Oracle: The House War: Book Six (93 page)

“No,” the fox said, and in his voice, Jewel heard the rumble of breaking earth. She understood, then, that the forest—like any of the wild elements, save fire—rejected the
Kialli
.

“I ask one boon of you. One favor.”

Meralonne was silent.

“If I am to reach the White Lady’s side, I must travel in the shadow of your Jewel.”

He did not correct the possessive. Nor did Jewel.

“Were it not for her intervention, I would not now be here. I understand that such intervention seems dire, or possibly evil, to some; Lord Celleriant is only barely civil.”

Meralonne’s hands tightened but did not release hers; he turned to glance at Celleriant. “Is this true, Lord Celleriant?” His voice held winter and death.

Celleriant could not fail to mark it. “It was not the will of the Winter Queen that Shianne be free. Had it been, she would have needed no rescue. I was ordered to serve The Terafin—a punishment for my own failure.”

Jewel glanced at him; she said nothing.

“And I serve her completely at my own choice. If she does not reach the Hidden Court, there will be no Summer and no Summer Queen—and I am willing to stake my existence upon that attempt.” He exhaled and his sword vanished. “And perhaps I am like you, as you have said. I serve The Terafin until her death. I serve her completely. In any way that matters to our kin, I
am
forsworn. But without her . . .” he fell silent. And then, in full sight of everyone, he tendered Shianne an obeisance.

“What do you fear?” Meralonne asked him.

“That her coming will harm the Winter Queen.”

Meralonne’s silence was longer and deeper. When he spoke, he said, “You have not been long in mortal lands. When mortals are injured or wounded and there is no healer to be found—or afforded—they are sometimes faced with a choice: the amputation of a limb or the eventual loss of life. Most amputees will choose to take the latter risk. It is why most are not given the choice.

“The White Lady is not mortal. But the firstborn were not invulnerable; no more were gods—and many died when they walked this plane. But it is possible that in order to save her, some part of her must be sacrificed.”

“It is the choice you made.”

“No, Lord Celleriant, it is not.”

“How is it not?”

“She ordered us to amputate, and we refused. It is in no wise the same.”

“But you did not refuse, Illaraphaniel,” Shianne said softly.

“I knew,” was his grave reply. “When she chose, I knew. But I could not argue against her choice—who among us could? I saw the shadow of failure, and I rode into it.” He turned, once again, to Shianne. “What favor would you have of me, who have given me a glimpse of the lord I have yearned for?”

“I ask only one thing, but it is not small, and it may not be possible.”

“And that?”

“Protect Jewel’s home. Protect her city, when the time comes.”

“You think highly of me,” he replied. “I am one. They are three. Do you not remember them as they were? Time has diminished me.”

But she shook her head. “You sleep in a different fashion. You have lost nothing; rather, I perceive you have set it aside. I will not ask why; it does not matter. When they wake, you will retrieve it. I ask again: protect her home.”

“Very well.”

She did not release his hands.

He smiled. It was slight and resigned, a turn of lips that held no joy. “Will you have me swear a binding oath?”

“Is there another way?”

His smile deepened. “No. Would it surprise you to know that I have formed some small attachment to this faded, mortal city and some of its inhabitants?”

She glanced, once, at Adam’s bowed back. “No.”

“I cannot make a binding oath to you—I do not believe your child would survive it.”

She was silent for one long moment. “Can you make such a binding oath to Jewel herself?”

“In this place? Yes. But she is mortal, Shianne. It is not without risk.”

Jewel said, “I’ll take that risk.”

“It is not for your sake that I would make such an oath, Terafin. The decision is not, and cannot be, yours.”

“It’s my life to risk.”

“Yes. But the loss of your life is of significance to Shianne. I am, in some fashion, fond of you. Such minor affection would never impel me to make that oath.”

Shianne released Meralonne’s hands. “No,” she said quietly. “I cannot risk it.”

“You could do as I have done,” Celleriant said.

A sword appeared in the hand of Meralonne APhaniel.

Shadow hissed laughter. He shook with it. Snow and Night snickered. Jewel considered smacking them all. “I realize you consider it insulting, Meralonne—but put the sword away. I mean it.” To Celleriant, she said, “He cannot do as you have done. If he confronts his brethren while I am still alive, they will know—and they will destroy him.”

“If,” Meralonne said quietly, “they can. The world has changed; their power, in it, is not what it was.”

The small golden fox sauntered over to the mage and sat, regarding him, his triangular head tilted. Meralonne’s sword vanished—slowly.

“I will offer you the only oath I have offered since the long sleep began,” Meralonne told Shianne. “It is not binding; if I fail to adhere to it, I will not die. But perhaps,” he added lightly, “if I fail to adhere to it, you will return. I remember your wrath; it was inspiring. I will protect this city against my kin should the need arise.

“Go.”

“If we find Ariane,” Jewel said, rising, “I have something she wants. I will ask for her intervention. If she were here, if she accepted our right to exist in this place, there would be no battle.”

But Meralonne shook his head. Streams of platinum fanned across his shoulders, and down. “There would be no battle if she walked the streets of your city—but she will not. She declared her unwillingness to look upon us at all until we have fulfilled her command. To intervene, she would have to do so.”

“Was her declaration a blood oath?”

All three of the Arianni looked scandalized. The disdain that slowly replaced immediate outrage was thick enough to cut. It was also enough of an answer that Jewel didn’t ask again.

She lifted her hands as she turned to the den, and signed,
later
. And then,
home
.

Teller signed
safety.

Finch signed,
we’ll be here
.

But Jester signed,
Carver
.

 • • • 

“Adam,” Jewel said. “We’re ready.”

T
HE AIR GREW COLD ENOUGH,
between breaths, to numb Jewel’s nose. Earth could be seen in the shallows created by melted snow—but they were few; the snow was deep. The blue of daytime sky melted instantly into the dark clarity of evening; the stars were a vast array of light above her upturned face. Such a cold light—but beauty had become that, for Jewel: cold. Distant.

There was no multiheaded serpent; there were no demons. The Winter King had not returned in either world, but Jewel knew he would; his absence did not concern her. Nor did the absence of Calliastra; that couldn’t last.

The earth was silent beneath her feet. If it had given vent to its fury, it had done so elsewhere: the trees were standing, their roots undisturbed. No birds sang, here. No insects droned.

Moments ago, she had been within touching distance of her den-kin. Only Angel remained.

She caught Adam as he listed to the side. In the darkness she couldn’t find his mittens, but she knew where hers were, and she transferred them to his icy hands. He was breathing; his breath rose in a faint, thin mist, unlike her own.

Avandar said, to Jewel, “Let me carry him.” His voice came at a remove.

It was Terrick, however, who lifted Adam’s slender, boyish body, not the domicis. When he spoke, he spoke briefly—and in Rendish.

“Yes,” Angel replied, in Weston, “They’re damn good weapons.”

“And they might not be enough,” Terrick said.

“No.”

The cats were golden eyes in the darkness, shadowed wings high and almost demonic. Celleriant and Shianne stood side by side, inches between their shoulders; they did not touch. Kallandras, however, came to stand behind them, and he placed a hand on either shoulder.

“Can we make camp here?” Jewel asked Terrick.

“Yes.”

It sounded like no. She exhaled. “Boys,” she said to the cats. “One of you needs to carry Adam.”

To her surprise, Shadow stepped forward—without argument or criticism. Night and Snow failed to mock him or to step on each other’s feet or tail.

 • • • 

They walked for perhaps two hours, Terrick and Angel in the lead. The forest remained silent; the winter continued for miles as far as the eye could see. Admittedly, although the sky was clear and a moon she couldn’t seem to find in the sky sent reflected light off the surface of crusted snow, that wasn’t far.

But Terrick came back when she was leaning against Avandar. Snow head-butted her, growling.

“You are not
stupid enough
to
sleep
here.”

In truth, she thought she might be. She glanced at Adam, slumped across Shadow’s back, with a touch of envy. Shianne was on Snow’s back. Jewel was exhausted, but not enough to ride; she felt too self-conscious doing so while everyone except the person who’d collapsed and the woman who was very pregnant trudged through the snowscape.

Shianne was silent.

Silence lasted until Terrick approached. “Do you see the cliff?” he asked.

Jewel said, “That dark wall in the distance?”

“Not so very distant as all that, but yes.”

“We’ll camp there?”

“If you’re willing to risk it, there’s a cave.”

“Does it have bears in it?”

He chuckled.

“That’s funny?”

“It was Angel’s first question as well. Given what we’ve faced today, bears would likely be trivial.”

 • • • 

Jewel knew, the moment she saw the darkened mouth of the cave, that they had reached the midpoint of their journey. She had very little experience with caves, but that was irrelevant; this was not, in the end, a landscape in which prior experience would have helped.

“You sense it?” Celleriant asked, drawing close. She glanced at him; he wasn’t armed.

“What am I supposed to sense?”

He raised one platinum brow, the shift in expression visible even in the hushed, evening light.

Exhaling breath that was just as visible, she surrendered, and nodded. “Terrick.”

“Terafin.”

“It’s not a normal cave.”

His grin was broad. “Nothing about this land is normal, save perhaps the snow. Will it kill us?”

She looked out, at snow. Terrick was probably right—the snow was normal. But she knew that snow could kill. “Not more than anything else,” she finally offered.

Night snickered. “
Everything
can kill you.”

“Not so far,” Jewel countered.

“You were
lucky!
”

“Not luck, Night. I have all of you.”

This predictably caused less whining for at least five minutes. As far as the cats were concerned, there was no difference—in their eyes—between flattery and truth.

“Terafin,” Terrick said quietly.

She turned to him. “Call me Jewel,” she told him. “We are not in Averalaan. On long days, I feel we might never walk those streets again. The title doesn’t matter.”

“Does it not?”

She shook her head. “I’m Jewel. Even in the office of The Terafin, I’ve never known how to be anything other than myself. I struggle—always—to be more or better. Sometimes I even succeed. But in this place, I have to understand and remember who
I am
.

“It would help if the people who are risking their lives beside me would remind me of that—even in small ways.”

He nodded. Had he been Essalieyanese, he would have bowed. “Jewel, then. I wished only to say that I am grateful to be here, by your side. My ax-arm is not as strong as it once was—but the body remembers. If death finds me on the roads you will walk, it will be a mercy—I do not think I can ever return to the Port Authority cages again.”

She shook her head; curls fell into her eyes. “We are so different. What I want are my familiar cages. Even the ones I rail against every morning.” She caught Angel’s moving hands out of the corner of her eye, and smiled. Her own hands were once again in mittens as she approached the incline that led to the cave’s mouth. She wouldn’t have seen it on her own. She wasn’t certain that anyone but Terrick would.

She paused and turned toward Shianne, who had remained silent and withdrawn since their return. “I do not feel the cold,” she told Jewel. “And I do not fear the climb. But I would not have guessed, before my confinement, that the world—the worlds—could change
so much
in my absence. I feel as if I have become enmeshed in the lands of the Warden of Dreams. It is . . . not pleasant.

“Illaraphaniel did not say, and I did not ask, whether or not the White Lady is likewise changed—but I fear it, now. Go, Jewel. If I am not mistaken, the cave found by Terrick is where we will make camp and rest for some time.”

 • • • 

Jewel should have known then, that the cave she approached was not a cave. Her legs ached, her hands were numb with cold, and she was exhausted. Exhausted, homesick, and afraid that she could not carry the burdens she’d accepted.

She had already chosen to drop one, but Jester’s expression, Jester’s question—or demand—was the one that stayed with her. She felt, and could feel, no pride in her decision; no pride in her ability to make it, regardless of personal cost. Perhaps, in time, her thoughts would become as numb as the rest of her body.

“They will not,” a familiar voice said, as Jewel lifted a magestone a yard from the cave’s mouth.

Standing, framed by rock and darkness, was the familiar robed form of the Oracle.

 • • • 

Jewel offered her a stiff, exact, Imperial bow.

“Well met,” the Oracle said, inclining her chin. “You are not as angry as some of the supplicants who have walked this path.”

Jewel said nothing.

“But you are older, and perhaps with age, wisdom accrues in some fashion. Come.”

“And my companions?”

“They are welcome to join you. Here, for a moment, you will find rest.”

 • • • 

Beyond the cave mouth there was no cave. When Jewel stepped across the threshold, the light from her magestone seemed to grow and spread, becoming both brighter and harsher to the eye; it traveled across marble and stone and alabaster, glinted off gold and liquid and brass. She knew that the light a magestone cast could not reach the heights of the magnificent ceilings that opened up and traveled ahead for as far as the eye could see. And yet, it did.

Night and Snow, predictably, pushed off from the ground the moment they entered the hall, taking to the heights with their usual range of insults and complaints.

Terrick rescued Adam from Shadow’s back so he could join them. When the cats chose to release pent-up energy by fighting with each other, it was always best to have them at a distance. Adam stirred; his eyes fluttered open and he attempted to push himself off the Northerner’s chest, in almost the same way the cats had freed themselves from the constraints of gravity.

“Adam.” Jewel put a firm hand on his left shoulder. He stopped struggling when he met her eyes. “Rest.” When he failed to respond, she exhaled. “By order of the Matriarch.”

He nodded then, and closed his eyes.

“He is an interesting child,” the Oracle said, coming to stand beside Jewel. “But young. You were not so young, at his age.”

“I was. I wasn’t so
kind
at his age, though.” She exhaled, forcing her hands to her sides. “Have I passed your many tests?”

“They were never my tests, Terafin; they were yours. Do you understand the purpose of the testing?”

It was not a question Jewel could answer without giving vent to her anger—or pain. She remained silent.

“Food is waiting, and beds; fires are burning. There is no chill in the air in my hall unless you bring it with you, and I desire to allow it. You are concerned for Lord Isladar?”

“I’m not.”

“Ah.”

“Did he survive?”

“He did. So, too, his enemy. The serpent landed,” she added softly. “Should you travel four days to the South, you will see what that has done to the landscape.” She turned and began to lead the way down the hall.

 • • • 

The hall narrowed; the ceiling descended. With its descent came the cats. Terrick returned Adam to Shadow—at Jewel’s request.

“Why
me?
” the gray cat grumbled.

“Because I said so.”

Snow snickered. Night, however, had padded up to the Oracle’s left and was giving her the side-eye usually reserved for those he was about to step on. Jewel decided the firstborn woman could take care of her own feet. She was not feeling particularly charitable.

“My visitors seldom are,” the Oracle said, the reply to her unspoken thought drifting past the people who walked between them.

“No, I don’t understand the purpose of your testing.” She half-expected that the Oracle would, like Haval, ask questions and provide no answers of her own.

The Oracle gestured; a section of wall faded. Beyond it was a long banquet table in a round room whose far walls appeared to be painting-framed windows. The room, for all its long table and varied food, seemed welcoming. Everyone entered the room.

Everyone except Jewel.

When Angel noticed that she had not joined them, he headed toward her. Shianne placed a hand on his right arm. “Do not interfere,” she said quietly. “It is not for you.”

He shook her arm off. Jewel wouldn’t have, and knew it. She had shed the bulk of her outer coat; she lifted her hands to sign, but they remained stiff, motionless, before she lowered them.

Don’t go where I can’t follow
.

Shadow, relieved of Adam, stepped on Angel’s foot; Angel grimaced and dropped his hand to the hilt of his sword. The gray cat hissed, lifting wings; his fur, however, remained relatively flat. It was only when Adam dragged himself from a chair and moved to stand in front of Angel that he relented—which is to say, he looked up and met Jewel’s eyes.

She saw the fear in his, and understood it—how she could not? It was twin to her own. He was afraid for her. He was afraid of what the Oracle might do or demand of her. He did not wish her to face it alone.

Adam did not speak. Instead, he signed, his movements slower and more deliberate. Jewel could not read what he signed; she could tell that he did when his hands rose, as if height were cadence.

But Angel swallowed. “Jay?”

She nodded. She didn’t force herself to smile; it wouldn’t have helped. “Keep an eye on Adam. I won’t be long.” She turned, then, to the Oracle, who did not join her guests either.

 • • • 

“I do not design the tests you must face,” the Oracle said, as she began, once again, to walk. Jewel joined her, hands clasped loosely behind her back, head bent.

“And they just happen to occur when we decide we’re going to pay a visit?”

The Oracle lifted her hands and settled the hood of her robes around her shoulders. Jewel was, momentarily, viscerally angry: the Oracle had chosen to wear her Oma’s face. “Have you no face of your own?” she demanded.

“That is an interesting question. I do not know what you see when you look at my face.”

There was no way, Jewel thought, that the choice of appearance was not deliberate, and she meant to say as much. The words wouldn’t leave her mouth.

“People see,” the Oracle continued, turning her profile toward Jewel as she began to walk, “not what they want to see, but what their experience allows them to see. They notice inconsistencies within a larger context—but if there is nothing consistent with the lives they’ve lived, they fail to fully capture what is set before them.”

“You can choose how you appear.”

“Yes. I can. But I do not always choose. Today, I have not.”

“And I am to guess from your appearance that you’ll be short on sympathy and heavy on criticism and demand?”

The Oracle smiled. “Perhaps. I do not choose the tests, although very few believe that; I choose the nexus of events during which seers are invited to visit. The choices they face are not of my making; nor is the presentation. But my arrival is chosen very specifically. It is part of a pattern,” she added. “When you have visions, they are incomplete; their meaning—to you—is often unclear until after the fact. The events are not fixed. You act on them.

“In some cases, you have managed to change what you have seen, and in some, you have failed to do so. The plethora of possibilities is endless. Could you see them all, you might never move again from the spot in which you are standing. You might look at a corner in a room, and see iterations of every event that might happen. You might see different families, different organizations, different economic situations; you might see ruins or a cozy parlor. You might never see an event you consider significant enough to warrant the close inspection—and yet, it will take time.