The guard’s nod was grim. “Get the mage—I’ll make sure no one uses this entrance until it’s dealt with.”
• • •
Birgide was aware of Meralonne APhaniel’s existence. As a function of her role within the Astari and her placement—albeit it to study the finer points of botany—she could name, without fail or pause, every First Circle mage within the Order’s active rolls. She could also name all of the Second Circle, as well. Knowledge of, however, was not acquaintance; being talentless, she was generally considered a nonentity as far as mages were concerned. The magi were cautious to the point of paranoia about each other. They were not as careful around people like Birgide, whose utter lack of magical talent meant she would never be a threat to the prominence of their position in the only important hierarchy.
Meralonne, however, was different. Even among the Order’s many magi, he was unique. He had been, as far as Birgide could determine, a member of the Order of Knowledge for decades; he was, in theory, older than Sigurne. No one was willing to acknowledge this; Birgide had never understood why.
But Duvari had cut short that avenue of research—which had raised flags that Birgide was not aware, until that moment, had even existed.
Meralonne APhaniel was the Terafin House Mage. She considered this even as she followed Jester at a run. She was surprised when he came to a skidding halt in front of The Terafin’s personal chambers. Two of the Chosen guarded these doors, a clear indication that the rooms were not occupied by The Terafin herself.
“We’ve got a door problem,” Jester said to the woman on the left, without preamble. She nodded, stepped to one side, and allowed Jester to yank the doors open. Pages often performed that function for guests and important dignitaries; clearly, Jester was neither.
“She’s with me,” he added, as he stepped through the doorway.
Birgide had never been invited into The Terafin’s personal quarters; nor did she ever expect to be so. She hesitated for a second and Jester disappeared. Literally. The doors appeared to open into a high-ceilinged library. He was not, however standing beneath that ceiling; nor was he walking across the library.
She glanced at the silent Chosen. Neither of the two, man or woman, appeared to be alarmed. They were well enough trained that alarm would be almost invisible, but Birgide detected no unusual tension. No surprise.
She walked quickly through the open doors.
• • •
Jester was, to her surprise, waiting for her on the other side. The doors through which she had walked no longer existed at her back; instead, she was framed by a wrought iron structure that implied the existence of a gate, without actually containing one.
Birgide looked beyond Jester ATerafin. Beyond and above. There was no ceiling here. There were no obvious walls. There were shelves, but closer inspection—even at this distance—indicated those shelves were also . . . trees. The flooring was a pale, unstained wood; she would have sworn it was a softwood, which was in no way suitable for the chambers it occupied.
Except that nothing in her experience would suit these chambers. Nothing except the Ellariannatte. She almost closed her eyes, so strongly did she sense their presence.
“Sorry,” Jester said brusquely. “I have to admit this is not my favorite part of the manse these days.”
“Was it ever one of them?”
“Sure. I was never summoned here, so anything that occurred here was guaranteed not to be my problem.” As she raised brows, he added, “Lazy, remember?”
“We all have some measure of laziness—we’re human. But yours, given your position in the House, is taken to ridiculous levels.”
“Not ridiculous. Merely self-serving. I’m perfectly happy to acknowledge my multitude of personal weaknesses.”
“Because you hope they will disqualify you from having to actually be useful?”
He grinned. “You see? You’re coming to understand me better as the days pass.”
Birgide smiled absently, her attention once again drawn away by amethyst skies that seemed to stretch out on all sides with no visible end. “Are we staying here?”
His shoulders slumped. “I hoped so. But he doesn’t appear to be arriving to meet us.”
“Does he usually?”
“Yes. He’s taken up residence here, and he’s ferocious about defending the space. The Chosen keep a very skeletal guard—but I don’t think it’s for his benefit. We don’t want to lose any of the Household Staff to the wilderness.” He began to walk to the right of the fence, toward the shelves. Birgide was almost afraid to touch them.
The thin strands of light that were scattered throughout the Terafin manse were nowhere in evidence in this room. Or perhaps, she thought, following in Jester’s wake, they were so much part of this landscape they could not be separated from it; she heard music, distant but distinct, every time she took a step. If Jester heard the same, he gave no sign.
Nor did she ask; as she considered the wording of the question that was forming, she was distracted by the sharp, harsh illumination of lightning. Pale, white-green streaks flashed across the whole of the sky, changing both its texture and its color.
Jester exhaled. “We’ve come at a bad time,” he said, as if such obvious magic was commonplace here. “No wonder the path was allowed to finish forming there.”
“Is it a common occurrence?”
“It’s not common. It has happened. It’s how we lost Ellerson and Carver. Meralonne is—can be—aware of when doors within the manse become strange, and he usually deals with them.”
“How?”
Jester shot her a look.
“You didn’t ask. Of course. Never mind.”
“I didn’t,” he added, “ask you how you knew, either.”
“No.” She didn’t volunteer the information; she didn’t understand it well enough herself. “But you did accept that I did.”
“I saw what happened in the forest,” he replied. “At the moment, I’m inclined to trust your instincts.”
Lightning flashed across the sky again. It was accompanied by a roar that literally shook the floor beneath their feet. Jester was understandably tense; he was not, however, frightened.
“Does this happen often?”
“I don’t know. I don’t ask the House Mage—”
“Questions. You really are remarkable.”
“You don’t say that as if it’s a good thing.”
She could not help it, she laughed. “I have always thought you feckless and lazy,” she told him, when she stopped. “But I must admit that your dedication elevates it into an art.” She frowned. “That last flash of lightning was different.”
“The blue one?”
“Yes.”
Jester nodded. “I don’t know about you,” he said, “but I’ve been walked off my feet this afternoon. I’m going to sit down.” He looked up at the skies as amethyst once again reasserted itself. To Birgide’s ears, so did the subtle, insistent song, the whisper of leaf against leaf and branch. She followed Jester down a row of shelves, glancing at the spines of the books; the language, which began as familiar, modern Weston, devolved into Old Weston, and from there, into languages with which she was not familiar. So, too, the style of bindings.
She did not touch the shelves, although the temptation was strong. Instead, she walked clear of them. As if they were a literal forest, there was a clearing in their center: a thing of floor, table, and chair. Beyond these, she could see a fountain, a clear, primitive font of stone and wood; lilies in pale pink and violet adorned the slightly rippling water.
Jester pulled out a chair and sat, leaning back in a lazy sprawl. She was not particularly surprised to see him put his feet on the table’s surface. The table itself was home to a small stack of books and a single, silvered mirror of the kind that one found in modest dressing rooms.
“You might as well sit,” Jester told her.
“We are waiting?”
“For Meralonne. When he’s finished—and assuming he’s survived—he’ll join us here. I hope you don’t mind pipe smoke.”
“He still smokes?”
“Only if it irritates someone. I don’t really mind it,” he added. He folded his arms and tilted his face toward sky. “Did you see him much, when you were a student in the Order?”
“No. He was, however, infamous for both his pipe and his general demeanor. Most of the mage-born are arrogant and dismissive when dealing with the lesser students. Meralonne was arrogant and dismissive when dealing with anyone, which somehow made it easier to bear.”
“I disliked the waste of my time,” the mage said.
Birgide blinked. Meralonne APhaniel was floating some ten feet above the table, his hair a spread of unfettered platinum that adorned his shoulders and fell across the whole of his back. He wore no other cape, and at the moment, carried no weapon.
But seeing him now, seeing him this close, she felt, viscerally, that he was of this place, and not the halls that existed beyond it, be they Terafin manse or Order of Knowledge. The wind that touched his hair carried him down to the floor.
“You are Birgide Viranyi,” he said, surprising her. He almost shocked her by tendering her what appeared to be a very respectful bow. His smile, as he rose, acknowledged this. “My apologies, ATerafin. I was much occupied.”
“I can see that,” Jester replied, taking his feet off the table and pushing himself, reluctantly, from his chair. “You’re bleeding.”
He was. Birgide had both cataloged it and failed to find it either disturbing or inappropriate. He looked much like any warrior come directly from the field of battle, save for the lack of weapon. “It is inconsequential. Come. Let us attend to the disturbance in the main hall.” He turned to Birgide, and, if the events of the day had not already passed beyond the bizarre, pushed them into the surreal: he offered her his arm.
She was aware, accepting it, that her own hands were dirty, callused; that she was dressed as a gardener and not a dignitary of note; that she was scarred, her nose once broken, her hair shorn. Even when it had grown, it had never grown as his did. All of these things were true any given day of the week—or year—but she seldom felt them so keenly. Interesting.
“You will not often see me in the manse itself,” he told her, as he led them back the way they’d come. Jester walked to her right, in silence. “In the absence of The Terafin, creatures grow bold, and these lands are not well-defended.” His smile was sharp. “Or they would not be, were I not here.
“Your duties are somewhat more mundane.”
He spoke as if he knew.
“The Terafin as she exists now is bound tightly to the world you inhabit. But the roads that lead to her are also hers; because she cannot acknowledge them fully, there are weaknesses in her defenses. You are meant to stand where she cannot stand in her absence. I am both surprised and unsurprised.”
“You do know.”
“Of you? Yes. The forest speaks your name. Serve The Terafin,” he added, his voice cooling. “Serve the forest, if you must. But serve as the Chosen serve. The ancient world is waking, and it is wild. There is beauty in it such as you and your kin—talent-born, god-born, mighty or insignificant, have never witnessed. But there is danger in it. There is no malice, but service does not mean to the ancient what it means to mortals.”
“The cats,” Jester pointed out.
The mage grimaced, his eyes narrowing at the mention of The Terafin’s chaotic winged retinue. “What they offer is no one’s definition of service, on either side of the divide; it is possible that mortals might consider it acceptable. It is not. I would not suffer them to exist in any space I claimed as my own.”
“I believe the cats care about The Terafin.”
Meralonne APhaniel exhaled. “Yes. Inasmuch as it is possible for those feckless, dangerous infants to care about anything other than their momentary entertainments, I would agree. That did not prevent one of them from almost ending her life.”
Birgide had not heard of this, and did not ask. If there was time, it would come later. She was concerned with the mage’s knowledge of the role she had only just accepted, because she felt suddenly certain he had a far better understanding of it than she did. “What does service mean to the forest?”
“It is entirely dependent, at this point, on you. If you are careless, that will not remain true. Service is an artifact of power; the powerful rule; the powerless are ruled.”
Birgide frowned. “Is that not always true?”
He laughed. “Mortals play at power. Money is power. Prestige is power. Talent is power. Should the Kings desire it, however, they could not level this city in a day. They could not level it in a year, if they met with any resistance.”
“And you are claiming the forest can?”
“Look at the library through which we now walk,” he replied, “and understand that the whole of it—what you can see, and what you cannot—was created in minutes, if that. You have walked the paths lined by trees of silver, gold, and diamond—and they, too, took root in a similar span of time.”
“Neither of these things happened in isolation.”
“No. They happened because of The Terafin. You have some experience with changes wrought outside of the boundaries of the Terafin properties. Or perhaps you do not; accept that I do, and they have. Those changes, like these, occurred in a span of minutes.”
“You are saying The Terafin is a power.”
“Yes.”
“And if I serve her—”
“She did not take your oath of service; the heart of her forest did. If you will take advice—and it is freely given and quite possibly worth only what you pay to hear it—you will offer your formal oath to her the moment she returns. She has limitations that the high wilderness would not even begin to understand—but what she accepts, the forest will accept.” He reached the iron arch. “And now, we must attend the difficulty in the manse itself.”
“APhaniel.”
“Yes?”
“What causes the difficulty?”
He did not answer.
Chapter Eighteen
BIRGIDE HAD STOOD BY the side of the House Mage while he examined the section of wall the House Guard now forbid anyone to touch. Anyone did not include Meralonne, of course; he gestured them away, and they went. To Birgide’s eye, they were grateful to be relieved of the task. She stepped back so that she might watch both the mage and the paneled section of wall.
“You’re staying?” Jester asked.
She glanced at him.
“Suit yourself. I find staring at walls unentertaining at best, and I’m heading back to my rooms.”
Birgide nodded, turning back to Meralonne. Even in this room, which was in all ways more mundane, he looked as if he belonged to some ancient, wild magic that she could witness, but never approach or use.
Where strands of colored light graced the room, they were concentrated for the most part at the level of the lighting and the windows themselves; there was very little to be found at foot level. The strands were violet and orange, the colors blending and diverging as strands traveled.
Only around the paneling that the mage now faced were they different. It wasn’t the color so much as the texture; the strands were thicker, the weave tighter. They emitted no sound when touched—or at least no sound Birgide could hear; she was reluctant to test the limits of her newfound perception, given Jester’s reaction.
Meralonne touched nothing. He studied the gleaming wood grain as if the lines there told a story only he could read. “Do you see what I see?” he asked softly.
“No.”
“And yet you see that something does not belong here.”
She nodded.
“How
does it differ, to your eye?”
“I can’t explain it,” she replied.
His eyes, which remained focused upon the paneling, narrowed. If he was petty and aggravating to many of the magi within the Order, he was sober, even grave, here. Birgide watched as the thick, dense weave began to unravel, threads moving as if they had will and purpose of their own, and seeking surfaces to which to cling.
He allowed them none.
“How is this dangerous?” she asked.
“I am almost not of a mind to answer the question, given your own evasion,” he replied. He exhaled, and—later than Jester had predicted—drew a pipe from the folds of his robe. She blinked. He had not been wearing the robe when they had met him in the library above; nor had he been wearing it when they had descended into the manor proper.
Meralonne had never been of a mind to answer any irrelevant questions—where relevance was based entirely on his own interests, whatever they might be. Birgide, accustomed to this, fell silent.
He surprised her. “It is not clearly understood by most of the citizens of Averalaan, but the city itself is situated on dangerously unstable ground. You spent some time recently in the Western Kingdoms?”
She nodded.
“And, no doubt, you heard rumors of strange happenings along the roads?”
She nodded again, this time more slowly.
“The world is changing, Birgide. No power exists which will stop that change; small pockets of power exist which might mitigate the damage it causes. I would be one of those small pockets. The Terafin would be another. In my opinion,” he added, lighting the pipe he held in his hands, “She is the only significant one. What the Kings, the Exalted, and the rest of the Order combined might achieve is insignificant in comparison.
“And Jewel’s reach is defined by borders of the city. They know,” he added.
“They?”
“Those who serve the Lord of the Hells, and those who have lived for far, far too long in the shadows and the hidden byways barely acknowledged by your kind at all. They know she is absent. But even absent, she is connected to these lands. Do you understand the connection?”
Oracle: The House War: Book Six Page 51