Michelle West - Sun Sword 04 - Sea of Sorrows (108 page)

What is Diora?

She did not know how to answer the question. She could tell the force beneath her feet that she was a woman, that she was born to Sendari par di'Marano and Alora en'Marano; that she was seventeen; that she was the widow of the man who had once been heir to the vast lands of the Dominion.

She could tell him that she had been alone all her life; that she had had a few brief months in which she had learned not to be alone. That it was the most costly of lessons.

But she knew that those words were too thin and fragile a truth.

What did the earth know of life, after all, but its end? She could hear the echoes of the movement of tree roots through wet soil, could feel the passage of water beneath the surface of dry, hot sand, could almost touch the small flowers that tickled the surface in their brief hold on life.

What is Diora?

Words had often failed her. Silence had failed her. But song had not. The Serra Diora sang. She shed the words that so often contained the gift; they would offer the earth no meaning.

She knew so many songs. The cradle song came first. She sang it as if it were the first sound that she had known— and if it was not, it was the first she remembered clearly, when, as a child, she had been held or carried in the arms of adults who had offered the false promise of safety. And love.

Her rhythm was the rhythm of the falling earth, and between one song and the next, she offered the silence of the grave.

But there were other songs. She sang the lay of the Sun Sword, wordless, emotion carrying her from one note to the next; she sang the song of the first kai Leonne, and his battle with the falling Night.

The earth rumbled. Moved beneath her feet.

She did not offer her silence to what lay there; she had started; she meant to finish.

She sang of the Dominion. She sang of the Radann. And then, sensing that the song itself was not finished, the audience not satisfied, she left behind the songs she had been taught.

The music was wild. Harmonies were unsung. She took each breath as if it were a step across treacherous terrain, offered each note as if it were the last she might be allowed.

Beneath her hands, she felt the warmth of the Heart of Arkosa; it was the only comfort she was allowed to seek, and even that was bitter, because she knew it was almost at an end.

She did not sing of the City.

She sang of sun and wind, of day and night, of the storm that carried the Serpent at its heart. And then, because it was not enough, never enough, she turned at last to her sister-wives, and into the wordless melody, she placed their names. Faida. Deirdre. Ruatha.

And when she sang of them, she sang of Na'dani, her strength failing, and she returned at last to the first song that she had heard, the first song she had sung, the first song she remembered: the cradle song. But this time, she sang it as she had sung it only in the precious hours of night when she had been given the care of her son. That song trailed into the mourning song, the quiet ululation of a woman alone, arms empty, praying in the night to the Lady for a mercy that was almost never shown.

And the earth sighed.

It has been a long time, Daughter, since a mortal offered me their song.

I know you, now. The rivers know you, that have slept beneath my surface. The land will know you as you pass above it. There will be life, yours and mine, within this cradle.

I take your gift, instead of your blood. Bind yourself to the path you have chosen, and when that path has been traveled, when that burden has become, at the last, too heavy, I will carry you.

I will sing
. .

"Diora." Margret's hushed voice. Thin and weak and easily missed in the wake of the earth's, but more precious for all that.

She looked up.

"Margret," she said quietly, her own voice foreign to her. "Your shadow."

Margret nodded, but absently. "Look, Diora, look." She lifted a hand. One hand; the other held the Heart of Arkosa.

Above them both, the endless azure of the open sky looked down, bearing witness. The Lord's face was blinding, a white-gold sphere that had never waxed or waned. Or failed.

The earth was completely still.

But it was no longer flat; it was no longer the wide stretch of dusty sand that ran from Raverra to the mountains in Oerta.

Great stone edifices rose from the ground around them. Towers taller than any Diora had ever seen stretched up toward the endless sky, as if to claim its ownership. Their faces were carved with symbols, great indentations in stone that seemed to both catch the light and shed it at the same time.

She could not read what was written there; did not try. But Margret's eyes lingered on them, as if to absorb what lay there, newly exposed.

Domed ceilings rose like helms across the heights of the buildings whose roofs were distant enough to be seen; they were simple, but not austere, and they too were adorned, not with symbols but with statues. Had those statues been brightly colored, had they been painted or leaved, she would have mistaken them for people.

But people seldom chose to ride horses from the edges of rooftops.

There was glass here.

Glass had always seemed so fragile, and in the South, glass was worked in such a way that it might provide accents to the austerity of the homes of powerful men. But she could see glass that stretched, unbroken, from wall to wall, glass that stretched from ground to roof, be that roof three times the height of a tall man.

She saw flags, saw hanging signs, saw the perfect curved basins of fountains and wells.

She knew that she could spend the rest of her life exploring this City without discovering all that it contained, for she had never seen a city so vast. But she knew, as well, that she would have this day, this hour, this minute; that she would take only the time she needed to find the road that led from the place she now occupied to the gates the walls must contain.

"The Seven Towers still stand," Margret whispered, in a voice that was almost a stranger's.

"Seven? There are more," Diora said gently.

"There are seven of note.
The
Seven. Can you not see the Spheres that burn at their heights?" Her smile was also a stranger's. "And they did not fail."

"Margret?"

"If they had failed, there would be no City. Look at that sign, Diora—can you see it?"

Diora nodded, although she could see more than one.

"It is wood. Wood, stone, gold. But it looks newly made. And that flag. That banner. Can you not see the brilliance of scarlet, the depth of azure? They still exist. They have not aged." Her smiled broadened.

"And there—that is the artery. That is the street that leads from one place of import to another, in an unbroken circle." She laughed. "I recognize this street. The one we're on. I know where we are!" She started to move, and then jerked to a stop, her hand still upon the Heart of Arkosa. "Look, look! There's sand there, dirt—but if you cleaned it, if you swept it away, you would see that these roads form the crescents of the symbol."

Those streets wound their way around the base of the closest tower, and from there, past buildings large and small, littered with sand, with stones, with things of the earth that they had clung to in their long captivity.

"Margret," Diora said gently. "Take the Heart. Take it. Wear it. You will be free to move."

Margret hesitated.

But she did not lift the crystal.

It sat between their hands, between their wounded palms.

"I don't—"

"You will have to take it sometime."

"I know."

"Why not now?"

Margret looked up, forgetting the city for a moment. She met the Serra's gaze, and held it. "Don't you know?"

"We will have time," the Serra replied. "We will have time to say our goodbyes."

But Margret, daughter of Evallen, shook her head, the smile fading from her lips as sun faded from the sky at the close of day. Her skin was dark; it was lined and creased with sun and wind. Her hair was wild and dusty, her jaw too pronounced. She was not lovely. She was not graceful.

But she was very, very beautiful. "None of them will mean what this means."

"Shall I remind you again of all of the luxuries that power does
not
give you? Or shall I remind you instead of the luxuries that duty does not give me?"

"No. Maybe."

"A servant of the Lord of Night walked these lands. If your cousins survive, you must find them. If they do not, you must find their bodies. Your people are waiting, and I think they are no longer waiting patiently." She frowned a moment, and then laughed.

Lifting her voice, she spoke to the breeze that seemed to come from a quiet, cool place.
"Ona Teresa,"
she said.

"Na'dio."

She offered her aunt no other words; nor did her aunt offer questions.

Margret, daughter of Evallen, caught the chain that held the Heart of Arkosa. She lifted it in one hand, and watched the light gold cast in shards across her feet. In silence, she raised it. In silence, she watched as the Heart left the Serra's open palms.

She donned it quietly, and felt all the weight of its burden as she raised her head to meet the eyes of the Flower of the Dominion.

As Matriarch and Serra, they stood.

"It is done," Lord Telakar said. "The City has risen. Is your vision so poor that you cannot see the two who now walk the streets?"

Elena swallowed.

"I see them. They wear the robes of your people, but they have exposed their faces to the sun your people shun. One is fair, the other dark; one walks like a warrior, and the other like a courtesan. But they walk in step, and they walk toward the East Gate.

"Ah," he said. "If you cannot see them, it is of no consequence. You must be able to see the river."

In spite of her fear, she turned to look.

Across a large rent in the surface of the desert, water gushed, as if from a great wound. It was no small river, and as she watched, it seemed to spread from the heart of the City outward to either side, sweeping beneath the walls that denied entry to all else.

"The earth has awakened. I think it will not be long before life returns to the wastelands." His smile faded. "It will not be long before the Matriarch of Arkosa begins to understand the workings of the Seven, and I will, I fear, meet with a poor welcome when she does. I feel their power now. It is… exquisite and unpleasant."

He lifted his arms a moment, pointing. He spoke, his words guttural and harsh.

"I cannot stay. But I thank you for your company. It has been a long time since I have had such an opportunity; in the Hells, no one visits who does not intend to stay."

His smile was brief. Cold.

He vanished.

And Elena fell.

But she did not fall for long. The air caught her in its folds, and she felt the arms of the demon around her. "It has been too long."

She closed her eyes, clinging to him in spite of herself, the fear of the imminent death greater than the unknown one.

He laughed. As if he could see every layer of fear she felt. She wasn't surprised that he enjoyed it.

The laughter faded; the arms held.

"Things
have
changed," he told her. "Believe that we were not always what you see now. We must leave. There are those who might interfere in what must unfold, and I have already been injured."

The world vanished.

The last thing she saw was the City of Arkosa.

The last thing she heard, although she could not see him, was the voice of the Northern bard.

"Elena!"

Lord Celleriant touched Kallandras' shoulder.

Kallandras turned his gaze from the empty sky. "We could not afford that," he said quietly. "Not now. The City has barely risen, and it stands empty."

"What they know of the City is not enough to be a threat. Unless it were the Matriarch herself who was taken—and perhaps even then, I cannot say—your enemies will learn little of substance or value."

Kallandras frowned. "You are not concerned."

"No. But my vision is better than yours."

"What did you see that I could not?"

"Who held her," was his quiet reply. But although he had told Kallandras to disregard the open sky, his gaze lingered longest upon the place that had been occupied, in the distance, by the two.

They waited, Arkosans, the Serra and her seraf, the stag, the Arianni lord, the Northern bard, the Northern seer, her quiet companion, and the Havallan Matriarch. Clothed in the robes of the Arkosan Voyani, they weathered the heat of the sun, the touch of its fire, and although they tried to speak among themselves, their words drifted into silence before they could complete a sentence.

What words could they have that would describe what lay before them? They felt no joy; not yet. They felt no fear, although perhaps the awe that they did feel was tinged by it; no wise man walked carelessly into the unknown, and the Voyani who had survived to be Yollana's age, or Stavos', had become, by grace of experiences which had not yet killed them, wise.

They waited.

And waited.

An hour passed. And another. Their shadows had lengthened against the newly exposed earth, the restless ground, but they kept their vigil.

And when the sun had begun to edge its way past the horizon, that vigil was rewarded. The walls of the City shimmered to the West, as if they were liquid stone. Through that curtain of liquid, unharmed, passed two women.

They wore the robes of the desert wanderers, but their faces were exposed, and at a distance of less than a mile, it was clear who they must be. They stopped as they gained the desert beyond the walls, and they gazed out.

The taller of the two lifted an arm and waved.

That was their signal, for in the absence of battle, they had developed no others: Stavos let out a cry of joy and began to run across the sands, arms wide, as if the distance was negligible.

His wife snorted; his cousin laughed. Tamara hesitated, as did Donatella by her side. Six had left the Arkosan encampment, and it became clear, when Stavos was halfway to the Matriarch, that only two would return.