But he was not satisfied.
Not even when the adjudicator returned to him and bowed. "Your throw," he said.
Eneric of Darbanne appeared at his side, expression as cool as the sea in the rainy season. But he bowed, and then extended a hand in the Northern style. "I have-not heard of you before," he said, "but I will not forget the name now that I have heard it. A pity that you did not compete in the River Jump."
Was it meant as an insult?
Valedan shrugged. Did it matter? Form was form; he had forgotten that at the River's test, and he had paid for it. He took the offered hand. He had expected the Northern man to do what many Northerners do—to make of this shaking of hands some primitive contest of strength.
Eneric did not. He brushed pale, pale hair from eyes that were almost too blue to be real and smiled. First smile. "You are not satisfied."
Valedan shrugged again.
"You bested me here, and equaled me in the medium throw." He started to speak, stopped, his smile broadening. "In the North, your displeasure would be an insult; to me, it is not."
"An insult?"
"Yes. It is clear that you consider the throw inferior—and we were both off our mark today. But to consider it inferior when it bested my best—it implies that I am beneath notice."
"You speak well for a Northerner."
"And you speak well for a Southerner." He released Valedan's hand. Bowed. "I believe that you have been underestimated, Valedan di'Leonne. But I believe that this next test is mine."
Valedan looked at the size of the Northerner, torn for just that moment between the competition and grace. To his surprise, grace won. Eneric was larger than Valedan, with the longer reach—none of which mattered; he was well-muscled, bulkier; he carried a momentum through size and strength alone that, for distance, Valedan could not match. "Yes," he said. "If someone challenges you there, it will not be me."
He bowed then. Southern style—and then when he rose, he struck his chest with a curled fist.
Eneric returned the latter gesture, and they parted.
Ramiro watched.
"Well?"
He glanced up, surprised at the interruption. Beneath the shade of a wide brim, his par waited in silence.
"The… hat… it does not suit you."
Fillipo met his brother's eyes a moment and then removed it. "You were lost to wind," he said.
"Or sun's glare," Ramiro replied.
"He threw well," Fillipo said politely.
But they were kin, these two; he knew that the throw itself could not demand this attention from the Tyr'agnate of Callesta. He waited patiently.
At length, as the contenders began to assemble for the last of the three tests, he was released, and turned to his brother, rewarding patience. "I do not know who that boy is," he said. "I thought—we all thought—that he was seventeen, and weakened both by thinned blood and Northern life.
"And then, I confess, I thought him a Lambertan pawn—the student of Alina di'Lamberto, no more."
"And what has changed that?"
"That man," Ramiro said softly. "That pale-skinned, pale-haired man. Do you recognize him?"
"Eneric of Darbanne, I believe. He is said to be the Champion in waiting," Fillipo shrugged. "You did not hear what passed between them, surely?"
Ramiro frowned. "Of course not. But in watching it, enough is clear. The kai Leonne has made a friend, if I am not mistaken."
"Men make friends," Fillipo replied. "It is hardly worthy of remark."
"It is worthy when that man is your enemy."
"Ramiro—this is the Kings' Challenge, not the Lord's. The competitors are often friendly."
"Granted," the Tyr'agnate said, unmoved. "But Valedan is a stranger to tests. I would have said, the first time I saw him, that he was a stranger to the sword as well. But now I understand that he is a stranger not to its use, but its allegiance. He has the Lord's grace."
The third throw of the day belonged, decisively, to Eneric of Darbanne. The Northerners who occupied the northern side of the coliseum as if it were a recently taken castle, filled the whole of the isle with their jubilation when he took to the white line. It seemed impossible that their cries could grow louder, but they did, and almost immediately. He played no waiting game here; he threw with an ease that was dismissive, that acknowledged no competition.
Indeed, there was none. The spear fell just short of the line of benches occupied at times by the judicatory body, some ten feet, possibly twelve, from the next closest spear.
The test of strength gave him the lesser crown and closed the event for the day; Valedan kai di'Leonne, who had given him pause in the first and second throw gave him no pause in the third—although Captain Sivari was quick to point out that nothing short of a quarrel at close range would have done so—but in spite of his poorer placement in the third, he came second.
Andaro di'Corsarro finished best for the Southerners at tenth, and people were privately surprised at his finish; the Southerners did not favor spears or their use, and they were also poor archers.
No, the tests at which they excelled, always, were yet to come: The rider's test.
And the sword's.
* * *
CHAPTER TWENTY
The streets, during the Festival season, had a life of their own, a rhythm that sleep and work and the demands of a day's labor could not suppress. The magisterians were out in force—and for the most part they were honest enough; they took little ease from the wine merchants or the sellers of ale and late-night food.
This wasn't always the case, but the events of the evenings past had made of their patrol a necessity far more urgent than stopping drunken brawls. They were on edge, and that edge demanded, and received, their best. Whether you liked them or hated them, in the end they were almost all honest men. Tired, hot, overworked—but honest for all that.
The bards were out as well. Many of them, Kallandras recognized by sight, but a handful—a very, very few—had come new to the city from their colleges, Morniel and Attariel, and although they wore those emblems and carried new—and less valuable— instruments, it was easy enough to mistake them for revelers, wide-eyed and brilliant with youth.
Easy for one who was not Kallandras. He listened to the sounds of their voices, hearing that youth in them. Wondering why it was that the gods saw fit to gift so few with such voices, and even then grant them their full range and glory for so short a time.
His own voice had not sustained the easy tenor of his youth, but his gift made up for the lack—to most ears. His own, dispassionate, could hear the difference enough to remark on it. Enough to regret it, and he would not have thought, in a youth far, far different from the youth of the Morniel and Attariel students, that he could regret any loss. Any loss save for the one that had shaped his life: his brothers.
He held Salla in his arms with the easy familiarity of a master, but her strings were still.
"What, no song, Master Bard?" the wine merchant called, affecting a merriness which implied that his wines were better than Kallandras knew they were. Good or no, they would sell; it was the Festival season. They might sell late, rather than early, from the looks of the merchant.
"A moment, Varren," the bard replied. "I see an old friend, and we might be persuaded to sing a duet."
"Well, sing here, sing here if it pleases you," the wine merchant said. Kallandras would have laughed under other circumstances; the man was literally rubbing his palms together with ill-contained glee. But the bard that he saw was, of all bards, the retired Sioban Glassen—and the only familiarity she granted him upon sight was that of relief.
He moved through the crowd toward her, murmuring quietly as he did; carving a delicate, almost unseen, path with his words, the subtleties of his voice.
"Sioban," he said, as he reached her. "Why did you not call for me?"
She shrugged, and he smiled slightly. Of all bardmasters, Sioban Glassen had become famed, in her time, for her use of the bardic voic
e—or rather, for her lack of its use. I'm not bardmaster because I can order any idiot around, she had been fond of saying. I'm bardmaster because I'm the only one here—next to Solran— with enough of a sense of responsibility.
Solran Marten had succeeded her, and Solran was voiceless— but not powerless. Never that.
"What is it. then?" he said, bowing. Knowing that she did not speak because her voice would give something away, although she was skilled enough to hide it from almost anyone else's hearing.
"I've been sent." she began, and he did hear it—the tremor of an old fear, "by Sigurne Mellifas. To find you."
"Sigurne Mellifas? Why?" He wanted to ask a hundred other questions, for he had not seen her in literally years, and she had been among the most important of his masters in Senniel.
"I don't know."
Lie. He let it pass.
"If you would accompany me. Kallandras. she requests your presence upon the isle."
He nodded at once, and she smiled. The years fell away from the corners of her lips, although the lines the smile rippled were many. Had she been beautiful in her youth? He could not recall: she was beautiful to him now in a different way. "How could 1 refuse? You found me, Sioban. It was… needed."
They both knew that he spoke of his youth.
"You gave me all the life that I have now."
The shadows flitted beneath her eyes; she turned, and then turned again. "But it wasn't the only life you'd known." No question, there.
He said nothing, old habit. They walked some ways together through the crowd, Kallandras sweeping it gently—always gently— aside.
"I have heard," she said quietly, "from Solran."
He waited, patient now, although it had never been his way to interrupt her.
"And I have heard from an… old friend. I desired to see him," she said quietly. "I did not realize how close to the eve of war we've come. I'm glad, master bard of Senniel, that I am no longer the bardmaster. Once was enough."
And he knew that she spoke of a Henden in a dark, grim year. Some memories had a life of their own; they could be cozened and reasoned with, but they could not be laid to rest.
They crossed the bridge; he almost offered his arm, and he would never have presumed that when she had ruled the college. Because she had never needed it then. She probably didn't need it now. "I think you should know," she said, "although Sigurne did not tell me this in so many words." Now the hesitation was strong; as strong as the curiosity that had always been part of her voice where he was concerned.
"Yes?"
"Meralonne APhaniel wishes to speak with you."
He frowned. "He is—"
"In the royal healerie, yes. And if Dantallon sees you, you'd better be prepared to use your voice and pray; he's in a foul temper."
"A healer has no effect on the fevers. He knows that."
"And he always deals so well with loss of control where life is concerned." There, more of her edge, that snap of her words whip-like and familiar.
But beneath that edge, truth.
"How bad?"
She did not answer.
"Sioban. How bad is he?"
She did not answer, and by that, he knew she wouldn't. But she had met him here, instead of calling him, instead of asking another bard who knew him well to call. There were at least two who could reach him across the length of a city alive with the noises of just such a celebration, and possibly farther than that. The fact that she had summoned neither, that she had come in person, suddenly said too much. He began to walk quickly.
In the darkness, Meralonne APhaniel toiled. Sweat speckled the length of his brow, reflecting light and fire; the heat passed, and the cold was upon him, as terrible in its way as any demon could ever be, but closer, far closer.
Watching him, Kallandras knew all these things as intimately as only those who had suffered the fevers could. But he knew, also, that no one suffered as the mage-born did, not even the healers. And he knew, further, that the only men and women to whom the fevers were often fatal were the mages. Still, in his life he had heard of it only thrice.
Three times was enough.
Sigurne looked up from the bedside as he entered, her face pale with lamplight, although he thought it would be pale regardless. She looked frail; she always looked frail. But beneath that, part of it, a steel surer than almost any other. The moment her eyes met his, her shoulders slumped.
"Kallandras," she whispered, "thank you for coming."
Sioban was at his side, and that was enough to make him cautious. But he bowed. "I would not refuse a request of yours, Sigurne, were you a seamstress and not one of the magi."
"It was not my request, but his," she said, looking away. "Both the ACormaris and Devon ATerafin have been to see him, and I believe—although I cannot be certain of it—that the ACormaris thought it germane to speak with him, even given his state."
Anger, there. Brief, but certain.
"The circumstances are complex," he said.
"Yes. But so is an old woman's anger." She granted him his gift, and the truth of it. "He has not rested since she came; he desires no company but yours."
"Why?"
She turned away again, as if she could not meet any gaze, not even under cover of darkness. "He is not doing well, Kallandras," she said at last. "And what strength he had, he… expended."
"Pardon?"
"Dantallon came to see him."
He started to speak. Stopped. Paled. "Was the healer injured?"
"His pride, and if he chose to press it, the magi would answer for Member APhaniel's use of unauthorized magics in the healerie. But Meralonne is deemed to be—or was—in a state of dementia, and therefore I have been asked to ward and guard him. He will not have Dantallon in the room."
"No," Kallandras said.
"But he used strength he did not have to make that point. And he uses it now, to speak, to ask for you." She rose. "Come, then, and speak with him, and perhaps he will be at ease." Her voice cracked on the last word.
Is it to be here, Meralonne, that you meet your end? Here, in the courtyard of Kings, and not there, upon a field that needs your skill and your knowledge of ancient magics? He moved round her gently, as aware of her presence as he was of the presence of Sioban.
He sat. "Member APhaniel," he said. "Meralonne."
There was no response other than the shuddering of a man who could not be kept warm. Kallandras lifted a hand, raised it, reached out—and hesitated, there, an inch from the pale, wet curve of Meralonne's brow.
They did not touch, these two. They did not offer comfort except as it must be offered: On the edge of death, or just beyond it. And he did not want to acknowledge that this was indeed that edge. "Meralonne."
Gray eyes widened, sudden, like the flaring of magical fire. "You must… investigate .'. . what I cannot," he said.
Kallandras frowned.
"You will… have heard this… no doubt. The men who died." He lost the thread of words; Kallandras waited, listening. No one listened as well as he. "The ACormaris came. The Lord… of the Compact… has forbidden interference in this affair. She thought… to warn me… not to interfere."
The frown fell a moment; it was like Miri to spite Duvari in some things, and he could hear her now: "I am not allowed to speak about the circumstances surrounding the death of the Annagarians because Duvari finds it strange that they died in captivity, apparently within a few minutes of each other…" She had told him as much.
But he did not understand why she had come to Meralonne. Not now.
Not until he spoke again, laboring over each word. "You have heard… their names."
He reached out then, caught Meralonne's hands in his own.
Felt them shaking with fever's strength. "APhaniel," he said, voice low, denying nothing because in the end there was nothing to be gained by denial. "There were not nine names."
"No… I did not think so. But there were at least eight." He slumped, then.
Ice,
here, as if the cold could be transmitted by touch, and perhaps it could. "Brother," he said quietly, his word for Meralonne alone.
The mage smiled, lips moving up in a rictus of emotion so alloyed with pain it was impossible to separate them. "Go."
He released the magi's hand, and then turned back. Speaking with the bardic voice, speaking with a fury of something that he had thought himself beyond, he said a single word.
"Live."
Eight names. Eight names.
Had he been stupid? They were eight, and he had thought that number high, and it had been weeks ago—but he had not thought that those eight would be part of this nine. And why?
Because the names had been taken in Annagar; of that he was certain. They had been taken, and they had been given back, to the Lady. To his Lady.
Over the years, he had come to peace, of a kind, with his life, and the death that would follow it. He had betrayed Her. He had betrayed his brothers. There was truth in it, but it was not so bitter now as it had been. He had come to peace, of a sort, because he had seen the demons, and he understood the whole of what they presaged.
Still, he knew when another brother became one with the Kovaschaü, for he was still one with them, in his fashion. And he knew when one died; that, too, was given to him. They dwindled, those that he had loved best, those that he had known.
Years had passed since he had been given a task such as this. Years, and the passage of time had dulled his senses, had given him a false security. One of his brothers was here, in the city. And somehow, although he did not understand the how of it, the Lady had given him permission to take those lives. She had refused it for the Kings, and for the Exalted; he knew it for fact. She had refused it for Valedan kai di'Leonne not once, but twice.
The stars were light and low above the seawall.
"Kallandras," she said, and he did not turn; he knew her voice, knew her age by it, knew everything he needed to know.
"Evayne."
"He is not finished yet," she said quietly. "He is not finished; they have come, and he will be given four names. Four names, and you will recognize all of them.
Michelle West - The Sun Sword 02 - The Uncrowned King Page 51
