Michelle West - Sun Sword 04 - Sea of Sorrows (58 page)

"If I had to guess," Avandar snapped, "the
it
that you so quaintly refer to is doing two things."

"What?"

"It's attempting to reject your offering."

"But—"

"And it's spilling enough power into the surrounding countryside that anyone with power of their own now knows
exactly
where we are." He lowered his voice with obvious effort. "Jewel," he said, through his teeth, "you are bound to
me
. I apologize if that was not made clear to you. What you do here—with the Voyani—is offer another binding. You are trapped on either side by power that you neither comprehend nor control."

The bowl's contents burst into flame; the flame was white. Elena bit her lip, but she did not let go of the bowl.

He was silent for a moment. When he spoke again, his voice was its normal frigid self. "It appears that the Voyani no longer comprehend what it is that they seek to. summon. In my youth, you would have been considered very brave. By the foolish.

"Come."

She was having difficulty breathing. Oddly enough, that made it easier to listen to him. She didn't even raise her customary elbow when he enfolded her, from behind, in the questionable shelter of his arms and chest.

She was surprised at how cool, how blessedly cool, that chest was.

"Where are we going to—"

"Hush."

"But—"

He was silent a moment, and then he chuckled; the chest at Jewel's back seemed to lose some essential rigidity. "They must finish what they have started; the offering has been made. If you somehow survive it, we can assume that it was accepted." He caught her as she stumbled. Or rather, fell; she hadn't actually moved her feet. "Accepted with grace? Unlikely. But if you do not leave this site before dusk, it is likely that you will never leave it."

"Domicis!"

Jewel felt, rather than saw, the movement of Avandar's chin as it rested just above her hair. "Matriarch?"

"What—what has happened here?"

He was silent.

Avandar.

She felt, rather than saw, his surprise. Her eyes were closed, although it took her a moment to identify the cause of the pale gray and red that obscured all vision.

ATerafin.

Tell them.

He was silent.

All right, you stubborn sonofa
—

ATerafin.

This
is
going to be hard. All right, tell
me
and let her listen. I want to know what's happening, too
.

You won't be awake for the explanation.

Try me.

She felt a glimmer of mixed annoyance and amusement, both of which were almost dwarfed by a vast and endless anger. But that anger was not for or at her, and it was not— although it had been momentarily aimed at—for Margret. "When the Voyani fled their ancestral home— No, do not raise the dagger, and raise no alarm; I reveal enough about myself in this speaking that I am not a threat to you." There was a silence. It stretched. Jewel listened for the sound of a weapon being sheathed; it didn't happen.

But after a moment, Avandar chose to resume his explanation.

"When your ancestors chose to embark upon the
Voyanne
that dominates your lives to this day, they were watched. There were bloodlines within the homelands that were notable and therefore noted, and although the cities themselves were… destroyed… in a fashion, it was the bloodlines that represented the greatest of threats to the Lord of Night who is not otherwise named.

"He bound the cities with magic—in the magicks he understood and wielded. His work was fine, and long, and deadly. But it was not… complete."

She heard the rustle of cloth. "Matriarch, I will offer you this warning. If you attack me, you will die. If you order your people to attack me, they will die." It was the worst kind of threat, uttered in the matter-of-fact tone reserved for observations about simple statements of fact. Like the price of butter. Or the price of bread.

"You're sure of yourself, stranger." Elena's voice.

He did not dignify bravado with response. Jewel was pretty sure that no one expected him to.

You are certain you wish me to continue? There may be consequences. Deaths.

She, too, did not dignify the ridiculous with a response.

"The Lord is a creature who understands power. He understands it in minutiae; he understands it when it is grand and glorious and sweeps whole continents into the sea by the ferocity of its ambition. He understands the desire to preserve what one controls; this is at the heart of rulership, when the ruler is not mad. But he does not understand— and did not—the power that comes from a willing sacrifice.

He cannot clearly understand the power that abjures power, or denies power.

"But he desires that understanding. It is a weakness in both offense and defense to so lack what motivates so much of humanity. I digress.

"When the Matriarchs chose to follow their course, they were forced to abandon their homes."

"'Gret." Elena's voice. Hushed. Tight.

"Stranger—"

"No one can hear a word I say, and while I speak, no one can hear your response. Shall I stop?"

No one answered.

"They gathered those they could trust about them and they convinced them, by means unknown, that the Lord was coming to war against the Cities. And then they explained that the Cities themselves were covered in a fine veil of magic by which people of power or consequence were watched. Anyone caught outside of the vast array of defenses the Cities offered was prey for the kin.

"They knew the truth of this. However, it was not a punishment meted out
to
the rulers within the cities, for the Lords of these lands had power, and the kin could not be guaranteed to defeat them. Therefore, should they travel in the wake of a power, they might be safe.

"But what they did not understand—what was made .clear—was that while they could leave, they could not leave in safety without the Matriarch, and if
she
left, the enemy would be alerted.

"In the end, a minor member of each family stepped forward and offered his blood as the binding by which the spell might be defeated. It was woven—this blood, this integral part of identity—into the magicks cast by the Matriarch, that those watching might see only the identity of the man whose blood was offered, and not the identity of the women whose blood carried that power. It is an old spell and it is not without its debt—on either side. It requires an element of trust."

Silence. Neither Elena nor Margret broke it.

Adam did. Jewel heard his voice at Avandar's back, although as Avandar did not seem even remotely surprised at the interruption, she guessed that the domicis has been aware of his presence.

"We have completed this ceremony every year since the
Voyanne
beckoned, and if there were deaths, if the minions of the Lord were hunting us, it isn't recorded."

"Indeed. I would say that you have diminished significantly in power over the years, to a point which makes this ruse, this binding, unnecessary."

"Then your anger—"

"Jewel ATerafin is bound to
me
. And my power has not diminished at all with the passage of time. If they are looking for me, they will find me. And they will see that I am moving into the heart of the territories mankind once held against them at a crucial time in their war.

"Then," he added softly, "they will come."

Silence.

"Margret—can we—"

"No," Avandar said, before she could answer. "Had the blood reached sand, touching nothing of yours, you could have found a different sacrifice. As it is, her blood is already bound to the Matriarch's line; the bowl is blooded. The wagons are waiting.

"And, I, too, must prepare."

"Who hunts you, stranger?"

He laughed. "It would be more germane, young man, to ask who
doesn't
."

5th of Misteral, 427 AA

Shining Court

For the better part of one week, the child had cried. She had cried upon waking, cried when going to sleep, and screamed within sleep's fold; she had wept when she was taken—briefly—to the human Court and worse still, wept when Anya came for her.

It had been hard, then, to preserve her life.

But Lord Isladar had faced a similar challenge with an earlier ward. True, Kiriel—even as a small child—had been more robust; the simple howl of Northern wind did not pierce or freeze her skin; the raging fire of Falloran's breath did not burn it. But in the eyes of the kinlords, such simple immunities were taken for granted. They went unnoticed by all save the old woman he had procured to raise his ward.

To build into her the necessary human weaknesses.

This time, he thought he might forgo the interference of another parent. Kiriel had been his first child, and he had learned much in her rearing.

This, this second child, this unlooked-for gift, had come out of the hands of madness into his arms and his tower; he could not conceive of a role for her, should he manage to preserve her. And it had been almost an eternity since Lord Isladar of the
Kialli
had done anything spontaneous; not even reveling in the sensation of the elemental wind had been unpremeditated.

He watched the child.

She slept.

Falloran
, he thought.
Will you serve one without even the faintest trace of blood or power
? Perhaps. Perhaps not. While she slept, he watched over her, thinking that the line of her cheek and her upturned nose, in the shadows of a Tower with shuttered windows and the muted glow of lamp against smooth stone, was familiar.

Above her head, the carved symbols of elemental flower that had been invoked to protect his first child were glowing faintly. It took no art to see the light they cast; he had enchanted them for her comfort. She was the third person to sleep in this bed. The first, Kiriel's mother; the second, Kiriel herself. The third? He did not desire that the third should meet the fate he had planned for either the first or the second. Strange, that.

Perhaps it was because the child was so inherently valueless. She had no glimmer of mortal talent and her eyes were as brown as the eyes of the most base of Southern clansmen; not even flecks of gold that hinted at a mysterious ancestry made them interesting or appealing. She was trapped in the span of her years, and unaware of the nature of that trap, she would die confined by them.

And yet… his hand hovered above the knotted strands of her too-fine hair, his thumb above the fluttering shell of closed lid.

He felt the intruder at the foot of the Tower door.

It destroyed the fragile moment. In the air, shimmering like horizon in the desert heat, a sigil formed. He had cast this sigil, enforced it, displayed it, when it was new; he had left it when the Tower emptied of both its occupants. But he was almost surprised to see it, whole, his name emblazoned across air a menace with no subtlety.

How was it that the kinlords could be driven by things ancient and things powerful—that the scars of a world that no longer existed could exert such influence and control when the recent, the mere decade, could be so easily forgotten?

He smiled. Rose, and bent with infinite care. His fingers brushed the cheeks of sleeping child. He did not analyze the action; he merely enacted it until he was satisfied, his back bent beneath the confinement of a single piece of stone.

Then, when he was certain she would not wake, he rose. Wondering, as he did, why he had not chosen to deprive her of the memories of parents he was certain—given Anya's comments—were dead. Certainly, at any other time, he would have.

But at any other time, he would have had a plan.

There was an eternity to question. But first, there was an unwelcome interruption to be dealt with.

The kinlord was tall.

He had gathered his shadow around him like a mantle; from a distance—the distance provided by winding stone stairs—that power could be seen as it spilled into ground, seeped into air, announcing the presence of the lord who now held it.

It was not, however, meant as a threat; merely as a statement. The kinlord looked up as Isladar drew near. He did not otherwise shift position.

"Lord Isladar."

"Lord Telakar." Isladar offered no similar display of power. It was not needed. The Tower was his.

Silence stretched; Telakar smiled. "I hear that you have another mortal in your keep. Is this one mongrel as well?"

"You know full well that she is simply a stray human."

Telakar nodded. "I had heard," he said softly, "that she was chosen by the mad mage."

"You are reckless, Telakar; Anya a'Cooper has sharp ears, and she is sensitive."

"She is mortal," he said, his shrug more dismissive than the momentary current of excitement detectable in the words themselves.

"Yes. And if you wait long enough, she will no longer be a threat. Although… that was not always the case with mortals, was it?"

The silence that followed was composed of lack of speech, lack of breath, and the sudden, frozen stillness of shadow. Lord Telakar fell to one knee, slowly, groping for the form of respect between liege and lord that had been used when the
Kialli were
yet alive.

"Lord Isladar." Power such as Telakar possessed was not easily shed; he made no move to release it.

Which was wise. Shedding such gathered shadow often presaged the laying of the foundation for a major spell, and no lord chose that undertaking in the dominion of another unless he was certain that he might prevail.

Against Isladar, the inscrutable, the least predictable of the
Kialli
, there was no certainty.

"Lord Telakar." Isladar inclined his head. He accepted the humbling gesture without comment; they were both aware that, had he desired it, the gesture itself would have been superfluous. Lord Isladar did not desire public displays of power—except as it suited a specific purpose—but rather, its certainty. Among the
Kialli
, there was not a lord who had chosen to bind more of his servitors than Isladar.