The Riven Shield: The Sun Sword #5 (93 page)

He stepped past her; came face-to-face with Ramdan.

The seraf was not cerdan. Not Toran, not Tyran. He bore no sword, for serafs were granted no weapons in the Lord’s Dominion. Still, as he could, he stood watch.

Kallandras offered him a shallow bow. More than this, and he would pass from genuine respect to hollow mockery. Ramdan seemed impervious to all compliment. As the Serra Diora before him, his gaze passed to, and lingered upon, Lord Celleriant.

And as she had done, he said nothing. Old habits were his by nature, and not by the dint of effort. He stepped aside, and the bard knelt.

And closed his eyes.

A healer was summoned
, Diora said. Her voice was flat, uninflected in even this intimate a form of communication. It surprised him, and little did. Her power, he thought, was greater than even he had guessed, so many years ago.

The past held him. If he did not look upon her, he could see the child that she had been when he had first heard the clarity, the purity, of her singing.

A healer? Here
?

Here
.

He did not ask who; he knew she would offer him nothing. Needed to offer him nothing.

And the healer said
?

That he cannot help her, Kallandras
. Ah, a crack in the armor.

He nodded.

Is it true
?

You must judge, Serra Diora. You heard the words he spoke
.

Silence. Then,
Years ago, you made a man heal a woman against his will. She was dying. Could you not now call the winds? Could you not grant to Teresa what you granted Lissa en’Marano
?

All distance burned away in the heat of her words, as if it were the paper in the screens of the harem’s doors. He bent, and touched Serra Teresa’s forehead; it was slick with sweat. Her eyes were closed; he opened them with care, and saw that they were wide, unseeing. He knew, then, what she had done.

The demon
, he said quietly.

The Serra Diora nodded.

This is beyond the ability of a healer
, he told her quietly.

But
why
? She is not dead. She is not—yet—dying
—

It is not the body that is injured, Serra Diora. It is the gift. And the gift itself cannot be made whole
.

You know this
.

It is a truth often held by healers. If the fevers had destroyed her body, the healer might tend the injuries; it is done in
Averalaan Aramarelas
. But
 . . .

It would not heal the other damage done
.

No, Na’dio
. He paused, and then offered her the only kindness he could.
She knew what she did; not by accident did she arrive at this pass. She chose, Serra Diora
.

Celleriant came to kneel beside him; their knees were an inch apart. The Arianni lord touched the Serra Teresa’s face.

“She is important to you?” he asked quietly.

He needn’t have asked; he knew the answer.

But if they were brothers, they still answered the dictates of their nature. Kallandras nodded, exposing weakness with the grace of a man for whom weakness meant little.

“I do not have your gift, Kallandras,” Celleriant said. “I cannot cloak my words in silence; I cannot make the silence mine. Would you have me speak?”

He weighed his answer with care.

But before he could offer it, the Serra Diora did.

“I would have you speak,” she told him gravely. “And I will bear the responsibility for the words offered, if they return upon the wind.”

“Among my kin, there is only one who might be of aid, and . . . her aid is costly. Always.”

Diora’s gaze lingered upon his face, the lines of his cheekbones, the fine, slender point of his jaw; she glanced at the Northern white of his hair, at the silver-gray of his foreign eyes. She knew of whom he spoke. “No. She would accept no such aid, be burdened by no such debt.”

“She is wise.”

The Serra turned, but Kallandras reached out; fully extended, his arm brushed the rounded curve of her shoulders. She had drawn them in, as if to ward off a blow.

“He would not have spoken,” Kallandras told her, “if that was all he had to offer. Be patient, Serra Diora. Understand that he speaks as he can, and as he must; his language and ours are not, and will never be, the same, no matter how similar the words first appear to be.”

The Arianni lord raised a silver brow: But he nodded gravely. “In all things,” he said, “even this, there is a price. Be it small, be it paid in momentary pain, it must be asked.”

She did not understand this; he saw it, although her expression did not shift. Perhaps because it did not.

“Among my kin,” he continued, as if there had been no interruption, and no graceless explanation offered, “there is only one. But we are not healers. That was never our gift. And many are our gifts, Serra. We speak with the wind. We speak with the water. We move—when we can be heard—the very earth. Even fire will dance when those who have the power summon it.

“But the lesser arts, the mortal arts, are
not
ours.”

“And you know of them?”

“What is left us, in eternity, but study? Yes. Yes, we know of them.”

She did not ask him how. Nor did Kallandras. They waited, audience, and captive.

“Why?” she asked at last, daring much.

“It is part of our oldest histories,” he replied. “You are aware—perhaps?—that mortals have souls. You are not aware of what those souls are. They are some part of the divinity of the gods, captured fragments made flesh. In some mortals, those fragments have power. In the North, they know the names of these powers: bard-born,” he said first, gazing at the Serra and then to Kallandras. “Healer-born. Mage-born. Seer-born. Maker-born.” He paused, and then said quietly, “There were others. Perhaps there still are; the powers granted mortals were often subtle, and they eluded the naming. At the height of the Cities of Man, such power existed in mortals that might challenge the mastery of gods.

“And among the mortals, in the time of the Cities of Man, there were those who might heal the injury she has sustained.”

“A healer has come—”

“A human healer?”

She nodded.

“And he could not aid you.”

Nodded again.

“Understand that, as with all gifts, some are greater and some lesser. I did not say that all healers were capable of this task; only that some existed—in a world that the ghosts of the Cities remember—who might.” He brought his hands back to his sides. “But the fevers burn,” he said softly.

“She will survive the fevers.”

He raised a delicate brow. “You are not a seer,” he told her gravely.

“No. But I will not let her go; not that way.”

His smile was slender. Cold. Nothing about his face suggested kindness. “You are without mercy,” he said softly. “There are those who, blinded, lose all desire for life—and in her fashion, she has become one such. But . . . If you can carry her, and if the fever does not devour her, there may be one who can answer her need. He is not here,” he added softly, “but you have seen him; when you see him again—if ever—you will know.”

“Who?”

But the Arianni lord fell silent, and as the silence lengthened, it became clear that he would not speak again.

Kallandras wondered if she would attempt to force an answer from him; she was weak, spent—and desperate.

The bard lifted hand and voice both.
You carried the Sun Sword, Serra Diora. You carried the Heart of Arkosa. Believe you will carry the Serra Teresa for as long as she must be carried
.

He bowed.

It was easier, to carry the Sword
.

Yes. This is the price you pay, when you walk among the living and think of things other than death
.

She waited while Kallandras gained his feet; the Arianni lord joined him, moving with so little effort he might have been a seraf. In another world, another Court. She heard the ice in his voice; he did not trouble himself to hide it. He was cruel; there was nothing about his presence that suggested kindness.

But there was little about Kallandras that did either. She bowed to them both as Ramdan once again knelt by the Serra Teresa’s side.

“The kai Lamberto is waiting,” Kallandras said softly.

“I know.” She rose, taking the hand he offered. “Has he spoken with you?”

“Not a word.”

“Ah. You are . . . from the North.”

“Yes. And I see the truth of his disposition without the need of words; he will not be a willing ally, Serra Diora.”

“No. Nor will he ally himself with the Servants of the Lord of Night.”

Kallandras’ smile was slender. “Nor that.”

“Has he come for the Sword?”

“I do not know if he knows that you have it in your keeping.”

Her eyes skirted the distant figure of Jevri. “I think,” she said softly, “that he will know. He was never a fool.”

“He could not be, and rule in the South.”

She nodded. Gathered her silks about her slender shoulders, arranged the fall of her veil, hands calm and still with familiar motion.

The harem fell away; for a moment she saw walls, stone walls, smooth and bare of window or door. In such a room, she had bided her time, reinforcing the oldest and most important of learned skills: the gift of waiting.

But the time for waiting was done.

Mareo kai di’Lamberto was not a young man. Nor was he a man who sheltered beneath fan or bough; his face was lined and creased by exposure to sun, to wind; the plains boasted no desert, but she saw sand in his eyes as he turned toward her, his arms across the breadth of his chest.

She stopped ten feet from his shadow and knelt before him. Her knees were already dark with earth and dew; she would not trouble Ramdan to bring her those things that Serras of import were accustomed to.

His brow, streaked with the silver of age, rose slightly.

“Serra Diora.”

She nodded. Her hands held no fan; she offered no resistance to the appraisal of his gaze. He did not bid her rise; did not offer her the freedom of speech. He was the Lord’s man.

“Serra Diora . . . di’Marano?”

She let the silence serve as emphasis before she broke it with her delicate voice. “Serra Diora en’Leonne,” she replied. A challenge, a soft one.

“The kai Leonne—both of them—lie dead and buried upon the plateau. Will you lay claim to a marriage of the dead?”

“Not of the dead, Tor’agnate.”

“And does your father’s clan have no claim upon your name, no claim upon your person?”

“As is our custom, my father’s clan,” she replied, even now, dagger steel dancing between the delicate syllables, “ceded me in marriage to Ser Illara kai di’Leonne.”

“And your father had some hand in his destruction.”

She said nothing. He expected no reply.

Or perhaps he did; something about his expression was wrong, some thinning of lip, some narrowing of eye. She straightened her back, lowered her chin, placed her hands, palms down, upon the fold of lap. She was a Serra of the High Courts; he was a Tyr. She had been raised to sit in the presence of men such as he. Raised to understand their moods, to read them as clearly as if words were painted in ink across the lines and hollows of their faces.

She would anger him, she thought, but that anger must be one of her choosing, and the timing of its invocation, under her control.

But she did not know him now. It had been many years since she had been a child in the lee of Amar.

“You have nothing to say of his treachery?”

“I am a Serra, Tyr’agnate. You ask me to speak of the games of men, and I have little experience from which to speak wisely.”

“Indeed.” But he was not moved; not cajoled. “Jevri.”

Jevri el’Sol came to stand by his side. By it, and not within his shadow.

“Tell me what you know of the Serra Diora.”

The old man hesitated, although the hesitation was marked only by the Serra. She was practiced in the same art; could gather strength and thought in the same subtle way.

She listened now. Wondering as she did what Ona Teresa would hear, if she could sit thus.

“I made her two dresses,” Jevri el’Sol said quietly.

It was not what she expected to hear; it was not, she saw, from the lift of thick brow, what Mareo kai di’Lamberto expected either. But he did not turn to glance at Jevri, and because he did not, she could not.

“A dress,” the Tyr’agnate said, meeting her eyes, his own a brown so dark they might have been all of black, “is something that any woman might wear. It tells me little.”

“A dress, yes,” Jevri replied, and his words carried stung but measured pride. “But upon any other woman, such a dress would fit poorly.”