She was not old but sounded, momentarily, ancient, the weight of the burden she carried apparent in her voice, her expression, her endless weariness. “This is all I can offer you; it is meager. But you are not mine; you are not my distant kin. Could you take and survive my test, I could offer more—but even were you born to see, you could not now undertake it. You have made choices for the whole of your life that have defined the choices you might make now. And your choices are binding.”
“And yours, lady?” he asked softly.
“Do not pity me.”
“I could not.” It was truth. “You are the Oracle.”
“I am, yes.”
“Have you seen The Terafin? Have you seen Angel ATerafin?”
Understanding that he must ask the questions, no matter what his current situation, she nodded. “Yes.”
“Did she pass your test?”
“It was not my test,” the Oracle replied softly. “But her own. Inasmuch as she could, she did—but . . .”
“It is not yet over.”
“No. That is the nature of the seer-born.”
“Does she know?”
“I do not know. She will, if she does not yet.” The Oracle lifted the folds of the hood from her shoulders and pulled them over her head again. “I cannot stay. Your presence here is faint enough that it might continue undetected—but even hidden as I am, mine is not.” She surprised him; she bowed.
It was a complicated gesture, too formal for all but the ceremonial investitures of the highest echelons of the patriciate. He could not return it in kind, but he offered her the bow that was appropriate for his own station in the life he had chosen. “You wish to resume your responsibilities,” she told him as she rose. “As you must. But you are mistaken if you believe that you must return to Terafin to do so.”
He stiffened.
“You walked into this landscape from a wardrobe.”
Breath held, he nodded.
“When you did not return, Jewel went in search of you—but she had waited too long. She entered a different dream, a different geography. Before she did, however, Carver entered the wardrobe.”
“Carver’s here?”
“Yes. But I must warn you, he is not as you are. The dreams of this place are more real to him; he does not know how to avoid them. Find him—and find him soon.”
Ellerson nodded and bowed again. He was not surprised to find her gone when he rose—and had she not been, it would not have mattered. He began to search the floor upon which she’d been standing. As it was solid stone, he could not find the trapdoor he’d expected, and after a few more minutes, he gave up on that notion.
He spoke. He spoke in his authoritative, quiet voice. The word open did nothing. He tried it in all the languages he knew—it was a rudimentary word, and he could speak it efficiently in almost a dozen ways. He tried shelter next, and as open, it did nothing. He then tried help, succor, sanctuary.
He was not the den; he didn’t give way to cursing until he had run down the list of obvious words, and when he did, he did it deliberately, each word tested in the languages he knew.
When he had exhausted even those, he tried different words, each with a decreasing amount of hope, an increasing amount of urgency. After this, he slumped against the wall and closed his eyes, listening to the howl of wind and the horns.
The Oracle had come to him. She had come to where she knew he would be. Jewel didn’t speak with any frequency about the Oracle or the firstborn, but he understood what the Oracle could do.
She could have found Carver instead. She could have delivered the same message; she could have led him to the same shelter. She had done none of those things. She had come to Ellerson.
• • •
Ellerson seldom thought of the guildhall of the domicis. But he had stumbled through the ruins, thinking of his past, the sharper images and interactions, the odd illuminations. His friendship—his rivalry—with Ryan had not defined him. His clashes with Akalia had shaped what was already there.
But those memories folded into a single word, which remained unchanged no matter which language he might choose to speak it in.
Terafin.
• • •
The ground beneath his feet began to glow with a faint, pale light that was reminiscent of moon, not sun. There was no other change, but he could see that the glow was confined to—and defined by—a specific area. He cleared the light snow with his feet, and as he worked, he thought of Ryan. He had not seen Ryan in years, had had no reason to speak with him.
If he returned, if he survived, he would seek him out. He could not, of course, introduce Ryan to his lord—it would be difficult to gather the den in one place, given their disparate responsibilities. But he could tell Ryan at least this much of them: their names.
Finch.
Teller.
Angel.
Arann.
Jester.
He watched the glow brighten, and he heard something crack or snap beneath his feet. He spoke the last name because, at the moment, it was the most important.
Carver.
A staircase opened up before his feet. It opened not into the darkness of disused cellar, the mustiness of crypt; it was brightly lit, a stretch of hall visible from the height of the stairs. He descended quickly but carefully; he could not afford to fall, and his limbs were thick and stiff with cold.
Chapter One
“YOU STEPPED ON MY tail!” The outraged yowl of a great black cat echoed off the uneven walls and the rounded ceiling of the tunnel.
“It’s dark,” Adam said. He might have lifted his hands in a gesture of placation, but they were full. The thick wire of a lantern hung from the crook of his right elbow, swaying as he attempted to avoid compounding his sin. “It’s dark and the tunnel is narrow. I told you you should let me walk ahead.”
“What if something tries to eat you?”
He prevented himself from grimacing, a skill he had learned in his years overseeing the very tired younglings in his care. “This is the stronghold of the Oracle. There is nothing in these tunnels that will eat me unless she commands it.”
And nothing—not even the cats—that would save him from death if she so desired it.
“What if I try to eat you?” Night stopped walking. His tail twitched as it lay, extended, on the floor at his back. If Adam’s hands had not been full, he might have smacked the cat’s head in frustration.
He avoided the tail a second time; he strongly suspected he had avoided it the first time as well. There was no point arguing with Night. Although his brothers, Snow and Shadow, did, they were also cats. Mortals didn’t emerge from scuffles like this uninjured.
The cats were bored. They were so so bored. When bored, they shared. Adam was heartily sick of bored cats. His sense of self-preservation had dwindled with the passage of days; not even the most cautious of men could consider these whiny, tired children a serious threat. Not even when he had almost died at their hands. Or claws.
Jewel was the Matriarch of Terafin.
The Oracle was the Matriarch of Matriarchs.
In these halls—some constructed of worked stone that was smooth as glass, with ceilings higher than any the Terafin manse could boast, and some rough tunnels that were narrow and twisting—it was the Oracle’s word that was law. She did not speak often; Shianne disliked her intensely. Shadow concurred. Avandar would answer questions on the rare occasions she chose to appear and interact. For the most part, she kept her distance.
But she had asked Adam to run small errands for her, as if he were the most junior of children, and he had agreed because she was Matriarch here, and it was always wisest to stay on the good side of a Matriarch. He had, at her command, filled the lanterns that he found in empty rooms. She did not tell him which rooms, of course, but he understood her command; if the doors were open, the lanterns within were to be filled.
Many of the doors did not open and would not. Nor did Adam attempt to force them. No, Night di
d that, shredding wood in his sulky boredom. The great cats could not, however, destroy the locked doors.
Adam had also been sent to the lake that existed in just one branch of this place, and he had drawn water in buckets—a familiar activity. These, he returned to the room in which Jewel slept. He did not accompany Jewel when she rose in the morning; Shadow did. But he was there when she returned, with water, with light. Water, however, could not wash away the dark circles under her eyes, and her hair had become tangled in the way it did when she worried. He did not ask her what lessons the Oracle imparted; he truly did not want to know.
Today, however, he had been asked to carry clothing.
“You will find a chest in a room across the hall from Jewel’s room,” the Oracle told him. “And in it, you will find a set of robes. They are dark, but the cloth is thick; it is perfect for this endless Winter.”
“You wish me to bring these robes to Jewel?”
“No, child. I wish you to bring them to someone else. I would carry them myself, but she will not accept anything from my hands, not even food.”
He knew what the next task would be.
• • •
He had hooked a food basket—an awkward size and shape, but the Oracle had not seen fit to supply him with another—over his left arm; the handle nestled into the crook of his elbow. The rest of his attention was upon the robes. She had not told him to be careful, but he understood that caution was absolutely required, because he had seen the chest that contained them. And when he had—hesitantly—attempted to pull the robes out of that chest the first time, he had paused, his hands an inch above the cloth. He had then washed those hands as thoroughly as possible.
He told himself that the robes were valuable, but that had been a lie. Ah, no, he believed they were of incalculable value, but that did not account for his hesitance. Something about the cloth and the color was a warning; these were not meant to be touched. Not by Adam. Even Night had sniffed in disdain, but he had kept his distance.
That distance had evaporated; the cats were very single-minded, and Night’s mind was on boredom and the injustice of being forced to endure it. When Adam failed to step on his tail a third time, the great black cat took a forceful step back, and a paw landed on the trailing length of the robe.
The cat shrieked, a yowling sound that devolved almost instantly into a guttural snarl; his fur rose as he gained size through outrage and resultant fury. There was an enemy here, carried in Adam’s arms, and he intended to do battle.
“That is quite enough.”
Night hissed but froze in place. The Oracle appeared in the hall, casting a shadow that encompassed only the cat. Even in the dull lamplight, the cat seemed to dissolve into the darkness.
“My apologies, Adam. I forget the wild ones and their constant, querulous mischief.”
Night had disappeared.
Alarmed, Adam opened his mouth, but the Oracle shook her head. “He will find himself back in The Terafin’s rooms where he will argue with Snow.”
“I’m not sure that’s better.”
“It is better,” the Oracle observed, “for the cat. You have done well. I will be in your debt.”
He froze.
“I am not a Matriarch, Adam of Arkosa. Nor am I one of the Winter people. I do not feel lessened by debt or obligation; they arise naturally from my sense of gratitude for services rendered. The gratitude of the firstborn is not the resentment of those who came after; nor is such gratitude onerous to us. If you proceed down the hall, you may set the robes down.” She glanced at them, the shape of her eyes changing.
“I have waited for you,” she said. “I cannot carry them myself. Even if I could, as I said before, she would not accept them from me. But you will survive the carrying, and no one else would.”
• • •
The door at the end of the hall appeared as Adam approached it. In any other dwelling, he would assume this appearance the artifact of light. Here, he did not. The Oracle had given him directions, and the tunnels conformed to her desire. She wished this door to be open, and it was now open. Light shone through the crack between hard door and frame. Something about the way it fell against the uneven floor felt strangely lonely.
On the open road, one learned to hoard one’s privacy; to make a space inside oneself where one could retreat while surrounded by the noise of the children. One learned—slowly—to recognize the signs of that retreat in the adults, and as one approached adulthood, to make allowances for it. Sometimes people needed to be alone.
But loneliness was different. It was an isolation that was not desired, although it could exist side by side with those who desired privacy. Sometimes it could exist no matter how immersed one became in the noise and the chatter of family, of kin. Adam had learned early to tell the difference between these two states.
He therefore approached the door, pausing there. His hands were full. On the open road, there were sounds and signs that one used to ask permission to encroach; in the Terafin manse, one hit the harder doors and waited. If one were expected, the doors would open at the hands of a page or servant. If not, one left.
Today, Adam waited. He heard nothing; no movement, no voice.
After a pause, he said, “Hello?” And when no answer came, he tried again, this time in Weston. He waited, his arms full of cloth, the basket on one and the lamp on the other growing weightier in the stillness.
At length, he pushed the door open with his foot and entered a room that should not have been at the end of a poorly carved tunnel. It was a bright room, the floors gleaming where they could be seen beneath the knotted fringes of a large, oval rug. There was a table pushed up against one wall, the wood of its legs light against the darker grain of floor. There were windows; curtains had been drawn and roped to either side of each. Sunlight touched floor, changing the color of the carpet; it stretched to touch everything, even the bed.
The bed, like Weston beds, was above the ground, and it was occupied.
Its occupant was covered by heavy blankets, but they had bunched beneath the crook of her left arm; she slept on her side, her back toward the wall. She did not wake as Adam entered the room; given her appearance, he wondered if she would wake at all. He set the basket and the lantern down and carefully placed the mass of robes on the single chair tucked beneath the table. Long after he’d finished, the cloth rustled, the noise louder than breathing. He turned his back on it and headed toward the room’s occupant, but he stopped before he reached the bedside.
Her hair was a tangled, black mess; her skin was not ruddy, but dark with what appeared to be soot. Soot that still bore the marks of tears. Her hand—or the hand that could be seen—was not much cleaner, and there was a trace of dried blood on the tips of the exposed fingers. She was wearing clothing that was about as clean as she herself.
He wondered where she’d come from. He thought her fifteen or sixteen years old, although sleep often deprived a face of the weight and characteristics of age. He hesitated for one long moment, and then went in search of water.
• • •
By the time he returned, the girl was no longer sleeping. She was seated across the bed, her back against the wall, her body still tangled and covered in blankets. Her hair was not less of a mess—but even this, the Oracle had foreseen; the water had already been warmed and a brush and comb lay on a tray beside an enormously heavy bucket. He had tucked them into his satchel and carried the water back to the room. There was no bath, and no lake or river, but there was easily enough water to clean one girl.
The girl, however, did not appear to want to be clean. Or to want to clean up while Adam was anywhere near her. Her eyes were so narrow it was hard to see their color, but when he did, he froze. They appeared to be violet.
Voice almost a whisper, he spoke a name. Evayne. Her eyes widened, and yes, they were violet, a particular shade that he associated with only one person.
Her eyes narrowed again, her body stiffening. “Are you one of the O
racle’s people?”
“Ah, no. No. I serve Terafin.”
Her brows rose again, in concert. “Terafin? You mean one of The Ten? You’re a long way from home.”
He reddened. “I serve The Terafin while I remain in her Northern city. I am of Arkosa. My Matriarch is Margret. My home is the Voyanne.”
“We’re not in Averalaan, are we?”
“No. We are in the Oracle’s domain. We have taken shelter here while the demons hunt us.”
She was pale then, as if she had never seen sunlight. He could see the whites of her eyes. “They came to you? They came to you, too?”
“They have been hunting the Matriarch,” Adam replied. “But, yes, demons also hunted my kin in the Sea of Sorrows.” He would have died there, so much mortal detritus, in the wake of a battle that had broken earth and unleashed storms in the hard, baked clay of the desert. He would have died had his talent not manifested itself then. And he would have been broken permanently had it not been for . . . her. Evayne.
But this girl and that woman were not the same; he could see the shape of the older face in the younger one—but none of her experience, none of the measured and weary control she exerted over her expression.
“Have you—have you taken the Oracle’s test?” he finally asked.
She lowered her chin toward the knees she had folded into her chest. “. . . No.” She shuddered at the question. Adam could understand this. The Oracle was a power the like of which existed only in stories told to children. But so much of the world he had experienced since his mother’s death was. If she had not yet taken that test, she would. He was certain of it; he’d seen proof of it, held in the hands of the older Evayne—and any age was older, compared to this girl.
Ah, he’d been mistaken. She wasn’t shuddering. She was weeping.
Adam understood the difference between being alone and being lonely. He understood, as well, the different shades of pain; the pain that was a wall, and the pain that could be a bridge. He was Adam of Arkosa; this was a bridge, and he crossed it before he could stop to think because he had done it so often in his life.
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