Oracle: The House War: Book Six (64 page)

Jewel would not have dared to speak to Duster in such a dismissive way. She knew Calliastra was not Duster—but there were enough similarities in their reactions she would have known better.

Clearly, the children of gods did not have an edge in observation and derived wisdom.

“If I have chosen to spend time in her company, that choice
is
mine. Your opinion of my effectiveness means less than nothing.”

The bristling fur of three great cats began to flatten as they watched. It was almost comical; their heads drifted between the two firstborn as if they were watching a game of ball. Jewel switched a hand to Snow’s head when his tail began to twitch. He hissed. Night yawned.

He yawned loudly. He then set about grooming his paw while staring balefully at the firstborn. To Jewel’s surprise, this caught their attention.

“What did you wish to show her?” Calliastra asked the Warden, her voice stiff and deep and yet still compelling.

The Warden frowned. “You are here in the dreaming, where you should not be. The dreams belong to me—and to Jewel. You are no part of them.”

Snow hissed. It was, unfortunately, the laughter hiss. The Warden’s gaze felt, as it turned on the cat, as if it could kill. Snow, however, wasn’t bothered. “She is not afraid of
you
,” the cat said. “And
we
are not afraid of
anything.
”

“She is afraid,” the Warden replied. “You merely distract her from fear.”

“If she is not afraid of
us
,” Shadow growled. “She is not
allowed
to be afraid of
you
.”

The Warden was silent for one long beat, and when he spoke again, Jewel knew that one brother had retreated—as he so often did—in favor of the other. “She is not afraid of me,” he said, to the great cat. “And has no reason to be so.”

“You did not visit.
He
did.”

“That is true, but I am here now. Jewel, why do you remain in the wilderness? The dreams and fears you encounter on this road will scar you; you will never escape them while you live. Without intent, will, desire, no one walks these paths for long; they are swept off them, there to wander in broken sanity for the time that remains them.

“One of our brothers was lost here, once.”

Jewel frowned. “Firstborn?”

“Yes. And no.”

“That creature is no brother of mine,” Calliastra said, with evident disgust.

“You are unkind, sister.”

“Always.”

“No, not always, and that is your tragedy.”

Calliastra clearly preferred Nightmare to Dream—but Jewel thought she understood why. Hope was painful when it was dashed, and it was always dashed.

“
Yes
,” Shadow said, hissing quietly. “But despair is always broken, time and again, by
hope
. The two exist, circling each other. No matter how strong one is, the other cannot be avoided. It is like—
very
like—the Warden himself.”

Calliastra turned the malevolence of her glare on Jewel, who had not spoken. Jewel did not, however, deny that she was the source of Shadow’s comment; there was no point.

“I was thinking of my own life,” she offered instead. “Not yours.”

“Think
quietly
,” Calliastra replied. “Where your odious cats won’t hear you.”

“In the dreaming, that would require me not to think at all.”

“And if you are not a fool, you will understand that is
exactly
what you must do in the dreaming. You give him permission—both of him—to play with your heart and your mind if you open either to him.”

“No mortal’s heart is completely closed,” the Warden of Dreams said. “Unless they are dead. The mortal dead do not dream. But it is true; I have come to carry both nightmare and dream to you. It is necessary,” he added. “The
Allasakari
intend to march upon your fragile, mortal city. If you cannot make a decision, it will be moot, soon.”

“And you’d care?” Calliastra demanded.

“The
Kialli
do not dream, little sister. The mortals do. Even the darkest of their fears sustains us—but if they are exterminated, I will have nothing. Yes, I would care.”

Jewel swallowed. “What dreams and what nightmares?” she asked.

His smile was soft, if pained. “That is not the way either work. A dream is an experience—as is a nightmare. In the case of one seer-born, the separation between dream and reality is thin; one world affects the other, if only peripherally. What you dream has relevance and meaning to the fate of your world. And yes,” he added, as Jewel drew breath to speak, “the meanings are not plain or clear—to you. That is also the nature of dream and nightmare.

“We will retreat, if that is your desire; your guardians have a power here that they do not—and cannot—have in the mortal world.”

Shadow growled.

The Warden of Dream smiled. “You guard her dreaming, yes. But you cannot control where she walks in that dreaming; you cannot control what she sees.” He turned, again, to Jewel. “In sleep, you are at your most vulnerable, and mortals must sleep. There are places within the high wilderness where you might sleep in peace—but you will sleep long, and the world will turn beyond you while you do.

“You have heard the stories of Lattan and Scarran?”

Jewel nodded.

“They come, at heart, from those experiences.”

“Tell me,” she said, as she once again grabbed Night by the scruff of an admittedly tall neck, “Why do the dreams come? Who sends them? You were said, once, to be a messenger—”

“Yes. A messenger of the gods.”

“But the gods are gone.”

“Not all of them, little Terafin ruler. Surely you must acknowledge that.”

She stiffened. “And were you sent here, tonight, or did you just happen to wander across our path?”

“The paths in the wilderness are multiple and shifting. Understand that. No distance you cover in the march of a long day is guaranteed to remain behind you when you wake. Each small dell, each small land, has rules and boundaries—but you are mortal and you walk in ignorance of what either are.”

“That wasn’t an answer,” Jewel replied.

“Very good. Nor will I provide one, this eve. There will come a time when you and I will converse almost as equals. That time is almost upon you, although you cannot see it. I will show you the dreams and the nightmares that lay at our own hearts, and you, Jewel, will show us things that we have not seen for so long we have almost forgotten.

“And we forget nothing.”

Shadow was at a full-on growl by the time the Warden lifted his wings. They were, Jewel thought, coal gray—but in the night, it was hard to tell. She thought she could see stars.

“She really is a remarkably stupid mortal, isn’t she?” Calliastra asked Shadow.

Shadow, however, surprised Jewel; he did not reply.

 • • • 

Jewel closed her eyes. Shadow hissed and hissed and hissed. There were words in it.

Jewel
.

Winter King
.

Your cat is not wrong. Do not close your eyes in this place.

I’m sleeping.

Yes. By your own choice. Even I find this inexplicable and foolish, and I have grown accustomed to your risks. Why do you take this one?

Because Shadow is with me
, Jewel replied, although the answer was not the answer the Winter King wanted. She had no answer to give him, but said,
because I believe I must have this dream, in this place. I don’t know why.

For some reason, however, this unhelpful explanation eased him.
Understand that the power of the talent-born is not lessened by their departure from the world of man. It is strengthened by it. You cannot see it as strength because almost every creature that can speak in the world you now walk is more powerful than you are.

Should I wake the others?

No. Those of us who can sleep in safety must. The dreams your companions have are not the danger your dreams are. But they will be stranded if you are lost. If something you see or hear propels you to act, they
must
be woken. If you leave them, there is no definitive path you might walk to return to their sides. Remember these words if you remember no others.

She nodded.

The quality of the hissing to her left changed. She opened her eyes to fire.

It was not the fire of a camp pit; not the fire of logs, confined and consumed for the purpose of providing heat or warmth. It was a raging, building consuming fire—and it was burning in the Common. Her breath caught smoke and debris as she stood immobile for one long minute; she recognized the building at the heart of the rising flame: the Merchants’ Guild.

People streamed around her as if she were a rock in the center of a rushing current, shouting in their flight. She didn’t even attempt to stop them; instead, she began to move through the crowd, toward the fire itself.

She understood that this was a dream or a nightmare. But she
knew
that in some fashion it was real; it was truth. What she could not know, did not know, was the
when
of it. As she approached a building both familiar and privately despised, she saw that the fire had flown, in patches, to other rooftops, other buildings. There were no magi in the streets, nothing to contain the spread of that fire. She saw, looking up, that fire adorned the branches of the standing
Ellariannatte
.

Movement in the sky caught her attention and held it: the magi that were not lining the streets in an attempt to contain and control the fire were, of all things, flying.

She could breathe again. She understood that this was not her battle, not her fight; that she could bear witness and hand over the responsibility of it to those far better equipped to deal with it.

And that was good, because fighting to one side of the building—and fighting at its peak—were
Kialli
. She recognized both because neither looked human. They had adopted forms meant to terrify and demoralize—although for Jewel, those forms had the opposite effect. She
knew
who they were, where they were, and what they were doing; they did not attempt to abuse trust by assuming the guise of friends and allies.

The streets had emptied in the sudden way streets can in dreams; the screams and shouts panic raised had dissipated. She turned to the demons who remained; they were fighting.

They were, she thought, fighting while an audience, pressed against the outer wall of the Merchants’ Guild building, watched. For the most part, they were dressed as servants, but among their number were two men she recognized instantly: Jarven ATerafin and Hectore of Araven. Although she stood nowhere near them, she could hear their quiet conversation. Jarven was offering the Araven patris a wager.

Jewel had never liked Jarven. She was certain, at the moment, she never would. She didn’t, and couldn’t, trust him. But Finch had a soft spot for the old Terafin merchant.

Jewel did, however, care for Hectore. And that was just as soft a spot as Finch’s; she knew it. She had found no information about Hectore that implied he could not be trusted—but really, given the position Araven held in merchanting matters, she was certain she could if she was determined. She wasn’t.

This had been the hardest thing to learn and accept about people: that they could be both incredibly cruel and mendacious, and
also
incredibly generous and kind. They were not all one thing or all the other. It shouldn’t have been hard to learn; after all, she was like them. But—it had been.

Hectore was far less amused than Jarven appeared to be. Even in dream, he could not be compelled to take the bet Jarven offered, although he didn’t punch or slap him, which Jewel would have been severely tempted to do. Instead, he paled and turned, his mouth opening slowly around syllables too attenuated to be understood. He was shouting to or at someone.

She turned in the direction of that someone and saw two things.

No, she saw more than two things, so much was happening all at once: she saw a demon, winged, weaponed, a thing of flame and shadow and beauty, and she saw something attacking him. She could not, now, say what the creature was. Its form, which seemed, at base, to be almost human, shifted and blurred; it grew wings, but even those wings were not fixed and solid, as the demonic wings were; they weren’t leather or feather; they weren’t scaled or furred; they weren’t even of a single fixed length.

The form of the body was likewise indeterminate, and she realized, watching, that Hectore shouted at this creature, and that she had seen it before. Once. In the great, rounded room of carved reliefs beneath
Avantari.

She might have spoken. She opened her mouth.

But light appeared behind the demon’s wings, sharpening their outlines, and as the light grew, she realized that a new combatant had joined the fight. He was in form as tall as the demon; he carried a sword of blue lightning. He had swallowed that lightning; it was of him. It was reflected in his eyes, in the trailing edge of his hair. He was not the heart of the storm, but the storm itself, and what he struck—earth, air, the fire that had seeped from the guildhall itself—he destroyed.

The demon called him by name.

And she knew the name. Of course she knew it. But there was nothing connecting any prior experience to the creature of blue lightning and destruction that stood before her now. The fire in the guildhall was inconsequential. The men and women within the hall would die, yes, and that would be tragic under any other circumstance.

But this man? This man would walk across the city, and even the most casual of his steps would break earth; the sweep of his sword would bisect buildings and anything that happened to shelter in them. She knew he intended no harm.

She thought him incapable of causing none. As the demon perished—and it did—the earth in the center of the Common itself rose, breaking, and breaking again; a spire rose from beneath the earth, displacing everything above it as it reached for the sky.

Meralonne turned toward it. He turned, then, and called wind, and it seemed to Jewel as the spire continued to rise he dwindled in power and majesty before its height. The wind caught his hair, drawing it from his face as if the elements were valets.