Gaze broken.
Valedan turned as well. He offered Andaro a hand; the Southerner, exposed to public regard, stiffly refused it. They retreated to the far edge of the circle, but neither of them crossed it.
He knew they were fools. But to cross the circle was to end the contest; to admit defeat. Instead, they sat—and they did sit; Andaro could barely stand—and watched.
This was what she hadn't wanted; to face the darkness head on. But she faced it because it was Kiriel, and because Kiriel was hers—her responsibility, for better or worse. Hers to save, and if salvation somehow proved impossible, hers to kill. She knew that now. That was why Evayne had woken her, sent her.
She also knew that Evayne didn't know it, and that brought her comfort. Cold comfort was better than none.
Kind's face was wreathed by shadow, blessed by it, awful, terrible in its beauty, its seductive death. Jewel almost took a step back. But she didn't. Instead she took a step forward, grabbed her den-mate by either arm.
Stupid, stupid, stupid.
She could feel the shock of cold ride up her arms, numbing them. Locking them in place.
"I know you're afraid, Jewel Markess ATerafin, " Kiriel said softly, softly. She touched Jewel's face with the palm of her hand. "I can see you so clearly, I can see all your fear. None of it is hidden from me."
"Then tell me," Jewel said, although her teeth were chattering from cold—and worse. "What's the worst fear, Kiriel. What's the worst fear I have?"
Silence. The familiar and completely foreign brow furled. Then, "Me."
"R-right the first time. What about you?"
"Death."
Jewel snorted—an act of bravado which was becoming more difficult as the seconds passed. "Good guess. Look deeper."
The palm against her cheek became fingers, became claws. She was pushing. Knew it. But desperation makes a woman stupid, and Jewel was desperate. She could feel the magi gathering at her back; could feel the Kings, the god-born, the whole of the Empire's power staring down at them, waiting.
Waiting as she waited, but with so much less to lose.
The darkness readied itself. She saw it in the lines of Kiriel's shifting expression. But it didn't pounce; it didn't strike. Kiriel, darkness-born, found what Jewel had sent her looking for.
With a wordless, a strangled, cry, Kiriel di'Ashaf pushed Jewel ATerafin away. Unfortunately, that push sent Jewel staggering ten feet back. It was not meant to injure; it was meant to preserve. Avandar caught her again, and this time she knew he'd bind her before he'd let her get away.
But she didn't try. She watched as Kiriel crumpled slowly into the ground, the lifeless ground, at her feet. Watched as the sword fell from one hand, watched as both hands became fists.
Watched, in sadness and with a pride that she knew she had no real right to feel, as Kiriel began to fight.
Our worst battles, Jewel thought, are always with ourselves. No one else can fight 'em.
And as she thought it, she knew she was both right and wrong. Something changed; something about Kiriel; something inside of her. The ring on her hand, unnoticed until now, glittered in the sunlight. No; it was flashing as if it, too, were struggling to come to light.
It succeeded.
At first the ring's glow was gentle; soft and somehow comforting. Jewel wouldn't have noticed it at all if she hadn't had the eyes of a seer. But she did.
Platinum ring. Oathring.
Kiriel's hands stopped shaking although they didn't unfurl. She touched the ring with her shield hand. Touched it. Held it.
A light that gentle, that pale, still shone brightly in the darkness. In a darkness such as this, it was a lighthouse, a beacon, a warning. And as the ring continued to shine, it seemed to grow brighter, and the darkness to grow less. Day broke, for Kiriel.
"Avandar."
"We'll speak later," the domicis said, through clenched teeth. But he, too, knew that the danger had passed. He let her go, this time.
She didn't make it to Kiriel's side before the Ospreys did.
The shadow was gone, the ring remained.
Kiriel flexed her hand, looking for charred flesh, for burning, for signs of the pain the ring had caused her. This time, there weren't any. There was the ring, a blurred line of metal that seemed to separate her finger from her hand. She looked up, hoping to see Jewel.
Afraid to see her.
The Ospreys were there instead. They surrounded her gravely, with a watchful silence that spoke of their suspicion and their concern. Had she been watching them with the vision she'd been born to, she would have latched onto the suspicion, made of it fear, manipulated it and used it if she needed to. But she saw them as they saw each other, and she knew that there was more there than fear, and more than just one kind of fear.
Who would have thought that fear could have so many faces, and that one of them could be—
Ashaf's face.
The ring wasn't blurring; she was, or rather, her eyes were. And her arms were shaking, as if she'd used too much power, too quickly. Isladar had always warned her of that particular risk. She rose quickly, turning away from the Ospreys and toward the two men who sat at the far edge of what had once been a combat circle. She turned away from them just as quickly.
Auralis came to her rescue.
Not that she needed rescue, not now—but he came anyway, shielding her from both his own sight and the sight of prying strangers or helpful friends. He didn't ask her any questions. Didn't want to know the answers, she thought. But it didn't matter.
He knew that she was close to tears. Knew that that weakness was not a thing meant to be shared with anyone. He was very careful when he touched her, but he did touch her; she'd remember it later, that he'd dared to put his arm around her shoulder, and lead her away.
The strange thing is that the only person who tried to stop him was Jewel—and she only tried for as long as it took to make eye contact.
They rose.
He watched them: his student, gashed to bone at knee, thigh and calf, and his enemy, gashed likewise at forearm and rib. A cut across the forehead would heal cleanly if tended quickly: it would scar otherwise, but it was a scar that many Southerners would be proud to bear.
And many prouder still to see.
Valedan kai di'Leonne had bested the creature in full view of the spellbound coliseum.
They turned to each other, these two competitors, bleeding and weak with the lack of blood. Neither made a move toward the circle's edge, as if—having fought for their lives—they might somehow return to the contest that had brought them so close to death.
Or, more likely, as if neither one of them could bear to be accused of surrender.
Outside of the circle, the body and the head remained. Ser Anton's knowledge of demon lore was a child's knowledge, hoarded over the years—and that child within said that demon's bodies returned at once to the evil that had created them. At once.
"Andaro," Ser Anton said.
His student, warily, turned to face him, and Anton knew, as their eyes met, that he was student no longer. His no longer. It stung, which surprised him. The more so because it was absolutely deserved. Whatever he had promised this man, he had in the end only given betrayal, albeit unintended.
"Ser Andaro," he said, bowing his head. "Shall I tend to the body?"
That brought him to life, as Anton had known it would. The circle was his pride and his strength, the test of the warrior beneath the gaze of the open sky. But the body was all that was left him of something that he had valued at least as much. He hesitated on the boundary, and then said, "Don't touch him."
Ser Anton clasped his hands behind his back.
Waited.
But here, he found Valedan kai di'Leonne unexpectedly graceful. It cut him, just as Andaro's anger did.
"Andaro," the young kai said.
The man who was not much older turned.
"You struck twice; I struck once. If the match is to be judged at all, that will be
remembered." And before Andaro could move, he bowed. And stepped out of the circle.
There was a sudden whisper from the Southerners who watched, a growing rush of sound, muted and indistinct. Andaro, sword in hand, stared at the kai Leonne's moving back. And then he shouted a single word.
" Tyr'agar! "
The kai Leonne stopped. Turned back. Their eyes met, and Andaro understood that what he could not have taken in combat, he had been given in compassion. Not a thing to burden a Southern warrior with.
But his word, unlike the moving hush of whispers, was loud. Distinct. It traveled the breadth of the coliseum and any who understood its significance held breath.
Andaro di'Corsarro took his sword. Lifted it, beneath the open sun. Plunged it, point first, into the dead grass, the circle's edge.
He knelt—staggering as his wounded knee took his weight and held it—and bowed his head. "If you will have my service, it is yours. Your enemies are my enemies, and my death is yours to command." Loud, that voice. Ringing. Almost too clear to be unaugmented.
The Northerners were clever. Ser Anton had never accused them of anything less.
"I… apologize. It is not the formal oath, and it is—it is not done well. I am offering—"
"We have been blooded in the same kill, against an enemy no man should stand beside. 1 will take your sword over your pretty words—when you find them—any day." And then he lowered his voice, the words falling into a wry smile that seemed just a bit too old for his face. "And besides, it means we don't have to face each other on the field. I've now seen what you can do with that sword."
Andaro smiled in return; the moment stood until the sea breeze blew it away.
"Tend your dead," Valedan said quietly. "I—" and he turned to look across the field. "I have my dead to attend as well." The young Tyr'agar walked back to the circle's edge. Grasped the hilt that was damp with sweat and a trace of blood, and pulled For an injured man, Andaro had planted the sword with a little too much strength.
Andaro nodded. Rose, with difficulty, and retrieved the sword he'd planted so visibly, so forcefully, in in the ground from the hands of the man he had pledged it to. He would have eyes for only a headless body for the next several minutes.
All that Anton needed, really.
He saw his moment, and he, too, accepted it.
"Kai Leonne," he said, in a voice that was deeper and fuller than Andaro di'Corsarro's.
Valedan turned at once. There was no friendship in the look that Ser Anton met; there was nothing but steel and distance.
The swordmaster drew his weapon—and stepped into the circle.
The boy had not sheathed his. But he lifted a hand, waving away the Callestan Tyran—and the Ospreys—who might otherwise attend him. Waving away the magi, the priests, the powers that could sweep across them both with ease.
"Ser Anton."
And he, too, stepped into the circle.
Brave, that. Anton thought he might—if he were wiser—refuse the fight; it was risky, but had he chosen to invoke the presence of demons and their historical association with the South—a South that had sent Anton and his students—his reputation might not have suffered.
But he played no games, this boy; not here.
* * *
"As acting judge, it is my duty—"
"I have been offered combat," Valedan said quietly. "I will accept it."
"You are not in the South, with all respect, Tyr'agar," the nameless judge said. "You do not have the right—"
"I have claimed the rulership of the South, and this man is one of my subjects, not yours. The rules of suspension dictate that there are customs and rituals observed within the South which, when they do not interfere with the liberties of Northern citizens, may be observed in Avantari. Or am I mistaken?"
"No," a voice he did recognize said. "You are not mistaken, as you well know."
He almost didn't recognize the man who came with the voice, for it was Kallandras the bard, but dressed in darkness and bereft of the lute for which he was famed. He bowed, and the bow, as always, was perfect. "Tyr'agar," he said softly.
"Kallandras."
"The rules of suspension allow it, but your injuries—"
"Are my own."
He heard it, of course; it took no bardic talent to recognize the rage and the anger that overruled common sense and pain.
Turning, he met the eyes of the swordmaster of the South, the only Southerner to ever win the Northern crown—and at that, to win it twice, once each for the woman and the child that he had loved. And lost. To politics. To ambition, very little of it his own.
Or perhaps not; perhaps the ambition had lain there, lain fallow, and he was aware that although it had cost his wife and child their lives he could not give it up. Such a guilt had driven men greater than Ser Anton in their time.
Or so legends said.
"Ser Anton di'Guivera," he said softly, "will you do this thing?"
"I have offered challenge," the old man replied in a rock solid voice.
Kallandras' hand curled tight around a simple, inexpensive piece of jewelry. Closed there, unwilling to expose it to light. He heard the cracks and the fissures, so less evident in the old man's voice than in the young one's, exposed to him by talent, by blood, and not by any slip of the swordmaster's.
Evayne, he thought, I know why you gave me this ring and this message.
But he heard the voices beneath the words—young and old, raw and concealed—and he understood then what Evayne did not, or could not, given the burden she had so unwillingly undertaken. Ser Anton di'Guivera was about to be tested; was about to discover his own measure, his own depths.
So, too, was Valedan kai di'Leonne.
As a bard, Kallandras made his decision. He bowed. "The circle, gentlemen."
The Ospreys were, as usual, beside themselves with rage. "What in the Hells is that supposed to mean? We're supposed to let them fight?"
Duarte's lips were a thin line. "Good. I see, Fiara, that your comprehension is improved by a night's heavy drinking."
"Valedan's injured!"
"Yes."
"But the old man—"
"I don't need to hear it, Fiara. Alexis."
Alexis had said very little.
"Put the daggers down."
She folded her arms across her chest. "Duarte—"
"No."
"But if he dies, it's for nothing. All of it."
"Thank you for pointing that out."
Silence.
"All right," she said, and her arms slowly dropped. "But we kill the old man if he wins."
"You can kill the old man the minute he steps into the city streets. You touch a hair on his head while he's in Avantari and you won't have one. A head, that is."
"Got it without the explanation."
They were left to witness, to watch. The Ospreys were not good at games of patience.
Baredan di'Navarre brought the healer.
He dragged him through the crowded aisles and past the Kings' Swords, taking him by the hand minutes before Ser Anton di'Guivera's voice had been raised in challenge. Or Valedan's raised in acceptance.
He was not the man that Alesso di'Marente was—in any way. That General, first among the three who had served Markaso kai di'Leonne, was gifted with an intuition that no amount of experience or skill could equal; he was blessed by the sun, able to bask in its glory without being burned by the ferocity of its light.
Not so Baredan—but Baredan's skill was of a different type. He was canny, not so much in the field, although in the field he was able to hold his own, but on a more personal level. He understood not men en masse, but men, and watching Ser Anton's slight stiffening of the shoulders, even over the long stretch of grass that separated them, he knew what the swordmaster intended.
He had been afraid for a moment that the swordmaster would disgrace himself entirely—but only for a moment. Anton di'Guivera might consort with assassins—they all did, who played games alon
g the political edge of the Lord's sword—but he could never reduce himself to being one. And that left only the challenge itself.
Had Valedan been an older man, had he been Ramiro or Fillipo, or even Mauro, who was not so much older in years as wiser in his acceptance of experience, Baredan would have stayed his ground, and left the healer alone; left him unexposed, unrevealed.
But he was Valedan, the too-young kai Leonne, and his first, his only, General was beginning to understand his measure well.
The sun was high, the sky was clear, two swords had been raised from the earth.
"I am sorry," he told his friend, as they approached the kai Leonne and began to slow their frenetic pace.
"He is not dying," his friend replied. 'I will not call the dying."
"And this?"
"For you, Baredan, because the debt between us is no small matter." The man paused, his Southern throat unadorned by the Imperial symbol, the two famous palms that spoke of the healer's presence across the breadth of trie Empire. "And because I am not… unimpressed… with the boy you came North to save." His teeth flashed in a white, white smile. "My foolish wife," he said, in a voice so heavy with indulgent affection it pulled an answering smile from Baredan, even given the grimness of the situation. "Watches from the stands, and she would never forgive me if I denied you what you have not yet asked. She thinks I am fearless, although she should know better; she thinks of me—" he laughed, "as a hero.
"And you know the cost of disillusioning such a wifely fantasy."
That wife had cost him his family in the end; his country. If there were regrets, they were not evident.
Baredan nodded. He straightened his shoulders and approached the kai Leonne. "Tyr'agar," he said, choosing the formal address because it would be witnessed.
Valedan turned. "If you have come to dissuade me—"
"I have not. But I have come, as your first General, to ask you to consider the use of a healer before you enter the circle. It is not undone, in a circumstance of this gravity."
Silence. The refusal gathered around the young man's lips, and stayed there, held in abeyance by something that might, in time, become wisdom. "Do you know what you're asking?"
Michelle West - The Sun Sword 02 - The Uncrowned King Page 75
