The Riven Shield: The Sun Sword #5 (4 page)

Devlin
. She looked up at him, and the tears started, a thin, terrible train down the bruised mask of her face. “Where are you going?”

“I? To my home, little Anya.” He held out a hand, and it seemed natural to her, as she met the absolute black of his eyes, that she should take it, and be comforted. “And if you wish it, you will find safety and warmth there.”

“And who are—who are you?”

“I? I am Lord Ishavriel.”

She did not think to ask him what the creatures were. Did not think to ask him why they had come for her. Did not think to ask why he had been there, sword in hand, in the middle of a stretch of land between the free towns and the Western Kingdoms. There was only one question that burned at her, that burned more terribly than the pain that had, in the end, driven her from the free town of her birth.

And she could not ask it, and because she did not have the release of speaking it aloud, it consumed her.

Devlin, how could you leave me to die?

“Never trust a human, Anya a’Cooper,” Lord Ishavriel said. “For they want what they want so ephemerally, so pitiably. A human knows fear, and only fear; fear guides him, not oath or honor.” The moon faded slowly as he spoke. His voice was soft now, almost distant.

“I am Lord Ishavriel,” he told her softly. “And I fear nothing.”

He caught her in his arms as she fell, and brought her up and up to the center of his broad chest, cradling her as if she were a babe in arms, and a small one at that.

The wind was a wild taste in her mouth. Ashes. Fire. Salt.

When the demons came hunting him, he was ready.

Not to fight; scant hours had passed, and he was no closer to home—or a weapon—than he’d been when they’d first come upon him. But the flight had broken something in Devlin a’Smith, and it was only hours later, stumbling with exhaustion into the hard crook between two large rocks on the side of a hill’s shelf, that he could even acknowledge it.

He was a coward.

Everything else that he’d ever believed about himself had been stripped away like the flesh of his finger; he was just as cowardly as the weaver’s weasel of a son.

Aie, even that was a lie.

He was worse. The weaver’s flaxen-haired boy had never once promised to love and cherish and protect. Had never, in words and in more than words, told a girl as trusting as Anya that he would be willing to—

that he would die for—

He was too exhausted to be sick; he’d been sick several times already, and none of them had helped; bile had scoured his throat and stung his lips and offered no relief.

There was nothing I could do
! He
knew
it for truth.

Ah, but it cut, it cut because what he knew and what he believed didn’t quite meet. The words were a hollow, brittle shield behind which he could hide from the eyes of any man—

Any man save himself.

Oh, he tried; he still tried. For just a few minutes longer.
No, it’s not true
—
I couldn’t have saved her. All I could have done was die
. His death would have served no purpose.

No purpose but this: it would prove that he was what he had always promised himself he would be. Brave. True. Honest.

He could hear her screaming his name every time he stopped to rest. Could hear the terror in it, and then, worse, the terrible, terrible loss that came with, came from, betrayal.

It ate at him, devoured him from within. But he could no more cast it off than he could the sunlight; he lived with it, as he could.

When he saw the ebon shapes in the pale afternoon light, he was giddy with a terrible relief, although his breath quickened and his heart raced and his body desired to betray him.

As it had already done once.

It had killed him.

But he had not accepted his death; there were stories like that, of bodies whose soul had already deserted them, and which had to be laid to rest. Just so.

He could accept it now. He had no strength—and no desire—to flee. Swallowing, he saw the sunlight glisten off the sinews of their muscles, off the silver of their claws; only their eyes seemed to drink the light in, absorbing it, consuming it. They were the world; the trees lost color, and the goldenrod and the milkweed and the brilliant blue of forget-me-nots that were, that remained, the flower of Anya’s choice.

And as he watched them, dazed, the sun bearing witness to this final act in the play begun an eternity and a nightpast, he thought that they were, in the strangest of ways, so terribly, terribly beautiful. That they were strong, that they were whole, that they moved with effortless, perfect grace, perfect strength.

He wanted to close his eyes, but they held him, hypnotized, and he told himself, as the distance between the demons and the rocks grew smaller and smaller, that they were really only a doorway.

A doorway, after all, to the Halls of Mandaros, wherein he might meet his Anya. Might meet her, and beg her forgiveness and—and ask her, as he never had, as she
always
asked him:

Do you still love me?

When the lightning fell from the clear blue sky without even the clouds to presage its coming, he blinked. It was a flash of incandescent light, a thing without thunder; it was almost beyond his comprehension. Almost.

But it was not beyond the comprehension of the creatures who promised him, with the death they brought, reunion. For they were the field of his vision, and they were what the lightning’s fork sought.

Could death scream?

He learned the answer that late afternoon, watching, the rocks hard at his back, rough beneath his thighs, his calves. He cried out, as they cried out, and he could not have said whether the cry was one of denial or terror or relief; his heart froze as their shadows did, as they turned to look up, and around, seeking an enemy.

Was it an act of Cartanis? Did the Lord of Just War ride, so late, to his rescue?

A moment’s hope, and then it was gone, as much ash as wood fed to the fires. Cartanis was a warrior’s god, not a coward’s god; he would not raise a finger in aid of a man who had abandoned his responsibility and broken his vow. No god would.

But then?

Lightning, forked, blue and gold and white. Crackling with an intensity that broke the darkness. And the darkness, in this open day, walked on two legs.

“THERE!” One of the creatures cried, and he turned—turned away from Devlin. A hollowness filled the young man, a hallowing emptiness. He opened his lips and swallowed air, choking on it as if it were water, or a very, very strong draught. His senses returned to him: He could taste the blood in his mouth, smell it on his clothes, and more besides: sweat, fear. He tried to stand. Legs that had carried him this far locked; they would carry him no farther this day.

“The boy!” The other creature cried. “Kill him!”

Ah, death.

But as he waited, as the death came long-clawed and sudden, he saw the lightning for the third time. This time it was no tentative flash: it was a thing that caught. And held. And burned. He could not look; the white was so bright and the pain of the creature so visceral he had to bring his hands up to his eyes—and then, to his ears. But nothing took the smell out of his nostrils; it clung there, burning flesh.

Burning flesh, as if the demons were, and could be, only flesh. In the end, there was silence and when the silence had reigned for long, for long enough, he opened his eyes.

The shadows still waited, but they were no longer shiny, nor graceful, nor new; they were not black, but blue, a deep blue of the kind that only the evening sky sees. He followed their folds up, and up, aware that his gaze had started at the ground only when it finally met hers: violet eyes in a pale, careworn face. She held out a hand.

“Devlin a’Smith,” she said softly.

He could not speak. The world returned to him slowly, and the life. He stood, took a teetering step, scraped his hand against the gray-red of rock stained with blood; his blood; that was the shadow he cast. His hand ached terribly.

She saw it, and her brow furrowed, but she moved slowly, as if afraid to startle him. He did not step away as she raised her other hand, and started once when she spoke in a language that was not language. He might have pulled back then, but she moved quickly, encircling his wrist with her hand.

“So,” she said to herself, “this is how it was.” And before he could ask her what she meant, he saw fire start in her hand; a fire that was white. He closed his eyes.

And screamed as she seared his flesh and bone away.

He clutched his hand, stepping into the rocks again as he sought to protect it—and himself—from his savior. She spoke, but the pain still held so much of his attention the words were a tickle in his ear. He would wonder, later, if the words themselves had been significant.

A moment passed; he stared down at his finger. No blood, no exposed bone, remained; the finger was puckered with an ugly red scar, but it was whole. A neater job than any save the Mother’s priestess might have done.

But the Mother’s priestess would not cause so much pain in the healing; the pain of the cure lingered, and would, for as long as the pain of the cause, an echo; a twin.

“Who—who are you?” And then, as a wild hope seized him, he added, “Anya—did you save Anya, too?”

Her smile was graven in stone, cold and bitter; had he not been looking at her eyes, he would not have seen the flicker of pain in them. “I do not choose, Devlin, who I will save or who I will leave to death.”

The hope left him in a rush, and he collapsed.

“You cannot stay here. Lord Ishavriel will know, soon, that his servitors have failed; he will send others, and they will be . . . less easily disposed of.”

“Who is Lord Ishavriel?”

“I have already said enough, Devlin.”

“He’s a demon?”

“He is more than just ‘a’ demon. Come. If we debate theology for another hour, we will both perish. These creatures were blood-bound; even at this distance, he will feel their deaths.” She offered him a ringed hand; he took it.

“Who are you?”

“I? Call me Evayne.” She paused, and her violet eyes narrowed as she looked momentarily groundward. “Evayne a’Nolan,” she said, as if the saying of the name was costly.

“You’re an Imperial?”

“I’m a free towner. I was.”

He relaxed at that; it made her smile again. The smile was not a comforting, or a comfortable, expression. “How do you know who I am?”

“Ask me that in ten years; perhaps in ten years I can answer.” Her smiled was bitter and brief. “Or perhaps in twenty. Or perhaps never.”

“Where—where are we going?”

“Would you go to your home, Devlin?”

He started to nod and his head froze, and he became aware, fully, that he had lost more than Anya, and more than himself, on this afternoon: he had lost all else, all family. He could not return to them with this crime on his head. He could not face them.

But he had no money, and no gear; everything had been left at the campsite. “No.”

Her cloak lifted; later, he would remember that she had not touched it at all, but at the time it seemed natural, a throwing off of guises. Nothing about this woman was natural. Beneath the cloak she had three things. The first was a pack. The second was a bedroll. And the third—the third was a sword. Its scabbard was almost unadorned; it was black and long, with a silver tip and a silver mouth. But in its center there was a large, clear stone that caught the light and held it brilliantly. He wasn’t a jeweler, but he thought—he thought it might be real.

“Is it—”

“It’s not a magical sword, if that’s what you’re asking,” she replied, with just a hint of wryness. “But if you will make a life for yourself, there is a life waiting. Have you not heard, Devlin? The Empire is at war.”

“War?”

“The free towns obviously don’t feel the Southerners at their borders.”

“With the South?”

“With the Dominion, yes. The war started a year ago; I fear that it may continue for at least another. These are the games that men play, who desire power.

“You’ll see what war means, Devlin. Don’t forget the cost of it.” She paused, and set the pack and the bedroll down at his feet. The sword, she lifted in two hands. “This sword’s maker was a man torn by his own past and his desire for vengeance. I believe that you will understand him, or you would have, had you met. Take it.”

He hesitated, and then nodded. It was easier to obey her than it was to think—to think about what he was, now.

The blade was bound to its scabbard; he cut the strings that held it, and then, effortlessly, he drew the sword.

He hefted it, swinging it lightly to and fro, in ever faster arcs. As the son of the village smith, he knew weapons, for his father had come from the Empire itself, with a weapon-smith’s knowledge of arms—and in the free towns, arms were valued, especially in the warm seasons when Imperial bandits thought to take a small “unprotected” town’s merchants.

This sword was light for all its weight and heft; it turned easily in his hand; its balance was fine. Lifting it to the light, he studied its edge. It was so perfect, he thought it had never seen a forge’s test, never mind battle.