Oracle: The House War: Book Six (67 page)

“No,” was the bitter, bitter reply. “My own death would be an end to pain.”

“Only an end to yours, little mortal. Do not—never—forget that.” Turning to Shianne, she said, “the sky is not safe.”

Shianne said nothing. To Jewel’s surprise, she closed her eyes and lifted her face; a rain of ashes missed her delicate skin. Fire joined lightning. The skies, which had been a cold, even gray, were lit, for a moment, from within: they became white and red and black.

It was beautiful.

Avandar approached from the rear. “You might consider lowering your voice.” His entire body was shimmering with light, predominantly orange. But there were hints of other colors: violet, blue.

“I think they know we’re here.”

“They know that something approaches, certainly,” he replied. “They cannot—or could not—be certain what, or who.”

“Is Calliastra right? Are we facing demons?”

“I am standing beside you,” was his mild response. “If we faced Verasallion, you would know; he would cover the sky with the span of his wings and the storm would destroy the forest and everything beneath him. Let us hope for demons.”

Any day that involved hoping for demons was not a good day. Jewel started forward; Avandar caught her shoulder. “Not you.”

“I want to see—”

“You will be seen. You are unarmed. This is not your fight.”

“We’re not in the normal world. If it’s not my fight, then whose?”

“Those more likely to survive, Terafin. You are not upon your own ground, here. The elements will not obey you. The fire will not protect you. You stand in wilderness that has never been claimed. I invite you to consider why.”

Calliastra was watching this exchange with a growing—familiar—impatience. Jewel was not surprised when she sprouted wings of shadow. “
I
will scout,” she told them both. “I hear your Night, and I would not leave all of the fun to him.” She leaped toward the sky as if the sky was her enemy.

Avandar released Jewel’s shoulder; he met, and held, her gaze. “We follow Terrick and Angel. They are the two most likely to be lost, here.”

 • • • 

Terrick’s movements had slowed. He grunted, adjusting the weight of the ax as he slid behind the trunks of standing, barren trees. Angel’s sword caught light and reflected it as he found different trees; their progress was marked by the hide and seek the den had perfected in streets of a city.

Lightning perforated the gray sky above their heads; it seemed aimed at their backs, where Jay was. But there was nothing in flight; no shadows cast upon snow to indicate that the combat was aerial.

The den’s hide and seek had often been a matter of survival—but they had faced people. Lightning had been no part of the deadly games the dens played among themselves. Nor had fire. Not this fire.

It erupted across the tree line a hundred yards ahead, and it spread, flames consuming winter wood as if the trees were dead and dry. Terrick pulled up, as did Angel. They could see no visible sign of enemies. The lightning itself seemed to flash in place, as if Terrick and Angel were so inconsequential they weren’t worth the bother of killing.

And given the attitudes of the various immortals whose paths Angel had crossed, they probably weren’t. Unless the mortals in question provided some sort of sustenance, the way hunting prey did for humans. Angel lifted a hand and signed; Terrick frowned.

“Let’s head back. We can stay on the outer periphery, but I don’t think we’re going to find anything that Calliastra doesn’t find first.”

 • • • 

Angel was worried about their supplies. Dead people didn’t require food or shelter—but lack of either in this place just meant death would come anyway. He, like Terrick, had shrugged himself out of the heavier pack that encumbered movement; the fire forced them to retreat. The retreat took more time, not less, but Angel lost some hoisting the pack by one strap onto his shoulder.

“Smart boy,” Terrick murmured, doing the same. He stopped speaking when a shadow sped across the snow, broken by branches and geography in its passage. Both men glanced up.

“I think that’s ours,” Angel said quietly.

“It is not the cats.”

“No. I think it’s Calliastra.”

Terrick watched for a moment longer; the natural shadow ran into the fire, where it was lost to easy sight. “I don’t like it.”

“I don’t, either. But I trust Jay. If she’s willing to accept Calliastra, I’ll accept her. I don’t have to like her.”

“She is death, boy.”

“Yes.” Angel nodded in the direction from which the shadow had come. “But at the moment, what isn’t?”

Terrick chuckled. “This isn’t the fight I was trained for. Those cats, the death goddess, wind that moves at a man’s command, and fire that spreads across living trees as if they were kindling. I can’t fight at range; I can’t throw the ax.”

“We would make a mile a day, if that, without you,” Angel replied. “And you know it. The winter is your element.”

“Aye, and maybe it is. I feel young again, in this place. There is your lord.”

Angel nodded. “I’ve never questioned your sanity.”

“But?”

“You seem happier to be here than you ever seemed in the Port Authority.”

Terrick nodded. “I am. I saw your father surrender his life on what seemed a mad, pointless quest. He died beneath the shadow of loss and failure. But, boy, he made you. He trained you. He did what he could to prepare you for this life. The mad quest? Doesn’t look so mad, now.

“This is the reason Garroc left Weyrdon. And I waited for Garroc, and then, for Garroc’s son, to have an ending to the long, tangled story. To have peace. All I have to do is obey the few commands your lord gives, and protect her.

“I can do that. And you, boy? It’s the only responsibility you’ve ever truly accepted. Yes, I’m happier. When I finally meet Garroc across the bridge, I will tell him your story. And mine. He will understand.” He shifted his grip on his ax and grinned. “And I will see dragons. I know it in my bones. I will see frostwyrms and gods and demons. I will see things that there are no Weston words for. It is enough. It is more than enough.”

 • • • 

Jay met them as they headed back to camp. The familiar, pinched set of her lips eased as they came into view. Angel sheathed his sword, which probably meant Terrick’s lips were just as pinched, if for vastly different reasons.

“There’s a ring of fire spreading across the forest,” Angel told her. “No sign of what caused it.”

Avandar frowned.

“Adam is with the Winter King; Shianne is with Snow. You might have heard that last bit.”

“The complaints?”

“Apparently, he can’t fight with a pregnant woman on his back.”

Terrick was not Angel. He didn’t sheath the ax; he held it, watching the sky. “Are we safe?” he asked Jay, although he didn’t look back at her.

“At the moment? Yes. Kallandras and Celleriant have taken to the air as well. I’m not sure there’s going to be much left for the cats, though—Calliastra took off after Night. If they start another brawl like the last one, they’re going to level huge swaths of forest.”

“And us?”

“Probably—but that would be less intentional.”

“Calliastra passed over the ring of fire,” Terrick said quietly.

“We’re going to head that way as well. Stay in range of Avandar; if magic is used here—and frankly, the ring of fire—he can protect us from the worst of it.”

“Not the worst,” Avandar replied. “If something chooses to wake the wild earth here, we will be in some danger.” He glanced at Jay; her brows folded a moment as she considered his words.

“Not yet,” she finally said. She began to walk toward the fire that Angel had spoken of—but that wasn’t hard; he was certain all paths would lead to fire.

 • • • 

Lightning struck trees as they walked. A rain of bark—and larger branches—fell to either side of the path Terrick chose. Jay didn’t expect to be hit; she did glance up from time to time to see which tree had been struck, to better gauge the accuracy of whoever their unseen opponents were. The lightning was clearly aimed; the fire had been laid down as a precaution.

Given the cats, Calliastra, and the two men who fought in the air as if they weighed less than hummingbirds, it wasn’t much of a precaution.

To Avandar, Angel said, “Can you carry us through or over the fire?”

Avandar’s response—and a response wasn’t guaranteed—was lost to the roar of a very angry cat. The sound was thunderous; it belonged in the air, with the lightning. Angel couldn’t differentiate the voices of the cats.

Jay, clearly, could. She had paled. “That was Shadow,” she said.

Of the three cats, Shadow was the tactician. Angel signed. Jay signed back. The sky, less full of obscuring branches, gave them no line of sight on the cat—or any of the combatants. They picked up the pace that Jay now set.

She was worried. Angel was less worried; he privately suspected that nothing could kill the cats. The cats, on the other hand, were perfectly capable of ending lives, and had demonstrated this with authority.

 • • • 

Kallandras hovered. His movement was not flight; it had none of flight’s grace or deliberation. The air was alive. Lightning flew with the grace and power that he denied himself for a moment, striking trees and perhaps ground beneath his feet; he had removed the snowshoes that Terrick had provided. No battle in the wilderness was going to be fought on the earth.

To the west, Celleriant was likewise anchored in air; the Arianni Prince was armed with both the sword and the shield of his kin. In his hands, at the moment, they resembled the lightning that flew, uncontained. His hair curled in currents at his back; no strands escaped to obscure vision.

As if aware of Kallandras’ regard, Celleriant smiled. At this distance, his eyes were silver light.

Kallandras drew his weapons. A gift from Meralonne APhaniel, they were artifacts of a bygone era; Kallandras believed they had last seen use during the age of the Blood Barons. He used them only in combats in which his opponents were likely to be talent-born or inhuman, and even then, he handled them with care, will, focus.

They were the length, at the moment, of long daggers; the hilts were of a piece with the blades, and the blades themselves meant for parrying or thrusting; they were not edged in the Southern tradition. Or the Northern, for that matter. But the shape they held now could change if he had the will to command it.

They could change, more treacherously, if he did not.

He had not drawn them since he stepped through the portal in the basement of
Avantari
; he had not been certain whether the surroundings would affect the strength of the weapons’ will. The blades had been crafted by an Artisan with the materials he had had at hand.

The materials he had had at hand included demons. Meralonne was not apprised of how they had come to be in his possession—or how he had survived it; no one completely understood how Artisans worked. Not even Artisans themselves. But they could work, and did.

And they had crafted blades that existed for combat; that were drawn to fear and pain. For that reason, Kallandras did not use them often. He had learned that that temptation ended lives among the brotherhood. He had seen it, during training. He had learned to value death, and to respect it—but to crave it? Never.

The wind moved him before he reasserted control over its flowing currents. Control, in any battle, was necessary; one surrendered it only when one had no other option; lack of control was failure. Or death.

In this place, the wind was stronger, its voice clearer.

And in this place, for the first time, he heard the voice of the blades. It was a singular voice, which surprised him, for there had always been two weapons. It spoke—as the
Kialli
did—in words; the wind did not.

And it spoke with force, yet its voice was velvet. It was almost more of a sensation than a sound.

Let me go
, the weapon sang.
Let me fly
.
Let me meet the dead and grant them some small measure of peace. LET ME GO
. As it spoke, both weapons shuddered. There was very little traction in the air; Kallandras had taken the equivalent of five steps when he regained control of them.

Here, to be mastered by the blades was death—in all likelihood, his own.

The wild wind was like—very like—a child. It required cozening, praise, appreciation; it could be commanded and forced to obedience, but the sullen resentment it felt lingered. It was best, always, to allow the wind to believe that it had choice and the freedom to make decisions; best to convince the wind that the wind itself had chosen the enemies it faced.

Locomotion was not a matter of life or death, as far as the wild air was concerned; it was just as happy to pick Kallandras up and carry him in its currents as it was to remove the roofs of buildings.

The weapons, however, were not like the wind. The wind knew mercurial anger—fury—and equally instant joy; it sang or it raged or it whispered, hiding behind Kallandras while playing with his hair.

The blades twisted in his hands, bending toward him. They had done so once before, in the silence of Meralonne’s tower; they had drawn the slightest of blood, no more, before acquiescing to serve him; they had taken a shape and form with which he was familiar and even comfortable.

They lost that form as they struggled for mastery.

He held them, regardless. He could have dropped them—he had that much control—and in truth, he considered doing so. In the wilderness of this winter landscape, they might never be found again.

But no weapon he now carried in this place was their equal, save for perhaps the wind itself—and the cost of rousing wind to fury was too high, here where the earth slept beneath their feet, waiting provocation.

He tightened his grip and spoke. He spoke with the voice to which he’d been born, and into which—at so much peril in the South of his birth—he had grown. Bard. Bard-born.

Stop
.

The blades, folding, shuddered to a trembling halt. The length of each didn’t straighten; they strained against the imperative in a command no one else could hear. He struggled with their sudden weight.