Oracle: The House War: Book Six

by Michelle West

  The serpent roared again.

  Shadow hissed.

  “You disagree, Eldest? I mean to give her warning, no more. I am Kialli. You will, of course, fail to trust me; all of my words will be suspect. But I offer advice—and no comfort. Power in the ancient world always demanded a price. Mortals were oft foolish in their attempt to transfer their accrued debt. I believe some of your stories still exist, but if you will not seek them out, let me tell you that those attempts did not work out well—either for the mortals or those they hoped to sacrifice in their own stead.

  “Power has a price. See it. Pay it. Or walk away from the power you require.” He bowed again.

  “Why are you doing this?” Jewel demanded. “What advantage do you hope to gain?”

  “I did not lie; I want war. We will be enemies in the future, as we have been in the past; my goals and your goals can never, in the end, be the same. But I am in your debt.”

  Jewel folded arms. She did not, and would never, trust the man who stood, silent and without the obvious arrogance that graced most immortals—even the stag—but he wasn’t lying. “You are so not in my debt.”

  “I had nowhere else to leave the child.”

  “How did she even—”

  “It is of no material consequence. She came into my keeping; I agreed to keep her safe. I could not, in the end, achieve that in the Shining City. I could not take her to Kiriel, for reasons that I am certain are obvious. I could leave her nowhere else.”

  “Why do you care?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “Yes.”

  He met, and held, her unblinking gaze. “Understand that the Kialli do not condescend to truth; it is a vulnerability, a weakness.”

  Jewel waited.

  “I am not like my kin. I remember, Terafin. I remember much. I do not know why it is of import to me; I have no plans for the child, and see no future for her but the future that plagues the mortal races; she will age, she will die, and she will be unremembered. She will make no mark of greatness in the future. She will influence no great powers, and play no role in the war to come. She is unlikely to survive that war at all, as it currently stands. She is missing fingers. She was, from all accounts, the scion of poor, but free, clansmen.

  “There is nothing in her that is relevant at all.”

  “You saved her.”

  “Yes.” He smiled. The smile did not suit the cast of his features; Jewel found it disturbing, although she couldn’t say why. He looked, once, again, toward the sky, as lightning changed its color. “I told you: mortals, your distant kin, were very much like the pets adopted by mortals now; they are like your horses. No, they are like your cats. They have no utility on the surface—and possibly no utility beneath it, as well. The most powerful of mortals might own such creatures; they are irrationally fond of them, for no obvious reason.

  “It is my suspicion that Ariel is much like a cat, and I, like the mortals who might own them in your lands. I cannot, however, say with any certainty; I studied mortals, but I did not attempt to imitate them.”

  “So your answer is: you don’t know.”

  “Indeed.”

  She exhaled. “Ariel doesn’t belong with you.”

  “No. That is why she is currently in your keeping. Or in the keeping of your den. You will not take her on the road to war while your home is left standing. Does it surprise you that I have a similar inclination?”

  It did. Nothing about the Kialli lord in front of her made sense to Jewel. Not even the fact that, inasmuch as her gift could determine, he spoke truth.

  “Let me eat him,” Shadow growled.

  “You won’t like the taste. He’ll just turn into dust and ash in your mouth.”

  The great, gray cat snarled. In as low a voice as he ever used, he said, “But he will bleed first.”

  “Doesn’t matter. The rest of it will be ash, and you’ve tried that once.”

  “That was Snow! Snow is stupid!”

  Isladar raised a single brow. Although he didn’t appear to be watching the cat, Jewel was certain he was aware of the movement of every, single one of Shadow’s whiskers. “Yes,” she said quietly.

  Shadow yowled in outrage. “We don’t need him!”

  “Do you mean the Sleepers to wake?” she continued, over the caterwauling of angry cat.

  Isladar joined her, but began to walk. “Can you speak with your companions in the air?”

  “I can send Shadow.”

  “I won’t go.” This verged on growl. He did not like Isladar.

  The serpent roared. The ground shook. The tremors continued when the roar itself was no longer even an echo. Shadow fell silent, then. Everyone standing on the ground did.

  “Please don’t tell me,” Jewel said quietly, “that the earth is waking.”

  Isladar’s smile was cool. “It is not yet awake. But if you will accept my help, we must leave this place. I can no longer safely fight on the ground—nor can any of my kin.” He glanced once at the sky. “The serpent is not Kialli. He is not of the dead. The wilderness hears his voice when he chooses to speak with it at all.

  “It hears ours,” he added, as he picked up the pace without apparent effort, “and it attempts, where it can, to destroy us; we are no longer of this world. The elements took our choice as desertion and betrayal—and they are not the only ones.”

  “It is possible you will not be the safest of guides,” Avandar said.

  Isladar smiled. “If I cannot cajole the earth as I once did, I can speak in such a way that the earth does not immediately attempt my destruction. It was,” he added softly, “the work of silent decades.”

  “Decades that your comrades have not spent.”

  “No. Where rejected, they reject—or destroy. The earth, of course, cannot be destroyed; it can be subjugated.”

  “Not easily.”

  “Of course not. But where things come easily, they are not, in the end, of value. Not to you, Warlord. Nor to me. I can pass above the restless earth; I can silence my voice and my presence. But I cannot fight with any power. Nor can my kin—but they are likely to survive the waking earth. Some of you will not.” He froze as a roar once again broke the stillness of sky above.

  This roar was higher; it didn’t sound like a force of nature; it contained too many syllables.

  A name, Jewel thought. And she recognized it.

  Isladar’s smile deepened, sharpened. “They have seen her. I do not know your intent in this, Terafin—but you chose well. We are Kialli. We remember.”

  Above them, in the air, Shianne replied. She spoke, as the first voice had, and there was as much pain, as much surprise, in the names she called.

  “But memory, in the end, is not as visceral as experience. Knowledge at a distance is a dull shock, a dull pain, in comparison.” His smile deepened. “You cannot feel what they feel.”

  “No. I can . . . hear it.”

  “It is not the same. This, Terafin, is what we have become; it is one of the few pleasures left to those who must mind and tend the Hells. Even the pain of our own kin feeds us. Remember this.”

  “Isladar?”

  “We must run,” he replied.

  “Would she recognize you?”

  “After this day,” he said, “I do not think she will recognize any of the kin should you encounter them again. Our choice—such as it was—would be an unthinkable betrayal to her, and she is encountering that grief and that loss for the first time.”

  “We told her,” Shadow growled.

  “Yes, Eldest. But rumor, while painful, does not have the teeth of truth.”

  • • •

  Shadow would not leave.

  “I need someone in the air. I need you to carry a message—and I need you to lead them to us when—and if—we find safe harbor.”

 
Shadow could converse—as most Immortals could—in any language known to man. Certainly in any language known to Jewel. He failed to understand the words, while simultaneously finding them insulting.

  The Winter King quietly rejoined the group. There is no fire in the direction you are heading; there are no demons.

  Good. I need you to join the rest in the air.

  You could force the cat to your will, the great stag said, with only a trace of his usual disgust. He was—there was no other word for it—excited, somehow. Born mortal, he had become something other. Or perhaps that otherness had always existed at his core; Jewel didn’t know how a Winter King was chosen. She had never asked.

  Nor did she ask now. Yes, she replied, rescuing the packs the Winter King so effortlessly carried. I could. But it’s costly, and he’ll sulk for days. I don’t think we can afford that.

  You do not want to suborn his will to yours.

  She didn’t, but changed tactics. You want to be there, she told the Winter King. And I need someone to be there. Go.

  I cannot speak as your Shadow speaks.

  You’re smart enough to make yourself understood. When we come to harbor—if there is one to be found—you’ll have to lead the others to where I am. There’s no one in the sky now who won’t be able to follow you.

  And you?

  We’re following the demon, she replied. He doesn’t intend us harm.

  He will not fight if harm presents itself.

  For us? Probably not. But given anything else we’re likely to encounter, I’ll take the lack of intent. Go.

  The Winter King was not Shadow. He obeyed.

  • • •

  Jewel didn’t count steps. She had no idea how long she’d run—only that she had run, one heavy pack strapped to her back. Shadow hissed and growled when she’d saddled him, metaphorically, with the others. What was good enough for the Winter King was clearly very far beneath him.

  “You could have joined your brothers,” she told him, while he tore new runnels in the ground. “But no—I had to send the Winter King.”

  “And the Winter King obeyed you,” Isladar noted. “You have indeed traveled interesting paths since last we met.”

  “Yes. And none of them managed to kill me, either.” She finished buckling a slender strap around Shadow’s underbelly, and rose. Isladar began, at once, to run. It wasn’t a sprint—he set a pace that Jewel could match. But as distance grew, the pace became punishing.

  She listened as she ran, her breath escaping slightly open lips in a thin, pale stream. The earth’s rumble shifted, and after a long stretch, stilled.

  But the creature roared again, and echoes of his voice remained beneath her feet when the voice itself fell silent.

  She had seen what the earth could do. She had marveled at it. But she knew that earth, awake, here, would be deadly: the bard and Celleriant could not easily maintain their footing in an air made wilder by anger.

  She turned to shout a warning to Kallandras and stopped. She wasn’t bard-born. If she could—somehow—make herself heard, she would be heard by all: her companions and the enemies who had erected a slender barrier of fire to trap her here. Had she been alone, she would have done it, regardless—but she wasn’t.

  She had never wanted to be alone again. She’d built a life, with all its resultant compromises, that ensured that she wouldn’t be. And those compromises stung now. What she might survive—on instinct, on talent—Angel would not. Neither, she thought, would Terrick—although she felt a twinge of something that disagreed with that assessment. She didn’t question it. Didn’t evaluate it.

  Avandar wouldn’t die. He was the only man here who would greet death with joy.

  I would prefer the passage to be as painless as possible, he replied, a hint of dry humor in the words.

  I need Kallandras to speak—

  No, Terafin. No, Jewel. He cannot safely do so from the air—if he can do so at all. His command of the one element is a gift of the ring he now wears—a ring that cannot be transferred or removed except at his death. If then.

  I don’t need him to speak to the earth. I need him to sing to the serpent.

  Ah. That, I can tell him.

  She didn’t even ask how. She merely cursed herself for not speaking sooner. She had never ascertained the full range of Avandar’s capabilities—in part because she was certain he would hide most of them behind pretty—or angry—lies. She regretted it, now.

  Isladar’s stride had widened; the pace he set went from uncomfortable to painful. Jewel sensed no pursuit; if demons were present, she thought their full attention must be, in the end, upon the serpent and Calliastra—her form, the full shadowed width and breadth of her wingspan, was visible in a way the serpent, strictly speaking, was not.

  Shianne’s voice cut across all roaring—serpent or cat. It was as strong, as clear, as pure as Kallandras’ voice, when raised in bardic song.

  It stopped even Isladar in his tracks; Jewel knew, because she ran into the stiff, hard line of his back.

  Shadow hissed laughter. Jewel almost kicked him. She moved to the side to avoid contact with the demon lord, and saw, for a moment, his expression: the width of his eyes, and the slow way they closed; the stiffness of his arms and the shudder that took his hands before he curled them into fists.

  She had never seen a demon in pain, before.

  “No,” Isladar said quietly. “Our own pain does not feed us, except in one way.” His hands remained fists as he turned, again, to look at the height of the contested skies, where every voice but one, and one alone, fell silent. Not even the serpent roared, Shianne’s voice was so powerful.

  Jewel couldn’t understand a word of the song itself. Not a syllable. And she was grateful for her ignorance, because tone alone conveyed too much. She didn’t cry in public, but regardless, tears escaped her eyes—nor did she attempt to brush them away, to deny them.

  Because to deny them was to deny Shianne when she exposed a part of herself that Jewel would never have willingly exposed to any—not even her den.

  She was surprised when voices joined Shianne’s. The first, she recognized instantly. Shadow. It would have been hard to miss, because he’d come to stand on her right foot. His singing voice resembled the voice one might expect from a yowling cat—at least in texture. But it managed, in spite of that, to contain actual notes.

  Snow and Night joined him from on high.

  And then, surrendering for a moment to the force of Shianne’s stark voice, Isladar smiled. It was a bitter expression that spoke of loss—but more, it spoke of resignation that had once again slipped away, revealing everything that could not be accepted: loss, death, consequence.

  He sang.

  He sang, and had they been running, it would have been Jewel who would have frozen midstep, as if running or walking—or even breathing—consumed too much will, too much thought.

  She saw him—before she turned away—not as demon lord, not as Kialli. Nor did she see him as Arianni, although the resemblance was there. She saw him, instead, as ghost, the grief of past losses too overwhelming to be laid to rest.

  And if this ghost was deadly—and he was, as were all of his kin—if he could destroy the living, in this one simple moment, that almost made sense. Grief could, and did, destroy the living if the living couldn’t somehow make peace with it.

  But there was no peace to be made with this grief: it was too raw, too new, too fresh. It invoked loss in a way that even Lefty’s death had not. She felt slight, insignificant, almost invisible, as he joined voice to Shianne’s.

  And he was not the only one. Although she could not see them, could not pin direction from the sound of their voices, they joined him: his kin, his brethren, the demons he meant to betray by leading her through this gauntlet of trap and death.

  She wondered, then, as she would wonder in f
uture, what love meant to demons. She had seen his hand in Kiriel, and it was dark and scarring. But she could not imagine pain such as this coming from that place. She could not imagine that Isladar could grieve—truly grieve—Kiriel’s loss; Kiriel was pawn or Queen in a game of complicated chess.

  He would never sing for Kiriel as he sang, in this single moment, for Shianne. But he could sing thus; it was humbling. She bowed her head; she meant to give him privacy, the sense of awe was so large.

  But she had no time for privacy, because she understood what this song—what this complicated, terrible outpouring was: a gift of time. She did not touch or approach Isladar; she did not speak to him. She signed to Angel, and Angel passed word to Terrick; she signed to Adam and he joined her. Avandar nodded.

  They began to move.

  Shadow slapped the demon lord with his right wing.

  The humility, the grace, the respect that Isladar had offered Shadow was entirely absent as he turned in sudden rage, lifting an arm. To it came sword: red sword.

  “You will wake the earth,” the cat growled. He did not seem particularly intimidated by either the weapon or the rage itself. For one long second, Jewel thought the earth no longer mattered to Isladar. The earth, his chosen mission, his game—all were dwarfed by the enormity of the experience and the memory that he had almost involuntarily chosen to honor.

  But the sword wavered as Lord Isladar’s arm fell, once again, to the side; it was gone between one blink and the next. He retreated from a song that had not ended. “We are Kialli,” he said, his voice remote. “We remember. But we choose the memories that we honor in the end, and there are some to which we do not return.” He whispered her name, raising his face as if he could see hers, at this distance.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  15th of Morel, 428 A.A.

  Terafin Manse, Averalaan Aramarelas

  ‘‘I NEED TO MEET WITH JARVEN.”

  Jester’s brows bunched together over the bridge of a lightly freckle-dusted nose. He didn’t bother to lose the expression; he was speaking with Birgide. If the expression had hit his face—and it had—it had already been noticed. As Jester was famously lazy, he refused to put effort into what was already pointless.