Michelle West - The Sun Sword 02 - The Uncrowned King (94 page)

"She won't answer; she's never answered that question."

"
But do not doubt her motivation any more than you doubt your own. Jewel ATerafin, and guard what you see here wisely, for
only
you will see it. "

The dagger fell: the sun rose.

And Sigurne Mellifas
spoke
.

She spoke syllables, but they were syllables that Jewel clapped her hands to her ears to avoid hearing; there was something about them, like an animal roar, but somehow darker and older and deeper, that contained a horror worse than one's own death. Worse, in fact, than death.

No human voice could speak like that; no human voice—but Sigurne Mellifas was undeniably human.

She spoke.

Kiriel di'Ashaf froze.

Flanked by Auralis and Alexis, on patrol in the ninety-seventh and ninety-eighth of the hundred holdings, she raised her head as if waking from a dream or a reverie.

"Kiriel?"

She turned, put her hand to her hip, gripped the haft of her sword. The sun had lost all warmth, all light; there was shadow upon the horizon, a spill in the sky like a cloud gone awry. And she knew its
name
.

A
hand gripped her arm, pulled her round; she almost drew the sword before she recognized Alexis' face.

"Kiriel, 1 asked you a question."

The syllables of the name faded, but the echo still traveled the length of her spine. For a moment—just a moment—she felt shadow; she felt at
home
.

The moment passed. The sun returned, and with it the weakness that plagued her. Glowing in the reflected light, the band upon her hand—the ring that protected itself from this immortal-forged sword, caught light. "I—I think someone's found our demon," she said quietly.

Alexis and Auralis exchanged a look over the top of her head.

"Where?"

She said, "You didn't hear it?"

"Didn't hear what?"

"His name."

The second look that traveled between the two senior Ospreys was more pointed, but it answered her question. Which was good, as Alexis wasn't going to bother. She knew the Decarus well enough to know that.

"Where, Kiriel?"

"I don't know. I don't know the city well enough. It's that way," she added, pointing.

"Can we get there in time?"

There was a stillness in the air; even the fire seemed to freeze at the chill of the magi's shadow-bound syllables. The magi herself was stiff as steel; was standing, in fact, except for raised arms, in exactly the posture she'd assumed when Jewel had first set eyes on her.

"Allaros," Sigurne said, through gritted teeth, her voice raised as much as a voice could be raised that had spoken a name not meant for mortal throat.

The demon turned his gaze to earth. "Do you
dare
?" he demanded, his voice the thunder.

"Yes," was her tired, tired response. "That, and more, if it is necessary."

Fire flared, erupting from his hands as if he were ornamental font, and it, liquid. But it fanned around her—and Jewel, for which the younger woman thanked Sigurne—in a circle; it melted ground, but did no damage.

"I have," Sigurne said softly, "some purchase upon your form. While you wear it, I have your name."

Meralonne APhaniel came then, riding the crest of air that seemed to still echo the syllables Sigurne had spoken with such difficulty.

The demon parried, but it was slowed, slowed by the weight of something that Jewel could not see.

"This… is… not… possible…" the creature snarled, parrying, striking, parrying. "The hells have no purchase over
me
! I did not traverse the ways through the circles or the mages. I am here, I exist in the
now
."

She was growing paler by the second. She spoke anyway. "You gave up your life. Such a decision cannot be revoked by mere presence, or the existence of an open passage between that world and this.

"Did he tell you otherwise? You will not be the first to believe the words of a Lord who decries such credulity.
Look at yourself
," she said. "Look at the form you have been
granted
. No summoner's trick, this, no burden of circle and passage, no mage's rapture.
Look
!"

And the word was a command.

Jewel knew it.

She wondered if Meralonne would strike then, while his enemy was held in the grip of another's compulsion. Of the many things that she admired about Meralonne, pragmatism was one: He was not a man to waste his life on a point of honor.

And yet he stayed his hand.

As if seeing himself only truly at the force of her word, the creature's gaze dropped. She waited a moment, and then saw that something else dropped as well: his shield. It flickered, as if struggling for life, before its fire went out completely.

"It will not be the same," he said softly; the wind carried the words away from her ears, but she heard them all the same. She'd wonder how later.

"Allaros—"

"Did you know it, Illaraphaniel? Did you humor me?"

The white-haired mage said nothing.

"Or did you think that I knew it?" An obsidian profile that was suddenly achingly beautiful in its momentary vulnerability gazed out, out beyond the city to the sea itself. "Do you know what I most miss?"

"No."

"The worthy foe."

Silence. "And… I," the mage said.

"And second?"

"No."

"Life. In all its aspects. I miss ending it. There is no death in the Hells, no satisfying closure; although the pain of the damned is intoxifying, it is also endless." He bowed his head a moment. "And I miss beginning it."

"Allaros—"

"Meralonne!" Jewel cried out, sudden in her panic. "Now! Kill him now—Sigurne is almost past holding him!"

And the creature's lips turned up in an unpleasant smile. Ugly, but respectful. "But victory is better than failure, and you
will

fail, and if we have no life in the Hells, and no life here when we leave it, we will at least end
yours
."

He struck, then, and Meralonne struck as well; their blades passed through each other as fire was finally consumed by lightning.

Jewel barely saw it; she had turned her back to the fight with just enough time to spare that she managed to catch Sigurne Mellifas before she hit the ground.

Kiriel came round the corner far in the lead of Auralis or Alexis. Her sword was unsheathed; she held it a moment as she looked at the bleeding magi, at Carver and Angel, at Jewel—here!—and the woman whose weight she struggled with.

Of the demon, there was no sign.

She sheathed the sword. Stood in the open road a moment, waiting.

Jewel ATerafin raised her head, as if that silence were a question. In a fashion, it was. "Kiriel."

The younger woman nodded.

"Help me."

She walked across the open ground, and as she approached, saw who Jewel was struggling with. The old woman. Sigurne Mellifas. Without thinking, she put out both arms, caught the whole of the old woman's weight, and hefted her as if she were an infant and Kiriel, her mother.

"So," Jewel said softly.

"What?"

"You've still got your strength."

She almost dropped Sigurne as weight returned to her arms. Almost—but not quite. "I—I didn't," she said softly.

"Doesn't matter. We've got to move. The runners will be here, and the magisterians have to have enough time to clean up."

"Where are we going?"

"The isle," Jewel replied. "The isle or
Avantari
."

Meralonne joined her, bowing stiffly to Kiriel, his brow still slick with blood. She'd missed this fight, and now wished she hadn't. "You must have—fought well," Kiriel said, awkwardly.

"Did you know the
Kialli
?" he asked.

"Not personally, no. But I—I knew his name when I heard it."

Steel-gray eyes met hers; held them a long time before he deigned to let them go. "Take her to the Palace," Meralonne ordered. "If she survives that far."

Valedan came in third. Eneric came in second. Andaro di'Corsarro came in first, driven as if by the demon that Meralonne had faced. He was a surprise to them all, judging by the look on his trainer's face; a surprise, that is, to all save one man. Carlo di'Jevre looked on with a pride that had no bounds as Andaro found the speed necessary—somehow—to cross that margin, that narrow, man-made boundary, first.

He collapsed immediately, his legs spasming, his body twisting into stone and dirt as it struggled for air. The crowds along the street took up his name with a roar that only the ocean in fury could match; they understood what they saw—both victory and collapse—and they appreciated the effort.

Neither Valedan nor Eneric were so indisposed, and both men must have wondered what it would have taken to push them across that line first.

Commander Sivari wondered it, but he wondered dispassionately. He had watched the race, riveted only in the last fifteen minutes; his thoughts were still anchored to numbers, to the probability— the possibility—that Valedan might walk away with the crown that Sivari himself had once claimed.

To that end, Valedan's position crossing the line was all that mattered; he could not go back in time and reclaim the race. He could only go forward. Tomorrow: archery, and of that, he felt more confident.

The day after, the test of the sword.

He had seen Valedan fight. Had wondered, the first time, how he'd ever missed the boy's singular skill; had even been surprised that Mirialyn ACormaris had not. But having seen Valedan in action, he also knew that battles that counted were different in subtle ways from the battles that didn't; Valedan had never really been in a battle that
counted
. There were too many men who came to this competition with the sword as their chief strength; who struggled to take only that crown, of the ten, and not the crown for the event itself.

The Southerners, for instance.

He could not help himself; he glanced across the enclosure to Ser Anton di'Guivera, feeling it: The pang of loss.
Idiot
, he told himself. But there had been about Ser Anton that patina of nobility—a nobility of spirit that birth and circumstance could never duplicate—when the Southerner had taken the Crown. Not once, but twice, and in the name of love.

Much is done in the name of love
, he thought, and looked away.

"Valedan."

The water played through his open fingers as he held his palms up in supplication beneath its fall. He knew the voice; knew by the near soundless fall of perfect steps that the Serra Alina was drawing closer to where he knelt. He wanted to order her away; he almost did.

But the fact that he
could
order her, and she—Southern-born and bred—would be forced by some nicety of law and custom to obey, where in the North she might laugh or stand her ground with ease, silenced him.

"Valedan."

He did not look up. He knew what he would see; could hear it in her voice. She was silent a long time, and at last he spoke. "An old woman is almost dead," he said, each word flat and uninflected. "And a dozen more
are
dead, because they were standing in their windows, watching the streets below. Hoping for a sight of the runners."