Michelle West - The Sun Sword 03 - The Shining Court (75 page)

She heard a cackle in the silence; her Oma's voice, and at its least pleasant.
It'll be missed, all right
, she said,
but I imagine he's not stupid enough to think otherwise. You're as safe as you can be, on this road, right where you are. Even if he wanted you, he wouldn't dare to take you
—
not without her permission
.

And she
is
most definitely on the road
.

And I'll be safe from her?

Her Oma didn't offer an answer, which was answer enough.

"This is my dream," she said quietly.

"Pardon?" Avandar asked.

"My dream," she repeated the words. "The dream I—I left The Terafin for."

"No," he said quietly, "it is not."

"Look—"

"Jewel. They hear almost every word you speak."

"And I should care?"

She felt, rather than saw, his momentary smile in the easing of his grip. She also subsided.

The mounted man—no, not that, but something very like— lifted a hand and the small host ceased as if it had been moving in time to his movement, as if it were dependent on him. Perhaps it was.

He lifted the visor of the helm she would have said was decorative it was so fine and thin. The smile on his face dimmed in that instant, but it lingered in memory: the expression of a predator, who, catlike, plays with its food. She did not like the look of his fine, fine features any better on closer inspection.

It irritated her that the breaking of the smile had had nothing to do with her; she had seen the gray gaze flicker up over Avandar's face and freeze a second before falling.

The silence that engulfed them was no longer underscored by the voice of the horns. She suspected it was magical in nature.

Very good, Na 'jay. Very good.

"You are strangers on this road," the stranger said. "And ignorant of our ways, no doubt."

"Indeed," Avandar replied, before Jewel could.

"Therefore I will ask you to give way on the road; we ride to meet our Lord, and She is neither patient nor forgiving of the intrusion of strangers into lands She has claimed."

"Indeed," Avandar said again, his voice even softer.

The man's mount took a step back, and then another, before he brought it to bear. She wondered what Avandar's expression looked like at that moment, because the creature was definitely frightened.

Which was good, because Jewel
knew
, as she watched him, that there was no way for her to leave this road in safety. She said, as quietly as she could, "Avandar."

His fingers brushed the curve of her collarbone in warning. She did not shake his hand off—hated that she couldn't.

"Avandar?"

"Jewel."

"We can't."

"We can't?"

"We can't leave this road. If they're to pass, they can go left or right; they can dig a damn tunnel through the rock or build a stinking bridge. But
we
can't surrender the road."

His silence lasted only a moment longer than it usually did, but that was enough. Acknowledgment. "You are," he said, and she was certain that
his
voice didn't carry, "such a rarity, Jewel. Had I found you at the height of my power, and not this nadir, had I found you at the peak of this world's glory—

"You are correct. Which will require a change of tactics. Come, stand by my side. You will see the circle I draw upon the ground; no matter what is said or done,
do not
cross it. Do you understand?"

"Perfectly."

"You've never been particularly good at following the orders of others," he continued, as if she hadn't spoken, "not even when your life depended on it. Pretend, for a moment, that it is not
your
life that depends on it, but
theirs
. And obey."

She took a step back and to the side, swallowing more than just words. "What are you going to do?"

"With your permission."

"As if you need my permission?"

He said softly, "I do."

"But I—"

He stared down the road at the waiting riders. She had never seen that expression on his face before, although Avandar's face didn't exactly define the word expressive. He seemed on the verge of words, but when he finally spoke them, she had to strain to hear them, they were so low.

"Arann, Carver, Teller—especially Teller—or any of the rest of your den with the possible exception of Kiriel—could act without your permission on
this
road. I believe The Terafin could. I… cannot."

"I don't understand."

"Perhaps not consciously. And I would lie to you and tell you that our time grows short, but you have always been a difficult person to lie to."

"Except by omission."

His brows lifted in surprise, fell in amusement. "Except," he said, nodding quietly, "by omission. Your permission?"

"Yes."

He turned. Lifted his arms as if to strike the air, and at that, in a way that would kill. It wasn't his way to warn her, but the gesture itself was warning. She flinched, but did not jump, when blue-and-orange light burst up from the ground in a coruscating, visually abrasive wall.

She started when the light grew bright enough—in literally an eye blink, bad timing on her part—to momentarily blind as it traveled up, and up again, toward the stars that Avandar said were not there.

But she
did
cry out when that power bent back toward the earth like a whip's lash, crackling and branching out as if it were a living tree, but one formed in the heavens of lightning, and not for the benefit of the ground below.

The man on the stag's back was engulfed by it; she heard screaming, a terrible, terrible wailing that grew louder as the seconds passed and her vision returned to her. But she didn't realize that she'd jammed her hands up against her ears until Avandar touched one of them.

"Make it STOP!" she shouted at him.

His face was as warm as stone. She understood from this that he expected her to be strong, where strong was defined as either not caring that someone, anyone, could be in
that
much pain, or in Jewel's case—because he wasn't stupid enough to expect a miracle—at least not showing it.

But it was just
so
bad.

Na'jay
, her Oma said, voice as gentle as Avandar's expression.
Don't
.

Don't tell me what to do
, Jewel snapped back.
He needs my permission, and I
don't
give it. Not for this
.

She turned to him. Caught his very fine robe; clenched the arm beneath, and shouted words to that effect in his ear, or as close to his ear as she could get when he made no move to meet her halfway. Gods, she hated tall people.

He's wrong about you, you know
, her Oma said, subsiding into irritability.
You would never have survived in his time; you would have been devoured whole by his enemies
.

Fine. We're
not
living in
his
time, thank Kalliaris. We're living in
mine.
And I'll damn well define part of it
.

She felt the words leave her lips; she couldn't
hear
them.

Avandar caught her by the arm—one arm, the way one would catch a careless thief and
not
a member of the House Council— and shook her slightly. It had the effect of forcing at least one of her hands from her ears. And when she did: silence.

Sudden silence. In it, all eyes—his, and the mounted riders ahead—were turned to her. The road was blackened and scarred by the magic Avandar had wielded; there was a pit about a foot deep that ran the road's breadth, and seemed edged—slightly— in an angry red glow.

In that pit's center stood the leader of the strange host: His armor was blackened, and his skin somewhat darker for its exposure to Avandar's power, but he was otherwise untouched. He was staring at Jewel.

From the ground.

The mount on which he'd ridden was nowhere to be seen.

I'll be damned
, her Oma said quietly.

Isn't that already decided one way or the other?

The old woman's laughter was a warmth and a comfort. She tried to hold on to it. But it was a pale echo in the silence.

Only two faces were exposed: Their leader's and her domicis'; both were inscrutable.

She hated that. Hated the silence, and did what she usually did when silence made her uncomfortable: she broke it. "Well," she said, squaring her shoulders as Avandar released her arm. "Uh, we'd like to get past, if you don't mind."

The silence got worse.

This time, she decided to be prudent; she bit her tongue and squirmed, but quietly, quietly.
Gods, what was I thinking
?

You weren't thinking
, her Oma replied, but without the sting such words should have had.
That's the point of the path you've taken, Na 'Jay
.

Well, I'm going to start now, if no one minds.

Voice dry as autumn leaves, her Oma said,
I don't believe that

the Warlord would mind, and I certainly would be pleased to have raised no fool.

The stranger said, "Viandaran. Warlord. Tell her what she has done."

"Lord Celleriant," he replied, inclining his head as he cast off the polite fiction of being unknown, "I am disinclined to take your orders."

Silence. The man stepped from the pit in the road's heart.

"Avandar?"

"ATerafin?"

Wonderful. "What happened to his mount?"

"A very good question," he replied. "And I believe that Lord Celleriant is about to demand an answer to it."

"Which means," Jewel said, in a voice that was becoming quieter and flatter as she spoke, "That you don't have any idea either."

"None whatsoever." The two words were polite and conversational, neither of which Avandar generally was. She flinched; she couldn't help it. "And before you ask," he continued, again in that pleasant tone of voice, "no, I did not attack his
mount;
my spell was aimed directly at Celleriant. But you will come to understand—if you are unlucky—"

Which means it's certain
, Jewel thought.

"—that the mount and its rider are bound in a particularly unpleasant fashion, especially for the mount."

"It was the mount that was screaming."

"It was, indeed, the mount."

"But—but I heard
it
. It
wasn't
a deer's voice—if deer even
have
voices."

"No."

"But it—"

"Yes. I'm surprised that you didn't see it."

"See what? What do you see?"

"I? I see what you see. But I do not have your gift. This close to High Winter, my dear, you could hear the truth. But on Scarran, you will see what these mounts actually are, if you are ever foolish enough to be in the path of the Hunt during the Dark Conjunction."

"Or perhaps," another voice said, "she will become more intimately acquainted with the truth than that, and sooner."

The voice was a woman's voice.

If blood were water, Jewel's would have frozen. She turned, slowly, to that part of the road that she had left behind, and there, at her back—and at Avandar's—was the most beautiful person she had ever seen in her life.

And, inexplicably, the most terrifying.