Read Michelle West - The Sun Sword 03 - The Shining Court for Free Online Page B

then she calls my name.
    "I know I'm dead. She's just so compelling, I'm not sure I care. But then he speaks, I mean, the man who's been following me. He says, 'Only give me the word, and I will save you.'
    "He steps forward. And as he does, the dead pile up at his back. Only this time, I can hear them screaming; I can see them falling; I can see the shadows swallowing them whole. It makes him stronger. It feeds him.
    "I tell him to stop. I tell him to
stop
. And she—she rides in." The lamplight flickered. She stared at it, into its heart. "The bodies appear to either side of her, as if they're some sort of afterthought, as if they're just dust from the road.
    "And then he says, 'Do not challenge me.'
    "She says, 'I have her name.'
    "He says, 'The name gives you the right to combat, but it is power that decides her fate.'
    "And she waves her hand, her unmailed, pale hand, and the land to either side of the road we're standing on is suddenly turned to desert; it falls away. Behind her, behind the body of her host, is a lake that glitters like diamond; cold, beautiful. She says, 'These lands were my lands, and I mark them still. What was given was given, and thanks are offered and my ceremonies performed, however weak those have become.'
    "And he says, 'I will pass through, and I will take what I have claimed.' "
    "Jay?"
    "He lifts his helm then."
    She turned in her chair.
    1
    Her domicis stiffened in the silent kitchen.
    "Avandar?"
    "Yes."
    "It was you."
    He nodded. Stepped back.
    It was Teller who said quietly, "It isn't finished yet."
    The domicis lifted a dark brow.
    "No," Jewel said softly. "It isn't. He takes two steps forward. More dead. I tell him to stop. She stops as well. There's movement from the North—and as they look North, their faces are lit with a sudden light; red light, bright light. It seems to go on forever.
    "A voice speaks out of that light.
    "It says, 'This world is mine, and all deaths serve my purpose.'
    "And then," she said softly, no longer looking at domicis or lamplight—or anything at all—"the killing starts.
    "I'm in the middle of it; it's suddenly real. There are faceless people running around screaming in terror; there are dying children, dying women, dying men. They become dead so quickly they slip through my fingers, but if I don't sift through the dying, I won't find them in time.
    "And that's why I'm there. To find them."
    "To find who?"
    "I don't know.
I don't know
. I've ridden this dream out to its end eight times, and I don't know what it is I'm supposed to know. I only know that I can't fail, or we all—"
    Teller put the quill down. Rose. "Jay?" he asked quietly.
    She looked across the table at him. Reached out with a shaking hand. "No."
    "But we—"
    "No."
    "What's going on?" Carver's voice. Strained.
    "She's leaving," Teller said quietly. "And she doesn't intend on taking any of us with her when she goes."
    Moonlight. Darklight, nadir at its strength.
    Why was it that she always came to be here when the darkness was strongest? She knelt. She was too weak to stand. The truth. The dead weren't faceless.
    Teller knew. She was certain that no one else did.
    "I can't do this," she said into the night, into the clarity of emptiness. Avandar had not even contested her desire to visit the shrine without him; although he hovered in the distance, he had chosen to retreat into a privacy as solid as any she could impose upon herself.
    But that was acceptable to her. She knew that he understood her dream far better than he wanted to.
Knew
it. Did not choose to question him. She had her own ghosts, her own demons, her own guilty secrets.
    "I can't do this," she said again.
    "Then why," he replied, answering at last, "does Teller know that you're leaving?"
    She turned, putting the altar firmly behind her.
    In the moonlight, pale and thin though it was, she recognized the face he had chosen to wear. Teller's.
    "I wish you wouldn't do that."
    His eyes were like moonlight. "Why have you come,