Michelle West - The Sun Sword 02 - The Uncrowned King by The Uncrowned King Read Free Book Online Page A

I have ever visited. Not for the same things, not precisely. But yes. In the Dominion, it is more gracefully hidden. A family must enter— with small fee—the name of their chosen contender or contenders. The Radann perform the office that these magistrates perform here, and they do it within the confines of their temples. They also," he added, "have the good grace to do so where the rest of us are not forced to bear witness.
    "You must excuse me. Few of my students speak Weston well enough to answer these questions—and almost all of them, without exception, take poorly to being asked them."
    Aidan was left alone.
    No one chose to question his right to be here; he obviously carried no sword, so he wasn't trying to sneak in as a contender. He stared at his feet, feeling his size and lack of weight, and almost despising both.
    And because his vision was so turned inward, and unpleasantly at that, there was very little to distract him from one of his favorite sounds. Metal. Metal. The clash of weapons. He lifted his head. For the most part—or so he had been told—the men who had come to trial came to prove they had swords, but they were tested in this first round, with wooden swords. Practice blades. They were required to wear their armor, to show their bows, but steel and steel for such a test as this was rare.
    He'd wondered about it, because the old man's students certainly used real swords. And perhaps what his Da said wasn't true. Wouldn't be the first time, although it would be the first time he'd been wrong about the Challenge!
    He thought the sounds of fighting would stop, but they didn't.
    and he couldn't help himself. He was carried by them as if by music; to Aidan, they were. They had their own timing, their own distinct feel, and as he approached them, as the sounds grew louder, as the bodies in front of him became sparser and sparser still, he felt the hair on his neck stand on end.
    The coliseum itself was huge, and it was mostly empty—those were the rules—but attendants, such as he, were allowed to sit and bear witness to the fairness of the trial's many judges. He was aware of the seats, but he did not take one; he walked across the ringed floor to the railing that separated him from the two men who now fought in the circle's center.
    A flag was flying under the open sky, and beneath it, a banner had been driven into dirt. He did not recognize it immediately because he was not familiar with banners that didn't have something common, like bread, a keg, or a lute sewn across them, but when he saw the gold glinting off the full height sun, when he saw the golden curve of the sword beneath it, he knew that this man was a foreigner.
    He crept closer, then froze.
    There were two men. He recognized one of them.
    Commander Sivari.
    The other, he had never seen before in his life—but he would remember the grim set of his face, the dark, straight flat of hair pulled back and bound very, very tight. He wore no helm. His Da would have said that was the last act of a young idiot, the lack of helm.
    But Aidan knew, watching him, that it was more than that. He
moved
. He did not falter, not once. The sun caught his blade, his hair, the curve of his armor; he and the Commander seemed to be, in this dance, in another place entirely. A place where heat and the sea-heavy air could only watch, as Aidan did: without touching.
    He did not hear the footsteps at his back, although they were heavy, and there were many of them. He did not see the old man appear at his side. But he heard the old man's voice because the old man was watching these two through the same window that Aidan was.
    "Why do you watch him, boy?"
    Aidan felt a curious resentment—a muted echo of the same resentment that he had felt when the old man had asked a similar question the day before. He wanted to
see
this. He knew that he would never, never have this chance again. To watch even the others—even the two best of the old man's students—wasn't