Michelle West - Sun Sword 04 - Sea of Sorrows (90 page)

He was not.

He could feel the pulse of the ground beneath his feet. He had come, time and again, to this desert, searching the sands, forcing the old earth to come, at his bidding.

But the earth resisted him here in a way that it could not in the Northern Wastes, the frozen desert. And although he could come close enough to the buried Cities, he could not touch them; could not say with certainty where in the geography of this vast, slumbering body, they lay.

Until today.

Because the Matriarch of Arkosa's pilgrimage was a ritual. That is what they had not seen, could not understand; the magicks that brought them to the City were not the magicks of the Cities of Man; they were hidden, subtle. All language, all invocation, had been subsumed in the trek itself; the symbols to invoke the past were drawn not in blood, not in magery, not in sacrifice. Their outlines, so vast they were not clear to the eye that searched for minutiae, were inscribed entirely by the walk itself, described by the language of movement. With each step, with each retracing of the Voyani path of flight, this mortal brought sentience back to what lay hidden.

He was close. So close.

But he was not the only one.

"I will not?" The night was in her voice. The desert night. She drew herself up to her full height.

Nicu took a step back, and then, as if realizing what that implied, planted his feet apart. Fighting stance. "We have never been allowed to enter the—the homelands."

"We?"

"Arkosans. Any other Arkosans. Not even Elena—"

"Do
not
attempt to speak for me, Nicu. If you indulge in madness, it is entirely your own."

"Easy for you to say," he snapped. His hand fell, but not to the hilt of the sword he wore loosely girded around his hips; he brushed his robes aside, and in its folds another hilt appeared.

Elena closed her eyes.
Nicu
. Opened them. "Nicu—"

"Do not attempt to coddle me."

It was far too late for that.

"You'll be Matriarch if she dies. You'll have your chance. And her daughters—if any man is stupid enough to get her with child—will also have that right. But what of us? What of the sons? What of the men who fight and die to protect Arkosa?"

She closed her eyes again. Sand was in them. Just sand. She lifted her hand to wipe them clear. "Will you speak for the men of Arkosa?" she asked. Her voice was shorn of expression.

"If not me, then who?"

Margret had not spoken a word.

"Let them speak for themselves, Nicu. Let Stavos speak for himself. Let Andreas speak for himself. Let Adam speak for himself, when he returns."

"Adam?" He spat. Water hissed against the ground, in a voice not unlike a snake's. "A child cannot speak for a man."

She turned to the men who flanked him, left and right. "Does he speak for you?"

They were silent. Their faces were now hidden in the caves of desert hood, desert cowls, but their eyes were both dark and bright.
Three
, she thought.

And three.

She took her place by Margret's side. Her hand fell to her own weapon, but she did not draw it. Were she forced to, she was not certain what would happen. Not one of the Arkosans was Nicu's equal when it came to sword.

And she knew what that sword would do, if it were unleashed.

Nicu
, she thought, although she did not speak his name again. Instead, she loosed it silently; she set it free.

But he knew her; he knew her well enough to understand what her silence threatened. The ice left his voice, and she found the heat that replaced it was no less terrible.

"Don't you understand, 'Lena? Don't you see? It is not just our history that lies in this place, it is our
power
. We have wandered like the least of clansmen for centuries. We have starved, we have been taken for slaves, we have existed on the periphery of a land we should have
ruled
because of the whim of the Matriarchs."

"You will destroy Arkosa," she said with absolute, sudden certainty.

"No, no!
I
will save Arkosa. I will save our people!"

"How, Nicu? If our power was here, don't you think we would have taken it? If it could be safely used, if it could be used at all—why would the Cities have fallen?"

She spoke freely of the things which were never, never said, and she was grateful for the first time that she had stepped, in Margret's wake, from the
Voyanne
, for in speaking here, on this barren, ancient ground, she broke no law, divulged no secret.

He was silent a moment. He had not thought of that. She felt him teeter on the edge, and she willed him to fall, to take a step toward them, to come back.

Even though she knew the edge was sharp.

"We abandoned the Cities," he said at last, his voice thick. "And maybe if we hadn't, they would never have fallen. This is the Dominion, 'Lena." He drew himself up, found his center.

She wanted to weep with rage and pain; fear was a distant cousin.

"This is the Dominion of Annagar, and in Annagar, women are not meant to rule." He drew himself up to his full height, which was bad.

And drew the sword, which was infinitely worse.

"I am sorry, Margret," he said, the formality of each syllable clipped and strained, "but you will give
me
the Heart of Arkosa. Now."

They were not too far from the camp. The Serra Diora did not understand what had possessed Nicu, although she could guess; he had been thwarted in his desire. Neither of the men who stood beside him had spoken; she could not gauge their intent from their voices, and she had come to trust her gift. Yes, she thought, gift.

But if she could not listen, she could speak.

"Kallandras, come. There is trouble."

The wind took her words.

But the reply she waited upon came quickly, and in a voice that she had never heard before—and recognized, in spite of that.

"I am afraid that we cannot afford to be interrupted."

From out of the hazy air, a man stepped.

A man who was no man, a man whose voice was death, and delight in death, a servant of the Lord of Night.

He could not hear her. She was Certain that he could not. But she was also certain that the Northern bard would hear no word she spoke either, and for the first time, in the height of midday, she knew fear.

It was a clean fear.

"Margret, the stranger is a servant of the Lord of Night."

Margret turned her attention slightly, shifting in place. Whatever this creature's power was, it was contained.

A mile away, Jewel ATerafin looked up. Her eyes widened, her breath stopped.

No one seemed to notice. She struggled to her feet and stumbled away from the ship of the Matriarch's heir.

The air was a haze of heat; the sun was almost above them, and it cast no shadow, allowed them no relief. But it was not the sun she feared.

"Yollana!"

She stumbled, righted herself, and ran toward the awning beneath which the old woman sat.

"ATerafin?"

"Yollana, there's trouble."

The Matriarch of Havalla lifted her head as if it weighed a great deal. "I know," she said softly.

"We have to go. We may have time.
Kallandras!
"

She did not hear his footsteps, did not hear his movement, although the robes themselves made noise when folds of its heavy fabric rubbed against each other. But he was there, in the sun outside of the awning.

"ATerafin?"

"Good. You're here. How fast can you run in those? Where is Celleriant?",

"I can run, if it is necessary. What have you seen?"

She shook her head. "Not now. You'll know when we get there."

"No." The Havallan Matriarch had found her cane; she used it to rise, and she stood, her legs unsteady in the dry heat.

"Yollana, the Matriarch of Arkosa is in grave danger. If we do not leave now—"

"You must not interfere."

"What?"

"You must not interfere," the old woman said again. "What we can give her, we have given her. You will know—we will all know—when it is time to move."

"I don't know what the Voyani do when they come to the desert. But I'll bet Imperial Crowns—or Annagarian Solarü, if it comes to that, that they don't meet demons every day."

"I wouldn't take that bet," the Matriarch replied, with just the trace of a bitter smile. "But it doesn't matter. If Margret can be bested at the heart of Arkosa, there is not a power here that will save her."

"Matriarch—"

"But there is a power there that will destroy the rest of us. You
will
wait, ATerafin."

"Kallandras?"

"It is not wise to meddle in the affairs of the Voyani, even when they
have
requested it. We will wait."

"Can we wait any closer?"

"ATerafin." Yollana reached out and caught Jewel's forearm in a grip that belied her age and her apparent infirmity. "I have seen what you see. But I have the history of my people with which to unravel its meaning; you have a single life, and at that, a short one. You
must
not interfere. This is a trial that was ordained long before any of us were born. I thought, once, that it would be
my
trial, but I was mistaken. It matters not. What unfolds in the desert, unfolds. We must bear it."

Jewel started to speak, drew breath, and held it as she met Yollana's dark, unblinking gaze. She struggled a moment with what she saw there, and then nodded bitterly.

"Tell me one thing."

"Perhaps. This is not a game of barter; there is no give and take on this road. Ask your question."

"What happens if she fails?"

"She fails," the old woman replied.

It didn't take sight to know that she wasn't going to get any more of an answer.

But the old woman was not yet finished; she held Jewel's arm, drew the younger woman close, and turned her palm up to the light. There, with nothing to gentle the light, years of labor were etched into the dry, rough skin of her palms.

"You are not a woman who believes in destiny," she said at last. "But you should be. You, of all people. The road begins to unravel here, where it began. And you have already set foot upon the path that will replace it. Walk with care, ATerafin. Walk, if you can, in the light of the Lady's Moon," She turned away.

But not before Jewel had had a chance to see the whole of her face, and the expression that darkened it.

She didn't believe in a destiny that she couldn't make. "What do you think you see there?"

"The Oracle," she replied. "I will not look upon your future again, for it is dark and broken, but I will say this— and I, who should know better than to speak at all. In my youth, the woman we call Evayne came to me. She said that I had been born with a gift of some strength. I knew it; I was young and foolish, and it was a pride, both to me and to my mother.

"She offered me myself; offered me the strength of a vision unfettered by whim and circumstance. You have seen her, ATerafin. Her mark is upon your hand."

In spite of herself, Jewel looked at that hand, as if to read what she did not believe was written in flesh.

"She has command of her vision, for she has drawn it from herself so that she might hold it in her palms."

The soul crystal
, Jewel thought.

"I went with her. I walked to the foot of a path that none of my people have walked since the
Voyanne
was first opened to us. And I could not pay the Oracle's price. I understood what I had to gain, but the loss was too great." The old woman sat again, heavily. "Do not be as weak as I, when you are brought before her."

The sun was no longer warm.

There and then, Jewel promised herself she'd be damned before she followed willingly down any path Evayne chose.

As if he could hear her, and perhaps he could—she had never been able to read Kallandras well—the bard of Senniel College said softly, "Make no vow you cannot keep. Evayne a'Nolan is colder than desert night, and far more cruel than the demons she was born to fight."

Demons.

Jewel looked slowly to the South.

Nicu did not acknowledge the arrival of the stranger. He did not move; did not turn; did not look. The men who stood to either side were not as complacent. They turned, quickly, their hands dropping to the hilts of their sword.

Old habits.

He was tall, taller than any man she had seen, save perhaps the pale-haired stranger whom she had suffered to travel among the Arkosans at the behest of Jewel ATerafin. Like that stranger, this one was suffocating in his beauty. Margret's throat was dry, but she did not blame that on the desert; had she been in the heart of the gale, he would have had this effect on her. He radiated power, but it was not the power of the clansmen; it dwarfed that in breadth, in depth. She felt a keen, sharp, piercing desire.

She had never trusted desire.

"This is an unfortunate turn of events." The creature— for Margret could not think of him as a man—smiled. She had seen rabid dogs that looked kinder. "But mortals are known for their impatience, and why would they not be impatient? True patience would consume the full tally of their years."

"Do not interfere," Nicu snapped.

The creature threw back his head and laughed. The length of his hair—for it was dark and unfettered by hood—fell down his shoulders like a gleaming ebony cascade. His voice was rich and thick. She could have listened to him speak forever.

If she had forever.

If she had even a glass full of running sands.

"Would you know of the fate of the Cities were it not for my interference? Would you understand your role in the future if it were not for me? Your complaint is feeble and it comes late. Far too late."

"I do not serve you."

"No, indeed," the creature said smoothly. "You serve your people, and you serve them well."

Margret had heard merchants speak with less sincerity, and for the first time since the stranger arrived, she felt not fear or fascination, but a deep and abiding anger. How
could
Nicu be so stupid? How could a man who shared her blood, her history, her family, be so easily swayed by one such as this?