Michelle West - The Sun Sword 02 - The Uncrowned King (101 page)

They all knew that.

But the bard's voice had come to him, only him, carried by wind, heavy with warning and fear. He knew both of those—that warning, the fear behind it—even if the bardic voice was soft and smooth, where his mother's or grandmother's voice grew harsh or shrill with the burden. He was in danger
because
he knew.

You are in mortal danger. Flee.

He almost did. He knew how to run. He knew how to hide. He knew how to survive.

But another truth occurred to him, because he'd listened to his mother's stories, his grandfather's stories: the bard somehow knew there was danger, but he didn't see what that danger was.

Carlo di'Jevre had, as usual, no interest whatever in Aidan. But Aidan, like moth to flame, could no longer look away from Ser Anton's other student.

He left the swordmaster's side, his hand sliding over the dagger that he always carried—the single dagger that had been a gift from a grandfather he'd watched settled into earth too many years ago. They'd let him keep it, that first day across the gates into the coliseum. He'd thought no one would be allowed to carry weapons, but the adjudicator had only laughed when he'd asked about it, and Aidan didn't much like being laughed at, so he hadn't asked why.

Didn't much matter, now. Maybe it was just Kalliaris, and it was up to Aidan to decide whether the dagger was an act of her smile or her frown. Gods, it was suddenly so
cold
.

He followed Carlo, moving across the grass as quickly as possible. It wasn't easy; there were men all round, men of magic, men of knowledge, men who were set to guard and protect the traditions—that was the word that Ser Anton used—of the Challenge, and they were all a head taller than Aidan, even the shortest and widest of them. He lost sight of Carlo di'Jevre once, and he put on a burst of speed, dreading the feel of a hand on his shoulder, of anyone trying to stop him.

But they didn't, because it was his right, as Valedan's witness, to approach. As Valedan's chosen.

To approach as closely as the judges did.

Because he was there, because he was afraid, he was not surprised when Carlo di'Jevre threw his arms wide and sent the nearest judges—three men of equal size and stature—almost flying to either side.

But he knew what it was that had caught his attention as he saw the raised arms of the Southerner: the hand, the right hand, was adorned only by a black-and-red circle of scorched and blistered flesh.

When he spoke, he spoke with the voice of the storm; the clouds gathered as the first syllable left his lips.

Aidan didn't have time to think.

He understood more than he could put into words; the storm that was gathering was blacker than nightmare, more certain a death than any death he'd ever seen in his life. But he'd heard of others, and those tales lay buried in childhood, hidden so far from thought the memories responded as if they belonged to another boy, in another place.

Valedan kai di'Leonne was in front of both him and the creature who was starting to speak, caught in the purity of a fight that Aidan had been chosen to witness. Luck, he'd thought it.

He never thought that there was another reason for the choice, another hand behind it. Had no time to feel honored, no time; he could feel the weight of the momentous fear begin to shift beneath his feet and rob his limbs of strength.

Valedan kai di'Leonne was fighting Andaro di'Corsarro in the Kings' Challenge; his back was turned; he saw nothing of what happened behind him. Just as Carlo di'Jevre saw nothing of Aidan. Neither blindness would last for long.

Biting his lip, he drove the dagger neatly into Carlo di'Jevre's back before the last of the syllables left his lip.

Thunder, then.

Lightning.

Aidan had the privilege of meeting the eyes of the beast; Carlo di'Jevre roared and turned. The dagger itself was lost in the flesh of his back, locked there by the sudden tightening of unnatural muscle. Not that Aidan thought about the dagger for long. The whites of Carlo's eyes had been devoured. As had the rings of brown. What was left: darkness.

A more certain death than the clouds of shadow gathering above them all like some Hells-spawned storm. A more certain death than he had ever seen, and he had seen death. His mother's death.

He thought to wonder, as his knees chose that moment to fail him, if he would see his mother again, soon. If she would be proud of him.

A certain death.

He felt a terrible pain as his chest dissolved and the creature turned away.

Meralonne APhaniel cried out.

Sigurne was instantly awake—a bad sign, in her condition. But bad or no, she was attuned to the battle that had begun over fifteen years ago beneath the streets of Averalaan's oldest holdings; her eyes went to the soaring heights of the healerie's only truly grand windows.

She lifted a hand, but he had gained enough control to catch it; to touch her lips.

"Yes," he said, and he knew his face had lost all color.

"How?"

"Obviously," a humor so dry the words might catch fire if rubbed together returned to his voice. "I don't know. I was here."

She struggled to rise; he helped her. It was either that or struggle to hold her down, which she could ill afford. Which he could ill afford. The fevers had come, as Dantallon had surmised they would; he had kept hidden what could be hidden. For a man who professed a great disdain for the practice of the magical arts,
very
little could be hidden from Dantallon.

They sat in the silence, and then Meralonne APhaniel said, "We're in the healerie, Sigurne. It is a room that protects itself from the casting of magicks, or so Dantallon has often hinted." Meralonne waited for some words of wisdom to come from her; they were two magi, after all, two of the few members of the Order considered among the Wise. She offered him muted silence instead. Determined silence.

He lifted his slender hands, cast them skyward.

Cast.

His own power was so very, very weak; it had been a full day and perhaps a few hours and the chills had barely abated. But power was there, and he could catch it, thread by thread. Bind it to his will. Will, after all, was the foundation upon which all of his magic had been built.

He faced an old woman, worn by time into a shadow of her former height, granted by power a crowning glory that she could never have attained in her youth. He was… fond… of Sigurne Mellifas. He respected her. There was no other reason to sit before her, half a body space between them on her wide, dignitary's bed.

The spell, he lay before her, before them both.

"Meralonne," she whispered, "No. It is too soon—"

The air began to twist, as air did in the haze of too much heat, too much sunlight.

"Who calls?"

"Meralonne, idiot."

"Master APhaniel! Thanks the gods—we—"

"I don't have time for idle chatter, Cahille—let me
see
." He did not have the power to travel to the coliseum itself; the casting of the spell—and he did have it—would kill him in his weakened state. But he would not sit in ignorance.

"Let you—oh, of course. Sorry, sir."

The magi looked apologetically up at Sigurne. "Cahille is a model student—for a member of the Order. He is also by character and inclination the perfect librarian. It's a small wonder he's still alive."

"I've taught Cahille," Sigurne replied, her voice as weak as his magic. "Look," she added. "He's let you in."

The clouds that stood between them took on form, color, a sense of place in miniature. Costly. Everything was costly.

But there was no mistaking the tableau on the bed, captured by Cahille's vision.

They both heard it. The best of Ser Anton's students. The best of Commander Sivari's. Southern born, bred to the lives they had been chosen for, caught in a fight that was, inexplicably, a step or two away from the complicated intimacy of a blade dance, they heard the roar.

Almost nothing else would have caught their attention simultaneously; almost nothing else could have broken, so exactly, the cadence of their fight in such a way that no death or injury resulted.

Valedan turned; Andaro froze.

The rag-doll body of a small boy covered in blood flew across the heads of the gathered, silent, crowd.

The roar turned into words, guttural harsh utterings that neither Torra nor Weston could boast.

The darkness closed round them both, then.

Death, there,

Death.

Meralonne did not understand what happened next. There should have been death; a quick, painful death, a thing of blood and excess. A statement. There was enough power contained in the seeming of a Southerner to rouse his awareness a mile away. Easily enough power to crush the lives of two human men.

But although he saw the darkness erect a shield that both he and Sigurne had seen one time before, that shield did not buckle and fold, crushing the two trapped within it; it expanded. It grew to contain them all: Valedan kai di'Leonne, Andaro di'Corsarro, and the creature that had been Carlo di'Jevre.

He did not curse his own stupidity as he watched, but he wondered, aloud, whether or not this had been a part of the plan of the Southern contingent.

"They play at politics here, the fools; they play at
justice
and
wisdom
. What wisdom now? Kill them all, as I suggested, and there would be no harboring of such a creature in the heart of the Empire."

Sigurne reached over the vision; touched his arm. Brought him back to the present. "Men play at many things, Meralonne. I would rather they play at justice and wisdom than brutality and dominion. And I have seen what I now believe you have seen. Enough to know what the cost of the failure of the game is."

"Why did he not destroy them?" "I do not know."

Andaro's cry followed the cry of Carlo di'Jevre.

Of the thing that had been Carlo di'Jevre. Valedan recognized his face, and the proud line of his Southern body, but the eyes were guttered by a darkness so profound they would never hold light again; he was certain of it.

But where the first roar had been an animal cry of fury and frustration, Andaro's cry was one of disbelief, of despair. It cut Valedan; cut him deeply. There was no intimacy between them. Southerner and Southern hostage, and only an intimate should ever have to bear witness to a cry that contained so much.

But he hadn't much choice. His grip on the sword was tight, tight, tight. For the first time since he had walked to the Great Hall, surrounded by guards that had become, overnight, watchful enemies, he longed for the Sun Sword.

Sun Sword or no, he was Leonne, and the enemies of the Lord of Day were the enemies of his bloodline; he knew that now. He would not die without a fight. The creature opened its mouth, raised its arm. But his hand fell open palm up, a menacing supplication.

He spoke.

"I… am… not… dead…"

Carlo di'Jevre's voice.

"This… is… our… battle. Finish… it. For… me."

Labored, that voice, those words. The words, Valedan knew, of a dying man.

"Finish… it… and… he… will… set… you… free. I… would… never… let… him… kill… you."

"And what of you?" Andaro cried, and again, Valedan would have given much to be anywhere else, not to avoid the fight, but to avoid a pain that he had not earned the right to see.

The creature—the creature that was somehow still Carlo di'Jevre—did not answer. Its lips moved, and then stopped, moved and then stopped, a grotesquerie of attempted speech.

"What of you?"

Valedan spoke then, spoke carefully. "He is already dead, and he knows it. But whatever is left of him won't let the creature lie to you, even to save your life."

"Na'Carre? Na'Carre, the
truth
."

"There… is… not… much… time."

He should have attacked. He knew it. But he held his sword up, as if awaiting, at the circle's edge, the signal to begin. Andaro di'Corsarro stepped forward, stepped toward Carlo di'Jevre. His sword he still held, but his arm was slack with its weight, with the weight of things intangible that were still obvious.

To Valedan's great surprise, the creature took a step back, into a darkness that he had thought, until that moment, went on without end. It appeared to be a wall. A wall, a barrier. He had heard something of such a thing in the Northern Court.

Allasakar.

When the creature stopped, Andaro stopped; they stood inches apart, but even so, Valedan could see the darkness that had been Carlo's eyes. What Andaro saw in them, he did not know—but he must have seen something, if not in the eyes, then in the line of face, the twisting of muscles into familiar spasms of expression, that spoke of something other than the demonic, for he raised his hand, his empty shield hand, slowly. . Touched the face of Carlo di'Jevre very, very gently.

"Na'Carre," he said, his voice a whisper. "How did this happen?"

"Pedro… gave… us… water."

Andaro nodded gently. Carlo's hand, shaking, rose to touch Andaro's; they stood a moment in the darkness, and made of the darkness something other than the death and the terror that it was.

"I will fight our enemy," Andaro said quietly. "For you. No matter what the cost."

Complicated by shadows, Carlo's expression shifted. Valedan couldn't read it.

"Thank… you."

Andaro di'Corsarro's hand fell away from Carlo di'Jevre's face. He stepped back, and turned toward Valedan kai di'Leonne, his expression shifting into lines as hard as his sword's.

Valedan waited, thinking that the circle had become much smaller—and that the boundaries had been writ in shadow; there would be no crossing the lines without a death, no quaint surrender.
This
was real.
This
at last was the fight that he had been seeking.

And it was not.

He waited.
Is this war
? he thought, but there was no one to ask the question of, not here. He hefted his own sword, waiting for Andaro. Waiting for Andaro's first move, just as he had done when the sun had beat down upon them.

Andaro di'Corsarro made that move.