Michelle West - The Sun Sword 02 - The Uncrowned King

by The Uncrowned King

  But even wishing it, he knew, guiltily, that had he been lucky enough to be in the streets when so many armed men were riding by, he would have stared, too. From a safer distance. Maybe.

  It was hot. Heat was one of the tests a man faced when upholding the Lord's honor. So the old man had said. The heat had never troubled Aidan.

  "That is because you've never spent a day in armor, let alone when your life depended on the wearing of it." He lifted a hand before Aidan could speak, although how he knew Aidan was going to speak, Aidan didn't know. He certainly couldn't see it from the back of his head. "In the Dominion, there are two kinds of armor that men wear. The most obvious is the armor you see on Andaro there; leather, metal, a thing upon which life depends. It can be bought if you've the coin for it, fashioned if you've the skill. It is second to only your horse or sword in importance. But armor wears; it breaks and it can be stolen. A fool with money can purchase the best. It takes no skill to wear it and little enough to learn how to put it on.

  "There are men who define themselves by the things they own, the things they buy. Owning these things, they put much of their wealth into hiring others to protect them." His tone of voice was deceptively soft. Aidan heard the steel in it, the winter chill. "But hiring others guarantees nothing. This is a lesson that the Tyr'agar himself—the king, if you will, of the Dominion—learned, to his regret. We all learn it, Aidan: there are times when the plans of other men will prevail." His voice became soft, and Aidan heard in that softness a hint of his mother's thoughtful distance.

  What are you thinking? he would ask her when he saw that look. As a young child, he'd asked not because he wanted the answer, but because answering would bring her back to him, and he hated when she was far away. But as she got older, she would smile, sometimes sadly, and tell him, I am thinking of far away.

  Very far?

  Not so far that I can't reach it by making a quiet space for myself and taking time to think in it. And not so far that I can't be called back by you.

  That was how she told him she loved him.

  And now she was too far. He couldn't bring her back with anything as simple as a question because she couldn't hear him ask it.

  As if he could hear the sudden ghost of old pain, the old man continued, returning from the place that he'd been, just as Aidan's mother had. "There is armor that we wear in the service of, for the glory of, the Lord. And there is armor we wear as protection against him, for he tests us, always; he destroys the things that weaken us, and if we prove weak, he destroys us. He will not be served by the inferior.

  "This second armor I speak of, nothing pierces, nothing destroys. It cannot be bought, have you more money than a Tyr, and it cannot be made by any hand other than your own. Forge well, boy, and the world will never know that it can hurt you, and it will find some weaker man to torment in your stead."

  "Do you have it, this armor?"

  "Yes." The old man chuckled. "It does not stop pain, boy. Only death does that. But it prevents you from revealing the things that cause you pain. If they do not know the difference between the things that hurt you and things that do not, your enemies can make many mistakes."

  Aidan was quiet for a long time. At last he said, "So can your friends, though."

  The old man's arms tightened a moment; Aidan should have worried about being tossed off the horse. But he didn't. "You are young," the old man said at length. "You don't yet realize that in truth, we have no friends. There is the will of the Lord. The will of powerful men."

  "There has to be more than that," Aidan said.

  "Does there?"

  "Yeah. Why else would you come to the Challenge?"

  "What makes you think that I do not travel at the will of other, more powerful men?" Bitter, bitter words.

  "Because," Aidan said, "you're the master."

  Silence, punctuated by the clipped weight of shod hooves on exposed stone. "You are very observant, boy. If you stay where you are in the life that you have, it will be a crime in the Lord's eyes."

  "The Lord doesn't rule these lands."

  "No, perhaps he does not."

  "Can I ask a question?"

  "You have asked more questions in this last hour than anyone of my acquaintance has dared to ask in the last ten years," he replied.

  Aidan took that as a yes. "Why do you serve the Lord? You don't even sound like you like him."

  "You do not particularly care for Kalliaris, but if I had to guess, I would say that you pray to her far more often than you pray to any of your other gods."

  Aidan shrugged. "She is what she is. But I like the Mother, and the Kings' fathers."

  "They are none of them powerful enough to stand alone," the old man replied, with the faintest hint of scorn.

  "Maybe they don't feel they have to. They don't have a lot to prove."

  Dry chuckle. "Your point, Aidan. Perhaps if I lived in the North, I would believe as you believe, worship as you worship. But the Lord is the Dominion, and he shapes us all. I do not follow him any more than you follow Kalliaris. He is. I am. But before the winds take me, I will stand up to his heat; I will stand. And if he destroys the things I value, I will have vengeance.

  "Because creatures of power only understand power; everything else is in a tone too delicate, a nuance to subtle, to catch their attention, to force their acknowledgment."

  "Nobody lives alone," Aidan said. "My—my mother used to say that."

  "She was a woman of the North."

  "She was smart."

  "Wise, I think, would be the better word. What else did your mother say?"

  "All the old stuff. Stand up for what you believe in. Do the right thing, even when it's easier to do the wrong one. Give when you can. Take only what you need." He shrugged, uncomfortably close to himself, to the fact that he was slipping away from his mother's words because he couldn't figure out how to live with his father. She'd've hated that. "Stuff like that. Girl stuff."

  The old man said, softly, "Once, there was a woman in my life who said very much what your mother said. I, too, thought her very foolish. Very, very foolish."

  And Aidan, who found his eyes stinging a moment as memory blending into the present became sharp and twisted, understood that this man had lost someone, and that he, too, would take no comfort at all in the telling of it.

  One hundred men.

  One hundred men would be chosen out of this gathered, hopeful crowd. Aidan was not very good with numbers, but he was certain that the long, thick line of waiting men, on this first day of the trials, far outnumbered that. Some, he knew, would be turned away immediately; they were perhaps a year or two older than he was, and worse, looked it. The Challenge had rules just like the army's; you had to be Old Enough. Aidan wasn't that mythical age. He wondered if he would ever reach it.

  "What do you see?" the old man asked.

  "That we're not the only people here on horseback."

  "That is unusual. It is seldom that we see Northern riders, and for the Northerners, the horses are large and fine. Who are they?" There was an awkward pause before the old man said, "Forgive me, boy. You know so much of the Challenge's history and ritual that I had almost forgotten that some of these things—horses, mounted riders—are foreign to your way of living. I… see the horses. I do not see the riders."

  The old man didn't sound at all pleased about it either, which is to say that he suddenly ceased to speak Weston at all. Had a lot to say in the Southern tongue, though. Aidan promised himself that he would learn to speak that language. He tried to listen to the sounds the old man's words were made of, clinging to them as if he could hold them in memory for long enough to eventually unlock their meaning. But the only words he could sift out of that fluid stream of oddly musical sounds were "tor" and "leonne"; they were said sometimes together and sometimes apart.

  The tone of the old man's voice as he spoke was all alley shadow. Aidan wouldn't have dared to interrupt him had his life depended on it. He was certain that if it ha
d, he would be dead.

  They joined the line; the horses brought a combination of the magisterial guards and the Crown guards. Before either of these groups of officials could speak, the old man handed them a set of curled papers. The magisterians read them over so carefully you could almost hear their eyes scraping paper. But the royal guards hardly glanced at them at all; it was as if they'd expected to see over a dozen huge horses in the trial lineups.

  "Commander Sivari," one of the King's men said. Aidan froze. He recognized the name. Sivari. It wasn't all that common.

  The old man said, quietly, "It is time for me to dismount, boy." He offered Aidan a hand down; Commander Sivari met him halfway. The Northern officer looked at Aidan's white hair and soon to be blistering pale skin, and raised a dark brow. He did not speak, however.

  "Commander Sivari," the old man said. He bowed, the gesture so unexpected to Aidan that the boy froze in surprise. "I expected to be met, but not by a man who has worn the Challenge Crown. I am honored."

  Aidan's jaw dropped. This man—this man was Effarin Sivari. Kings' Champion. It had been a long time since he had earned the right to that title, but as he was one of the few champions who had been born and bred in the Empire's heart, and not its Northern remove, Aidan knew his name, and even some of his history.

  He was speechless. A god could have tapped him on the shoulder and it wouldn't have surprised him more. He was beyond surprise.

  Or so he thought.

  But Commander Sivari returned the bow; if possible, it was lower, more formal. "Who else would they send," he said as he rose, an expression that Aidan didn't understand on his face. "Who else would properly honor the only man living who has worn that crown twice?"

  Why didn't he tell me? Aidan was still speechless. He was also mortified. He had spent the last two days with a man who practically defined the word champion. He had even—oh, the humiliation was boundless—told him the stories about himself, stories he probably sounded completely stupid, at best, repeating.

  No Southerner knew so much about the Northern Challenge; they almost never sent their best North. The fact that he'd shown the interest, and knew so many of the answers—that should have been a dead giveaway. Dammit, he should have known who that old man was.

  He wondered if the old man had enjoyed laughing at him.

  "You are… quiet, boy."

  Aidan said nothing.

  The old man returned his silence with a silence that was shorter and less awkward. "I would have told you," he said at last, "but by the time it became relevant, it would have been awkward. You have a vision and a simplicity that no one involved in the Challenge with me will have. Not this Challenge. I found it refreshing. I am not a political man." He laughed. "And yet, life is politics; the politics of the sword, the politics of power, or position. I wished a reprieve, and you were that reprieve.

  "Forgive my duplicity." He bowed.

  Aidan was stunned. "But aren't you—but didn't you think I was stupid for not recognizing you? I should have," he added, speaking because the old man had spoken. "They all practically worship you. They'd stop breathing and turn blue if you told them to hold their breaths. Hells, they'd probably parade around the Commons without any clothing."

  "But not without their swords surely," was the old man's sober reply. "You mistake them."

  "No, I don't." Aidan shrugged. Balled his hands into fists and crossed them behind his slightly bent back. '"Because I'd do the same damn thing, if you told me to. If you'd accept me as a student. I'd do it, too."

  "I think," the old man said quietly, "that I would not take a student who had so little sense of self. They listen to me because I speak of the sword and the Challenge when I speak to them at all, and they know that my knowledge in this regard is superior to theirs. Were I to speak, instead, of women, I think they would humor me because of that knowledge—but they Would take no orders of mine. Two of them are better riders now than I have ever been, and if they had beneath them the mount that I was given for the Challenge, they would be unstoppable here. But we two, that horse and I, we were chosen for our strengths; riding him, I won the race. That man," he said, pointing to one of his students, "will win the rider's wreath." There was no doubt whatever in his voice. "But I digress. They listen, but they do not worship me, boy. I am not the Lord."

  Aidan would have argued, but he realized that at least two of those students suddenly looked less friendly than they had only moments before—which said a lot, as they'd never looked particularly friendly. It hadn't occurred to him that any of the other Southerners could speak Weston until that moment, and it made him feel at a disadvantage.

  One of the men, the one, in fact, that the old man had pointed out, opened his mouth. Spoke two words. The old man—no, he had to stop thinking about him that way—Ser Anton di'Guivera lifted a hand and swatted them away as if they were flies. Well, more exactly, he crushed them.

  Aidan was distinctly glad that no part of his life depended upon the goodwill of that student. It was too bad, though; he was one of the two really good ones.

  Talent, his mother used to say, tells you nothing at all about the man. Don't judge anything by it. It was true, but it was always disappointing when someone who was living his dream didn't live up to the dream itself.

  He glanced to the side and found that the old man's eyes were upon him. "He doesn't understand most of what you say," he said with a wry smile. "He merely dislikes you on principle. He wishes to be surrounded by his peers, and has enough wit to be suspicious of the unusual—you, in this case—without any instinct whatsoever to fall back upon for discretion's sake.

  "He is also," Ser Anton added, "preparing in his own way for the trials. He likes too many things, too much: food, wine, the company of young women. But he has a sense of respect for his art, and although there is no question at all that he will be accepted as one of the hundred, he will give these trials the same respect as the Challenge itself. That alone sets him apart from the many rather unremarkable young men he resembles. It's not just about talent, although talent does count. Focus. Concentration. Ambition. Without these, no man amounts to anything."

  "In the eyes of the Lord," Aidan said quietly, thinking uncomfortably of his father.

  The old man raised a solid brow. "Indeed," he said softly. "In the eyes of the Lord."

  The trial administrators were a bored group of men. They resembled, more than anything; merchants, as they sat in high-backed chairs behind their solid, heavy desks. They even had paper and slate, ink and chalk, before them. Names were taken, and numbers given, numbers written down.

  The old man—Ser Anton—smiled a little grimly. "This," he said, "is where most of our day will surely be spent."

  "Do they do this where you live?"

  "They do 'this' as you call it," Ser Anton said, "in every land I have ever visited. Not for the same things, not precisely. But yes. In the Dominion, it is more gracefully hidden. A family must enter— with small fee—the name of their chosen contender or contenders. The Radann perform the office that these magistrates perform here, and they do it within the confines of their temples. They also," he added, "have the good grace to do so where the rest of us are not forced to bear witness.

  "You must excuse me. Few of my students speak Weston well enough to answer these questions—and almost all of them, without exception, take poorly to being asked them."

  Aidan was left alone.

  No one chose to question his right to be here; he obviously carried no sword, so he wasn't trying to sneak in as a contender. He stared at his feet, feeling his size and lack of weight, and almost despising both.

  And because his vision was so turned inward, and unpleasantly at that, there was very little to distract him from one of his favorite sounds. Metal. Metal. The clash of weapons. He lifted his head. For the most part—or so he had been told—the men who had come to trial came to prove they had swords, but they were tested in this first round, with wooden swords. Practice blades. They w
ere required to wear their armor, to show their bows, but steel and steel for such a test as this was rare.

  He'd wondered about it, because the old man's students certainly used real swords. And perhaps what his Da said wasn't true. Wouldn't be the first time, although it would be the first time he'd been wrong about the Challenge!

  He thought the sounds of fighting would stop, but they didn't.

  and he couldn't help himself. He was carried by them as if by music; to Aidan, they were. They had their own timing, their own distinct feel, and as he approached them, as the sounds grew louder, as the bodies in front of him became sparser and sparser still, he felt the hair on his neck stand on end.

  The coliseum itself was huge, and it was mostly empty—those were the rules—but attendants, such as he, were allowed to sit and bear witness to the fairness of the trial's many judges. He was aware of the seats, but he did not take one; he walked across the ringed floor to the railing that separated him from the two men who now fought in the circle's center.

  A flag was flying under the open sky, and beneath it, a banner had been driven into dirt. He did not recognize it immediately because he was not familiar with banners that didn't have something common, like bread, a keg, or a lute sewn across them, but when he saw the gold glinting off the full height sun, when he saw the golden curve of the sword beneath it, he knew that this man was a foreigner.

  He crept closer, then froze.

  There were two men. He recognized one of them.

  Commander Sivari.

  The other, he had never seen before in his life—but he would remember the grim set of his face, the dark, straight flat of hair pulled back and bound very, very tight. He wore no helm. His Da would have said that was the last act of a young idiot, the lack of helm.

  But Aidan knew, watching him, that it was more than that. He moved. He did not falter, not once. The sun caught his blade, his hair, the curve of his armor; he and the Commander seemed to be, in this dance, in another place entirely. A place where heat and the sea-heavy air could only watch, as Aidan did: without touching.