The Riven Shield: The Sun Sword #5

by Michelle West

  Fredero did not raise his sword often, but when he raised it, it seldom fell unblooded.

  Marakas discovered that the kai el’Sol was known. His cloak and his robes fell across the low villages like a tent, and time and again people came to him, seeking the protection they offered.

  The first time a young woman had darted between the shoulders of men who had gathered to speak with the Radann kai el’Sol, Marakas had been surprised. That surprise had not lessened when the woman—past girlhood, but barely, her skin dark with sun, her eyes dark with much else—had thrown herself at his feet, grasping his hem in shaking hands.

  The Radann who accompanied Fredero had not removed the girl; they had drawn themselves up to their full heights, dropped their hands to the hilts of their swords, and waited.

  He had wondered why. But only that once.

  In ones and twos, bending at knee and covering the exposed ground with their exposed backs, the serafs of the village surrounded the Radann, their hands flat against dirt in the most submissive of postures. Old women, old men; the children were scattered or gathered and hidden by roof or hill or field. Of these, only one sought to raise his face; he was old in the way that strong men suddenly are when struck by loss.

  Marakas turned his attention to the girl again.

  Four men had come seeking her.

  They were, not to his surprise, finely dressed; they were younger than the kai el’Sol, but older than the girl. The villagers, who had made no move to hinder the girl, now cringed to either side to grant passage to the men who pursued her.

  Those men stopped just short of the kai el’Sol; to do otherwise would have insulted the symbol—the full symbol—of the sun ascendant. Not even the Tyr’agnati would dare such an insult without cause.

  The kai el’Sol gazed upon them without comment for a full minute, and then he bent to the girl, whose hair now streamed down her shoulders and neck, obscuring her face, and trembling, as she trembled, like a dark rain.

  “Child,” he said, his voice remote and forbidding, “who are you?”

  She did not look up. And she did not release his hem. But she did not refuse his question. “Talia,” she whispered, her voice so broken Marakas could not be certain that he had heard the name correctly. “Talia en’Sambali.”

  “Talia en’Sambali,” he said quietly, “where is your husband?”

  She did not speak for a moment, but not even Marakas could mistake her silence for anything other than terror. The kai el’Sol waited. And waited.

  Marakas knelt. He knew that the robes of his office would suffer for this lack of dignity, for not one of the Radann had shifted, and they were each more experienced than he. But at that moment, such dignity had seemed a paltry thing. He touched her shoulder. She flinched. But she did not draw back; the hem of the kai el’Sol’s robe twisted in her shaking hands as she shrank away.

  “Child,” he said, touching her shoulder gently. It surprised him, this gentleness; he had thought it scoured from him by the deaths of his family. “You must answer the kai el’Sol. But answer without fear.”

  She raised her face slowly until it was at a level with the kai’s knee. “He is—”

  “He is dead,” one of the finely dressed men said coolly.

  “She is widowed, and her family does not speak for her here.”

  “Ah.” Fredero looked at the young man. His face was slender, handsome, his beard trimmed and tended. “Who then speaks?”

  “I am kai to the Tor’agnate.”

  “The Tor’agnate?”

  The man’s brows rose a fraction. “The Tor’agnate Amando di’Manelo.”

  “Ah. And he serves the Tor’agar Gerrardo di’Verrens.”

  The man nodded.

  “Who in turn owes loyalty to the Tyr’agnate Mareo di’Lamberto, if I am not mistaken.”

  “You are correct, kai el’Sol. This girl is a villager in my father’s lands. She is without husband.”

  One of the scattered villagers made a sound. A low sound, like a grunt of pain.

  Fredero turned to him. “You know her husband?”

  The hesitation was profound. Marakas understood it well; the kai el’Sol did not appear to.

  “Speak,” the Radann Jordan el’Sol said, breaking his silence without motion. “The kai el’Sol is a man with many responsibilities. Do not waste his time.”

  “He was not—was not dead—this morning.”

  “And now?”

  “If the kai di’Manelo vouchsafes his death, it must be so.” The words were broken.

  “I see.” Fredero turned to the young man. “When did this death take place?” It was only barely a question.

  The kai did not answer. And the girl, who should have known better, now raised her head fully. The sun’s light traveled down the necklace of red marks around her throat, and lingered on the soiled, common clothing she wore.

  “They killed him,” she whispered. “He is just beyond the south fields, among the trees that serve as protection against the wind.”

  Marakas rose. To the old man who had spoken, he said, “Do you know the place of which she speaks?”

  The old man nodded.

  “Take me there. Now.”

  He felt a moment’s pity for the man; the son of the Tor’agnate glanced at him coldly, and the glance was a command. But the old man, eyes cast groundward in humility and fear, did not appear to see that glance. When Marakas approached him, he turned, wordless, and walked away from the village center.

  Marakas heard the kai el’Sol’s command; no one followed them. When the village center was beyond them, the old man began to run, forgetting the Radann who trailed behind him like shadow. If the sun had added lines to his face, and the wind had broken the straightness of his back, it had not robbed him of agility; Marakas found it difficult to match his pace.

  They crossed the field; the stalks of wheat were high, and the corn, green, was still as tall as a young man. The furrows between rows were not wide enough to grant two grown men easy passage; stalks fell as they passed, a punctuation to the story of their movement.

  Other stories were written here; stalks trampled and crushed by the hooves of larger beasts. As they cleared the tall growth of the field, as they passed into the wilderness that farming had not banished, they came to the line of trees. Marakas had spent his youth in the land of Oerta; Mancorvo, with its abundance of life, its long stretches of rivers and lakes, was still a miracle to him.

  But in that land, or in these, men with power still left their mark. They found the young man against the trunk of a tree. He had been wounded by swords, and his farmer’s cotton had absorbed blood without staunching its flow.

  The old man cried out, wordless, and fell at once to his knees by the young man’s side.

  “I told him,” the old man said. “I told him, not her, not that one. I told him not to marry that girl.” There were tears upon his cheeks; they caught no light, for the trees provided shade from the harshness of the Lord’s glare. “It is no boon to desire a beautiful girl,” he added, although Marakas knew it well. “And no boon to have that desire returned.”

  But Marakas had also fallen to the ground beside the young man, and the life of the Radann, the desire for vengeance against the perfidy of the Lord, slipped past him, falling away as if it were a poorly fastened mask. An iron mask, a mask with no obvious weakness. He learned much, that day.

  He touched the man’s face—if someone quite so young could be called a man—and then turned and barked at the older one.

  “Bring water,” he said. “Bring fever root. Bring arsal, if you have it, and if you do not, for the love of your son, find it.”

  The old man was motionless for a second, but only that long; he turned and Marakas heard the crashing of fallen stalks as the old man receded into the distance.

  He was left alone.

  Into the silence, he offered his only hesitation, but the hesitation was profound. He had touched the boy’s face, and he knew—as no
one else would have known it—that the spirit had not yet fled the body. He also understood what the cost of holding that spirit here would be; the winds that were howling in his ears had nothing to do with the gentle breezes of the Mancorvan plains.

  You did not come to the Lord to heal, he told himself angrily. You did not come to the Lord to offer what you promised Amelia you would never offer again.

  How many promises, made to his wife, had he broken?

  He withdrew his hands. Stared at them.

  Amelia . . .

  A small bird flew down from the tree’s height. It was brown, plain, clearly a female; its chirping was an agitated cluck and whistle.

  He touched the boy again, wondering, as the bird continued to worry at him—from a safe distance—if this were a sign. How could it be? In daylight, here, the symbol of the Lord upon his breast, who would dare give a sign such as this?

  But that question was to go unanswered.

  He knew what the cost of this healing would be, and he feared it, as he had always feared it, but he welcomed it as well. He reached for a name, and he found it as if it were his own; his own, he released.

  Darran, he said. Darran di’Sambali.

  The injuries the body had suffered were profound. He had thought the spirit well on its way. But the boy answered. A warrior, he thought; a warrior to the end, be his weapons the simple implements of the field.

  He felt fear, rage, helplessness as Darran di’Sambali struggled against his enemy: Death. The death that would remove from his new, his beloved wife, the only protection he could afford her.

  Was it so different a fear, so different a rage, than his own? No. It was his own.

  He had called men back from the winds before, and the winds had hollowed him, reducing him to emptiness, loneliness, a terrible gnawing need. But the need of this man was so strong it swept him up, carrying him, rejecting all weakness.

  Where is she? Where is Talia?

  The voice was wild, terrible.

  His own.

  He struggled against it, and because this was not his first healing, because he had developed the ability to retreat—if only a little—he answered.

  She is safe. She has claimed the protection of the—of the clan Lamberto, and her claim has been accepted.

  The voice stilled.

  But she needs you, Darran. She needs your silence, and your strength. You were wounded. You survived. Be still now, and you will do more.

  He felt the wounds closing.

  They were many.

  And as they closed, he felt other things; the depth of a longing that he had thought lost forever, with youth, with Amelia. He saw Talia, not as a terrified girl, but as a wild wood spirit, a creature feral and frightened, who might be approached with care, with quiet motion, with soft words. He saw her ferocity, her loyalty, and more, much more; he would have spared them both the intimacy of this knowledge, but to withdraw was still death.

  And he wanted this personal affirmation of life, this reason for living, this profound sense of belonging.

  He knew that Darran would understand why, for he knew that Amelia, and his son, the boy she had insisted bear his name, would be no less revealed, that his longing, and his sense of bitter failure, no less horrifying; that Darran would forever be scarred by the Radann’s loss.

  They clung, in the warmth of the healing trance, until someone dared to touch them.

  He heard, from a great distance, a voice he knew well, and did not recognize.

  “Marakas el’Sol, you have done enough. Come away.”

  He opened his lips to refuse, but sound was beyond him; the kai el’Sol was a force that could not be denied. Not by a man who had offered him his oath.

  Two cries broke the silence, and it was hard to tell which man had uttered which; they were one sound of denial.

  “It appears,” the kai el’Sol said, “the reports of this man’s death were exaggerated.”

  Marakas opened his eyes. His hands were shaking. He reached for Darran, but caught, instead, the fabric of the kai el’Sol’s robes, the embroidered gold of the sun ascendant, its rays spreading in all directions.

  “You are brave,” the kai el’Sol said quietly, “and foolish beyond belief. Remain here until you are composed. I am grateful for what you have chosen to do here, but you are Radann; the weakness which holds you now must pass unseen. I will take the young man to the village; there is work to be done. If you can join us, join us; if you cannot, do not worry. Nothing that has happened here has happened in vain.”

  Marakas looked past the golden sun to the kai’s face; he shuttered his eyes against the brightness of the Lord’s symbol. Lord’s man, he thought, and for the first time in his life—perhaps because he was weakened—he understood what those words meant.

  They were alone, the kai el’Sol, Darran di’Sambali, and Marakas. Not even the old man from the village had been allowed to attend them.

  For the sake of the Radann. And for the sake, Marakas realized, of those who might witness what could not in safety be witnessed. He knew, then, that he could trust this kai el’Sol with far more than just his life.

  Darran cried out as the kai el’Sol lifted him. But Darran was no Radann; what weakness he chose to show disgraced none but he.

  “Darran!” Marakas shouted. “She thinks you dead, and she is waiting. Whose needs have precedence?”

  And although he was not a well-learned boy, he understood every word Marakas spoke; they were almost one man, for a time, for a little while longer.

  They left Marakas and began to make their way to the village center; he watched the field bend and sway as they moved through it. They had not yet traversed its length before he, healer-born and weak as a girl, found the strength to compose himself, to rise, and to follow. The part of his mind that was healer-born, trained to both the power and the terrible vulnerability of that gift, thought it best to linger, but the part of his mind that held the memories, the desires, and the fears of a much younger man, had to know that she had found safety.

  Or perhaps that was not true.

  Perhaps it was Marakas himself who needed to know this. Because without safety, the depleting, exhausting, revealing work of this day meant nothing. Less than nothing. What was hope, after all, but another way of torturing a man? Had he not, with hope, returned through villages made funereal by the passage of disease, looking for his wife, his son?

  He found strength. He walked quickly. And stopped when he reached the village center.

  For Fredero kai el’Sol had drawn his sword. Balagar burned as if steel could be the heart and essence of fire. There were almost no villagers in sight; few were willing to bear witness to the unfolding of events when those events involved the naked blade, and men of rank and power. Marakas understood their absence well; he did not even consider it cowardice, although among the high clans it would have been dismissed as such. Marakas was not born to the high clans, just the free ones; he was an indifferent swordsman—at best—and he had abjured use of blade where the simple expedient of hiding in safety would do.

  And all of these things, all of them, were part of an old life, a different life. The crest upon his chest had never felt so alive as it did this day, and it demanded its due.

  The Radann had drawn swords as well. They caught sunlight, reflecting it, scattering it.

  In their midst, the young girl stood, straight and tall, her left eye bruising now, her lips thick with the weight of ungentle hands. But her eyes were clear, her shoulders straight, her back unbowed; she was achingly, piercingly beautiful, and he would have given his life, in a frenzied instant, if it would have saved her any sorrow, any misery.

  Ah, Darran, he thought. For he stood, husband to her, and proud of it, terrified of it, hallowed by it, at her side, his clothing wet and sticky with unstaunched blood, his face pale, his lips set. His arm was across her shoulders, and he drew strength from the contact. Enough, in Marakas’ certain opinion, to be able to remain standing.


  The man who had claimed to be the kai of the Tor’agnate di’Manelo had drawn his blade as well; so had his men. They were not, in Marakas’ opinion, Toran—or if they were, they did not deserve their rank. They had an easy confidence about them that spoke of youth and familiarity with the privileges of power—but not with the responsibilities. There were some lessons which one did not survive the learning, or the teaching, of.

  He witnessed them now.

  “This man,” the kai el’Sol said evenly, “is not dead, as you can see. This woman is therefore claimed, and protected, by a family.”

  “An oversight,” the kai di’Manelo said quietly. He had not taken a step forward; he was younger than Fredero, but not so young that he overestimated the effects of age upon the kai el’Sol’s sword.

  “Attempted murder is seldom considered oversight.”

  “Murder?” The kai di’Manelo’s eyes narrowed. “There must be some misunderstanding, Radann kai el’Sol.” He bowed, but he did not lessen his grip upon the haft of his curved blade. “We came upon him in this condition, and his wife, believing she had been widowed, was grieving. She was distraught; she mistook our concern for something less seemly. There must have been a bandit attack.”

  “The bandits are thin at this time of year; the harvest has not yet proved so poor that men must kill for food.”

  “Then perhaps it was the Voyani. They come at will, and they take what they can, like the carrion creatures they are. Ask him what occurred,” the young man added. “I am certain that he will explain the misunderstanding.”

  The kai el’Sol turned. “The Lord is witness here,” he said. “I call upon him to be judge as well. What was done was done beneath the open sky; the Lord sees all. Understand, Ser Darran kai di’Sambali, before you reply, that I am the first of the Lord’s servants. What he witnesses, I witness.

  “What happened in the south fields?”

  “Think carefully,” the kai di’Manelo said.

  “Indeed,” the kai el’Sol said, nodding gravely.

  In his youth, Marakas would have known a horror at being trapped, like a pawn, in the game of two powerful men. But Darran knew no fear this day, and Marakas, a giddy elation. Not hope, but something more substantial.