The Sun Sword - The Broken Crown Part 15

wife-back would mean that I would have to become her. I am a rider. She is barely free-and she is a woman. Would you have me be unmanned?"

"Yes," Diora said, her voice as icy as his had become. "What difference would it make?" Ser Laonis flushed with anger and shock; Serra Teresa, watching him, did the same, although she knew that Diora did not understand the full import of her insult. She had never seen Diora so poorly behaved. "You are lucky," he said, "that it is the Night of the Festival Moon. You are lucky that you are a child, and you do not know what it is that you say."

"I do know what I say," Diora replied, with the steely gravity that was so unusual in a child of any age. "You're just afraid. You're a coward-and Father says that no real man is ruled by fear." Ser Laonis spit upon the floor and turned to his serafs. "I did not come here to be insulted by an unmannered child. Serra Teresa, you will inform Ser Sendari that in future I will not come to his summons. You, bring water and cloths; I will wash, and we will leave."

"I'm afraid I cannot allow that."

All heads turned and four steel blades flashed in the light of a dozen lamps.

Perched in a window that faced the interior courtyard, clothed in shadow and bearing the exaggerated features of the clown, sat a man that only Serra Teresa recognized.

Kallandras of Senniel.

"What is this?" Ser Laonis said softly. "Treachery?"

"I a.s.sure you, Ser Laonis," Serra Teresa said, answering his question although it was not directed

at her, "that the clan Marano intends no treachery this eve. This man-this reveler-is not one of

us."

"Then you will, of course, have your cerdan deal with him." It was a command; Ser Laonis was personally powerful enough that he could give such orders and expect them to be obeyed.

"I?" Serra Teresa said, staring at the mask, at the glimmer of blue behind the open eyes. "But I am not Ser Sendari, Ser Laonis; the order to kill can only be given by Sendari unless there is a threat to my life or the virtue of his wives." She paused. "Is that not so, Karras?"

"It is, Serra," the cerdan so addressed replied, bowing.

"Then, stranger, have you come to threaten either my wives, or myself?"

"No, Serra Teresa, I have not."

His voice. His voice was night and darkness and a wild, wild wind. It chilled her, and she was old

enough to be chilled by very little in the Dominion. Diora came to her side, unbidden, and stood within the circle of her skirts- except that she did not wear skirts this eve.

"Why have you come?" "Not," the stranger replied, "to answer the questions of women, even such a one as the fabled Serra Teresa di'Marano." He lifted a hand then, and the light that flashed off cerdan swords was dull and harmless compared to the light that glittered upon his finger.

"Ser Laonis," the voice behind the mask said, "you have been granted a gift by the will of the Lady, and it is the Lady's night. Will you not use it?"

"For one who is not even full wife? You have already heard my answer. I will leave. Do not hinder me, or the clan Caveras will never again tend a Marano, on the field or off it, for as long as either clan lives."

"That," the stranger said gravely, "is a very long time, Ser Laonis. And who can say with certainty that the winds will not have carried your name so far from the lips of man that the deeds this night will be long forgotten?"

Ser Laonis stiffened, for although he was not born to the voice, he heard the hint of the stranger's music, and it was dark. "Who are you?"

"It is Festival Night. I am a servant of the Lady, no more and no less. We all are." The light upon his hand grew brighter, like a Widan mark gone awry. "Do you think that this youngling was meant to die? I think not. This is the Lady's night; if she wished to lower the dark shroud, she would have called Lissa en'Marano on any night but this one."

Serra Teresa felt something so sharp and so painful she thought for a moment she had been stabbed. And she had, but by hope. The bard's voice, it seemed, could touch even she.

"Your gift is a gift of the Lady's, not the Lord's; you will use it, as she desires."

"And you speak for the Lady?"

"Yes," the stranger said, jumping lithely out of the window's stone frame. "And I speak with the voice of the wind." His feet did not touch the ground, and light limned him, carried by the beginnings of the storm.

Alana drew the Lady's circle across her left breast at the mention of the wind; the serafs, terrified, fell to the ground at once. All, that is, save Ramdan, who stood behind his Serra in a silence born of years and determination.

Ser Laonis di'Caveras paled until his face was the color of the light that danced around the stranger.

"This is the night of the Festival Moon, and the Lady's face is upon you. Choose, Laonis, and choose quickly."

"I serve the Lord," Ser Laonis said, but he took a step back, raising his voice to be heard above the wind's howl.

"And will you live in the heat of a sun that knows no cooling night? You will live in a desert, Laonis, and the night's peace will be denied you."

"Who is she?" the clansman cried. "Who is she, to merit this?"

But the stranger had no answer to give the healer. Instead, he looked to the Serra Teresa, nodding his head before she could see the expression in the deep-set eyes of the mask-of the many masks -he wore.

He understood loss. He understood love. He understood what a bard had cost her; understood that she could not, cleanly, hate the man, that she had grown attached enough to someone who understood her gift and its compulsion that she still mourned his death beneath the surface of her ever-present resentment of the fact that his well-meaning interference had taken from her the life that she'd been groomed and trained for-the one chance that she had to be more than a "child" in someone else's harem. And he understood what Alora had given her in its place, and what Alora's loss meant.

Alora's death. And she had never mentioned Alora's death.

Was she a simple child, a simple girl, to be so moved by understanding? Was she a weak and simpering innocent, to crave so desperately a thing which made her so vulnerable?

Could she meet his unflinching eyes, without acknowledging the depth of this gift? The wind, she knew, would never mean again what it meant to the rest of the Dominion. His coming had cleansed its howl; had shown her the heart of the storm.

He spoke with the wind's voice, and she answered with her own, wordless.

Beneath her hands, Diora stirred, hearing in the ulula-tion of her aunt things felt that came from a person far older and far more wounded than she. She looked up, her small hands reaching out for the clenched fists of the woman who had been, in all things, her mother. She who had sought protection from the wind, sought now to offer it.

Alora.

Diora.

Tears spilled down Teresa's cheeks, and she let them fall, unheeding. Let the voyani catch them and make of them a spell; let the clansmen speak of them as weakness, as infirmity, as age.

She offered them to Kallandras.

And he turned the wind in the palm of his hand into a sword that Ser Laonis di'Caveras bowed before. There was not a man in the room, nor a woman, who would not have bowed to that voice, that will, and that threat; not even she.

As if to mock her, and to steady her, the Lady chided her gently for such arrogance; for there were always those whose very nature abhorred a retreat from their given vows. She stepped back and hit the broad chest of her most trusted seraf, a man she had owned for almost all of her life. And he, unbent, would be unbending, a shelter of sorts whose steadiness should have required no reminder. The healer of the clan Caveras moved with the gale, his feet hurried against the silks and the cushions. Alana en'Marano huddled against the ground as his shadow pa.s.sed above her; Illia cowered against the wall, beneath the light of the lamp that the wind's force did not touch.

"Send... them... away," Ser Laonis said, his teeth clenched tightly over the words as he forced his head round and glared at Serra Teresa. "Leave!" he added to his personal serafs. They were well enough trained that they stayed their ground in the storm, but his words cut them free and they flew.

The Serra looked at the Marano cerdan and then she nodded. Because she stood in the chamber of the wives, and not in any other room, they were obliged to obey her unspoken command. Obligation or no, they were wise enough to treat as commands each of the carefully worded requests she made of them; power has many faces, and not all of them wear obvious rank.

The cerdan sheathed their swords, shaken, and left the chambers, escorting Alana and Illia in their midst. The Serra stepped away from her seraf with a dignity that she did not feel, and he, too, she sent away-for if the healer did not wish his own serafs in attendance, he would most certainly not want hers.

Ramdan hovered until the healer's shaking white hands touched Lissa en'Marano's body, pushing the stained silks aside in a blind search for skin. Then he bowed to his Serra and walked quietly out of the room, his hair tossed by wind, his hems flapping in the gale.

Serra Teresa, Serra Diora and the masked stranger whose hand burned with a cold fire watched as Ser Laonis sank into the healer's trance, his hands stilling against Lissa en'Marano's white, white skin. Wind turned to breeze, and the breeze gentled his face, brushing away strands of his hair. His eyes were closed, his brow creased; sweat caught the light and softened his features.

Serra Teresa had never seen a healing so close to the edge before. In truth, she had only twice seen healers called, both times for Adano in his tumultuous youth. He would not speak of either now. Watching Ser Laonis' face become slowly more unguarded, she thought she understood why.

"Diora," she said, pitching her voice above the wind, although it was quieting. "It is time for you to leave us." She thought that Diora might demur, and was prepared for it, but the child raised her face without argument.

Serra Teresa bent down and hugged her niece tightly, planting a kiss upon either upturned cheek.

"Will he heal her?" Diora whispered into her aunt's ear, the voice, that special gift, undampened by wind. "Yes," was the soft reply. There was no doubt in it. She felt the tension leave Diora's body in a rush, as if it were water and Diora a broken vessel. She tightened her arms instinctively to catch her almost-child's sudden weight. "I'm very tired," Diora whispered.

And why wouldn't she be? She had spent herself fighting the compulsion placed there by a woman trained in the voice. Teresa lifted her, thinking it odd that her weight was so slight.

"Kallandras," she said, again folding her voice in privacy, although she doubted very much that anyone but he would hear it.

The white mask turned toward her, in silence. "I must take my child to the sleeping chambers. Will you watch?"

"I will watch," he said, his voice smooth and completely uncluttered by expression, "for as long as is necessary."

She had never seen a healing so close to the edge before; had never been so close to having her curiosity satisfied. But Diora's arms were around her neck, the trust-and the need-in them implicit, a just weight. Perhaps this was the Lady's way of granting the healer some small measure of privacy, some peace from the voyeurism of the curious.

Or perhaps it was a test, a choice between the desire to be comforted and the desire to comfort. Only beneath the Festival Moon could she have been given two such choices in peace. She kissed the top of Diora's head, knowing the gesture for the luxury that it was.

But as she walked away, child in arms, she called upon the voice and sent it to the man who had brought the wind. "Why?" she asked him softly, knowing that he would hear all of the questions that single word contained.

The sound of her feet against the stones was her only answer for a long moment.

"I don't know."

It was almost a stranger's voice, and she understood in that moment why he was so guarded-for she heard a wild keening beneath the surface of those words, an enormity of loss that dwarfed any that she had ever felt, and she knew then that this was as honest as she wanted him to be.

He did not stay to the end, for he knew what Serra Teresa did not: that a healing of this nature, when one walked so close to death's edge, brought together two people in so complete a fashion that to sunder them again brought the healer only pain.

And the healed.

He had no desire to see such pain; it was a distant mirror that nonetheless reflected too much, too clearly. But his word, once given, he would not break again; he remained in the harem's open chamber until Lissa en'Marano's p.r.o.ne, red body began to rise and fall with the movement of easy breath.

He watched her hands tremble and flutter weakly, gaining strength as the seconds pa.s.sed. And he watched those hands close around the neck of the reluctant healer, as if to hold him there forever. The healer's eyes, he could not see, and the healer did not move.

"Lady bless you," he said softly, gaining the window.

He sat there a moment under the Festival Moon, the sounds of merriment and freedom as loud as high waves against the sea wall of his home.

"They will kill you on the morrow," she said, her voice clear and strong although the sleeping chambers of the children surrounded her.

"I know," he told her. "There will be war this year, as there was a decade ago; we will survive it now as we did then. We will fight our way to peace over the bodies of the fallen, when neither side can afford to support such an effort; there will follow treaties, and there will be trade. And perhaps, then, you might come to Essalieyan and visit the college of Senniel."

"Perhaps," she said, but her tone said never."Teach her, Serra. Teach her as much as you dare. It is terrible to grow up with such a gift in isolation."

"As I can, I will." She paused. "I will not forget this evening."

"Nor I. May the memory not be a trap."

They were both silent a moment, and then Teresa said, "It so often is, isn't it? Lady watch you."

"And you."

He pushed himself off the side of the building and into the courtyard, rolling into the cover of

shadow so reflex-ively it was almost more natural than breathing. He found Salla and his harp, fit one snugly over his shoulder and the other beneath his arm, and then bid a silent farewell to the Dominion of Annagar, and the vibrant streets of the Tor Leonne.

He had hundreds of miles to travel and an army to pa.s.s around to deliver his message. It was time to move on.

CHAPTER FIVE.

Sunlight.

Bright and crimson with first light; the Festival Moon's ascendancy was over. The streets shrank into their normal lines, their hard-edged, dusty reality; people hid their masks, or buried them, or kept them as heart's ease against the coming days. The Lord held sway, and the Lord's will was no f.e.c.kless freedom, no weakness, no childish utterances; in the Dominion, strength ruled.

The people of Annagar understood strength well.

In the morning, Serra Teresa rose as Ramdan played the chimes. She saw her mask on the cushion beside her bed and held it a moment, weighing its value. Then, gesturing, she handed the slender, simple face to her seraf. "To be kept," she told him.