Michelle West - Sun Sword 04 - Sea of Sorrows (93 page)

It had only been her freedom, and she had been too stupid to keep it in reserve against a time of need.

She staggered to the side, but flight deserted her; her legs were weak; her lungs as dry as her lips. She fell. Rolled over, with effort, pushing her weight up on her left arm.

The creature did not touch her. Did not move toward her. She frowned, squinting into the harsh light of day, thinking that her vision had often been better than Margret's or Nicu's.

The creature that stood before her was not the one who had spurred her into wild flight. There were two, she thought bitterly. Of course, there were two.

"Little mortal," the creature said, bending as if from a great height, his beautiful features hidden by shadow from the natural light, "you bear the blood of Tor Arkosa in your veins. Why do you flee when you are so close to home?"

She could not reply.

"Or perhaps you cannot hear it. I am Lord Telakar, and it amuses me to intervene in your affairs."

His hand was almost upon her forehead when he stopped moving; the wind tugged at his hair, but his robes were still. "You cannot trust me," he told her, "but if you are to survive this day, you must. You have little time."

"She has," a voice from behind her said, "
none
."

Use only the old roads. Touch nothing that does not call your name. Take nothing that you cannot control. Offer only that which you can afford to lose; offer nothing that you do not value.

Yollana's words. Margret paled as she looked at the stone walls across which her ringers had casually trailed. No, not casually. She had found strength in the familiar in this enclosed place. The Voyani were accustomed to the open sky, the unfettered wind, be it sand-laden or no, and she felt their absence keenly.

"Nothing calls my name in this place."

Diora was quiet. At length, she said, "Not yet. But we have not finished walking this hall. I think… I think the Heart is warning you. Are you prepared?"

She had cried in the arms of this woman. She could not lie. "No." Not even for the sake of leadership.

Diora smiled. Quiet, genuine, the expression was warm in a way the lights here were not.

"My mother," Margret said, her voice thicker than she would have liked, "did me a great service when she gave the Heart into your keeping. And she was right. I saw the silks and the powders, the combs, the seraf. I heard the title. But I did not see you, and if not for necessity, I would never have learned how to speak your name."

"If a service was done, it was done for me. I have learned much here. I wish…" she fell silent.

Margret was afraid. But the Serra did not finish, and at last she turned. "What must I offer? And to who?"

"Trust your ancestors, Margret. You will know." There was no doubt in the Serra's expression; none at all in her voice. "Your ancestors were women like you; they came to this place with questions. They must have received their answers."

What if I don't like the answers
? But she walked, the Serra by her side.

The symbols passed, on the left and right, their forms as tall as she. She could appreciate the simplicity of their bold strokes and wondered if she had ever drawn them with such stark certainty. Was positive that she had not.

But she felt, as she walked, that she had drawn them with a living hand; that the act of writing them, in blood, gave them an immediacy that the stone did not suggest, did not convey.

They brought me here. They were good enough.

Their conversation was the simple sound of footsteps, the mingled hush of breath.

They came, at last, to a set of doors. Where the first had been invisible, the second were anything but; they rose to the height of the ceiling, stretching from one wall to the other. They were made not of stone, but of wood, and she was almost glad to see them, because they had been fashioned out of something that had once been alive, had once been rooted in ground, and dependent on sun, on water, on air. If they did not live now, they existed as a part of the history of the living; they had had a beginning, and had they not been felled for such a purpose, would have known an end.

She looked at the symbol that lay across the door; it was red as new blood, and it glistened. Outer circle. Inner circle. The symbol of Arkosa.

And between the opposing crescents, in a language that could not be dead, although it was not one she spoke or wrote at any time other than in the studies of the Matriarch's duty, she could read two things that she recognized.

"Margret?"

Margret lifted a hand; it hovered above the door. She was afraid to touch it; afraid to disturb what lay there. Stone had its function after all. "Serra," she said, her hand above these two lines that had never been part of this symbol. "Was your mother's name Alora?"

"It was."

"Can you read these?"

"I? No. They seem to be in the style of the runes across the walls, but I do not know what they say."

"They're names. This one," she said, lifting her hand, "says Margret, daughter of Evallen."

"And the other?"

"Can't you guess?"

Diora waited quietly.

"Diora, daughter of Alora."

The younger woman closed her eyes. "Do they say nothing of our fathers?"

"No. But the line of Matriarchs is traced from mother to daughter. After all, it's not always easy to say who your father was, but no one doubts who your mother was; it's hard to hide from the birthwives."

"It isn't hard to say that for sons either."

"No."

"Did your brother never mind that you would rule and he would not?"

"You've met Adam. What do you think?"

"I think that Evallen was blessed in both of her children."

Margret smiled. Lifted her hand.

Diora mimicked the movement with her own; they each touched a door at the same moment.

Blood burned in a ring of fire.

As the doors swung open, a voice said,
"Welcome, Daughters, to the Heart of Arkosa."

What was a heart?

It beat. It bled. Still it, and the body would know no life. But it was hidden, unseen; it hoarded memories and wounds in equal measure.

Neither of the women in question had ever seen a heart, although they had seen the effects of its death; they had never touched a heart, although they had placed their hands close enough to one to know where it lay beneath skin; had traced the lines of pale green, pale blue, that traveled in fine, curving lines, most obvious across parts of the body that were not exposed to the glare of the Lord and harsh screed of wind. And they had listened to its quiet rhythm, the steadiness of its insistent beat, cradled at first in the arms of their living parents, and later in other arms, stealing that moment, that secret, hidden tongue, that could take them back to the safety promised by childhood.

But they knew, as the room unfolded before them in a display of multifoliate light—soft light, yes, but also the light that strikes in storm, the light that destroys shadow, corrupts shade, the light that reveals and the light so bright it blinds the eye just as surely as darkness deprives it—that there was in that promise no safety.

They stood on the threshold, on the surface, and they waited until light resolved itself into shapes they could understand. There were walls that seemed to rise and fall as far as the eye could see; no floor graced the room; no ceiling.

Margret had missed the open sky; she longed for enclosure now. She could not speak. The winds did; roaring from a depth she could not penetrate with something as simple as vision.

She did not move.

Diora did not move.

What do you desire, children of Man? Power? There is power here.

Embedded in the walls they could see were glowing spheres of light, as tall from top to bottom as a man. They had color, but that color shifted constantly. Green, the color of leaves in sunlight, the color of leaves at dusk; the deep green of emerald, the pale green of jade. Blue, the color of open sky, of judgment, the dark of a night in which all longing, all secrets, might be expressed. Gray, the color of cloud, behind which one might shelter from the stare of the Lord, and the gray of the storm, in which one might stand defiant, and one might die, split like tree to the root. Orange now, orange as fruit, as sand in the North, orange as the flowers upon which the butterflies fed. Gold, the color of power. Red, of fire, red of blood, red of lips and the fruit of desert trees.

More. She could not contain it, however much she might have desired containment.

If you have come in search of power, take it.

Margret was silent.

But the Serra was not. If she could not speak—and she was, Margret thought, so still her lips could not be moving—she could sing.

Quietly, hesitantly finding her way into melody, she began. There was no demand in her song; there was no question; no answer. If she had thought to offer comfort, that, too, escaped the range of her voice.

But as each note followed the next, building upon it, Margret recognized the slow birth of song: cradle song.

The heart, the heart is a dangerous place.

She had heard it all her life. Had asked for it, when she was young enough to ask without fear of ridicule. She heard it now, and what was invoked weakly, and wordlessly, touched what she had never seen: her own heart.

Funny, that in this place ruled by women, the voice that carried the song the most strongly in Margret's memory was her father's voice. She could smell him, sweaty and musty with the trailing smoke of pipe. She could feel the walls of his chest, the support of his arms. She could not touch him; he was gone. But the gift that he had given remained.

His heart.

The lights in the room did not change; did not sing what she now sang. They danced, and for just a moment, she thought she could see the hands of men against the surface of glass, chanting. Praying. Struggling.

Not even the Lord of Night could extinguish such a light as this.

She thought of Evallen. Her mother. Wondered if she had seen what Margret now saw, burning and glowing, twisting and dancing, raging like storm, lingering like ember.

A heart
, Margret thought.
Just that
.

But this heart was not exposed; it was not known.

She swallowed. She had never feared heights before, although she understood the danger inherent in a fall. But she found the fear she had never acknowledged when she looked down, for there was nothing beyond the tip of her boots.

What do you desire, Daughter?

Yollana had not told her what to ask for. Perhaps Yollana did not know. Havalla and Arkosa were distant kin, but not even close kin were identical.

What did she desire?

Power, yes. The power to succor her people in the shadow cast by her enemy.

But she desired peace as well; she desired safety. She desired—although she could admit this only in silence— love, and the peace and strength that came from its certainty. She desired knowledge, if knowledge could be granted; desired experience because by experience she might better be able to glean folly from bravery.

There was so much she wanted that she stood immobile with the strength of it.

And then her hands moved, as if they belonged to another, and touched the rough edge of a fabric that was suddenly, blessedly real. She knew who had woven the cotton balls into cloth, knew who had cut that cloth, and whose hands had held the needles and thread, from dawn to dusk, until the robes themselves were complete.

These men and women had not known who would wear the robes; they had not known when they would be used; they had known only that Arkosans would find shelter from the desert in their folds, and that had been enough.

She exposed her face to light, and answered the question, although she was no longer certain she could bear the burden of what she asked for.

"I want to know the truth."

Before her feet, ground formed from light. It spread like a crack in dry earth, reaching out in all directions, not a road, but a tree. Around it, the endless fall continued beyond her vision.

And you, Daughter,
the voice said,
what do you desire?

Margret waited. She found it curiously difficult to breathe. She was afraid of what Diora might say, but she could offer no counsel; no advice. They had come here together, traveling not as allies, although they were allies, and not as kin; not as friends, for friendship was a pale word, yet not as lovers, for the intimacy that passed between them was based not in hope for the future, not in love.

They stood together and they stood alone.

The Serra Diora drew breath; she reached for her own hood and exposed her hair, her face, arranging it without thought across her shoulders.

She had learned as a child how painful desire could be, and she had lived her life by shunning its visceral strength; desire did not see clearly.

And yet there were things that she desired.

She had heard what Margret had asked for. She had waited, as she always waited, for Margret was the Arkosan here. And she had failed to be prepared for the question that voice now asked of her.

Failure haunted her. It always had. She schooled her face.

Felt Margret's hand touch her cheek briefly. "Don't," Margret whispered.

She turned, eyes widening slightly; she could not suppress her surprise. The touch lingered against her skin, not hot, not cool; Margret's fingers were surprisingly rough. She lived in the sun and the wind, and dared all.

"Diora, this is the heart of Arkosa."

"There is no safety here. Can you not hear it in the question? The wrong answer will destroy us. The wrong path will lead us only to death."

"You have lived your life in the High Court. Was it different there? Did you not make a home, in spite of the danger of words and impulse? Did you never unsheathe the truth; did you never speak it?"

"I… sang it, for you."

"You sang it," Margret countered, her words both gentle and sharp as well-crafted blade. "But you hid behind the mask and veil to do so."