But there were no other children in the Terafin manse. Not children he could claim, in some small way, as his own. Not children whose survival depended, in any way, on Adam of Arkosa.
And this child—unborn, but alive—did.
I will ask you, Adam: do not do this.
He could see the older healer so clearly for a moment; he smiled and shook his head. He was afraid, yes. But he had learned to live with fear, and where he could, to manage it. There were very few decisions in his life that weren’t shadowed in one way or the other by fear—and very few in which his fears were not at war.
Levec was the voice of one of his fears. But his own voice, his hands, and the power with which he had been blessed was the other.
They will not die if you leave them here, this shadow of Levec said, brow furrowed, eyes narrowed and darkened.
No, he thought. But they will never live, either.
What is life but the absence of death?
He froze for one long moment. The voice that he heard was not his. Nor was it Levec’s. Neither man could have ever asked that question.
Chapter Ten
NO. IT IS NOT a question you could ask. I have heard your voice, and the voices of your companions, since you first entered this hall. One of you speaks with the voice of the wild wind, and his voice is beautiful to my ear. And yet, at the same time, it is fragile and delicate.
One of you speaks as kin speak; I hear the echoes of every syllable beneath my feet.
And three of you speak like cats.
“They are cats.”
And you consent to travel with them? That is not wise if you value either dignity or possession; they are capricious beasts. Ah, but it has been such a long, long silence, even their voices reach my ears.
Tell me what you are.
He blinked. “Pardon?”
What are you? You are not a cat. You are not my kin. You are not firstborn, and you are not the creations of the firstborn. Your voice is almost inaudible. The world does not move to give you room; it barely notices your passage at all. What are you?
“I am Adam,” he replied. “Of the Arkosan Voyani.”
That will not do.
“It is my name.”
She laughed. Her laughter was like water in the desert—but Adam was Voyani; he knew that water in the desert could kill. It is not a name. It tells me nothing at all about you. If I told you my name, you would understand much of me. But the telling is long and complicated.
“It is a name. It is how I am known, by my kin. What do people call you?”
Ah, no. If you were not touching me, I do not think I could find you at all. But—I have found you now. Come. Open your eyes, Adam.
He obeyed. He almost shut them again immediately.
• • •
Adam had never suffered a fear of heights, but he found the vestiges of that fear in him now—and it was unwelcome. He had, moments before, been standing—or kneeling—on thin air, high enough above the darkened stone below that he could barely see it.
He was not standing on air now; he stood on the slightly sloped peak of a mountain. He could hear wind howl; could see, hundreds of feet below, the snow-capped heights of lesser peaks. If anything grew here at all, snow buried it—but Adam suspected nothing did. The cold here was staggering; he couldn’t be certain he could maintain his footing because he began to shiver. To shudder.
He turned slowly; he almost dropped to his knees just to have more contact with the ground, and less exposure to the open air. And he did fall to his knees, but not, in the end, for that reason.
“Welcome, Adam.”
• • •
She was the most beautiful woman Adam had ever seen.
Her hair was the color of snow, and it fell down her body like a cloak so fine not even the most moneyed of clansmen could afford to own it. She was, as depicted, otherwise naked; as depicted, nudity did not make her self-conscious.
“Does it make you self-conscious?” she asked. “You are my guest. I do not understand your reaction, but if it will set you at ease, I will change.” She did so, instantly, her hair falling into a spread of even, pale white, as if strands of that hair were weaving themselves into cloth.
That cloth covered her shoulders, her arms, the full fall of breasts; it draped over the rounded and prominent smoothness of expectant belly before reaching the ground. Her feet, throat, and hands, remained exposed to the biting cold, but the cold did not seem to affect this woman.
“I have always loved the heights,” she said, as she approached the spot on which he stood. “No, do not move. It is, at the moment, impossible for me to fall. And a fall from this height would end my existence just as certainly as it would end yours.” She held out a hand, almost in command. Adam came from a long line of autocratic women who were accustomed to unquestioning obedience.
He did not take the hand she offered because he was suddenly aware that his own hand was shorter, stubbier, and infinitely more dirty than hers had ever been.
Her brows rose in surprise; she laughed. The sound was the essence of both amusement and delight. “You are not a cat, then, although you have brought them with you.”
“They didn’t come with me,” he said, almost defensively. “They came with the Matriarch. They are hers.”
“We are not.”
Although Adam never wanted to look away from the woman on whose mountain he found himself shivering, he did. Shadow, wings folded, was standing gingerly on an outcropping of stone that was sheer drop at his back. There was no sign of either Night or Snow, and no sign of the man Shadow had grudgingly agreed to carry.
He closed his mouth and glanced at the woman who made this mountain her home. She had lifted one perfect brow—at Shadow. “Who gave you wings?”
“We have always had wings.”
“You have always been able to walk in the air, and you have always been able to survive landing when you insulted the winds in your hubris. I do not, however, recall wings before.” As she spoke, she walked toward the cat, who sniffed and turned his head away.
Away in this space brought his gaze in contact with Adam’s. Shadow growled.
The stranger laughed in response. “You sound like a kitten,” she told the great cat as she placed a gentle hand on his head. “But the wings suit you. I would never have guessed.”
“And where are your wings?” the cat demanded.
Her smile shifted, and what remained of it was both soft and melancholy. “I will never have wings again,” she told the great cat, laying a hand, as she spoke, upon her belly.
Shadow hissed. He then leaped toward Adam, who almost jumped out of the way. He remembered where he was—and just how far above the ground—at the last minute; Shadow stopped just short of head-butting the healer’s chest. “You can do something.”
“You don’t even like it when I touch you.”
“I am not her.”
“Do you know her?”
“Of course I do. I am not stupid.”
“What do you think I can do?”
“What do you think you are doing?” was Shadow’s surly response. It wasn’t his only response, although the rest of it involved a lot of the word stupid.
“Shadow, I can’t just touch her and grow wings for her!”
“Why not?”
“That’s not the way healing works.”
“It is.”
“It’s not.”
“It is!”
During this exchange, the lady of the mountain approached. She watched; Adam was aware of her gaze, even when he couldn’t immediately turn to meet it. “You call him Shadow?”
“It’s what the Matriarch calls him.”
“I see. And is your Matriarch as you are?”
Shadow growled. His wings rose, becoming rigid arches. “She is n
ot for you,” he told the woman. The almost omnipresent whine was gone from his voice; what was left reminded Adam of dream and nightmare.
“And you will keep me from her? How bold you’ve become.” Her voice now reminded Adam of desert night. “I ask you to leave us. I will only ask once.”
Shadow shrugged, the movement so similar to the shrugs of Jewel’s den, Adam was surprised. “You can ask.”
“And you will dare to ignore me?”
“What can you do? You are here.” He turned his face toward Adam and muttered stupid boy loudly enough it could probably be heard from the foot of the mountain. “She is worried,” he told the boy, when he’d finished.
Adam blinked. “The Lady is not—”
“Why does she always like the stupid ones?”
“I’m not sure,” Adam replied, as he realized the “she” was Jewel. “But she likes the difficult ones as well.”
The implication was lost on the cat, probably deliberately. “You will get lost here, stupid boy. You will starve. She will break, and it is not time for that yet.” He turned, once again, to the stranger. “You will let him leave.”
The woman’s face was immobile; it was as frozen as this peak. “What is he, Shadow?”
“A stupid boy.”
“Yes, I understand that. But not so stupid that he does not have a cat as his guardian. It has been a long, long time since I have had guests; will you deprive me of this one? I cannot reach my sisters, and the White Lady’s voice is so distant I am not certain I hear it in truth; it might be a dream.
“But I have never encountered someone like this man before. I ask again: what is he?”
“He is mortal,” Shadow replied.
Her eyes widened. “Mortal? He is born to die?”
“Yessss. All mortals are.”
“All? He is not alone? There are more like him?”
“Yes. They are everywhere.”
“And what great magics do they possess in return for the fate they have chosen?”
Shadow hissed. It was the laughing hiss. “They did not choose mortality; they were born into it. There are many, many of their kind who have been extremely stupid in an attempt to avoid their own nature.”
“Born?”
“Born, Lady,” Adam said. “Just as the child you carry will be born.”
She was silent; her eyes traced the line of Adam’s face as if she were attempting to read it. The language, however, was not her own; nor was it one she was familiar with. “What magic,” she asked him, softly. “What magic compensates you for your fate?”
He started to say “none,” because it was true. It was the truth of his kin, of his kind. “The power I have,” he said, voice small, “was not granted to me because I am mortal.”
Shadow hissed. This one was contemptuous. “It was.”
“No, it wasn’t.”
The hiss grew louder. “It was, stupid boy. Not all mortals have your power. But you have it because you are mortal. You do not understand what it means.”
“But I do,” Adam said, irritated. There were very few things he understood, but his gift was one of them.
“Do you understand why I won’t let you touch me?”
“You’re a cat. No one understands how cats think.”
Shadow blinked, looking for an insult in Adam’s statement of fact. When he failed to find it, he snorted. “You can heal her.”
“Jewel?”
“Yessss. Do you know why?”
“Because I’m healer-born.”
Hiss. “Because she is mortal. I will not let you touch me because you will change what I am.”
“But I don’t change the healed—”
“You do. But mortals cannot be changed easily; even the gods had difficulty.”
He thought of Avandar.
“You change them back to what they were. You cannot change what they are, except in that way. You could change her,” Shadow added, this time pointedly staring at the Lady. “You could give her wings. You could make her less ugly.”
Adam’s jaw was attached to the rest of his face, or he would have lost it when it dropped. “She is not ugly!”
“She is not as ugly as you.” He snorted again.
But Adam shook his head. “She is not what you are,” he told the cat. “I have never been given leave to tend Lord Celleriant; I do not know if she is as he is. But, Shadow, if she were injured, I could heal her.”
“You couldn’t.”
“I could.” There was no doubt in his words.
“How stupid are you? She is not like you!”
But to Adam, she was. Mountain and ice and deathly cold aside, she was; except in one way. He had touched pregnant women before. He had been allowed to examine Bernice—until the disastrous delivery of the child. What his eyes did not see, his hands did. It had not occurred to him to wonder, until Shadow’s arrival, whether his power should have sensed something different, or other.
“Yes,” she said, although he had not spoken these thoughts aloud. “Although I did not recognize you—or your kind—you see the truth. I am, now, like you. I was not born a mortal; I did not exist to face death. If you release me from this place, I will die. There will be nothing to prevent it.”
Shadow hissed. He stared at her protruding belly with recognizable loathing. Adam wanted to smack him; he almost did. But the exposed fangs were enough of a warning that he managed—barely—to refrain.
The Lady, however, smiled down at his expression of complete disgust. “Yes. You understand.”
“Why did you do this? Why? You will never fly. You will never speak again with a voice that the wilderness hears.”
“I could not bear this child and remain as I was.”
“Why did you need a child? Why did you not make one the normal way?”
Adam said, without thought, “This is the normal way, Shadow.”
“For animals.” The irony of this angry, terse reply appeared to be lost on the cat. “For mortals, who are like talking animals!”
“But if she doesn’t even know any mortals, how is this not natural?”
“Ask her. Ask her who the father is.”
It was not a question the Voyani ever asked, at least not of the expectant mother. Adam was almost offended. “It doesn’t matter. We know who the mother is. And we know that she wants this child.” He hesitated. He had a hundred questions to ask, and none of them seemed appropriate. Shadow could speak of—and to—her as if she were no different than Adam or Jewel. Adam could not.
Any questions he might have asked—surrounded by empty sky and distant mountain peaks—slipped away the moment he met her eyes. They were silver in color, framed by white lashes that suggested a dusting of snow.
Only one question remained, and it slid out of his shivering mouth before it had fully formed. “What will this child become?”
Shadow hissed. There was no amusement in the sound, but no obvious anger.
“What he needs to be,” was her serene reply, “in order to free our people.” To Shadow she said, “If the child dies before he is born, it will make no difference to my fate. There is no way to change it, except this: I am trapped here, beyond Time’s reach. Beyond the reach of any save the White Lady.” She lifted an arm, and drew Adam into a loose embrace. “And a . . . mortal boy. You are cold.” An edge of question adorned the observation.
“Y-yes, Lady.”
“You are like plants, then. Like those with the smallest of voices; you perish so quickly, and at the slightest of provocation. You do not create your own warmth. Come, Adam. Here, at least, I can.”
She spoke the truth; her arm, and the length of her sleeve, enfolded him. The wind’s howl could still be heard; it could no longer be felt.
“Shadow says you are not for me.”
The cat’s hiss w
as louder, and it contained threat. The threat did not trouble her.
“I accept this, although I regret it. Tell me, Adam, how did you come to be here?”
“You brought me here.”
She laughed. The sound was soft and gentle; it was as warm as he now felt. “You were already here. I could hear you, and when you touched me—and you are still touching me—I could sense enough of you that we could converse. But I did not call you to my side; none of us now have that power. We can hear the voices of the wind and the dreams of the sleeping earth, although even that, we do not touch; they cannot hear us.”
“Can you hear each other?”
Silence. After a long pause, she said, “No. We are aware of each other, of course. Until recently, we could hear the White Lady. She sings,” she added gently. Adam looked up; her eyes were soft, her lashes half-closed upon their silver. “She sings songs we knew and sang in our youth. But of late, she does not sing; we cannot hear her.
“We are truly imprisoned.”
“Can she hear you?”
“I do not know. What had we to say, when we were by her side? We listened, Adam. You cannot know the miracle of her voice or her words; you have not heard them. When she sings, I forget, for a moment, all fear, all anger; I hear her voice alone. There is no song that can contain the whole of her, but when she sings, there are no other voices. Not the voices of gods, nor the wilderness that spawned them; not the voices of the firstborn, nor their many creations.
“We could listen to her song for eternity. We would sing for her—we sometimes did—but she was whole, without us; we were not whole without her. And we are without her now. Is that how you come to be here?”
He shook his head; Shadow growled. “She is not here,” he said. “And he is not yours.”
“I will not keep him.”
“You have. She is worried.”
“She is not my concern.”
Shadow’s growl deepened.
“Shadow,” Adam said, afraid that the great gray cat—whose fur had risen an inch—would attack the woman in whose arms he was now standing. “How long have I been . . . gone?”
Oracle: The House War: Book Six Page 28