The bard shrugged. “Pride?”
“Where there are no witnesses, your words are your own. But where witnesses preside, your words are carried, and they are carried at the whim of the watchers. I would not speak so softly to the wild ones.”
“Perhaps I trust the witness.”
“Perhaps. Trust or no, it is not a gambit that I would chance. You are strange, Kallandras of Senniel.”
“Perhaps. Perhaps it is something I learned in Senniel College.”
“In Senniel? The college of bards?”
“Songs serve their purpose. Each is chosen to invoke either memory or emotion.” He glanced up, along the hidden forest path. “I am not a man who is destined to rule. If I am seen as weak, it may even be truth.”
“And this does not concern you.”
“No. Should it?”
Celleriant’s hair fell about his shoulders as he shook his head. “I have seen you fight,” he said softly. “I have seen you kill. I would not have guessed that you could speak so quietly, that you could offer plea where command would also serve.”
“Death is the Lady’s,” Kallandras whispered. “All else comes from me. Perhaps we have something to teach each other.”
“I would have said no.”
Kallandras smiled.
And then he froze, for he heard, in the road ahead, the sound of a short, terrible cry.
Yollana’s voice.
The stag froze in mid-step.
Jewel had heard that phrase before, but she had never seen words given such visceral life; his foremost left hoof hovered above the ground between the impression of pale steps. The child dozed in her arms, legs to either side of the stag’s great back, and Jewel tightened her grip just enough that the girl stirred.
She forced herself to relax, as much as she could, craning back, eyes squinting in the shade and shadow of forest at dawn. And what a forest: a ragged wall of trees that stretched from the earth to the heights so far above she could not see their tops without taking the risk of falling off the stag’s back.
Jewel.
Stag’s voice.
That was Yollana.
Yes. His voice was smooth and deep.
Should we ride back?
No.
But—
No. If she summons you, turn; if she does not, do her the grace of ignoring what should have remained unuttered.
But she—
No.
Her knees tightened, as if the stag were horse; his antlers rose, like cool tree branches, at the whim of his stiffening neck.
And then she, too, froze.
The stag was silent. Before them, in the winding curve of a path laid out by the feet of the dead, stood two men.
An old man, she thought, and a young one; their faces were obscured by morning shadow, although they were white as snow. Why was white the color of snow, anyway? Why was white the color of cold?
It is the color of mortal death, the stag replied softly. When blood has ceased its flow beneath the shell of skin: when flesh has ceased all movement.
That was rhetorical.
Ah.
You can see them?
I . . . can. But I do not think I see as you see, Jewel ATerafin.
I see an old man. And a boy.
I see merely the dead, and they are angry.
They’re looking for something.
I doubt that. I doubt it much.
Why?
I think they know exactly where what they seek is to be found: they merely lie in wait. Do not, he added severely, as she shifted the burden of her weight, attempt to interfere here.
Interfere?
If you attempt to dismount. I will carry you as far from this place as I can before you touch ground.
She nodded; she had almost expected to hear those words.
For the first time that night, she thought of Avandar.
Viandaran is close by, the stag told her gently. And if you manage to escape the safety of my back, he will be greatly annoyed.
Well, at least that would be normal.
No, the stag said, the tone chiding. He would be greatly annoyed at me.
He’s not in danger, is he?
He is Viandaran. By definition he is in no mortal danger. The stag paused; its breath came out in morning mist, sweet and damp. But that is too simple an answer. Yes, Jewel ATerafin, he is in danger here. But it is not the danger you face.
What do I face?
The old man stepped out, onto the path, and his eyes, his hollow, cavernous eyes, turned toward her.
Never mind.
Radann Marakas par el’Sol had heard screams before. He was not, had never become, inured to them; it was a sign of his weakness, a sign of the vulnerability that came with his gift. Or so he had often believed in his youth, when other men stood in the wake of such cries, unmoved.
But if he were honest, he might seem to be those men now, made of Lord’s steel, affected by nothing but the corrosive quality of blood, the damaging rigidity of an enemy’s armor.
He turned to the Serra Diora, and saw that she was as still as he; her face was smooth, her eyes no wider than they had been.
“Serra?”
She nodded, gracefully, delicately. At her back, looming like shadow, her seraf met the Radann’s gaze. He held it only briefly; he was not a free man, to offer threat or warning in such an obvious fashion. Nor was he a poorly trained seraf, an embarrassment to a great clan; the glancing meeting of gazes was enough—just enough—to catch the Radann par el’Sol’s attention.
“Are we truly upon the border of Mancorvo?” She asked the question quietly, but urgency marked the words; he wondered if it were his, placed there by the grim shade of early morn in a place that knew so little light.
Marakas gazed into the forest. He wondered if the Lord’s light ever fell upon this ground; the bower of tree branches was high and terrible. But the trees had shed leaves—some passing reminder that all living things know season—and the light was therefore brighter than it might have been, the ground less barren, less devoid of color.
“If you had asked me at another time,” he replied gravely, “I would have said it was impossible that these lands could border any Terrean of my acquaintance.”
She did not smile; did not demur; he realized only after he had chosen to answer that she had not asked for permission to speak the words. They had come, unfettered, into the morning, and he had accepted them. As if they were equals, this Serra of the High Courts and he, a man second only to the Tyr’agar and the kai el’Sol.
No Lady’s time, this; and no Lord’s. She took advantage of laws older and more unforgiving than he.
She stiffened slightly.
“Serra?”
“I am well, Radann par el’Sol, and grateful for your concern.”
He frowned. But he accepted the words as they were spoken; refused to seek the more obvious meaning behind their surface. Instead, he drew sword.
Light flared, and grew, in the clearing; cold light, white and blue. He had only once seen Verragar burn so brightly, and he knew—or thought he knew—what that fire presaged.
And yet . . . and yet he felt somehow that the kin were not present; that Verragar’s fire spoke of a different danger, a different enemy.
Skin white in the shed light of sword, the Serra Diora bowed her head. Lifting a graceful, delicate hand, she drew the mask of the desert traveler across her cheeks and lips, denying him the full breadth of her expression.
Kallandras.
Serra Diora. You are safe?
I am . . . safe. Are you distant?
I cannot see you, he replied, but I can hear you clearly.
The sword of the Radann par el’Sol is speaking, she told him, and I think it best that you join Ona Teresa and the Havallan Matriarch.
I think it unlikely that our presence would be appreciated.
It will not be. But that does not make it less necessary.
In the darkness, he smiled, and the smil
e lingered a moment.
“Kallandras?”
“The Serra,” he said gravely, “has learned more than she knows in her journey alongside the Arkosa Voyani.” He turned to his companion. “Lord Celleriant,” he said gravely, “I think it time that we join the Matriarch.”
“Past time,” Celleriant replied.
The Serra Teresa di’Marano had learned the cadence of Yollana’s injured step; had learned to shoulder the burden of this older, this powerful woman, as gracefully as she had shouldered any burden in the High Court.
But the familiar footfall had changed as the black of night gave way to gray and shadow, and twice now, she had had to exert some force—and a great lack of the grace for which she was known—to prevent Yollana’s fall.
The third time, she failed in the duty that she had silently undertaken; the old woman’s knees buckled quickly and suddenly, rounding toward the earth beyond the rise of knotted, ancient tree roots that time had exposed to air.
“Teresa,” the Matriarch said, “leave me.”
It was not a request. And the Serra Teresa was not Havallan, not a daughter who might be forgiven the crime of disobedience by the expedience of her necessity to the bloodline.
But she did not choose to hear the older Woman’s words. Instead, she shifted her arms—they ached now, with damp, with morning—around the old woman’s waist, feeling the line of tobacco satchel, of hidden pack, of dagger hilt.
“Na’tere,” the Matriarch said.
Her voice was devoid of querulous anger, of annoyance, of rage. It was devoid of almost all emotion; Yollana had closed the window that lay between them as firmly as she could.
Of all things that had happened this eve, this single act was the most disquieting.
“I have seen you through the Sea of Sorrows,” the Serra of clan Marano said, bending to the older woman’s ear. “I have stayed by your side while the Serpent of the ancient storm rode the winds above us; while the earth broke and bent beneath our feet. Will you send me away now?”
“Yes.”
“Ah. Forgive me, Matriarch. I understand the cost associated with deliberate disobedience; I understand it better than you understand it yourself, for I have lived at its whim all my life. When I chose to travel with you, when I chose to step—for as long as our roads conjoin—upon the Voyanne, I made my vows.”
“To whom?”
“Does it matter? If I say ‘To the Lady’ you will chide me; you will tell me that this is not the Lady’s time. And you know that I make no vow to the Lord.”
“You know me too well,” the old woman replied, but again her voice was smooth as stone wall; no cracks or fissures there, nothing to read.
A reminder, if it were needed, that Serra Teresa di’Marano relied upon what lay in the voice; that it had become a part of every conversation she had ever overheard or participated in. She felt the absence of Yollana in Yollana’s words; she was alone with her own.
“I know you well enough,” the Serra said quietly. “You fear to meet something on this road.”
“I do not fear it,” the old woman replied, snapping, coloring her words with annoyance. “I accept it as inevitable. I will meet what I meet, and if I am strong enough—” and she gazed at her broken legs, legs that could not support the whole of her weight without the humiliation of dependence, “—we will win through.”
“And if you are not strong enough?”
Silence.
“Yollana, are we lost to this path if you cannot face what is here?”
“It is my . . . hope . . . that you will make your escape,” the old woman replied, and the walls cracked suddenly as her eyes turned up, toward the Serra’s face, “while they are otherwise occupied.”
“Then you know me less well than I know you,” the Serra said.
“You have your duty.”
“I have done with duty. No, that is not true. I have my duty, and it is here, by the side of the Matriarch of Havalla.”
“And your niece?”
“I have given her everything that I am capable of giving; she stands in the lee of Kallandras of Senniel College, a man who speaks with the very voice of the wind.”
“He had best not speak with that voice here.”
“If it is necessary,” Teresa replied, “he will speak with all the voices he possesses.”
“And?”
“And then we will see death, and know it.”
Yollana shuddered. “I see death,” she said, and her hand reached out, caught Teresa’s, clamped tight. The gesture was involuntary, and Teresa did not deign to notice it, although she saw her fingers whiten at the strength of Yollana’s grip.
“I tried,” the old woman said weakly. “Bear witness, Na’tere, and remember: I tried.”
“I understand. I hold you responsible in no wise for my action, for my decision.” She bent, braced herself, and drew Yollana to her feet. And then, softly, she added, “That is not true. I hold you in esteem, and myself in your debt, for the road you offered me was the only road for which I am now fit, and you offered it without judgment or fear.”
“Na’tere.”
“Yollana?”
“Sing,” the old woman said quietly. “Sing a song that is meant to soothe, to speak to, the loss of men.”
She had no samisen, no Northern harp, no lute; she might find one at a word to Ramdan, a word to Na’dio, but in taking it, she would have to give over the burden that she bore.
She closed her eyes. The burden was, in some fashion, an instrument. “Yes, Yollana,” she said quietly. And she lifted her face in the gray light, and she opened her dry lips, and she wrapped her words in their most naked form of expression: song.
They heard it.
Jewel ATerafin, the child in her arms, the stag upon whom she sat in relative safety; Avandar Gallais, in the shadows cast by old trees, older memories; Kallandras of Senniel College and the brother he had chosen in the fight of flight and blade; Stavos, Ramdan, the Radann Marakas par el’Sol, and the woman they chose to guard, hovering like common cerdan.
They lifted their heads in unison; her voice commanded the attention; drew it, coaxing and cajoling in turn.
The Serra Teresa di’Marano had been called upon to sing of loss, and she understood loss in some measure; she had forsaken her home, her family, the only life for which she was suited. The decades of perfect courtly grace honed the words she chose, coloring them, lending them a depth, a gravity, a majesty, that a child’s voice could never contain.
They bowed head, these witnesses, and some felt tears sting their eyes and blur vision in the dusk of this new, this unknown world.
They were not the only listeners; not the only ones who were drawn to the song that she offered. They were, however, the only ones for whom trees, plants, the twisting roots of undergrowth, were an obstacle.
The dead came.
Teresa saw them first.
Had she been younger, had she been a different woman, she would have fallen silent, the strength of voice faltering in the wake of fear. She had seen death before; no one who made home of the High Courts could avoid it, no matter how careful their fathers or brothers chose to be. But that death was different: a thing of blood and flesh; a cessation of motion, something that could be touched, ascertained, made distant.
These dead, Yollana’s dead, were hampered by no such forms. They were pale as morning mist, solid as vision; fear gave them their only solidity.
In her arms, Yollana of the Havallan Voyani stirred; in her arms, the old woman froze. The hand that Teresa held, the hand that held her, was tight now, so rigid it seemed that life had deserted it between the start—and the end—of the song.
But the song did not end.
Three ghosts. Three quiet ghosts, moved toward it.
A young man, one barely past childhood. A man in his prime. An old man, not yet bent by years, his face pale with beard’s ghost. But all of their eyes were black and hollow, and their skin was the color of light on water
, although no light pierced the trees.
They came, moving in time to the rhythm of her song, and she knew that she could not let that song falter. Not yet.
The man who wore the mockery of the prime of life raised an arm. Flesh hung from it loosely, as if it were poorly donned cloth. But it was not flesh that concerned her; his finger was part fist and part finger; he pointed at the heart of the Havallan Matriarch, and when he opened his mouth, he introduced the first discordant note into the Serra’s perfect song.
She groped for harmony. Groped, phrasing the notes and the scales, as she tried to match, to gentle, his wordless keening.
He drew blade, and the blade was dark as his eyes. From it, dripping groundward, black blood. This, she thought, was memory; the memory of the dead. She knew how he had died.
He approached. Her song slowed him; she could see that he stepped in time with the notes that she sang. Seeing this, she modulated them, slowed her words, the power that they contained.
If he did not deign to notice her in any other way, he slowed.
The old man joined him, eyes as dark, hands darker. He, too, carried a dagger, night’s dagger. It was not, she thought, the Lady’s work.
Last came the boy. He was of an age with Adam, the Arkosan Matriarch’s brother, but there was none of his inherent sweetness in this ghostly face; there was something akin to malice, something akin to rage, and the youngest face wore it most openly of the three.
Yollana, Teresa thought, very much afraid. What did you do here?
She did not ask. Could not afford to; the break in the words would give them room and time to maneuver. No knowledge of the dead was necessary; she knew what that would mean. Could see it clearly in eyes that were no longer—if they had ever been—mortal.
The Serra Diora di’Marano lifted her head. As she did, her shoulders dropped; her posture became the posture of the wife of Tyrs. She did not rise, for she had not taken shelter upon the ground, fearing the earth here, fearing the tangle of roots, the touch of these trees.
But she was not unarmed: She, too sang.
Who better than she to sing a song of loss?
Since her sojourn, her brief peace, in the towers of Arkosa, the dead had slept more quietly; her memories had stilled and gentled. She heard, in Margret’s voice, the voice of the most beloved of her wives, and she was almost content. She had discovered, in the Sea of Sorrows, that the dead were not dead; that the wind did not contain them; that there existed, beyond the moment of a terrible, painful end, the possibility of another life.
The Riven Shield: The Sun Sword #5 Page 52
