Oracle: The House War: Book Six (68 page)

They spoke to him.

They spoke of death. They spoke of loss. They spoke of rage and bitter betrayal. They spoke—ah, demons—they spoke of their lost brethren. Brothers, all. And at their head, a Queen. They were sundered forever.

Just as, they whispered, Kallandras himself was forsaken.

He was no longer a young man. That man had believed that pain would never lessen, never end. That love’s sharpest edges would cut forever. At a remove of decades he had learned that those beliefs were true. But he had also believed that the rest of his life would remain static; that nothing would fill the emptiness, nothing would speak to the loss.

And that had proven less true.

His life had not been static. His affection, reserved and withdrawn, had nonetheless been hesitantly, slowly offered, growing roots so quietly he had not himself been aware of their existence until his trek through the Sea of Sorrows at the side of the Arkosan Voyani. His gift, trained in service to the brotherhood, had been repurposed in service to foreign Kings, through the halls of Senniel College, the most respected of the bardic colleges.

You were trained to sing death
, the weapons said.
And we were created, to
cause it
. We are not your enemy. And here, bard, you have many. Some you will see. Some you will hear. But some will take you unaware. Give us free rein. We might be allies.
The blades twisted in his hand, becoming longer and more slender in shape; the hilts—all of a piece—retreated.

But these weapons, Kallandras had also learned. He smiled; the weapons sensed genuine, if bitter amusement in the expression; it did not please them. Their struggle intensified. Even trapped as they were within the confines of simple weapons, the arrogance of the immortal could not be underestimated.

“Brother!” Celleriant shouted.

The weapons momentarily stilled, listening—as the bard did—for a voice that was familiar.

“You will miss your chance if you hesitate; we not only have the cursed cats, but Calliastra herself to contend with—and neither are inclined to share glory.”

The
Kovaschaii
did not kill for the glory of any but the Dark Lady. And yet, Kallandras thought, shifting his grip. And yet. He did not relish the challenge of battle the way Lord Celleriant did. He did not seek to prove himself against the wild and elemental; nor did he seek to control any element but the air itself. As a mortal, the elements were beyond him; only Myrddion’s ring allowed him to speak with the wind as if he were . . . Celleriant. Or Meralonne.

In both, when they chose not to guard their voices, he could hear a loss that resonated with his own. But his loss was not their loss; his choice, not their choice. It was therefore one of the oldest—and most familiar—of voices that returned.

Only a fool carries weapons he cannot master
.

And how many times, Kallandras wondered, had that same master called him a fool? Too many to count, although with effort and will, he could. The sting and humiliation of those early lessons had left no scar. What he was, now, was in large part the legacy of those difficult years.

He had mastered the weapons that he had been given; they were many.

He had mastered the dark; he had learned to fight, where necessary, in water, and across the sands of the desert. Snow, however, he had come to on his own. Snow, and air.

You cannot name us
.

“It is not required. Here, you serve my purpose or you lie in the snow beneath us, there to wait until you are found. You are unlikely to be found by mortals in this place; your desires will count for even less against those who now claim these lands.”

No one claims these lands
.

A roar shook the air. Literally.

Kallandras grimaced; he sent a benediction to the wind. Gratitude came easily and without effort; placation was more difficult. The wind, however, did not require that effort—not yet. Soon, Kallandras thought, as Celleriant once again called him.

“Make your decision; make it quickly. I am generous enough to offer you that choice; there will be no finer weapons to be found in this stretch of sky, for this particular battle.”

It was not, of course, over; not even when the blades once again returned to the shape they had held since he had accepted them. This was a fight he would have, over and over, until he abandoned the weapons or returned them to the magi.

But, he thought, as he called wind and leaped into its folds, that was as it should be.

 • • • 

The sky was winter clear, the air cold; the wind at the heights above the trees that covered ground for as far as the eye could see was bitter and sharp. The wind could moderate the chill, but it could not destroy it; nor did Kallandras ask.

Where lightning struck trees, the debris wafted in currents not under the bard’s control; they rose and swirled in dense, temporary clouds. He suspected, but could not be certain, that The Terafin stood on the ground beneath them; had all combat been aerial, that would have been the safest.

Some combat was aerial.

Kallandras could see the sweep of wings in the distance—wings he’d missed on first glance because they were the exact hue of the sky itself. So, too, the creature’s neck, its head—but the interior of its jaws were the dark shade of crimson when those jaws opened.

They opened on lightning and anger.

As lightning flared, Shadow roared, folding his wings in a dive; streaks of pale blue-white brushed his feathers on the downward arc.

Had Calliastra not taken to the skies to confront the creature, it would have been hard to gauge its size, the perspective of clear sky offered so little for rough comparison. But she had. The creature was large; much larger than the cats or the firstborn.

A second set of jaws opened, longer and wider than the first. Kallandras approached slowly, skirting the highest of the nearest branches. He was wrong. The creature’s body could not be easily seen, and if it had eyes, they also blended with the sky in which it fought.

‘‘W
HAT ARE THEY FIGHTING?” Terrick asked.

Jewel said nothing for a long breath. “I can’t tell. I can hear it—but I can’t actually see it. Avandar?”

The same
. He was, however, uneasy.

“You don’t think this is natural.” When Terrick coughed, she added, “For the wilderness.”

“No, Terafin. Whatever they fight now is casting lightning bolts toward the trees. There are creatures that could, once, do this—kin to the dragons, but separate from them—yet I assure you, were we fighting one of those, you would see it. You might see it seconds before you perished—but you would see it.”

“Do they fight on the ground at all?”

“Yes. The forest is not ideal for that. If enraged or determined, the creatures will land regardless—but the trees here are not fragile, mortal trees, and such a landing might wake them.”

“And the lightning won’t?” she all but demanded.

“The lightning might. It is deep winter here. The forest sleeps.” He hesitated, and then added, “I did not dwell in forests in my youth. I did not have the patience to learn to hear them speak. Or the time.” His smile twisted into something grimmer. “And when I had the time, and knew I had nothing
but
time—” he shook his head. “You travel with Lord Celleriant. If the trees wake, he will know.”

“In time to explain that it’s not us that attempted to destroy them?”

A roar broke the flow of conversation.

Jewel closed her eyes. “Angel?”

“Yes?”

“Did you hear that?”

“I think we all heard it.”

“Did you understand it?”

Silence.

“Avandar?”

“No, Jewel. I heard what I suspect Angel and Terrick did: a roar. A roar that implies a set of truly impressive lungs. You heard words?”

Jewel nodded, grimmer now, her lips set in so thin a line they were almost invisible.

“Is he saying anything unexpected?” Angel asked.

“What, exactly, would you expect him to say?”

“I don’t know. Food! Die!”

“I’d be happier with that, because I think he’s attempting to give commands to the elemental air.”

 • • • 

The roar of an all but invisible creature was thunder. Not to be outdone, the cats replied—but their familiar voices, at this distance, were dim echoes. Dim, insulting echoes.

Lightning replied; lightning, anger, aimed not at treetops or Jewel, but at moving, taunting targets. Jewel saw that one of those targets was Snow—and that Shianne was now in the air, perched on his back. All of her outrage was silent; she didn’t have ready words available to vent it, and had she, no target.

Avandar, however, nodded grimly. “It is not a tactic that many would have used in such encounters in my youth—but Calliastra is correct. Dignity is a sign of the certainty of power. Let the cats fight as they fight; it buys us time.”

Jewel didn’t even ask for what; she knew. Terrick did not give Avandar the lead; he took it. And he led them directly to the fire that he and Angel had encountered.

The Rendish man had called it a ring. It seemed, to Jewel, to be an apt description; it stretched in a thin line that curved slightly—very slightly. A circle.
Is it alive?
she asked her domicis.

You cannot hear it.

No.

And yet you can hear the voice of the creature above us as if it spoke language.

Clearly.
She was impatient and struggled not to show it. Or not to show more of it.

Yes. It is elemental fire. But it is contained and restrained at the moment. It longs to leave the circle; it longs to burn the forest.

And that would be a bad thing?

For us, yes.

She shook her head, frowning.
For them. For whoever is attempting to kill us or pin us here. It’s possible we could survive the fire—we can, in a haphazard way, fly. But the trees can’t.

No, Terafin.

Burning or harming the trees wouldn’t be in the interest of whoever controls this fire.
It wasn’t a question.

That would be the safe assumption.

There was no safety. “We can’t call air anywhere near this circle without breaking it, can we?”

“No.”

“The forest isn’t the concern, then. It’s the earth.”

“The earth would have to be sleeping very, very lightly to notice a fire as small as this; the wind has come and gone to no effect.”

“The trees here are rooted in earth. I think some of the trees here are—or were—sentient, at least in a way Celleriant and Shianne would understand. If the earth is slumbering deeply enough to ignore the small voice of this fire, I’m betting it won’t ignore the screams of the trees whose roots are buried so far down.” She exhaled. “Can you douse or separate the fire to let us through?”

“Yes. I think it unwise, however.”

“Because they’ll know?”

“They’ll know where the break is, yes. And they’ll know, for certain, where you are.”

She glanced pointedly at the canopy of sky that was now filled with combat and furious cats. She could see the slender, winged outline of Calliastra as well, but the firstborn voice was mercifully silent. “How long can she fight like that?” she asked, voice almost hushed.

“A fair question. Until this journey, I had never seen her take that form; it was not to her liking. It reminded her too much of loss. I do not know what it signifies.”

“You think her father is here.”

“I think her father’s power might influence her, yes. But she is not her father; she has will and choice. You are not foolish enough to mention his name here.”

“No. I’m not angry enough, either.” She shook her head. “If the earth won’t help them, it certainly won’t do us any good.”

But Avandar smiled. “I believe I can speak with the earth. I was one of very, very few mortals who could—and I could not master that until after I had been granted the god’s gift. It was the work of decades.”

She hesitated before she shook her head. “Not you,” she said, in the softest of voices. “Not unless we have no choice at all.”

“Celleriant can speak with the fire, if he desires it; it is not his natural element. He cannot do so from the air, however.”

“Kallandras can control the wind, if necessary.”

“You do not understand the elemental air if you think the matter that simple.”

Nothing, Jewel thought, would ever be simple again. She had learned to play games of power in the last decade of her life, and she had used those games, to greater or lesser effect, in the last few months. But no study of trade routes, no study of houses, no intelligence offered her even obliquely, was of use here.

Power, of course, was—but the definition of power had shifted dramatically the moment she had accepted the Oracle’s invitation and set foot through the portal in
Avantari
. And yet, she was not without power, here—she just didn’t understand the rules. She didn’t understand the etiquette, if raw displays of power, such as Calliastra’s, could be said to have etiquette at all.

The Immortals seemed to do whatever they wanted; the only thing that stopped them was the possible fear of death. And even then, Jewel thought, they were arrogant and feckless enough not to fear the challenge. They lived forever; they never starved, never grew ill, never grew old.

None of these things would ever be true of Jewel. She
could
starve. She could succumb to illness—absent Adam’s presence—and she would age. She had already aged. But she had power.

You lack the will to use it
, the Winter King said.

No
, she replied.
I lack the will to use it as
you
used it. I don’t know what mortality meant to you in your day. I don’t know what it meant to you at the height of your power. It probably just meant weakness, if Avandar’s experience says anything. But I
am
mortal. It’s part of what I am. It’s part of the power I have.

It is not—

It is. Only mortals can be Sen
.

The Winter King’s silence was not assent, and he broke it after a significant pause.
You do not understand what it means to be Sen.

No. But you don’t, either.

No. If you wish to traverse the fire, I can take you past it.

And the others?

If necessary. Viandaran cannot be stopped or killed by so negligible a display of power; it was almost certainly set in place to trap and confine you and your less powerful companions. It would stop neither the bard nor the healer.

She stiffened at the mention of Adam.

I am not advising you to send him into combat; I am merely pointing out that he will survive it. What will you do?

I want to know who’s controlling the fire. It’s not the creature in the air.

No. If you will allow it, I will scout ahead. I will leave Adam to your care. I can bring you that information.

She didn’t want the Winter King to die.

He surprised her. He laughed.
You do not understand the enchantment laid upon me. I will die with the White Lady’s permission and leave, and only then. Some part of me is bound to her, and it returns to the form she gave me upon the end of my Winter reign.
He appeared some ten feet away.
What would you have me do?

She signed to Adam, who nodded and dismounted.
Go
.

 • • • 

When the serpent roared a third time, no lightning left his lips—and lightning would have been preferable to what did: Kallandras heard the command in the rumbling thunder. The air upon which he balanced grew uneven—worse, it grew wild and angry.

He was familiar with the wild wind; he knew its mood well. He knew, also, that the wind would not casually destroy him unless he attempted to force it to behavior not of its own choosing. This, he did seldom for that reason. When the wind fought him, the ring that allowed his voice to be heard by the wild element burned; the diamond at its center scorched skin and flesh. He could—and had—fight through pain and injury, but it was his last choice.

His first?

Song.

The most famous bard Senniel College had ever produced—and he had no false modesty—lifted his bard-born voice in song. He did not sing for the wild element, but for the serpent whose flight and fight depended on that element as much as the bard’s did.

He chose a simple song, to start. A Southern cradle song, one etched into memory by a voice he had not heard for decades, a gift given him by the talent that had defined his life, had caused his family’s death, and had given him a home in Senniel.

He sang in Torra, the language of his childhood. The words themselves were containers for the power he now put into the song: he could make himself understood even if language was a barrier, not a bridge.

 • • • 

“Is that Kallandras?” Jewel asked Angel.

Angel nodded. He lifted his hands in den-sign; she caught the familiar movements as she glanced toward him.

“No,” she agreed, her hands stiff by her sides. “It wasn’t smart at all.” But even saying it, she smiled.

“What is he singing?”

“A song my Oma used to sing.” And of course it was never in song that her Oma’s voice returned to her.

 • • • 

The serpent listened. It fought; the cats and the firstborn wove in and around what Kallandras assumed was the length of its body—as if they could see it. But Celleriant was now more cautious; he stood, armed and watchful.

Kallandras saw clear, cloudless blue until the serpent opened at least one set of its jaws; then he saw red and black and white, a wound in the flesh of sky. He was not surprised when the serpent roared, as if to drown out the song. Had Kallandras not been bard-born, it would have worked; he was. There was nothing, short of death, that could dampen his song if he desired it to be heard.

And he desired it. He sang.

He noted that the gray cat folded wings and plummeted toward the trees, but did not otherwise track his progress; he doubted that any of the cats could be killed by a simple fall.

 • • • 

“What are you
doing?
”

“Thinking of ways to strangle one of your brothers.”

Shadow hissed laughter. “
She
told him to fight,” he pointed out.

“And
I
told him
not
to fight.”

“Ssssssoooo?” The great, gray cat snorted. “Why are
you
playing here?”

“You’re playing up there.”

The snort shifted into a low growl. “You
never
want
us
to have
any fun
.” He stomped toward the fire, crushing snow and dead branches. It was deliberate; he generally didn’t condescend to touch the ground otherwise. Apparently, the snow made his feet wet—or cold, depending on the whining—and cats didn’t
like
that.

Only when he stalked past her did Jewel realize where he was headed. “Shadow, don’t—you didn’t like it when you singed your whiskers in the fire.”

The cat hissed. “I liked it when the
stupid
cat singed
his
tail
.”

“According to you, there are no stupid cats here. What are you doing?”

The cat reached out with his left paw, claws extended. “I am telling the fire to
go away
.” He roared.

The fire roared back. It was very disconcerting. “Shadow—”

“
You
should be doing this.”

“I can’t tell the fire what to do.”

“You
can
.”

“Shadow—”

“You tell
everyone
what to do!”

“Yes, but most of you don’t
listen!
”

The fire, however, shocked Jewel; whatever it heard in Shadow’s voice, it obeyed. As she could make sense of the roar of the creature above, she expected to make sense of Shadow’s command in a similar way—but he sounded like an aggravated, giant cat to her.

This was what made the wilderness of ancient and immortal magic so bloody difficult. Nothing made sense. If there were rules to its use at all, they were rules that were invisible to the merely mortal. Regardless, the circle of fire dissipated all at once.