Michelle West - Sun Sword 04 - Sea of Sorrows (60 page)

She had to think about that.

The survival of the strong.

Mother.

There was no one in Margret's life who had been stronger than her mother. For all of her life—
all
of it— Evallen of Arkosa had denned strength for the Arkosan Voyani. They had lived by her whim, died by it, fought for it. They had trusted that her whim was more than self-indulgence, more than temper; that it was guided by the Lady's will.

So had Margret.

Oh, her hands, she hated that they shook. The brush was sticky with drying blood, she worked so slowly. But although she had seen these runes drawn for fifteen years, although she had traced their form in sand and earth under her mother's tutelage—and her mother's unfortunate temper—she had never truly understood what the painting of them would mean.

She cursed loudly. She reached for the lamps and drew them close, snarling at Adam when he dared to approach the wagon to offer his aid in steadying them. She had four symbols to lay down; she had completed only two.

The outer circle was the easiest. The inner circle was fairly simple, too, although the brush was not suited to a steady line. But what lay between the inner and outer circles—the words of the Lady, the words of Arkosa, the words of
home
and
homeland
that were never, ever uttered—these were hard.

They had been passed from mother to daughter. And the passage, in her writing, was complete. It was over. Evallen was truly gone.

Was grief always like this? Was she always to discover, with every task, this sensation of loss, this closing of doors? Was she to see, not her mother's presence in all of the things she had ruled so successfully in her life, but rather, the implacable fact of her absence?

It had been years since her mother had allowed her to be a child; childhood had been that space of years reserved for Adam's use, and Adam's alone. But the early years in which her mother's lap had still had space for her, and her mother's ear, sympathy, were inextricably linked to the meaning of comfort.

She had felt so safe in her mother's lap.

Now, shorn of safety the way foolish clansmen were shorn of their gold, she labored, the runes within the circle complete, the circle closing as they were finished.

She had never liked endings. She had never liked beginnings. She had desired the stability of the immutable, although she knew that not even the dead were unchanging.

The brush started at the midpoint of the circle and swept down in a bold, vertical line. There must be no hesitation in that stroke, nor in the three that followed.

She offered none, but she moved very slowly, feeling the resistance of the wood as it absorbed what she laid down: a trail of a stranger's blood. She drew the next line, a slender crescent that bisected the line at a quarter height, a shallow bowl. It was followed by a circle at the line's midpoint, and another, mirror stroke of that crescent, reversed, at the three-quarter mark.

The third symbol was complete.

She moved around the wagon until she reached the place she judged appropriate for the last of the four: the place in front of which she would stand during their journey— visible to all eyes, should any falter and require the strength of the presence of the Matriarch beneath the harsh spokes of the Lord's fiercest glare.

And they must see her. They must see this.

Without intent, she drew the last outer circle much larger than the previous three. She found it harder to keep the lines even as the size increased, and she struggled with the inner circle as penance for her choice in the outer.

But the runes and the symbols seemed at home in less confined space; they came quickly, easily, compared to the other three; their curves were much smoother, their points more pronounced. Her memory, as the night fell, had sharpened, until it was like a blade, and the forms were almost as she remembered seeing them under her mother's driven brush.

She did not have to think about spacing, about leaving enough room, or perhaps of leaving too much; they fit the space given by the two circumferences. The relief she had felt when the heat of the day had finally broken was gone; in the passage of thirty minutes, she found herself yearning for warmth. These were the contradictions of the desert, but they suited her life.

She did not want to finish. Hands shaking now, breath visible, she did not want to write the final word. For a moment, trapped beneath open sky, trapped by open road, she felt as if she was on the verge of understanding
something;
the words that were beneath her hands seemed familiar somehow. As if she only had to concentrate, and the familiar feel of this language on her tongue would return; she might speak and give the words a life she knew they had not had since the
Voyanne
had opened to swallow the children of Arkosa.

She
did
concentrate. Her lips were quivering now; she reached for the night clothing she had forgotten to don. She had not dressed for the desert because—until this act was complete—she could not afford to surrender to it.

But she surrendered now. Her lips moved over the words that were written—as all significant words were surely written in the history of Man—in blood. She lifted her hands, as if too exhort them to feel what she felt: kinship. She was aware, for the first time, that the words here had once been spoken; that they had had a meaning that was written in blood in an entirely different manner than it had been today. It had been a way of speaking of great things. Birth, love, revenge, betrayal, death, grief, loss. It had been not only the language of the coldly arcane, of the premeditated, of the murderous—it had been a language by which an entire people had lived.

Great people.

Proud people.

Arkosa.

There were no shadows in the words. Not even the protective shadows the Lady created in the fiercest of the Lord's glares. There was, she thought, as the words came to her tongue, fierce light—brilliant, warm, a passionate display of revealed color that blended and combined into the visual nuances of a life she seldom scrutinized. All this, contained by the shape of words; words had never seemed so strong, so profoundly personal, as now, when they came from someone she had never met, and never would.

But having never met them, she felt the continuity that came with ceremony, with tradition; she felt, as she spoke the words that she did not recognize and that she would never forget, her mother's presence, and her grandmother's presence, and beyond those shadows, the shadows of other women, standing as she stood, year in and year out, defining their lives by this act, this action, these words.

She wanted to sing them. She wanted to shout them.

She would never be certain if she had done either.

"Caitla, sleep."

The older woman snorted. Her lips moved over the syllables of something curt enough to border on a curse, but she didn't give voice to it; she had, as her husband did, a bear's voice, no matter how quietly she tried to speak, and cursing one's husband loudly on a night like this one invited the Lady's darkest attention.

"Caitla—"

She shuffled through a diminished set of words, and found a couple of curt, but perfectly serviceable ones. "You sleep."

He drew a deep breath. Loudly. Expelled it. "Caitla," he said wearily. "It's been two hours. If there was going to be a sign, we would have been informed by now. It's late. Sign or no, we'll know in the morning. If the Matriarch is alive, we'll continue." He called her Matriarch. Not Margret.

Not little 'Gret. They distanced themselves, all of them, from the child they had helped raise. From the girl they had promised to follow. Why?

Would it ease their loss, if indeed she was to be lost? No. Did anyone believe it would? Aie, that she couldn't be so certain of. People were stupid. "You sleep," she repeated, speaking slowly. "I'm going to wait for Margret."

"Caitla, this is foolish."

"So? You're not sleeping."

Stavos tilted his head to the side, and forced a smile into the corners of his eyes. "I don't sleep well without you."

She snorted again. "I don't care if you lie to me—but come up with something that shows you think I'm
smart
. Not even the children would believe that."

He was silent for a moment, and then he laughed.
That
would wake up anyone insensitive enough to be sleeping. He reached for his wife, and she chose not to move out of the way. It was cold, after all, and it wasn't going to get any warmer.

"They do fail," she said softly.

"I've never seen a failure."

"You weren't part of the Matriarch's caravan until I was foolish enough to marry you."

He laughed. In spite of herself, she felt the corner of her lips tugged upward by the sound. The sky was merciless and beautiful as it stared down on them.

"Evallen was the Matriarch."

"She wasn't always the Matriarch."

"She
was
the oldest daughter, Caitla."

"Aye, she was that. All right, all right. Maybe it's enough. But… her mother wasn't the oldest. Her mother was the middle girl, middle of three. We'd been winnowed by raiding, that year. Old story. There were rumors that the Heart of Arkosa had not yet found its way back to the bloodline."

"Why is it that women always cling to the worst possible piece of news?"

"Someone has to."

"Why?"

"Because in the end, if the worst possible happens, the body has to be moved. The ceremonies have to be performed. The Arkosans—those who work—have to be informed. And who will see to that, hmmm? The men? Ever?"

"The men are capable. But that's almost beside the point. Worrying won't change what has to be done. Whether or not you fret here, in the cold, or play under the blankets with your husband, the night will go as it goes, the morning come as it comes. You're old enough to be prepared for anything. You don't need this." He caught her face in his hands; both—face and hands—were lined and cracked by time and sun and wind.

She had never thought to miss the sun or the wind, but in the bitter chill of unusually still night, she did. "Stavos, don't you care at all?"

He nodded.

"Don't you worry?"

"You worry enough for ten of us, never mind two. But no, I don't worry. Margret has too much of her mother's temper, and maybe not enough of her mother's vision—but she has a will and a spirit that even Evallen was missing. Evallen was loved by few, Margret among them. But Margret is loved by many. She was never allowed to be a child; she will not be a child now."

"That's more than you've said all night."

"You made me say it." He smiled. "I'm afraid of what waits in the desert. I'm surprised that she asked us to accompany her. But tonight? One hour, two hours, three—it won't be enough to kill her."

"She won't be able to work after an hour has passed."

"She must be working," he said. "Or it would be over, and we'd be asleep. Caitla—" A light flickered yards away. "Do
none
of the women in this camp sleep?"

"Some of us try to—but who could sleep through a voice like yours?" Tamara, Evallen's sister, crossed the cold, cold sands. She wore three obvious layers of pale robe, and possibly a fourth wound loose round the skin; the fabric dyes were all pale enough the night leached them of color.

Caitla shrugged herself free of her husband's arm and met Tamara halfway; the two women hugged fiercely, clinging to each other.

And as they did, as they created this artificial, human pocket of warmth within sight of the Sea of Sorrows, the night sky vanished.

Light stretched across the width of the encampment, twisting and dancing from horizon to horizon for as far as the eyes could see.

Granted, the eyes weren't what they used to be. But they didn't have to be; although the flash of silver and gold, the brilliance of blue and the dance of fire heart—red, orange, white, and yellow—were like no other display she had ever seen as they cascaded like liquid across frozen, open sky, she could not see them clearly for long.

The tears were fierce and painful.

"Aye, you see, you see, Caitla?" Her husband's voice, quiet now, although it should have been a roar, his lips were so close to her ear—and when had he come up on her, like that? Why hadn't she noticed? "You see? You've never seen a sight so perfect, a sign so marked, and you'll miss it all because you've worried so badly the relief is killing you."

She did what any self-respecting Voyani wife would have done: she hit him. Or she tried; her sight was poor and he was damn fast. But he laughed, and she heard the younger man trapped within him; she smiled, and she felt—for a moment, the younger girl within herself.

Nicu sat across from Elena in a wind shelter that had proved mercifully unnecessary. To preserve oil, they had guttered the lamp whose light had let them find their footing, and their blankets, in the darkness; they had donned outer layers of fabric as the chill grew less and less bearable.

They had offered each other few words, and for once, Nicu seemed content to hear none; they were uninterrupted by Elena's duties to the children, to Margret, to the older women, and they were also uninterrupted by the men of whom Nicu was so boundlessly jealous.

They had even worked together, throughout the day, by Margret's side. Neither Nicu nor Elena had ever been present when the wagons were prepared; neither Elena nor Nicu had been crucial to the pilgrimage—and those that were not crucial were not present. The voyage to the Sea of Sorrows was one that was undertaken by Margret when her mother deemed it necessary, and it was that first voyage that had driven the fine edge of the wedge between the three inseparable cousins.

But tomorrow—tomorrow it would be removed.

Margret was Matriarch. Elena was Daughter. No room for Nicu in that, but for tonight he didn't mind. He was the man who would protect them both with the men under his command.

Without thinking, he reached out for Elena's hand—and then tensed as her head shot up and she met his eyes. But she did not withdraw; she did not make excuses.

Instead, she said, "Thank you for this afternoon." And her hand curled tightly around his for a moment before letting him go.