Oracle: The House War: Book Six (24 page)

Avandar failed to reply, but Shadow said
ugly
very, very loudly.

“Your companions,” Kallandras said, his voice warm with amusement, “are interesting.”

“Yessss,” Shadow said, padding toward the bard. “
We’re
not
boring.
”

“No,” was the grave reply. “You are certainly not that. Tell me, do you recognize this hall?”

“
May
be.”

“That generally means no,” Jewel cut in. Shadow hissed. “The cats aren’t terribly good at admitting there’s anything in the world they don’t know.”

“
We
don’t know how to be
stupid
,” Snow informed the bard. He growled at Night, took a running leap, and pushed himself off the cold stone floor, toward the ceiling’s height.

“Your point is well taken,” the domicis told Jewel. He gestured and light flew toward the ceiling, revealing color as if it were painting over the darkness with wide, swift strokes. She had seen this effect once, half a lifetime ago.

“Why don’t you ask
him
if he knows where we
are?
” Shadow asked. He batted Avandar with a wing, but not with any force; the domicis failed to move.

“My apologies, Shadow,” was Kallandras’ grave reply. “Avandar is mortal, if in unusual circumstances; you and your brethren are not. You are ancient and wild, and if there is wisdom to be found while we walk these unknown byways, I thought it might be yours.”

Shadow looked deeply suspicious, but there was nothing at all in Kallandras’ tone that implied mockery or dishonesty. Then again, there wouldn’t be—he was a bard. His voice implied what he wanted it to imply. For this reason, Jewel knew that bards couldn’t be trusted, but it was almost impossible to view them with genuine suspicion.

Shadow tried harder. Even the great winged cat failed, in the end. His ego was his weakness, but it was in its fashion an endearing weakness.

“This,” he said, walking in predatory circles around the golden-haired bard, “is an
old
place. It used to be
noisy
, but it is quiet now. It has been quiet for
many, many
years. And
boring.
”

Jewel’s brows rose; Kallandras’ attention, however, was apparently absorbed by the cat. This annoyed Night and Snow enough that they joined Shadow, with predictable results: one bard, three large, hunting animals.

“What lived here?”

“
They
did.”

“Who?”

Shadow had turned his golden eyes on Celleriant. “
Her
people. In their youth.”

 • • • 

All eyes turned to Celleriant, some more covertly than others. He couldn’t fail to notice, but did; he was staring at the heights of distant ceiling. “Viandaran, do you recognize this?”

“No. If what Shadow says is accurate, it was abandoned before my time. I am surprised that it stands at all.”

Jewel frowned. “What do you mean?”

He glanced at Celleriant. Celleriant was statue-still for a long moment, before at last inclining his head. “It should have been destroyed,” he whispered, voice soft, face slowly lifting. “Viandaran, can you fly here?”

“I will not take that risk. We are not where we once were, and the elements are freer. If these halls have survived the long passage and the sundering, I do not wish to accidentally destroy them.”

“If they have survived,” Celleriant countered, as breeze began to lift the strands of his platinum hair, “they cannot be destroyed by so simple a thing as angry breeze. If this is, indeed, the deserted ruins of her ancient home, it is not on the ground that we will find our answers. Come. If we are to find our way to the Oracle, and the path begins here, I would see what I have heard about only in song and story.” He rose, pausing to glance down at the bard.

Jewel saw the ring on the bard’s thumb come to life; the diamond at its center became a thing of magic and light. He did not ask Jewel’s permission, as Celleriant had obliquely done, and she did not attempt to deny him. Terrick’s face was carved in frown as he watched the two, bard and Arianni Lord, rise. “I’m not much use,” he said, in slow Weston, “when my feet can’t touch the ground.”

Jewel shrugged. “I’m often not much use when my feet can. I don’t know where we’re going, Terrick. I know only that we have to arrive. I was given no map, and no instructions. But I had the choice of my companions. Can you ride?”

He nodded; it was just as controlled.

“Night.”

Night uttered a long-suffering, heavily put-upon sigh. “Why do
I
have to carry
him?
He’s
heavy.
”

“And you,” Jewel replied, “are strong.”

“We don’t require mounts,” Avandar told her. “Celleriant—and Kallandras, if I am not mistaken—are full capable of asking the wild air to carry us all.”

Jewel nodded. “But I will not be in the wild wind’s debt here, not yet. Not until it can’t be avoided. Snow, I want you to carry Adam.”

Snow rolled his expressive eyes. He didn’t have Shadow’s intense dislike of the young healer.

“Do I have to take the
stupid
one?” Shadow asked, glaring at Angel—who glared back.

“Yes,” Jewel replied, as he walked to Angel’s side and tried to knock him off his feet.

Avandar rose in folds of air. He was never going to ride a cat when any other option presented itself. Probably for the best; Jewel could imagine the cats dropping him out of spite.

She closed her eyes. Breeze ruffled hair that was, for once, unconfined by the strict demands of patrician fashion; she reached up absently to push it out of her eyes. She could have chosen to ride the cats; they were capable of carrying two.

But she understood that in this place, she had one mount. He had not stepped onto the Oracle’s path with the rest of her companions, but he was so much part of the hidden path, it wasn’t necessary. He had been felled by the Winter Queen, and he had been remade at her desire. There was no place that he could not walk, no path that he could not find, if it had once been touched by Ariane.

Winter King.

He came out of the darkness of the halls themselves, his hooves silent as he ran toward where she now stood, waiting. They did not touch the stone, and the wind that carried three of her companions—the three with the most obvious power—didn’t appear to touch him at all.

Her voice did. He came to a stop a yard in front of where she stood waiting. His eyes were the color of cat eyes in this place, but they were luminescent in a way that the cats’ were not.

Jewel
.

Do you know this place?

My feet know it,
was his soft reply. He knelt, lowering his great tines toward the cold, stone floor.

She climbed up on his back, and he rose. He was proof against the bitter chill of the still air. When she rode him, the cold no longer touched her. She thought she could sit astride him in the frozen Northern Wastes and be as warm.

Yes
, was his quiet reply. He did not give her warning when he leaped toward the heights, but he didn’t need to. While he was willing to carry her, she could not be dislodged by a simple thing like motion. Not even the wind at play could pull her from his back.

She understood, as they rose, that she was not the rider he wished to bear. She was mortal, and frail, and in his estimation, unacceptably weak; she had survived because the grandeur and beauty of true power had been drained from a world that was now fit only for livestock and insects.

Yes, Terafin. But not for much longer. The world wakes. What the hidden paths contained can no longer remain hidden, and things are waking whose sleep guaranteed the safety of your kind.

You’ve seen this.

Yes, in my travels. I have seen much.

He had not, she thought, seen the Winter Queen.

No.

She heard the longing in the single word; he made no attempt to hide it.

No,
he said again, as they reached the height of a ceiling that had seemed, from the ground, to be solid.
It is not a weakness that can be used against me; it defines all that I now am. The only command she gave was that I serve you.

But if any mortal—any
rider—
can find the solitary, hidden path that leads to her Court, it is you. She is not Winter Queen now; nor is she yet Summer Queen. She exists between these two states, and the world into which you have willingly stepped now holds its breath, waiting.

There are rules that govern the seasons of the world.

Summer or Winter in the lands in which the Winter King and the Wild Hunt were at home were not the seasons of Jewel’s childhood.
I don’t understand.

No. No more did I, when I lived as mortal man in the ancient cities.
Ariane
is the child of gods. Before the sundering, she was kin to them; she was a power that rivaled theirs. In some cases, it was the greater power; she was of the land, of the world. It heard her voice. Perhaps, in the time before her birth, the seasons were different.

But when she spoke, she spoke with the voice of the ancient and the wild; the things that lived at the heart of the elements. She bound herself to them, and the world leaped with joy in reply.

What she desires,
is desire.
What she loves
is
love
. It is not mortal love; it is not built on fear and the necessity for allegiance; it is not a matter of momentary whim, and it is not subject to time.

It is subject to her seasons. She
is
Winter, Terafin. She
is
Summer.

Which did not lessen Jewel’s confusion.

One cannot love Ariane and have room for any other love. Even in my existence, what I want is Ariane. Winter Queen. Summer. Just and only Ariane. When I am in your world, echoes of my earlier life distract me. I watch you play at politics, and I remember when those games were complex enough to devour my life if I was not cautious.

But I am not what I was then. I am hers. And while she commands it, I am yours in equal measure. Because she commanded it, I serve. I play no games with you; I do not stoop to lie. I offer you the advice that will serve your purpose.

But this is no part of that. This place is at the heart of her Winter. If this is where the Oracle meant your test to start, I am not certain that any of you will survive the journey.

He knew where they were.

No. I have not been here before; it is new to me. But listen and you can hear the echoes of her ancient sorrow and her ancient anger. Celleriant does not understand what this presages.

And you do.

I understand that it is a monument to the past. It stands with the force of vow, of blood oath. Bredan’s fingers have touched the pillars and the stone; his voice can be heard if you but listen. We live because we hide our weaknesses, and that is true, even of gods. There are things here that should not be touched. Tell them.

But she had seen Celleriant’s expression, and she doubted very much that her words would reach him.

She felt the Winter King’s frustration.
He is yours. He has vowed to serve you. Command him, and he will obey. And she has accepted this. She has planned for it. You do not understand the significance of either of these facts. The Arianni do not serve any lord but Ariane. And yet, Terafin, this one does.

I do not understand what it means or what it presages. But the fate that awaits Lord Celleriant is death, if she is on her Summer Throne.

And if she isn’t?

He was silent for a long beat.
You have promised Summer, Terafin. If you have come to value Lord Celleriant at all, you will fulfill that promise.

 • • • 

The ceiling was not, as Jewel had assumed, closed to air and sky. At the farthest reach of the long, long hall, it rose in a series of complicated arches that seemed to rest on the air itself. The pillars were of stone, at least from a distance.

They were of stone on approach. But the stone was carved stone, rendered in likenesses of Ariane herself. There were twelve, in all, in various states of dress; some wore armor that looked familiar; some wore dresses. Some wore nothing at all, but hair trailed down the fronts of their bodies in a way that suggested much but revealed little.

Each of these figures stood in midair; their raised arms formed the height of pillars that ended with delicate stone arches. They stood in pairs, but they weren’t carved or positioned to be facing each other; they looked in the same direction: forward.

Jewel asked the Winter King to slow as they approached these graven images, but even if she hadn’t, she thought he would have regardless. She could see the hand of Makers in these, and not only because they stood on a firmament of air. So, too, the Winter King.

He moved slowly. He did not speak a word.

Moving slowly or no, he almost collided with Celleriant, for Celleriant had, as he reached the foot of this odd construction of arches, come to a full stop. Wind tugged at his hair; it was the only thing about him that moved. That could, Jewel thought, with growing unease, be moved.

Kallandras had stopped a yard ahead of where Celleriant now stood, and turned; wind also tugged at his hair, golden curl to straight platinum fall, but it pulled at his cape and his tunic, tugging at fabric as if it were an impatient child.

His eyes narrowed as he watched Celleriant; his lips moved. No sound escaped them.

“What is it?” she asked softly. “What is it that you see?”

“Traitors,” Celleriant replied. But his voice was soft with wonder, hollow with disbelief. Jewel nudged the Winter King forward, toward the statues that seemed to hold the majority of the Arianni Lord’s attention.

“These are not different depictions of the White Lady?” she asked.

He turned to gaze at her. She expected contempt or the arrogant dismissal he generally offered. He gave her neither. For a moment, standing in the eye of the wild wind’s storm, he looked young, to Jewel. Young in a way that he had never looked, not even on the day she had found him at the height of nightmare made real, and rescued him.