Michelle West - The Sun Sword 03 - The Shining Court (35 page)

But that was Festival Night; this was a night, like and unlike any other; power dictated, less power obeyed.

"The bodies, Mikalis?"

He could not avoid them, then.

No spell of preservation had been placed upon them; the Sword's Edge desired—rightly and intelligently—to contaminate them with no foreign magic. Not until they had been thoroughly studied, thoroughly examined. But although the Lady's Festival occurred at the coolest time of year, it was never that cool in the Tor Leonne; the bodies had stiffened and then relaxed, and those parts of them that had been laid open with such casual violence—for it seemed, to Mikalis, that they had had little time to prepare for defense, let alone defend themselves, against whatever force had chosen to attack them—had already begun to decline.

He recognized two of the men. No, he recognized all of them, but two he had considered—inasmuch as any Widan considers another Widan to be so—friends. Men whose search was similar enough to his own that he might be unguarded in his zeal and his enthusiasm from time to time. They were, neither of them, from the High Court; nor was he. The manners of the Court confounded them all, embarrassed them at times, made them aware of their deficiencies. Magic was easy; politics was death. How many times had they said that, and laughed or smiled bitterly?

He had not counted. It was over, that easy camaraderie. He was left with death, and the order of the Sword's Edge. It made him wish—Lady knew it, even if he would never utter the words where she might hear them—that he had never set foot upon the
Voyanne
, for the dust of that bloodstained road now carried the name Mikalis di'Arretta, and he
knew
what his duties were.

He knelt, not beside a friend, but beside a headless corpse. He had studied the dead many times, and as he stilled his breath, he found his center, found the distance that had always served him well in the past. He placed his hand on the ruined, clawed chest. Closed his eyes.

Lady
, he thought.
Lady, guide me. Give me a sign. Grant me your wisdom
.

His hands burst into flame.

Had he been any other man, he would have cried out at the shock of it, but he had faced flame before and emerged—as they all must, who have been tested by the Wind and the Wind's guardian—
Widan
. He held his tongue, held his shock, let that shock turn into something else in the temper of the fire: determination. Knowledge.

The fires did not burn him; after the shock of first heat, he spoke the words of the triad and they melted to either side of his skin as if the skin of a man who could speak the three were anathema.

He rose. Cortano's eyes were as black as the night sky that knows no dawn. No one asked him what he had found; he circumnavigated their perfectly still forms as if they were statues, some perfectly chiseled, well-placed stones around which he
must
pass to find truth. To find their truth.

The next man, then.

The next.

The next.

All burned at the touch of his hands, the taint of his magic. For he, Mikalis di'Arretta, had indeed walked the
Voyanne
, and he had seen the shadows that waited by road's edge. They taught him of those, when they would teach him nothing else, because the shadows were the enemy of
all
men, and not merely the Voyani. No private quarrels existed when the Lord of Night rose.

Was it true?

In the eyes of the Lord, private quarrels
were
all that existed, and strength was the test of the Lord's favor. Lose or win; that was his judgment. Day, Night—did it make a difference? Men with power fueled men with less power; the weak died, in either case.

Ah. The last body. The last.

He hovered a moment above it, knowing that once he had finished here he would face the men who ruled the realm. He had no desire to do so; no way of avoiding the task. Power had been granted him in his life, but it was never
enough
power.

In the search for enough, a man might do many, many things. He bent; his robes brushed dried blood and rent skin; his hand hovered a moment above gaping throat, wide, sightless eyes. It was almost a matter of compulsion with him, to leave those eyes open. As if the dead could bear witness to the crimes of the living.

The fires came. He expected no less.

They came in a pillar, in a column that spoke of blistering heat and scorched earth, of death as the only rightful dominion of the element.

They had been taught thus: let the elements take control and death
is
their only dominion. Fire will scorch you and water will drown you; earth will suffocate you and air—ah, air was the wind itself, and no one who lived in the Dominion of Annagar could doubt the howling fury of the winds. Even when they were gentle—even then—a wise man questioned the seedlings that they brought as gifts for another season.

"Sword's Edge," he said, his living eyes trapped a moment in the thrall of dead ones.

"Widan."

"My examination is complete."

"Are you prepared to discuss your findings, or is there work to be done before the results are clear?" Ritual, that. Performance.

"I am prepared to discuss the preliminary magics I believe to be at work—pending, of course, the results of subsequent study and possible correction." He did not want to rise; he did not want to remove his hand from the skin of a dead man. The dead, for a moment, were an anchor, and once he left them behind, he would drift away. Into the shadows, where men waited.

But the shadows, men or no, also waited; the Lady watched. He had trained all his life to uncover the knowledge that granted him power, and with that power came, if not notoriety, than at least reputation; he could not step past the name he had with such cursed pride made for himself. He rose, lifting his hand. Letting the dead go.

Lord knew there would be more of them, and in far greater numbers; after all, rumor had it that the new Tyr'agar would
finally
declare his war against the North at the Festival's height. It was not that war which concerned him, although it intrigued him because it so obviously involved the Sword's Edge, a man seldom given to the intricacies of the realm political when magic itself was not involved.

It was
this
war. These dead. This Festival. Those masks.

He bowed to the Tyr'agar, and then, as deeply but not more so, to the Sword's Edge. "These men," he said softly to the man who ruled his Order, wielding it as if it were the weapon after which he was named, "were not killed by a magic that you or I are capable of wielding. Here, and here," he added, bending at the knee without actually kneeling, "are the killing blows, and the killing blows themselves bear the taint of—"

"Yes, Mikalis?"

"Of the creatures that we would best know as demons." He had been about to call them something else:
Leonne's Wyrd
. He hoped that his lapse had in no way been obvious; it was a mis-take that a lesser man would pay for with his life. He did not dare a glance at the Tyr'agar.

"And you say this because?"

"You know well why I say it," he replied, his voice as sharp as the Sword's Edge. "You summoned me for the knowledge that I might have gleaned in my passage through the Dominion at the side of the Voyani. This—this rudimentary spell—is one of the few they would willingly teach me; it is a spell that they teach to anyone who has the capability of learning it. Simple detection."

"And you are certain that you are detecting what they've chosen to tell you you're detecting?"

Cortano was silent. Sendari, silent as well, had the grace to wince as the man he served, both as adviser and ally, waited for the answer to a question that no Widan would ever ask. Significant, to Mikalis, that neither man moved to enlighten the Tyr'agar; significant as well that the Tyr'agar did not know enough of magic's practice to render the question meaningless.

He blunted the edge in his voice. Bowed, letting his knee hit the ground as his chin clipped his chest. "Tyr'agar," he said, the title heavier for the respect with which he chose to burden those three syllables. "No Widan—not especially one who has studied under this particular Sword's Edge—is capable of casting a spell whose nature he does not clearly understand. Our magic is a magic of precision."

"Granted," the Tyr'agar replied, unfazed. "But the Voyani magic is said to be," and he paused to take in the breadth and the rich, quiet darkness of the clear night sky above them all, "a thing of night and shadow, a gift of the Lady's, a power of
intuition
."

"The Voyani are also said to be able to see the future, and they fleece the young and the old alike on the strength of that belief when they travel through our cities." Thankfully, it was Sendari who replied. Sendari, whose voice was as dry as desert night, but less chill.

Of the three men gathered, he understood Sendari best and least. A ripple creased the former General's brow; it left the shadow of displeasure across the whole of his face, although Mikalis would have been hard pressed to say why; this Tyr'agar was a more cunning man than the last one had been; he gave
nothing
away.

"Very well. The Voyani magic, then, has much in common with the Sword's?"

"It has enough in common that we can learn much of what they teach, and they, much of what we do."

"And did you trade our knowledge for theirs, Widan?" Now he spoke with an edge in his voice to rival Cortano's. Mikalis stiffened, glad for a moment to be on his knees: it made taking a step back impossible, and the step back would have been the greater gaffe.

"I traded
my
knowledge, Tyr'agar, and at that, the knowledge was not magical in nature."

"Oh?"

"I aided them in a matter of folklore, an area of study which has often led me to discoveries more germane to the Sword of Knowledge, and the Sword's Edge, than a more direct approach would." He stood slowly, unbending at knee and neck. "And, in turn, they offered me two spells." His glance grazed Sendari's; their eyes met. Between Widan it was understood that no man of power
ever
exposed the full extent of his knowledge; secrecy preserved power. He wondered if the Tyr'agar would view the… omission… should it come to light, as a lie. Wondered what kind death he would be
granted
, if that were so. "Two. One, they said, was a minor protection against their ancient enemy, and the other, a detection of that enemy's residual magic. The latter spell can be used as I have used it, but I believe that it is more commonly used to cleanse the corpse of taint than it is to determine the nature of the creature that caused the death. In fact, I would hazard a guess that the Voyani would not think of using the spell as a confirmation of a suspicion, or as a tool of detection; they would feel no such need because—"

The Tyr'agar raised a hand. The gesture stemmed the flow of words that might otherwise have continued for at least the quarter hour, and it evoked the evening's first smile across the face of the Lord of the Dominion. "You are, indeed, one of the Widan," he said softly. "And I have never been a man with enough patience to listen to the minutiae that rules the Widan's life. This spell is a spell to cleanse a corpse."

"Or an object, yes—although that object must be an object that has been casually handled or affected by the creature in question; it cannot be one of the creature's manufacture—such a spell as I have worked tonight would not be up to the greater task."

"What, exactly, does it cleanse the… object… of?"

He froze a moment. Took a deep breath, tasted the night air as it passed his lips.

"The demon darkness," he said at last. "The shadows of the Lord of Night."

Mikalis was certain, as he watched a different darkness settle into the harsh contours of the Tyr'agar's face, that there were shadows just as unpleasant, and just as deadly, as the shadows that had killed the men whose bodies he studied.