Michelle West - The Sun Sword 03 - The Shining Court

by The Shining Court

  The light, Kallandras thought, permeated the camp in a very unnatural way.

  He walked to Yollana and offered her his arm; she took it. But she was unwilling to relieve herself of the burden of her mask; none of the Matriarchs, not even Margret, set those masks aside, and he suspected that they would not, until they were either dead, or the masks had served their purpose.

  Whatever that might be.

  * * *

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  "How will we know when to don the… masks?" Margret asked quietly, as they walked briskly toward the city. She carried the mask in a sash at her side, the way a woman with an infant will carry a baby. She had to resist the urge to tell Andaru what she saw, and what it meant to her; had to resist the stronger urge to bring him out and let him see what she saw. She felt that she owed him that much.

  But other obligations were stronger. "Yollana?"

  "You'll know."

  "But how?"

  "Matriarch, trust your instincts. If there is any doubt in your mind, do not let your hands act or your tongue flap. Understand? You will know."

  Margret subsided. But she promised herself if Elsarre said a single word, she'd slap her silly.

  They moved as a group of four women. Margret had chosen to leave Elena at the camp, and after a brief but very heated argument, Elena accepted the order. Yollana had no daughter and no retainer except Kallandras of the North, and she readily accepted from him the help that she would not take from the Voyani. Elsarre took Dani with her; Maria, as Margret, had chosen no escort.

  They had daggers, after all, and the will to use them if it came to that—but they were Voyani, and the shadows at night were so plentiful there should be no excuse for open confrontation.

  As they approached the city, they donned other masks, and Margret found them a comfort. She had always been herself until the moment she had learned of her mother's death. Then she had been forced to go into hiding. To hold back tears and fear and anger; to hold back harsh words and the pleading that she might otherwise have done with her cousins. She had become Matriarch in every external way possible, but on the inside she was only Margret, a damn poor substitute for the woman the clansmen had murdered.

  Hiding her face behind something that made her one of the faceless, those responsibilities fell away. She heard the distant strum of samisen strings and the hoarse bark of a man selling expensive trinkets. She stopped a moment; they looked like gold. She lifted one, and his eyes followed her every move. Heavy enough to be gold.

  She put it down. He whined at her. Both moves were perfunctory. She had no desire to tryst with a stranger; no desire to exchange some token of such an encounter. Not all of the Voyani women felt the same way, and certainly the younger girls could be a bit wild if released on an unsuspecting city during Festival—but Margret had always had her mother as leash, and her eventual role as guide.

  She stopped at the wine seller, insulted something that might once have had grapes passed over it, and then scurried to rejoin the group. They walked in a circle. Kallandras took the lead, and although the crowd was dense—and no surprise, with the sun so long and the colors of the sky so inviting—they had no trouble at all moving between bodies. It was almost as if he smiled sweetly and they parted.

  It didn't matter. For whatever reason, they came to the first stop in the circle. Kallandras reclaimed his arm from Yollana, and she hobbled to the Fount, taking care to cross the circle completely. She propped herself up against the ledge, so that she was near the water. "Go. I'll give you three hours. But when the moon is there, in relation to the plateau, begin." She then turned to scowl at a young couple who had chosen to perch there.

  The man frowned, but the woman whispered something Margret couldn't catch, and drew him away. It was very crowded by the fountains. Margret hoped that people wouldn't interfere with magic.

  Or that magic wouldn't kill them if they were someplace they weren't meant to be.

  She nodded dutifully, as did the rest of the Matriarchs; satisfied, Yollana turned to face the moon; they had no question whatever that she would be facing it until it was time.

  But she was wrong; Yollana looked away just before Margret turned. "Matriarch of Arkosa."

  "Yes?"

  "The fire marked you."

  Margret frowned and touched her very tender wrist. Even though it was swathed in unguent and bandage, it ached.

  "What else did you ask from the fire?"

  Margret said nothing at all. But she was glad it was dark; that her face was hidden; that the others could not see the shift in an expression that, unlike Maria's, was always in motion.

  Kallandras bowed to Yollana. Yollana grimaced. "We should have brought wine," she said.

  "We did," Maria replied mildly.

  "For us to drink."

  Maria raised a perfect brow, but said nothing.

  From the Northern Fount, they went to the East, and there, as at the circle in the Arkosan camp, Maria took her position. There were men and women here, but they were few. Those who wished to pay their respects to the Lady had taken the road up the hill, to gain their first, and probably only, glimpse of the Lady's miracle. Kallandras spoke a few soft words here and there, encouraging them to be on their way; to be hungry, to be sleepy, to be whatever it might take to get them to leave of their own accord.

  Margret noticed that he had not done the same for Yollana; Yollana had been left to fend for herself. Which she did.

  Elsarre noticed the same, and was put out by it, but she hadn't the energy to have a real tantrum. Just as well, because Margret hadn't the energy to stop herself from slapping her, and that would cause real stress between Arkosa and Corrona.

  But it was just as well that Margret was left at the Southern Fount and Elsarre was taken into the darkness at the city's edge.

  The sky was very dark, and the night was clear. Margret sat upon the fountain's edge and watched the people who milled around in the gated quarter. They wore masks, often simple ones, although in the streets that led to the Fount she had seen gold and glory on the faces of those who were rich enough—or foolish enough—to afford it.

  They were quiet, these people; they did not understand how to revel. And she was glad of it; tonight she wished to be left alone. It was a waste of the few minutes of freedom she had, and she knew it. She took the thin mask off and set it aside on the stone lip of the Fount.

  An hour passed.

  People in masks drew near and then, seeing her naked face, drew away; there was a statement in the simple removal of the mask that was anything but simple.

  She waited as she watched the full face of the Lady's Moon rise and extend itself toward the height of the plateau.

  Peder kai el'Sol let a mask fall into the Lake. Before it touched the surface of the water, flame took it. The crowd—and it was a crowd—saw the light in the darkness far more clearly than they had when the Lord reigned. It should have pleased him.

  But the wind came, sudden and cold, unfurling over the Lake as if it spoke with the water's voice; he felt a chill very like the one ascribed to men who looked into the waters and saw their own deaths. He wanted to hurry them then; to dispense with formality and politics; to tell all of the men and women who watched that this Festival, they must make certain that all masks meet the Lake or remain unworn.

  But he was the kai el'Sol; he stood in the wind's path and he continued.

  22nd of Scaral, 427 AA

  Shining City, Northern Wastes

  It was not his own blood that he minded; Cortano di'Alexes had seen his share of that. He had bled as a youth in his father's home, when his father chose to drink to excess; bled during the training that would in the end serve him poorly on all but one occasion; bled as he clung to the bridge of Winds that was the Widan's final test. At every juncture of his life, there had been blood spilled.

  Even in the daily routine of his life as Widan, he had been forced to the blade's edge; he could not conceive of a time in his life whe
re blood would be concealed beneath skin, its power untapped. He had cut himself several times for those spells and ceremonies in which blood was the only acceptable signature, and he had bled from wounds when men who were tired of his reign had attempted to end his life. They were dust; he had survived. In some ways, the act of bleeding meant that he was alive.

  No; his own blood, taken from either palm, did not upset him.

  But the Lord's blood did. And he was anointed very carefully with it, as an animal in a divination rite might be before its slaughter. He could not move; nor did he waste the time or the energy attempting to do so. The Lord summoned, and he obeyed. It was as simple, as humiliating, as that.

  And worse: He did not desire to disobey. There was about the darkness a rich and endless beauty, and when he gazed upon the Lord's face he understood what Isladar had hinted at, and still did: that the Kialli had not chosen to follow the Lord out of any compulsion other than… love.

  The Lord gave him robes, and he accepted them; the Lord bid him close his eyes, and this, too he accepted. But his lids, thin and delicate, felt the weight and the pressure of a god's fingers; felt something warm—hot—and sticky against the membrane that protected his vision.

  Heard the words that joined them, although the language was a cacophony of words in an endless stream of languages, most of which had not been heard by living man.

  Lady Sariyel struggled; she fought; she used her magic unwisely and this displeased the Lord. In return for her disobedience, he bled not her palms, but her cheeks. On another day, this might have amused Cortano, for in truth he found her particular vanity revolting.

  Tonight, it did not. The moon in the Northern Wastes was full and high above the Palace that had been carved out of a single piece of rock from depth to height.

  "Come," the Lord said, and Cortano bowed. He bowed willingly. Krysanthos joined him. Of the three, the Northern mage accepted his fate gladly; it made Cortano wonder how much of the shadow had already devoured him. No man willingly became a vessel for the Lord's power who had not already been touched by the influence of the Allasakari. It was a route that a man dedicated to the search for knowledge might study but would never take, for it devoured not body but mind.

  Alesso, Cortano thought, but he said nothing. They were ushered, in haste, to the tower's doors, and from there, they traveled by grace of the Lord's power to the courtyard below. There, roaring and snapping in a fury, were the Great Beasts. Cortano had been called to audience with the Lord before. He had found the conceit of a tower without stairs to be amusing, a way of weeding out the weak from the strong.

  Not so the beasts at the tower's foot.

  They lunged and snapped, and even when the Lord roared and they reared back and exposed their throats, they still growled. Something, Cortano thought, would die in those jaws this eve.

  And perhaps that might be the kinder, the quicker, death. The Festival Moon had not yet reached its height.

  The Lord chose to ride astride one of the beasts; the second… the second he gave to the mages. Neither they, nor their mount, were happy with the arrangement; the beast because no one likes to be reined in by food, and the mages because it was hard to navigate the spikes of the beast's back in order to sit, let alone hold on when it began its sinuous padding movement through the city streets.

  And how like city streets they were, and how unlike. Cortano had spent his youth on Festivals. He had even spent his money on the trinkets one offers to women behind delicate masks, although he had only been fool enough to do it once.

  The streets then had been as crowded as they were now. He had never appreciated the diversity of the Tor, although the memories were sharp and distinct as he laid them against the demons and the imps that watched the Lord's procession.

  They watched with a mixture of adulation and fear, and they did not look away; indeed the least of their kind pressed their bodies against cold, cold stone and whimpered in the language of the kin.

  It was almost repulsive. He wondered how a god could actually find the obeisances and dim obedience of such creatures gratifying.

  Or necessary.

  He wondered if, on the morrow, he would be like, one of those creatures. It was not a pleasant thought.

  Alesso. Where is Anya?

  22nd of Scaral, 427 AA

  Tor Leonne

  Anya was still missing.

  The continent was not distance enough to separate the kinlord from his Lord's rage. Mountains, he thought, would fall before this night's end if Anya were not in place.

  He had used every spell that he had ever designed to trace her; every call that he had ever developed to compel her; he had sent his lieutenants to in full Kialli form to tempt her out of hiding.

  There had been no response.

  Lord Ishavriel dispensed with pretense.

  After tonight, it would no longer be needed.

  But if Anya was not delivered to the Lord before the end of Scarran, all of his careful planning meant nothing. And Scarran was coming; he could taste the change in the air, could feel the old earth waken at the touch of his foot.

  He looked into the open sky; called wind. Wind came. It scoured him of the facade of mortality, and he let that facade be taken in exchange for the elemental power.

  Take this name, he whispered. Take this name and carry my power with it.

  And the wind lifted him, sundering his momentary ties with the earth that was waking as the old world began to eclipse the mortal one.

  He gestured and all mortal seeming vanished as his sword came to hand. The people in the streets of the dismal, pathetic city that was becoming less significant as the minutes passed screamed when the sword brought fire.

  The wind begged him for a plaything, and he let it take a mortal or two, choosing from among the many who did not wear the masks of his devising. They screamed, and their cries were carried in eddies and currents of wind, along with their bodies.

  It cost him; the wind did not yet have that power on its own. But in return, it gave him what he desired.

  "Anya!"

  She froze as if she'd been slapped.

  The sound of her name ran up and down her spine as if the vertebrae were strings and a child was playing with them. She cried out in shock and pain, and she almost dropped the child—but Isladar was there to catch her. They had been taking turns carrying the sleeping girl, and it was hers.

  She was very angry.

  "Anya," Lord Isladar said, in his calm, calm voice. "I have the child. She was not hurt."

  But Anya was hurt. And she didn't like it.

  "Stop it!" she shouted.

  Lord Isladar said softly, "Anya, you will frighten the child."

  She tried to stop being so angry—it wasn't good, she knew that—but he shouted her name again, and it hurt.

  So she lashed out with the thing she knew best. Fire carved an arch of light in the deep night sky.

  Ishavriel cried out as the fire struck him. It dripped from his armor in rivulets and vanished—but the effort was costly. Had anyone—anyone—other than Anya cast that spell, he would have hunted them down and killed them; as it was, he was almost past caring about her survival. Almost.

  But the glory of the Lord depended upon it.

  Lord Ishavriel had spent mortal years planning for this evening. He had subjected not only himself but the fist of the Lord to the humiliation of treating the Southerners—the descendants of the traitors—as near equals. He had enduring the insanity of the most powerful mage on the planet, pandering to her foolish whims, her idiocy. She had put a throne at the pinnacle of the gateway! It was almost inconceivable that something so powerful and so theoretically valuable could cause so much damage on a whim.

  Ishavriel was immortal, but the last several decades had been very, very long. He was used to a long game. He was also used to winning them. Had he lost any game of power, he would not be kinlord or general.

  The darkness was almost completely; the eclipse was almost do
ne. He could hear—at a great distance—the thunder of delicate hooves.

  He was about to win the game…

  If Anya returned to the Shining City in time.

  The old ways were strong now. The Moon was almost at its height. It was time for so many things.

  Time.

  He let the wind carry him in the direction the flames had come from.

  "Teresa," Jewel said quietly to the woman who was now dressed as a woman and whose face was covered by a silvered, simple mask. "Do you know what we're doing?"

  "We are standing in line," the Serra answered lightly, "in order to catch a once-in-a-lifetime glimpse of the Lady's Lake."

  "And those gates are the gates that take us into the Tyr's home?"

  "Into the Tor Leonne upon the plateau, yes. Beyond those gates— it is said—there is a road that leads to the heart of the Empire. Small roads branch from it to either side, but the path itself is true. The lake is there, and beyond the Lake, the Tyr's palace rises. We will see it," she said quietly. "Although I am not certain we will see it soon."

  "We're moving." Jewel shrugged. "We've moving slower than a baby who hasn't quite figured out crawling yet, but we're moving. Gods, I hate these masks. My face is sweating like—"

  "Jewel."

  "I mean, what a lovely custom." She did actually blush, which meant the masks were good for something after all.

  "I am not offended, Avandar," the Serra said, and her voice made it sound like it was true. "It is Festival Night, after all, and we speak with our hearts on Festival Night."

  "Jewel always speaks with her heart. It would be encouraging if she attempted to speak with more of her intellect."

  "Avan-dar."

  "Yes?"

  "Can I have a word with you?"

  "If by word you mean what you usually mean, you may have several."

  "Teresa," Jewel said, as plaintively as she could, "can I ask you how you managed to find Ramdan?"

  She actually did laugh at that, and her laugh was so surprisingly sweet Jewel immediately wanted to say something that would make her laugh again.