Free Michelle West - Sun Sword 01 - The Broken Crown by sun sword

harem, that the Serras were
only a little more free, and only a little more honored, than the
serafs themselves. The will of the Lord whose waters were so sweet.
    "Why?"
    "Because you have haunted my dreams for three nights. Three
nights beneath the Lady's Moon, I have dreamed of the death of the
Havalla Voyani—and more, the death of the Dominion." She drew breath;
her lips thinned as if she were attempting to hold the words back. No
Voyani woman spoke her mind so freely to strangers—not for free. And
among the Voyani, Yollana was more mysterious than any.
    "Did you have these dreams," Ashaf asked, as if the revelation
were as natural as the turn of seasons in the valley that had been home
for the only parts of her life that she cared to remember, "before you
journeyed to the Tor Leonne? I have not heard that the Tyr'agar freely
grants the Voyani permission to take what the lake holds."
    "Yes," Yollana said starkly. "Three nights." She moved then,
unbending at the knee and rising as if freedom of action could soothe
her.
    "You saw me."
    "I saw you."
    "Where?"
    Yollana averted her gaze and did not speak.
    "Yollana."
    "I will not lie to you this eve. I will never lie to you
again." She fell silent, and it was a moment before Ashaf realized that
Yollana did not intend to answer. It seemed to her, as she watched the
Voyani woman, that Yollana's actions were a mixture of nervousness and,
oddly, pity. She should have felt fear, but she felt almost nothing.
Almost.
    "Why have you come?" she said, asking for the third time,
realizing as the words left her lips that the third time was the
significant one.
    "To bring you this water," Yollana replied, quietly placing
the skin upon Ashaf's humble table. "The Havalla Voyani will be in no
one's debt."
    The answer made no sense, but the set of Yollana's lips, the
shadowed lines across her brow, made it clear that she would answer no
questions about such a debt. They stood a moment in silence, and then
Yollana shook her head, sending graying curls across the curves of her
face, her shoulders. "You will forgive me," she said, almost wry in
tone. "But I am not a gentle woman. Not a sympathetic one. I am not
good at these offers, these gestures. I raised Voyani; I define what
the Havalla are." She reached into the folds of her shirt and pulled
something from between her breasts. As she lifted it, it caught the
light and sent it out in a fan of intense color.
    "Take this," Yollana said, and if there was a request in the
two words, she hid it well. "Take this, and wear it. Travel this
village, these lands. Speak to the people who make this your home.
Visit your graves, your fields, your hills; find the shade in your
forest, the cooling waters in your brook and small river." She let it
fall; Ashaf gasped until she saw the glittering chain that stopped it
from reaching ground. A necklace or a pendant of some sort.
    She reached out an open palm, and Yollana carefully dropped
the stone—for it was a stone, a clear one, like a diamond that would
beggar even a Tyr—into her hand. At once, it flared with a deep, blue
light; the light ran the length of her arm, shrouding it.
    Magic.
    "What—what does it do?" Her voice was, momentarily, a girl's
voice—the girl that she had thought long gone. Dreamer. Seeker of
wonder.
    "It is the Lady's magic," Yollana replied, "not the Lord's. It
will not protect you; it will not defend you. Where a blade is raised
or spell is thrown, you will find no solace in it."
    Ashaf smiled wryly. "I did not ask you what it wasn't. I asked
you what it is."
    "It is a keeper," Yollana said. "Of memory. Of affection. Of
place. Wear it, as I have told you to wear it, and it will take some of
what you feel and hold it within depths that you cannot even imagine.
Wear it, and you will feel exactly the peace or the joy or the
quiet—yes, or the sorrow—that you felt when you first donned it."
    "Why?"
    "It is a piece of home," Yollana replied gravely. "Many of the
Voyani women