The Riven Shield

by Michelle West

  “Radann Fiero el’Sol.”

  “How may we serve?”

  “With your permission,” Valedan said, as smooth in speech as Ramiro had been, his Torra the perfect Torra of the High Court, “I would guard this conversation from ears less friendly to our cause than yours.”

  “Of course”

  “Primus.”

  Primus Duarte AKalakar lifted arms in a wide, swift circle that reminded Ramiro of a bird’s flight. Hunting bird. The Ospreys, he thought, had always been well-named.

  While Duarte drew the eye with the grace of his gesture, and confounded the ear with the unpleasant gutturality of his spoken, impenetrable words, Valedan gestured Kiriel forward.

  He turned, met her gaze openly; she offered him no pretty bow, no Serra’s obeisance, no graceful obedience. Her gaze traveled across the gathered men; her fist clenched. After a moment, she shook her head.

  “Thank you, Sentrus. That will be all.”

  It was not a choice Ramiro di’Callesta would have made, but he had already made his decision, and now abided by it.

  “Radann Fiero,” Valedan said quietly, “I ask for your judgment.”

  Fiero’s brows rose. What seemed dark in the darkness was lined silver; age, there. The strength of an age that weakness had not yet diminished. Men called it wisdom.

  Radann Fiero el’Sol waited.

  “The temple of the Radann is forbidden the women of the Dominion,” Valedan continued. “The Lord seeks warriors, and the women of the South lift no sword, and join no battle, for his greater glory.”

  “Indeed.”

  “But among my men are the warriors of the North. This woman,” he continued, acknowledging Kiriel, and by such acknowledgment, forcing the same from the Radann Fiero el’Sol, “lives by the sword she bears. She has fought the servants of the Lord of Night both in darkness and beneath the Lord’s gaze, and she has always emerged victorious; if he judges, he judges her as one of his own.”

  Ramiro closed his eyes. The line of his jaw was stiff as a blade, stiff as Annagarian pride. He did not speak.

  “The Lord does not reign in the North,” the Radann Allanos el’Sol said, his modulated tone belying the outrage of stiff words.

  “The Lord,” Valedan replied quietly, “is not confined by the borders drawn—and contested—by men. There is not a one among you who can best her in battle.”

  “Kai Leonne,” Ser Ramiro said. A warning.

  One that the kai Leonne chose not to heed.

  “She is blessed by the Lord. I have seen it. The Tyran that now serve the Tyr’agnate have seen it. She has defeated a darkness that existed, whole, in the light of day.”

  “She is a woman,” Radann Fiero el’Sol replied. Seeing, now, where the conversation was headed, and not liking it overmuch.

  “She is. But she has more than a warrior’s heart.” He bowed. “We have traveled far this eve, and we have received word that the servants of our enemy reside within Callesta, waiting upon the departure of the Tyr’agnate before they strike at the heart of his lands: the city of Callesta itself.”

  “Grim news,” Radann Fiero said softly, relenting.

  “There is only one place they might reside in safety,” Valedan continued. “Only one place that is considered above reproach, and therefore, above suspicion.”

  Wisdom. Light in the face of the Radann Fiero el’Sol: fire. Lord’s fire. “Impossible.”

  “That is our hope,” Valedan replied. But his tone offered none.

  The Radann turned to his Radann, to his armed servitors. He gestured; he spoke.

  And the Tyr’agnate saw what he had never seen as lord of Averda: the Fire of the Radann. Light leaped from Fiero’s eyes to the edge of the blade he drew, as if it were lightning strike in the heart of the storm.

  “Yes,” the kai Leonne said softly. “Within the temple itself.”

  Dangerous. Dangerous that; it bordered upon accusation. Boy Tyr, Ramiro thought, tread cautiously.

  “We harbor no servants of the Lord of Night.”

  “Not knowingly; it is not the way of that Lord. But within the temple itself, our enemy is waiting.”

  The Radann turned toward the open doors, toward the darkness made of night’s fall through the crafted glass of the Northern Empire.

  “If such a creature has made his abode in this place,” Valedan said softly, “is the temple of the Radann not defiled?”

  The Radann Fiero el’Sol was curved, Lord’s blade. Southern blade. “If such a thing were true, Tyr’agar, yes.”

  Be careful, kai Leonne.

  “Then the Lord has consecrated these grounds in a manner befitting the warriors he chooses to test. This is his blessing.” Valedan drew blade; it was dull and flat as it met the fires of the Radann, but he held it firmly, raised it without hesitation. The Radann Fiero el’Sol recognized the blade at once: the blade of the heir to Callesta. “We take battle to the only place upon the grounds of Callesta that knows the Lord’s sight in the darkness of the Lady’s time.

  “Will you deny us our warriors?”

  “They are women,” Fiero said slowly.

  “Yes. And the judgment that I wait upon is in the hands of men who know best the Lord’s will. Deny them entry, and we will abide by the decision of the Radann.”

  The moment stretched.

  Valedan kai di’Leonne did not move; although he was capable of—could be accused of—being gentle, he was steel now. Behind the respect he offered the Radann was, at last, the edge of a threat that only the Tyr’agar could offer. The Tyr’agar, who wore the sun ascendant, as even Radann Fiero el’Sol could not.

  The Radann Fiero el’Sol’s eyes fell first and, as they did, gazed at last upon the full splendor of the sun ascendant. “Tyr’agar,” he said stiffly. “As you have spoken. Let the Lord judge.”

  Just that.

  Valedan kai di’Leonne offered the Radann el’Sol the lowest of bows he might offer from the distance of his rank.

  “Sentrus,” he said coldly to Kiriel di’Ashaf. “Find what you seek.”

  It was a command. And more, for if she was mistaken, it would be costly, and the cost would be borne, in its entirety, by the man who would be Tyr.

  Although he had given the command, Kiriel waited.

  She understood the subtle play of politics between the powerful; had seen it many times. Kinlords often offered their vassals a chance to earn their deaths, and the deaths were never pleasant.

  He waited a moment, and then he nodded. “Follow,” he said quietly.

  She saw, out of the corner of her eye, the slight incline of Ramiro di’Callesta’s head. Was surprised at the momentary pleasure his approval afforded her.

  Lord Telakar waited by her side.

  “You are . . . interesting,” he said, in the tongue of the Kialli.

  She gave him no answer; Valedan stepped between the open doors and she followed, moving so quickly and gracefully not even Ser Andaro was given the chance to cleave to the side of his lord. She drew her blade carefully, avoiding the theatrical sweep of black steel in the confined space the backs and chests of men made.

  “Where, Telakar?” She, too, chose to speak in the Kialli tongue.

  “Can you not sense it, Kiriel? You are almost upon him now.”

  She hesitated for only a moment. “If I could sense him, I would have killed you instantly.”

  “Then perhaps it is not in my interest, Lord, to satisfy your curiosity so quickly.”

  She shrugged. “You’ve already exposed your weakness, Telakar. Thwart me, and I will kill her.”

  “You lack subtlety.”

  “Yes.”

  “Very well. But be quick, little one.”

  She froze. Turned to him, then, the blade wavering in
her hand. She almost killed him.

  Didn’t. “Never call me that,” she said softly.

  He bowed. Rose, expression remote. He lifted a hand and gestured.

  Toward the altar.

  Toward the body of the kai Callesta.

  Kiriel reached out; touched Valedan’s shoulder. He froze. “Kai Leonne,” she said, using the familiar title and not the formal one. “It would be best if you . . . waited outside with the Tyr’agnate.”

  Her only mercy. A mistake; she had little time. Telakar’s warning was clear: if the creature escaped, if he made good his return to the Shining City, it would change the face of the war before she was ready.

  He would carry news of Lord Telakar to the Shining Court, and if the Lord’s will was bent upon Telakar, she had already lost him. Worse, he would know where she was.

  But the ring upon her hand burned suddenly hot and the colors of the shadowed room darkened and brightened, speaking a language that mortals were never meant to understand.

  Valedan’s expression was cloaked now in the colors of night; his face was pale. She could see, beneath the thin stretch of skin, the colors by which mortal lives were defined: the brilliance of pale, pale white, the beauty of the grays that defined its edges. No darkness here.

  The sight stilled her.

  And in that moment, the Tyr’agnate joined them as they stood, crowded now, too many bodies pressed into a small space.

  She looked at the older man. Wondered why she had thought of sparing him this combat, and shook herself free of the desire.

  Lifting her blade, she shattered the silence with the strength of her unbound roar.

  She could see.

  For a moment, the ring seemed to fall from her hand; it was luminescent, yes, but slender, a transparent circlet, a harmless adornment.

  Not so the blade; it woke at the sound of her cry, quickening in her hands. She could feel its pulse as if it were alive; as if it were an extension of her arm, her flesh and blood.

  She had wielded it for all of her adult life, and it had never responded thus.

  The creature upon the altar rose at once, caged in dead flesh, his eyes shrunken now by the lack of water and vision, his lips cracked, the hollows of his face containing wells of shadow. Beauty, and in it, the whole of the facade of death.

  Those lips stretched out across flat teeth.

  She could not see his name. Could not command him; could not draw him out of the body that housed it.

  But she had learned the art of combat, the dance of survival, long before she had mastered the pronunciation of The Name; she leaped past Valedan, past Telakar, curling her knees to her chest and trusting the force of momentum to carry her well above the rounded curve of closed helm.

  Her blade struck stone, shattering it.

  The creature was no longer there.

  He hissed through dead lips; she heard the sibilance of its laughter. “Daughter of Darkness,” he said, “I thank you for this opportunity.”

  She twisted, turned toward the flat, broken rasp of his voice, and saw where he had landed: within striking distance of Valedan. The kai Leonne.

  She did not cry out a warning; did not express any hint of the sudden fear that moved her. Here, training held her in a grip that could not be shaken.

  Light came to the creature; red light, in twin flashes: the sword of the Kialli. And the shield.

  He had armed himself, this nameless lord, and she had been slow enough to allow it. Some part of her reveled in the opportunity.

  What did it matter, in the end? Valedan was not bound for the Hells; if his body and spirit were sundered, he would go where the dead went, would stand in the Halls of Mandaros, and would wait upon his return.

  She saw that clearly.

  And more.

  Saw the colors of a man she recognized. When the Kialli blade circled, it struck the steel of Auralis AKalakar’s sword.

  The Osprey’s blade shattered, as stone had shattered.

  But it bought her time. She leaped again as the Radann scattered, and this time the creature did not seek to evade her. Hissing, it turned.

  He was slow, she thought; slowed by the form he had taken, by the casement of flesh through which she could so clearly see the shadows that burned. Why did he not relieve himself of the burden and be done? The masquerade was at an end.

  Black met red. Thunder came of that brief conversation, lingering in the reaches of the ceiling above. She struck again, and the creature was driven back as it raised shield against her. The shield held.

  Power, here. No simple minion had been sent to the heart of Callesta.

  But the only fear she felt was for Valedan kai di’Leonne; the only failure she contemplated, the end of his life. None of the battles that she had faced in the Shining Court of her youth had prepared her for this.

  And all of them had. She laughed as she deflected the controlled arc of his blade; she had called the shadow and it had come. She held his attention, and all she needed to do was to hold it a few moments longer.

  But he stilled as her laughter died, as the wildness left her.

  He drew his blade up, the red of its fire the only true light in the cavernous room. His eyes were as dark as hers, the skin he wore as pale. “This is not your battle,” he hissed.

  “Any battle I choose is mine.”

  “And you choose this one? Did you not dwell within the heart of the Shining Court, in the towers of the Lord? Did you not choose to take your place by the side of the Kialli, in the halls of the Palace?”

  “Never by the side,” she whispered. “You are not my equal.”

  His turn to laugh. “Your equal? You have walked the plane scant years, and I have ruled in the Hells; not even when I walked this plane as a youth was I so much the child. Do not stand against us, Daughter of Darkness, or you will meet the fate of the mortals.”

  She left ground as the burning blade whistled cleanly through the air where her chest had been.

  “What of it?” she shouted, gripping the haft of sword in both hands as gravity and power forced her down. “I am mortal.”

  “Mortalis,” he hissed. “So be it.”

  She had time to raise the sword before the ground at her feet cracked and splintered, shards of stone as large as her arms driving up and into her feet.

  By that act, she knew him.

  Lord Telakar watched.

  Having spent much of his time upon the plane in the Southern reaches of the continent, he had never had a chance to see Kiriel di’Ashaf in combat.

  He was unimpressed.

  Isladar, brother, what in this foundling has driven you to make the choices you have made? What in her is worth the risks you have taken? She was feckless, wild, impulsive—and in the Shining Court, in the Hells, in the lands that had once been the home of the kin when the kin knew the spectrum of life and not its shadowed mockery, these things were death.

  She was injured; her power was weaker than it should have been. The stones themselves had broken the underside of her boots, and although he could not see it clearly, the dust of falling rock did not obscure the scent of blood.

  She will die here, or die soon.

  Dispassionate, he folded his arms across his chest; bore witness to the event that unfolded before him.

  Silabras was no youth, no wild kin; his memories were strong. He was unhindered by her anger, and the wildness that drove her broke against the simple surface of his shield. He would take her; none here could prevent it. She had come to master her blade, but she had no shield, and there were none—not even Lord Isladar himself—who could fashion one for her.

  But the folly of mortality knew no wisdom; one man tried.

  Light, orange and pale, spread before her like a web, its lines a spiral that rose and
fell, touching ceiling and broken ground as if to anchor itself. Lord Telakar raised a brow; in the open doors of a building too insignificant to be called a cathedral, one of the mortals stood, arms raised, face still.

  He would not have been worthy of the title mage had he walked the streets of the fallen Cities. But in those streets, he would not have had the courage—or the ignorance—to attempt to intervene in the affairs of the powerful.

  She found her feet.

  He recognized her pain. He was Kialli. The winds of the Hells had spoken to him in all of its languages. She labored under its grip as she stood—but she stood; her face showed nothing.

  And it hid nothing. Not from Silabras. Not from Telakar.

  Silabras smiled. The visage of dead flesh would never again settle into the lines of peaceful repose; the flat of white teeth cracked and sundered as the truth of what it contained could be contained no longer.

  “My only regret,” the kinlord said, gazing past the thin, the inconsequential barrier of pathetic magery, “is the lack of a worthy audience. The Lord sought to place you above us, forgetting the laws of the Hells. I will send you there, Kiriel, and when I return, I will find you.”

  He staggered, his voice breaking on the last syllable. A sword, dull metal, dead steel, protruded from his chest.

  Lord Telakar raised his chin. This, this was the first act to capture his attention.

  The hand behind the blade released the hilt as Silabras turned. The guise of human hands was discarded as the kinlord extended his reach toward the man who had wounded him.

  Was he slower? Hard to tell. Not slow enough, surely, that the human who had chosen to join the intimacy of Kialli combat could avoid the reward for his folly.

  “Kiriel!” The man shouted, dancing back, the sheets of chain metal shredding at the force of Silabras’ blow. “First blood!” The scent of blood was strong; for a moment, Telakar wondered if the man was speaking of his own.

  Kiriel shouted something that made as little sense. “Bastard! He was mine!”

  And the injured man, the man who stood one side of death, laughed. Laughing, drew another blade as Kiriel attacked Silabras, drawing his attention, saving the man’s life.

  Silabras’ blade tore through the orange weaving of the weak mage. But it moved just a shade more slowly than it had; there was power in the weakness that Telakar had failed to correctly assess.