Skirmish: A House War Novel Read Online Free PDF

rise. Soon, you will see the ancient waken from its slumber; I do not know what form it will take.”

    She caught his elbow in one hand; he had settled enough that it was almost safe to do so. “How long?” she whispered. “Decades? Years? Months?”

    He reached out and gently lifted her chin with the tips of his fingers; her eyes widened. He had not touched her in this fashion for many, many years. “Perhaps a decade, Sigurne. But I feel it will be less—much less.”

    “You do not fear it.”

    “No. Never.” He smiled, but the smile was no longer sharp and cold. It was worse; it was tinged with pity. “I would hurry it, if I could, Sigurne; you have few years left, and if you die, you will never see what unfolds.”

    “I would never see it at all, if it were within my power.”

    “Yes. That is the strange and confounding truth about you; you comprehend beauty; you understand those things that are truly terrible; you have even raised hand against them. But you deny your own desire.”

    She shook her head and lifted her chin further, breaking the contact. “I have many, many desires, Meralonne. I do not deny that power is compelling; I never have. But it is simply one desire, one reaction.” She made her way to the edge of the Tower and looked down, to the web of light that the streets below were gradually becoming. “There is beauty in birth, and beauty in life, even mortal life, which passes so quickly. Perhaps especially in mortal life; one has to stop, to witness, or the moment is gone; it cannot be captured or lengthened for eternity.

    “There is beauty in peace, Meralonne, and you will never know it. But I know it.”

    “That beauty, if I grant you its existence, is exceptionally fragile.”

    “Yes. But the desire to protect the fragile is strong.”

    “I admit that I have never fully understood why you would work so hard, and so thanklessly, to give to others what you yourself will never have.”

    She nodded. “I desire power, Meralonne, because it gives me the illusion that I have the ability to protect others.”

    “It is not entirely illusion.”

    “No, perhaps not. But it is not absolute; even were I a god, I would face failure, at least from time to time.”

    “And yet you continue.”

    She lifted her chin and gazed for a moment at the moons. It was easier, sometimes, to speak to him when she could not see his face. “Yes. I am not what I was. Nor am I
Kialli
. My memory is not perfect. My rage is not eternal. Even pain that I swore I would never forget has dimmed with time. One failure is not enough—although I admit it comes close when the days are dark—to become all that I see or know.

    “It is what the young forget: one failure does not render all past success—or future success—meaningless. It is only if we surrender to despair that we fail in perpetuity, because we cease to try at all.”

    “And is all of your life to be that struggle?”

    “Has not all of yours been?”

    He was utterly silent for a full minute; she could not even hear the sound of his breath. The wind was gone.

    She waited, as she had waited a handful of times before, and was rewarded by the sound of a brief, dry chuckle. Her own expression did not change as she turned to face him.

    There he stood: his familiar robes dusty with travel, his hair once again a straight fall down his back, his sword absent. “Sigurne, you are a marvel. It is a growing wonder to me that men can look at you and see only your age.”

    “And not a young girl’s heart, APhaniel? Not my inner beauty?” She winced.

    “You have never had a young girl’s heart; it is the lack that makes you so luminescent.” He bowed. “I will tell you this, for I must return to the generals and the army; they will harry me if I am absent for too long, and I am less inclined to be either patient or subservient these days. Guard Jewel Markess. Guard her well. She has a role to play in this that I cannot clearly see, and if