It gave her pause. She stopped. Stopped for long enough to see him, to know who he was. The shadows had taken her vision to the fight; the fight had controlled it. What had Isladar said? Never let your attacker choose the method and the means of the fight. Never let him dictate the how, and if you can avoid it, the where.
"What," she managed to say, "are you doing?"
"Look at him, " Auralis said. He was shaking. She could smell the fear as if it were old sweat, but it was an acrid fear, an unpleasant one. She shied away from naming it. "You're attacking a boy, Kiriel. I don't care what you think he is—look at him. Look hard."
She turned, then.
Turned to see the creature waiting, a cool smile at play across his lips. Could feel his power, the taunting that lay beneath it. The dare.
"I know the kin," she said, her voice far darker than his. "I know what I do here."
"You don't."
The human was inconvenient. He was inconvenient and he was a threat to the plan that Lord Isladar had crafted. He was also not under protection, any protection.
But to kill him was to alert the girl to his presence, his true presence, and that, too, was a threat. He thought a moment as he heard their speech, the interaction of it, as he saw Kiriel tainted by human concern in a way that both pleased and surprised him.
And then he lifted his voice, and wrapped it in power, and said, "There! Beside her. The man who controls the demon. The mage. Kill him and they will both be gone!"
Auralis heard the death in the words: it was for him, after all. The whole tavern would know that Kiriel was a demon, and untouchable—but he, he was only human. The first dagger's blow glanced off his shoulder blade, driving chain and leather into his skin. Drawing blood. Would've been worse, but he knew how to move. How to run.
Auralis knew how to run.
There was one safe place in the tavern; he found it, hiding behind Kiriel di'Ashaf, a girl half his age. And behind Kiriel was the boy, the youth she had singled out for slaughter. It was not coincidence; he was now certain of it. One of these men, in this tavern, was no man—but if she couldn't see it, he was damned if he could. He didn't know how to look.
Don't do this, he thought. Don't play into their hands. We'll have to hunt you down, or kill you ourselves. Don't give them that weapon.
He was surprised when another blade glanced off his cheek. Her shadows hid the light he would have used to judge its trajectory. Strange, how one required light for so many things, and yet didn't notice them until it was gone. Sort of like breath, like breathing.
He raised a hand; felt another blow, something strike his ribs.
He saw her turn. He knew that she was going to protect him. It was the wrong thing. The wrong thing to do.
But he didn't want to die. That was the crime, knowing that she was being set up, and being unwilling to die to save her the trouble.
He fell forward, to knees, exposing his back and hiding his face. Wondering, briefly, when he had become so vain.
And she saw that they intended, all of these little humans, to kill Auralis. That they intended to kill her, which was laughable.
"How dare you?" she cried, and her voice reverberated in the tavern as if the tavern were far too small for its depth and its grandeur, her anger. She raised the sword she held, she brought the shadows with it; she called upon her birthright and it came.
Two men, the closest two, the two who had dared both her sword and Auralis' theoretical magic, stood frozen before her, disarmed, although it hardly made them more helpless than they had been.
They were his tools. Auralis was hers. She defended what she owned; those were the rules of the Hells.
Her blade rose, and her blade fell—
And light singed the air in front of her eyes; light blazed across the back of her hand, a burning white line of flame, a whip's crack up her arm. She screamed in a shock of terror—terror of what, she could not say—and the sword went out.
She was too well-trained to drop it. She held it, the way a man who's lost a hand will hold that hand, as if by holding it, he can somehow make himself whole. She did not forget the two men, the two unarmed men, but they had been rendered harmless—they were as frozen in shock as she by the light, by the pain, by the sense of terrible, terrible loss.
It was gone. The shadow; the power—it was gone.
And without it—without it. she was nothing. She was less than nothing. She turned, at once, the sword now steel that housed no spirit, no blood, no essence.
Auralis lifted his face and stared at hers. But she didn't see that. What she saw stood behind him, stood in the center of the circle she had carelessly forced the floorboards to surrender. A boy, not much older than Valedan kai di'Leonne. but. infinitely less wise. His shaking hands clutched a dagger; his lips were so gray they were almost the color of death.
She reached out to touch him, because she couldn't—not quite— believe he was real. He couldn't be real. He had no color. None of the light and the dark, the swirl and the movement, that all humans had, who had choice.
Shaken, she looked down; saw Auralis. Saw the empty shell of him, the familiar comfort of darkness, the closeness of twisted anger, loathing, fear—all gone. Fled.
And yet—she reached out—
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; 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 Kind'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 Kind'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.
Michelle West - The Sun Sword 02 - The Uncrowned King Page 35
