Sun Sword - The Riven Shield Part 92

Almost.

But bard-born, he was caught by the water's voice: by its rage, its fury, its sense of betrayal.

In the desert, water had been the source of life, its absence the source of death.

What life this water offered had been scoured clean. It spoke with death's voice.

Upon his finger, Myrddion's ring began to burn.

He could not heed that burning; the two kinlords did not; they drove themselves against the blades, and he was forced to meet their attack.

They were angry; they did not trouble themselves to hide it.

He had been taught, time and again, that anger was a fool's preserve; that in combat, there was only the blade dance and the blade's song; the tracing of the stars, the points of the Lady's circles.

His masters, he thought, had never faced Kialli lords.

They drew blood.

Lord Celleriant stood a moment between the scant safety of two mortal dwellings-the tallest that stood upon the edge of the river's banks. They would not last, and indeed, in this mortal geography, they were a poor choice of hiding place.

If, that is, one thought to hide from the elemental water.

Only the Winter Queen could now speak clearly to the rivers; only the Winter Queen could control, with contempt and ease, the water's anger, the water's fall.

In his youth-and that youth so far beyond him it returned at unexpected times-he had seen Arianne lift white, white arms in the splendor of Summer sky; had seen her walk into the stream of rus.h.i.+ng foam and roaring water made by the falls of Lamentine. Hair streaming down her shoulders as if it, too, were liquid, she had laughed, raising hands as if to catch the bounty of the falls.

And the falls had . . . stopped.

The water ceased its roar, pausing, trapped in place against the sharp edges of broken rocks, and the smooth contours of worn ones.

Others, greater lords than he, had taken the Queen's challenge, but where she stood triumphant and at ease, they labored, the gray of their eyes turning now to silver, and now to gold.

Aie, she was gone.

Beyond him, for his failure in the cold of Winter.

But she could not command memory; he took what he could, as if he were mortal beggar in need of crumbs.

His blade he now lowered. His heart was its sheath; blue flame flickered and died, as if guttered by water.

He watched Kallandras as he danced between the kin-lords, and it brought a smile to his lips; a thin smile, but a genuine one.

The water struck the roof of the building on his right; he sprang clear of the falling debris, waving a hand to flick the timbers and s.h.i.+ngles to one side.

It was not a casual gesture.

If he had any hope of returning to the Summer Court-or the Winter one-it lay with the mortal woman, Jewel ATerafin.

And she had commanded him, clumsily and without an understanding of the binding force of words, to use his power to preserve.

Brother, he thought, lifting a hand as if to touch the mortal bard, your guess was wise; the drums were the source of their containment.

But they were not the source of their power. It is true: the world does not lie easy beneath the hands of those who chose to forsake it.

Ser Alessandro kai di'Clemente had cause to be grateful for his Toran. Adelos threw himself bodily across the man he had offered his life to as the water pa.s.sed above them, flattening the dais that now seemed such a paltry, flimsy conceit. The body of the Tor'agnate was crushed in that instant, and only by Adelos' reflexes did Alessandro fail to join him.

But he could not hold Adelos; could not prevent the water from taking him. He watched in a grim silence as one of the two men he trusted drowned in the moving column.

And then he picked up fallen blade, caught Reymos by the wrist, and began his retreat. Few were organized enough to stop it.

One man stood against the river, hands raised in fists. The cloak that had hidden him-the cloak that had disgraced him-he cast aside; the water reared the greatest of its many tentacles above his head, seeking him blindly. He did not duck, bow, hide; he did not seek to evade; he stood, a challenge to the majesty of the wild element. Debris gathered at his feet, sloughing off his back and his raised fists.

He spoke to the river water in a voice both ancient and broken with disuse. But the water's response was simple rage; without the binding of drums and blood magic, he had no hold upon its depths.

Once, once he had.

He was bitterly aware that among the Kialli there existed lords of power whose will, and whose memory, held the skills of their shattered past-bitterly, because he was not among that number. Oh, his memory was intact, but everything else about his past had been burned away in the h.e.l.ls. This mockery of magic, this b.a.s.t.a.r.d summoning, was all that was left.

That, and his sword. The s.h.i.+eld, too, failed to come at his call.

Water took the mortals in number; what had been an army was broken by the sluggish whim of the living river.

He despised them, these broken, terrified men. Death took them all, soon or late; he could not understand their significance in the plans of the Lord. Could not understand the need for secrecy; the need to hide.

The water struck him.

He rose in its fist; felt it wash across his face; felt it exert the sudden pressure of an almost unimaginable weight. And he smiled.

What need had he of air? Only the living need draw breath.

He rose, encased in water; fell, encased in water. The ground at the river's bed grew dry and cracked as the element summoned what it needed, and he exulted a moment in its raw fury; it was kin to his own.

The Tor'agnate was dead. Dead by the hands of mortals, by the hands of the clansmen. The Lord would be ill-pleased-but if the other Tor had offered truth, if the Sun Sword could be found, such a loss might be forgiven.

He let the water play. There were deaths on both sides of the river that could no longer be avoided.

Against the water's rage, Lord Celleriant had several weapons. But only one might accomplish the task set him by the mortal he had been commanded to serve.

Viandaran's warning was just, and justified; the elements hated each other with a strength that rivaled the enmity between the Kialli and the Arianni. But the Arianni had one advantage: they were of the world. Even hidden, even imprisoned upon the old ways, the wild roads, they were of it.

He called air, and it came, its voice a roar.

The drums had been a gamble.

An expensive one.

Kallandras had failed before. In his youth, in the labyrinths of Melesnea, and beyond it, in the streets of the Tor Leonne. But each failure had failed to buy his death; instead, it had brought his brothers, their varied voices and experience the steadying influence, the salvation, he required.

The voice that came to him now was none of these.

But he recognized it: the voice of the elemental air. His hand burned; the ring grew bright enough to blind. To a man who relied upon vision it might have been fatal, but Kallandras had been trained to darkness. He leaped clear of death, and the eddying currents of the air carried him above the shoulders of the kin.

Their voices joined air, a howl of anger, a hint of fear, blended into the harshness of a language he barely knew. And harmony to it, harsh and beautiful, wild with the promise of death, a brother's voice.

Allele.

Across the wilds of storm made now of wind and now of water in a mockery of nature, he met the eyes of an Arianni lord of the Green Deepings.

He could not bow; the fleeting gaze was salute enough. The kin rose to join him, finding easier purchase in the shelf of wind than they had upon the ground.

Kallandras frowned. The wind drove them back, toward ground. Into it.

The water rose as well.

Avandar Gallais struggled to sheathe his sword.

Jewel was aware of the motion although she couldn't see it; he was behind her. The Winter King's stride had carried them to the edge of the water's range-and it was wide.

But she could almost hear the voice of the blade; could feel its weight, and its warmth, in her right palm; could feel the pain of its denial against the scarred flesh of her forearm.

You play a game you do not understand, ATerafin, the stag said. He had never called her by t.i.tle before; the rebuke stung.

Avandar, she said, calling him in a way that diminished distance.

He did not reply.

She looked back. Gray mist radiated outward in a nimbus of light, and at its center, nothing. Avandar was gone.

There was no way to ford the stream. Although the riverbed was dry and cracked-a hint of the desert and its multiple deaths-the water roved freely.

Alessandro kai di'Clemente would never see water again without remembering the destruction of Damar.

But he would see it without fear. He would see it as the Lord's man. He paused on the periphery of flight's edge, drew breath, turned back.

There, in moonlight-the lamps had fallen, and lay crushed upon the cobbled stone and broken earth-he saw the Northern bard. Saw what the bard faced: red swords, red fire. Nothing natural. Nothing that the forest birthed.

He had offered the Lady his prayers, but he was of the South; he accepted her answer with a grimace. His men, upon the far bank, were scattered, but he heard the orders and the sounds of steel that spoke of retreat, not rout. Pride, there; pride for just a moment. Clemente produced men. The Manelan Toran were either dead or dispersed; they had failed in their sworn charge, but they had not chosen to seek the death that awaited the failure of such profound oath.

He met Reymos' eyes in the darkness.

Ignored what he saw in them; he could offer his man that much dignity.

But he could not make n.o.ble what was ign.o.ble. He steadied himself, found strength remaining in the bend of tensed knees, and ran.

The water struck the ground ten feet before him; he froze and before he could run again, he was caught.

But not by water: the air held him.

"Tor'agnate," a foreign voice said, the syllables cold and too clear, "not on the West does your battle lie."

He flailed for just a moment, and then stilled as he rose. The water roared and rumbled as it pa.s.sed beneath him; tendrils slammed into his legs with enough force to bruise.

And then he was clear of the banks; clear-for a moment-of the water. He heard a grunt at his side, and saw that Reymos had likewise been carried above the din of battle.

Quickheart was lost. He could not hear the horse; could not see him in the darkling night. Home, he thought, and it was a prayer. But it was all the prayer he spared.

For he could see, thirty yards away, what his men fought.

Celleriant fought the water. To force the air to accomplish the simple task of setting a commander among his forces had been costly, for the water was its enemy, and it sought nothing but battle. Sought to destroy anything that came between it and its rightful prey.

He was no youth, no stripling; the dawn of the world was beyond him. He could not be shaken by the simple anger, the visceral desire, of elemental air. He understood its heart; it was his own. For he had, by command, no choice but to turn his back upon the red blades of the kin, and they called him, a challenge and an insult that none-not even the Northern bard-could comprehend.

Winter was his heart. Ice. Cold.

In the Winter, the wind was death.

But his lady had commanded him to preserve life; he struggled to forgo the wilderness of the road that had defined him for millennia.

They will die anyway, he told her, silent, aware that his words would not carry the distance-the many distances-that separated them.

Aware, as his gaze turned to follow Kallandras a moment, that although the words were true, they contained the beginning of a falsehood. Lies were weapons; subterfuge a game. But what grew now was something foreign, something that defied his nature, his birth.

He lost the air a moment.

He paid.

They were like dogs.

Dogs grown in size, dogs whose eyes held the patina of fire's heart. They had jaws the size of a horse's head, teeth the length of daggers; they spoke with voices that might-once-have been human.

It was their speech that was, of all things, most disturbing. Ser Alessandro understood it. Felt the exultation that tainted the words and the challenge, the triumph, of the short bursts they made of words. Crossbow bolts were less effective.

They broke ground with their forepaws; severed limbs with their hind legs; they paused only to savor death, and the pause was brief.

He counted seven.

Against one, two, his men might stand, but against seven? He knew. Before he drew horn from sash, before he drew breath to wind it, he knew.

Not for Alessandro kai di'Clemente the madness of battle; not for Alessandro, the Tor'agar of Clemente, the wild exuberance of struggle and death. He stood, unchanged and unchangeable, as his men fought, and when he finally winded horn, they understood two things.

That their Tor was alive.

And that he was at their side.

Ser Amando had been correct in one way: These were men of the plains, and they served their Tor. They drew strength from his presence. They fought.

Where is he? she asked wildly.