Michelle West - Sun Sword 04 - Sea of Sorrows Page 8
Men and women worked there who wore the robes and the emblems of the Order of Knowledge. He did not choose to approach them closely enough to see if they were mageborn; where the magi were concerned, sanity, and therefore safety, was always in question—and besides, they were busy. They stood, some dozen or so—fourteen, he thought, as he counted more precisely—in a loose circle. They did not touch each other, but they were clearly connected in purpose.
And that purpose: a tree.
Funny, that so many people lay dead or broken, and yet the magi were consumed by this: Giants had fallen.
Teller watched, as he always did, struggling to find words that made sense. Jewel had named him because he spoke so rarely. He could not explain why, and if he understood it now—at two decades remove—the knowledge served little purpose. It had become his habit to think before speaking, and he could not be hurried through either thought or speech, but when he did speak, his words were always measured, always calm, and always to a purpose. He did not curse or swear, did not vent rage or frustration in useless arguments or fights. He had learned that at his size it was worse than pointless. Instead, he observed, hidden, as unseen as he could make himself, and he bound his thoughts with words, when words would come. Sometimes they came quickly. Today, they would be a long time in arriving.
Those trees had stood in the heart of the Common since before the founding of Averalaan.
"Angel, for the Mother's sake, can't you be more careful!"
Angel's reply, half grunt, half spoken word, would have earned him a swat to the head, but Finch didn't have Jay's temper. She frowned. "I know it's heavy, but you're supposed to be helping the victims, not adding to them!"
Like Teller, she was slight of build and slender; they didn't expect her to be of much help. So she fluttered; he watched; they bore witness in their own way.
"Teller?"
He lifted his head, and as he did, strands of brown hair parted like a curtain. He did not, in principle, like long hair—but during his convalescence, it had grown, and Finch had been too busy to nag him to have it cut. So had Jay.
Jay.
"Teller?"
Turning, he saw that one of the Terafin Chosen was navigating broken ground; here, the damage had been concentrated in the earth. He nodded at one of the two captains who between them commanded The Terafin's Chosen. Wondered briefly if his face was as expressionless as Torvan's. He doubted it. "I've come from the west," he said quietly.
Teller waited.
"There's no sign of her."
He exhaled. Spoke a safer name. "Avandar?"
"None." The Captain of the Chosen turned away, hiding his expression by exposing his profile. Not a look that Teller liked, it was so unusual.
"What happened?"
"You know as much as we do. There were a number of demons present in the Common itself; they attacked a large group of people and destroyed just over a third of the market in the process. There is some evidence of struggle; some evidence that resistance occurred before the magi were summoned. But that resistance… crumpled. The attackers were eventually destroyed by the Council of the Magi."
"But Jay—"
Torvan turned to face him. "Yes."
"Yes?"
"She was here."
"But—"
"There are a lot of dead, Teller. We've… questioned the magisterial guards; guards were apparently in the Common during the battle."
"And?"
"There were no survivors in either the first or the second group to arrive here."
Not hard to believe. Not hard at all.
"Witnesses outside of the Common place her close to the center of… the attack."
"You think they were trying to kill her."
"We know they've tried before."
But never like this.
And the last time, he thought, they had sent only one creature. One creature, and Angel and Jay had ended up in the infirmary, bleeding to death while The Terafin and Alowan argued about which of the two was worth saving. He looked away.
"We'd like your help," Torvan said quietly.
"Help?"
"There are other witnesses."
"Yes, yes, sir," the young boy said, obviously flushed with excitement at the importance of his story, but just as obviously intimidated by the arms, armor, and size of those who questioned. "There was fire."
"Fire?"
"In the sky."
"And the—"
"They were demons. My grandma said so. Demons."
"There were many?"
He held up his right hand, extending his fingers. Then he held up his left hand. Teller knew the boy couldn't count, but that didn't mean he was stupid.
"What were they doing?"
"I don't know. They killed all the magisterians, though."
The old woman with her hands on his shoulders frowned; the boy winced as her nails bit into his collarbone. "Uh, the magisterial guards."
"How?"
"I think," the old woman said, her face frozen into a harsh series of lines that could not be mistaken for permission, "that that can be best determined by the magi."
The House Guard started to speak, and the old woman added, "They're still looking for his mother. My daughter." Her voice made ice seem warm.
Teller very deliberately stepped on the man's foot.
"How did the demons die?" He asked the boy, while the House Guard reined in the frayed temper of a long day without answers.
"The magi came," the boy replied. "On the wind." And he looked up, up again, as if between sun and cloud, between cloud and ground, they flew there still, circling the city.
One mage did.
It had been a risk that he had not wished to publicly acknowledge to summon the wind. To ride it, to summon the air and to give it commands that it followed was more than a skill; it was an act of seduction; it required a delicate balance, an intuitive understanding of the bargaining done by men of power that could not be separated from the elemental ability itself. He could cajole the wind with the whisper of its own voice; could stand at the edge of its storm before he earned a place in its eye, watching as it destroyed at its leisure. He could promise it many, many things—but making such a promise to a wild element was not a matter of words and contract, not a matter of human law with its labyrinthine clauses, its its and ands, its laughable penalties. The price was written in blood, paid in blood. Old laws.
Aiee, one considered the cost carefully when one summoned the past. Carefully. Delicately.
The wind's voice was a roar; he could literally hear nothing else.
To summon the wind as if it were a kept, tame creature— to demand that it carry not only himself, but the cadre of the elite who had been trained to fight, and to fight creatures such as the kin—was entirely different. It required not bargain, but force.
He was powerful enough that he could force the element to his bidding, but not so powerful that he could escape its wrath. Costly. Costly, these acts of desperation. Beneath his feet, blind to his flight, the beneficiaries of that desperation crawled across the broken surface of earth, excavating by slow degree the bodies of their dead. He was not a master of the intricacies of life; had he been, he would never have survived the great wars of his youth. But he knew enough to know that the men and women who toiled would find little worth their time and their worry beneath the bodies of the great trees and small buildings that lay broken.
He felt the loss of the trees keenly. Men passed on to some majestic hall and some hidden destiny at the whim of Mandaros when they died. But the trees that had existed for millennia—the last of their kind, although only the Order of Knowledge seemed to have a deeper appreciation of this fact—had been reduced to mere sap and wood; they represented a true loss, a profound loss.
Still, the arrival of his mages had been timely. Over half of the trees had been untroubled by the battle that had raged across the less contested grounds; of the fall
en, there was some hope that the knowledge of the magi might save or heal some few. The Common would be scarred by the loss, its voice stilled. But in time, the fallen would be forgotten.
In time. He stopped the wind from doing anything more harmful than tearing at the wide hand-shaped leaves.
As he brushed the edge of branches, as he cajoled the angry wind, he felt a change in the composition of the men and woman who toiled below; he looked down.
Sigurne Mellifas, leader of the Council of the Magi, had set foot upon the Common's ground. She rarely deigned to display her power, and when she did, it was so often offered as an act of mercy, not an act of war. She was frail, but not fragile; she played upon the weaknesses that age had given her, making them cunningly disguised strengths. He knew the games she played, but he was not above being bound by them. Although the person did not exist for whom Meralonne would give his life, he acknowledged with a grimace that he would give much to protect hers.
Just as there was not much she would not give to protect what she had chosen to dedicate her life to. It was complicated. At first, he had thought her like other magi, but colder. Of the magi, she faced death, even painful and violent death, with a calm unperturbed by human pain or suffering. Just as he himself might. But they were not kindred spirits. She accepted what she could not change; she made plans to change what she could; she wasted no energy— none at all—on the gray area between the two that tormented lesser people.
Yet she did not give her heart to the magi. He knew— although she had never said as much, and he doubted she would, even when questioned by Mandaros himself—that she had taken the helm of the Council of the Magi to guide and control them, not to protect them.
It was these, these broken and helpless mortals, these talentless, visionless men and women, that she had made her life's responsibility.
She had never approved of his warriors. She had never approved of the tactics he had used to train them. She had nearly disbanded them three times when injuries had been, in her word, unacceptable. As if they played boys' games.
She was right, of course; they were games. His own students could not see it; he did not choose to enlighten them. Instead he filled their heads with glorious nonsense, all the more powerful for the truth it contained: that they were the men who would stand between the Kialli and the city when the Kialli at last showed themselves; that their lives were the lives that would shield and protect what the Twin Kings, over the centuries, had struggled to build.
A just society.
A free society.
His laughter was taken by wind. Sigurne, watching, had said nothing at all. But she had, in the end, given him leave to let his students prove their worth in the only way that mattered: against the enemy they had been trained, since a dark Henden many years ago, to fight.
Being old put him at a disadvantage.
There was a bitter, fierce joy that lingered at the edges of his awareness; he had met his chosen enemy, had named him, had defeated him. As promised, that name was committed perfectly to memory, as was the struggle itself.
But into the enjoyment of the battle had entered something that he had never thought would hamper him.
He had watched these callow, and often useless, students make mistakes and die for them, and he felt their deaths as if they were the physical blow his enemy had tried, unsuccessfully, to land. It came, a rawness and a regret that had never marred his composure on the field of battle. The wind sensed weakness, of course; he would have, in his youth, when all he understood was power.
Sigurne, he thought, with a bitter envy, what life shaped you, that you can be so cold in your failing years?
He could not afford to land while any of that weakness governed him, or the damage done by demons and magelings would pale in comparison to the damage done by the wind.
But he wanted to land. He wanted to go to the fallen, his fallen, and honor them. He wanted to see their faces, and commit them to the same memory that now held the details of his combat and his victory.
* * *
The Terafin was absolutely silent.
One step from her side, close enough at any time that he could reach out and touch her, could—had she been a different woman—offer her physical comfort, was her domicis, Morretz. He carried one thing for her; a simple, heavy _ cloak, proof against the sea wind and the inclement weather.
She almost never wore it; it had a value that only history could give an item. She would ask for it soon. The lights that mages had cast were dimming; the lamps that guards carried, flickering. The noises in the Common were night noises. Many weaknesses were forgiven in the darkness. He had thought in his youth that he had found a woman without weakness; he had learned with the passage of time that the ability to reveal weakness—for a woman of Amarais' stature—took a different form of strength. She understood the demands of her rank. She waited; he waited, watching in protective silence.
From a bitterly cold sunrise—surprisingly cold, given the geography—to a cool, star-broken nightfall, The Terafin watched her Chosen work at the side of Jewel's den. Noting the difference in armor, in arms, in the deference they were trained to give: The Chosen were perfect, and the den, handpicked in no less careful a way given the circumstances in which it had formed, far less polished. But she saw the potential in them. They were terrified. They worked through it, hid it. Served.
He knew what she observed by her expression. She knew, for instance, that when Captain Torvan ATerafin approached her and knelt beneath the rising face of the narrow moon, he would report failure. She knew that the Council of the Magi, represented by Sigurne Mellifas, would likewise offer no comfort, but she offered words to the woman who wore the quartered moon. To her Chosen she had offered a grim silence, no more.
"Were they hunting your girl?"
"I had hoped that the Council of the Magi would offer an answer to that question."
"We are not all-seeing, Terafin. We labor under an understanding of the demon kin that is very little improved since the last time we were forced to deal with their presence in the streets of Averalaan."
"A motion was made, or so rumor would have it, that the forbidden arts be once again a subject of study within the Order. It was defeated by a narrow and forceful margin."
"You have, as always, impeccable sources, Terafin. Enough so that you will refrain from insulting my intelligence; you know the vote carried, and the head of Council exercised her right of refusal."
"You credit me with better sources than I have," The Terafin said quietly. "I was not aware of the rule in Council that allowed the head of council such a veto."
Sigurne Mellifas was frail; her skin was the color of light on water. Hard to imagine a woman such as this could successfully veto the decision of the most powerful members of the Order of Knowledge. Until she smiled, the amusement mixed with momentary appraisal. "We are both too blunt, Terafin."
"Indeed. Perhaps because we can be."
"You haven't the excuse of age and ill temper."
"Nor have you, although as any ruler does, you choose the excuse that's expedient."
"The excuse, yes, but not the veto, it seems."
The Terafin was silent. At last, she said, "I would know when to trust my own and when to have them watched. But I am not a mage; my sense of the expedient, where magical study is concerned, would be tempered by ignorance."
Morretz's brow rose a fraction; fell again before either woman could notice the ripple of expression. You trust this woman, Amarais.
Silence. "I don't know whether or not they were hunting, as you call her, my girl," The Terafin said quietly. "But I would have to guess, without further investigation, that hunting or no, they found her."
"Oh?"
"Terafin has ways of contacting its ranking members during a crisis." As was proper, she offered no further comment.
"I see. I will, if you desire his aid, offer Member APhaniel the choice of service to your House. I believe he has already served your House in s
ome capacity." She knew, of course, what capacity he had served in, and when; the only detail she was unlikely to know was the amount of money that had exchanged hands, although Morretz would not have been surprised if she did.
"I believe that Meralonne APhaniel has pledged service to the Crowns in the South."
"True. And you think that the two—your girl and the South—are unconnected?"
"A good point."
"Would you know if she was dead?"
"I am considering the purchase price of such an enchantment in future, but understand me; I would not waste your time with questions if I already knew their answers. We have too much to do to waste each other's time with such tests of knowledge or power."
Sigurne smiled. "You chastise me, and I accept it; you have no idea how envious most members of the Order would be." The smile vanished. "I have trusted my instinct for all of my adult life. I do not think Jewel ATerafin is dead."
"No?"
"No."
The Terafin was silent a moment, and then she offered the unexpected: a smile.
"Let me clarify that. I do not believe that she died here."
The smile froze and then vanished, like northern ice sublimating. "Please explain," she said softly, in a tone of voice that belied the possibility that the two terse words were a request.
"You are familiar with translocation?" Sigurne unexpectedly turned and began to walk to the west. The Terafin fell in step by her side; Morretz fell in behind them.
"I am unfamiliar with most of the magi's arts, but if you mean the passage from one place to another as if nothing existed between the two points, yes. I am also aware that perhaps a handful of the mageborn will ever attain the power necessary to cast this spell; the attempt would kill them."
"Indeed. I am not one with that power. Meralonne, as I suspect you know, is. Your Jewel ATerafin was with someone who cast the spell."
"You know this?"
"We deduce it. Power is always a personal trait. How it is used is also personal. You are not The Terafin your predecessor was, and your heir—should one ever be chosen—will not be the woman you are. Power makes its mark. Here, Terafin, power has left its mark."
Morretz came to stand beside the woman whose service had become his life's work. The slight narrowing of her eyes told him all he needed to know—but he was certain that Sigurne knew it as well; she was frustrated with the superficiality of her knowledge. "I see nothing."