The Sun Sword - The Broken Crown Part 5

She was surprised when Yollana turned aside, her eyes flickering with some emotion that made her seem human. Made her seem, for a moment, as much a seraf as Ashaf, and not a woman of Voyani freedoms. "No. But I have come in search of your future, whether you ask it of me or no."

"What?"

"I have crossed the plains, Ashaf kep'Valente." She looked down at the still surface of the almost untouched water in her bowl. "I have stood beside the waters of the Tor Leonne, and I have gathered them."

Ashaf grew still; her bowl was half empty.

"You have lost two lives, and you stand upon the threshold of a third. I cannot influence your choice, and I would not; I could not bear your burden; not then, and not now.

"I come to perform no act of magic, no act of mysticism. I have left my tents and my wagons and my family behind. Tonight, we are two women beneath the Lady's Moon." She raised her head and the lamp's glow caught and whitened her chin, making of her face a stark relief.

Ashaf looked out and saw that at least some of her words were true; dusk had pa.s.sed, and the secrecy of darkness held them. She looked down at her half empty bowl, as if deciding, as if afraid to decide.

The water was sweet as she lifted the delicate clay to her lips. From the Tor Leonne, she thought. For me. So did the Serras drink in all their finery, surrounded by serafs and cerdan.

But she knew, from her time in the harem, that the Serras were only a little more free, and only a little more honored, than the serafs themselves. The will of the Lord whose waters were so sweet.

"Why?"

"Because you have haunted my dreams for three nights. Three nights beneath the Lady's Moon, I have dreamed of the death of the Havalla Voyani-and more, the death of the Dominion." She drew breath; her lips thinned as if she were attempting to hold the words back. No Voyani woman spoke her mind so freely to strangers-not for free. And among the Voyani, Yollana was more mysterious than any.

"Did you have these dreams," Ashaf asked, as if the revelation were as natural as the turn of seasons in the valley that had been home for the only parts of her life that she cared to remember, "before you journeyed to the Tor Leonne? I have not heard that the Tyr'agar freely grants the Voyani permission to take what the lake holds."

"Yes," Yollana said starkly. "Three nights." She moved then, unbending at the knee and rising as if freedom of action could soothe her.

"You saw me."

"I saw you."

"Where?"

Yollana averted her gaze and did not speak.

"Yollana."

"I will not lie to you this eve. I will never lie to you again." She fell silent, and it was a moment before Ashaf realized that Yollana did not intend to answer. It seemed to her, as she watched the Voyani woman, that Yollana's actions were a mixture of nervousness and, oddly, pity. She should have felt fear, but she felt almost nothing. Almost.

"Why have you come?" she said, asking for the third time, realizing as the words left her lips that the third time was the significant one.

"To bring you this water," Yollana replied, quietly placing the skin upon Ashaf's humble table. "The Havalla Voyani will be in no one's debt."

The answer made no sense, but the set of Yollana's lips, the shadowed lines across her brow, made it clear that she would answer no questions about such a debt. They stood a moment in silence, and then Yollana shook her head, sending graying curls across the curves of her face, her shoulders. "You will forgive me," she said, almost wry in tone. "But I am not a gentle woman. Not a sympathetic one. I am not good at these offers, these gestures. I raised Voyani; I define what the Havalla are." She reached into the folds of her shirt and pulled something from between her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. As she lifted it, it caught the light and sent it out in a fan of intense color.

"Take this," Yollana said, and if there was a request in the two words, she hid it well. "Take this, and wear it. Travel this village, these lands. Speak to the people who make this your home. Visit your graves, your fields, your hills; find the shade in your forest, the cooling waters in your brook and small river." She let it fall; Ashaf gasped until she saw the glittering chain that stopped it from reaching ground. A necklace or a pendant of some sort.

She reached out an open palm, and Yollana carefully dropped the stone-for it was a stone, a clear one, like a diamond that would beggar even a Tyr-into her hand. At once, it flared with a deep, blue light; the light ran the length of her arm, shrouding it.

Magic.

"What-what does it do?" Her voice was, momentarily, a girl's voice-the girl that she had thought long gone. Dreamer. Seeker of wonder.

"It is the Lady's magic," Yollana replied, "not the Lord's. It will not protect you; it will not defend you. Where a blade is raised or spell is thrown, you will find no solace in it."

Ashaf smiled wryly. "I did not ask you what it wasn't. I asked you what it is."

"It is a keeper," Yollana said. "Of memory. Of affection. Of place. Wear it, as I have told you to wear it, and it will take some of what you feel and hold it within depths that you cannot even imagine. Wear it, and you will feel exactly the peace or the joy or the quiet-yes, or the sorrow- that you felt when you first donned it."

"Why?"

"It is a piece of home," Yollana replied gravely. "Many of the Voyani women wear them, because the heart-our hearts-so seldom find a home, and when they do, we cannot remain there."

"But this is-this is-" Ashaf fell silent, realizing two things. For the first, she bowed low. "You have honored me," she said softly.

Yollana's face was in shadow as she bent to retrieve the lamp. Ashaf slid the chain over her head with shaking hands, letting the stone fall to rest against her skin. What should have been cold was warm; what should have been hard was smooth and almost soft.

Honored? Yes. But she knew, as the Voyani woman attached the lamp to the pole she carried, that Yollana did not expect to see her again. Did not expect that anyone would. The Voyani did not surrender the secrets of their hearts to anyone.

What had Evayne of Nolan said?

Your story ends here, in this village; there will be no one to tell it, to carry it on, to bring it to light.

The next day, at dawn, Ashaf kep'Valente rose and walked to the graves in which lay the remnants of the second life that Yollana of the Havalla Voyani had spoken of. She knew now when it ended-had almost known it then, so bleak was the day, and the year, and the year that followed. The last of her children. Her son.

You were to find your joys, she thought, as her hand smoothed out drying strands of once green gra.s.s. But her joy, such as it was, was here, if she could let go of the memory that ended it.

And sometimes she could; sometimes she could see his youth-all of their youths-and his innocence, although she expected that the latter was the kindness of aged memory.

As if this were her last day here, she knelt before the grave, these graves-but she could not sit for long; the tears came, and it was not tears that she wished to capture.

Valla kep'Valente was waiting for her this second morning. Valla, with her delicate chin, her raven's hair, her intemperate words. She was like a child, and unlike; she spoke her mind as it pleased her, and often with great surprise at the results.

The pinks were fading from the sky, and the men had been fed; it was time to tend the fruit of the fields. They walked together, and to Ashaf it seemed that everything- the colors of the valley fields, the smell of the cut stalks and turned earth, the movement of birds and men, the sound of the river-was heightened. Almost new. She looked from side to side, as if a wonder long dead had found new life.

"Ashaf? Ashaf, have you heard a thing I've said?"

"It's-it's a lovely day," Ashaf said, blushing.

"Which means no." Valla's face was caught a moment between a smile and a frown; the smile won. "It is a beautiful day."

"Is that Riva?"

"Yes. And that monstrous son of hers."

"He's not monstrous," Ashaf said softly. "Or he will not always be. He is reckless. When your own are that age, you will understand it better."

"My own," Valla said, with the arrogance of loving ignorance, "will not survive if they choose to become like Eric. It's Riva's own fault." She shrugged. "Give the child no child's name, and what happens? He knows no mother's calm."

It was common wisdom. "Na'Eri," she said quietly, turning the words around in her mouth. "Be kind."

Valla's brow lifted a moment. "You weren't so forgiving when he broke your door."

"True enough," the older woman said. "But the door was fixed."

"I worry about you, Ashaf. You've been sleeping well?"

"No," Ashaf replied cheerfully. "Very poorly. Come; the shadows are lengthening and the overseer will take our names."

He didn't, of course; and she knew he wouldn't. Although he was a clansman in theory, he had spent his life here, in this village, among the serafs. He had played with them, bullied them, and been bullied by them; he had lain with them, and broken their hearts, and had his heart broken. He had wed here, under the Lady's Moon, with the permission of the Tor'agar-the same man who had given Ashaf a husband and her freedom.

The freedom of a seraf.

He was also a good ten years younger than she, and twice, when his daughters were ill, had come over the hillocks, his lamp and his fear burning high. And she had followed him to the biggest house in the village, to tend to his children in the silence of sickness, of terror. How could she do less, when she understood that particular helplessness so well?

"Ashaf. Valla. You're late again."

"Daro," Valla said, kneeling meekly.

"Daro," Ashaf said. "At my age-"

"At your age you set about Michale with a broom and reddened both his ears." But his good-natured smile was broad enough; it had been a good year, and the harvest would please the Tor who ruled them all, whether his serafs were late or no. "We'll fall behind without you, Ashaf. You set the good example."

"And she terrifies those who don't follow it!" Someone else, his words carrying in a loud, happy boom. Michale.

She set about her work, feeling the long stalks of wheat as they lay, new, against her dry hands. The children came to help her, although she needed little help; they came to thresh and stomp and squabble while they worked. That was the way of the young.

The way of the village.

She felt a sharp pang, seeing them all. And she did not name it because she did not have to. She could have chosen any home when the Tor'agar who had been her husband met his just end beneath the Lady's Moon. It was truth; his son had been almost a son to her, for all sons were reared in the harem until they came of an age deemed suitable by their sires.

But she had chosen to return to this village, as if by coming back she could reclaim what had been lost: dreams. Innocence. Trust.

And she had, for a while.

There was a warmth at her chest, a warmth and a softness, as if a child lay pillowed against her breast. And she realized that she cared very much for these people, and this place; that not only her dead, but her living, were here in numbers.

"Ashaf?"

It was Daro, his black hair swept in an unruly knot above his forehead. His wife loved long hair, and although it was not at all practical, he kept it so as not to have to listen to her complaints. Or so he said; there was an affection in Daro that was strong and deep and not afraid of the gibes of men.

"I am sorry," she told him softly, setting a callused hand gently against his shirt.

"And I am worried. It's not like you to miss the call three days running. Are you ill?"

"Do I look ill?"

"No. But I know you, Ashaf. You'd have one hand in the Lady's before you'd admit that anything was wrong."

"Then why," she said pointedly, "do you waste your breath and time asking?"

"Because if I get close enough to ask you over this din, I'll be able to see for myself." The concern lingered in his eyes, and she surprised herself by setting all work aside.

"Come," she said, and he followed, just as he followed her the evening his daughter's fever had- barely- broken.

They climbed the highest of the hills that the forest shielded from the outside, and sat there, looking down upon the men and women who toiled in such high spirits below.

"We'll finish early," she said. He nodded. "Is the Tor happy?"

"You'll be able to ask him yourself," Daro replied. "He's traveling this season, and intends this village to be his last stop." As he spoke, he cast a sidelong glance at her, the question in his voice unmistakable.

As always, the news that he would visit warmed her. He was not her son; she reminded herself of this again and again, although in truth she needed no reminder. He was the Tor'agar Danello kai di'Valente; he held her life, and the life of this village, in a hand that could just as easily curl into fist as open in offering.

But he held her in regard, he flattered her, and in the privacy of the tiny home that she would not leave, he spoke to her as if they were still prisoners in the same harem.

And that, she thought, was the first life, and it is over. "Do you love this village?" someone said, and when Daro replied, she realized it was her. "It is my responsibility."

"And you understand responsibility well," Ashaf replied softly. Proudly. "This is a village unlike any village in the Dominion, and it was made by the Tor'agar and by you. Give me your word, in the presence of the Lord, that you will guard it when I am gone."

"I have given just that word," Daro replied wryly, "to the Tor'agar himself." He laughed as he saw her expression shift into sternness. "But I am a wise man. He is in the capital. You are here.

"I give you my solemn word that I will guard this village in your absence. The Lord sees all. May he scorch me if I lie, or prove false to my vow. But, Ashaf," he continued, more seriously, "I don't want to have to do it without your help."

"No," she said softly.

The sun was warm and high.

She returned home while the sun was still ascendant, casting a shadow across the graves that she and her husband had made. That she had made alone after his pa.s.sing, changing the shape of the earth with spades and tears.

Moving, she came to stand by the graves so that the sun cast her shadow away from what lay within them. The day had softened the edges of the loss, as it sometimes did, and she could sit here a moment, speaking silently the names of her children and her husband as if they were litany. Nothing lived within them, of course; nothing that could answer the words she did not speak aloud.

But she had stayed here, by the side of the dead, because it was here that their memories were strongest. She let them come; all of them. But she held the tears until dusk, offering them to no judgmental, unsympathetic Lord, and no Lady who, mother or not, had seen fit to part her from her family.

He came that night.

She should have known, and perhaps in some way she did, for her sleep was restless and easily broken. Yet it was not the sound of his voice that wakened her, shouting through the screens; nor was it the sound of his hand against the wooden beams.

She rose in the silence of insects and wind through the valley's tree branches-the silence of the pause before breath, of the stillness in a crowded room after the shattering of a precious crystal gla.s.s. Something had called her from sleep, but no trace remained of its sound except her certain knowledge that it was there.

She rose and went to the screen that separated the world without from the one within. The moonlight was bright enough to be visible, but not bright enough to see by. Darkness, light-it made little difference to Ashaf. Every inch of her home was more familiar to her in the darkness than most places were in the day.

Little difference? Ah. Not this night. She felt that she wanted the light, or rather that she should; she struggled a moment with tallow and wick before she brought its flickering glimmer into the night.

And then she remembered-and was surprised that she could forget for even a moment such a fact: That the harem had never been given over to night's darkness; lights abounded, proof to the wives-and their children- that the Lord's will ruled in the harem of the Tor'agar at all times.

Very few were the people who had dared to speak against this more than once, although it made even the Radann-the men whose worship of the Lord of the Sun defined their lives-uneasy. "The Lady's time will come," they would say, muttering among themselves in their cloisters.

And it had. When the rites had been said over the newly turned earth. Oh, she had smiled then, her face veiled and masked, her anger hidden. The only joy she was allowed to show were her tears, and she shed them freely, knowing that the clansmen would not understand-and that her sister-wives would.