The Riven Shield: The Sun Sword #5 (61 page)

“While you stand thus?”

“I am beacon,” he said softly.

It was half the truth. Ramiro di’Callesta understood power, and he understood that the powerful offered, at best, half truths among equals.

He hesitated, warring with anger, with the visceral, terrible need to strike. To kill. The rage that rode him was almost his master.

Almost.

But had it been, he would never have survived his father, the former Tyr’agnate. And perhaps, just perhaps, that might have been a mercy.

The Lord knew no mercy. He judged his followers by two things: victory and survival.

“Move forward,” Ramiro said, and his tone brooked no refusal. “Stand in the lee of that building. I will . . . be cautious.”

“If an opportunity presents itself,” Meralonne said, obeying the Tyr’agnate as if obedience itself had no cost and no value, “you will know when to strike.”

Ramiro nodded.

He walked quietly; he had chosen the location because the building itself was unusual. It housed the Guild of the Callestan Cloth Merchants, and because of that, it was larger than most of the buildings in this quarter of town. Of more significance: it was three stories high, and both the second and third stories were girdled by large, open verandas over which the cloths of the various members were often hung in gaudy display.

But not at night; at night, the guild members most mindful of thieves caused those banners, those proud and prominent displays, to be carefully folded, and just as carefully concealed. He made his way up to the second veranda, and stopped there; crouched, knees bending, heels falling back into the flat slats of painted wood. Wood was seldom used in buildings such as these, but stone balconies of this size would have been costly; the merchants did not desire a finer dwelling than the Tyr’agnate’s, and they made this clear by the choice of the materials with which they built.

Nor were they foolish or overcautious; such a slight, he could not afford to overlook.

Fire strode through the streets. What strays there were, on many legs or few, vanished before it, leaving silence in its wake. Callesta should have burned; it did not. The flame was focused, like the breath of ancient dragons; it skirted the ground, but did not char it, seeking instead other prey.

And fire answered. Blue fire, a single, slender line that was almost as fierce in its glare as the Lord’s. Ramiro’s breath was quiet, still; he watched, his shoulders hunching, free hand upon the rails. Through it, like a caged great cat, he watched, bore witness, bided time. But he did not pace; did not otherwise move.

Instead, as the red fire drew closer to the blue, he wondered. He had chosen, months ago, to break the peace of the swordhaven, to lift
Bloodhame
, to choose his war. Had
Bloodhame
lain, silent, enclosed in case and sheath, unexposed to the glare of the Lord, and the Lord’s judgment, would his son now live? Would his kai now stand ready, at his father’s side, on the eve of the first war he was old enough to be tested in?

Night thoughts, and pointless, but they came, and he allowed them entry. He had stood by his father’s side in a very different war.

Ah. The fire stopped.

Clear as morning bell, dark as Lady’s veiled Night, the creature spoke. “Illaraphaniel.”

And the Northern mage bowed. “Ishavriel. It has been some time.” The blue blade rose, not in threat, but in punctuation. “And do not, please, for the sake of my dignity, attempt to tell me that I meddle in things I do not understand.”

“You meddle,” the creature said softly.

“Indeed. A failing of mine. There is so little amusement left to me, I take what I can find.”

“You think this a game?”

“A fine game,” Meralonne APhaniel said.

Ramiro frowned. The words spoken, the language he heard, was Torra. And it wasn’t. He could not repeat the sounds made by either man, although he could easily resolve them into meaning.

Mage
, he thought, bowing his head at this unexpected gift.

“As always, you have chosen the wrong side.”

“Ah. As always,
Lord
Ishavriel, the right side is defined by the survivors and the victors.”

“If you wish to be among them—” He leaped. He leaped, and the air solidified beneath his feet, granting him an impossible purchase as he swung his blade in a wide, wide arc.

Meralonne APhaniel was not there to be bisected by it. He leaped clear, leaped up, his blade tracing a visible path in the night sky.

“You are without your shield,” the creature said.

The Northern mage did not reply. Not with words, not with blade. But the winds came in at his call, at the slight tilt of his chin; the winds howled through his hair, lifting it wide as if it were the span of wings. Above him, moon, below him, the city.

His enemy flew back, striking a small building below; the stone cracked.

A man would be dead, Ramiro thought, had he struck the ground in such a fashion. But the creature snarled and rose.

Fire blazed from the tip of his sword, speeding like red lightning toward its target. The blue of blade split its foremost plume; flames lapped to either side of the Northern mage, flowing around him like a river.

But not without cost.

“I would offer you your life,” the creature said.

“My life is not yours to barter with,” the mage replied, laughing. “And I have heard far prettier offers, far more polished and courtly words. Did you not come here for battle, Ishavriel?”

He dove, then, ground rising to meet him.

Ishavriel stood his ground; the clash of swords was blinding. But the Callestan Tyr merely closed his eyes and waited until the light had passed him by.

Ser Fillipo par di’Callesta stood a moment as the color of the night sky changed. His hand ached; his arm shook. The Tyran gathered about him, silent as men, lost as children. He had but to give word, grant permission, and they would be gone.

Instead, he handed Ser Miko a shovel. “If this is not to take the whole of the evening, we will help the Northerners dig.”

Ser Miko accepted the shovel far less willingly than the sword. Had there been no strangers present, he would have argued; they were half brothers, and not all of the words exchanged between kin were fair or pleasing. But he would not demean the rank that Fillipo held in the presence of Northerners. In the presence of the Tyr’agar.

Half of the Ospreys dug. Half waited, swords ready.

Kiriel di’Ashaf was among the watchers.

“Come, Miko,” Fillipo said, speaking as quietly as he could and still be heard. “We must finish this before sun’s rise. The Serra Amara has tended these grounds personally, and we would be well to be away when she discovers the damage done them.”

Miko managed a feeble smile; it was better than nothing.

They fought; he waited, refusing to give in to the sting of bitter envy at the power they wielded so casually.

The ground broke at their feet, the air moved at their whim, fire gouted from between cracked stone, blackened earth. He could not survive this.

They were distant; too distant; the battle had moved, and moved again. No simple swordplay ranged this far; no simple battle for life or death traced such a large circle of destruction. He had thought to hide, to bide his time, to wait for an opening. The anger that had moved him this far was guttered; flames burned beneath his feet that were hotter, and colder, and brighter by far.

What place, he thought bitterly, had he in this war? What place had he, in the shadows cast by legends? What place, Callesta, or Lamberto, or even the kai Leonne? He closed his eyes, hands shaking now around the hilt of a blade that seemed dull, ordinary, a child’s toy.

And then the wind changed; small stones and shards of glass flew past his upturned face, tracing thin lines of blood across his cheeks, nesting in his hair. He opened his eyes to the face of the moon, Lady’s face, veiled but bright

And he thought, as he met her distant gaze, that she waited in judgment; that she had seen things greater, and things far more insignificant than he; that all time had passed beneath her august gaze. And if, indeed, these were warriors of legend, if they were men—or worse—who could destroy whole cities when they came face-to-face—where were their kin now?

The whole of the Dominion, the whole of the Empire, was owned by the
insignificant
. Mortals ruled, mortals lived—and died—in places that would never know such glory as he was given to witness. And the lack of this knowledge did not impoverish them.

We rule here
.

The moon’s face. The sun’s face. Between them, the hour of man, and it was coming; the sky was not so dark as it had been when he had ridden through the streets at the side of the kai Leonne; nor so dark as it was when he had seen the sacrilege done his son.

He rose, hand gripping rails; he watched. The winds had given him warning, and more, a reminder. He did not lose focus now, and the anger returned, primitive, a fire unlike the fire that ravaged the streets of his city.
His
city.

They passed beneath him, red and blue, dark and dark, and he tensed to leap, his sword before him, the curve of the crescent held up and toward his chest.

He would strike one blow, if that; he knew that he would be given no chance, no opportunity, for a second. He was not of the magi, not of the Sword, and for the first time in his life, he regretted it. But fleetingly.

He saw the creature draw back, saw his body shift, weight supported by his back leg, body lengthened to the side, shield out to absorb the blow offered him by Meralonne Aphaniel.

Before the twin blades met, Ramiro was in motion; gravity bore him down; no air sustained him, no wind broke his fall. One blow. One blow, for his son.

One.

What blue sword had failed to do, his sword did not; the creature, absorbed in the combat he had chosen, failed to notice something as insignificant as the Callestan kai.
Bloodhame
fell into the darkness behind the shield of the demon lord; it fell heavily, jerking with the force of a man’s weight, a man’s fall.

But the shield
fell
. The shield, and some part of the arm that had borne it.

The creature roared.

Had Ramiro voice for it, he might have joined its brief ululation, for the emotion it contained was kin to his own: fury. Pain. Instead, he leaped to the side, rolling along the broken ground.

Meralonne APhaniel passed above him; he saw the sword of the demon and the sword of the mage meet for the last time.

Heard the mage curse, in a language that was utterly foreign, as the demon suddenly withdrew.

The moon paled in the night sky. The Lady began her passage into day. But the Lord had not yet come.

“Kai Callesta,” the Northern mage said, his back toward the Tyr’agnate, his face toward the South.

Ramiro rose. Almost without thought, he removed his cloak; its edges now burned with the tongues of small flames, and he set it beneath the heels of his boots, grinding them, denying them further voice.

Then he rose.

“Meralonne APhaniel,” he said, speaking in Weston, “I am in your debt.”

The mage turned slowly. His sword was gone. The wind had left him; he seemed, for a moment, an old, an ancient, figure, weary with the burden of years.

“In my debt? I think not,” he said quietly. “For Lord Ishavriel has lost his shield, and in the war to follow, that loss will count.” He bowed.

He bowed, and Ramiro di’Callesta returned that bow, made of it an obeisance.

“You led him here,” the Tyr’agnate said quietly.

“I?”

“I have . . . rarely . . . seen such a display. And I am grateful for the lack; I am not a young man, with a young man’s dreams of glory. But I could not fail to notice that the battle was in no way contained; it had passed well beyond my reach.”

Meralonne’s gaze was cool. “It is said, among the Northern Commanders, that there are only two men to fear in the South. The Tyr’agnate of Callesta, and the man who now leads the armies of Annagar against us.

“You see too clearly, kai Callesta. I meant to burden you with no debt.”

“Ah. That is very Northern of you, Member Aphaniel.”

The mage smiled briefly. He bent his head a moment, and in the dawn light, untied the flap of his pouch. “I will smoke, I think, if it will not trouble you.”

Ramiro nodded. “Forgive me if I do not join you.”

“Indeed. It seems a habit that is out of favor in the South.” He set dry leaf into the bowl of his pipe with meticulous care. Hard to see the warrior in the mage now; hard to believe that the hands that shook slightly as they conveyed pipe to mouth had wielded a sword of cold fire. “You see too clearly,” the mage said again, “and you ask no questions.”

“None,” Ramiro replied gravely, gazing upon the broken ground, the guttering flames. “I have gathered wisdom over the years, and at some cost; I have learned that there are some answers that are better left unspoken.” He smiled, and the smile was the sharpest of his smiles. “Was he important, mage?”

“The demon lord?”