“He would not have survived either of us; I believe Finch would have. But yes, since you mention him, I am. Do you believe it is fondness that motivates me?”
“Not for them, no. If it became necessary, you would sacrifice any of them.”
Haval nodded. “It is the definition of necessity, however, that divides us now. If Jewel does not return, the city will perish. Some small handful of its citizens can be rescued—but even so, it will be a near thing.”
“You think The Terafin can stand against three gods?”
“Yes. If she is in this city, yes.”
“You cannot influence her return.”
“No. I cannot. But I can influence what that return will mean. She requires this city,” Haval continued. “She requires her den, and her House. She requires the safety of one farmer and one old, irascible tailor, both in the Common. She requires the safety of one tavern. She requires your Kings.”
Duvari watched the fire at Haval’s back. Reflected in his eyes, it made him look demonic. “You will never return to us.”
“No. But you knew that, even then. Had there been any possibility that I would, you would have had me killed.”
“I would have killed you myself.”
“That is the only way that I would have—possibly—died, yes. I will not interfere in the protection of the Kings; it is not my responsibility, and it is not my job. I will offer you aid in what meaningful way I can, should I have the opportunity. But the Kings are not in my hands. They are in yours.”
“If she can stand against the Sleepers that even the gods—when they walked—fear, why does she require the Kings?”
For the first time, Haval glanced down. A branch of fire trembled above his head; it then lowered to touch his shoulder. He felt warmth, not heat, and thought, affection is always a danger. Love is a weakness. But no man or woman could be strong for every waking minute of their life. “Mortals were not meant to contain what she might contain. They were not meant to have that power.”
Duvari had always been perceptive. “You believe she will not be sane?”
“I believe she will not be fit to rule mortals,” he replied. “And the city is mortal. The people who live in its many streets, rich and poor, are likewise mortal.” He stared at Duvari as he continued. “Are gods sane, Duvari? If a god desires it, they might make a living, growing tree—of fire. Is that sane? They might, in a night, remake the entirety of their personal quarters, might open doors into worlds that do not or did not exist before the door opened. Is that sane?
“It is not mortal. It is not human. But insane?”
“If she is so powerful, how is it that she is not what you fear?”
“Because she’s human, and she wishes to remain human. On some level, she understands exactly what will happen if she dons the mantle of the power she requires. She has not faced it, not fully. The cats have always understood.”
“The den?”
“I believe Teller understands. The rest cannot truly conceive of it; they might pay lip service to the shadow of that fear. Jewel has traveled in order to find another way to stop the Sleepers from destroying her life. She believes she has traveled to find the only way. And I will not lie, Duvari, tempting as it is. I have prayed—”
“You?”
“Even so. I have prayed that she will find that way. If she does not, there is only one stark choice to be made. Her life or the Empire’s. In every functional sense, she will be dead to us. But if she finds what she seeks, the battle will be harder and the losses more severe. We will be at war with the wilderness and the demons; we will be at war with gods.
“Her rule of these lands is absolute, even at a distance. I do not understand it, but I accept it. Her people cannot yet walk the lands we normally live in. But as the days pass, I believe it will be possible. Some can leave the forest now, and return; they cannot be seen by most. Soon, they will be visible. Soon, the power they hold in this forest will affect the world beyond its borders.
“I am training those who desire the knowledge,” he continued. “I am teaching them, inasmuch as I can, and within the frustrating limits of my own experience and knowledge. No matter what Jewel faces, if she dies, we will all perish: King, city, Empire.”
“You are creating Astari of your own.”
“In a fashion, yes. Chief among them will be Jarven ATerafin.”
Chapter Six
ON THE SECOND DAY, Adam could not find the door to Evayne’s room.
Jewel lay abed, and he did not feel up to the task of joining the conversation among those who waited for her to wake. Two days, she had slept, and looked to sleep for a third. Or longer. But it was Matriarch business, and the decisions reached were not his to make. That they were not anyone’s to make did not occur to the others, and he was content to let them discuss and argue in his absence.
The Oracle, however, had other plans. She left the company to its own devices, interfering only when the cats got out of hand. Given that boredom had become the entirety of their litany—eclipsing even stupid—interference was frequently required. The cats were not fond of the Oracle, but the Oracle required neither obedience nor respect. If she wished to move them, they moved, without much volition. It didn’t improve their mood, on the other hand.
As Evayne was elsewhere in the bowels of this maze of halls and tunnels, Adam was not surprised to find the Oracle, or rather, to be found by her. She appeared by his side in one of the physical, stone halls, rather than the tunnels that seemed older and wilder. Robed, as Evayne the elder was robed, her hood drawn back from her face, she seemed not quite real; a spirit that haunted the caverns.
“Do you understand how time works?” she asked.
Time was not a concept that troubled Adam overmuch.
“You are young,” she said. “I am not. Time is the web through which all of my observations must travel, and the web is complex; to shift one strand is not the matter of a moment but often of centuries of foresight.”
He nodded. “It is the business of Matriarchs,” he said when it became clear she expected a verbal response.
“When you return to Averalaan—if indeed that occurs—and Evayne returns to the world, you will not meet her immediately. Even were you to arrive in the same place, you would not arrive at the same time. You are bound to the time and the stream that birthed you.”
“And Evayne is not.”
“And Evayne is not. You are aware that her sixteenth birthday occurs three years hence. You are aware that the coming of age that was so necessary has not yet fully occurred. Nor will it, while she remains in my halls. You can meet her before she is of age only here, because my halls were created by me, and they reflect some of my abilities, my duties. Do not attempt to find her in the mortal world; do not attempt to contact her. If you speak, she will come to you—or not at all. Do not speak of what will come,” she continued. “Do not speak of it to any save Evayne herself, and only if she raises the subject. You will see her—you have seen her once.
“You think us unkind.”
Adam nodded more forcefully.
“And so we are. Although we can see individual lives and individual pain, we can also see the aggregate. Were it a choice between one life and many, what would you expect your Matriarch to choose? What would Yollana of Havalla choose?”
“The many,” he said, without hesitation.
“And you would not?”
He looked at her for one long moment. “Were the one life in question mine, I would choose the many,” he finally said. “But if neither are mine—the one or the many—how can you expect or ask me to choose? I am not Matriarch. The choice will never be mine.
“Matriarchs can see the future,” he continued, when the Oracle failed to either move or speak. “You know this. You are Matriarch of Matriarchs. It is why Matriarchs are trusted. If a Matriarch tells us that we must abandon an infant, even those who hate it will abide by the decision. But if a stranger tells us that this must be done, that there is
purpose to the evil, we cannot trust it. We should not trust it.
“It is said that we were given the Matriarchs so that the harshness of the Voyanne would not make monsters of us all. And so it falls on the shoulders of those who can see, to see.”
She looked at him as he stopped, her eyes unlike any eyes he had ever metin his life. “Are you afraid of becoming monstrous?”
“Why do you ask me when you already know?”
“I know the many possible paths you might take,” the Oracle replied. “But your fears, where they are not expressed, are opaque. And, Adam, I ask because there are many, many possibilities. You think I have seen everything—and I can. But you do not understand that that everything means, in some fashion, that I have seen nothing.”
“But you have planned—”
“I have hoped, child. I have hoped. I have done what I can, when I can, from the moment I first understood that most lives were not lived as mine was—and is.”
“I am not afraid of becoming a monster,” he told her. “I am only afraid that my sister might be forced to become one.”
“Because she is Matriarch.”
He nodded. And then, disloyally, added, “Because she is not hard enough and cold enough and certain enough.”
“Neither is Jewel.”
He nodded again, uneasy now.
“What you have given Evayne, I could not give her, but your role in her life is done, for now. If she had time, I would send you to her. But she does not; nor do you.” She closed her eyes. “At the moment, it is Jewel who requires your aid.” The Oracle paused. “I will give something into your keeping. It is not yours; it is not of you. But you must hold it now, until it is required.”
Adam hesitated. The Oracle’s right hand was a fist.
“Adam.”
She was not asking permission. She was not asking a favor. She meant him to carry this thing. He nodded. Her fingers unfolded slowly as if it took effort, will, concentration. In her hand she held a ring.
It was the ring of House Terafin’s ruler. It was the Matriarch’s ring.
“It was left with me, as surety. I will return it to you now. The path I made, she has walked, and the ring is not, therefore, forfeit.”
Adam’s hands were frozen by his sides. “Can you not give it to her?”
“No. She has not yet finished, but the path made from here is her own path—to follow or to forsake. You will understand when it must be returned, and if you doubt, hold it fast. Do not,” she added, “lose it.”
• • •
Before the Oracle led Adam back to the room in which Jewel slept, Shadow reached her. Adam had never seen the murderous rage with which he now regarded the Oracle—and he had tried, almost successfully, to kill Adam on at least one occasion. He had tried to kill Jewel then.
The Oracle stopped instantly. “Eldest,” she said, her voice neutral.
Shadow growled. His voice was so bestial it seemed as if the ability to form words had deserted him. His claws, Adam could see, had created grooves and runnels in the floor—which was stone.
Adam was not surprised when Shadow leaped toward the Oracle.
The Oracle gestured, and Shadow froze in mid-leap. “Come, Adam,” she said. “You do not want to be standing there when he works himself free.”
“What did you do?”
“Some creatures—like your great cats—are only peripherally aware of time and its passage. They have agreed to abide by time’s rule, but they are cats; they abide in their own fashion, and their obedience is often hazy. They do not age as you age, of course, but they are more primal than even I. What they were yesterday, they are today; what they will be tomorrow, they were millennia past.” She stepped around the silent, snarling, clawed statue. Adam, mindful of dignity, followed.
“Why did they agree to—to obey time, then?” he asked.
“Why do they agree to serve Jewel?”
“I don’t know.”
“Knowledge accrues over time. Experience begets knowledge. To live free of time in its entirety is to live unchanged. The sum of their knowledge could be confined to the moment of their creation—but it could not grow or expand. And the cats, you might have noticed, are vain; they do not like to be ignorant. In their minds, ignorance is stupidity.
“But even so, when they are not driven by rampant ego, they are comforted by it; at times they feel they have learned everything, and they wander. It is the ability to wander that makes them vulnerable to such minor tricks.”
Adam hesitated.
“You are wondering if I have answered this question for a reason. You are wondering what purpose I intend the answer to serve.”
Adam exhaled. “I was.”
“Do you understand that the power you possess is in some fashion a power that affects time in a limited way?”
Did he? He frowned. “It is not,” he answered carefully, “just a matter of time.”
“No?”
“If the body is injured—if, for instance, the intestinal walls have been pierced or slashed open—time is not guaranteed to save the man or woman so injured. If someone is poisoned, time is not guaranteed to save them, either.”
“Then you would argue that time is not involved?”
He shook his head. “Sometimes it’s time. The body remembers its healthy state. It has its own imperative. There are injuries that would heal naturally. If an arm is broken, a leg, we can set the bone—and yes, Oracle, in that case, time shifts around that injury.”
“You are afraid that Levec will be angry with you for speaking to me.”
Adam winced, but he smiled at the mention of Healer Levec. “Levec,” he said fondly, “is a very angry man. But his anger is not terrifying.” Mostly. “And no, I do not think he would be angry at this discussion. He might be confused by it. He does not think of healing as I think of it.”
“Ah. But he is powerful, in his own right.”
Adam nodded. “For Levec, time is what heals injuries that don’t require us. The injuries that do require our intervention are not a simple matter of time. We work against time. It is our responsibility to keep the body and the spirit entwined while we force the body into its proper shape. We cannot force a body to become something different, something other than what it naturally is, and we let the body’s knowledge of itself guide us.
“I think it is at least two parts: the first, to force the body to remember what it was, not what it currently is, and the second, to hold that shape, to knit it in place—yes, Oracle. Time.”
She smiled again, as if he had answered an especially tricky question. “You are wrong on one count, however.”
“Oh?” He did not doubt her; he was not Levec. There was no bluster in him.
“You can force a body to become other than what it is, or what it was born to be. Should you desire it, you could shape living flesh. Should you desire it, you could do what I have done to the cats. I would not recommend it, however—they are not terribly forgiving creatures when their vanity has been deeply wounded.”
• • •
Shadow was waiting for the Oracle and Adam when they finally reached the room in which Jewel slept. Adam froze, as if he were the one whose time had been stopped. Shadow, however, ignored him. He had eyes for the Oracle. Words for the Oracle, as well—and such words: a torrent of curses for which Adam would have been caned or without the next meal had he been at home among kin.
The words, however, were far less threatening. When the cats were talking—even in outrage—they were as safe as fanged, clawed, winged hunters could be.
The Oracle nodded to the cat. “Eldest,” she said politely, as if they had not already crossed paths minutes ago.
Shadow hissed.
“Has she woken?”
“No.” Shadow’s wings were high. His fur, however, was flat and sleek; his tail swished back and forth.
“She is speaking,” Snow added, from farther in the room. “And crying. Even he can’t make her wake up.”
Shadow hissed again.
Adam stepped in front of the Oracle. “You can’t wake her. The Oracle might—if you allow her entry.” He spoke softly, as one did with the cats, but there was no plea, no wheedling, in the words he had chosen.
Snow hissed. “She doesn’t need our permission, stupid boy.”
“Unless she can walk through you, she needs you to move.”
“She can.”
Adam whispered a prayer to the Lady for patience.
• • •
The room in which Jewel now slept was not the one in which she had fallen asleep, but close: it was larger. It accommodated the whole of their gathered companions: the three cats, Angel and Terrick, Kallandras and Celleriant, Adam and Shianne, Jewel and her domicis Avandar.
Terrick leaned against one wall, as he had when Adam had departed to find Evayne. The others were seated a little way off, by a long table that was currently empty. Jewel lay abed.
As the cats made way—loudly, and sulking the entire time, as if moving a few feet away from a door was an act of colossal inconvenience—he entered the room, and the Oracle followed in his wake.
There was food here. Warmth. Shelter. There were no demons; the giant, winged serpent could not hunt them. But he was aware that in a peaceful life, the worst enemy one faced was often oneself. One’s kin. In the face of greater danger, those things could be put aside—but they had seeds, grew roots, even then.
He did not know the precise details of what the Matriarch of Terafin feared, but he had lived his life in the lee of Matriarchs—his mother, his sister—and he knew the precise details didn’t matter. What mattered was survival: the survival of the children, the future of the clan. What mattered was the safety of kin. The Voyanne was—had been—the only home the Voyani knew; they did not therefore have to defend a fixed, immovable space.
Adam had not wanted his sister, Margret, to become Matriarch. And he had known that she must. But she was, he thought, more like Jewel than like Evallen, their mother. She had failed to kill Nicu when he had betrayed them the first time, choosing love and history and sentiment over the rough and necessary justice of the Voyanne.
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