Michelle West - The Sun Sword 03 - The Shining Court (117 page)

"You did not recognize my family name," the old woman said. "And perhaps in the end, it will mean nothing. But clan Namarro is in the debt of the Arkosa Voyani, and perhaps we will save your children from hardship or grief, as you have just saved ours." She paused a moment. "This sleep…"

"I am no witch," Margret said quickly.

"Then perhaps it is the Lady's gift. I am… grateful for it. Is it safe to leave the circle?"

"Yes," Margret said quietly. "The Hunters have gone elsewhere, and I think that the hunted will lead them back on a road they should never have been able to leave."

Celleriant sat like a wall in the road; the stag upon which he sat slowly, even leisurely, lowered its massive antlers.

At the last minute, the Queen broke her stride. She looked down upon Celleriant. To Jewel's surprise he did not bow his head; he did not beg or scrape. He waited until she had slowed and then he turned to look back at Jewel ATerafin.

She swallowed and nodded, and he stepped off the road, leaving her to face Arianne.

The Winter Queen sat astride her chosen mount.

"This grows tiresome, mortal. You have not the skill or the power to make this road your own." She lifted her visor, and Jewel's mouth went dry. "It was therefore very dangerous to summon me. I have called a Hunt, and there
will
be a Hunt; that is the wild law."

Oh, good
. Jewel felt awkward, ugly, small, and just verging on the edge of pathetic. Oh, and dirty.

"I have a message to deliver," she said, keeping her voice as polite and as neutral as it was possible to do.

She felt Avandar's gaze boring into her profile.

"A message? Truly? How… amusing. Deliver it while I am still in the mood to hear it. The night will not last forever, and the Hunt
must
be joined. I enjoy the Hunt," she added, her voice changing in texture and tone, "but even if I were to tire of it, mortal, I am of the Firstborn." Her eyes were dark and round, where they had, moments before, been the color of perfect steel. It was almost as if… as if…

"The wild law governs many things." Jewel could not take her eyes away from the white expanse of the Winter Queen's skin. Luckily she didn't have to. "You have a duty and an oath to fulfill and you are called upon to fulfill it."

The was a sudden silence; all movement ceased; it was as if the ice of Winter had hollowed out every member of the Queen's entourage, leaving stiff and frozen shells behind. Then the Winter Queen dropped hand to horn and rested it there, and Jewel understood that this was the worst of the threats she had yet made— although she didn't understand
why
.

"And you, mortal, will tell me of my oaths?"

"I am a messenger," she said quietly. "You are challenged,

Lady, to a greater Hunt than this. These people have kept their faith with you; they have followed the vows that their ancestors made."

"Indeed."

"And your presence here threatens—"

"I am aware of what my presence here may mean," she said quietly. "But the law is the law."

"Do you hear the Hunters?" Avandar asked, breaking the silence that settled around that pronouncement.

"No," the Queen said quietly. "But they have called their Hunts and they pursue them."

"Indeed. But where, Queen of Winter?"

She frowned a moment. And then she raised her face until it was full in the moonlight; closed her eyes so that white lashes brushed perfect cheeks. "They… are not here."

"The only Hunt that has not been sounded is yours, my Lady," Avandar said.

"And the Winter King awaits you, he says, if your hunters are capable of finding the simplest of trails."

"What did you say?"

"I said the Winter King—"

"You have seen the Winter King?" Her eyes narrowed. "Impossible."

"For your hunters, and perhaps even for you. But I… visited him… at his request."

"He owns nothing that does not come first from
me
." Arianne's fingers twitched along the length of the horn. "And he has been long hidden. How do I know that this is not a mortal game? Such tricks have oft been attempted when the alternative is… unpleasant."

Jewel frowned.

"ATerafin," Avandar said, his voice smooth and confident, "answer the Winter Queen."

"He didn't exactly give me a password," she said out of the corner of her mouth.

"No-o-o," a painfully familiar voice said. "He gave you something
better
."

She swore under her breath as that something flying overhead took advantage of moonlight to cast them all into shadow.
I don't believe this is happening to me
. Kalliaris.
I can't possibly have offended you this much in one lousy lifetime
.

Before she could speak, the shadow grew larger and darker; it happened so swiftly that, were it not for the sickening sound of snapped bones and the two bodies that lay, like cast-off dolls, against the broken red maples, she would have said that the gargoyle had never dived at all.

"Hello, stupid ground-dwellers," the winged cat said.

"
You
," one of the Queen's Hunters shouted. "Lady—"

"Enough." She turned. "Kalliasanne—look down the road. Look, and tell me if it is possible."

One of the Hunters—and Jewel could not tell them apart, they were all tall and perfect and pale-haired, and they all had the same high cheekbones, the same steely gray eyes—turned his mount in the direction of the Lake. He moved forward slowly, pausing a moment in front of Jewel and Avandar.

Jewel nodded. He passed them by under the watchful eyes of her domicis. She wanted to watch him; Avandar apparently had no difficulty. But her eyes returned to the face and the eyes, the astonishing eyes, of Arianne. The Queen spared a glance to the fallen, no more. It was almost as if, by dying, they had served their purpose. If they were dead at all. She thought them very like demons, and expected their bodies to vanish as they fell.

But these two did not.

The rider who had approached with caution came flying back; he rode around the road to reach the side of the Queen and when he did, he dismounted and dropped to both knees. And his forehead touched earth at the foot of her stag, and he knelt thus on the ground while she looked at his bent back.

"So," the Queen said quietly. "The trail was there and you missed it."

He said nothing at all. As if aware that to offer an excuse was to also make oneself a target. "I should leave you here," she said softly. "Or let you join Celleriant in his exile. You have failed me, and in some ways your failure is the greater one.

"But the news that you bring is welcome, and I am in a mood to forgive. Someone, bring down that cursed cat."

The "cat" hissed in that dry gurgling sort of hack that Jewel associated with its laughter.

Lightning rose like a miniature storm, but it was gone between the bolts, moving faster than anything made of that much stone had any right to.

"Good-bye, little mortal," it said, elongating every syllable in the most annoying way possible. "If you are very good,
maybe
you will see me again."

"Avandar."

"Yes."

"Help them."

He smiled. "I think it a waste of power. Listen, Jewel. You are about to hear a sound that has not been heard for a very long time."

The Winter Queen lifted her horn to her lips and pressed mouthpiece to mouth, and from the bell of the horn a cry sweeter than horn music had any right to be filled the air.

In the distance, across the Lake, an answering note sounded. The Winter King.

The Host, mounted, surged forward; they left Arianne behind. She paused on the road. "We will meet again, you and I," she said quietly. "You are marked, and I, I now walk under the same shadow." She turned to face North, and the smile on her face might have frozen water.

"But my Lake is safe, child, and for that, I am grateful. When next you see me, I will ride a different mount, and I will preside over a Court in which, should you desire it, I will grant you a place."

She turned and her mount leaped forward; her hair brushed against Jewel's upturned cheek. On impulse, Jewel reached out to touch it, and three strands remained in the palm of her hand when she opened it.

The Host followed their Queen—but it seemed to grow in number; where twelve riders had been, there were now too many to count, they flowed past so quickly.

Jewel didn't try. Instead, silent, she watched as the Queen lifted the horn again; heard its song; she could not see it touch lips, and that was just as well.

The bridge, old and wet and new, took the thundering weight of the host; the water echoed its voice; the air carried its command. They were wild, yes, but they were beautiful. Jewel's throat was full; she stared at the Winter Queen and wondered if she would ever see anything as beautiful again. Hoped not.

Prayed to.

Avandar stared at her.

Jewel stared at the long, fine hair. A poverty of beauty. A promise.

"You have been honored," he said quietly. "Although I do not understand why."

"Because," Jewel said, watching the Lake swallow the island and all trace of the Hunt, "by giving her the Winter King, I've given her back the Summer."

She turned, then, to look upon the Lord Celleriant; he watched the Lake devour his companions as the true road, the
only
road, opened in the fabric of earth, air and water to receive them. Only when it was clear, perfect water again, did the tears come.

But he wept in the silence for a long, long time.

Margret and the Matriarchs were gathered by Kallandras of the North. They were tired as children are tired, and they allowed themselves to be led. Even Yollana could spare no energy for cutting remarks. She let Kallandras bear the brunt of her weight, and when she looked, for a moment, as old as everyone thought she
must
be, she let him ease her with words that passed no farther than her ears.

Margret was curious, but she was tired, and in the end, exhaustion won out.

But she felt a deep satisfaction that had nothing to do with reality. She still lacked the heart of Arkosa; it was wrapped around the neck of another woman—a woman who had accepted the burden laid upon her by a Voyani Matriarch. But she had found something of her own in the streets of the Tor, and when she was awake and well-fed she might even understand what it was.

Her mother's ghost escorted them back to the Arkosan camp, where the fire Arkosan blood had paid for was still burning like a miniature sun. She did not speak, of course, which was very uncharacteristic, but speech was no longer necessary. Margret understood what her mother had died for.

Had her mother accomplished what she set out to accomplish? Margret was not certain she would ever know.

But she knew this: the Hunt had not destroyed the city, and the demons had not returned. She had saved the life of an old woman, and the life of a little boy. The bodies that lay in the streets were a tragedy, but they were someone
else's
tragedy for now, and that would have to do.

Diora and Teresa, shorn of title and the responsibilities to which they'd been born, wandered through the empty streets of the Tor Leonne. They stayed near shadows when shadows were present, and when they heard the heavy tread of many feet, they chose to be prudent. But the night was a new night, and the dawn would not begin the first day of a new year; it would begin the first day of a new life.

They were afraid.

They did not speak of their fear; they could not. If they began a new life, they began it as themselves, and what experience would alter—if anything indeed was altered—would be determined by time.

But there was a language they could speak, if they could not openly speak of fear.

When they reached the merchant Court, Kallandras was nowhere to be found. They called him in the way that they had been taught, but if he heard them at all, he wisely chose not to answer. It took them half an hour to decide to approach the manor, and when they did, they found, tucked neatly beside the wide flower beds, a Northern harp.

Diora's hands trembled as she lifted it. Her fingers, clumsy with months of forced inactivity, skittered off the surface of the strings as if she was afraid that strumming them would destroy them.

It was Teresa who gently took the harp from her hands; Teresa who began to play it, although in truth between them Diora was the more accomplished musician.

And it was Teresa who began to sing.

"The sun has gone down, has gone down my love

Na 'dio, Na 'dio child

Let me lay down my helm and my shield bright

Let me forsake the world of guile

For the Lady is watching, is watching my love

Na 'dio, Na 'dio child,

And she knows that the heart which is guarded and scarred

Is still pierced by the darkest of fear.

When you smile, I feel joy,

When you cry, I feel pain,

When you sleep in my arms I feel strong

But the Lord does not care for the infant who sleeps

In the cradle of arms and my song.

The time it will come, it will come, my love,

Na 'dio, Na 'dio my own.

When the veil will fall and separate us

May you bury me when you are grown

For the heart, oh the heart is a dangerous place

It is breaking with joy and with fear,

Worse though if you'd never been born to me,

Na 'dio, Na 'dio my dear."

Sendari di'Marano did not sleep; he watched as the dawn rose over the trampled grounds of the Tor. There were bodies, but they were few, and the only man so far who was in danger of joining them was the very hysterical man who had tended the grove of dwarf maples that had been splintered and crushed by the passing of hooved animals.

As the Serra Fiona en'Marano was very fond of the man's work, he had had him incarcerated for drunken behavior—a flaw that was acceptable in the aftermath of the Festival, but only barely.