The Riven Shield

by Michelle West

  Without asking leave or permission—and in the end, what Voyani woman knew such grace—the Havallan Matriarch took a slender stick of wood from the dirty folds of clothing she had been unwilling to surrender to the ministrations of the serafs.

  The scent of sweat, of blood, of road, lingered in the room in spite of the costly oils and incense that Celina had chosen to burn; her husband would be ill-pleased at the expense, she thought.

  And knew herself a foolish woman to think so.

  The wood was a sweet wood, but it was not a soft one; it was slow to take fire from the lamp, and Celina thought the lamp itself might gutter before surrendering any share of its flame.

  But the stick took fire and began a hesitant crackle, and only when it spoke thus did they speak.

  “Serra Celina,” the Serra Teresa di’Marano said quietly, “I have traveled long upon the Voyanne at the side of the Matriarch, and in return for my aid, she has gifted me with some measure of the Voyani lore.

  “What I say, therefore, is of the Voyani, and if you will have peace between her people and yours, you will hide the source of the words while you live.”

  Celina nodded.

  But she sat, knees shaking into the soft mat that held them, hands now bunching in graceless fists around folds of pale silk. Orange, it looked, in the fire’s dim light. Orange and shadow.

  “Send for your son,” the Serra said. “Tell him to man the curtain wall with the archers the Tor’agar left behind.”

  The Serra Celina gazed into the fire, into the dwindling length of stick. “I am not a man,” she said at last, and softly. “It is not from me that he will take his command.”

  “Tell him,” the Serra Teresa continued, as if the necessary and formulaic words had not been spoken, “that the forces of Alesso di’Marente have gathered a thousand strong in Damar, and that they will march—if unhindered—to the very gates of Sarel.”

  She closed her eyes. Thought of her son.

  “Not all of the Clemente men were seconded; those that can fight must be ready to fight. Summon the Radann,” she added, “for their foes are on the field.”

  Bright Lady, Dark Lady. She bowed her head.

  “And Serra Celina, I bid you be deaf to the sounds of battle that you hear within your domis; seek only your son; deliver only this message. Return,” she added quietly. “We will be waiting, with the child.”

  The child. For a moment, Celina’s expression softened into lines of gentle worry. But the child had not heard; her breath remained steady, an even, gentle sound.

  The Radann par el’Sol heard the words as if they were the voice of god. Clear, clearer than the roar of winds in open desert, they came to him as he stood in watchful silence with his gathered Radann, his men of the Lord.

  It is time, Radann par el’Sol. Draw your blade. Do what must be done.

  And what of you? he whispered, his lips barely moving. What of the kai Clemente?

  But there was no answer; his voice was not like unto the Lord’s; it traveled the brief span of air allowed men who must breathe to exist.

  Turning to the Radann he lifted finger to lip; they nodded in the dim light. Around them, the domis of the clan Clemente slept; cerdan manned the gates, but they gazed out, toward the sleeping road, and the shadows of the Old Forest.

  He placed his hand around the hilt of Verragar, and after a brief pause, he drew the sword. It shamed moonlight; it shone blue.

  Radann eyes widened; heads bowed in respect. The swords that left sheath in reply to his own were dull glints of moon-touched sharpness. But they were men’s weapons, all; Marakas par el’Sol felt not empowered, but humbled, for they drew their weapons as purposefully as he, and theirs was the greater risk.

  “Not so,” the eldest of the Radann said, divining the thought that Marakas did not hide behind courtly expression. “The only risk that matters is failure.”

  Marakas bowed to these men, rank forgotten a moment as the voice of the Sword became his own.

  He began to move, and they followed in silence.

  The Serra Celina returned to the heart of the harem, her face as pale as the powdered Serras of the Highest Court in the land. No artifice gave her color, and she paused a moment to gather breath, strands of her hair falling across her face like shadowed web.

  “My son—” She was not used to running.

  Which of them were, who lived in the harem?

  The Serra Teresa di’Marano waited.

  “My son bids me ask, what of my husband?”

  The Serra Teresa shook her head. Had it been in her power, she would have lied. But the war had not yet come to the harem’s heart, and only when all hope was gone would she use her gift in that way.

  Instead, she said softly, “Serra Celina?”

  The Serra nodded.

  “If it is not too bold a request, and not too difficult a burden, I ask that you take the child. I must tend to the Havallan Matriarch.”

  The Serra’s brows rose, and then she nodded. Was she grateful? Perhaps. Or perhaps she simply accepted the Serra Teresa’s words.

  She lifted the sleeping girl, settled her in her lap, and bowed her shaking head.

  Verragar spoke in a voice that grew louder and louder; Marakas wondered—briefly—why the light of the blade did not blind, as the sun’s light did. But gazing at the blade did not make the shadows darker; when his eyes returned to the halls, they seemed clearer. Harsh, bereft of all softness.

  He had expected to find Clemente cerdan throughout the domis, and he did—but their numbers had been winnowed greatly. Here and there, a single man stood sentry, blade drawn.

  None hindered his passage, or questioned it; in the light of the moon, even the serafs were absent; the domis seemed hollow. Sleeping.

  One could be lulled by the silence.

  Cozened by the stillness.

  Even one as watchful as Marakas par el’Sol.

  He heard Verragar’s voice; saw her light flare, bright now as sun, the most urgent of her warnings, and glanced ahead at the closed doors—Northern doors—that separated the dignitaries from the rest of the domis. He nodded, moving forward.

  And almost died when the wall exploded outward at his back.

  They felt it, in the harem’s heart.

  They saw it, in the flicker of lamplight, for the color and the dancing tongues of the flame seemed to lap a moment into a solid shape.

  Yollana cursed; lifted her hand to the dark patch across what had once been eye. “Na’tere!”

  Serra Teresa stood at once, lithe as a young girl in the first blush of harem’s youth. Her hand was upon the hilt of a dagger, concealed until this moment against need. “Serra Celina,” she said, “I charge you with the safety of the child. And with the mercy of her death, if it comes to that.” She turned to her niece. “Na’dio,” she said softly. “You have the sword?”

  The Serra Diora di’Marano nodded, eyes watchful, hands still.

  “Watch, then,” the Serra Teresa said tersely. “Wait.”

  Ah, waiting. A woman’s game. The Flower of the Dominion nodded again.

  Celina’s eyes were wide, and her skin as pale as moon. Her son was no boy; he manned the walls; her daughter ruled a harem of her own in a distant city. She thanked the Lady for this small mercy: none of her own faced the threat this child now faced.

  None of her own.

  The child stirred, and Celina reached out gently, stroking hair and brow. But brown eyes opened; lids grew light as flickering lamp. She sat. The Serra’s arms tightened, preventing retreat.

  The Havallan Matriarch now rose to her feet; her stance was shaky, and the Serra Teresa did not come to lend her strength. “Na’tere,” she said again. “Take the satchel. Inscribe the smallest circle you can that will contain us all.” She pull
ed the leather pouch from her belt and tossed it.

  The Serra Teresa di’Marano fumbled with the leather knots that held the satchel closed. She opened her hands to ash, gray and fine. For just a moment, her brows rose; she met the eyes of the Havallan Matriarch.

  But the Matriarch did not confirm the question the Serra would not ask.

  Instead, she said, “All magic is a matter of life and death, and it exacts its price.”

  Two men did die. The creature—for if it had ever been graced by the shape of man, all grace was past—drove long hands through the length of the Radanns’ blades, shattering steel as easily as he had splintered broad wood beam.

  Marakas could not turn in time; could not and did. Verragar moved his hand, became the force by which he might steady himself to meet the creature’s charge.

  He discarded the dead like gloves, throwing them with ease into the men at whose side they had labored in the halls of the Radann. And then he turned to face Marakas, his jaws stretching into something akin to smile.

  “You are too late,” he said, tongue flickering pass the ragged edge of exposed teeth. “If the Tor’agnate returns, he will return to a mausoleum.”

  “I am not the Tor’s man,” Marakas replied, raising blade and bending into his knees. “But the Lord’s.”

  “There is only one Lord in the Dominion.”

  The Radann par el’Sol offered the grimmest of smiles. “Indeed,” he said softly. And struck.

  The doors did not shatter; they slid. They slid as if at the hands of seraf, and indeed, a lone seraf now knelt in the hall without, head to floor, dark hair braided down the length of his spine.

  The women stood in the center of a circle of ash, pale and light. A strong wind might sweep it away, exposing mats.

  “Serra,” the seraf said quietly. “The kai Clemente bids you follow.”

  But Yollana of the Havalla Voyani smiled grimly and lifted her pipe. “She will not follow where you lead,” she told him, voice cracked with smoke and age, a texture that invoked a rough sense of beauty. “Leave.”

  The seraf rose, lifting youthful, even beautiful, face.

  His eyes were hard and dark as ebony.

  Yollana spoke a word and threw the pipe to the mats. They were soft enough to yield, but the pipe shattered on contact, and embers of what it contained now flared, bright and gold, in the circle.

  Through the haze of summer light, the seraf’s features changed; the bones of his face grew long and fine, the hair at his back dark, wild, a moving cloak. The winds, cursed in the South, buoyed him; he moved, and they whispered at his whim.

  But although they felt it, heard it, although the room lost all warmth as he drew breath, the ash that lay upon the mats did not so much as quiver.

  “Yes,” Yollana said. “There still exists in this world the power to defy you.”

  The seraf—not seraf, not human, but not quite monster—laughed softly. “Clever children,” he said, and reaching out casually, he brought the door’s frame down.

  The creature seemed surprised that the sword struck the hard shell of demon flesh; that it pierced it, fraying the edges of what looked like flexible chitin with a burning blue light. But although the sword took him in the heart, it was said that demons had none.

  Marakas had just enough time to pull the blade free before the creature struck. Long claws raked armor, shredding it as if it were gauze. No blood was drawn.

  Not by Verragar. Not by demon.

  “You have one of the lesser swords,” the creature hissed, “given to men too weak to survive the making of their own. Do you think to stand against us?” He drew arms back, and when he lifted hand—and claw—again, he carried a massive, red blade.

  “Be honored,” he said. “I have killed many, many mortals since my return, and I have raised sword against only one.”

  His expression was not mortal; was not human. But the arrogance in his voice made the contorted lines of his face clear.

  He struck; there was no grace, no dance, in the motion.

  No grace or dance in the parry.

  But where the blades met, fire burned, and the fire was real.

  The roof buckled with the loss of door and frame, teetering and creaking like an ancient, living thing. Beneath its sudden curves, the golden fire grew brighter.

  “You cannot enter the circle,” Yollana said.

  The man—the demon—laughed. “No, little mortal,” he replied, “you cannot leave it. The whole of your lives are enscribed in your circle; to leave it is death. And I need not touch you—any of you—to kill you. You are the definition of fragility; there is none of the greatness of the old world in you.”

  The Havallan Matriarch nodded. “And none of the taint,” she whispered. “Be careful when you seek the weak, creature of the Lord of Night.”

  “You are all weak,” he replied. He reached out again, and the wall folded.

  Fire. In the domis.

  It lapped at floor and wall, at screen and the lattice that held opaque paper in place. The flowers in the vases that lined the hall in sparse and elegant display withered in the heat of the flames.

  The Radann cried out; warning blended with fear.

  But Marakas par el’Sol was beyond them. The flames touched him, lapping at robe, blackening chain; they took, once again, hair and the sparse beard that had struggled its way back from the cleansing in the Tor Leonne.

  But they did not touch his face; did not obscure his vision. Instead, they honed it. He stood, as the demon did, his hands upon an ancient blade: he saw, as the demon did, the only enemy worth facing.

  He swung, and the demon parried; he parried as the demon swung. His blade sliced clean through extended claws, for the creature had chosen to fight with both hands, much like a man who chooses dagger over shield.

  The Serra Teresa di’Marano rose. She spoke a few words, but although her lips moved, they offered no sound.

  “Ona Teresa—”

  The child in the lap of the Serra Celina rose suddenly, as if startled from harbor; her face was pale, and her hands stiff. But her knees were bent; she crouched on the ground, looked up, and met the eyes of the creature.

  His smile was soft; an invitation. The whole of his threat was hidden a moment beneath the curves of that sweet expression. He offered the child a hand, and Celina reached for her.

  But she was swift, this unnamed orphan; she dodged past the Serra’s shaking, fearful grip.

  For just a moment, mouth dry, Celina thought that she would accept what the stranger offered. But the moment passed; the child turned suddenly, swiftly, on heel and leaped toward the back of the circle that had been traced with such care across the perfect floor of the harem’s heart.

  And the Serra Diora rose swiftly, as swiftly as the child had, and as unexpectedly. She could not—quite—reach the child, but her words could. And did.

  “Ariel, stop.”

  The child froze in mid-motion, and the Serra, graceful for someone who moved so quickly, caught her shoulders. Her hands were smooth and steady, and her voice dropped, as her head did; her lips were by the child’s ear.

  “He’ll kill us,” the girl said, her voice high and terrified. “He’ll kill us all—and Isladar’s not here. There’s no one to stop him.”

  “Hush, hush, Ariel,” the Serra Diora said softly. She drew the child into her arms. “He will not kill us. I give you my word. I will protect you.”

  The Serra Teresa lowered her head a moment, and when she raised it, she smiled. It was a Court smile, shorn of the honesty, the vulnerability, that Celina’s smiles oft exposed.

  The Serra Diora stiffened. What she saw in her Ona, Celina could not say. “Ona Teresa, don’t—”

  The Serra lifted a hand; the niece fell silent.

  “The sami
sen,” the older Serra said softly. “Na’dio. Play.”

  “I—”

  “Ariel will sit with you, if you play. She always has.”

  The Serra Diora shook her head again. “Ona Teresa.”

  In all of this, the stranger stared, his slate gaze moving first from the child and then to the women, as if he were tracing the lines of a triangle that contained them all.

  “Ariel,” the Serra Diora said quietly. “You must help me, now. Sit in my lap, and I will place the samisen in yours. We will play it . . . together. Will you do this? The circle cannot be crossed in safety. If you but break it, he can walk in.”

  “He doesn’t need to walk in—I’ve seen them—I want my—”

  “He will walk in if he can. Do not open the door for him. Do not fear him. It is fear that he needs.”

  The child crumpled, and the Serra drew a deep breath; she pulled flat, dark hair from the child’s forehead, and kissed her gently. Her eyes were wide and red, her face wet and slick in the summer light.

  It was almost too much for the Serra Celina, whose wives were somewhere in the domis. Somewhere where there was no circle, no ash, no Matriarch.

  After a moment, silence gave way to sound: the strings moved. Celina watched, fascinated, as the young Serra began to play. She did not sing, and because she did not, it was a moment before the Serra Celina recognized the lay of the Sun Sword.

  If the creature understood the challenge she played with such perfect, cool grace, he did not acknowledge it—and he was, Celina thought, a man; he did not ignore the overture of battle where knowledge was within his grasp.

  His ignorance calmed her.

  The circle was a boundary. But it was the least of the boundaries that had defined her life—and her survival—in the Dominion of Annagar. Teresa had no sword; indeed, no woman of worth in the Dominion ever held one, unless it was sheathed, and intended for use by a son. A husband did not leave his blade to the hands of women, not even his wives.

  Aie, she had learned those lessons well. Not even enwrapped by Voyani robes, shrouded by dust and the multiple scents of travel upon the open road, had she been able to shed the lessons that had guided the whole of her life, from cradle to this moment.