House War 03 - House Name

by Michelle West

  “And I do not wish to lose them here, where they will die unremarked and ill-respected for their sacrifice.”

  The Terafin was silent until it became clear he would not say more. “Will you then hunt without your pack? I am not Breodanir, but even I am aware—”

  “I will not lead them to certain death. Espere will accompany me, but we may fight in halls of stone; there are no forests, here.”

  She still did not accede.

  “I have lost enough.”

  She nodded then. “I will speak with the Mother’s children. But I fear that your dogs will not be parted from you.”

  “They will go where I tell them to go.”

  Devon, who had followed Jewel into the dirt and the darkness of tunnels that were, in theory, their entry into the ruins of an ancient city, felt the light envelop him as he walked. He, like Duvari—like any sane, rational man—was uneasy in the obvious presence of magic. Magestones and privacy stones aside, magic was a force best left to gods, and in the hands of mortals—even the god-born—it was a danger.

  He therefore expected the passage to be difficult, and only in part because he wasn’t certain where—or when—it would end. But the light itself was almost pleasant, and it was certainly warmer than the cold midnight of Henden air. He could hear, at a remove, the wind that wailed during the storm season; he could hear the thunder that rumbled in the clouds and the breaking of waves along the seawall. He could hear, as if they mimed wind, the muted voices of people; none of the voices were familiar, and he couldn’t make out the individual words spoken; they were pressed together, unintelligible.

  As if, he thought, they were some part of nature, the natural world, indistinct from waves or storm or wind or the growth of leaves on the trees that girded the Common; inevitable as sunrise and sunset, as moonrise and eclipse.

  But the voices, like the break of waves or the rush of wind, passed into silence as Devon at last emerged. Gone were the glowing flat panes, and gone was the forbidding visage of Moorelas and the threat of his shadow: His eyes acclimatized themselves quickly to the dimly lit halls in which giants might once have walked. They were not whole; they had seen some cataclysm that had sheared their heights. But what was left was easily taller than Kings or god-born men, and it surrounded marble floors that bore long cracks but no other signs of wear. Here, gold was inlaid in large, circular patterns that suggested words; he could not read or recognize them.

  “We will have more light,” Duvari said, in his cool and entirely flat voice.

  “No.”

  And there she was. The mages turned, and in the scant light of the room, swords rose in the hands of the Kings’ men; Duvari’s weapons could not yet be seen. But Devon drew nothing; he recognized the voice. He wasn’t bard-born, but voices, once heard, seldom escaped his memory.

  He turned, as did the whole of the assembled force, but he waited. Duvari glanced briefly at him, and—as as much as he ever did—he also relaxed. He signaled a brief question; Devon returned only a nod. Two seers, he thought, and so different from one another that the only thing they appeared to share was a talent and a gender.

  Evayne a’Nolan stood, robed in familiar blue, alone. A long moment passed, in which orders might have been given or followed; no one broke the silence until she herself stepped forward, toward where the Kings stood. She crossed marble, the hem of her robes brushing away the dust of centuries, and when she had approached as closely as Duvari would allow, she knelt before the Twin Kings and bowed her head.

  Nor did she lift it until King Cormalyn spoke. “Rise. Rise and identify yourself.”

  “I am Evayne,” she said, unfolding at his command. “Evayne a’Nolan.”

  “What are you, and what are you doing within these walls?”

  “I am waiting for you, Majesty, for I have walked the hidden path, and in so doing, I have learned enough to be of service to you while our paths converge.” Her robes shuddered and rose, as if stirred by a wind, a wind that touched no one else. Devon, who had seen her before, nevertheless found it disquieting. As was the orb she now drew from the folds of those robes; it sat, pulsing faintly, in her hands. If the healer-born wore the open palms, this was the only symbol of office a seer might bear.

  “And why should we trust you?”

  “Because, my Lord, no one living, no one sane, seeks the ascent of the darkness.” Her voice was proud and cool, but without hesitation; she looked with ease into the eyes of the Wisdom-born King. She was not tall, but lack of height in no way diminished her presence. “Those who call themselves Allasakari have already been devoured, and those who delude themselves into thinking they will have power. . . . But I have not come to speak of that. I am seer-born, and the way to the undercity is treacherous. Will you accept my aid?”

  “And who is Evayne a’Nolan that we should know her to be sane?” Duvari spoke now, and sharply, as was his wont.

  She glanced at him as if he were barely of consequence, which caused Devon to stifle a smile. Duvari noticed, of course; he noticed everything.

  “A friend,” she replied.

  “But friend to whom? It is a matter of ease to claim friendship—and often a matter of deceit.”

  “I will not force myself upon you. I cannot. If you will not have my aid, I will leave you.”

  Devon almost spoke, then. But one look at Duvari’s expression was enough; he maintained silence. Nor did Evayne look to him for either succor or support. She looked to no one.

  But help did follow. From out of the shadows behind the Kings a familiar bard appeared. He did not speak to Evayne a’Nolan, nor did he immediately acknowledge her presence. Instead, he knelt before the Twin Kings, his posture the posture of the supplicant. “Majesties, I am Master Bard Kallandras of Senniel; I have served the Crowns’ circuit for my tenure. I bear this woman little love, but I will speak for her. You may trust her.”

  Devon was slightly surprised; Evayne, however, was motionless.

  Nor was Kallandras the only man to speak on her behalf. Meralonne APhaniel now separated himself from the less than perfect precision of the ranks of the warrior-magi and joined Kallandras. He, too, adopted the posture of the supplicant, although he did it with far less practiced grace—or ease—than the bard.

  “Majesties, I am Member Meralonne APhaniel of the Order of Knowledge and of the Council of the Magi, and of the Wise. This one was once . . . my student. I, too, will speak for her.”

  The third man who came to stand before the Kings did not abase himself; he made no gesture of allegiance—nor was one expected. “Your Majesties. I am not Essalieyanese, but I have fought demons and the darkness in my native lands—and you have granted me permission to hunt them here. If my word means anything to you—or to the man who speaks for you—I give it as well: I speak for Evayne.”

  “I do not speak for the King,” Duvari said, his voice both cold and sharp.

  “He speaks,” the Justice-born King added, with the hint of a smile, “for the Kings’ safety. We will accept your guarantees, gentlemen.”

  The Kings then retreated some small distance and spoke in tones so quiet only Duvari might catch all of their words; no other was allowed so close. But Devon didn’t make the attempt; he watched Evayne, instead. She approached Meralonne, Kallandras, and Lord Gilliam of Elseth as they rose in the absence of Kings.

  The Master Bard of Senniel, first to speak, was also first to turn away at her approach, and he turned in a silence so complete that no one watching could mistake it for anything but a rejection. She lifted a hand as he retreated, but she lowered it again and did not speak.

  Meralonne APhaniel waited until she turned to him.

  “I have not forgiven your silence,” he said, in a cool voice.

  “I know. But mark it well: The time is coming when my silence will be broken at your behest, and then we will both wish for the years in which I sat at your feet learning the arts.”

  “Is this a seeing?”

  “Yes.” She turned
away from the mage but then stopped. “But not of the gift. Of the heart.”

  Meralonne, a man for whom discussions of the heart seemed out of place—at best—fell silent as she left him. But he watched her back and the moving folds of her robes, and it seemed to Devon that he watched with bitterness and, yes, hunger. Anger.

  But to Lord Gilliam of Elseth, she tendered what she had tendered the Twin Kings: a perfect obeisance. She tried to fall to her knees, but he reached out and grabbed her arm; the cloth of her robes rustled and struggled against his grip, although he didn’t seem to notice. “Don’t,” he told her roughly, drawing his hand away abruptly. “I didn’t save him either. He always said the Hunter would take him. I always said—” words, which had never been his strength, deserted him, and he struggled with silence for a long moment.

  “But tonight,” he finally managed, hefting the spear, “it will all be over.”

  “Hunt well, Hunter Lord,” Evayne said, rising. “And you, little sister,” she added, for the wild girl now dogged Lord Gilliam’s shadow, as close to his person as the dogs that would have followed him everywhere. “Hunt well.”

  The girl keened her wordless keen.

  These were her friends, the men who trusted her. Devon shook his head; there was no affection at all, no sense of camaraderie, in any of the exchanges. There was history, yes, but the history seemed to be a thing of pain; no joy rose from it.

  Evayne now returned to the Twin Kings. “Your Majesties, it is not safe to use magic within the great chamber. It has . . . unusual effects, not all of them pleasant. However, if someone should be so foolish, it will almost certainly be survived. But below, in the chamber where the Sleepers lay, any use of magic will destroy the caster. Once we are in the tunnels proper, the protections wane.”

  “Very well,” King Cormalyn replied. “Member APhaniel, you had best impart this information to your mages.”

  Duvari was not pleased, and he did not scruple to hide this fact. Duvari, however, seldom looked pleased, and the tight rein of his anger was a simple fact of life for those who were forced, by the necessity of his role and his duties, to endure his presence. He kept as close to the Kings as possible, but as Evayne took the lead and the Kings followed closely behind, it was difficult to put himself between them. Devon traveled by Duvari’s side. Only the unknown terrain troubled him; the scant light he could work with. The hall was long and wide and would present no difficulty in a fight; he could not, however, see ceilings; nor could he see the whole of the distant walls or what might lie in the shadows pooled there.

  But he could hear the growing distress of the distant magi; the fools had heard advice that it was beyond their meager self-control to follow. As the Kings’ assembled forces traversed the great hall with its golden symbols engraved upon marble floors, its broken pillars, loose rocks, and distant shadows, the mages stopped or cried out in an excitement they could not contain; that excitement turned quickly to bitter regret. He was certain that there had been some use of magic in the distance, but it was slight, subtle, and easily extinguished.

  At last they paused at the top of stone stairs that lead in a wide spiral into darkness below.

  “Here,” Evayne told them, although her eyes did not leave those stairs, “we begin our descent. Light your lamps if you have them, or your torches—but do not rely on magery to guide your steps.” It would have been almost insulting to add this reminder, except that the magi appeared to require it.

  The stairs were disconcerting; they hit a note each time someone stepped on them. The notes, if approached one step at a time, might have sounded like music; as it was, it was cacophony, and if any subtlety in approach was required for the small force to survive its first contact with the denizens of the mysterious undercity of Jewel Markess, they were all doomed.

  “It is the song of approach,” Evayne told the Kings and a very tight-lipped Lord of the Compact. “And of departure. The stairs were built to chime it, by some magic or some craftsmanship that has long been forgotten. No one could approach those who waited above by stealth. No one could leave in secrecy.”

  “They’ll hear us below,” Devon said quietly.

  She raised a brow. “I do not know. But I think not. The chamber of the Sleepers lies between us and our enemy.”

  “Lead,” King Cormalyn told her quietly, as if even the mention of the Sleepers was disquieting and he intended, by this command, to stifle it instantly. It was . . . unusual. And, in Devon’s opinion, entirely unnecessary; the cacophony of the hundreds of men and women who descended the stairs would have drowned out all but the shouted word, and Evayne did not shout or raise her voice.

  Instead, she waited a little way off the last—or first—of the steps until there was once again silence. Here, they stood at the foot of an empty hall; it was long, and it was not so fine a hall as the one above. There were no windows, and the walls were visible; there was no obvious shearing of their height. But they were stone, not marble. This was not meant to impress but merely to convey. Nor was it a single hall. The ceilings above were vaulted, and the hall branched into tunnels to the right and left. Devon had no other orientation; the journey through the Sanctum had made all other directions almost superfluous.

  He would not have been particularly surprised to learn that some of the Order’s mages had disappeared down one or another of those tunnels, for the magi knew that the ways were, and would remain, closed to them after. He would, however, have been annoyed.

  They came to a full stop at a set of large doors. Large, in this case, was an understatement; not even in Avantari, a building with which Devon was intimately familiar, were doors of this height to be found. They were closed, and there was no sign of keyholes. In the place of keyholes or knockers, they carried a large seal, which seemed, at base, a spiral that turned uniformly from edge to center. It glowed gold, suggesting base metal. It was not, in Devon’s opinion, any such thing.

  “These,” Evayne said, turning to the Kings, “are the last of the doors. There were three, but two have already been breached by the breaking of the earth and the sinking of the city. They were magicked once, but the source of their power has long since fled this world.”

  “Magic,” Member APhaniel said, in a sharp, crisp voice, “does not flee when the caster dies.” He spoke as master to pupil here, and with some disappointment.

  “No. But it is weakened when the race dies. Or when the race leaves.” She met his gaze, and she smiled—it was an odd smile. There was no triumph in it, and much weariness. “And if I gave you the impression that no magic remained here, please forgive me—for the magic is not one that you or I could easily break.” She turned, then, to the Exalted, and they came.

  “It offers warning,” the Exalted of the Mother said, after a long pause spent in the study of the single rune.

  “And promises danger,” Evayne replied.

  “You read the oldest tongue?”

  Silence. When the pause had gone on for long enough, Evayne said, “Exalted, grace us; open the door that your ancestor barred. We have so little time.”

  The Mother’s daughter approached the doors. She drew breath, lifted her arms, and began to chant. The chant sounded almost familiar to Devon, but it had been years since he had sat through a service in the Mother’s temple, and even in his youth it had not been to the Mother that he had paid his most earnest respects. He was content to watch.

  The sons of Cormaris and Reymaris came to stand beside her to the left and right, and they held torches aloft, although she didn’t seem to require them. But they did not speak.

  Devon had expected the doors to open, and in some fashion they did; but there was no clicking of lock or tumbling of bolt. Instead, the doors grew translucent as she chanted, losing shape and solidity until only the rune itself remained, cutting edges into vision that could still be seen when he closed his eyes.

  At last, that single rune dimmed, and the stone frame stood empty.

  Light flooded in through the
opening.

  There was no hall that led to the chamber; the door seemed part of what served as wall. Beyond it, Devon could see biers, stylized and pale, the engraving exact and sharp. Makers must have labored here—or gods—but their work did not receive its due, for upon those biers lay three men. Their hair was white, and they were unhelmed; they lay upon their backs, the perfect and precise lines of their profiles exposed to any witness. And witnesses came, in the hundreds, held back only by the Kings and the Exalted, for the Kings ceded their lead only to Evayne a’Nolan, and all others must wait.

  Evayne stepped through the frame in which a door had once stood.

  The Exalted of Cormaris turned to the Kings. “Do not approach them, and be wary of crossing any circle’s path.”

  The circles were evident to Devon only once he had entered their chamber proper. The biers, like the three petals of a trifold flower, were surrounded by golden circles into which words had been engraved. He did not study them long; the language was not one he recognized. Instead, he studied the Sleepers themselves, for he had no doubt at all that these were they: even in sleep they radiated composure and power, and they were beautiful in the way that no statue, even one touched by Artisans, could be. Their skin was the white of alabaster, their lashes and hair were also white; their cheekbones were high and pronounced, and no wrinkles or lines marred their faces at all. No scars.

  Mindful of the words of the Exalted, Devon followed the Kings lead; he did not linger for more than a moment, and that, almost against his will. Only Duvari seemed immune to the subtle demand for attention—possibly obeisance—from these three. He had not gotten far, however, for Meralonne APhaniel approached their silent guide.

  “Did you always know where they were?” he asked. Even the mage was subdued.

  “Not always.”

  “Did you know of it while I taught you?”

  “No.”

  He had already turned away from her answer, and he now approached the bier farthest from the door. She lifted a hand, reached for his shoulder, and then let it fall without touching him; she did not speak.