Michelle West - Sun Sword 04 - Sea of Sorrows (85 page)

"Because Yollana believes it. Yollana believes that you are your mother's daughter, and her superior. That you have more power than knowledge. That it is
this
voyage, into
this
City, that will be succor or downfall for the Voyani. All of them."

"She—she told you this?"

"Not with words. But it is in her voice whenever she speaks of you. If you cannot trust yourself, trust her."

Margret's snort was as natural as the rolling of her eyes. "Do you trust her?"

"I have less reason to, but… yes. Yes, in this. I believe that if she were asked to sacrifice her family in order to win the war she sees coming, she would do it."

"You don't understand the Voyani."

They lapsed into silence; Diora offered no defense against Margret's reflexive criticism.

Margret was
so
tired.

"Margret, if you sleep, I will watch. I will be wakeful."

"Can you gather them? Can you tell them to be ready before the sun reaches here?" She placed the point of her finger against the table, two inches from the shadows cast by the sill.

"Yes."

It was almost the last thing she heard.

Jewel woke to the sound of screaming.

She was used to this, but—if you could ignore the cramped, small wooden cabin; the knees, legs, and elbows of the various Arkosans as they met her hips, ribs, and legs; and the snoring—there was one significant difference.

The screams were not her own.

She sat up quickly enough to disturb Elena, largely because most of the extra limbs belonged to her, but the disturbance didn't last. Elena was clearly used to sleeping in cramped, impromptu spaces.

It had been many years since Jewel had been accustomed to doing the same. She had thought, even when she first joined House Terafin, that she would never forget the experience, but her body betrayed her; she was used to the privacy and quiet of a large room, and the unfamiliar snoring of strangers was not a melodic lullaby.

In the dark of the cabin, another figure rose as she rose. She could not clearly see who he was; in the height of day, Elena had chosen to close the shutters, to preserve what little of the night's chill she could.

But she knew who it was before he spoke her name.

Kallandras.

"ATerafin."

There were no screams. Save for the snoring, the cabin was silent.

"It's nothing," she told him.

He did not speak, but he did not sleep either.

Neither did she. Her arm throbbed in the dull airless heat. She rubbed it for a long moment, and then stopped. In the shadow, the sigil on her arm glowed faintly.

Avandar.

No answer. She waited a moment, wishing that he had not insisted on traveling by foot.

Avandar?

No answer. She cursed as quietly as she knew how, and shoved her hair out of her eyes; it was matted to her forehead, and her hand came away damp. She wanted a bath, a change of clothing, a real meal. She wanted her kitchen, and not the interior of this ungainly floating ship.

Avandar, damn you, answer me!

He did.

She didn't like the answer.

Where are we?

Her shadow was long and thin, as thin as the shadows cast by great trees. Those trees reached up from thick roots, stretching like a silver-barked limb that ended in a canopy of leaves. Hard to tell what color they were, but nestled among them were small, gold blossoms whose petals carpeted the ground like a gentle snow.

His shadow was taller than hers, broader, but his head was contorted. She looked up at him and took a step back. He was shiny with sunlight. Across his brow, the peak of a great helm rose, and across his shoulders and chest, an expanse of flat, pale steel rippled as he walked. His hair had disappeared; his hands were mailed, his robes—the familiar robes of the domicis were nowhere to be seen.

"Avandar?"

His expression, never friendly, was no warmer than his armor when he turned it upon her. She had to stop herself from taking a step back, from reaching for a dagger. Had to school her expression.

He had taught her that.

He spoke. She did not understand the words, or rather, she did not recognize them. She understood what they meant, and the two—understanding and lack of familiarity, were jarring.

"Did I not order you to remain behind?"

"No."

"An oversight. You will remain with the
Sen
." He waited for a moment, and when she made no move to leave his side, he frowned. There was nothing about his frustration that reminded her of their life together; it was cold, dark— more threatening than the simple drawing of a weapon.

She did not want to anger this man.

"Go back.
Now
."

Before she could reply—if she could find the words to frame a reply—the scene shifted.

She was in his dream, of course. Which meant at least one good thing. He was sleeping. That was all she could say for it.

She was dressed, head to toe, in a shimmering, iridescent fabric that she thought was tacky and revolting, although it was certainly more comfortable than the heavy desert robes she'd almost gotten used to. Her hands were covered in gloves made with the same fabric, as was her hair. She wore no House ring.

She bore his mark.

A dour-looking man stood between her and the door to the room she occupied.

And it was a single room, although she had never seen a room so large in her life, not even in House Terafin. There were slaves on the perimeter of the quartered circle; she knew they were slaves, although their presence felt natural.

"Sen Marshal," she heard herself say. It was, and was not, her voice.

Damn you anyway, Avandar; if I have to live in your dream, the least I could do is be with you.

He frowned.

"We will watch the battle."

"I was given no such order."

"You are being given that order now."

He was an older man; his hair was dark with cruel streaks of gray throughout. His chin was narrow, and the thinned length of beard he wore only added to its shape, drawing his face to an uncomfortable point. Had his face been youthful, had he had the softness of youth about his expression, it would have made no difference.

She did not like him.

"May I remind you that I serve the Warlord?"

"The Warlord is not here, and I would see him in his glory." She turned to a slave and bade him open the door.

He did not dare hesitate. She knew, if he did, she would kill him.

She wondered if the Sen would kill him instead. A part of her rebelled; a part was idly curious. The slave she had chosen did not bear her mark; he bore the Warlord's.

"I have my orders."

She shrugged. "And I do not." The slave walked past her in silence and opened the doors. But he did not accompany her as she strode out.

Where she walked, no one but the Sen could, and even he could not do so without an expenditure of power that given the circumstances would be unwise.

Viandaran had designed the balcony for her use. He had bound the air in such a way that it would bear her steps and her weight, no matter where she placed them. The Sen could summon air as he pleased, and struggle for its control. Although neither of these men could speak with the wild air, one of them had learned to master it.

There was a reason the Sen served, after all.

She stepped into the open breeze, let it blow her hair across bare shoulders, perfect patrician neck. From where she stood, she could see the streets, although they seemed a thin and narrow network of regulated veins from this distance. Small or no, it was clear they were deserted. She had never seen them empty before. Not even the slaves who adorned the fronts of buildings were being risked in this war.

But the fires had been lit in the high pyres; they burned now, their golden hearts surrounded by colored auras: orange, green, blue, white, red, violet, gray. She had never seen the fires lit, and gazed at them, not with wonder, but with a slowly growing disquiet that robbed her of motion.

Beneath each fire stood four adepts, their palms the pedestal upon which the fires burned. They would not survive the burning, but they could not be forced to maintain it; they had to choose the sacrifice they would make. She could not conceive of the knowledge that would drive twenty-eight such men to choose the death of the spheres.

She heard his voice; he knew she was there. For just a moment she reached for her own power, because he was almost angry enough to withdraw his, and a fall from this height wouldn't leave much for the healers to gloat over.

But he was distracted; he could not afford the annoyance he felt, and he let it go. Relieved, she took a step forward—

Into a blackened, broken field. All about her feet, the dead lay. But she looked up, looked away, forced her eyes to skirt the horrible manner of their death. She could smell it in the air; she had smelled death before, but not so strongly.

She had never seen a battlefield.

Could not imagine that one could become so grotesque. She had never understood the concept of dignity and the dead; not in her days in the twenty-fifth, when cold and starving, she and her den would force themselves to pick over the bodies of frozen men and women; not in her years at Terafin, although she had come to understand that the living
needed
the respect granted for their loss.

But she understood it now.

And knew herself happier for her ignorance, although it was gone.

The shadow fell.

She heard Avandar's battle cry.

Looked up. Saw him, in his shimmering armor, his helm gone, his face red with blood, white with its loss. He was the man she knew, and had never known. Everything about him was profoundly arrogant. She could not even find voice to call his name, although she knew, and
knew
, that this was a dream.

Over the crest of a ridge that she was certain was not natural, she saw the army come.

He stood against it, almost alone, the City his backdrop, the sky darkening in a way that no one, not even she, could mistake for night.

And at the head of the army, cloaked in shadow, taller than any of those who followed, was a… god.

She could not even think, which was good, because some fleeting memory provided her with a name that, even in thought, should not be enunciated.

He was beautiful, beautiful in a way that even the Winter Queen was not. And terrible, terrifying, as she was not. She knew that had he walked the Stone Deepings, she could never have held the road against him; could never have bartered, bargained; she was nothing to this creature, would never be capable of being worthy of even the smallest fragment of his attention.

But Avandar was.

For the god—and the army that followed as if it were raiment—halted his progress and looked.

"Where is your god now, Viandaran?"

Avandar lifted his sword arm, drew his blade. Jewel shielded her eyes from the intensity of its light. Blinded, she could still hear; there were cries, shouts, screams, all cut short. The earth beneath her feet buckled; she struggled to keep her legs beneath her. She did not want to join the dead until she
was
dead.

But when the silence fell, it was Avandar who broke it. "My god is playing with a tenth of your army. If they exist after death, ask them where they are."

"Very good, Viandaran. You have again proved yourself worthy of alliance. Tell the mages of the City that I will overlook their treachery this once."

"The treachery was not ours, Lord of the wastelands. We kept our oaths. You sought to betray them, and succeeded merely in revealing yourself. Tor Carrallon will never serve you again. The men of Tor Carrallon are no one's slaves, be he god or Firstborn."

Her vision cleared slowly. She lowered the hands that she had brought up too late to shield her eyes.

"Ask your slaves if service is better than death. Ask your mages if killing is better than dying."

"Ask them yourself, Allasakar, if you succeed in breaching the defenses of the spheres." His sword rose in an arm that was as steady as the pole that bore the standard upon a field, and she could see, glimmering, barely visible, the magic that swept from the length of its edge. It traveled to the City behind his turned back.

Light filled the sky in a dance that devoured all shadow. It was painful to look at, and cold, as cold as the lights in the Northern skies when the weather hovered at the edge of ice.

But the lights did not remain in the sky for long; they streaked toward the ground like fallen birds of prey, and where they landed, the earth split.

The god gestured; the light avoided him. But to either side, Jewel could see what had made corpses of the people she now stood among.

Fire. Ice. Water.

Worse.

There was power on this field greater than any power she had seen in
Averalaan Aramarelas
. She prayed that she would never see its like again.

And wondered, as she prayed, who would hear it, and what they would do.

This was the Age of Gods. The Gods walked.

Avandar, I've seen enough. Wake up, damn you, wake up.

But this was his nightmare, and he was—as she so often was—trapped in it to the end. She wondered how much of it was history, how much the fabrication of his fears. Could not imagine, watching this magnificent stranger, that he had any.

The god laughed.

"Have you tired, already, of my brother's gift? You have been elevated, Avandar. You have been granted more than was granted to the Firstborn by simple existence. There is not a creature in my army who could kill you."

She heard a roar of fury.

The god turned his head to the shadows, and the roar became a strangled scream, a sudden silence.

"I could kill you, yes. You have but to move aside and let the army pass through the gates, and I will give you what you desire."

She watched. She watched in horror as the Warlord hesitated for a moment before laying down his sword.