Michelle West - Sun Sword 04 - Sea of Sorrows Read online

  "You also used to tell me to be careful what I wished for, Master."

  He was already in motion. She followed, shunting the crowds aside not by the force of her momentum, but rather by the artifice of magical suggestion. If Meralonne APhaniel, member of the Order of Knowledge and special adviser to Kings, thought poorly of this illegal use of magery, he did not condescend to note it. But he did not use it either; he wore the official medallion by which the magi were known, and it served to clear a path in magic's stead.

  He moved in silence for half a city block, and then he said, without looking at her, "I do not think Myrddion truly saw the depth and range of this child's power. If he understood her nature at all."

  She lifted a hand, shunting aside the curiosity of eavesdroppers in the same way as she had the men and women in the crowd she had passed through. "He must have; the ring went to her. The rings know their masters."

  "Masters?" His laugh was unkind. "An amusing word, and an inappropriate one. This—this should not have happened."

  "What?"

  Silver brows rose; gray eyes narrowed. He did not express contempt with words because it wasn't necessary. "Listen to her voice, Evayne."

  Just like that.

  "The ring—"

  "If its sole purpose was containment, it is already failing."

  Her fingers, adorned by three rings now, curled into fists. All of her life came down to that ring, this girl. Earth and air, fire and water—these she understood. She had seen the workings of one of the elemental rings intimately. She had never clearly seen the purpose behind the simple, unadorned band, the ring that Myrddion had considered the most powerful of the five.

  But she understood this. What she heard in Kiriel's voice, in this city, on this street—it was death.

  Meralonne knew well why she had summoned him. He was discreet, for reasons of his own.

  And he was her equal in magery, should it come to battle.

  She didn't look human.

  She didn't look demonic.

  She looked—like a dream of Death, like an angel of judgment, like something that had never known mortality.

  Or had caused a lot of others to become intimately acquainted with their own.

  Auralis grabbed two men by the shoulders and threw himself forward using their weight as a brace.

  She had drawn her sword.

  Damn, damn, damn.

  She had drawn her sword, and her eyes when she turned to face him were the color of her blade.

  His hand was on the hilt of the sword he wore across his back, but it froze there. It froze, although he had to fight every instinct he had ever honed in combat—and had proved by survival—in order to keep it there. He wanted to run.

  It had been a long, long time since flight had been an option. Since fear had hit him in the gut, visceral as a heavy kick, had taken his breath, had made his hands weak and slick with sweat.

  "Kiriel!"

  "Stay your hand," Evayne said, lifting hers. Around her wrist, as if caught in howling winds, the sleeves of her robe twisted and gathered.

  Meralonne did not choose to obey. He lifted his hands, crossing them. She was afraid that he was going to summon the elemental air, but a pale, orange glow gathered and grew in his upturned palms, and the voice of the wind was silent. He held the spell in abeyance.

  Together, they watched.

  But she thought it interesting; orange was protection's light; hearth light. It was only in her youth that she had been naive enough to believe that Meralonne APhaniel would willingly spend his power and his carefully hoarded knowledge on something as simple as the public good.

  She might not have believed it now, but she recognized the signature of the spell. He had taught it to her, the last of many spells, at a time when she had not realized how difficult defense was to master, and although the intervening years had embroidered it with her bitter experience, giving the spell a signature that was unique, the spells were kin. The magi historians would be able to trace the one back to the other with effort and time.

  The magic would create a circle around Kiriel, should she lose control—or rather, lose more of it—separating her from the crowd. And, more relevant, the crowd from her.

  For as long, Evayne thought quietly, as it lasted.

  What had gone wrong? What was the ring doing?

  Why had the path she had chosen to walk led her here? She was weary.

  Evayne, who had lost the habit of prayer, given the closeness of her relationship with the gods, cursed instead. She was old, now; powerful in a way that she had not been in her youth. She had seen so much death; had witnessed the failure of so many plans.

  But the failure of this, a plan that she barely—no, that she honestly had never—understood, would be profound.

  Hard, to have given your entire life to a cause that depended on so many fragile people. Blood filled the crescents in palms where fingernails bit deep.

  It took a moment.

  Auralis hated fear more than he hated Annies. More— almost—than he hated demons. Especially when it was his own. He drew his sword. People who were smarter ran screaming if they could spare breath for sound.

  Shit, he thought, if we survive this, The Kalakar will have our heads, never mind our names.

  And then he had other things to worry about.

  Like keeping his head for long enough that it could be presented to her.

  Kiriel swung.

  She was slow. Her hand was on fire. But her vision was clear. For the first time since the ring had shorn her of strength, she could see.

  Auralis was no longer a simple mask and a shell of flesh; entwined in these things was a light and a shadow that she had always thought lay beneath the flesh, trapped by it. But now she could see it for what it was; a part of the living body, inseparable from it.

  No, not inseparable.

  She had seen the division of the two. If she paused for just a moment, she could clearly recall each time it had happened.

  But that would take her to the final time, and the final time was not an event she wished to revisit; not in memory, not in nightmare. Not in the Hells, when and if she arrived there, although she was certain that was what was waiting: an eternity of Ashaf's death.

  And Kiriel's failure to prevent it.

  She cried out, and her voice was the dragon's voice; her voice was death. Any demon who heard it—when it was used in the Shining Palace—would have fled unless he was foolish enough to think himself a match for the Lord's daughter. The humans were fleeing, too. All of them but one, this one.

  There was really only one way to learn a lesson in the Hells: from someone else's mistake. Mistakes were so seldom survived.

  But Kiriel had become, under Isladar's tutelage, an excellent teacher.

  The sword, her sword, was singing; she could hear its keening, could feel it as if it were an extension of both her hand and her shadow. She was alive.

  She swung.

  Auralis was the only Osprey who had thrown himself, time and again; into the circle with Kiriel. She had beaten him every time. He didn't fight fairly; he had learned to really fight in the South, where anything that worked meant survival, and questions of what was "fair" became so academic they were treated with scorn and derision by the rank and file.

  He knew how to cheat in the circle.

  She hadn't even noticed.

  And he knew, as he rolled out of the way, that his reflexes and instincts were either going to save his life or get him killed in the next two minutes—because he realized, seeing the compelling darkness of her eyes and the shadows that pooled across the flat of a sword that should have reflected sunlight, that he had never fought Kiriel. He had sparred with her; had played some game that she struggled to understand the rules of, but he had never fought Kiriel.

  "Well?"

  Meralonne's voice.

  Evayne frowned. "Not yet."

  She heard the friction between hair and cloth; a shrug.

  Aur
alis lied. A lot.

  But there were a couple of truths that defined him: He knew when to run. And he hated running. He had gotten used to self-loathing; this was a good time to hate himself. But he brought his blade around in a parry, deflecting the blow's force and rolling out of its way. He'd learned that his size and his strength weren't a match for hers; everything about her was deceptive. All those lost bets in the training circle had been good for something after all.

  But she was better at cheating than he was.

  If she was thinking at all.

  She could see. She could hear. Everything in the street was alive with the color of eternity. She wanted to weep with joy at it; at the light, at the gray, and the growing shadows. It was as if she had been drowning in mortality, and for the first time in months she had managed to take a real breath.

  She did not want to exhale. But the ring was burning; it slowed her down.

  "Kiriel!"

  The frail, mortal darkness was calling her.

  "Kiriel, snap out of it! They've already gone for the magi!"

  She had meant to shake him off; he parried the blow.

  Very few of the mortals—or the imps that were their closest cousins in the Hells—could parry her sword; when she was intent on the combat, she could slice through steel.

  She looked up, and saw a darkness she was familiar with. Sensed, in the air between herself and that shadow, a wonderful fear.

  Was surprised when the man chose to destroy the fragility of that moment by striking her—with the flat of his blade.

  It wasn't the smart opening move. Then again, against Kiriel there were no smart opening moves—and the closing moves were, sadly, all hers.

  But it had the single advantage of being a move he had never tried before, and it was—

  Completely incomprehensible. Not even in the pathetic games the Ospreys called training had anyone treated her with this much condescension; certainly not Auralis, driven by the desire to win at any cost.

  She was confused enough to let him land a glancing blow. Not confused enough to let him land a second. She returned the attack almost casually.

  Old habits died hard. Auralis stopped himself from screaming because he'd felt similar pain before. Familiar pain was never as terrifying as unknown pain. Even when it was magical in nature.

  The damn sword had sliced through metal and padding; he'd felt it cut.

  There was no blood. And there should have been. A lot.

  Shit.

  First time for everything, he thought, shifting his grip on his sword and circling Kiriel at the outer edge of her reach.

  Who would have thought he'd ever be unhappy at the lack of his own blood?

  Evayne shed hood in the dusk. The street had emptied but would fill again, and she had no intention of allowing Kiriel this kill in front of the people who would fill it. But she was surprised that she still had the opportunity to intervene.

  Meralonne reached out. Touched her. Risky, that; the cloak that had been her father's only useful gift was more… independent… than other forms of armor. But it allowed the contact.

  Meralonne did not speak.

  He was still alive.

  Kiriel frowned; her hand hurt; the sword burned her palm. Pain was something to appreciate at a distance; she did not savor or enjoy her own. She looked at the hilt reluctantly; it was made of gold and shadow, and limned in an ugly light that had never been there before.

  An early lesson—never let go of this sword. She had learned it quickly, although when she had reached the age of fourteen, she had insisted on learning to fight with other weapons as well. It was a simple precaution, and one Lord Isladar had shown pride in, for the sword was obviously enchanted, and it was an enchantment that, having been placed there by another, could never be fully trusted.

  The sword itself had been that most suspicious of things: a gift. Isladar had offered it to her while its maker looked on, as if observing a ritual.

  "This has never been done by our line," the strange Kialli lord had said.

  "Nor will it be again. I fear the time for your art has passed."

  "Will you take this risk, mortal?" He turned to face her for the first time, his eyes unblinking and devoid of everything but a bleak, bleak curiosity. She remembered it clearly, could label it only now. As a child, she had thought him sad.

  Sad.

  She looked to Isladar for guidance; his face was impassive. It was enough. She nodded.

  "You are capable, in my estimation, of summoning a cruder weapon with no ties to any other maker's hands."

  Lord Isladar frowned. "Enough."

  But the stranger was not deterred.

  "If I could do that, why wouldn't I, instead of accepting something another lord made?"

  "Because the shape and the form of that weapon will not be of your choosing, and you might find it one not to your liking. It is created by will, but it is not easily molded."

  She frowned.

  Lord Isladar's voice was cool and distant. "You might invoke dagger, with no reach. You might invoke spear or bow. Any weapon you created in such a fashion you would be forced to wield as a true weapon."

  She absorbed this, the newness of the knowledge, Isladar's annoyance, and the stranger's quiet patience. At last she nodded.

  "The sword will kill you, or it will become a part of you. But first, you must feed it."

  She took the sword. It was the heaviest thing she had ever lifted on her own. She wanted to ask him how to feed a sword—but Isladar's eyes had narrowed to edges. He was not angry; she had only rarely seen him angry. But he would be, if she continued. Cold and distant, like the mountain peaks. She had hated that, as a child.

  She looked up. Saw the man. Recognized him.

  "Auralis?"

  "Kiriel. I think it's time to go back."

  His gaze was wary; he did not stop circling. As if that motion, this close, was preparation for any attack she might launch.

  She was surprised when her sword failed to skewer him. But not surprised enough that his countering strike connected. She saw the glint of steel six inches from her feet and smiled; it was the edge of his blade that had hit the dirt between the cobbled stones.

  What she had not realized, when she had lifted this cumbersome, great sword, was that she would not be allowed to let it go until she had offered it whatever it was it required. She would not be allowed to ask. Until she could figure it out for herself, she was trapped by its weight.

  "Do you like the sword, little one?" the stranger asked.

  "I'm not sure," she said, too absorbed by the sheen of the naked blade to be. cautious. "I don't think it likes me."

  She saw his smile—his perfect smile—as a reflection in the, blade's flat. He was beautiful, then. She would have turned to look at him, but she couldn't imagine that the smile could be better than the smile's reflection across new steel.

  "Isladar," she said, forgetting his title.

  "Kiriel?"

  "Why is he smiling?"

  "Is he, Kiriel?"

  There was no anger in his voice, but whenever he asked a question it demanded more than an answer: he wanted her to think about what she had just said before she answered anything. If she answered at all. But what had she said?

  Why is he smiling.

  What was Isladar doing? She turned, sword still heavy in her hands, to see his expressionless face. Turned back to the sword. Something was wrong, but it took a moment before she realized that she could not see Lord Isladar's reflection in the shining steel. At all. She turned then, to see the other Kialli lord. His face was as cold as… as steel.

  But the steel… the steel still held his smile.

  The stranger's brows rose. And then his lips curved in a pale echo of the smile she had seen. "You do not know what you have found here, Lord Isladar."

  "Do I not?"

  The tall man walked past Lord Isladar as if he was no longer of interest. That got her attention; no one did that to Isladar. Yet
Isladar waited in silence. "I have… misjudged you, young one," he said, touching her; taking her chin in the palm of his hand. His hand was callused and rough. But although Lord Isladar had always cautioned her against the gentle touch of any other Kialli, she raised her chin until she could meet his gaze with her own. "I was not a lord when I dwelled upon the mortal plane," he said quietly. "That was not my art. But this… this was." His lips thinned; his beauty was lost a moment to the edge of something bitter. But when the creases in his lips and around his eyes unfolded, he was beautiful. As beautiful as the sword he had crafted.

  "Feed the sword, and it will serve you."

  She nodded.

  "What happens if the sword isn't fed?"

  "I believe you already know the answer to that."

  "But I—" She did. "If I feed it?"

  "You will be a warrior without parallel. You will fight as men fought when the Cities stood."

  "Enough," Lord Isladar said quietly. "She is young, and her curiosity might lead her to ask questions in the Court of humans who would be interested in that bitter history."

  She frowned. "I don't want to be the best warrior just because of a sword."

  He smiled as if she had said something very clever. But he removed his hand from her chin as Lord Isladar approached. "I thought the mortals were happy to win at any price? Why would you refuse such an offer?"

  "May I remind you, Anduvin, that she is our Lord's daughter. His plans are—"

  "Don't be tiresome, Isladar. I expect it of the pompous and graceless Fist, but I expect better of you."

  "But I am of the Lord's Fist."

  "Ah… I had forgotten."

  "Then perhaps I erred in requesting a sword from your forge; what weapon of value could possibly come from a… lord of such diminished memory?"

  For the first time, Kiriel saw a Kialli lord draw sword against Isladar. He brought his free hand to the sword's hilt and raised the blade, turning it on edge so that it was a gleaming line of fire that divided his face. He called no shield. She had seen the Kialli draw swords before; Ashaf, fanciful, had called them tongues of flame—weapons of Hells.

  But this blade was different.

  She forgot to breathe, fascinated. She had seen the kin fight—and kill—and she had seen the Kialli challenge. Of the challenges, elemental was the most enviable. It was a power she would never possess, although Isladar assured her that she would have the power to destroy the kinlord who attempted to humiliate her by offering her a challenge that she could not accept.