Michelle West - The Sun Sword 02 - The Uncrowned King (66 page)

"I am hardly likely to tell her something she can't figure out for herself," was the mage's cool response. "And we gain no allies by treating the people we need as if they were imbecilic."

"Or," Duvari said, "politically astute. There are some things that it is not necessary to mention, and the wise person—" and he stopped to stare at Jewel a moment,"—does not wish to know more than she needs."

"The wise person," the mage replied, "understands the value and the temperament of those he uses, and treats them accordingly. This particular ATerafin is not at her most useful when she's hooded."

"And she doesn't like being talked about in the third person unless it's by herself," Jewel said. "'It's the kin, right?"

Silence.

Meralonne nodded.

"We've seen prior evidence of the use of living bodies as hosts," she said.

"Yes," Meralonne replied, but hesitantly. "Yes, we have."

"But?"

"But in this case… it's different. Worrisome." He removed a pipe from his robes. "Do you mind?" he asked, waving its stem in her general direction.

"Not at all," she replied. It wasn't true, but she knew Duvari hated it, and she was willing to suffer if he did. Petty. "What could be worse than what happened with—than the ability to take a body and some of its memories?"

"To take a body and all of its memories," Meralonne said, softly. "The creature that destroyed the—" He shook his head. "The creature that we are both speaking of
was
a distinct form, with a distinct set of abilities." He began to stuff dry leaves into the deep bowl of the pipe, nestling them there with a meticulous care that he showed in very little else that was not directly involved in his speciality of study.

She shrugged.

"The creature that has caused us difficulty at the Challenge is bound by no such form. It is almost as if—" He lit the pipe with a careless snap of fingers. Or rather, he tried. "Ah, yes,' he said dryly. "Duvari's famous room. I do believe that I had forgotten some of its less natural properties."

"I don't believe you," Duvari said coldly. "It is exactly the sort of detail that a mage of your renown does
not
forget."

He shrugged. "As you will." He pulled flint from his pocket, sticks of dry wood. She had seen this done before, but not often. Fire from a natural source was harder for a man of Meralonne's talent to obtain, but he worked at it in the heavy silence.

Pipe smoke and information hung in the air between them as the mage turned his attention back to Jewel ATerafin. "It is almost as if the Lord of the Hells himself could somehow reach back across the wide bridge to the Abyss and draw his followers here, whole; that he could deny them the form and the shape of the world, the heaviness of it, the flesh."

"Why bother?"

"I am not completely certain," Meralonne said softly. "But I believe—and my knowledge of the kin is not, fortunately, complete—that creatures of the type that were used some fifteen years ago are actually rare. To infiltrate where necessary, it would require far more of them than are likely to exist. But stripped of flesh, denied a body, most of the
Kialli
would seek whatever they could find, regardless of their learned or developed abilities.

"It is," he added, "a hunger, and a protection."

"Stripped of flesh?"

"Jewel," Meralonne said quietly, "you forget your theology. The kin have no natural forms; they force a form of flesh from their imperfect memory and the magic of
this
world combined, and they wear it. It reflects them, and they reflect it. When a demon is summoned, the moment he bridges that gate created by his name, he takes his form. There were old experiments done to stop the
Kialli
from such an arrival; it is why we have some meager understanding of this at all."

She didn't ask him about those experiments; she didn't want to know. "Did 'they' succeed?"

"No," he said softly. "They did not have the power required to keep the creature from its form."

"And you're telling me that something here does."

Silence.

She was suddenly glad that this room had no windows, that it allowed for the casting of no magic, that it had one door, and that door an easy one to keep an eye on.

"Yes," he said at last.

"If I ask you what has the power to do that when a group of rogue mages doesn't—"

"They weren't rogue," he said. "They were seekers of knowledge under the reign of Vexusa."

Silence. Terrible, long, silence.

"Why does it always come back to this?" she whispered. "The cathedral. The Shining City."

He put the pipe to his lips and inhaled. Some answer. At last he said, "You know why."

And the terrible thing about it was that she did. She knew.
Allasakar
. Lord of Darkness. Lord of the Hells. Ruler of the kin.

"If he can do this," she said faintly, "he'll have hundreds of… of kin that can take human shape. Thousands."

"I believe that is the fear."

"Are they detectable?"

"Yes…"

"But it's worse than the last one."

"Yes. Because the creature does not create its own flesh."

"Rath was—"

"Beneath the skin, the flesh was not his," Meralonne replied quietly. "I'm sorry."

She looked up at Devon then, sharply, gaze like the edge of a knife. He met her gaze anyway, fencing with his own, unwilling to give ground.

She was silent a long time. "That's why you need me," she said softly.

"Yes. What a seer sees is nothing as simple as magic, or the creation of magic; it is far more complex, far more reliable."

The pipe moved. Jewel did not.

"He's really here," she said at last. "And if he can pull any of his subjects across the divide…"

"Yes."

"Then what can we do?" she asked, straightening out, lifting her chin slightly. She felt Avandar at her back; had forgotten, until he moved restively, that he was there at all. Was surprised by how natural it felt, how unnatural it was. "I think I've listened to every bardic lay there is about the Shining Lord. How do we stand against a god?"

Meralonne shrugged elegantly. "'The same way," he said softly, "that we stand against any enemy. I pity you; I pity any man or woman who is not a member of the Order of Knowledge, for it seems to me that it is easiest for them to continue their labors in ignorance. I would have thought—I
do
think—better of you."

"If he were all-powerful, we would be ash," Devon said quietly.

But she could hear a child screaming across more than a decade, and the screams were more real than the nightmares that threw her out of sleep. Because she'd lived them.

With him. With Devon.

"Maybe he just needs the sacrifices," she said softly.

"Maybe." He smiled, and as the smile fell into place, the last of his unease seemed to give way before it. He bowed, ever so slightly. "But I think that you forget the end of all bardic tales."

"Oh?"

"Moorelas," he said quietly. "Moorelas rode."

"Moorelas fell," she replied.

"Does it matter? So did his enemy, in the end."

"Who gets to love a hero who does nothing with his life but prepare to lose it?"

He raised a dark brow; it changed the shape of his eyes. Blue eyes. And then he laughed. "Touche," he said softly. "But I believe that the Lord of the Compact now requires your service, and in earnest. There are… two ways, or so we believe, of detecting such infiltration.

"First, and easiest, is you. Second, and more difficult, is the healer-bom."

"No," she said. There wasn't any question at all who he was talking about, and she felt a chill, and an anger. Daine had been at the healerie for only a few days, and he had met, outside of her own den, almost no one. Almost.

"Jewel—The Terafin has given her permission, in case of emergency, for all members of her House to cooperate to the fullest extent with the Crowns or their chosen representatives."

"Fine. I'm cooperating. But he hasn't given his yet. And he's
not
ATerafin."

"Oh?"

"He's one of mine," she said, and her voice was low, quiet. "Not that that means much to you, as we've both seen." She wanted a reaction; wasn't sure which one. Didn't matter. He didn't give her one. After a minute, she continued. "He's been through enough lately. I won't risk him."

"If the rumors are true." Devon said softly, "he'll only be able to tender one answer if we make the request. You and he are said to have… much in common, at the moment."

She was surprised at just how angry she was.

She was especially surprised at the white mark her hand left in the side of his face; it had been years since she'd hit someone. She was not, however, sorry. It had been done; she'd live with it.

"You can ask him," she said. "But without my say-so, he won't do a damned thing for you. Try to force him," she added softly. "Try to push. I'll make sure every healer this side of the Western Kingdoms knows about it. And knows that you have the support of the
Astari
."

The drawn breath she heard at her back was Duvari's, not Devon's.

Devon was absolutely still.

And then he raised his hand to the side of his face, touched his cheek, met her eyes. Smiled, although because the smile was one she'd never seen on his face before, she couldn't place it and didn't know what it meant. Danger, maybe. Something.

"A temper like that," he said softly, "won't hold you in good stead in the arena you want to play in." He bowed, stiffly, correctly. "You understand our need better than almost anyone here. You're right, of course; the decision cannot be forced. Should not be." He turned to Duvari. "With your permission, I believe it is time to adjourn. The contestants have yet to be… screened, and we've left ourselves little time."

Duvari was slow to nod, but the nod—when it came—was definitive. "Member APhaniel," he said curtly.

"Of course. Lord of the Compact." His eyes skirted the tense lines of the two ATerafin faces. Came to rest on Jewel's. "Your pardon, ATerafin," he said quietly. He ceased to draw on the stream of smoke, and the embers began to fade. "I was summoned in haste from the duties 1 have undertaken to both the Order and the Crowns, in order that I might answer questions deemed pertinent to your investigation. The matter we are discussing is not generally known to the magi. Currently, there are three, and you will be delivered into the hands of Member Mellifas should the need for such consultation arise."

"What are you doing?"

"I," he said, sardonically, "am put to uses which mere apprentices would be deemed too intellectual for." He set the pipe aside a moment and stretched, the movement as languorous a display as any Jewel had seen from a man who flipped from dignity to cantankerousness and back without warning. "It has been an interesting discussion; I am grateful for the opportunity it afforded me to relax."

And she knew, as he spoke the words, that he was lying. "You're worried." she said bluntly.

"Perceptive, as always." He bowed. "I am pressed," he told her softly. "My services are required to put your services to use, and my time here means that we will not be well-coordinated without cost."