Skirmish: A House War Novel

by West, Michelle

  “So we believe.”

  “Meralonne can use Summer magic.”

  Sigurne’s silence shifted and changed. After a long, long pause she said, “So, I believe, can the young man who is now fighting in the air above us.”

  “Avandar, can you—” Jewel stopped. Took a deep breath. “Never mind. I see the Winter King.”

  He came across what might have been a fairy-tale clearing to reach her, and he knelt at once on both slender forelegs, bowing his crown of tines. He was wounded in several places, something she had never seen.

  They will heal, he told her, in a tone of voice that forbade both concern and questions. Climb, Jewel.

  How long had it been since he had experienced Summer?

  Celleriant cleaved bark that was no longer bark, the edge of his sword sparking as it struck. Around him, leaves flew, cutting skin, hair, scraping armor. But the branches could no longer reach him; he stood within the heart of the trunk, in a gap made by the weight, and the force, of his sudden downward plunge.

  How long had he lived in the lee of Winter, with its bitter, bitter ice and its beautiful, deadly cold? He knew Winter. But he remembered Summer, and the memory of the Arianni had no equal.

  The edge of his sword began to shimmer as blue light made way for slow and certain gold; he spoke words that existed for one season alone, and he spoke them now in the secrecy of darkness and the imminence of death. Cold answered. Cold, a reminder that Winter reigned; Summer’s time had passed and might never come again.

  His laughter was wild and angry.

  “Is that the best you can do? Think you that a simple passing regret has the power to destroy a Prince of the Arianni?” The hilt of his sword was warm and sticky with his blood; the leaves were now attempting to sever his arm at the wrist. They understood the nature of the danger, but not the nature of the sword itself, and he drove it down, plunging it into the growing shadow, cracking ice as he did. Black ice.

  Once, he had plunged sword into white ice, burying it to the hilt, as he stood before the Winter face of Ariane. The ice had cracked only an inch from the buried blade, no more, as if making a statement. She could swallow the whole of his self with but a moment’s hesitation, a moment’s discomfort. She could contain him.

  She was the only being that could. She had walked the world when the gods were young, and it had not destroyed her. But she could own it, break it, build it; she could destroy and she could create. On her own ground, there was no force that was her equal. Child and kin to those gods, she had been born, breathing, into the world; she could not forsake it.

  But she had not been the only such child born.

  Ice cracked like a brittle facade. Liquid, dark and thick, some mix of sap and unnatural blood, spilled from that fleshless wound. He began to sink into it as the leaves buzzed like insects near his open eyes.

  Jewel stiffened. “Avandar.”

  “ATerafin.”

  “I need to go to Celleriant.”

  He gave her a familiar, questioning look. Sadly, what it questioned was her sanity. “That is not, at this moment, possible. Not for you.”

  “Can you go?”

  “I could, yes. Not without injury.”

  “Could you command him?”

  That look again. He didn’t bother to reply.

  “We have ten minutes, Avandar. Ten at the outside.”

  “And if we fail? If we choose not to take that risk?”

  “We’ll lose him.” Her voice was flat and hard.

  His was nonexistent.

  Avandar.

  You underestimate Lord Celleriant.

  No, I don’t.

  “My duties as your domicis are focused on your well-being and your safety, ATerafin. Perhaps Member Mellifas might aid you. I, however, cannot.”

  Jewel bit back an angry stream of Torra, the den’s cursing language of choice. She turned to Sigurne, a woman who now made her Oma look young. But before she could ask—if she even could—the Winter King said, again, Jewel, climb.

  This time, she did as he asked. Angel started toward her; she shook her head. He turned to Devon, said something low. Devon nodded and something passed between their hands. Then her den-kin joined her, and not until he was firmly seated on the Winter King’s back for a second time did the great stag rise.

  I serve you, he told Jewel, as the muscles beneath her tensed. But I am not your slave; you are not master of my will.

  Was she?

  Of course. She was—and is—absolute; it is her nature. It is not, and will never be, yours; you are subject to the flaws and imperfections of both change and age. But in those flaws, ATerafin, there is power and a brilliance of a type that cannot be found in the eternal.

  As he spoke, he ran, the cadence of his measured words a counterpoint to the urgency of his stride. The tree was not far from where they had stood in silent witness to the events unfolding above them, but Celleriant was; he was somewhere at the height of the tree, and they were too close to its base.

  That changed. You must hold on, now, ATerafin. Tell your leige. He must hold, as well.

  You can’t carry us?

  Here? I can. But only if you are willing.

  His words made no sense at all; she was on his back, wasn’t she? He was taking her exactly where she wanted—and needed—to go. What, in that, implied that she wasn’t willing? She was becoming accustomed to a total lack of sense in the world. Sense was something small, hard, practical; it was human. It was mortal. Sense was her Oma.

  Yes, he said, as he rose up on his hind legs at the base of the trunk. Sense is practical. How many times, ATerafin, have you walked up the side of a wall?

  It wasn’t, as Jewel quickly discovered, a rhetorical question. She grabbed the Winter King’s tines, and felt Angel’s arms surround her on either side as he scrabbled to do the same. He was silent; she was shouting. Wind tore the words away, made them nothing but a sensation in her throat and on her lips. She tightened her legs around the Winter King’s girth and felt her inner thighs slide inches as he continued to run.

  To run up the trunk, while the wind dropped leaves. Those leaves were deadly; she closed her eyes as they scratched the sides of her cheeks, drawing beads of blood. Behind her, Angel finally let loose with a curse, but he clung to the tines of the King, just as she did. Kalliaris, she thought absurdly.

  It is not in her hands, ATerafin, but yours.

  Her hands were slipping. But, eyes closed, she could feel the Winter King’s muscles beneath her legs. She could feel—and hear—the wind’s howl. She could imagine that she was riding in the middle of a flash flood in the desert, while above, the storm took the form and shape of a great dragon. The Winter King was willing to carry her now; he’d carried her then, as well—and for a similar reason.

  But that ride had been effortless compared to this one.

  Yes. But if you look, Jewel, if you look, seer, you will discern the path I follow, even in this. I cannot run pathless, nor can the Wild Hunt.

  You go where she leads.

  Yes. But she is a pathfinder, Jewel. If there exists a way, the Winter Queen will find it, no matter how narrow or dangerous the journey. This is a gift given to those who call the Hunt.

  Celleriant—

  He rides. It is not the same.

  But the Winter Queen—

  Oh, Jewel. Ariane has run those roads, just as I have run them.

  Without thought, Jewel replied, Celleriant will kill you if he ever hears you say that.

  Yes. But he and I do not speak. Why do you think she gathers the fallen and transforms them?

  …I don’t know.

  She cannot be weak, was his soft reply. But she is what she is, in its totality. What her mounts see, we see as mutes. What we hear, we cannot betray to her enemies.

  You can talk to me.

  Yes, and that is the wonder, Jewel; how often do you think she has ceded her personal mount to one who is merely mortal?

  Jewel had no answer. Although
she was mortal—or perhaps because she was mortal—the presence of the Winter Queen was death—but a death so beautiful, a death so all encompassing it made life seem pointless and insignificant in comparison. Jewel had seen gods in the flesh in the Between, but it was Ariane whose face was rooted so deeply within her that she had only to close her eyes to recall the Winter Queen in all her deadly glory.

  She opened her eyes to escape that memory, and regretted it; the air was red and black. But Ariane’s gift was twined around Jewel’s wrist, and as Jewel’s sleeves flew in the wind, she saw it: it glowed. Strands of hair that should have been all but invisible to the eye glittered as if they were fine spun crystal; one was blue, one was gold, and one was white. They flashed like miniature lightning, and when she could see again, the world had become…white.

  The Winter King ran across a white desert, his breath leaving clouds in a trail.

  The ice is thin.

  Celleriant looked up into a sky of dead branches, dead leaves. Beyond them, he could see the lingering ghosts of the ancient forests that had once given voice to a world. He had—in a youth so long past him only memory retained its fragments—loved those forests. He had loved them as he had loved nothing else, although he would learn how shallow that love had been, in time.

  Beneath the bowers of singing trees, their voices attenuated and slow to build, he had traced the networks of streams, brooks, and rivers, learning to walk on the surface of the rippling water without actually getting wet. Had he fallen? Yes. Many times. As a child, it had little troubled him.

  Had he stumbled? Fallen? He was wet, now. Wet, in the warmth of Summer, was a benison. But the air was chill and cold—how else could there be ice? He tried to lift himself out of the water and realized that there was no riverbank in this place; no rocks on which to balance his weight. There was no grass.

  Those were fragments of youth; he yearned for them as one can only yearn for lost things. What had silenced the forest’s voice? Ah. Winter. Where had he been?

  Ice cracked as he moved. It was thin. It slowed him. His breath rose in a wreath, like steam or fog. He saw his name swirl in the eddies before the wind carried it away.

  The ice was thin, yes—but it hardened as he walked. It deepened beneath his feet. He slowed, then stilled, listening for familiar voices. Hearing none. Or hearing ghosts. What had happened to the forests?

  At the height of the tree, the sun shone without warmth—but it was Henden; Jewel told herself it was because it was Henden. Her arms were red with cold, her hands shaking as they clung. Angel’s hands, resting now almost on top of hers, were the only source of heat; the Winter King himself might have been a ghost. A solid ghost. She felt his fur as barding, his musculature as iron. She was momentarily afraid, but reminded herself, with what heat she could muster, that she had demanded to come here.

  Yes, he said. Just that.

  The landscape was strange. She knew she was riding up the trunk of the tree, but she saw the tree as horizontal. She saw it, bark covered in ice and snow, the height of its branches frozen and glittering in Winter sun. Its leaves were now encased; their color couldn’t be discerned. As the Winter King continued to run, the snow thickened and widened until it formed a vast plain, glittering and cold, out of which only icy branches grew. Gravity reasserted itself in the normal direction.

  You were not wrong, the Winter King said.

  About what?

  The trouble began in the roots. But as with any tree, what the roots touch travels to the branches if the tree is not to perish. We will find something buried there, in the end.

  Given the gardeners, Jewel thought this statement more prophetic than historical. Especially considering the funeral and the dignitaries who’d been invited to attend.

  But the imperative of the funeral—of the respect that was Amarais Handernesse ATerafin’s due—had receded for a moment. Jewel held onto the Winter King and stared straight ahead as he ran. The tree seemed to go on forever. To the left and right, branches encased in ice formed patchy walls. Ahead, those branches were all that remained, as trunk gave way, at last, to the tree’s crown.

  At the heart of those many branches stood Celleriant; he, like the leaves, seemed encased in ice. He was frozen, but she could see the bright, burning blue of his sword.

  He remembered now.

  Celleriant, Celleriant. Long days spent forming the syllables lent them strength and a majesty that he did not, perhaps, deserve. He turned, or tried. His hands were encumbered and heavy; perhaps this was why he could not climb.

  The Winter comes, Celleriant, and with it sleep.

  You will sleep, Ancient?

  All things which know life know sleep.

  Am I not alive?

  The rustle of laughter touched his upturned face. The leaves were falling. You are alive.

  But I do not sleep.

  Do you not?

  No.

  We pity you, Celleriant. There is peace in sleep. There is a promise of rest. It is earned. We grow into it, year by year. How is it that you do not sleep?

  I don’t know. There’s too much to see, Ancient. Too much to learn. If I sleep your sleep, things will age and die before I wake again.

  But new things will be born beneath our bowers. We are content. Tell us, Celleriant, if you do not sleep, how do you dream?

  He had been young, then. Youth was its own country, its own terrain; the geography of folly could still be beautiful. I dream, he had told them, so defensively.

  Of what?

  Of life. I dream of the wind. I dream of flight. I dream of the earth and its mountainous heights. I dream of my kin, no matter how distant they are. One day, Ancient, I will find a calling and a duty.

  So soon?

  I have my sword, he’d said with pride. I have my shield. I have called them myself, and they are of me.

  But they have no place in the forest.

  He said nothing.

  And the things of which you speak are not dreams, Celleriant. They are your bright and quick imaginings. They are figments of your desire and your will. They are the crown of the waking hours. But they are not dreams.

  Then I want none of your dreams, Ancient.

  No, indeed, although in time you may come to them anyway. We must part for now, for you will not hear our voices, and we will be unable to hear yours. We will wake again, Celleriant. In the turn of seasons, we will wake, we will be renewed. We will look for you in the height of the Summer; that is our promise.

  The promised Summer had come, but Celleriant dwelled no longer in those ancient forests, for with Winter had come war, and with war, the Winter Queen.

  * * *

  It was Winter now. The coming of Winter presaged so many things: endings. Beginnings. He saw the ghosts of ancient forests and heard their tremulous voice and he felt an ache and a desire that became, for one moment, the whole of his desire for Summer. Winter without end was silent, still, cold. There was glory in it, there was majesty, and there was death. Not all things that Wintered survived to see Summer’s return.

  The water was just beneath his shoulders now; the cold had slowed the river’s force, but not enough. He was heavy. He could not recall ever feeling so heavy. He tried to swim, but his hands were still full and they stung. He looked down; beneath the water, warped and wavering in his vision, were two things: a sword, a shield.

  They have no place in the forest.

  He struggled with their weight.

  Chapter Six

  THE BLUE LIGHT of Celleriant’s sword began to flicker as the Winter King slowed.

  “Can you take the branches down?” Jewel asked.

  It would not help him.

  “I don’t care. It would help me.” She started to dismount and Angel tightened both of his arms, trapping her between them.

  “What in the Hells are you doing?” he all but shouted in her ear.

  She shook her head as if to clear it. She felt the Winter King’s presence; he was waiting. Watching. “I
need to get down,” she finally said.

  If you do, you must leave your companion with me.

  “If you get off his back, you’re going to fall a lot farther than you think!” Angel’s hands were white; his words were almost a hiss. “Jay!”

  She pulled one hand off the Winter King’s antlers, signing. Angel, however, didn’t sign back; he held tight. “What do you see, Angel?”

  “What do you mean, what do I see?”

  “Exactly what I said. Tell me.” Her voice was low. It must have transmitted the urgency she felt, because he drew a longer, more measured breath.