House War 03 - House Name

by Michelle West

  No.

  They had come for one thing and one thing alone, and although it took weeks, they finally found it: the coliseum. “Here,” Isladar told them softly. “We will build here.”

  The stone, of course, had proved problematic. To build the arch, to enchant the stone, to inscribe it in the necessary fashion, had been both difficult and costly. In this impoverished, mortal world, there were no great quarries; the mortal quarries were simple things of dead stone, and it was not dead stone that they required. Even so, Lord Isladar had traveled to several quarries to the east of Averalaan; he had inspected both the visible rock and the rock that had not yet been broken, seeking some hint of the ancient in their sleeping forms.

  It was not to be found, not there.

  Sor Na Shannen was ill-pleased. Karathis might have been as ill-pleased, but her foul humor often amused him. What, then, shall we do, brother? he asked.

  I will retreat, Isladar replied gravely, to the Deepings, if they even remain. If not, we will work with what we can obtain.

  It is too much of a risk.

  It is a risk, he agreed. But if we have no choice, we will take it. The arch will either hold, or it will not, and it is my suspicion that we will know before the long summoning begins. If you desire, begin your construction and your invocation now; I will search while you . . . experiment.

  That had been to Sor Na Shannen’s liking. Although she, like the rest of the kin, did not age, she was nonetheless impatient. Such impatience had often been their downfall; Isladar had no intention of allowing it to run unchecked here.

  Isladar had then traveled south, past the borders of the Empire in which the god-born ruled, and he had found, again, a travesty of power, a mockery of its substance, in the rulers there. But there, at least, without the god-born to hamper them, the rules of power were clearer and cleaner.

  He spent some years in the South, traveling; he observed the differences in custom between the Northern Empire and the Southern Dominion. When at last he was satisfied that he understood these diminished people well enough, he encountered his first danger: the Voyani.

  They were both of the South and entirely separate from it, and they had the knowledge and power of their ancient ancestors, albeit in shreds and tatters. They did not own land, and for this reason, he had missed them during his first sojourn in the courts of the powerful. No, they traveled in their wagons, led by their Matriarchs.

  And their Matriarchs? They knew him. Understood what he was, what his presence might presage. He had been forced to flee, for the power to destroy them, while his, would not guarantee his survival. Lord Isladar had very little pride when it came to displays of power; he did not care whether or not the merely mortal held him in contempt.

  But he took note of the Matriarchs and the Voyani caravans, and when he was quit of them, some hundreds of miles away, he endeavored to learn what he could. He accepted—as Karathis did not—that the mortals, the mere mortals, could be a threat to the plans of the Lord, and as such, some caution and knowledge were required.

  He made his way to the Green Deepings. They were bounded on all sides by either mountains or the ferocious superstition of Southern slaves in their small enclaves and villages. He was Kialli; he understood fear in all its nuances, and he understood, as well, that the only people who dared the Old Forests were the Voyani themselves. It was, of course, a warning.

  Accepting the warning with the cool grace of a powerful, free man—albeit a stranger to these villages—he had smiled. He did not ride, and free men of any power were expected to take to horseback as if born there, but the slaves were cautious, regardless. It was not their position to question the identity of strange men of rank; that was the responsibility of their lords and owners. He accepted their warnings with gravity.

  But of course, he entered the Old Forest, as they’d called it.

  There, he found the elder trees, preserved somehow against the graying and dwindling of mortality. He walked among them, as he had not walked among them for years beyond count, and he whispered their names. They could not—or would not—hear him, and this was bitter, but it was not unexpected, for there were older and darker things than even Lord Isladar in these forests. Some slumbered, some did not.

  But it was here, for the first time, that he touched the hidden paths. They were not obvious, and they were not visible in a way that mortal vision could easily discern; nor, apparently, immortal vision. But between one step and another, the wind changed, and the sunlight; even the color of the leaves above and the forest growth beneath his feet changed. He heard the wind’s voice so clearly he could call it—and he did, for a moment, speaking its endless litany of names, and asking from it no task but response.

  Wind, of the wild elements, was quickest: quick to anger and quick to forgive. It carried dead leaves in its folds with as much grace and force as it tickled the living, pulling them from their branches. It was not the Earth. And it was willing, on this hidden path, to converse as wind did.

  He walked the path and understood at last the heart of the Old Forest, for the forest’s roots touched this path, this narrow road in which the Green Deepings lived and breathed. The mortal slaves feared the powerful—with reason—and they therefore found only fear in the lee of the forest’s edge.

  Isladar did not fear power, and he did not fear the unknown—for in the end, very little was unknown to him. He found rivers upon the hidden path, and they spoke with the voice of wild water, although water, like earth, was not his friend, and it rose in fury at the sound of his voice. But what it would not willingly give, he could force from it, for he had the time. He did not find fire here, but fire alone welcomed the Kialli to their ancient home.

  And so it went. He was almost foolish in his desire to explore, and it was a sentimental folly—this had once been home.

  But he had abandoned home for the love of the Lord, and it was no longer his. He found the first signs of the Wild Hunt while he followed this path, tracing its curving and unpredictable lines toward the distant mountains. He did not encounter the Hunt itself, for it was not Scarran, nor close, but the wind whispered the name of the Queen of the Hunt, the Queen of the Hidden Court: Ariane. Hoof prints had been stamped into the very rock that adorned the side of one river, as if stags had been driven up the face of cliffs in search of prey.

  Yet even this reminder of ancient enemies, ancient enmity, filled him with yearning. It was Winter in these lands. The Hunt rode only in Winter.

  Yes, the trees seemed to whisper, and he understood then why they did not speak or listen or grow enraged—as water and earth did—by the sound of his voice: it was Winter in the forest. Winter. How long? How long had it been since the forest had seen Summer?

  The forest itself did not reply. Later, he would seek the answer in more unobtrusive ways, but the task of the moment demanded his attention. He did not, however, stray from the hidden path, and it traveled from the Green Deepings to the farthest edges of the Northern Wastes, land of brilliant, biting light, howling winds, desolate beauty. It traveled to hidden oases, to endless caverns, to vistas that had not been touched by either god or man since the gods last walked the world, and it almost pained him to leave them, so stricken was he by the visceral desire for home.

  He did not speak of this; not then, when there were no witnesses, and not later. The home of that longing, the brief and unexpected pain, was long, long lost. What existed now was the Hells and, if he was ultimately successful, the whole of the mortal plane.

  To this end, he continued, with more caution and less curiosity, until he at last found the remnants of the Stone Deepings. He did not delve there long, nor could he; magics had been wrought there, and if he did not recognize the caster, he recognized the power: They were ancient, and they barred the way. But they were subtle as well; he could not discern the whole of their purpose, and it both troubled and irritated.

  It signified little. He had found the living stone, and he carved it with care, piece by piece
, each of a size and shape that might support the magics that must be worked upon it. It was not quick work, and it required a raw power that he seldom used, but this far beneath all that was human he did not fear detection; he feared, instead, to somehow set off the strange and unidentifiable magic that hid all but a small part of the Deepings from view. The mountains rumbled in their slow and thunderous way, and he spoke in their ancient tongue. But they, kin to the earth, resisted. Had he been any other Lord, he might have died and returned, lessened, to the foothills of the Hells.

  But he was Isladar, and although time was short, he took the time he needed, not to defy the living stone but to soothe it.

  Only then, the first arduous steps taken toward relearning an ancient tongue made foreign by his departure from the plane and his sojourn in the realm of the Lord, did he make his return to Averalaan.

  There he gave the stones into the keeping of Lord Karathis, and together they began to build the arch, imbuing it, at each iteration of pillar, each placement of stone, with the power of the Kialli. Only once it was finished, only once they had spent the three days in the long invocations, sacrificing the mortals they had scrounged for that purpose from the streets of the city above, did the long journey of Allasakar at last begin.

  And they watched, joined by Sor Na Shannen in her wild impatience. Centuries had passed since the Lord to whom they had dedicated the whole of their existence while they lived had walked this world. He would walk it again, but this time—ah, this time, there would be no gods to hinder him. Sor Na Shannen had, centuries past, destroyed the worship of the only one who might.

  So it stood, day by day. Lord Karathis assumed the form and shape of Lord Cordufar in the manse above, and Lord Isladar spent time traversing the plane. He spent some years in the Southern Dominion, witnessing the wars of the Tyrs and Tors, as the nobles there were called, as they struggled for supremacy against both their northern neighbors and their internal rivals.

  He traveled, as well, to the far North, before returning to Averalaan. And everywhere he went, he assessed the powerful, and he examined the colors of their souls, judging them, searching for those among their number who might be both competent and malleable under the right circumstances.

  But he returned, always, to venture to the standing arch, with its single runed keystone; he knelt not two feet away from where it stood, and he bowed in complete subservience to the heart of the gate. He had often stood by the side of the Lord’s throne in the Hells, and of the Kialli who had done so, Isladar was the only one who had survived either his Lord’s attention or the suspicion of the rest of the Kialli Court.

  The Court was distant now, but if those who currently labored within the confines of the Empire of Essalieyan had success, it would not remain so; only the surroundings would change. And the souls, he thought; those, too, would change. The Shining City would once again rise, as if from slumber, with the Lord upon the throne.

  But he returned to the undercity when he desired privacy or silence, and he walked among the ruins there, conjuring the ghosts of their former grandeur as clearly as only the Kialli could.

  On one such excursion, Isladar discovered, alone among the notable and powerful buildings, one that he did not recognize. It was not—could not—be of any recent construction, for it was here, beneath the earth and the sullen mortal streets above. It must have been erected after the fall, for the plummet of the city into the waiting, ancient earth had not destroyed or marred it.

  He approached it with a suspicion that hardened almost to certainty by the time his feet touched the first of the large, carved symbols perfectly laid in stone, for the lights in this building cast his shadow against the ground so sharply they might have been sun. He felt, for a moment, the touch of the gods upon the stone; saw the dim impression of their fingerprints upon the walls; saw their work in each carved symbol.

  It had been so long since he had seen even a hint of their language, for not even the Lord of the Hells spoke it now—what use had he for a tongue meant for communication among the gods? He was, and had always been, solitary. He spoke to destroy and to render to those who were worthy of his respect an epitaph. To the gods, the god-tongue.

  Isladar had chosen to follow only one, but he was aware that, follower of the one or no, he was not immune to the presence of even his sworn enemies, be they but gods. They were like the heart of the wild elements, like the tallest of mountain precipices, like the most savage of coastal storms. They existed as a force beyond comprehension and control, and they inspired awe; something as petty as envy could not touch them.

  And so he had approached this new building, this edifice that had never been touched by memory. In size and shape it was a lesser architectural work, but the grandest of buildings that adorned the Shining City had required the living power of Allasakar to sustain its impossible heights.

  Isladar had walked the length and breadth of the streets of Averalaan above. He had glanced at the many so-called cathedrals, and he had looked for some sign that power—that beauty—existed within the mean streets; he had found none.

  Therefore even this lesser work, this lesser edifice, fanned the dying embers of wonder and awe in him. He was surprised at how those embers could burn, but he was Kialli. He remembered, and memory was painful. It was their art.

  Alone, he traversed the terra-cotta floors, his feet skirting the deep grooves the circular runic forms made. He did not touch them, but he read their meaning slowly and with care. He understood that the sigils were meant as a warning and as a lament, and he cursed, in silence, his partial ignorance. But none of the Kialli spoke the tongue of gods, not even the most learned.

  Lights had been wrought here, in crystal, in glass, in gold, each warm and luminescent. Even fallen, even buried, the gods did not choose to accept the fact of endless Night. The gods, like the firstborn and the lesser mortals who had followed, were proud. He considered destroying that light, but in the end, he held his hand. He could not say why.

  The long, wide halls, broken with runes that told the story of the fall of the Shining City and the desertion of this world by its gods, he traversed for days. He spent hours studying each glyph, learning its shape and its pattern; its sound was lost to him forever, for matters of such a simple thing as pronunciation were not the type of question he could ask of the only god he now knew. It frustrated him bitterly, but he accepted his ignorance, galling though it was.

  He did not accept that he would always be ignorant, however; who, in the end, could predict what might or might not occur in the future of this world? So, he walked, and stopped, and studied; he consigned shape and height and texture, as well as positioning, of each such sigil to memory.

  Was it any wonder, then, that he took days? He required no sleep and no sustenance, and the hours and days and months of the long unfolding of the Lord’s plan left him little to do in the darkness; he considered the study a worthy endeavor, even if he suspected where the end of the tale they told must lead, and why. He let it unfold, in its mystery, its partial glimpses of ancient history, as if, at the tale’s end, he must once more emerge into darkness and the gray world of mortals, riven from even the hints of ancient magic and majesty and true wilderness.

  Thus it was that Isladar finally came upon the Sleepers in their chamber of eternal repose. And Isladar, in the glory of the light they shed, paid them the respect that was their due; for in the end, were it not for the treachery of the Sleepers, the Lord of the Hells might now be dead, his body scattered ash, his followers riven from both himself and each other.

  He had seen them ride in the full glory of the Winter Hunt, by the side of their cold Queen, and he had seen them fight, and kill. No matter that they fought his own kin; the Kialli might curse them or taunt them in the heat of battle, but they respected power, and the Sleepers had been powerful. He knew their names, but he did not speak them, not aloud.

  They had faltered once; they had failed once. This was the result of their failure, this deathlik
e sleep, the splendor of this dream.

  At the behest of the Winter Queen, they had ridden to war at the side of Moorelas; they had ridden to war with the godslayer. Yet Moorelas was no Arianni, no Allasianni; he had been born to mortals, and he had aged greatly in the mere handful of years he had wielded the sword that alone might strike a fatal blow against Allasakar. Moorelas did not comprehend the wonder and the savage beauty of the gods—how could he? He was mortal.

  No more did he understand the light and the brilliance of the princes of the Queen’s realm. They were his allies, and they were necessary, but he did not revere them, and he did not fully trust them. In such a way, he proved himself exceptionally wise for one of his mean origins.

  Isladar understood the treachery of the Sleepers. Had they not been princes of Ariane’s realm? Had they not been the strength and the pride of both Winter and Summer Courts? Had they not ridden at the head of her grim and ancient host to stand against the very gods themselves? They had experienced all the glory of the world, of the gods, of the wars that rearranged mountains and plains and rivers before one side or the other might at last claim victory.

  They, like the Kialli, had been born in blood, raised to war, trained to attain the heights of its savage glory, to see the beauty in the death that followed in its wake; it was their truest test. They did not raise livestock and cut firewood and shear sheep for rough, poor fabric; nor did they trundle with battered wagons and poor guards to deliver these pathetic goods. They were the princes of the firstborn.

  And were they to strike to diminish and humble the whole of their known world for the sake of the merely mortal? Were they to bleed the numinous and the eternal from the world until all that remained was the essence of mortal soul? Nor did the mortals fight and struggle and craft these souls, these shards of the eternal; they were born wrapped around them and lived in ignorance of their existence, all but a few.