Sun Sword - The Riven Shield Part 58

But she had learned the art of combat, the dance of survival, long before she had mastered the p.r.o.nunciation of The Name; she leaped past Valedan, past Telakar, curling her knees to her chest and trusting the force of momentum to carry her well above the rounded curve of closed helm.

Her blade struck stone, shattering it.

The creature was no longer there.

He hissed through dead lips; she heard the sibilance of its laughter. "Daughter of Darkness," he said, "I thank you for this opportunity."

She twisted, turned toward the flat, broken rasp of his voice, and saw where he had landed: within striking distance of Valedan. The kai Leonne.

She did not cry out a warning; did not express any hint of the sudden fear that moved her. Here, training held her in a grip that could not be shaken.

Light came to the creature; red light, in twin flashes: the sword of the Kialli. And the s.h.i.+eld.

He had armed himself, this nameless lord, and she had been slow enough to allow it. Some part of her reveled in the opportunity.

What did it matter, in the end? Valedan was not bound for the h.e.l.ls; if his body and spirit were sundered, he would go where the dead went, would stand in the Halls of Mandaros, and would wait upon his return.

She saw that clearly.

And more.

Saw the colors of a man she recognized. When the Kialli blade circled, it struck the steel of Auralis AKalakar's sword.

The Osprey's blade shattered, as stone had shattered.

But it bought her time. She leaped again as the Radann scattered, and this time the creature did not seek to evade her. Hissing, it turned.

He was slow, she thought; slowed by the form he had taken, by the cas.e.m.e.nt of flesh through which she could so clearly see the shadows that burned. Why did he not relieve himself of the burden and be done? The masquerade was at an end.

Black met red. Thunder came of that brief conversation, lingering in the reaches of the ceiling above. She struck again, and the creature was driven back as it raised s.h.i.+eld against her. The s.h.i.+eld held.

Power, here. No simple minion had been sent to the heart of Callesta.

But the only fear she felt was for Valedan kai di'Leonne; the only failure she contemplated, the end of his life. None of the battles that she had faced in the s.h.i.+ning Court of her youth had prepared her for this.

And all of them had. She laughed as she deflected the controlled arc of his blade; she had called the shadow and it had come. She held his attention, and all she needed to do was to hold it a few moments longer.

But he stilled as her laughter died, as the wildness left her.

He drew his blade up, the red of its fire the only true light in the cavernous room. His eyes were as dark as hers, the skin he wore as pale. "This is not your battle," he hissed.

"Any battle I choose is mine."

"And you choose this one? Did you not dwell within the heart of the s.h.i.+ning Court, in the towers of the Lord? Did you not choose to take your place by the side of the Kialli, in the halls of the Palace?"

"Never by the side," she whispered. "You are not my equal."

His turn to laugh. "Your equal? You have walked the plane scant years, and I have ruled in the h.e.l.ls; not even when I walked this plane as a youth was I so much the child. Do not stand against us, Daughter of Darkness, or you will meet the fate of the mortals."

She left ground as the burning blade whistled cleanly through the air where her chest had been.

"What of it?" she shouted, gripping the haft of sword in both hands as gravity and power forced her down. "I am mortal."

"Mortalis," he hissed. "So be it."

She had time to raise the sword before the ground at her feet cracked and splintered, shards of stone as large as her arms driving up and into her feet.

By that act, she knew him.

Lord Telakar watched.

Having spent much of his time upon the plane in the Southern reaches of the continent, he had never had a chance to see Kiriel di'Ashaf in combat.

He was unimpressed.

Isladar, brother, what in this foundling has driven you to make the choices you have made? What in her is worth the risks you have taken? She was f.e.c.kless, wild, impulsive-and in the s.h.i.+ning Court, in the h.e.l.ls, in the lands that had once been the home of the kin when the kin knew the spectrum of life and not its shadowed mockery, these things were death.

She was injured; her power was weaker than it should have been. The stones themselves had broken the underside of her boots, and although he could not see it clearly, the dust of falling rock did not obscure the scent of blood.

She will die here, or die soon.

Dispa.s.sionate, he folded his arms across his chest; bore witness to the event that unfolded before him.

Silabras was no youth, no wild kin; his memories were strong. He was unhindered by her anger, and the wildness that drove her broke against the simple surface of his s.h.i.+eld. He would take her; none here could prevent it. She had come to master her blade, but she had no s.h.i.+eld, and there were none-not even Lord Isladar himself-who could fas.h.i.+on one for her.

But the folly of mortality knew no wisdom; one man tried.

Light, orange and pale, spread before her like a web, its lines a spiral that rose and fell, touching ceiling and broken ground as if to anchor itself. Lord Telakar raised a brow; in the open doors of a building too insignificant to be called a cathedral, one of the mortals stood, arms raised, face still.

He would not have been worthy of the t.i.tle mage had he walked the streets of the fallen Cities. But in those streets, he would not have had the courage-or the ignorance-to attempt to intervene in the affairs of the powerful.

She found her feet.

He recognized her pain. He was Kialli. The winds of the h.e.l.ls had spoken to him in all of its languages. She labored under its grip as she stood-but she stood; her face showed nothing.

And it hid nothing. Not from Silabras. Not from Telakar.

Silabras smiled. The visage of dead flesh would never again settle into the lines of peaceful repose; the flat of white teeth cracked and sundered as the truth of what it contained could be contained no longer.

"My only regret," the kinlord said, gazing past the thin, the inconsequential barrier of pathetic magery, "is the lack of a worthy audience. The Lord sought to place you above us, forgetting the laws of the h.e.l.ls. I will send you there, Kiriel, and when I return, I will find you."

He staggered, his voice breaking on the last syllable. A sword, dull metal, dead steel, protruded from his chest.

Lord Telakar raised his chin. This, this was the first act to capture his attention.

The hand behind the blade released the hilt as Silabras turned. The guise of human hands was discarded as the kinlord extended his reach toward the man who had wounded him.

Was he slower? Hard to tell. Not slow enough, surely, that the human who had chosen to join the intimacy of Kialli combat could avoid the reward for his folly.

"Kiriel!" The man shouted, dancing back, the sheets of chain metal shredding at the force of Silabras' blow. "First blood!" The scent of blood was strong; for a moment, Telakar wondered if the man was speaking of his own.

Kiriel shouted something that made as little sense. "b.a.s.t.a.r.d! He was mine!"

And the injured man, the man who stood one side of death, laughed. Laughing, drew another blade as Kiriel attacked Silabras, drawing his attention, saving the man's life.

Silabras' blade tore through the orange weaving of the weak mage. But it moved just a shade more slowly than it had; there was power in the weakness that Telakar had failed to correctly a.s.sess.

Kiriel roared. The whole of the city must waken to the voice that she used; even Telakar was frozen by it.

Her blade cut a clean arc through air; it was met by the casual lift of Silabras' s.h.i.+eld.

The s.h.i.+eld sundered.

He saw, then, the signature of the dark blade she held, and he knew that she had been granted a blade made by the hand of Anduvin. Rumor had said as much, but rumor had also said that she had failed the test of its mastery.

The Lord's Fist would be vexed indeed to learn the truth.

Your pardon, Isladar, he thought, letting his hands fall to his sides. I better understand your weakness now. And why should I not? Is it not kin, in some measure, to my own?

The injured man circled, wary now, his chain s.h.i.+rt hanging open. He navigated the rise and fall of broken stone as if he were used to fighting upon mountain terrain.

But he was not Kiriel; bleeding or no, she danced from stone tip to flat, her sword trailing shadow. Silabras spared her no further speech.

Nor would Telakar have done so.

He would have said, watching, that the child who had started this combat, and the one who engaged Silabras now, were entirely different, but he did not doubt the truth of his senses: he could see Kiriel, could see the signal truth of her claim to mortality: The soul; the only thing about her that could not, in the end, be destroyed.

But something had changed. The shadows were sharper now, and darker, than they had been, and they wove round her like a cloak, like a second skin-something she was only peripherally aware of. Her face was sharp with it, her eyes-her eyes were golden. The only light she cast.

Silabras chose fire because fire was his element.

But in the depths of her power, the fire guttered.

She swung her sword.

The half circle s.h.i.+fted, the blade dipping suddenly, the edge rising.

And the mortal, the injured man, also swung.

He would lose a second sword, this eve.

But in the losing-to Telakar's profound surprise-the remaining pieces of the s.h.i.+eld of Silabras were also lost.

Impossible.

Kiriel swung her blade with a cry of triumph as the mortal man stumbled back, the rocks impeding escape, the floor opening up beneath his back.

Silabras parried, the motion circular; her blade glanced off the exposed flat of his as he continued his swing groundward. Groundward toward the foolish mortal who had thought to fight by Kiriel's side.

It struck the steel of Lord Telakar's sword.

Silabras knew a moment of surprise, a moment of anger, of thwarted desire.

And then he knew nothing.

The head rolled free of the body, bouncing against the broken floor as if it were a soft boulder.

It came to rest at the feet of the Tyr'agnate of Callesta, pa.s.sing between the feet of the Tyran, beneath the reach of their drawn swords. Ramiro had drawn Bloodhame, but he had stayed his ground. And because he was of the South, because he was of the High Courts, he could offer the pretense of prudence for his lack of action.

The Northerners would accept this; might even feel some contempt for it. But the Tyran, born to the South, and of it in a way that no transplanted Northerner could ever be, would understand the truth.

Fillipo subtly closed ranks as the silence in the temple became absolute. He turned his face outward, planting his feet to either side of a great crack in the stones of the Lord's haven. Miko joined him to one side, Stevan, to the other. Gazing outward, they offered their Tyr the dignity that he could not afford to lose.

He knelt.

Bloodhame sc.r.a.ped floor, cold hiss of steel unblooded, untried. He had failed his son, not once, but twice.

The face was a dead man's face. It bore little resemblance to the living; less even than it had under the watchful eyes of the Radann and their spells of preservation. The flesh of his lips had been torn from comer to cheek on either side; the eyes were open, empty. But his hair was still bound in a warrior's knot-the only dignity left him.

Ramiro's hands shook.

The Tyran had spared him their knowledge of this; they bore no witness to the weakness itself.

Removing his gloves, he bent down and closed the lids of his kai's eyes.

Men did not pray. Men did not cry. They weathered loss as they weathered wind, sand, sun.

Carelo.

"Tyr'agnate," an unwelcome voice said, its speaker hidden by the backs of his oathguards, the only kin he trusted. "Be wary. The kin-"

"He is gone." Kind's voice. Lady's voice.

He gathered his son's head in his hands. Pulled the folds of his cloak across it. Then he rose.

"Par Callesta."

Fillipo nodded; he did not turn.

"Extend my grat.i.tude to the guards of the kai Leonne. I have duties that must be attended."

"Kai Callesta."

The doors of the temple were open; they sat awkwardly astride their great hinges. They would not, he thought distantly, close with ease this eve. It signified nothing. He walked between them, and the night sky wavered in his open eyes. The Radann were not his kin, but they were men of Callesta; they bowed as he pa.s.sed them, offering him the full measure of their obeisance.

Offering him, by that measure, the privacy he desired; they saw his feet, the sweep of his cloak, the edge of Bloodhame and the scabbard in which she no longer rested.

Starlight, moonlight, a hint of nebulous, illuminated cloud: the raiment of the Lady. Everything was silver. The night was cool, the wind gentled into breeze.