Michelle West - The Sun Sword 02 - The Uncrowned King (28 page)

13th of Lattan, 427AA

The Shining City

Serra Diora di'Marano.

Close his eyes, and he could see the perfect stillness of her face. He could even think it lovely, in the way a perfect sword was lovely when it was held by an enemy's hands and turned, in silence, against him. And she, barely a woman, had lifted sword against
him
, against them all. The Sun Sword.

If the power existed in a Widan's hands to destroy that Sword, it would have been destroyed long ago; if the power to steal it existed, it would have been stolen, hidden, copied. But it rested, luminous and defiant, in the Swordhaven that the first Leonne had built for it in ages past, after the end of the Shadow Wars.

As if there could ever be an end to such war. As if, he thought grimly, fingering the long, fine strands of his pale, peppered beard, that bloody, murderous battle had been anything but a skirmish, a pale shadow of the war to come.

The mountain winds came in through the open arches, lifting his cloak and his hair in the strength of its grip. Such arches as these had never existed in the whole of the Southern Dominion while he lived, and only the whispered echoes of a history before the gods themselves gave hint that such structures as this—this stone work, this scion of mountain and magic and shadow, this Shining Palace, was not unique in the history of the world. It boasted no gold, no wood, no Northern masons. Only the hand of a God could have accomplished this: the stone was of a piece. End to end, depth to height, it was seamless; embellishments added for the human court had been added with the Lord's permission, as afterthought that did not, ever, diminish or add to the grace and strength of his achievement.

The mage stood, planted there by spell and Southern defiance, as the winds at the height grew stronger, and stronger still; the Northern Lords repaired at once into the great chamber, drawing their furs and their magics and their cloaks tight about their bodies, forgetting, in a moment's discomfort, that the kin watched and waited, circling weakness in the way that vultures circled above the dying in fields made fallow by battle's end.

Cortano di'Alexes neither forgot the watchers nor fled the cold; he had lived with the wind all his days, and in a Dominion where the wind and the sand scoured the soul in perfect harmony, the Northern wind was not so much to be feared; it was a fact, the wind, and it comforted him to feel its threat so far from home. The comfort was, as the wind, cold.

Serra Diora
en 'Leonne
.

Oh, she was more than her father's daughter, that pale-faced, black-eyed child. And he, surrounded by men who defined manhood by three things, war, riding, and women, had been out-mastered by her maneuvering; outmanipulated by her helpless facade; almost undone in the sweep of a few well-placed words, at a ceremony that he had been the original architect of: The crowning of a new Tyr.

Not even the death of the Radann kai el'Sol was a death he could take pleasure in; for it had been used against them all, a reminder that the only way to truly disarm a warrior born was to kill him, and brook no delay.

Very few of the women in the Dominion were born warriors. Still, he should have seen it. They
all
should have seen it.

The wind drew tears from his eyes, and those tears struggled down the folds of his skin, freezing slowly in the cold air. Soon, he would have to leave this perch; a show of strength was one thing, but it could be… overdone. Almost disdainfully, he stepped forward to the stone rails, and stood there a moment, between the folded wings of a stone dragon in flight. His gaze rolled down the length of its neck and beyond: for in the distance made of height and wind, he could see, clearly, the gate. Demons guarded it, standing at each of its five points, invoking its magic—mind, heart, spirit, body, and place—with theirs as sustenance. Hours from now, they would be replaced, and hours from then, when the sun was well and truly hidden, the Lord himself would take to the pit and begin to call forth the kin.

He had their names.

Each and every one.

Turning, his hands edged in white, he made his way back to the great hall in which fires would be burning.

Burning.

For a moment, just a moment, the Widan Cortano, Sword's Edge, the most powerful mage in the Dominion of Annagar, paused. He was beside himself with rage, and that rage, concealed behind a necessary mask, was like the fire itself, and the wood; it consumed. She was a
girl
and he a
Widan
, and she had taken, in silence and meekness, the weapons that she required to injure them all.

No, it was not that she had taken them; it was that she had used them, to advantage. She had won. Had he been a political fool— or a man to take those chances—the girl would be horribly, terribly dead, a sure warning to any who thought to follow her example. Cortano di'Alexes was not a man who lost at anything. Ah, he was angry; he was angry, still, and he dared not show it, not here.

For he stood within the great stone halls—the cold stone halls— of the Shining Court, and here, such an expression was almost an open admission of weakness. He was not a fool; a foolish man could never have both wielded, and been, the Edge of the Sword of Knowledge. He knew that the
Kialli
watched, always; that no human lord of this Court was ever safe; the
Kialli's
memories were long and near-perfect.

And why should they not be? The
Kialli
were truly immortal. Kill them here, and the Hells opened in the distance to draw their essences home to the winds of the Abyss. Their bodies, made by some pact between the sleeping earth and its ancient children's names, burned to ash, and less, like discarded clothing.

At least, he reflected, this was how a Summoning worked. But the gate that the Lord of the Shining Court built, with the aid of Cortano, Isladar, Krysanthos—a man Cortano respected and disliked in equal measure—and the Lord Ishavriel and his strange, wind-scoured child-woman Anya, was not a summoning of that nature; it was a bridge. It made, slowly, a single place of these two worlds: The Hells, and the lands of man. And if these two places were one, then what?

Cortano let curiosity eat away at the edges of anger, for he was known for his curiosity; it was a weakness that he was, conversely, proud to own.

The sun was in position. The meeting was about to start. He played no games of waiting here; his power was understood, and it was valued.

* * *

"Lord Assarak, Lord Etridian; your objections in this matter are trivial and must be overlooked. I need not remind you that you were invited—and accepted that invitation—to show your vaunted prowess by seeing to the destruction of a boy. Not even a man, but a magicless. powerless boy.

"Your failure there—and our enemies' ability to use our weakness to advantage—has placed us in a more delicate position. The plan that I've outlined is the only plan we will consider."

The saying of the words afforded Cortano di'Alexes a certain amount of pleasure. He turned toward the shadow that waited patiently by the door, and that pleasure diminished greatly.

The shadow bowed. "Sword's Edge," he said softly.

"It is… not common… to bring a guest to these meetings." Lord Isladar rose.

The shadow sauntered into the light that was brought as a subtle accusation of weakness into the council hall; the
Kialli
, after all, did not require it. "I am hardly a guest, Lord Isladar." He bowed, but not to the
Kialli
with whom he spoke; instead he turned to Lord Ishavriel of the Fist of God.

Cortano was not pleased, but the presence of this particular man—and by extension, of the men with whom he served—had never given the Sword of Knowledge pleasure. In the Empire, the Order of Knowledge—a weaker and less focused body—did one thing that Cortano desired to emulate: They destroyed mages who were not under their auspices and their quaint law. Somehow, that destruction of the so-called rogues had not brought the Order to its knees, and it had started no long and bloody war between rival factions. Power in the North was a strange creature.

Not so, not here.

The shadow rose, shedding magical disguise, and adding it. Bold, here. "I am… the humble merchant, Pedro di'Jardanno." Humble. Older. Rounder. The beard that suddenly graced his face was streaked with white; the rings that adorned his fingers were tight around overly soft flesh. "I have been granted permission, by the Tyr'agar's new edicts, to travel North for the Festival season; I am late to arrive, sadly."

"Is this meant to impress us?" Etridian said, with studied contempt.

"No," Pedro replied genially. "But the Brotherhood of the Lord will test its mettle against the coterie that protects one simple human boy. Perhaps," he added, equally genially, his smile a studied fold of flesh, "it will impress the Lord, where his Fist has failed to do so."

Etridian rose like the fall of lightning.

Pedro crossed his arms; there was a clash of something that sounded almost like steel, and lightning, indeed, did come. "We are not
Allasakari
," he said, with some contempt. "We do not seek to be the Lord's vessels. I have no doubt that should you decide upon it, you will kill me—but your own survival might then be at question; it will be a costly kill, Lord Etridian."

The Brotherhood of the Lord.

Cortano understood much then. It was not a title that had been claimed in centuries—not a title, in fact, that Ser Pedro had dared to claim when they first began their negotiations. Something had changed, was changing, and Cortano liked it little.

What
, he thought,
have you been promised
? He did not ask; he would, later, but indirectly as was his wont. The brotherhoods— Lord's or Lady's—did not take kindly to direct questioning.

Etridian's hand left claw marks in the surface of stone and wood; it drew the Widan's attention and ended the unfortunate silence.

Of the five Generals—the fist of God—he preferred Lord Ishavriel, who had the advantage of being subtle. He had no other advantage, however; he was, as were all of the
Kialli
—with the notable exception of Lord Isladar—condescending and arrogant when dealing with the merely mortal, so the preference was slight, and had he the upper hand over that General, he would not hesitate to apply it. Cautiously.

"You will not take my kin," Etridian said. "When we were instructed to do away with a so-called magicless, powerless 'boy,' you neglected to inform us that we would be facing the darkness-born." He turned his neutral expression upon the Lord Isladar, who had until this point kept his own counsel. "You gave your word," he said softly, "that she would not be a threat to us."

"I gave my word," Isladar replied, softer still, "that she would not defy our Lord's command."

"It is his plan that we follow."

"And he has not chosen to speak against her." The single Lord in Allasakar's service who had asked for no demesne offered the glimmer of a rare smile. "Kiriel has long lived by the law of the Hells, Etridian. You have offered her no alliance, made no pact, granted her none of the respect due her position."

"Position," Assarak said, "is a function of power."

"Indeed. And had she none, she would have died long ago."

"She has yours, Isladar."

"Not now."

"No. Now, she holds—"

Silence descended at once, cold and sudden; all eyes glanced a moment off Cortano's still curiosity, off Ser Pedro's implacable good humor.

"
Enough
," Lord Isladar said. "Enough, Lord Etridian. This bickering is pointless. The kin will be taken from both the ranks of yourself and Lord Assarak—and the Lord has graciously agreed to summon one who can take the physical form of another creature, and not the mere appearance.

"The boy must die. His existence is an affront to our ability, and our strength."

"And your… student?"

Isladar was silent a moment; Cortano watched with interest— always interest—as the will of Ishavriel and the will of Isladar clashed openly, and in complete silence. It was the only way he had seen them test power against each other. Of all, Ishavriel was Isladar's greatest threat, and it was hard to gauge the depth of that threat; Cortano had seen each of the Generals display more power, and at that openly, than Isladar had ever displayed.

Which is why it should have come as no surprise to him that Isladar spoke first. But it did. "If Kiriel is hunting the kin, and I suspect there is a chance that she will do so out of spite, we must be prepared."

"How much can she sense, Isladar?"

Again, Cortano caught a flicker of glances, all touching him briefly.

"I do not know," Isladar said at last. "But I believe we can circumvent it—or better, use it against her."

"How?"

"She is young; she is not experienced; she has not dwelled long among the humans. I believe, with the expedient use of magics, we may be able to convince her that there are kin where indeed none exist.

"In the event that we have that success, I believe she will likely kill—and with some obvious force—an innocent human, perhaps several, and in Averalaan, that will mark her. Let her run from our enemies, and draw their attention to her unique capabilities in the process."

"And what," Etridian said coldly, "makes you think that our enemies will be her enemies? It was in the hall of their Kings that she chose to attack me."

"True enough. However I believe that until that moment the allies that she had did not realize her true colors; it may be that they will never do so without our… aid. They will look, and closely, when that same girl is busy slaughtering the citizens of their city with talents that only the darkness-born might possess."

"They believe there is no such thing as one darkness-born."

Isladar's frown was a momentary crease of smooth skin. "Indeed," he said softly. "Perhaps," he added lightly, "they will assume her to be Allasakari."

Etridian spit. "They will not. They will know—or the triumvirate will—that she is god-born. Just as you, or I, would know the kin, whether they chose the talents of the
kialli
or the use of man-made sword to spread their law."