And it was then that she saw it: The ring. The ring that had fallen from the hands of the seer-born witch, Evayne. Evayne a’Nolan. It almost hurt her, to look at that band, but once she did look, she wondered that she had not seen it before; it was burning with a white fire that at once scoured and tantalized vision. No gems in it; no engraving; nothing whatever to mar the perfection of its line.
No beginning, no end.
Just the ring itself.
The mantle was gone.
She grabbed the ring and almost cried out; she could not move it, and the attempt was more painful than any of the lessons that Isladar had tried, successfully or otherwise, to teach her in her youth.
“Boy,” she said, biting back the pain, forcing herself to show none of it, “leave. Now.”
He clambered sideways, between the distinctive edges of newly-cracked wood. Stopped. Unlaced the pouch at his belt and threw it at her feet as if he couldn’t quite believe that she would let him go, and wanted to distract her for long enough that it didn’t matter whether or not she’d changed her mind.
The tavern had drawn collective breath. Kiriel offered Auralis a hand—the hand that bore the ring—and he groped about as if in darkness before taking it. It did not burn him. He did not even notice its touch, he who was, of all the Ospreys, the darkest, the most lost. “I think,” she said, “we’d better leave.”
He was going to say something sarcastic. She saw it in the lines burned by sun and time into the set of his lips. But before he could speak, someone else did.
“What a clever, clever illusion.”
And she looked up, across the room and the three tables that Auralis had told her the gamblers used. Looked across the empty chairs, the upended flasks and tankards, the low flat boxes that dice were thrown into.
He bowed, and she recognized him by the gesture. Auralis, she let fall; an afterthought, and a necessary one.
The sword that she carried was no danger to anyone now, expect perhaps an unarmed mortal. She lifted it anyway, lifted it in the hand that did not bear the ring, because it was the hand that was not on fire.
“You.”
“But I believe,” the Kialli said, “that the truth of your nature has made itself felt in this holding. We will put an end to your schemes and your murders.”
“No,” she said. Just that. “You will die.” She leaped.
His laughter was slow and lazy; he moved far more quickly than she.
It shouldn’t have been possible.
It wasn’t possible.
Her hand was on fire.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Humans, once gathered together, often pooled their voices, made of cacophony a consensus, lumbering, larger than it had the right to be, a single thing. These humans, in their muted fear, were no exception. They spoke now, the cascade of indistinguishable words a whisper of anticipation. Sensing blood, death, defeat, they watched. Safe things to witness, when they were someone else’s to experience. Humans were, in that respect, not unlike the Kialli.
Wood splintered in the distance outside of the immediate circle she had made by splintering wood herself; something heavy cracked as if struck by force. The door. Was he abandoning the spell that sealed it?
“What is this, little Kiriel?” the demon whispered, for her ears alone. “Am I so contemptible a target that you have chosen to divest yourself of all defense?”
Fear. Fear then.
She hated fear. But she lived with it, gathered it, beat it back; had always done just that, more than that. The arrogance in her enemy’s voice was a warning and she had not always been a power in the Shining Court, although she had always been a fighter. What else was there to be? She could fight, or she could die.
His hand came down in an arc that ended with wood. Wood was weak; it splintered and flew—and this sound, this she paid heed to; it changed the ground beneath her feet; it changed the lay—and therefore the law—of the fight.
She had no power.
It was not the same as having no weapon; she would have to show him that, should she survive. She would survive, to show him that. She swung, low, keeping the sword’s play as tight and controlled as possible.
Do not fight in anger. You become anger’s weapon; it is never yours.
His voice spurred her on; the wildness of this helpless state seemed a harmony to the memory of the teacher that, had he been here, would have saved her life only after she had proven that she was worthy of the salvation. Only then.
Never, never, never.
Vow it. Mean it. Never prove yourself worthy of him again.
But she’d proved herself worthy time and again, and this Kialli was no different from the rest, when it came to attacking the less powerful. Arrogant. Stupid. Dangerous.
She leaped.
She leaped, and the music carried her, the song that she had not known she was singing because her lips were pressed tight and thin, a white line over teeth too blunt to be useful, over words too thin now to carry the under-rumble of power, of power’s authority.
Lightning leaped with her; leaped before her, branching at a point behind her back, but not above her head. It struck the Kialli shields, buckling them; driving the creature over broken floor and fallen furniture alike.
He was here.
He had seen no sign, in her, of weakness; no sign of the fear that she struggled with; no sign of the cost the power’s loss, and the ring’s burden, exacted.
She felt at once trapped and relieved; he was here. He had come. And she was, in all things, the student, his only student. He was, in all things, the only teacher. A test. It was another test. And she had passed it, somehow, or he would not be here. Was Evayne his servant?
She froze; she had often frozen thus when Lord Isladar of the Kialli had decided, at last, to intervene. His magic was finely tuned; she would feel its crackle and its build a moment before it would strike, and she would know, he’d trained her so well, when and where it would land.
This bolt singed her skin; she’d lurched to a stop—struggled for it, found it—but momentum carried her into the outer edge of a gold-tinged white light, whose heart was blue, blue fire.
The Kialli’s eyes widened; his lips moved over perfect teeth, human teeth. He raised his arms above his face in a gesture of denial, instinctive, old as time and older than the Kialli themselves.
Spoke a word. Another word. The arc of mage’s light hit him. Passed through him. He was gone.
A woman cursed, in time with Kiriel’s curse, her voice familiar. “I believe,” a man said softly, another stranger, another stranger’s voice, “that you have all witnessed an illegal act of magery. Illusion, a complicated art.” Noise returned slowly to the tavern, in whispers, in prayers. In music; the lute’s gentle strum.
The man who spoke smiled softly as his fingers touched those strings. “The magisterial guards will be along presently; they have been alerted. We, my companion and I, would have arrived sooner, but we were . . . detained . . . by this rogue mage’s companion. He is dead, by decree of an Order in Council of the Magi.
“Any information that you can provide us will aid us.”
“But we saw her!”
The man with the lute tossed his ringed curls over his shoulder. “That’s why they call it ‘illusion,”’ he said, the sarcasm in his voice sharp to wounding. “I am Kallandras of Senniel College. I serve the Kings.”
She heard someone mutter the word “bard-born.” She knew what it meant. Stranger or no, she had seen this man before, in another hall, in the Palace of the Kings themselves.
He met her eyes. Bowed, but not before she could see an expression flitter across his face, unfamiliar and unwelcome.
“My companion,” he said, in a voice that carried the length of the room without ever becoming a shout
, “is a member of the Order of Knowledge; she has the signs, and the writs, and any of you may question her if you wish to detain us further.
“But there is a man with murder on his mind—and it is of a particular type; he does not kill, not by his own hand—he plays you all for fools and has you do the killing for him. Let us take our companions from you, and we will pursue; keep us here another five minutes, and he is lost.
“You outnumber us, good citizens, and you have been through a darkness of your own, and a danger, and therefore the choice must be yours.”
All the while he spoke, he played, and there was no doubt at all in Kiriel’s mind that he spoke the truth, and all of it. And she knew that he lied.
But as the woman in midnight-blue robes approached her, she forgot that. “Kiriel,” the woman said softly, “I believe we must go.”
Evayne. A moment of confusion, there.
And then realization. Understanding.
Bitter disappointment, followed by bitter self-loathing.
Who had she thought it would be, after all? It could not, would not, be Isladar; she had betrayed his confidence, as he had betrayed hers; she had carried the war of the Court to him. And he? He had taken from her the only woman in the Court she valued—the only one.
Could she forget that?
Could she forget the crime, the vow, the anger?
It shamed her, and it hurt her, so she looked at the truth very, very briefly and then turned away from it and refused to see it again. Hardened herself—she was good at that, if nothing else. He was not here. They were not allies. She was truly kin, now. She was alone among enemies.
Evayne a’Nolan had a soul that seared her eyes because it moved so quickly, becoming darkness and light in a cross of bands that brooked no observation, welcomed no intrusion.
Or she had had such a soul. Tonight she was as empty of light and color, of boon and bane, as one of the kin. Bad enough, but so was Kallandras. So was Auralis.
Her hand was no longer on fire, although enough pain lingered that she was certain it had not been seared to ash. She was afraid to look; it hurt to look.
“Kiriel.” Gentle, gentle voice.
Her nod, when she offered it to the seer, was stiff and unnatural. “Auralis.”
And Auralis, shaking, rose. He stared at Evayne.
“She’s a—” She started to call her friend, or ally, to give her some title that humans would understand meant a momentary safety. But the ring burned her hand, and burned it still, and the words would not leave her lips. “Evayne. She’s Evayne.”
“We’ve met before,” he said softly. Shakily.
The seer’s violet eyes widened a moment. Narrowed. “In the Averdan Valleys,” she said. “And . . . before. Auralis?”
“We don’t have time,” the bard said.
They left the tavern.
Meralonne APhaniel was waiting for them. He was bleeding; the rents in the clothing he wore exposed flesh too white to have known much freedom under the sun’s light. Here, in particular, where the sun was harsh, the lack was obvious.
“You were in time.” Not a question.
Kallandras and Evayne exchanged a glance that was both weary and wary. “A matter of definition,” Evayne replied at length. “The demon escaped.”
He said nothing.
Kiriel thought, at first, that it was because he was angry, but as he approached her, she saw the expression upon his face as if it was illuminated from beneath, and it was; he carried a lamp. The light did not gentle him. Indeed, it added a harsh edge to the cut of his features, darkening the shadows that made of it an angular, a dangerous, landscape.
“Kiriel,” he said softly.
She did not trust the softness in that single word. He had never spoken her name with anything but respect. Could he see it? Could he see the truth of what she could barely comprehend herself: the nakedness, the loss of the power that had been hers since her father—no. No. What was she, without that?
She lifted a hand to ward him; she had never thought to do it before. How long had it been since the shadows had not nestled within her, coiled and tense with the desire to expand and consume all?
Memory was treacherous. It answered the question that she could barely ask aloud. But even before then, even before the power had been poured into the vessel that she had only then understood she had been fashioned to be, even then she had had the vision that she was born to. It was gone, now.
Sightless, she stared out at these, her companions, and she could see nothing at all but their faces, their bodies; they were leeched of the colors that twisted and danced within the shell of flesh, the body.
“Kiriel,” Meralonne said, lifting a hand.
She stepped back, lifted her own.
He caught it. “Where did you get this?” he asked.
She would have cut him in two, for her free hand still held the sword that had been made for her by the only one of the Kialli who considered himself a smith. It had been a gift. A talisman of sorts, he had said, and although she knew that it had been offered only to curry favor with Lord Isladar, her master, she’d accepted it as that. Protection against such offense as this: an unwanted touch. As if any touch could be wanted.
But where his hand touched hers, the fires banked. She stared at him. Pain could not make her cry out; of all sensations, it was the one she was most inured to. He’d seen to that. But this: cessation of pain, unlooked for—it startled a wordless sound from her lips.
“The ring,” Meralonne said softly, intently, unaware of the concession surprise granted him. “How did you come by this?” And then he turned swiftly. “Evayne,” he said.
The seer’s offered answer was silence. They were not friends, these two, but they were allies; there was history between them; she could see it clearly, although she could see little else.
“Yes,” Kiriel replied. “She dropped it.”
“Dropped it?”
“It—it—” the fire that reddened her cheeks as she turned toward the now hooded face of the seer had nothing to do with magic, with magery. “You tricked me!”
Evayne said nothing.
Kiriel tore her hand free—cried out at once with the pain of it—and reached out for the woman who had, she dimly recalled, just saved her life. As Isladar would have.
And, as Isladar, for her own reasons. She played her games.
Kallandras said, “There was no trick, Kiriel.”
Kiriel did not, could not, hear him. Roaring, although the sound was pathetic and weak, she reached out before the older woman could react, and grabbed her by the folds of her cloak.
“Kiriel, no!” Evayne cried.
But it was late, for that. The cloak opened wide, and into the night sky, with its high moon and its terrible heat, there spilled darkness and ice.
And she, with no protection, stood in its path, in awe.
She was not going to move. He saw it clearly. Whatever it was that Evayne held within the confines of the only clothing that he had ever seen her wear, it was revealed to Kiriel’s eyes, and Kiriel’s eyes alone. Bard-born, death-trained, Kallandras could make out nothing; what was there was reflected in the lines of Kiriel’s face, and that, poorly.
He did not look at Evayne; he did not need to. Her voice told him all that he needed to know; that the girl was in danger, that she was not certain of her ability to protect the girl from the cloak itself. Had he never dared to touch her? He could not remember; it did not matter.
Certainly, he had felt Kiriel’s anger before.
But he had never been asked to pay for it with his life.
He had been Kiriel’s age when Evayne had destroyed the only life he wanted. That was probably the only thing that they would have in common, she and he—that and the rings. It was enough.
&n
bsp; He was across the cobbled grounds, his feet touching stone once and twice; a third time, and he felt snow and ice and bitter, bitter cold—and he felt her, Kiriel di’Ashaf, demon-killer and darkness-born child, as he wrapped both arms round her and bore her to ground, rolling with the momentum of his jump.
Not gentle; he could not afford to be.
He released her before she could struggle, stepping back. Her eyes were still wide, and he knew why, he knew why. His feet had touched ground like that only once before, at Evayne’s behest. In Scaral, on the darkest night of the Old Weston Year. The first rite, for either of them; they had both been younger then. Once had been enough.
And it had not been he that she had chosen to sacrifice; he had not paid the price of that night, except in this way—the memory could be called up by the touch of an old shadow.
Her cloak had stilled by the time Kiriel gained her feet.
“I am sorry,” the seeress said, the word so low it carried inflection only to the bard. “But the cloak is . . . magical. It hides much, protects much.”
“That—that was not you,” Kiriel said, rising. “I have seen shadows like that—”
“It is the sacrifice and the knowledge,” Evayne said, coldly now, though not so cold as that shadow, “of the Winter Road, may you never walk it.”
“The Winter Road?”
“Enough, Evayne,” Meralonne APhaniel said. “We do not speak of these things in so open a place. Not now, when so much is at risk.”
The seer nodded almost genially; she did not speak. Kallandras knew that that was for his benefit. But he was not a young man, not in that way, anymore. “It is . . . all right.”
“The ring?”
Reflexively, she looked at her hands; only one ring remained there now. “There were five,” she said. “That one was the second to go. A year ago. Less.”
“And the others?”
“I believe you already know where one of them lies,” Kallandras said softly, speaking with the wind’s voice, speaking of the past. “But for the rest, it is not for the guardian to say; she carries them, but she cannot use them, and she cannot see, clearly, to whom they go, and for what purpose.”
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