Michelle West - Sun Sword 04 - Sea of Sorrows (72 page)

Celleriant turned, to Avandar, to Jewel. His eyes still retained the width brought by surprise, by shock. But he smiled again. "It is true," he said, sounding pleased.

"True?"

"The time is almost upon us. Perhaps my Lady—perhaps the Winter Queen—was not so angered as she seemed when she sent me to you. The End of Days approaches. Legends wake. The princes of the Firstborn must surely be preparing for their final ride. Who among us would have turned away from the opportunity to walk the lands in freedom at such a time?"

"You are not free." Avandar Gallais was once again himself; no hint of conflict, no hint of desire, troubled his expression.

"No," Celleriant replied, although he did not turn his gaze back to Avandar. "I serve the mortal. But I do not walk the hidden ways; I do not ride with the host; I do not turn at the Lady's whim, and the Lady's whim alone. I watch the turning, instead, of sun and moon; I feel the change of day, from ice to fire and back. I see the passage of time across the faces of everyone around me; I saw it in the turn of leaves at desert's edge; I see it in the drift of the stars above.

"What happens at the End of Days will happen, I think, in
this
world, in this diminished, mortal world. But so, too, did the greatest of our wars, the most ferocious of our battles.
These
are the lands that gods walked, and we walked in their wake."

"Don't," Jewel said, before she could stop herself.

He looked up immediately, sensitive to her, to her commands. "Lady?"

"Don't speak of gods walking."

He shrugged. "Lady?"

But he had spoken. She felt it as a twisting of muscle and sinew, a certainty in the pit of her stomach that was as strong there as any fear she had ever faced had been. It did not leave her.

Jewel?

She lost sight of Avandar; lost sight of Kallandras, of Celleriant. She lost sight of the tunnels, of the perfect clarity of desert night, of the clouds of breath that hung a moment from each of their lips before the growing breeze swept all trace of it away.

But she did not lose sight of the shape and shadow of night; it condensed, losing the pinpoints of light, the shades that gave it texture and color as it stretched from horizon to heaven, shrinking inward until it encompassed the center of her vision.

And on the growing edges: the broken spires of the Isle of
Aramarelas
, under siege by winged beasts who spoke with majesty in voices of flame. Fire. The towers were burning. The cathedrals were being destroyed. She could hear the terrible silence that presages screaming as the city drew its collective breath. She could see, beneath the feet of a passing god, the refuse that she would think of, at any other time, as bodies. She was dimly aware that there were other creatures around the heart of Night; dimly aware that they might attempt to stand beside, or before, the darkness that came toward the city of Essalieyan.

And she?

Upon the field of battle. Her hand around, of all things, a pole that felt suspiciously unlike a weapon's haft. Surrounded by the dead, by the dying.

Jewel!

Avandar's voice.

She closed her eyes, but not before she realized that she could not tell if his voice were a part of her vision, or simply an escape hatch from the worst of it: the destruction she
knew
was to follow.

Her knees refused to hold her. His arms did what her knees could not. She felt his voice by her ear. "Jewel." No question.

She could not weep, or scream, or even speak.

Celleriant watched her face closely, his expression slightly perplexed.

She shook her head, to clear it—to give him back the joy and lucidity of purpose. "Go."

Released, he turned again to Kallandras. "Come, mortal. Come. The storm's voice is almost upon us."

No
, Jewel thought,
not almost
.

The rain began to fall.

Rain.

The Serra Diora di'Marano had never lived in the desert; had never lived confined by it. Confined by other things, she had seldom stood beneath the exposed face of an angry sky in the depths of such a bitter cold. She thought the water must freeze, but no—it was warm where it touched her exposed skin.

Her skin.

She raised her eyes to the Matriarch's face; ice lay against her cheeks, and against the sheen of her rounded eyes. Black edged her face until she raised her hands and shoved her hair back.

She said, "It doesn't rain at night."

Just that.

The two women turned toward the sky. Diora thought it strange that one could so be far from the ground and yet still be no closer to the Lady's face or the glittering pin-points of light that she cast.

"Hold on," the Matriarch said. "Hold tight. We—"

From out of the clear—the
clear
—of the night sky, shadows unfurled. And spread. And spread.

"Matriarch?" Diora whispered, the sound anchored by her gift where any other whisper would have been buffeted from lips by the roar of the wind.

Margret did not move. Could not speak. She raised a finger; it shook.

"Matriarch!"

The wind
roared
. Diora stood, transfixed by what she heard. She knew the wind's voice; she had listened a thousand times as it howled past her, laden sometimes with water and sometimes with dry, arid heat; she had tried, as child, and then as bereaved and isolated widow, to grab words from its folds, to isolate voices, anything at all that sounded as if it had once known life.

She would never do that again. Lady, have mercy in this darkness, this storm—should she see the sun again, she would never struggle to find the words the wind carried.

She heard them now, and if she could not understand the language, she could recognize its cadence.

Had she not repeated it, precisely and accurately, at the behest of the Arkosan Matriarch? But there had been no anger in her repetition. No grief, no hatred, no fury, and no desire; she had stripped the syllables of anything but sound, the comfortable neutrality of air across lip and teeth.

Had she been able, she would have done the same to this voice. She could not; she was transfixed by what she heard contained by words.

Across the darkened sky, the shadow had ceased to spread; had in fact taken form in its deadly flight: the form of great pinions, of moving arches. Wings.

She almost forgot—did forget—to hang on to the rails, but the rocking of the boat was reminder enough. She stumbled, banged her knee; caught the rail with her left hand and the crook of her right elbow, and clung to her footing with an appalling lack of grace.

She lost sight of the Arkosan Matriarch.

Her back was exposed a moment as she struggled to find her feet while the surface of the slight deck shifted, inclining toward ground in a dangerous spiral.

But the exposure was not as terrifying as what she saw beneath her. The Voyani encampment was alive. She could not differentiate between young and old, man and woman, they moved so quickly—but their voices told her what her less capable vision could not. They understood that the storm—and it had suddenly become a storm—meant death. The Voyani accepted no death with grace.

All this she caught in a glimpse, wheeling as the boat wheeled.

But she caught one other thing as well: among the men and women who ran back and forth, was one who did not; he stood tall, remote; he was deliberate as he searched.

At a distance, with no voice to guide her, she did not recognize him until she had passed beyond his vision, and he hers.

Ramdan.

He did not speak; she could not imagine what he would say to anyone who was not the Serra Diora or the Serra Teresa di'Marano. She wondered if any of the Voyani would care enough about his life that they would save him in spite of his silence. His silence and the servitude that they resented or despised.

The ship listed; she heard the Matriarch's guttural cursing. She had never thought to take joy from such base indulgence, but she felt her heart twist in an unaccustomed relief.

"Matriarch!"

"Blind the Lord!" The Matriarch cursed, speaking into the wind and the water. She groped her way to where Diora clung to the rails, threw her arms around her waist, and struggled a moment. "I've tied you to the rail; if you need freedom, cut the twine!"

Diora nodded.

"We're going to try to draw the attention of the—of the storm."

The Serra nodded again. "How much attention do we want?"

"All of it."

"Now?"

"Now."

Diora lifted her face; water streamed down her cheeks, traveling the length of exposed throat, settling into folds of rough fabric more quickly than it could be absorbed. Serpent's tears. Warmer than her skin. She felt the rope cut her waist as the ship careened in the sky; she let that rope take the brunt of her weight while Margret brought the boat to, bear, as if it were an unbroken horse, and she only barely capable of riding.

The Serra Diora di'Marano lifted her arms, palms upturned toward the part of the night sky that knew no moonlight, no starlight. For just a moment she stood, listening to the storm, to the people below who, in frenzy, sought to avoid the floods that would follow.

She sang.

She sang and the storm turned.

* * *

Two people looked up from the ground the moment her voice joined the thunder.

"Teresa!"

One looked down again almost as quickly.

Na'dio
. She could not clearly see where the voice had come from, but she knew that her almost-daughter was no longer among the rain-drenched Voyani.

Water matted the Serra's hair to her forehead, her clothing to her skin. Everything was heavy, weighted by storm, necessity, duty. She shifted her arm's weight as Yollana stumbled, sliding against ground that had already become treacherously slick. There had been lamps, but the glass hoods that were so precious were not proof against the howling wind; flames had guttered, glass shattered. Warm light was lost to the water; the cold light of moon and star was lost to the… storm.

Life, she thought, would follow.

A hand was on her chin, its grip too tight. She followed that grip to see Yollana's grim expression. To see her lips moving over words that were so quiet even her natural talent could not catch them. Not without effort.

She made the effort. Grace served her well; she was limber, she was able to balance the weight of the older woman and the responsibility of safe passage over terrain she could no longer clearly see.

The rain that had started suddenly had gone from heavy drops to torrent in the minutes it took the encampment to struggle from sleep into panic. The tent that had housed the Matriarch of Havalla had been swept away; it was not easy to anchor it in ground as dry as the tunnel had been.

It was not easy to find footing. Not easy to find a way out of the tunnel itself; the water swept fingers away from what had once been a challenging incline. They had pikes for climbing; the water that poured down from everywhere above them made climbing impossible.

The Serra Teresa found a place to stand and turned her full attention to the Havallan Matriarch.

"Tell Margret to flee." Yollana commanded.

"I will not tell you how to do it. I will allow no others to ask how it was done. I ask no questions. I have never asked questions. I have trusted you as I trust only Havallans from the moment we first met. Do as I ask. Tell her. She has her responsibility."

She waited for less than the space of an uneven breath.

"Yollana," she said, "if I do not survive, and you do, keep my daughter safe."

"I promise nothing, Teresa. Not now. The Lord of Night has come, and I am already bound by promises older than either of us."

"Promise, then, that you will do all you can do short of breaking those oaths. Your word, Yollana."

"For what it's worth?"

"I value it."

"Then you've grown addled with age. You've blunted your edge, girl."

"A club is blunt, Matriarch, but your people still use them when swords are too dear."

The water had risen, Teresa thought. How much, it was hard to say; the water flowed swiftly through the tunnel creating peaks and vortexes that made measurement difficult. She waited.

"Done, Serra. Done. But tell Margret. Tell her—she's a fool, that girl. She'll ride the storm."

The Serra hesitated a moment longer, and then she nodded. But it was not Margret she bespoke, not directly; she had blunted her edge, as Yollana said, but she had not lost it entirely, and she was unwilling to expose the secret of decades to a woman who could neither control tongue nor temper.

The water came.

Jewel watched as the ground, hard and cracked, refused to absorb it. Avandar caught her roughly by the chin—as if he realized that he had to make the source of the threat as clear as possible—and turned her face up, toward the top of the tunnel walls, the edges of the vast, exposed plain from which they had taken refuge.

She saw a waterfall that stretched as far as the eyes could see. Given the night and her vision, that was thankfully not that great a distance.

Water
poured
into the tunnel. Jewel was pretty good with numbers. At the rate the water was rising… she could suddenly understand why the Voyani were terrified, and it didn't have much to do with freezing to death.

The rain didn't look like it was going to stop any time soon.

It may
, Avandar said, in that uncomfortable, intrusive inner voice.

She looked up, squinting in pain as the unnatural rain hit her face, sliding into her eyes and her mouth.

"Avandar!"

No answer. She cursed him then, cursed roundly.

Avandar.

Jewel.

We need to get out of here. How do we get up through that?

She didn't like the quality of his silence. Even here, it was oppressive.
Avandar
?

There… is no certain way. It would be best if the storm was called away.

And we talk to the storm how
? she snapped back. But the words, which would have been sharp and sarcastic when spoken out loud, carried far more of the fear she felt than she wanted to show; she felt silent.