Oracle: The House War: Book Six (17 page)

She stumbled as the floor once again shuddered. Matteos caught her as she lifted one hand—and her chin—and spoke. Her lips were less than twelve inches from his ear, but he could not hear a single syllable.

Meralonne
, he thought,
what are you doing? What have you done? What are you becoming?
Sigurne was afraid. Sigurne, who was cautious, but almost fearless, was afraid.

 • • • 

The platinum-haired mage entered the back halls. His eyes were luminescent silver, his hair a straight, undisturbed fall of white. The eyes narrowed.

“Can you bespeak the earth?” Sigurne asked.

“Not easily, and not yet; it is waking—but the waking of the earth was always fraught, and the
Kialli
voices that reach it will engender rage, not service.”

“Can you kill the demon who is attempting to wake the earth before he fully succeeds?”

The cool glance he now cast at his theoretical superior was the only answer he offered; silence fell.

It was broken by a roar of bestial fury. The floors shook. The aftershock of roar was scream—several screams. Matteos was surprised; he had thought, had expected, that the merchants would be dead. They weren’t. Or rather, not all of them were.

That would galvanize Sigurne. It always had. But he saw no like relief or surprise on her face. And he remembered Henden, then. Henden in the year 410. There had been no quick deaths, no merciful deaths, until the end.

Those weeks had been a living nightmare, and he felt that he had turned a corner into that landscape again.

“Sigurne,” Meralonne said. He glanced at Matteos. “You know what you must do.”

“You know why I have not.”

Meralonne nodded. His sword was so painfully bright, Matteos squinted and looked away. “The time is coming. What do you fear?”

“He will hear.”

“The god you do not name?”

“Yes.”

“It is not the god you will have to fear if the earth is unleashed. The god, in this action, has surrendered all hope of ruling this city. Those who sleep will not be destroyed by so small a thing as the earth’s displeasure—even sleeping, they are not at risk. Not in that way. The risk to you is twofold: the earth can destroy this fragile city in its anger, and it will wake in rage—or the earth can do what none have yet done: it can wake the Sleepers.

“And the rage of the Sleepers guarantees the destruction of all you have built.”

“And the rage of a distant god?”

“Distant is the important word, there. Do what you must. Make your decision.” He turned away; two strides carried him half the length of a long, empty hall. But he turned back. “Matteos.”

Things must be grim indeed if Meralonne addressed him by name. “APhaniel.”

“She will listen to voices that none of the magi can hear. They will not, as she fears, hear her. That was never the danger. I leave her safety in your hands.”

The reply Matteos should have made died on his tongue. He meant to tell Meralonne that Sigurne needed neither safety nor protection, because that had always been true. But life was not static. Sigurne was alive.

“Meralonne,” she said, before he turned again.

“Guildmaster?”

“I want the merchants alive.”

“They are dying even now.”

“Yes. Do not add to the numbers of the dead where it can at all be prevented.”

“Very well. The architectural stability of the building itself?”

“When buildings like this one collapse, people die.”

He nodded again, and left them. With him went the harsh, cold light of his blade, and the narrowed edges of his eyes. But Matteos had seen the sharp, upward curve of his lips; the slender edge of smile that adorned them seemed almost predatory.

 • • • 

Sigurne did not follow.

Instead, she sank to her knees, the motion deliberate. Her hands, she set immediately against the flat, stone wall. Her lips moved, and as they did, a demon roared again; the echoes of his voice shook the floor. She did not attempt to repeat her words; she swallowed them, closed her eyes, and leaned all of her weight into her hands.

Matteos felt the ground move again. He heard the roar of a demon shift in tone and timbre as it shouted a single name:
Illaraphaniel
.

He did not hear Meralonne’s reply. He heard shouts. He heard screams. But through them all, he saw Sigurne. In the end, he did what she did not: he cast a shield around them both. He concentrated on floor and wall—he trusted neither. Meralonne unleashed could destroy half the building without a second thought. Sigurne had given clear instructions—but combat, for the mage, was its own imperative.

Sigurne, he thought, what are you doing?

“Do not speak,” she whispered. Her hands trembled. “I must
listen
.”

He was afraid he knew. He had never asked her about her life in the North, although he knew of it. Rumor, gossip, angry whispers about hypocrisy, often filled the halls in the absence of the guildmaster. But the Kings trusted Sigurne. Matteos trusted her.

He quieted his growing unease as he always had: by guarding her exposed back. He understood the significance of the wild earth, here. What he did not understand was how she meant to thwart it. What he did not understand was why Meralonne expected that she
could
.

As one mage-born, Matteos could see magic. He could see it as color, as a pale nimbus. Every school of magic, every discipline, had a telltale color associated with its use. He could sense magic. He could, with effort, detect it, if the magic were subtle or faint.

The magic Sigurne now used was colorless. Had he relied on vision alone, he would have said she used none. But without effort, he felt the surge of it; he felt the sudden shift of
power
. Sigurne huddled against the wall, hands extended and white, as if with strain; she bent, her head falling, her eyes closed.

He wanted to catch her. To carry her. To lift her and remove her from this place. And he wanted, simultaneously, to step back, to step away, to shield himself and protect himself from what must surely follow. He had never followed Sigurne because she was weak; he had never admired her because she required protection from the consequences of her actions. She required only support when the actions required were difficult and fraught—and even then, the support she accepted was minimal.

Sigurne
.

The demon’s voice filled the hall; he was no longer roaring. Matteos did not understand the words he shouted, but knew them for speech.

Sigurne’s eyes snapped open; she pushed herself back from the wall, her hands shaking. “I am done for the moment—let us find what survives of the membership of the Merchants’ Guild.”

Breeze moved down the hall; tugging at the hem of both of their cloaks. “Meralonne,” she said, in a voice too soft to be heard. “I have bought time—but in truth, not much. If you do not finish this fight quickly, it will be for naught.”

Matteos glanced at her, and understood, as she headed grimly down the hall toward the assembly room, that whatever she had done required power, and she was spending it. He took no joy in watching the savagery of Meralonne at war; he displayed an almost unholy delight in the act of killing. But just this once, he was grateful.

Or would be, if Meralonne heard Sigurne and understood: she had only the time her power granted her, and her power—unlike Meralonne’s—was not limitless, and it was never spent without cost.

 • • • 

“Matteos, husband your power.”

Matteos nodded. It was a nod that acknowledged receipt of a command, but did not imply obedience. “I do not trust these floors,” he told her. It was explanation for the spell he had cast; if the floors gave way, they—Sigurne and Matteos—would not fall. “There is smoke in the distance.”

Demons summoned fire; they both knew it. If much of the building was of stone, parts of it were not, and wood burned swiftly when confronted with magical fire. Stone, on the other hand, did melt.

Her lips pursed; she said nothing else. Her expression was both weary and distant: it was as if most of her thought, most of her attention, was elsewhere. This Sigurne, he had seldom seen. In fact, he had only seen her a handful of times—and each and every one involved Meralonne APhaniel.

 • • • 

There was no longer a door between the great hall and the back halls. There had been; splinters and twisted brass were strewn across the floor on either side of its frame. So, Matteos thought, with some disgust, were large chunks of stone. If this were a bearing wall, he had just shortened the time they had to effect a rescue—and from the screams and the sobs growing in volume in the distance, rescue was not yet impossible.

Sigurne frowned. “Did I not tell him that he was not to destroy the building?”

“Not in so many words, no.” Matteos’ wards flared to life. “How much time do we have?”

Sigurne stepped around him as he paused at the opening destruction had left. She looked up. Matteos did not; the merchants were not in the air. Meralonne was, of course. Meralonne and chunks of debris. The debris itself would kill if it landed in the wrong place.

Matteos cast. Gray light rolled across the debris-strewn floor like a carpet. Orange light encased them both with a harsh brightness that implied fire.

“How many?” she asked. She did not wait for an answer. Where Matteos’ protections were a bright translucent orange, the spell Sigurne now cast was gold; it gilded the former.

“A dozen are dead,” Matteos said, frowning. “A dozen are dying.”

“The rest?”

“Alive. Injured, but alive.” He glanced at her. “You are not surprised.”

“No. Demons are not known for granting quick and painless deaths where they have any other option. I do not believe they thought to be disturbed before the earth rose. They do not hunt in the city; if they hunt at all—and they must—they are kept on a very tight leash. This would have been a gift to them.

“We must hurry,” she added. “They intended to kill all of the merchants present. Now that they know we are here, any sustenance granted from pain and torture is secondary.” She did not need to tell him that the demonic ability to kill the remaining survivors was vastly larger than their ability to protect them.

 • • • 

The great hall in the guildhall was two stories in height, the ceiling that capped it, rounded. The Order of Knowledge boasted only two rooms that approached this one in size.

Matteos braced the crumbling stone of the wall that had once contained the servants’ entrance and exit. The entrance through which the merchants had come was not, of course, the one that Matteos and Sigurne had followed—but the doors that they’d entered were closed. They were also standing. From this distance, Matteos could see that they were magically protected. They might also be barred; he hadn’t the time to waste ascertaining that.

Most of the merchants—those who survived—were huddled against the walls of the great room, or beneath its tables. Some were huddled protectively over those who had fallen; it was folly, of course.

But folly was part of humanity, and there was, in this reckless and hopeless attempt to come to the aid of friends—or even strangers—something they would spend the rest of their life attempting to preserve.

“Matteos.”

He nodded. He knew her. He knew what she wanted of him. The demon was occupied with Meralonne APhaniel; Meralonne could not afford to be distracted. Matteos glanced up; the familiar brilliance of blue sword met the sharp edge of burning red in midair; the impact drove the combatants apart. They did not stop; their trajectories were decided by air, by fire, by power. Driven back, they traveled in an arc, the lowest and highest points the moment at which they pivoted, gaining traction in a way that no one mortal could.

They spoke in a language that sounded familiar; the words, however, were taken by wind and rock and the sharp, harsh crackle of flame.

Fire.

It devoured tables in an instant; the merchants screamed as they realized their slender protections were gone. Gone as well were tablecloths, pitchers. Shards of broken crystal littered the floor; they had already drawn blood.

Sigurne gestured then.

The fires banked. In any other circumstance, Matteos would have turned to stare. The merchants couldn’t know that magical fires differed greatly in nature. They couldn’t be expected to understand the difference between wild, elemental flame and the fires the magi could produce; death was death, after all.

But Matteos knew. Sigurne knew. What the demons summoned was no simple artifact of power; it had will. It had voice. It had a life of its own. Wild elements were lore, legend; only one mortal voice in recent history could be heard by them at all.

She was gone. The ancient wilds had swallowed her whole; no one—not even the Kings—knew if she would return. And in her absence, the demons had attacked. In her absence, they chose to summon the wild earth.

In her absence, Sigurne had lessened their impact. Sigurne had somehow managed to forestall the waking of the earth. The fires did not vanish. But they burned less wildly.

“It will not last,” Sigurne said, as if she could hear what he did not put into words. She cast again—and this time, there was blessed familiarity in the spell. Light—magelight—spread across one section of the floor, in a perfect, glowing line, the width of two men standing—albeit tightly—abreast.

She lifted her chin, and as she did, raised her voice, projecting it into the room. She was loud, clear, and unstoppable; her words cut through sobs and shouts, swamping whimpers and even screams.

 • • • 

“Follow the path that appears on the floor in front of you. Those who can walk, help those too injured. We do not have much time.” She extended a shield of protection above the path.

Sigurne could sound calm and harmless at the heart of a storm. Even this one. Her glance grazed the characteristic greatcoat of Loren; the merchant had lost the whole of his left arm, and lay unmoving and wide-eyed in his own blood, one of two dozen such bodies.

Some of the living hovered over the corpses, shouting their names in a series of repetitive, cascading syllables that denied not death, but truth. Sigurne understood, and understood further that too many of these people were bereft of their normal good sense.