"Four rays in the rising sun."

"Good. He serves the Tor'agar Carlos kai di'Morgana."

"Who is allowed to wear six rays above the rising sun."

"Better." The Serra's smile was soft and almost openly affectionate-a rare public display. But it was hard, with Lissa, to be anything less. "And he serves in turn?"

"The Tyr' agnate..."

"It is a good guess," she said softly, for it was, but Raverra, of the five Terreans, had no Tyr'agnate; it was the heartland, and it was ruled by the Tyr'agar. "But in this case, the Tyr'agar himself is their liege lord." She did not add, but could have, that his crest was everywhere in evidence within the city of the Tor Leonne, and the Tor Leonne proper: the sun ascendant, with ten full, distinct rays. There were only two men in the whole of the Dominion who were privileged to wear that rank.

The man who ruled the Radann, the warriors of the Lord. And the man who ruled the Dominion.

Crestfallen, Lissa nodded, but her smile brightened as the clansmen settled into the mournful musicality of the samisen's long notes. "Na'dio!" she whispered.

Yes.

Serra Diora di'Marano, halfway between four and five, was slowly and gravely rising. Her porcelain face had not once slipped in unbecoming smile; of all the children who had sought the comfort of her fan-signal, Diora had not once, this concert, been among them. It was because of her extraordinary ability to retain her sense of an occasion's gravity that Serra Teresa had chosen her own niece to sing the last of this cycle: The song of the Sun Sword.

She felt the cold; it was sharp and sudden, like the wound a clean blade leaves.

Her hands were slightly whiter around the knuckle as she lifted the fan.

"Oh, Teresa," Lissa said, honorific forgotten again as she gazed upon the child that meant more to her than almost anyone else in the harem. "Look at her."

Serra Teresa could see nothing else. This slender-boned, high-cheeked, large-eyed child was perfect. Her mother's daughter. Dark hair fell, unfettered by the pearls and pins, by the braids and twists, that graced an adult's. She wore a white sari, edged in the same gold embroidery that Serra Teresa's more elaborate silks showed. Her hair touched her cheeks like a shadow as she bowed to the quiet audience, and a whisper shook the clansmen as they saw, for the first time, the child of the Serra Alora en'Marano. Her brother's wife.

Alora. Four years dead, and already the shadows of her pa.s.sing could be seen-could be felt-in the face of her child.

Unease? No.

Value nothing too highly, especially not your own life, Na'tere. Her grandfather's voice, stretching out from a past that was almost beyond memory's grip.

Why?

Because it will make a coward of you. A coward. Only an oathbreaker committed a graver crime -although there were many who would argue that fear was the more unmanning of the two.

Care too much, and you lose the power to act because every action you take will cause a loss. Every one. He was dead now, dust; he had failed in the clan test because he had been too proud to acknowledge that he could no longer ride with the riders. And he was the only man in the clan Marano who called her Na'tere after she reached the age of five.

And even at five years old, she had not been naive enough to think that he cared so much about her, although she felt secure in his indulgence, for she was a girl. A girl.

A boy, and she could have ruled Marano; she knew it, and thought it without much rancor; it was a truth written upon wind, and by wind scattered.

Serra Teresa was thirty-two years old. Unmarried and childless, she saw to the harem of her brother, Ser Sendari par di'Marano. Adano, the kai of the clan, had a living wife, and no need of his sister's aid. At least, she thought grimly, not in the affairs of the harem. With her brothers, she had a polite and reserved relationship; they served the same interests, no more and no less.

She had had no suitors-at least, so Sendari and Adano claimed. She knew better, of course, but knew also that no suitor was grand enough to take her from the clan Marano, whether she wished it or no. So. As a woman, she had no place in the rulership of the clan; unmarried, she had no husband, no children and sister-wives of her own to guide and instruct and protect. She existed, like something outside of the natural unfolding of time, for poets to make a mystery of.

What did she have?

Loyalty to the clan, of course. Loyalty to the two men who protected her from the life she might otherwise have led. Loyalty to Sendari's harem, and even affection for some of the sub-wives she herself had chosen for her brother's use. But care? No. She had listened to her grandfather well, and the event of his death had driven home the truth of his words. A valuable lesson. Very little of the activities that defined her life had the ability to move her.

As if in denial of that, the sun flashed bright across her hand. She looked down to see it: finely crafted, so beautiful in design, so expensively jeweled, that it should have been a husband's morning-gift. A ring. Sendari had asked her once where that ring had come from, and she had demurred; Adano had not even noticed. The only woman who would have answered was dead four years and more, in childbirth, or so it was said.

Diora was Alora's child.

Serra Teresa di'Marano listened, breath held, as her heart kept an awkward, uneven time to the samisen strings. And then, as Diora di'Marano began to sing in her clear, soft voice, she froze completely.

There was a strength in her voice that no child-no natural child-could ever have. It wasn't possible; it shouldn't have been possible. Diora-her Na'dio-was only four.

But like knew like, and in that instant, she knew that her niece, the child that she had never had, and would never have, bore the curse.

Serra Teresa di'Marano was afraid, and she had named the fear.

She found Sendari by the Lady's shrine. The moon's face was almost full in the clear night sky on the end of this first day of the Festival. He was not the man she wanted to see-or rather, she wished to see no men at all, and of them, he the least. Her private supplication to the dead and the lost could not be spoken in his presence, and she wished to be free of the words, even if only the Lady and the open sky could catch them.

But she was patient, the Serra Teresa; she knew how to wait.

"Serra Teresa," Ser Sendari said, bowing very low.

"Ser Sendari." It was always thus with them, and perhaps it was better so; false affection, or worse, true affection, weakened one. Had they not both learned the truth of that, time and again? She bowed in return, and held the bow, not grudging him the respect. Although he was two years her junior, and Adano four her senior, she favored Sendari.

He was, after all, following the path of the Wise. The Sword of Knowledge had opened its doors to his study, and he had become a blade in their service; he missed only the final tempering, the edge gained by the test of fire. Already he had learned to twist elemental fire to his use; to call it to hand, and to light the lamps and the contemplation fires.

"What brings you to the shrine this eve?"

"Festival night," she replied. "It is the custom."

He glanced around as if to make a point; the pavilion was empty.

But she did not offer him another explanation, and he did not demand it; what good would it do?

She could not be made to answer a question that she did not wish to answer.

He had night thoughts of his own, perhaps. Sendari had always been a deeper man than most.

A strong breeze blew through the pavilion, scattering the shadowed petals that lay there like a

fragrant blanket.

An echo of the wind's voice, the wind's touch. So much had been taken from them.

"I heard that Diora acquitted herself well this day."

Was there a question beneath those words, and was it sharper than Sendari's wont? Or was it

imagination, was it her own fear? "Your daughter sang well."

"I heard that the Tyr of Oerta himself offered her a blossom from the height of the Tor Leonne's trees." "That," she said, the smoothness of her voice edged with a rare severity, "was exaggeration. I hope you did not hear this from a source you consider reliable." "It was not garnered from any of my sources," he replied. Silence, heavy, between them. Then, "I will take the test of the Sword two days after the Festival, before the Lady turns her face into shadow again. I will face the fire of the sword-sworn, and I will prove myself equal to their power." His smile was caught by the round gla.s.s lamps that quartered the shrine as it fell into her silence. "I have surprised you, Serra Teresa." "Yes," she said softly; there was no point in lying. He knew it, and she, and there were no other witnesses to keep count. "And angered you."

She did not answer him; her anger was his guess, and if it was shrewd-if it was, indeed, correct -he did not have to hear it from her lips. But she knew, then, why he waited by the Lady's shrine. It was for her, may the wind take him.

The ring on her finger was cool; she gripped it a little too tightly, hiding the hand in the submissive posture and hoping that he would not notice. But he was Ser Sendari; he noticed much. Too much.

"She does not look much like her mother."

"Appearance," Serra Teresa replied, "is all guile; the Lady's mask. What lies beneath, only time will tell."

"Serra Teresa," he said gravely, turning his face to the moon, "you will speak freely; you do not need to wait upon my questions or my prompting; I do not require you to hamper your speech to suit mine."

"You mean, for this evening," she said, and if there was a trace of bitterness in the words, he did her the grace of ignoring them. "I am, after all, only a Serra."

"You are Serra Teresa di'Marano," her brother replied coldly, "and we both know what that means."

A threat? She met it without flinching. What did it matter, after all? Sendari was par, not kai, the younger brother, not the oldest one-and her life was thus not his to end. Only Adano had that privilege, and Adano had not felt the need to travel to the Tor for the Festival of the Moon. Once a year-for the Festival of the Sun-was enough.

She did not reply, and at length he spoke.

"Yes," he said softly. "Even that vow, I will break." His face was grave as he turned to her. "I have surprised you again, Serra Teresa."

"Yes." She bowed. "What will become of Diora if you fail the test?"

"She will go to Adano."

"Adano has daughters of his own; three-and not one of them is a match for Diora, in either beauty or ability. And, I believe, he will soon have two sons."

"Does it matter? I have no other issue; she has no brothers to protect her. She will go to Adano, and he will do as he will do. If I fail. And I do not intend to fail."

"Have you been at a testing before?"

"No." He knew that she knew the answer well enough; no one who did not, by right of combat, wear the Sword of Knowledge, had seen the testing. He lifted a hand. "I know how few survive, Serra Teresa."

"And you will take this risk?"

Silence.

"Under the Festival Moon," Teresa whispered, turning to face her brother.

"No-now, Teresa."

She let the anger show then, and it was clear and cold, like the lake of the Tor Leonne. "You gave

her your word."

"Alora?" He smiled softly. "A third time, sister. A third time, you have been caught off guard.

And if I, a mere supplicant, can surprise Serra Teresa three times in the s.p.a.ce of an hour, can I

not surprise the addled and arrogant minds of the Wise? I will be Widan Sendari by sun's rise of the third day."Alora. He had not spoken her name aloud for over four years. It was understood, between them, that the name of

Serra Alora en'Marano died when she had, her head cradled in Teresa's arms, her babe mewling pathetically for food. Sendari allowed no mention of her.We both took oaths, she thought, anger warming the surprise. "It was an oath given to a woman,"

she said, each word cold and hard. "You are not strictly honor-bound to keep it."

His face showed her nothing, nothing at all. But he had been expecting this, and she, she was still off guard, as if she were no more than a girl on this moonful night.

"It was given to a wife," he answered. "Why do we argue, Serra?"

"Why indeed? You are Ser Sendari, and you will meet the test of the Sword whether I will it or no -a dead woman's words notwithstanding."

"And you," he said, the words as sharp as hers were cold, "will protect my child if I fail the test. You have the means to do it, Teresa, and you will do it." He paused. "Or does the breaking of one oath warrant the breaking of another?"

She said nothing to that; nothing at all. "I wish you the Lady's favor and the Lord's strength," she said, bowing very low. She turned, then.

"We both loved her," Sendari said, as if he could not resist a fourth strike at the heart of the woman who was his sister. "And we have both paid."

She acknowledged the truth of that in silence, her hand around the ring that Alora had given her to bind her to the oaths they had sworn years before the birth of Diora.

So be it, she thought, as the anger took root. I will protect my niece from everything, Sendari. I will give her the life that was denied me, even if it does not serve Marano's interests.

Because I swore to protect Alora's child.

Because I so swore.

There was worse news to come.

"Teresa!"