House War 03 - House Name

by Michelle West

  He might have asked. It would have wounded her. But before he could speak, wind did: The stone balcony that overlooked the arena splintered against the far wall.

  She understood then. The wild wind had been called, and it had come. It carried shards of the balcony across the whole coliseum.

  Meralonne called, and wind replied; he rode its currents, felt them solidify, briefly, like Artisan’s steps beneath his feet. He longed for the absence of boots and greaves and armor, but this was not the place, not the time.

  Sor Na Shannen was shadowed and darkened by the grace of her Lord; Meralonne’s was absent. But unlooked for—always unlooked for—was the wilderness, the wild. The wind had come, and he did not care, not yet, who had called it, who had been fool enough, crazed enough, desperate enough, to call it.

  He used the power it gave him.

  But he did not surrender to it; he was old enough and wise enough to understand the cost of consorting with the wild element on its own terms. Instead, he teased its attention, and he slowed Sor Na Shannen just enough in her parry that he might strike home with his own blade.

  She was not so slow, not so addled as all that; he drew blood but claimed no victory.

  They felled demons. The Kings. Their Astari. Even their men. They felled the walking dead to reach their enemy, but the dead rose, legless or armless, again and again. The demons, however, did not; they became ash in the endless, bitter wind.

  The standards could no longer be seen. Voices could not be heard above the wind’s roar. Sand, grit, and stone caught in eyes, mouths, and ears. But the demons were also troubled by the wind; Devon thought the wind could not be in their hands. Whose, then?

  The Lord fought; Sor Na Shannen could feel his presence. It was different here than it had been in the Hells, where she had finally made the long climb—and survived its dangers—to present herself at his feet. At his feet, not by his side. His side was reserved for those who, over countless centuries, had proved themselves worthy. Against a Duke of the Hells, Sor Na Shannen had never been counted.

  Nor would she be if she returned again to the Hells; that was not, and could never be, her fight to win. But this? This was. This world. This gate. This opportunity and this freedom. These were things that not even Dukes, in the countless centuries, had been able to give her Lord. She had come so close. The Lord had gifted her, blessed her, almost revered her for what she, and she alone, had accomplished in his name.

  He was here. He was here, and he was beseiged; he could no more grant her what she desired than she could now ask. And she would ask it.

  Yes, he wore the mantle of the Hells, the final gift from his estranged and much-loathed brethren. His will, by dint of that gift, was her will, for in a battle between the two, he would—always—win. The other kinlords, the other Kialli, might rage against it; not so Sor Na Shannen. For in any contest of note, with the whole of his will and intent bearing down upon her, she would lose. Did the details matter?

  She had chosen to follow her Lord to the Hells, forsaking the open sky and the boundless water and the endless earth for love of Allasakar. It was a love that burned and scoured; it destroyed the weak. She was not weak, had never been weak.

  She wanted this.

  She turned, once, and received a blade’s edge for her carelessness.

  She summoned fire in her rage at this interference, this unwanted intrusion. Nor did she worry about its control; the wind was here, and it would recognize its ancient enemy. What fire now burned, loose and wild, was no longer a concern; it could not harm Allasakar, and everything else was inconsequential.

  Or so it seemed, in her towering rage.

  But the winds, free to roam, suddenly banked, and their attention focused not upon the combatants and the insignificant architecture of the coliseum—for they would build, here, and they would build a city to rival the Shining City at the height of her power—but upon the only important standing structure in the whole of this fallen city: the arch itself.

  She turned in flight, her sword tracing a red arc across the air; she cried out a warning, for she knew that the Lord had come early into this world and that he was tethered to power that had not yet fully emerged. If the arch collapsed early, it would never emerge, and he would be lessened greatly.

  He heard her; he must have heard her. But the roars of the Lord of the Covenant shattered both warning and attention, and he could not yet do as she had done: turn from the fray.

  Nor could she, in safety. She sought a glimpse of the face of Allasakar as the winds carried stones and dirt toward her eyes.

  It was folly, and she paid. Her enemy’s sword buried itself in her flesh.

  She was a denizen of the Hells; she had made her choice. The Hells, as their Lord, knew no mercy and no kindness. His beauty was a thing of power, and it was, in the end, for the powerful; the glimpse of him that she sought was denied as ice and Winter doused all fire and all movement.

  Meralonne APhaniel, putting up his sword, felt the ashes of his enemy brush his cheek and his hair.

  It was not a victory that filled him with either joy or pride; it had not come about because of his own skill but rather her lack. Even had it been a moment of triumph, he would have been forced to set it aside, for the voice of the wind was sharp and clear. He did not bespeak it in any obvious way but instead stepped, naturally, into its folds and climbed as if it were an edifice.

  The wind was its own music, its own instrument. It had no fingers, no weapons but its voice; it was very like the bard-born in that way. Unlike the bard-born, however, it was not forced to be subtle.

  Meralonne!

  He glanced at Evayne. She was much aged since she had last come to his rooms in the Order of Knowledge. Where she had gained those years, and when, was a bitter mystery, but with the years, she had also gained power and stature such as mortals rarely achieved. He turned to face her, yards above the ground over which the dead and the dying now fought for supremacy.

  Speak to it. Calm it. It is wild, now; it will kill them all.

  Them, he thought. Not us.

  It was true. Even now, the ranks of the living were being tossed about like so much debris, tilted off their feet and spun in the act of either killing or defending. The shambling dead were likewise disturbed, but unlike the living, they felt no alarm, no loss of composure. No fear.

  Fear, of course, fed the Kialli, strengthening them in their own battles.

  He did not bespeak Evayne. He was not kind enough, nor forgiving enough, in the end. But if she watched—and she was a seer, he did not doubt that she could—she would be comforted in some small measure. He lifted his head, and his hair splayed out in the palms wind made of nothing. He spoke to it—to its ancient anger at confinement and to its exultation at this unexpected and momentary freedom. But he did not attempt to gentle its force, not yet. Instead, he spoke of fire and earth. The wind roared like a young dragon in response.

  It swept in toward the fires, tearing them from their moorings; the fire—the only element over which the Kialli had any control—fought back.

  But the wind also continued its assault on the standing arch. It was the arch that was the goal of the Kings’ men and of Meralonne APhaniel.

  Can you not see how it resists you? It has no voice; it does not speak. But you cannot destroy it.

  His words angered the wind; they were meant to do so. But the anger of the wild was a fine, fine edge to walk.

  Across the coliseum, the dead faltered in a single wave. Their gait was slow and stumbling; this, however, was different. They stiffened at once, no matter what they were doing, as if in the rictus of early death. And then they fell.

  With them fell the unnatural shadow that absorbed or devoured light; it was as if the whole of the darkness was being pulled back, inch by inch, toward its source: Allasakar. His roar, unlike the wind’s, was deep and clear, and even those who had never heard his voice knew it for what it was: a god, in anger.

  By some strange alchemy o
f the divine, darkness was light: the Lord of the Hells was clothed in it, as if it were raiment or armor, and he shone with it. He sent his enemy—his only worthy foe—staggering backward as he raised his arms in both fury and denial.

  The trembling stones of the arch stilled instantly as the god bespoke the wind.

  But the wind was wild. Of all the elements, it was the hardest to contain, the most capricious. It could be controlled, yes—but only for so long, and always harboring at least as much resentment as the summoned and chained demon-kin themselves. To cajole was better—to flatter; to coax.

  But the gods were as they were. Allasakar did not cajole or coax; he commanded, and he was obeyed.

  To pit one’s will against the will of a god was a fool’s sport. But it was not the will of the god that Meralonne now contested: It was the whim of the wild air. He had not yet bent his will against it; he had merely conversed. Nor did he attempt to forcibly wrest it from the Lord of the Hells.

  Instead, he whispered the names of its ancient enemies: Fire. Earth.

  It was enough. The wind slipped free of Allasakar’s grasp, and it renewed its ancient attack on the standing arch—focusing its fury on the keystone that glimmered at its height.

  The Lord of the Hells turned.

  He turned toward the embattled arch, exposing his back to the Hunter God. There were no rules of honor and engagement in this fight; between gods, there had never been rules. The Hunter Lord leaped at his exposed back.

  Wings unfurled from that back, an expanse of shadow that glittered like obsidian in its outward rush; the gods crashed together like lightning and earth. But the Hunter God in his bestial form clung; the beating of wings could not dislodge him.

  The Lord of the Hells did not fall.

  “Sigurne!” Matteos shouted.

  He was not four feet from her, but without aid of magic—a magic that was almost entirely focused on the protection of the Kings and the Exalted—he had to strain merely to be heard at all. She glanced at him, and he lifted his arm, pointing into the rising clouds of debris that blew across the whole of the confined front.

  Or at least that’s what she thought; she narrowed her eyes and looked more carefully. Matteos could be protective, but he would not attempt to point out clouds that no one not dead could miss. Nor was she wrong. Through the clouds, through the debris, through the ranks of literally flying—if briefly, and painfully—combatants, she saw at last what he intended her to see: the wings of a god.

  The god, besieged by the bestial form of his enemy and the force of wild wind unleashed, was not weakening; he was growing stronger, the depths of his shadow darker and longer.

  They could not win.

  She saw it clearly, and for a moment, she faltered. She had heard the stories of the time when gods had walked the earth. She had not heard them in the laps of her parents or grandparents, aunts or uncles, for her people seldom spoke of the business of gods. No, she had heard them from the lips of a Kialli lord who had walked the earth in the shadows cast by gods. He had spoken of the splintering of the ground, the rising of the seas, the changing shapes of whole coasts. He had spoken of the power of the gods, and power was revered.

  The Hunter God was no match for the Lord of the Hells; Sigurne could see this clearly.

  She looked at the Lord of the Hells. Looked as she had been taught, not by the mage who had taken her from her village, turning her by command and teaching into something, someone, who would never be allowed to return, but by another captive: a demon. A lord. Velvet voiced, tall, slender, and human in appearance, he had knelt by her side, his lips almost brushing her ear.

  You must learn to see, if you mean to understand us at all.

  “Show me.”

  Then, as now, she paid the Kialli Lord’s price. She accepted the truth of her own desire, and she looked.

  Mortality was a taint. An unforgiving weakness. Those in its grip were condemned to die, no matter how they lived, because mortal life was not for the worthy. It simply was. Therefore the untainted, the untouched, the unenfeebled were the immortals, wherever they might be.

  The search for immortality had driven Sigurne’s first master. Demons, of course, lived forever. How else could their names exist for hundreds or thousand of years and still be of use? But the summoning of demons was forbidden to the mages of the Order of Knowledge. Therefore, to look for immortality, he must have freedom in his researches. To have freedom, he must escape the watchful eye of the Magi. To escape their notice, he must kill the god-born, for what they saw, their parents could see.

  All of it, useless to think of now.

  But it came, wordless, certain knowledge: she gazed upon gods, and she was not worthy.

  Allasakar’s power was almost numbing in its glory.

  Sigurne was not—had never been—interested in glory, except perhaps in the dim and inaccessible reaches of childhood. What she loved was small and dingy in comparison, but it was hers to defend. She looked—with effort—past the beauty of the Lord of the Hells and acknowledged the fact of her grim desire for him as she did. It, like breathing, was a natural consequence of mortality.

  She could see that the god’s power was anchored, and it was the anchor she now sought. She found it; she found it because she had been taught to see those shadows and to search for their majesty. Somewhere, her second teacher now rested in the plains of the Hells. Did he know, as he stood, or served, or suffered, what she now did with what he had taught her?

  Did it matter?

  It was the arch. The standing arch that seemed so out of place. The arch was his gate, and the gate. He had emerged from it, but it was not closed. He was not fully here; he could draw the power that was his by his very nature, but he drew it from the arch, from the Hells; without the arch itself, without the gate, he would be lessened, diminished.

  She snapped her eyes shut. Always, always, in the darkest of hours hope was both blessing and bane, burden and relief. She could not do what needed to be done; she didn’t have the power, and even at the cost of her life, she could not contain enough of it.

  But she turned to look for Evayne a’Nolan, knowing, as if she too were momentarily cursed by the gift of sight, who might be able to accomplish the task.

  The seer had already turned toward the gods. Sigurne didn’t try to catch her attention; it wasn’t necessary. As if she could, without effort, see what Sigurne had so laboriously learned so many decades past, her violet eyes widened.

  And then her lips turned up briefly, not in joy or amusement, but in involuntary relief. She began to run, her robes swirling around her feet against the dictates of the roaring wind. Nor did the wind strike or touch her. But she stopped just short of where the gods raged; not even she dared more.

  Her arms rose in an arc, sharp and slender, her palms flat and extended. Between their mounds, light grew, crackling and burning the vision. Sigurne felt it. Had she not been watching, however, she would not have known the source of the magic; so much magic was being used in this small, confined space. She waited for the lightning to fly from the seer’s hands; instead, it grew.

  And it grew.

  Faced with the magic of gods and demons, it shouldn’t have been impressive—but it was. It was mortal will, made manifest, in the middle of battle; it was not casual, and it was not a simple fact of life: It was choice. It would be costly.

  But failure would be profoundly worse.

  When the light flew at last, the seer shuddered, and her arms fell at once to her sides, trembling there a moment before her knees also buckled beneath her sudden weight. Sigurne trembled for entirely different reasons.

  In the distance made of the flesh of gods and the wings and claws of demons, the keystone shattered.

  Three things happened then.

  The seer vanished.

  The wind roared.

  The Lord of the Hells screamed.

  Of these three, it was the last sound that struck Sigurne the most deeply, although in the end it wa
s not the most dangerous. She heard pain, shock, and an abiding fury in the single sound the god made before he turned the whole of his attention—at last—upon his bestial foe. It was the sound of hope, inverted. She closed her eyes.

  The wind almost tore her off her feet.

  It was enraged.

  Meralonne’s voice, Meralonne’s cajoling, could no longer reach the wind; the keystone in the arch had shattered, and the wind was now left with no obstacle, no resistance. Nor had the wind destroyed it; had it, it might have been satiated for a moment and open to suggestion.

  Now? It raged as only wild wind could; it had been deprived of its quarry.

  People could be controlled in their rage; the wild elements could not. Their rage was the heart of their existence; it was primal. It could, with will, be confined, but it was a contest and a struggle.

  He smiled as the wind pulled his hair. The smile dimmed. For he could hear, at last, twined with the wind’s rage, the keening of a familiar voice: wordless, bereft.

  It was the voice of Kallandras of Senniel College, the mortal who had unleashed the wind.

  “Hold!” King Cormayln cried. By the power of birth and blood, he was heard. Above the wind. Above the roar of gods. Above the threats and the rage of demons. His standard had not—by miracle and the grace of human desperation—fallen, but while he spoke, it wasn’t necessary.

  Devon paused. There had been some forward momentum when the ranks of the animate dead had faltered and slowly collapsed in on itself, but it was a scattered movement; the Kings’ forces now coalesced, retreating with intelligence where possible until they formed one body.

  The demons—what few remained—had also regrouped. Their numbers were lessened; in particular, the striking and compelling woman was nowhere to be seen. He would have the story later, if there were any left alive to tell it. But now, the gods raged.