The Riven Shield

by Michelle West

  She thought of those lessons now, of their import; she moved with the delicate grace of a Serra as she raised dagger in the moving air. Flecks of ash rose to greet its silvery flat.

  The dagger was a woman’s weapon. Poison was a woman’s weapon. Silence. The ability to wait, to endure. Words were a woman’s weapon, if they were placed with care and humility into conversations whose power might otherwise be above them.

  All of this, all of it, was her truth.

  But she had others.

  She bent to the fire that had bloomed from the shards of Yollana’s pipe; bent there, as if the golden light were of the Lady and not the Lord. But she offered no prayer, no song, no supplication; she acted as a man acted, and took what she needed.

  The blade passed through the fire.

  The fire clung.

  “Na’tere—” Yollana began.

  But the Serra met the Matriarch’s eyes, and it was the Matriarch who retreated into silence.

  “Ona Teresa.”

  She did not look at her almost-daughter. But she spoke a single, private word. “No.” She paused a moment, almost weary.

  “Let me help.”

  “You have, Na’dio. Your song and the child in your arms strengthen me. I know what you are feeling, and it is a gift; protect this child. Protect this harem. You have your duty. And I . . . have long been absent from mine. Stay. Wait. If I fail, you are their last defense.”

  She, who had claimed no obvious power, gathered power now.

  She had thought, when she had taken the robes of a man and had walked away from the Tor Leonne, that she had left the old life behind. It had been truth.

  But truth was subjective; the moment, the demon, the heart of the Clemente harem—her own forever denied her by her father and her brothers—now gave lie to what had been so bitter, so difficult a sacrifice.

  Because she was silent, graceful, dutiful; she was Serra Teresa di’Marano.

  “Demon,” she said, as she rose, the fire lingering upon the sheen of blade’s length. “It is said there is power in names, and in naming.”

  He laughed. The sound, to her ears, was exquisite—a thing of such texture and such beauty she might have listened to it until he chose to end the symphony by the simple expedient of death. She almost did.

  She might never hear beauty of its kind again.

  “You have not the skill or the sight to name me,” he said, “and therefore, to you, little one, names have no power.”

  “Ah,” she said quietly, her voice the voice of the High Courts, modulated and apologetic. She held the dagger almost carelessly, as if aware that it was no weapon against a man who could, without effort, bring down walls and ceiling on a whim.

  She skirted the edge of the circle she had inscribed upon the mats; saw its edge, in a trail of diffuse dust, an inch away from the toe of her boot. “It was not your name of which I spoke.”

  Before she could retreat into hesitation, before the earlier lessons of her life—before her life—could reassert itself, she lifted foot and crossed that line, exposing herself.

  The man smiled; his smile was breathtaking, and deadly in the way that the smiles of powerful men had always been.

  “Come here,” he told her, lifting a hand, curving a finger.

  She obeyed; obedience was natural.

  But what lay behind it, what had always lain behind it, was natural as well. Robart, bard-born and foolishly naïve, had taught her the use of her curse; had named it gift, a blessing. He had counseled her long in the gathering of its power, and she had learned.

  Be wary, child, he said, from the distance of years, his words blurred by the fickleness of memory. Power such as you wield must be gathered gently, and used gently. There is a risk, with power, of using too much.

  Risk. And what risk was greater than this? Dark eyes, fire, shadow. Death.

  She walked. She appeared to struggle with each step, and in truth, it was more than simple appearance; she needed time, and she knew—for she could hear it in his voice—that the struggle, helpless and futile, would please the creature. Would feed him.

  She offered him that much.

  And while she walked, she heard Robart’s voice. His old stories. His cautionary tales about the danger of reckless use of the voice.

  Your gift is strong, he had said, but think of it as a vessel; think of it as Northern crystal. Northern glass. It will hold even the most corrosive of elements, will gather and contain the most deadly of poisons—but once cracked, it will hold nothing.

  She gathered the power, thinking of herself as that crystal, as that clarity through which light shone, and in which the most dangerous of elemental liquid might, for moments, be contained.

  “Come, mortal.”

  And she thought of shattered glass; of its new shards, edges sharp enough to catch the unwary, seeking blood.

  She reached him, and as he reached for her, she let loose the force of the power that had destroyed the life she had been born to, day by day and year by year, until only this moment remained: outcast by choice, at the side of the Voyani, victim to sun and wind.

  To sun and wind.

  But not to man.

  “HOLD.”

  Not even his brows rose; she felt the word leave her throat, and she knew that she would not speak another word this eve, if she could speak again at all, without a voice as broken and cracked as Yollana’s had become with time.

  Her hands shook.

  Old memory.

  She ignored the warning that all memory contained, hoarded as it was, examined and sorted in the recesses of dream, of nightmare, of history.

  As she had done once before, she raised dagger against a servant of the Lord of Night.

  This one burned.

  The Radann had retreated. He was no longer aware of their presence. The duty of battle had passed beyond them, but other duties remained: the domis burned. And in it, unaware of the death that followed flame, cerdan, seraf, Serra; the wives of Clemente.

  He saw the battle not as swordplay; it was too raw and too wild for that. It was a thing of fire, and in its heat, all vision was reduced to the bare essentials. Not even the wavering of desert mirage had prepared him for this.

  He did not face a minor demon. He did not face the creatures that had troubled the Tor Leonne.

  He faced a lord, and knew it.

  He had turned away from the path of the healer to enter the service of the Lord; he had turned back to it, to better serve the one man who defined the Lord in his eyes. That man had also faced the fires, willing to be consumed by them: could Marakas do less?

  Yet he felt no pain, in the heat of these flames; he chose his footing with instinctive care as floorboards parted and blackened beneath him.

  He took wounds, he offered them; he became aware that this was the whole of the only conversation allowed between what he had become and what the creature had always been.

  And if this was to be his last discussion, he entered into it freely and with a ferocity that the High Courts could never, ever, understand.

  As the ceiling above gave way to fire, as the walls dissolved, flames opening windows into the rooms beyond, he cried out a single name.

  Would have been surprised to know that it was not Verragar’s.

  Serra Celina en’Clemente stared; her gaze hovered over the lids of a child’s closed eyes. Smart child, she thought, with a trace of chill; wise child. Her own, she knew, were round; she could not contain her expression in the rigidity of the court—any court, even one as lax as Sarel’s.

  The creature screamed; his voice was the wind’s voice, but worse—much worse—was the Serra Teresa’s face, for the rigidity denied Celina was there in every line; her cheekbones and her chin formed a steel cage for everything else.

>   The fire consumed the demon, the gentle glow of Summer devouring red and black; making ash of flesh in an instant that seemed to go on and on in a scream of pain and denial. It should have been a comfort, that cry, for it was death’s cry. But the Serra Celina was—had always been—a weak woman; if she understood the need for death—and she did, how could she not?—she had never understood the need for pain.

  The Serra Teresa seemed unaware of the damage she had caused. She lowered shaking hand; the dagger’s blade was gone.

  “Na’tere,” the old woman said, her voice almost gentle.

  The Serra shook her head. She did not try to speak. Instead, she sank to her knees, outside of the circle, apart from them in ways that the circle itself could not account for.

  “Na’tere,” Yollana said, voice stronger. Angrier, or so it seemed to Celina.

  But the Serra Teresa did not, could not, hear; she sank further, folding perfectly straight back over the bend of flawless lap. Her hair was a dark spill that caught lamplight and the remains of fire; dusted by ash, it cloaked her.

  She gathered her arms around her shoulders, and beneath the curtain of hair, she began to tremble.

  What woman would not, having faced what she faced? What woman would not, having exposed what she exposed? Celina felt the room waver, but it was the artifact of water, the quick pain of tears. These, she was strong enough to hold.

  “Serra,” the Voyani Matriarch said.

  It came to Celina that the Matriarch spoke not to the Serra Teresa, but to her. She nodded.

  “Take the child from the Serra Diora,” Yollana said. “Take her, and let us see to the—see to Na’tere.”

  It was not a request.

  What will you do to me, old woman? Celina thought, as she rose.

  But before she could take the child, the Serra Diora rose. She set samisen aside, and with it, some of the poise of her former station. Her eyes were perfect; round and dark; her lips were pale in the darkening light.

  “Serra Celina,” she said quietly. “Ariel.”

  The child’s eyes flickered open.

  “The demon is gone,” she told the girl.

  The child nodded. She was stiff now, and words had once again deserted her; a mercy.

  “Stay with the Serra Celina. Stay in the circle. The Serra Teresa needs me now. I will not be far away.”

  The child nodded again; she allowed herself to be lifted, allowed herself to be given to the Serra Celina. Celina was almost shocked at the weight of the child; it had become nonexistent. She caught the girl’s hands in hers, noticing for the first time the loss of fingers. It made the burden seem more precious somehow.

  The Serra Diora walked with care, lifting the silk of sari until she reached the circle. Listening a moment, she said, “Do not leave this haven.” But she spoke without looking back. As her aunt had done before her, she now stepped across the barrier that had kept the creature out; she left no evidence of her passing in the fine, fine ash.

  She reached the Serra Teresa and knelt by her side, the flat of her flawless hands touching the flat of the older woman’s exposed back.

  Then she rose. “Matriarch,” she said quietly.

  Yollana grunted.

  “Give me the waters of the Tor.”

  Yollana reached into the folds of that same robe—as if it were haven to treasures, time, legend—and withdrew a waterskin. She hefted it with as much care as she could, and then, shifting bent shoulders, threw it.

  One eye did not see as clearly as two; the skin flew wide, across the back of the Serra Teresa, and beyond the easy grasp of the Serra Diora.

  But the Serra said nothing; she rose quickly, retrieving what she needed.

  “How is she?” the Havallan Matriarch said. All defiance, all certainty, all sense of the mystic, had fled her, as if it were invoked by the presence of the Servant of the Lord, and bound to him. She remained an old woman, half-blind, crippled and far from kin.

  Serra Diora di’Marano shook her head.

  Answer, Celina thought, enough.

  Healing was not a man’s gift. Not the Lord’s gift. It was too valuable to be stigma, but too suspect to be revered; it was used by the powerful, when they had access to it, that was all.

  But were it not for the Lady’s gift, Marakas would have been consumed in the fire, for the fire that took hold of the domis was natural. He felt the smoke twist his lungs, depriving him of breath; felt the skin on the backs of his hands go the way of his hair and his robe; felt the chain shirt take heat and hold it until it threatened to blister the flesh it protected.

  But he felt, as well, the resistance of his body, the instinct of its defense. The creature was beyond the touch of fire; he inflicted it, but he did not suffer its grace.

  Nothing was burned clean; there was nothing to be cleansed. Of all fights he had yet undertaken, this was the clearest, and he valued the clarity while it remained. He struck; he struck; he struck. Verragar’s voice was a roar that the creature responded to; Verragar’s speed was such that the Radann el’Sol tracked its movement by the sudden jerk of shoulder, the sudden lengthening of arm.

  But when Verragar severed the arm that held the sword, the fight was over; flight remained.

  He pursued as he could, but he was tainted by mortality, by something his sword both understood and decried. The creature retreated into the heart of the fires it had summoned, and the blood that fell caused the flames to billow, like cloud or curtain.

  It was gone.

  The Radann were scattered or dead; in the distance, above crackling wood, sundered timber, bodies spoke with fire’s voice.

  They were beyond him, now. Fire’s death, the worst of deaths, he could not heal without cost—and in battle, he had only one choice.

  Walls rose around him, moving back and forth as if at the dance of wind. He raised Verragar.

  The sword sang.

  His sword, he had thought it; and it was. But it was more. What the demon had summoned, the blade now summoned as well, but where the fire had scattered at demon whim, it coalesced at blade’s, becoming a concentrated thing, something that went from orange to white, from white to blue: blade’s edge. And blade’s edge shone, hot, as the fire flew to it; his palms blistered with heat.

  But he held the sword, for he knew that it had no voice and no power without a wielder. One by one, the red-and-orange lights that demarked the boundaries of the creature’s reach guttered; all flame came to Verragar, and Marakas was content to hold it.

  It was over.

  He could see the moon’s full face above the broken columns that had once supported roof. But he could see, as well, as if it were a small doll’s house lacking the final wall to seal it from prying eyes, the remainder of the domis; the edge of fire had blackened wood, and the smoke had grayed walls in a wash of shadow and soot, but it stood.

  As he did; they would both need repair.

  The Serra Diora di’Marano spoke to her aunt. She spoke in a voice that she had used since childhood, but strengthened it with experience, much of it bitter. No one else could hear her; and as she bent over her Ona’s back, no one could see her lips move over the ceaseless flow of words.

  Ona Teresa.

  She was no healer. Had never been one. She had gift, yes; she had even used it. Only once had she used enough of it to lie as the Serra Teresa did, shaking with fever. But it had been the work of hours, of the hours of a first, a terrible labor, her voice extending from start to finish by the dint of will and the terrible fear of what would happen if she stopped singing.

  Ona Teresa had uttered a single word. Just one.

  Could one word do such damage?

  She closed her eyes, hating the lie that she told herself by the simple expedient of asking the question. She was born to the gift; she had heard her Ona
’s word, and she had known, then, what the cost would be.

  Had refused to know it.

  The cool night breeze that swirled through the cracked and broken roof didn’t touch the heat; it was shunted to either side by the strength of fever’s grip.

  Ona Teresa, Ona Teresa, I’m here. Speak to me.

  Truth, she had learned at the side of Margret of the Arkosa Voyani, need not be bitter.

  But it was, this truth.

  She could have left the child with Ona Teresa; she could have attempted to fight the demon. And why had she not? Because Ona Teresa had commanded her?

  No. No. She turned a moment to look at Ariel, and she saw the whole of the girl’s pale, peaceful face. She had stayed in the circle because—for just a moment—she wanted to protect that child. Those wives. Because it was an answer to the past that had defined her, had destroyed her, had birthed her. She wanted to hold that girl.

  Because she could now do little else for the Serra Teresa di’Marano, she mourned.

  You never had wives.

  I did. If even only for a brief time, I did.

  You gave me what your gift denied you. You protected me from the weight of its curse, as you could. You lived by, and with your curse, and in the end, it was your only power; your only company. What have you done? What have you done to yourself?

  Her eyes were wide; she dared not blink. Blinking would cause the tears to fall, and Ona Teresa would not appreciate them.

  Her hands unstoppered the waterskin; she struggled a moment with her aunt’s shoulders; tried to turn her over, to unfold her. The tremble had grown, and grown quickly. She felt the Serra Teresa’s resistance, although another might not have been able to discern what was will and what, reflex.

  These were the fevers the talent-born faced. Kallandras of Senniel College had told her that once. He had told her more, but the rest eluded her now.

  Kallandras!

  Nothing answered; even the wind was silent.

  In the Dominion, no Serra feared silence. Silence was a retreat; silence was a platform; silence was a gilded cage. All waiting was done in silence, and only with permission or invitation did the confines of that waiting allow for the things that she had loved best: song, the sound of samisen strings; the fuller, wilder notes of Northern lute.