Michelle West - The Sun Sword 03 - The Shining Court (110 page)

"Why did Kiriel leave? I forget."

"I do not know, Anya. I had hoped she would be here so that she could answer your question herself."

"Oh." She was silent for a little bit longer, and then said, "I suppose if you
really
want, I'll let you carry the baby for a while. You used to carry Kiriel when she was a baby, I remember that now, and you never dropped her or let her be hurt."

"I am… honored, Anya. If you will allow it, I will carry the child." He smiled as he held out his arms. But he did not irritate her by promising to protect the girl. After all, Anya knew that men who promised that just
lied
and she hated liars more than she hated demons.

But only a little.

* * *

Alana en'Marano was sick with worry. It showed because in the heart of her harem, with an absent husband, it was allowed to show.

Illia en'Marano brought her the waters that Sendari's position as adviser to the Dominion's ruler now granted them as a matter of course, but Alana set the cup aside untouched. The dressmaker had come and gone, and he was frazzled in a way that men often are during the Festival season. A wedding dress on the first day was not considered auspicious by some; by this poor, and somewhat beleaguered man it was barely considered possible.

And it was only possible because the person who would be offended were the dress not finished and not
perfect
was the Tyr'agnate Eduardo kai di'Garrardi, a man whose temper was as famous as the single-mindedness with which he set about fulfilling his desires. The dressmaker was excellent; Alana had now been in the capital for long enough to know both his name and his work.

But he was snappish to the point of being almost intolerable and the cerdan now had their hands permanently affixed to the hilts of their swords. It was difficult; they were not allowed to actually
see
what was occurring—that would be offense beyond imagining to their master; but they were there to make certain that no offense was offered their master's wives.

Pierro di'Casell was offensive. Alana could see the clenching of cerdan fists as he railed at poor Diora from behind the safety of the screens that assured modesty when the cerdan were present. But she could see what they could not: the absolute, stark terror in the poor man's face. This was Festival Night, the only night given to the people at the Lady's behest that they might express their secret joys and secret desires—but it was no longer for him; his freedom was to spend the night by candle and lamp, desperately beading and sewing the remnants of this gown so that it might be ready for the ceremony on the morrow.

However terrible that fate might be, she did not think death would be kinder; death would be kinder only if it seemed that he would somehow fail to produce a gown that was worthy of the bride of the kai di'Garrardi. And although his temper was sour— understandably—the gown itself was exquisite, second only in quality to the workmanship of the former kai el'Sol's hidden servitor. If he completed his work, his existence was guaranteed.

But the announcement of the ceremony had been so sudden that he was not as close to completing the work as he should have been on the eve before the ceremony itself. She drew a breath as the cerdan started to turn, and offered him sweet water.

The look he gave her could best be described as rude—if one chose to be mild and polite. But she knew the kai Garrardi. And in her fashion, she was fond of Pierro, who had done such fine work for Mia en'Marano, the youngest and still the most beautiful of Sendari's wives, excepting only the Serra Fiona herself, who half an hour ago, had absented herself from this gathering in tears.

She, too, felt the pressure of the Festival, and Sendari, grim and gray from the terrible burden of the rumors that swirled around the Tor Leonne, was of little use or help in alleviating any of them. As
his
wife, the Tor had been her responsibility; but the preparations of the grounds, subtle and delicate and perfect, had been almost destroyed by the influx of so many common clansmen, and worse, their serafs.

Alana hoped that the Serra Fiona en'Marano had a mask and a destination for this Festival eve, although she doubted it. Sendari's wives were afraid this Festival was of the darkness, and Alana doubted very much that they would chance the outer world, masked or no. Too many rumors had passed from seraf to seraf, and grown—as rumors will—more significant and weighty with the passage. The darkness held servants of the Lord, and the Radann, bereft of the sunlight, might prove too weak a defense against them.

And the masks… the whispers that she'd gleaned in passing when the Widan—her husband of many years—spoke to himself in his most private chambers… how could any of them risk the wearing of such a thing?

Yet without masks, the Festival was a night like any other.

Except that on the morrow Na'dio would leave them, and for a husband far less to their liking than even the previous husband had been. But perhaps, just perhaps, it would serve her well. Perhaps she would build a harem again, and find some peace in the building, and perhaps she might choose wives who could speak to the loss and the rage that no one who had raised her could touch, it was trapped so far beneath the perfect, serene surface of Na'dio's face.

Alana wrung her hands, noticed that she was doing it, stopped, and then decided that it was
her
harem, and Festival Night at that, and she could wring her hands if she so chose. The dressmaker was pulling his hair in frustration—which was certainly less dignified.

All the while, like a statue of the very Lady, the Serra Diora di'Marano stood. Her hair was pulled back in the simplest of knots merely to get it away from the very fine silks with which the dressmaker worked; her face was devoid of all powders and creams, her lips so pale they were almost of a color with her skin. Her eyes, dark and round, were unblinking.

And she was beautiful; a beautiful adult, a stranger, a woman who did not belong in the bosom of her father's harem.

The dressmaker gathered his things and, by some miracle— mostly prayer, and at that, Alana's and Illia's—he was allowed to leave the residence with his head still upon his shoulders.

After he had left, Alana shooed the cerdan out with the least friendly words she had used all evening; they were accustomed to her, and one of them had the cheek to smile on the way out, as if he were actually a son and not a man paid by the labor of her husband. Mia, she set to tend to the last of the details: the jade combs, the strands of pearl and gold with which any daughter of means must be decorated, the rings which even now Na'dio would refuse to wear.

Only then did she turn to this statue who was her daughter, in truth, because she had borne no children for her husband, no matter how desperately she had desired them. "Na'dio," she said, to this young woman, this stranger.

And then, because it was the Lady's Night, and because she had the premonition that sometimes comes in those longest of terrible darknesses, she pulled her daughter down from the dressmaker's uncomfortable pedestal, and kissed her pale cheeks.

"Good-bye."

Diora started, then, as if the words were not the ones she expected to hear.

"I do not know which road you travel, Na'dio. I would travel it with you if I could. But I love the father that has lost your love; he has been kind to me, and to all of mine save those of his blood; Teresa and you."

"Alana—"

Moon-wise, Alana stood before Na'dio. "If you marry the Tyr, you know what to expect. But if you do not…" She looked at Diora's perfect hands.

"I heard what you said, or heard of it. The Lord heard it, and his servants accepted it. No matter what happens on the morrow, Lady be with you, Diora, and if the Lady is merciful, I will see you again.

"And when I do, child, you will be at peace."

She turned, then, and she left Na'dio in an empty room in the harem's heart.

Because she thought—although perhaps it was conceit—that she had somehow finally touched her almost daughter, and she wished to give her the privacy in which to shed tears, if tears were going to fall. For even as a small child, Diora had felt the shame of tears keenly.

The Radann were upon the plateau. They should have been exhausted, and if not for the sweet water from the Lady's Lake, they might well have been. But Marakas attended to their wounds— such as they were—and the Lady's bounty attended to their bodies; they were as whole, and as prepared for battle, as men can be.

Peder kai el'Sol was not among them; he was upon the platform that separated the Lake from the people that had come, masks in hand like awe-filled beggars, to partake of legend. He was not particularly pleased with the role—but it strengthened the Radann in the eyes of the people; it made them the masters and the arbiters of the Lady's bounty and mystery; it tied them together, politically, with a ceremony that otherwise had little meaning for them.

And it allowed them to claim the destruction of the accursed masks as acts of the Lord.

They should have cared. Perhaps, in the morning, they would. But this night… they were not Widan, but they could feel it: a wildness in the air. The sun had not yet disappeared below the Western horizon, but the Festival of the Moon had already begun.

They did not wear masks, this eve. And yet, perhaps for the first time as Radann, they felt the ultimate freedom the Lady offered: They were completely at ease with their desires; they revealed themselves as the darkness approached, and, swords in hand, they were content to wait.

Kallandras watched at a distance.

Elsarre was weeping openly; the Serra Maria was crying. Even Margret—who, he thought, had much in common with the mother she feared she could not live up to, had given in to the sentiment of the binding. Only Yollana was dry eyed. What passed between her and the face in her lap was so private, she did not voice a word.

Because a word, in his presence, revealed everything. He smiled. But the wind caught his hair and his hair, his eyes. He looked west at the colored sky.
Time
, he thought, although he dared not interrupt them. // is
time
.

But they knew.

On some level, they knew, and they were so entwined with the sacrifices made that they were incapable of wasting it. As one woman, the four suddenly snapped to attention, lifting their chins and turning, faces toward the fire that did not yet exist.

Reverently now, and with great care, they lifted Evayne's gift, so that eyes that still saw could bear witness to what would follow. They moved, again, as one woman.

He had never seen this fire lit, although there were songs sung of it, ancient and in a tongue that he could not sing with the requisite skill unless he used the legacy of his gift. He had never tried, and he thought, after this eve, he would never have to; the words came to him, and beneath them, contained but only barely by the skein of those words, music, song, a hint of harmony.

He had Salla over his shoulder; he unstrapped her as he watched, and his fingers wandered delicately over taut strings. She was, of course, in tune; he coaxed a phrase from her, something simple and direct; another, less so but with a complexity that hinted at what he now witnessed.

Kneeling, facing the fire, Margret of the Arkosan Voyani began to speak. She spoke in Torra, but in a Torra that was broken everywhere by phrases that had the feel of antiquity, the awkwardness of history being compressed into the present by someone who both understands that she is on the verge of mystery and yet cannot conceive of its depth.

The words were taken up, first by Elsarre's weepy voice and then by Maria's—and Maria's voice was as sharp as a blade, cold as steel, a surprise. But when Yollana, the fourth and the final Matriarch, finally offered her voice for his inspection, it was a revelation: Yollana of the Havallan Matriarch was beside herself with rage and sorrow and anger and hopelessness, and it infused her song with a full understanding of the words that the others struggled with. She spoke the old tongue, with its awkward cadences, and it was
beautiful;
it was, for a moment, her native tongue, her only language.

Spellbound, his fingers weaving on the loom of Salla's strings, he joined them, who should have stayed silent.

And the fire joined them as well, blazing up like a beacon and a challenge; it took the cross beams of wood at once, traveling from the West, where Elsarre clutched mask to chest, to the east, where Maria cradled; from the North, where Yollana, like Maria, gently cupped the only mask that no longer looked human, to the South, where Margret of the Arkosans waited.

And when it lapped the ends of the wood she had anointed with Arkosan blood, it
crackled
.

It spoke.

"You have paid the price, Daughter," it said, in a tongue that he understood because the bard-born understand all speech. "And I have come. What would you have of me?"

It snapped up wood, devoured it the way an effete patris devoured canapes in the Northern capital of the Empire.

And she said, "Protect my people. You are fire and light; our enemies are darkness and shadow. Let your magic be the only magic that is cast in my home; let my blood be the only blood that, by magic, is shed. Cast light great enough that my people will see by it until the fire comes up over the eastern rim."

The fire's crackle stopped; for a moment, it stood in an eerie silence, an image of fire's heart. Then it spoke. "You ask much, Daughter."

"Yes."

"And are you willing to pay the price?"

"Have I not already paid it?"

The fire roared; it was, Kallandras realized, fire's version of a laugh.

Margret did not move as the fire reached out and touched her wrist. She stiffened; she bit her tongue, and then her lip; in the unnatural light cast by the flame blood had summoned he saw blood trickle from the corner of her mouth.

And then the fire withdrew. "Yes," it said, "you pay my price."

The ring on Kallandras' hand sparked; the fire turned, seeing him truly for the first time. Kallandras bound the wind as tightly as he could, and he offered the fire his obeisance. But not his blood.