Michelle West - Sun Sword 04 - Sea of Sorrows (28 page)

Fail to feed it, and you will die.

No.

The sword is an extension of you. An extension of us. It reflects our basest truths. The woman is old and frail. She cuts herself on shards of simple stone; she has no defense against something as simple as air; the weather can kill her. A single imp would be her death
—
her slow death. Do you not understand her purpose
?

She was brought here to take care of me!

Yes. Until such a day as this. You have been given your weapon
—
you no longer need to be treated like the human young
.

No!

He came then.

She had only rarely seen him robed in Shadow; had only rarely been forced to acknowledge the power that he kept—against all demonic protocol—concealed. At his side, eyes the color and sheen of new steel, Lord Anduvin.

"I would not, if I were you," the Swordsmith said, speaking not to Kiriel but to her master.

Lord Isladar did not move. "Do not offer advice when you are not well acquainted with the particulars of the situation."

"I am acquainted with the particulars of the weapon; it is one of mine, and inasmuch as a creator can understand the complexities of a living work, I understand it. You cannot force her to give what is required."

"I have never forced her hand," Lord Isladar replied, his eyes on his student. "I have always allowed her both choice and its consequences. At most I have made certain she understands the consequences of her decision."

Kiriel met his eyes and looked away, the motion almost continuous. But her gaze was not a random attempt to avoid his glare; there was purpose in the movement. The old woman, winded by the force of a blow meant to save her life, was stirring. It was clear, as she lifted her head, that she was struggling for breath. And struggling with pain. Could something so simple have broken her ribs?

She saw Ashaf clearly: weak, soft, old. So close to death it might be a mercy to end the life that bound them.

And they were bound.

She reached out with her free hand to help her nursemaid to her feet, and she found herself turning to both Anduvin and Isladar, subtly interposing herself between them and the old woman.

Even though she was disgusted. Even then.

"She is mine," her words said; her voice told a different story.

"Is she worth your life?" Isladar spoke, for the first time that day, in Torra.

Kiriel answered him in the language of the
Kialli
. She lifted the sword and swung it in a slow, steady arc, until it came to rest point first, in a straight line that joined them.

She was young, but she wasn't stupid.

Lord Isladar's eyes narrowed. "You are not my equal, Kiriel."

"I've seen you use more of your power than anyone."

"She has fangs, Isladar. Even if they are too small to be of real danger, she attempts their use. How like a… young one." His eyes narrowed as he spoke the last two words.

Kiriel's curiosity and her muted anger struggled for a minute. It wasn't a contest. This
Kialli
lord was like no
Kialli
she had ever met—and she had met a lot of them. "Did you have children?"

"
Kiriel
." Isladar's word was a whip's snap. Anger appeared in the brief break of syllables; he concealed it by the time the last had died into silence.

Lord Anduvin said nothing at all, his gaze intent. She did not like him… but she did not instantly
dislike
him, as she did the other kinlords.

"Kiriel?" Ashaf's voice was surprisingly steady as she pulled her hand free and stood without aid. Kiriel felt the sudden freedom as a shock of cold against her empty palm.

She said nothing.

"Kiriel, what did he mean when he asked if I was worth your life?"

"Nothing."

"But he—"

"He wants me to kill you."

"That isn't what he said. He said—"

"I heard him," Kiriel snarled. "But he never speaks in Torra—to me—without a reason. I'm not going to do what he wants, so he's trying to get you to—to help him."

"Why is he speaking of your death?"

"Because," she said slowly, as if Ashaf were the child, and Kiriel the mother, "if I'm not willing to kill you, he thinks you might be stupid enough to kill yourself to save me."

Isladar lifted his hands and clapped, slowly. "Very good," he said, still speaking in Torra. "But, Kiriel, I have no need to lie. I am telling her the truth."

"I want you to go upstairs," Kiriel continued, speaking to Ashaf as if Isladar had not interrupted her. Ashaf didn't move; Kiriel glanced over her shoulder and saw the old woman's face. The lines there had been etched by sun and wind long before Kiriel's birth, but Kiriel had always found them beautiful.

The strangest thing in this long afternoon was finding that she still did, "Ashaf?" She reached out with her cold, empty hand. The older woman relented, and took it. "I need you to go upstairs. Please. You know he wants something. You know he's never let me be killed. But if you're in danger, I can't
think
. You know what happens to
Kialli
who can't think."

The expression on the older face softened visibly as she looked down at her charge.

Deliberately, because she knew a public act of contrition would anger Lord Isladar, Kiriel added, "I'm sorry I hit you so hard. But the sword—you can't touch it."

"Why not?"

Lord Anduvin said, Unexpectedly and quietly, "It will kill you. Heed your mistress. This is a
Kialli
matter, and it would best be solved by your absence."

Ashaf turned to the stranger. Isladar seldom allowed the
Kialli
—or the lesser kin for that matter—into the Tower courtyard. "Is Kiriel's life in danger?"

"Oh, yes," he said, smiling at the way her face lost color. "But your presence here is no longer a factor in her survival." Ashaf hesitated another minute, and the Swordsmith said, "There are things that are best faced in private."

His voice was gentle. He looked at Ashaf for a long while, and then added, "I would give much to know what he offered you to come to the wastes to raise this child, for I see that you are not bespelled, and you are not ignorant. You must know that you will never leave the Shining Palace, and that your death, when it comes, will be… unpleasant."

"She's not going to die!" The sword, which had been heavy, lost weight as she swung it, wordless, a second time.

"Hush, child. There are more imminent deaths with which to concern yourself." But again his voice was gentle.

"Do you still search, Anduvin?" Lord Isladar was as quiet as Anduvin had been. "I fear that you search, as always, in vain."

"So you said, in a different age, in a different world."

"Indeed."

"And you were… not wrong."

"Indeed."

"Search?" Kiriel asked, although it was hard to speak while he was staring at her.

"Oh, yes."

"For what?"

"The perfect sheath."

The sword burned. The ring burned. Between them, flesh. Mortality. Ashaf had been mortal.

Something was caught in Kiriel's throat: a scream. She struggled to suppress the sound, but it was choking her; she managed, barely, to turn it on its edge, to make a roar of it.

It was a wild, terrible sound.

"Kiriel!"

Kiriel.

She recognized the voice.

"Auralis?"

The sword, she realized, was burning her because she had cut him; she recognized the scent of his blood on the blade.

For a moment she was herself. But it lasted for as long as it took her to realize she didn't know what that meant.

She killed. She killed imps. She killed kin summoned and controlled by lords who had tried unsuccessfully for years to kill her. It occupied the dark, clear evening.

Like shadows, the Swordsmith and the lord who taught her everything she knew about survival trailed behind her, watching in silence. Waiting for her to admit what she already knew, these minor deaths did nothing to feed the sword.

But the sword took the blood she offered; there was no need to wipe the blade clean.

It also seemed to lose weight or substance as the evening drew to its natural close. What had been a struggle to lift became less and less of a burden until, by night's end, it felt as natural as her hands. It was certainly more efficient.

But she had no answer.

"The sword," Meralonne said.

"It is the sword Kiriel has always wielded," Evayne replied.

"It cannot be. I would have recognized the maker's mark."

"From this distance," the woman who had once been his student said, "I see Shadow and the blood of a brave—or stupid—man. If there is a mark—"

"You have always been so powerful it is easy to forget that there are some gifts time and experience will not grant. We must stop her, Evayne."

"She may be able to contain herself: Look."

Auralis bent at the knee as he parried the clumsy overhead blow—a movement too brutish and crude to be identified with Kiriel's regular fighting style. It left her open.

Whatever held her in its grip, whatever possessed her now, she was fighting it. In the only way she knew how. Sadly, there was only one way to take advantage of what she offered. They had at least this much in common: they had learned to fight in a place where death was the most common reward for making a mistake. They did not know how—not safely—to lessen the force of their blows.

And he didn't want to kill her.

But he wasn't willing to die.

Come on, damn you.

"That's not what I meant," Meralonne said.

Dawn.

Ashaf rose with the sun, as much a part of daybreak as the wash of rising color across the northern peaks. No doubt she would be waiting now, rice dust under her fingernails, a fire in the grate, mats laid out on either side of the low table.

She would wear the heavy formless robes that she said kept the cold at bay. Kiriel had never really felt the cold. Proof, if more were needed, that Ashaf was weak.

And the weak died. That was the Law of the Hells.

"Kiriel," Isladar said.

"How will it kill me?" she said, speaking to the Swordsmith.

He frowned. "In my youth, I made a blade for the Queen of the Winter Court. It was the finest weapon I had ever crafted."

Kiriel's confusion was clear, but it was not Anduvin who chose to ease it.

"She was our Lord's greatest rival. We were not always what we are now, Kiriel. Nor was the Winter Queen."

"But if she was—"

"Is."

"—is our greatest enemy, why did he give her his best sword?"

"Do you not understand?" He smiled. "Do not feel your lack of understanding too keenly. Very, very few of the
Kialli
could answer that question."

"Lord Anduvin?"

He did not look at her. His eyes were the color of Winter sky seen through storm's mask. "Understand that a weapon is not a trophy; not a badge of rank, not a sign of power. It is a weapon, no more, no less. Among my… kin were those who failed to understand this basic truth. They traded in magicks and drew their swords as a matter of quaint ritual. They had their power. My swords were a trifle."

"An exaggeration, Anduvin."

Anduvin's shrug was graceful. He stepped forward. Isladar raised a hand.

"Isladar," Kiriel said quietly, "If I'm old enough to have this sword, I'm old enough to defend myself."

"Your fitness to wield the blade has not yet been established." But he lowered his hand.

Kiriel was staring at Anduvin intently. "The Winter Queen used her sword."

"Oh, yes, little one."

"But she used it against the kin. Against the servants of our Lord."

He laughed. "And who did you wield your sword against this eve? Who will you wield your blade against in the months to follow? No enemy of the Lord's will ever be as much a threat to you as his strongest servants already are. She was—"

"Have a care, Anduvin."

Anduvin nodded.

"Why did you give her the sword?"

"Because she was the most powerful of the Firstborn. And I wanted a sword of mine to be wed to her name and her glory."

Kiriel frowned. What he said made sense… but there was more.

He raised an ice-white brow. "You don't believe me?" There was no anger in the question, which was very unusual. The kin made an art of lying, but if accused of its practice, reacted with slightly less anger than they would have had you accused them of weakness.

"I do. But… there's something else you haven't said."

"There is much I have not said. I do not regret my decision. I do not regret my offering—or her acceptance."

"You… liked her."

"Kiriel, have a care," Isladar said.

But the
Kialli
lord ignored the interruption. "Yes, little one. I owe her a debt," he added, gazing beyond Kiriel into the past he spoke of. For a moment he seemed very human to her. She understood why Lord Isladar allowed him entry to her Tower.

"In her Court I honed my craft." He paused. "Let me explain something briefly. The Southern sword is a single edged blade. It is designed to cut, and the slight curve of the blade maximizes the presentation of the cutting edge. The Winter Queen—as she is most often called—is a single-edged blade. But," he added, his fingers dancing quietly along sword hilt, "I traveled with the Court of the Arianni for two seasons. Winter… and Summer."

Kiriel waited for him to continue, but the silence stretched.

"Lord Anduvin?"

"My blades exact their price. But—they cut both ways."

"What do you mean?"

Anduvin did not answer. Isladar did.

"She used his sword."

"But—"

"—as the Summer Queen."

Auralis was bleeding.

She was surprised at the contrast of red and white, because his bronzed skin—as Alexis mockingly called it—had paled into something pasty and unpleasant: the complexion of fear. Without effort, she had pierced armor. She could smell blood and metal.

"Why don't you
run
?"

Her own voice shocked her into silence. She heard it as he must have heard it: as a foreign sound, a mixture of menace and grating roar that hinted at the bestial.