Battle: The House War: Book Five

by Michelle West

  She looked scandalized for just a moment, her expression the expression of a mother who’s caught her child throwing rocks into a fountain in the Common when the magisterial guards are on patrol nearby. “You tell him—” She froze.

  “He knows where you are,” Adam continued. “He knows why you can’t come to him yet. But he’s happy. He’s not hungry, he’s not cold, he’s not in pain; nothing—not even a healer—can touch him on that side of the bridge. Only Mandaros.”

  Leila said, “but he’ll get lonely waiting—”

  “No, Leila, he won’t.” Adam rose, his expression changing; it grew darker, harder, although it was still young. Jewel recognized the judgment that age and experience often lessens—because it was almost a mirror. She had been young in the same way.

  And then, she thought with a grimace, Have I ever been anything else?

  “He is not your only child. But he is the only one who no longer needs you, and you have been sleeping and dreaming for far too long.” He rose, still carrying the child’s limp body. When he turned toward the coffin, Jewel almost stopped him. Almost.

  But he was right.

  Leila didn’t rise. Leila didn’t follow him. She buried her face in her hands and wept, instead. Adam very gently laid the boy’s body into the empty coffin; there was no lid. “You will always remember him,” he said, in a softer voice. “Nothing can take that away. But you are not a child, and it is time. Leave him here.”

  Jewel swallowed. “Leila,” she said, her voice as even as Adam’s, but far more autocratic.

  Leila lowered her hands. She rose stiffly, glancing about the room as if—as if she were waking from a long, long dream. She saw the coffin; the coffin didn’t change in shape or size. But the room did. The black scoring of fire and the soot of smoke evaporated, and the floors beneath either were solid. They were scuffed; this was a room that was well lived-in.

  “It is time,” Jewel said softly.

  “Terafin.” Leila bowed. It was a bow that was clumsy and graceless; it was, in fact, very much like Jewel’s earliest bows in the Terafin manse. “Thank you.”

  Jewel said nothing. Adam came to stand by her side in the same silence. “Leila,” he said, “go home. Your children are waiting.”

  Leila swallowed, wiped her eyes with the back of her hands, and straightened her shoulders.

  The world began to evaporate. The floors faded. The walls. The windows. Even the coffin. All that remained was Leila herself; Leila in the gray of a colorless, featureless world. Like any dreamer, even Jewel, she wasn’t shocked or bothered by the sudden absence of landscape; she looked mildly confused.

  “Oh,” she said, “they’re beautiful.”

  Jewel frowned and looked down at her arm, following Leila’s gaze; against her wrist and palm were two almost motionless, white butterflies.

  “Go home,” Jewel said gently. “You will always be welcome back—but don’t stay so long next time.”

  “Terafin,” Leila said, bowing. Yes, it was a rough bow, but she loved it because she knew it was a gift she didn’t quite deserve.

  They watched as Leila faded from view. Jewel had half expected Adam to go with her, but Adam remained stubbornly solid at her side. “If either of us is sleeping,” she began.

  “We are. But it is not yet dawn.”

  “How do you know that?”

  He frowned. “Don’t you?”

  She shook her head.

  Adam stared at her arm. No, not her arm, but her wrist and her palm.

  “Matriarch,” he said, his voice thicker.

  “Adam, I’m not a Matriarch. There is no Markess line. If my Oma was Voyani, she never said so.”

  “It doesn’t matter what you call yourself,” he said, his voice low. “It’s what you are. I’ve seen the Matriarchs of Arkosa. I was the Matriarch’s son, until her death, and the Matriarch’s brother, after. You have the gift of the Matriarchs.”

  She didn’t like the look on his face; it didn’t suit his age.

  “The Matriarchs,” he continued, when she didn’t speak, “protect their line. It’s what they’ve done from the beginning of the Voyanne. But the protection is . . . difficult. It is not without cost.” He cleared his throat. “If they are strong, they pay the cost in their own blood.” He closed his eyes. “My mother saw her death. She knew she would die.” He swallowed, opened his eyes. “My sister was never as harsh as my mother; it frightened her.”

  “Your sister?”

  “My mother. She knew what the Voyanne demands of its Matriarchs, and she wasn’t certain—” he shook his head. “I am sorry. I speak of things that are Arkosan, and I should not.”

  “You’re speaking of your family,” she countered. “And you’re part of that; they were your life.”

  “I miss them.” His voice was softer; his words carried far more weight than simple syllables should have. “But when I dream of my sister, now, I don’t see our caravan; I see cities of ancient stone and empty, empty streets.

  “My mother,” he continued, turning, “did not consider herself strong enough.”

  “Why?”

  “Because rulers must kill, Jewel. If it comes to that, they must make sacrifices—demand sacrifices—of other people.”

  She knew why he stared at the butterflies, then. “Adam, what do you see?”

  “Pardon?”

  “What do you see when you look at them?” She lifted her arm, and the butterflies came with it.

  “What—what do I see?”

  “I see white butterflies. They’re small, they’re very light, and they’re glowing a little.”

  His eyes rounded. Clearly, that was not what Adam saw.

  “There used to be three. I think—I think Leila was one of them. Adam—what do you see?”

  “I see the sleepers,” was his soft reply. “Sarah and Catherine. She hates that name,” he added. “No one but her mother uses it.”

  “What’s wrong with Catherine? Tell her to try Jewel.”

  “What’s wrong with Jewel?” Adam asked.

  She started to answer and stopped. Clearly, if this felt like an appropriate conversation in this circumstance, she was dreaming. “Never mind. I interrupted. I’m sorry.”

  “Sarah fell asleep two weeks ago. I’ve woken her once, since then. But Catherine has been sleeping for longer. She’s lost weight, and when she wakes it’s—she doesn’t fully wake.” He reached out slowly until his hand was almost touching hers. “What will you do with them?”

  “Wake them, if I can.”

  He closed his eyes, exhaled, and relaxed. When he opened his eyes and caught sight of her expression, he winced. “I’m sorry,” he said. “It’s—the work of Matriarchs. We don’t understand it, can’t predict it—but we’ve always understood what it means. For the children,” he added, as the Voyani so often did. “And for the future.” He swallowed. “Did you come here to save them?”

  “I don’t know. When you wake, when Levec bellows you back to the Houses of Healing, you’ll find that several of the sleepers died tonight. I didn’t kill them,” she added quickly. “The Warden of Dreams did.”

  “The Warden of Dreams?”

  When Adam said it, it sounded vaguely ridiculous. “That’s what he’s called by Celleriant.”

  “Why did he kill them?”

  “He derives power from their dreams.”

  “But they can’t dream if they’re dead.”

  Did Adam make this much sense when she was awake? “I don’t know why he killed them,” she said, after a long, thoughtful pause. “It made me angry.”

  Adam nodded, because that made sense to him.

  None of this made sense to Jewel. She shook herself, straightening as she did. “I know why you’re really here,” she told Adam, grimly.

  “I’m here to wake you.” Adam replied, his hand still a hair’s breadth from hers.

  “Did I fail to wake?”

  He nodded, hesitant now. “Everyone is upset. Angel is angry.” H
e looked at the butterflies. “But this is different from any other time I’ve attended the sleepers—even The Terafin herself.” He met her eyes again and smiled, rueful. “Now, Levec will be angry.”

  “Because you’ve also fallen asleep.”

  “Yes, I think so.”

  “Well, that’s the silver lining, then. If I don’t wake, I don’t get a face full of furious bear.” She wanted to pace in the tight circles that helped her think, but she still carried the butterflies that Adam saw as women. “I’m certain the Warden killed the others,” she finally said. “I don’t know why he did. I don’t know if he did it just to make me angry. I was,” she added; she could almost hear the lecture Haval was no doubt preparing as she slept. “I was so angry.” She glanced at her very fine, very patrician skirts, and missed the loose, summer sleeping shift. “ . . . And I was afraid. This—this is my nightmare made small: people will die in front of me and there will be nothing I can do to prevent it.

  “If I failed to wake, this is how he trapped me. And I,” she added, stiffening, “am how he trapped you.”

  Adam shook his head. “I chose to stay, Matriarch.”

  “Can you just call me Jay while we’re here?”

  “Jay is a—is a bird?”

  “It’s better than an expensive rock.”

  “Women,” he said, “have very strange ideas about their names. Margret hated hers. Elena hated hers. I don’t understand it.”

  She grimaced. “What do you mean, you chose to stay? This is Levec’s worst nightmare.”

  Adam smiled. “No. Being drawn to the dreaming by the sleepers was his worst nightmare.”

  “But you’ve—”

  “I’m here with you. If you wake, Jewel, I will wake. You didn’t stay because you were trapped by the sleepers; you stayed because you wanted to protect them.”

  “How do you know that?”

  Adam raised a brow. “I’m young, I’m not stupid. Leila is awake now.”

  “Adam—”

  “She won’t come back. We can wake the two you now hold, if you’re willing.”

  She nodded almost absently. Something was bothering her. Winter King.

  Jewel. She wasn’t surprised when he answered. She couldn’t see him, couldn’t touch him, was almost certain she couldn’t force him to appear—not yet. But he was here. She was no longer lost in her own elusive dream.

  Go back to my den. Go back and tell Celleriant that I’m here.

  Silence.

  I know he can understand you, even if the others can’t.

  I will not leave you here.

  Adam is here. Nothing short of decapitation will kill me while Adam is with me. Maybe, she added, feeling distinctly uneasy, not even that, if he acts quickly. It was true.

  “Yes,” she told Adam, “we can wake them. But not just them.” She lifted her arm—the arm that didn’t contain butterflies. “Warden,” she said. “Warden of Dreams, come.”

  Chapter Eight

  INTO THE GRAY of nothing, Adam, and butterflies, the Warden of Dreams emerged. He was winged, his wings the color of the butterflies in this place; luminescent and pale. They were the shape of eagle’s wings, but larger, higher. His face was long, fine, his eyes—the whites of his eyes—were golden. But the irises were not; she couldn’t begin to pinpoint their color, they seemed to shift so much.

  He bowed to her. It was shallow, but his expression robbed it of sarcasm. It was meant, felt. “Terafin,” he said.

  “Why did you kill the dreamers?” Her free hand slid from sky to hip. The butterflies remained on her arm. She’d been half afraid they would fly to meet the Warden of Dreams—and their own demise.

  “There is power in dreams,” he replied.

  She watched his face, his eyes. Remembered that someone—Avandar? Celleriant?—had called him the two who are one. “Yes. But the dead don’t dream.”

  “You believe that sacrifice leads to power. You believe that sacrifice of life’s blood is potent and useful.”

  “I’ve seen both.”

  “Yet you fail to believe that the destruction of the dreamers leads to power?”

  Jewel forced herself not to look at Adam. “They’re no longer in the dreaming if they’re dead. They go to Mandaros. If you need dreams for the power they provide, their death is the last thing you want.”

  “Perhaps, little mortal, I devour the parts of their sleeping minds that dream at all; perhaps it is the ability to dream that grants me the power, not the dreaming itself. You have seen only one such dream—but it is life made visceral, personal; it is strong.”

  “Yes. But there is no dream if the dreamer is dead. You killed the dreamers.”

  The Warden of Dreams lifted his hands; they were glimmering. “I did.”

  “Why?”

  He smiled. It was an odd smile, and it changed the whole of his face—literally.

  “The two who are one,” she whispered.

  He nodded. “There are many ways to travel through dreams. Not all of them grant power to the traveler; in fact, very few do. But if one is content to simply travel and observe, there is much to be learned.”

  She thought of the magi as they appeared in Leila’s dreams. “Most of it isn’t accurate.”

  “What is accuracy? The dreams are felt, their worlds are known, they are believed. In rare cases, when the dreamer wakes, the world changes.”

  “The three dreams.”

  “The dreaming wyrd, yes. Have you not felt its imperative?”

  She nodded as the conversation began to drift out of her control. She brought it back, watching him. He seemed gaunter, more frail, than he had as he folded his wings across his back, changing his shape in the gray skyline.

  “Why did you kill them?”

  “You were not awake,” he replied. “They were trapped here.”

  “We were trying to get them out!”

  “No, Jewel. You were not. Your healer was.” He turned and offered Adam a deep bow. Adam returned a nod; he was watchful, but he wasn’t angry—not the way Jewel was. She reined in the anger.

  “They dreamed pleasant dreams,” the Warden of Dreams continued. “Their nightmares cause them endless pain, but nightmares can shift or change. So, too, happiness.”

  “You killed them because they were happy.” It wasn’t a question. It was a certainty.

  He nodded. “They were at peace. They will be at peace in the halls of Mandaros. In no other way could I guarantee that their dreams would remain pleasant.” He glanced into the featureless landscape in a way that suggested it wasn’t featureless to him.

  She stared. Her mouth opened, but words failed to emerge for a long moment. When they did, they were louder; had a butterfly not been sitting in her palm, her hands would have been fists. “Do you even understand what life is? What living means?”

  Turning back to her, he raised a brow. “I understand the concept as it exists here. I understand what life meant before our parents chose to abandon us. I understand what life is on the hidden path. In no one of these places could your mortals exist for long; they are fragile, and their sanity breaks easily.”

  “I’m mortal.”

  “Yes. But you are gifted; you can touch the essence of the hidden path. You do not,” he added, with a frown, “choose to do so; you stumble and drift by accident. But I am aware of who you are. I am aware, as well, of Adam. In you both, I see the End of Days.”

  This was not a comfort.

  “You do not build, Jewel. But you must. These roads are known to your enemies; they have used them in the past, and they will use them again if you do not prevent it.”

  She thought of Lord Darranatos in the Common. “If I build, can I stop you from gathering the dreamers?”

  “Yes.”

  “If you could kill them, why couldn’t you set them free?”

  He frowned. “I did.”

  “You didn’t. They’re dead!”

  “They will never return here. They will never again be caught
in the web. That is as much freedom as I am able to offer; I cannot yet leave the hidden ways.”

  “And you want to leave.”

  He smiled. “We want to leave, yes. It has been long indeed since we have walked among mortals, in mortal seeming. My brother thought if he trapped you here, it might be enough. But you are not so easily trapped; you see too clearly. He was not pleased at the deaths of the dreamers,” he added softly.

  “Neither was I.”

  “Yes. What will you do?”

  “What must I do, to stop you?”

  He smiled. “Stop dreaming.”

  She shook her head. “No. You are in my lands, now.” She gestured and the forest grew up around them both, with trunks the size of two men abreast as bars of an ancient cage.

  * * *

  “I have no desire to harm you,” the Warden said, as his wings once again expanded, his feathers shearing whatever they touched. Bark flew; chips of wood rained down. Only the trees of diamond were spared. Those, Jewel thought, and the lone tree of fire, around which no other trees grew. It was to the fire that she was drawn; Adam was her shadow. She couldn’t see the Winter King; nor were the cats immediately obvious.

  “Yes,” the Warden said. Although his wings were extended, he made no attempt to fly; he waited as Jewel approached; he was standing now beneath the bowers of burning branches, his face upturned as if he desired the fire’s warmth.

  “This is the only thing that is truly yours in this landscape,” he told her, lowering his face. The whites of his eyes were still golden, but the irises were the color of reflected flame. “Do you understand what it signifies?”

  “No. It’s a burning tree.”

  “Ah, yes—but the fire did not come from you, little mortal; it was meant to kill you. The echoes of its intent cause its leaves to tremble—but not a single one of them has dropped. It is yours, in this place; it is singly yours. Not even the Lord who sought your death by fire could touch this tree now.

  “You made it, Jewel. You took his intent, and you fashioned it into something that could stand against him. It could stand against even the most powerful of the Kialli, unbound. Without it, you would have failed in your charge.”