Just how in the Hells you were expected not to be nervous when you had a couple of thick hunks of rope and leather as your only method of controlling something that probably weighed ten times as much as you and could crush you flat with iron-shod hooves, Jewel had no idea. But Avandar managed with annoying calm.
Unfortunately, Jewel found the carriage ride to be the far more comfortable of the two methods of travel—which wasn't saying much given the speed of the driver and the roads beneath the wheels. The streets themselves were, of necessity on this last Challenge Day. packed; it was hard to negotiate them without having to come to a halt.
Too many halts.
"Jay?"
Angel's voice, tense with sudden knowledge.
Her sudden knowledge.
"ATerafin?" Kallandras' voice, asking the same question that her den-mate had, but with an edge to the word that brooked no silence, no time to gather thoughts.
"We're late," she said, her eyes caught by the edge of a ghostly vision that was torn from her by sunlight and movement and color.
They all froze, but in different ways. Carver and Angel drew breath, but Avandar and Kallandras seemed to settle into the edges that made them dangerous men. If they were afraid of any possible outcome, they hoarded their fear jealously.
"Someone's already dead," she added, "and he doesn't know it yet."
"ATerafin—"
"I don't know. I don't know who. They'll kill the boy—"
Kallandras reached for her; Avandar's hand was in his way in an instant. Their hands met, bard and domicis. Jewel knew that she could not have moved as quickly as either man had in response to her or each other.
They did not argue. "Which boy, ATerafin?"
But while the certainty was not fleeting, the details were. She looked at him, and then looked out into the streets that now seemed more impassable than the twenty-fifth holding had when it had been littered with magisterians looking for her den. "I don't know," she said, in helpless frustration.
And then, Kalliaris smiled.
"Aidan."
* * *
CHAPTER THIRTY
The voice came to him on the wind.
"Aidan, I do not know where you are, but you are in mortal danger. If you are not with friends, flee if you can hear me at all."
No identification followed the words, but he didn't need it— he'd heard the voice on one other night, and the events of that night still lived in the depths of the type of sleep a dreamer can't escape. Kallandras the bard, the master bard of Senniel College.
Voices at a distance—especially raised ones—were a matter of fact in his daily life, a life which seemed so far away from him now he could almost forget he had one. But voices like this—voices that spoke in a whisper so close to his ear he leaped up and back at the shock—were like childhood stories—the ones that give you the dreams you can't escape from.
"Aidan?"
"Aidan, we are coming as quickly as we can."
He looked up to see the concern in Ser Anton's face. Am 1 with friends? No. No, he wasn't. He was just with a man that he wanted, desperately, to have as a friend. An old, a very tarnished, hero. Gods, but he was being stupid. Hadn't Ser Anton already as much as said he knew about the attack on the Witness House? Hadn't he already admitted that he knew about the demon? "It's—it's nothing."
"But not for long," Ser Anton said. "Look. That is definitely the Leonne standard, rendered in the Northern style."
"And in the Southern. Over there. I think it's being carried by General Baredan."
"Bold boy," Ser Anton said softly. It took Aidan a minute to realize that he spoke not of Aidan, but of Valedan kai di'Leonne himself. He didn't see what was so bold about carrying a standard; gods knew that Andaro, when he did show, would be carrying— would, rather, have carried—a standard of his own.
But then he looked up at the old man's expression, saw that the focus lay at a distance. He remembered to breathe as he followed the old man's gaze.
Sure, he could run. He could listen to Kallandras. But he'd miss it. He'd miss the start of the fight. He'd miss the fight. And the only person who was anywhere close to him now was Ser Anton di'Guivera. He could not believe—would not believe—that Ser Anton would personally harm him.
Not when they had this thing to share: A testing of the two men whose skill they both valued.
The adjudicators and the magi moved in, in greater number than Aidan had yet seen. He exhaled. It would be a few minutes yet.
But the swords were being unsheathed; he could hear the metal. Light helms were being raised, donned, visors lowered. Heat— and there was heat—was being denied. They girded for war, these two, and they accepted the terrain that had been chosen for them almost as if it were beneath notice. Almost.
He felt a sharp pain in his hand. Brought it up to his face in surprise and saw the knuckles were so white, he'd somehow managed to drive at least one of his flat little nails through the surface of his palm.
"Aidan?"
"It's—it's nothing."
Ser Anton nodded, and then his gaze fell upon the circle that the magi circumscribed. Aidan was certain that he wouldn't look away again.
She had seen the bardic voice before, but she had never seen it like this. Kallandras of Senniel College bowed to her, a drop and lift of head. "With your permission, ATerafin," he said, in a voice that brooked no refusal—and no questions.
Her gaze glanced, skittishly, off the side of Avandar's face, but the domicis seemed to understand what Kallandras was about; he said and did nothing.
The bard swung the carriage door wide, and in the same motion, rolled out of the cab and up, where he disappeared from view.
"What is he—" Carver began, but the bard himself answered their question in a voice that might have rolled in during an ocean storm so strong it could have broken the seawall, it hit the crowded street in such an undeniable wave.
"Get out of the way of the carriage."
She had time to steady herself given her gift, but only just; Carver and Angel came out of their seats and landed rather gracelessly as the carriage lurched into sudden flight.
It began.
Not with a blow, not with a strike, not with a sudden rush of movement—although both Andaro di'Corsarro and Valedan kai di'Leonne had used both tactics in their previous bouts. No, it began in silence and stillness; not even the breeze cared to move through the sluggish humidity of the sea air. The circle that contained these two men contained the world in microcosm; the South and the North, the echo of old wars, the premonition of new ones.
They took each other's measure in the subtle things, waiting, waiting, waiting.
Sivari watched as Ser Anton's student broke the tableau. It surprised him; Andaro was perhaps six years older, and therefore more experienced, than Valedan, and it had seemed to him, as observer, that the first contest within a contest would be decided by who struck first, or rather, who moved last.
"Remember to breathe," someone said at his side. For a lesser man, he would not have turned.
But the man who addressed him—in a fashion that bordered on the familiar—was the Tyr'agnate Ramiro di'Callesta. Dangerous ally. Deadly enemy. Not friend and not foe, because no Southern man of power could be trusted enough to be called the former, and no man in his tenuous position in the Dominion would make himself the latter. Not yet.
"I'll breathe," he said, irony weighting the words. "And you?"
"The Lord watches," the Callestan Tyr said. "And 1.1 will tell you now that even my par is much impressed with the kai Leonne's showing today. Ser Kyro is beside himself."
"Ser Kyro watches?"
"It took some effort to gain both permission and space, but yes— the entire hostage contingent has been present from the start of the day. A gift," he added. "A Callestan gift." He raised a hand, his expression wry, even—although it was hard to be certain with a man such as Ramiro di'Callesta—self-deprecating. Upon his finger, glittering in a thin band of maker-w
orked gold, the magic of the North that he had refused to don. Until now. The test of the sword made its own demands, and they spared no one.
Sivari had spared the time he could. He turned back to the sound of glancing steel. Strike and parry, but the parry was a sliding movement that ended in a strike of its own. Low movement, and fast. In earnest, the two men closed.
Serra Alina di'Lamberto sat on the edge of the witness box, surrounded not by silent women—although all the women were present—but rather by Callestan cerdan and even Tyran. They had rightfully taken up the position best suited to guarding the married women from the eyes of the idly curious. They had also, and this did not escape her attention, chosen the best vantage points from which to watch the combat that unfurled below.
Not the last combat, no.
Not the one that would decide the Kings' Challenge.
That was to come, and that featured the very prominent Eneric of Darbanne, an oddly pale giant of a Northerner with frightful manners and a bearing that any mother might secretly be proud of. The Lord would love such a warrior as he, if the Lord knew love at all.
Her face she obscured by spread fan. but she had lifted the veils that were so often worn in public: her brother would have been irritated at least, beside himself with rage at worst, for the public display she made of herself, the momentary disregard she showed.
Today, it did not matter.
Southern eyes—and they were, after all, the only judgemental eyes that she need fear in this crowd of gathered spectators— were all turned groundward, to the two men who fought within the confines of the prescribed circle, beneath the eyes of judges both earthly and more.
Because this combat decided much more than the Challenge; it was the banner that would be carried into the war by one side or the other.
And the hostages had, by the evil of circumstance, been forced to choose a side in that war, or perhaps been chosen by one. Their lives unfolded here, with the slashing and striking of light scattering steel.
Valedan.
First blow, and probably first blood. The kai Leonne staggered back, gaining his feet—and his sword arm—before Andaro di'Corsarro could take advantage of his luck. General Baredan di'Navarre watched, unblinking, as the boy side-stepped the brunt of the attack, also pirouetting out of the danger; almost using the momentum of the blow itself to carry him.
His hands—the General's—were fists.
He had seen dancers who were less well-matched than this.
But the dancers were fighting for the same goal; they drifted on sword's edge—and death's—seeking a precarious balance.
These two were each trying to push the other over.
Mirialyn ACormaris sat in a chair at the foot of the Kings and Queens, beneath her half brothers but separated from the rest of the Royal entourage. She had sat in chairs such as this for most of her adult life, although the chairs for the Princes were a later addition. Oldest child, she, and not wisest for it.
But wise enough to begrudge her brothers nothing.
It was her own life that bit her here, that caused her a momentary pang; her life in the form of a young man. She had no children. She had never missed them. But Valedan kai di'Leonne had been, in his way, the outsider child. Much as she had been in a youth as awkward as any child's.
Her brother, she felt, would have responded differently; she was both proud of the difference and chagrined by it. That had been her life. Was still her life now. Wise, she was called. Child of wisdom.
The memories of her childhood had lost their teeth, but those teeth had still had some bite in them when she had first set eyes on the eight-year-old boy and his hysterical mother. When she had brought him to bow and spear and the Northern hunt.
It was the sword he had wanted, at first, and therefore it was the sword she had denied him, perverse as she was. She knew— or thought she knew—that he would spend his life in the Northern court. There would be no home for him in the South; that much was clear. It had seemed the wisest course to offer him the breadth of her own experience; to let him choose.
He had come back, time and again, to the sword.
She had taught him.
And as she watched him now, the truth bit her, as those memories of early girlhood could not.
This was not the boy she had trained. What she had given him, in those early, crude circles, and what he had achieved, even given the aid of Commander Sivari—they did not seem, to a mind bound by wisdom and the dictates of experience, to be congruent.
Yet what hands could be at work but his own? The magi were out in force, and the Southerners watched like hawks; no sword could give him what he had today, no matter who had crafted it, save perhaps the sword the first-born had forged at Myrddion's side at the dawn of their age. A sword such as that fair cried "magic! magic!" or so wisdom had it. It could not be used without being seen.
Valedan, she thought, gripping the arms of her chair too tightly.
The carriage careened into the courtyard of Avantari; it teetered a moment on its left wheels and then rocked to a stop, shoving the horses forward.
Jewel's door flew open as if it had lost both hinges—it hadn't— and Kallandras stood in the light. He held out a hand, and she took it almost without hesitation.
Almost.
"Jay?"
"Follow!" she cried, half the word spoken from within the carriage's confines, and half without. There was more than the pressure of his pull upon her; there was an urgency, a sudden pang much like the stab of an invisible dagger.
She flew. Or as near to flew as she could on two legs.
It was Kiriel who sensed it first, and even she did not immediately place it—the ring's curse. Had she been in the Shining City, had she never fled through the path along the bottom of the unnatural crevice that served as both gate and barricade, she would already wield every weapon at her disposal.
But she had fled; she did wear the ring. Her senses were quieted, her attention held by the frustrating and tantalizingly comprehensible men and women with whom she struggled to serve. The Ospreys were as silent as men and women could be—which was almost a shock in itself—as they watched the fight stretch out, a clear victor undecided. They held their breaths, collectively sighing in relief, collectively inhaling in dread, almost afraid to break the silence with their cheers. They hadn't been so hampered in any of Valedan's other fights.
But two men could not fight forever, and while Valedan had landed a blow, Andaro had landed two. They were nervous. She was nervous.
That's when she should have known.
But she didn't, not immediately.
Not even when she found her gaze pulled momentarily from the spectacle that held the entire coliseum in thrall to see a Southerner approach the judges on the periphery of the circle.
She noted his standard, but more, noted him; he was Andaro's comrade, and if she was a judge of humans—and she knew she was not—a friend or perhaps a brother.
But she should have known then, because he was so unremarkable and because he caught her attention, regardless.
Aidan knew.
Aidan knew.
He was the witness, after all; he was the boy that Valedan kai di'Leonne had chosen—from horse height and a distance—to gift with the medallion that now hung in the open around his neck. Hadn't he watched? Quietly, of course. The Ospreys scared him, the Callestans intimidated him, and the crowd of mages that visited randomly made him melt into the shadows—but he watched, mostly unseen, mostly forgotten.
It was his right.
The unnamed fear gripped him tightly.
He glanced up at Ser Anton, and then across the field, uncertain now as to what he knew. That Carlo di'Jevre had never been friendly? That Carlo di'Jevre spent as much of his time as close to Andaro di'Corsarro as possible? That Andaro had won the marathon for Carlo, because of the injuries that Carlo had sustained fighting the demon under the water?
They all knew that.
But the bard's voice ha
d come to him, only him, carried by wind, heavy with warning and fear. He knew both of those—that warning, the fear behind it—even if the bardic voice was soft and smooth, where his mother's or grandmother's voice grew harsh or shrill with the burden. He was in danger because he knew.
You are in mortal danger. Flee.
He almost did. He knew how to run. He knew how to hide. He knew how to survive.
But another truth occurred to him, because he'd listened to his mother's stories, his grandfather's stories: the bard somehow knew there was danger, but he didn't see what that danger was.
Carlo di'Jevre had, as usual, no interest whatever in Aidan. But Aidan, like moth to flame, could no longer look away from Ser Anton's other student.
He left the swordmaster's side, his hand sliding over the dagger that he always carried—the single dagger that had been a gift from a grandfather he'd watched settled into earth too many years ago. They'd let him keep it, that first day across the gates into the coliseum. He'd thought no one would be allowed to carry weapons, but the adjudicator had only laughed when he'd asked about it, and Aidan didn't much like being laughed at, so he hadn't asked why.
Didn't much matter, now. Maybe it was just Kalliaris, and it was up to Aidan to decide whether the dagger was an act of her smile or her frown. Gods, it was suddenly so cold.
He followed Carlo, moving across the grass as quickly as possible. It wasn't easy; there were men all round, men of magic, men of knowledge, men who were set to guard and protect the traditions—that was the word that Ser Anton used—of the Challenge, and they were all a head taller than Aidan, even the shortest and widest of them. He lost sight of Carlo di'Jevre once, and he put on a burst of speed, dreading the feel of a hand on his shoulder, of anyone trying to stop him.
But they didn't, because it was his right, as Valedan's witness, to approach. As Valedan's chosen.
Michelle West - The Sun Sword 02 - The Uncrowned King Page 72
