Michelle West - The Sun Sword 03 - The Shining Court

by The Shining Court

  "No."

  "Then she is not dead. But she is Winter, and the Hunt is the most terrifying thing you could ever see. The most beautiful. She brings the Winter with her; the shadows and the promise of eternal ice. She rides with her host, She hunts with her beasts; She is undeniable, inevitable. If she hunted at all, you would know it, you would know of it. Your world—it must be so pale and so lacking in wonder.

  "I should have known, when she did not come, that there had been changes we had never dreamed of."

  She started to answer. Stopped. Thought about a palace of glass and a cat with stone wings, about pillars of stone with branches that grew into great, solid arches at their heights, about leaves of silver, gold, and diamond. About the wild, wild magic that seemed to glimmer beneath the transparent surface of everything she could see in the room, both standing wall and the ruined shards beyond.

  "Lacking in wonder, yes," she said, thinking of what it must have been like to live in the age of gods. Thinking, and knowing. "But not in life. Not in justice."

  "And you are then one of those who would trade beauty for safety." He did not keep the chill contempt from his words. The answer was obvious enough.

  "You chose beauty. Live with it," Jewel said, and turned to walk away.

  His laughter stopped her. It was, indeed, beautiful. "Well played, well played, little mortal. That would have cost your life in another time, on another day."

  "You want something from me."

  "Yes."

  "I'm a merchant. I know when to walk and when to talk. You want to talk? I'd suggest a little change in attitude."

  "You have dreamed of my Lady," he said. "I can feel it in the words you can't even think of saying."

  "You know what I've been dreaming?"

  "You are dreaming now, and you are in my lands, and I know what is thought in my lands if I bend my mind to it. I do not know the whole of the dream, but the dream itself has the taint of truth to it. I will not believe the Winter Queen dead.

  "And if she is not dead, you will take three things to her, and a fourth will come, and you will remind her of her oath. Tell her that the way has been opened just enough that if her hunters are competent and not the fools they once were, they will be able to find it."

  "I think I'll reword that, if you don't mind."

  He laughed. "As you please. The night of the Hunt is coming. It is coming. The host will ride." He laughed, yes, and the sound would define laughter for years, it echoed so deeply inside. As if her ears had trapped it, hoarding it for memory. "I will gift you, child, if you will carry this message."

  "With what? If I guess right, you'll be dead."

  The cat hissed. Loudly.

  The man did not blink. "With the Summer Queen," he said. "For the Summer Queen and the Winter are two very different creatures, different sides of the same coin." He rose. "There is a man who is calling your name. He calls it loudly, and he stoops to magic." His expression changed. "It is a familiar magic. I would ask you to kill him, but I fear that you will never find my Lady if he is dead.

  "Go." The shadows left his face in a rush. The life left it; he was skeleton once more, strewn like a corpse in a glass throne that sat in the center of four golden pillars. Trapped here, and aware of it.

  She nodded.

  The cat said, "Only do this, and we will be grateful."

  Jewel waited until they had left the presence of the Winter King before turning to the cat and saying, "And that would be helpful how?"

  He didn't have time to answer; he disappeared in a flash of blinding, painful light. She cried out; the pain stopped.

  Avandar Gallais sat beside her, in her bed, one hand on either shoulder. She could see the traces of magic, wound tight around those hands like multihued, delicate nets.

  "Let go," she whispered, as his eyes widened.

  He did as she bid—rare, but beside the point.

  She fell backward. Felt something dig into her skull. Rising swiftly, she walked to the oval mirror that was one of her few prides. The glass, silvered so perfectly, had been a gift from the Terafin. Reflected there, she could see quite clearly in the tangled mess of hair it would take hours to comb out, if it could be tamed at all without judicious clipping, three leaves. One was silver. One was gold. And one, of course, was diamond.

  "Wait!"

  He was halfway across a room that seemed suddenly too small before her word bit him. He turned, his expression dark. He was, of all things, angry. "I have a matter to attend to, Jewel."

  "No, you don't."

  Shock robbed him of words for a moment, and she took that moment, leaving dignity behind, to do the run around him and end up in front of the room's only exit.

  "Do you know what those leaves mean?" he asked her, his voice almost as cold as her memory of the Winter King's.

  "Better than you think. Probably better than you'd like."

  "Jewel, let us have this conversation after I've seen to the defense of my citadel."

  "No."

  His smile was chill. She wondered if the mountains themselves held some taint of Winter; she could not remember Avandar's expression ever being so frosty at home, although he had never been a warm man. "You will not tell me what to do in my own domain."

  "I will," she replied evenly, "Domicis."

  The slightly crimson tinge to his skin paled. She watched, unblinking; she had his attention now and she wasn't going to let go. Tenacity wasn't her middle name, but back when they named children for stupid character traits, it would have been a good bet.

  "You don't understand," he said softly. "Those leaves—"

  "They came from the forest of the Winter King."

  He closed his eyes. "Yes."

  "He's still there, Avandar."

  "He will always be there."

  "He won't. She'll hunt him. I get the impression that something you did," she added, without bothering to take the accusation out

  of her voice, "prevented the Winter Queen from actually finding him."

  "And from hunting him, and sacrificing him. He should have been grateful."

  "Avandar."

  "You do not understand, Jewel. The Winter King isn't just a man, isn't even a man imbued with the powers she grants. He's an aspect. The man who speaks—and I assume that was the nature of the dream that held you—is a servant to the aspect, not its master; he sacrificed the essence of his mortality when he agreed to become the consort to the Winter Queen. He could no more walk these roads than the gods could, not now."

  "He's trapped there."

  "Yes. Whether or not he is given reign of these lands. These… were not his. But they are on the true road, and had they been what they were before I… stumbled across them… they would have led to him. And to her."

  "We have to free him," she said.

  "Everything is simple for you. Do you not understand? She will choose another to take his place. He will be what he was; the geas laid by the title itself is more powerful than the force of a merely human life. Free this human, as you desire to do, and she will merely find another to take his place, and another after his death, and another. There will be a stream of sacrifice.

  "Let this man remain upon his empty throne, and there will be no further deaths."

  She hated choices like this one. Hated them. But she didn't move out of his way.

  "Jewel," he said, using the most persuasive tone he had— which, given his general imperious arrogance, wasn't all that impressive. "He can't hurt me. There is nothing at all that he can do to injure me. But you are vulnerable. Do you think she chose the kind, the just, the honorable, as her Winter Consort? She chose the hunters. She chose the powerful. She chose the merciless. You offer this… man… a kindness that he would despise.

  "And I will not have him take advantage of you. I will not have his magic go where—"

  "Where yours can't?" She lifted her wrist, exposing the scarlet S.

  "Jewel—"

  "We need to do this," she said softly.


  He caught her face in his hands, cupping it and pulling it up before she could move. She saw his eyes flare; orange light, and green, and a hint of white, swirling just at the edges: magic. She held her ground, but it was difficult; his grip was strong enough—she was certain it was unintentionally so by the look of concentration on his face—that she clung to the ground by the balls of her feet.

  "Very well," he said at last, lowering her. "You are not en-spelled. This is merely your usual foolishness."

  "No," she said, and she was certain, suddenly, that it wasn't.

  Years had given him the key to her tone of voice. His eyes narrowed.

  "He offered mea gift."

  "You refused it, of course."

  "He offered to give me this gift after we'd given him what he desired."

  "And his desire?"

  "Just the Hunt," she said softly. "Just the Hunt and, I think, the death. Not more."

  "If he expects death at her hands—"

  "He'll get it," she snapped. "He'll get it. She might use others that way, but she won't disgrace the title of consort. Not this consort. Not this King." It was there again, the steel in the words, the edge of them cutting away all that wasn't truth. And the truth was her gift, her curse. Seer-born.

  "I did not know that you knew so much of the Winter Queen."

  "I don't. I don't want to. But—but he mentioned the Summer Queen."

  Avandar looked away.

  "Avandar."

  He did not meet her gaze. She studied the shuttered neutrality of his expression; no way in there. So she did what she usually did. She kept talking.

  "The Summer Queen must be the opposite of the Winter Queen, and maybe—just maybe—she'll help us."

  "You understand so very little; you're like a child with a large sword. You have the weapon; you know the edge is sharp; but you are incapable of wielding it, of even understanding what wielding it means. Yes, Jewel. There will be a Summer Queen. But She is no mortal Queen, and even as the gods could not, She can hold a soul without mercy."

  "She won't be the Dark God's friend."

  "The Winter Queen is not the Dark God's friend- Nor will she ever be. They contest the same land, They struggle for the same Dominion."

  "And won't we be better served if it's the Summer Queen that fights that war?"

  "The seasons of the Firstborn," he said coldly, "are not the seasons of creatures who march toward death with the passage of time."

  "You haven't answered my question."

  "I have." He walked to the desk that adorned her wall less usefully than the mirror did. Placed his hands, palms flat, against its surface. "Those leaves," he said softly, "are part of his domain. And all that he was, was granted by her. Her power demands its price. You have taken something from her lands. I seek to protect you from that theft."

  "It was hardly theft."

  "You do not understand the Firstborn," he said coldly. "But I am your domicis, I will do as you command."

  "The Summer Queen?"

  " Yes," he said, spitting the word out as if he could no longer abide its taste. "Yes, it would aid us and our cause."

  "Then let's take the leaves. I have a feeling that we'll find our way out now. You said—you said we couldn't leave because it was me you worried about. I don't think, if there's some bar on some gate or some door, it will stay closed against me. He wants her attention."

  "Yes, and you propose to draw it how?"

  "By going to the Tor Leonne," she replied.

  He closed his eyes.

  And she, standing in front of the door, slumped against it, mouth suddenly dry. "I didn't—I didn't mean to say that." But her dream was there. The strange, compelling woman riding at the head of a host.

  He opened his eyes, met hers. "Jewel," he said, and for a moment the ice melted slightly. "I am sorry."

  "The war." She spoke as if she hadn't heard him; as if the vision was as clear and detailed as a solid tapestry before her eyes. "Is about to start in earnest."

  "Yes," he replied, lifting his hands from the desk's surface. "And the most bitter thing about those words is that you don't even know what they mean."

  12th of Scaral, 427 AA

  Tor Leonne

  The masks were very good.

  Alesso inspected them carefully as they were offered to him, their makers kneeling into the hardwood of his audience chamber, heads bent so firmly into ground they might leave indentations. These men were not the finest of craftsmen, and it was obvious their gifts were seldom used at the request of the high clansmen; he could smell the sweat and dirt of the day's labor. No scented oils, no musky perfumes, no clothing pressed and preserved for a meeting of this nature, and only this nature.

  Still, they were dressed well for poorer men; their presentation was a product of their class and not their respect for his station. To make certain that any of the watching clansmen appreciated this fact, he let the maskmakers kneel against the wood while he turned the product of their labor over in his hands, examining it. It was a very plain, very elegant mask, its surface not quite as smooth as he would have liked, but its features otherwise in every way the same as the first of the four masks the Kialli had offered— and ordered—for his people.

  He seldom conducted any business of import in these chambers. Or rather, he had seldom done so. But today, in the full white and gold of his station, his hair drawn back and pulled in a tight warrior's knot, the line of his brow broken by crown, he did just that. Six months had passed since the crown of the Tor had been placed upon his brow, but he was still under constant inspection. That would stop only when he won his war—the war that Markaso kai di'Leonne had lost all face, and arguably his -life, losing.

  It was close enough to the night of the Festival Moon that the high clansmen, Tor and Tyrs all, had, with few exceptions, arrived at the Tor Leonne. They were given leave to hunt—by hawk or falcon, of course—within the grounds; they were given leave to practice their weapons skill, to ride, and to partake of the hospitality of the Tor itself.

  They were also given leave to litter the sides of the audience chamber in which minor matters of governance were decided, and Alesso had been four days without opening those chambers. Sendari had—as he often did—brought this oversight to his attention, and they had argued full into Lady's shadow. In this case,

  Sendari had been able to persuade the General that his position was correct: Hospitality required a convening of the court. Hospitality and the need to show all in attendance that his court was as fine, as important, as significant, as the court of his predecessor.

  Alesso desired a change in that particular overture of hospitality, but too much had already changed; he would not slight or offend men whose alliance he might need over the simple dignity of craftsmen such as those who now knelt perfectly at his feet.

  He handed the mask back to Sendari; Sendari handed it to the Widan Mikalis di'Arretta, a man Alesso did not quite trust. There was something about him, a nervousness or a fear, that spoke of risk. He could ill afford risk at this time.

  But he could afford ignorance even less.

  "Sendari?"

  Sendari di'Sendari turned away a moment from his magically silent speech. "Tyr'agar?" he responded, offering so perfect a bow no one watching—Tors and Tyrs all—could fail to note it, or its significance.

  "The masks?"

  "They are, in Mikalis' opinion, flawed."

  "That was our intention, was it not?"

  "Indeed. He wishes to speak a moment with the craftsmen when you have finished to ascertain that they used the correct materials in constructing the masks."

  "Done. Gentlemen, I will accept your generous gift with appreciation." Alesso turned from his adviser to the rough silk of merchant craftsmen's bent backs, the gleam of their dark hair. Only the oldest of the men had been colored by the white of wisdom, but it was he who lifted his head and shoulders first when the Tyr'agar granted them permission to speak.

  "You honor us, T
yr'agar," he said. He rose gracefully, graciously, the motion belying his age and his apparent rank. His beard brushed the ground as he sat straight-backed, knees bent beneath him in the second half of the subordinate posture. His apprentices had little grace, they rose clumsily, their movements full of youth and strength. It did not matter; they had shown that they could bend. "Stay a moment," he said, tendering the dismissal that would allow them to rise from the ground. "My adviser wishes to speak with you."

  "Tyr'agar."

  But he was no longer concerned with masks, with the makers of masks, with the obeisance, correct but of poor quality, that those craftsmen displayed.

  The Tyr'agnate Eduardo kai di'Garrardi had entered the room, with four of his Tyran.

  By Tyrian law he was allowed four Tyran, but by custom a clansman entered the presence of his Tyr with half that complement. It was a public gesture of trust in the liege of one's choosing, and although there was never any trust between two men of power, the appearance was—as all appearances were—important. Eduardo di'Garrardi was not a man concerned with the import of appearance. He was allowed his swords in the Tyr's presence in this room, and he wore both openly. This was not a slight. What was: his sheaths were war sheaths, simple and unadorned.

  "Alesso," Sendari said as he began to rise.

  He stopped. For a moment—just a moment—he understood Cortano's anger, Cortano's vast impatience, with men whose passions were invoked by mere women.

  "My apologies, Ser Sendari," he said, too softly for any but his friend to hear. "Tend to the maskmakers; I understand their task is the task of import. I will see to the Tyr'agnate."

  Sendari's bow was perfect, instant, and stiff as steel. "That," he said quietly, "is what I fear."

  Alesso made no reply.

  "Tyr'agar," the kai Garrardi said, surprising him slightly. Flanked by his Tyran, he approached the room's only chair, the curved half circle with a high back graced by the gold of the sun's rays. It had the advantage of serving as throne. It had the disadvantage of forcing its occupant to sit.

  Alesso was immediately on his guard. He was, as a matter of course, armed. Hard to be ready for combat from the curved seat of a chair, a throne. But not—never, for a man like Alesso— impossible.