“Shianne,” she said, her hand fixed to Shadow’s head, “when you first met Shadow, you were surprised at his size.”
“Yes.”
“But you recognized him.”
“Of course. He is eldest.”
“Is that what Snow and Night are becoming? What they were?”
Silence. Three beats of silence. “I do not know. They were old when I was young. They did not look as they look now, and their claws were never sheathed. In the court, we were told stories of the glory of their many hunts—and, Terafin, they claimed to have injured the dragon. I thought, at times, that they were his distant kin.”
This caused Shadow to yowl in outrage, and that was a comfort to Jewel; it was his normal outrage, his normal voice, his normal hissing spit. He was insulted, of course.
“Did they have fur?”
Again, silence. Two beats. “They are not now what they were when I first caught sight of them, by the White Lady’s side. She did not care for them then. I do not imagine she would care for them now.”
“But did they have fur? Did they have scales? Was there a reason that you thought they might be related to a dragon?”
“Fur. Scales. I do not know. What I saw, in my infancy, was what lay beneath their outer appearance. It is what I see, now, when I look at them. It is what they are, not what they appear to be. But . . .”
“But?”
“They are not what they were. Oh, they are,” she added quickly as Shadow began to sputter. “But they are . . . more. There is more to them than there was, then. The force of their ancient selves lies coiled within them, still, but it is buried.”
“It is hardly an improvement,” Calliastra said, with withering scorn, as if she, too, remembered.
Shadow’s head, still beneath Jewel’s hand, swiveled as he eyed Calliastra.
“Not now,” Jewel told him. “We need to find your brothers.”
“It won’t be safe if they’re making that much noise,” Calliastra said.
“Safe for who?”
“Are they yours?” The darkness-born woman demanded. “You have always refused to answer that question. You prevaricate. You make excuses. Here, in the wilderness, and there, in the tangle, there is only yes or no. And, Terafin, if the answer is not yes, you will die. You will all die.”
• • •
Shadow said nothing, but his side-eye was turned on Jewel, not the child of gods. He seemed to be waiting for her answer, and she had none she wanted to give. She understood loyalty. She understood kin. She understood the ways in which the ties of blood could supersede all else.
She understood—she thought she understood—love. She loved Finch. She loved Teller. She loved Angel and had grown to love Adam. But in none of those examples—and, of course, there were others—would she have said she owned them. Did she love them? Yes. Did they love her? Yes, although the reasons for that were far less clear to Jewel herself. But were they hers?
They followed her orders—when she gave them. But she’d certainly asked Jester and Carver to tone things down in the past, and their answer had not been compliance. Nor had she expected it. If asked if she owned her den-kin, she’d’ve answered swiftly, viscerally. No.
But if the answer was yes, did it even apply to the cats?
“What were they?” she asked Calliastra. “What were they before?”
“Can you not hear their voices?”
“We can all hear them, yes.”
“Have you ever heard them speak like that before?”
She started to say no, paused, frowned. “Yes.”
“Oh?”
“When angry. They roared thus at the Warden of Dreams.”
Shadow nodded, as if satisfied.
“They are not angry now.”
“Oh, they are,” Jewel replied grimly. “It’s just lasting longer. And at least this time, it’s not my mansion that’s going to take the brunt of it.” She began to walk, and in her wake, her companions followed. Only Shadow walked by her side; he had to. She wasn’t moving her hand.
• • •
Jewel couldn’t mark the exact moment when the forest changed; she was aware that it had, but the change had not been instant; trees grew taller, thicker, and sparser. There was a footpath between them, and she followed that until Terrick pulled her up short. The older Rendish warrior had his ax in hand; he had shouldered his heavy pack in such a way that dropping it would be a matter of seconds, no more.
He spoke in his native tongue to Angel; Angel replied. They weren’t arguing, not exactly, but they weren’t agreeing, either.
“What’s the problem?” she asked.
“If the tangle is not a fixed geographic location, Terrick considers the footpath suspect. It’s clear that Corallonne considers the tangle all but impassable. If people do not walk here—”
“She did not say they do not walk here; she implied heavily that those that do do not return,” Calliastra said. She was pale, her skin the white of death, her hair the black of darkness; the shadow of her wings was still a soft blur. “It is more than possible that the tangle itself carries the imprint of those who have traversed it. Little is known of the laws of its landscape. It has no Lord.”
And Jewel said, reflexively and without thought, “Yes, it does.” It was never wise to disagree with Calliastra; it required finesse, and a better choice of words. But this was visceral certainty, words born of gift, not observation or experience.
Calliastra’s expression rippled with obvious displeasure. But there was, in the lines that finally settled, some hint of curiosity and even acceptance. “You are certain?”
Jewel nodded.
“And has your vision produced something as simple as the name of the Lord of these lands?”
“No. That’s not the way it works.”
“Can you look? Can you look for the answer?”
“Here? In the tangle? Is that what you would advise? You didn’t seem all that keen on the idea before we entered it.”
Calliastra stared at her for one long, silent beat, and then she threw back her head and laughed. Her laughter, like the raw, loud roar of the cats, was at home here. It was right. And it was every bit as dangerous. “No mortal of any sense has ever asked my advice, and when I have offered unasked, no mortal of any wisdom has followed it. I am death, Jewel. Love is death.” She paused to look up the length of tree, her laughter folding, in an instant, into pain and fury and resentment.
• • •
An hour later, or perhaps less, the footpath remained. The forest remained. It was not Corallonne’s forest, but there were marked similarities. No birds sang here, however. No insects buzzed. The only butterfly that flew was the one that Jewel had brought from Fabril’s reach—but it did fly here, landing on tree and branch and bent stalk of wild plant that might have been grass were it not such a deep shade of blue.
It did not sing, in this place. Jewel asked Kallandras if he could still hear its voice—her voice—and he shook his head. The distant cats roared once, twice, and fell silent. The path led in the direction of those voices.
“What does the tangle do?” Jewel asked.
“Do? It exists.”
“You implied that there was a use for it—at least to the living, walking gods.”
“Did I?”
“Yes.”
“It is irrelevant. You have no god’s blood in your veins, and even those of us born to gods cannot safely touch the heart of the tangle.”
“And the gods could.”
“I did not say they did so in any safety. They did not. But it was their risk to take. Rulers sacrifice pawns,” she continued. “And in order to rule efficiently, in order to rule without heartbreak, they keep the pawns at a distance; they appreciate them for what they are, but they move them to ruthless purpose.
“Even among the gods, there was hierarchy, an order of importance. Where beings of power gather, it is always thus, is it not, Lord Celleriant?”
He seemed suspici
ous of her question, which was fair; his suspicion stemmed from confusion, which was less so. To Celleriant there was clearly only one answer to the question, and it was so obvious he could not divine the game being played.
Jewel ground her teeth as Shadow hissed laughter.
“It was always so,” he finally replied.
“And so, gods died. Did you know that they could die?”
Jewel nodded.
“Do you understand what happened to those that did die?”
“What do you mean, what happened?”
“When mortals die, do they not leave corpses?”
“Depends on how they died.” It was Angel who answered. Calliastra accepted his answer as if Jewel had offered it herself.
“Do you believe that gods have bodies to desert, the way mortals do? Do you believe that their existence is somehow twin to yours, but larger and more powerful?”
“She does.” This time, it was Shianne who answered. Calliastra found this interruption more annoying, if one judged by expression. “I believe they all do.”
“Not all,” Celleriant said.
Shadow hissed.
Avandar said nothing, but in the silence of thought, she felt his curiosity and his caution. He had seen gods die. He had never spoken of what he had seen. Nor did Jewel now ask, although she thought she would. Later.
“They believe that this,” Shianne continued, raising hand to the height of rounded belly, “is how all offspring are born. They believe this is the only way. They believe that you were born in this fashion. They believe that I was.”
Calliastra’s eyes were round and obsidian.
“If birth, to them, is this, death must be the same: an echo of their lives, but larger, grander.”
“That is not the way the gods died,” Calliastra finally said.
Have a care, Terafin.
“What happened to them? What does death mean to the gods?”
“An ending, of sorts,” Calliastra said. “As there was a beginning, of sorts.” She hesitated, then. Glanced at Shianne, who seemed only confused, and Celleriant, who was more shuttered.
“They are not their bodies, although their bodies can be damaged. In some battles, their containments could be shattered, rendering them ineffective. Were they mortal—or immortal in the way of the firstborn—that would be death. They were not; they were gods. But in some cases, Terafin, more than those containers was shattered, disrupted. Then, gods fell to their enemies.”
Jewel understood where Calliastra was leading this discussion; it required Jewel’s participation. She accepted it. “What happened to the fallen gods?”
“Where they could be, they were consumed. Those elements of their being that were in harmony with the victor of their long war became part of the victor.”
“And those that weren’t?”
Calliastra shrugged. “There is no bridge, for gods. What do you think happened to them?”
“I honestly have no idea. We’re not accustomed to thinking of gods dying.”
“Oh?”
“To die, you have to live.”
Silence, then, as the words sank roots.
Calliastra, however, smiled. “It is an odd wording, but it is apt. The gods do not live as you perceive life; they do not die as you perceive death.” Her smile grew edges—but those edges had always been there, beneath the darker velvet. “Much has been said about gods, Terafin. About their wars, and their acts of creation and destruction. As you watch the firstborn in awe when they go to war, we watched the gods.
“And when the wars ended, when peace—of a kind—was brokered, we watched the world perish. Magic left it, seeping out of the earth and the skies and the waters, as blood seeps from mortal wounds. We, scions of the gods, were scions as well of the world itself; we were anchored in place, in time; we could not transcend them.
“We were deserted. But not all lands could be so easily divested of some part of their essential nature. The Stone Deepings. The Green Deepings. The hidden ways.
“The tangle, Terafin.”
“What exactly is the tangle?”
“That has never been fully ascertained—but many believe that the tangle contains the deaths of ancient gods.”
“It killed gods?”
“No. It is what their deaths left behind.”
• • •
This was wrong in some fashion. Jewel could feel it yet could not articulate much beyond that; it was instinct. But the instincts of the seer-born were never simple. She turned to Shadow. “Call your brothers.”
“Are you stupid?” he demanded, in obvious outrage.
“Demonstrably. Is it dangerous? Will they not recognize you?”
“It is dangerous,” Shianne said softly, “because they will. If what I hear is correct, your cats are in the process of being reborn.”
“As what?”
“As themselves, as they once were.” She did not look intimidated by the prospect; there was a glimmer of something that might have been anticipation, had she been human and not merely mortal.
“Shadow.”
“Yesssssss?”
“What did the Winter King do?”
He hissed.
“I mean it. I need to know. I need to know yesterday, but I’ll settle for now. What did he do?” Her skin was tingling in a very peculiar way, as if she were lightning that clouds had not yet released.
“He died,” Shadow growled.
“Terafin, there is a risk—”
Jewel did not remove her hand. Shadow’s eyes had grown rounder; she thought at first it was his outraged expression taking root. It wasn’t. His eyes were larger. His fangs had lengthened, and his claws—his claws were scraping the stone beneath his feet as if he could shatter it just by scratching.
The only feet that stood on stone were Shadow’s. Not even Calliastra changed the ground on which she stood, and she was daughter to gods, one of whom Jewel did not have the courage to name—not here, not in the wilderness.
The stone beneath great cat paws was scored, scarred.
The cats had once been made of stone.
She knew—thought she knew—what must be done.
“Yesssss,” Shadow said, although he had volunteered no information. “But you cannot, foolish girl. These lands are not your lands. These lands are not anyone’s lands. But they could be ours.” And he roared.
• • •
Snow replied.
Night replied.
There was an ebullience, a joy, in a sound that was otherwise death. Shadow struggled a long moment with silence, as if he meant to cling to it by main force.
What had the Winter King done? “He was in his own lands,” she said, speaking to herself, but speaking out loud.
“Yessssss.”
“And when I was in my own lands—”
“Yesssss.”
“Are they yours, Terafin?” Calliastra demanded. Her voice was both distant and more urgent, as if she cared about the answer. No, as if she cared about the right answer. Jewel turned to her, and then away. These lands were not her lands. What she could do in her own with barely a thought—with less than a thought—she could not do here.
She suffered no delusions. She could not ask Corallone to cede some part of her lands. Even were the firstborn willing, it would make no difference; they walked the tangle, now—unclaimed wilderness in the heart of Corallonne’s stronghold.
Could the tangle be claimed?
Yes. Yes and No. The No was relevant here because it was Jewel’s answer. Jewel couldn’t claim it. But she didn’t think the cats could, either. Instead, it claimed them, was claiming them. No, that was wrong. It wasn’t making them; it wasn’t unmaking them. It was unmaking what had been made of them.
“Shadow,” she whispered. “What do you want?”
“I want you to be less stupid.”
“Want something attainable.”
Shadow hissed laughter. The laughter ran through the whole of his body; his claws momentaril
y stilled. “You want permission, stupid girl.”
“Yes.”
“That is not the way the wilderness works. While you are waiting, it will devour you. And your stupid friends.”
“How does the wilderness work, then?”
Shadow’s eyes were luminescent; they implied darkness by being its opposite. “Speak,” he hissed. “Be heard. If you are loud enough, it will hear you. If you are strong enough, it will listen. If you are determined enough, it will obey. It will be yours.”
Calliastra said, again, “Are they yours, Terafin?”
And Jewel answered.
Yes.
• • •
The cats were not cats. They had never been cats, not even truly in form. They had been stone, when she had first seen them; flesh and fur—and noise—when she had encountered them again. She had wondered, often, why they had come to her; had wondered if they somehow existed as part of a forest of metallic trees.
They didn’t.
They were very like the Stone Deepings and the road she had walked through them. The Stone Deepings, like the Green Deepings, were part of the wilderness, and in them, things grew that were not mortal, and not of the mortal world. There were wonders, and dangers, and death. But when stone spoke, it killed the unwary; that was its nature.
She had not consciously tried to take the Stone Deepings as her own.
It would not have worked, Avandar told her, some hint of ancient frustration coloring the words.
She knew. Maybe some part of her that was only seldom touched by words, and therefore thought, had always known. But it was on the roads in the Stone Deepings that she had faced the Winter Queen. It was on those roads that she had remembered who she was, where she was from, and what she was fighting for.
And the road had answered not the imperative of the Winter Queen and her Wild Hunt, but the imperative of an orphan who had built a home and family in the distant, distinctly mortal streets of the twenty-fifth holding. She had held the road, although she could not own it.
It had been hers for that moment in time because it was of her. Had she asked permission of it? No, of course not. It hadn’t occurred to her that she needed permission. If the Stone Deepings spoke—and she was uneasily aware that they could—they didn’t speak to her in that way.
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