Michelle West - The Sun Sword 03 - The Shining Court (71 page)

Then he knelt, still circled by fire and allies, against the flattened grass.

"Kallandras?"

His eyelids fell, as curtains might, shutting out the world and its visual detail. That left the subtle senses: scent, the muskiness of sweat, the sweet burning of the Matriarch's fire, the faint but unmistakeable aroma of Lady's oil and wine; touch, the cold, hard curve of clay in his palm and beneath his fingers as they traversed half a face. He had touched corpses before. He knew death when he felt it.

But touch, scent, sight—these were the senses that his training had honed into weapons. Hearing, he had been born with. Lady's gift.

He listened.

"I am sorry, Serra Teresa, but I hear… nothing. Nothing at all out of the ordinary."

"I… see."

Then, deliberately, coldly, he lifted the mask to his brow.

The Serra Teresa inhaled sharply; Yollana shouted his name as if it were a curse, a plea, or a command. These things he heard, but peripherally.

Stronger, much stronger than these was the pain that lanced up his left hand in an arc of blue light, storm's light, sparking and hissing as it burned a thin trail along the surface of his pale flesh.

But he heard it: the wind's voice.
Mine
, it said.

It did not speak to him.

The creature was canny. Unlike the demon named
Telkar
— first kill—he knew their worth as enemies; he used the door and the short stone hall behind it to narrow the fight. One man might stand against him with ease; two, if they were careful and understood each other's combat style well enough to take advantage of the slender space.

The Radann were not sword-dancers; they were warriors; they kept their skills to themselves.

Peder kai el'Sol stepped forward.
Saval
burned, and he burned with it. The claws of the creature struck out; he parried the hand. The strike of demon flesh against steel was oddly musical. His arm shook with the strength of the clash.

Hands shook with something more.

He had desired power. That was truth. He accepted it. Accepted that that desire had bent and shaped him until it had become the definition by which all men were judged.

All men.

Saval's
light was fire. He held it.

The creature struck again; both hands moving in a blur of ebony, claws extending so far they looked like slender, long daggers. Hard to parry them all; the shadow devoured surcoat, scratched armor. The armor was strong; it had saved his life a handful of times before this, when strength had been contested. When power—Lord's power—had been proved.

At his back, he could feel them: Samadar, Samiel, Marakas. Men chosen by a different leader. They stayed their ground and bore witness; he knew that no matter what the outcome of this fight, they would not flee.
This
was the purpose of the Radann.

Had he never seen it?

Saval's
intensity should have scored his vision; it was brighter, stronger light than the Lord's own. But it left no trail across his eyes; it illuminated.

Fredero kai el'Sol had put his hand into the heart of the Lord's fire.

He, of all men, had known the Lord's law.

Power. Yes. Power…

He had chosen to divest himself of power because it was the only way to wake them—but their waking had been slow.

Radann Peder
kai
el'Sol fought like a man possessed. It was the only way to repay his debt to the man he would think of, for the rest of his life, as
the
kai el'Sol. He had incurred that debt willingly, but without the knowledge of just how much his part in the death would sting, would cut.

Had he let it, the wind would have torn the mask from his hands and shattered it against distant rock. The scent and taste of Cenera Pass, the only way through the rough, deadly chill of the Menoran mountain chain, overpowered the stillness of the heartland's languid night.

But he had not summoned the wind; he had not offered it his edged and reluctant alliance. Here, he was master. The summer returned.

"You take a risk, Bard." Yollana's clipped words were like blows; he heard the anger deepen with every syllable. She brought a smile to his lips, a rare one: it was genuine.

"There is something to what you say," he agreed, turning his attention to the Serra Teresa, who had not moved a muscle or spoken a word since he had lifted the mask to his face. She relaxed as he spoke.

The mask in his hand was cool as desert night. He turned it over. Looked up.

"Adam," he said.

The boy nodded.

"You said they had resumed distribution of these masks?"

He nodded again. His hair fell over his eyes and he lifted a hand to push it back, a gesture very much like Margret's. It made Kallandras wonder, perhaps for the first time, how old Margret actually was; the sun had weathered her skin, the road had toughened it. No Matriarch ever looked young.

"Yollana, Margret, Serra Teresa." He rose. Bowed.

"What is it?" the oldest of the women said, sharp as a dagger's edge. "Do you know what they do? Do you know what their purpose is?"

"No. But I know," he added softly, "what night they will be worn on."

"The Lady's Night."

"Yes. And it is a night that has no significance in the Empire for anyone but the student of antiquities. The twenty-second day of Scaral, the shortest day of the year, was once called
Scarran
. The Dark Conjunction."

"We know of it," Yollana replied, her words so tight he wasn't certain if the "we" had anything to do with present company. Judging by Margret's frown, he thought not.

"Yollana, I am not Widan; I am not Voyani Matriarch; I am not Northern mage. But I am not a fool; these masks number in the hundreds. They have been distributed to the people of the Tor Leonne, and try as he might, the General will not be able to retrieve them all before the night of the Festival Moon. Whatever they do, whatever they
will
do, they will do it at a time when the ancient magics are strongest, and the protections between our lands and older ones weakest." He set the mask against the silks, keeping it, as the Voyani did, from touching the earth beneath them.

"I have walked the Winter road," he said. "I know what power it holds. And if you feel that a death on the Festival Night brings its own wilderness with it, we must assume that one of the conjunctions between our world and the old one is someplace within the Tor itself."

She surprised him, then. She lifted her hands in a circular motion, completing a gesture that was said to protect the soul from the howling winds.

"Margret," she said, turning to the younger Matriarch, "we must speak."

Margret waited. So did everyone else, with the exception of Kallandras, who rose.

A minute passed before Yollana snorted. "What was I thinking? Margret, you've yet to train your people, and I don't have time for idle chatter. That," she said curtly, "was a hint. Let me make it clearer: Everyone else, leave
now
."

Fingers shaped like finely honed blades had drawn blood. But so, too, had a blade shaped like the curved crescent of the slender moon.

The creature summoned fire.

And fire, liked a trapped soul, writhed and twisted in his grip. "Be honored," the demon said, as he ripped the fire in half and forced it to take two shapes, sword and shield. "You will be the first of your kind that has survived for long enough to merit my sword and my standard." the demon lifted a shield made of living flame that nonetheless seemed to bear runnels the eye could recognize as a pattern.

Peder kai el'Sol nodded grimly. "It is good," he replied quietly, "to know who one's killing."

The demon snarled. "You are not so very powerful; if it weren't for your swords, you'd be
nothing
."

Truth was always the most effective weapon.

Peder stepped back into the street.

He judged correctly; the creature, bearing sword and shield, followed him into the wider corridor the buildings made of the street. Samadar stepped to Peder's left, Samiel to his right.

Marakas, healer-born, waited in grim silence at their backs. They had seen fire before. But they had never borne so many of its scars as they would this day.

Peder lifted his voice in the battle cry of the Radann. The streets were graced by blinding light, scoured by fire.

"We walked these roads," Yollana said, the intensity of her voice belying the banality of the words themselves. "We walked." She had been staring into what was left of Margret's fire, speaking the same words over and over, as if they were breath and she was drawing them.

"Yollana."

The Havallan Matriarch looked up at the sound of her name. Studied Margret's face as if Margret were suddenly a stranger.

"We walked these roads," she said at last, but before Margret could interrupt her again, continued. "When they were desert sand and desert sun, and the creatures that call themselves
Kialli
sought our destruction. We traveled from the ruins of our homes, bearing children the road—or the kin—took from us, and at last, when our numbers were far fewer than they are now, we came to this place.

"It was not just Havalla." The fire illuminated her face; Margret realized that the sun was falling only by the orange glow across Yollana's cheeks. "Arkosa came. Corrona. Lyserra. Drawn here, to a place that we would never willingly have approached when we sat in our seats of power." She shuddered. "This is an old tale, Margret, and you are unblooded."

Margret snorted. "I had my first courses when you could still bear children."

"Aye. But that is not the meaning of blooded to the Matriarchs, and you will come to understand, to your sorrow, what it
does
mean." The fire absorbed her vision, she had none left for Margret. "We came to a place the demons would not travel to easily. We came seeking either death or salvation. It was… it was long ago. An old story." But her hands opened and closed convulsively as she spoke. Margret had seen dying men; they had shuddered in just such a fashion.

"Yollana—"

"I know. People dwelled here." She turned her head. "The Lady dwelled here."

"The Lady?"

"The Lady," Yollana repeated faintly. "And because we fought Her enemy, because we brought them to Her cohort and She was… amused… by the battle that resulted, She took only a little from us for our trespass, and She granted us… Her miracle."

"She saved our families?"

"Oh, yes," Yollana continued distantly. The fire, it appeared, had become more and more compelling.

"Why are you telling me this?" But Margret felt it; the chill of knowledge. She suddenly thought she understood why Yollana was so fascinated by the fire: It offered warmth. "It was here."

For the first time since she'd begun speaking, Yollana lifted her gaze. "Yes."

"In Raverra."
She granted us Her miracle
. "No. Upon the plateau."

"Yes. The Tor Leonne was built around the Lady's jewel. The Lake itself. It was a gift, of sorts. She created the Lake from the blood of Her people. And ours. We had a mutual enemy. You know the law: the enemy of our enemy." Darkness, shadows, age. All pulled at the lines of Yollana's face, shrouding it in mysteries that Margret had not yet begun to approach. "We respected the Lake. The Tor itself was built long after the war was both won and lost, and the roads were closed."

"Yollana—"

"But closed or no, when a death is offered Her here, She feels it."

"But, Yollana, the clansmen say—"

"What? That the Lake was made for Leonne? Leonne was a pup with gift and vision, no more. He was shown the Lake's secret because he was the leader who could unite the clans against the
Allasakari
. The servants of the
enemy
. Of the Lady. Of the Voyani." She snorted. "He was a clansman. He made it his own, of course. Lake
and
myth."

Margret let the words take root, turning them over as if they were physical objects. "I don't understand."

"Of course you don't understand," Yollana replied irritably. "Which part?"

"If summoning the Lady saved us the first time, why would the
Kialli
risk summoning Her again?"

"
Assuming
the Lady saved us the first time." Which meant, of course, that she didn't know. Yollana rose. "Get Kallandras." The words hung between them a moment before she had the grace to add, "Matriarch."

The Lord had no use for trophies; they were as useful to Him as clothing. But men often took trophies when their victories were costly or grim. A reminder, not of supremacy, but of survival.

The Radann understood why the taking of trophies counted so little with the Lord: the battles in which survival was noteworthy were the very battles that made trophy taking impossible. The
Kialli
left no bodies.

At least, Peder thought grimly as he stepped through the ruined doorway of what had once been a maskmaker's home, no bodies of their own. The Radann began their inspection of the creature's living quarters.

He was silent. He bore witness.

But he thought, as he forced distance to come between what he saw and his reaction, that although war was indiscriminate and left seraf and warrior alike at its back, there was a special horror about the death of children.

Especially so long and so messy a death.

Marakas par el'Sol was white. He had long been called the weakest of the Hand of God; it was easy, witnessing the strength of his reaction, to understand why. He was physically sick. Visibly. His body shook with the force of his emotion.

He did not speak. His silence was joined as they walked from room to room. The bodies they found were not always whole; Peder privately thought the creature had eaten parts of its dead, although it was widely believed demons had no need to eat.

It was Samadar who. broke their silence; Samadar, oldest and arguably wisest of the four.

"The masks?" he asked quietly.

If there had ever been masks in this slaughterhouse, they were gone.

"It is a time of change."

The Serra Teresa sat beneath the nearly full moon, her voice as soft, as perfect in cadence, as it had been in the harem of her oldest brother, and her father before him. She sat upon grass beneath the open sky, the soft drape of a loose shirt all the finery she would be allowed upon the road she'd chosen.