“In time to explain that it’s not us that attempted to destroy them?”
A roar broke the flow of conversation.
Jewel closed her eyes. “Angel?”
“Yes?”
“Did you hear that?”
“I think we all heard it.”
“Did you understand it?”
Silence.
“Avandar?”
“No, Jewel. I heard what I suspect Angel and Terrick did: a roar. A roar that implies a set of truly impressive lungs. You heard words?”
Jewel nodded, grimmer now, her lips set in so thin a line they were almost invisible.
“Is he saying anything unexpected?” Angel asked.
“What, exactly, would you expect him to say?”
“I don’t know. Food! Die!”
“I’d be happier with that, because I think he’s attempting to give commands to the elemental air.”
• • •
The roar of an all but invisible creature was thunder. Not to be outdone, the cats replied—but their familiar voices, at this distance, were dim echoes. Dim, insulting echoes.
Lightning replied; lightning, anger, aimed not at treetops or Jewel, but at moving, taunting targets. Jewel saw that one of those targets was Snow—and that Shianne was now in the air, perched on his back. All of her outrage was silent; she didn’t have ready words available to vent it, and had she, no target.
Avandar, however, nodded grimly. “It is not a tactic that many would have used in such encounters in my youth—but Calliastra is correct. Dignity is a sign of the certainty of power. Let the cats fight as they fight; it buys us time.”
Jewel didn’t even ask for what; she knew. Terrick did not give Avandar the lead; he took it. And he led them directly to the fire that he and Angel had encountered.
The Rendish man had called it a ring. It seemed, to Jewel, to be an apt description; it stretched in a thin line that curved slightly—very slightly. A circle. Is it alive? she asked her domicis.
You cannot hear it.
No.
And yet you can hear the voice of the creature above us as if it spoke language.
Clearly. She was impatient and struggled not to show it. Or not to show more of it.
Yes. It is elemental fire. But it is contained and restrained at the moment. It longs to leave the circle; it longs to burn the forest.
And that would be a bad thing?
For us, yes.
She shook her head, frowning. For them. For whoever is attempting to kill us or pin us here. It’s possible we could survive the fire—we can, in a haphazard way, fly. But the trees can’t.
No, Terafin.
Burning or harming the trees wouldn’t be in the interest of whoever controls this fire. It wasn’t a question.
That would be the safe assumption.
There was no safety. “We can’t call air anywhere near this circle without breaking it, can we?”
“No.”
“The forest isn’t the concern, then. It’s the earth.”
“The earth would have to be sleeping very, very lightly to notice a fire as small as this; the wind has come and gone to no effect.”
“The trees here are rooted in earth. I think some of the trees here are—or were—sentient, at least in a way Celleriant and Shianne would understand. If the earth is slumbering deeply enough to ignore the small voice of this fire, I’m betting it won’t ignore the screams of the trees whose roots are buried so far down.” She exhaled. “Can you douse or separate the fire to let us through?”
“Yes. I think it unwise, however.”
“Because they’ll know?”
“They’ll know where the break is, yes. And they’ll know, for certain, where you are.”
She glanced pointedly at the canopy of sky that was now filled with combat and furious cats. She could see the slender, winged outline of Calliastra as well, but the firstborn voice was mercifully silent. “How long can she fight like that?” she asked, voice almost hushed.
“A fair question. Until this journey, I had never seen her take that form; it was not to her liking. It reminded her too much of loss. I do not know what it signifies.”
“You think her father is here.”
“I think her father’s power might influence her, yes. But she is not her father; she has will and choice. You are not foolish enough to mention his name here.”
“No. I’m not angry enough, either.” She shook her head. “If the earth won’t help them, it certainly won’t do us any good.”
But Avandar smiled. “I believe I can speak with the earth. I was one of very, very few mortals who could—and I could not master that until after I had been granted the god’s gift. It was the work of decades.”
She hesitated before she shook her head. “Not you,” she said, in the softest of voices. “Not unless we have no choice at all.”
“Celleriant can speak with the fire, if he desires it; it is not his natural element. He cannot do so from the air, however.”
“Kallandras can control the wind, if necessary.”
“You do not understand the elemental air if you think the matter that simple.”
Nothing, Jewel thought, would ever be simple again. She had learned to play games of power in the last decade of her life, and she had used those games, to greater or lesser effect, in the last few months. But no study of trade routes, no study of houses, no intelligence offered her even obliquely, was of use here.
Power, of course, was—but the definition of power had shifted dramatically the moment she had accepted the Oracle’s invitation and set foot through the portal in Avantari. And yet, she was not without power, here—she just didn’t understand the rules. She didn’t understand the etiquette, if raw displays of power, such as Calliastra’s, could be said to have etiquette at all.
The Immortals seemed to do whatever they wanted; the only thing that stopped them was the possible fear of death. And even then, Jewel thought, they were arrogant and feckless enough not to fear the challenge. They lived forever; they never starved, never grew ill, never grew old.
None of these things would ever be true of Jewel. She could starve. She could succumb to illness—absent Adam’s presence—and she would age. She had already aged. But she had power.
You lack the will to use it, the Winter King said.
No, she replied. I lack the will to use it as you used it. I don’t know what mortality meant to you in your day. I don’t know what it meant to you at the height of your power. It probably just meant weakness, if Avandar’s experience says anything. But I am mortal. It’s part of what I am. It’s part of the power I have.
It is not—
It is. Only mortals can be Sen.
The Winter King’s silence was not assent, and he broke it after a significant pause. You do not understand what it means to be Sen.
No. But you don’t, either.
No. If you wish to traverse the fire, I can take you past it.
And the others?
If necessary. Viandaran cannot be stopped or killed by so negligible a display of power; it was almost certainly set in place to trap and confine you and your less powerful companions. It would stop neither the bard nor the healer.
She stiffened at the mention of Adam.
I am not advising you to send him into combat; I am merely pointing out that he will survive it. What will you do?
I want to know who’s controlling the fire. It’s not the creature in the air.
No. If you will allow it, I will scout ahead. I will leave Adam to your care. I can bring you that information.
She didn’t want the Winter King to die.
He surprised her. He laughed. You do not understand the enchantment laid upon me. I will die with the White Lady’s permission and leave, and only then. Some p
art of me is bound to her, and it returns to the form she gave me upon the end of my Winter reign. He appeared some ten feet away. What would you have me do?
She signed to Adam, who nodded and dismounted. Go.
• • •
When the serpent roared a third time, no lightning left his lips—and lightning would have been preferable to what did: Kallandras heard the command in the rumbling thunder. The air upon which he balanced grew uneven—worse, it grew wild and angry.
He was familiar with the wild wind; he knew its mood well. He knew, also, that the wind would not casually destroy him unless he attempted to force it to behavior not of its own choosing. This, he did seldom for that reason. When the wind fought him, the ring that allowed his voice to be heard by the wild element burned; the diamond at its center scorched skin and flesh. He could—and had—fight through pain and injury, but it was his last choice.
His first?
Song.
The most famous bard Senniel College had ever produced—and he had no false modesty—lifted his bard-born voice in song. He did not sing for the wild element, but for the serpent whose flight and fight depended on that element as much as the bard’s did.
He chose a simple song, to start. A Southern cradle song, one etched into memory by a voice he had not heard for decades, a gift given him by the talent that had defined his life, had caused his family’s death, and had given him a home in Senniel.
He sang in Torra, the language of his childhood. The words themselves were containers for the power he now put into the song: he could make himself understood even if language was a barrier, not a bridge.
• • •
“Is that Kallandras?” Jewel asked Angel.
Angel nodded. He lifted his hands in den-sign; she caught the familiar movements as she glanced toward him.
“No,” she agreed, her hands stiff by her sides. “It wasn’t smart at all.” But even saying it, she smiled.
“What is he singing?”
“A song my Oma used to sing.” And of course it was never in song that her Oma’s voice returned to her.
• • •
The serpent listened. It fought; the cats and the firstborn wove in and around what Kallandras assumed was the length of its body—as if they could see it. But Celleriant was now more cautious; he stood, armed and watchful.
Kallandras saw clear, cloudless blue until the serpent opened at least one set of its jaws; then he saw red and black and white, a wound in the flesh of sky. He was not surprised when the serpent roared, as if to drown out the song. Had Kallandras not been bard-born, it would have worked; he was. There was nothing, short of death, that could dampen his song if he desired it to be heard.
And he desired it. He sang.
He noted that the gray cat folded wings and plummeted toward the trees, but did not otherwise track his progress; he doubted that any of the cats could be killed by a simple fall.
• • •
“What are you doing?”
“Thinking of ways to strangle one of your brothers.”
Shadow hissed laughter. “She told him to fight,” he pointed out.
“And I told him not to fight.”
“Ssssssoooo?” The great, gray cat snorted. “Why are you playing here?”
“You’re playing up there.”
The snort shifted into a low growl. “You never want us to have any fun.” He stomped toward the fire, crushing snow and dead branches. It was deliberate; he generally didn’t condescend to touch the ground otherwise. Apparently, the snow made his feet wet—or cold, depending on the whining—and cats didn’t like that.
Only when he stalked past her did Jewel realize where he was headed. “Shadow, don’t—you didn’t like it when you singed your whiskers in the fire.”
The cat hissed. “I liked it when the stupid cat singed his tail.”
“According to you, there are no stupid cats here. What are you doing?”
The cat reached out with his left paw, claws extended. “I am telling the fire to go away.” He roared.
The fire roared back. It was very disconcerting. “Shadow—”
“You should be doing this.”
“I can’t tell the fire what to do.”
“You can.”
“Shadow—”
“You tell everyone what to do!”
“Yes, but most of you don’t listen!”
The fire, however, shocked Jewel; whatever it heard in Shadow’s voice, it obeyed. As she could make sense of the roar of the creature above, she expected to make sense of Shadow’s command in a similar way—but he sounded like an aggravated, giant cat to her.
This was what made the wilderness of ancient and immortal magic so bloody difficult. Nothing made sense. If there were rules to its use at all, they were rules that were invisible to the merely mortal. Regardless, the circle of fire dissipated all at once.
Avandar looked down at the gray cat. “They will know,” he said quietly.
Shadow snorted and looked up at the sky. “They know we’re here anyway.” He glared at Jewel. “Why are you standing there?”
“We’re not alone,” she replied.
Shadow growled and turned in the direction that had once been guarded by a wall of fire. Standing ten yards from the great cat was a lone man.
• • •
“You are not terribly difficult to find,” he said.
Shadow bunched and gathered. Jewel quickly ran forward to place a hand on the top of his head. “What now?” he demanded.
“Don’t kill him. Don’t kill him yet.”
The cat yowled in outrage.
And the man’s brows rose. “Well met, Jewel ATerafin. Well met.”
“Are you in command of the serpent in the sky?”
“And perceptive, although that is less of a surprise. I am not, as you guess, its captain at the moment. Nor is it entirely happy to serve those who control its flight.”
Avandar was almost instantly beside Jewel; she saw the flash of orange light that spoke of protection; bands of blue overlay it. She couldn’t remember immediately what blue meant—it had never been used against her in any combat that also involved magic. Nor, she knew, was it relevant now. She recognized the Kialli lord who stood, waiting.
“And Viandaran,” the man said. “Well met, indeed.”
“Isladar.”
“Terafin. You have had much success since our last encounter.”
“If we don’t count the dreaming, the last time we met, you tried to kill me.”
“Indeed.”
“I could forgive that,” Jewel continued, her hand pressed into the top of Shadow’s head. “I can’t forgive the child you victimized to draw me in.”
“Or the man who serves you?” He glanced at Angel, and away. Angel, whose distinctive hair was now like any other hair. Jewel was surprised Isladar recognized Angel. And yet, at the same time, unsurprised.
“The child,” she replied, “had no choice. Angel was foolish; he did.”
“He saved your life.”
Jewel shrugged. “I’m aware of that. If the serpent is not yours, why are you here?”
“I wished to speak with you,” he replied.
“And not to assassinate me?”
“Greater hands than mine have made that attempt in recent mortal months, or so rumor implies. No. The harm I feared you might do has already been done; I cannot undo it by the simple expedience of your death. Viandaran, do not make the attempt.”
“If the Terafin is willing to forgive, I am not.”
“You were never a forgiving man. In your youth you were the epitome of its opposite. But she is your master, and if she does not desire my destruction, you will not make the attempt.” He spoke coolly, his voice shorn of doubt.
“I might,” Sha
dow said, voice low.
“Eldest,” Isladar replied, “I ask that you grant me mercy.” He bowed—to the cat. If Jewel’s jaw had not been attached to the rest of her face, she would have lost it.
This mollified Shadow—but not by much. Jewel could feel the tension beneath her palm.
“Eldest, I did not know that you would become her companion. I would not have raised hand against her had I understood her import.”
He was lying. Jewel knew it immediately; she was certain Shadow did as well. But the cats were particularly vulnerable to flattery. Shadow, the tactician, was no exception. “Why are you here?” she asked.
“I did not lie. I am here to speak with you, for however long you allow. You are aware that you are in danger here—although it was never danger to yourself that formed the core of your intent. Kiriel is not with you.” It was not a question.
Jewel answered it anyway. “No. She was AKalakar, not ATerafin, but she remained in the South at the end of the war.”
He nodded as if this was not a surprise; Jewel doubted it was.
“Do you see it, Viandaran?” Isladar asked, looking up to the sky, his lips curved in a smile that was too cold to be nostalgic, but implied nostalgia anyway.
Avandar did not reply. Jewel glanced at Angel; he was armed with a dagger. An ornate, consecrated dagger. What Jewel was willing to forgive, Angel was not. She signed. His hands remained still; his expression made clear his intent. But she trusted him; he would not move unless she commanded—or at least allowed—it.
Isladar frowned. “Is that Calliastra?” His voice was sharper, the edges more apparent.
“It is,” Jewel replied.
Her voice pulled his gaze from the vault of sky. “You are still determined to shelter the children of your greatest enemy.”
“Calliastra isn’t Kiriel. She doesn’t need shelter.”
“No. I had thought you wiser than this. She will be your death, or the deaths of those you protect.” He paused, and then, to Jewel’s surprise, said, “What of Ariel?”
Oracle: The House War: Book Six Page 64
