The Riven Shield

by Michelle West

  “The armies are ready,” the Commander said quietly.

  “They can begin to move on the morrow.”

  “Send word, then. We will join them on the plains, if they can hold the forces of Marente upon it.” He lifted his head. “Tyr’agar?” he said quietly.

  Valedan nodded. “You know Raverra and Averda better than I; I will follow your lead in this.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  9th of Corvil, 427 AA

  Terrean of Averda

  “WAKE.” From a great distance, a single word. She understood it, but everything about it was unfamiliar. The voice. The cadence. The word itself, prefaced by nothing; no snort of irritation, no edgy amusement, no gruff annoyance.

  No warmth.

  She saw darkness. Into night, the single word came again, unchanged. She listened and heard it: foreign, strange, unfamiliar. No voice of hers.

  She was used to waking in sunlight; to sleeping in sunlight; used to waking in dusk or at the edge of dawn; used to waking in the dead of full moon. If there was a rhythm that punctuated her life, it was the lack of routine. The only demands were those of the open road; the weather in the Terreans, the season, the possible conflicts brought to the Voyani—or carried by them—and the clansmen.

  She was accustomed to shedding sleep the way waterfowl shed water. But this sleep was heavy, and it lingered in her limbs, like the edge of sickness.

  “Daughter of Arkosa, wake.”

  Ah, a change in tenor.

  Anger. Fear. Something that hovered on the edge that separated them.

  She woke.

  Saw starlight, saw the moon’s face, slipping by sliver of gray into nadir; woman’s face, veil falling. The stars were her stars. The air was warm.

  Elena struggled to sit.

  She felt something between her lips, her swollen lips; water trickled from the corners of her mouth before she remembered that water was precious. She curved those lips, tightening them around the mouth of a waterskin.

  Her hands were shaking; she forced them to rise, lifting them as if they were weights. They worked against her until she lost moonlight and looked at the person who held that water.

  He held her gaze for long enough to be certain that it no longer wandered, and then he waited until she took the burden he carried.

  Had she not been so thirsty, she would have refused to swallow.

  He rose. She was not comfortable with the sudden difference in their height, but she could not stand; her legs were weak.

  The robes that had been graced by blood, rent by sword, were now whole. “Elena Tamaraan,” he said quietly. “Where are we?”

  It was not what she had expected to hear. If indeed she had expected Lord Telakar to speak at all.

  The Lady was gracious this eve; Elena’s vision, better than Margret’s in the night sky, was not so good as Adam’s; she could see the lines of the creature’s face, but they were softened by shadow. She knew that he could see her clearly.

  She drank in silence.

  “Elena,” he said again. “I asked a question.”

  She nodded. “I heard you.”

  And dropped the waterskin as his hand struck her face. It was a brief gesture, and no hint of its violence marred his perfect posture when she turned to face him again, her eyes stinging from the pain of the contact.

  “You are no longer among your kin,” he said softly. “Learn to speak with grace, if you choose to speak at all.” His lips turned up in a smile. “You no longer carry a weapon. If I am not mistaken, you shed it in the desert.”

  Her hands stilled.

  “Now. Where are we?”

  She could see trees in the darkness; the moon had risen above their tops; the forest was sparse.

  But the stars were familiar. Stars.

  She was alive. By the Lady’s grace, alive. And any gift the Lady offered was to be treated with respect, with fear, with caution.

  But she accepted that gift; with life came possibility.

  So she looked. She studied the stars. She listened.

  And in listening, she felt the cold of the desert night, although she now knew that the desert was far, far away.

  It was absolutely silent. She heard her own breath; heard the rustle of her shirt against the trailing folds of desert wear. Heard the wind’s voice in the distant branches.

  But that was all; there was no other sound in the clearing. No insect song, no cricket dance; no movement of light carried on the back of night flies. There was no hunting cry; no owl voice, no padding through the undergrowth that spoke of waking predator.

  “It’s too quiet,” she said, without looking at him.

  “It is quiet, yes.” He moved in the silence, part of it.

  “Is this—” Speak with grace. “Are you responsible for the silence? Is it like the heartfire?”

  “I do not know what the heartfire is,” he replied. “But I am responsible for the silence.”

  Some changing current beneath the surface of his words made her look up.

  “It is . . . interesting. It appears that life, no matter how little sentience it possesses, is aware of my presence. Of what that presence entails.”

  She said nothing.

  “It is unfortunate as well. It appears that I am never to return to the forests of my youth upon this dwindling plane. The silence follows me.”

  Something about his words. She frowned. “Are you not alive?”

  He lifted a hand; it made a shadow against the moon’s face. “Alive? No, Elena Tamaraan. I am not alive.”

  His voice. The Voyani almost never spoke softly; their voices, like their skin, were cracked and harsh. Before she could consider the wisdom of her words, she said, “Were you ever?”

  He turned to her then, and knelt. Kneeling, he was taller than she; she reached his shoulders, if that. Felt dwarfed by his presence. Threatened by it, and Elena was no girl. But he did not raise hand again.

  “Why do you ask?”

  Had he been Voyani, her answer would have been couched in flippant nonchalance. She bit back that reply. When you traveled the Voyanne, you learned how to keep a safe distance when distance was necessary.

  Here, now, she doubted it was possible.

  “I don’t know. If . . . someone else . . . had said what you just said, I’d probably ask them if they were a ghost.”

  His smile was silver. Too long, too thin.

  “Ah. But?”

  But I don’t want you to hit me again. “You aren’t a ghost of mine.”

  “Indeed.”

  “Too solid, for one. Too cold.”

  “Cold?”

  She laughed; it was a forced sound, and it died quickly. “We don’t trust anything that’s too hot or too cold. Either one is a desert in the making.”

  “We.”

  “The Arkosans.” She paused. Her feet were finally waking, and they ached beneath the weight of her legs. She wanted to rise; was afraid that he’d forbid it. She lived with the discomfort. “The Voyani.”

  He shrugged. “Your trust is not of concern.”

  “No.” She returned the shrug with care, watching his hand. It was still raised against the moonlight’s fall, dark and still; the trees knew more motion than he did.

  Hells, statues probably did.

  “But your description is of interest.”

  She was not born to the clans; she made no mask of her face. Expression moved across it with quickness and ease.

  “Mortals have changed much, diminished much, with the passage of time. But we were often described as a cold people. I understand what was meant by it in the past; what do you mean by it now?”

  She stared at him as if he were mad.

  Saw his hand shift slight
ly as it hovered in the air.

  “I . . . don’t know. I don’t have the words for it. I’ve never really thought about it before.” Although his expression was absent, she struggled to find words now. “Distant. Remote. Merciless.”

  “Ah.”

  “And heat?”

  “Too quick to anger. Too quick to do anything, really.”

  “Passionate?”

  She shrugged again. “Maybe.”

  “Among my kin, I was not considered cold.”

  “No. But among their kin, neither are the clansmen of the High Courts.”

  “There is a difference,” he said softly. “Among their kin, the clansmen of your High Courts have trust. Among my kin, it was always considered an entirely mortal conceit.” He rose. “Where are we?”

  “The Terrean of Averda.”

  “Is that what these lands are now called?”

  She nodded. “What—what were they called before?”

  “Before you were born? I don’t know. But when I walked these lands last, they were wild places. The earth woke here. The valleys were not so low, not so silent. They are silent now.”

  They were. She swallowed air, and struggled to gain her feet, hoping they would hold her. “No,” she said quietly. “They aren’t.”

  “You have nothing to compare them against.”

  “I have. I’ve walked these valleys by day and by night; I’ve passed through the villages that they hold; I’ve spoken with the people who tend the lands.”

  “They are,” he said coolly, “little better than cattle; if they speak, they speak in voices that not even the wind chooses to heed.” He waited until her legs stopped shaking, watching her in a darkness she was certain did not inconvenience him. “You yourself have said as much, Elena.”

  She shrugged. “Maybe.”

  “Maybe? Do the Voyani now claim to be shepherds? Do they claim some touching concern for the welfare of those outside of their boundaries?”

  “What boundaries?”

  “Arkosa.”

  “I don’t speak for all of the Voyani. I don’t speak for the Arkosa Voyani. I speak for Elena. For me. If you want authority, go back to Margret.”

  “Margret?”

  “The Matriarch.”

  “Is that a family name? Margret?”

  “It’s a name.” She shrugged.

  He laughed. “Sen Margret,” he said quietly, “was the founder of your wandering clan.”

  She thought about correcting his use of the word clan, and decided against it. It wasn’t hard to curb the words.

  “Who was Sen Margret?”

  “Do you honestly not know?”

  “Lord Telakar,” she said, struggling to keep her voice as even—as respectful—as possible, “maybe you have all the time in the world. I don’t. I don’t ask a question like that if I already know the answer.”

  He was perfectly still for a long moment; Elena thought he would slap her again, and she braced herself.

  But instead he said, “Fair enough. Sen Margret was an adept of the Sanctum.” He waited. After a moment, he shook his head. “You have lost your history,” he told her.

  “Maybe. Maybe it’s no longer ours. Maybe we only live long enough to make history, not to remember it.”

  He laughed. “Why did you seek to save me from the City?”

  The moon was bright. “I don’t know. Why did you interfere with the other demon?”

  “Ah. I do know,” he replied. “But I do not think that this is the time to discuss it. Nor the place. Come, Elena.” He began to walk.

  “Where?”

  “Where?”

  “Where are you going?”

  “We,” he replied, “are going to pay a visit.”

  A visit? She closed her eyes. “Lord Telakar?”

  “Yes?”

  “Why did you bring me here?”

  He was silent. After a moment, he said, “By that, do you mean to ask what I intend to do with you?”

  “To me.”

  “For the moment, nothing. You are mortal, you are of these lands. Over the rise of that ridge, there is a city. It is not large; it is not—in any way I once understood the word—a city of note. It is flat, its buildings of stone and dead wood; people huddle behind its walls as if they think to find safety there.”

  He shook his head. “But there is no safety in such a poverty of power. Can you feel it, from here?”

  “Feel what?”

  “The city.”

  “No.”

  “No. Nor can I. It did not draw my attention in the way the old Cities once did. But it is there, and if I am not mistaken, it is the city in which the man who claims to rule now resides.”

  “You mean Callesta?”

  He shrugged. “We will travel there.”

  “On foot?”

  “Unless you wish to travel in another fashion, yes.”

  “How did we get here?”

  “There is a reason, Elena Tamaraan, that you remember nothing of that passage.”

  “How—how long has it been?”

  He shrugged again. “Days. Weeks, perhaps.”

  There was no road beneath her feet; she had no way to judge the distance.

  She said, “If we’re in Averda, we can find my people.”

  “They are in this Terrean?”

  She nodded. “Most of them.”

  “And you wish to take me to them?”

  Silence, then.

  He laughed. “Come.”

  He walked for hours.

  Hours, as the passage of the moon shifted, and shifted again, changing the face of the sky.

  She was used to walking. Although she was Margret’s cousin, the daughter of the Matriarch’s sister, she disliked the closed walls of the wagons, and where possible, she avoided them. Especially in Averda.

  But her legs were shaky; her feet, stiff. His pace was even; he did not deign to notice the geography of Averda as it passed beneath his feet. Did not seem to be inconvenienced in any way by the fall of the ground, or its rise.

  She stumbled.

  Felt his frown.

  “We will not arrive in the city before dawn if you walk at this pace.”

  Struggled to keep up.

  He stopped. “You are so frail,” he said at last. “In the time when the Cities of Man held the heartlands, you would have perished.”

  She was hungry, tired. Hot. He approached her, and she stopped herself from flinching.

  “Come,” he said again, and before she could speak, he lifted her in the cradle of his arms. As if she were a child.

  “I can walk.”

  “Yes. But I cannot wait.”

  “Then leave me here.”

  He smiled. “Elena, you are safe.”

  She laughed. She could not keep the hysteria out of the sound, and she hated herself for it. “How can I be safe, with you? Don’t you know what you are?”

  “Oh, yes, I know.” He crested the ridge and stopped for a moment.

  She could see the lights of the city of Callesta in the distance.

  “Do you know what you are?”

  “Elena,” she whispered. “Elena of the Arkosa Voyani.”

  “That is barely a name,” he replied.

  She said nothing.

  Felt his chest beneath her cheek as if it were the cool low winds that swept down from the mountains.

  “Is my cousin safe?”

  “Your cousin? Ah, the Matriarch. Yes. Inasmuch as she resides within Tor Arkosa, she is safe. Only upon the Isle of the god-born would she be safer. I do not understand how the City came to rise; I would never have been trusted with such information.” His smile deepe
ned. “Nor, it seems, would you, and you are of that City.”

  “My other cousin?”

  “Who?”

  “Nicu.”

  He frowned. Closed his eyes. Eyes closed, he looked almost human. “I do not know,” he said quietly. “Why do you ask?”

  “I want to know.”

  “Is he not the man who stood at the side of Lord Ishavriel? Is he not the man who intended to deliver Arkosa into the hands of her ancient enemies?”

  She said nothing.

  He laughed. “Were you another person, Elena Tamaraan—or were I—I would do you the grace of pretending to believe that you asked out of a desire for either justice or vengeance.”

  Lies came easily to her lips, but they did not pass them. “He’s family,” she said at last.

  “And that is so important?”

  “It’s all we have, on the Voyanne.”

  “It is all you had. But if I am not mistaken, Elena of Arkosa, it cannot be all that remains if you are to claim what was stewarded for you by the wild earth.”

  She was quiet for a long time.

  “Telakar?”

  “Yes?”

  “What is a demon?” Her voice was hushed.

  “A name, not unlike the name Elena.”

  “What do you call yourself?”

  “Among the kinlords, we are rarely required to call ourselves anything. What are you told about demons?”

  “They serve the Lord of Night.”

  “Ah.”

  “We don’t.”

  “No, you don’t.”

  She was so tired. “Why did you challenge Lord Ishavriel? Aren’t you on the same side?”

  He laughed. “You are quaint, a child. Not one of the kinlords serves any master but himself and his own interests.”

  “But the Lord of Night—”

  “And we are all interested in our own survival.”

  “Does he know you’re here?”

  Silence. Then, “You are a very clever child.” But he did not answer the question.

  She woke again at the gates of Callesta.

  Had anyone told her that she would have slept, she would have cursed them for a liar. But she did not remember the passage from the ridge to the walls. Could not remember the exact moment when she had given up on wakefulness, retreating into the luxury of a sleep that depended upon another person’s arms, another’s motion.