"I don't know."
Blue light billowed like the breath of an ancient beast, hoary with smoke and the thick stateness of too little air, none of it clean. It came up from the floor of the bar, pierced and surrounded its heart.
"Oh, my god!" She froze as she recognized the power that permeated the words, that carried them across the breadth of the room, breaking into every conversation, every noisy argument, every private gathering, with equal facility.
She saw him then. He was tall; taller than Auralis, but not of such a height that he towered obviously over the rest of the men in this crowded, filthy place. But he was fair, where they were darkened by sun and summer's height, and his eyes were of a color, a rich darkness that the word black was too thin to describe. He lifted a hand, pointed. At her. At Auralis.
"Demon! "
"Shit. Duarte's going to kill us."
Clever bastard.
There was a pause; the collective drawing of breath, a prelude to action.
In this city, those words meant something.
Oh, in the towns they meant something as well—to small children and their exhausted or angry parents—but if you were living in this city in the year 410, if you'd lived through that Henden, and had managed to hold onto your sanity until the break of First Dawn, the word had a resonance, held a terror, demanded an action, whether it be flight or fight.
There weren't a lot of places to flee to.
Swords left scabbards, when their owners possessed swords; more often than not they didn't. They all had daggers. In two places, drinks hit the tavern planks in a thud and a spill as tables were overturned precisely enough to make shields of them. Luckily, the floors here were thick enough and old enough that the mess was right at home.
He thought blood would be, as well.
Because it didn't occur to him to doubt that the words of their accuser would be disbelieved.
"I think it's time to leave," he said, backing doorward, hand on sword hilt. The room was frozen a moment, in shock, in the space before deep breath is drawn and battle is entered in earnest. They had just that much time to flee. He'd seen enough action to know when he'd been outmaneuvered.
That was the problem with raw recruits. Raw, powerful, recruits. They could be so gods-cursed stupid. It had never occurred to Auralis to consider the best, the dirtiest, the fastest fighter in the unit stupid, until now. He hoped fervently that he survived the misestimation.
"Kiriel, no!"
In a single motion, she drew her sword and leaped across the length between the tavern's door and its heart. If there were men in the way, it didn't matter; the old building's ceilings were high enough to accommodate both her height and theirs, and she moved faster than he'd ever seen her move. He cursed. Because the moment she drew that damned sword, it sucked the light out of the air, it made the accusation not only fitting but exact.
He should've been grateful; the minute she drew that sword, no one really had a lot of attention to spare for him. He certainly didn't.
You'd better hope, he thought to himself, as he quietly drew his own sword, that someone here kills you, because if they don't, Alexis will. He could face anyone in the Ospreys, would in fact face all of them combined, before he'd face her.
The silence broke like a wave against the sea wall.
They didn't matter to her.
Isladar had told her, time and again, just how dangerous they could be, these humans, these fully mortal, unclaimed humans, and she'd listened to him, as she'd always listened. In the Shining Court she'd discovered the truth of his words; the humans were as dangerous in their fashion as the Kialli. They had their power, their magic, their subtlety, and she had felt the sting of each as she grew.
She forgot that now. She was her father's daughter.
She gestured; it was that simple. Shadows rose, splintering floorboards in a jagged edge, making of them a poor wall, a thing that humans would have to struggle between, or over. She thought they would run. If she thought that much.
The room became one thing, one creature. His shadows touched everything, trapped and blanketed them; it was the force behind his voice, unseen by all but her, unfelt by none. She would have ended the game—do not let another creature set the terms of the games you play, his voice said, here, where she least wanted to hear it, where she could not help but hear it, for hadn't he taught her how to survive? Hadn't he saved her life, time and again, from the Kialli, from the human Court?—but she could not end it; she could only see her enemy's power. She could not see his name.
No name, and no challenge—not directly. And if he were powerful enough, his name alone could not demand what she desired; Etridian, Isladar, Assarak, these at least stood against her. There were others. But they would not stand against her will forever. They bowed to her father. In time, they would bow to her.
She had been chosen. If the Lord was the Lord of the Hells, he had claimed her as daughter and heir. She would be their Lady. She would be their Queen.
And what would not bow before her, she would destroy.
As she would destroy this one.
Auralis was on the outside of the splintered floorboards that rose at the drift of her hand across air. They did not obscure vision, but they marked the boundaries of a circle that she had drawn, there. In the North, they fought in circles; the meaning of the enclosure was lost on no one.
He was surprised that she chose to use it. Didn't understand what it meant.
Someone cried, "Get the magisterians! Tell them—tell them to call the magi!" And Auralis recognized the strangled voice, thinned and weakened as it was by fear. The tavern's owner. Fire he'd seen, and fight; he had two dour, grim men with swords—albeit not of the best quality—who habitually took up residence, arms crossed against armored chests, for just that purpose. But there'd been no magic in the tavern since its opening three generations past—at least, none detectable, none visible, which is probably all a normal man could ever really be certain of—and he'd no method on hand of dealing with that.
No way of dealing with a demon and a sword that looked as if it drank souls. There were stories of those, in the years between suckling and manhood; Auralis had probably heard half of them, and the tavern's owner, the other half.
Someone ran out into the night air, as if the command were a gift from the gods. Young man, thin; the owner's son or nephew. He'd been here often enough that he thought he should know.
The two men with swords looked at each other. Their arms, hanging slack with the shock of the accusation, came up, hesitated, and then dropped. To sword hilts.
Auralis was certain, as they drew these weapons, that it was probably the first time they'd been drawn all year.
The sight of swords seemed to galvanize the inn itself. Most of the men and women here hadn't drunk enough—as if—to want to stay; they bolted for the doors.
The doors slammed shut.
Lord Isladar was seldom wrong. He had not been wrong this time. The creature that served him smiled softly in the haze of the tavern's smoke, its man-scent, its peculiar and poor light.
He was a creature of cunning, not a creature of brute force, although he was capable of either. He was one of the few who had been strong enough to hold the memories of his life during the long passage between this world and the Lord's—Kialli. His name was more to him than compulsion, it was identity. He guarded it, as the Kialli guarded nothing else but the damned.
He was not far from Kiriel when she landed, but he was completely beyond her vision; her sword, drinking the light, drew all eyes to it, even his, who knew what it was.
Even the man he had chosen as her victim.
The man was a fool, as most mortals were, and as mortals went, not a particularly interesting one; he was young, and tall; overly trusting—not a soul who would choose a place in the Hells for several lifetimes yet, if ever. In youth, humans often showed a surprising, sharp burst of malice that time and experience leeched from them. Perhaps this boy was one of those—the men who flirted
with the Choice, but never with any intention of following it to its end. He'd accepted, with wonder and gratefulness, the small purse that he had been offered; it was tied to the wide belt he wore, along with the flotsam and jetsam of his hopeful life.
Within the flotsam and jetsam, the power resided. The patina of power. The heart of the truth that was Kialli: Illusion. Lie. Death.
He would hold it there for just long enough, and when the sword struck home, seeking life, he would withdraw. She had already summoned the shadows to her; his power, to draw and detail the dark lights of her eyes, was becoming less and less necessary. No man here would forget what he had seen.
That he had seen her slaughter an innocent. That she was a demon, in their eyes, a thing of nightmare. They would summon the mages, and Kiriel, half-blood and hated for it. would know what it was to be hunted by her half-kin.
The man's mouth was still open in the gape of human reaction. He grabbed his dagger—he was too poor to own a sword, as he'd said several times—and drew it. She allowed that. Waited for it.
How… odd.
He felt the fear in the air grow, thicken, and deepen—and it felt good. Who could have thought, so very long ago, that one could miss the Abyss, the red plains, the charnel winds? Who might have predicted that the voices of Those who have Chosen would become sweeter than Kialli song?
Not he, never he.
And do we sing? he thought, as he resisted the pull of a desire more physical than any that he remembered from his youth. And do we sing now, that we might compare what we once had with what we chose to condemn ourselves to?
No, of course not. They could not sing who could barely stand clothed in flesh and form. The ages held them in a grip that was stronger than mortality.
The fear here was thick and sweet, if pale.
Oh, it started.
Auralis saw it first.
He saw her land within the broken circle her hand had conjured into existence; saw the sword cut the air and leave a visible trail through smoke and sight. And he saw her clear a path for herself in a wide, wide arc that, by some miracle of Kalliaris, didn't end in a death.
Men who had stood at those tables had chosen to gamble, and more often than not the tables turned ugly as the evening wore on. But not like this. They were swept away by the lash of her power; thrown, like rag dolls, against the walls that were closest to them.
Kialli power, of course.
Not hers.
He intended, before she'd finished, to take a few lives for his own amusement; to bury the crime in her crime. The Lord would not know; Isladar would not know. And he was long away from the home he had chosen and had grown, if not to love, then to need. Need was always the stronger binding.
Daggers flashed in the light; the sword drank their reflection, devouring it. They were thrown, and they glanced off her armor as if they were made of starched cloth. One. One she caught and sent back to its wielder; he stopped short at the force of the blow; screamed as he staggered into the bar. Broken arm. No one noticed Auralis. They came upon him, backs exposed, daggers toward her as if they knew, each and every one, that the daggers were useless. They might have chosen to leave the tavern entirely, but the doors were barred more effectively than they had ever been, lit on each of four edges and two hinges with a bright, bright light.
The light was a warning, to anyone with a brain. Two brains had obviously been devoured by the viscerality of fear; two men tried the door. They had the time to scream, and to scream; burning weed did not hide the stench of burning flesh; the black grime of it.
He heard prayers in the smoky winds.
The two men with swords stood in front of the tavern's owner, implacable. If she attacked, and they defended, they weren't being paid enough, in Auralis' opinion. Not that it counted for much.
"Come," Kiriel said, as she lowered her sword, point first, at the only man who stood too gape-jawed and stupid to back away. "I have claimed this city, and these lands; they are mine, and I choose to protect that claim. Your serve my enemy. Give me your name."
And the man, knock-kneed now, struggling with a dagger that shook so much it made the poor light shiver, said, "Richard. Richard Welton."
She laughed, laughed at the sound of his name, the terror in the three words he'd spoken, the vulnerability.
The prayers in the room increased. Another dagger was thrown; a tankard—but it was as if they thought—all of them—that if they let her have her kill, if she destroyed this one man, she would be satisfied; they would be spared. They held themselves still, like mice who smell cat and know death's around the corner. Waiting. Hoping.
Hoping that if they were very, very good, the gods would let them live. As if the gods decided fate. As if the gods ever listened when it counted.
He hated it.
He hated it enough that he drew his sword before he could think. The smell of terror—theirs, his own—was thick enough to suffocate.
Auralis knew what she was, of course. He'd always known it; they all had. But she was an Osprey. And he had sworn, in the streets of this city, that he would never run from demons again.
He just hadn't known, then, what the Hells it meant, that swearing, that oath.
She was an Osprey. He was an Osprey. The Kalakar forgave them both their pasts. She did not question them. But Duarte— Duarte was slightly more selective. Auralis was no fool; he knew that several of the accidents, training and otherwise, that occurred in the early days and weeks of the Ospreys' formation were Duarte's, start to finish, the pruning of the hard cases that could not be brought into line.
He'd survived.
He suspected that Kiriel would have.
But he knew, without question, that she could not survive this. What he didn't understand was why she stopped in front of a man who looked as if he were about to give consciousness over to terror. This man was no demon.
But she enjoyed his fear…
What do we know about her? Precious little. That she was capable of this. And yet she was an Osprey. And he was certain that she was hunting the mythical worthy opponent, because he recognized that spark of kinship between them.
She was young. She was powerful. She thought she knew everything. They always did. He had, and learning otherwise had almost killed him more times than he could count.
It was obvious to Auralis that this man was no demon. It was obvious to Kiriel that he was. One of them had to be wrong—but it seemed too much of a setup, somehow. Kill him, looking like that, and she was dead. The mages, the Kings. The Ten, the entire damned city—they'd all be hunting her, and power or no, she wouldn't survive it.
Why?
And then, unbidden, Maybe the demons don 7 think we know who you are.
He moved past the bar's patrons; past their fear, and their pathetic last minute preparations; past the two who were foolish enough to try the door and now lay on the floor, blackened husks of what they used to be as young men. Letting the reflex take the panic, letting the sword arm slacken as he readied it for use. I wanted a fight.
She raised her blade.
The creature before her smiled.
"Do you think I am so inconsequential, little half-blood, that you can have my name for the asking? You are not your father's daughter. You are an abomination; a child of weakness and human artifice."
"And you," she said evenly, "are less than even that. You gave up what you were born to; you have nothing but what the Lord grants."
He snarled. .
"And I will own it. Give me your name."
Had he not been standing to one side of her focus, had he been at the center of it, he would have answered. As it was, he almost did; his lips formed the syllables, but his will prevented the movement of air and magic that would have given them sound and meaning.
What is this? Isladar—you promised us that she had no training, no ability; that the investiture was in all things a deception, a failure of power.
But no; he could see it in her.
&nbs
p; He could see it in her more clearly, for that single moment, than he could see the color of the soul that she had been born with, as all mortals were. The soul itself. The ultimate insult to the Kialli. To the kin. Were they to be ruled by cattle?
No.
No.
He lost the illusion a moment.
He did not answer.
She waited, and then the waiting was done.
She did not need to have his name to fight him; she did not need to take his name to destroy the presence the passage between worlds had given him, the flesh. She drew her sword back to strike, and it struck steel as she brought it round in a half-arc.
A sword went flying across the tavern's space.
Auralis swore.
Could be worse, he thought, drawing daggers as an afterthought. I could have gone flying with it.
The young man, the young idiot, was still rooted to the spot in terror. Almost, Auralis thought, as if his feet had been driven, like iron spikes, into the wood itself. "RUN!" he snarled.
The young man gaped at him. Just gaped.
Kiriel turned. Shadows fell, like drifting water, out of the corner of her eyes, darkening her face; her lips were gray, her skin white. White, he thought, as ice, as something that had never known life.
"What," she said, her voice low, as cold and colorless as her skin, "are you doing?"
"Look at him!" Auralis shouted, stepping back from the force of her words. "LOOK AT HIM!" He thought, as she raised the sword, that she would strike him. Knew that if she did, it was death, his death, no way to run from it this time.
He met her eyes; saw nothing at all in them but the darkness, the ice. Her lip curled in contempt as she looked at him, through him; where she was impervious to his sight, he knew, then, that she saw everything about him.
Why he did what he did next, he couldn't say, would never be able to say; it was the last act of a stupid man, and he would tell himself that again and again for months afterward, when he woke, with a half-scream choking his throat, from the nightmare of this tavern, this woman.
He dropped both daggers.
No Kialli would have disarmed himself in the face of such danger unless he meant to give up his name. And even then, to disarm oneself this obviously was to render oneself useless; it was more than a simple act of suicide. Much more.
Michelle West - The Sun Sword 02 - The Uncrowned King Page 34
