The Sun Sword - The Broken Crown Part 3

"I won't for long."

Evayne swallowed. "If you do not carry this child to term, we stand no chance of winning this war."

The silence. Oh, the silence.Of the two, it was Evayne who looked away, casting her gaze stoneward."And if I do? If I do, can you tell me that we will win? Against a G.o.dV Her voice was thin and high and strained. But it was not mad, it was not hysterical.

Evayne started to speak, and Askeyia cried out, "Look at me!" and the words died on the older woman's lips. "No," she said, the lie that was so distasteful defeated. "I cannot say that with certainty. I can only say that she is hope, and she is our hope, as she is his."

"She?"

"If you have this child, this child will be a girl. And she will be all that she was born to be."

"How can you ask this?"

"Because, Askeyia, she will be his daughter, but she will be yours as well. It is only hope, yes.

But it is hope.""And for me?""I promise you that you will suffer no more in the birthing than many others suffer naturally.""And will I go home? Will I be free?"Evayne rose, and in rising, she took the weight of her answer with her, carrying it, burdened by it.

She saw the clouds rolling in to either side.

"No," she whispered. "Just as I will never be. I cannot force you, Askeyia, and I would not. But if a healer's vocation is to save lives, you will be the greatest healer the world has ever had, known or not.

"And I promise you, before the end, you will be known."

She heard Askeyia begin to cry as the path closed in about her, taking her from the desperate young woman, and leaving her with the burden of what she had asked, of what she would ask.

She was Evayne a'Nolan.

II: ASHAF..

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The Terrean ofAverda, the Green Valley.

She would always remember that he came at the break of dawn. Not at full morning, when the serafs were out in the fields, sun burnishing their forearms with color and the glow of sweat seen at a distance, but when the darkness had not yet been broken, and an old woman could take the time to sit beside the earthen shroud that lay over so many of her once-bright futures. It happened that way sometimes.

She lifted a goblet carefully, searched the still, dark surface of its liquid, and then spilled the contents, drop by careful drop, over the graves. The wine was almost finished for the season, and she'd little taste for it otherwise; it was folly to drink alone, a type of weakness that she'd sometimes longed for but never truly approached.

Harvest was around the corner; a day, maybe three, away. She'd seen enough of them to know that it would be a good year, Lord willing. The Tor'agar would be pleased.

Ashaf kep'Valente had much to be thankful for. She served a Tor who was just, if at times harsh; she had her health, her sight, her teeth, and the kind of strength that years of labor cannot destroy. Not labor.

But other things hurt, and over time it became harder and harder to ignore them. She was tired. The Lady knew it, if no one else did. She wanted to see her children again, and there was only one way she could ever do it. One way.

"Ashaf kep'Valente."

She looked up from the Lady's blessing, although the sun had not yet robbed the sky of all its hidden shadows, its quiet darkness. And she saw him for the first time.

He was neither young nor handsome as Ashaf reckoned either, but in his face she saw the conjunction of cool distance and absolute certainty that spoke of power. He did wear a fine and heavy cloak, out of season in the Averdan summer. It was the colors of harvest, gold and green and brown-but it felt black to her, and that was unsettling.

Had they a new Tor? It would not be the first time she had found out this way. But it would be the worst, and it would be painful; this Tor was a good man, a known one.

This stranger, she thought, although she did not know why, would be neither. Ah, age and family made a coward of a woman. Bow and sc.r.a.pe and beg and give way, if it kept you alive for your family.

But she had no family now.

Her eyes fell at once to his collar, his breast, but he wore no sun with rays to mark his importance among the clansman.

"No," he said quietly, "I am no Tor or Tyr; if you bow to me here, it is at the desire of your courtesy, no more."

"And have you come to find the Tor, then?" She rose, standing implacably between this stranger and those graves, as if by putting herself there she could guard her heart. As if she knew, even then, that it was necessary.

"No," he said quietly. "Your Tor has little of interest to offer me." He paused. "You are not a very curious woman, are you?"

She shrugged, wondering if she had time to raise a shout and call the men from the field. Wondering, in truth, if it was worth the effort. Perhaps the Lady heard her prayers, and if this was not the method she would have chosen to end her time and toil, one couldn't argue with the Lady. Sometimes the answers to your prayers were answers, like them or no, and once asked, very little could be taken back.

When he saw that she wasn't about to tender an answer, he smiled, the expression shrouded and somehow dangerous, although she thought he meant it to be friendly. She would learn the error of that, and many things, in time. "I was right," he told her. "The Averdans are different. Ashaf kep'Valente, I have come to purchase your service."

"Then you do want to speak with the Tor," she said firmly, thinking that he would take her from this place, these tangible, buried memories, and not much liking it.

"Perhaps. Perhaps not. You are the first woman I have met that I think suitable for my needs. But I will not take your service if it is offered unwillingly."

At that, the daylight broke; the Lady's time pa.s.sed. Ashaf kep'Valente snorted and settled into things practical. "You aren't from the Dominion," she said boldly, "if you think that service and willing are one and the same. You buy me, I work. You don't, I work." She shrugged. "But it's not up to me to jump through your hoops either way. You talk to the Tor, and if he's willing, he'll give me the orders." She straightened her shoulders, first left, then right, and wiped dew-moistened hands on her ap.r.o.n, knowing what answer the Tor would tender. Or believing that she did. "Now, I've work to be about."

"Indeed. As have I."

But his eyes were the darkest brown she had ever seen as he caught, and held, her gaze. "I think we will speak, you and I," he said, and for a moment she felt like a young woman again. And she hadn't much liked being young, with no freedom, and choices that were so painfully few. Age had its precious value.

He came that evening, again at the bridge between darkness and light; dusk. Ashaf was not surprised to hear the knock at the sliding door of her one-room home. Her husband had built it, with the Tor's permission, when they'd birthed their third live child. He was proud, said the Tor, of their fecundity; he hoped that their children would serve the clan as well as their parents had.

Oh, her husband had been so proud of the praise offered. And proud, too, of the fact that he could live, almost like a poor clansman, in a home of his own. Perhaps it was his hubris that angered the Lord above, although it had not angered the Tor. She would never know.

You are maudlin, she told herself. The Lady's night is going to be a long one. She rose, took the steps necessary to reach the screen. There, silhouetted against the darkness, she saw him for the second time. No face, no clothing, no voice-but she knew him by the shadows his lamp cast against the opaque cloth. She hesitated a moment, wondering whether to feign sleep, and knowing at the same time that he had heard her quiet shuffle to this entranceway.

She opened the screen.

"Ashaf kep'Valente," he said, and he bowed. He held a lamp that was burning brightly, some reminder of the Lord's power in the Lady's night. But she thought that he held it for her benefit, and not his own, for his eyes were the color of starless night.

She had always been taught that the golden-eyed pretenders were the demon changelings born to earth, but she felt at this moment that gold was life and night was death; the echoes of the Leonne wars.

And she was sun-scorched if she was going to let this man intimidate her in her own home, this one remaining artifact of her past life. "I don't believe 1 know you," she told him stiffly. "And strangers don't cross this threshold."

"Very well," he replied, bowing with such perfect grace she felt old, ungainly, ugly. "I am Isladar."

"Isladar of?"

"Just Isladar." He rose, lifting the lamp in his left hand. "As you will be just Ashaf, if you so choose. Have I satisfied the guardian of this abode? Might I be given leave to enter?"

There were old stories about creatures that could not enter, unless invited-but then could not be forced to leave before they had exacted their terrible price, if they could be forced to leave at all. She hesitated a moment, and then, feeling foolish, stepped aside. It was clear that this man had power, much of it unseen, a thing made not by birth and blood and rank, but by something other. If he were Widan, if he wielded the full night of the Sword of Knowledge, he could strike her down with a gesture, and destroy the timber and wood and cloth of her husband's making. What point in ill manners?

"But bring the lamp," she added. "We don't get a lot of tallow, and we don't waste what we have."

"Even so."

He stayed the evening, whiling it away as if he were a chisel, and time a rock or a piece of wood. But he asked her for nothing. Instead, he asked about this place, this one-room dwelling. She demurred, saying little; she did not know this man enough to want to share the few precious memories she did have. He did not seem displeased, and turned his discourse to the question of wood, of the type of wood that could be found in the Averdan valleys, and of the finishes applied to this tiny home. She listened politely, thinking that morning was going to be hard; she was not a young woman anymore, to speak and while away the Lady's hours without suffering during the Lord's.

As if hearing her, he rose, lifting his lamp and his light and his regard, as if each were somehow a cloud. "Ashaf kep'Valente," he said softly, bowing. "The stars are out; the night is not a dark one. I thank you for your company this eve."

She began to kneel before him, as if he were the Tor, and stopped; then she said, "And I thank you for yours. It is not... what I expected."

"Oh? And do you, Ashaf kep'Valente, know what it is, exactly, that you did expect?" And the darkness was in his eyes, and along the glittering edge of the teeth in his sensuous half-smile.

She could not speak then. Words would have marred his menace, and she greatly desired to use them, but she felt his power again, and it made her feel young, and in youth, she had known the value of silence, of remaining hidden. The Lady's smile was dark this eve.

He stared at her a long while. Then he said, "Might I return to visit you again?"

"Could I stop you?"

"With a word." He lifted the lamp; its light lengthened his face and darkened the shadows around it.

But she nodded. "As you will." And turned, feeling old, knowing that the menace and the strangeness, the sense of hidden power and danger, did not change the fact that he had not hurt her, although he had every opportunity to do so.

When, she thought, did I become such a lonely old woman ?

The earth that lay beneath the silvered moon was silent, and the silence was all the answer that she had never wanted.

As a concubine in the court of the Tor's father-a man who returned to her in nightmares for years after she had been "discarded"-she had been envied by the other serafs in the village; they knew that she would be taken from their toil and hardship, and given a wife's name, and a wife's place, at the side of a man of power; that she would live in luxury, and never again have to face the heat of the Lord's face, the chill of the wind. And she had thought so herself, as she was taken and cleaned and clothed and oiled. One night, two, and the illusion was gone, although appearances had to be maintained. She learned her manners, her diction, the nicety of movement and the tricks by which the Tor might be pleased. She learned to sing and play the samisen. To dance. She would not dance now.

In the harem, she had never slept well. There was always, beneath the surface of sleep, a certain knowledge that, at any time, the Tor-or the cerdan he thought to reward-might come upon her unawares. She bore the old scars, some visible, most hidden; time under the Lady's skies, with a gentle man whom the Tor's son-upon taking the clan's t.i.tle-had seen fit to grant her permission to marry, had slowly masked and eased the viscer-ality of those memories. There had been little love lost between the new Tor and the old.

But that husband had pa.s.sed, like the pain, and under this night sky, her sleep was as harsh a thing as it had once been during those years.

Ashaf dreamed, and her dreams had never been kind.

The sound of the chimes woke her, or she thought it was chimes; a hint of music lingered in the air. There was no light in the room; she lay on her side on the worn, wide roll that had served her for too many years. And she heard the voice.

But where Isladar's voice held the menace or danger of the not-quite-known, this voice held something familiar. And besides, it was night, and it was a woman's voice, and after all, night was the Lady's time.

"Ashaf."

She was disoriented by the nearness of the word; thought, for a moment, that the harem enclosed her again, and a wife had jostled her to give her a few minutes of warning, granting her time to prepare, if such preparation were possible. Kesli had done it, often, before her untimely death. Kesli. She sat up quickly, stiffly, pulling the sleeping silks up to cover her shoulders and b.r.e.a.s.t.s.

Except that there were no silks; there was a blanket of rough cotton twill. She was home. Home.

"Ashaf."

"Who-who is it? Who's there?" She hated the sound of her voice, when it came; it wobbled so much she knew she was making a child's display of fear.

"Not a friend," the voice replied. "Do you mind if I bring a little light into this place?"

"Not the Lord's light," Ashaf said, quartering herself with the sign of the Lady's moon.

"Not the Lord's light, no." And light came, and it was the Lady's light, a soft, silver glow that did not destroy the privacy of night colors, but did allow a woman to see by.

Two women. Not a friend, Ashaf thought, repeating the stranger's phrase to herself as she stared at the pale contours of this other woman's face. She wore blue, a dark midnight blue that made her seem one with the Lady's intent; the hood framed her face, hid her arms. There were shadows about her and within her; Ashaf recognized them at once, for they bowed her as well: old pain. Old fear.

"Who are you?"

"I am Evayne a'Nolan."

"a'Nolan? You are a Northerner, then."

"I have no home," the woman replied gravely, "But if names are important, then, yes, I was

named in the North."

"Names are important." Ashaf rose. "It seems this is a night for visitors."

"It is night," the other woman said softly, "and in the South, night is the time of possibility."

"Possibility." She paused. "You told me that you are not a friend, yet I do not feel you to be an

enemy."

"If a man is driving a wagon, and the weather is poor, and he does not see the child that runs out

into the road, the child is still dead. That man, if you are the mother of the child, is no friend, although he intended you no ill. An accident."

Ashaf felt the cold, then, but this Evayne did not stop speaking; she merely paused a moment.