House War 03 - House Name

by Michelle West

And in the center of a Cathedral lost to shadow and magic, before the waiting eyes of demon-kin who stood at rigid, silent attention, the darkness finally became perfect.

  Devon had been in the Between, the misty place in which man might meet his gods, at the behest of their children. He had therefore seen gods and heard their endless chorus of voices. But no god had come to his world; no god had walked the streets or the parlors.

  This was, therefore, the first god he had met in the flesh.

  They fell, slowly, to knee, excepting only Duvari.

  The god came through the vanished forest. As he walked, his form shifted, losing bulk and the gait of a giant beast. He straightened, stiffened, and at last stood as a man might stand, although his feet were bare and unencumbered.

  He didn’t wear armor; he was neither too tall, nor too short. His hair was becoming fair, as he walked, and his cheekbones were high. He looked, or would have looked, entirely mortal, were it not for the color of his eyes. Devon recognized him instantly: he was, except for those eyes, the very likeness of Lord Elseth’s dead Huntbrother.

  Lord Elseth’s knuckles grew white around the haft of the spear; he lifted it. What he might have done next, no one knew; Evayne reached to the side to grip his shoulder so tightly that her knuckles blanched the same color as his. “Lord Elseth,” she said, the softness of her voice at odds with the apparent strength of her grip, “peace.”

  But Lord Elseth had seen enough; he rose.

  Evayne rose with him; it was that, or release him. “Lord Elseth,” she said again. “Now is not the time to use the spear.”

  He hesitated; he understood the weight of both her words and their situation. But he was on edge now. Devon moved carefully, calculating. He understood that the spear in Lord Elseth’s hands could injure the god. Could possibly kill him. In the time before gods had deserted the world, weapons had been made that could. Moorelas of Aston had wielded the most famous, and the most effective, of those.

  But the god—if indeed god it was—neither knew nor cared. As he walked, it became clear that he approached only his follower. His face grew lined, his expression exhausted. Only the eyes, which now seemed to be all colors—or none—marked him as Other. He carried the weapons and the characteristic horn of the Breodani Hunters.

  “Gil?” he said, almost hesitantly, as he came to a stop perhaps fifteen feet away from the Hunter Lord.

  The expression on the face of Lord Elseth cracked the moment the word left his lips.

  “I told him this was a bad idea. I told him you’d think it was an insult. Did he listen? I can understand why he’s called the Hunter God.”

  Silence. A beat. No one moved or spoke. “Stephen?”

  The distance between them disappeared seconds later.

  “Gil, I’m not—I’m not alive. But he—Bredan—told me I should speak with you.”

  “I’ll get you out.”

  “I’m not the important one. I was the last one taken; I still have some . . . solidity.” He turned, half turned, as his Hunter still held him, toward the pillar of darkness. “He’s stepped across, Gil—but he came too quickly—you forced him. Bredan asks your leave to Hunt once more before—before you do.”

  “My leave?” The words were bitter, stark.

  Stephen shook his Hunter. “This isn’t about your loss—or mine—Hunter Lord. This is about the fate of man. If Bredan doesn’t kill the Avatar of the darkness—”

  “I know.” Lord Elseth’s words were almost a growl. But he accepted—as he so often had—the correction of his Huntbrother, and he released him slowly. “Stephen, I—”

  “I know.” He smiled. It was a weary smile, but it offered Gilliam some small peace. “He doesn’t have much power. The fight with the enemy will drain it all—and more.”

  “What does it—”

  “It means that all that’ll be left is the Hunter’s Death. The beast, not the Oathbinder.” He paused. “That’s when the Hunt starts. But, Gil—he says that it will be as if the Hunt hasn’t been called in years.” He stepped back, and his features began to shift. But they hardened again as he shook his head, as if grasping at one final moment.

  “We—he—” He shook his head. “In Mandaros’ Hall.”

  “Swear it,” was the intense reply.

  “I swear it.” A crackle of blue light laced air as the God of Oaths witnessed, and accepted. Only after this was done did Stephen grimace and turn away as quickly as possible, running in long Hunter strides toward the darkness ahead. His body lost the shape and the form of the familiar Huntbrother, gaining width, height, bulk; becoming, at last, the beast at the heart of the forest. The god.

  That god now lifted his head and roared.

  “Lord Elseth,” Meralonne APhaniel said, “what did he mean?” He stood to one side of the Hunter Lord; Devon had literally failed to see him move.

  Gilliam did not answer; he watched his god lope toward the shadow in a silence that was grim and terrible with both longing and fury.

  “He meant,” Evayne said, when it had become clear that he would not answer at all, “that the Hunter’s Death will kill anything in sight until its need is satiated.”

  Devon understood. Only one sworn to the Hunter God of the Breodani could satiate that hunger. Bredan had been a God of Oaths, and it was the sworn oath of his Hunters—and their brothers—to serve the god in his time of need.

  “Hunt well, Lord Elseth,” the mage said softly.

  All existence was a game. All of it, a gamble.

  Lord Isladar stood a moment in perfect darkness, his eyes closed. He could feel the earth beneath the marble; it was rumbling as if it meant to create new fissures and new breaks into which anything might fall. Old Earth, he thought, and knew it as truth. The earth was almost waking, and he well knew why: the Lord of the Covenant was here.

  The Lord of the Covenant, who, against all wisdom, had himself followed a path similar to the one the Lord of the Hells had traced, crawling and struggling toward the forbidden world of Man. Of Man. Once, the gods had ruled here. The gods, their wild children, their firstborn.

  The Arianni. The Allasiani.

  The earth had obeyed when they spoke; the water would part and the air would carry them, wingless, into the skies. And the fires? He smiled, but it was a bitter, unseen smile. They could still touch the fires.

  But fire had never been Isladar’s element. He could command it, but it was not to fire that he went for either peace or comfort, where comfort might be found at all; there was nothing for him here now.

  Nothing but his Lord.

  He turned at the sound of paws striking marble. Not even the strongest of shadows could bind the creature that made that noise, for he was a god, in form and shape. Were it not for his weakness and his folly, he would have been more powerful than the Lord of the Hells, for nothing had impeded his progress, and nothing had forced him to come early into the world, stripped of a portion of his essential power.

  He was more beast than god now, diminished by his choice.

  Allasakar was also, more regrettably, diminished by the choice forced upon him.

  And in the end, it was for neither that Lord Isladar listened. For one god still traversed the mortal realm; he was certain of it. He had listened, he had studied, and he had searched for some proof; he had come away with nothing.

  But Lord Isladar had come to the Hells with nothing; all promise turned, in the instant of his arrival, to ash and death.

  All existence was a game, yes. But this long, long game had started, in the end, at the bidding, the tortuous and opaque bidding, of one god. Nameless god. Sometimes called Mystery and sometimes called the God of Man. An odd god, to be worshiped by none, revered by none, obeyed, in the end, by none.

  No cathedrals were built in his name because he had no name, although the existence of such mundane, mortal buildings was possible only because of his intervention and his cunning. He therefore owned no part of the souls of Man, the flimsy and fleeting shards of a great
er, shattered divinity that formed the transient, moving battlefield over which the last great war of the gods would be fought.

  Allasakar had no god-born children. No woman had survived a pregnancy, and although the gods sometimes bore children from their own flesh, no child had survived such a birthing either—no mortal child. A god could, yes. But the gods were gone.

  All but three.

  Will you show your hand, here? Will you, nameless one?

  The beast god answered with a roar.

  All existence was a game, a war, a battle. Isladar watched, waited, and smiled. You have waited long; here, at last, is my Lord’s opening move.

  The great beast ran toward the rising column of a darkness that seemed impregnable to light. Its form had become almost familiar to Devon, and he cast a backward glance at the healers and the Mother-born priestesses but caught no glimpse of the wild girl. But he saw the kinship between the form she had donned for her battle with a demon lord and the form of the beast that now ran, unerring, toward his enemy.

  His fur was a subtle silver, and it shed a pale, pale light—moonlight, for the darkness, not the radiance of the sun. Yet it was a strong, pervasive light, and when it met the rising pillar of darkness, it was not engulfed. Instead, the darkness cracked, falling away to either side of the moving god as if it were forming reluctant walls at his command. Those walls, limned in the same silver as the great beast’s fur, remained, and the Kings’ forces now passed between them, following not the seer who had led them this far but the god who might see them to victory.

  Or to death.

  Nine had already been lost in the passage to the city. No one expected that they were the last of the casualties. But the only ones that mattered now to Devon were the Kings.

  At the heart of the column itself stood a single, vast building. Evayne had called it the Dark Cathedral, and it was clear, in the scant light that followed the wake of the living god, why. It rose at least four stories, and it rested atop the flats of large, semicircular stairs that had not been built with the small in mind. Although it was striking in the bold clarity of its initial lines, it looked as if it had been composed of slate and gold. It could not, of course, be slate. The gold itself reflected light as if light were repulsive. And yet, it was beautiful in its fashion.

  The god paused for the first time at the foot of those stairs and looked up to their heights. Standing before the five recessed arches that formed the complicated architrave of the entry was a man. It was hard, in the dim light, to tell what colors he wore; his face was shrouded by the edges of a hood. He stood between the carved ebony of winged gargoyles, each much larger than a man; their claws gleamed in the light of torches and burning braziers, carried by the priests in this last procession. They moved, flexing wings as they turned unblinking eyes upon the small force beneath them.

  The god did not speak; he roared.

  And the man, in response, laughed. “You are too late. Our Lord has come.” He raised a staff in the light cast by both god and mortal, and he summoned darkness. “Prepare, sacrists. Prepare, exultants. Allasakar—” The rest of the sentence was lost with his throat as the the god leaped, in one muscular movement, up the stairs. Nor did the demons come to his aid; they flew up, as quickly as possible, beyond the reach of the god. But they did not move fast enough or far enough. As if they were simple sparrows and he a hunting cat, his claws clipped and shredded their wings before he passed them by.

  The Kings followed; not even the magi spared the demons a second glance. They had heard and understood the Allasakari’s claim: the Lord of the Hells had arrived.

  But so, too, had Bredan, the Lord of the Covenant.

  The god ran on. The Kings did not immediately follow. They turned to the Exalted and then to the men under their command. Those men now checked their sword knots. No song left their lips, and they did not strike their shields or otherwise speak, but there was no terror in this silence; there was the simple weight of determination. They may have prayed; prayers were often unvoiced.

  Devon knew; his were. He didn’t pray often, but when he did, it was not in fear or supplication. His own gods were distant this day.

  The Lord of the Compact, however, was not. He no longer asked the Kings to stay back; nor did he attempt to exert the authority his role as their protector had always granted him. Even Duvari understood that the time for such protection had passed. They had walked, as Moorelas had once ridden, into the shadow, and in such a shadow as this, there was no safety, no nicety of rigid form or protocol.

  There were gods. There was death.

  But perhaps the gods had always heralded death when they had once walked. It was a new, and unwelcome, thought; Devon slid out from under it. If there were no protocols and no forms, there was the simple truth of a vow: He was the Kings’ man. He didn’t inspect his sword knots; he checked, instead, for the weapons blessed by the Exalted. Here, they offered little comfort.

  The Exalted nodded, and the Kings, nodding instead of bowing, turned. But they turned to Evayne, who had remained silent for most of the passage. She nodded as well and began to lead.

  The god could not, now, be seen, and the seeress did not forbid the magi to use magic; the glow of magelight, absent its familiar, containing stones, now flooded every nook, every corner, of the grand hall they entered. It was a light that was heavy with shadow; it could not, and did not, mimic the welcome clarity of day. But it left nothing hidden, which was its intent.

  Avantari did not boast halls of these majestic heights; nor did it boast the complicated vaulting of the ceilings so high above. Devon understood that power and beauty were not disparate. He understood, as well, that power did not preclude art. This Cathedral was proof of that fact.

  “Seeress,” Duvari said. Duvari alone seemed immune to the towering heights and the impressive architecture the magelight revealed. It was irrelevant in all ways to the Lord of the Compact.

  “The halls round here,” she told him, her voice cool, “into small apartments and offices for lesser dignitaries. Ignore them; follow the hall to its end.”

  What offices and what lesser dignitaries did the Lord of the Hells require? Devon’s thoughts drifted to the concept of a bureaucracy in the Hells, and he smiled at the thought. It was brief and bitter. “The Cathedral here has no nave—it has a coliseum. The halls we are traveling form the interior wall to the pens. The coliseum itself is four stories high, and in its day—” she shook her head, as if aware that she sounded like a guide. “We must enter as the—as the combatants did.”

  The stone of the halls trembled as the beast roared in the darkness; the men and women who walked it shook as the darkness answered.

  They were the combatants now. As Evayne had suggested, they followed—swiftly—as she led them through the longer, darker enclosure in which the slaves must have walked before they met their end in the coliseum. They might have been armed and armored, as the Kings’ men were; they might have been without so much as a club. Very little history remained of this city—or the one that lay beneath its foundations.

  But the Kings’ men followed this inner corridor until they came, at last, to a closed gate. It was not stone, and it was not so fine in design as the grand, first halls had been.

  Which was good. The beast had reached the gates. He lifted his head, and he crashed through it, leaving splintered wood and twisted metal in his wake. He did not look to see if they followed, nor would he; Devon understood that to the shining beast, there was only one worthy foe, only one enemy, upon the field he now approached. All others were insignificant.

  Meralonne APhaniel uttered a brief phrase, an alien phrase, to Devon’s right, and Devon turned a fraction. But the mage said nothing else. Instead, he drew his sword—from where, Devon did not see. He shed pain, as he did; he shed the infirmity of an arm that should have been broken when his shield was riven. He stood tall, and if there was no wind to dissipate the heavy stench of death, wind nonetheless flew through the strands of his unbo
und hair.

  “Look well,” he said softly, speaking now in the language of the Empire. “You will see what no living men—or women—have seen for millennia: gods walking the world.”

  Devon looked as if compelled.

  The beast, shining as if he were the moon made flesh, approached a darkness that was in all ways solid; it suggested height, and strength, and—disturbingly—a midnight beauty that could stop breath by the force of the awe it evoked. For a moment, these two were the only living things the world contained; all else was shadow and ash.

  It was the Kings who forced themselves to look away first. Not even the Exalted were immune to the unexpected power of the gods’ presence.

  “There is a reason,” King Cormalyn said, his voice weak and thin compared to even the mage’s, “that the gods are no longer welcome to walk the face of the world, and it is to be found here.”

  He lifted an arm, and he pointed, and although his voice lacked the surprising and unlooked for majesty of Meralonne APhaniel’s, the men and women had been trained to its sound, and they now obeyed the Wisdom-born King: they looked. They looked through the gap left by the sundering of the gate; its jagged boards, its twisted, broken bars, formed a frame.

  And it was a fitting frame, in the end. At the feet of gods who walked the world for the first time in millennia, if Meralonne APhaniel was correct, were the bodies of people who would never walk again.

  It was not the gods that now drew—and held—the Kings’ attention, not the gods that awed or silenced them. It was the faceless, nameless dead, for these dead were their failures writ large, and in them, the promise of the same death, the same failure, waited for the Empire should the Kings and their companions now falter.

  King Reymalyn drew his sword; King Cormalyn did likewise, although he carried the rod in his shield hand. It was both symbol of office and artifact, and not even Duvari was bold enough to comment on its use. They walked, with purpose, through the shattered gate and toward the center of the coliseum, where the demons attended the gods with the same reverent silence as Meralonne APhaniel had.