Michelle West - The Sun Sword 03 - The Shining Court

by The Shining Court

  There were eyes upon her back; the Lord's, and perhaps the Lady's. She pushed and the doors slid inward, creaking slightly on hinges that had once been perfectly silent.

  Dust rose at the eddies of the sudden breeze; it settled again, but the accusation of neglect had been made. Wind's voice. Here.

  As if he could hear her disapproval, the par el'Sol said, "We have been busy, Serra Diora. There are demons in the streets of the city, and we have lost men to them."

  Demons. Servants of the Lord of Night. She closed her eyes a moment. Nodded. She did not need to straighten out the lines of her shoulders, the lift of her head; they were perfect.

  Nothing about the haven had changed; the braziers still stood astride the steps that led to the case itself; the doors, heavy, were still open to those who had either the rank or the temerity to view the sword. They were few; the reigning Tyr'agar had little use for the sword and the viewing of it by clansmen who visited the plateau had become a political gesture. Few indeed were the men who wished to risk the wrath of their new ruler; a new ruler had no choice but to be brutal and swift in reprisal. And complete.

  But the Radann could make no statement more political than the kai el'Sol had made by dying with this sword in his hands; they were expected to at least pay polite respect to the Sword and its haven.

  "There is no fire," Diora said quietly.

  "No."

  The braziers were dark, and almost empty. The torches were guttered.

  But from the windows above, light streamed down on the Sword, accentuating its lines in the shadows windowless walls made.

  "Please," she said softly, "wait here."

  He bowed. Bowed. To her.

  She walked to the steps that led to the sword, and she knelt there, knowing the dust would leave its mark on her knees, but willing to be so marked.

  She could not easily remove her hat, or rather, she could remove it, but could not replace it; the pins and combs were intertwined in such a way as to seem a natural part of her hair except where gold and jewels were meant to make a statement of their own about her father, or her husband, or her owner. She hesitated a moment, and another, and then, with shaking hands, she began to remove what Alana had, with such care, placed there.

  She was surprised to hear the footsteps at her back. Surprised when she turned to see Marakas par el'Sol, standing as Alana might have stood, as Ramdan had always stood for Ona Teresa.

  "Here," he said, "let me help you."

  "But you are—"

  His expression was strange; she could not be certain that she saw it clearly, the light on everything but the Sword was so poor. "Serra," he said quietly, "I was a clansman, one step above seraf." He bid her, by movement of hand, turn her back to him, and something in his face made her comply.

  Sorrow, memory; things that demanded privacy.

  Yet although she had turned her back, she could not give him the gift of her deafness; she heard what he did not say in the cadence and the texture of the voice he offered his words with. She might have asked him to be silent, but she did not.

  "My wife," he said, as his hands gently touched not the hat's rim, but the binding combs, "had such lovely hair. She was not so fine a Serra, and would have been a poor seraf for your Ona Teresa or your father, but she had a rough grace, and a wildness I fostered.

  "We could not afford serafs. We could barely afford not to become serafs."

  The wife was dead. She heard it in the words; dead but not dead, as her mother had been for most of her father's life: dead but not dead. She hadn't understood it before she had lost her own wives, lost Deidre's beautiful baby, her first baby, the child Diora had dared to call son.

  You could learn to hate the living, if you had to. You could learn to force them away, or force yourself away, from the things they stirred. Not so the dead. The dead would never again irritate by ugliness or pettiness or simple change and age; they were like the steel of the Sun Sword, tempered in fire.

  For just a moment, his hands on hat and hair, she wondered if there would ever be a time, again, when the living drove her, not the dead.

  And she hated herself for wondering it.

  Because she had saved her father's life.

  "I used to do this, for her, because we had no serafs," he said; she had missed some of his words, but none of the feeling behind them. "I used to tell her that I was her seraf." He laughed.

  "And she would tell me that I was a clumsy oaf; her hair, unlike yours, was so very fine and so easily broken or tangled." His hands were gone. He had lied, of course; she had never called him clumsy, or an oaf. He had done for Diora what Alana had done, but swiftly and almost unnoticed, his hands healer's hands, light and certain.

  She wanted to ask him about his wife, because she suddenly wanted to know who had been graced by his devotion; who he had thought worthy. But the Sword beckoned, and there would be time for questions—if time existed at all after the passage of this terrible Festival—later.

  She lifted a fold of the winding cloth of her sari, and dutifully began to drape it over her hair, her face. She bowed, once to the East, to the Lord's beginning, and once to the West, to the Lady's; both were proper; she was proper.

  Marakas par el'Sol stepped back from the stairs, granting her privacy, and after a pause to take a breath, to still the questions his action left her, she began to mount the stairs.

  It had always taken effort to mount those stairs, but this was different. No smoke burned in the braziers as an offering of some theoretical respect or obedience; no Radann waited in the silence of their attendance upon the Sword. She had nothing to offer but the intensity of her inspection.

  She stood before the Sword on its golden platform, the light from the Lord above creating an echo in this, His weapon, and His scepter of judgment.

  Stood, and then began to unwind the sari that hid her face, that protected her hair, that kept her from the full force of the Lord's judgment. She heard a sharply drawn breath and she froze, but the Radann Marakas par el'Sol said nothing, and into the strange quality of his silence, she made her first gesture of denial, although she did not know it for that until later.

  She stood.

  She said, "I have a warrior's heart; I have dealt my enemies a blow; I will die fighting your greatest enemy. Judge me, if you will, Lord. Find me wanting. The wind claims us all in the end, and no wind can come that can hurt me, no death that can scar me, as I have already been scarred." She took a deep breath and uttered words that she had heard not from her father, but from grandfather, long, long dead: his stories to the sons of the kai, had been there when she chose to catch their edge. They had never been for her; he had never had the desire to make a man of the women in his family—because that would have been its own shame.

  But she had been stirred by the stories of daring and sacrifice and tragedy, and in the end—in the end, whose life was more bitterly marked by the Lord's gauntlet? She was the Serra Diora di'Marano, and in her heart, words meant to guide young boys into the ferocity of battle were the only words she could find to say. "I will face any death you offer, gladly, if it be over the corpse of my enemy." She reached out with the flat of her palm.

  And she felt pain, like a spreading blossom, start at a point between her breasts where, hidden from sight, another burden lay: the pendant given her by a woman whose death had been an act of mercy—by the hand of the Serra Diora di'Marano.

  "Radann par el'Sol," she said, pitching her voice, reckless now, so that only he might hear it.

  He came at once, as if his name were a summons or a command. "Serra Diora."

  "The Sun Sword—has it been tampered with?"

  "The Sword itself could not be tampered with." He spoke with certainty. She was comforted by it; there was no doubt at all in his voice. "The scabbard?"

  "It, too, was a gift from the Lord." But there was less certainty in those words.

  "And the stand upon which both rest?"

  "I… do not know." He closed his e
yes. "Serra Diora," he said quietly, without opening them, "we are now involved in a war; my Lord and the Lady against a Lord whom the Radann will never willingly serve again. What you see here you must never see, do you understand?"

  She nodded, the perfect Serra, and then realized that he could not see the gesture. "Yes, I understand."

  Fire grew in his hands, left and right, as if an artist of exquisite skill had chosen to paint a representation of the Lord's strength where His earthly power resided: in the hands of the Radann. But it did not stop; it grew, brightly, darkly, until his hands were of the fire and not of flesh.

  His face was white.

  He reached out to touch the scabbard in which the Sun Sword lay, and the fire guttered at once, doused as if shadow and darkness were liquid.

  He curled his hands into fists and drew them close; she had no doubt whatever that had she not been present he would have screamed. But he—even he—could not be so unmanned. He held the pain until he could speak through it. She was certain a candle would have burned down by half before the first word came.

  "You are… perceptive, Serra Diora. And we… are lax. Come; before we continue our errands, I must deliver a personal message to the kai el'Sol."

  Her expression of concern—and it had been there because she chose to reveal it was gone; she was the Serra who had once been wife to a Tyr; cool and distant and perfect. She bowed low.

  The Serra Diora di'Marano had vowed that she would never think of Peder par el'Sol as kai, for by his treachery—redeemed, in the end, by the grace of the kai el'Sol and the par el'Sol's commitment to God, if not to honor or loyalty—Fredero kai el'Sol had gone to a death he might well have avoided.

  But when he was brought from the confines of the temple the Radann occupied at the behest of Marakas par el'Sol, she did not recognize him as the same man. There was a leanness to his face, and the presence of three wounds, two of which, in her opinion, would leave scars. Both of these, that gaunt look, those wounds, transformed him: he had become the Lord's man. Gone, the political games by which all men—perhaps even Fredero, although she could not conceive of how—achieved power at this pinnacle of power in the Dominion. He wore his sword by his side, and the scabbard, red with blood, was unadorned by so much as a leaf of gold, facet of gem.

  So, too, his robes; gone silks and the perfect seams of master tailors; he wore armor, and the armor itself was without exaggerated shoulders, paint, or color. He was not dressed for display or parade; he could have been any cerdan, and Toran, if not for the fact that his surcoat bore the sun ascendant. Only two men had the right to wear it, and Diora doubted that she would see the Tyr'agar again before the day of her wedding.

  He was not Marakas par el'Sol. He would not, she thought, ever bow to a woman who was not in the ceremonial position of being the Lord's Consort. But if he would not acknowledge her in a way that debased him, he acknowledged her by two things: first, when she began to lower herself to the ground in the full supplicant posture, he stopped her by a single, sharp gesture, and second, he nodded and met her gaze fully.

  She should have looked away. She began to; the lessons of years turned her muscles gracefully, exposing the side of her face to his inspection in as pretty, as perfect, a way possible. But something in her tightened; some imperfection, some part of her that had been broken by the truth:

  That perfection, that obedience, never guarantees safety. That good and the reward of being good were for the discipline of children. She had done everything as it was to have been done; had been everything she had been taught to be; more.

  It had given her everything, she thought, only so that she might learn what loss was.

  The Serra Diora di'Marano met the gaze of the Radann kai el'Sol, and held it. His brows rose a fraction, a fleeting gesture of distaste at what she guessed must be her boldness.

  "Serra Diora di'Marano," he said, "the Radann have been told by the Tyr'agnate Eduardo kai di'Garrardi that you are to wed the morning after the night of the Festival Moon.

  "Accept our apologies for our rough state; we have seen the beginnings of war, and it is not from the direction we would have expected." He paused then, to look to the North. To the North, where the traditional enemies of the South lay in silence, their movements unascertained because the spies and the scouts of the Tyr were in the streets among his own people.

  The words that he spoke next were not for her; they had that faraway quality that spoke of unguarded thought. More than anything else he had said or done, the lack of caution surprised her. Frightened her. He said softly, into the wind. "Where are they?" It was almost like… a prayer.

  And the wind twisted the heavy flap of his surcoat, pulling it in the direction where their historical enemy lay in silence.

  * * *

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  427 AA

  The Stone Deepings

  "You must let yourself relax," a familiar voice said in a darkness sharp with nightmare. The words, calm and wise, could be heard with ease over the dying sound of a scream. She shook her head. Opened her eyes.

  She'd been dreaming, of course. All she did on this road was dream; what made it hard was that she could not remember— ever—falling asleep. Her journey had been one of waking from nightmare into crisis; waking from nightmare into crisis. The act of sleep itself had deserted her.

  She found her breath with difficulty because she was waiting for familiar sounds that would—of course—never come; Finch's light step, Carver's cursing, Angel's sharp words, and Teller's quiet Are you all right? But from them, only silence. She had no room, no bed, no wing; there was no House Terafin, no manse, no shelter. The road was open and she felt as if she would never leave it.

  Wise, wise child.

  Oh, shut up, she snarled.

  But at least one thing hadn't changed: Avandar stood at her feet—which was probably as close as he could come to the foot of her nonexistent bed—carrying a lamp, or rather, the magical outline of a lamp whose heart was white fire. His own.

  And when she shook sleep off, she found that the other shadows had not left her: The stag, horns heavy, stood to one side of the sweep of the rock strewn path, and Lord Celleriant stood against a rocky outcropping, his sword unsheathed, his back toward her. A sentry, she thought, but against what? The worst of the dangers had ridden, abandoning him to her care.

  "Jewel?"

  She nodded. No kitchen to go to, but she stood anyway.

  "Where are we going?" Avandar asked her quietly.

  "I don't know." She started to walk.

  "Jewel, may I—"

  "No." She stopped and began to roll up her figurative sleeves; the ones she was wearing wouldn't easily roll into the loose folds of cloth she best liked. It was time to wake up. "Is any of that money real? Any of that gold?" She reached down and gave the front of her tunic a sharp tug. Felt real enough. "Am I going to walk off this path and end up stark naked? Because this isn't the weather for it, and even if it were, it's probably not the right country."

  "Jewel."

  "Yes?"

  "Your dream."

  "I don't remember my dream. I haven't remembered a dream since—" Silence. The stars were so bright she couldn't believe they were an artifact of memory.

  Believe it, a familiar voice said, almost too softly to be familiar. But believe that it is not your memory that makes them so, but mine. The world was young, once. I was young.

  You remember that?

  I remember everything, was the quiet reply. And you remember more than you know. You were dreaming, child, and your dreams are a part of my gift and my curse to the creations of the one who would not be trapped by a name.

  Starlight. Bright. And beneath it, the movement of men, of hundreds of men, thousands.

  "I do remember." Jewel said. She tried to keep the accusation out of her face when she looked up at him, his chin lit by the lamp he held, his face cast in shadows. "How did you know?"

  "Because you called out two names," he
replied quietly.

  "And those?"

  "Valedan."

  "That's one."

  "Kiriel."

  She shuddered. "It was Kiriel who broke the dream."

  "I… guessed. I have rarely heard you so terrified, and I have borne witness for so many of your nightmares I have lost count."

  "Kitchen," she said, without thinking. And then, scanning the landscape—such as it was—added "Ledge." She pointed with her head. "You, pretty boy, sheathe that and follow. And you, four legs, if you've got a brain in there, you might as well join us."

  "Jewel—"

  "What? She told me they were mine, and in the end, there's really only one way to be mine. No, don't make that face. If you disagree, tell me I'm wrong. Go on. Tell me."

  "I believe that you do not understand the danger of what you suggest," he said, but after a long pause. "But you accepted Kiriel where I would have killed her—if that is even possible now—and you have not yet been proved wrong."

  "Meaning you think I will be."

  "To your lasting regret, yes."

  "Let's just say this is a matter of instinct and leave it at that."

  "Let us, then." His lips were tight. It was a familiar expression, and she was very happy to see it. She walked to the ledge and stood to one side, propping her chin up by the use of elbows and palms. "Okay," she said, looking the almost-human newcomer squarely in the eyes, "these are the rules. It's late. I've had a nightmare. It's what I call a true dream."

  The pale, silver brows of the most beautiful man Jewel had ever seen rose a fraction. I'm going to have to do something about those looks, she thought. He cannot stay that pretty and be part of my group. But she decided that particular set of changes could wait.

  "You have the Sight," he said at last, as if speaking to her was a distasteful but necessary evil.

  "More or less," she replied. "You're used to pomp, circumstance, ritual, and sadism. Guess what? Life's a lot different where we live, and it's going to stay that way, if I have to send everything that isn't human to the Hells permanently."