Sun Sword - The Riven Shield Part 100

Jewel understood why; the arrows that the wind did not dislodge flew above them.

Words traveled from height to ground; words were carried from building to Tor'agar. He listened, grim, and offered words of his own in response; like arrows, they were often taken by the breeze; they did not reach Jewel's ears.

Her hand played with the haft of dagger hilt as she watched; she did not draw her weapon. All of her skill with a blade-and it was meager-was not meant for fights of this nature; gone were the narrow alleys of the twenty-fifth holding, the walls of buildings looming to either side. The shadows in Damar were broken by moon and light, and the silent memory of the alley, by the hoa.r.s.e shouts and cries of men.

And the screams.

Not all of the dying screamed. Some had no throat for it, and the gurgle of their final words were lost with their lives. Nor did all of the living choose to cloak their combat in sound.

Kallandras of Senniel College was utterly, profoundly silent. Celleriant of the Green Deepings was silent as well, although his blade drew the eye, time and again, as it rose and fell.

He did not stand upon the bridge, but instead, upon the rail, and several times in the fight, he was forced to leap up, and into the Adane to avoid the play of spears, the swing of crescent blade. He seemed heavier, to her, than he had been-as if some essential joy was absent from the battle.

But joyless or no, he fought, and Kallandras shadowed his movements, touching water as well, but failing to sink beneath the rush of its current. The wounds he had taken at the hands of the kin were joined by others; he retreated and returned, as if such actions were part of a graceful dance.

Two such men as these could hold the bridge, she thought, for a long time.

But they wouldn't. She knew it, and spun, knees digging into the haunches of the Winter King.

Fire limned the edge of the Southernmost wall; dirt and stone flew up, as if they were, by fire, made liquid for a moment.

The cerdan retreated, but Avandar Gallais stood in the rain of earth, his hands spread wide, orange light seeping from his fingertips.

Kallandras leaped clear of the bridge; the soles of his boots skimmed the surface of a water now deprived of voice, of anger. He called for the wind and it took him above the din of battle, above the flat roofs of Southern dwellings; above the archers whose bows must be spent-they were silent.

He could see the Marente forces; they had gathered behind three sections of the wall that Avandar had pulled from the flattened mud and stonework of Damar's streets. They were led by men on horseback, but they hung back; they waited upon the work of Widan, of magecraft, the Sword's Edge.

He could hear the words they spoke-when they spoke at all; they h.o.a.rded night words and night thoughts beneath the grim press of lips. Lady's time.

Turn back, he told them, using the fine edge of his power. Turn back or the Lord will devour you; there will not be enough left of you for the winds to claim.

The words came from no discernible direction, or from all; the three mounted men froze a moment, gathering the reins of their horses in mailed fists.

He sent his words out again, choosing as targets the Widan who worked against the walls.

Two froze a moment, but the third-ah, the third-looked up. An umbrella of flame lit the sky, the point of its center the spot where Kallandras had chosen to hover. He dropped, folding his shoulders, his neck, curling his head into the s.h.i.+eld of bent arms. The air caught him before he struck ground, and a trail of fire clung, like burrs, to the longest strands of his hair.

Lord Celleriant, he said, s.h.i.+fting weapon's weight, I have found the last of the Kialli.

Ser Alessandro kai di'Clemente counted the fall of his men. Spoke their names, one after the other, as if naming were a thing of legend, and had power. It was the Lady's time, and if there was a time for such a power, it was now: he surrendered to her the things that he valued: his men. His horse. His sword.

He sat astride a horse not his own, and honored his rider in so doing, although the rider had not lived to see or acknowledge the honor; he lay beneath the moving water.

A calm was upon the Tor'agar; a calm made of names, of inevitability. A spray of pebbles, dusted with dry earth, clattered against the shoulders of turned armor. The Marente forces still had their Widan, but although Clemente forces had never dallied long with the Sword of Knowledge, they were not helpless.

Not yet, and not while they stood.

He spoke another name, the fingers around the hilt of his sword growing numb with the ferocity of what seemed idle grip. Soon, he thought, he would join them. But not soon enough; there was no room upon the bridge, no worthy death there. Still, death, he thought, would come, did come.

He heard the shortened cry of the only woman upon the field, and he did not even turn to acknowledge what it presaged; he knew. One wall, one at least, had fallen.

And a miracle, he thought, raising sword to the light of the falling moon, the grace of the Lady's brightest face, that it had not fallen sooner; that it had, in fact, stood at all.

He lifted his horn in his left hand, brought it full to lips; tasted cold silver, as if it were the very Lady's kiss. He called his men to him, those who remained, and they came, injured or whole, the clank of metal against metal, the labor of breath, the only honor offered him.

More than enough.

He spun horse around on short rein; saw that one wall had, indeed, been breached. But the breach was narrow, and in the gap stood the two Northern men, both fair of face, both dancers whose weapons seemed to add to their grace, their deadly steps. He could not recall the exact moment they had deserted the bridge.

He sounded horn again and urged his horse forward.

Horn answered him. A single long note.

And following it, others, lesser, shorter, but distinct: a song, a war song unlike the clamor of drums.

His gaze grazed moon, his horn fell slowly from his lips; just as slowly did his men look up to see his face, to see that the horn was now, once again, in his lap.

Reymos hesitated for a moment, but only a moment; he raised horn now, and in reply the Clemente call sounded across the rise and fall of the gathered huts and dwellings. Alessandro was surprised that Ser Reymos had breath left with which to make the urgent call of horn so loud.

The Clemente cerdan turned to him, turned away, listening for the play of distant horn, the sound of distant hooves.

As if, Alessandro thought, they did not walk in a dream of the Lady. As if they were upon a clear field, upon the open plains in the heart of Mancorvo. As if the notes they had heard had been, could be, real.

But when they sounded a second time, he, too, turned, reins in hand, sword in hand, horn once again idle at his belt. Not for the Tors or the Tyrs the song of that call; no man of worth sounded his own praise.

From the North, where no wall had been erected, the first of the hors.e.m.e.n appeared, their gait slowed by the fall of buildings and the bodies that adorned the slender road. And the foremost of the men carried, with pride, a banner that even in moonlight no clansman could fail to recognize.

He bowed his head.

The Tyr'agnate, Mareo kai di'Lamberto, had come.

Steel is a miracle.

Fire is a miracle.

Horses are a miracle.

Cloth, the weave of something grown from plant or worm; gold, from stream or Northern mine; silver, border of chained links that stop wind from furling the banners away from mortal sight.

The sunlight seen through moon is a miracle. Blood, when it flows, and when it stills; breath, when drawn, and when it ceases to be drawn.

Miracles. Offerings.

Who can say that in the Dominion there are no prayers, and no answers, that power alone decides who is fit and who will fail?

Men. And men say much.

Even in silence, wielding blade, they speak.

The walls fell in concert as the forces of the Tyr'agnate streamed past the wounded and the dying. Silence-if silence could be the thundering of hooves, the sound of drawn blades-reigned, and ruled; no words were spoken, no threats exchanged. Threats were idle pleasantries in the South, and the time for pleasantry-if it existed at all-had vanished.

They brought the sun with them. One man wore it openly; orange flame fanned the sheen of golden surcoat above his breastplate, and his sword spoke the language of Day.

Honor bound, he was called, this lord of Lamberto. Honor bound, and as one bound, lessened by stricture, weakened by it.

But strengthened by it as well.

He moved through the ranks of Marente cerdan as if they were already dead. His blade shattered blades; nothing stood in his way. He was not a young man, but the age that rested upon his face had hardened it, granting it the lines and fullness that no youth could own.

Ser Alessandro kai di'Clemente watched a moment, hand numb, the names of the dead lost to the rush of the living, and he realized that he had seen this man before.

Not in the Court of Amar, not within the vast expanse of the circle, the domis within which resided the most powerful clan in Mancorvo. Not in the Tor Leonne. Not in any of the dwellings within which the rich and the powerful resided.

But in a village in the Torrean of Manelo, wielding the same blade, and in the same cause: Justice. Honor.

He bowed his head a moment.

Kai el'Sol, he thought. Fredero kai el'Sol.

Alessandro had loved his cousin, Ser Franko kai di'Manelo.

He bowed his head, leaning into the wind, into the roar of a battle he had not yet joined. Yes, he had loved his cousin. He had hated the man who had killed him over a single, willful mistake.

But men make mistakes. And some mistakes end them; the truth of the Dominion. Costly. Clear.

The night air was cool and clean; he drew it into his lungs, held it a moment, and expelled, straightening the line of his shoulder, guiding the horse beneath his knees.

"Come!" he called, lifting sword, rallying the cerdan who remained. "Let us not leave all of the Lord's glory to Lamberto!"

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN.

NOT for the first time, she was trapped within the confines of a harem, waiting for armed men to finish their night's work.

The circ.u.mstances were different.

No one turned their last spoken words into the deadliest of all the weapons ever to be wielded against her.

Her wives were dead; her son dead; her father, alive, but taken by wind. She had thought she had nothing left to lose; had fas.h.i.+oned the whole of her life into a weapon on that premise.

But her hands lay against the damp skin of the Dominion's foremost Serra, giving lie to that: she learned, this eve, and bitterly, that there was always something to lose.

She did not cry; she did not struggle; she did not unfold the delicate bend of her knees. But she spoke three soft words to the woman she did not look to.

"Where is Ramdan?"

Remembering, as she said it, that not all losses were hers.

The outer rooms of the harem-three-were open to sky, and although the wives of the Serra Celina did not fear the Lady's gaze, they knew the cost of exposure to the Lord's; they retreated into the harem's heart as the pale pink and blue of dawn added color to the sky, changing the pallor of wood, the pale, jagged edge of column's broken heart.

But here, too, they found destruction, and at last, they gathered in the gardens that were, in theory, surrounded by rooms occupied by the wives of the harem. They were a pretty whirl of cluttering noise and plain silks, and they s.h.i.+vered and clung to one another in either youth or fear.

Serra Diora di'Marano watched them ambivalently.

They were not her father's wives; not hers. They could not see when death had pa.s.sed them by; they were caught by the fascination and fear of its shadow in the failing moonlight, and they asked the Serra Celina for words of wisdom.

But the Serra Celina held fast to her charge, and although she clearly held her wives in regard, the force of her affection was blunted-as it should be-by the presence of strangers; by the Havallan Matriarch, by the Serra Diora, and by the woman who huddled in the throes of seizure upon the damp ground.

Teresa lay like shadow between two standing stones in the garden; they provided no shelter, and no shade, for they were set in the garden's center, like tall, stone sentries; the carved faces turned outward on either side bore no witness, made no judgment.

Serra Diora would not leave her aunt's side. She labored, the waterskin slowly emptying, the power in her own voice becoming thin, as she bespoke the Serra Teresa. As companion, she had Yollana, and Yollana offered no words, no interference, no misplaced kindness. Instead, the wreath of slowly moving pipe smoke gathered in the air like cloud, dense and familiar; she watched, and she stood guard in her fas.h.i.+on.

There was some comfort in that; there was comfort in nothing else.

The sun could not be seen; the horizon was denied the harem garden. But its effects lightened the sky by slow degree, presaging the pa.s.sage of the Lady, the advent of the Lord. What was hidden by night and silver light was now to be exposed; the damage done the domis was not light.

But it was nothing; it could be rebuilt.

She brushed matted strands of hair from her Ona's face; felt the heat beneath the clammy surface of skin, the terrible asymmetrical shaking, like heartbeat gone askew and traveling to the outer reaches of the body in its wild flight.

She heard the wives raise voice; heard the sudden absence of their muted whispers. Fear came and went; she was sensitive because she listened for any sound-any sign-that the Serra Teresa might somehow wake whole into the world. Only then, she thought, would she know that the night had truly pa.s.sed.

And then she heard the sound of armor, and interposing herself gracefully in the gap between the standing stones, she rose, lifting chin and dropping hands in a semblance of courtly grace. Yollana did not trouble herself; she lit her pipe and inhaled, watchful now, her one eye more menacing than both would have been.

Men entered the garden, but they were few.

Three, four, five. She counted them by the sound of their boots, for she could not look up to meet their gaze; she wore no veil, and she had no desire to see what she feared in their faces.

Two men approached, the length of their stride broken by grace and silence. She knew them for serafs by the fall of their step, and waited. Ramdan bowed to ground before her, and he did not rise. She closed her eyes.

"Serra Diora," he said. Just that. What she heard in his voice was night. She had never thought to wonder just how much he understood, how much he knew; she did not wonder now. Instead, she accepted the smooth surface of his impenetrable voice as the answer to that unasked question. He knew.

He held out his hands, palms up, as if in plea. Her answer: she pa.s.sed the waterskin that held the waters of the Tor Leonne into his keeping. There were no other hands that she trusted with the task; no other eyes that she would willingly expose the Serra Teresa to. She did not speak; she did not step aside.

It was awkward.

But the man by his side was not known to her; not known to the Serra Teresa; she offered her aunt what meager protection she could.

Discovered that she was wrong when the second seraf also fell to his knees; fell low enough that she could see the stylized-and indistinct-halo of sun's ray upon his right breast. No seraf, this. Radann.

Servitor.

As he knelt, his head bowed, she waited; absence of breath informed her posture, made of her a living stone, a living monument.