Michelle West - Sun Sword 04 - Sea of Sorrows (75 page)

The ground shuddered again, rising and falling as if it struggled for breath.

As the water rushed down the tunnel, ground appeared in its wake; the plains surrendered less and less to the tunnels, and the men and women who had been carried into wall and pulled along ground struggled to find their feet.

She recognized one.

"Tamara!"

Thunder broke the word in three places. She tried again. Lost the word to cold. A third time, and the bedraggled woman in question looked up.

"Gather here! Gather around the—around my—around him!" She pointed to Avandar, who had not moved since the storm had started.

Age had tempered the older woman, but it had not taken the edge off her instinct; she obeyed at once, words coming out of her mouth in a rapid, high bark.

"Yollana," the Serra said, looking up.

Yollana of the Havalla Voyani did not answer. The Serra had wedged herself between two large outcroppings of hard rock; she was bleeding in four places from the rocks that had struck her face and shoulder. But she had not been swept away by the current, and neither had the most precious of all her burdens.

But that burden did not stir when she spoke the name again.

My apologies, Matriarch
, she thought. She put force behind the next word she spoke. "Wake. Now."

The old woman struggled to the surface of consciousness. When Teresa was certain that it would not release her—or she it—she cautiously eased the tension required to brace herself in this awkward place.

Her arms were shaking.

Her legs were only slightly better. "We must go," she said, "to the woman who came in the Fires of the Arkosan Matriarch. We must go now."

Yollana nodded. "The water?"

"It is—it has stopped, for now."

Jewel realized, when she saw a man lurching toward her cradling his arm against his chest, that the sharp bend in the tunnel was probably as dangerous as the water itself when you were rushing toward it in the river's current.

She lifted an arm, pointed to Avandar, spoke briefly in Torra. The man shook his head in denial and came toward her, his gait awkward. She could see the gash in his forehead.

"Stavos?"

He nodded. "Stavos," he replied. "You must help."

"Your wife?"

"She is—she is with Tamara. It is not my wife who needs help."

"Be quick, Stavos. What do you mean?"

"I left them when I saw—I saw—" He turned and pointed back the way he'd come. "The current is strong; the tunnels slope. He went down. I tried to reach him."

"Who?" She frowned as two syllables resolved themselves into both a name and a request.

"Adam."

Adam? Adam. Matriarch's brother. A boy who had not quite crossed the awkward threshold into adulthood.

"Go to Avandar," she said. "No—do as I order. Go to Avandar, and stay with him. Bring your wife and Tamara.
Do not
leave his side again."

"The Matriarch's brother," he said again, a terrible edge to the words.

"I give you my word," she said, lifting her head and tossing wet curls to either side of her face, "I'll bring him back. Go."

He went.

But not before he had seen, hurtling through the water as if water itself were insignificant, the great, horned beast who remained, always, on the periphery of the Voyani encampment.

Memory:

You will never have to fight alone.

"Joakken, stop."

The blade stilled.

"Kallatin, pay attention or you will never complete the first circle; you will never gain the knowledge required to join your brothers outside of the Labyrinth."

He was bleeding. Cloth had split neatly from elbow to wrist as if the binding that held the seam together had come undone. Accompanying that, a fine line, a mirror in flesh, his own.

He said nothing.

The oldest master present was expressionless for the space of five heartbeats. His eyes were cataract blue, his skin lined by sun and wind; he seemed, at a distance, helpless with age. Distance was deceiving.

He rose. Crossed the floor that separated him from the two combatants, the one newly come from the vows and the joining, the other a man who had served the Lady's will for five years. "Joakken," he said again, and the older man bowed and stepped aside.

Kallandras turned the wound away from the old man's line of vision. The gesture was not lost upon the master; little was. "You hesitated, Kallatin."

He nodded.

"This is natural," the master said quietly. "Many of our brothers do not see the sense of fighting among themselves."

He nodded again.

"But in you, this hesitation is stronger than I have ever seen it."

He had already exposed one weakness, and although the gash was long and shallow, it was reminder enough. He waited patiently for the old man to expand upon—or discard—what he said. The old man also waited.

With swords, Kallandras did not appear to be the most skilled of brothers; not for his age, and not for his weight or height. But no one bested him in games of waiting.

"Very well," the master said at last, into the silence. "There are other ways of teaching what must be taught."

He drew his weapon. The watchers drew breath. They were subtle; the only person who was aware of the break in the natural rhythm of breathing was Kallandras himself, born to listen.

"Leave," the master said, and the others, masters or no, bowed, acquiesced.

The two men stood beneath the rounded height of one of several training rooms.

"Your weapon, Kallatin."

"Master." He did not hesitate.

"Good. You remember how to wield it."

"Master."

"We will fight to first blood." He lifted his sword arm, but he did not move. "You have been here for long enough, Kallatin. The Lady accepted the sacrifice of your name; none here will gainsay her wisdom."

But
, Kallandras thought, resigned.

There was a glimmer of a smile around the network of lines in the corner of the master's mouth. "But," he said, nodding, "you have yet to complete the full circle; you have yet to be deemed fit to leave the confines of the Labyrinth to follow trie Lady's will."

It was true.

"Do you wish to leave the Labyrinth, Kallatin?"

He looked down at the torchlight caught in the polished sheen of steel.

"You are, it is said, a poor swordsman for your age."

"Yes, Master."

"Yes? Yes, you are a poor swordsman?"

Kallandras nodded.

Before the motion was finished, two swords had shifted position with the simple motion of wrist; steel spoke. Where there had been torch fire, there was now the odd blue of an older man's eyes.

The student had not even seen the master move.

"How poor?" The Master asked, lowering his sword. He turned away from Kallandras; turned toward the empty arch between this particular training room and the rooms beyond it. "Before you were accepted by the Lady, before she took your name, you were one of our most promising students."

"And now," Kallandras said, stung in spite of himself, "I am one of your worst."

The old man's sword cut air, cut distance, filling the space around Kallandras. Like the music of some ancient barbarian tribe, the sound of clashing metal beat out a rhythmic time as he moved and the student moved with him, anticipating all blows.

There was music in the movement, in the dance—and it was a dance—of youth and wisdom, strength and experience, elder brother and younger brother, sword and sword. Kallandras heard it as clearly as he heard the song in the spoken word, the mortal voice.

He moved, circling and in turn being circled; his sword becoming an extension of his hand. Twice he transferred it, right to left, left to right, waiting for the moment when his master would draw the second blade, would join the fight in earnest.

He did not. They fought, each with a single weapon, beneath the rough, rounded ceiling of the Labyrinth's largest room, exchanging the fleeting knell of steel tempered in the forges of Melesnea.

The music stopped.

"The Steel Curtain," the master said, with a severity entirely devoid of humor, "cannot be drawn by a poor swordsman."

Kallandras looked down, not at hand or blade, but to the floor itself. There, in the swirl of dust, he could see where his feet had been, could see the pattern traced there.

"First blood," the master said quietly.

And to Kallandras' great surprise, the old man lifted his blade and opened the mound of his own palm with its edge. It was not a shallow cut.

"We are done, Kallatin. For today, we are done. Tomorrow, return. There is much to learn."

* * *

The wind roared. The Serpent roared. Above both of these, Lord Celleriant raised the standard of the Green Deepings. If air was not his element, he had mastered it well enough to both survive and ascend; he moved with an ease that spoke of experience. There were no false attempts to gain footing in an ether that would not offer it; no hesitations.

But as lightning answered the blurred strike of sword, the lash of supple tail and faintly iridescent claw, Kallandras saw that there was blood.

Thunder. Lightning.

The rain began to fall again.

She looked up and cursed, but swearing was almost as natural as drawing breath; it didn't cost her much time.

Jewel gripped antlers and allowed herself to be thrown up and onto the back of the great beast. She had always hated riding; she expected this to be no different. Or perhaps she had hoped it would be no different.

But it was. The chill and the cold deserted her the moment her legs touched the stag's fur; her hands lost their shuddering, twitchy numbness, her feet and fingers their painful ache.

It did not occur to her, until he leaped clear of the water in one great stride, that she had not spoken a word; had not given him directions or orders. She reached for the lowest of his tines, and then pulled her hands back; she had no fear whatsoever of falling.

The rain fell hard, harder. She saw the water begin to pour into the tunnel again, and cried out in dismay.

But the stag seemed to run across it, or above it, as if it were uneven, dry ground.

/ was
the mount of the Winter Queen. This is simply water; no more. Do you think the Queen searched for bridges when she led her Hunt? Do you think she crossed no mountains, no lakes, leaped no chasms? The roads walked by the Winter Queen are treacherous, even for such as she
.

What will you hunt, Lady?

In the full richness of his words, there was a hint of dark humor.

She kicked him with both heels.

But she answered.
The boy. Find the boy
.

* * *

The Serpent retreated into the heart of the storm, drawing it with him. Below their aerial battleground, the Voyani encampment fell, once again, beneath the shadows of its wings.

He grew to dread the lessons.

The master's palm had not healed by the following day, and although the master made no allusion to it, the bandage that kept the wound free from infection was plainly visible.

The master bowed to the student. "Well met," he said softly. "We will fight to first blood. Any time we meet in this room, or in this arena, it is only the letting of blood that will end our lesson. You are not a fool, Kallatin. You understand."

He did not understand anything beneath the veneer of words, but he heard it all: the regret, the momentary affection, the disapproval, and the growing sense of unease.

He turned to the wall, reached into the bright light beneath the curve of a large lamp, and lifted a weapon. Light curved round the circumference of a slender pole, glinted off the flats of the two small blades at either end.

Kallandras lifted both hands and caught the shaft of the pole arm; it was too heavy, too cold, to be fashioned of wood.

He had time for no more; the master had set his staff in motion; twin blades traced the circumference of a circle in the air before him. Kallandras waited. The circle would shift, the perimeter becoming a weapon, not the bright outer circle of a shield.

There were few ways of breaching such a circle, but defense was not as difficult.

Or not as difficult when one faced another novice.

He leaped and heard the grating rasp of the circle's edge against stone. Felt the blade whistle through his hair at the same time.

Felt the hard, metal rod clip his side with bruising force.

The Serpent was not a simple beast; not a creature like the wolves of the North, the great cats of the South. It had size, reach, a choice of six attacks: jaw, spiked tail, and the great, curved tines of its claws. It could turn in the currents of the storm the way Kallandras had leaped that day beneath the safety of the Labyrinth's ancient stone.

He found purchase in the jutting ledge beneath the ceiling's rise. He had thrown the weapon with as much force as he could; he caught it as it fell.

The old man stood in the room's center. "Well done," he said. "Joakken is not my equal."

From the heights, Kallandras nodded.

"He is not, in my opinion, yours."

But from a man like the master there was little safety in distance. He did not reply.

"Last week," the master continued, "you met Arkady in the Chamber of Fire."

Kallandras, again, offered only silence.

"Arkady is not Joakken's equal."

Silence.

"Does it not occur to you that both of these brothers have injured you in their time?"

"Yes, Master."

"They do not have your compunction; they are not crippled by your sense of allegiance. They follow
our
instructions."

"Yes, Master."

"You fight well enough against me. Not well enough, however, to wound me. Not well enough to end these sessions. I am an old man; I am not as strong as I was in my youth in these halls.

"Will you tell me why you will not fight?"

"I… do fight."

For the first time, the master snorted. "Go, Kallatin. We will meet again in three days."

He lifted the pole arm, calmly, and dragged it across his thigh. It was a deeper cut than the cut he had given himself the previous day. "It will take three days," he said softly, "before I will be sufficiently recovered."