Oracle: The House War: Book Six (79 page)

“No, and that’s a pity. I bear her no ill will; I have admired her—at a safe distance—for decades.”

“When do you think you will be available?”

“Given Jarven’s command of the Merchants’ Guild during this time of crisis, I have remarkably little to do. If you felt it appropriate, I could join you tomorrow evening.”

“The early dinner hour?”

“I would be delighted.”

T
HE SILENCE WAS BOTH cold and heated as they jogged. Jewel could manage to run in spurts—but not for long. The attachments Terrick had fashioned for the feet of those who could not skirt above the snow’s surface made her widen her stance; Terrick had said it was unnecessary, but she still hadn’t developed the knack of moving naturally. The pack she carried slowed her down; Avandar took it. Terrick and Angel were already encumbered; Adam, on foot, bore tenting which had seen almost no use in the winter landscape.

Shianne’s song continued for some time. The earth shifted twice beneath Jewel’s feet, a rumbling that made her knees feel like water. She understood that earth, air, and water in their wild, elemental forms, had voices; she had never heard them speak. Even in her own land, on her own ground, she had been aware of them as presences—but as intruders, as unwelcome guests.

No, she thought, stumbling as the ground shuddered again.

On some fundamental level she felt, about the elements on that day, the way she felt about her great, winged cats. She had been angry. Beyond angry. She would have been just as furious at her cats if they had attempted to have one of their squalling fights in the middle of the service, although their squalling fights couldn’t cause the same level of destruction.

She had not been regal with the wild elements; she had not been graceful. She had kicked them out of the room and told them to clean up their damn mess first.

She slowed to catch her breath.

She’d told them to take their toys and
go home
. She would have told the cats the same thing. Both the elements and the cats understood her when she spoke in genuine anger. Exasperation? No; that was safe to ignore. Of course it was; Jewel ignored it all the time. Living in a two-room apartment with so many disparate personalities, that had become second nature.

She would never, on the other hand, enter someone else’s home and expect that her rules would be obeyed if she laid them down in the same fashion.

But even that wasn’t all of the truth. In desperation, the division between “home” and “outside” vanished. She could not command Isladar in the way she commanded the cats or the elements; she could not command the two demons who had ventured into the heart of the wild forest in which she
could
make a stand. But she had taken the road against the Wild Hunt, and she had held it, making of it something that spoke to her: the streets of the hundred holdings.

How had she done that? How had she managed? Desperation couldn’t be the answer. She had been beyond desperate too many times in her life, and the universe had failed to move as she desired.

Rules. She wanted rules. She wanted to
know
how
this
world worked, because knowledge was the only hope she had. “Isladar.”

He could, she was certain, run for days without pause. The dead didn’t need to eat. Or breathe. Or rest.

“Terafin.”

“What is a Sen?”

“You have not asked Viandaran or Lord Celleriant?”

“It wasn’t relevant before.”

“It is, and was, always relevant. Do you feel that ignorance excuses responsibility?” He lifted a hand, signaling a stop, before she could answer. In truth, answering while running had been a trial.

Shadow was giving Isladar the side-eye. His hackles had fallen, but he was twitchy and tense. Jewel placed a hand on his forehead the minute they came to rest, ignoring the murmured threats to eat that hand.

“I would answer the question if I could,” Isladar told her. He was not lying.

No. Why do you think that is?
Avandar asked.

Because the answer wouldn’t do her any good. Knowing this, she still felt compelled to listen. To hear what he was willing to put into words. Even the absence of information would give her some basic structure, some underlying shape.

“Do your kin know more than you do?”

“Only one. Only one, among all of my kin. It is my belief that you and he will cross paths. For the first time since the devastation, he has taken a pet. Perhaps you know of whom I speak; you traveled with the Arkosan Voyani when they entered the Sea of Sorrows. I do not know if he could answer your questions; I do not think the Sen themselves, gathered in one place, could—not that they could coexist in one place.

“There is a reason that the Cities of Man never grew—the way human cities oft will—to form kingdoms or empires. The Sen are as gods in their own small spaces.”

“And what,” Jewel asked, as he raised both arms until they were perpendicular to the straight, slender line of his body, “are the gods? What were they, then?”

His eyes opened; he had closed them, as if to concentrate. “I can think of very few who would follow your first question with that one.”

“Why?”

“You have met gods.”

“And I don’t understand what they are any better than I understand, in the end, what you are. I understand that you’re predators. I understand that your prey is mostly us. I understand that, where we can, we must destroy you—and I even understand some of how to do it. But the knowledge is practical.”

“Viandaran, I do not think you appreciate what you have chosen to serve.”

Avandar said nothing.

“The gods as they once existed are not what they are now. Nor were any two gods alike. If the Sen could not occupy the same city without disastrous results, the gods could barely content themselves with occupying entire small worlds—worlds such as this one. You ask me to define the gods for you? Terafin, we barely understood them ourselves. They were not as we were, even when we lived. We could touch the wilderness; we could cajole it, and where powerful, we could bend it to our will.

“But we did not create it. We did not make it.”

“But the gods had children.”

He nodded.

“And their children had children. If I understand, in the end, anything Shianne said, you were—when alive—the children of the White Lady.”

 • • • 

He paused, although he did not lower his arms. “You are bold, even for a mortal.”

“Is this why the demons seem to recognize Illaraphaniel?”

“Too bold. I will give advice, although it is the way of your kind to ignore it if it does not suit your whim. Do not ask him. Never ask him.”

“And never ask the
Kialli
, either?”

“Very few of the
Kialli
will speak with you—and those you are likely to encounter will desire your death, regardless. It may hasten the death; it may intensify the ferocity of the attack. It may—should it prove necessary—distract, where distraction is a possibility. Do not ask.”

“I have to ask.”

“So believes many a fool. Why?”

“Because I will travel—with Shianne—to the White Lady. The Winter Queen. I understand that the enmity between your Lord and the White Lady is endless and ancient, but—” She hesitated.

“But?”

“It is not to destroy you that she hunts him.” She spoke with certainty, because suddenly, she was.

“No.”

“It is to destroy him.”

“Little mortal, do not ask. It is safe, perhaps, to question my Lord—but you will never survive it. Even the mortals he graced with power could not, in the end. You do not understand what a god is, and what our Lord
was
, and only in experiencing it will you understand us. But it will change you. If you are lucky, it will only break your mind—but the effect of that, on the Sen, is a matter of legend.

“We loved the god who became the Lord of the Hells.” He spoke quietly, softly. Jewel listened, as if hearing, beneath the words he chose to speak, the words that hid beneath them, waiting. “We loved his night, and the subtle beauty of it. We loved the texture of his voice and the words that formed palaces and mountains and great, gaping chasms of rock; we loved his strength and his fury.”

“You were her children.”

“Yes.”

“And the Arianni are not born the normal way.”

Shadow hissed. “They
are
,” he insisted. “It is
you
who are
strange
.”

Jewel ignored this, focusing now on the question she had asked, and the questions that waited beneath it; she had a sense that she was not asking the right ones, as if this was the only chance she would ever have, and she was, in ignorance, wasting it.

“You were part of her, in a way that I could never be part of my mother, if I understand what Shianne said. Nothing you are, nothing you were, nothing you could be did not come from her.”

Isladar was still.

“Did she love your Lord?”

 • • • 

In the distance, she heard the panicked denial of the Winter King. Closer, she heard Avandar’s sudden withdrawal; the totality of his rejection of the single question.

“You must ask her,” Isladar replied.

Jewel
knew
she would not survive even the beginning of the question. Knew, as well, gazing at the benign neutrality of the
Kialli
lord who had, in some fashion, protected Kiriel, that she might not survive the asking now. “You mean to kill me.”

“No, not yet. But if you are this unwise, you will find death; the difficulty will be avoiding it. We are not
of
her, now.”

“But—”

“We are dead. You, however, are not. Shianne, as you call her, has almost finished, and when her voice falls into silence, many, many voices will fill the gap. But not all. They know you are here, Terafin, and it is through your actions that the most ancient of all losses has been . . . renewed. You will not survive; they will wake the earth in their attempt to see an end to you.”

“But the Oracle—”

“The Oracle is not—yet—where you are. The earth will not wake beneath her feet; the air will not move against her. She is firstborn, and she is the heart of her own world; if you reach her side, you—and your companions—will be safe.”

The rumbling beneath Jewel’s feet silenced her for a moment. This time, however, it did not fully still.

 • • • 

Lord Isladar—and he seemed that to Jewel, in this place—did not appear to notice. He lifted his palms; they were flat and straight, perpendicular to the line of his arms. He spoke three words—resonant words, syllables that encompassed sensation more than sound. She could not repeat them—not then, and not after, yet at the same time, she could not forget them; they remained at the heart of her memories, in a place that she could not easily reach.

Avandar’s shields rose; they were so strong and so solid Jewel saw the world through a brilliant, orange pane. The domicis did not speak.

No one did. Terrick had armed himself; he had not dropped the pack that encumbered his back. Adam, however, was frowning. Jewel saw this because she reached for him, drawing him instinctively to her side—and behind the magical shields Avandar had erected.

Shadow growled, but did not attempt to attack the demon lord; he watched, his golden eyes narrowed. “Hurry, hurry, hurry.”

“Eldest,” Isladar replied.

“
Hurry
. They will
know
.”

“What is he trying to do?” Jewel asked the great, gray cat.

He is hoping,
Avandar replied,
to take a short cut. Watch what he does; watch it carefully. It may be something you will be forced to do in future.

I don’t understand what he’s doing, which is why I asked.

We will walk between this world and our own.

But we haven’t finished yet. We haven’t reached—

That is why it is difficult, Terafin
. He was annoyed; he seldom used her title privately unless he intended to lecture.
The path he opens must be some part of
this
world, and yet must blend with some part of our own. We must walk it fully, and we must not step off—or we will be fully away from the hidden path, and we will not be able to return.

Could I do this?

It is my belief that you could, yes.
He frowned.
What is Adam doing?

Adam was, to Jewel’s surprise, kneeling. His brow was furrowed, the elastic lines of youthful forehead adopting the creases of thought that would fall away just as easily the moment his expression changed. His hand was pressed into the snow; he had removed the mittens that kept the cold at bay.

“Adam?”

Adam’s frown deepened, but he looked up and met Jewel’s concerned gaze. “He is not—he is not doing what needs to be done.”

Isladar’s eyes opened; he looked at Adam, and only Adam.

Avandar’s shields intensified. Jewel wanted to tell him to cut it out, because it was now hard to see the world beyond them clearly. Adam was beside her.

“I am attempting—” he began.

But Adam cut him off. “I feel what you are attempting to build from the body of the earth.” He grimaced, shook his head, and reverted to Torra. “I believe that you do not intend us harm. Not right now. The Matriarch would know.”

“Can you do what I am attempting to do?”

The Voyani boy’s frown shifted, intensifying and turning—as it often did—inward. “You are not the only person here who is trying.”

They froze, then.

They froze as Shadow snarled and leaped.

Into what was not a clearing, stepping between the trees anchored in the rumbling earth, stepped a figure that Jewel had never seen before. In seeming, in shape, in form, he was Arianni. But his blade was red.

 • • • 

“Lord Isladar,” the demon said. “We should have expected this.”

“Lord Darranatos,” Isladar replied. He glanced, once, at Adam, and lowered his arms. “Have you come to redeem yourself?”

Darranatos
. She would not have recognized him had Isladar not thought to use his name. She wondered if it was deliberate.

It is not
, Avandar told her.
To Darranatos, we are insignificant. I am not certain that he believes even you to be a threat. The presence of Isladar merely confirms what he has long suspected: it is not mortals who are the threat.

“Viandaran,” Darranatos said softly, as if he could hear the words the domicis had wisely chosen not to speak aloud.

Jewel lifted hand in brief, quick den-sign. She did not otherwise look to Angel.
Winter King
, she said.