The Riven Shield: The Sun Sword #5 (63 page)

“Celleriant.”

The Arianni lord lifted his silver head. The night had waned; the moon had passed above them inches at a time; day weighted it as the horizon shifted toward light. “Now,” Lord Celleriant said softly, “we had best be wary.”

Kallandras nodded. He could not see what Lord Celleriant saw; that much was clear. But he knew how to listen; he could hear. The forest was devoid of the voices that would otherwise give it some semblance of life. Only dry branches spoke, at the behest of the weight of footsteps.

“Do you know this place?”

Celleriant offered the bard a rare smile. “I knew it in my youth, and it has . . . changed little. I am surprised.”

“What dwells within this forest?”

“Now?” The smile dimmed. “The dead,” he said softly. He spoke with regret; did not trouble himself to hide it in the folds of silken voice. “And the living—you, the others—had best be wary. But there is some benefit to this road. If we are followed here, it will go ill with the followers.”

“Where will this path take us?”

“I do not know. It is not a path of
my
making.” He lifted his head. Listened a moment. “Understand,” he added, staring up at the bower of dark trees, “that in a place such as this—in any of the oldest places the world harbors—paths are made; they are not made, as they are elsewhere, by the simple expedient of walking them time and again. This forest lives, and the will to make an impression upon it—any impression—must be both strong and personal.”

Kallandras heard nothing but the sound of Lord Celleriant’s voice. It was almost enough. “We will fall behind,” he said softly.

Celleriant nodded. Nodded, and drew sword. It came in the graying dark of early light, as bright as moon or stars in the clear, cool sky. Its edge traced a blue symbol in the air; one that hung there, like afterimage, burned into awareness and vision.

Kallandras lifted a pale brow.

“It is . . . my name,” Celleriant said, answering the question that the bard had not—would not—ask.

“And you expect to meet someone who will know it?”

“This is an ancient place, a Deeping.” Celleriant began to move, taking care to place his feet against the earth, grounding heel, bending toe. “The old woman has written her name, her blood’s name, in the earth; she seeks to use what already exists.”

“You see her name?”

“Yes. You don’t?”

Kallandras shook his head. “I neither see it nor hear it, and perhaps that is best. I may cling to the delusion that mortals do not possess mystic names.” But he, too, drew his weapon. As he lifted it, the ring that had come to him in the oldest of the mortal cities burned blue against his pale flesh.

“Be wary,” Celleriant told him, eyeing the ring. “For the power that guides us is not a friend to the power of that ring.”

The master bard of Senniel College bid the ring be silent, speaking softly and pleasantly; making a plea of the command. He cajoled, where another might have ordered, and in doing so, avoided an argument.

Celleriant watched him. “You are . . . unexpected,” he said at last, when the ring was silent, its light momentarily stilled.

Kallandras looked up.

“It is the way of men of power, is it not, to rule?”

And shrugged.

“The wind is silent,” the Arianni lord continued, “and if I judge its voice correctly, it will remain so.”

“Be glad that it cannot so easily hear yours.”

“Ah, but it can.” He smiled. “It is not our way to speak softly to the wild ones, and we have ruled them for millennia.”

“You are not mortal.”

“No. But in my time, I have met many who are, and I have not noted that lack of pride comes with lack of longevity.”

The bard shrugged. “Pride?”

“Where there are no witnesses, your words are your own. But where witnesses preside, your words are carried, and they are carried at the whim of the watchers. I would not speak so softly to the wild ones.”

“Perhaps I trust the witness.”

“Perhaps. Trust or no, it is not a gambit that I would chance. You are strange, Kallandras of Senniel.”

“Perhaps. Perhaps it is something I learned in Senniel College.”

“In Senniel? The college of bards?”

“Songs serve their purpose. Each is chosen to invoke either memory or emotion.” He glanced up, along the hidden forest path. “I am not a man who is destined to rule. If I am seen as weak, it may even be truth.”

“And this does not concern you.”

“No. Should it?”

Celleriant’s hair fell about his shoulders as he shook his head. “I have seen you fight,” he said softly. “I have seen you kill. I would not have guessed that you could speak so quietly, that you could offer plea where command would also serve.”

“Death is the Lady’s,” Kallandras whispered. “All else comes from me. Perhaps we have something to teach each other.”

“I would have said no.”

Kallandras smiled.

And then he froze, for he heard, in the road ahead, the sound of a short, terrible cry.

Yollana’s voice.

The stag froze in mid-step.

Jewel had heard that phrase before, but she had never seen words given such visceral life; his foremost left hoof hovered above the ground between the impression of pale steps. The child dozed in her arms, legs to either side of the stag’s great back, and Jewel tightened her grip just enough that the girl stirred.

She forced herself to relax, as much as she could, craning back, eyes squinting in the shade and shadow of forest at dawn. And what a forest: a ragged wall of trees that stretched from the earth to the heights so far above she could not see their tops without taking the risk of falling off the stag’s back.

Jewel
.

Stag’s voice.

That was Yollana
.

Yes
. His voice was smooth and deep.

Should we ride back
?

No
.

But
—

No. If she summons you, turn; if she does not, do her the grace of ignoring what should have remained unuttered
.

But she
—

No
.

Her knees tightened, as if the stag were horse; his antlers rose, like cool tree branches, at the whim of his stiffening neck.

And then she, too, froze.

The stag was silent. Before them, in the winding curve of a path laid out by the feet of the dead, stood two men.

An old man, she thought, and a young one; their faces were obscured by morning shadow, although they were white as snow. Why was white the color of snow, anyway? Why was white the color of cold?

It is the color of mortal death
, the stag replied softly.
When blood has ceased its flow beneath the shell of skin: when flesh has ceased all movement
.

That was rhetorical
.

Ah
.

You can see them
?

I
 . . .
can. But I do not think I see as you see, Jewel ATerafin
.

I see an old man. And a boy
.

I see merely the dead, and they are angry
.

They’re looking for something
.

I doubt that. I doubt it much
.

Why
?

I think they know exactly where what they seek is to be found: they merely lie in wait. Do not
, he added severely, as she shifted the burden of her weight,
attempt to interfere here
.

Interfere
?

If you attempt to dismount. I will carry you as far from this place as I can before you touch ground
.

She nodded; she had almost expected to hear those words.

For the first time that night, she thought of Avandar.

Viandaran is close by
, the stag told her gently.
And if you manage to escape the safety of my back, he will be greatly annoyed
.

Well, at least that would be normal
.

No
, the stag said, the tone chiding.
He would be greatly annoyed at me
.

He’s not in danger, is he
?

He is Viandaran. By definition he is in no mortal danger
. The stag paused; its breath came out in morning mist, sweet and damp.
But that is too simple an answer. Yes, Jewel ATerafin, he is in danger here. But it is not the danger you face
.

What do I face
?

The old man stepped out, onto the path, and his eyes, his hollow, cavernous eyes, turned toward her.

Never mind
.

Radann Marakas par el’Sol had heard screams before. He was not, had never become, inured to them; it was a sign of his weakness, a sign of the vulnerability that came with his gift. Or so he had often believed in his youth, when other men stood in the wake of such cries, unmoved.

But if he were honest, he might seem to be those men now, made of Lord’s steel, affected by nothing but the corrosive quality of blood, the damaging rigidity of an enemy’s armor.

He turned to the Serra Diora, and saw that she was as still as he; her face was smooth, her eyes no wider than they had been.

“Serra?”

She nodded, gracefully, delicately. At her back, looming like shadow, her seraf met the Radann’s gaze. He held it only briefly; he was not a free man, to offer threat or warning in such an obvious fashion. Nor was he a poorly trained seraf, an embarrassment to a great clan; the glancing meeting of gazes was enough—just enough—to catch the Radann par el’Sol’s attention.

“Are we truly upon the border of Mancorvo?” She asked the question quietly, but urgency marked the words; he wondered if it were his, placed there by the grim shade of early morn in a place that knew so little light.

Marakas gazed into the forest. He wondered if the Lord’s light ever fell upon this ground; the bower of tree branches was high and terrible. But the trees had shed leaves—some passing reminder that all living things know season—and the light was therefore brighter than it might have been, the ground less barren, less devoid of color.

“If you had asked me at another time,” he replied gravely, “I would have said it was impossible that these lands could border any Terrean of my acquaintance.”

She did not smile; did not demur; he realized only after he had chosen to answer that she had not asked for permission to speak the words. They had come, unfettered, into the morning, and he had accepted them. As if they were equals, this Serra of the High Courts and he, a man second only to the Tyr’agar and the kai el’Sol.

No Lady’s time, this; and no Lord’s. She took advantage of laws older and more unforgiving than he.

She stiffened slightly.

“Serra?”

“I am well, Radann par el’Sol, and grateful for your concern.”

He frowned. But he accepted the words as they were spoken; refused to seek the more obvious meaning behind their surface. Instead, he drew sword.

Light flared, and grew, in the clearing; cold light, white and blue. He had only once seen
Verragar
burn so brightly, and he knew—or thought he knew—what that fire presaged.

And yet . . . and yet he felt somehow that the kin were not present; that
Verragar’s
fire spoke of a different danger, a different enemy.

Skin white in the shed light of sword, the Serra Diora bowed her head. Lifting a graceful, delicate hand, she drew the mask of the desert traveler across her cheeks and lips, denying him the full breadth of her expression.

Kallandras.

Serra Diora. You are safe?

I am . . . safe. Are you distant?

I cannot see you
, he replied,
but I can hear you clearly.

The sword of the Radann par el’Sol is speaking
, she told him,
and I think it best that you join Ona Teresa and the Havallan Matriarch.

I think it unlikely that our presence would be appreciated.

It will not be. But that does not make it less necessary.

In the darkness, he smiled, and the smile lingered a moment.

“Kallandras?”

“The Serra,” he said gravely, “has learned more than she knows in her journey alongside the Arkosa Voyani.” He turned to his companion. “Lord Celleriant,” he said gravely, “I think it time that we join the Matriarch.”

“Past time,” Celleriant replied.

The Serra Teresa di’Marano had learned the cadence of Yollana’s injured step; had learned to shoulder the burden of this older, this powerful woman, as gracefully as she had shouldered any burden in the High Court.

But the familiar footfall had changed as the black of night gave way to gray and shadow, and twice now, she had had to exert some force—and a great lack of the grace for which she was known—to prevent Yollana’s fall.