Oracle: The House War: Book Six (58 page)

“They are trees, ADonlan.”

“They are not simple trees; simple trees do not reach their full growth in a matter of minutes.”

“I am not certain they
have
reached their full growth,” she countered. “I have studied these trees for all of my adult life. There has never been an instance in which they have been harmful in any way. I do not expect—sudden growth notwithstanding—their presence here to cause any difficulty.”

Maures opened his mouth. Birgide, however, watched Duvari.

“That is not your decision to make.”

“No. I believe, in this instance, it is the Master Gardener’s. Or perhaps, the Kings themselves.” She walked, slowly, across the room, toward the area in which the translucent strings were at their most dense. Toward, she thought, the windows in this office, which faced the Courtyard gardens, and therefore, the
Ellariannatte
themselves. Through spotless, clear glass of a serviceable nature, she had to lift her chin and expose her neck to see their heights.

She did. Thus occupied, she said, “If it is necessary, I will tender my resignation immediately.” She watched Maures in reflection; she watched the Lord of the Compact. Sliding her hands to the workmanlike, shiny satchel, she waited for a response.

It was not long in coming. “You intend to resign?”

She turned, once again, to face Duvari. Her hands were loose by her sides; fingers trailed through violet and orange as she nodded.

“Effective when?”

There were only two phrases she might use in such a circumstance; both made her feel young. Youth had had very, very little to recommend it in Birgide’s experience. The first was
If the current crisis had not commanded so much of your time, I would have left the service sooner.

It was the second she chose. “Right now.”

“You understand,” Duvari continued, as if she had not spoken, “that there are very few acceptable ways to retire from the service? You’ve sworn an oath to the Kings; they have accepted it.”

Birgide nodded. “It is my belief that they will accept the resignation.”

“They are the Kings,” he replied. “I am the Lord of the Compact. You have spent too much time within Terafin if you think the
Astari
have the rights of the Terafin Chosen.”

Birgide glanced at the door that led to the outer offices. She glanced at Maures. Maures did not seem overly concerned with her resignation; he did not seem overly concerned with Duvari’s reaction to it.

So, she thought, it was true: demons did not absorb all of the memories and experiences of their victims.

Duvari turned to Maures. “I will have words with the magi,” he said, his voice as quiet as death. “You will take care of things here.”

Maures nodded. And, of course, he smiled.

Birgide’s hand now rested upon the hilt of an awkward dagger. Haval Arwood’s gift. Her palm, as she tightened her grip on the dagger, grew warm. Unlike the flame of the burning tree, this warmth caused no pain; it reminded her, instead, of summer rocks. Of Summer.

But winter was white misted breath, not thick, dark smoke; winter was blinding snow, and falling flakes and silent port; winter was reddened cheek and chapped skin. What imbued Maures now was none of these things. Could be none of these things. The Summer and Winter Birgide Viranyi knew were anchored in human experience.

Duvari turned as he reached the doors that opened to the outer office.

Birgide lifted one hand and passed it through the strands of magic: orange and violet, all. The notes reverberated, in a very rudimentary music. Maure’s eyes narrowed; she wondered what he saw.

“You cannot possibly think,” he said, Duvari forgotten, “that you can stand against me?”

“Stranger things, by far, have happened,” she countered. The notes she had struck stilled. But the notes she had not now took their place as she stood in the tall, wide windows that faced the Courtyard gardens.

What she had read of demons—and the reports were closely guarded—was scant. She knew only that they were deadly, that they were often immune to simple steel, and that they were
fast
. They were not immune to magic, but they had magic of their own with which to counter that school of attack; they were not bound by simple things like gravity.

Or flesh.

They were powerful enough that they did not feel the need for caution when they chose to attack. And they were rumored to be capable of exactly this: they could assume the appearance of the living. They could inhabit them, speak as them, and gain some part of their knowledge.

But Duvari trusted no one completely. Birgide was certain that the only person who understood the network of
Astari
spread across this Empire—and occasionally beyond it—was Duvari himself.

Duvari, who was armed. Duvari who could wield any weapon Birgide had ever seen with equality facility. Today, he carried short daggers; they had fallen into his hands with a flick of the wrist. Hers had not; she understood that the gift given her by Haval Arwood was to be her best chance in what was to follow.

But it was not, she thought, as the sound in the room grew louder—and brighter, if sound could be said to have any visible component—her only weapon. She felt, of all things, joy—a giddy, boundless joy. Joy, in Birgide’s life, had been ascribed to the absence of pain. It would never be relegated to that, again.

Because here, facing demon—and grieving, in a quiet way, the loss of the man he had absorbed—Birgide was in her forest. She was in the forest of her childhood, when everyone in her life had been composed of rage and fury, and the power to lash out, again and again. She was not—would never be—as physically strong as the people who had made life unbearable.

She was not, and would never be, as powerful as the creature she now faced. Not in a pure fight, not on her own. But she understood, as the sun streamed in through the window at her back, that she was not alone. She had chosen the peace and the power of her solitary life in the forest, and its echoes returned as voices. Every stolen moment of harbor, every brief escape, every temporary respite, had been a seed, and those seeds had grown roots. She stood, rooted, solid, shorn of fear.

But she understood, as the Lord of the Compact
moved
, that those moments of safety had not been the only safe moments; that more than one seed had been planted, and more than one had taken root. Maures did not notice Duvari—not immediately; his attention was solely riveted upon Birgide.

And Birgide knew she would have seconds—if that—free from that attention. She shifted her stance, standing at ease, hand in satchel, sun warming the back of her neck. Maures—or whatever he had become—cast shadows as he walked; the shadows were multiple and only one of them suggested humanity. She thought she could trace the outlines of his demonic form in the fall of that darkening: four arms, tines that rose from the shoulders, too sharp and slender to be wings; broad chest, and a height that even the tallest of men could not naturally reach.

He carried no weapons. The shadows implied that simple weapons would be superfluous; his hands were long, and seemed bladed or clawed; the reach of those protrusions was greater than Birgide’s reach with dagger or sword would be.

And she should have been afraid. Should have.

But having brought the
Ellariannatte
to
Avantari
, she couldn’t be. Because the forest was here, and because Duvari had taken, from her defiance, the only message of import. She didn’t flinch or blink when the Lord of the Compact drove both of the small knives he carried into Maures’ exposed back. His strike was too low for organs. Birgide thought he had attempted to sever spine.

And it would have worked; she was already in motion.

She was not prepared for the sudden flight of desks and shelves in the office, and aborted her planned attack when a chair bounced off the window two feet above her head. The windows did not break. Nor would they, without a more concerted effort.

Maures stiffened, stumbled and fell. But even as he fell, the shadows that had been clear only to Birgide’s vision shifted and solidified; hands that had been, upon entry into this office, human, shed flesh—and blood, and bone—as longer, thicker arms broke through. And yes, claws—long, slender, curved blades. They shredded carpet as the demon pushed himself off the ground, unfolding.

Half of Maures’ face fell away; half clung as demonic face expanded. Shadows for eyes, ebony for fangs; nothing about what emerged from the cocoon of a familiar body looked remotely human. The ribs that surfaced from the clothing Maures had worn extended a foot to either side, like a shattered cage.

It was a blessing. It was death. But Birgide had lived in the shadow of death for as long as she could remember; only her chosen field of study had celebrated life in any form. And even that study had been undertaken because plants could lead, in the end, to death.

Always death.

And who else should face demons? Who else? She stood; light streamed in from the window; Duvari moved like a man possessed. As he moved, the sound in the room shifted; watching him,
listening
to him, she understood that all of his movements were augmented in subtle ways. For a man who was at best coldly suspicious of the magi, this should have come as a surprise.

Duvari always used the tools at hand. He was gone as the demon sent both of his arms back; the sound of blades hitting blades filled the room, but the demon did not even turn; he faced Birgide. Birgide reached up with her left hand, intercepting sunlight and air and transparent strands of magic.

The demon growled; his voice was not Maures’ voice. Birgide thought he must have literal eyes in the back of his head—or the sides. He rose—and rose again. He did not attempt to strike Duvari with his long, clawed hands a second time; he gestured, and a desk rose. Two. Birgide had no illusions; she could not survive the crushing weight of either.

She started to leap to the right and froze, her left hand tightening in the sunlight, her fingers becoming numb. She held the hilt of an awkwardly shaped, unbalanced knife in her right.

The demon smiled. It was hard to look at his face, because half of it was now the obviously dead skin of a man, but she thought his smile held genuine amusement. “I know what it is you hold,” he said, as the first of the desks went flying backward, toward Duvari. “It is only effective if you can strike me—and, Birgide, you can’t. You were never the most competent of combatants.”

The second desk flew toward her.

She watched its slow, ungainly flight. She heard it as magic asserted itself in the air of the room, and she watched as it arced, at last, into the falling beams of light. There, it came to a sudden stop, suspended above the ground in the strands of a golden, bright net.

Summer.

The demon’s expression rippled, shadow melting into flesh. His eyes—defined only by a shift in texture somewhere in the high midpoint of his face—had rounded and deepened. He spoke a word. Two. Neither were in a language Birgide recognized.

Her hand, still entwined in light, tightened; the light itself developed texture and weight at her touch. She pulled on the strings and the desk swayed in midair. In the distance, she was aware that the first thrown desk had landed; wood cracked and shattered, as if it were glass.

Her cursory glance past the demon’s sharp, open ribs did not reveal Duvari, and she could spare no further attention; the demon was not concerned with the Lord of the Compact. He leaped toward Birgide, and she shifted her weight, bending into her knees and raising the dagger she carried.

But she did not strike; his leap was a feint. The beginning of the jump implied a direction and velocity that he did not choose to travel. Rumors were true: the demon was fast. The floor beneath Birgide’s braced feet cracked; she couldn’t see what had broken it.

This time, when she leaped, she moved; the sunlight didn’t hold her in place. Strands of light trailed behind her, twined visibly around her hand; they didn’t restrict motion, which was good. She hit the floor, rolled to her feet, and leaped again as the shadow passed—narrowly—over her moving body.

The floor held; the demon’s reach was vastly greater than her own. His arms were deceptive in length; they elongated, and his claws shrieked against the floor; sparks rose as he hit stone supports. He did not intend, as he’d said, to give her opportunity to strike him with the dagger that Haval had gifted her.

He had enough of Maures’ memory to know that armed combat had never been her strength. She could fight; she could leverage her size—or lack of size—to advantage, hiding her strength. Hiding had been one of the few trained activities that had earned her neither bruises nor humiliation. They were refinements on rudimentary lessons she had already learned.

Maures understood that size was not the measure by which the
Astari
were judged. He had overseen some part of her training. No one, however, oversaw it all; no member of the
Astari
could be aware of another’s full measure. Maures, alive, would have been more cautious.

Maures, alive, did not have the arrogant confidence the demon did. He was sloppy; all of his gestures were, as he himself, large and forceful, as were his attacks. Where the desk had failed, he gestured another into the air; as he did, she could see new strands of gray attach themselves to the desk’s surface and legs. The desk flew, and as it did, the demon joined it, leaping up and across the room to the left of where Birgide stood.

Birgide could not stand to fight when too much of the room could be used against her. The floors were not thin, the supports were not fragile, but neither had been designed or built for a conflict such as this.

She leaped to the right, rolled, and leaped again. Claws broke wooden planks inches from where she’d come to a stop as he followed. Had he minimized the ferocity of his blows, had he minimized movement, practiced restraint, she was almost certain she would be dead. To avoid him at all, she had to avoid injury; there was no room for error, no room for the loss of speed injury often caused.