Michelle West - Sun Sword 04 - Sea of Sorrows (100 page)

"Do you not know? Can it be that you do not understand?" She turned slightly, her gaze shifting until it rested to Margret's right. Upon the Serra Diora. "Will you not tell her?"

Margret, too, turned. Met Diora's gaze, her wide, round eyes steady and unblinking. "No," she answered, although she looked at Margret. "I will not tell her."

And Margret knew.

She
knew
.

"Tell me." Her voice was thick; the words sounded heavy and swollen as they left her. She wanted to cling to them, to keep them on the right side of her lips. But something forced them out.

"Her name was Margret. Margret na'Sarasheen."

Margret reached out, the movement completely beyond her control. She caught Diora's arm in her hand and held it too damn tightly. Knew that she did, but she had to; her hands would shake too much otherwise. "And her sister's name was Diora."

Diora nodded.

"Do you know what she did to her sister?"

"She did nothing."

"She killed your parents. She bound your body. She destroyed your ability to have children; denied you the possibility of family. She took you away from everything that I—"

"That you value."

Margret could not speak.

"Margret, she did not do that."

"Then her mother did. Or her father. Someone did."

Diora was silent. After a moment, she said, "What
she
did to
her
sister was not done to me. But had it been, it would still be kinder than the crime my father committed. This other Diora lived in a different time, a different place, but she lived as I have always lived—at the whim of the powerful. And if the Sen Margret was powerful, and if the Sen Margret did all that you accuse her of doing, if she deprived me—or her sister—of those things you value, she did it in a way that caused no pain, no loss. What loss can be felt for something you have never had a chance to love?"

"How can you say that?"

"Because I lost everyone I loved in a single night, and I lose them over and over again without pause. I lose them when I sleep, and nightmare takes me. I lose them when I wake, alone. I lose them when I see something that would have drawn a smile from their faces. I lose them when I watch your children, and I hear them speak a new word or take a new step, and I think of all the things that my child will never do."

"And is that how she felt?"

"I know that she made her choice freely."

"She did not. She was chosen by the Sen, and had she refused, she would have been used as just another sacrifice."

"That isn't the choice I speak of."

"Then what?"

"Her death. I know that the only loss she could not face was yours."

"My loss—no, the loss of the
Sen Margret—
would have been her death," Margret snapped. "The Sanctum killed sisters who failed in their duties. It wasn't a good death."

"Did you see that?"

"No. But I
know
it."

Diora was silent for a moment. She looked at the stone in her hand, at the chain that moved in the slow even dance of a pendulum. "Did the Sen Margret never love her, then?"

It was a terrible thing to ask.

"Margret, answer my question; I have answered yours."

"She has answered your question," the pale woman said. "Inasmuch as she can, she has answered it."

There was a long silence. Margret would have answered the question just to spite this ghost, but she couldn't. And she hated to be so transparent to something that, in the end, wasn't even alive.

"Diora, did all of the Matriarchs of Arkosa come here alone?"

"I think you should ask them. They're
all
here, Margret. The greatest of them, and the least. They have been waiting for you to complete this journey; they have been waiting for you to bear their voices."

"I don't want to touch the Heart."

"I know." The Serra Diora drew herself to her full height. It wasn't impressive. And it was.

"Diora—"

"No, Margret," she said, her tone taking all sting out of the refusal. "I have borne the weight of the Matriarchs for long enough. It is your turn."

She held out the Heart.

Margret swallowed air. "Not here." She began to walk again.

And this time the ground did not branch before her; it did not shift or turn; it spread across air in a wide span of stone, welcoming her at last into the heart of Arkosa.

She paused. Diora hesitated for a moment and then stepped from the sharp, harsh crystal to the flat smooth stone. It was wide enough for both of them, but Diora stumbled as her foot touched the ground. Her boots would have to be replaced; there was no repairing the damage the crystal had done.

Margret caught her elbow, steadying her.

"I hate my mother."

Diora shook her head, but the corners of her lips turned up in a rueful smile.

"I wish she were still alive, so I could tell her how much."

"I have reason to believe that would not be very satisfying."

They walked together. The vast expanse of the room seemed to shrink and dwindle.

"Why did you ask for the truth?"

"I don't know."

The path led to a circle that had been scorched into stone. Within it was another circle and between these two, the oath. She had never spoken it aloud. Until this day, she had not possessed the language with which to do so.

She must have hesitated, for Diora touched her gently. "Must we stand in the circle again?"

Before Margret could frame an answer, Diora lifted her robes and stepped lightly upon the mark of Tor Arkosa. She waited in silence, and Margret knew that she would wait that way forever. If they had forever.

Margret had never been good at waiting.

She stepped into the circle as well, and noticed that she had chosen to stand in such a way that her toes brushed the top of one of the Arkosan crescents. Diora's touched the other.

The Serra lifted her hands, and held out the Heart.

Margret flinched as she raised her own, palm down. She was weak. She hated weakness.

"Diora?"

"Yes?"

"Will you hold the Heart?"

Diora's smile was slow and sweet.

Margret's hands touched the Heart, and as she did, her fingers brushed the Serra's hands; she felt their warmth more strongly than she did the cut of the crystal.

She knew when the fight was over.

Or knew that it would be, soon. Telakar had taken the edge of his opponent's blade across shoulder and chest. She had thought the wounds shallow, for they did not appear to slow him, but perhaps he fought in such a focused frenzy that he could not hear their message.

He bled; she thought he bled. But the sand beneath his feet was dry and newly cracked with the force of their steps. Blood wrote no message there.

She gathered her strength. Her forearm ached. She looked down; the gashes made by flying metal were shallow, the blood sticky. She drew out a single shard of metal and held it carefully between her fingers.

It caught the light like a sliver of ruby, dark and red, the facets of its cut broken, its beauty destroyed, its essence unchanged.

She was not the Matriarch of Arkosa. She knew that she would never bear that title.

She had been gifted with the visions Margret lacked, and if they were not Evallen's visions, she had learned to trust them with the passage of time.

Blood had always been the key to the Matriarch's power. Even here, in the desert. Especially here, where liquid had a value that was incalculable, no matter where it came from.

She lifted her head. Straightened her shoulders.

She dropped to her knees, reached for the sand, spread her left hand across it, splaying her fingers as wide as they would go. In her right, knuckles white as the bone beneath skin and flesh, she clutched the remnant of her dagger.

But she did not pray.

The Lord was watching, and the Lord sneered at prayer. She had one chance, and that chance involved no show of weakness, no hint of fear. As if she had been born to the High Court, she made of her face a mask behind which she could hide.

"Elena."

His voice. Her cousin's voice. She did not look up.

Not even when she heard Ishavriel's triumphant cry.

She felt the light. It did not change; it hid beneath the surface of flat, smooth gem, pulsing with a familiar beat. But it was warm, not hot, and it was blessedly silent.

She looked up to meet Diora's eyes.

And she met her mother's instead.

Her mother's. Evallen's.

It should have been strange. But it wasn't; she had spent long enough walking in the memories of a dead woman.

"I was going to tell you how much I hated you," she said, no heat in her words.

"I know."

"Mother—"

"I stood where you stand, the Heart of Arkosa around my neck and within my hands. And the first thing I saw was my mother. I told her… how much I hated her." She smiled. The expression softened her face in a way that no living smile had ever done. Not in Margret's memory.

No. No, that wasn't true. She had looked that way when Adam was young enough to be carried for long stretches beneath the open sky. When the day had passed, and the night had not yet taken the color and hue of the world and made it gray and silver. She had looked that way, sometimes, when her father had lived, and Evallen had stood within the hollow of his arms, staring out at something neither she nor Adam could see.

Margret had always wanted to be the recipient of that smile.

Instead, she was the recipient of all else. The responsibility. The family. The
Voyanne
.

"You're dead."

"Yes. I am dead."

"Then what is this? How can you talk to me?"

Again, her mother smiled. "I spoke to you, Daughter, long before you came here. In this room. Within the seven spheres. I saw you standing here so clearly. I heard what you
would
say. I saw
so
much. I knew that you would not come alone. There was a power in the spheres that sharpened all vision, all talent; I absorbed it. My vision was not strong before I entered this room, but when I left it as Matriarch, it was greater. I thought that
that
was the ultimate gift of Arkosa: a strengthening of vision. That, and the advice of women who had had to live, as I had lived, ever since the
Voyanne
unfolded before us. And I knew—"

"Mother."

She fell silent. The smile left her lips. "You were not born with the gift. Your cousin was. I thought, for years, that I might be forced to make Elena Matriarch after my passing."

Her daughter closed her eyes and looked away, but the Heart beneath her hands was warm; it took the sting from the words that she had always suspected were true.

"When did you decide not to?"

Her mother hesitated.

Margret swore. "Even dead, you make me angrier than anyone I've ever met. What harm can there be in telling the truth?"

"Don't you know?"

"No."

"Very well, Matriarch. I made my decision when I saw that Elena would set foot off the
Voyanne
."

All words left Margret in a rush.

"I could not be certain when, or why; I saw it only briefly. But I saw it clearly, and I knew it for truth. I spent many years afraid of death, of what my death would mean."

"Then
why did you walk into it
? Why did you leave us, now? Why did you take the Heart of Arkosa with you?" She had thought that anger had vanished; she had spoken the word hate with such a happy irony.

"Because the seer came to me, and she told me both my future and my fortune."

Evayne.

"Do not judge her, Margret. Of all creatures in this war, of all people twisted and broken by its necessity, its brutality, do not judge her."

"Why?"

"Because I would live any other life, given a choice. I would live no life at all if it prevented me from bearing her burden."

"And her burden is so great? Her duties so terrible?" She could not keep the scorn from her words. "Is that what she told you?"

The Evallen of Arkosa that Margret had known for almost all of her life returned to the calm, gentle stranger who stood on the other side of the Heart. "You'll mind your words, Daughter. I'm not a fool. She told me
nothing
because to share her burden at all might cost her everything she's worked for. What I say is what I saw, the first time I met her.

"And the last time I met her. She knew what I would walk into. She knew how I would die."

"And she let you do it."

"Did you not desert your cousin?"

Margret cried out in denial, in anger, in pain.

And another voice spoke. "Na'eva," a woman said quietly. "You are too harsh. Always, always too harsh."

To her mother's left a figure appeared. Her face was familiar, although Margret was certain she had never seen it before. ,

"And
you
were always too quick to forgive. You almost failed in Arkosa. You almost failed to offer what was necessary to preserve the
Voyanne
." Evallen of Arkosa said, almost grimly, "This is
my
mother. We all have our ties, and our burdens, to bear."

The voice that had spoken took shape and form, standing across from Margret as she touched the Heart of Arkosa. Another ghost, Margret thought. Another Matriarch.

The woman was older than her mother; the sun had shaped her face, the winds had cracked her skin. But the wrinkles in the corners of her eyes and mouth were the remnants of years of smiling.

"You look a little like your mother. You certainly have her temper. She didn't get that from me."

"My father," Evallen said softly, "was not a patient man."

Margret did not remember him.

She had always wondered what it would be like to have a grandmother; she was the only child in all of Arkosa guaranteed not to.

But many, many other children, with no such guarantee, had also been born without a mother's mother to ease their passage into the world.

She regretted the loss now.

"There is no loss, Matriarch. Do you not understand what the Heart of Arkosa is?"