Oracle: The House War: Book Six (30 page)

“And maybe if I held that child now, I could
make her
understand that I was there, and that I loved her to the end.”

Levec said nothing.

“But that child gave me many memories. All of her life. Some of the memories are good, and some have become better, with time.”

The older healer snorted. “Fourteen years, boy, is not a lot of time.”

“It is, to me. When I think of her death, it hurts. It’s true. And it is true that if I thought
only
of her death, she would be pain and loss. But when I think of
her
, I don’t just think of her death. I don’t just think of our loss.

“You can’t protect me from life. Not even the Matriarch could do that. You can help me to see life clearly. You can help me to see what’s in front of my face, because sometimes the sun is in my eyes, and I can’t. But you can’t decide—for me—what my life has to be about, or what it has to mean, or what it
can’t
mean. I am not you. You are not me.”

Levec closed his eyes for a long moment. When he opened them, he looked weary. But he no longer looked angry. There was so much anger in Levec, Adam thought. So much anger—and so much love. Levec could never be Matriarch, of course; no more could Adam. But it was of Matriarchs he thought, now.

This man had taken the burden of Matriarchs across his broad shoulders. He had no living kin. Neither did Jewel or many members of her den. But both Levec and Jewel made family, and Adam understood family.

“My Ona Elena once told me something important,” Adam said, hesitant now that the force of Levec’s anger had deserted him. “Happiness is like a seed.” Before Levec could speak, Adam lifted a hand. “She said that anger and hatred and love are like seeds as well. All the things we feel that endure, are.”

“And we are?”

“Dirt,” Adam replied.

“I might agree with that statement, but I’m certain you intend to go elsewhere with it.”

“We are earth. But we are like different types of earth, in different climates. Not all seeds that fall from a tree take root. Not all things that take root survive. We cannot be
given
happiness. Only the seed of it. We might not recognize the seed,” he added. “Because we can’t see the tree it might become. We are surrounded by trees, and the seed in our hands looks nothing like them.

“For some, the earth is damp and fertile, and all seeds take root. But for others, the earth is hard, and water scarce. Elena believed that no man—or woman—starts life as a desert. But without trees, any man or woman can become one.

“She thought all things could take root in me, but she was my Ona,” he added, with a trace of self-consciousness. “She told me it was important to take the seeds, to plant them, and to tend them. To water them, when water was scarce; to protect them from water when it was a deluge. She said that only by growing those trees in ourselves could we then have seeds to give to others.

“Rich or poor, child or man, anyone can plant such a seed.”

“And the other seeds? The anger, the bitterness?”

Adam nodded. “Those, too, come from others. They are not gifts in the same way, but they require soil and if we are not careful, it is
those
seedlings we tend and shelter, and if those are the trees we favor, it is their seeds we pass on. And anyone can grow those seeds, just as everyone can grow the others.

“The seeds are all there. We can’t choose, for others, which seeds they tend. We can only hope to make good choices for ourselves.”

“And what am I giving you now?”

Adam smiled. “You are giving me worry, but it is a worry that comes from a place in which I feel safe.”

“And will you heed my worry?”

“Always. But I will not always adopt it as my own. I know that you love me.” Levec never liked to hear the word “love.” “I know that your fear comes from experience; it is not idle. But I know it comes from your experience. A day will come, perhaps, when I will return to you and tell you that you were right.”

Levec nodded, then. “The damnable thing is this. If you were not a person who desperately wanted to help others, I wouldn’t care much for you at all. It’s always the kind ones that break my heart, in the end. I cannot command you when you leave my home. I can ask. I will ask you, Adam: do not do this. Do not interfere with those who have not lived.

“Now, get out of my office. I have work to do.”

 • • • 

Get out of my memories
, Adam thought.
I have work to do.

He was afraid. He had traveled with fear as a companion for so much of the past year. He had lost his mother because his mother could see no path to walk but the one that led to her death. She, like Jewel, was Matriarch; she, like Jewel, was gifted with visions that were woven into the fabric of reality.

He had lost his family in the desert—although they still lived. He had found a second family, hesitantly, within the Terafin manse, with its endless maze of walls, its lack of small, comfortable spaces, its lack of open sky or breeze.

But he had found himself, bitterly and in isolation, in Levec’s broad, protective shadow. All of the healing he’d done, he’d done at Levec’s command; all but one. Levec had taken credit for most of it, where credit was due, and Adam absolutely understood why.

He had, he knew, been blessed by the Lady; his life had been passed over by the Lord. He survived. He was taller, rounder; he did not face starvation or privation within House Terafin. Nor did he face the endless contempt of the clansmen—for he privately thought of the Terafin Council, and most of the people who bore its name, as clansmen. Jewel had even brought Ariel from the Dominion, a child missing fingers and family. He had, as he could, taken care of her, because feeding the children had been his most important job.

But there were no other children in the Terafin manse. Not children he could claim, in some small way, as his own. Not children whose survival depended, in any way, on Adam of Arkosa.

And this child—unborn, but alive—did.

I will ask you, Adam: do not do this
.

He could see the older healer so clearly for a moment; he smiled and shook his head. He was afraid, yes. But he had learned to live with fear, and where he could, to manage it. There were very few decisions in his life that weren’t shadowed in one way or the other by fear—and very few in which his fears were not at war.

Levec was the voice of one of his fears. But his own voice, his hands, and the power with which he had been blessed was the other.

They will not die if you leave them here
, this shadow of Levec said, brow furrowed, eyes narrowed and darkened.

No,
he thought.
But they will never live, either.

What is life but the absence of death?

He froze for one long moment. The voice that he heard was not his. Nor was it Levec’s. Neither man could have ever asked that question.

N
O. IT IS NOT
a question you could ask. I have heard your voice, and the voices of your companions, since you first entered this hall. One of you speaks with the voice of the wild wind, and his voice is beautiful to my ear. And yet, at the same time, it is fragile and delicate.

One of you speaks as kin speak; I hear the echoes of every syllable beneath my feet.

And three of you speak like cats.

“They
are
cats.”

And you consent to travel with them? That is not wise if you value either dignity or possession; they are capricious beasts. Ah, but it has been such a long, long silence, even their voices reach my ears.

Tell me what you are.

He blinked. “Pardon?”

What are you? You are not a cat. You are not my kin. You are not firstborn, and you are not the creations of the firstborn. Your voice is almost inaudible. The world does not move to give you room; it barely notices your passage at all. What are you?

“I am Adam,” he replied. “Of the Arkosan Voyani.”

That will not do.

“It is my name.”

She laughed. Her laughter was like water in the desert—but Adam was Voyani; he knew that water in the desert could kill.
It is not a name. It tells me nothing at all about you. If I told you
my
name, you would understand much of me. But the telling is long and complicated.

“It is a name. It is how I am known, by my kin. What do people call you?”

Ah, no. If you were not touching me, I do not think I could find you at all. But—I have found you now. Come. Open your eyes, Adam.

He obeyed. He almost shut them again immediately.

 • • • 

Adam had never suffered a fear of heights, but he found the vestiges of that fear in him now—and it was unwelcome. He had, moments before, been standing—or kneeling—on thin air, high enough above the darkened stone below that he could barely see it.

He was not standing on air now; he stood on the slightly sloped peak of a mountain. He could hear wind howl; could see, hundreds of feet below, the snow-capped heights of lesser peaks. If anything grew here at all, snow buried it—but Adam suspected nothing did. The cold here was staggering; he couldn’t be certain he could maintain his footing because he began to shiver. To shudder.

He turned slowly; he almost dropped to his knees just to have more contact with the ground, and less exposure to the open air. And he did fall to his knees, but not, in the end, for that reason.

“Welcome, Adam.”

 • • • 

She was the most beautiful woman Adam had ever seen.

Her hair was the color of snow, and it fell down her body like a cloak so fine not even the most moneyed of clansmen could afford to own it. She was, as depicted, otherwise naked; as depicted, nudity did not make her self-conscious.

“Does it make you self-conscious?” she asked. “You are my guest. I do not understand your reaction, but if it will set you at ease, I will change.” She did so, instantly, her hair falling into a spread of even, pale white, as if strands of that hair were weaving themselves into cloth.

That cloth covered her shoulders, her arms, the full fall of breasts; it draped over the rounded and prominent smoothness of expectant belly before reaching the ground. Her feet, throat, and hands, remained exposed to the biting cold, but the cold did not seem to affect this woman.

“I have always loved the heights,” she said, as she approached the spot on which he stood. “No, do not move. It is, at the moment, impossible for me to fall. And a fall from this height would end my existence just as certainly as it would end yours.” She held out a hand, almost in command. Adam came from a long line of autocratic women who were accustomed to unquestioning obedience.

He did not take the hand she offered because he was suddenly aware that his own hand was shorter, stubbier, and infinitely more dirty than hers had ever been.

Her brows rose in surprise; she laughed. The sound was the essence of both amusement and delight. “You are not a cat, then, although you have brought them with you.”

“They didn’t come with me,” he said, almost defensively. “They came with the Matriarch. They are hers.”

“We are
not
.”

Although Adam never wanted to look away from the woman on whose mountain he found himself shivering, he did. Shadow, wings folded, was standing gingerly on an outcropping of stone that was sheer drop at his back. There was no sign of either Night or Snow, and no sign of the man Shadow had grudgingly agreed to carry.

He closed his mouth and glanced at the woman who made this mountain her home. She had lifted one perfect brow—at Shadow. “Who gave you wings?”

“We have
always
had wings.”

“You have always been able to walk in the air, and you have always been able to survive landing when you insulted the winds in your hubris. I do not, however, recall wings before.” As she spoke, she walked toward the cat, who sniffed and turned his head away.

Away in this space brought his gaze in contact with Adam’s. Shadow growled.

The stranger laughed in response. “You sound like a kitten,” she told the great cat as she placed a gentle hand on his head. “But the wings suit you. I would never have guessed.”

“And where are
your
wings?” the cat demanded.

Her smile shifted, and what remained of it was both soft and melancholy. “I will never have wings again,” she told the great cat, laying a hand, as she spoke, upon her belly.

Shadow hissed. He then leaped toward Adam, who almost jumped out of the way. He remembered where he was—and just how far above the ground—at the last minute; Shadow stopped just short of head-butting the healer’s chest. “You can
do something
.”

“You don’t even like it when I touch you.”

“
I
am not
her
.”

“Do you know her?”

“Of
course
I do.
I
am not
stupid
.”

“What do you think I can do?”

“What do you think you
are
doing?” was Shadow’s surly response. It wasn’t his only response, although the rest of it involved a lot of the word
stupid
.

“Shadow, I can’t just touch her and grow wings for her!”

“
Why
not?”

“That’s not the way healing
works
.”

“It
is
.”

“It’s
not
.”

“
It is!
”

During this exchange, the lady of the mountain approached. She watched; Adam was aware of her gaze, even when he couldn’t immediately turn to meet it. “You call him Shadow?”

“It’s what the Matriarch calls him.”

“I see. And is your Matriarch as you are?”

Shadow growled. His wings rose, becoming rigid arches. “She is not for you,” he told the woman. The almost omnipresent whine was gone from his voice; what was left reminded Adam of dream and nightmare.

“And you will keep me from her? How bold you’ve become.” Her voice now reminded Adam of desert night. “I ask you to leave us. I will only ask once.”

Shadow shrugged, the movement so similar to the shrugs of Jewel’s den, Adam was surprised. “You can
ask
.”

“And you will dare to ignore me?”

“What can
you
do? You are
here
.” He turned his face toward Adam and muttered
stupid boy
loudly enough it could probably be heard from the foot of the mountain. “She is worried,” he told the boy, when he’d finished.

Adam blinked. “The Lady is not—”

“Why does she
always
like the
stupid
ones?”

“I’m not sure,” Adam replied, as he realized the “she” was Jewel. “But she likes the difficult ones as well.”

The implication was lost on the cat, probably deliberately. “You will get
lost
here,
stupid
boy. You will starve. She will break, and it is
not time
for that yet.” He turned, once again, to the stranger. “You will let him leave.”

The woman’s face was immobile; it was as frozen as this peak. “What is he, Shadow?”

“A
stupid
boy.”

“Yes, I understand that. But not so stupid that he does not have a cat as his guardian. It has been a long, long time since I have had guests; will you deprive me of this one? I cannot reach my sisters, and the White Lady’s voice is so distant I am not certain I hear it in truth; it might be a dream.

“But I have never encountered someone like this man before. I ask again: what is he?”

“He is mortal,” Shadow replied.

Her eyes widened. “Mortal? He is born to die?”

“Yessss. All mortals
are
.”

“All? He is not alone? There are more like him?”

“Yes. They are
everywhere
.”

“And what great magics do they possess in return for the fate they have chosen?”

Shadow hissed. It was the laughing hiss. “They did not
choose
mortality; they were born into it. There are many, many of their kind who have been
extremely
stupid in an attempt to avoid their own nature.”

“Born?”

“Born, Lady,” Adam said. “Just as the child you carry will be born.”

She was silent; her eyes traced the line of Adam’s face as if she were attempting to read it. The language, however, was not her own; nor was it one she was familiar with. “What magic,” she asked him, softly. “What magic compensates you for your fate?”

He started to say “none,” because it was true. It was the truth of his kin, of his kind. “The power I have,” he said, voice small, “was not granted to me because I am mortal.”

Shadow hissed. This one was contemptuous. “It
was
.”

“No, it wasn’t.”

The hiss grew louder. “It
was
,
stupid
boy. Not
all
mortals have your power. But you have it
because
you are mortal. You do not understand what it
means
.”

“But I do,” Adam said, irritated. There were very few things he understood, but his gift was one of them.

“Do you understand why I won’t let you
touch me?
”

“You’re a cat. No one understands how cats think.”

Shadow blinked, looking for an insult in Adam’s statement of fact. When he failed to find it, he snorted. “You can heal
her
.”

“Jewel?”

“Yessss. Do you know why?”

“Because I’m healer-born.”

Hiss. “Because
she
is mortal. I will not let you touch
me
because you will
change
what I am.”

“But I don’t change the healed—”

“You
do.
But mortals cannot be changed easily; even the gods had difficulty.”

He thought of Avandar.

“You change them back to what they
were
. You cannot change what they
are
, except in that way. You
could
change her,” Shadow added, this time pointedly staring at the Lady. “You could give her
wings.
You could make her
less
ugly.”

Adam’s jaw was attached to the rest of his face, or he would have lost it when it dropped. “She is
not
ugly!”

“She is not as ugly as
you
.” He snorted again.

But Adam shook his head. “She is not what you are,” he told the cat. “I have never been given leave to tend Lord Celleriant; I do not know if she is as he is. But, Shadow, if she were injured, I
could
heal her.”

“You couldn’t.”

“I could.” There was no doubt in his words.

“How
stupid
are you? She is
not
like you!”

But to Adam, she was. Mountain and ice and deathly cold aside, she was; except in one way. He had touched pregnant women before. He had been allowed to examine Bernice—until the disastrous delivery of the child. What his eyes did not see, his hands did. It had not occurred to him to wonder, until Shadow’s arrival, whether his power should have sensed something different, or other.

“Yes,” she said, although he had not spoken these thoughts aloud. “Although I did not recognize you—or your kind—you see the truth. I am, now, like you. I was not born a mortal; I did not exist to face death. If you release me from this place, I will die. There will be nothing to prevent it.”

Shadow hissed. He stared at her protruding belly with recognizable loathing. Adam wanted to smack him; he almost did. But the exposed fangs were enough of a warning that he managed—barely—to refrain.

The Lady, however, smiled down at his expression of complete disgust. “Yes. You understand.”

“
Why
did you do this?
Why?
You will
never
fly. You will
never
speak again with a voice that the wilderness hears.”

“I could not bear this child and remain as I was.”

“Why did you
need
a child? Why did you not make one the
normal
way?”

Adam said, without thought, “This is the normal way, Shadow.”

“For
animals
.” The irony of this angry, terse reply appeared to be lost on the cat. “For
mortals
, who are
like
talking animals!”

“But if she doesn’t even
know any mortals
, how is this not natural?”

“
Ask
her. Ask her who the father is.”

It was not a question the Voyani ever asked, at least not of the expectant mother. Adam was almost offended. “It doesn’t matter. We know who the mother is. And we know that she wants this child.” He hesitated. He had a hundred questions to ask, and none of them seemed appropriate. Shadow could speak of—and to—her as if she were no different than Adam or Jewel. Adam could not.

Any questions he might have asked—surrounded by empty sky and distant mountain peaks—slipped away the moment he met her eyes. They were silver in color, framed by white lashes that suggested a dusting of snow.

Only one question remained, and it slid out of his shivering mouth before it had fully formed. “What will this child become?”