Michelle West - The Sun Sword 03 - The Shining Court

by The Shining Court

  And she so hated to grant that much power to clansmen.

  Roughly, because she was suddenly angry at herself, she said,

  "What is your clan?"

  And the woman looked up and said, "Namarre" It meant nothing to Margret. She looked away.

  "All right," Jewel said quietly. "Here we are. That's a beautiful body of water. Well, from here anyway. And here is about as close as I want to be. Where is she, Serra?"

  The Serra lifted her head a moment. Frowned. Neither she nor the Northerner had mentioned the only thing of value to the Serra. But she heard the certain knowledge in the younger woman's voice, and on this one night, she acknowledged it. Diora. She wondered if Kallandras had told her, and if so, how much.

  She lifted her chin slightly. Called with the private voice.

  Silence.

  "1… do not know," she said at last.

  She stood, the Sword that defined the Leonne clan wrapped like a babe in her arms. The moon lit the steps at her feet, but cast her shadow down the rest, like a carpet or a path. She froze there, staring.

  "Serra Diora," the Widan said quietly.

  "Widan Sendari," she replied, her voice the cool voice of the dutiful daughter. It was a voice she understood well, and it came naturally to her.

  He stared up at her, his face as naked as the moon's face, but shorn of light and power. "Na'dio."

  She stiffened. It was a rejection they both understood.

  But understand it or no, the haggard man at the foot of the stairs said again, "Na'dio."

  She hated him.

  She hated him and she could not hate him. She desired his death and yet, when it had been offered her, she had rejected it utterly, risking exposure and death to stay the hand of the kai Garrardi when he had no desire to show mercy. She said, although all instinct screamed against it, "You have no right to call me that."

  He flinched.

  He flinched. She was wearing the mask, and he, he had chosen the subterfuge of the naked face, a sign, on Festival Night, that one did not wish to expose oneself to strangers, regardless of how anonymous that exposure might be. Yet he flinched. He stood, his voice stripped of accusation, of anger, of surprise, but not of emotion.

  Had she not been carrying the Sword, she would have covered her ears. And it would be a futile gesture, a child's gesture.

  "Will you not ask me why I am here, Father?"

  "And if I ask," he said quietly. "If I find the courage to ask, will you answer, Serra Diora?"

  In the worst of the isolated moments in the Tor, when she had been denied the use of the samisen or the lute, and her voice was not steady enough for naked song, she had dreamed of what she might do when she could finally confront her father.

  For in the end, the others were men of power, and they played by the rules of the powerful: kill what must be killed, salvage what is of value, destroy what might be used against you.

  They had not betrayed her. They had betrayed oaths given to and accepted by the clan Leonne, and if those oaths were honored by the Lord, they were not so honored as victory. Victory.

  She intended to destroy the victory that had been bought at the expense of her family. Not her husband's family, but hers; the wives whose rings she would never again remove; the child—oh, Lady, her boy—

  But her father understood the pain of that loss. And her father was the only one of them who had promised to protect and to love her.

  She hated him. "Ask," she said wildly, the power crackling beneath the surface of the command. She wanted him to feel that power; she wanted him to understand that no matter what happened here, he was at her mercy, and there was so little of it.

  But he offered no resistance. The word might have held no power or no command at all.

  Or perhaps it did not conflict with his desire. Perhaps he had come this way, to ask her whatever it was that she had commanded him to ask.

  "I did you no kindness, did I?"

  The words might have been Weston they were so foreign; she did not understand them.

  He waited, and then, searching for the face that the mask hid, he said, "Would it have been better to let you die with your wives?"

  She opened her mouth, but no words came out. His voice had the power; hers eluded her.

  "I have come because it is Festival Night, Na'dio, and because I thought—if I have not misjudged you—that you would be here."

  She stared at him, her hands rhythmically clutching and unclutching the folds of silk the Sword was wrapped in. When she answered his question, it wasn't an answer at all. It was a child's plea. "Why? Why?"

  She could not even articulate what she desired because she did not understand it; her dead were screaming as they always screamed, and for the second time—for only the second time— she joined them.

  He flinched again. Took a full step back. His eyes moved, flickering off the contours of her masked face, dodging her eyes.

  But before she could force them back, they came; he stood, old now, staring up at her, and he finally raised both hands, empty hands, palm up. It was a plea.

  "I wanted what men want," he said. "Na'dio, Na'dio, please." His voice was incredibly gentle. It was a voice that she had not heard for a decade.

  She was weeping. She had never thought she would weep again in his presence. She could not see him for the tears. "Alora was dead. I could not have her back. I searched for a second wife, but there was no wife like Alora. Because," he added, "I was not the same man. I did not realize it then, and realizing it now does not change me; I am what I have become, and I will pay the price for it."

  "And what of me ?"

  "My child—"

  "They killed my wives," she said; she had started and she could not stop the words. "They slaughtered my wives. And my son—my boy, Deirdre's babe—they snapped his neck. Do you know—can you even imagine—"

  "What it is like to watch the one you love slip away while no one raises a hand to save her? Yes. Yes, I know."

  "/ did not kill your wife. I did not destroy your life!"

  "Yes, Na'dio," he said quietly. "You did."

  The Sword tumbled out of her hands and came to rest at her feet; the tip of the blade, peering out of the silks she had been so careful with, now overhung the edge of the platform.

  "She bled to death giving birth to you. We could not stop the bleeding. I sent for a healer. He failed me. He died." He did not look away; she did not; they were trapped now by the cadence of his words. "I hated you."

  A peculiar numbness began to settle around her.

  "And I wanted to continue in that fashion, but the Serra Teresa convinced me that you—you were all that was left of her."

  She bent slowly, her knees almost giving under her own weight. The sword was beautiful as it lay exposed to moonlight.

  "Believe that I loved you, Na'dio," he said softly. "It did not take long before I could see her in you, and could see that you would never be what she had been." He looked away. "I did not desire this marriage. I did not trust the Tyr, and his son was not to my liking. I had hoped to protect you, but I was ordered by both kai and Tyr to give you in marriage to the kai Leonne.

  "And on the day you were married, you had no desire to leave' my house. It was only a year," he added softly. "I—"

  "Please do not tell me that you thought I would come back to your harem unchanged."

  "I will not tell you that if it is not what you wish to hear, but it is the truth."

  She knew what he would ask next, and she did not want to hear it. It was a question she had asked herself so often the answer made no sense. She lifted the Sword. Bundled it carefully in the silks that she had brought for just that purpose. She started down the steps, and he stepped aside. But he did not spare her the words, and she had no strength to force him to silence.

  "Why did you not attempt to defend yourself? Why—if you had the powers that you do have, did you not save your wives? I did everything within my power to save mine."

  She fro
ze; the mask was on her face, but it was less effective than her expression would have been. "Because," she said, her back to him, "I knew that there was nothing I could do that would save their lives."

  "And so you saved your own."

  She turned then.

  "Yes," she said, voice as sharp as the Sun Sword. "I saved my own because I thought if I did, I could avenge what I could not stop."

  The silence—she thought it would go on forever.

  "Na'dio," her father said, surprising her again, "I have dedicated my life—what is left of my life—to the pursuit of power." He lifted a hand, extending it into the empty space that separated them. "And I no longer find it a rewarding substitute for the life I had.

  "I am… committed. I am old and there is no way to turn back from the path that I have begun to travel. But I will tell you now that if I knew that we would be here, on this Festival Night, speaking these words, I would never have taken the test of the Sword."

  "And now?"

  "Now?"

  "You have taken the test. You have chosen your path. And I, Father, have chosen mine." She knelt slowly and placed the Sword on the floor between them, and then lifting shaking hands to the back of her head, she carefully untied the mask she had taken such pains to secure.

  In the torchlight, she met his gaze; he met hers.

  "I am leaving," she said quietly, "with the Sword. There is only one way you can stop me."

  "Na'dio," he said quietly. "Do not do this. Do not force my hand."

  But there was no steel in his voice, no edge in his expression; he acknowledged, measure for measure, what she acknowledged; that he could not see her killed; that he could not lift his hand to kill her himself.

  "Leave the Sword," he told her softly. "Take your freedom, but leave the Sword."

  She placed the mask on the floor beside the Sword. Looked at its flat face, its bright plummage. "I remember when I asked you for this mask," she said, as if he had not spoken. She stroked feathers as if they were alive; ran her fingers over the contours of the familiar beak as if by doing so she could capture the sensation, hoard it against a future hunger which might be appeased by such simple comfort. "And you told me, so sternly, that I was a graceless, ill-mannered child; that a proper Serra never made demands. And I knew that you were disappointed; but I also knew that you would bring me the mask."

  "Your gift was that powerful even then?"

  "No." She smiled bitterly. "I knew it because when I was a child, I knew that you loved me more than you loved anything else in the Lord's creation, or the Lady's Night. I knew that even though you did not like the way I asked, the fact that I asked at all would mean something to you.

  "I am not that child.

  "You are not that man.

  "But I was that child; you were that man. I cannot take this with me, Father; I have held it long enough. But if you desire it, keep it, and remember."

  She did not meet his gaze; her hands ceased their searching motion over the fine surface of a child's desire. She turned, instead, and lifted the much heavier burden. She walked to the door, the closed door, and then she turned back.

  He did not look up; instead, he knelt by the mask that she had left on the floor, touching it, as she had touched it, as if he could absorb that contact.

  She felt a fierce, a terrible urge, to throw down the Sword and run to him, to open her arms and believe in the comfort and the promise of his uncomplicated and unfettered love. But it passed.

  "Good-bye, Father."

  "Na'dio…"

  "She is coming."

  "What?"

  "Diora, the Serra Diora; she is coming."

  Jewel nodded absently. "Avandar?" There was something unpleasant in the air. Like the smell of burning flesh, but without smoke, fire, or victim. The wind was a little too wild; it was as if… as if…

  "Yes."

  "Yes?" As if she could hear the wind in the Deepings.

  "Yes, you do."

  "I hate it when you do that." She turned to the Serra Teresa, and asked, "Serra, do you hear… horns?"

  The Serra frowned. "Yes."

  The General Alesso di'Marente presided above the Tor Leonne in shadows. He could see the Lake; he could see the Radann. And above the city, in raiment of fire and light, he could see Lord Ishavriel. The match was almost at an end. If he lost, the game was lost. If he won, the game continued. There was little ground in between.

  He waited for Sendari, and eventually, out of breath, the Widan arrived. "Old friend," Alesso said. "Are you well?"

  Sendari did not reply. It was answer enough.

  "This is not the game that we envisioned," the General said, lifting a goblet of sweet water in one hand, and a goblet of sweet wine in another. "But it is the only game. Come. Have we ever played to lose?"

  "You have never played to lose," Sendari replied after a moment, choosing not water but wine. Alesso raised a brow in the dimly lit room. Then he put a free hand on his oldest friend's shoulder.

  "And I do not play to lose now. Anya a'Cooper, against all odds, is in the Tor."

  "What?"

  "Do you see the person standing in the large, empty space?"

  "Yes."

  "He or she just threw fire halfway across the city."

  "Oh."

  "I cannot hear what is being said, but I would say, from the up and down motions, that Anya a'Cooper is about to have a tantrum."

  Sendari raised a hand to his brow and closed his eyes. And then he opened his eyes again.

  "Yes, old friend," Alesso di'Marente said. "Horns. I believe that Mikalis di'Arretta said that this was sometimes called the Hunter's Moon." Sendari was silent. "What is that, old friend?"

  The Widan lifted a pale hand. In it, far too small for a grown man's face, was a small child's mask. A mask.

  "How many?" The General asked softly. He waited; his oldest friend stared at the mask in hand as if it could provide answers.

  "Let us pray that the Lady is merciful."

  "Which Lady?" Alesso said, with an almost reckless laugh.

  Moon night.

  Above the city, Lord Ishavriel could see the masks that he had created. Some had survived. Enough, apparently. For in the distance of the Scarran road, High Winter was returning to mortal lands on the backs of the Winter Hunt. He could hear the song of the silver horns; could hear the hooves against the dirt. But although he remembered the Winter Queen well, he could not imagine what she might look like; it had been that long. He wished to see her arrival; indeed, that had been his role. But Anya, willful and foolish, had destroyed that triumph.

  She had destroyed much. She would not destroy everything. His plan, and The Lord's favor, might still be salvaged if Anya arrived in the basin before the ceremony's start.

  The boy in the Arkosan camp would have no demons to save children from, and therefore no strategic return to grace this eve; the Radann had thinned the ranks of his servitors severely enough that he could not afford to sacrifice another.

  It was the night of the Dark Conjunction.

  Across the thousands of miles he spoke to the Lord, and the Lord listened.

  I have found her, Lord.

  From the heart of the Northern Wastes, his Lord spoke. Ishavriel gathered the god's power and made it his own.

  "Anya."

  Across the city she struggled against him, but he was her master; he not had spent the years training her singular talent without building careful holes in her defenses against the time when he might need to exploit them.

  He used them now.

  She screamed in rage and pain.

  Lord Isladar said, "Anya. Anya. You will frighten the child."

  The wild, wild anger deserted her for a moment, although the struggle against her Lord did not. She was awe-inspiring in her fashion, for although she was destined to lose, she nonetheless held her ground against not only Ishavriel's considerable power, but also the Lord's. "Is she awake?"

  "Yes," he said. His voice was gentle a
nd quiet. "She is awake, but she is confused. Because you have promised that she will not be hurt, she has been… happy." He gently pried the child's arms from around his neck, taking care, nonetheless, to support her full weight. He had done the same countless times with Kiriel. "But when you scream like that, she is afraid that it means that you cannot protect her, and then she is frightened."

  "I can protect her," Anya growled.

  "Yes. But Anya, the Lord needs you in the Shining City."

  "The Lord doesn't need protecting from anything."

  "Ah. No, he does not need protection. He needs your help. There is no one in the Shining City who can do what you can do. No one who has your power. You are special. You have always been special."

  "I don't care about that," she said, tossing her hair. "I promised—"

  "Anya, we can all go to the Shining City together. Shall we do that? And while you are busy with Lord Ishavriel and my Lord, I will watch over the child for you."

  "You?"

  "Did I not protect Kiriel? And she was younger, and even more helpless than your child."

  "But you're a—"

  "Yes. I know. And you do not have to leave. You are powerful. If you wish to stay in the Tor, no one will be able to force you to leave. But the Lord will be proud and happy if you arrive in time to help Him."

  "Oh."

  Such a difficult child, Anya.

  She thought about it for a moment, and then she frowned. "Can you smell that?" she said, wrinkling her nose in obvious disgust.

  "Smell?"

  "Yes, it's terrible."

  "My apologies, Anya, but I am only Kialli. There are some sensations that are lost to us. I smell nothing."

  "It's the bells," she said. "And the horns." She actually started to gag, doubling over and vomiting until she had emptied her stomach. Isladar watched, fascinated.

  "We have to leave," she said, when she could speak at all. She wiped her mouth on the sleeve of her robes, and then said, in a very irritated voice, "I'm ready, why are you taking so long?"

  Lord Ishavriel appeared almost instantly. He had time to smooth the lines of fury from his face, but only barely.

  "You promise you'll take care of my child?" she said, ignoring him entirely.