rd of Seril, 426 AA.

City of Amar, Terrean of Mancorvo.

All things must end.

All things, be they valued or hated beyond measure. Such was the will of the Lord and the Lady. But the endings were bitter indeed, and often resisted by those who could not, or would not, submit themselves easily to the whim of another master.

He thought all of these things, on this fine, clear day, the sun reigning, without attendant clouds, in the heavens. But the man who faced him quietly, even deferentially, noticed none of the clouds which had already begun to gather beneath the surface of the Widan Sendari di'Marano's eyes.

"Understand, Widan Sendari par di'Marano, that your daughter, the Serra Diora di'Marano, will be wed to the kai Leonne; that her children will be his children, and that her sons will rule the Dominion in their time.

"Thus it is that we," and here he nodded quietly to a woman that must, Sendari thought, be one of the harem elders of the Tyr'agar himself, "have come to travel to the Marano domain, seeking to make an agreement between our Tyr-and yours."

The reminder was not lost upon Sendari. "I am... overwhelmed," he said, sounding no such thing. "It is rare indeed that the clan Leonne seeks to marry so far beneath it."

Although his words were humble, his tone was not; the man who had been sent to facilitate negotiations stood stiffly a moment in his uncertainty. "It is rare indeed," he said at last, "and I'm glad to see that you appreciate its significance." His hair was streaked by time, his face worn; both gave him the blended look of authority and wisdom that was so prized by the Tyr'agar. He did not dress as a court n.o.ble, he dressed as a rider-which was just as well; his travels brought him to Mancorvo, and in Mancorvo, things courtly were considered beneath those who sought to prove themselves worthy of the regard of the Lord.

"And how is it that the kai Leonne-or the kai's father-happened upon the daughter of a humble par?"

"You will find, Ser Sendari," the negotiator said, choosing his family t.i.tle over the coveted Widan, "that there are few indeed who have not 'happened' upon the daughter that you have guarded so zealously. She is famed throughout the Dominion for her beauty; the poets carry her words to the farthest reaches of the five Ter-reans and back."

"The daughter of every clansman of note is so famed," was the cool reply.

"Indeed. And it is not fame alone, but experience, that moved my master's hand. Your brother, Tor'agar Adano kai di'Marano, offered the service of his sister, the famed Serra Teresa-and she, in turn, brought her niece to light in the Pavilion of the Dawn.

"The sun rose upon these two women, and with them. I tell you now, Ser Sendari, that not a clansmen remained unmoved who were privileged to hear their voices and their song; they are matchless in their gifts."

He paused, as if the sudden outburst were almost embarra.s.sing. In truth, it was, and entirely inappropriate; it gave away much of his bargaining position, and much of the Tyr's desire. "It is clear that you understand her worth," he added coolly.

And Sendari thought, Teresa, and the word was a dagger, a stab of anger so visceral he was afraid, for a single moment, to speak. The moment pa.s.sed, and quickly; one did not keep the appointed representative of the Tyr'agar waiting. "Yes, Ser Alexi, I understand her worth. I will retire now, to consider in full the enormity of the honor that you have done the clan Marano."

"Consider it," the negotiator said, bowing. He did not have to add, and quickly. It was understood. Such an offer could not be refused.

"Sendari."

"Adano."

The two men sat in a quiet room; a seraf knelt by the far wall, a pitcher of water at her side. When either man chose to lift the cup set before him, she would un.o.btrusively rise and fill it; she was trained by Serra Teresa di'Marano, and because of that, knew no gracelessness, no artlessness, when serving the Tor'agar and his chosen guests.

The Tor'agar was, in all things, a clansman that the Dominion could be proud of. His hair was still dark, and his shoulders broad; no part of his face had ever been broken, although he had seen combat time and again during the wars. He rode as if riding were more natural to him than walking, and he wielded a sword as if it were an extra arm; he wore armor more readily than silk. He was, by all accounts, handsome, and he was, rarer, loyal to those things that he valued and respected.

His brother.

His Tyr.

The man he faced was shorter, slighter in every way; he wielded a sword poorly, and barely deigned to ride. His face was longer and narrower than his brother's, and he Wore a beard, as if to hide a weaker chin. Yet there was, between these two, a similarity of appearance, some echo that spoke of their birth.

"Sendari," Adano said again, meeting his brother's gaze with a directness that spoke of affection, authority, and blood. "This man, Ser Alexi-he is valued by the Tyr'agar. He would not have been sent otherwise."

"I know it."

Silence, uncomfortable, uneasy. There was so much that these two-a man, a true man, of the clans, and his weaker, wiser brother-had chosen not to say to each other over the years. Their silences were folds of comfort into which they might drop, places in which understanding reigned, rather than prejudice and fear.

And that understanding, Sendari saw, had been stretched, like a fine and unmatchable cloth, to breaking; it was not a magical thing, after all, but a thing made of man, made of two men, made when those men's roads had diverged decades past.

What, for the sake of an old affection, would he do?

"Sendari, when you chose-when you chose not to take the test of the Sword, 1 accepted your decision. It would have weakened Marano to lose you, and I did not think that the loss was worth the risk. I also understood at that time that there were... reasons why you might choose as you did.

"If you have reasons for doing so now, I must ask you, please, as brother-put them aside. Marano is under the Tyr's eye, and his eye is not particularly kind when he has offered honor and been offered insult in return."

"And if I cannot, as brother, as you so quaintly say, put 'them' aside?"

"Then I will ask it as Tor'agar, and your kai."

"And if 1 politely decline your request?"

"What would you have me say, Sendari? That I would see clan Marano brought down? You know, as well as I, that I could order you to do as I say-but that has never been our way, and I have no desire to be forced to it. I do not wish to order you as if you were common cerdan." He paused. "But I will not beg.

"We both know, for the sake of Marano, the Tyr'agar cannot be refused."

But two long days later, Ser Alexi kai di'Orro still waited. And three days.

At the end of the fifth day, road weary with dust and sweat, and unaccompanied, although his position commanded, literally, the armies of the Tyr, came General Alesso di'Marente.

"She is a daughter, Sendari; you value her too highly. No, this is not meant as criticism. It is fact, and as Widan you cannot turn from truth. As always, the decision you make is yours alone. But the clansmen see you as weak with every hour you wait." The General Alesso di'Marente was not so young a man as he had been; the sun had burned some of the color from his hair, and the wind had worn fine lines into the contours of his eyes, his jaw, his lips. But it was not the pa.s.sage of time that had hardened him or angered him; not the turn of the sun or the march of the seasons. Loss, in battle-the first war between the Empire and the Dominion in decades-had cut a swathe in his pride that, over a decade later, still showed in his face. Those lines, etched, made his face seem a thing of stone-unyielding.

If Sendari had faced the test of the Sword, Alesso had faced the test of the field; the former had been granted a t.i.tle above the sway of clans and birth; the latter, by dint of strategic brilliance, had also improved his lot, but by greater degree, turning a rout into a retreat, and destroying the most famous of his enemies: the Black Ospreys. To Alesso, it was a Pyrrhic victory, a shadow victory shared with the Tyr'agnate of Averda. The failure drove him, although in the eyes of the clans, he alone had emerged not only unscathed, but elevated in stature.

In the eyes of the Lord, the men who sat in the heat of the summer day, surrounded on one side by artfully arranged rocks and on the other by plants that had a touch of the desert's defiance in their spines and quills, were not equals.

The Lord valued combat above all else.

"On the contrary," Sendari replied, eyes lidded in that half-open expression that spoke not of fatigue but rather of great anger, "They will think me strong. Not one of them would dare to take the risk that the offer be withdrawn."

"Those who do not know your past might mistake your hesitance for part of the bride-price negotiations-but I know the truth, and Cortano knows; there will be others."

"I am not inclined to care what they think."

Alesso rose, angered. "And my regard, Sendari?"

The serafs were nowhere to be seen. Water had been brought, and something to blunt the edge of the hunger that might occur between meals; both had been left in the stillness that lies between two proud men.

Sendari should have noted their absence for what it was, for Alesso rarely argued where any ears but his could hear what was said. "I am not the keeper of your regard."

"Your actions define it."

"Then judge me," Sendari said, rising as well, so as not to give Alesso the advantage of too much height, "by those actions."

"If you choose to act at all."

This was not the first time that these two had argued; it would not be the last. They were like brothers in that regard, although no blood bound them. "Alesso."

The General subsided a moment. "You are my closest... adviser," he said, when he could speak again. "And I will not lose you because of your oversentimental attachment to a daughter. She is not your son, old friend, and if she were, she still would not have the value of a kai; you are the second son of the Marano clan.

"Even Adano has urged you to think clearly upon your action."

"I am Widan, Alesso. It is unlikely that I would think any other way."

Silence again, heavy with the struggle to leave things unsaid. To speak things in anger gave words a power and a history that friendship weathered poorly; and for all that they disagreed, the friendship between these two men was genuine and worth much to both.

"Sendari," the General said, bowing. "She is only a daughter."

The Widan bowed in return, stiffly. "Yes."

"But even so, ask yourself this: Would this match not be the very thing that she would have desired?"

Because Alesso so rarely acknowledged his previous wife, it took Sendari a moment to understand who that "she" was. And when he understood it; when the words had sunk, like water, between the cracks of a dry and parched land, he rose, his face the desert's face for just that moment.

The dead did not remain buried. "You are... unkind, Alesso."

"Yes. But not to you alone." He turned, but did not leave; not yet. His hand sought the hilt of his sword and found it. Almost, Sendari thought, as if to still himself, to steady himself. "I despise weak men," the General said. "Understood."

"And the Lord offers only contempt for their struggles. "She weakened you, old friend, and I cannot decide whether or not I, in my turn, desire to face that weakness or no. But dead, she controls your life. Even in this."

"In this?" Sendari felt anger's echo, a thing much weaker than anger itself, but no less haunting. "Why? You are right, Alesso. Diora is only a daughter.

"But I believe I might drive a hard bargain for her in such a way that her value will be known across the Dominion."

The General did the Widan a courtesy; he did not turn until a moment had pa.s.sed in which the Widan might carefully school his face.

th of Seril, 426 AA The Tor Leonne, Annagar Some scars healed.

Eleven years after the test of the Sword, the Widan Sendari di'Marano's arms were the pale, white color of fire-touched flesh. Gone were the blisters, the cracked skin, the rawness of blood brought by heat too close to skin's surface; all that remained were these marks, like an oiled parchment. And the rank. Widan.

Wise.

He stood, clenching his fists, the morning sun bleaching the water of all color until it resembled, in his eyes, the shade of the scars on his arms and hands. White.

"Sendari?"

He looked down at the feel of small hands across his chest; delicate hands, and cool, as if they had been washed in the waters of the lake that he gazed upon. They hadn't, of course; the waters of this lake were special, and given to only a few for such frivolities. This was, after all, the Tor Leonne itself, the seat of the power of the Dominion.

There was only one woman who came to him thus, only one who was not wise enough to know when to leave him alone, and when to approach. The Serra Fiona en'Marano.

Pa.s.sing the Widan's test gave him a patina of power, an aura of authority, that belied his rank; the clansmen came, with their marriageable daughters or sisters, to pay their respects.

And he wished a wife, a clansman's wife.

Not one who would ask him to make promises that she herself could not keep.

Younger than the concubine whose service to him had been the price of her life, the Serra Fiona had been lithe and supple, and p.r.o.ne to a self-importance that time had not yet worn the edges off. It wasn't pleasing, but it pleased him to indulge it in some small way. He knew that she would suffer for it in the harem, for although it was technically her harem now, and his concubines her sister-wives, he knew that her place among the women who had not been her choice was still delicate. In eleven years, these women had not forgiven her youthful arrogance and her attempt to rule what had never been ruled: the harem of Widan Sendari par di'Marano's previous wife.

Previous wife.

"Sendari?"

He caught her hands, pulling them round his chest and pinning them there, so that she might feel that she had his attention. He was not a man who wished his wife to be a counselor or a coconspirator. He wished his wife to be pliant, and obedient, and graceful; he wished her be desirable, to dress perfectly, to play the samisen as a woman alone could play it; he wished her to be pleasing in all things, but pleasing in a way that did not, in the end, touch more than the senses, did not warm more than the body. He had suffered enough at the hands of the Lord's whim, at the howl of the desert wind. He would not willingly suffer more.

Her hands slid, playful, down; he caught them, feeling a rare annoyance. "Fiona," he said softly. A warning.

She was well enough brought up that she heeded it, retreating as delicately as she could and gathering her silks about her shoulders-but he knew, as she hid the ivory of her skin from sun's light and her husband's eyes, that her pride had been p.r.i.c.ked.

His concubines would suffer for it. Youth could be so petulant. But the rest of the concubines could take care of themselves. And if, for some reason, they could not defend themselves against the wrath of a rejected wife, they could no doubt turn to the Serra Teresa for guidance and wise counsel.

For Teresa was among them, albeit as visitor, and where she went, she reigned. Even Fiona did not raise voice against her.

Left alone, Ser Sendari di'Marano contemplated the magnificent waters that defined the Tor Leonne. Thinking that fire-the sun's face-was the Lord's aspect, and water, the Lady's; thinking further that the Lady's aspect was the heart of the Dominion, its seat of power, if not its regalia. Thinking that the anger of the Lady must, in the end be far deeper than the anger of the Lord, for it was the Lady who, time and again, demanded the due of life. At night.

It was morning, now; the sun should have offered comfort as it hung in the summer sky. But its travel over the waters reminded him unaccountably of scars, of scarring, of loss. Loss.

The Serra Diora di'Marano was to be married in three days time. He had refused no less than six offers for her hand, finding some pretense, some excuse, that might shield her from the interest of the clans for just a day longer, or a week. His wife was his wife, and as all men, he did not trust a man not to treat his daughter in as dismissive a fashion as he treated the lovely Fiona-and the certain knowledge that his daughter, his intelligent, cunning, perfect daughter would be so regarded angered him and worried him both. She was of an age where she as yet had no desire to leave the harem that had been her home for all of her life-and he... he was still her father.

But the seventh offer was an offer that he could not refuse. And even so, he had delayed his response until he stood upon an edge very different than the Sword's-and one far more dangerous.

Did it matter? He was here, now, obedient and richer for that obedience; he had drawn the attention of the Tyr'agar himself, both for his negotiating skill and for the golden sword that he wore upon his breast; and his daughter was there-somewhere among the many pavilions designed by Leonne the Founder to grace the lakeside in such a way that they might see no other, granting not the illusion of privacy, but something rarer in the Tor Leonne: its substance. His daughter.

And not his daughter anymore.

He stared down at the pale skin that covered his hands, remembering the test of the Sword, and the reason he had taken it; aware that he had pa.s.sed another, and at no less risk. What he did not know, as he stared at the waters, was whether this test, like the last such test he had taken, had empowered him-or whether it had robbed him of some meaning, some strength that was hidden from the eyes of the clans.

The Radann Fredero kai el'Sol stood in the courtyard of the edifice that had been built, at the behest of Leonne the Founder so many years ago, when the dark years had come to their close with the death of a Tyr whose name, and whose clan name, had been carefully expunged from the texts by which history was learned. Leonne the Founder had been a man both blessed and chosen by the Lord as his warrior; it was to Leonne the Founder that the Sun Sword was given.

The Radann-the men who spent their life's devotion, and their lives, in the service of the Lord- had been commanded to follow the lead of Leonne the Founder, and they had, in faith and strength, stood beside him, wielding their own weapons against those who sought to deny the Lord his dominion.

It was the time of legends, of their making. The courtyard attested to that, with its fine arches of stone, its flagstones, its interior sculptures, each of a piece of stone, and each created by a man who could bring, to stone, a semblance of eternal life. There, the sword bearer, and to his left, the crown bearer; to his right, the vessel bearer, and across from him-across, the symbol of the Lord himself: The many-rayed, magnificent sun.

The time of legend, Fredero thought, had long since ended. Leonne the Founder had been a great warrior. His blood could barely be seen in the man who now wore the Sword's crown: the Tyr'agar Markaso di'Leonne. Markaso was a dour man and cold; he spent too much time in the sun-Fredero lifted his hands in a propitiary benediction at the thought-and too little with the sword, too little upon the horse, too little with the war council that was built beneath his feet. Danger, there.

He bowed his head a moment, and said a customary, solitary prayer; it was no plea, of course, for the Lord did not listen to the pleas of men. Rather it was a promise, a form of negotiation.