Skirmish: A House War Novel

by West, Michelle

  She looked at the vines, and then touched them, sliding her fingers between the leaves and singeing skin in the process. They uncoiled from her forearms like leaved snakes might have, and slid toward the ground, leaving a trail of curled, dark fur in their wake. And wool.

  They were there when the fire appeared. The Winter King leaped clear of its opening fanfare: an orange-red blaze with a heart of blue. The vines coiled around the bonfire, red to its shaded hues. Its leaves burst into brighter, longer flames when they met, vine and flame, tree and fire.

  What are you doing, Jewel?

  I’m telling the fire to go back to sleep and dream of forests, was her curt reply. Before he could ask her how, she added, Watch.

  The vines took root. They took root, however, on what had been path, its beaten dirt blending into worn cobblestones. Stones began to redden as the vines grew; Jewel prayed that whatever it took to wake the earth, this wasn’t it. Flames lapped against the vines, and the vines of fire wrapped themselves around the heart of blue, curling and twining until the fires couldn’t be seen. The vines melted together then; they formed a trunk that Jewel didn’t dare to touch.

  Branches, red and sleek, grew out of that trunk, thick around as her arms; they reached for air, as flames might, and they sprouted leaves. Nothing would touch this tree. Not the cool Winter wind, not the rain, not the snow—and she was certain that snow fell here. As the fire summoned by the demon Lord continued to arrive, the tree grew taller, and taller still, until its height touched—and burned—the edges of the canopy the rest of the trees made.

  The Winter King was utterly still as he watched.

  “Do you hear it?” she asked him.

  Yes.

  “Will it stay contained?”

  Yes, ATerafin. Yes, Terafin. The fire…is not yet awakened; the earth is not yet aware.

  “That’s the best we’re going to be able to do,” was her soft reply. It was lost to the clash of steel. “Can Celleriant kill him?”

  Not yet.

  “Will he withdraw?”

  The Winter King turned and walked away from their fight. It wasn’t much of an answer, but Jewel had the sense that it was the only one she was going to get. That, and the lightning—in blue and red—that flashed across the whole of the sky, not just the patch under which they met, flying at each other—literally—with their ancient swords, in an echo of their ancient war. She could almost see the others as she walked: the dead, Allasiani or Arianni, in the dim shadows of the forest that existed beyond her trees. She could see the brief gleam of light off metal at chest and the height of forehead; she could see the same gleam off splints on arms or legs. What she couldn’t see—what she was suddenly certain she would never see, should she encounter these shadows again—was any hint of their weapons; swords, she thought—and shields.

  The path remembers, the Winter King told her. He walked slowly, Jewel ensconced on his back, his hooves touching cobbled stone without breaking or disturbing a single one.

  Arann was waiting for her in tense silence that broke the minute their eyes met. “Jay—”

  She shook her head. “It’s what he wants,” she told her den-kin.

  “To fight that demon? To risk his life?”

  She nodded. “It’s what he’s lived for for longer than either of us—or both of us combined—have been alive. I could order him back,” she added, acknowledging what he didn’t say, but what he was nonetheless asking. “But I think he needs this.”

  “But—why?”

  Jewel shrugged. “Because we can’t do what he’s doing now.”

  Arann’s eyes were dark and wide; his knuckles were white. “Jay—”

  “Don’t ask, Arann. I don’t understand it either. But he’d rather die there than retreat, and I’ll let him. We’re leaving. He can find his own way back.”

  He wanted to argue; she saw that clearly. She even understood why, although it surprised her: Celleriant had been allowed into their kitchen, part of their council no matter how far back he stood. Arann did not want to leave one of their own—one of her own—behind in the face of such a danger.

  But he swallowed the words.

  “He’s proving himself to me,” she said, relenting. “Yes, I know I don’t need that proof—but he needs to give it. I think the Lord of the Hells could walk that path in person and Celleriant would still stand on the road, wielding that sword and that shield. He won’t care about the collateral damage the fight causes, though.”

  That much, Arann knew was true—more than true. Celleriant had argued—coldly and passionately at the same time—for permission to run through the manse slaughtering everyone in it in order to end, as he called it, any opposition to her rule. Arann fell in beside the Winter King; Jewel wondered if that was the reason the stag was moving so slowly.

  She turned to look over her shoulder; to see the shadows of the two, demon and Arianni, as their movements emphasized their light, their grace, the death that happened all around them almost as an afterthought. They were beautiful. They were beautiful in the exact same way as the tree of fire was: it burned, no matter how careful you were, but for moments at a time, you didn’t mind the burning.

  “Jay?”

  Arann’s voice brought her back.

  “Where are we going?”

  “Home.”

  “Good. How are we going to get there?”

  She pointed. Arann’s gaze traveled in the direction of her arm, because a man stood in the road—the cobbled road, the road of the holdings. To his side were trees of silver and gold, and leaves touched his hair and his cape. He wore a familiar face, but she expected that. He was Torvan ATerafin.

  And he wasn’t.

  She slid off the back of the Winter King, and this time, he allowed it. “I think there are other ways back,” she whispered. “I know if I follow this path, I’ll reach the manse.”

  The Winter King nodded. Who is he?

  “The Spirit of Terafin,” she replied.

  He wore armor that Torvan would never have worn, but he was of a height with the second Captain of the Chosen. The real Torvan was probably having catfits about now. So, she was certain, was Avandar. She couldn’t sense his presence at all; even the brand on her wrist was cool and unremarkable.

  But his smile was not a smile that she’d ever seen on Torvan’s face. When she was a few yards from where he held the road, he fell to one knee, just as Celleriant had done. Somehow, it was worse. She stopped moving and stared at his bent, helmed head. Lifting only his hands, he removed that helm and set it across one thigh. He carried no sword that she could see, but she was afraid if he had, it would have been a sword very like Celleriant’s. Or Ishavriel’s.

  He smiled as he looked up. “No, Jewel. It would never be that.” His voice was grave.

  Hers was thick. “You let her die.” It wasn’t what she’d meant to say.

  But it was, clearly, what he’d been expecting. “And so as punishment for my failure, you will not venture to my side; you will not present yourself at my shrine?” He still did not rise.

  “…no. It wasn’t as punishment. She’s not dead to me until the end of the funeral rites. Maybe not even then.”

  “You came to me when she was alive, Jewel.”

  “Yes. Yes, I did. You know why it’s different.”

  His glance strayed to the forest itself, and he smiled. “I know why it is different, yes. ATerafin.”

  “Are you going to just sit there on the road?”

  “Until you give me leave to rise, yes.”

  She almost left him there. Almost. But Arann was staring—at her, at him. The Terafin Spirit had never appeared before any other member of her den before. “It’s not mine to give,” she told him, the words more shaky than the brusque she’d intended.

  “ATerafin,” he said. And then, just as the Winter King had done, “Terafin.”

  She closed her eyes. When she opened them, she’d shrunk a couple of inches. “Will you force me to carry all of
the resposibility? You’ve always been here.”

  “I have always been here,” he agreed. “Since the advent of the Twin Kings; since before. I have been here. But all things end, Jewel. Amarais was waiting for you, although she did not know it the first day you met. But I? I had hope. These lands are your lands in a way that they have never belonged to any Terafin before you, even myself. And you will defend them, while you breathe, in a way that I cannot. I can guide—but I cannot guide you, in the end.”

  “But what about those who come after me?”

  He said nothing. But he didn’t rise, and she hated to see him on one knee.

  “Have you always been here?” She glanced at the trees to either side of where he knelt.

  “Yes. Here, on the edges of the path, between my lands and the hidden ways immortals fled to when the gods chose to leave the world.”

  “And the shrine?”

  “It is close, as you must know by now. I am not alive, Jewel. I am not entirely dead, but even spirits know weariness. Perhaps especially spirits. I have watched over Terafin for centuries, with some success and some failure; it is time. There is a force in the North that has already begun to twist and remake the pathways.”

  She closed her eyes. “Allasakar.”

  He didn’t even blink at the use of the god’s name. “Even so. Can you feel him, where you stand?”

  “I’d rather not try.”

  “Ignorance avails you nothing.”

  “Nothing but peace, for moments at a time. I know I can’t face a god. I’d rather not attract his attention, since that’s the case.”

  The Terafin Spirit laughed. His voice was rich and deep, and it echoed in the silent forests. Leaves rustled, as if it were a breeze. “While you live, I will serve you in whatever capacity I am allowed. Will you not accept that service?”

  “It’s not the service,” she said. “It’s what it means.”

  “What does it mean to you, Jewel?”

  Jewel shook her head.

  “Are you afraid of your failures?”

  “I’m afraid to fail, yes. I’m afraid—” She closed her eyes. Opened them again, and straightened her shoulders. “It doesn’t matter, does it? The war is coming. For the House. For more.”

  “For far more. You have begun to build not a House but a city, and you cannot see it yet. Where you travel, I have never dared to travel, alive or dead; nor could I. I cannot guide you further. I cannot demand your service, as I have done in the past. What you give, you must give willingly, because so much of it will be done in ignorance.”

  “And you can’t enlighten me.”

  “No, Terafin.” He smiled, and his eyes were the strangest color; she couldn’t quite pin it down.

  “All right, get up. We need to get back to the others; they’re probably worried by now.”

  He rose then. “Not gracefully done,” he told her. “But done, nonetheless. Do you know where this path leads?”

  “Yes. The shrine. The heart of the House.”

  She had never come to the Terafin shrine without passing the shrines of the Triumvirate first, and it felt almost wrong to do it now. But shrines to the Mother, Reymaris, and Cormaris didn’t join or touch the road the Winter King now traveled. Only one shrine did, and it stood at the end of that road, as if it were anchoring the pathway.

  She could see the altar at the height of its polished, concentric circles; she could see the light of the sconces at the circular height play off the surfaces of smooth stone. She could feel the weight of the House descend, at last, upon her shoulders; if the Winter King hadn’t been carrying her, she might have stopped walking for a moment, dwarfed by what she felt.

  But he was carrying her. He didn’t run or leap, but he didn’t pause either. This slow, stately walk gave her whatever time she needed—or rather, granted her the only time she was allowed. He didn’t stop at the path’s end; he continued beyond it, to the stairs of the shrine itself. These, he mounted; his hooves clicked against the surface of marble, but only lightly, as if he weighed no more than the squirrels that sometimes annoyed the gardeners so much.

  She slid off his back at the altar’s side. Arann had already reached the height, and he knelt by the altar, bowing his head. Jewel touched its surface; it was cool—but it would be; it was Henden, and dark.

  “Are you not going to ask me what I have to offer the House?” she asked the Terafin Spirit. He was there, silent, his face still Torvan’s face.

  “No. I will never ask it again. This is not an altar for you to make offerings upon, not anymore.”

  “Then what purpose does it serve?”

  “It is a reminder, Terafin, of what others will sacrifice in service to both you and your House.”

  “And you think I’ll need it?” she asked, trying—and failing—to keep the bitterness out of the question.

  “You? No. But I am not a seer, nor was I ever one; I cannot tell you, in the end, what you will need and what you will cast away. I can tell you what you must be willing to do—”

  She lifted a hand. “Thanks. You’ve done that already.” She took a deep breath and said, “Well, we’re home. Shall we go find the others?”

  The Winter King nodded, but waited; he intended for her to ride.

  “I won’t run away,” she told him.

  But he knelt anyway, the posture the whole of his demand; she gave in because, damn it, she was tired. The Terafin Spirit did not leave the shrine. He stood at its height, beside the altar, as if he intended to remind her of everything that he himself had sacrificed in the name of Terafin. She didn’t—couldn’t—hate him, but she was aware as she left that he had lost some of his aura of mystery and wisdom tonight, and she wanted it back.

  She wanted to believe that someone, somewhere, knew what they were doing; that someone, somewhere, knew what she had to do. Because if they did, it meant there was a right way to do things, a correct path to follow, some way of navigating the strange shape of what House Terafin would become. She wanted it, needed it, and knew that it probably didn’t exist. Maybe it never had.

  But the need for action, the commitment to it, did. She had given her word to Amarais, and she intended to keep it, and as she passed through the most private areas of the Terafin grounds, she felt, for a moment, that she could. She clung to that feeling; it was sure to evaporate under the harsh glare of reason if she examined it too closely. There were so many ways in which she could fail, and so many people who intended her to do exactly that.

  Some of them weren’t even human.

  She glanced up as the Winter King paused, and slid off his back at the shrine of Cormaris. He allowed it without comment, and she made her silent prayers for wisdom and the guidance of gods who had chosen to abandon this world so long ago no one really believed they had walked it. She mounted again, and was not surprised when the Winter King also stopped to allow her to offer her respects—or private pleas—at the shrines of Reymaris and the Mother. At the Mother’s shrine, she lingered longest, because the Mother knew mercy, of a kind. Mercy, healing, home.

  But she wondered, as she rose, if this was the danger the gods presented to mortals: the sense that someone, somewhere, knew it all, and knew it well enough that there was no point and no need to struggle to reach a decision; one could leave it, for eternity, in their hands. If the Mother were here, Jewel would have gratefully handed the whole of the war—all of it—into her keeping. What did you become, in the end, if you never had to make those decisions and those mistakes?

  Happier, she decided. But the Mother wasn’t here. An echo of her existed in her god-born children, one of whom would be here for the Terafin’s funeral rites. But if those god-born children had had either the full power or the full wisdom of their parent, would demons exist in Averalaan at all?

  Probably.

  They’d almost certainly existed alongside gods and other legends. It was a small wonder any of humanity survived at all.

  She rose and once again joined the Winter Ki
ng, but only because he knelt to allow her to mount—and she had no doubt he’d stay that way until she did, even if she left him behind. The night air was cool. The bright moon was high. It wasn’t full, but it didn’t matter; she could trace the shadows she’d once called eyes from the safety of the stag’s white back. White, she thought, and a bit of black that wasn’t there by design.

  Arann had no difficulty keeping up, and alone of the Chosen, he escorted her. He was silent, as he usually was, but that silence hadn’t devolved into either awe or fear. The weight on her shoulders sat on his as well, but it always had. Was it heavier? Yes.

  But their shoulders were stronger now. They could bear it. They’d faced loss before, and they’d survived—Arann, by the skin of his teeth. Had it scarred them? Yes. But if there was one thing she’d learned in the intervening years, it was this: everyone, everyone, was scarred. No one escaped life unscathed.