Michelle West - Sun Sword 04 - Sea of Sorrows (65 page)

The stretch of valleys, remembered now only by the empty riverbeds, once housed trees that were vast and ancient as anything found in the heart of the Deepings; they cast long shadows, spoke with the wind's voice when they chose to speak at all. As a child, before the rise of man, he had walked in those forests, and years had passed as he watched the saplings lift themselves from their beds of dirt, straining for the supremacy of sky and sun.

Here, in the heart of these lands, he had first called earth, and the earth, rich with the worms and the insects, the roots of those great trees its only restraint, rose at the first hint of his song. The earth was the youngest of the wild elements; of the four, in its vast deepness, the most tame, the most approachable.

They were strong, these memories, rich with scent and texture; he could feel the runneled curves of ancient bark beneath his palms, and remembered that he had anchored himself against the trees the first time he had called. Hesitancy?

Yes.

Curse Isladar.

He fell, the descent only barely slow enough to be controlled; he released the wind, and it fled. His feet struck the harsh, hard ground. Nothing marked the earth now; nothing differentiated this land from the lands a hundred miles to the South.

He placed his palm down, as if in supplication, against the barren ground.

Memory, here. It lay across the present like a translucent shroud, and because he was
Kialli
, he could see the ghost of his youthful hand against the damp mosses of forest floor, fingers splayed wide in the exact position of the present.

Memory. The moist tang of new-turned earth, the heavy scent neither cloying nor bitter; the fullness of greenery in its varying shades, some brilliant, some subdued, none clashing; the sense, here, of the type of cool found only where warmth presided. Life.

The dark earth had opened then. It… welcomed him. He had treasured that welcome; had bowed before it, humbled, as the roots of trees were exposed in all their protected intricacy; as the backs of worms, wet and glistening with the half-light of bower and sunlight, left a trail like the scrawl of written language in the soil.

Why not the wild earth, Brother?

Because he had expected this truth, this present. He treasured few memories, although he hoarded them all, and he did not want proof, if it were needed, that memory and existence were in no way the same.

He placed the flat of his open palms against the harsh and broken ground that did not resemble his valued past, and the slumbering earth woke; he felt its movement, its slow, cumbersome musculature constricting as it protected the reserves of liquid that rested well below a surface exposed to sun. Its voice was the voice he remembered from that day, sheltered by the bowers of leaves, and he felt something that lived below memory's surface; it was sharper, sweeter, and far, far more bitter than he had expected.

The earth remembered as well.

He had scant seconds to find the air again before the ground beneath his feet shattered and the heart of the elemental earth lashed out.

Rejection.

The earth raged against him; he was no longer a creature of its nature. He spoke with a voice that he had not used since that first day, but although it was, to his own ears, a perfect mimicry of youth, it was not youth.

He could force what he desired from the body of the world, but he knew, now, that he would never be welcomed; he would never again be gifted with intimacy. He could bargain, or threaten, or—in other circumstances— cajole in a dim and impersonal way.

And so?

Fingers curved in toward the center of palms. He was
Kialli
. He had survived losses far more significant than this. If force was required, he would use it; over the passage of time, he had perfected that art.

You will give me what I seek
, he told the earth.

And the earth answered,
You will take it. It is not the same
.

Is it not? In the end, I will have what I require, and I will walk away. There is nothing I desire that you can keep from me. Not here, where your power is weakest.

For now
, the earth said.
For now. But there is no weakness where life resides
.

I serve my Lord. My Lord paid your price.

* * *

Telakar felt it.

He had never been a gifted elemental mage. He had been born after the wild voices had stilled sufficiently that only the patient, or the sensitive, might stoop to listen to their muted tongue for long enough to learn the cadences of their particularly cumbersome language.

He could call fire; he could send messages into the forge of the wind and be certain that the substance of his meaning would be preserved and conveyed. But he could never speak with the confidence, with the conviction, with the force required to compel the earth to shelter any living creature.

But had he, he would never have the power to force the earth to surrender what it had been made to hold within its heart. The grip of earth was strong.

And the Lord's binding, bought by the required magery of the old compacts, was shifting. Once, no such compact had existed. Once, the Cities of Man had dominated these lands.

The winds were the voice of a heat that belonged to another era. The sands beneath
Kialli
feet cracked and fissured, like the sudden exposure of veins.

Surely
, he thought,
the Lord would not expend so great a power now. Not against so trivial an enemy
.

But it was unmistakable—to his ears—as he listened.

The beast roared.

The serpent had been awakened.

Avandar frowned.

His frowns were like geography; over the years in Terafin, Jewel had learned to use the topography of the corners of his lips as a map by which she might better navigate her behavior. It was harder, however, to gauge the details of an expression when the frown was more felt than seen; she cursed the existence of sand, wind, and sun.

And felt a moment's amusement.

It was gone the instant the slender shadow crossed her path and halted there, bounded on either side by the reflection of sun across sand.

"Viandaran," Lord Celleriant said. In the day and a half since they had entered the desert, only Celleriant seemed unchanged. Jewel would have said he had shrugged off the heat, but that would have implied that he felt it at all. She wanted to strangle him, but found the heat difficult enough that the extra effort probably wouldn't have been worth it. Probably.

Avandar nodded. "I felt it."

"Do you know what it was?"

The domicis' frown returned. "No. It is… distant. I believe—although I am not an elementalist of note—the wild earth has been invoked."

"Could you not hear its outrage?"

"No. But if you could, and you could understand what it signified, that would be of interest."

Celleriant shrugged. "To you?"

"To the woman you now serve." lie was silent for the space of four heartbeats. It wasn't possible for Arianni skin to pale, Jewel thought—but had it been, he would have been white as sun-bleached bone when all flesh has been stripped from it by desperate carrion.

"Celleriant?" she almost whispered.

And was rewarded by his full attention. "The old earth is stronger here than I would have guessed possible." He lifted an arm, swept it across the breadth of dry horizon, cracked dirt, steady, unbroken sunlight. If he had paled because he had been reminded of his service to her, and of the loss it implied, he said nothing. Nor did she.

"Not even in the Deepings is its voice so strong, and the Deepings hoard the most ancient of living things in its heart. But the earth has been forced to surrender something it valued. I do not yet know what."

"You speak with the earth?"

His smile was bitter. "I listen," he said quietly. "I am sensitive to its song."

"What's happened?"

"I do not know. But if I were to guess, I would say that the
Kialli
are in the desert, somewhere, and that they have invoked what has not been invoked since before the Fall of Man."

"The Fall of Man?"

Lord Celleriant looked to Avandar.

Avandar was absolutely silent.

The Arianni lord shrugged. "If you wish it, I shall travel toward the breach. I may be able to answer your questions more precisely when I arrive."

"No. If there's a really big danger, I think it's better to face it here—because if there's a really big danger, it's aimed at the Voyani."

His gaze turned skyward; flickered off the underside of the wagons that were, in the brilliance of sky, low, squat guides, or guardians. "Yes," he said softly. "At the wanderers."

But two days passed in the heat of the sun and the terrible sameness of cracked sand, and no danger arrived, no dream came to haunt her, no portents leaped out of her mouth before she could catch the words she spoke and drag them back.

Two
whole
days. A person could learn to relax in the space of two days. Even here, in this unbearable heat. The desert became a place in which there was privacy, and if the privacy was an act of nature—who would want to disturb it?—she accepted its gift nonetheless.

But she missed the children. She missed the meals at which they were shepherded, guided, coddled, fed.

12th of Misteral, 427 AA

Sea of Sorrows

The only good thing about the Serra, Elena reflected sourly, was the effect she had on the men. It wasn't so much their posture, cleanliness, or manners—never a strong point among the Voyani of any family except Elsarre— although these traits did improve drastically. It was their squabbling. It had become almost nonexistent. The Serra had, by simply becoming utterly still and utterly silent, made clear how little she enjoyed the flashes of uncontrolled temper the men were wont to show, and they had either taken such bursts elsewhere—thereby belying the meaning of the word uncontrolled—or forsaken them entirely.

The Serra herself did nothing at all to encourage the Arkosans, although from time to time she did acknowledge them—therefore, this shift in behavior came for free. Her clothing hid almost everything from view; not even the perfect midnight of her hair could be seen beneath the folds of rough cloth and twine. But hidden or no, she was known; the Arkosans—the handful that traveled with the Matriarch, handpicked all—came to offer her their company, their food and their water; they came to stand guard against sunlight by offering to create shadows in which she might rest.

It was not an effect, short of temper and the threat of a good dagger, that Elena herself could have hoped to have, and Elena, of the Arkosans in the Matriarch's van, was— had been—best loved. And given that it seemed highly unlikely that the Serra would condescend to have sex—with anyone, come to think—the fact that they behaved well at all was mystifying. Either that, or they were completely stupid, which given men and sex, was also a distinct possibility.

"Is something wrong, 'Lena?"

She started, and then smoothed the frown from where it had lodged in the corner of her lips, aware of the new lines that would be there when she was finally free of the desert. Of the Sea of Sorrows. "No, Nicu. I was just thinking about how far we have to go."

He raised a brow. "You know how far we have to go?"

Her shrug was a good indication of her annoyance. She was inclined to be friendly, but although she appreciated constancy in almost any circumstance, Nicu was perhaps the one man in the Arkosan encampment she'd happily cede to the Serra's courtly ice. "I know we'll know when we're close."
Careful, careful, Elena
. She missed the children. Nicu's help at their feeding had calmed his temper, eased his jealousy, given him the camaraderie of shared purpose.

She had hoped it would be enough. So much for hope.

"Margret told you that?"

"More or less."

It was Nicu's turn to look annoyed. "
I'm
in charge of the men here," he snapped. "I'm in charge of the safety of the Matriarch. If she tells anyone that—"

"It shouldn't be the next in line?"

He took a step back, but his lips compressed. "No," he snapped. "Not unless she wants you to be the first in line." His hands were curved into the fists Elena least liked.

"Nicu—"

"Why is it always the women? Why aren't the men ever important?"

"The men
are
important."

"The men are important as fodder for clan warfare," he snapped. "The men are important as muscle. The men are there to lift clay urns and wood and wheels from wagons that they'll never helm." He glanced up, the narrow curve of his eyes an act of hostility, and jabbed at the sky that contained Margret's wagon.

"Adam is in the second wagon," she said quietly.

"Only because you're too cowardly to helm it yourself."

Her hand itched a moment with the desire to redden his cheek. "Maybe," she said, the effort of saying one word where many would do extreme. "But the men—"

"The men serve the Matriarch."

"Nicu, we all serve the Matriarch."

"The men are sent to die at her convenience."

"That is
not
true. You of all people should know—"

"I
do
know, 'Lena. It wasn't your back she scarred."

A hundred words slammed into each other as she snapped her jaw shut on them. "Nicu," she said flatly, "that's the wind talking." She turned, but she stopped herself from walking away—just as she had stopped herself from speaking—by dint of will.

By desire, truth be known, to preserve the fading memories of the great affection that she had had for him when they had both been young. Because she knew if she started to walk, he would try to stop her; would grab either her arm or her shoulder—and she wasn't certain that if he touched her, she could stop herself from lashing out. Verbally. Physically.

If she tried very, very hard, she could see the boy in this man, and it was the boy she had loved.