The Riven Shield: The Sun Sword #5 (85 page)

But she wanted to live, and she knew that the blood that fell, absorbed instantly by parched ground, drew the kin. That and the pain.

The fear that she felt was a fear that the kin could not use; she had learned that much of their nature.

Twisting, holding, she tried to see through the wild strands of unkempt curls.

But Avandar was gone.

Alessandro kai di’Clemente drew his men back. He had lost some quarter of their number; would lose more before the battle’s end. But it
was
a battle now. The stag that had leaped into the midst of the creatures had killed one, and injured another. Hard to say if the injury was mortal; there was blood, but it was dark beneath the night sky; he could not say with certainty what its color was.

He raised a hand, bringing horn to lip. He knew that over the din of arms his voice would not carry, but the horn song would.

Archers came at his call, their ragged line forming up into something more graceful. Their bows were strung; they had arrows ready. He raised a hand and let it fall.

The strings quivered.

The creatures snarled, as if pricked by insects. Two turned to leap into the line of men.

Alessandro joined those men, pushing through the ranks to stand at their head; the line wavered a moment.

Reymos came, sword given over for the greater burden of the banner he now carried. Unfurled, silver and gold caught moonlight, marking the presence of the Tor.

The men held their ground. The moon looked on.

The foremost of the beasts drove into the line, and it broke, not by flight, but by impact.

Run
, the creature roared.

Stand
, the horn replied.

Of such a conversation are stories born.

But legend is born from something else entirely.

As the creature tensed, as its jaws snapped around the metal gorge of an armed cerdan, a strange silence fell, and into it walked a man wielding a sword the color of the sun.

For a moment, it seemed that Leonne had returned from the grasp of the winds to offer support and succor.

But the man’s eyes were dark, and they passed above Clemente as if it were beneath his notice.

He spoke in a language that Alessandro had never heard, and had no desire to hear again, and the beast swiveled, turning to face his death.

And the man said, “The Warlord has taken the field.” For the benefit of Clemente.

The Warlord
.

Lord Celleriant held the water. He did not argue with the elemental air, but instead gave it the play it desired. Only when it swept across the paths of men did he nudge it back toward the oldest of its three enemies, and although it grudged him even this interference, it heeded the warning.

He did not attempt to protect the dwellings along the river’s edge. If men were foolish enough to hide in them, they earned their grave. But he contained the combat, forcing the water’s reach to the heights; what had been a several-tendriled foe was now a pillar.

It struck at him, and the air was only barely quick enough to respond. He was not grateful; he was not afraid. Instead, he felt something that he had never felt when he had chosen to enter combat: uncertainty. The rules of this battle were not the rules that had governed the whole of his existence, and he discovered that the Arianni were not as . . . flexible . . . as mortals.

Although he took no joy in death, the wild exultance of the Hunt had been solace and pleasure; these were gone. Gone, too, the worthy foe: the battle was beyond him; he held its fraying edges, no more. He bore witness, he made boundaries; his hidden sword was a weight and a decoration, like unto the banner now held, at such personal risk, by the Clemente Toran.

But he understood the importance of such a conceit, and at some cost to himself, forbid the wind to carry it out of their grasp.

Avandar was gone.

What remained had little in common with the man she had known; little in common with the man he had slowly become over the passage through the Stone Deepings and beyond. His hair was dark, his skin pale, but even these were of a hue that defied recognition.

He walked into the kin and they parted, jaws snapping, voices raised in something she had never really expected from them: fear.

Two fled.

Or tried to flee; light blazed from the sword as he swung it. He swung it yards from where they leaped; yards from where they fell. But the arc of the sword was larger than the sword itself, and the light, golden, was a corruption of every summer that Jewel had been graced—she knew it as grace now—to see. The kin were cut in two, and lay twitching and crawling upon the open ground.

The Winter King had gored a third, crippling its hind legs; its jaws were danger enough, for its neck was prehensile. It snapped at its foe, but the King, unwounded, was faster, leaping lightly into the air and touching ground only long enough to strike.

She wondered if he had ever held a sword like the Warlord’s.

Yes
.

She could see its ghost in the play of his limbs, the supple bend of his neck; his fur was warm armor beneath her hands.

She heard the fourth cry, the fourth mewling sound of a creature being consumed—and slowly—by flame, and although she had seen what the kin had done here, she flinched. It seemed to go on forever, blending with the howl of wind until at last she could no longer separate the two.

The Winter King stopped. He took to ground and stayed there, and Jewel was free to turn, free to look at the east bank of the Adane.

She was grateful for the moon’s light; it was pale and silver and it hid the color of blood. Of all blood save that which now graced the Warlord.

The Clemente cerdan stood as the Winter King did; they bore witness, as if afraid to attract the attention of the man with the golden sword. Some fell to ground, but whether this was out of respect or due to lack of blood, she could not say; she hoped it was the latter.

Jewel
, the Winter King said, his voice a thing of ice.

She shook her head, understanding what he asked.

The Warlord turned his gaze toward the West bank. He lifted his sword; buried it in the dry ground with enough force that the Winter King stumbled a moment.

Out of the earth came a bridge. It was wide, flat, a thing of rock.

Mortals can’t contain the elemental forces. She had heard this somewhere. She had known it for truth.

His curse
, the Winter King whispered.

In awe, she watched. What the water had sundered, he made whole, and she was not surprised to see that the rock’s curve and width began to smooth and lengthen; that it grew rails, things that stonesmiths might once have made in the glory of the haunting and terrible cities that had defined power, for men, when the gods had walked the earth.

He took to the bridge, but she saw as he did that he turned toward the men of Clemente.

She
knew
he would command them.

She knew they would obey; what else was left them in the face of the power he now displayed? Power defined men in the South. Power elevated them; lack of power destroyed them.

Without thought, she leaped from the back of the stag.

Heard his voice, a clear warning that reverberated through her limbs as if she were struck bell. Music there, and worse. She knew what bells tolled.

“Avandar!” She shouted the word; it was almost lost to the gale, for the air’s voice had not stilled, and the water’s had grown loud indeed. Neither air nor water troubled him, and if the earth did, it did not show in the cold, smooth lines of his face.

He did not turn; did not give any hint that he had even heard her.

And her instinct failed her—as it sometimes did—because the fear that she felt was suddenly too loud. He turned from her toward the bridge, and beyond his shoulder, she saw that Kallandras fought a single kinlord. The kinlord had the advantage of height, of reach, but Kallandras had something else—something that she was certain had not been defined or refined in Senniel.

His fight was a dance; not even the storm could deprive it of grace.

But she could not watch; her eyes turned to Avandar’s back. He had not yet summoned the Clemente cerdan.

She could not afford to let him do that.

Yet when he turned, at the height of the bridge’s curve, she froze again; she did not know how she—how anyone—could stop him.

For just a minute, wasn’t sure that she wanted to.

Truth, too much truth this eve. “
Avandar
!”

Was not sure that she wanted to because he seemed unstoppable. Remote, broken, a killer. Maybe even her killer, if she could reach him. She wore his mark. He—wore it, twin to hers.

And he would be a killer that she never need fear—not the way she had feared Duster, in the end. Because in the end, Duster had died.

Yes
, the Winter King said. Unfair, that a single word could say so much.

Lefty had died. Fisher had died. They had all left her. Nothing she had done, nothing she
could
do, could prevent their desertion.

Teller could easily have been killed had Haerrad not chosen to offer warning in a way that would clearly show the cost of open warfare. The fear of that had almost destroyed her. And it would, she thought, bitter now.

She shook her head; hair was already arrayed against vision, and she did nothing to push it out of the way.

Avandar lifted his arm, his sword arm.

And she lifted hers, struggling a moment with the button that held shirt to wrist.

“
Viandaran
!”

The words that he might have said did not come. Instead, he looked at her for the first time since he had drawn sword and taken up the mantle of the Warlord.

Enough
, she said softly, as if speaking to a wild creature.
Enough, Viandaran. You have done enough here
.

He lifted his arm; she could not see it clearly, but she felt hers respond. Warmth. Heat.

Everything would change. She knew it.

But everything did, anyway.

You swore yourself to my service
, she told him, arm burning as if the brand itself were being applied for the first time, or as if the pain of it had been delayed until she had at last accepted its presence.

I
 . . .
serve
 . . .
you
?

We serve each other
, she replied. Raw now. Words she hadn’t spoken for so many years they made her feel young and vulnerable.

He stood. It was not an act of hesitation.

The Clemente cerdan began to gain their feet, to find their weapons, to find their ranks. She heard, above the din of so many different storms, the call of horn; heard it answered.

Harmony, she thought.

I’ve seen your dead
, she told him.

Lady
, he said, although the word itself was composed of syllables that she had never heard.
The servants of the shadow god leave no ghosts
.

No
, she said, because it was truth.
They leave scars. You’ve done enough. I
—
I asked for too much
.

How much was too much? The words seemed small, irresolute, the whimpering denial of a child.

But because they were true, she stood behind them.

Golden light shrouded his face, his features; made him hard to look upon.

I am not Avandar Gallais
, he told her.

I know
. She took a step forward; bent her head into the driving wind. Something struck her in the shoulder, but not hard enough to knock her off her feet; she glanced back to see the flat of a board. Some part of a building that had not survived the night’s work.

But you’re not the Warlord either
.

Am I not
? Sword, now. Eyes too bright to be dark, although they looked all of black.

No. Because if you were, you would never have taken the name Avandar Gallais. You would never have come to Terafin. You would never have been
—

The blade lowered a fraction. She had all of his attention now, and she found that she didn’t
want
it.

Mine
.

Everything, everything, would change.

She made her way to the bridge. The debris that swirled lazily in the air no longer touched her; it swooped past her face, shadowed her steps, ruffled her hair—but it caused her no harm.

His work, she knew.

Do you understand what you are saying
?

As much as I ever do
.

His brow rose a fraction. It was almost familiar.

This is a war that you cannot fight, ATerafin. This, these
—
they are not enemies against which you or your den can stand. Will you take that risk? Will you disarm yourself
?

Could you protect them
? she asked.
Could you, when you couldn’t even protect
—