Michelle West - Sun Sword 04 - Sea of Sorrows (92 page)

She saw the haze of the Lord's glare all around her; she did not look back. Whatever was behind her would be upon her soon enough, and she would see it then, in all its dark glory.

She ran.

But she could not run fast enough.

* * *

Margret was on
fire
. The flames that she had contained were contained no longer; they burned. Yollana had been wrong; even if Margret had the blood, she was not welcome in Arkosa without the Heart. She screamed, but the scream was not wordless; as her flesh burned, as her hair curled and died with a sharp, clear crackle, she heard the word she cried out—and the pain was too great for her to be ashamed.

She was her father's daughter, after all.

And she had loved her mother greatly.

She thought she lifted her hands; she could not feel her arms. She felt fire, and the pain that fire caused was indescribable.

She cried out again, but the cry was weaker.

And this time, it was answered.

A cool hand touched hers, and where the hand touched, the fire vanished. She could not feel her own hands, but she knew she had gripped whatever it was that drove the pain away; gripped it tightly.

Heard its intake of breath.

Margret.

Margret.

Margret.

The words drove the pain away. She reached out, as she had not reached out in years, and clung, arms encircling robes, clutching at whatever it was that lay beneath them.

She found her voice as the fires receded. She wept with relief, buried her head in the rough fabric of Voyani robes.

A hand touched her face, brushed the tears away, stroked her head. She felt fingers against flesh.

"Margret."

She recognized the voice. But even recognizing it, she could not stop the tears, could not still the shaking. She had been raised to despise weakness in the face of pain. Tears were something shed in anger, in sorrow; but never in fear.

She did not know why, but the Serra Diora di'Marano held her anyway, spoke her name, over and over again, in a voice heavy with unshed song. The Serra, raised by the clans that despised any tears.

It was dark.

"My eyes—"

"Margret."

"I can't see!"

"Shhhh, Margret. Your eyes are closed. They're closed. You can open them now."

"I can't—"

"You can."

"The fire—"

"Is gone. Margret. The fire is gone. You—you've left it behind." She was pulled gently forward; she had no desire to resist. The Serra's voice was so blessedly cool.

She sat in the darkness, leaning against the shoulder of the Dominion's most beautiful woman. She could not see her, but sight did not diminish beauty; she understood that now. Humbled, terrified, the Matriarch of Arkosa swallowed air and tears and waited.

Fingers touched the lids of her eyes very, very gently. "Can you feel this?"

"Yes."

"Good. Margret, open your eyes. Just a little, but try. If you are truly blind, we must know."

She did not want to open her eyes. Said as much.

"What are you afraid of seeing?" The Serra's voice was so peaceful, so quiet, so unlike the boisterous roughness of every other voice she had grown up hearing.

"I—I don't know."

"I promise you are not blind."

"I don't belong here. Arkosa
knows
."

"If Arkosa knew, you would not be here. I would be here, alone. And… I do not think that I would be welcome at all."

Margret's laugh was shaky. Weak. But it was there. "You would be welcome anywhere. Every one of the Arkosans fell in love with you the day you arrived at our camp. Every one of them listened to you. They knew—they knew what I would say, so they never spoke about it—and for an Arkosan, that's hard. But they're so bad at lying. They wanted to hear you talk. They wanted to hear you sing. They wanted to protect you."

"Maybe," the Serra said. "But they wanted to
follow
you. Where I come from, that is infinitely more valuable."

"Is it?" Darkness. Behind her lids. "You never tried giving them orders. You don't know what they would have done if you had. Even my mother must have trusted you, and she trusted no one."

"No," Diora said, more quickly, the softness peeling away from the words as if it was veneer. "She trusted
us
. She died for us."

Margret opened her eyes.

The first thing she saw—the first she wanted to see—was the Serra Diora's face. It was lit from above by a diffuse, golden light that seemed to have no source. Too gentle to be sunlight, too warm to be moonlight, it caught the sheen of her exposed hair as if it were a pliable crown. Her eyes were dark; her lips parted; her chin slightly lowered. Her skin was smooth as Northern glass, but warmer, softer, finer.

"Did you not feel the fire?" she whispered.

"No. But before you say anything else, remember: I did not drink the blood Yollana gathered. That was for you, and only you."

"What does that have to do with anything?"

Her hand was still in Margret's hand. It tightened, and Margret rose unsteadily to her feet. "Look, Margret."

She pushed Margret's shoulders gently but firmly, and Margret had to choose between resisting, or allowing herself to be turned in the opposite direction. She did not resist.

Standing close enough to touch was a living shell of fire; it was blue and white, and for a moment she thought it was a being made of flame.

But she recognized some of the features beneath the flickering tongues. She had seen them before, many times, in the silvered glass her mother valued.

They were, of course, her own.

"I—I don't understand." She looked to Diora, and the Serra smiled.

"If you don't understand, and you are the Matriarch, no one will."

They were silent a moment, watching the fire. But the fire did not move. After a moment, the memory of pain dim enough that she could pretend to ignore it, she said, "does the Heart speak?"

The Serra shook her head.

But she reached to the nape of her neck, gathered the chain that rested against her skin, and pulled it up. It shed the protection of her robes as it came, and she laid it against her breast. "I'm sorry," she said, "but I have tried, and I cannot remove it."

"Then we're not—we're not wherever we have to be."

"I don't think so."

"Can we leave this place?"

"There are doors."

"Good." Margret took a step forward. Stopped. Looked down at the hand that still grasped the Serra's. She could see that her knuckles were white, hers and the Serra's. With a grimace, she forced her fingers to relax. She started to apologize. Stopped when she saw the expression on the Serra's face.

"Thank you," she said instead.

The room was not large. It was circular, and the shell of fire that burned as if waiting stood in its center. Light lay across the ceiling—and it was a ceiling, although it was hard to judge its height—like paint, a layer of perfectly even illumination. If there were markings in it, she could not see them. But she assumed that the ceiling was made of stone, for the walls were, and both were smooth.

Across the floor lay the circle of Arkosa writ large; it was red, the russet color of dried blood. She saw the Serra bend at the knee, and warned, before she could think, "Don't touch it."

The Serra froze. Margret's voice was harsh, but not with anger.

"The doors?" she asked, for she could not discern any break in the curved wall.

The Serra frowned. She lifted the Heart of Arkosa and moved steadily toward the wall, taking care not to disturb the circle—either of the circles—inscribed upon the surface of stone.

The Heart of Arkosa seemed to absorb the light of the ceiling; as the Serra moved, the concentration of light that had appeared so even gathered above her.

"It is here," Diora said quietly. She cupped the large crystal in her palms, and traced the rounded arch of a door; she had to stop because she could not reach the height of its peak, but the shape was clear. The light the crystal shed did not burn the eye; did not leave the marks across vision that the sun's light did—but having followed its movement, Margret remembered its path.

"Can you open it?" she asked, no bitterness in the words.

"No. It's—It has no handle."

"You know what?" Margret came to stand at Diora's side; their robes touched as she placed herself in the center of a door she could not see.

"What?"

"I think I hate magery."

Diora laughed.

Stopped immediately, as if laughter in this place was a profound breach of protocol.

"You might as well laugh," Margret said, frowning. "It can't be any worse than screaming or crying, and I've already laid claim to those noises. Am I at the center of the door?"

"Yes."

"Good." She closed her eyes. Placed both palms against the surface of stone. Pushed.

She had expected something to give beneath the force of her weight; nothing happened. She cursed. Pushed harder.

"Margret."

"What?" .

"May I?"

"Why not?" She lifted her right hand; Diora placed her left there. Together, they tried again.

Nothing gave way. They pushed; pushed again. Margret offered a good curse or two.
If I have to shed more of my blood
, she thought grimly,
I'm going to resent it
.

"I don't think this is going to work," she said at last; she didn't bother to keep the frustration out of the words. "But I'll be burned if I—" And then she looked up, as if something had gathered her hair and given it a sharp, hard tug.

The door had not moved, but it had certainly changed.

She could see through it.

"Diora?"

Diora nodded.

"I'm an idiot. Place the Heart against the door. Between our hands."

Diora lifted the Heart in her right hand, crossed her wrists, and placed it against the surface of what now appeared to be glass.

The glass began to shimmer.

Margret smiled. She took a step forward; felt heat and light and shadow. She turned and reached back through the door.

But her hand touched stone, although she could not see it. "It's safe," she said softly.

The Serra followed. When she had come through the door it became, again, part of a wall. A dead end in a long hall.

The sky was so blue, the sand so white, the wind as strong as she had felt it since the night of the storm.

She ran slower now, stumbling. Sweat fell down her forehead and into her eyes.

She knew that he let her run. She knew that it amused him; that he was a hunter, she his prey; that he had the time and the power to end the chase whenever he desired an end.

But even knowing it, she could not stop. If the only thing that bought her a moment's grace was his pleasure, she was willing to give it to him. The alternative…

No. She found strength. She ran.

They walked slowly down the hall, dwarfed by the height of its ceilings, two women in the robes of wanderers. One was fair, and one darkened by years upon the open road; one was tall, the other tiny; one moved with deliberate, heavy steps, and the other could be heard by the shuffling of fabric.

But they walked in step.

Along the halls, carved into the face of the stone, were runes that Margret recognized; she had been taught their shapes by her mother, and if she had never written them so perfectly, so precisely, she knew them anyway. The language of the dead. The ancient vows of her ancestors.

There was no dust on this floor. No sign of the mice or the insects that scrabbled from building to building across the stretch of the Dominion's driest lands. She stopped once or twice to inspect the stone itself; to touch the curves and the peaks of letters that she could not read, as if to absorb their meaning by the intimacy of contact.

But the Serra Diora touched nothing; she stopped when Margret stopped and resumed her walk when Margret had finished.

Had she been 'Lena, she would have cluttered the silence with an endless stream of questions.
Elena
.

She paused for a moment, pressed her forehead into the cool surface of stone. It did not give. This is what she had to be; this stone, that bore the language of the dead, the weight of history.

"Margret," the Serra said.

Margret rose. "I'm sorry. I—"

"The Heart is speaking."

"Can you repeat what it's saying?"

Diora was pale and still. Her eyes were wide, unblinking, but she was not in trance. It took Margret a moment to understand the expression: fear.

The Serra Diora was afraid.

Two weeks ago, Margret would have been gleeful. Two weeks and a lifetime. "Diora?"

"I do not need to repeat it," she replied, in a voice shorn of strength. "I can understand exactly what it's saying."

She thought she had run from the shadow. She had certainly fled its grasp, felt it nip at her heels as if it were a feral dog.

The sky was so clear. If the air weren't so hot, she might be able to see the Arkosan ships; might be able to see Stavos, Caitla, her mother. She had always had good eyes.

The dagger was heavy in her hands, and slick with sweat, in spite of the leather strap she'd wrapped around its hilt when her uncle had first gifted her with it. She clutched it tightly as she staggered.

She could not breathe without pain. Her lips were cracked and bleeding; she had not dared to stop to drink although she needed the water.

Her knee hit the sand as she slid.

Cursing wildly, she struggled to her feet.

The shadow was there.

"Very good," it said softly.

With a ragged cry, she swung the dagger.

The blade shattered in midair. Shards of steel flew across the sleeve of her robes; she felt a sharp pain as they pierced cloth and skin.

"I was never known for my patience," the creature said calmly. "But I forgive your boldness. If you had drawn a real weapon, I would be forced to kill you."

The shimmering heat of desert air resolved itself into a shape. Elena cursed herself silently; the dagger was gone.

It had never been a weapon, not in this fight. She should have understood that.