Firstborn

by Michelle West

  They were old; older by far than the newly made building. The color and shape and light were absent, but there was a strange majesty to the earth in this place; almost, he could hear its voice.

  “You shouldn’t listen,” Stacy told him softly. “That’s what the old man says.”

  “I am capable of speaking for myself,” the old man told her, his words sharper than his voice.

  “Yes, but you don’t.”

  If Carver could have spoken to this old, scarred soldier in a way that excluded Stacy, he would have. And the old man knew. But by silent consent, there were questions they did not ask and words they did not say where Stacy could hear them.

  It was stupid; of course, it was. Stacy was a child, but it was nonetheless upon Stacy that the unspoken burden would fall. She had a right to know. He suspected that she did know. But if she would not speak of it, they couldn’t. And so, he walked down the long tunnel until it at last opened into a room.

  • • •

  The room was larger—larger by far than the whole of the cathedral had been. And it was silent. Between one step and the next, all sound of the demon and its ancient rage was extinguished. Here, there was a silence that seemed like the hush of held breath. There were stone walls, flat, smooth, and all of a piece, and there was a light that implied moonlight.

  Moon was a reflection of sun, and sun lay, in miniature, in the form of a man who rested, arms folded across his chest, on an altar very similar to the one they had deserted to walk through the tunnel of earth. Columns of rock rose to the heights of the ceiling, and the rock itself was shaped; here, stone implied forest, and forest implied the hallowed space of the ancients: the Wild Hunt.

  The source of the brilliant light was the effigy of one of those hunters.

  Carver had never seen him before, but he felt an instant recognition: he was one of the three. He was one of the Sleepers. His eyes were closed as Carver froze; closed as he found his courage. They remained closed as he approached. He was not, as Carver had first thought, of stone, although the altar was; he lay upon it as if it were a bed, and armor bright and gleaming was his counterpane. He bore no shield, no sword; his hair was unbound and lay beneath him as a blanket. No tiara and no crown bound his brow, but Carver knew that this was the Lord of the lands over which they had trekked.

  He lifted an arm without thought, and slowly dropped it; he knew suddenly that he must not touch this man. Even had Anakton not remained in the open tunnel’s mouth, he would have known: this man was one of the three who should not be awakened.

  This, he thought, was why the demon raged. This place was closed to him; he could not enter. Could never enter, again, the presence of the Lord who slept, sleeping or waking. He had made his choice, and if it was madness, it was done; it could not now be unmade. Could never be unmade.

  The thought was both Carver’s and not Carver’s. The words that framed it were his, but the content, no. Here, in this enormous room, with its carvings and its breeze and its hint of forest past, of sleeping grandeur, he heard the voice of the earth as if it were his own voice.

  Yes.

  Carver glanced at Ellerson, but Ellerson did not appear to hear what Carver now heard.

  Anakton, however, began a strange, chittering sound.

  “He’s beautiful,” Stacy whispered, in part because she didn’t want Carver to pay attention to Anakton, and in part because the Sleeper was.

  Carver nodded. He found no words that would suit to describe what he now saw and made no attempt to find them; he was old enough now to know how inadequate words were. Old enough to know that Stacy still believed her spoken words conveyed what she felt; they meant what she meant.

  The earth existed in this place without words, but it was alive; it felt and it thought in some fashion. And as with all living things, isolation was anathema. If it was slow to feel, the feelings ran deep, and they were also slow to be disgorged.

  Anakton heard the earth’s voice; Anakton could, in turn, be heard.

  And Carver heard the earth’s voice—as his own; Carver could, in turn, be heard.

  He remembered something Anakton had said. When he had been hunted by the Wild Hunt—or by the visceral memories and dreams of the Sleeper—he had been injured.

  He’d bled. The blood had touched snow and the snow, earth, the liquid both freezing and seeping down, down, down.

  “Anakton, how long have you lived here?”

  Anakton growled.

  “When did you offer the earth your blood?”

  “It is living blood,” Anakton snapped.

  “And mine?”

  Anakton stilled. “You really aren’t as stupid as you appear.”

  Stacy muttered something under her breath; it was a word, given her clothing, Carver had assumed she knew better than to use around adults.

  “Yours, like mine, is the same—you are obviously breathing. Loudly. But it is not here, and it is not enough. Can you not hear it?”

  “The earth is lonely,” Stacy said. “Is everything lonely?”

  “Are you?”

  She shook her head, but her hand tightened.

  Carver could feel what she felt now: the hollowness at the core of the wild earth. It was occupied by the Sleeper, but it was also empty; he did not wake. Could not, not yet. Were he awake, Carver would not be here at all. The earth could hear the Sleeper’s voice. But it was turned toward the dreaming and memories that were ancient before Carver was born; nothing in the Sleeper now heard the wild earth. The earth had tried to rouse him in every possible way, but he had not woken.

  Was not meant to be woken, Carver told the earth. To wake him here would be to wake him everywhere.

  In response, the earth sang, its voice a deep, sonorous bass; it was almost like drumbeats. Carver’s body resounded with the earth’s voice. He could hear it—and for the first time, he could not hear Stacy, although she appeared to be speaking. Ah, he thought. The earth had slept, as its lord had slept, but now it was awake. To ask how long was to ask a question that could not be answered, because Carver had no frame of reference with which to understand the answer; he knew because he asked.

  How long. How long have you been awake?

  He looked at Anakton, white now, the color of too harsh a light; the color of ghosts, of the dead.

  Anakton was not dead. He was here, awake, but caught in the dream of the Sleeper, as much a prisoner as Carver and Ellerson. Carver looked at Stacy. Yes. She, too, as much a prisoner as they. But they might—Anakton, Carver, Ellerson—be free, in time, and should time pass mercifully.

  The earth’s song continued although it was not, in any way Carver understood it, music. There was the insistent, consistent beat; it rose in tempo and it fell. It was, he thought, the pulse of the earth, the heartbeat, perhaps the breath. It spoke, and he caught the thoughts in his own, until they were tangled inseparably, and he knew what the earth wished to convey. There might be freedom, under a different sky and in a different season, for Anakton and Ellerson and Carver.

  There would be no freedom for Stacy. Not for Stacy, not for the old man—the earth found this name odd, and Carver could not explain that it was not a name. Did the birds have names? Yes. One name and all names of their own. And the insects. And the grass, the trees. Especially the trees, which might have many names, in many places, in the lee of Summer. The Summer that had not come. That would not come.

  As Carver looked at the sleeping Prince, he could see the shadow of, the echo of, the White Lady, the Winter Queen, the ruler of seasons, the Lord of the Wild Hunt; he could see and almost hear her voice, raised in a different song. It was a song of command, of kinship, of waking; it was a song that implied power—but a power that had will and sentience and the ability to create and destroy in equal measure.

  He could hear the trees wake to her voice; he could feel the warmth of her Summer and the bitter, bitter cold of her Winter. There was no Summer.

  And the Sleeper would not see Summer, even were Summe
r to finally arrive.

  Woe unto those, and all but death, who disobeyed the White Lady, if she but made a command. Here he lay, and the displeasure of the White Lady was met—was matched—by the displeasure of the gods, all save one. His failure was her failure, and her rage was great.

  And yet, and yet, and yet: who could obey the commands given to the fallen? Who, of her kin, of her kind, of herself could do what she had demanded? Not he, on the bier; not his kindred. None cold enough, none strong enough, none certain enough in their shock and grief save one.

  Illaraphaniel.

  The Sleeper stirred. Carver held breath, crushing Stacy’s hand. To flee one death to meet this one? No. That could not be why Evayne had come.

  To the earth, whose voice he heard at a remove and yet at the same time within him, he said, Why? Why is there no freedom for this child?

  She is bound, bound, bound, the earth replied. Bound to the sleeping, as the Prince is bound whose name was taken from us, riven from us, by the children. Bound to the Sleepers as the earth is bound.

  Carver wanted to wake the earth. To wake the earth, and not the Sleeper. He thought that the rhythm of the earth, its cadence, was not complete yet.

  She cannot stay here, he told the earth. But she was trapped, trapped and bound—and to the earth, the binding that could not be broken did not silence her; she could speak with and to the earth. She and her kind. And she might ask what Carver could not ask—although he did and was: For the freedom of those who were not bound as she was. Her voice was light and airy; it was a thing of spring and sunlight. Although she did not speak to the earth, the earth drank her voice in as if it were liquid.

  As if it were blood.

  Was Anakton awake?

  Yes. Yes, because the earth had desired it; that Anakton enter the dreaming of this place as it was and find the voices that had entered the dreams of the earth. But other things had entered this dream that should not; had turned it from a whisper of youth and spring, to a far darker winter; the shadows of death and death and death, roaring in a pain and rage that would never end, unless the worlds—all worlds—should end first.

  How? How? How?

  Carver heard the answer that lay beneath the earth’s lament. Darranatos that was, Darranatos, lost for eternity, his name forbidden, lay at the heart of the Sleeper in some fashion that the earth could not and did not perceive. Darranatos had once been of these lands and even the earth remembered the height of his glory, the radiance of his brow, the brilliance of his eyes, his smile, his laugh—and his voice, raised now in song and in praise of the White Lady.

  The earth’s pain was the White Lady’s pain, almost beat for beat: the earth had been loved and the earth had been betrayed, forsaken. There was no forgiveness in the earth, for even in death, the fallen would never return to it; Darranatos’ body, as the body of those demons who walked the mortal lands, left nothing in its wake: nothing to hold and keep and protect. Nothing to nourish.

  Pain became hatred in time, and time had passed. But for the Sleeper, with perfect memory, history unfolded like a weed in a tended, perfect garden; time and again, it was destroyed; time and again, it grew. The Sleeper turned, his brow rippling.

  Carver attempted to disentangle himself from the question he had asked, because it had led to the question the earth had asked—and he had not asked it of Carver.

  We do not name the Lord of the Hells when we speak of him at all, he began, and that was enough; enough to pull the earth away from the question. But Carver then stepped into a different storm; this shook the earth, a movement that all but broke the sound of drums, the sound of the earth’s heart.

  Ellerson caught him before he was driven to the stone of the grand floor. Ellerson, who was steady, whose feet did not tremble with the movement of the earth.

  “He can’t hear it,” Stacy said, her voice very quiet. “He can only hear you. And only when you open your mouth and use words.”

  “A pity. He looks smart enough to talk sense into the boy.”

  Carver was not a boy. He proved it in two ways; he did not correct the old man, and he endured. He stopped asking questions and waited. He had no sense of time passing, and simultaneously, of centuries passing.

  “I can try,” Stacy offered.

  Carver shook his head. “Not you.”

  “It doesn’t matter which of us, boy. We’re bound together. You can’t just pick one of us out.”

  Anakton bit Carver’s ankle, although Carver thought it unintentional; he was, like Ellerson, attempting to hold Carver to his feet. “It is not safe to lie down here.”

  “And you care?”

  “I did not intend to harm you. If I had, you would be dead.”

  “And dead, I’d be no use to you?”

  “Dead, you’d be little use to anyone; nothing can even eat you as you are. I certainly wouldn’t. But the leaf—the trapped—does it matter where they’re trapped?”

  Yes, Carver thought, as he gained footing and held it without relying on Ellerson. Yes, it mattered. If Jay had done this—and he could not doubt that she had—he could not, in the end, believe that she had done it for him. He had come to her by accident; she had not found him because her vision compelled her to do so. He wasn’t Finch or Teller; wasn’t Arann. And given the earth’s response to the prelude to the question he had not finished asking, he thought there was a chance, no matter how small. “The earth might be unhappy again.”

  He waited until the tremors had died; waited until he was once again enwrapped in the sound of steady, beating heart. Could I do what Stacy could do, if she were here? Could I ask and open the way?

  And the earth said: you are not bound here. You are not, yet, of me.

  Carver could see the truth in that; could feel it; he was outside of the earth; he could hear its voice because the memories of this sleeping almost-god were deadly. He glanced, once, at Stacy, and once at the old man; what he saw in both steadied him.

  To defeat him, we cannot leave the trapped here.

  The earth stilled then.

  At his heels, Anakton started to snuffle. And then to wail. Carver grimaced as Stacy’s dislike began to wilt.

  “He’s crying, you know,” she said.

  “They’re probably fake tears,” the old man told her, voice grim, words clipped.

  “They’re not fake tears—he’s really crying.” Her hands fell to her hips, the gesture so familiar, it tugged at parts of Carver he didn’t want to express. If she pushed her hair out of her eyes—but no. She looked at Anakton, and then she crouched. “You have to let go of my hand,” she told Carver.

  Carver shook his head. “You can’t pick him up.”

  “I can.”

  Carver grimaced and bent at both knees; he scooped the silver furred ball into one arm but kept a firm grip on Stacy with the other.

  “You can’t hug him like that.”

  “I don’t think he wants me to hug him,” Carver replied, as Anakton attempted to burrow into his chest.

  Ah, he wanted to go home. He wanted to see Merry. He wanted to see his den-kin.

  “You could,” Anakton said, half whine, half growl, his body vibrating in the crook of Carver’s arm. “Don’t you understand? There’s nothing you can do for her—she is never going to be free. But you could! We could!” Carver had no doubt which of the two was more important. Nor did he believe that Anakton was lying; he couldn’t. Anakton said what the earth, wordless, also said.

  He believed that Jay had left the leaf here for a reason. But he believed, now, that it was the wrong reason. He could see the detritus of love—of the fear of loss—in this glorious room, and in the man that lay upon an altar as if it were a bier. He had heard it in the rage of Darranatos.

  And even had he not, he could not buy his own freedom with Stacy’s.

  Anakton shrieked in agitation at Carver’s stupidity; it almost made Carver feel that he was home. “She is not free!”

  • • •

  “And she
will never be free if she remains here.”

  Carver was not surprised to see Evayne emerge from the light; she had not come through the tunnel. The shadows her robes cast were long and dark, but they did not fall on Carver. Not physically.

  “She will never be free at all!” Anakton snarled. He glared at Evayne.

  “You are bold,” Evayne said, voice cool. “Far bolder here than you have been.”

  Carver understood. Until—and unless—the earth granted him his freedom, the earth would protect him.

  Evayne looked above Anakton’s head to Carver; she met his eyes, her violet gaze unblinking and steady. She was scratched and pale, and one eye was blackened, but she did not bleed. He wondered, briefly, what her blood would mean to the ancient earth, but did not ask.

  “This is not why Stacy made her choice.”

  “Jewel will be sad,” Stacy said, her voice soft.

  “Yes.”

  “And my mother will be sad anyway.”

  Evayne did not close her eyes, but Carver closed his.

  “Yes. Would you rather your mother be sad some of the time, or dead?”

  Both Carver and the old man stiffened, Carver’s eyes opened, his expression shifting as he glared at Evayne. Evayne, who could face demons, had faced far worse than the fear of one child, and certainly worse than the icy disapproval of an old man.

  “Stop it,” Carver said.

  “It is not for her sake that I ask,” Evayne replied.

  “If you’re implying that you’re doing it for mine, don’t. It doesn’t help me.”

  “It is not for your sake, either; not directly.” Evayne glanced, once, at the Sleeper.

  “Why are you here?”

  She was silent for a long, long beat, during which Carver could feel the thrum of the earth.