Michelle West - Sun Sword 04 - Sea of Sorrows (64 page)

Jewel nodded.

She might have said more, but the passing clouds distraded her; they cast a very dark shadow against the ground, and that shadow seemed to grow.

And she had seen no clouds in the perfectly crisp morning sky. She glanced up, her face turned toward the answer to the question she had asked much earlier.

The Matriarch was
here
.

Or rather, there, in the sky above, separated from the hard, harsh ground by fifteen feet of air. She stood at the bow of what appeared to be a squat, overbalanced ship. And that ship, rudderless, rested in the currents of the sky, the upward curve of its smooth, rounded belly exposed to those below.

She had seen it before. But it had borne wheels that had made it mundane; the home of the Arkosan Matriarch.

Lord Celleriant said, "So." No more.

Avandar said nothing. But around them, in ones and twos, the Arkosans found their knees, found their silences, found their gestures—used so rarely it should have taken them more time—of respect and obeisance.

The Matriarch.

The Matriarch has come.

She saw the flash of steel as, men and women, they drew blades. Some drew daggers, some drew swords, some drew the knives that they used for simple tasks like eating and separating plants from their longer roots. They exposed their skin to sun and sky, and then they exposed more: the blood that bound them to Arkosa, that made them Arkosan.

Jewel was impressed.

Very few of the men—or women—blanched or hesitated. Jewel had cut herself a time or two, and she vastly preferred to do it by accident in a kitchen than to do it deliberately, as a signature to an oath or a vow.

She did not do it now.

Nor did Avandar, nor Celleriant.

She wondered, idly, what would have happened had she chosen to join the Arkosans.

I would have stopped you
, Avandar replied, in the silence hallowed by blood and the implacable faith of the Arkosans as they offered this Matriarch, for the first time, the price of passage into the Sea of Sorrows.
As I have always attempted to stop you from impulses which endanger your life
.

This is the heart of Arkosa
, he continued, his voice an uncomfortable intrusion.
There is power invoked by the Matriarch, and power accepted and offered by her kin. The Voyani were always capable of blood magic. But today… today it is strong
.

Watch, Jewel. The Havallan Matriarch lifts neither head nor hand.

It was true. Yollana stood, legs stiff, hands gripping the gnarled tops of two walking canes. No one offered her aid, but Jewel didn't blame them; even at a distance, Yollana's expression said clearly,
don't touch
.

And don't approach, don't speak to, don't look at as well. Yollana never seemed friendly—Jewel suspected it was impossible for a Matriarch
to
seem friendly. She bore witness, this old woman, a grim, terrible witness to the birth of a new Matriarch.

Yes, a birth.

Watching the lines of the older woman's sun-cracked, windburned face, Jewel understood then that the flight of the wagon was critical, but it was not the end; Yollana of Havalla watched like a midwife waiting for a newborn babe to draw breath and prove that it is viable outside of the mother who has been its nurture and sustenance.

"Arkosa!" Margret shouted, in a voice that filled the flat lands. She gestured, and a man joined her at the prow of this strange ship: her brother.

She gestured, her hands spread wide, like the pinions of a bird who, in triumph, has taken its first flight. The ship began to descend, its shadow growing smaller and darker as it approached the sand. But it did not land. Instead, it stopped three feet aboveground.

"Rise. We've little time to waste—the Sea of Sorrows is waiting."

They rose at her command, and the silence of respect and obedience gave way at once—as if being shed—to both jubilation and the no-nonsense pragmatism of people who have known what their work will be, and have been waiting only the word of their overseer to start it. They had robed themselves for the desert, and as Margret brought the ship to ground—or as close to ground as it would come—the Arkosans began to appear with the large, clay jugs that housed water. Among the Voyani present, there was no liquid stronger than water in any abundance; in the desert, wine was for the Lady, and the Lady alone.

A plank was placed between ground and floating wagon, and the jugs were cajoled, by muscle and timing, up that precarious walkway.

Gripping the rail of the ship, Margret vaulted easily over its side. She landed on her feet, bending into her knees to absorb impact. Adam joined her, but he landed with an obvious relief that made one or two of the older women smile.

They joined the line of men and women who worked with such speed and efficiency, and in scant minutes, the wagon housed the water that the journey would require. But not the food.

Margret smiled. "'Lena!"

Elena, daughter in waiting, grunted from beneath the last of the heavy containers. The sound passed for a yes.

"Is your wagon ready?"

She nodded again, but she didn't look happy about it.

Margret's smile was not calculated to comfort. "Then bring it to bear, cousin. We travel together."

"I understand," Elena said, grunting between syllables as she set the jug between her feet, "why you used to swear you'd never ride when you didn't have to."

"You can thank me for my generosity."

"Exactly what generosity are you talking about?"

"That information," her cousin replied with mock sweetness. "You got it for free. Now get moving! We're wasting the dawn!"

The Matriarch's Daughter, her red hair confined by the heavy folds of desert hood, her natural flamboyance restrained by the gravity—and the practicality—of the moment, returned in a much less flashy way than the Matriarch had. She stood at the prow of the body of a smaller wagon, one that had also been designed for this strange flight; the underside of the cab was smooth and rounded, like a squat, ugly boat; the axles along which large wheels normally rested had been somehow folded into that surface, and subsumed by it.

But although this airship flew, it flew close to the ground; the shadow it cast was not distorted by distance. It was not heralded; it provoked no letting of blood, no fervent whisper of vows. It was practical, or as practical as a magic of this nature could be.

/
wonder
, Jewel thought, as she watched Elena's unusually stiff expression,
if she hates heights half as much as I do
.

And then, because she was a merchant,
What would it cost to get a mage to do this back home
?

"More," Avandar replied, as if reading her thoughts— and he probably was—"than you could possibly pay. There is a reason that magic is used sparingly."

"The mages created the glowstone lamps," she snapped. "And they maintain the wells in the hundred holdings."

"Indeed. But the glowstones are empowered in such a way that they catch the light of day and extend it when the light is gone. It is… something that occurs, at times, in nature. These flights—in the heart of the Sea of Sorrows— are vastly more costly."

"Could it be done?"

"Oh, yes. But not in a way that would be cost-effective. The Ten could afford it, if they wished to grandstand.
And
if they received the appropriate permits and writs to allow for such a public display of magic. Remember where we are, Jewel. And remember that the Voyani do not choose to travel on the
Voyanne
in this fashion when they are anywhere else but here."

"Why here?"

His smile was slightly grim. Or, Jewel amended, grimmer than usual; he had the slightest and least friendly of smiles to begin with. "You have never traveled in the open desert," he said.

"He speaks truth."

Jewel jumped about two feet into the air; she would have gone higher, but the clothing she found so uncomfortable acted as ballast. When she landed, she turned to face Yollana of the Havalla Voyani. The old woman had moved quickly and quietly, an ability that Jewel would have bet against. With her own money.

"But even so, he does not understand the
Voyanne
."

"Does anyone?" Avandar questioned softly.

"Not really." The old woman shrugged. "But the closest one comes to understanding is to walk it." She lifted a hobbled foot, and Jewel wondered, seeing momentary pain contort the muscles of Yollana's face in a passing ripple, if that foot would ever recover. "And you don't walk in the air."

"Does Havalla have its own custom?"

"Do you mean, does Havalla have such a ship, does the Matriarch of Havalla make such a flight?"

Jewel didn't answer.

After a stretched silence, the old woman cracked a smile. "Wise, this young one," she said to Avandar.

Avandar shrugged. "Wise enough not to press the question, but not wise enough not to ask it."

"Take what age offers, and wait for the rest."

"If she survives."

"If." The old woman laughed. "Havalla has its own custom," she said, her voice cracking. "And its own time. And I won't be insulted that you asked, although you must know—stranger or distant bearer of Voyani blood—that the Matriarchs do not speak of their rituals to anyone but their heirs and their chosen."

Jewel nodded. "But you go with us."

"If I did not go with you, I would be far, far away before the rituals commenced. There is a saying, taught me by that pretty, pretty bard of yours." She nodded in the direction of the only unhooded man in the group. "It comes from the Western Kingdoms, so he says, but it could come with ease from the Southern clans. No country is at peace when it harbors more than one man who remembers the weight of the crown upon his brow."

"You have the advantage of not being men."

The woman's laugh was a dry, brief bark. "And that is why I am here, daughter of deserters. But that is not so great an advantage. People are people; even these, the handpicked of the Arkosans."

"Are they?"

"Are they?"

"Handpicked."

"They are the closest of the blood relatives. There is no tie stronger."

"I've seen how some families work. There are certainly ties that are just as binding."

"Spoken like a Northerner."

With not a little pride, Jewel lifted her hand; against skin that had darkened with sun, the glint of gold was both heavy and profoundly comforting. "Yes. A governing member of one of The Ten. Chosen by merit, and not by an accident of birth."

"Let me offer you Voyani wisdom, child. Among people of power, there are no accidents. What works in the cold lands of the North works in the North; in the South, both leading the way into the desert and escaping it, there is only the
Voyanne
. You will understand its harshness better at the end of this journey. If you survive it."

"And you, Yollana?"

The old woman's smile was gone. Her face was like the sand that stretched before them as far as the eye could see. "This is not the first time that I have traveled with a caravan that is not my own. We are not a people who naturally hoard information or emotion. We speak as we think, and we care openly and fiercely. We are not afraid of weakness.

"But I do not speak of what I have seen when the Voyani return to the desert. Ask me why I tell you this, when the blood of deserters runs in your veins. Ask me, Jewel of this Northern House that binds you with gold and power."

"Why are you telling me this?" The question was not perfunctory; it was punctuated by a deeply felt curiosity.

"Because you have eyes that see, and you will walk roads that are harsher than the
Voyanne
before you are allowed to rest. If you are allowed to rest at all."

Jewel felt the chill of shadow cross her face, although the sun was high and the sky was clear. An old woman could cast just such a shadow, if she were born to the sight. "Hardship is not usually reason enough for the Voyani to be so open with strangers."

"No," Yollana agreed, as amiably as Jewel had yet seen her. But she did not offer further words.

When the sun completely crested the horizon, the Voyani were gone. The evidence of their passing had already been taken by wind.

One
Kialli
lord had preceded them into the cracked, barren plains; one followed. Both spoke with the voice of the desert when they chose to speak, and they entered the heat of dry sand and scouring wind without even a trace of the fear that shadowed every mortal.

Their pasts were here, beneath the sands, not above them.

Lord Ishavriel offered no obeisance to the sand itself; he made no concession to the heat or the wind. No more did he choose to acknowledge the ice and the snow of the Northern Wastes; the ability to support life was only of marginal interest to those who existed above it.

He had traversed the width of the desert, and he had, with delicacy and determination, found the lattice of his Lord's magic where it lay, like a net or a cage, around the dormant shadows of what had once been the only significant cities mankind had ever built.

But he had been unable to touch them. They lay just outside the periphery of his power. In the desert, as in the North, he practiced little caution; they were wastelands, they guaranteed privacy. He had exerted considerable power in his efforts. He was unaccustomed to futility in such exertions, but he was
Kialli;
he accepted the truth when he faced it.

The light of Voyani magic echoed with the grandeur and the mystery of the Cities themselves, and he understood that these hobbled people, these diminished, bent fugitives had something that made their hidden life inconceivable to one of the
Kialli
: control of the Cities.

The taste of blood magic still lingered in the open air.

He did not recognize the signature of the power that blood invoked; neither the blood, nor the aura that burned itself into vision sensitive to power, were familiar, although something familiar did linger beneath the surface of the magicks used; a potent power. He had faced the ancestors of the Arkosan Voyani long ago, when the vast stretch of the Sea of Sorrows had been the most viable, the most beautiful, of the Southern lands. No human remembered what he remembered, as he hovered above the sand, arms outstretched, palms turned toward ground.