Michelle West - Sun Sword 04 - Sea of Sorrows (79 page)

A god.

But although he listened, the name that was spoken next never came.

He had given it, with his blessing and the whole of his desire, to the Lady, and she had taken it.

The memories came; the memories, the combat, the swords and the shattering of swords.

He saw, in the now of his adult vision, the master's broken blade. Saw that shattered steel had flown from hand to wrist, to the inside of arm; saw that the blood was the old man's. Saw that muscles were severed, that the loss of that blood would be severe.

Had he won?

Yes.

Then, and now.

You have served
, god said, in a voice he did not recognize.
You have served me, and mine, with only the fear of loss to sustain you. You have lived the life of outcast. You have learned to stand alone
.

But it is time, Kallandras of Senniel, to stand beside a comrade. Time to fight shoulder to shoulder instead of alone in the shadows.

Time has worn the edges from you. Take them back now. Be broken, be remade. This conflict will consume you; fight, then, with everything you possess.

I have.

Yes, but you have not had
enough. God's voice.

He was no youth, to be humbled by god. By any god he had not chosen.

The air bore him. The wind whispered in giddy fascination. The Serpent roared. Celleriant's blade rose.

It would fall.

He saw that; it would fall and it would shatter. He knew what that would mean, although he had never seen it happen. He had sung of it, as had most of the Northern bards, in their little classrooms, beneath the acoustics of Seahaven on the Isle.

Yes
, the voice said.
The blade will shatter
.

The name came.

He took it, drew breath in the sudden absence of a god's voice.

"Allele! No!"

The blade froze.

He had seconds. He used them to launch himself at the Serpent's jaws, his blades inferior to the steel of the Green Deepings, but his skill inferior to none.

The lord of the Green Deepings turned, wild, wide-eyed. Vulnerable, in that instant, as Kallandras passed over his upturned face.

He tightened his grip on the wind; the wind bore him. The ring upon his hand burned flesh, reminding him—if he needed reminder—that all things alive feel pain. He could not breathe, did not require breath. He felt the claws of the Serpent pass through his flesh, but he had aimed himself, he had chosen the price he was willing to pay; the wind would not allow a simple attack to change his trajectory.

He bled.

Saw the great eyes of the beast as they grew, large and dark, the perfect targets for the weapons he carried. They reflected nothing, not his hands, not his arms, not the smooth surface of steel. He took them both; felt the membranes give way as his knees lost cloth and skin to the rough ridges between them.

The creature
roared
. What it had seen, it would see no more. Its head snapped back, snapped forward; its tail lashed out; its claws struck.

Ribs shattered. Forearm snapped. But Kallandras held the weapons by which his early life had been defined. Had they changed? In the darkness it was hard to see them, but they felt… lighter. Different.

Kallandras fell.

He did not call the wind; he wore it.

But he felt the cold; the ice of desert night; the chill of shock.

It was a long way down.

Avandar of the Guild of the Domicis lifted his face into the rain. His chin rose slowly as he brought his arms, in concert, to his sides. Beside him, Jewel of House Terafin stood, silent, the face of her ring of office cupped inward, in clenched fist. She stared up, into the sky, and saw the first glimmer of moonlight that signaled storm's end.

But the water in the tunnels was a thunderous motion of sound. Rain could stop now; it didn't matter. If they could not climb—and they could not, here—they would perish.

The Serra Teresa was singing softly. The storm did not carry her song from the ears of her captive audience; Jewel thought, as she listened to the quiet, peaceful Torra in which the song was couched, that nothing could.

The Arkosans huddled around her, ringed her, pulled sodden cloth around themselves. As if her song was warmth, they held out their hands, turned their faces toward her, exposing the vulnerability of fear, anxiety, grief; her words turned these gently, inexorably, away.

Only Yollana seemed immune to the effect of her song; she sat in a stony silence, waiting.

The song faltered once.

The earth rose to fill the gap left between notes, the break in melody; it rumbled like the sound that comes from flat palms across the surface of a great skin drum, a slow beat, an accompaniment to the song itself.

Jewel watched the stone wall that kept the water at bay slowly collapse as green filaments left the cracks they had mortared.

Avandar bowed his head.

She felt the movement more clearly than she saw it: the lowering of chin, the clenching of jaw. As if the power that radiated out from him were a part of his body, he strained at the earth. It answered. It rose. And rose again, a hill with a flat plateau birthed whole from the hard, wet ground.

Ascent slowed; song hushed; there was utter silence.

The rain had stopped.

Someone pointed; someone spoke in hushed Torra. To the south, in the sky, the Matriarch's ship was slowly wending its way toward where her people stood.

A long way down.

He seemed to fall forever. The element was silent as he sank into the folds of its mantle. He was silent.

He should speak.

He knew he should speak. The wound he had taken had not touched throat or lip; had not impeded the ability. But his hand burned. The past had stripped him of wisdom, or perhaps reminded him of how thin a veneer wisdom could be.

He closed his eyes, felt the wind rush past his lashes, carrying water away from his eyes. And then even the wind's voice was silent.

A hand touched his shoulder. He bowed his head; his grip on both of his weapons tightened; hands shook with the involuntary effort. He was clinging; he knew it.

But the hand on his shoulder did not leave it.

The sky was silent. The moon was bright. The Lady's face was half in shadow, but she wore a clear veil of stars. He opened his mouth, but he had no words to offer, and after a moment, he closed it again.

"I do not know your name," the man behind him said. "You know mine."

Kallandras nodded. He felt the cold as if cold were all that he now knew. "My apologies, Lord Celleriant. I—"

"And what have you to offer apology for?"

"What any man does, who takes something of value that belongs to another, when he has not been given that right."

"Were you not?"

The voice of the Arianni lord was painfully, starkly beautiful. Kallandras could not reply. It had been many, many years since words fled his grasp.

"I called my brother."

"I… heard."

"I was mad with battle. I was… fey." There was a smile in the depths of that voice. "You intervened."

"I chose to join you when you took to the skies."

The hand on his shoulder shifted; the Arianni lord turned Kallandras around.

He said, "I have sheathed the sword, but I fear it will be some time before it is… mended. There are smiths who might be called, if the time and the price were right. I did not realize what we faced. I thought it merely a scion of elder days, a hint of the former glory of our enemies." His smile was a slight twist at the corner of his lips, and in the night sky, Kallandras could not be certain how shadowed it was. "I was wrong. Such a mistake is often costly."

His eyes were the gray of flashing steel, his hair the crisp white of Northern snow.

He said again, "I do not know your name."

"Kallandras," the bard replied, voice flat. "Kallandras of Senniel College."

A pale brow rose.

"I have no other."

With infinite care, Lord Celleriant's hand brushed Kallandras' still cheek, pushing wet hair to one side of his face. There, beneath the left ear, his fingers stopped, tracing a circle around a mark that ordinary men could not see.

"You speak truth. Do you remember what you were named?"

"No. I gifted my name to the Lady, and all memory of its beginning, all knowledge of its end, resides now with her."

"They do not know." Lord Celleriant lifted a hand, and a cold blue light settled in the cup his curled palm made.

"No."

"May I?" The light blossomed, spreading its tendrils in a slow curl around each of his fingers. He reached out, brought his hand toward Kallandras' chest.

"No."

The hand closed before it made contact. The light guttered. "So," the Arianni lord said, "you are still bound by your vows."

"No more—and no less—than you are by yours."

"I would not care if you could discern the existence of my kin, of my Queen, through touch alone."

"We made different vows."

"If you desire it, I will call you Kallandras of Senniel College."

"It is not a lie," the bard whispered.

"No. No more is Lord Celleriant. We wear our titles. We bear them. But there is more."

Kallandras bowed his head. He was weary. The elemental wind had hollowed him, harrowed him, as it always did. He felt the emptiness, vast and untraversable, between himself and the world that he had once known and valued.

The silence grew.

"I am in your debt," the Arianni lord said at last, eyes narrowed.

Yes
, Kallandras thought.
In my debt
.

But when the pale-haired lord withdrew his hand, Kallandras felt something within snap. He spoke, and the word was a shock.

"Kallatin," he said. "I was Kallatin."

The lord did not smile; there was no triumph to be found in the gravity of his expression. "I am Allele."

There is no debt between brothers.

No more was said; they drifted down by the grace of Lord Celleriant's power. But they did not land upon the plateau that had saved the Voyani.

They landed a mile away, upon the dry, cold soil of the undisturbed desert.

The storm was gone. From her perch by the open windows of the odd ship's cabin, Margret watched it die. The clouds that had surrounded the Serpent now shrouded it; she could see them flail and struggle as its wings beat. She could not see what had injured it, but when she looked toward her silent companion, the Serra said quietly, "It's over."

Just that.

The lightning died with the storm; the absence of thunderous roar made the silence seem unnaturally loud. The moon was still. The stars were bright.

The open sky, as always, watched—but what the Lady saw, she kept to herself.

"We can return." The Serra was subdued. She had taken the blankets Margret had offered in hands that were shaking with cold, and had wrapped them about her shoulders without speaking a word. Her face was turned toward the frosted sill of open window, but her eyes were focusing on nothing Margret could see.

Silent, Margret complied; she brought the ship to bear, and as it cornered smoothly, turning without effort into the night sky, she found that she missed the rhythmic bump of wheel against ground, the slight discomfort that gave movement its texture, that told her body there
was
movement.

"Look." The Serra lifted a slender arm. Pointed, turning the injured palm of her hand in such a way that the wound was not visible.

Beneath them, upon a plateau that rose above either side of what had once been the tunnel, the Arkosan Voyani gathered. Margret breathed once, deeply, when she saw the other wagon; it had been brought to ground and seemed to await the arrival of its sister.

"Ready to go back?"

The Serra looked away from the sky. "If I said no, Matriarch, would it make a difference?" Lifting the injured hand, she examined it in the silver light shed by moon.

"You don't want to go back?"

"I… do not know. I used to dream of flight, when I was young. But it wasn't like this." She turned back to the sky. "When we land, we will enter the world again. We will worry about tents, and food, and shelter. We will worry about what we have lost, what we might lose.

"I will look at my hand. I will have to decide how best to hide the injury, and if it scars, how best to hide the scar. I have value, but it is based upon ephemeral things.

"If you fight, you bear scars. But it does not change what you are. You are the Matriarch of Arkosa. What I am…" She turned back to Margret and smiled. The smile was perfect. Perfect.

And cold, as the night was cold; distant as the Lady's face was distant.

"Do you ever smile when you're happy?"

"I don't know." She withdrew, although nothing about her visibly changed. "You are wise, Matriarch; I think that your people are waiting. It is best not to worry them further."

12th of Misteral, 427 AA

Sea of Sorrows

In the distance, she watched as the storm broke. The wind was as natural as wind in these lands could be; fierce and cold, an unwelcome rejoinder to the sheets of water that had drenched the barrens.

She raised a hand only once; the other, concealed in the billowing folds of a blue that was dark as the sky, gripped a simple shard of crystal, rounded and made smooth at the behest of the Oracle many, many years past. But the man who stood in shadow beside her raised a hand as well, a gesture of both command and denial, and she lowered hers at once; it curled into a fist at her side.

Watch
, he said.
Bear witness
.

She watched. She was not young; she would never be young again. She had learned to take the ice into her, had learned to see through the shadows that she had accepted when she had first chosen to walk the Winter Road, in the arrogance of anger and youth. She could be dispassionate now; she could watch the most horrible of deaths without blinking, without turning away.

Turning away was an act of mercy that she had learned she could not grant herself. Better to accept the crime. Better to understand, in the end, all that she had to answer for.