Michelle West - The Sun Sword 03 - The Shining Court (112 page)

Alesso
, Cortano thought, but he said nothing. They were ushered, in haste, to the tower's doors, and from there, they traveled by grace of the Lord's power to the courtyard below. There, roaring and snapping in a fury, were the Great Beasts. Cortano had been called to audience with the Lord before. He had found the conceit of a tower without stairs to be amusing, a way of weeding out the weak from the strong.

Not so the beasts at the tower's foot.

They lunged and snapped, and even when the Lord roared and they reared back and exposed their throats, they still growled. Something, Cortano thought, would die in those jaws this eve.

And perhaps that might be the kinder, the quicker, death. The Festival Moon had not yet reached its height.

The Lord chose to ride astride one of the beasts; the second… the second he gave to the mages. Neither they, nor their mount, were happy with the arrangement; the beast because no one likes to be reined in by food, and the mages because it was hard to navigate the spikes of the beast's back in order to sit, let alone hold on when it began its sinuous padding movement through the city streets.

And how like city streets they were, and how unlike. Cortano had spent his youth on Festivals. He had even spent his money on the trinkets one offers to women behind delicate masks, although he had only been fool enough to do it once.

The streets then had been as crowded as they were now. He had never appreciated the diversity of the Tor, although the memories were sharp and distinct as he laid them against the demons and the imps that watched the Lord's procession.

They watched with a mixture of adulation and fear, and they did not look away; indeed the least of their kind pressed their bodies against cold, cold stone and whimpered in the language of the kin.

It was almost repulsive. He wondered how a god could actually find the obeisances and dim obedience of such creatures gratifying.

Or necessary.

He wondered if, on the morrow, he would be like, one of those creatures. It was not a pleasant thought.

Alesso. Where is Anya?

22nd of Scaral, 427 AA

Tor Leonne

Anya was still missing.

The continent was not distance enough to separate the kinlord from his Lord's rage. Mountains, he thought, would fall before this night's end if Anya were not in place.

He had used every spell that he had ever designed to trace her; every call that he had ever developed to compel her; he had sent his lieutenants to in full
Kialli
form to tempt her out of hiding.

There had been no response.

Lord Ishavriel dispensed with pretense.

After tonight, it would no longer be needed.

But if Anya was not delivered to the Lord before the end of Scarran, all of his careful planning meant nothing. And Scarran was coming; he could taste the change in the air, could feel the old earth waken at the touch of his foot.

He looked into the open sky; called wind. Wind came. It scoured him of the facade of mortality, and he let that facade be taken in exchange for the elemental power.

Take this name
, he whispered.
Take this name and carry my power with it
.

And the wind lifted him, sundering his momentary ties with the earth that was waking as the old world began to eclipse the mortal one.

He gestured and all mortal seeming vanished as his sword came to hand. The people in the streets of the dismal, pathetic city that was becoming less significant as the minutes passed screamed when the sword brought fire.

The wind begged him for a plaything, and he let it take a mortal or two, choosing from among the many who did
not
wear the masks of his devising. They screamed, and their cries were carried in eddies and currents of wind, along with their bodies.

It cost him; the wind did not yet have that power on its own. But in return, it gave him what he desired.

"Anya!"

She froze as if she'd been slapped.

The sound of her name ran up and down her spine as if the vertebrae were strings and a child was playing with them. She cried out in shock and pain, and she almost dropped the child—but Isladar was there to catch her. They had been taking turns carrying the sleeping girl, and it was hers.

She was
very
angry.

"Anya," Lord Isladar said, in his calm, calm voice. "I have the child. She was not hurt."

But Anya
was
hurt. And she didn't
like
it.

"
Stop it
!" she shouted.

Lord Isladar said softly, "Anya, you will frighten the child."

She tried to stop being so angry—it wasn't good, she
knew
that—but he shouted her name again, and it
hurt
.

So she lashed out with the thing she knew best. Fire carved an arch of light in the deep night sky.

Ishavriel cried out as the fire struck him. It dripped from his armor in rivulets and vanished—but the effort was costly. Had anyone—
anyone
—other than Anya cast that spell, he would have hunted them down and killed them; as it was, he was almost past caring about her survival. Almost.

But the glory of the Lord depended upon it.

Lord Ishavriel had spent mortal years planning for this evening. He had subjected not only himself but the fist of the Lord to the humiliation of treating the Southerners—the descendants of the traitors—as near equals. He had enduring the insanity of the most powerful mage on the planet, pandering to her foolish whims, her idiocy. She had put a throne at the pinnacle of the gateway! It was almost inconceivable that something so powerful and so theoretically valuable could cause so much damage on a whim.

Ishavriel was immortal, but the last several decades had been very, very long. He was used to a long game. He was also used to
winning
them. Had he lost any game of power, he would not be kinlord or general.

The darkness was almost completely; the eclipse was almost done. He could hear—at a great distance—the thunder of delicate hooves.

He was about to win the game…

If Anya returned to the Shining City in time.

The old ways were
strong
now. The Moon was almost at its height. It was time for so many things.

Time.

He let the wind carry him in the direction the flames had come from.

"Teresa," Jewel said quietly to the woman who was now dressed as a woman and whose face was covered by a silvered, simple mask. "Do you know what we're doing?"

"We are standing in line," the Serra answered lightly, "in order to catch a once-in-a-lifetime glimpse of the Lady's Lake."

"And those gates are the gates that take us into the Tyr's home?"

"Into the Tor Leonne upon the plateau, yes. Beyond those gates— it is said—there is a road that leads to the heart of the Empire. Small roads branch from it to either side, but the path itself is true. The lake is there, and beyond the Lake, the Tyr's palace rises. We will see it," she said quietly. "Although I am not certain we will see it soon."

"We're moving." Jewel shrugged. "We've moving slower than a baby who hasn't quite figured out crawling yet, but we're moving. Gods, I hate these masks. My face is sweating like—"

"Jewel."

"I mean, what a lovely custom." She did actually blush, which meant the masks were good for something after all.

"I am not offended, Avandar," the Serra said, and her voice made it sound like it was true. "It is Festival Night, after all, and we speak with our hearts on Festival Night."

"Jewel always speaks with her heart. It would be encouraging if she attempted to speak with more of her intellect."

"Avan-dar."

"Yes?"

"Can I have a word with you?"

"If by word you mean what you usually mean, you may have several."

"Teresa," Jewel said, as plaintively as she could, "can I ask you how you managed to find Ramdan?"

She actually did laugh at that, and her laugh was so surprisingly sweet Jewel immediately wanted to say something that would make her laugh again.

But the laugh must have startled the Serra, for she fell silent immediately and did not speak again until they had passed the gates.

"Diora."

The Serra Diora, dressed in a simple sari, knelt before a mask. It was a simple mask; it had a bird's face. As a child, she had thought it was an eagle's, but it was softer than the harsh-beaked hunter; not so wide-eyed as the owl. There were feathers in abundance across the face, some gold along the edges, and upon the beak itself. It was almost gaudy; it was certainly not the mask she would choose for herself now.

And yet, it was here, buried beneath layers of clothing, kept safe from Festival to Festival, from home to home. Aie, it had even survived the death of her wives. She should have known, then. She touched it hesitantly, her fingers brushing bent feathers.

Remembering, as if the sharp, brittle quills of such dress feathers were keys that had opened a locked door, the Festival of her fourth year, when she had been carried upon her father's shoulders through the streets of the Tor. More clearly than she remembered events of a month ago, she remembered the flash of the blades in darkness where he had paused to show her the dancers; she remembered the food he had bought for her, a light pastry with a very sweet syrup in the center, made by Northerners who had come to visit the Tor. War was very far away from her then.

She remembered that her father did not come home the next day. That all of her mothers were worried about him; that none of them would tell her what they were worried about. But she could hear it in their voices: they thought that her father was going to die.

She had tried to talk to Ona Teresa, and Ona Teresa had forbidden it; she had said it was dangerous to her father. And so she had spent a night in fear, until at last she had crept out of the harem room where the children slept. She remembered the walk between their room and his, because Alana would be angry that she was not asleep, and she didn't want Alana to be angry.

No one caught her. No one. She curled up in her father's rooms, determined to wait until he returned to them. That night had been at least as dark as this one. She had prayed and prayed and prayed to the Lady—but it was no longer Festival, and she knew that the time when the Lady would listen
best
had passed.

She had no candle for light. She walked in the dark, her hands touching familiar walls and screens with a sudden understanding that all familiar things seen in shadow were mysterious and frightening. And yet… she had not wondered then what she herself was like, seen in shadow.

She had found her father's room. And sleep had found her there.

But so had her father. Her clearest memory of that evening was her father's hands, red and raw and bleeding, his face, scratched, beard singed, his robes torn. It should have horrified her. She should have been frightened. But he was
alive
. He was alive; the Lady had given her all that she had asked for.

Such an easy thing to ask for. Her father's life.

"Na'dio?"

"I am… here, Ona Teresa. I am almost ready to leave."

"Time your flight carefully. We are not yet at the Lake."

There was a pause, and then the Serra Teresa added,
"Kallandras does not answer me."

He heard the wind's howl; his hand sparked and flashed with its voice. A moment, no more, he ached to walk the same path that the kinlord walked; but higher, faster. He missed the wind's voice, and when it came to him, when it spoke all of his names as if those names belonged to the wind alone, he heard nothing but its song, desired nothing but its music.

But he had been tested by greater desires, and he had survived far greater losses than simple denial. He sang his regret, and the wind churlishly shredded the words into syllables and single notes.

But it did not, in its caprice, choose to betray him to the Lord who now gave it freedom to play.

Freedom to play?

Kallandras frowned.

"He will be here, if he is needed. I am… almost ready. I will meet you by the gate, unless I am detained."

Diora lifted the mask to her face and after a long pause, spent staring at the flat curves of the interior of that birdlike face, she settled it upon her cheeks and tied the ribbon around her hair with shaking hands. She pinned it, wrapping it in her hair so that it could be lifted but not easily dislodged.

There was a small mirror in this room, for this was the room in which she was to prepare for the wedding on the morrow. She paused a moment to look at her face in the mask a child had chosen.

And then, because she was no longer a child, she looked away. She would have set the mask aside, but it was the only one she had; the only one she could be certain was not in some way ensorcelled.

And it had stayed with her, year after year, for so long, she felt that it was meant to serve this final purpose.

She had chosen her clothing well; it was serafs clothing—but of a fine cut and a fine cloth. The role of seraf was a part that she could play with ease, for in the end, upon the plateau, there was very little difference between the wife of Tyr and the seraf of one until she bore a child. And if that child was a girl, her status changed little.

But the freeborn mother of a
son
had power; no son who was to inherit title and clan could be tainted by the shadow of slavery.

And she would not think about sons. Not now. Not here, so close to the grave of the only son that she had ever had. All of her ghosts were restless tonight.

Festival Night.

Freedom.

She gathered a blanket—the only other possession she would take with her—and began her final journey.

The Tor was alive with people, more crowded than she had ever seen it. Here and there, the wildness of the evening had given way to more personal meetings than she desired to witness. She wondered how the grounds would look on the morrow; if the delicate dwarf trees to the east of her father's residence would be trampled under the heels of the masked strangers who now strode like giants across the landscape. Robbed of daylight and Lord's judgment, they, too, were free.