Oracle: The House War: Book Six (34 page)

The dress was almost white at the shoulders; as it fell to the ground, it gained color—but the color was stone or ash, darkening in the last yard to something that was almost black. The hem of sleeves and skirt were adorned with red embroidery, and delicate red swirls rested just beneath the line of her breasts; across the very obvious swell of belly, the cloth was a delicate gray. It was, in all ways, unlike the dress Snow had made for her.

What, she thought, should she call this woman? Lady, perhaps, but it seemed too prim a word. Jewel was certain that the hands that now ran along the folds of sleeves had carried swords before—and had used them. There was a harshness about her beauty, a distance, that offered wonder but no comfort and no safety. It made a mockery of the desire for comfort and safety.

She shook her head to clear it. “I understand that you are not as we are.” She indicated the obvious mortals in their midst. “But every single Immortal I have ever met has a name by which they are known, or will be known, by us.

“I didn’t name Lord Celleriant. I call him Celleriant because it is what his brother called him, and what the White Lady herself called him. Even the Winter Queen has a name by which she is known to mortals—Ariane. I wouldn’t have the courage to call her anything else.”

“You have met many?”

“No. I’ve met very few. Celleriant, his brother Mordanant, their lord.” She did not repeat the Winter Queen’s name. “Meralonne,” she continued, after a pause. “Which is what he calls himself when he speaks to us. But the gods and the rest of the immortals call him Illaraphaniel.”

Her eyes widened. “You have met Illaraphaniel?”

“Yes.” She hesitated, and then added, “he lives in our city.”

“And you yet live.”

It was Jewel’s turn to frown. The nameless woman turned instantly to Celleriant, as if for confirmation. At his slow, grave nod she said, “There is a story in this, and I would hear it. But perhaps it is best that we leave.”

Jewel nodded. “We can’t go back the way we came.”

“No,” the woman replied, as if the possibility had not occurred to her. She bowed her head for a long moment; her hair framed her face, lending it light, but no color. “Illaraphaniel.

“When we were young, he called me Shianne. It was a new name, a small name.” She looked up, then, tilting her head, exposing her throat. “He was not Illaraphaniel, not then. And I have not been Shianne for so long the name is the barest echo in memory, even mine. I grew beyond it. I grew beyond it and I will never return; it is part of who I was—but it is not who I am. I . . . am no longer certain who I am.” She did not look down; her eyes continued to seek the heights.

And then she lowered her clothed arms; silk fell like liquid to all but cover her hands.

She began to sing.

They froze at the sound of her voice; the first note, the fullness of it, almost deprived them of breath. She sang storm; she sang sunrise; she sang open skies and freedom; her voice rose and fell, hardening or gentling. Even the cats were almost still, although their tails or ears twitched.

It wasn’t that it was impossible to move, but rather that if one looked away, if one allowed any form of distraction, some essential part of the song might be missed—and it would never be heard again.

And perhaps, just perhaps, that might be for the best. She did not sing in Weston; nor did she sing in Torra. Jewel couldn’t understand the words themselves—if there were words at all. It didn’t matter. She didn’t need the language to underpin meaning; the meaning was plain.

Jewel wept. The tears were silent; they trailed down her cheeks. She couldn’t stop them and didn’t try, although she had long ago learned to hide the weakness of pain and emotion. This song was every farewell she had ever said, but more, every farewell circumstance had denied her: It spoke of love—not storybook love, but messy, complicated, conflicted emotion. She closed her eyes; she could see Duster front and center. Of course.

Behind her, Lefty, as he was the last day she’d seem him in the dim glow of magelight, far beneath the open skies. Fisher. Lander. She’d made a home with them, and their deaths had destroyed it, hollowing it out from the inside until it collapsed.

Duster, so difficult, had preserved what remained. But the act of preservation had destroyed her.

Just as it would destroy Shianne.

Jewel opened her eyes. Shianne was not Duster. There was no anger in her, no rage, no desire to destroy. For Duster, destruction had been the truest test of power; she’d spent too much of her life feeling powerless.

And this woman? Had not. She had none of Duster’s doubt, none of her fear. She had all of her intensity, but it was turned, in this moment, with this song, to sorrow; sorrow and yearning. There was beauty in sorrow; beauty in resignation. And pride in both.

But surrounding them, elevating them, engraving them in some sense into a memory that was far too thin to fully hold them, her song.

Jewel was almost shocked when a voice joined hers, it felt so
wrong
. The voice was rougher, lower, less consistent in its strength and urgency; it should have clashed horribly with the eerie, almost overwhelming beauty of hers—but it didn’t.

Of course not. There was only one man present who might have dared to draw breath and use it to reach out, to touch, to entwine himself inextricably with her song.

Kallandras was the youngest Master Bard Senniel had ever produced. What he sang now, he had not learned in Senniel College. He hadn’t learned it in the streets of the hundred holdings, facing starvation and isolation; he hadn’t learned it in the rooms of a brothel. Jewel knew because she had been in those places, and the loss he sang of now was Shianne’s loss—but it was also his own.

It wasn’t hers. She had felt a hint of it in the days when Lefty disappeared; she was shadowed by an echo of it whenever she thought of Duster’s death. But the certainty of loss and separation—no. She was here to
find
Carver. She was here to do everything in her power to save him.

No part of that salvation meant walking away.

And yet, she heard in his voice—and in Shianne’s—the certainty that only by walking away could lives—and love—be preserved, even if neither the bard nor the woman would ever be part of it again. Other lives. Other loves.

It wasn’t a gift she could give. Surrendering the family she built for its own sake was surrendering the very thing that made her what she was. She accepted this as her own truth, and accepted, as well, that it was not a truth that defined either Kallandras or Shianne. They were, for a moment, beautiful in exactly the same way: the mortal man and the woman who had chosen to become mortal although she was, in all ways, of Ariane.

So she stood, listening, as each note shifted and changed, moving into the next note, the next lift of voice, the next breathless silence; she tried to gather the song into memory, to hold it for as long as it could be held, because she knew she would never hear it again; not this way.

 • • • 

The long hall spread out before them as far as the eye could see—or as far as Jewel’s could. A ceiling that existed in shadow, if it existed at all, was supported by pillars whose heights likewise disappeared from view. The air was chill; breath rose in small clouds. Shianne had taken the lead, although she was sandwiched between Night and Snow; the two cats, for once, did not fight over the same position. They did complain, and as they were the only voices raised, the procession sounded as if it were composed of growling four year olds.

Adam woke twice while they walked, startling as if from nightmare; he subsided the moment Jewel spoke into his ear, her voice far softer in the echoing hall than it would otherwise be. She was worried, but worry was a constant companion. She knew the cost of overusing one’s talent-born power.

“He is not suffering from mage fevers,” Kallandras told her. She heard his voice, although his words were softly spoken and he was not beside her. Her own voice, to reach his ears, would have to carry, and she was hesitant to shout here. She didn’t question the hesitance; she was seer-born.

You fear danger, here.

She almost laughed.
Yes
, she told the Winter King.
How could I do otherwise?

We will not be attacked in these halls.
He spoke with certainty.

You didn’t even recognize the halls when we first arrived
.

No. But if you listen, you will hear the Winter Queen’s name; it is spoken in the silence. None but the desperate or the very, very foolish will seek a battle here. If I did not know better, Jewel, I would swear that we walked at the very center of the Hidden Court. The Winter Queen has not dwelled here for a long, long time—but she is everywhere within it.

“How long are these halls?” she asked.

Shianne paused and turned back to look over her shoulder. “I no longer have an answer for you, Jewel.”

Jewel briefly regretted denying the use of the title Matriarch. There was something almost intimate in Shianne’s use of her given name; the title—Matriarch—was far more distant. “Have they changed greatly?”

“Yes, as you must suspect. They are silent, now; the echoes speak of abandonment.” She paused and added, “If you fear that we will find new residents, be comforted. Nothing that passes through these halls without the White Lady’s permission would survive the night. No one dwells here save my sisters and I.”

Angel cleared his throat. Shianne frowned. “I’m all for comfort, Lady. But—
we
don’t have her permission.”

“Without her permission, you would never have arrived at all.”

Angel glanced at Jewel. Jewel glanced at her wrist. She did not lift her arm. “We did not travel here as others must have, in the past.”

“No.”

“We arrived because the Oracle sent us.”

But Shianne shook her head; her hair moved like liquid lit from within. “You do not understand. The Oracle might open a door to this place; she is first of the firstborn, and there is no place, no matter how dire or distant, that she has not seen in her many, many visions. But such a door is not permission. Nor could she herself beg entry.

“If she chose to send you here as part of your quest, Jewel, she did so because she was certain you would be granted entry. Nor was she wrong.”

“Is she ever?”

“Wrong?”

Jewel nodded.

“The meanings of the visions she grants are difficult to grasp, even by those who fully understand their context. She is not easily moved to rage or fear; nor has she ever been considered a creature of great pride. She has no
need
to be right.”

Jewel noted that Shianne had not answered the question, and she almost let it go. But she had too much invested in this quest to do so with any ease. “I understand she has no need to be seen to be right. What I want—what I need—to know is whether or not she’s ever mistaken.”

“No.”

Jewel fell silent.

Shianne laughed. The laughter was not kind, but it was not sharp or edged. “How can the Oracle ever be wrong? It has been said that she can see every possibility the future holds. Only one of those possibilities will become reality; only one will become the present, and from there, the past. Many, many are the gods and the immortals who have attempted, time and again, to use the Oracle to influence that reality in their own favor. Most failed. The Oracle could not be moved to choose one path or another; nor could she be moved to allow those who sought her aid in their endeavors to glimpse a present they could not otherwise easily see.

“She was considered a weapon.”

“Most weapons aren’t sentient.”

Shianne’s brows rose.

Jewel drew dagger, not as threat, but as demonstration.

The woman’s eyes narrowed. “You cannot possibly think that is an example of a weapon.” There was no question in the words; they were flat and dismissive.

The Winter King was highly amused.
In my time, Terafin, your knife would not have been considered a weapon; it might have been considered a tool of middling quality—if that
.

“The Oracle would indeed have been a potent weapon in the hands of the gods—or their offspring. Those who understood her gift, those who better understood the context of her visions, could have used her to sculpt, from the multitude of possibilities, the outcomes they most desired. We were,” she added, “oft at war.

“But of course she knew—how could she not, who could see all things if she but bent her will toward them? But she was not neutral—and if you believe that someone who sees every possibility is neutral, you do not understand the Oracle.” The words were bitter and softly spoken. “Like any of the firstborn, she forgets nothing, and her grudges can be long and harsh—but they are miracles in the making when she at last chooses to act—for when she does, she makes no mistakes. There are no last-minute reprieves for her enemies. She is thorough, Jewel—and perhaps she is because she is the only one who can see the entire game.”

“Does every vision she shows serve her purpose?”

“I do not know. We ask, and if she chooses, she replies. She does not ask for our approval or our gratitude.”

Gratitude was not what Jewel was feeling at the moment. Gratitude she thought, uneasily, was not what Evayne felt at the peak of her power. “It wasn’t just the gods,” she said. “Or even the immortals. I think, near the end, before the gods chose to leave, she saw mostly mortals. Mortals,” she added, “like me.”

“The gods chose to leave.” She glanced at Celleriant. “We will have many a day upon the path you have chosen to walk. Tell me, then, about the gods and their absence. Tell me about their wars, and their victories; tell me about their defeats.”

He was not comfortable in her presence. He was not as obviously awkward as Terrick, but that was impossible. He glanced at Jewel; she was surprised.

“I see no reason not to do so. Your knowledge—and Avandar’s—far surpasses any of ours. Tell her what you know, if you choose.” Jewel had often been curious, but she had never asked. His past was his past—just as Duster’s had been her own. She had always believed that the past was irrelevant; it was the present and the future you looked toward that counted.