“She could find him,” the gray cat said. “If she looked. But she is not ready to look.”
“And you do not know where he is, Eldest?”
Shadow examined his paws, lifting the right one to flex claws. “Maybe he doesn’t want to be found.”
“He probably doesn’t,” Jewel told Shianne, trying to sound natural. Her voice was too thin, too reedy, in comparison; everything about the syllables except their content felt superficial. “Night was making enough noise to wake the dead. Snow . . . isn’t.”
“And it is unlike your cats to be silent.”
Jewel nodded.
“Do you fear for his safety?”
“No.” Jewel paused for one long breath. “Not until you asked.”
• • •
The men came into view, shimmering in the distance as if the road was hot as desert sands. Hectore could not count them; they rode two abreast, but their ranks seemed to extend into that shimmering. They did not gallop or trot; they moved as if they were escorts—carriage or caravan. But they carried spears, and those spears reflected light beneath a forest that had, in an instant, become canopy.
Hectore had seen gods before, in the Between.
These men were not gods, but they were so perfectly rigid, so seamless in uniformity—of height, of armor, of weapons and even of mounts—that they did not seem real. He had, however, become familiar with things that did not seem real. They did not seem to be aware of him as they approached. He chose to stand with his hands by his sides; he drew no weapon, well aware that he had none of any use against this number of men and the arms they bore. He felt a twinge of fear, . . . and a twinge of curiosity. Both grew.
“Hectore.”
“I have not moved,” Hectore replied. “But I am going to be asked to move soon.”
“What do you see?”
He described it.
Andrei cursed. It had been decades since Hectore had heard such liberal cursing from his servant, a man many suspected was entirely composed of starch.
“Banners, Hectore?”
“Yes, now that you ask. But I cannot easily see the standard. It is held high,” he added, “but it seems composed of silver.”
“You are certain?”
Hectore did not deign to reply. “You are having difficulty reaching my side?”
“Yes. There are no paths here; there are rivers, brooks. There are oceans. But those moving streams are the only way to progress through the tangle. And this is a poor analogy; I will think of better, in future. But if you stand as you are standing for a day, for two, for three, the tangle will change around you constantly.
“There are some who can follow the ebb and flow of a particular stream, seeking its estuary—but there is a risk in that, for once you reach ocean, you cannot easily return. In this place it is better to keep moving—and it is deadly to keep moving, both.”
“I do not believe,” Hectore replied, voice mild, “that it was my idea to come here.”
“It was entirely your idea.”
“It was my idea to follow; had you decided against it, I would now be attending to a meal or less pleasant negotiations. I do not understand why you fear for The Terafin here; the girl is seer-born. She will not take a wrong step unless there are no correct ones.”
“There are frequently no correct ones; there are less disastrous choices. There are some streams—to continue my analogy—into which no mortal should step, and all streams flow through all points eventually.”
“And the ocean? No, never mind. I believe our riders have noticed my presence.”
• • •
They had. They did not lower their spears, but one man raised a hand, and the entire procession came to a slow stop. Hectore was surprised; he would not have considered it strange had they simply chosen to ride him down.
The banner stopped; the riders—two—came forward.
They did not ride horses, although Hectore might have been forgiven for assuming it. They did not—as The Terafin sometimes did—ride great, antlered beasts, either; Hectore could not name the beast they rode. It was, in general shape, an animal; it was hooved, like a deer or a horse, and it had a long tail, which could be glimpsed clearly by its motion. But the head was too narrow for a horse, too thick for a stag.
And Hectore could understand why. The creatures’ riders were not mortal, not human. They reminded Hectore of the cold armsman who occasionally attended The Terafin herself. They had the long white hair, plaited in warriors’ braids; they had the same perfect skin, the same silver eyes. They wore gauntlets, helms, their visors open to air and sky.
And they looked at him with faces that might have been carved of ice or blown in perfect glass.
“Greetings, stranger,” the man on the right said. “We have need of the road today and ask that you move to allow our Lord passage.” The words were musical, beautiful; they implied song, or wind chimes, caught in syllables for a moment before being released.
Hectore’s throat was dry. He felt oddly self-conscious, standing here, his clothing meant for merchant caravans, his skin aged and weathered by sun and wind and time. These men had never known age—and would never know it—if they were men at all. But he thought, watching them, they had not known youth, either. He framed a reply with care; he chose the same tonal formality that they had chosen. His knees did not bend, for he understood that to show weakness here was death.
“I regret that I cannot accommodate your reasonable request. This road is not the road I must walk, but I dare not lose it.”
The man stiffened, his eyes narrowed.
“It was not a request,” his companion said.
“Ah. Might I know in whose name you command me?”
“The Winter Queen.”
• • •
“The Winter Queen?” Andrei asked, as he stepped—at last—onto the road itself.
Hectore noted that his servant’s hair was both unbound and long; that his face had lengthened, that he had gained three quarters of a foot in height. His clothing at first appeared to be ragged—but no. It was indeterminate now; it flirted with shape, with texture, with color, but did not seem to settle on any of them, as if they were all too fleeting to catch and hold.
The two riders had shown no alarm at all at Hectore’s presence; they had been about to descend into contempt or even annoyance.
But Andrei? Andrei was not Hectore.
“The Winter Queen is not Lord of these lands, and even were she—and it is, as you well know, impossible—she is not with you.”
Hectore allowed Andrei to take the reins of the conversation. He glanced to the side and saw that Jarven had joined him. To his mild consternation, Jarven’s feet did not seem to touch the road—or the earth to either side of it; he appeared to be floating slightly above it, his lips compressed in obvious concentration.
It was the concentration that Hectore found most disquieting. Jarven had taken injuries without blinking or altering his expression; he might have been pleased and pleasantly surprised by the pain. He was an accomplished liar; he understood men—and women—well. His words could not be trusted, but they could be sifted. What he wanted you to know or to believe was information; what he thought you might believe was also information. What he did not say was information. He had always been master of every stage on which he chose to stand, and he was not particularly protective of his dignity. If a man could be said not to care about the opinions of others, it was Jarven.
“Do not think so loudly,” the Terafin merchant said.
“I was not aware that my thoughts could be heard.”
“Your expression is remarkably unguarded, and it is giving me a headache.”
“I am afraid I cannot indulge your headache at the moment.”
Jarven fell silent as the two men dismounted.
• • •
“We carry her banner.”
“And it is a lovely piece of cloth; I see her hand in its weaving, and it is seldom that she choo
ses to weave. But the cloth is not the man; she is not present.”
“Her will is.”
“Her lieges are.” Andrei’s hair rose as if at a gust of wind; that wind touched nothing else. No, Hectore thought; it touched the air, chilling it instantly. They had called their Lord the Winter Queen, and Winter, he thought, must descend.
Andrei did not move. “The road you follow will continue here; the road we follow will not.”
“What,” a new voice said, “seeks to hinder us?” And this voice? This voice was almost human. Jarven’s gaze narrowed, mirror to Hectore’s. The voice was male, masculine—but it was chill.
“What, indeed?” Andrei replied. His voice shook the road beneath Hectore’s feet. Without thought, Hectore reached out to place a hand on his servant’s shoulder. He intended, now, to take back the conversation he had surrendered.
A man appeared, walking between the unnamed mounts and their riders, his feet heavy on the stone road. He did not wear armor, gauntlets, helm, and his face was neither perfect nor inhuman. His hair was black, his brows black, his eyes brown; he bore two scars as a bracket to his face across his lower jaws. He was not a young man, not a youth; he was a man in his prime, at the peak of his power and the certainty that came with it.
His brows rose as he saw Hectore. “This is not your forest,” he said.
“No,” Hectore agreed. “But neither is it yours. I have been told mortals do not enter the tangle.” He did not bow, but said, “I am Hectore of House Araven.”
“And I am the Winter King.”
• • •
Andrei stiffened beneath Hectore’s palm as the man—the mortal man—reached the last rank of his guards. The two immortals parted, the motion subtle and far too silent for the amount of metal they were wearing.
If the stranger was a man in his prime, it was Jarven’s prime; his eyes were narrowed, but there was a focus, an intensity, to their flickering gaze that implied that he missed nothing. Where the guards were white and silver, he was obsidian and copper. He was, however, Lord here. No one could question that.
His gaze traveled between Hectore and Andrei, narrowing on the latter, before it moved to Jarven ATerafin. It remained there the longest, and Hectore glanced at Jarven, his lips turned in the slightest of frowns. Jarven’s were not; he was smiling broadly. On occasion, Hectore’s wife was uncomplimentary about men and their various rivalries; she opined that civilization occurred because of the women. He was grateful that she was safe at home because she would certainly have been moved to comment about this.
Or perhaps not; she understood that there was a time and place for frustration and condescension, and being in the presence of the Winter King was neither. She would not, however, have been impressed.
Hectore, not notably his wife, was. Jarven could—and frequently did—play the aged, fragile fool with little care for his reputation or the reputation of the men or women around whom he chose to do so. But Hectore understood, watching the two, that the Winter King would never be among their number.
As if Andrei could hear the thoughts Hectore did not put into words, his hair stilled; after a moment, it braided itself neatly into a thick plait that fell down his back. His back was no longer a moving patchwork of fabric—or worse—beneath Hectore’s hand; it became a very, very fine wool, a somber gray that suited the Araven servant’s regular duties. He did not shed the inches of height he had gained, and his face remained longer and somewhat more angular, but it was recognizably Andrei’s face.
Whatever staring contest the Winter King had begun to engage in was forgotten as Andrei once again established himself. Jarven would be annoyed, but his annoyance at the moment was not Hectore’s problem. He willed the Terafin merchant to speak, to intervene, because Andrei was servant here, not master, and must remain so.
Ah, Hectore thought, shaking his head slightly. Andrei was servant, yes—but Jarven was not his master. Hectore was.
“And what is this House Araven?”
“It is a mortal family,” Hectore replied. “Perhaps your sojourn with the immortal has been long enough that you have forgotten.” He used the last word deliberately and was rewarded—if reward was the correct word—with the edge of very narrowed eyes.
“I am aware of the significant clans in every one of the cities.” The tone of his voice made his title appropriate; it was ice. “Araven is not among them.”
“I am unaware of your cities,” Hectore replied. He smiled. There was no warmth in it.
“This . . . man . . . serves you?”
“He is my servant, yes.”
A whisper started in the distance. It broke against the Winter King’s back; Hectore could catch syllables, but they did not or would not cohere.
“I would accuse you of lying if I had not seen the truth of it myself. I would have the whole of the truth.”
“Perhaps. But you would have it at another time. There is a task we must accomplish here.”
“Oh?” The Winter King’s hand fell to his sword, which had been hidden by the fall of his cape, the shadows of which did not follow any light Hectore could see in the clearing.
Andrei stiffened; Hectore lowered his hand.
“The road is not ours,” Hectore continued. “Nor is it yours. We must stand here a moment longer, and then we will be on our way.”
To his surprise, the Winter King’s brows rose, as if in astonishment. His attention fell, once again, to Andrei, and it was anchored there. “The road is mine.” Before Andrei could speak, he continued. “Only the road. The lands, as you surmise, are not; they belong to no one. They are not solid enough to be bound, not sentient enough to remember something as complex as a name—even a mortal one.”
“The road is yours?” Andrei asked. His voice was polite, neutral, and nonetheless full of doubt.
Hectore wished to move his feet. He wished to take a step, to bend knees; he felt as if he had been standing in place for a very long time. And perhaps he had.
“The road is mine. You will allow a mortal his vanity; I am proud of it. But I am not as you are. The tangle is not my home.”
“Yet you are here, where mortals do not walk.”
“I am.”
“If you can force a road upon the tangle, might you be persuaded to alter it slightly? I do not have the same ability, and the road we must walk is not this one.”
“Is it not? As you must guess, the making of such a road is not a trivial endeavor. The road will carry me between two points, and only when I walk it am I safe from the primordial. It is . . . odd that it crosses a path you feel you must take.” He gestured then.
The two immortals withdrew, mounted, and returned to the distant carriage.
“Does the tangle have will?” he asked Andrei.
“Yes. But it is not a single will; it is a plurality, and there is no majority. It is not a place of consensus, but a place of power. Where will is strongest, it will override all others—but even that cannot hold at the edges; strength is tested, battle commenced, victory achieved—but it is the victory of the wounded and the dying, only. Will is broken, subsumed, devoured, but there is never cohesion.”
“Would that I had had you when I began this endeavor.”
“You wish to conquer the tangle?” He lifted a hand as the Winter King unsheathed his blade. “He is my lord. Attempt to destroy him, and I will destroy you before returning, in full, to the tangle. You will not find me, Winter King. No road you build, no matter how strong, how solid, how bloody, will reach me.
“But no wall you build will keep you safe, if Hectore of Araven is dead.”
To Hectore, the Winter King said, “I would know how you did this.”
“Did what, exactly?”
“How did you bind namann? How did you bind the godspawn?”
“You would never understand it,” Andrei replied, before Hectore could. “No more would you,” he added to Jarven, although the Terafin merchant had not spoken a word.
“You claim to lo
ve him, then? This is the sentimental drivel that has long plagued the foolish of our own kind.”
Andrei said nothing.
Hectore said, “He has made no such claim.”
“He has heavily implied it. I am the Winter King. I am, of course, heartless. I exist in isolation when the last hunt is called.”
Silence. A beat. Two. It was Hectore who broke it. Of course it was.
“And before that last hunt?”
“As you see: the Winter Queen’s servants serve me—at her command. I am their Lord; my word is considered her word. There is nothing I cannot command of these men saving only that they raise sword against her. I live in her Winter Court when I choose to be confined.”
Something in his voice caught at Hectore, and the Araven patris could not look away. “Does she confine herself to her Winter Court often?”
“She is the Wild Hunt, the heart of it,” the Winter King replied. “I have hunted at her side these many months.”
That was a no.
“Do you understand what she desires of a Winter King?” the Winter King continued. “Do you understand how she chooses?”
“No.”
“Have you not explained it?” he asked Andrei, incredulity in the question, as if the Winter Queen was the whole of the world, as if her desire, her choice, was the center of it, the heart of all life. It was the first time that he had seemed genuinely human.
“It is irrelevant to his life,” Andrei replied. “Hectore is not, could not, and will never be Winter King. It would be neither his desire nor hers.”
“And yet you serve him.”
“Power to you, to Winter, is measured in the simple act of survival. But survival among your kind—among your former kind—is not a simple thing.”
“It is.”
“No, Winter King, it is not. It is complex. You think of survival as war. That is one aspect. But among mortals it is not the only one. A man with an army behind him can destroy villages. It has happened. It will happen. That is your definition of strength. If you have an army with which to greet him, you cannot be so easily destroyed.”
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