Michelle West - Sun Sword 04 - Sea of Sorrows (59 page)

Or rather, not a lord who had bound more and survived.

Yet this one, he had chosen not to leash.

He was not entirely certain why. Telakar was
Kialli
, and possessed of the same ambition, the same goals. He sought power. There was no question of trust; he could not be trusted.

They both understood this; it was part of ancient ritual, the dance of the powerful.

He waited patiently while Telakar rose, shedding subservience with grace.

"I did not expect to see you here."

"In truth, I did not expect to be here. The… task that you set seemed of interest, but it is not yet exciting, and it is by no means finished."

"Observation seldom is." Isladar's smile was both rare and genuine.

Telakar's frown was no less genuine, but perhaps not as rare as the smile it answered. "Lord Isladar?"

"You were always so impatient. If I could have taught you one thing—if I could teach it now—it would be patience. Very little is boring in the end. Anticipation, with care, can last millennia."

"I was not more impatient than Etridian is now, and he is one of the Lord's Commanders, a part of His Fist."

"For now," Isladar replied. "But he has failed twice."

"He failed against your mongrel."

"Yes. And so, too, would you."

Telakar was predictable. He bristled, but he did not demur. He understood that it was not in Isladar's nature to boast.

"But he failed against the mortals as well. I do not believe his tenure will survive the war. Come, we have had this argument before, and it was not interesting then. And you must admit that Kiriel, when she was present, made things vastly more amusing in the Northern Wastes."

"You came to report something of interest?"

"Perhaps. Ishavriel is canny. It is difficult to observe him without his knowledge, and it requires… a greater distance than I had anticipated."

Isladar did not nod; he merely listened.

"He seems, at this distance, to have taken an interest in one of the Voyani men."

"That is not generally where power resides among the Voyani."

"No. But it is where power once resided, and perhaps he seeks to invoke that."

"Perhaps. Or perhaps it is where weakness resides; it is vastly easier to manipulate the weak—but it is less satisfying. Come; you did not return to the Northern Wastes that you so despise to give me that."

"No." He was silent for a moment; shadows shifted around the contours of his perfect, youthful cheeks, lending his face not a sullen air, but a pensive one. "I have not journeyed often to the lands of men since my return. I know that we are forbidden to mention them among the mortals at Court—but Isladar, I remember them so clearly."

"You were young, then."

"Yes, and you—and the others—were old. Do you not remember the cities? Do you not remember the buildings they wove out of glass and magic and desire, out of gold and silver and common clays? In my day, they decorated their walls with their weak; you could smell the dead as you approached."

Isladar watched the expression mute the edges of Telakar's
Kialli
face; for just a moment, as the kinlord spoke, he could see what had been there before the sundering. It was beautiful in a way that Kiriel, or her human nurse, could never understand.

"You were scarred," he said softly, when Telakar's voice trailed into the past.

"I… I was scarred," he said; he did not deny what another lord would never have admitted. "But I traveled the desert they called the Sea of Sorrows, and I felt our Master's ancient touch across all of the sands. There are no cities. There are no ruins."

"And yet they gather."

"Yes, they gather. At the desert's edge. For what bastard ceremony, I do not understand. Nor, I feel, does Ishavriel, although he seeks to use it."

"Telakar, at the risk of being offensive, think."

"I—"

"They have gathered for generations, and human memory is a weak, pathetic thing; it has no viscera, no fire. If there was truly nothing left, do you think they would stand at the desert's edge, exposed to the men who hunt them?"

"I am no expert in human behavior."

"Then be expert in mine, kinlord. Would I send you on such an errand, to such a place, without cause? I am not— I have never been—without mercy."

"Perhaps not—when it serves your purpose. The quality of your mercy has yet to be tested."

"By you; it has been tested by many."

Telakar was silent for a long moment. His lips thinned and then relaxed; he closed his eyes briefly. Light and shadow played against the perfect sheen of his closed lids.

"My apologies, Lord Isladar. I am distracted. It is not of Ishavriel that I came to speak."

"No?"

"No. In the end, he chooses to dally with a mortal man, in the cover of night or shadow. He does not declare himself; he does not seek to use his power. Not yet.

"But there was a man who was old when the cities were built; old when they warred, older when they fell. He was one of the gifted, and he… survived much. He is known to us, and he still lives, although I do not understand how."

"Continue."

"I am not privy to the discussions of the Lord's Fist, but I believe that Lord Etridian was given the responsibility of either making an alliance with this man, or destroying him."

Isladar's smile was perfect; sharp, cold, brief. "He was indeed."

"I see no servants of Etridian there, and I can only assume this means he failed. His servants are not of a caliber to practice subtlety; if they were there, I would know." Telakar's smile was less brief, although it, too, was a perfect
Kialli
expression. "The Warlord is with the Voyani."

"You are certain of this?"

"Yes."

"How?"

"An hour ago… his sigil hovered in the air above the Voyani encampment like a disembodied ghost. They—the humans—are not sensitive to the dispersal of such magic, but it was there. Both Ishavriel and I were forced to retreat—hastily—to avoid detection.

"But… the power ebbed. It is detectable now, but it is… strange."

"Strange?"

"It is… it is undeniably his power. But it is… distorted, contaminated. I have not chosen to approach more closely to determine how."

"Wise," Isladar replied, as if wisdom and Telakar were not always found together. "But he is with our ancient enemies."

"Yes. I do not believe they were aware of his nature."

"And now?"

Telakar shrugged. "They are human."

"You speak as if their nature excuses your ignorance."

The kinlord flushed. But he wisely chose to refrain from response.

Isladar gestured a window into being in the Tower wall; it was large, the sill the size of two men, the height, perhaps three. It seemed to defy the existence of stairs as it opened into the winter courtyard of the Shining Palace.

Ice touched them both as Lord Isladar of the
Kialli
raised his face to the keening death the elemental air promised to all who spoke its wild tongue. Telakar gathered his shadow close; he had learned the elemental arts, but he was not entirely comfortable with the surrender required to barter with the wilderness.

Yet he was moved at the sound of Isladar's voice contorted by air; there was harmony between what could be easily modulated and what in the end could be coaxed, coddled, and only barely controlled.

Isladar was aware of him, as he was aware of Northern air and the sudden shock of ice that traveled the length of the Tower stairs. It was given no egress into the room the child slept in, but Falloran, at the foot of the Tower, was growling in fury, a literal storm of fire about his brow.

Telakar, he thought, appreciated beauty in a way that the kinlords in the Hells had almost forgotten.

Perhaps that was why, in the end, he did not choose to. bind him to, and by, blood. He had been a foolish youth, inasmuch as any of the
Kialli
could be said to be young; of all of the Sundered, Telakar was not one that Isladar would have predicted would cling to the bitter identity of memory. But he had, finding comfort in the pain of those who had Chosen the Hells. As the
Kialli
themselves had done, and perhaps with as clear an understanding of what it meant to choose.

But he had not forgotten beauty in other guises, other forms. So many of the
Kialli
had been subverted by the starvation of necessity; their sensuality and sensibilities had become inextricably linked with things of the Hells.

Even Isladar. Even he.

But there was in Telakar a feckless youth that spoke to the kinlord of life, in a way that extinguishing the merely mortal could not.

The winds demanded his attention; he found a momentary oblivion in the struggle to be worthy of the element. An old battle. But the wind recognized the cadence of his voice, and in the end, the battle was disappointing in its brevity. It carried his request, howling, the distance between death by cold and death by heat negligible, beneath contempt.

"I am pleased, Telakar. But you have not disclosed everything."

The silence was uncomfortable, but it was short; Telakar was only half a fool. He found his knees again, and gained them. "Lord."

"Tell me."

"I believe that someone enspelled by Queen Arianne travels with the Voyani."

"Interesting. Is he enchanted to appear as one of the Voyani?"

"He is… not. In truth, I would have assumed he is one of the Voyani, but… he is far too quiet, he does not interact with them."

"That does not mark him as Arianne's."

"No." He hesitated; the shadow within him gathered against the possible contempt his response might engender. "He travels with a mount, but he does not seek to ride it. It is antlered; one of the Arianni beasts. I am not an expert. I was… considered young to ride in the host. But I would say—"

"You would say too much," Lord Isladar replied, no contempt at all in the perfect winter of his expression. "And you assume that this stranger is in control of this mount?"

"I… do not know. I had not considered otherwise. I mark this stranger as Arianne's only because there is something about his appearance that my magic glances off. He is defended. I know the Warlord; I know the Matriarch. I recognize the power—when it is used, and it is used sparingly, of the mortal-born talents. His power is none of those things. He barely acknowledges the existence of the others. He wears no armor; he wields no weapon."

"Strange."

"But when he speaks at all, he speaks to the Warlord, or his consort."

Isladar turned at the sibilance of the last syllable. "Consort?"

"The Warlord has marked a woman of the Voyani."

"Of the Voyani? You are certain?"

Telakar shrugged. "She looks like one of the Voyani, if perhaps a bit pale. She is not tall, has no power, wields no weapon. From her voice, I would say she has a human temper; it is easily frayed."

"What does she look like?"

Telakar shrugged.

"Lord Telakar…"

With an imperceptible frown, the
Kialli
lord gestured, lifting his hands in the laziest and most minimal of foci. The shadows that he had so carefully hoarded were diminished as he used their edges as the raw material for an obsidian sculpture. It lacked color, and perhaps the finest of definitions, but the likeness was exact.

Jewel ATerafin.

He did not ask about Kiriel di'Ashaf. Had she been present, she would have been the first person Telakar mentioned.

Kiriel. You have lost your anchor
. The fact that that anchor now traveled with two of the powers of the ancient world was less of a concern, for the moment. She was traversing the Sea of Sorrows, and in it lay the greater part of the warding magicks set by
Allasakar
himself. And if they did not devour her, they would almost certainly change her. That was the nature of mortality: change.

And death.

Even Kiriel's?

Perhaps. Perhaps even that.

"Will you send me back?"

"You would do well," Isladar said softly, "to be less transparent."

"Am I so obvious?"

"Yes. But as I said, I am not without mercy. I will not detain you in the Northern Wastes. Travel South again, to the deserts that are left of the lands you lingered in. Be my eyes, and my ears, and intervene if you deem it appropriate."

Telakar raised a perfect brow. "Intervene, Lord?"

"Indeed."

"But—"

"I send you South with only a request: inform me of all that passes between the Voyani, and the Warlord."

Telakar bowed.

When he rose, Lord Isladar was gone.

At the edge of the Sea of Sorrows, she sorrowed.

Although Adam, Elena, and Nicu were to stand guard while she worked, they were at a remove; the work itself separated Margret from all that she had ever known, by becoming, in its intensity and isolation, everything she did know. It was the first step, the first step along the
Voyanne
that only Matriarchs walked.

The brush was drying. She paused a moment to stare at the pattern she had created. It was a shadow, she thought, of the work of other women, reaching backward in a line from daughter to mother, daughter to mother, but linked, always, by Arkosa's demands, Arkosa's needs.

But if it was a shadow, it
must be
a shadow cast by the true form. She had thought—had she always been so naive?—that when the day came to take up brush, she would wear the slumbering Heart of Arkosa, and she would simply know her way through the silent words that were among the Voyani's strongest ritual incantations.

It had not started out that way.

Instead, it had started as all things in Margret's life started: with uncertainty in a time that demanded its opposite. Nothing came easily to Margret.

Her hands shook. She focused on the sharp curve of a trailing symbol. As if that could excuse her life. As if she needed excusing.

She had stood as she knew Elena must now be standing, fingers looped in the folds of her sash, head cocked to one side as she listened for the sounds of life that followed in the wake of the sun's absence. Lamps had been lit, and clothing brought; she knew that she had at most an hour before her fingers would feel the imperative of the Lady's Night. In the desert, neither Lord nor Lady had compassion for the weak or the foolish; they were winnowed. The strong survived.