Sun Sword - The Riven Shield Part 1

The Riven Shield.

The Sun Sword: Book Five.

Mich.e.l.le West.

This is for Terry Pearson, who should know why.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS.

As always, I owe Sheila Gilbert a debt for her patience and her understanding. Debra Euler, called DAW's Valkyrie by Tanya Huff, provided timely reminders and her particular brand of encouragement. Alis Rasmussen read the early chapters of this book when I despaired of it being a book, and as always provided insight and advice. Graydon Saunders also provided a different kind of insight, meant for a later work, which did help for this one.

And Thomas, Daniel, and Ross patiently gave up their time while I wrote, complained, tore out my hair, and wrote more.

Author's Note.

I know that I told a great many of you that I was working on the last book of The Sun Sword-and this was completely true.

A bit about how I work. I don't have a formal outline, or rather, I have several, and none of them are binding; they change with time. I approach my novels as if they were a collection of people I grow, with time, to know, and the motivations of those people change everything, time and again.

I have never been good at determining the length of a given story. This has led to much good-natured humor at my expense, and because it's deserved, I accept it.

So . . . I was working on the last book of The Sun Sword. Family matters brought the book to a screeching halt in January of 2002, as they often do. But we recovered, and the book recovered, and I continued to write it. At the worldcon in San Jose, I was still telling people that this was the last book.

But about a month after I returned home, I realized that I was actually on page 1700 of the ma.n.u.script, and by best guess-see above re: me and length-it was going to come in at 2000 pages. So I phoned the DAW offices, and reached Sean Fodera, the rights manager (the wonderful thing about the DAW offices is that you never quite know who you're going to reach, but it's always a pleasure, regardless), and I said, "Sean, I think this is going to go a bit on the long side." He laughed and said, "So what else is new?" And after several minutes of ribbing, which I won't recap here, he got down to business and asked, "How long is long?"

And I said, "Ummm, at least 2000 ma.n.u.script pages." (Writers are not, thank G.o.d, paid for conversation).

All laughter vanished at that point, and he said, "Now you have a problem. You'd better talk to Sheila."

So I did, and at length, and it was decided that instead of attempting to hack 600 pages out of the book, we would split it.

Which is a good thing, given that I'm now at nearly 2100 pages, and although the end is definitely in sight, it's not there yet.

I want to apologize to all of my readers for this. I didn't intend to mislead anyone, and I didn't intend to disappoint; to shorten the book would have been to carve out whole characters, and at this point in the story, it seemed to serve no one's purpose. The Sun Sword is almost finished, and it will definitely be the concluding volume; I hope that you don't find The Riven Shield, the first half of that longer work, a disappointment because it's not quite the end.

Annagarian Ranks.

Tyr'agar Ruler of the Dominion.

Tyr'agnate Ruler of one of the five Terreans of the Dominion Tyr The Tyr'agar or one of the four Tyr'agnate Tyran Personal bodyguard (oathguard) of a Tyr.

Tor'agar A n.o.ble in service to a Tyr Tor'agnate A n.o.ble in service to a Tor'agar; least of n.o.ble ranks Tor A Tor'agar or Tor'agnate Toran Personal bodyguard (oathguard) of a Tor Ser A clansman.

Serra The primary wife and legitimate daughters of a clansman kai The holder or first in line to the clan t.i.tle.

par The brother of the first in line; the direct son of the t.i.tle holder.

PROLOGUE.

17 of Scaral, 416 AA.

THE wind was a wild taste in her mouth, a thing that kicked at the tongue and the lips with its strangeness.

It carried the embers of a dead fire, wood ash long past the point of burning, in the lengthening shadows of the coming evening. The living fire burned around it, swirling like eddies of brightly colored water. Wrong, wrong. She lifted a hand, rubbing her mouth with the back of it as if the taste would somehow come off. As if she could clean it away.

"Anya," Devlin said. He caught her hand before she could cut her lips against her teeth; she'd been rubbing too hard, without thinking.

Almost, she pulled his fingers back, but as she touched them, she realized that his skin felt the cool, crisp color of blue-and she knew it was happening again. The tears started, and as they ran down her face, they tingled, a jumble of red and exquisite yellow, burning brightly. She heard the wind, held its voice a moment before it slid into something that she did not understand-some thing that made her mouth water, a smell.

"Anya, Anya, Anya." But she could still hear his voice, his precious voice.

The first time it had happened, she'd been terrified. She'd touched a metal plow in the old shed down by Devlin's uncle's farm, and instead of feeling cool, humped metal, she'd touched green. A year ago. A little more.

Then, in the wake of that confusion, pain.

It had pa.s.sed with sleep and the dawn's light, and she'd said nothing to anyone. Not then. And not a month later, when it happened again. Not five months after that, when it happened once or twice a week, always something unusual-a smell where a sound should have been, a color instead of a sensation, a noise, some pealing of bell or muted susurration when she looked at what should have been cornflower blue.

Not even when the sunlight began to shout in a voice she understood; when the shadows whispered or sang; when food felt like bark or steel shavings, the taste wrong.

No; she hadn't spoken at all until the pain was too harsh to ignore-because when she couldn't ignore it, no one else could either. Devlin noticed first. He always noticed things.

"Anya."

But it was bad this time. When had it gotten so bad? Tears blurred the lines of his face, and she brushed them away-just as harshly-so she could see it clearly. She needed to see him clearly.

He knew what she was thinking, too. Always did. He was Devlin and she was Anya, and they belonged together.

"It's the pain again."

She bit her lip and nodded, and the tears blurred his face again-but it didn't matter, because his arms formed a brace around her body, drawing her in, holding her close-and that close to his face, she couldn't focus anyway.

"Anya, they're coming too close together, these pains. I'm worried, I'm worried for you, little Ann-maybe we should go back."

"No!" She pulled back a moment, and when he wouldn't let her go, buried herself more deeply into his chest. "No, I won't go back. You heard what they were going to do. They were going to send me away with that-with that man!"

"Aye, away. I know it." He held her, rocking her against the pain. "But that man-he wasn't an ordinary man. Maybe he was a-"

"He was a wizard," she said, her voice a tight sc.r.a.pe of sound struggling free of clenched teeth. "And he'd done his poking and prodding." She buried the words again, as the pain came. Bit his shirt, which helped. Heard his grunt, and knew that she'd bitten more than shirt-but Devlin never complained about anything. He was steady. "They were going to send me away. Without you."

"Anya-"

"Dev-" she bit her lip until it bled, as she'd done many, many times these last few weeks. A wonder it hadn't scarred. A wonder. "Don't you love me?"

Her voice sounded small, even to her own ears, and he answered with words and without, speaking and rocking her, letting her know by motion and presence that he loved her more than anyone else possibly could.

Her parents had called for the wizard. Called him all the way from the city of the Twin Kings in the Eastern Empire. Never mind that they were free towners, and d.a.m.n proud of it. One priestess' mumbled words and they'd scattered like chickens when faced with a fox.

They were going to give her away.

Anya, love, smart chickens do scatter when faced with a fox.

And leave their young behind 'em? No-not even chickens do that. We'll go to the-to the Western Kingdoms. We can make a life together there. Find a farm, a place we can make our own. She hadn't told her parents, and he hadn't told his; they'd packed in bits and pieces over a hurried day and a night. And then, before Anya could be packed up and sent off to the East, they'd slid out of the confines of their parents' houses and headed out into the world to decide their own fate.

Oh, the pain, the pain was terrible. She felt her stomach shudder, and knew that her knees had collapsed, although the ground didn't rush up to meet her. The priestess had said the pain wouldn't stop until she spoke with the mage-born. The priestess had said- Not even the healer-born can help with this pain, Anya, if you could afford their touch. And all the while, her eyes were round and dark with pity, as if Anya were a lame horse.

She bit her lip, or thought she must have; blood welled up in her mouth as if it were the only drink she was to be allowed. She choked on it, on something thick and chewy, and then she felt something hard between her teeth. Something her teeth could cling to.

She had never been so afraid of fire in her life; she knew it was burning her, burning her to ash.

Devlin!

I'm here; I'm here, Annie. I'm not going anywhere without you. I'm here.

And it helped, to hear his words, even if they sounded as if he'd spoken them underwater.

There wasn't anyone she loved so much in the world as she loved Devlin. He was tall, and handsome, and his hair was like copper, brushed and straight; his eyes were a deep blue that sometimes edged into gray when she least expected it, like the shadowed secrets of a free town dusk. He wasn't the miller's son, with his wandering hands and his sour breath; he wasn't the weaver's son, who wanted to leave his mark on all the young women of the village, taking what he could without giving anything much in return.

Every girl in the fields had had an eye for Devlin a'Smith, and he-he had had eyes for Anya a'Cooper. Oh, not all at once, and even when he knew that she wanted him, he'd kept his distance because he thought she was just a child. But she was more than a child, and she'd proved it in time. Just this past year. After she'd seen her fifteenth birthday, although by the priestess' reckoning, she'd been a woman since she was just shy of fourteen.

Devlin was nineteen. Almost twenty. Broad shouldered, and learning a real trade. And he was the best man in the village, even her mother said so-excepting, of course, her father, although Anya privately thought that between Devlin and her father there wasn't much comparison.

She'd been so happy, even when the pain had started. Even when it had come more and more often, until it seemed to always be there, she could ignore it because Devlin loved her. It was when it got sharp and hot that she'd finally gone to a priestess. And the priestess had spoken with her at length, and then risen with a worried look, a creased sort of face with thin lips.

She'd given Anya herbs, in a bitter brew, that helped with the pain for a short while-but only a short while, and in truth, not very much.

The priestess had spoken with her mother and father, and they had come home tired and gray, her mother fussing in that sharp-tongued way that mothers fuss when they're worried and everyone else is going to worry just as much, or else, and her father going silent to his work, casting a troubled glance over his shoulder a time or two, hushing the rest of his children while watching them with that same terrible worry that he now watched Anya. As if she was a hailstorm and they were the rest of the crop.

And then, weeks later, he came, like the doom out of an old story, walking into her town while the sun was high and the sky was clear. He cast a long shadow, but Devlin sensibly pointed out that it was because he was tall-and he was tall, the tallest man she'd ever seen. His hair was white as snow in winter, and longer than any sensible free towner's, and his eyes were gray and cool and hard, very much like metal. His hands were unblemished, and his skin fair, and his clothing-well, his clothing, her mother said, was probably worth more than a cow.

He'd told them he'd walked, but Anya didn't believe it; the dust of the road had a way of marking a man, and no man-n.o.ble-born or common as clay-escaped it. But this one had.

I've come from the Order of Knowledge, at the behest of the church of the Mother. He was polite and distant when he spoke to anyone, even Anya, but she knew when she saw him that he was the end of her life.

He came, and although her parents were allowed to listen to him-more, she thought, for their comfort than her own-he did not acknowledge their presence. Hers, he did; he treated her with-with careful respect. He spoke at length. To her, in his quiet voice.

And that night, that night she made her desperate plans to flee. Went to Devlin, to whom she would have been married by the end of her seventeenth year, and told him that she must leave with him, on the following eve, or she would never see him again. It was, after all, the truth.

Ah, the pain, the fire.

What she hadn't told Devlin, and what she was afraid he was beginning to guess, was what the mage had said: she was mage-born, and coming into her power far too quickly, and if she didn't come with him, she stood not only to lose that power-which she didn't much care about anyway-but quite probably her life as well. That was exactly how he'd worded it. Quite probably.

If she hadn't been so afraid of losing Devlin, she might have gone with the mage. But the mage had made it plain: there was only room for the mage-born where she was going, which meant no Devlin. And if she'd told Devlin, if she'd told him what that white-haired stranger had said, that she might die-he'd have betrayed her; he'd've sent her with the mage. For her own good.

Devlin was the only thing she wanted. Had been the only thing she had ever wanted.

They'd put up their little tents; the sun's red gleam was cut by those tents into precise shapes as it lowered itself down the horizon behind their small encampment. The light would fade quickly, and when the last of its color had bled into blues so deep they were almost black, the demons would be allowed to feed.

They were feeding now, at an uncomfortable distance, the m.u.f.fled intensity of the young girl's pain a hint of the sustenance that they had been forced, by dint of the Summoning, to forgo. The h.e.l.ls, they feared, were lost to them-and if they had ever known another realm, it was buried in the memory of a flesh much different than the flesh the world had surrendered to their return.

Thus it was with the kin: They tended the gardens and the monuments of the h.e.l.ls with a keen and loving hand. But in a time beyond the memory of all but the most powerful, they had been born to the earth, to the old earth, and the world remembered their names and their spirits. A cunning mage could stumble across those names, and if he was willing to make a bargain of blood and time with the old world, he could force the demon to return to the land of human life and vice; the world itself closed round the kin in a shape, a physical form at once natural and foreign to the Summoned creature.

They wore such shapes now: things of ebony and silver, bodies long and dark with slender claws, long fingers.

Two weeks; two weeks and more, they had watched this girl and this boy. Lord Ishavriel himself came frequently, to take their reports, to cast his spells, and to listen. But today, finally, the watching stopped.

"Kill the girl as you please," he told his two servitors, "but do not harm the boy."

Ishavriel-kevar smiled thinly, but Algratz did not; he studied his lord's expression. "What would you have us do with the boy?"

"Frighten him," their lord replied, but carefully. Algratz thought him ill-pleased by the tenor of the question. Or perhaps by the interruption. "Before you take the girl, you must force him to desert her. Break his spirit; offer him a choice between his life and hers. It must be clear, to him, and to the girl, what his choice was." He paused a moment, to give his words weight, and then he looked back at the tents framed by sinking sunlight.

Ishavriel-kevar laughed and nodded, straining eagerly as the sun's light ceased its dance upon the windswept waters of the lake.

But Algratz asked. "Why?"

"Because," Ishavriel replied, "I so order." His voice lost all trace of warmth, and there had been little enough of it, and that all carnal. "Or do you challenge me, here?"

"No, Lord Ishavriel."

"Good." His gaze, wrapped in a face that appeared almost human, was the color of the setting sun. "The boy is mine," he said, relenting slightly. "After he has fled, I will hunt him."

Ishavriel-kevar nodded, impatient to be gone. They would share the girl and leave the boy to him. It made sense.

Still, Algratz began his approach through the tall gra.s.s and the low shrubbery more cautiously than his companion. "Think, Kevar," he said, granting the demon the use of free name. "The Lord has forbidden all hunting of humans until the gathering and the Summoning is complete."

"And our lord has given us permission."