Michelle West - Sun Sword 04 - Sea of Sorrows (101 page)

The corpse, Margret thought bitterly, of the Sen Margret's son. And her sister. "No."

"Our voices. Our memories. Our lessons. Our stories. It is our knowledge, preserved, as it can be preserved, for you."

"But—"

"She knew, the first Arkosan Matriarch knew, how bitterly lonely a Matriarch can be. She knew that Matriarchs would bear the burden of the
Voyanne
alone. She was a hard woman, and a cold one, but she understood that no people can survive the winter desert for long. She gave us the only comfort she could give: the company of those who had learned the price of power."

"Did you? Did you learn the price of power?"

"Some of us more than others. Come, Margret. Walk among us for a time. There will never be another place where our voices will speak to you so clearly, and our shades be so alive as they are here."

But Margret shook her head. "Mother," she said quietly, "you haven't answered my question."

"I have."

"You haven't told me what Evayne said."

"No."

"Tell me."

"It would make no sense to you, Margret. Not until you have led my life. Have you found a father for your children?"

Margret rolled her eyes. "I did not come all the way to the Heart of Arkosa to have this argument again."

"Arkosa needs children."

"Mother!"

"Arkosa needs daughters. Elena's namesake, five generations ago, bore four sons. You are not as young as you once were. You have your duty."

But Margret shook her head slowly. "Mother—"

Her mother was silent.

Other voices spoke in her stead. Some were harsh and some soft; some were grating and some musical. The women who accompanied those voices were tall, thin, large, short, small; they were gracious and graceful and clumsy and ancient; they were young and beautiful, sorrowful and joyful.

She looked at them all as they filled the chamber with their presence in ones and twos, and she felt the Heart of Arkosa beating out a familiar rhythm beneath her palms.

"Mother," she said again, "you know there's no point in talking of children."

They fell silent. As if they were one woman, their voices stilled, and she could see in their faces that the truth of her words had reached out across the generations; that each woman, standing here before her, preserved in the Heart and the memory of Arkosa, had in her time stood within this circle, her palms cupped about this same gem, waiting for word that the
Voyanne
had finally led them back to the fabled homeland.

No. Not fabled.

Among the women present was the first Matriarch.

The Sen Margret made her way through the crowd as if it were, in truth, a crowd and not the artifact of magic, not an illusion sustained by the presence of the seven spheres. She slid deftly between arms and shoulders pressed too tightly together, pushing her way past the older women who did not seem to acknowledge her presence.

"You came here alone," Margret said to her mother, the words almost an accusation.

"Yes. We all traveled alone. That was our duty. That was the law. One or two of us attempted to bring our daughters to this hallowed place, that our daughters might draw strength from the presence of their ancestors. But our daughters were refused entry.

"Only the Matriarchs could enter. And only if they carried the Heart of Arkosa within their hands. The Heart was enchanted… in a way that made it sensitive to the bloodline. The Matriarch Raven, daughter of Deverra, lost the Heart to the man who ruled these lands, centuries past. He took it from her before he killed her. But the Heart returned to her daughter. And she was not the first to lose it; not the first to guide her people without the voices it contained. When you have time, or desire, when you are willing to face death, you will know how each of your predecessors fell.

"But I ramble. The Heart returned, ten years later."

"How?"

"We do not know. There are glimpses of memories that do not belong to any of us within the crystal's depths. Do not touch them, Margret. Do not disturb them."

Margret knew a moment of fear, her first among these women. "Those strangers—did the Matriarchs speak to them?"

"The Heart cannot speak, not directly, to anyone who does not carry our blood in their veins."

"You're certain?"

Again they were silent.

Margret frowned. "But the Serra Diora is no Arkosan."

"Perhaps in the past—"

"Mother."

"You may as well tell her, Evallen. It's not likely to harm us."

"If the Matriarch dedicates the gem—and the dedication is complicated, and the act involves many, many things, not the least of which is the waters from the Lady's Lake—we can sometimes speak to strangers. But we cannot speak without the will of the living Matriarch behind it."

"And you were."

Again, she was silent.

"Margret." The Sen Margret spoke. Her voice stilled the others. "You know that that is not why the Serra Diora can hear our voices."

Margret said nothing.

"You know, or you would not ask why they came alone. And by exclusion, why you did not."

"She is not here."

"Who?"

"You know who. The Sen Diora."

"No. I never meant for my sister to be part of the dedication of the seven spheres."

"You were ready to kill everything else."

The stranger flinched. But she accepted Margret's judgment.

"I did not intend for her to be part of the dedication because I knew that I could bear children and that she could not. The dedication was complicated, Margret. The spell was years in the making, and it was a subtle spell. It had to be bound to the bloodline. And Diora's was at an end." She bowed her head.

"But in the end, without the aid of my sister, I would have lacked the strength necessary to make the Heart. I went to the North tower before the arrival of the Lord of Night, and I spoke with Sen Adoll. And on that day, another also traveled to the North tower. I do not know how she knew to be there. Had the Seven been invoked, she would not have been able to pass the walls, no matter how simply she chose to travel."

"Who?"

The Sen Margret raised her face, and her eyes were a blue flash of light.

"Will you seek the truth one more time, Matriarch?"

"Why not?"

She stood upon the battlements at the height of the North tower. It was the tallest of the towers, and the sphere it housed was black as night; nothing moved within it. Margret did not think that such a dark thing could draw light and hold it, but she knew that she was being fanciful; it had been built for that purpose, and if, in its dormancy, it chose shade and shadow, it mattered little.

The guardians of the tower faced outward, their eyes absorbing and examining the smallest movements in the streets below. Their robes were blown this way and that by the play of strong wind, but the wind did not move them; they were adepts; they could walk in the folds of the most violent of storms without harm.

She could not join them, and she found the wind at the heights uncomfortable in its strength. But Sen Maris had ordered the adepts to allow her to pass, and they suffered her presence with no outward acknowledgment. To be ignored by an adept was far safer than to be treated with an obvious display of respect.

She bowed her head, waiting.

She had waited for an hour; she marked the passage of time by the length of the shadows cast by the adept who manned the eastern watch.

Sen Adoll joined her upon the battlements.

Sen Margret smiled when she saw her, but the smile froze across her lips. For Sen Adoll came alone; no sister kept her company; no sister watched over her.

"Sen Adoll," she said faintly. Sen Adoll was without dispute the most capable seer the Sanctum had yet produced. And because of that, she was dangerous. "The wind is strong across the heights."

Sen Adoll nodded gravely.

She was placid. Calm.

Sen Margret could not remember a time when either of these words had described her demeanor accurately. They were words that were used when outsiders were present, but they were heard with an understanding of the context of Sen Adoll's life.

"Daughter," Sen Adoll said quietly.

Sen Margret dropped at once to both knees. Were it not for the presence of the adepts, she would have abased herself completely, but such an abasement would be noted and questioned.

"Rise. Such a posture does not suit the woman who has protected my followers from danger for so long."

She rose at once, gathering her skirts as if they were thoughts that could be put in order.

"Firstborn," she whispered.

"Why have you come to this tower? I am not at home on the heights of such a bastion."

Sen Margret swallowed.

"You did not choose to venture down my path."

"No, Firstborn." She bowed her head.

"Why? You have sent many others to me."

"My gift was not as strong as theirs."

"No?"

"No."

The Oracle's smile was cool and subtle. "Your gifts are many, Daughter. Your sight is weak because you have chosen to hide from it."

Stung, Sen Margret bowed her head.

"And because you have hidden, you have no avenue to seek the answers you desire. You chose the path of the coward, Daughter; you chose to live in fear."

"I chose to live as those without true vision must live; I have a responsibility—"

"You have deserted the responsibility you now attempt to hide behind. If you seek truth, Daughter, offer it first."

"Had I come to the foot of your path, I would offer no less."

"But I am the guest here, and you the host?"

"No, Firstborn. The tower is not my home." Sen Margret studied the woman who wore Sen Adoll's face.

"You avoided the path because you did not wish to expose all that you are to my inspection."

"Firstborn, all that I am, and all that I will ever do, is open to your inspection." She said it without bitterness or rancor.

"Perhaps. But giving something is not the same as having it taken, in this time, or any other. You accept the vulnerability that you cannot avoid with admirable pragmatism— but you avoid vulnerability at all cost when you have the choice." She raised a hand and gestured briefly; furrows formed across her brow as she frowned.

Sen Margret said quietly, "I avoid what you yourself have avoided."

The frown melted into a smile—the cool smile of a teacher who thinks a student has said something precious or clever.

"You misjudge me, Sen Margret. What is, is; what will be is… more so. I am vulnerable in ways that you will never understand to someone who chooses to walk my path.

"But you have led those who would travel my path to me, and of those who survived their journey, you have been the protector and guardian. I understand well the ways of the Cities of Man."

Sen Margret fell naturally into silence. She was of the Sanctum.

But she had never seen the Oracle prophesy before. She watched. And even she could not remain impassive when the Oracle reached into her own chest, and drew forth… a heart.

"Do not look too deeply."

Had Margret the choice, she would not have looked at all. But her eyes would not obey the command to close; she saw what lay cupped within palms that seemed human, beating. Bleeding.

"You are correct in your surmise," the Oracle said. The pretense of Sen Adoll's voice vanished; she spoke slowly and evenly, her words punctuated and broken by breath. "The hands of your sister changed the nature of your spell in a way that you had not foreseen. But the spell itself is true. You will leave the City within the week, when the moon is at its nadir." It was not a command; it was barely an observation.

"You will bear your children. You will begin your line. But the blood of your children alone will not be enough to retrieve all that you have preserved."

The Sen Margret knelt at the feet of the Firstborn. She reached out to catch the blood that fell from the beating heart; it was red, warm. Like any other blood that she had ever touched.

"My sister had no children."

"No. And she is lost to you. There is nothing of your sister preserved within the Heart of Arkosa but your memories of her. And those memories will not be enough."

The others, then, she thought bitterly. The others. Havalla. Lyserra. Corrona. But three were better than none.

"No, there will be a fourth, and it will be the first. Arkosa. The time is coming, Daughter. There will be a sundering. The world will know a loss that is measured not in lives, for lives are lost as we speak. In the North, a child has been born. He will grow to manhood, and he will carry a sword that the gods have, in ignorance, forged. He is the beginning of the end. But he is not the end, not yet."

She did not speak. It had rarely been so difficult for Sen Margret to keep her peace, but she knew that visions could not be interrupted without cost.

"The gods will leave this realm. Some willingly, some by force, but they will leave. And with them leaves the glory of your Cities, the zenith of your power, who are mortal and have chosen to play the games that gods play.

"You understand mortal memory, or you would not have undertaken the work that will destroy your life. But you cannot conceive of how long the path from Arkosa to Arkosa will be." The Oracle smiled. "Yes. Your descendants will walk again through the heart of the City. You have a question, Daughter, and our time is short. You may ask it."

"How? How will the City be reborn if my sister's bloodline is no more?"

"You are mortal, but some part of your being is not. What is taken can return, again and again, seeking answers to questions that birth itself destroys. And that return starts when the gods choose to play a different game. Mandaros will sit in judgment, sifting through the dead who wait.

"She will return. You will know her. The Heart of Arkosa will know her. And when one of your descendants is strong enough to bear the loss of her mothers, two again will walk into the City of Arkosa."

"And on that day?"

"The End of Days begins."

"The End of Days?"