Oracle: The House War: Book Six

by Michelle West

  “Let’s head back. We can stay on the outer periphery, but I don’t think we’re going to find anything that Calliastra doesn’t find first.”

  • • •

  Angel was worried about their supplies. Dead people didn’t require food or shelter—but lack of either in this place just meant death would come anyway. He, like Terrick, had shrugged himself out of the heavier pack that encumbered movement; the fire forced them to retreat. The retreat took more time, not less, but Angel lost some hoisting the pack by one strap onto his shoulder.

  “Smart boy,” Terrick murmured, doing the same. He stopped speaking when a shadow sped across the snow, broken by branches and geography in its passage. Both men glanced up.

  “I think that’s ours,” Angel said quietly.

  “It is not the cats.”

  “No. I think it’s Calliastra.”

  Terrick watched for a moment longer; the natural shadow ran into the fire, where it was lost to easy sight. “I don’t like it.”

  “I don’t, either. But I trust Jay. If she’s willing to accept Calliastra, I’ll accept her. I don’t have to like her.”

  “She is death, boy.”

  “Yes.” Angel nodded in the direction from which the shadow had come. “But at the moment, what isn’t?”

  Terrick chuckled. “This isn’t the fight I was trained for. Those cats, the death goddess, wind that moves at a man’s command, and fire that spreads across living trees as if they were kindling. I can’t fight at range; I can’t throw the ax.”

  “We would make a mile a day, if that, without you,” Angel replied. “And you know it. The winter is your element.”

  “Aye, and maybe it is. I feel young again, in this place. There is your lord.”

  Angel nodded. “I’ve never questioned your sanity.”

  “But?”

  “You seem happier to be here than you ever seemed in the Port Authority.”

  Terrick nodded. “I am. I saw your father surrender his life on what seemed a mad, pointless quest. He died beneath the shadow of loss and failure. But, boy, he made you. He trained you. He did what he could to prepare you for this life. The mad quest? Doesn’t look so mad, now.

  “This is the reason Garroc left Weyrdon. And I waited for Garroc, and then, for Garroc’s son, to have an ending to the long, tangled story. To have peace. All I have to do is obey the few commands your lord gives, and protect her.

  “I can do that. And you, boy? It’s the only responsibility you’ve ever truly accepted. Yes, I’m happier. When I finally meet Garroc across the bridge, I will tell him your story. And mine. He will understand.” He shifted his grip on his ax and grinned. “And I will see dragons. I know it in my bones. I will see frostwyrms and gods and demons. I will see things that there are no Weston words for. It is enough. It is more than enough.”

  • • •

  Jay met them as they headed back to camp. The familiar, pinched set of her lips eased as they came into view. Angel sheathed his sword, which probably meant Terrick’s lips were just as pinched, if for vastly different reasons.

  “There’s a ring of fire spreading across the forest,” Angel told her. “No sign of what caused it.”

  Avandar frowned.

  “Adam is with the Winter King; Shianne is with Snow. You might have heard that last bit.”

  “The complaints?”

  “Apparently, he can’t fight with a pregnant woman on his back.”

  Terrick was not Angel. He didn’t sheath the ax; he held it, watching the sky. “Are we safe?” he asked Jay, although he didn’t look back at her.

  “At the moment? Yes. Kallandras and Celleriant have taken to the air as well. I’m not sure there’s going to be much left for the cats, though—Calliastra took off after Night. If they start another brawl like the last one, they’re going to level huge swaths of forest.”

  “And us?”

  “Probably—but that would be less intentional.”

  “Calliastra passed over the ring of fire,” Terrick said quietly.

  “We’re going to head that way as well. Stay in range of Avandar; if magic is used here—and frankly, the ring of fire—he can protect us from the worst of it.”

  “Not the worst,” Avandar replied. “If something chooses to wake the wild earth here, we will be in some danger.” He glanced at Jay; her brows folded a moment as she considered his words.

  “Not yet,” she finally said. She began to walk toward the fire that Angel had spoken of—but that wasn’t hard; he was certain all paths would lead to fire.

  • • •

  Lightning struck trees as they walked. A rain of bark—and larger branches—fell to either side of the path Terrick chose. Jay didn’t expect to be hit; she did glance up from time to time to see which tree had been struck, to better gauge the accuracy of whoever their unseen opponents were. The lightning was clearly aimed; the fire had been laid down as a precaution.

  Given the cats, Calliastra, and the two men who fought in the air as if they weighed less than hummingbirds, it wasn’t much of a precaution.

  To Avandar, Angel said, “Can you carry us through or over the fire?”

  Avandar’s response—and a response wasn’t guaranteed—was lost to the roar of a very angry cat. The sound was thunderous; it belonged in the air, with the lightning. Angel couldn’t differentiate the voices of the cats.

  Jay, clearly, could. She had paled. “That was Shadow,” she said.

  Of the three cats, Shadow was the tactician. Angel signed. Jay signed back. The sky, less full of obscuring branches, gave them no line of sight on the cat—or any of the combatants. They picked up the pace that Jay now set.

  She was worried. Angel was less worried; he privately suspected that nothing could kill the cats. The cats, on the other hand, were perfectly capable of ending lives, and had demonstrated this with authority.

  • • •

  Kallandras hovered. His movement was not flight; it had none of flight’s grace or deliberation. The air was alive. Lightning flew with the grace and power that he denied himself for a moment, striking trees and perhaps ground beneath his feet; he had removed the snowshoes that Terrick had provided. No battle in the wilderness was going to be fought on the earth.

  To the west, Celleriant was likewise anchored in air; the Arianni Prince was armed with both the sword and the shield of his kin. In his hands, at the moment, they resembled the lightning that flew, uncontained. His hair curled in currents at his back; no strands escaped to obscure vision.

  As if aware of Kallandras’ regard, Celleriant smiled. At this distance, his eyes were silver light.

  Kallandras drew his weapons. A gift from Meralonne APhaniel, they were artifacts of a bygone era; Kallandras believed they had last seen use during the age of the Blood Barons. He used them only in combats in which his opponents were likely to be talent-born or inhuman, and even then, he handled them with care, will, focus.

  They were the length, at the moment, of long daggers; the hilts were of a piece with the blades, and the blades themselves meant for parrying or thrusting; they were not edged in the Southern tradition. Or the Northern, for that matter. But the shape they held now could change if he had the will to command it.

  They could change, more treacherously, if he did not.

  He had not drawn them since he stepped through the portal in the basement of Avantari; he had not been certain whether the surroundings would affect the strength of the weapons’ will. The blades had been crafted by an Artisan with the materials he had had at hand.

  The materials he had had at hand included demons. Meralonne was not apprised of how they had come to be in his possession—or how he had survived it; no one completely understood how Artisans worked. Not even Artisans themselves. But they could work, and did.

  And they had crafted blades that existed fo
r combat; that were drawn to fear and pain. For that reason, Kallandras did not use them often. He had learned that that temptation ended lives among the brotherhood. He had seen it, during training. He had learned to value death, and to respect it—but to crave it? Never.

  The wind moved him before he reasserted control over its flowing currents. Control, in any battle, was necessary; one surrendered it only when one had no other option; lack of control was failure. Or death.

  In this place, the wind was stronger, its voice clearer.

  And in this place, for the first time, he heard the voice of the blades. It was a singular voice, which surprised him, for there had always been two weapons. It spoke—as the Kialli did—in words; the wind did not.

  And it spoke with force, yet its voice was velvet. It was almost more of a sensation than a sound.

  Let me go, the weapon sang. Let me fly. Let me meet the dead and grant them some small measure of peace. LET ME GO. As it spoke, both weapons shuddered. There was very little traction in the air; Kallandras had taken the equivalent of five steps when he regained control of them.

  Here, to be mastered by the blades was death—in all likelihood, his own.

  The wild wind was like—very like—a child. It required cozening, praise, appreciation; it could be commanded and forced to obedience, but the sullen resentment it felt lingered. It was best, always, to allow the wind to believe that it had choice and the freedom to make decisions; best to convince the wind that the wind itself had chosen the enemies it faced.

  Locomotion was not a matter of life or death, as far as the wild air was concerned; it was just as happy to pick Kallandras up and carry him in its currents as it was to remove the roofs of buildings.

  The weapons, however, were not like the wind. The wind knew mercurial anger—fury—and equally instant joy; it sang or it raged or it whispered, hiding behind Kallandras while playing with his hair.

  The blades twisted in his hands, bending toward him. They had done so once before, in the silence of Meralonne’s tower; they had drawn the slightest of blood, no more, before acquiescing to serve him; they had taken a shape and form with which he was familiar and even comfortable.

  They lost that form as they struggled for mastery.

  He held them, regardless. He could have dropped them—he had that much control—and in truth, he considered doing so. In the wilderness of this winter landscape, they might never be found again.

  But no weapon he now carried in this place was their equal, save for perhaps the wind itself—and the cost of rousing wind to fury was too high, here where the earth slept beneath their feet, waiting provocation.

  He tightened his grip and spoke. He spoke with the voice to which he’d been born, and into which—at so much peril in the South of his birth—he had grown. Bard. Bard-born.

  Stop.

  The blades, folding, shuddered to a trembling halt. The length of each didn’t straighten; they strained against the imperative in a command no one else could hear. He struggled with their sudden weight.

  They spoke to him.

  They spoke of death. They spoke of loss. They spoke of rage and bitter betrayal. They spoke—ah, demons—they spoke of their lost brethren. Brothers, all. And at their head, a Queen. They were sundered forever.

  Just as, they whispered, Kallandras himself was forsaken.

  He was no longer a young man. That man had believed that pain would never lessen, never end. That love’s sharpest edges would cut forever. At a remove of decades he had learned that those beliefs were true. But he had also believed that the rest of his life would remain static; that nothing would fill the emptiness, nothing would speak to the loss.

  And that had proven less true.

  His life had not been static. His affection, reserved and withdrawn, had nonetheless been hesitantly, slowly offered, growing roots so quietly he had not himself been aware of their existence until his trek through the Sea of Sorrows at the side of the Arkosan Voyani. His gift, trained in service to the brotherhood, had been repurposed in service to foreign Kings, through the halls of Senniel College, the most respected of the bardic colleges.

  You were trained to sing death, the weapons said. And we were created, to cause it. We are not your enemy. And here, bard, you have many. Some you will see. Some you will hear. But some will take you unaware. Give us free rein. We might be allies. The blades twisted in his hand, becoming longer and more slender in shape; the hilts—all of a piece—retreated.

  But these weapons, Kallandras had also learned. He smiled; the weapons sensed genuine, if bitter amusement in the expression; it did not please them. Their struggle intensified. Even trapped as they were within the confines of simple weapons, the arrogance of the immortal could not be underestimated.

  “Brother!” Celleriant shouted.

  The weapons momentarily stilled, listening—as the bard did—for a voice that was familiar.

  “You will miss your chance if you hesitate; we not only have the cursed cats, but Calliastra herself to contend with—and neither are inclined to share glory.”

  The Kovaschaii did not kill for the glory of any but the Dark Lady. And yet, Kallandras thought, shifting his grip. And yet. He did not relish the challenge of battle the way Lord Celleriant did. He did not seek to prove himself against the wild and elemental; nor did he seek to control any element but the air itself. As a mortal, the elements were beyond him; only Myrddion’s ring allowed him to speak with the wind as if he were . . . Celleriant. Or Meralonne.

  In both, when they chose not to guard their voices, he could hear a loss that resonated with his own. But his loss was not their loss; his choice, not their choice. It was therefore one of the oldest—and most familiar—of voices that returned.

  Only a fool carries weapons he cannot master.

  And how many times, Kallandras wondered, had that same master called him a fool? Too many to count, although with effort and will, he could. The sting and humiliation of those early lessons had left no scar. What he was, now, was in large part the legacy of those difficult years.

  He had mastered the weapons that he had been given; they were many.

  He had mastered the dark; he had learned to fight, where necessary, in water, and across the sands of the desert. Snow, however, he had come to on his own. Snow, and air.

  You cannot name us.

  “It is not required. Here, you serve my purpose or you lie in the snow beneath us, there to wait until you are found. You are unlikely to be found by mortals in this place; your desires will count for even less against those who now claim these lands.”

  No one claims these lands.

  A roar shook the air. Literally.

  Kallandras grimaced; he sent a benediction to the wind. Gratitude came easily and without effort; placation was more difficult. The wind, however, did not require that effort—not yet. Soon, Kallandras thought, as Celleriant once again called him.

  “Make your decision; make it quickly. I am generous enough to offer you that choice; there will be no finer weapons to be found in this stretch of sky, for this particular battle.”

  It was not, of course, over; not even when the blades once again returned to the shape they had held since he had accepted them. This was a fight he would have, over and over, until he abandoned the weapons or returned them to the magi.

  But, he thought, as he called wind and leaped into its folds, that was as it should be.

  • • •

  The sky was winter clear, the air cold; the wind at the heights above the trees that covered ground for as far as the eye could see was bitter and sharp. The wind could moderate the chill, but it could not destroy it; nor did Kallandras ask.

  Where lightning struck trees, the debris wafted in currents not under the bard’s control; they rose and swirled in dense, temporary clouds. He suspected, but could not be certain, that The Terafin stood on
the ground beneath them; had all combat been aerial, that would have been the safest.

  Some combat was aerial.

  Kallandras could see the sweep of wings in the distance—wings he’d missed on first glance because they were the exact hue of the sky itself. So, too, the creature’s neck, its head—but the interior of its jaws were the dark shade of crimson when those jaws opened.

  They opened on lightning and anger.

  As lightning flared, Shadow roared, folding his wings in a dive; streaks of pale blue-white brushed his feathers on the downward arc.

  Had Calliastra not taken to the skies to confront the creature, it would have been hard to gauge its size, the perspective of clear sky offered so little for rough comparison. But she had. The creature was large; much larger than the cats or the firstborn.

  A second set of jaws opened, longer and wider than the first. Kallandras approached slowly, skirting the highest of the nearest branches. He was wrong. The creature’s body could not be easily seen, and if it had eyes, they also blended with the sky in which it fought.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  ‘‘WHAT ARE THEY FIGHTING?” Terrick asked.

  Jewel said nothing for a long breath. “I can’t tell. I can hear it—but I can’t actually see it. Avandar?”

  The same. He was, however, uneasy.

  “You don’t think this is natural.” When Terrick coughed, she added, “For the wilderness.”

  “No, Terafin. Whatever they fight now is casting lightning bolts toward the trees. There are creatures that could, once, do this—kin to the dragons, but separate from them—yet I assure you, were we fighting one of those, you would see it. You might see it seconds before you perished—but you would see it.”

  “Do they fight on the ground at all?”

  “Yes. The forest is not ideal for that. If enraged or determined, the creatures will land regardless—but the trees here are not fragile, mortal trees, and such a landing might wake them.”

  “And the lightning won’t?” she all but demanded.

  “The lightning might. It is deep winter here. The forest sleeps.” He hesitated, and then added, “I did not dwell in forests in my youth. I did not have the patience to learn to hear them speak. Or the time.” His smile twisted into something grimmer. “And when I had the time, and knew I had nothing but time—” he shook his head. “You travel with Lord Celleriant. If the trees wake, he will know.”