Michelle West - The Sun Sword 03 - The Shining Court (93 page)

Yollana's smile was unkind. "One of the Arkosan men."

"The men? He is braver than many Lyserrans would be."

"Yes. The children call him Uncle Stavos." Yollana bowed her head a moment. "We sent the Northerner out on the roads, in search of safe passage from Raverra, but the Tyr has been gathering his army. We keep the children here, and we hate it."

Maria's smile dimmed, but her forehead didn't wrinkle, her expression didn't sour. She and Yollana seemed to be opposites in every possible way. "Yes," she said softly, "the future is in their hands, and we risk it. Your daughters?"

"Safe. Yours?"

"Safe as well, if that has meaning in this place and time."

"Good. Wood, Maria. I tire of your endless grace; it wears me down and makes me feel as old as I actually am."

She watched them go; Kallandras watched her face, the lines of it losing the mockery of true anger. In its place, skin cracked and weathered by as long a stretch upon the
Voyanne
as any Matriarch had been known to have, something pensive, something like fear. "Matriarch?"

She nodded. "I miss my daughters." It was unexpected. "And the children here, it's too easy to get attached to children, even when they aren't your own."

"In the North, the Mother—the Lady's harvest face—calls all children Her own. Perhaps you approach the wisdom of our gods, Matriarch."

She snorted. "No, just the age. And is it 'our' gods now?" She snorted again. "Come. You'll have to carry me if I'm to make good time. Bring the Serra with you."

"The Serra?"

"Teresa."

He paused a moment.

"And show some of those flashy Northern manners, Bard. Speak in a way that I can hear." She paused, grunting with the effort of pulling herself to her feet. "She does."

"She must trust you, Matriarch."

"That or be desperate. Or both, more fool she."

The Serra Teresa emerged from the wagon that had been appropriated for the Havallan Matriarch's use. Dressed as a Voyani, she was very like the Serra Maria en'Jedera: unable to shed the grace and the elegance of her upbringing when she donned the clothing. "Yollana," she said quietly.

"We go for the wood," Yollana said. "And the herbs; the flowers we want will not blossom here until sunfall, so we'll skirt night's edge and wait."

"You told the others to be here in an hour."

Yollana stared pointedly in the direction that Elsarre had wandered in, and smiled—a brief, sharp quirk of the corners of her mouth. "They can wait on us."

"Teresa?"

"Yes, Yollana."

"There, under those leaves."

The Serra who had commanded the best trained serafs in the Dominion bent, graceful and delicate in the motion, and turned over the heavy, low leaves of a plant she didn't recognize in the deepening blue of evening. They felt odd beneath her fingers; a texture of something at once supple and swollen.

"Be careful not to break them. What's beneath them?"

"Flowers, Matriarch; but small and white."

"Good. Take the leaves—break them at the stem; take care that they are otherwise unbruised—and the blossoms." She paused to curse. She cursed frequently. Her fingers were splintered from the exercise of cutting wood, and the Serra Teresa di'Marano, accustomed in all things to a grace and gravity of manner when exposed to the open air, found herself smiling.

She had not offered to help Yollana wield the heavy knife that would take the wood's heart; it was forbidden. Yollana had obliquely taught her much in the few times they had met, and one of the things she had learned was that the cutting of the wood was in some ways the act of the heart that sparked the magic that not even her hearing could pierce. Nor, in the end, had she offered to support the old woman while she cut, balancing her weight on feet that might never right themselves after the injury done them; Kallandras was adept at avoiding the sudden danger a stumble caused when the knife slipped.

She did not understand why Yollana would not use an ax; the handle was longer and the blade far shorter, and in the end it was lighter than the tool she chose. But she had her way, and—like the most ancient of wives in a good harem—those ways were indulged and unquestioned by a younger Serra.

A younger Serra so very much out of her element.

"Yollana," she said quietly.

The old woman took the leaves from her hands and wrapped them—with great care—between two folds of cloth. "This is the last of 'em, Teresa."

"Ah."

"Not that you're looking at the flowers," the old woman said, wiping her hands on her knees.

"No. I see light, I think, from the plateau."

"You see light," she agreed. "It's the first night, and the Tyr probably has to show off some; he's new and he's not secure in his position. Lady willing, he won't ever be."

"Lady willing," she said, but her heart did not give the words weight; the man that was now Tyr was her much hated—and much loved, and that was the truth and the pity of it—brother's oldest, and truest, friend. He had killed a wife; he was not a man that she herself would have tangled with in any way, and he had
hurt
her almost daughter so much she clung to life by the hatred of the hurt, and not for any love of existence.

And yet, he was Alesso di'Marente, and a flash of the spirit that moved him, the loyalty that bound him to those whom he chose as friends, moved her. She wanted him to fail. But the fate that she wished upon his allies she did not wish upon him. Aie, weakness.

She had seen the Festival of the Moon from only two places in her life: the Lambertan city of Amar, or the Raverran city that defined the Dominion. The Tor Leonne.

Wind blew at strands of her hair, her unkempt, unoiled hair; she felt the last of the dying sun across her skin.

The Serra Teresa di'Marano, refined and learned in all things courtly, had long been confined by rules of the life she had been born to. Denied wives and children of her own by the curse and the gift she'd also been born to, she had wondered for forty years why the Lady had seen fit to curse her in such a fashion.

Darkness answered her now.

And at the heart of the darkness, light on the plateau. She felt the wind again, and she turned to look at the Northern bard. He did not blink; his eyes in the darkness seemed like captured water from the Lady's Lake; his gaze fell full upon her. As if he understood some small part of what she felt.

No, more; as if all of what she felt—the sense of loss and the sense of terror at a freedom she had both dreamed of and never desired—were an echo of the winds that drove him. How could they not be?

She had seen him call the winds.

She had seen the winds obey.

And yet they were here, crouching in shadow, fearing both daylight and night sky. She shivered, acknowledging the truth of her fear: That if a man who could control the wind's voice with the strength of his was afraid, what could
she
do in the battle to come?

Lady
, she thought, wondering if perhaps she had been rash; wondering if her strengths, those ties so carefully developed and cultivated through the years of empty court life, might have been better used there, upon the plateau. But no. No.

Night thoughts.

Lady's thoughts.

She bowed her head.

Together, she, Kallandras, and the unusually quiet Matriarch of the Havalla Voyani made their way back to the heart of the Arkosan camp.

- Four women. Four Matriarchs, the chosen of their line. And not by birth alone, although birth defined it. There were Matriarchs in the history of the Voyani families who had died abruptly and without children; those who had—although it was very, very rare, died in birthing those children. There were Matriarchs who, like Evallen, had died, but with her daughters by her side.

The hearts, either immediately or slowly, but in either case with certainty, found their way to the women who were meant to wear them: To Yollana of the Havalla Voyani, early to her title and her mystery, and late to reign against the desire—some said because of the desire—of wind, sand, and clansmen. To Elsarre of the Corrona Voyani, later than to Yollana and she less adept at charting the political course, less able to cast off the desire for the approval and the love of her people. To Maria of the Lysseran Voyani, unexpected and unlooked for, a burden and a gift with So many complications she accepted it the way women must accept all: gracefully and with pleasing humility.

The only person who did not bear the heart of her family beneath the folds of her clothing was Margret of the Arkosa Voyani. She was acutely aware of the lack at the moment, which was surprising as she hadn't thought her sense of inadequacy could get any worse. Hadn't. Now she was certain, as they each began to lay the logs at the base of what would be their fire, that the night would bring new lows.

Yollana laid down her heart wood first; by age, Maria followed, taking care to nestle the logs in the dirt in such a way that between them they formed two parts of what would be a cross; oath markings. Elsarre was next; she took the wood from Dani and bore it carefully to ground. Then she rose and took her place at its end, facing inward. Margret was last. She wondered if any of the other women were as nervous as she felt. And doubted it. But she took her place; they stood, Elsarre to the West and Margret to the South, Maria to the East and to the North, where the shadows and all their ancient enemies lay, Yollana.

Elena and Teresa were allowed to be of aid; they brought the containers that had been so carefully prepared by silent Matriarchs, handling the earthenware as it passed from hand to hand as if it were made of the finest of crystal, the most delicate of northern glass. To Elsarre, the largest of the vessels, heavy and fragrant with a wine that would have made poor merchants in the Tor at this season weep for joy if they happened to obtain it; to Maria, glittering with the light from the low moon, the next largest vessel, its contents so clear that were it not for reflection and weight it might have been empty. To Yollana, a small flat jar, with a heavy, coarse lid that the old woman did not bother to lift.

And to Margret of the Arkosan Voyani, a shallow, empty dish. Because she was Arkosan, and this was her camp, and therefore her home. She was to be the anchor.

"Come," Kallandras said quietly, when the vessels had been delivered to the women who would use their precious contents. "Stand outside of the circle."

Margret, having never seen this ceremony performed, wished very much that her mother were the one to perform it; she wanted to say all the obvious things and get the muted and whispered answers to the questions inherent in them. For one, there was no circle. For two, how did he know there was supposed to be one when she didn't, not really? What did his eyes see? What did he hear? Why was he trusted by the Havallan Matriarch in a way that not even the other Matriarchs were? As a girl, as a daughter, she would have been forgiven much and her questions—some at least—given the half-answers that would be understood as truths later in life.

But she was trapped by the necessity of her role, and her role had been narrowly and clearly defined. She waited upon the actions of the other Matriarchs.

Elsarre of Corrona poured the wine, following the line of wood she had laid out to the center of the cross, where she carefully emptied the contents of the jug. Maria of Lyserra poured the water, but more carefully; she walked a line without spilling a drop, and at the end, in the center, when she made the last libation, she murmured a prayer that the wind took from Margret's ears. Only the quality of her voice remained; musical, low. Desperate. A prayer, then.

Yollana's turn next.

She lifted her head; nodded imperiously to the two Matriarchs who now stood beside their empty vessels in the flattened grass. Maria—it was so hard not to think of her as Serra, and Margret loathed the women of the clans—aquiesced at once; Elsarre waited that extra minute to make clear that she was doing this of her own accord and not at Yollana's command. Aided now by the Matriarchs, and the Matriarchs alone—Yollana of Havalla anointed what had once been living wood with the fine paste she had made from the forest's harvest.

They helped her back to her place at the end of the stretch of wood she had cut.

And that left Margret. She knelt by the empty, flat bowl and rolled up her left sleeve. She
hated
this part. It was ritual. It was ceremony. It was a tradition that was so old the stories about when it started were almost the same as the stories that mothers used to get their children to behave properly.

She took the dagger from her side, lifted it; held it in front of her face where it could catch and reflect moonlight, as if waiting the Lady's inspection. She was slow and deliberate because her hands were shaking and she was embarrassed by it. But she did not like to cut herself; certainly not deeply enough to fill the shallow dish and paint the line from here to the heart of the fire.

She knew it was childish, because her mother had cut herself many times, bled herself for the sake of her people, and it had always looked easy. But she wished that this meeting had been anywhere else—Elsarre's caravan. Maria's. Yollana's even.

She bit her lip.

And she hissed as she drew the knife across the vein. But she did it. Hoped she hadn't cut anything useful, like muscle. She held her arm over the bowl, let it fill—and it filled too quickly, she thought—and then grabbed the cloth between her knees and bound the wound as tightly as she could. Donatella had, bless or curse her, spread ointment on the cloth; it burned where it touched the open wound.
Fire
, her mother would say,
is good. It burns away the disease
.

She wanted to cry, not for pain—the pain was liberating and she held onto it because it was so much in the present—but because she was truly, completely, and utterly alone: her mother was no longer Matriarch, and she would never come back to be so. The winds had taken her, as they had taken everything else.

And Margret stood in the gale without the heart of Arkosa, arm throbbing, as she crawled along the line of cut wood, anointing it with her blood, which was after all, the product of the years of Arkosan history. She thought about her mother, and then because that was painful, Elena. But Elena brought Nicu, and Nicu was a memory she didn't want to face.