Oracle: The House War: Book Six

by Michelle West

  “No.”

  “And she will, if she is released.”

  “Yessss. She will die like you die. She will be like you.”

  Adam said, softly, “She will be nothing like me.”

  The cat hissed. “She will be almost like you. She will walk in time. She will age. She will die. The White Lady will lose her—forever. If you leave her here, she will continue to be eternal.”

  “But this is not life, Shadow!”

  “It is.”

  Adam did not want the discussion to devolve into one better suited for squabbling children. Again. “And the child?”

  “He will never be born.” Shadow hesitated. “I do not know why she did not kill it.”

  Adam uttered a brief Torran curse at the cat’s contemptuous face.

  “Destroying the child,” the Lady said gravely, “would not save me. And perhaps she understood, in the end. I cannot say. I understand that my loss will cause the White Lady grief. It is an echo of the grief we ourselves might face should we lose her forever.”

  “She will not die.”

  “If she died,” the Lady replied, “we would all die with her.”

  • • •

  Adam did not understand the love that existed in these imprisoned women for the being who had imprisoned them. But he did not always understand the love—and the hate—that existed between any man and woman of his acquaintance, be they close family, close friends, or distant strangers. Love of a particular type was, and had always been, a mystery.

  But life was not, now. Not to Adam.

  Help us.

  Yes, Adam said.

  Something moved beneath his hands. He felt . . . surprise. Attention. Excitement. It was a child’s excitement, not an infant’s, and unlike the plea itself, it was not contained in, or by, words.

  Adam moved away from the Lady. He held out one hand—his right—palm up. He was aware, as he made this gesture, that it was not his hand that moved; beneath his palm, if he concentrated, he could feel flesh. It was like dream or nightmare, he thought. During those, he lay abed, sleeping while at the same time running in terror, eating, hiding.

  Yet, as in dream or nightmare, what felt true was the outstretched hand.

  She regarded him as if from a great remove. No matter how close he stood, there would always be distance between them.

  “If you will leave this place, if you will risk the heartbreak and sorrow of the White Lady who is your life, take my hand.”

  “It is to preserve what we have loved, it is to preserve the source of all that we are, and all that we might ever become, that I made my choice. I knew it would be irrevocable.” She placed her hand in his; hers did not shake at all. “I was wrong, of course. You think of my current state as punishment, and in some fashion it was—but it was more, Adam. The White Lady loves as she loves, and she does not willingly surrender that which is hers. Not to time. Not to death. Trapped upon this mountain, I would remain hers for as long as she exists.”

  “But she does not visit.” He offered her a second hand, and she took that as well. “If you are not what you were—if you are as I now am—the world itself will be strange and deadly; there is every chance that if you follow me you will meet death far sooner—”

  “You mean, at all?” She laughed. Her laughter was warm and deep. “We know death,” she told him; he heard her amusement but did not open his eyes to catch her expression—which was hard. “Our kin have always known death. But death is not an inevitability. We do not walk toward it. If we are powerful enough, skilled enough, fast enough, wise enough, we step out of its path; it might sweep the lands of all life but ours.

  “It is of that death that you now speak, is it not? And not the one that awaits you regardless.”

  He nodded. He trusted himself to nod. He understood, listening to her while gripping her hands so tightly, what the distant White Lady desired: to preserve. To keep this woman safe. To hold her above death and time and the decay that came inevitably with either. Even childbirth risked that death.

  Especially childbirth.

  But Adam was a healer.

  And if you can only save one? Levec asked, from a painful distance.

  He did not answer.

  • • •

  Jewel did not lift her hand from the woman’s belly; for her, the feel of it, the texture of perfect, taut skin, did not change. But she opened her eyes the moment she heard the sudden absence of all breathing, looking in panic to Adam. To Adam’s hands, and to the flesh that lay beneath them.

  He no longer touched a pillar, carved in the shape of an Arianni woman. He touched skin. He touched visible flesh. She understood, then, why the silence had grown so sharp and so thick.

  She heard the sound of drawn blade: one. She knew who had drawn it; she almost told him to put the weapon away, but did not. She had seen the White Lady of Celleriant’s life only once, but no part of her assumed that haunting beauty was without peril. It was, it had been, death.

  And she had no doubt at all that he would attack this woman if she proved to be as deadly; the only person upon whom he would not—would never—turn that sword was Ariane herself.

  You are wrong, Jewel. He would not raise sword against you except at your explicit command.

  The stone did not give way to flesh instantly. The ivory-pink cast of skin traveled out from Adam’s splayed hands, as if the stone were a curtain he was slowly and deliberately pushing to the side. It was not simple work; his brow was furrowed with concentration, his skin, in the cool air, beaded with sweat. Jewel’s free hand held his shoulder, bracing him.

  Shadow roared.

  She startled, looking up; she could see the great cat, wings spread as he circled above these arches. Snow, riderless, replied in kind, and Night joined them. She could not tell what angered the cats—or if the cats were angered at all; they had never been shy about putting their feelings into actual words. There were no words now.

  But she thought this might be the cat form of horns, of a type of complicated, sub-verbal heraldry or greeting.

  Color spread up the woman’s torso, down her arms, and down her legs; it turned marble hair platinum and lent it a weight and a sheen that Jewel’s hair had never, and would never, have. She would have pushed her own straggly hair out of her eyes, but to do so she would have had to surrender her grip on Adam.

  She surrendered her grip on the Arianni woman instead. Lids that had once been stone opened; lashes that had once been stone framed a very familiar silver gray. The first thing those eyes saw was Jewel Markess. They widened. Jewel placed a second hand on Adam, her palms shaking.

  Adam, however, did not open his eyes; nor did he release the woman. The Arianni woman glanced down at his bowed head, and to Jewel’s surprise, she smiled. The hand that had been raised to support an arch now fell, gently and slowly, to touch his hair.

  “Adam,” she said, and her voice was a shock of sound, it was almost a sensation. “Adam of Arkosa.”

  He did not reply. Her eyes narrowed. This was not a woman who was accustomed to being ignored. The cats above her head continued their three-part roar; the air shook with the force of their voices.

  Silver eyes narrowed as the woman lifted her chin, turned her gaze upward, to the source of the noise.

  “You are the Matriarch?” she asked Jewel, without looking down.

  “It is what Adam calls me,” was Jewel’s evasive and unintentionally hushed reply.

  “And these cats are yours?”

  She coughed, which did attract the woman’s attention. “They’re cats. I’m not sure they can belong to anyone but themselves. But—yes, they’re traveling with me.”

  “Do they obey you?”

  “They’re cats,” she repeated.

  “They obey her,” Avandar said. He offered the lady—the naked lady—a perfect b
ow. In style it was Southern.

  She frowned. Jewel half-expected her to call him by name, and was surprised when she did not. The lady glanced at Kallandras, who also bowed; if she could see Angel and Terrick, she made no sign; her eyes came to rest, at last, upon Lord Celleriant, armed—as Jewel knew he must be—with the sword and the shield of his people.

  Her smile was brighter, sharper. It was not predatory, but it was not entirely welcoming. “Brother,” she said.

  He failed to bow. He failed to speak. He watched her for a long, long moment, his lips a thin line, his eyes likewise narrow.

  Jewel exhaled. She started to speak, but Adam lifted his head; the lady’s hand gently brushed his forehead. “I am in your debt,” she told the kneeling boy. She lowered the other arm, and by some miracle of magic the arch above her did not come crashing down; it did not even teeter.

  She then offered those perfect hands to Adam; he took them with obvious hesitation and she lifted him, with ease, to his feet. He was pale; dark semicircles sat beneath his eyes, and his lips were cracked. “The child?” she asked, in an imperious voice.

  “He is well,” Adam replied.

  “Snow,” Jewel shouted. The white cat’s roar banked; she could hear sibilance take its place as he meandered his way toward her.

  “Yessssss?”

  “Adam is exhausted. I do not want him to fall here.”

  “Where can he fall?” the cat asked, with great interest.

  Jewel placed a hand between his ears; the cat muttered. He glanced at the pregnant woman, huffed, and muttered some more. Most of it had to do with stupid, which meant, of course, Jewel. “You are never allowed to drop him,” she said, “unless he specifically requests it.”

  Snow sidled up to Adam without quite meeting his gaze. This was made simpler by the fact that Adam had difficulty taking his eyes off the woman. The air carried her; Jewel wasn’t certain whether she spoke to it herself, or Kallandras did.

  She was almost the same height as Celleriant; her skin, her hair, and her eyes suggested immediate kinship. But she did not look particularly pleased by his presence. Since her look mirrored his almost exactly—absent armor and weapons—Jewel supposed this made sense. She didn’t understand the Arianni. The lack of understanding made her feel human.

  “I am Jewel,” she told the stranger. “This is Snow; his brothers noisemaking above us are Night and Shadow, respectively. They carry two men, Angel and Terrick. You’ve obviously met Adam; the man who addressed you is Avandar, my domicis.” The woman frowned. “My oathguard.” The frown on her face cleared. The frown on Avandar’s deepened. Jewel ignored both. “The man with the golden curls is Kallandras; he is a bard. Music is his strength and his gift.

  “And behind me, you see Lord Celleriant. He is my liege; I am his lord.”

  She spoke to Celleriant in a language that Jewel did not understand. As she struggled to retain some of the syllables, she frowned. She had understood every word the stranger had spoken so far, and the stranger had clearly understood her.

  Celleriant replied in kind. He did not set aside either his sword or his shield; this did not seem to give offense. As the woman spoke, she lifted Adam with ease and deposited him both firmly and gently on the white cat’s back. She did so without apparently looking at him; her gaze was fixed upon Celleriant. Adam listed.

  “What do you intend for the others?” Avandar asked the healer.

  Adam shook his head. “They are not to be touched. The Lady feels that were I to somehow free them, I would pay with my life. She does not feel that my touch will mean to them what it meant to her; they will be as adamant—and as dangerous in their rage should I try—as Shadow.

  “And the Matriarch does not command that I heal the sisters of the White Lady.”

  Celleriant’s voice rose in outrage or horror; Jewel turned from Adam for just a moment to see the Arianni lord’s expression. His skin was the color of his hair; his arm had fallen, and with it, the sword. He turned to Jewel as his shield and sword guttered and vanished.

  “Do you know what you have done?” he demanded.

  The practical truth was that she had done very little. She said, instead, “I have allowed a healer the use of the talent to which he was born.”

  “Do you understand who she is?”

  “No. But you understand it and perhaps you will share.”

  Be wary, Jewel, the Winter King said. He had come out of thin air, as he so often did, to stand by her side, his tines raised. This woman was not the Winter Queen, but clearly, kin to her; he was drawn to her—just as Jewel was drawn.

  “You are to travel,” the woman said softly, “to the White Lady’s court. If it pleases you, I will travel with you.”

  “And if it does not?”

  “I will travel, regardless. I will not travel quickly, and perhaps not well; I am told I have a handful of decades in which to arrive, and speed is therefore of the essence.”

  She looked to Celleriant; he was rigid.

  “I do not intend to travel to the—to the White Lady’s court directly. I have come to find the Oracle’s domain—and I don’t have any clear idea of where it is.”

  “No, you would not. No one does, who has never walked the path to reach her. It is not simple to find; it is not simple to walk. Should she choose to remain hidden, she will never be found at all.”

  Jewel said nothing.

  “But, Matriarch,” she continued, frowning slightly as Jewel flinched, “I have traveled that path. Let us then come to an agreement. I will lead you to the Oracle if you agree, in turn, to allow me to travel with you to the White Lady’s court.”

  “There is some chance,” Jewel said, her voice too thin and too dry, “that I will not survive the Oracle’s test.”

  The woman frowned. “You think she means to kill you?”

  Shadow snorted; the woman ignored him.

  “Not directly, no. I am not the first woman to walk the Oracle’s path. But many who did so did not survive it.”

  “They died?”

  “No.”

  Silence. Shadow hissed. The woman, again, ignored him. The great gray cat flexed his claws, and Jewel fixed him with a glare. It was wordless, but not even Shadow could pretend to misunderstand her meaning.

  “Many have walked the Oracle’s path,” the Lady said quietly. “I have not yet heard that the Oracle destroyed those she chose, in the end, to grant audience. I am told the world has changed—has it changed so much?”

  Celleriant’s laugh was bright and hard. “If you are as you claim, it has changed almost beyond your reckoning.” After a harsh pause, he spoke again in a language that was opaque to Jewel. There was less shock, less outrage, in his tone, and he did not draw sword.

  Jewel thought the danger—whatever that danger might be—had passed, for now. Do you understand her words? she asked the Winter King.

  His silence was almost reverent, which was answer enough. The wind tugged Jewel’s hair, and she pushed it out of her eyes, even though those eyes remained closed for another long beat.

  When she opened them, she lowered her hands—to her hips. Her pursed lips would have been a signal to her den—but only Angel was here, and Shadow had never come close enough that he could see them clearly.

  It was time to leave. It was probably, she thought, past time.

  And where exactly will you go?

  Clearing her throat, she said, “I don’t intend to die. Everything I care about depends on my survival and my sanity. If you will lead us to the Oracle’s domain, we will escort you to the Queen’s court.” Although the two Arianni voices had not fallen silent, the Lady turned. “I do not think I can even find the court until I have undertaken—and passed—the Oracle’s test.”

  Silver eyes rounded; platinum hair flew in the swirls of agitated wind. She turned to Celleriant, her voice raised.
/>
  He replied in Weston. “None can return to the court if they but leave it; the ways are closed; they are hidden to all.” He then turned to Jewel. “On occasion, my lord sees things that are hidden. If she is to see what is hidden, she must subject herself to the judgment of the Oracle. It is for that reason that we have come. Whether you accept my lord’s offer or not, it is to the Oracle that we must first travel.”

  “I do not have the time,” she said, and for the first time there was an edge of fear or anxiety in that perfect, clear voice. “Did you not understand the truth of which I spoke? I will age and die. Your Adam has explained what mortality means, and I am mortal, now. I do not have the decades to undergo the Oracle’s many tests—not again.”

  Jewel shook her head. “You don’t have decades. I don’t have months. Did Adam explain the difference between the two?”

  She nodded. Adam, on Snow’s back, looked foggy and confused. “I didn’t—”

  “The communication, Adam of Arkosa, is a bridge. You traveled to me, at my request; I, too, could reach across what you built. I understand your language—your two languages. I understand how you mark . . . time.” She spoke the word as if testing it. “I understand what a healer is, and what you believe your Matriarchs capable of.” She turned to Celleriant, who was now utterly silent. “I understand the gray simplicity of their tiny, brief lives—and the lack of beauty, the lack of wonder, that informs them.”

  “You are mortal?”

  “Yes.”

  “You cannot be! Do you understand what you have done to yourself? You will be little better than—”

  “Thank you, Celleriant,” Jewel cut in. “You may, if it pleases you, discuss the taint and inferiority of mortality on your own time.”

  Chapter Eleven

  NOW, JEWEL THOUGHT, standing in midair, the ground so distant beneath her feet it made her dizzy just to look, all that was left was logistics. She knew how much food they had; adding another person cut the number of days they could travel in safety without resorting to foraging. Given the wilderness, she had anticipated the end of safe food with dread.