Skirmish: A House War Novel

by West, Michelle

  Turning, cupping hands around her mouth, she shouted “Go back, Devon! Go back for the daggers—we’ll hold it while we can!” She had no idea whether or not her words had carried, but she wasn’t certain he’d need to hear them. Devon was pragmatic, practical. Practical enough, certainly, to trust the lives of companions to fate if necessary.

  Jewel!

  Join us, she told her domicis grimly, as quickly as you can. I have no idea what he’s facing, but it’s—

  You said it was a demon.

  It’s not. And it is. It’s— She shook her head; her hair flew at right angles.

  Why, Avandar asked, are you running toward it? Stay back, you fool.

  But back was gone as they approached what had once been a tree. The Winter King stopped before they reached its trunk; his hooves came to rest well away from the gnarled and exposed roots that lay between the artful construction of flower beds.

  Above their heads, black branches swayed against the breeze, leaves now glittering like flat rubies. They reminded her of other leaves she had seen and taken, but these she would never have dared to touch.

  “Let us down,” she told the stag.

  No. It is not yet safe.

  “Then why in the hells did you bring us here?”

  Look, Jewel. Look well. What, exactly, do you see?

  She wanted to argue; she didn’t. Short of throwing herself off his back, she couldn’t. Instead, she did as bid: she looked at the tree.

  This close, she could see the bark that had once enclosed it; she could see the ebony that underlay it, growing thicker as the minutes passed. The roots were darkest as they lay against the ground.

  Winter King, she said grimly, move. We’re too close to the—

  She lost thought and the rest of the warning as the stones that lined—and made—pathways cracked; the Winter King leaped clear of the roots that broke free of their binding of earth and stone. They reared back like serpents readying to strike, and the Winter King lowered his head, his antlers both weapon and shield.

  “Jay—”

  “Hang on. Just—hang on.”

  She saw root and antler clash as the Winter King snapped his head up and away; the roots were attempting to snarl themselves around his tines. He lashed out with his hooves and she heard the crack of something far too solid. The landscape passed in a blur of black and green and gray; she tried to focus on the roots that were even now shaking themselves free in greater number.

  It was the roots, she thought. The roots, not the branches; something was buried beneath the tree, and it had been absorbed.

  Yes, the Winter King said, as she cupped hands around her mouth and shouted a single name. “Celleriant!”

  Shearing the branches off seemed to cause no harm; they fell, and where they struck earth, they burrowed. Celleriant was wounded; he was angry. But the anger was not wild rage; it was akin to humiliation. He could not challenge this creature, this corruption of a tree that was barely full grown; it had no name, no voice, no status. It was an affront that it could injure him at all, but it had, and he felt the wounds—slight scratches, simple insignificant cuts, begin to burn.

  But he heard the voice of Jewel Markess ATerafin beneath his feet.

  “Not the branches! The roots, Celleriant!”

  Fire cut across the height of the Winter King’s antlers as Jewel shouted the words. Focused fire, it struck the tangled black roots. If proof were needed that these roots weren’t entirely wood, the fire gave it; it bounced. Avandar rarely did anything as undignified as cursing; he was silent. She felt, rather than saw, his passing shadow as he approached the tree, skirting the ground by several feet. His flight wasn’t Celleriant’s flight, but it didn’t matter.

  “Avandar—the earth—”

  “Not here,” was his terse reply. “These lands are not a desert and you do not wish them to become one.” Fire flew from his hands. Contained in the privacy of the Terafin grounds, it was technically legal; no writ would be required for the use of this much magic unless the House Council deemed it necessary. Jewel shook her head to clear it, amazed that she could even be thinking of bureaucracy at a time like this.

  The tree cast little shadow, as if it was unwilling to part with even that much darkness. Avandar’s second round of flame was slower, but no less focused, and it spread where it hit root; this time, it singed. The Winter King dodged; his hooves splintered roots when they were close to the ground. But they fell like shards or slivers and they were absorbed.

  Above, Celleriant fought.

  He heard Jewel’s command. He understood what she desired, but it irked him. She couldn’t imagine that this was beyond his understanding; she couldn’t imagine that she, in her handful of mortal years, had seen more than he in his millennia. But the branches that fell lost form and shape, hitting the ground like a black rain that was quickly absorbed.

  “The roots!” she shouted again.

  Yes, if this were an ancient tree, it would be the correct form of attack, but that was impossible. Not here. He knew the ancient. He was of it. She was not. He wanted to tell her as much; he didn’t. The Winter Queen had commanded him to protect—and follow—the mortal seer. Beneath him, secure on the back of the Winter King—one of only a handful to have survived, even in this lessened form—she still lived.

  His shield drove him back as he blocked; the tree’s branches had lost even the patina of what they had once been; they moved like snakes, coiling to strike, attempting to grasp and crush. He cut them down, shearing leaf from branch and branch from trunk. Beneath his feet fire rose in gouts; Viandaran had come, but he had not yet chosen to unleash the full force of his power.

  It shouldn’t have been required here, where mortals huddled like rabbits and cast a gray pall over everything they touched. But…this tree...

  Sigurne Mellifas came last to the grounds, and she froze before the doors to the terrace were fully opened. Matteos was with her. He had become more stoic in his silences, but no less protective, as the years had passed, and his scars whitened as he saw what she saw. “Sigurne, wait,” he said, but without much hope.

  She gestured; the doors flew open with enough force to rattle glass. She offered no other response to his comment.

  “Is that Meralonne?” Matteos demanded, squinting as he gazed into the sky over the Terafin grounds.

  “No. He is still in the South.”

  “Then who?”

  “At this distance, I cannot be certain; my eyes are not what they once were. Come, Matteos; follow.” This was easier said than done; the lowest of the stairs that descended from the terrace were adorned with armored House Guards. They had unsheathed their weapons, but they had not advanced. Sigurne approved of this obvious caution; young men so seldom set aside their pride of position in favor of common sense.

  She removed the heavy and easily recognized medallion that marked her as a member of the Order of Knowledge, and at that, mage-born. In her hands, it signified more: it made clear that she was the guildmaster. The House Guards did not, in theory, follow orders from any save the House Council or the regent, but theory often faltered in the face of the unknown and the obviously dangerous.

  “Guildmaster Mellifas,” one such guard said, bowing.

  “I was summoned here at the command of Jewel ATerafin,” she replied, giving him an authority upon which to pin obedience should an authority beyond her own be required.

  “She’s not here,” he replied.

  “No. She is, I fear, much closer to the danger.” Lifting her hands, she passed them—obviously—over her eyes. “If you insist, Sentrus, I will take two guards, but no more. From here it is clear that swords are not our most effective weapon.”

  “You can see swords?”

  “Just one,” was her soft reply. “But if that sword is all but ineffective, nothing we wield will make any difference.”

  “Not nothing, Member Mellifas,” a formal and familiar voice said. She turned. On the terrace, slightly—very slightly�
�out of breath, stood Devon ATerafin.

  “Ah. You’ve brought weapons.”

  “I had one,” was his grave reply, “at the behest of the Exalted. One, however, seemed insufficient.”

  “Keep your weapons, then,” she replied, “and accompany us now.”

  He nodded.

  Celleriant called the wild air and it woke enraged; like all wild things, it could be coaxed and cajoled, but it resisted a cage. He required a cage, now; he required its force as a weapon he could wield, not just as a landscape upon which he might stand and hold ground. The branches that attacked him did not increase in number; that much, at least, Viandaran’s fire granted him. He whispered the only benediction that mattered: the name of the Winter Queen.

  Then, gathering air, he shifted the position in which he held his shield, and unleashed the heart of the wind’s fury. It could not strike him—although it desperately desired to do so—and chose instead to vent its rage on branches that twisted and moved; it flattened leaves, tore them from their slender, ebon moorings, and as it did, Celleriant dove forward, slicing a narrow path directly in front of himself. The shield was driven back into his chest as the tree attempted to do what the wind could not.

  But nearer the trunk, the lashing branches were not so numerous; they were thicker, wider, and they moved less quickly. The leaves were the danger here; what the trunk lacked in flexibility, the leaves gained; they were launched like daggers, and embedded themselves across the length of his shield. He might have ignored them, otherwise, but to his consternation, they were not easily dislodged, and from their tips, red light began to spread across the shield’s surface.

  It wasn’t—it shouldn’t have been—possible. He raised his sword and swung it with a cry that even the howling wind couldn’t dampen.

  * * *

  The Winter King’s unexpected leap carried them much farther away from the base of the tree. But the distance didn’t seem to faze the roots; they broke earth in a straight line between tree and the stag. Stones, dirt, and bulbs erupted above them. Reaching out, Jewel grabbed the tines of the stag’s antlers; she cut her hand and cursed. Cursing, it seemed, was something that only the den did, when injured; Avandar, Celleriant, Kallandras, and Devon became utterly silent. But she needed that grip; she pulled herself over and around Angel, and balanced, like some street performer, at the base of the King’s neck. There, feet as flat as she could make them, she looked at the tree. Not at Avandar, not at his fire, not at Celleriant or the sudden ferocious storm that whipped more dirt and debris up into the sky, but at the tree itself.

  As if the ground was momentarily transparent, she could see its roots. They were spreading as she watched—twisting, breaking and re-forming as they sought to gain ground beneath them. She shook her head. Not those, she thought, but the deep roots, the roots that never saw sun or felt wind. How far down did those travel? What did they now draw sustenance from?

  She could almost see the answer, but it was insubstantial, like shadow in fog; it had a shape that she couldn’t discern, but must.

  Something was wrong. Something worse than a tree that was no longer a tree breaking earth and sky in an attempt to kill. She had called it demonic, but no. Its power was red and black, yes—but it was like a tidal wave or earthquake; it belonged here.

  Impossible, two voices said, as one: Avandar and the Winter King.

  She staggered as something struck the Winter King in the side; he leaped, spilling blood. The blood wasn’t absorbed as easily by the ground as the fallen black limbs that might once have been branches

  Avandar—

  Her words were lost as she tumbled. Angel joined her; the Winter King was yards away. Yards away and safe. Around Angel and Jewel, roots rose like a thicket, exposing not leaves, but thorns.

  “Sigurne, if you please?” Devon said, voice low.

  Sigurne understood both what he asked and why: she could see Jewel ATerafin, alongside a single member of her den, as the ground shifted to expose ebony vines with jagged thorns. She gestured in silence; Devon flew. He was not the master of his own flight, and in truth, he was ill accustomed to cooperation with the magi; his landing was rough, and it was off by a few inches. He took the brunt of his weight with bent knees, one dagger in each hand.

  “Angel!” He held one dagger out, and Angel, no fool, took it almost before Jewel had turned. He retained the second; if the daggers did their work here, he’d have time to give one to Jewel.

  Jewel shouted a warning; Devon’s body obeyed. He threw himself to the right, landing to one side of a large, moving vine; into this, he thrust the dagger he held. The runes along the flat of the blade blazed with sudden, golden light, and the light grew so bright it seemed white. Something in the distance screamed in mingled rage and pain; the vine scorched and blackened. Devon released the blade and unsheathed another, while Angel struck a different vine.

  Jewel stood between them, watching the ground.

  “ATerafin,” Devon said, more sharply than he intended. He caught her shoulder with his free hand as she knelt. Before he could pull her to her feet, Angel caught his wrist. They exchanged a single, silent glance—a brief one—before Devon released her. She hadn’t even looked up.

  “It’s been a while since you’ve worked with her,” Angel said softly. “If you intend to do it again, remember: Don’t touch her, and don’t interfere if she’s not in obvious danger.”

  Devon looked pointedly at the smoking ruins of blackened vines that encircled them; Angel’s grimace granted Devon the point. Angel turned; enough time had been spent on advice. He watched the broken ground as Sigurne Mellifas at last approached.

  “I think it safe, for the moment,” she told Devon. “At least on the ground.”

  Jewel bent further and laid both of her palms against the exposed earth.

  Celleriant could not dislodge the slender spikes that had attached themselves to his shield; had he time, had he a moment’s respite, it would have been a simple task. But this, this slow decay, was something he had not seen since—

  He roared, his voice like thunder.

  The tree shuddered. He flew up and away, gaining speed above the wild air’s bitter protests; the branches that now sought to follow tore his cape, no more. As he gained speed, he gained height, divesting himself of gravity. Only at the height of the tree did he swerve and retrieve all of gravity in a second. He fell.

  Falling, he sundered branches with sword, cracked them with shield; he accepted the stinging cuts of slender, ruby leaves. They followed him as he plummeted, but they curved in on themselves in a rush, twining and tangling, one over the other, until there was no way back.

  But he had no intention of escape now. He struck the very trunk of the tree with the edge of his sword, and he held nothing back; he had no hope of surviving what followed if he showed any hesitance at all.

  Jewel.

  The tree’s roots froze in place. Only the vines that had encircled Jewel were dead. Jewel lifted her face and blinked rapidly as Devon and Angel swam into view. She rose on unsteady feet.

  Avandar, where is Celleriant? What has he done?

  I can no longer see him, the domicis replied. What has happened to the roots?

  I don’t know. Whatever force animated them, it’s withdrawn.

  Gone?

  No. She began to walk toward the tree. Angel cleared his throat.

  “It’s safe,” she told him, without looking back.

  “ATerafin.”

  Jewel stopped at the sound of a new voice.

  “Sigurne?”

  Sigurne Mellifas nodded. She was accompanied by Matteos Corvel, who looked much, much grimmer than she.

  “It’s Winter magic,” Jewel told the Guildmaster of the Order of Knowledge.

  “Yes.” Sigurne lifted one guttered dagger.

  “I thought Winter magic was demonic magic.”

  Sigurne was silent. It was the wrong type of silence. “Sigurne?”

  “Why do you think this i
s not demonic in nature, ATerafin?”

  Jewel looked up to the tree’s height; it wasn’t a question she could answer immediately—if at all. “Tell me about Winter magic, Sigurne. If it’s not forbidden.”

  “It is not forbidden, but I have very little to say. It is not a mortal magic, and it is not a branch of magic that we can either develop or teach with any reliability. Those among my magi who are interested in Winter—and Summer—magics are also those who study lore and legend.

  “There is a reason that the daggers in Devon ATerafin’s possession are consecrated by the Exalted.”

  “Winter and Summer magics were the forms used by gods?”