The Sun Sword - The Broken Crown Part 90

"What would you have done, had a man you trusted been responsible for the death of Alora?"

He started to answer, and then he stopped. Thinking that, in all these years, his daughter had become a woman, unfathomable, and lost to him. That she had walked the path from a daughter who was much loved, to a wife, with a wife's friends and loves and loyalties. Loves that he was not privy to, that he would never-quite-understand.

What would he have done?

Anything.

"And how," the Serra Teresa continued, her gaze now intent, "would that man stop you from exacting vengeance?"

There was only one way, and they both knew it. She picked up her lamp and swung its shadows in the darkness of the Lady's night. Then she crossed the small s.p.a.ce between them-the necessary s.p.a.ce, the terrible distance-and she placed a palm on his shoulder. "Sendari, what will you do with her?"

"Is that your question?"

"Yes. And it is the only question I have, tonight, tomorrow night, and in the nights to follow. It is the only question I will have until it is answered and I-and we- move on, following one path or another."

He raised a palm, as if to ward her, and said, "What other choice do I have?"

And because it was as much of an answer as he could give, and her gift would make this clear, he waited in silence until she left. Because until she left, taking with her the question that he had not been able to ask of himself, he could not breathe.

The Serra Diora di'Marano was weeping.

You must not move.

The hardest thing she had ever done was to sit in the harem's Inner Chamber and listen. To the voices that she recognized, distorted by screams of pain and fear, ended by death. Knowing that she could use the voice, that she could force these men to stop for long enough that they might somehow, some way, escape.

Aie, she knew that she could not have done it. But her heart did not know it. And it never would. She had sat, while their blood splashed her lap, and she had lifted no hand, spoken no word. She had done nothing.

The rings that bound her fingers bound her heart; she swore to the Lady that she would never again remove them.

She had hoped, somehow, that the act of striking at the men who had been responsible for the deaths of her sister-wives-and her child, her son, no matter that Deirdre had borne him-would give her peace.

But there was no peace.

Because the last word that had been spoken to her had been a single word: her name.

And she could hear it now, rebounding in the emptiness of the room that was, for the moment, her prison.

Diora!

Ruatha's voice. Ruatha's shocked and terrified voice. Ruatha's angry, betrayed voice. Of the wives, only Ruatha had seen her, sitting, the power of her voice completely silent while the treacherous Tyran killed them all.

Killed- her son.

She could not breathe, except to weep. Her arms, she wrapped around her body, as if the ghost of Na'dani could be caught and held, just held, just one more time.

Diora!

And could she offer explanation? She told them all, in the private voice, that she loved them- that she would not let them be forgotten or unmourned. But she knew that Na'dani did not understand the words-and that Ruatha, her Ruatha, of the wives the one that she had loved most fiercely, had gone to her death bitter and betrayed.

If she could, she would go, now, and claw through the earth with her hands, digging up gra.s.s and worms and flesh until she found them where they lay in their bed of earth. And she thought, oh, she thought, that she might join them at last.

The Serra Diora was weeping.

Because she was the Flower of the Dominion, and her work was not yet done, and she did not know how she could continue it without them; they had been her strength. What remained of their memory, the months had leached from her, until all she could remember was their deaths, and her part in them.

Evayne, she thought, as her voice quieted, as she struggled to ride it and tame it, you were wrong. I have righted nothing.

Ruatha, please, forgive me. If you watch from the heart of the whirlwind, forgive. I have struck the first of the blows I will strike, and I strike it in your name.

She had not lifted a hand.

Please forgive me.

She had not raised her voice.

Please.

She had not used the voice.

Ruatha...

The night was endless; she had swallowed it, and it was devouring her. She knew that in the morning, when the sun rose, she would carry this night within her; the only people who could have gentled it with the coming of dawn lay dead.

And the worst of it was this: She was the Serra Diora en'Leonne. In the morning, she would wake, and she would plan. Because she had declared war, and now she must fight it. Nothing else was left her. Nothing at all.

The Tyr'agar was crowned, and the crowning both lifted, and lowered, his shadow. The blockade of the Tor ended with the Festival; the merchants who had been corralled within its walls were granted pa.s.sage to their Ter-reans, be they North or South. Death had come, dramatic and terrible, and death had gone, and in its wake, a new leader had risen: the Tyr'agar Alesso di'Alesso; the founder of a new line.

The clansmen left the Tor with their entourages, large and small, like a human river moving down the plateau. And among that ma.s.s, no one noticed or remarked on a single unremarkable man.

He dressed like a clansman, albeit in garb that was a bit too broad for his shoulders, and he carried with him two swords, one girded and one strapped to his back. He had only a small pack with the possessions that he valued, and they were few indeed, and on his sleeve he bore the emblem of the sun with indistinct rays on a field of blue.

He was tired.

Four days had pa.s.sed since the crowning glory of the Festival's Height; four days since the Radann kai el'Sol had chosen both his death and his weapon.

This man was not a man with rank or station that allowed him to witness the event, and he had no desire to do so.

But someone had to. Someone had to bear witness, bear it with honor, and carry it home.

So he had done something that he knew the Radann kai el'Sol would never have approved of: He had stolen a set of Radann's robes from the temple, and he had come to the water's edge, as the rest of the clansmen had come, both to witness the crowning of a Tyr-and its aftermath.

After this, he had done the second of three things that he knew the Radann kai el'Sol would not approve of. He had taken the liberty-and it was a liberty punishable by death, although death was fast approaching regardless- of filling three skins with the waters of the Tor Leonne. Because the waters contained all that remained of his master-the waters and the wind.

He had then returned to the temple, put away his needles, his shears, his crystals and pearls- those things which, as a master with little funding, he would have found difficult to replace. He took soldi as well, gold coins and silver, although he privately thought Fredero would forgive him that trespa.s.s.

What he would not forgive, what he would never forgive, was the third of the three things.

Jevri el'Sol, born Jevri kep'Lamberto, had taken the sword, Balagar, from its place of honor. If it objected, it did not make its voice known-not even when Jevri had, cautiously but with quiet determination, unsheathed the blade, wielding it. It was not the Lord's way, and he understood this, but he had never served the Lord; he had served Fredero. And while he understood that Fredero forgave the Radann Peder par el'Sol his treachery and his betrayal for the greater good of the Dominion, Jevri was under no obligation to do any such thing.

This sword had belonged to his master; the master of his adult years, and the master of his choosing. He had been blessed and privileged, and he would honor that privilege before he sought another master.

If he ever did. He was not a young man.

The sun was hot during the day; the nights, cold. Not until he was well quit of the Terrean of Raverra did he sleep without the terrible ache in the bones of his fingers, his feet. But the roads were safe for an old man such as he, bearing the crest that he did. He stayed with men who accepted coin for hospitality, and he walked, cane in hand, watching the merchant caravans as they fought for s.p.a.ce on roads that would soon see rain.

He expected pursuit. There was none.

When, he thought, would Peder par el'Sol-he could not bring himself to even think of the name kai el'Sol as any man's but Fredero's-notice the loss of the sword?

It was in the Lord's hands.

And the Lord did not choose, this time, to hinder. The days pa.s.sed; he walked through them all, keeping a steady, a stately pace. The three skins, he did not touch, nor the sword, but he ate traveling rations, honeyed wheat and nuts and dried fruits. There were rivers and brooks as he proceeded North, into the plains that produced the finest horses in the Dominion.

Jevri el'Sol crossed the Mancorvan border.

To reach the city of Amar was less easy than he expected it would be; at every point along the road that a man could be stopped, he was stopped; if it were not for the symbol of the Lord across his shoulder, he thought his detention might have been rougher and lasted longer.

Hard times, but he was calm; he expected no less.

Lamberto was not a friend of the new Tyr'agar. How could it be, when the man ruled by treachery, by darkness?

Politics, Jevri thought. And he continued to walk. Because this was his gift to Fredero kai el'Sol, the youngest of the Lambertan Tyr's brother's-youngest and most loved.

Days pa.s.sed. He thought the sun etched lines more deeply into his hands, his arms; he could not see his face, and was not particularly sorry for the lack. But he missed Fredero, perhaps because he carried so many responsibilities with him.

Perhaps because they were friends.

But Jevri el'Sol was patience personified in everything but his craft, and his craft was behind him; his past before. He walked from the heart of the Tor Leonne to the heart of the city of Amar, the home of the clan Lamberto, and although the road and the wind and the weather slowed him down, nothing stopped him.

The gates were not as he remembered them, and he felt a twinge at that, a stab of surprise. There were Tyran here, bristling like angry boars.

This was, however, Amar, and the Tyran here served the Lord with honor. They did not-a single one of them-recognize him, although he thought he recognized a few of their faces; it was hard to tell, the years changed men so.

"I have come," he told the oathguard who barred his way, "to speak with Tyr Mareo kai di'Lamberto."

"The Tyr is a busy man," the Tyran replied.

"Yes. And he is a man who serves the Lord. He will hear what I have to say."

But these men, they were determined, and in the end, Jevri had become curt. "I am tired, I am road weary, and I have come from the side of the Radann kai el'Sol to speak with Mareo. I will not be put off by young, self-important men. Do I make myself clear?"

"You most certainly do," a familiar voice said.

And the Tyran parted at once, as if they were a tunnel and not a wall. At the end, flanked by them, stood the Tyr'agnate who ruled Mancorvo.

"Jevri," he said, with a broad smile, "welcome to our home."

But Jevri did not return the smile. "Tyr'agnate," he said, although he had called him a good many things when they had lived under the roof of Serra Carlatta's harem together, and none of them had been that. "I have come from the Tor Leonne to deliver to you the tale of the last day of the Radann kai el'Sol."

Mareo's face grayed at once, turned grim and dark. He waved the Tyran away, and said, simply, "Follow." As if he spoke to a seraf, a familiar seraf.

And Jevri, born kep'Lamberto, obeyed.

In the privacy of the harem-the same harem in which he had watched Fredero grow up-he told the Tyr his story. He was quiet as he spoke, as was his wont, and Mareo did little to interrupt.

"I will do my penance," Jevri told him, "for the theft of the robe, but I have served the Lord

faithfully these many years, and it is in the service of the Lord that I have come."

But Mareo said, "It was in the service of Fredero that you came, and you came to Lamberto. You know that my brother forswore his family, to my father's dismay, and joined the Radann."

"Rather well," Jevri replied, almost dryly. "But he thought of you often, and he would have

wanted word of his fate to travel.

"He drew the Sun Sword, Tyr'agnate, that all clansmen of honor might see for themselves the Lord's wrath, and make the honorable choice."

"And you wished me to understand what my brother felt the only choice to be.""Yes. And more." He knelt and unstrapped the sword at his back. "This is Balagar."Mareo paled. "You stole the sword of the Radann kai el'Sol?"Jevri nodded grimly."But why?""Because when the armies ride, they will ride through Mancorvo. And it was the kai el'Sol's fervent belief that the demons who once served the Lord of Night will ride at their head. This sword was a sword that could stand against those creatures; it was a lesser sword than the Sun Sword, but it is a sword of right, one meant to be raised in defense of the Lord of the Sun.

"Had he lived, he would have wielded it, taking the war to the kinlords and their master. But he did not live. And 1 have taken the sword," Jevri said softly, "to the only other man I consider worthy of bearing it, Lord forgive my presumption.

"You need it, Tyr'agnate."

The Tyr'agnate was silent a long time. At last, he said, "Do you know what they offered me?"

Jevri felt a cold, sharp sting, as if something had pa.s.sed through his heart. He said nothing.

"The choice of the Captain of the Tyr'agar's Tyran. And a war with the Northern Empire and its

demon kings."

They stared at each other, these two men, and it was Mareo di'Lamberto who looked away. He had aged.

"What news you have brought us, Jevri. What terrible news. And the rites?"