Michelle West - The Sun Sword 03 - The Shining Court (115 page)

Sendari did not reply. It was answer enough.

"This is not the game that we envisioned," the General said, lifting a goblet of sweet water in one hand, and a goblet of sweet wine in another. "But it is the only game. Come. Have we ever played to lose?"

"You have never played to lose," Sendari replied after a moment, choosing not water but wine. Alesso raised a brow in the dimly lit room. Then he put a free hand on his oldest friend's shoulder.

"And I do not play to lose now. Anya a'Cooper, against all odds, is in the Tor."

"What?"

"Do you see the person standing in the large, empty space?"

"Yes."

"He or she just threw fire halfway across the city."

"Oh."

"I cannot hear what is being said, but I would say, from the up and down motions, that Anya a'Cooper is about to have a tantrum."

Sendari raised a hand to his brow and closed his eyes. And then he opened his eyes again.

"Yes, old friend," Alesso di'Marente said. "Horns. I believe that Mikalis di'Arretta said that this was sometimes called the Hunter's Moon." Sendari was silent. "What is that, old friend?"

The Widan lifted a pale hand. In it, far too small for a grown man's face, was a small child's mask. A mask.

"How many?" The General asked softly. He waited; his oldest friend stared at the mask in hand as if it could provide answers.

"Let us pray that the Lady is merciful."

"Which Lady?" Alesso said, with an almost reckless laugh.

Moon night.

Above the city, Lord Ishavriel could see the masks that he had created. Some had survived. Enough, apparently. For in the distance of the Scarran road, High Winter was returning to mortal lands on the backs of the Winter Hunt. He could hear the song of the silver horns; could hear the hooves against the dirt. But although he remembered the Winter Queen well, he could not imagine what she might look like; it had been that long. He wished to see her arrival; indeed, that had been his role. But Anya, willful and foolish, had destroyed that triumph.

She had destroyed much. She would not destroy everything. His plan, and The Lord's favor, might still be salvaged if Anya arrived in the basin before the ceremony's start.

The boy in the Arkosan camp would have no demons to save children from, and therefore no strategic return to grace this eve; the Radann had thinned the ranks of his servitors severely enough that he could not afford to sacrifice another.

It was the night of the Dark Conjunction.

Across the thousands of miles he spoke to the Lord, and the Lord listened.

I have found her, Lord.

From the heart of the Northern Wastes, his Lord spoke. Ishavriel gathered the god's power and made it his own.

"Anya."

Across the city she struggled against him, but he was her master; he not had spent the years training her singular talent without building careful holes in her defenses against the time when he might need to exploit them.

He used them now.

She screamed in rage and pain.

Lord Isladar said, "Anya.
Anya
. You will frighten the child."

The wild, wild anger deserted her for a moment, although the struggle against her Lord did not. She was awe-inspiring in her fashion, for although she was destined to lose, she nonetheless held her ground against not only Ishavriel's considerable power, but also
the
Lord's. "Is she awake?"

"Yes," he said. His voice was gentle and quiet. "She is awake, but she is confused. Because you have promised that she will not be hurt, she has been… happy." He gently pried the child's arms from around his neck, taking care, nonetheless, to support her full weight. He had done the same countless times with Kiriel. "But when you scream like that, she is afraid that it means that you cannot protect
her
, and then she is frightened."

"I
can
protect her," Anya growled.

"Yes. But Anya, the Lord needs you in the Shining City."

"The Lord doesn't need protecting from
anything
."

"Ah. No, he does not need protection. He needs your help. There is no one in the Shining City who can do what you can do. No one who has your power. You are special. You have always been special."

"I don't care about that," she said, tossing her hair. "I promised—"

"Anya, we can
all
go to the Shining City together. Shall we do that? And while you are busy with Lord Ishavriel and my Lord, I will watch over the child for you."

"You?"

"Did I not protect Kiriel? And she was younger, and even more helpless than your child."

"But you're a—"

"Yes. I know. And you do not have to leave. You are powerful. If you wish to stay in the Tor, no one will be able to force you to leave. But the Lord will be proud and happy if you arrive in time to help Him."

"Oh."

Such a difficult child, Anya.

She thought about it for a moment, and then she frowned. "Can you smell that?" she said, wrinkling her nose in obvious disgust.

"Smell?"

"Yes, it's
terrible
."

"My apologies, Anya, but I am only
Kialli
. There are some sensations that are lost to us. I smell nothing."

"It's the bells," she said. "And the horns." She actually started to gag, doubling over and vomiting until she had emptied her stomach. Isladar watched, fascinated.

"We have to leave," she said, when she could speak at all. She wiped her mouth on the sleeve of her robes, and then said, in a
very
irritated voice, "I'm ready, why are you taking so long?"

Lord Ishavriel appeared almost instantly. He had time to smooth the lines of fury from his face, but only barely.

"You
promise
you'll take care of my child?" she said, ignoring him entirely.

"Yes, Anya, I give you my word. But I think it best that we leave now. I do not think it healthy for you to be that… sick… again."

"If you are behind this, Isladar," Ishavriel said softly, "you will pay."

"Indeed." Isladar shouldered the child who had conveniently fallen back asleep.

The shadows took them all.

Alesso nodded. "Done, old friend."

He gestured; Sendari let the spell lapse. The vision of distant kinlords became just that: distant.

"So it would seem. But in time?"

"We will know in the morning."

"Yes. And that leaves us only one other problem. Look at the Lake."

In the center of the Lake, land was rising.

Not drowned mud, this; not straggling rushes; not the sediment that swimmers might touch whose dive was clean and fast; this was an isle that the Lady Herself could claim as home. Trees, here, taller than the palace upon the plateau, and between their branches, moonlight, shadow, stars. Grass, Nightshade, rushes near the retreating edge of water.

No buildings here; none needed. All who could see it understood its meaning: This was the heart of the Tor. This was the true palace.

When Margret heard the horns, she
knew
.

She turned to the old woman and the boy, and she said, "No matter what you see now, no matter what you hear, you
must not
leave this circle. Do not speak. Do not answer any questions you might be asked. And do not interrupt me."

She drew her dagger and with a grimace that was becoming far too common, she cut herself. She submerged that bleeding hand in the water. It
burned
.

Then she turned her back upon the old woman, for the child's sake, and she carefully pulled the mask from the sash she wore. She met a dead man's eyes, and she said, "This Hunt—it's for you, isn't it?"

He said, "I am honored to serve Arkosa, Matriarch."

"You serve more than Arkosa, Andaru, and I wish—" The horns again.

"Matriarch," he said quietly, "you were my audience; everything we have to say to each other has already been said. It is my time."

"Yes." Margret planted her feet against rock and her back against rock. Then, swallowing air as if it were a foreign substance, she placed the mask upon her face.

From the land in the Lake's center, there grew a bridge that stretched to the shore; it was made not of wood or stone, as bridges are, but of moving earth; lilies were tossed aside or crushed as it progressed. The people surrounding the Lake—and they were many—began to back away. Some fled.

Alesso wished them well. He lifted a goblet to his lips and drained it. "Sendari?"

"I am weary," Sendari said. "And if strong magic is required this eve, I fear that neither of us will survive."

The Serra Teresa's eyes widened. "There," she said, raising an arm. Someone hurried toward them carrying a large, awkward bundle; it was dark enough that Jewel did not get a clear look at her face.

But it didn't matter. "Okay," she said softly, her eyes on the newly made bridge and the strange light that seemed to emanate from the ground like a processional carpet. It was, in a fashion. She
heard
the horns. She
knew
what was going to follow. "You two?"

"Yes?" Serra Teresa's voice was sharp and alert.

"Leave. Now."

"But—"

"No—I'll meet you back at the camp. Or somewhere. But
leave
." Jewel began to elbow her way through the crowd.

"Why now, ATerafin?"

"Because some of those people didn't get their masks to the Lake in time, and now—now there isn't any.
Get moving
."

The strangers left. The Serra Diora di'Marano looked at her aunt; the silence between them was profound. They had been forbidden the pleasure of each's other company since the Festival of the Sun, and they were both much changed; the Serra Teresa in her poor clansman's clothing, with only Ramdan in attendance, and the Serra Diora in the clothing of a powerful man's property. The Serra Teresa had learned with time to school her voice so that one bard-born might hear nothing noteworthy in it; Diora had learned some of that art as well.

But neither woman wished their first meeting to be full of phrases so polished they were hard and shiny, things of surface beyond which any depth was unattainable.

At last, Teresa said, "You have changed, Na'dio."

Diora offered her aunt a very tentative smile. "I have, which is one of my burdens; and I cannot be seen to, which is the other."

They did not speak in words that any one else could hear. "Who is the stranger? Is she one of your Voyani friends?"

"No. She is from the North. The far North. She is well acquainted with Kallandras, and she is so honest it is hard to believe she holds political power, although the ring that she wears is a symbol of power in the House Terafin; I have therefore chosen to overlook the quality of her manners."

"But Kallandras' are so perfect."

"Yes," Ona Teresa smiled. "And while the world ends, will we stand in the moon's shadow and speak of the manners of Northern barbarians?" and she held out her arms.

Diora closed her eyes and walked into them, shunting her burden to one side. It was an awkward embrace for many reasons, and when the older Serra pulled away, her expression was troubled.

"Na'dio?"

"It is… nothing. But I fear that we are not yet free."

"Ah. And I fear the opposite."

"The opposite?"

"That we are, indeed free. I have been the mistress of a domain in which all is perfectly circumscribed; in which perfection is therefore attainable. What shall I do in the wilderness of a world that knows such poor grace and such ill ease?"

She spoke lightly, but buried within each word was a grain of truth.

"Ona Teresa?"

The Serra looked at her niece's cumbersome burden. She did not speak.

"Kallandras is calling us."

"I cannot hear him, Na'dio," Teresa replied quietly.

"His voice is not… strong."

"Where is he?"

Diora shook her head; strands of her perfect dark hair pulled free from the knot at the back of her head. "I do not know. He says that we are
not
to travel to the Arkosan camp.

"We are to meet…" She frowned.

"Yes, Na'dio?"

"At the merchant Court."

The Serra looked at the retreating backs of the two Northerners. Then she nodded. "Let us go, then, and quickly. There will be time to brood over our fate and our future if we survive."

Almost before the shadows lifted, Anya a'Cooper was gone. The Lord summoned her in a voice both pleasing and beautiful, and she chose to put aside her fear and her distrust. It had been some time since the Lord had consumed mortal souls, and some portion of His memory and power had grown wild. But the wildness was less of a danger than the sentience; Anya understood it better.

She appeared in the center of a large circle, and above her, for she was in the basin, the demons crowded, glad of the distance. Anya did not care for the kin, but she was no longer terrified of them. They had become her special game; she attempted to kill them, and they attempted to survive.

It weeded out the weak and the foolish, for while she was devious, she was easily surprised and easily distracted.

The first question she asked when she arrived was directed to the Lord Isladar, and when he assured her that he had indeed kept his promise, she allowed herself to be anointed. But first, she complained bitterly about the presence of that awful Southern barbarian, and he was dutifully removed from the circle. Then, she decided that she didn't like Lady Sariyel because, you know, Lady Sariyel was often not very friendly, and she, too, was removed. And last, she decided that she did not want to share space, or in fact anything, with Krysanthos, who, she suspected, thought she was stupid.

And so she stood under the Lord's hands, her skin glowing darkly with His earthly blood, the power washing over and through her as she stood on the old road.

The kin watched.

The Lord began to anchor the ways between the worlds. And as he worked, they all heard it: the calling of the Wild Hunt. The horns sounded three times in perfect unison.

The Lord laughed with a very rare joy; for it was wild law that once the Hunt had been called, the hunters would hunt their quarry; and nothing, not god, not mage, not even the Queen of the Hunt herself could call the hunters back.