Michelle West - The Sun Sword 03 - The Shining Court (94 page)

Blood now. Death later.

Damn. She'd cut too deeply. She could feel that dizzying spin that loss of blood caused.
That
would be the final embarrassment, and at a time when she wouldn't just be failing her own, she'd be failing them all. But it would be her life. It would be her luck.

Lady
, she thought.
Lady, we're doing Your work as well as we

can
. She swallowed. Got back on her knees. Tried to keep the line her blood made as straight as possible. It was hard; the fire had not been lit—it could not be lit—until she had finished this, this final step.

But she
knew
she had to finish. That she could not stop or pause or leave the last of the ceremony undone. She had dreamed it, and the Lady, unkind, sent true dreams to haunt and harry her.

She saw Elena move; saw the bard—the Northerner—reach out and grab her by the upper arm. Was very surprised that he kept his arm; Elena went for her dagger almost instinctively. They were all on edge.

They were all afraid.

She'd cut too deeply. She was an
idiot
. But she crawled. She crawled, and it came to her, as no doubt the Serra Maria's prayer had come: that she would crawl and suffer if she could save the children, their future. That she would die, willingly, if by doing so she became a part of the foundation that would drive back the Lord of Night.

The dreams were terrible.

"When can we help her?" she heard Elena shout.

No one answered.

"Margret!"

"I'm—fine, 'Lena. You're… embarrassing me."

"Well, it's good you should let someone
else
do it for a change," Elena snapped back. Only her voice carried. Fear. They were afraid. She was tired of fear. Did the enemy know fear?

He could smell it; could taste it; could almost touch it, thick and tangible as it was. But he did not dare; not there, not when the powers they were summoning, half understood but still primal, were so close to fruition. He could not walk cloaked into that fire, although he was not so diminished, not as a Lord of
Kialli
, that the fire would destroy him, spell or no.

It would destroy his seeming.

It would destroy the careful humanity, so close to his natural features, and so far from it, that he had endured for decades.

He longed to stand for a moment at the heart of that fire: It would reveal all that he was; put him in danger of entrapment for the seconds the four frail women survived.

And that was a fool's game; he had not lived to become a Lord in the Hells by such self-indulgence. He shook himself; the world drew him. Life, its variety, its lack of predictability, had been all but forgotten, and the lure of its delicate enjoyments became harder to resist.

In that, he was willing to admit—where no one could hear it— that Isladar had been correct in his concerns. Had it been the choice of that Lord, the
Kialli
would not now exist upon the plains of the frozen North, nor dwell within the grandeur of the Shining Palace.

Lord Isladar, not coward, not fool—and yet, not a power. The enigma; the
Kialli
who somehow stood beside the Lord's throne without being devoured.

No
Kialli
in existence accepted subjugation. They sought power, all of them; some with more subtlety than others. But Isladar's game? None comprehended it. He was a dangerous Lord to have as an enemy, and in the end, a difficult one to make, for he was devoid of the pride and the desire for dominion that informed, that
defined
the
Kialli
Lords—therefore the act which would make an enemy of him was not always clear or logical.

Yet Ishavriel was certain that Isladar was behind the appearance of Anya, so inconveniently, in this city at this time. This, after all, was Ishavriel's moment. The masks had been of his crafting; the summoning of the four women who could prove their destruction—to a city in which theirs was assured—was also the fruition of a plan some human years in the making. The masks that the human General—and he was impressed, in spite of the short span of years and the general ignorance that Alesso di'Marente displayed—had eventually decided to destroy had been spread about the city as artfully or artlessly as the occasion demanded.

He was annoyed, of course; there was no magic that they could have possessed that would tell them what the purpose of the masks was, and even if they understood it, they would not understand: these were a people broken by the loss of the truth of their history.

He should have had the moment to savor; the victory his own to enjoy.

Instead, he had been summoned by his Lord to deal with the difficulty the most powerful and least predictable of his vassals might cause.

Yet he stood, watching as the fires were built, the fear of the four women he considered the most dangerous of threats as alluring as the cries of the damned, but sweeter in their promise.

It had been so very long since he had heard the cries, attenuated and harmonic, of those who had chosen their fate and delivered themselves, in the end, to the eternity only the
Kialli
could provide.

But there were other ways to enjoy fear, other ways to plan for it. Lord Ishavriel turned his face to the evening wind, scenting and anticipating. He had taken a risk, to come to this camp at all. Because it was a wild night; a night when the forces that not even gods could tame—and it had been tried, and tried again— were loosed upon those sensitive to them.

These mortals, they could sense its tide and time, but were not a part of its current; they watched from its banks, and only if they were foolish enough—and powerful enough—to enter the current—were they carried and changed by it. They dabbled now, as if they could chart their course through that wildness with safety.

And he watched, called by their fear.

Soon, of course, their fear would be nothing. The subtlety of it, the anticipation of events that they would never fully understand, would be overwhelmed by the viscera of immediate pain, immediate death.

But he was fascinated, as many of his kind were often fascinated, by those who knew death as a part of their natural life; who could be tainted by wildness but never made part of it, and who could—in a fashion—tame wildness for a time. He watched, at a safe remove. Watched, impressed in spite of himself, that these diminished, helpless children could invoke the heart of a power they did not understand, but were descended from.

The girl who crawled on the ground had power. She would never realize it; it existed as potential, revealed only at moments like these, when the wildness brought their mysteries to their fullness. She was almost finished. A few moments from now, these grounds would not be safe.

But he was interested in a young man who resided within them, and he would not leave without speaking to him.

In the darkness—and what darkness could there be in these lands of moon and stars?—he found the human. The injuries done him—surprising injuries—were obvious although they could not be seen; the air was heavy with the scent of dried blood.

He sat by the side of a wagon; at a time when his kin slept, he was sleepless. The weight of his anger, like the scent of his blood, was tangible to the
Kialli
Lord; more so than the heavy wooden wheel at his back or the damp ground beneath the blankets he sat on.

"Nicu," Ishavriel said.

The man looked up, and the
Kialli
Lord could clearly see the boy in his face. The suspicion was instant; the anger that had been turned inward, leaped out.

"You!"

He could have crushed the boy's throat before another word escaped, but he allowed himself to be touched; to be pushed; to be shoved back.

It took all of the self-control he possessed, so close to Scarran, to be treated so by a mere mortal. His fingers sharpened; his teeth elongated; he could feel his skin losing its mortal softness. He fought; he fought it back. The feeding would come, and soon. He could wait.

"
Nicu
," he said again, putting power into his voice.

The man who was more boy than not stopped.

"Did I not honor my word? Did I not give you a weapon with which you could slay enemies? How have my actions betrayed you?" His voice contained intent and power, and this pretty young man with the darkened eyes and the gaunt cheeks had prickly edges of desire that cut him no matter which way he turned.

It was really almost too easy.

"Your children are important. I will make you a hero, but you must listen, you must listen with care."

The suspicion was there. The boy was wild with desire and the certainty that he had no worth, but he was not quite stupid. And the children were the one thing—or so Ishavriel had managed to glean from his limited study—that mattered to the Voyani. They were called the heart of the tribe.

He intended to give the boy a moment of heroism.

Staged, planned, crafted.

He had decided that the youngest of the Matriarchs would survive the slaughter because he needed
one
Matriarch. And he had decided that the young man who had survived the loss of her trust by the grace of her affection—for he watched them all, making his plans—would win both back. Would have to before he was of use again.

"What do you want?"

"Want? I want to help you, Nicu. I want you to have what is rightfully yours."

Nicu winced. "Your back isn't scarred," he said at last. That surprised Ishavriel.

"Yes," he said softly, "it is. You cannot see the scars, they are so old, but I made my choices, and I paid for them; we all must." He turned to leave, and then turned back; the man's eyes, unblinking, were upon him.

"I came only to warn you," he said. "The Lord of Night is coming. You've heard the whispers, surely. You know that's why the Matriarchs have gathered."

Nicu's lips thinned.

An overstep on Ishavriel's part. He was outsider, and in the heart of their camp. He immediately changed his posture—an act of will, again, a test of the resolve that was his plan—and let his shoulders slump slightly; bowed his head and upper back.

"Forgive me this intrusion," he said softly. "I did not realize the effect the sword would have upon your Matriarch. I thought, perhaps rashly, only of your people. And I am outsider; I do not know their ways."

Silence. Long and hard.

"But I will give you no weapon; not this time. You have a sword, I have been told, that bears your adult blood. I offer you only a shield that will protect you from the magic of your enemies—or from the enemies of your Lady. You may take it or you may set it aside as you desire. You may run to the Matriarch and tell her of what has transpired.

"I leave the decision up to you."

He stepped back as Nicu continued to stare at him, his expressions changing so rapidly no single emotion had dominion. No fear. Ishavriel did not smile; instead, he bowed low, and let the cape he wore slip open. Beneath his arms, held wrapped in a heavy, rough cloth, was indeed the shield of which he spoke. It pained him to touch it this way; uncovered, it burned, and the fire that it started could not be stopped by anything but magic wards. Obtaining the shield from the room of antiquities had injured one of his most powerful lieutenants; it was, however, meant both as a test of his lieutenant's power, and a way of diminishing some of that power while Ishavriel was not within the Palace to guard his political interests personally.

He wondered if the mortal would appreciate the enormity—and the danger—of the gift. The construction; the design; the magics, all ancient, and all inimical to one of his kind. To one, in fact, who was not mortal. A gift manufactured in the forges of the Cities of Man, taken as trophy—and as object of study—by the
Kialli
before the rift.

The perfect gift.

Be a hero
, he thought, dropping his difficult burden and stepping as far away from it as he could. "I must leave. My time is short. Decide for yourself what to do, Nicu of the Arkosans. But I will say now that you will
know
when the moment is right to use what you have been given."

Nicu's eyes fell to the cloth-covered curve in the grass. Hunger there, but caution and pain as well.

Lord Ishavriel winced; his attention was taken from the boy, from the grass, from the interplay of hunger and desire, of depthless shame and uncertainty, by something powerful. He felt it. The youngest Matriarch was almost at the center of the cross.

She had been wounded before.

She had been wounded before, and more deeply than that, and she hadn't had the cloth on hand to bind herself with. Elena had
seen
it. She knew it for truth; hadn't she been part of the same fights? Hadn't she suffered similar wounds? Hadn't they held each other up while help came, held each other's hands, spoken while they could as they waited? Yes. There was no way that Margret could be so weak so suddenly unless there was something wrong with the blade. The blade was poisoned. It
had
to be. The wind was wild where she stood, and the Lady's hand, sharp-nailed on her shoulder. But so, too, was the foreign bard's.

"Do not," he said, his words so heavy with the weight of command it did not occur to her to disobey them—not immediately.

But he was outsider, and she was family. She shrugged herself free.

And was caught again before she could take another step. Margret was struggling. She could see it; she wasn't even certain that she was going to make it with that bowl to the center of the cross.

"Let me go," she said, without looking at the stranger.

He didn't answer. And anyway, there was only one answer she wanted: His hand off her shoulder. The Voyani were not a patient people. She counted one, two, and then in silence, she drew her dagger.

It was out of her hand and across the grass before she could move, silvered by the turn of flat in the moonlight, but the hand on her shoulder—as far as she could tell—hadn't shifted once.

"
Let me go
," she said, letting the snarl transform her voice.

"You cannot go to her." He shook her slightly to punctuate the words. It was the most animation she had ever seen from him, except strictly speaking, she couldn't. See him, that was. She turned, and this he allowed, lifting his hand. "You do not understand. The wood was cut, yes, and the wine and water and unguent of forest and earth placed upon pine to summon the fire. But the fire that you are summoning here is an old fire; the protection you demand demands its price. Your cousin is
not
bleeding to death."