Skirmish: A House War Novel

by West, Michelle

  Sometimes, she said again, I dream of gods.

  She felt the sword fall, and saw that this time it had fallen farther, faster. And why wouldn’t it, after all? A demon Lord had no part in her world except as a vulture; these lands were made for all of the creatures like him.

  But this particular patch of strange, immortal land overlapped the life she knew. It touched her home. It was as much hers as his.

  No. It was more hers than his. It was here that she’d dreamed and cried and slept and ate; here that she’d loved and feared and raged. It was here that she’d given the vow that would define the rest of her life.

  “Lord Ishavriel,” she said, her hand now gripping the tree’s bark, “you are not in your lands anymore. You’re in mine, and I don’t want you here. Go home.”

  As she spoke, the surrounding trees upon which the leaves—her leaves—had settled began to glow; some were silver, some were gold, and some were hard, harsh diamond, warm ice. They grew into their light, gaining the height, the majesty, and the shapes that she knew so well.

  His wind flew at their heights; his wind tore at their leaves. Jewel smiled as those leaves were rent from branches. “It’s no good,” she told him, understanding for just this moment why.

  The leaves blew in his storm, but they came to settle on different trunks, different trees, and they took root there, just as the first flying leaves had done. There, in the darkness, transformation began, and it spread. The forest unfolded at her back, to her sides, and directly before her; the path lost shadow and darkness in their growing light. Light, however, did not diminish the demon; it hallowed him. Jewel felt her mouth go dry at the sight of Lord Ishavriel in the gleaming of Winter light. He was beautiful, yes, and cold—but there was something about his expression in the shadows cast by light that implied a sorrow so deep and ancient she couldn’t even comprehend it.

  She took a step forward and reached out with one hand—it was not the hand that anchored her to the tree.

  “Do not be a fool,” a familiar voice said. Winter voice. Celleriant had come. He looked up at the height of the tree she now held, and his eyes were a silver that reflected gold somehow. “So,” he said softly, when he at last looked back down at the grimy, mortal woman to whom his service had been given.

  He did something she could never have predicted: He fell to one knee and he bowed his exposed and perfect face toward that knee. She was speechless, which was admittedly rare. But he wasn’t done, not yet. He called the sword she’d hoped never to see again. It came to his hand in almost exactly the same fashion as Lord Ishavriel’s had done. But it was blue to Ishavriel’s red.

  He didn’t threaten her. He didn’t stand. Instead, he placed the sword at her feet, holding only the hilt to do so. “While you live, ATerafin, I will serve you—and only you.” He gestured and his shield came to his arm. “I will be your host; I will be your shield. I, and the things at my command.”

  “But—but—” She felt the tines of the Winter King lodge gently between her shoulders.

  Celleriant met her flustered gaze; his own was implacable, immovable. Immortal. He waited.

  What the Hells am I supposed to say? It’s not like he asked a question.

  “The Winter Queen,” she finally managed.

  “While you live, ATerafin,” was Celleriant’s reply. It was cold; he would never be warm; no more would he be open and giving. But there was, in the words, an intensity that defied the distance that cold implied.

  Tell him to rise, ATerafin.

  Jewel was silent. She understood what he offered. She was afraid of it. Of what it might mean, in the future.

  Tell him to rise, and allow him to do what he has sworn to do. Lord Ishavriel will not leave this forest merely because you have claimed it; he will cause no damage to your House and your kin because of your intervention—but you are mortal, and he is not. He is Kialli; his pride will not allow such a retreat.

  And Celleriant?

  Lord Celleriant is a Prince of the Winter Court; the Winter Queen and the Lord of the Hells have been bitter enemies for almost the whole of their long existence together. What Lord Ishavriel cannot do for pride’s sake, he can for pragmatism—but not if it is you alone he faces.

  He can’t hurt me here.

  He can, Jewel. Understand that. Your pain is far, far too simple. Can he injure you? No; not here. Not now. But it is not you that he will injure. Not you that he will kill.

  But—but what would it mean, to be served by a…a Prince of the Winter Court?

  Only what you make of it, in the end.

  If Ishavriel’s pride won’t allow him to back down—from me—why would Celleriant serve? Where is his pride?

  The Arianni and the Allasiani were never the same, although they could be kin. A wuffling breath touched the back of her neck; the Winter King was frustrated. You will need power, ATerafin. In the coming months and years, you will require it.

  She’d known that. But the definition of power had been money, influence, rank. Not this. Not this forest of radiant metal; not the Winter King; not the Arianni.

  Yet her enemy—one of many—was more of this world than the other.

  She nodded to Celleriant; he did not rise.

  Give me your hand, ATerafin. Do not let go of the tree.

  I didn’t need to be told that.

  His breath again, soft, distinct, and very warm. She held out her free hand and knew, the instant before it happened, what he would do: He cut it. It bled. Arann stiffened, and she was suddenly glad that it was Arann, and not Angel, by her side. She grimaced and then lowered that bleeding palm toward Celleriant. His eyes flashed silver light, and gold, and ice, and for a moment it seemed to her—from his eyes alone—that he had swallowed the spirit of this forest, had made it his own.

  He lifted his sword from its bed of broken cobblestones, and he cut his own palm; he bled. It looked red in the darkness, and it clearly wasn’t frozen. When he placed the bleeding cut above her own she hesitated again; she had to force herself to keep the hand steady.

  And he knew it, of course. His smile was thin and cold as any smile that ever touched his lips. But it was fierce, also, and bright. His hand in hers was warm. Warm, living; it might have been a mortal hand, by feel alone.

  “You know that this is going to be hard, for you,” she told him, the words running ahead of her thoughts; ahead of anything but instinct.

  “Will it?”

  He released her hand. She wasn’t surprised to see that no trace of a wound remained on either of their palms; just the blood smeared by their momentary joining. Rising, he adjusted his shield. In the growing forest, Lord Ishavriel stood, watching in a silence that had lost all frustration. It contained, instead, anticipation.

  “Yes,” was her soft reply. “Because I’ll see the Winter Queen again, and you’ll be with me. She’ll know.”

  She couldn’t see his expression as he walked toward the waiting demon. But his words, as they drifted back, were clear. “She already knows, ATerafin. She knew the moment you accepted my oath.”

  The trees sang.

  It was a slow trickle of sound, each note attenuated; from a single tree the note might have been the faint protest of breeze through branches. But it was not a single tree that Celleriant heard as he approached Lord Ishavriel; it was a forest. It was not a Winter forest, not a Summer forest—but something profound had touched the trees along this path, and their voices were waking.

  He wanted to sing to them. As if he were a youth, and the Winter Wars, the gods and their deaths or their abandonment, had never happened. He wanted to stand beneath their bowers and catch the slow fall of their leaves on his upturned face; he wanted to hear their voices and their long, slow words. He did neither. He carried a sword in the heart of this waking place, and he knew that it did not belong here.

  But he was sentinel now; he knew that there were other things that did not belong here, and only the sword might drive them away. Perhaps that was all, in the e
nd, that he was to be allowed, for War was in his blood with its savage, strange joy.

  “Lord Ishavriel,” he said, inclining his head.

  “I see the whelp of the Court has chosen to take his leave of its Queen. Have a care, Celleriant. You have, no doubt, seen the fate of those forsworn.”

  Celleriant was not kind; he knew well the fate of the Sleepers in their endless dream. “Can you hear the trees?” he asked softly, lifting his sword arm and gesturing toward the whole of the forest in one calculated sweep of motion. He knew the answer, of course. The forest did not speak to the dead.

  But the dead could listen. The dead could witness what they could no longer touch or hold. The dead—these dead, the demons of Allasakar—could desire what they could never again touch. They had surrendered all ties to the world and its vast deepings to follow their Lord to his new Dominion; they could not now return to those forests, those hollows, those mountains and caverns.

  “I hear the fitful dreams of a child,” was Ishavriel’s cool response. “No more. I hear,” he added, “an ending.” He leaped up and forward before the last syllable left his lips, and his sword traced a red arc that glinted off blue as Celleriant deflected, dropping onto his knees a moment. Lord Ishavriel was quick and supple in his movements; he did not remain in any place for long. The winds did not carry him. They could, if he chose to bend his will toward their dominance.

  But that would be costly.

  Ishavriel carried no shield. For a moment, Celleriant was angered; was he so insignificant an enemy that a shield was not required? The anger slid from him as he watched the Kialli Lord, replaced by something colder and infinitely more amused.

  “Where have you been playing, Lord Ishavriel, that you’ve lost your shield?”

  Lord Ishavriel’s smile was as cold and sharp as Celleriant’s.

  “In distant lands, little princeling.” He gestured, and Celleriant heard the familiar—and entirely unwelcome—voice of the wild fire.

  Jewel saw the fire before it started.

  Saw it, felt its heat, understood that it was coming. She cried out, wordless, to Arann, and he turned, lifting one hand in den-sign. She answered the same way, with a single urgent gesture: fire.

  He looked; no fire existed, no flames, no heat. But she didn’t have to tell him that it was coming; he understood that by its absence. “Jay—”

  “Come here,” she told him, striving for calm. “Come here. Stand in the lee of the tree and touch it.”

  “But Celleriant—”

  “Believe that there is nothing you or I can do for Celleriant now.”

  Even protesting, Arann came to the tree and did as she ordered. She then turned to the Winter King.

  You hear it.

  Jewel nodded. “Can he stop the fire?”

  Not safely, no, as Ishavriel must have guessed. Nor, however, can Ishavriel fully contain it, not here. Not so close to the sleeping earth. Something has angered the Kialli Lord.

  I can guess. He has that effect on me, too. Jewel hesitated for a moment, and then she reached up, teetering on toes and balanced on the tree’s trunk.

  What do you do, ATerafin?

  She didn’t answer—not with words. Not even with thought, which the Winter King would have picked out of the air anyway. Just beyond her, swords were clashing and lightning singed night air, blue and red, blue and red. Voices were raised, but even Celleriant’s was alien, to her. She couldn’t understand a word he shouted.

  Fire in an old forest was never a good thing.

  But fire had come to the tree and the tree had taken it in, absorbing its heat and its essence. She closed her eyes, which didn’t help; it made the voices and the sound of fighting louder, harsher. She whispered to vines of fire; whispered to the tree’s heart, because she was certain it had one. The darkness behind her lids grew red, and the cool night, warm. She opened her eyes.

  Wreathing her arms—both arms, and most of her upper body—the vines grew. They had leaves of kindling flame in a shape she recognized. These, unlike the vines, burned to touch. She was as careful as she could be, because they crackled and hissed without voices.

  Slowly, steadily, she withdrew her hand from the tree’s trunk. The Winter King reared and she shook her head. “Carry me,” she told him instead. “Carry me to them; the fire is coming.”

  Does it come willingly?

  “How the hells should I know? It’s fire.” But the truth was, she did know. The voice of the distant fire was raging fury and crackling heat, and it matched the cadence of Lord Ishavriel’s incomprehensible words almost exactly. Its voice defined the voice of the betrayed who destroy, rather than weep. Kin to those voices, it was also full of longing, desire, and recognition turned bitter and ugly.

  She shouldn’t have cared. Mostly, she didn’t—because if that fire was unleashed here, it would spend itself attempting to devour what she had built, and what she had built was new. Its roots hadn’t had the time to sink into the earth and grow deep enough to withstand this unwelcome visitor.

  Not that trees ever did all that well when facing normal fires; these trees, however, weren’t normal. They were dreaming trees and waking trees and they existed in a place where the gods might walk; gods, not mortal girls with a touch of vision and a houseful of people who wanted, in the end, to tell her what to do, how to do it, and when.

  What would Haval or Devon say to her now? She lifted her arms, and the vines rose with them, red and fine and thin.

  The Winter King knelt and she mounted, taking care—as much care as she could—to keep the leaves above his fur and away from his tines. She ended up losing patches of coat, but the coat smoldered and blackened; it didn’t catch fire. Thank Kalliaris.

  What would they say to her now? What would Ellerson say?

  The Winter King rose.

  “Arann, please, if you trust me at all, stay by the tree, no matter what happens.”

  She didn’t hear his reply because the stag sprang forward, tines lowered. With him rose Jewel and the vines and the leaves of flame. She knew that they were part of the tree, that she was still in contact with it, but she felt exposed as they drew close to the fight. Close was yards away from where Celleriant landed, yards away from where he rose, leaping to one side to avoid flame from the demon Lord’s hand.

  It was not farther away than the voice of the fire; she bid the Winter King stop without even saying a word. But when she tried to dismount, he moved. I will stay, he told her.

  Go back to Arann.

  No. I will remain, ATerafin, or you will not. Lord Celleriant was ordered to serve you. I am not a Prince of the Winter Court. My choices are mortal choices, not Arianni. You will not dismount.

  But the fire—

  I will ride the fire, he told her.

  You can’t.

  He was silent for a long moment. Very well. I will chance the fire. If you cannot achieve whatever it is you desire, it will not matter; the fire will consume everything. I fear it will consume the fool who called it forth, as well, but that will be little consolation.

  Little’s better than none.

  What did she intend to do?

  What did she know about fire, after all? What did she know about dreams? What did she know about ancient groves of trees that could be woken with a touch and transformed in the waking? The waking…Wait, did you say that the earth is sleeping?

  Yes. But not, I fear, for long, and when it wakes, it will be angry. Can you not feel it?

  No.

  I feel it beneath my hooves.

  Why is it sleeping? She didn’t ask how.

  I do not know. I cannot wake it, Jewel. Of the many gifts my service to the Wild Hunt has given me, that is not one. Even if I could, I would not do it; the anger of the elements is wild and barely contained; it would uproot your forest as easily as the fire would consume it.

  Could I?

  I…do not know. I do not know if it would hear your voice at all; there are mortals who might bespeak it and b
e heard, if only briefly. His tone made clear to her why he thought it would be brief.

  Avandar had called the wild earth in the Sea of Sorrows; he had called the earth in the village of Damar.

  Viandaran cannot be considered mortal. Even were he, he was born at the height of the glory of Man.

  She took a breath, closed her eyes, and steadied herself. She was on the back of the Winter King, and if he chose to carry her, she’d never fall off.

  On the other hand, she’d singed his perfect, silver fur.