Michelle West - The Sun Sword 02 - The Uncrowned King (92 page)

"Member APhaniel," Sigurne Mellifas said, in the tone of voice she usually reserved for pronouncing sentence on rogue mages, "I caution you against use of magic—in fact, use of
anything
at this early time."

"It's been six days, Sigurne," the member so lectured replied.

"And must you do that?"

"We are in the open air." But in deference to the mildest member of the Order of Knowledge, Meralonne APhaniel ceased to stuff the bowl with fresh leaf and tucked his pipe—with obvious regret—back into his satchel. "Sigurne," he said gently, "it's been
six
days. Most mages are taken with fevers for a good deal less time before either recovering or succumbing. Age and infirmity don't really change that." He paused for effect. "Dantallon himself pronounced me fit for… exercise."

"At the knifepoint of the Astari," she replied pertly, "and against his better judgment. You know he thought you'd be abed until at least the end of the Challenge."

He grimaced. "I feel much better," he began.

"And I suppose—"

His gaze flickered a moment over the crowd; his expression lost that long-suffering frown that spoke of rare friendship.

And hers, that vaguely maternal air.

He crossed the empty street to the barricade itself; Sigurne stood back, a lone old woman beneath a wide-brimmed hat—a practical hat that somehow seemed perfect for her, as most practical things did—arms crossed, eyes open. He had never been in a fight that involved Sigurne before, but he did not feel uncomfortable with that member of the magi at his back; her frailty was physical, if it existed at all; it was hard to tell with Sigurne.

He was met at the barricade by guards. They were, almost to a man, Southerners. Their gathered presence invoked the magisterial guards that had been assigned this section of road, and
their
presence called the attention to the youthful core of inexperienced mages sent by the Mysterium. They, he'd been instructed, were to
be
his power; his recovery, such as it was, was suspect, and fragile.

Luckily, such a gathering of men wielding authority—or at least swords and magic—had the end effect of pushing anyone of relative sanity as far to either side of the roadside as they could go. Unluckily, in a gathering for an event of this nature, there wasn't all that far they
could
go without actually losing their long-defended places streetside, and only the actual use of said swords or magic would cause them to abandon their positions entirely.

"Is there a problem?" a voice from behind the Southern guard rang out.

"Preferably not," the magi replied softly.

The voice switched over to Torra, and one of the guards turned to face it. The exchange was quick and short, and obviously held on one side by a man who expected to be understood. He was, of course.

"
Magi
? You
idiot
! Get out of the way!"

Huffing as if from great exertion, a rather portly merchant appeared between the ranks of his guards, who moved to either side of his girth, but did not choose to forsake their ground—or their point.

They had become inconsequential the minute the merchant appeared. He bowed theatrically. "Ser Pedro di'Jardanno." The bow was Northern in style; the affectation existed beyond national boundaries.

Meralonne offered a clipped bow in return; a thing of relatively little substance. As if lack of show could balance overt showmanship.

But power recognized power; that was a rule older than anything but time. Their eyes locked a moment before the member of the Order graciously requested permission to view the merchant's supplies.

"You must understand," Ser Pedro said, with an apology that fair gleamed, although it was made up of the usual parts: insincere expression and over-pronounced word and gesture, "that I did not come here to
sell
. I came to witness the hundred run, one of the few events that a common merchant has easy—and inexpensive— access to." He did not wring his hands, for which Meralonne was grateful.

The magi nodded quietly. "Of course," he said, with about as much force of meaning as the merchant's words contained. He followed the merchant, and the Southerners closed at his back.

The merchant's stall was impressive, given the lack of space the marathon usually afforded anyone, guards or no. It was not quite a wagon—too small for that—but not for want of trying, and it had enough fabric strewn this way and that a careless man might have mistaken Ser Pedro for a cloth merchant. Velvets, silks, heavy cottons, and fine spun wools, were artfully arranged within the stall's protected interior; there were cushions here. Food. Two decanters, one filled with water in the Southern fashion, and one with wine. He wondered if the merchant would claim that the waters came from the Tor Leonne itself. He did not ask; there was a tension in the air that forbade it.

But although he examined the stall itself with care to detail, and with the magic that was his birthright, he found nothing out of place, nothing remiss.

"Your pardon," he said softly to the merchant.

"Of course," the merchant acknowledged, bowing in return.

He left the stall, wondering what had called him to it, through the crowds and the rows upon rows of men. Wondering what he had responded to, what inside of him, beneath open sky, had felt that momentary twinge of danger.

One step. Two steps.

The third step did not fall; he turned, his hand flying back, palm open, his lips, wordless, calling the only defense he had—or needed—as the answer came.

The stall exploded; fragments of wood, burning cloth, ruined food followed. People screamed, but it was not the explosion that invoked those cries; it was what followed. And they fled, where they had not fled for guards or swords or magic.

Writhing a moment in sunlight, smoke from the fire grew dense and dark, a black maelstrom. He called—he almost called—his shield: felt the emptiness of its loss, a reminder of a recent battle. And then the darkness solidified, took shape and form—a shape and form that he had never seen before, but knew intimately regardless.

"
Illaraphaniel
!" the creature roared.

"Allaros," he replied. His sword shivered and crackled like blue ice on fire. His eyes scanned the crowd, but the merchant had dissolved with it, carried by its fear, sheltered from vision.
Decanters
, he thought.
We should have known
.

In the distance, he heard, of all things, horns. For a moment he stiffened in exultation, and then he remembered: the run. The hundred run.

The
Kialli
was caught by the same fancy, and the same realization, as if they were part of the same storm. "We will play the game of mortals and the game of gods," the creature said, folding great wings behind his obsidian shoulder blades, "'but at
our
leisure. Come. This has been too long denied us."

And from the center of his palm, red fire flared and took form, even as he himself had done. Sword. It was followed by shield. Full shield, fully formed. The mage did not waste time or breath cursing, although the desire to do so proved that his time in this city had taken its toll.

"You made the wrong choice, Allaros,'" Meralonne said, measuring the strength of his enemy—and the time it would take for the last of the people closest them to flee. Yes, he had been in this city a long time, if he could spare thought to them, but it did not concern him; once they joined combat in earnest, he would be lost to it.

"Speak to me of choice," the creature replied, its visage twisting into runnels of expression that seemed almost—but not quite— natural. "When this is done."

Meralonne opened his mouth to speak, and fire came in the wake of the
Kialli
words. The time for hesitation was destroyed in the blast.

Meralonne APhaniel
moved
.

Valedan leaped forward, into his knees; he could not—not quite—force himself to give up the burst of speed that the competitors chose to put on at the run's beginning. He knew better than to be left at the back of the pack, but he also knew better than to attempt to pull out in the lead—not from the beginning. No one here knew his full strength, and their ignorance was his advantage.

Sadly, the same could be said of any competitor in this run.

Speed didn't matter here. Commander Sivari had said this time and again—but it was impossible to believe it when the starting line moved so abruptly, surging into the streets as if the finish line were already well within sight. His competition knew what he knew: you surged ahead, found your place near the front—but not necessarily at it—and paced yourself until the end.

The end was hours off, half a day.

The sky was clear. Bad, that; the sun would make itself felt as the day progressed, and not a few of the hundred would collapse along the route in the holdings. He only prayed—to Kalliaris, and this caught him almost by surprise—that he wasn't one of that handful. Too much at stake. Too much to lose.

The streets opened up; he caught sight of the man ahead of him and pulled forward along the stretch of cobbled stone, his lips turning up in a smile of recognition. The runner spared a backward glance—obviously not one of Sivari's trainees—and returned the smile. He even moved over a bit to give Valedan some room.

Eneric of Darbanne was shorter of leg than Valedan, but not by much; he was also, of the two, sun-darkened, his skin was near brown and his hair almost white. They didn't waste breath with speech, although Valedan spoke Eneric's name in greeting, and Eneric lifted a hand, the motion rippling his stride slightly.

Valedan kai di'Leonne had grown up in the North. The Empire had sheltered him. He had been taught that it spanned the length of the coast from the edge of Averda to the frozen Northern wastes, that it stretched in breadth from the isle of
Averalaan Aramarelas
to the amorphous and little-understood buffer that the free towns formed. That, with political will and strength, it could grow to encompass the little cluster of Western Kingdoms.

Everything about the Empire was big.

But knowing it—and he had learned from the tutors appointed by Mirialyn ACormaris—was a distant experience to this: the hundred run, as the citizens of the Averalaan called it.

Riding through the streets from the West Gate to the isle had not given him the intimate sense of the city's spread, although in many ways that ride and this run would mirror the same route. There, he was mounted, he was part of a pageantry of sight and sound, of banner, of heraldry and display. Here, he was on foot, and the height of buildings, the nearness of the men against whom he had competed shorn of anything but simple, light cloth, made the task enormous.

The city of Averalaan became, for the moment, the Empire: larger than life, larger than a single glimpse, or a hundred glimpses, could contain. There, along the barriers, the rich and the poor alike pressed against wall and road, seeking a glimpse of the contestants. Skin, dark and light, smooth and wrinkled, hidden and exposed, melted into a distinct pageantry of color and life that
was
the Empire.

He took energy from it, somehow. He, the Southerner, running at the side of the Northern giant, running behind a man he vaguely recognized as a young free towner. He forgot that there was anything but this: the run itself. He found his stride. He kept it.

The two swords thundered like summer storm where they met, and a single fork of lightning, edged in red, shot up from the ground. They were driven back, mage and demon—Meralonne into the open street, and the
Kialli
into the building which had shadowed the merchant's stall.

The merchant himself was gone, his guards scattered as if they were commoners with no means of protection, no training to prevent them from fleeing in blind panic. The magisterial guards scattered as well, but deliberately, drawing and hefting their flat, lifeless swords as they took up distant positions at the magi's back. As if the circle had been drawn, and they did not—not yet— dare to interfere in the battle.

All of this, he saw in a glance; he had that time; the
Kialli
lord had, after all, disappeared
through
the wall at his back.

He did not choose, however, to reemerge from that hole.

Magic, when it came, came down in a rain from above.

Two of the magisterial guards caught fire, their voices raised in twin screams of pain.

That would be Allaros, Meralonne thought. He bit back the urge to curse and lifted a hand in response—but not more than that; the fires guttered before the spell—and the power, desperately needed for the fight, for he had no shield—came into focus.

It was not his way to thank gods; he did not thank them now.

But he rose upon the currents of the heavy air, forcing it into a breeze, shaping it to his will. The
Kialli
, it was said, favored fire, and in most cases, that was true.

Fire and air were often cunning allies, poor enemies.

But he had air, and it howled as he rose, wrapping himself in its splendor.

Jewel ATerafin swore.

She swore loudly and rudely in a box exactly four feet from the Kings' box, into a silence that had fallen as the last of the runners disappeared from her view.

The Kings did not deign to notice. Of course not. But two men did: the Lord of the Compact and her companion, Devon ATerafin. He caught her arm—the arm that faced away from the Crowns— in a grip that was a bit too tight to be friendly. "Jewel?" he said, accenting the first syllable, the question multilayered.

She pointed skyward, into the distance that had swallowed the runners, a distance littered with treetops and buildings. "You'll see it soon enough for yourself," she said, pulled her arm free. "Come on, we've got work to do."

"Jewel—"

Lightning, in a clear sky, tinged red and blue as it streaked into emptiness
from
the ground.

Devon ATerafin, curse him,
didn't
swear. Oh, well. That was what breeding did for you—put you at a loss for words.

He didn't argue either.