He landed and drove Jewel back. Calliastra could not be moved. As a testament to the value of his service, it wasn’t promising. The Winter King’s flank caught her back before she could hit the cold stone beneath all of their feet.
The cats converged, hissing, claws scraping stone as they pounced and landed.
Calliastra was the very mountains; the cats bounced. “Will you,” she said, voice of ice and shadow, “deny your lord what she herself chooses?” And even as she spoke, her expression was shifting and changing, until she stood before Jewel wearing more than just Duster’s eyes.
Duster. Duster who was, who would remain forever, sixteen years of age. Memory couldn’t contain that truth. Jewel’s sense of Duster aged with her. She knew that Duster had died in the streets of the holding when the rest of her den had arrived at the Terafin manse. She knew that was half her lifetime ago. But she couldn’t hold the image of this Duster in her mind.
This Duster was all of sixteen. She had swallowed rage and pain and humiliation; she had made loss her personal grail. And she had carried both to Jewel, offering them, time and again, with only the barest glimmer of hope to alleviate the darkness of all her early lessons.
And Jewel had been sixteen as well. She’d had hope. Hope.
Calliastra, she saw clearly, had none. She cursed the Winter King in the silence of thought, because she saw, just as clearly, that even gods did not live without hope; it grew again. It grew, no matter how much it cut and destroyed when it once again failed to take root. Love. Death. Loss. All loss.
The anger she felt at Calliastra’s use of Duster’s appearance guttered. It couldn’t warm her, couldn’t hold her back. She saw Duster in this woman—and woman was the only word she had for her; she couldn’t truly imagine that gods could feel this kind of pain. Gods were what they were. Calliastra . . . was not. The Winter King said she had struggled, in her youth, with the knowledge that all love—for Calliastra—led inevitably to death.
And Jewel could see that. She could see it in the ferocity of Duster’s expression.
She is not your Duster, Avandar said, voice sharp, harsh. Jewel’s arm began to throb, like a second, beating heart. She knew it was bleeding.
“No,” she said. “She’s not. Shadow, cut that out. You’re just going to sand your own claws off.”
He hissed. “You’ll be stupid,” he told her.
“Stupid, stupid, stupid,” Night agreed.
Calliastra laughed. The sound of her voice—it was Duster’s voice. Duster’s harsh, edged laughter. A flicker of genuine amusement ran through it, but it was slender, and it implied pain. Other people’s. “They are not impressively respectful.”
Jewel grimaced. The voice—the voice wasn’t Duster’s. The words weren’t. She tried to hold on to this fact, and failed. Because she understood, looking at this scion of ancient gods, that at heart—at heart, the two could have been the same person. “They’re impressive.”
“And you allow it.”
“They’re cats. I’m not sure why all of the Immortals seem so surprised—I can’t exactly change their base nature.”
“Why not?” Calliastra’s brows rose. “They are, if I am not mistaken, yours—and you are, according to Viandaran, Sen. You can change their base nature. You can alter the shapes they wear. You can redefine what service means to them. Perhaps they did not tell you this?
“Or perhaps Viandaran did not. The Sen cannot alter mortals—but the rest of the world is their canvas if they but accept the whole of their power.”
Jewel let the words sink into her, hearing them, understanding them in a way only a seer could. “Avandar,” she said, speech giving the words a weight that the internal voice could not, “is this true for all Immortals? Could one who is Sen do this?”
Shianne’s voice rose above all of theirs. “What is Sen?” she asked. It was only barely a question.
“I can’t answer that,” Jewel replied. “I don’t completely understand it myself; the word was used when the gods walked the world—and only then.”
“Until now.”
“According to Calliastra, a god now walks this world. Avandar.”
You are playing by her rules, he said. It wasn’t an answer, and they both knew it.
“I’m not. I’m playing by rules I don’t understand. I ask because I accept my ignorance. I want to alleviate it. Could I change the cats?”
Shadow hissed.
Snow sneezed.
Night hissed—at Snow.
“Yes. It is my belief that you could alter the cats.”
“Could I alter Celleriant?”
“You could try,” Celleriant replied. “But you would fail.”
Jewel nodded. “Because you are Ariane’s.”
“Because I am the White Lady’s, yes. Sworn to you, lord. Sworn to you while you live. But I am—and will be—Arianni. It is my nature. It is my existence. If the White Lady were to perish, I would perish with her—as would all of my kind.”
“All?” She frowned.
“All.”
“And I could not alter Shianne.”
“No, lord.”
Calliastra’s smile had fallen from her lips, and her lips, thinning, lost the fullness of Duster’s anger, Duster’s youth, Duster’s constant rage. “You cannot believe,” she whispered, in a voice that would have been a hiss had she chosen other words, “that I could ever be subject to your pathetic, mortal powers?”
Jewel did not reply. The stone beneath her feet cracked; the crack extended from beneath her boots across the length of the hall for as far as her eyes could see. Calliastra stood astride it—as did Jewel herself; the cats launched themselves into the air.
“Viandaran—if you wish to preserve your consort, you will educate her.”
Avandar was silent, in all ways.
Calliastra turned her chin toward him, her eyes darkening until they were all of black. Black velvet, Jewel thought: death, but not unwelcome. Not to Avandar. As if she could hear this, Calliastra said, “He is beyond me. His curse was the punishment for his hubris; the god who granted him the immortality he craved is ash and dust and memory. But he remains a testament to the power of the old gods and the old ways.
“I cannot grant him the death he desires; he cannot grant me the life I require—or the life I once desired. And, child, he cannot preserve you should you choose to throw your life away.”
But he had. Jewel’s arm ached enough that had she needed a reminder, it would serve. But his power pressed against her, she thought, with no intent on his part. He was silent, angry, watchful; he feared the effects of any words he might offer her.
And well he should.
Why, she could hear, at a remove of decades, did you keep Duster? Rath’s voice. Not her Oma’s, as it so often was, decades after the old woman’s death.
She labored under no illusion; Calliastra was not Duster. She was the child of gods; Duster was a child of the streets. Those streets had swallowed her whole and spit her out gods only knew where; her body had never been found. Jewel knew. She had searched, the power of House Terafin at her fingertips, even if her ability to use it effectively had yet to be honed. But the compromised magisterial guards and their damaged and lost missing persons’ files had led to nowhere.
No one believed that Duster had survived. Jewel was certain she had not. It was not, therefore, of Duster that she should have been thinking when facing a woman who was, to all intents and purposes, a living, walking god.
But she did. Duster had never been convenient, and apparently death hadn’t changed anything.
“I don’t need to believe it,” Jewel replied, as the crack widened. She had a small terror of heights, but also had a bard who could speak to the wind on hand; she could—with minor effort—ignore the possibility of falling to her death. “I only need to know. Perhaps, in your eavesdro
pping, you failed to understand why we are in Ariane’s ancient halls. If you think we came to rescue Shianne, you are mistaken.”
“Rescue is not the word I would have used,” Calliastra replied, drawing herself up to a much fuller height than she’d occupied in Duster’s form. Or in any form, really. Shadows coiled in her eyes; shadows curled around the contours of her cheeks, her cheekbones, falling as if it were prehensile hair down her back. “You have killed her; only your own mortality prevents you from understanding this.”
Jewel nodded, as if this made sense—because, when Calliastra spoke the words, it did. She seemed a goddess as she stood, chin lifted, in her raiment of night.
And it seemed, to Jewel, that the children of gods must be lonely creatures. “Shianne,” she said, although she didn’t look away from Calliastra.
“Matriarch.”
She barely flinched at the use of the word. “If I understand correctly, you are—all of the Arianni are—the White Lady’s children.”
“Yes.”
“But you were earliest.”
“. . . Yes.”
“I don’t understand the concept of children and offspring as it exists for the gods. But you understand the concept as it exists for the White Lady.”
“Yes.”
“Explain it, to me.”
Silence.
“The child you carry now, I understand. But bearing children doesn’t kill us. It doesn’t require our deaths. Could you have children in any other way?”
Shadow rumbled beneath her palm. “She could.”
Shianne, however, said, “No.”
“You could,” Shadow insisted.
“Your truths are vast and flexible, ancient,” Shianne replied—which was more a shock than it should have been, given the day so far. “Ours are not. The White Lady was firstborn; she survived the wildest of the ancient days, bound as she was to the lay of the ever-changing land.” Silver eyes met brown, assessing them. “Had I decided to attempt such an act of creation, every single being thus created would have been the palest imitation of me. And I? I was already the palest of imitations of her. An echo of her song.
“But that is not, I divine, what you are asking.”
Terafin, the Winter King said. The single word was all of his warning. Jewel understood. But she continued.
Jewel nodded. “I want to know why. Why did she create?”
“You must ask her, Matriarch. I am part of her thought, but not—never—the whole of it.”
Jewel was almost certain she would never have the courage to ask. If Ariane was the daughter of two gods—and she must be—they were vastly more forbidding in their combination than Calliastra. “I think,” Jewel said softly, “she was lonely.”
Silence.
• • •
In the hush before it was filled, Jewel heard the keening of the wind. She felt the rumble of the earth. She heard the hiss of at least two cats; the one beneath her palm was, it appeared, holding or husbanding his breath.
Calliastra laughed. The shadows that framed her and granted her a cold, beckoning majesty shifted as she once again stepped toward Jewel, ignoring the cats and the Arianni Prince who stood in her way. Celleriant brought his sword to bear; she reached out, without so much as a frown, to brush it aside. And it went.
Jewel, the Winter King said, changing tactics.
She wasn’t this powerful the first time I met her, Jewel replied.
She was vastly more cautious on those roads.
Clearly. Then again, Ariane is unlikely to ride through these halls while the Wild Hunt carries her standard. But even as she spoke the words, she knew that Ariane’s absence was not what made the difference. Calliastra’s strength was evidence of Allasakar’s growing dominion.
“What,” Calliastra asked, as she continued to walk, “do you know of loneliness?” Her words were cold but not brittle; she spoke as if ice could burn. “You live a handful of years. Less, if you are foolish. A handful of years in isolation? It is nothing.”
Jewel stood her ground. Shadow had fallen silent beneath her hand; no hiss, no criticism escaped his lips. Night and Snow did not land. Celleriant leaped again, into folds of silent wind; he brought his shield to bear as he landed.
“Do not,” Calliastra said softly, “stand between us. I cannot take you; I can destroy you.”
Jewel could see only Celleriant’s back, but she knew he would be smiling. She was uncertain that his death was inevitable; she was certain that while she stood exposed, he would not run from it.
No, she thought, he would leap toward it, testing himself. Always. “Lord Celleriant.”
He said—and did—nothing. Shianne, however, whispered his name; he turned toward her. Jewel couldn’t see his expression.
Calliastra was not concerned. Avandar’s shields grew bright; orange blended with gold in a wall that hugged Jewel’s body, sliding beneath her feet. The domicis did not otherwise move. Nor did the Winter King. There was a hush of held breath and stillness, as if everything in the great hall that was not Calliastra had become backdrop.
To Jewel, they almost had.
What had she seen, in Duster? In the girl that she had slapped in rage, in the girl that she had wanted—many days—to push out the nearest window? What had she seen that had caused her, time and again, to risk everything just to make a home for her?
I was twelve, she thought. Twelve. I believed in everything.
But had she? She couldn’t believe in love that lasted forever; she had been an orphan. She couldn’t believe that the universe was either just or fair; her parents had done nothing at all to deserve their deaths. They had struggled with poverty and long, lean, very cold months for all of Jewel’s life with them.
There had been no magic in their lives. No great, grand halls. No women of stone who were nonetheless women of flesh. No gods, except in their prayers—prayers which fell on no ears, at all. There had been no forests of silver, gold, and diamond, and no burning trees. No winged cats. No Arianni princelings. No immortal men who longed for death, for the peace of an ending.
Just Oma, and father and mother and Jewel herself. And Jewel’s curse. Jewel’s gift.
Oracle.
“Yes, Jewel Markess. Oracle.”
Calliastra froze, then. She froze, her arms outstretched, her fingers inches—if that—from Jewel’s shoulders.
The Oracle stood, robed, hooded, her arms by her sides, not two yards from Calliastra’s back. “I am late. Forgive me.”
“You are late?” Calliastra said, turning, her hands falling into fists. “If so, you are late by design; nothing is accidental in your life.”
The Oracle did not deign to reply. She turned, instead, to Shianne—who was about as friendly and welcoming as the daughter of darkness had been. “Well met,” she said.
Shianne inclined head. “It is said that despair is your shadow; despair and loss.”
“The events which bring either despair or loss are not of my making, daughter of Ariane. You know, perhaps better than anyone present, how short my reach is. I would never have chosen to lose you. I would never have counseled you to so much as glance at the road upon which you have chosen to walk.”
Shianne’s heavy lashes fell briefly. “Were it not for you, I would never have known the path existed. I would never have seen the need to walk it.”
“And in this new age, would you now recant? Would you choose to ignore that road?”
“Why do you even ask? We can but walk forward; there is no road back.”
“No. Not even for one who can walk the different branches of time, seeking always for some path that will bring her, at last, to the present.”
“You speak of Evayne,” Jewel said.
“Yes. Of all of those blessed—or cursed—by the gift of vision, she is dearest to my heart. Her life is a dim,
dim echo of mine, and it will be brief in comparison. It is to speak with Evayne that I have come, but I do not see her among your party. And yet it is perhaps good fortune indeed to find you here, sister,” she said at last, to Calliastra, who was standing before her, shadows once again wrapped tightly about her, arms drawn in and crossed.
Family, Jewel’s Oma said, is complicated.
Calliastra said nothing. She really did remind Jewel of Duster, now that she looked nothing at all like her.
“I am uncertain what brings you here,” the Oracle continued, “but I have a few words of advice.”
“I am not paying the price for your advice—no matter how wordy it might be.” Duster would have said: I don’t need your damn advice. I don’t need anyone’s advice.
“No. You have not asked; it is a gift. A warning, no more.”
And just as if she were Duster, she bridled, the shadows leaping around her in frustrated, silent anger. She said nothing, waiting, her hands carved, white fists. If the threat were offered to her directly, she could cope. She could laugh, could mock, could show everyone—show the world—that she wasn’t afraid.
But that, Jewel thought, was not the way this was going to go. As she’d thought it before, in the dim past.
“You are in danger,” the Oracle told Calliastra.
Jewel’s expression was stiff, neutral; she held it that way with the ease of long practice. No, she thought, not long. Duster had been with her for only three or four years, half a lifetime ago. But . . . practice, nonetheless.
Calliastra’s expression was neither. Her eyes almost literally sparked; would have, if shadow had been flame. “I?” she asked, voice the same burning ice. “I am in danger?”
The Oracle was as impregnable as Jewel—but with, in Jewel’s opinion, significantly less effort. “Yes.”
Silence rarely held so much anger. Clearly it couldn’t contain it. “And what do you consider a threat to me? Am I now to fear death, as if I were an insignificant mortal?”
Oracle: The House War: Book Six Page 44
