It cost her something, to lake the boy's hand; to take it, feel the small leap of suspicion and fear as he hesitated, and hold on because she needed his help. But she did. She did not know where they were going, how they were to arrive. She only knew what he knew—that they must arrive, and soon.
She tried not to snarl at his speed, or what little there was of it. She held onto his hand although she hated the feel of it. She even let him lead without speaking, because she knew that he was struggling with his own reactions. She could taste it, he was so close. The discomfort, the fear. She had gotten used to the peculiar shade of his soul, the odd darkness, the odd light, both so strong, and both so separate. Uneasy alliances there, easily broken.
But they had not been broken yet; she reminded herself of that. Humans were not what they had been in her youth in the Shining City.
"It's there!" he shouted, although shouting wasn't necessary. His breath interrupted his words; he strove for air, and air's weight in his lungs, between his lips.
She let go of his hand, although she hadn't meant to until the moment she turned to follow his shaking finger with her gaze. He fell at once; there was space beneath them, and she heard his surprise grunt as he struck stone and dirt.
She didn't care.
How had he done this? How?
She opened her lips and the words wouldn't come; there were too many of them, they were too painful. But pain didn't last for Kiriel di'Ashaf; not here, not in the face of his power. Like lead in the hands of the fabled alchemists, it became something infinitely more valuable, more precious to her: Anger. Fury. "Isladar!"
They all heard it.
Jewel, who was clutching her side now, clutching the first deep wound. Angel, who was on the edge of a sleep that held no waking. The child who was insensate, driven by fear beyond fear's reach.
And the demon himself.
Jewel saw his expression shift as he froze, as the sound of the single word seemed to destroy his momentum.
Isladar.
"I see," he said quietly.
She was aware of his movement before he made it, of course. Of every movement toward her, before he made it. Because every single blow he struck was meant to be her death, and her body didn't want to die. But she was tired now, bone tired, dead tired. What her body knew, and what it could do, were two different things. He cut again, and cut deeply; she was out of his way only enough to stop the blow from being fatal.
As if he knew that she was flagging, that he no longer needed to distract her or tire her, he left the child and Angel behind; there was only Jewel. Only Isladar.
Death. Death here.
And she was tired enough not to fear it.
Avandar had enough warning to leap out of her way, but in truth, that was little warning, and his body covered a stretch of rock and dirt so quickly he left parts of his skin on his shirt. She was a shadow that appeared, streaked in blackness, reddened and whitened by the cast rage lends fair features. Her sword—the sword that both he and Meralonne APhaniel shunned—was in her hand as if it were just a natural extension of her body. She drove it forward into the wall that separated Avandar from his keep.
No wall in the world would have withstood the weight and the force of that sword. Buildings, he thought, would shatter in the wake of the magic that traced the dark arc of its traveling. There was no doubt in his mind, no room for it, that she would fail to do what he had failed to do: breach the barrier. Reach Jewel Mark-ess ATerafin.
Certainty was such an odd thing.
He saw her stagger back; saw the air give way, refuse her its support. It took a moment for him to comprehend what he could not comprehend: her failure.
He heard her. From where he lay—lay?—upon the alley's floor, he heard the sound she made as her sword struck the barrier. He wouldn't have recognized her voice at all, except he'd never much liked her voice, and wouldn't have trusted her if it hadn't been for Jay.
And Jay was the word she shouted. Roared.
He opened his eyes to the barrier's darkness; thought he saw it shivering, as if it were alive. As if it were living shadow.
He thought he was beyond pain, but he was wrong; it hurt to move. He could see Jay, and in the darkness that he could not move to confront, he could see what attacked her. No way to reach her. No way.
But he thought—he thought that he might do some other thing. Wondered why he hadn't thought of it before.
Living shadow. Living.
He lifted the dagger that Devon had given him. Lifted it in a feeble hand, a shaking one. Propped himself up on an elbow, rolled. Fell over. Didn't matter. He was close enough. He'd heard the stories.
With no strength at all. Angel sliced the barrier's darkness with a thing of light: consecrated by the triad, blessed by the god-born. Too ornate by half to be useful in any other way.
He had not known her for what she was; had had no reason to know it, although his informant must have. Something to remember. But Lord Isladar of the Shining Court knew it now: She was seer-born, and her gift was as strong as the gifts that blessed those who had ruled in the cities of man, before the cataclysm. Before the desert.
More time, more time and he would have had her. More power, and he could have killed her at his leisure—and the desire to do so, this long thwarted, was great.
But time had run out.
He thought he had killed the man. A mistake, obviously, and a costly one. He could not reconstitute the wall that he'd erected. He was lucky that Kiriel in anger was still much like a child; she did not think to do what that man, pale-haired and pale as he hovered on death's gray edge, had done—to climb the building, to go over what Kialli Lord had made.
The wall was her enemy, and she did not look for anything to defeat it but a display of brute force. Had he taught her that? Perhaps. When one sharpened a weapon as dangerous as Kiriel one tried to make its edge as predictable and straight as possible.
It served her poorly. It served him well.
He turned as the barrier shattered, feeling the shards of his shadow dissolve, absorbed by both his body and hers.
Like shadow, she stood in the alley's mouth.
"I'm afraid," he said softly, with a very slight bow of his head to the seer-born human, "that you will live. For the moment."
And he turned to face his charge.
The wind took her hair, and it was a wind of her own making; the streets were heavy with humidity and the stillness of sea air. Strands far too long for practical battle fell back from her face as if pulled, and not by the gentlest of hands: she was in the grip of an anger that was deeper than anything she had ever felt, save perhaps—save perhaps that at Ashaf's death.
Ashaf's loss.
She had dreamed of this moment, in darkness, at night when the Ospreys slept, or better, when Valedan did, and she was not required to feign sleep, but rather, watchfulness, which was for her the more natural of the two things. She'd dreamed that she would see him again. That he would fall before her—that he would grovel or beg.
And she knew, the moment she saw him, that it was only that: a dream. Lord Isladar—Isladar of no demesne—did not know how to grovel or beg. And he had taught her well enough that she knew she would do neither were their positions reversed.
He bowed. She had not expected that.
"Kiriel," he said softly. "It has been… too long. You have begun to play a game that is greater than you realize. Come home; leave it be. The Lord does not yet fully comprehend the depth of your transgression, and you are his kin, his only kin. Come; if you stand against us for too long, I will not be able to protect you from his knowledge."
The words that she wanted to say would not come; they were not so simple as she had thought they would be. She wanted to cleave him in two and have done, and she brought her sword up for the blow. But she wanted more, too, hungered for it the way that she hungered for pain.
"Why?"
She did not mention Ashaf by name; there was only this one thing that stood
between them.
"Can you ask me that?" he said softly. "You were far too attached to her, Kiriel. You accepted the investiture. You chose, and yet, having chosen, you sought to retain what you were required to leave behind: humanity." He paused. "Do you not see, now, how she has weakened you? Were they to follow you here, any one of your enemies, even the least of the Lord's Fist, would destroy you with ease."
"You could have let her go!"
"You do not see it," he said softly. "'Kiriel, I have called you weak. You do not refute it. Have you forgotten everything I labored so long to teach you?"
"I would have let her go."
"That is what you would have done, yes. And she would have returned to you, in pieces—but not so many that she would not in some fashion remain alive as a weapon against you. I did not fashion her to be your downfall, nor did I fashion her to be the tool of any other Lord."
"Only you?"
He shrugged. "She was not what you are, Kiriel, and in the end, she would have left you—or worse. Can you doubt that, who could see her soul? She was beginning to know what you were, just as you were beginning to know it, and accept it. Was her death really so difficult?"
"It wasn't her death," Kiriel said at last.
"And what was it, then?"
"I'll kill you," she said.
She was lying. Jewel was certain that, had she been anyone else, she wouldn't have known it—but she felt the truth that Kiriel hid behind the words she was willing to speak, and she knew, suddenly, that she did not want to hear the rest. Knew that Kiriel—this Kiriel, this angry, hesitant girl—would say the rest, and regret it.
Lord Isladar. Shining Court. Allasakar-born child. It made sense only because, as she watched them, girl and man—for he looked the part of a man, sounded it—she saw the ties that bound them; they were ugly, but they were there. Pain. Fascination. Need.
Not to him. I'll keep you. Kiriel; you gave me your oath. And if I let you go—and she had let members of her den graduate—it won't be to that bastard.
Jewel was bleeding now, from eighteen wounds, only the last three of which were life-threatening by her own guess, but she wasn't dead. That she was on her feet at all was incentive to stay that way.
While Kiriel stared at this creature. Jewel quietly bent to the alley floor and retrieved a dagger. It was only that, now. The killing stroke had already been given, and denied.
But Hells, a dagger was better than nothing.
She was wobbly; thought that she would be worse than wobbly in less than a few minutes. As carefully as possible, she took aim, and spared enough of the breath she held to speak a single word, and that a supplication. Kalliaris.
She threw the knife.
It struck him. She was good enough to hit a motionless target in the back, especially if it was large enough to be mistaken for a good-size section of barn. The damned dagger—well, the blessed dagger, really—made it as difficult as possible; it was everything that a dagger shouldn't be. Pretty. Ornate. Unbalanced.
But it did its work.
It broke the moment.
"Kiriel!"
They both turned, then—Kiriel and the demon. The darkness of the alley would hide nothing at all from the eyes of the newest member of Jewel's small den. She knew it.
Isladar had time to frown, time to lift a hand in either denial or supplication, before Kiriel's sword bisected him.
Or it would have, gods curse him, had he still been standing there.
"Damn," Jewel said, to no one in particular. And then, as Kiriel reached her side, she added, "Angel. Get Angel." Pause. "And the girl. Don't know whose she is."
After that, there were no more words.
No light, no pain.
But as she slid into oblivion—fighting it all the way because she was Jewel and fighting was what she did best—she saw a familiar face step out of the sun's light toward her. Smiled, or tried to, as Avandar Gallais tried to take her from Kind's arms. Those arms tightened, and Jewel realized that she was being carried. She wondered, before she lost the light entirely, who would win.
* * *
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Alowan could not speak with Jewel: she had faded into something too heavy to be sleep, and she could not be awakened. The young woman, Kiriel, had delivered her into the keeping of her den-mate, Finch—but only after Finch had assured her that there were healer-born here who could grant life any miracle as long as some life remained.
Kiriel did not desire to see the healer. Reacted as if it were a shock, to hear of him. Maybe it was. But she accepted Finch's word as if the mention of the healer-born was indeed enough proof of a miracle, and she left swiftly. Left before Devon ATerafin came in, bearing Angel.
Finch froze.
Seeing Jay had been bad enough. Angel—Angel was worse, somehow. It wasn't the blood; they were both covered with it, sticky with it. No, it was his hair; his hair—which she'd never really liked—was flat, its spiral broken. The rest of him seemed intact, but his hair—he never gave it up; it was the last of his life on the street. Not really suitable for Terafin, but it was tolerated.
Angel.
Jay.
Here were two people that she loved—she wasn't afraid of that word anymore, they were her den—and she knew that a healer could barely survive calling one back.
Alowan came at once, and he looked a long time at them. Jay and Angel, unwakeable, barely breathing—but breathing still. They were in side-by-side beds, out of sight of Teller—which she privately thought was stupid—and he stood between them a long time.
"Well," he said softly. "It comes to this. Was this the House War?"
"No," she said immediately. Knowing she wasn't supposed to talk about it. Knowing that she would, to Alowan. "It was Kings' business, all of it."
Some of the tension left his expression; none of the weariness. "I cannot save them both," he told her softly.
He was wavering in her vision; she turned her back and rubbed her hands angrily over her eyes, as if she could squeeze them dry. "Will you—would you be willing to—to save one of them?"
A long pause. A long pause. And then. "Yes."
Anyone else, anyone else and she would've known who he'd pick. But Alowan didn't judge the way anyone else did.
"Who?"
He smiled at that, smiled wearily. Because she asked. Because she knew that to him, to the part of him that healed, life was life. There were precious few in the House—with its political tensions, its fractured struggle for power—who understood that at the moment.
They both heard the doors to the healerie open. No question who it would be. None at all. Devon had gone at once to fetch her: The Terafin. They entered the room, the armored man and the woman who was so sure of her power it seemed she didn't need armor. Morretz followed in her wake, as silent as always; his eyes flickered over Avandar, who stood apart, who stood alone watching Jay from a distance. Watching her, knowing that that watching did nothing, or so it seemed to Finch.
The healer tensed; she saw his shoulders slump and then rise, saw the line of his jaw stiffen. He turned and bowed. "Terafin," he said.
She wasn't a stupid woman. She must've heard it in his voice, because she said, "You have not begun."
"No. There are… two… who cannot be brought back by anything but the call."
She was silent a moment. Then, "There is only one who is important to the future of the House. Do what must be done."
"I will." He bowed his head again. "But it will not be to your liking, Terafin."
"What?" Devon's voice, harsh, loud where The Terafin's was soft, for all that you could hear it anywhere.
"We do not argue here, not in this place. It is the healerie, and it is my domain. If you wish it, Terafin, I will leave your grounds having achieved no healing at all. But for reasons of my own— good reasons—I believe it is the boy that I must save."
"Boy? He's not been a boy for twenty years!"
"And you. sir, for longer."
; "If she dies, we lose her sight, we lose her vision—we lose—"
"What do we lose, ATerafin? You will speak of House matters when The Terafin does not?" He turned away then.
Finch was silent, although she paced back and forth in front of the fronds whose tips touched floor from a height that was greater than Avandar's, pretending not to hear the raised and lowered voices, the imprecations, the near-pleas, the curses.
Avandar moved to stand beside Jewel's bed. He made of silence a weapon, one turned in both directions: outward and inward. Finch had never seen him so grim, so pale, so—downtrodden. The Terafin, she thought, had aged, putting on the weight of years the minute she crossed the threshold between her manse and Alowan's healerie. And it was. indeed, Alowan's healerie, no matter that it was located in the heart of Terafin's finest dwelling. They had forgotten it, at times, because they could forget it; not even during the last pitched battle, the aftermath of it, had he contravened any order, ignored any request. The Terafin had chosen to give him.
Finch had nothing against standing up for oneself against power—after all, it was not as if Alowan had ever chosen to take the Terafin name—but she wasn't certain she would have chosen now to do it, if she had been someone else. If she had been him.
But if she'd been him. she wouldn't have been able to act at all. There were some choices that should never have to be made, and this was one: Alowan, hovering between the barely breathing bodies of Jay and Angel. Finch was afraid. Maybe, at his age, there was no way he could bring even one of them back. But if that were the case, surely he'd say it? She bit her lip to stop from thinking; didn't help. Never did.
Jester and Carver had gone, with Meralonne, to find the demon-trapped young girl's parents, to deliver her to them. To hear Devon speak, she wouldn't have found her way home, otherwise; she was in a state of grace that people who've forgotten what pain and terror really feels like call shock. Devon was speaking now, and it was clear that what he had to say didn't do much but annoy the healer.
Michelle West - The Sun Sword 02 - The Uncrowned King Page 29
