Michelle West - The Sun Sword 03 - The Shining Court (74 page)

"I was still holding it," she said, her voice dropping enough that he was forced to step closer to catch the words that followed. He looked at the interior of the mask. "When I stepped off the road."

Silence.

"Evayne?"

"I walked into a slaughterhouse. It was dark and stuffy and airless; there were bodies, parts of bodies, blood. I—I dropped the mask."

"Did it survive the drop?"

"I don't know," she replied, neutral now. "Because when I picked it up again, it was covered with blood. From the inside. It was wet with it." She pulled a hand from the folds of her voluminous robe. In it was a very fine, very complicated mask; the contours of face—eyes, nose, the ridge of broad cheekbones so particular he was certain it was meant to be the likeness of a living man.

"Was there fighting?"

"There was fighting," she said faintly. "But in the distance. The moon was full. It was… outside, for all that it felt like the inside of the royal slaughterhouse."

"Where were you?"

"I'm not completely certain," she replied. "But I think it was here."

"Where we stand?"

"Or somewhere like it. In the Tor Leonne."

"When was it?"

"You know."

He did. He bowed his head a moment. Then he reached for the mask. She handed it to him. "This is not the mask I left you."

"No."

"Evayne—"

"I couldn't find it; I was searching for it, but the dying—" she closed her eyes. "I took one false step and the path carried me away."

"To me."

"No."

"To further information?"

"Yes." She drew a breath. "To Meralonne APhaniel of the Order of Knowledge." The sun's light at this time of day was unforgiving, but it cast the darkest shadows, and those shadows were so much a part of her expression he withdrew, physically, to give her the privacy of that darkness.

"The mask… is not the one I dropped."

He waited; she had turned her eyes from his, and he now watched the profile of her face, seeing where youth strengthened it, and age weakened it; seeing, as well, the converse: the uncertainty and the power. The sweep of her lashes hid the clarity of violet; she could have been—for just that moment—a Serra, pale-skinned, dark-haired, troubled by things she could not speak of.

"But Meralonne said it had been." She turned the mask over again. "I'm sorry," she said softly.

"Sorry?"

Hands shook as she turned the mask from exterior to interior. "The blood." Her voice was quiet. "He said—it wasn't there before the mask was donned."

"Will you—can you—travel with me?"

Her smile was sharp and bitter; youth and age. "I can try. Why?"

"I am sent to rouse the Voyani."

"Sent?"

His brows rose slightly at what he heard in her voice.

She had the grace to blush, but only slightly.

"It seems it is my fate to follow the orders of women with vision, no matter how unpleasant those orders are."

"And these?"

"Are unpleasant."

"Kallandras—"

"You, Evayne a'Nolan, have never met the Corronan Matriarch."

17th of Scaral, 427 AA

Essalieyan, Averalaan Aramarelas

A world away.

Time had been both kind and unkind in the passage that separated them: this world and the world that he knew best.

Meralonne no longer found it unsettling to see Evayne, and this surprised him. He was, after all, made to carry a grudge. It had been his signal pride as a younger man, although perhaps he had called it by some other phrase.
Honor
came to mind.

She had been his finest student. Subtle, brittle, jumpy, she had nonetheless had the vision to pierce the veils that magic throws up in its own defense. She had will, and anger to fuel it; she had just the right respect for power.

Seeing her, mask in hand, hand shaking in the shadows of his tower, Meralonne could almost forget that. Perhaps that was why he felt so little of the anger her presence always stirred.

Smoke from burning leaves curled around his beardless chin, a hazy frame.

Someone came. The knock at the door irritated him, but it often went away if he ignored it. He ignored it. It went away.

The tobacco burned down to ash as he fanned its embers with drawn breath, exhaling in ovals that thinned and spread very, very slowly in the still air. The season was a thing of rain and humidity. He endured it in the same way he endured all such trivial details: he failed to notice it.

Except at a time like this, when triviality prevented one from thinking about larger issues. There was a tactile comfort in emptying the pipe; in tapping the bowl, gently but firmly, and emptying it of ash. It was almost ritual, and there was otherwise so little ritual in his life that he clung to it.

He would be forced to give it up soon.

Evayne.

The mask was gone. She had handed it to him, slick with new blood, and some of that blood remained on his fingers. It had not yet dried to stickiness—a fault of the humidity—but just this once, he did not wonder who had shed it. The mask itself had answered the question.

It was not a spell he had ever cast; no member of the Order of Knowledge possessed the skill and the vision to do so.

"You said Kallandras gave you this mask?" he asked.

"No—not this one. I said—"

"My pardon. You said he had given you a featureless half-mask."

"Yes." Her eyes were narrow; sharp. The shock of blood was fading quickly, and because he had now seen her at so many ages, he knew it would be replaced by simple determination. "This mask—that mask—you're saying they're the same."

"No."

Momentary clenching of jaw. "You're saying that
this
mask used to look like the one I was given."

"Yes."

"Meralonne—"

"It is an old art. An imperfect one, let me add." He turned. "It is from a time of schism and unrest, and even in the annals of the antiquities, one might find a single mention, or two, and both oblique."

She was quiet for longer than the situation demanded. He wondered, as he often did, what she was thinking.

This time, as she rarely did, she let him know. "Which annals? Which books?"

"Evayne," he replied, only barely able to keep the edge in his voice from changing the tone of his words, "you were the best of my students, but not even you were privy to all of the knowledge I have secured."

Her eyes narrowed, expression sharpening until it was as cool as his words.

Pale violet and pale gray clashed in the stillness. At last, she said, "Perhaps one day you will forgive me for my lack of choice."

"Perhaps." And then, because he wished to make certain his meaning was clear—with the younger Evayne it had never been certain, "We all have secrets."

She frowned. "I have never attempted to hide mine behind so obvious a ruse. I am what I am. You are—"

"Short of time." He rose. There were questions she had never asked him. He wondered if she knew their answers.

But knew, conversely, that she didn't. Not at this age.

And not when she could bring him this mask. "Where did Kallandras obtain the mask?"

"From the Dominion." She paused, and then glanced away. "The masks were not manufactured by the Sword of Knowledge or the Voyani; he suspects they are
Kialli
in origin."

"Now?"

"I don't—I—when is this?"

"This is the seventeenth day of Scaral, in the year 427 after the advent."

Her minute hesitation angered him. Anger served to further chill his expression. The coolness, however, was slow to be reflected in hers. The shift in her age, a shift that Kallandras seemed to accept without pause, was difficult for Meralonne. People changed with age, certainly; it was an accepted and acknowledged truth. But as one tended to age
with
them, the changes were buried by time, made less obvious to the intimate observer. History and memory dictated how clearly the changes were observed.

Evayne was bound by no history and no memory. She was, quite literally, a different person every time she entered his rooms, and he had—after ten years of inconvenience—chosen to give up the protections against her entry by focusing his spells, not upon her person, but rather upon the robes that person wore.

At times he regretted it.

He rose, reaching for his pipe. Aware, as he did so, that he would not have responded with this anger or this annoyance had she been at the zenith of her power—if indeed he had ever seen her at the height of her power. Aware, as well, that she had been brought here for a reason.

Abruptly, as it sometimes did, the anger left him. He was not above the vanity of thinking himself beyond petulance. Nor was he deluded enough not to recognize petulance, even be it his own.

The mask. He reached across the desk, lifting it gingerly between two fingers. The face was light and delicate, a disturbing contrast to its expression.

"What does it do?"

"Now? Nothing. It has served its purpose."

"What
did
it do?"

He gazed across the table he used to separate himself from most of the visitors he received. "You are familiar with the concept of naming."

"Yes. It's how a mage takes control of the demon-kin."

"Indeed. The power of names over the
Kialli
is absolute. The ability to find a name they are forced by their nature to recognize is where the practitioner's power is proved. But I digress. The power of naming is not limited to
Kialli
, or rather, it was not.

"There was a time when such a power was used to define mortals as well."

"My name has no power over me."

He raised a silver brow. Smoke tangled with air as it left his mouth in a thin stream. "Spoken as a young woman."

She was old enough, however, that being called young no longer irritated her. He let it go. "Naming is sometimes a wordless affair. This mask, when put in place, becomes the face by which a man—or woman, or child—will be known; it reveals their truest self."

She frowned. "I don't understand."

"No." He rose, his pipe cupped in his palm. "Nor do I. The time when such a mask would be relevant—Evayne,
this
mask, where did it come from?"

"If you mean when, I'm not completely certain; I didn't have the time to find out."

"Was the moon full?"

"Yes."

He rose. "The masks were sometimes used on Scarran."

"On—" Her voice lost all strength. "The Dark Conjunction."

"Yes."

"But—"

"Yes?"

"That doesn't make any sense. The demons don't need masks to bring out the mortal soul—they can see it."

"I know," he said softly. He found his way to the window and began to draw the curtains; when they were halfway open, he couldn't remember whether or not he wanted to let the light in or deny it. "But that wasn't always the case."

"Meralonne?"

"You cannot speak to yourself," he told her quietly. "But if you have some other way of conveying a message to your older self, tell her this: her power is needed in the Tor Leonne on Scarran."

"When is that?"

"The night," he replied, his voice momentarily the irritated voice of a teacher who knows his pupil is capable of better than she's offered, "of the Festival Moon."

"Will you—will you go South?"

"I am drawn to the South, it seems, for many reasons." He turned away from her fully, his eyes on the familiar streets below the full glass panes. "But no, I will not go South. Not for Scarran. Not now."

"Meralonne—"

"I think it is best that you leave."

"But I—"

"Now."

427 AA

Stone Deepings

She was not sure when it happened—although that wasn't much of a surprise as she wasn't sure when
anything
happened in this place—but something in the air changed. The sound of the horns— and the word sound had rarely been guiltier of such poverty of description—grew louder and richer until the mountain valley resounded everywhere with the question and answer, the supplication and demand, of their music.

It reminded her of something; she struggled a moment for the memory and then let it go. In the distance, beneath the breath of the horns, rise and fall of notes collapsing into something more complex than harmony but never so discordant as cacophony, came the sound of hooves against rock and road.

"Stand your ground," Avandar said softly. He put a hand on her shoulder, and she didn't bother to shake it off. It wasn't that the contact provided her with any comfort; it didn't. What it did provide—what she
knew
it would provide—was protection. She stood under Avandar's shadow, and she knew, because he had been recognized by Calliastra and by Corallonne, he would be recognized by the riders who, from the sounds of hooves, approached from the road ahead.

"They ride to join Her," she said softly, without pause for anything as useful as thought.

His grip tightened, but he said nothing.

She wished that she didn't suddenly feel so plain and dowdy, and didn't bother to wonder why: the host had come over a ridge that, until they crested it, she hadn't noticed in the road ahead. They didn't ride horses. Nothing as simple and practical as that. They rode stags, or what would have been stags had deer been the size of Northern moose, and astride what was clearly the largest of these beasts, a man in armor rode.

She could not see his face clearly, but she saw the fall of his hair in a single, silvery braid, saw the breadth of his shoulders, the straight line of his back, the ease with which he rode.

"You know," she muttered to Avandar, "if
we
rode anywhere with hair that long—not that any of us could actually
grow
hair that long—we'd have caught it in the saddle or the damn spurs. Or something."

His fingers were momentarily painful, but he did not tell her to shut up; he knew her well enough to understand the bravado that was her den's particular exorcism of nervousness.

They came toward her, and with each passing step they took— and they traveled quickly—she felt their regard grow more pointed, more certain. The lead rider, who bore horn and not sword, lowered the horn; one less voice in the vastness of the Deepings, and hardly likely to be missed.