Michelle West - Sun Sword 04 - Sea of Sorrows (86 page)

She knew that the City had power. Knew that if the mages could not kill Avandar, they could destroy his ability to act, to function, to think, for a long, long time.

But she knew, as well, that in that single motion of surrender she had witnessed both the betrayal of, and the fall of; Tor Carrallon.

She woke, this time, to the familiar sensation of her own scream; woke to the sound of Kallandras of Senniel, his voice low, intense, impossible to ignore.

"ATerafin, wake."

She said, "Avandar is sleeping."

But he pressed a finger to her lips, brushed the sweat from her forehead with the cloth of his sleeve, and sang a quiet, quiet song for her ears alone.

In her turn, she reached up and pressed fingertips to his lips, to still the singing. "I'm all right now." She rose, tripped over Elena, mumbled an apology in response to that woman's sleepy curse, and struggled her way toward the terrible, midday sun.

The door opened; light fell across the living; she blocked it, stepping beneath the gaze of the open sky.

She was not surprised when Kallandras joined her. Would have been surprised had he not.

"Do you know where we're going?" she whispered.

"No. But I know that we have passed over the grave of Tor Carrallon."

She started, and his hand was upon her shoulder; it was so gentle she could hardly feel the threat behind the comfort—but it was there. "How much do you know?"

"I? I know what bards know, ATerafin."

"Don't start that with me. I'm not an idiot; I know full well that some bards know more than others."

His smile was rueful.

It didn't fool her.

"All bards learn the earliest of songs." The smile dimmed; his expression grew remote. She could almost see him watching himself in the past, and assessing his lessons, and what he had taken out of them, dispassionately. "The early songs are taught to give us mastery over rhymes and meters in a language that is foreign. Difficult. We vest our emotion in the music itself; attempt to bring the music to a language that has not been spoken in any other way for centuries.

"But there are those in the Order of Knowledge who understand the dead tongues. And there are those among my brethren who feel that the music is lost if the meanings of the words are not retained, and they have labored— some more successfully than others—to give the potency of myth and ancient lore to those who will casually listen.

"But there are almost no lays which dwell upon the fates of the Cities of Man."

"Why were they called that?"

"My understanding? That they were places of power. Places built by the merely mortal that still had the strength to defy a walking god. There was beauty, magery, knowledge in the Cities of Man. I do not think you would have liked them."

"I
know
I wouldn't." She leaned against the railing; the sun didn't feel that hot, and the wind filled her lungs without dragging the scent of every pair of feet and underarms with it. She did not want to go back inside. "Why did the Cities fall?"

"It is not clearly known, except perhaps by the Voyani, and of that, it is not safe to know more, or rather, to speak of it."

Clear warning there. "Were we the
only
people who didn't live forever?"

"There are many, many songs about the tragedy of mortality." He smiled. "But I like Farenzes better."

"He wasn't a bard."

"Very good, ATerafin. No, he was a romantic old man who played at philosophy and had a voice that made a catfight sound pleasant. But he felt that mortality was caused not by the nature of birth itself, but rather by the ability to feel both deeply and broadly. He made a story of it."

"A story?"

"Yes. When the gods made the Firstborn, in the manner of gods, they were pleased. But as the millennia passed, and their children warred without cease, they grew weary— for the gods were fickle as the elements in those days. The nameless god—"

"As opposed to the god we don't name?"

"As opposed to that god, yes. The nameless god then brought forth the mortal races, those who lived and died in such a brief, brilliant burst. And these creatures were strange; they learned simply by living, and yet the oldest of them—a man or a woman who might be ninety, a hundred years—had somehow managed to acquire a wisdom that the Firstborn could not.

"And they realized that all things that know life must know change, and that when those changes are complete— no matter how long they might take—so, too, is the life."

"That's a pretty… unromantic story. If you ask me."

"Ah. But the gods loved the strangeness of these creatures, the vividness of their mortality, the desperation of their longing as they burned through their years. They heard mortal voices more clearly than any other voices because they were so sharp, so visceral, so personal.

"There is a reason, after all, why the mortals rule the world, where the gods and the Firstborn no longer dare to walk. Think about it, ATerafin. Those who die, and know almost from birth that death is their goal, envy those who cannot change. But those who live forever envy the newness, the strangeness, the ignorance, and the pain of those whose lives are so easily extinguished.

"The grass is always greener," he added. "No matter who is observing. It is our nature, after all, to desire what we cannot have."

"Why is that?"

"Farenzes never addressed that."

"Good. How old is he?"

He could have pretended to misunderstand the question. He didn't. "I do not know. But there have been stories about the Warlord—in the South—for a long time. There are stories about the Warlord in the North as well, although the name he uses in those stories has far more bitter meaning to those born within the Empire." He was silent, gauging her.

"I really don't want to know this, do I?"

"I don't know."

"I think he wants to die," she said quietly. "I think he wants to die, and he can't."

And then she shook herself, stepped into the waking world, and tried to change the subject, although she knew that Kallandras of Senniel College would betray no confidence. He was famous for his discretion.

"Are you afraid of him, ATerafin?"

"Of Avandar? No. But I don't understand him, and it bothers me."

"He is not of your den."

"No. I don't—I don't know what he is to me," she whispered.

And that probably bothered her most of all.

"Be careful, ATerafin."

The Matriarch of Arkosa woke in shadow, as if from a sudden, vivid dream. A dream with color, sight, sound.

These were gone. Her mouth was dry, her eyes closed. She rose, or felt that she rose, for she struggled a moment to straighten her body to its full height. Gave up when she realized that this was not the place in which to do it.

She moved, although she could not have said whether or not she placed one foot in front of the other; movement seemed to have no reward, no obvious consequence.

She stopped the ship.

She was aware of its movement, and she knew that time for flight had ended.

The bowed, wooden top of a wagon that would be her home hovered in the air, too ungainly and awkward in its flight to be a bird, to be a living thing.

She felt sun against her face, but she could not see the light that usually accompanied the sensation of warmth; she thought of gold, of white, of blue; sky's colors.

They meant nothing to her.

But the wind's voice did. Had she feared the wind? Had she ever reviled it? She could not imagine why. In the folds of the wind, in the depths of its wildness, there was freedom.

She heard voices, but they were remote; for a moment she was deaf, blind; her hand had been on the table in a loosely curled fist but she could no longer feel the grain of the wood.

She felt, instead, a peculiar weightlessness, as if it were she, and not the ship, that was suspended in air, touching nothing, untouched by even the wind.

"Margret."

The Serra's voice was clear as a warning bell, clear as a winded horn. She turned in the direction of her name, and saw desert sands that stretched out for miles. In the distance, a distance that was both great and inconsequential, she saw the broken ridges of rocky mountains, their white peaks beautiful as diamonds, but strange and cold.

And she saw that the sands beneath her were the color of rust.

She said, "
We have arrived
," and felt the words as if they were something physical, tangible, as if they had fallen from her open lips and she could gather and keep them. As if she must.

She descended.

The sand drew closer. She was weighted down by the robes she had chosen to wear, the raiment of desert, the acknowledgment of the Lord's baleful glare. She considered shedding them.

Felt that she could, in safety. The cabin had been almost suffocating in its hoarded shadow, its lack of air. The wind was against her face, and it was blessedly cool.

"Matriarch."

As was the hand that touched her hand.

She frowned. She had had the sense that she was alone; that she had privacy, that rare and precious treasure that she so seldom found.

"Serra?" The Serra Diora stood in front of her, but at a distance, and her face was unblemished, flawless, beautiful.

"You—you should come inside. The ship is descending."

"Inside?" The world returned. She looked at the Serra Diora, and then looked down.

There was nothing at all beneath her feet.

A tiny voice tickled her ear; her own. It told her in no uncertain terms that the fall would kill her.

But she was not afraid of falling, not here. Not
here
. She swallowed. Spoke.

The Serra frowned. "Margret, I'm sorry—but I cannot understand what you say. Speak in Torra."

And Margret replied, "Tor Arkosa," and lifted an open hand in the direction of the sand that stretched in all directions.

"Elena."

The Matriarch's heir was restless, tired, and in a temper that could best be described as foul. It was not the only temper that was on such poor display; Nicu glared at anything that moved, and his mother snapped and fretted in turn. Kallandras was as cool and calm as the longed-for dusk, and when he spoke, tempers stilled—but he spoke seldom, as if preserving his strength for whatever lay ahead.

"Elena."

The Matriarch's cousin frowned. "What?"

"The Matriarch's ship has stopped."

The Voyani woman started to snap, stopped before words left her mouth. She rose and left the cabin, slamming the door in her wake.

They heard her wordless shriek.

She returned scant moments later. "Donatella, Mama," she barked. "We're—we're to land." Her face had lost its pinched, sallow expression, and with it, years; it had taken on the vulnerability of excitement and fear.

The women were relieved because they now had tasks: they busied themselves rummaging through the containers of dry food, selecting what would become the morning meal. As if it would be any different from any other morning meal.

But Nicu, if anything, looked grimmer, the petulance of his expression giving way to something akin to fear. He took over the space vacated by his mother, spreading his shoulders against the cabin's walls.

The ship descended. Diora was afraid to release Margret's hand. Margret spoke to her in the cadences of a language that she both recognized and failed to understand, and Diora knew that she was being asked to join her.

She shook her head.

The whole of Margret's face seem transformed; the lines worn in the corners of her lips and eyes by exposure to sun, wind, and storm grew deeper as she spoke. She smiled.

Diora shook her head again. But the second time, she lifted her hand, as gracefully and certainly as she had ever lifted it, and drew the Heart of Arkosa from the folds of desert cloth. It came as if it were weightless, as if it were already around Margret's neck.

Shaking, Diora lifted her chin, raising the chain that bore the heavy crystal in the same motion.

But it would not come free; it would not rise above the line of her jaw. She felt a brief hope die as she released the chain, and the Heart found its familiar resting place against her skin.

And Margret, Matriarch of Arkosa, who had so resented the separation of Matriarch from the Heart, did not even seem to notice.

"Ona Teresa,"
she whispered.

"Na'dio?"

"The Matriarch—she is—she is standing on air."

The Serra Teresa did not answer in words, but after a moment, the cabin door swung wide. There was enough room for another person at Diora's side, but not two.

The Matriarch of Havalla stumbled into the harsh glare of the open sun. She started to reach for Diora's hands, to demand and accept aid. But she dropped her hands as she saw what Diora held: Margret.

"So."

"Matriarch." Diora bowed her head; she did not kneel because in order to do so gracefully, she would have had to release Margret's hand. For the first time—perhaps for the only time—she had cause to be glad of the Voyani lack of refinement, courtesy, manners.

"I understand now, Serra. Evallen was both desperate and wise. You are the bearer of the Heart, no matter what else you have been. You are not Voyani, but you have been accepted by Arkosa.

"Speak of what you see here, and there is not a place in the world that will shelter you from our wrath."

The voice of a woman whose legs could not bear her weight for more than a few moments at a time without support was cold and strong. But she did not wait for a reply—and Diora offered none.

Instead, she turned to Margret and spoke, her harsh, cracked voice like lightning in a storm. Diora did not understand the words, and was grateful for her ignorance.

Margret's reply was the thunder.

"It appears," the Matriarch of Havalla said, switching between this ancient, dead tongue and the living tongue of her people with an ease that spoke of practice, "that if she will not speak Torra, she understands it well. I do not know what passed between you in the storm, but clearly you made your peace; she considers my threat… unnecessary." The hint of a smile changed the network of lines, of strong lines, that was her face. "Perhaps insulting would be a better word."