Oracle: The House War: Book Six (47 page)

He laughed. The laughter filled the clearing made by fire and fire’s unnatural heat. “This,” he told her, as the laughter faded into a worn smile, “is why I will never be a merchant.”

“Oh?”

“You’ve made clear—the
forest
has made clear—that you’ll serve Terafin, name or no.”

“Ah, you misunderstand me. I am not even certain it is deliberate. Yes,” she said, gazing up at the tree as the lines of the masking fire slowly, slowly faded. “I will do everything in my power to preserve this forest. I will not,” she added, “do it for The Terafin’s sake; I will do it for my own. I would do it,” she continued, “if Rymark himself took the House Seat and ruled from it.”

“That is never going to happen,” Jester said, the edge in his voice cutting the smile from his face.

“That is a House matter, and I am not—yet—of the House; I will not discuss it further; you understand the point I attempted to illustrate, no?”

“Use a better illustration.”

“I am not a politician; it is not one of my many skills. I mean only that the forest exists—for me—separate from the ruler of the House.”

“It doesn’t—”

She lifted her scarred hand. “Do you ever let people finish a sentence?”

“Not unless they’re committed to it.” He grinned. It made him look younger. It made her feel older. Objectively, there couldn’t be more than a handful of years separating them, and she was uncertain that she actually was the elder. “I’ll be good.”

“If the forest exists separate from Terafin, it is joined to it by the woman who presides as the head of the House. I will serve—in what limited way my oaths to Duvari allow—Jewel Markess ATerafin because to serve her
is
to preserve what lies at the heart of her grounds.

“But I could do that without tendering the aid you require. I could do that without approaching Duvari. There would be no need on my part to interfere in matters that exist between the Kings and The Ten.”

“And you will?”

She stared at her palm again. “Yes. Jester—what color are my eyes?”

He frowned. “Pardon?”

“What color are my eyes?”

“Last I looked? Gray.”

“Look again.”

“Birgide—” The rest of his words deserted him as he obeyed. “. . . They’re not gray.”

She nodded. “What color are they?”

“In this light?” He hesitated, which was unlike him, but given the day, it was a minor inconsistency. “They’re—they’re kind of a reddish brown.”

“How brown?”

“In this light,” he repeated, with more irony in the emphasis, “they’re red. I think they could pass for brown if they weren’t reflecting so much fire.”

“You’re lying.”

He gave up. “Yes. I’m lying. You think this is an artifact from the tree.”

“Yes. The forest doesn’t speak to me in the way you and I speak to each other. But I think, having decided to accept my service—and it
is
service, Jester—it has offered me tools with which to do my duties.” More than this, she did not say aloud.

I
NTO THE FADED,
pale day of the abandoned, ancient halls stepped one of the firstborn whose images had been engraved, in the passage of seconds, into the basement of one room in
Avantari
: Calliastra.

She had eyes, at the moment, for Shianne. Celleriant seemed to be beneath her notice. So, too, the cats.

Only the cats cared. Shadow hissed. Night hissed. Neither sound implied laughter or amusement, and in case their displeasure was somehow not apparent, their fur rose inches, changing the shape of their backs and faces. Shadow stepped closer to Jewel’s side; he placed one paw on the top of her foot and pressed down.

Jewel glanced at the top of his head, at the height of his ears; she was surprised to see that her hand was still attached to his fur.

Stand well back
, Avandar said. His magics, orange and gold, colored the air around the whole of their party.

I know
. She glanced, briefly, at her arm; at the arm that bore the Warlord’s sigil. It was not, however, for herself or her domicis that she feared. Angel was here. Terrick. Adam. They were all at risk, should Calliastra’s focus waver. Kallandras was mortal as well, but Jewel could not imagine that he could be caught in Calliastra’s grasp; she was, in fact, certain he could not.

As usual, she couldn’t say why, and as usual, she didn’t question the certainty. She knew it was the artifact of the talent to which she’d been born—the talent that had led, in slow and winding steps, to these grand and haunted halls.

Terrick dismounted. He dismounted and, to Jewel’s surprise, armed himself. Jewel frowned; Angel frowned as well. Angel, however, dismounted and drew sword, taking his lead from the older man.

Shianne—armed—had not caused this reaction in Terrick; Terrick’s gaze had been as awestruck as Jewel’s whenever it had fallen on the Arianni woman. It had fallen on her only slightly less often. It was hard, despite Shianne’s claims of mortality, for Jewel to look at anything else.

Or it had been. But Calliastra, daughter of gods, was compelling in her own right. She was beautiful, yes—but it was not a beauty that spoke of mountains and the vast heights and depths of a natural world that counted mortals as nothing; it was a beauty that spoke of desire. Desire, darkness, and death, as if one led naturally into the other, like dusk into night.

Night, in the eyes of the child of gods, was endless.

“She is not for you,” Celleriant said, coming to stand between Shianne and the daughter of their ancient enemy.

“She was not, once. She might be, now,” Calliastra replied, smiling. Her lips, full, her eyes, dark, implied both warmth and smoldering heat. If Shianne was distant and untouchable, Calliastra was her opposite.

Jewel swallowed.

She had faced Calliastra once, in the Stone Deepings; had it not been for Avandar, she would have died there. Willingly. It angered her to remember it, but she accepted it: she was mortal.

The Lord of the Hells, and the goddess of love had birthed Calliastra. Jewel had met almost no one who did not desire love—even if they failed to trust in its existence. And Callistra stood, now, in the ancient remnants of the Winter Queen’s first court: she had power here.

Shianne, however, inclined her chin. She evinced no fear, and no particular suspicion. “I am not,” she replied, “for you.”

“You have chosen,” Calliastra replied, “to do the unthinkable. You have tied yourself to the rhythm of life and death.” She gestured at the baby, still enfolded in the center of Shianne’s body. “Summer and Winter are not for me; they never were. But life and death? They are mine, Shianne.”

“And I,” Shianne replied, regally and distantly, “belong to the White Lady. If you seek to touch me, if you seek to destroy me, understand that I have already made my choice; there is nothing that you can offer me that will change it. I am, as I have always been,
of
Ariane.”

“Yes. Yes, you are.” Calliastra smiled. Her voice, soft and sensual, was almost a purr. “And you carry within you the seeds of her death.”

Shianne stiffened.

So, too, Celleriant.

“Do you think she preserved you for your own sake? She was foolish; she was sentimental. Sentiment is
my
domain. You are evidence of her weakness. She should have destroyed you, at least. Instead, she kept you here; she kept you hidden.

“But the roads are changing, Shandalliaran. They are shifting. A god walks this world once more, and every step he takes reminds things wild and hidden of the life they once knew. Ariane is trapped in her hovel of a Hidden Court, and I? I am free to roam as I please.

“I heard your song. It moved me. It drew me from the vastness of my home.” She did not seem particularly moved, to Jewel.

“It drew you,” Shianne replied, “from its emptiness. Why have you come?”

“To see the beginning of the end, little niece.” She smiled. Her smile could melt ice.

It could not, however, melt stone; Shianne was stone, now. She said nothing.

Calliastra turned. “Viandaran. I see you have not yet tired of your consort.”

“She is not my consort,” Avandar replied. He was quiet, his tone chilly; his stiffness, however, was natural. “She is
Sen
, Calliastra. Perhaps even you will remember what that once meant.”

Avandar
.

It is necessary. I do not know if Shianne divested herself of all power when she made her choice.

Jewel thought of the golden sword.
I doubt it.

As do I. But she is not, here, a match for Calliastra. We might stand against her for some small while; we might drive her off, if the cats choose to be useful. We cannot destroy her. Not yet.

When?

He didn’t answer.

Why is she here?

She did not, in my opinion, lie. She is here to stand witness to the beginning of the end.

What end?
Silence.
Avandar?

“Listen to
him
,” Shadow growled. “And do not be
stupid
.” He hissed at Calliastra. The child of gods failed to notice him. Pointedly. She did not, however, fail to notice Jewel; she turned.

Jewel remembered the starless night of the Stone Deepings; she remembered the velvet of a voice that promised everything. Her mouth was half-open, her lips dry, as she met Calliastra’s eyes. They were Duster’s eyes.

It angered her. She attempted to hold on to the anger, to shore herself up with it. But she knew it was too feeble; Calliastra engendered emotion—emotion itself was no shield against her. It was purchase. It was anchor.

Yes
, the Winter King said.
She was ever a danger to our kind, even when the Cities were at the height of their power.

She is no danger to you now?

No. She cannot take what is already claimed. I will die if the Winter Queen decrees my death. I will die if the Winter Queen dies. There is nothing she can take from me; nothing that will feed her endless emptiness; nothing that will calm her ancient sorrow.

Sorrow.

Sorrow, Jewel. She did not understand, when young, that love must lead inevitably to death. And she could not easily accept that she could not control the hunger that drives her to feed.

You
pity
her.

I do. You do not—and it is safest for you. She is firstborn. What she wants is not, and has never been, pity.

What does she want?

What she can never have: love. Warmth. Belonging. She is Allasakar’s daughter. She is Laursana’s daughter. How that union came to be, I will not guess. But it has made her the creature she is. You think her monstrous.

She did.

And so she is. But she is wed to her monstrosity; short of destruction, she cannot escape it. And Jewel: she has tried. There are lays and legends—lost to you and your kin—that speak of her tragedy.

Jewel’s frown creased the corners of her eyes and mouth as she turned her glance toward the Winter King—and away from Calliastra.
You want me to ask her what she means when she speaks of the end.

Silence. It was a thin silence; it could not hold.
Not I alone. Look at the Lady. Look at your liege.

Jewel did. Shianne was the height of distant mountain in the coldest of winter; her expression gave nothing away. So, too, Celleriant. A flick of movement caught her eye. Angel was signing.

No
, she signed back.
Stay where you are.
She glanced at Terrick and added,
hold him back
.

Angel cast a very dubious look at the grim and bearded Rendish warrior; he signed again. Jewel almost laughed.

Calliastra chose that moment to reach out to touch Jewel’s face.

 • • • 

Celleriant was in the air before the firstborn’s perfect fingers grazed Jewel’s wind-dark cheek. The wind howled, speaking all of the words he could not or did not choose to shed. His blade, blue lightning, traveled in the heart of his storm; he landed.

He landed and drove Jewel back. Calliastra could not be moved. As a testament to the value of his service, it wasn’t promising. The Winter King’s flank caught her back before she could hit the cold stone beneath all of their feet.

The cats converged, hissing, claws scraping stone as they pounced and landed.

Calliastra was the very mountains; the cats
bounced.
“Will you,” she said, voice of ice and shadow, “deny your lord what she herself
chooses?
” And even as she spoke, her expression was shifting and changing, until she stood before Jewel wearing more than just Duster’s eyes.

Duster. Duster who was, who would remain forever, sixteen years of age. Memory couldn’t contain that truth. Jewel’s sense of Duster aged with her. She
knew
that Duster had died in the streets of the holding when the rest of her den had arrived at the Terafin manse. She knew that was half her lifetime ago. But she couldn’t hold the image of
this
Duster in her mind.

This Duster was all of sixteen. She had swallowed rage and pain and humiliation; she had made loss her personal grail. And she had carried both to Jewel, offering them, time and again, with only the barest glimmer of hope to alleviate the darkness of all her early lessons.

And Jewel had been sixteen as well. She’d
had
hope. Hope.

Calliastra, she saw clearly, had none. She cursed the Winter King in the silence of thought, because she saw, just as clearly, that even gods did not live without hope; it grew again. It grew, no matter how much it cut and destroyed when it once again failed to take root. Love. Death. Loss. All loss.

The anger she felt at Calliastra’s use of Duster’s appearance guttered. It couldn’t warm her, couldn’t hold her back. She saw Duster in this woman—and woman was the only word she had for her; she couldn’t truly imagine that gods could feel this kind of pain. Gods were what they were. Calliastra . . . was not. The Winter King said she had struggled, in her youth, with the knowledge that all love—for Calliastra—led inevitably to death.

And Jewel could
see
that. She could see it in the ferocity of Duster’s expression.

She is
not
your Duster
, Avandar said, voice sharp, harsh. Jewel’s arm began to throb, like a second, beating heart. She knew it was bleeding.

“No,” she said. “She’s not. Shadow,
cut that out
. You’re just going to sand your own claws off.”

He hissed. “You’ll be
stupid
,” he told her.

“Stupid,
stupid, stupid
,” Night agreed.

Calliastra laughed. The sound of her voice—it was Duster’s voice. Duster’s harsh, edged laughter. A flicker of genuine amusement ran through it, but it was slender, and it implied pain. Other people’s. “They are not impressively respectful.”

Jewel grimaced. The voice—the voice wasn’t Duster’s. The words weren’t. She tried to hold on to this fact, and failed. Because she understood, looking at this scion of ancient gods, that at heart—at heart, the two could have been the same person. “They’re impressive.”

“And you allow it.”

“They’re cats. I’m not sure why all of the Immortals seem so surprised—I can’t exactly change their base nature.”

“Why not?” Calliastra’s brows rose. “They are, if I am not mistaken, yours—and you are, according to Viandaran,
Sen
. You can change their base nature. You can alter the shapes they wear. You can redefine what service means to them. Perhaps they did not tell you this?

“Or perhaps Viandaran did not. The Sen cannot alter mortals—but the rest of the world is their canvas if they but accept the whole of their power.”

Jewel let the words sink into her, hearing them, understanding them in a way only a seer could. “Avandar,” she said, speech giving the words a weight that the internal voice could not, “is this true for
all
Immortals? Could one who is Sen do this?”

Shianne’s voice rose above all of theirs. “What is Sen?” she asked. It was only barely a question.

“I can’t answer that,” Jewel replied. “I don’t completely understand it myself; the word was used when the gods walked the world—and only then.”

“Until now.”

“According to Calliastra, a god now walks
this
world. Avandar.”

You are playing by her rules,
he said. It wasn’t an answer, and they both knew it.

“I’m not. I’m playing by rules I don’t understand. I ask because I accept my ignorance. I want to alleviate it. Could I change the cats?”

Shadow hissed.

Snow sneezed.

Night hissed—at Snow.

“Yes. It is my belief that you could alter the cats.”

“Could I alter Celleriant?”

“You could try,” Celleriant replied. “But you would fail.”

Jewel nodded. “Because you are Ariane’s.”

“Because I am the White Lady’s, yes. Sworn to you, lord. Sworn to you while you live. But I am—and will be—Arianni. It is my nature. It is my existence. If the White Lady were to perish, I would perish with her—as would all of my kind.”