Michelle West - Sun Sword 01 - The Broken Crown (4 page)

Levec would be angry, when he learned how she'd let herself be
caught.

"Isladar," she said, turning the word around in a dry, dry
mouth. "W-what do you want?"

He offered her his arm; she reached out, hesitated, and then
let her hand fall limply to her side. She couldn't touch him. She could
not.

He stared at her, his eyes narrowed, his lips a slender line
in his pale face. Then he smiled, and this smile, unlike the other,
was, if not friendly, benign. "Let us," he said, withdrawing his arm,
"walk. I have so little experience of the healer-born."

She swallowed, took a step forward, stood near enough that he
might actually catch her in the circle of his arms. But he did not
touch her; instead, he smiled more deeply. "Your fear," he whispered,
"is so strong. I am almost surprised that you remember how to walk."

So was Askeyia.

He did not wish to injure her, but he could not quite bring
himself to say this; there was no gentleness in his nature, nor could
there be. He was First-born, he had Chosen, and he resided in a place
of power among his kin: Kinlord. Demon.
Kialli
.
Isladar.

Months had gone into the careful watching and studying of the
houses of healing on the isle. The healing houses were notable for the
security of their walls, the profusion of guards that protected the
students within them, and the personalities of the people who claimed
to own them. He studied them, but always at a distance, he would cause
an injury, pay for its correction, and then take the information from
the mind of the man or woman so healed. Time-consuming.

Yet in the end, he had settled upon the house of healing owned
by a man named Levec. Healer Levec. Taciturn, sharp-tongued, and more
possessive by half than the next man who undertook the running of a
house of healing, he had caught Isladar's attention. If he had a family
name— as most of the mortals did—it was not one that Isladar could find
easily, and the various records of the Authorities were open for his
inspection. In all of his dealings, he was simply Healer Levec, and he
was known to any man of power who made his home on the Holy Isle.

That isle was no home to him, and he did not cross the bridge
that separated
Averalaan Aramarelas
from the rest
of Averalaan happily, but he knew what he sought when he left his
Lord's side, and knew further that it was upon the isle, and nowhere
else, that it could be found.

He chose Levee's House, and from there, his intense personal
scrutiny began. Levec, of course, was not useful in the grand
scheme—but Isladar believed that a man of Levee's temperament was prone
to foster those who were. He was not completely certain; the younger
healer-born students did not have a
Kialli's
way
of measuring the depth of mortal affection, and they took his words,
often, as words that held all of his many meanings.

His smile folded into a line; his face grew remote, as it
often did when he contemplated the plans that lay, stone by carefully
placed stone, ahead. Always ahead. If he was honest, and in the silence
of his own thoughts, he could afford to be little else, he had chosen
the House of Levec for one other reason: Levec was a man who would be…
injured by the loss of one of his students. Even one.

And so we prove ourselves, again and again, true to
our nature.

There were many healers who fit the kinlord's needs in a
purely emotional way, but they were more often than not young men, and
for his particular plan, a young man was out of the question. Yet in
the case of a house such as the house Levec ran, the young women were
often more guarded—in both senses of the word—and it was not until he
found Askeyia a'Narin that he knew, with as much certainty as it could
be known, that he had found the one.

Narrowing the scope of his search had been simple, and
following her had proved instructive, although what he said remained
true: healers were almost beyond his ken.

"Askeyia a'Narin," he said, as he brought her to one of the
standing rings. "I have been waiting many months for this opportunity."
He reached up, caught the underside of a leaf, and followed its veins
up to the thin stem that fixed it to a branch. With a quiet snap he
pulled it free, turning it over in his palm as if that, and nothing
else, had been his purpose.

"What do you want?" she said again, the fear thickening her
words less. "Why have you—why did you—"

It was hard not to frighten her; she was so close to the brink
of hysteria he had only to speak the right words and she would fall
over the edge. In truth, he greatly desired it, but that was the
visceral, and Isladar was known for the control that he exercised over
base impulse. Over any impulse. He handed her the leaf, taking care to
cause no contact between her flesh and his.

Shaking, she took it, pressing it unconsciously between the
palms of her hands as if it were a flattened glove. The leaves very
much resembled wide, oddly colored hands.

"You are about to become a part of history, Askeyia. It falls
to you to begin the greatest empire that the world has ever known."

She was mute; she stared at the leaf, as if meeting his eyes
was painful. He pondered a moment, wondering if she could see his true
eyes. A rare self-annoyance troubled him; of course she could see them.
What other reason could she have for her terror? The healers saw much
that he had not expected. He reached out to touch her, and pulled away
as her nostrils widened. The sun was falling; the shadow was growing.

"Askeyia," he said, his voice soft and neutral, "I do not
intend to frighten you." .

At that, her eyes flashed. "You're lying," she said evenly.

"Am I?"

"Yes." Pause. "No."

He laughed, although he knew she would find the laughter
unpleasant. "You speak truth. And it is thus with my truth: that
opposites are in equal measure valid." He frowned, fell silent. He had
not intended to say as much.

It annoyed him.

"What do you want from me?"

"Everything," he said gravely, "but not for me." Her fear was
as strong as any fear he had tasted in this domain; he had, after all,
been cautious and infinitely human in his interaction with other
mortals. But this one, this girl—she would see much more than a simple
Kialli
indulgence before her life ended.

"For—for who?" She edged away, hit the bark of a tree that
unexpectedly barred passage into the Common that she had traversed
freely for years.

He stepped forward, coming upon her quickly, moving with all
of his speed, all grace. Her eyes widened, becoming white circles
around dilated pupils; the fear made her wild, and it was wildness that
he craved. She threw up her hands in denial, seeking to wedge them
between her body and his chest. Too late. He was upon her; his shadow
ran up the sides of her face, her throat, the back of her neck; he
caught her as she flailed, trapping the sound of her scream in her
throat; letting enough escape for his ears, for his ears alone.

It had been millennia.

It would be millennia again.

How odd, that the one girl he found suitable was also, in her
fashion, the one he found most tempting. The temptation itself was an
unexpected sweetness, a small element of risk. For he needed her, and
he needed her alive. And sane. He walked the edge, carrying her as she
flailed. Knowing that he could not give her the consummation of her
fear, of her dread, of her certainty.

He lowered his head; his face, wreathed in the shadow that
healers alone could find so corrosive no matter what its intent, rested
a moment in the crook of her neck. His lips touched her ears, and into
the shadows, into the sounds of her terror, into the crackling
sharpness of the fantasies of death that he now let run like the Wild
Hunt through her thoughts, he said, "For who? My Lord, dear child; the
only Lord that any of the kin have willingly chosen to serve.
Allasakar
."

And although the word sank and took roots immediately,
although her fear gave the name as great a weight as her imagination
allowed, the speaking of it freed him.

Impulse.

Control.

"I—apologize," he said, with some effort. "We are both
creatures of our nature." His smile was a glimmer in the darkness of
his shadow; it started and stopped almost at the same instant. She
could not see it.

He did not release her, but only because he could not; the
spell was near completion, and this particular casting of it required
physical contact. He was not, after all, a lord who chose ostentation
in any of his endeavors.

He cast a glamour upon her, something to take away the fear
that she radiated; in the Shining City, there was no faster way to be
noticed. No better way to call the kin, be they greater or lesser, to
feed. She was not ready for that—nor would she ever be.

The kin that had been called to these plains for the first
time in millennia found the absence of Those Who Have Chosen a far more
bitter thing than any, even Isladar, had suspected.

And Isladar, of the kin, was the wisest.

He came to the stone tower that had been built upon its own
foundation. Steps, of a piece, were sheared up the tower's side; they
were small enough for human feet, and they would serve until such a
time as human feet no longer found it necessary to traverse them. The
tower of the Lord had no such steps; his audiences were few indeed, and
he chose to hold them in the basin at the foot of this, his Shining
City. The kinlords, each and every one, were capable of rising to the
height of his doors without the need to touch anything as rough as hewn
stone; it was a subtle test, another proof that only the powerful
reigned in the Hells.

In the Hells.

But in this rocky, barren place, the skies were clear; the
snow, when it fell, fell in a clean, white storm of ice from the
heights; the rivers that ran carried with them pebbles, stones,
sand—and the air was silent, the lands were empty for as far as the eye
could see.

The kin could see far indeed.

There were no demesnes here, although there were Lords; there
were no souls. Mandaros did not control the only gate to this realm,
and the kin were free to gaze upon the souls of those who had not yet
made their Choice; who had not yet traveled the length and breadth of
their many, many lives. And the souls of the undecided were both an
offense and a dangerous curiosity.

He looked at the rigid form of the woman beside him, seeing
beyond the fragile network of skin and vein and flesh. She was pale,
pale gray; if darkness lingered, it lingered so far away from the heart
that he knew she was a lifetime or two away from her last journey to
the Hall of Mandaros. And while Mandaros reigned, while the Kings
reigned, while the world turned and changed in ways that were less
conducive to the fear and the hatred, trie loss and the bitter, bitter
anger that consumed the spirit, such a soul as this would never be
theirs. Or be his.

Ah, but the Lord had his plans, and the Lord could see far
beyond the span of a single human life.

The kinlord's lips lifted in a subtle smile. Because he knew,
as did the Lord, that the span of a single human life—less—was all that
they had, if they were to succeed. What Allasakar had done, the
Oathmaker could do again in a matter of decades.

If the Oathmaker and the Lord stood across a field of battle,
both at the peak of their powers, there was no contest. But they would
not stand at the peak of their powers; or at least the Lord would not.
Not now. To exist in this world at all he had had to sever the
connection between the hells and the mortal plane before he was fully
prepared. He was, as the kin, required to form a body out of the
substance of the plain itself—and to build a body to house the power of
a god was no simple task, no easy feat. Once, it might have been.

Before the sundering.

But the lands of man fought and pulled against the immortal;
to create the avatar itself was a task not to be hurried—when one had
the luxury, and the knowledge. They knew now. They had not known then.
Thus even with the plans of the Lord of the Hells. Crippled or no, he
was strong. And crippled or no, he wore the mantle; he was the Lord of
them all.

The Lord they had chosen to follow.

She stirred, as she stood beside him, drawing his attention.

"Welcome," he said, his voice once again soft, "to the Shining
City."

She did not blink, did not react.

He cast again, cast swiftly, bound her tightly without ever
lifting a hand.

"Askeyia a'Narin," he said, "fear is not your friend here.
You
will not feel it
."

And because it was something she desperately desired, she
obeyed the command in his words.

Such a human weakness.

The City had been carved out of the rock of a mountain that
seemed to exist for only that purpose; its face, where its face could
be seen was sheer and sharp, as if the rock itself had been shorn and
pulled new from the ground.

It was the first thing she noticed, that the rock was new,
that the city was rock. That there was, from this vantage, no life at
all, no greenery, no color, no bird on wing in the open sky.

Allasakar
. She could not speak the name;
it had been forbidden to all but the boldest of children for so long
that she could not clearly remember the first time she had heard it.

The last time was still too clear.

As if to deny it, she turned her face to the window and the
world it framed. Nothing moved; if not for the wind through the open
frame, it might have been a painter's vision of isolation. But the wind
was cold and sharp; it stung the skin and dried the eyes. More, it
could not accomplish. Askeyia a'Narin was, after all, a healer-born.
She adjusted to cold, and its damage, with the same conscious effort it
took to draw breath—which was to say, none at all.