That candle, round and low, had been his hurdle. A thing of yellow wax, it had been set upon the small Widan's table by the hands of his reluctant wife.
"Sit," he'd told her. And then, unmanning himself because this was the most private of his chambers, he had added, "Please."
Her smile was like the flame, almost as precious, possibly more beautiful. Even then, even marred as it was by her rare display of unease. She had never loved the Widan's craft, but because he had asked it of her, because she had loved him, she sat by the side of the low table, her hands cupping the candle.
She had done this for four weeks.
And on the second day of the fifth week, her hands around cool wax, her eyes alert although she'd sat almost motionless for the better part of two hours in the summer heat, the fire finally heard his voice and answered.
All images, all memories, of any strength were as complicated as these. The fire was his strength.
But so, too, had Alora been before her death. His strength and his weakness.
The only person in his life that he had loved as much— although the nature of the love was different—had also betrayed him. Diora.
His daughter.
He did not think. Had he thought, he might have stayed his hand. But the fire sped down the length of his arms, contained within him until its spark left his fingers. Every Widan described the art differently; every Widan communed in his own way with the source of his power. And every Widan learned, immediately, that power without control was death.
Yet he did not control himself, not here.
The power came automatically, summoned by a fierce protectiveness he would have said—had any dared to ask openly—had died on the last day of the Festival of the Sun. Worse, rage was there, beneath the surface of the fire, and it was a rage that Eduardo's disgraceful behavior could not quite explain.
"How dare you?"
The Tyr'agnate cried out in pain. It was not quite a scream; there was too much anger in the mix, too much outrage. His hands left Diora's face, Diora's body, in the blink of an eye, and Sendari's daughter—his unperturbable, steely child—leaped clear of Eduardo, trailing serafs silk, her face turned away from them both.
The sword rang out.
The fire crackled.
Death hung in the air between them: One man's death. Or two.
It would have been a better death than Sendari had faced in years, a cleaner one. He could have stepped into the flow of the wind, have become just another screaming voice in the wind's maelstrom. He could have discovered, for himself—because no matter how great the desire for that knowledge, it seemed no Widan was capable of answering the question and returning with the information—whether or not the winds ruled the dead, or the Northern gods did, or the Lady. And he might see the wife that he had loved and hated in his time, the only woman whose light had been as bright as the fire's.
Eduardo di'Garrardi swung; Sendari dodged the blade, drew his own. Steel against steel was meant as a distraction, and it succeeded; the kai Garrardi was not trained to fight Widan. He called fire. Fire came as he parried the Tyr'agnate's blow and staggered back. The ferocity of the attack was astounding.
They had come here without Tyran or cerdan.
They had come to the chamber that had been her prison.
And now, the ground at their feet hazed by red light, the air overpowered by the scent of singed hair and singed flesh, they were fighting as men fought: with swords. She thought the roof might burn away, seared into nothing by the Lord's vision, the Lord's gaze. His work, this. His work, as all misery in her life had been.
She gathered the silks more closely about her; Eduardo had pulled at the sari only briefly, but his hands were strong enough to loose their binding.
She had thought—she had thought her father would not intervene. Her hands shook as she crouched against the wall, her face turned groundward in a semblance of the humility so necessary in a Serra's posture. Better that, though, better that than that either man should see her face before she had time to compose it. She was numb with the mixture of fear and humiliation that only men could cause, and it was slow to leave her.
But when the sword skittered across the fine, fine floor and stopped six inches from her bent knees, something stronger took its place. It was her father's sword.
She looked up then. Looked up to see the Tyr'agnate's armor, bare of surcoat, bare of detail by the grace of fire. His hair, his skin dusted black by ash, his face in profile, he stood over her father's prone form, and her father—her Widan father, her powerful father—lay weaponless beneath him.
Before thought could assert itself, before recent history could remind her of everything she had never thought she could forget—even for an instant—her mouth was open, her lips full and then narrowed around a single word.
A single powerful word.
"NO!"
He stopped at once, his sword in mid-arc above his head, his arms extended beneath its weight. Vision, when he fought for his life, took on a clarity that could only be the Lord's gift: All things moved more precisely, and slightly more slowly, as he watched them. He could choose what to react to; could override the instinct that had saved his life more times than he cared to count.
Her word struck him like a forceful blow; a Northern archer's arrow aimed slightly off true while he stood, both hands on the hilt of a sword, the killing blow already begun. He almost staggered with the effort it took to heed her.
But he saw clearly.
The Widan Sendari di'Sendari was at his feet, a second from death, his Widan's fire split, like a wall made of kindling, by the use of the sword that had been the clan Garrardi's since the founding. Ventera hovered a moment as he weighed his options.
As he weighed them and found Sendari's death wanting.
If he killed the Widan, he would be declaring himself for the North. Politically, Alesso was astute—but the entire Dominion knew of his almost legendary friendship with the Widan, and a smaller circle of men knew of his desire for the Widan's daughter. Sendari's death would be all the excuse he required.
And the war?
To go to war, the Tyr'agar would turn his forces first South, to Oerta, and then North. There was no doubt in Eduardo's mind that Jarrani would support Alesso in this. The Sword's Edge would support Alesso. For aid—should he choose to ask it—he would be reduced to seeking alliance with either Mareo di'Lamberto or Ramiro di'Callesta. As it was Callestan lands that he sought for his part in the war, it was a poor exchange.
On the other hand, Ramiro di'Callesta had never dared to strike him with anything more careless than a duplicitous word.
He wanted to kill the Widan.
He wanted the Widan's daughter.
He knew that, having already shown how seriously she took the duty to husband—what man could now doubt that, after hearing the depth of conviction in her speech on the last day of the Festival of the Sun?—she would be no less the dutiful daughter.
And if he was her father's killer, husband or no, he would be forced to kill her.
All these things occurred to him in a rush of thought and clarity as he stood above the prone form of Sendari di'Sendari. All of them.
Such clarity, at such a moment, could only be the Lord's vision, the Lord's gift. Almost before the sound of the Serra Diora's voice had faded into nothing, the Tyr'agnate, Eduardo kai di'Garrardi, lowered his sword.
But he offered no apology for his transgression; he was clearly the victor, after all. For his own reasons, he granted the older man his life. But it was clear to Eduardo, indeed, it must be clear to them all, that that life was also his to take.
"I can be patient," he said, sheathing Ventera, "when I so choose. On the morning after the night of the Festival Moon, Widan." He turned to the Flower of the Dominion. "He has his life because of my high regard for you, Serra Diora."
She bowed her head, hiding her face from view. The desire to pull that face up by the chin and force her to meet his eyes was str
ong, but so were other desires. Better, at the moment, to wait.
He was not completely certain that he would survive the Widan's fire so easily a second time.
He knew what she had done.
He did not know why.
Speaking at all took effort. But he might have read whole treatises flawlessly, argued with Alesso for weeks, brought the Sword of Knowledge to order less painfully than he spoke a single word. Na 'dio. Almost, he said it. But he could not expose himself to her in that fashion.
He chose, instead, her given name. Her adult name. It was, after all, as an adult that she had become inscrutable. Perfection had destroyed the delicate, trusting child as surely as it did all Serras of highborn clans. It had turned her from daughter to wife almost before he could turn to witness the transformation.
And he had helped.
He had asked the Serra Teresa into his harem. And when Alora had died, he had given Diora into her care.
Teresa would never have raised voice to save his life. He felt certain of that. But he had been more certain that his daughter would not have.
He wanted to ask her why.
But he was a coward; he acknowledged the truth without particular fear or shame.
"Diora." He did not make any effort to disguise himself, to flatten his voice, to keep the truth from it. He wondered what she would hear.
He was no longer certain himself.
The woman whose power was words had none.
Her face was once again the perfect mask, and if her hair was in disarray, her sari carelessly arranged, her chin darkening with a bruise that would require the judicious use of powders to conceal, she rose above it all. She was the Serra Diora di'Marano.
Na 'dio.
Oh, her dead spoke.
They spoke with such terrible voices. When she could imagine them as angry, they hurt her the least; in anger, they were harder to face, harder to yearn for. She had embarked upon the Lord's path, under the Lady's guise, so that she might hear their anger, face it, and not be shamed.
And so, of course, the Lord let the wind whisper in other ways.
Na 'dio, we each have gifts for you, but if you accept them, they demand as much back in return.
Her hands became fists; the nails of her exquisite fingers cutting crescents in the flat of her palms. She would not think of this here. Not here, not where any could witness it.
It hurt her. She had not desired death—which of the wives had?—but she knew, now, that death would have been far, far easier than the life she had chosen. She would not have had to face life alone, her arms bereft of the child she had done nothing—no— nothing—
Death would have been hers, and peace with it, if not for the man who lay, bleeding from two wounds, neither fatal, on the ground in the room's center.
You condemned me to this, she thought, summoning her anger as if it were a creature from the Hells and she a Widan. But like a creature from the Hells, it twisted, defying her command, becoming not a shield behind which to view her father, but rather a blade upon which she might cut herself. Deeply.
She had saved his life.
And he had helped destroy hers.
She was numb. She had spoken with the voice. She had stopped the fall of the Tyr'agnate's sword, using a power that she had not once used in her own defense against him. She had raised voice to save her father even though she had sat in the dark of the only true night she had ever known, listening to the screams of the dying, her hands in her lap, her head bent forward, her body perfectly still.
"Diora?"
The body in the room's center moved.
And her father spoke. He spoke with fear, with hesitation, with the curiosity that had always been the strongest element of his speech, and with something that she would not name. She had nothing to offer in return but silence.
427 AA
Stone Deepings
Jewel had always disliked it—a matter of principle rather than practicality—when Avandar was right. But he was right about the stars. They didn't move at all; they didn't change. Hours spent walking in the great stone crevice under their cool guiding light had not dimmed or deepened the night blue sky; it had not brought dawn or moon. The stars, like the stone, were fixed in place.
She liked them better, but she found them disturbing. "Why can I see them?"
"The stars?"
"The stars."
"I don't know."
"Liar."
"If you are going to ask me a question, do me the grace of believing the answer I give you."
"Avandar, I can hear the lie in your voice. Learn to lie better or don't bother."
"It is not a lie," he replied, through teeth that were gritted in a comforting and familiar fashion. "I have some suspicions—and before you ask, no, I won't share them—but I do not know for certain."
"But the stars aren't real."
"No."
"And you can't see them."
"No."
"And you know that my gift has always made me pretty much impervious to illusion."
"Jewel, I am not ignorant."
"I wasn't lecturing you; I was thinking out loud."
"Think more quietly."
She subsided. Thought quietly. If what she was seeing wasn't illusion, and it wasn't real, what was it?
Why are they weeping, Oma? Her grandmother's face was still, the lines of it, cut—as her grandmother said—by sun and wind, scars from a South that Jewel had never visited. A South she was walking toward, if Kalliaris was in the mood to smile.
Her grandmother and her father—not her mother, not her Southern-born mother—stood on the edge of a large circle of people, all dressed simply, all carrying either clothing or food or offers, word offers, of shelter. Waiting for the Voyani merchants to unload their forbidden cargo: people.
They started to tumble out beneath the heavy flaps of canvas, rolling and stumbling as the bolts of fabric, the cords of Southern wood, the bottles of spice or exotic perfume, were removed and their hiding places destroyed: Men, women, children.
We have to offer them shelter, her Oma had said, and you are old enough to understand this now. They come from a land that is harsher than Mandaros when he's angry. You remember what you see here. You've the blood, child. It's no sin against pride to take what you need to survive. But it's a sin not to offer it in return when you have it.
Jewel, silent, had reached up to grab her grandmother's hand. That leathery hand, bent with age into curves that were both comforting and clawlike, had gripped hers a little too tightly as she watched the men and women continue to stumble from the wagon. They were thin, worn; some of them wore women's clothing although they weren't women. They were all younger than her grandmother.
They are weeping, her grandmother had said, because they are free.
No, they aren't, Jewel said.
You shouldn't argue with your Oma, her grandmother had said, breath sudden and sharp. Come home.
But you said I was old enough—
Come home now. She began to drag Jewel away.
This was the first time that Jewel remembered knowing something so clearly. She was pulled upstream, against the current of bodies, of people—like her Oma—who had come to help these people lucky enough to escape from their evil Southern masters. Gods, things were simple then; the good and the evil so clean. She said, because she was young, because she didn't understand her grandmother, except as the source of all wisdom, sharp words, and comfort: No, Oma, they're crying because the babies died.
And her grandmother had stopped in the streets, clutching Jewel's hand, grip so hard that Jewel was almost in tears. She'd turned back, letting Jewel go.
Jewel understood it now, but the child that she had been and the woman that she was existed for a moment in the same place, the fear of one, and the terrible pity—the unwanted pity that would have so angered the old woman—of the other in perfect harmony.
Kalliaris smiled on me, Oma. What you taught me—/ never forgot it. I never
will.
And the old woman answered, "I know."
* * *
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
"Avandar," Jewel said, trying to keep her voice conversational. The problem with that was volume, which was for all intents and purposes nonexistent. She knew it and tried again, louder.
"Avandar?"
"Yes?"
"That was you, right?"
"No."
"But you heard it?"
"Oh, yes," was his quiet reply. She turned to face him, but halfway to familiarity was stopped by a woman she had last seen propped up by cushions in a flat, wide bed.
"Oma," she said, the woman dissolving into the girl, the girl on the verge of tears.
"Jewel," the old woman replied.
Jewel knew better. She knew better. But she walked toward her anyway, her steps picking up speed as they came, each faster than the last; she lifted her arms to shoulder height, wide, as if she could catch—as if she could catch—
But her Oma held out a hand, and her lips took on that thin, compressed line that was a clear signal of annoyance. Avandar's shout meant nothing compared to that disapproval. Jewel stopped again.
"Not here, Na'jay," she said quietly. "Never here. I will take you to where you cannot go, but must, if you are to do what you were born to." A faint hint of pride in the sheen of those eyes. Those familiar and entirely unnatural eyes. "Walk with me, or walk beside me, but do not touch anyone you see on this path. Do you understand me?"
"Yes, Oma," Jewel replied meekly. When the old woman started to walk, Jewel took up her place at her side as if it were natural. She paused to look behind her; Avandar walked in his customary position. "This is—"
"The Warlord," her Oma said. "I know."
"Uh—that's not what I call him."
"It is not what he is called that matters," her grandmother replied, not even turning to acknowledge the man they spoke of, "but what he is. He is the Warlord, Jewel. And you will thank Kalliaris in your time for bringing him to you—although I am not sure he will."
Michelle West - The Sun Sword 03 - The Shining Court Page 39