Firstborn

by Michelle West

  Jewel drew one long breath and said, “Take us to the edge of the tangle.” Remembering belatedly that she did not speak to the Chosen or her household staff or her House Council, she flushed and added, “please.”

  • • •

  Angel was silent; he often was.

  Adam, however, lifted his hands, moving them in a particular way which immediately caught Angel’s attention; it was den-sign. He frowned, glancing at Jay, at Calliastra, at Corallonne. Angel had told Jay—and he fervently believed it to be the truth—that Calliastra was not, and would never become, Duster. She was the child of gods—and at that, the one god mostly likely to end all known human civilization without careful opposition. Duster, like most of the den, had been uncertain about at least half of her parentage.

  But it was Duster who most often took on the thankless job of arguing—pointedly, angrily—with Jay. And at least half the time, Duster had been right. The other half? Not so much.

  He wasn’t certain if Calliastra was right, but she didn’t have to convince him. And Angel knew the moment when she’d done the job she’d set out to do. He could see it in the lines of Jay’s face, the corners of her mouth, the slow unbunching of her shoulders.

  Adam said, “Is the Matriarch not correct?” the question soft.

  “I think they’re both right. Jay knows why she came here. She knows what she thought she’d be doing. And she knows that you don’t get something for nothing.”

  Adam coughed; it was a politic sound.

  “If the Oracle had said, I’ll trade you: give me your right arm and I’ll give you the ability to see the true future, that would be more along the lines of what she expected. But she didn’t. One night in a dark room—by Jay’s account—”

  “She cannot speak of everything.”

  “She’s not one of your Matriarchs,” Angel replied, voice even, irritation lurking at the core of the words. “She’s one of ours. She speaks of everything she thinks might affect the rest of us. It wasn’t a good night, but—it wasn’t enough. Calliastra is reminding her of that.”

  “Of what?”

  “That she didn’t get something for nothing.” He shouldered a pack. “Come on.”

  “Why are you taking those?”

  “It’s just a hunch.”

  “You think something bad will happen?”

  “I think,” he replied, as Terrick joined him, “something bad has happened. But it might affect where we end up, and we don’t want to starve when we arrive there.”

  “Why do you believe that?”

  “Because Jay does.”

  “You said she speaks of everything—”

  “Aye, and she does—but not always in words. She thinks the cats are essential. And she thinks the cats are in trouble.”

  Adam looked dubious.

  “She hasn’t accepted it yet, but the cats are den-kin. They’re hers, same as we are. She couldn’t control Duster, not precisely. She couldn’t demand Duster change who she was or what she could do. But she had rules we all had to follow—the weakest of us and the strongest of us. The cats? They’re kin, to her. And unless the fate of the world hangs in the balance, she won’t leave ’em.”

  “But . . .”

  Angel glanced at the boy.

  “The fate of the world does.”

  • • •

  The spirit of the Ellariannatte accompanied their host. He was bright-eyed, his expression one of open wonder, even joy. He asked questions, and paused only once, losing the strands of his focused curiosity as the bright butterfly left the bard’s shoulder and came to rest upon Jewel’s.

  Words fled his open mouth, and no schooling in manners caused that mouth to shut; he appeared to be gaping. After a long pause he spoke again, but this time he spoke in the language of, apparently, butterflies.

  Jewel had come to understand that it had a voice, of a kind; Kallandras could hear it. It didn’t so much converse as sing, as if it existed in its own little world—a world it carried with it. She couldn’t hear its voice, most of the time.

  She heard it now.

  The Ellariannatte spoke again, shifting tone and texture of voice without adding recognizable words; Corallonne and Calliastra seemed transfixed.

  Shadow, however, growled.

  Jewel’s hand fell automatically to the top of his head at the sound.

  “They are making too much noise,” he told her.

  She couldn’t hear it. “They make less noise than you or your brothers.”

  “They don’t. Not here.”

  Jewel looked down at the cat and froze.

  Beneath his feet, beneath the tips of his claws, the forest floor was flickering.

  • • •

  Without thought, she said, “Stop. Stop walking now.”

  Celleriant, by Kallandras’ side, drew his sword and his shield.

  Shadow stepped into her side, narrowly missing her foot. “You hear it.”

  “What am I hearing?” she asked, eyes narrowed, as if sound could be seen.

  “The tangle,” Corallonne replied, but her voice was muted, hushed. The Ellariannatte had fallen silent as well, and he retreated.

  “Adam. Angel.” She signed danger. Words were visual, here. To the Senniel bard, she said, “Quiet your voice.”

  She didn’t see his answering expression.

  Corallonne said, into the ensuing silence, “The tangle is not yet here,” as if the location could move.

  And it could, Jewel thought. It could. It was not a place as she understood geography, not even a place like her forest, her private rooms. She felt it as a presence, or as a comingling of presences, as if she could see the hushed gossip of a large, gathered crowd. As if that gossip carried anger, rage, helplessness—all things that turned a crowd into a mob.

  And she could see the butterfly’s glow, could hear the sudden storm of its song. Where she had heard the voice of a young girl, raised in a fluting sort of wordless, joyful song, she now heard the rage and despair—utter despair—that underlay it, or perhaps existed by its side. It was an odd thought.

  Kallandras was staring at the butterfly.

  Other eyes turned to it as well, hearing now what Jewel heard. She lost the sound of its song for one moment when the dragon roared.

  • • •

  Shadow hissed. His fur was sleek and flat, his claws scratching stone, although the rest of the forest floor was of dirt.

  “You are sensitive,” their host said. “We are much closer to the heart of the tangle than I perceived. It is no longer safe here, Terafin. I bid you withdraw.” She glanced once at Celleriant, her lips thinning, but held her peace; she did not do the same for Shianne. “Shandalliaran, it is no longer safe for you.”

  “Where they go, I must follow,” the former Arianni said; she was white as bleached bone, pale with the absence of color.

  “Will you not then warn them?”

  “Of what? The White Lady is trapped; she is all but lost. To reach her, there are no safe paths. Even contested paths, where our peoples war, will no longer lead us to her.” She had paled with each sentence; her hands were fists. From the corner of an eye, Jewel saw Adam move to stand beside her; saw Shianne drape an arm protectively—or possessively—across his shoulder.

  “There might be no existing paths,” Jewel said, her voice even but low. “But we don’t walk across water, either.”

  Angel understood. Terrick lifted an iron brow.

  “There are some places we can’t go. We can’t build what we need to build there, no matter how desperate we are. We can’t walk across water. Even if the land is at war and the ground is treacherous, water can’t be made into what we need.”

  “It might be touched by ice,” Celleriant offered. He was waiting, measuring—both Jewel and the environment. His desire to reach the White Lady’s side was no less visceral, no less desperate in the end, than Shianne’s. But Celleriant, unlike Jewel or Shianne, had forever.

  “Fine. Water was a bad example.
Fire? Would fire be better?”

  Angel lifted hands, signed; Adam signed back. She watched what they both said and did not say, then shook her head. Her own hands were bunched in fists; she couldn’t join their conversation.

  But she felt it, in the pit of her stomach, in the beat of her heart, the tightness of her hands: certainty. It was not safe to continue. And continue, regardless, she must.

  “My companions,” she began, turning to Corallonne.

  Angel said, “I’m going with you.”

  “You’re not Sen.”

  “So?”

  Jewel glanced briefly at Adam, remembering the dream that had almost killed them both. Shadow growled, low and wordless. Adam was not Angel. He was pale—although that might have been because Shianne’s grip was so tight her knuckles threatened to pop out of her skin.

  It was Adam Jewel wanted to leave behind. Adam and Shianne. She opened her mouth to ask. The words would not leave her lips. She could not find breath to speak them. She tried twice; the third time she lifted her hands and signed.

  Adam was not Angel. She considered him part of her den, her made family, but every member of that den was individual; they had their own thoughts, their own way of doing things. Adam’s had been formed by his family, his blood-kin—Jewel was Matriarch. Whatever she told him to do, he would do. Angel? He’d never been that person. He never would be.

  But it was Angel who was staring at her, eyes slightly narrowed; Angel whose hands lifted in reply. Adam was silent, pale, steady. He was the most truly gentle person Jewel thought she’d ever met. His sister and his cousin had been nothing like him, nor had most of his kin, male or female. But gentle was not stupid. Gentle was not, in the end, weak.

  It was Angel’s hands he watched, now; Angel’s gaze he met. He turned his back to Jewel, and his elbows moved; he was still signing. In the end, he nodded.

  “I will go with you,” he said quietly.

  “I don’t want you to go with me.”

  “No. You don’t. You are even less suitable to be Matriarch than Margret.” As he said the words, he smiled; it was a rueful smile, a type of surrender. “You don’t want me to go with you—but you need me to be there.”

  “I don’t even know what we’ll need—”

  “Yes, Matriarch, you do.”

  “I’m not your matriarch. Margret is. And she’s halfway across the world right now, waiting for you to come home.” It was true. It was all true.

  Adam lifted his chin. “I am Arkosan. I am of Arkosa. But you have been kin to me, and you are kin to me now. You are Terafin, not Arkosan, yes. But Yollana was Havallan, and when she gave commands, the Matriarchs listened, even Margret.”

  “Adam—”

  “You are Matriarch,” he repeated. “And you are afraid to be Matriarch.” To the great, gray cat he said, “She needs me.”

  “She is afraid to need you because you almost died.”

  “Had I not been there, she would have died.”

  “Yesssssss.”

  “I do not always trust your fear,” Adam said, speaking once again to Jewel. “But your intentions and your instincts? Those, I trust.” He switched to Torran. “I will go where you go.” Frowning, he knelt.

  “That is not wise,” Corallonne told him, her voice smooth as worked stone, and just as hard.

  “No, Lady,” Adam replied, without looking up. “But being healer-born isn’t wise, either. My kin consider it almost a curse.” His lips twisted in something that might have been a smile, if someone had broken it before it fully formed. He had become something strange, something other, in his absence from Arkosa, and he wasn’t certain what he would be to the Arkosans when he returned.

  Would he lie? Would he hide? Jewel’s hands were shaking enough that she had to force them from fists. Would they reject him? She’d keep him. She’d keep him if they didn’t want him.

  But even thinking it, she knew. Adam was Arkosan. Adam was loved. If he had become something strange and other, he was still both of those things. The people who had known him, some since birth, would love him regardless. Her Oma had known that Jewel was seer-born; she had feared for Jewel, but she had never stopped loving her or watching over her. Not while she drew breath.

  Adam placed both of his hands, palm down, against the forest floor.

  The roar—of dragon, of monster, of angry demon—returned in force, in fury.

  Jewel froze.

  Corallone and Shianne were white as alabaster. Celleriant moved instantly to stand before Jewel, his sword like lightning, but with a hilt attached.

  It was Kallandras who spoke; Kallandras who gave voice to the thought that was forming above a sudden pit of terrified certainty.

  “That,” he said softly, “was Snow.”

  The Hidden Wilderness

  The winding of horns grew louder and more insistent as the bear trundled—with astonishing speed—through the ancient snow. The shadowy fingers of branches through moonlight grew softer and more attenuated; the bear’s gold-tinged fur became, as he worked, the only source of light. Ice glittered yellow as he labored, but the moonlight was gone.

  Carver looked up to see clouds, or what he thought might be clouds, as the night sky lost the heart of silver light. He froze. What diminished the moon’s light in this winter world was not cloud, but . . . wings. Long, fine wings that seemed to stretch almost across the horizon.

  He had seen those wings before, although they had not been so large. He had seen this demon in the heart of Averalaan, on the day of the victory parade that marked the true end of the Southern War—or at least this iteration of it. A warning, then, that the war was not finished; the Southern part had been a skirmish; the real battle was to come.

  “Ellerson.”

  The domicis turned in the direction Carver was now facing, the tunneling, talking bear almost forgotten.

  “We’ve seen him before.”

  The bear shouldered them both out of the way, knocking them to the left and the right as he shoved himself between them. Walls of snow caught them before they could otherwise reach the ground.

  “This,” the bear said, “is bad.” He swiveled a head that seemed larger and brighter in Carver’s direction; his eyes were narrow, his fangs exposed. Carver thought he could see the echoes of a different shape, a different form, in the golden light that seemed to stream off his fur. His nose rose, and he seemed to exhale a golden mist as he gazed upon the creature that now graced the skies with his dark flight.

  He was beautiful, Carver thought, even through the fear he caused.

  The fear and the winding horns. Carver could hear metal against metal; the clink of chain, the subtle scrape of greaves against barding. He could see the Wild Hunt in its full majesty; they were the color of moonlight and Winter.

  “They do not ride to hunt,” the bear said softly. “They ride to war. Look, boy, and look well; this is what the Lord of these lands remembers best.” His voice grew quiet. “This and the creature above them now.” And as he spoke, tears nestled in the folds of fur beneath his eyes—eyes that seemed, suddenly, to be ancient.

  “I had not seen him,” the bear whispered. “I had heard, but I had not seen the truth of it for myself. Better that I had slept, then wakened now.” He fell silent, and to Carver’s surprise, lost substance, becoming again the much smaller animal he had been when he had first appeared.

  Without thought, Carver bent and retrieved the beast as if he were a cat. A real cat, not the winged, fanged variety.

  “You are warm, boy,” the creature said. “And foolish beyond measure. It is never safe to invite the ancients into your bosom. Remember it. Remember this, too: no matter how quickly you flee, you cannot escape your memories or your fears; they are within you, part of the measure of who you are.” Although he spoke to Carver, his eyes were upon the demon and the Wild Hunt as demonic wings slowly folded, and their bearer came down to the earth. The moon was once again visible, its light harsher and brighter, as if it, too, bore witness.


  From a distance, storms could be beautiful. And this was a storm of rage and pain and fury. Carver had seen the demon once before, but not like this. His voice was raised in wordless pain, long before the Wild Hunt had closed with him. Their voices clashed with his, as potent a weapon as the swords—and spears—they bore. Their shields were raised, and Carver thought he could see the heraldry across the long, smooth surfaces that glinted in the silver light.

  Silver became red; the color of blood and the color of fire. The demon had drawn sword, called shield. He flew above them but skirted the reach of their weapons because his chosen weapons did not give height the vantage if he wished to destroy.

  And he did, Carver thought.

  “Yes,” the creature said. “And no. That is memory, for the ancients. It is ever new, and ever renewed. He was a fool to come here now. His presence will hasten the end of this dream.”

  Carver stilled. This was the dream of a Sleeper, if he had understood anything that had been said in the West Wing in the past month—and there was only one way this dream was going to end. “Can you stop him?”

  The small creature hissed, very catlike, in outrage. “Stop him? Stop him? Perhaps if I attempt to throw you beneath his sword, it might catch his attention. But not yet. The ring you bear will not protect you from the Wild Hunt at the moment: this is elemental; they will not even see you. This is what happens when dreams turn to nightmare. You have not seen pain yet.” He shook himself then. “And I am grieved to miss it. But it will buy time.”

  “Where do you lead us?” Ellerson asked; he had been silent, watching as Carver watched.

  “To safety, of a kind. This is not the place to make a stand unless we have no choice. I will survive. Probably.” He did not resume the bear’s shape. “You said you can walk across the snow, and I would like to see it for myself.” To Carver, he added, “I like your cloak. It smells of nostalgia.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Corallonne’s Land

  ADAM AND ANGEL LOOKED instantly to Jewel as Adam lifted his hands. He was trembling, almost shuddering.