. We will rule, but not by hiding. Not by waiting."

  Isladar let his words fill the silence that was left between the cracks of the wind's roar. Then he said, quietly, "Mordagar. Arral. Saval. Verragar."

  "What of them?"

  "They are awake, courtesy of Telkar's inability to, as you say, skulk in pathetic human shadows."

  "I did not hear their voices," Assarak replied.

  "And they, no doubt, cannot yet hear ours; the distance is too great. But I have seen their light, and I have heard their voices. The Radann do not—not yet—know how to use them.

  "In a day, it has become… interesting to be in the Tor Leonne."

  "And what of the fifth?"

  "Balagar was nowhere to be seen." His smile was soft. "But the Sun Sword is keening now. Listen, if you have occasion to approach the city."

  "We need to kill the boy," Assarak said coldly.

  "And," Etridian added, diverting attention from his failure in that regard, "the Radann. Isladar, tell the Tyr that the Radann must be destroyed."

  "He is aware of this, Etridian. Our plans in that regard have been—"

  "Now."

  Isladar bowed his head.

  But he did not, in fact, agree. Minutes passed as they discussed elements of lesser importance. But hours would not be wasted here: the air was too strong, and their own skills too atrophied, to remain long.

  The air left Isladar last, swirling at his feet in such a leisurely fashion the edge of his robe seemed liquid to the eye. He bowed to it, offering what the others had not: a benediction. A gratitude. The wind's voice, here as in the desert, was strong. Much stronger than the earth's voice, although the earth did have a voice. Had he called it too weak for a parliament? Yes. And it was; but too weak and voiceless were not the same. The earth, beneath the surface of water and the force of air, was alive.

  He bespoke it as the winds reluctantly let him go and his feet grazed the ice-covered surface. The shock of foot against living ground had dimmed with the passage of years. But he was Kialli, not human, and the passage of years had been slight enough to make little dent in the visceral reality of millennia in the Hells.

  Millenia in a place that defied things merely physical, in a universe where sight, where sound, where sensation itself, was filtered through two things: The Lord and the damned.

  The world enveloped him; the elements, slow to wake to his presence, now called him, faintly, by a name he had not used since before the beginning. The Hells were gone.

  In a moment—less—he could be sent flying back to them; in the next moment, he could be called forth again. As if he and the rest of the Kialli were fragments of memory, hidden parts of their Lord's unknowable past. It was truth; he acknowledged it. He had always been the pragmatic Lord, in either universe.

  When the air no longer held him, he whispered to its keening presence; it roared back, ice crystals skittering along the surface of his skin in the wake of its voice. He spoke again; air rippled the length of his arms, pulling at the cloth that surrounded them, snapping at the tips of his fingers in petulant demand.

  He had raised Kiriel from birth with the help of a Southern slave. He knew what no other Kialli Lord had ever truly learned: How to deal well with petulance.

  / am called, he told the elemental wind, on all sides. You have taken the measure of my enemies and my allies. They watch me; they are cunning. And they listen. What they see does not concern me. What they hear does.

  Carry the words away from them, if you can, and when the words are well away, we will destroy the mountain's peak.

  He waited; the wind bit at his skin. On the odd occasio
n, it had drawn blood, but he had never angered the element enough to fight—to truly fight—for his life. Just as he had never angered his Lord.

  Not enough.

  The ground in the North was cold. The water above it, frozen and thick, had a more accessible voice. But water was not useful, not yet; earth was essential. He waited until the attention of air was elsewhere, and then channeled his power through ice and water and into the ground itself.

  The ground answered," rumbling and slow. Here, there was anger and a desire for blood—or war, he could not be certain which. The voice of the earth was sluggish, slow, thick with the cold and the presence of water. He had wakened it over the past decade, calling softly, coming at regular intervals to stand in the same spot, by the mountain's foot, while he relived his first attempt to call the earth to heel.

  He had been young then, but not so young that he thought power was a substitute for intelligence; he watched the success and the failure of others before he planned his own attack. Lord Isladar of the Kialli had always been capable of absorbing the lesson in another's failure. It was considered cowardice in the Hells; it had been considered prudence upon the plane.

  He weathered both with the same ease.

  You are known by what you choose to hate, and what you choose to love. If you wish to have no weaknesses, you will disdain either.

  Truth, there. The fierce love that the Kialli had once been capable of had been winnowed by the Hells; their passion was in hatred, and it was considerable.

  Ah. There. He lifted his head as the earth woke. Spoke to it, the syllables forming slowly, as if speech itself were fighting against his use.

  The element spoke his name.

  Isladar.

  He replied. In that exchange of syllables, two hours passed. The rest came more easily.

  The mortal.

  He felt, rather than heard, the earth yield to his request. Ice cracked at his feet in a ring; it was pushed aside in shards so slowly one might have thought the earth had no power.

  Until one saw the ground continue to rise beneath one's feet, the movement slow as glaciers, but as inexorable. He stirred a moment, the thrum of the earth's voice almost a comfort. Earth had been his first element because in all ways it was the hardest: it required, among other things, the patience that the Kialli, immortal each and every one, so often lacked.