Michelle West - Sun Sword 01 - The Broken Crown (9 page)

At that, Yollana smiled broadly. "All blood, yes. I give you
my word under the Lady's moon that I will spill none of yours this eve."

Ashaf laughed bitterly. "And that is meant to comfort? Oh, no,
Yollana. I know the Havalla Voyani well. You are subtle when you exact
your price."

History stood between them; history and the piercing clarity
of the memory of a young girl long gone.

"We have all met our heart's desire," Yollana replied at last,
speaking to a past that had never, and would never, fully die. "And
most of us have survived it. If I had warned you then, what would you
have done, you a seraf of the clan Valente?" She lifted a hand. "Don't
answer. We both know that you would not have chosen to believe me. You
were sixteen, Ashaf kep'Valente." Her smile was oddly crooked. "I was
sixteen once. I know the age."

The younger woman's face twisted a moment, and then relaxed.
"I survived," she said softly. "And for a time, I flourished. It is
gone now."

"Yes. You have lost two lives."

She started, as if in pain, and then said, "I have lost more
than that."

"You have mourned and buried more," Yollana replied, as cool
this night as she had been almost thirty years past. "But the two that
I speak of are yours." Yollana's words were carried by a cold, sharp
wind; they pierced the skin and more.

I
 
have
lost two lives
, Ashaf thought,
feeling the strange truth of the words as they echoed, unspoken,
between them.

Things were done in three. She exhaled slowly, feeling the
dread of the moment give way to weariness.

"Why have you come, Yollana? It is not the way of the Voyani
to seek out the serafs—or the clansmen, for that matter. You hide in
your tents and your wagons, in your stalls and beneath the masks you
wear upon your stages. If you want gold, I have none to give you. If
you want food, there are richer women than I.

"And if you wish to tell a fortune, you must find someone who
is fool enough to ask you. I have already been bled. I will not hold my
hand beneath your dagger again."

"This night I cannot see the answer to the question of your
future written so clearly across your face. You were beautiful in your
youth, Ashaf; you were known for it two villages in any direction. It
did not take the mystical skills of the Voyani ancestors to know what
that beauty presaged."

"I will not speak about my past," Ashaf said. "And I have not
asked you about my future." She spoke calmly now, and clearly, meeting
eyes that had once been dark and icy and yes, mysterious.

She was surprised when Yollana turned aside, her eyes
flickering with some emotion that made her seem human. Made her seem,
for a moment, as much a seraf as Ashaf, and not a woman of Voyani
freedoms. "No. But I have come in search of your future, whether you
ask it of me or no."

"What?"

"I have crossed the plains, Ashaf kep'Valente." She looked
down at the still surface of the almost untouched water in her bowl. "I
have stood beside the waters of the Tor Leonne, and I have gathered
them."

Ashaf grew still; her bowl was half empty.

"You have lost two lives, and you stand upon the threshold of
a third. I cannot influence your choice, and I would not; I could not
bear your burden; not then, and not now.

"I come to perform no act of magic, no act of mysticism. I
have left my tents and my wagons and my family behind. Tonight, we are
two women beneath the Lady's Moon." She raised her head and the lamp's
glow caught and whitened her chin, making of her face a stark relief.

Ashaf looked out and saw that at least some of her words were
true; dusk had passed, and the secrecy of darkness held them. She
looked down at her half empty bowl, as if deciding, as if afraid to
decide.

The water was sweet as she lifted the delicate clay to her
lips.
From the Tor Leonne
, she thought.
For
me
. So did the Serras drink in all their finery, surrounded
by serafs and cerdan.

But she knew, from her time in the harem, that the Serras were
only a little more free, and only a little more honored, than the
serafs themselves. The will of the Lord whose waters were so sweet.

"Why?"

"Because you have haunted my dreams for three nights. Three
nights beneath the Lady's Moon, I have dreamed of the death of the
Havalla Voyani—and more, the death of the Dominion." She drew breath;
her lips thinned as if she were attempting to hold the words back. No
Voyani woman spoke her mind so freely to strangers—not for free. And
among the Voyani, Yollana was more mysterious than any.

"Did you have these dreams," Ashaf asked, as if the revelation
were as natural as the turn of seasons in the valley that had been home
for the only parts of her life that she cared to remember, "before you
journeyed to the Tor Leonne? I have not heard that the Tyr'agar freely
grants the Voyani permission to take what the lake holds."

"Yes," Yollana said starkly. "Three nights." She moved then,
unbending at the knee and rising as if freedom of action could soothe
her.

"You saw me."

"I saw you."

"Where?"

Yollana averted her gaze and did not speak.

"Yollana."

"I will not lie to you this eve. I will never lie to you
again." She fell silent, and it was a moment before Ashaf realized that
Yollana did not intend to answer. It seemed to her, as she watched the
Voyani woman, that Yollana's actions were a mixture of nervousness and,
oddly, pity. She should have felt fear, but she felt almost nothing.
Almost.

"Why have you come?" she said, asking for the third time,
realizing as the words left her lips that the third time was the
significant one.

"To bring you this water," Yollana replied, quietly placing
the skin upon Ashaf's humble table. "The Havalla Voyani will be in no
one's debt."

The answer made no sense, but the set of Yollana's lips, the
shadowed lines across her brow, made it clear that she would answer no
questions about such a debt. They stood a moment in silence, and then
Yollana shook her head, sending graying curls across the curves of her
face, her shoulders. "You will forgive me," she said, almost wry in
tone. "But I am not a gentle woman. Not a sympathetic one. I am not
good at these offers, these gestures. I raised Voyani; I define what
the Havalla are." She reached into the folds of her shirt and pulled
something from between her breasts. As she lifted it, it caught the
light and sent it out in a fan of intense color.

"Take this," Yollana said, and if there was a request in the
two words, she hid it well. "Take this, and wear it. Travel this
village, these lands. Speak to the people who make this your home.
Visit your graves, your fields, your hills; find the shade in your
forest, the cooling waters in your brook and small river." She let it
fall; Ashaf gasped until she saw the glittering chain that stopped it
from reaching ground. A necklace or a pendant of some sort.

She reached out an open palm, and Yollana carefully dropped
the stone—for it was a stone, a clear one, like a diamond that would
beggar even a Tyr—into her hand. At once, it flared with a deep, blue
light; the light ran the length of her arm, shrouding it.

Magic.

"What—what does it do?" Her voice was, momentarily, a girl's
voice—the girl that she had thought long gone. Dreamer. Seeker of
wonder.

"It is the Lady's magic," Yollana replied, "not the Lord's. It
will not protect you; it will not defend you. Where a blade is raised
or spell is thrown, you will find no solace in it."

Ashaf smiled wryly. "I did not ask you what it wasn't. I asked
you what it is."

"It is a keeper," Yollana said. "Of memory. Of affection. Of
place. Wear it, as I have told you to wear it, and it will take some of
what you feel and hold it within depths that you cannot even imagine.
Wear it, and you will feel exactly the peace or the joy or the
quiet—yes, or the sorrow—that you felt when you first donned it."

"Why?"

"It is a piece of home," Yollana replied gravely. "Many of the
Voyani women wear them, because the heart—our hearts—so seldom find a
home, and when they do, we cannot remain there."

"But this is—this is—" Ashaf fell silent, realizing two
things. For the first, she bowed low. "You have honored me," she said
softly.

Yollana's face was in shadow as she bent to retrieve the lamp.
Ashaf slid the chain over her head with shaking hands, letting the
stone fall to rest against her skin. What should have been cold was
warm; what should have been hard was smooth and almost soft.

Honored? Yes. But she knew, as the Voyani woman attached the
lamp to the pole she carried, that Yollana did not expect to see her
again. Did not expect that anyone would. The Voyani did not surrender
the secrets of their hearts to anyone.

What had Evayne of Nolan said?

Your story ends here, in this village; there will be
no

one to tell it, to carry it on, to bring it to light.

The next day, at dawn, Ashaf kep'Valente rose and walked to
the graves in which lay the remnants of the second life that Yollana of
the Havalla Voyani had spoken of. She knew now when it ended—had almost
known it then, so bleak was the day, and the year, and the year that
followed. The last of her children. Her son.

You were to find your joys
, she thought,
as her hand smoothed out drying strands of once green grass. But her
joy, such as it was, was here, if she could let go of the memory that
ended it.

And sometimes she could; sometimes she could see his youth—all
of their youths—and his innocence, although she expected that the
latter was the kindness of aged memory.

As if this were her last day here, she knelt before the grave,
these graves—but she could not sit for long; the tears came, and it was
not tears that she wished to capture.

Valla kep'Valente was waiting for her this second morning.
Valla, with her delicate chin, her raven's hair, her intemperate words.
She was like a child, and unlike; she spoke her mind as it pleased her,
and often with great surprise at the results.

The pinks were fading from the sky, and the men had been fed;
it was time to tend the fruit of the fields. They walked together, and
to Ashaf it seemed that everything— the colors of the valley fields,
the smell of the cut stalks and turned earth, the movement of birds and
men, the sound of the river—was heightened. Almost new. She looked from
side to side, as if a wonder long dead had found new life.

"Ashaf? Ashaf, have you heard a thing I've said?"

"It's—it's a lovely day," Ashaf said, blushing.

"Which means no." Valla's face was caught a moment between a
smile and a frown; the smile won. "It is a beautiful day."

"Is that Riva?"

"Yes. And that monstrous son of hers."

"He's not monstrous," Ashaf said softly. "Or he will not
always be. He is reckless. When your own are that age, you will
understand it better."

"My own," Valla said, with the arrogance of loving ignorance,
"will not survive if they choose to become like Eric. It's Riva's own
fault." She shrugged. "Give the child no
child's name, and what happens? He knows no mother's calm."

It was common wisdom. "Na'Eri," she said quietly, turning the
words around in her mouth. "Be kind."

Valla's brow lifted a moment. "You weren't so forgiving when
he broke your door."

"True enough," the older woman said. "But the door was fixed."

"I worry about you, Ashaf. You've been sleeping well?"

"No," Ashaf replied cheerfully. "Very poorly. Come; the
shadows are lengthening and the overseer will take our names."

He didn't, of course; and she knew he wouldn't. Although he
was a clansman in theory, he had spent his life here, in this village,
among the serafs. He had played with them, bullied them, and been
bullied by them; he had lain with them, and broken their hearts, and
had his heart broken. He had wed here, under the Lady's Moon, with the
permission of the Tor'agar—the same man who had given Ashaf a husband
and her freedom.

The freedom of a seraf.

He was also a good ten years younger than she, and twice, when
his daughters were ill, had come over the hillocks, his lamp and his
fear burning high. And she had followed him to the biggest house in the
village, to tend to his children in the silence of sickness, of terror.
How could she do less, when she understood that particular helplessness
so well?

"Ashaf. Valla. You're late again."

"Daro," Valla said, kneeling meekly.

"Daro," Ashaf said. "At my age—"

"At your age you set about Michale with a broom and reddened
both his ears." But his good-natured smile was broad enough; it had
been a good year, and the harvest would please the Tor who ruled them
all, whether his serafs were late or no. "We'll fall behind without
you, Ashaf. You set the good example."

"And she terrifies those who don't follow it!" Someone else,
his words carrying in a loud, happy boom. Michale.

She set about her work, feeling the long stalks of wheat as
they lay, new, against her dry hands. The children came to help her,
although she needed little help; they came to thresh and stomp and
squabble while they worked. That was the way of the young.

The way of the village.

She felt a sharp pang, seeing them all. And she did not name
it because she did not have to. She could have chosen any home when the
Tor'agar who had been her husband met his just end beneath the Lady's
Moon. It was truth; his son had been almost a son to her, for all sons
were reared in the harem until they came of an age deemed suitable by
their sires.

But she had chosen to return to this village, as if by coming
back she could reclaim what had been lost: dreams. Innocence. Trust.