Yollana terrified her. She terrified the Matriarchs of the other Voyani clans. She was ruthless, unwavering, unflinching.
And she had, no doubt, been Jewel at one point in her life. She was seer-born, as Jewel was. And what she had seen had whittled away compassion or love or comfort until only the desert remained. It was merciless.
“Adam,” Jewel said, pronouncing his name with a Torran inflection.
“Matriarch.”
She flinched but did not correct him.
“Can you take us home?”
He nodded, a hint of doubt in his expression. “If we do not need to return the way we came.” The hesitation grew pronounced; she saw him struggle with it. But he was the scion of Matriarchs and knew better than to ask for explanations. It was death to know the Matriarch’s business—even if the Matriarch was mother or sister.
• • •
Shianne stepped between Jewel and Adam in that instant, the round fullness of protuberant belly pointed in The Terafin’s direction. “You have not completed your quest.” Her voice was full and warm; the words were cold and judgmental.
“I have completed what I can of it,” Jewel replied. There was no doubt in her voice, although no seer-born certainty drove the words themselves. “I came to walk the Oracle’s path. And I came, in the end, to find you, although I did not know it when I started.
“There is nothing I can do in the lands of Corallonne. Even could I, I would never be so foolish. No, it is in my lands, my wilderness, that we will find a path—or forge one.” She had folded her arms without thinking, and attempted to correct this oversight to posture, but it was an old, old habit.
Shianne tilted her chin, but she did not speak. After one long, almost breathless moment, she turned her attention to the woman who did claim rule of these lands. And rulership in the wilderness was not the rulership that Jewel had been aware of at the periphery of her entire life. In some fashion, the wilderness was Corallonne. It reflected her. It obeyed her. It took shape and form in a fashion that pleased her.
Only the tangle did not.
“I have an interest in the White Lady,” Corallonne said to Shianne, the White Lady’s daughter. Or sister. Or echo. Jewel was no longer certain. “I have an interest in her freedom. We are kindred spirits, she and I; we came of age in the same fires, the same wars. We survived, where so many of our kind did not.
“But my interest will not open the ways. I am not certain that the Sen’s will. But I am all but certain that the Sen is the only hope, the only window.”
And Jewel knew, suddenly, that she was wrong. And right. She bowed her head and allowed the conversation to pass above or around her. She needed to go back to Averalaan. She needed to be at home.
And she needed to visit Master Gilafas as soon as humanly possible.
Exhaling, almost unmindful of the conversation that continued with its complex cadences, its stilted give-and-take, she said, “Adam.”
Adam bowed to her, Southern style, as if she were in truth his Matriarch, and she remembered that the former Matriarch had been his mother, the current one, his sister. He then knelt, his hand hovering inches above the forest floor.
Corallonne said abruptly, “What are you doing?”
“With your permission,” he said, not lifting his head, not meeting her eyes, “I wish to create a path to the Sen’s home.” He spoke Torra.
“Oh? And how do you intend to do so?”
Adam placed his left palm flat against the ground. When nothing appeared to happen—when Corallonne herself did not speak to deny him, his left hand joined his right. His eyes became a sweep of dark lashes as they closed.
But Corallonne’s eyes widened. She lifted a hand, and silence fell instantly in the clearing. No birdsong, no cricket, no sound of distant, burbling brook or river, touched them at all. She stared at Adam’s bent head.
“What is he doing?” she asked softly, so softly.
Jewel drew breath, held it briefly. Shianne remained by Adam’s side; he was crouching in the lee of her skirts as if those skirts were a natural outcropping of rock, of cliff. Shianne did not speak, but rather, let a hand fall to Adam’s head. It was an odd echo of the way Jewel handled her cats when she was afraid they might become dangerously fractious, but it did not have the same meaning.
Corallonne noted Shianne’s position, and understood what the gesture meant: it was possessive. Declarative.
“He is healer-born,” Jewel replied, wishing she had not called him by name.
“A healer? Truly?”
“Yes.”
“The mortals do not have healers.”
“We’ve always had—”
“No, little Sen, you have not.”
And Jewel remembered Levec then. Alowan. She remembered Shadow. She remembered Isladar. And her gazed turned to Adam again, grief and surprise and love and fear crowding into it. “We have had healers,” she said, when she could force herself to speak. “Just as we have had Sen.”
“Can you feel what he is attempting?” Corallonne asked as if Jewel had not spoken.
Jewel shook her head. “He is mine. If what he does displeases you or causes you harm, I will pay. It is on my command that he acts—and has acted.”
Corallonne did laugh then. But it was a warm sound, a rich one. “You understand so little of the wilderness and the firstborn, Sen. I would suggest that you avoid them were it possible; I know it will not be. He does not harm me. He does not make that attempt. This close to me—and he is touching me now in a way that none of you ever have or ever will—I can almost hear him.
“I would keep him,” she added softly. “I would keep him here and keep him safe. There will be no safety where he travels, no safety where he rests—your shadow is too long, and other, longer shadows are even now being spread across the lands.” Before Jewel could answer—or perhaps before Shianne could—she lifted a hand. “He would not stay. Even were he to desire it, he would not stay. Can you not hear him? He yearns for home. It is in his breath, in his hands, in his thoughts. He has remained by your side, but it is not by your side that he will stay.”
“No,” Jewel agreed, relaxing. “I thought—”
“You thought to take him home.”
“I thought it was the reason the tangle became desert, yes.”
“Desert? Interesting. But no. He will remain by your side because you walk toward the only home in which he belongs. A pity, really.” She watched Adam, a maternal smile at play around her lips and eyes. Jewel understood it. Jewel had no children, had no desire to have them—she could not imagine bringing a child into a world the Lord of the Hells also walked—but thought she felt the same.
“Has he attempted this in your own lands?” Corallonne asked. The question sounded casual.
“No. We’ve had no need.”
“I almost suggest you let him try.” In the distance, Jewel heard birdsong and insect buzz and something that sounded like howling. Corallonne had let sound return to the clearing. “They will know, of course. Your ancients, your elders, your trees; they will become aware of Adam. Do you understand what he is even attempting?”
“To get us back home.”
“Ah. No. That is the effect it will have. It is not what he attempts. And perhaps,” she added, worry marring affection briefly, “the effect is what he feels he is attempting. You said he was healer-born. I can feel the truth of it as he works. But Jewel, we have had no healers for a very, very long time. It was always thus; we attempted to either keep them or, if they were not in our hands, destroy them. They were ever a danger in the long wars that divided our kind.” She closed her eyes, tilting her chin up, as if, behind her lids, she was looking at something so vast and so awe-inspiring it was only safe to see it thus.
“You have not finished your journey. I will not ask how you will attempt to do so. But . . . I see the light you bear. I will not ask how it came to be in that shape; I will not ask how you returned voice to it—but what I see, I hear. Have a care, li
ttle Sen. The world is waking, and I fear your Adam will be the force that finally opens its eyes.”
It didn’t look like fear, to Jewel.
“It is natural to fear what we desire,” Corallonne said, as if she could hear what Jewel was too wise to say. “Only when desire is the medium through which we live at all do we welcome it with open arms.” Speaking thus, she opened her eyes to look at Calliastra.
“I do not need your pity,” Calliastra snapped.
“It is not pity, sister. We are, all of us, trapped in the moment of our birth—and struggle as we might, we cannot overcome our essential nature. But it is always easy to envy those who do not live within the confines of our own personal cages.”
Calliastra’s laugh was sharp, harsh, discordant. “Envy? You envy me?”
“No. I do not envy the consequences of your existence; I envy the purity of it. And yes, sister, it is a whimsical thought, a whimsical desire. What will you do?”
“I do not require your permission—or your knowledge—to do as I will.”
“You are in my lands. With my permission.”
Jewel saw Calliastra’s eyes shift, saw them lengthen, darken; saw the hint of shadow wings begin to take concrete form as they gained substance. Without thought, she lifted a hand in den-sign, her fingers dancing as she faced the daughter of darkness and desire. She realized her mistake before she’d even finished.
Calliastra frowned as Jewel’s hands stilled. The anger had literally hardened the lines of the firstborn face, but Calliastra was all about anger. Anger, pain, loss, and a hope that could not be eradicated, determination notwithstanding. This could go either way—but reaching out to someone who was nothing but pain always could. Jewel had learned that years ago and could not forget it; it was part of who she was.
Angel did not come to stand at Jewel’s side; Shianne did. But Angel understood, as instinctively as Jewel herself did. Jewel had made the decision, and the consequences that arose from it were now hers to bear. It had never been wise to get between Duster and Jewel, and no one tried.
Jewel exhaled, lifted her hands, signed again.
Calliastra stared at her hands before lifting her gaze, aiming the obsidian glare more deliberately.
“Adam?” Jewel said aloud because Adam couldn’t see the motion of her hands.
He didn’t appear to hear her.
Or perhaps he had. She heard the distinctive rustle of leaves—metallic leaves. She heard the shift of birdsong, and in it, heard other songs, some wrapped in words that she couldn’t understand. Or that she shouldn’t have been able to understand.
“Yes,” one of those voices said, and she glanced then at the tree that she had planted—had been allowed to plant—in Corallonne’s forest. “They are aware of you, Terafin. Jewel. With Corallonne’s permission, you might return to her lands once your Adam has built a path between them.”
“Is that what he’s doing?”
“That, and more. He will not be safe, soon, if he was ever safe.”
“He’ll be at home. He’ll be in my lands.”
“And he is yours?”
“Yes.”
But the tree’s lithe spirit shook his head, and Jewel was inexplicably reminded of the shaking of boughs. “And no, Terafin. The time is coming. He will not be safe. The ancient world will feel this.”
“It’s not the first time he’s done it.”
“No. But the Oracle’s lands are not these lands. She is a power that none of the kindred understand; what occurred there might have been her bidding, her will. She can make paths between any world, at any time of her choosing, and has oft done so on what appears whim.
“This, however, is different. We did not see this in the boy, and we should have. But we know, now. Even at a distance, I can feel it. He is waking the world by slow degree, and first among those wakened will be yours.”
Corallonne took a step back, and the tree spirit joined her, head bowed. His lips moved, and his hands, but Jewel heard wind, breeze, leaves upon leaves like a whisper.
The ground beneath her feet changed; the change was slow and gradual, but it was also unmistakable. The Wild Hunt—all but forgotten—gathered now around Shianne, although she had given no obvious commands. Jewel did not spare them more thought, although she knew she should; they would not be leashed by the commands of a dead king the moment they appeared in her lands.
Or perhaps, she thought, they were unleashed now. She didn’t understand the tangle, didn’t understand the how of it. She did not want to walk there again; she had had nightmares that were more easily navigated. She had released the cats to the tangle.
But no, she thought, and knew it for truth. The cats could traverse the tangle because they didn’t care about the solidity of anything but their personal now.
She heard water, looked; in the distance she could see a brook with a very ornate bridge built to cross it. She had not seen it in her wilderness before but did not feel surprised to see it now. The wilderness that she had claimed had never been fully explored—not by the person who styled herself its Lord.
And that would have to change. Was perhaps changing even now.
“Matriarch,” Shianne said, using the term she had learned from Adam.
Jewel, however, shook her head and once again turned her attention to Calliastra. Her hands had stilled, but remained half-lifted, as if ready to continue a conversation that was meant, at base, to be private. But she had, of course, never taught Calliastra what those movements meant. They might seem childish; all hidden language implied at base a reason to hide, and that implied a lack of power.
But it implied other things, as well. Duster had never been good with words; words had been a deflection, a way of creating space for herself, of driving people away. Of keeping them at a distance because if they ever got too close, they would be just one more thing to lose. Jewel didn’t offer Calliastra words.
She’s not Duster.
No. Jewel held out a hand—her left hand—and waited. Although the godchild’s eyes did not change shape, her wings folded. She reached out with hands that were almost skeletal in shape, and cold—so cold. Her nails were long, sharp, reminiscent of claws or talons. Where they grazed Jewel’s wrist, they cut cloth and broke skin. She felt it; it stung. It stung, she thought, the same way touching Andrei’s invisible tendril had.
She wondered if everything in the old world revolved around blood. But she did not withdraw her hand. She wasn’t certain if Calliastra meant to cut her; wasn’t certain—and didn’t care. Adam was here. If the darknessborn godchild cut through her wrist and severed her hand, he could fix it.
It had never been smart to show Duster fear.
It had never been smart to keep her, either.
And yet, stupid or no, Duster had saved what remained of the den. Were it not for Duster, none of them would have survived the demons that had come for their lives in the twenty-fifth holding.
To Corallonne, without looking at her, Jewel said, “We’re taking your sister with us.”
“So I see. Sister?”
Calliastra didn’t spare her sister either glance or word. She stood, hand in Jewel’s, blood on her nails. But even as she did, those nails receded; her eyes lost the almost crystalline darkness that characterized her rage. Her wings folded, and folded again, until they had vanished. What was left?
A very beautiful, very sensual young woman. Hair of ebony, eyes a strange color that Jewel couldn’t quite describe, their undersides bruised. Her lips were red, her skin the color of death.
“Adam,” Jewel said again, although she did not take her eyes off Calliastra. She understood—as she had understood with Duster—that inasmuch as Calliastra could willingly show vulnerability, this was it. And Duster had been at her most volatile, her most dangerous, when she had taken that risk.
“Matriarch,” Adam said, in response.
“Take us home.”
“Do we have to come back?”
“No.”
&
nbsp; “But the cats—”
“No, Adam. They found us the first time. They’ll find us again.”
Chapter Twenty-One
THERE WAS A MOMENT of dislocation, a moment in which Jewel was no longer certain where she was. She could see the Wild Hunt; she could see the silvered leaves of ancient trees; she could hear the gentle voice of breeze, could feel the deep slumber of earth beneath her feet. To her side, she could see darkness, desire, the commingling of impulses that lead to death; she could feel them touch her face, feathered, cold wings. For one long moment, everything about the world was winter, the ice invisible, the cold inevitable.
She turned toward Angel; he was frozen, fixed in time, his hands half-lifted, as if he meant to sign. She reached out to touch him, lowered her hand, examined his slender face. The peak of Rendish hair would never, she thought, return, and she missed it. She was surprised at how much it had visually defined him.
And even thinking it, she could see the ghost of its presence hovering in place above his familiar face, could almost see his hair rise of its own accord. He had not shifted position, not even in the subtle movement of chest that spoke of breathing. She wanted to take a step, either toward or away, but Adam was in front of her, head bent, eyes closed, hands pressed into the earth. Corallonne had said that the wilderness would hear him, would know him, by what he was now doing.
And she had let him. More: she had commanded.
She wanted to bend, to wrench his hands up, to break whatever he was building. She wanted to do it herself, instead. And she knew, she knew, she could not. But the wind’s voice was growing, and she recognized, in its cadence, the harbinger of storm. She had brought it. She had brought it here.
As she watched Adam, she realized that he, unlike Angel—or Terrick, or even Avandar—was breathing. He did not move his hands, but she could see when they trembled, could see when they stilled. She turned, then, although she did not leave his side, to see that the Wild Hunt, all, were as motionless as Angel. To a man they looked like Celleriant to her eye: cold, judgmental, deadly; there was no joy in them.
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