Michelle West - Sun Sword 04 - Sea of Sorrows (78 page)

He heard.

Lord Celleriant of the Green Deepings spoke a single word as he raised a faltering sword; a single word as he swung it in an arc that ended with scale, with flesh. It was not a fatal blow; it was simply the first half of an exchange.

But that almost didn't matter.

"Lady!"

The Serpent's blow carried him out of the reach of claw or fang; the tail struck again.

The Lord of the Green Deepings tumbled like a broken acrobat through the air. The black beast roared in angry satisfaction and turned its long neck toward the lesser threat: the brother of the
Kovaschaü
.

It was a mistake; Kallandras felt a momentary ferocity, a savage joy, as he saw Celleriant rise. It did not last.

Gifted and cursed, as the Serra Teresa and the Serra Diora had been gifted and cursed in this barren land, this Southern continent in which suspicion and hostility governed the actions of even the wisest of men, he had found peace, lost it, and found a semblance of it again.

Decades of experience were shorn by the storm, by the cry that a stranger uttered; he stood facing certain death— not his own, but Celleriant's. Not his own, but a man who, unselfconsciously, evoked the Lady's name with a ferocity, a longing, a terrible desire that spoke to Kallandras so painfully because it was a part of what lay beneath the surface of the life he had built.

"
Celleriant
!" he yelled. Distant.

The Arianni lord did not turn.

He shouted again, to foe, not friend.

"Hold!"

But the Serpent was too ancient a power, the storm's voice too strong a shield; the great beast turned, in his element, his long neck rising into the roiling, dark clouds as he inhaled.

He spoke to the wind.
Take me there, quickly
.

The wind refused him. He had forgotten how jealous the elements could be.

He asked Arkady to leave him, and Arkady complied. But only physically. His anxiety—unvoiced—could not be contained; it accompanied Kallandras in lieu of his brother, joining the anxiety he himself felt.

All of his training, all of his practices, all of the exercises that had come so close to claiming his life, were poor preparation for what lay ahead. But they were all he had.

The master had given himself one week to recover. One week. In that time, Kallandras labored in solitude.

No other master was allowed to intervene, and as one said, a week in the hands of the Lady herself might—
might
—be preparation enough, but there was no certainty.

He trained in the darkness.

He trained in glaring light.

He practiced in the confines of the high walls and narrow corridors of the Labyrinth's most treacherous maze. He was aware that his brothers observed him, some with curiosity, some with concern, and some with a fear that they kept almost entirely to themselves; he felt the unease, but he could not clearly discern its cause.

He was not, however a fool; he could guess.

He had imagined—in the earliest months of the joining— that he might be placed in a position where he came to the rescue of his brothers. Had, in the youthful arrogance of daydream, imagined himself a hero, a desperate hero; had imagined that at great cost and great risk he might emerge victorious, brother by his side, their blood—for of course any threat to a brother must be a terrible opponent who offered the most deadly of challenge—mingling in the way their thoughts and emotions already did.

The truth, as always, was less romantic, more terrifying.

He was not certain he was the student the master assumed he was capable of being, and all failure led to death.

His voice could not touch the Serpent; it spoke with storm's voice. He had learned to abhor futility—although it was only Evayne a'Nolan who had convinced him that such a thing could exist—and with an ease that spoke of practice, changed strategy.

He spoke to the wind.

"Take me to him."

He was prepared for the wind's outrage. He was prepared for the way the sky lost the solidity of elemental current and opened up to drop him toward the barrens below. It was a risk, with the wind.

His own death was not an ending he feared.

The master had seen that clearly. Had exploited it mercilessly—just as the
Kovaschaü
were taught to exploit all weakness when the circumstance and the task demanded it.

Lord Celleriant cried out again, a snarl of rage, a sound that the
Kovaschaü
would have been incapable of making. But wordless or no, Kallandras heard the frustration and the horror of standing alone against an enemy worthy of… his brothers. His Lady.

They were gone, part of the life he had been judged unfit to live. He served a mortal who had been foolish and arrogant enough to stand in the Lady's path; his enemy.

Mirrors were held up in the strangest of places, but when they shattered, the shards still cut.

The wind stopped him from reaching the ground. The wind struggled against the geas he placed upon it. But he had been careful, this time; he had summoned what he believed he needed, no more.

He met his master at the end of a week.

In a circular room he had come to dread, he knelt against stone now completely clean of training dust, brazier, or any adornment save a short, squat candle whose tallow had trickled down the side, fixing it to floor. The flame was not high; it was not bright. It was meant, as these candles often were, to mark the passage of time, no more.

His back was straight. His hands rested lightly, palm down, in the lap his bent legs made.

There was little ceremony in the master's arrival. He did not announce himself; there was no need. Kallandras was instantly aware of his presence. It was not so much the sounds of motion, for there were very, very few. It was the sudden hush of his brothers' voices, the dimming of their daily conversation, their arguments, their affirmations.

Even those who hunted in the Lady's name allowed themselves to bear some small witness to this event; it had become significant. One of the masters had chosen a form of suicide in an attempt to better serve the brotherhood. Some understood it. Some decried it. All accepted that it was his choice to make.

The master joined Kallandras upon the floor, kneeling. He did not wear the robes of a master; he wore what Kallandras wore; stark, simple clothing rather than the voluminous folds of cloth that were meant for ceremony. He bowed his head to his chest and then raised it. Only his arms moved as he drew the weapons of his choice: the Lady's swords. He laid them across his lap and then raised his face.

Kallandras unsheathed his own weapons. The urge to speak was profound. But he could not speak when the master did not.

Instead, he waited, watching the flame's steady progress through wick, tallow, time.

When it flickered, his hands tensed.

When it guttered, he was four feet above the curved, crossing arcs of his master's weapons.

In his months here, in this room and elsewhere, his focus had been on defense. He did not forget it now, but for the first time, he looked for the opening that would decisively— and quickly—end the combat.

Aware, as he did, that he was not his master's equal; that he could not be certain that the blow he did land would be the blow he desired. He had seen brothers misjudge their strength, their aim, or their opponents in such contests, and the results had been terrifying.

The stilling of voices.

Their voices, brothers all.

But the risk of death was better than its certainty.

He accepted that. The risk. The certainty. He felt a curious freedom as the decision seemed to spread, like some fine intoxicant, through his muscles, as he relaxed into the knowledge that
nothing
he could do here could be worse than what the master had already promised himself.

He heard Arkady's voice, and although he did not allow himself to listen to the words too closely, he understood their meaning.

You will never have to fight alone.

Was this battlefield really so different from that earlier one? He found the footing he had been uncertain of. He found his weapons. He accepted wind, rain, roar, the terrain his opponent had chosen.

There were differences. He did not face the master, but he faced a creature whose age and experience made him dangerous, worthy. He did not fight to wound—he fought to kill. But he felt the same urgency, and he accepted it for what it was.

He heard, in the Lord of the Green Deepings, isolated and banished, everything that he could not, could never, say. He understood that Celleriant was Arianni, and even if the Lady never accepted his return, to Winter Court or the Court of High Summer, that fact would remain unchanged.

But more. In the instant that he heard Celleriant's voice, his own voices, the living ghosts of a past that could never be retrieved except this way, in memory, were almost silenced by its intensity.

If the Arianni lord never understood what it was that Kallandras desired, it didn't matter. He brought himself above the back of the beast. The wings swept him from the back of the summoned wind; he tumbled, stepping off the shelf of air pressure that arranged itself beneath his moving feet.

Controlled his plummet..

Folded, spun, landed.

The master met him on the way down.

Kallandras was close enough to a wall that he aborted the maneuver and managed to alter his momentum—but not enough so he landed on his feet. He rolled away, his arm shaking with the force of the glancing impact when blade had met blade.

But he held his own.

The Serpent roared.

His back was slick with rain, with blood. The blades Kallandras wielded against him were clean. He wondered what the demon blades took when they pierced flesh, but he did not ask; they had, after all, made their mark on him before taking the shape in which they would serve.

Instead, he leaped a moment before tail struck; he trusted the wind to catch him, trusted that a glancing contact between his foot and the elemental air, a tensing of calf and extension of ankle, would be enough to carry him just beyond the range of that death.

He did not expect the lightning.

He should have. Although the abilities of the masters were never discussed—save in whispers that could be kept entirely outside of the joining—Kallandras had seen him summon the absence of light; had seen him disappear while standing still.

He
moved
.

The lightning struck not him, but his hand; he felt its heat as an awful chill as his arm shuddered uncontrollably. One of two swords clattered noisily against stone. He did not pause to pick it up. To pause in this storm was death.

He saw the spark of steel moving too quickly against stone. Understood that the blow struck—had he not rolled clear—would have been fatal.

Did that change the nature of the fight?

The goal?

Did that change the resolve which had brought him here, to this master, and this fight?

No.

But it would.

He stepped aside from that memory, stepped into the present, wondering at the caprice of fate. He shed that young man, that fight, stepping into his skin, into the imperative of
this
one.

"Celleriant!"
he called.

The Arianni lord's sword responded to the flash of lightning, severing it at its root. The act was profoundly, distantly beautiful.

"Mordanant!" the Lord Celleriant called back. "Come. Join me!"

He heard the invitation because he was a bard, born to voice.

But he responded because in the end, he could never entirely escape that young man. He had nothing, nothing at all, to lose.

The Lord Celleriant spared him a glance; his brows rose in something akin to shock, although his features could not express surprise openly. For a moment Kallandras thought he might reject the aid he had asked for—but the rejection did not come. He raised his swords.

And saw that the edge of the Arianni's blade had been chipped and scarred by its egress through scale.

He understood, then, what it meant. Understood what could be lost here, in the strike of a sword, the end of a weapon's arc.

A brother.

This was his truth: He was not afraid to die. But truth or no, fear or no, his body struggled against death; his instincts fought it at every turn. Give in to instinct and movement came before thought the way breath came without it.

He gave in to instinct.

He let the fear go. Of killing. Of dying.

He was aware of the ground beneath his feet, the walls around him, the ledges above, and the open arch at his back. All these would shift, moving as he moved.

He moved.

He did not admire the master's skill; that was the task of an observer, a witness. He did not fear it. He gauged it, and if he did so well enough, he would win.

He heard his brothers' voices. Heard what they did not say. And he heard something he had heard only once, had feared even as he had been stricken by it.

The Lady's voice.

The Lady's voice, the Lady's words, the Lady's quiet attention. He could not understand them. He could not understand what she desired, if she desired anything from him at all.

But he would not forget it. God's voice. A god's voice.

And he understood, as his blades, crossed, bore the brunt of a tail lash and he was driven back into the currents.

His hands were slick with blood. He barely noticed it, although the weapons' grips were not the grips fashioned by
Kovaschaü
hands; not the grips of the blades he had held in visceral memory.

"Celleriant!" he cried, because he knew no other name by which to call him, although he was suddenly certain that there was another.

There is
, a voice said, quiet and calm, but loud and sudden as thunder.
There is another name. I offer it, I offer it to you, who are Kallandras of Senniel, no matter how much you have claimed the identity as lie or mask; you who are Kallatin of the Kovaschaü, and who, were, before that
—

He listened, now, and he understood that he heard what underlay the storm's voice, the richness of chaos, the cacophony of natural and unnatural sound: a god's voice.