Oracle: The House War: Book Six

by Michelle West

He felt fire—and fire was not of this world, either.

  He worked to douse it, and the world worked, naturally, with him. But he held the other things that were foreign to it in place, and the earth accepted them. It was not like healing; it was like weaving. Adam had seen the looms in the Terafin manse; Carver had showed him. They were large and intimidating. He could not weave, but watched, where watching was permitted; there was something almost like magic in the process of creation; one took threads and skeins and made of them something that was more than the sum of its parts, and yet also exactly that.

  Fire, fire, fire. He felt it surge; he extinguished it. It took effort and focus, very like the effort of healing. In the chill of winter, sweat beaded his forehead; he thought it would freeze there, while he worked.

  But he worked in the Matriarch’s shadow, and he wove that shadow into the whole, grasping it as if it were, among all things present, the most precious, the most necessary.

  And it was, to the Voyani. Adam was of Arkosa. Jewel was of Terafin. But she had taken him in and allowed him to care for the children—even if there was only one. She had touched the sleeping dreamers that had fallen to the beguiling lies of the ancient world, and they had woken to her touch, as they had to his—but each time, for Adam, sleep had returned.

  For the Matriarch, never. She had banished it. She had led them back to the lives they must lead: lives of pain and duty and loss. And yet, also, lives of hope and dreams and joy.

  Adam understood what he was weaving; he understood it in a way that even Lord Isladar did not; Lord Isladar was, as he had claimed, dead. The dead, Adam knew, could drive the living almost mercilessly, because the dead could not change. They were trapped, by the living, in their rage, their fear, or their resentment; trapped, by the living, in their sorrow and their loss. The lands here would not free them; they remembered, and their anger was endless. But so, too, their sorrow.

  Adam had seen the strange combination of sorrow and rage wreak havoc among his own kin. And he had, as a child, and later, as a young man, interceded. Anger had frightened him, as it frightened many children. But sorrow moved him in a different way.

  He was not as Isladar was: he was not eternal. But he was alive.

  • • •

  Angel’s sword caught the long, dark claws of the first demon to reach him; the creature was casual and careless, as if swords such as Angel’s were harmless. That cost the demon a hand.

  Angel had seen how ineffective regular swords and daggers could be against demons; with enough strength behind them, they could be wielded as clubs, but their edges did not cut demonic flesh. This sword had come from the armory in The Terafin’s personal chambers, and it had refused to leave its sheath until he had sworn his oath to The Terafin—to Jay. He suspected that Meralonne had some inkling of the sword’s history; he suspected that Avandar did as well. Neither had chosen to share.

  Demonic eyes widened.

  Shadow roared.

  Flames rose in sudden fury, demolishing snow. Angel didn’t burn. He wasn’t certain why, but didn’t pause to question it: the demons didn’t pause. There were two here; one was winged. It rose, bleeding where it had lost part of its left arm. The other shifted in place. What had once been a large, four-armed creature now condensed in all dimensions.

  Neither spoke.

  But the constant rumble beneath Angel’s feet grew stronger. The fires banked suddenly; given the reaction of the demon that remained on the ground, the absence of fire was not his choice. He leaped back, and back again; Angel followed the first swift retreat, but held his ground for the second leap. He was there for Jay—Jay and Adam. He did not intend to let himself be lured away.

  The creature on the ground leaped to the side, keeping his distance; he gestured, and fire once again rose in an orange wall. Angel cut it.

  Angel cut it and it split in half, the two sections falling away as if they were the slashed wall of a rough tent. The flames seemed to avoid the blade itself.

  He moved when the demon once again closed. This time, it barreled in, as if to force Angel back—or out of the way. Angel turned slightly to the side, shifting his stance as he brought the blade to bear in an arc that began below his hip and ended above his head.

  The demon stopped at the last instant; he made no further attempt to deflect the sword with his arm. Instead, almost hissing, he drew a sword of his own. It was red; redder than the flames that kept banking. No shield followed, for which Angel was thankful.

  He moved, his sword clashing with the demon’s against a background that was becoming less white as the minutes passed. He had not forgotten the winged demon. He moved when something that was not fire rained down from the sky.

  Avandar’s shields caught it, shunting it to either side of where Jay stood; it was liquid darkness. Angel had no chance to examine it; he was hard-pressed, now. The armed demon was fast; possibly faster than Angel.

  But the darkness that had fallen harmlessly upon the ground rose, moving in reverse; that much he could see. Not more. He was peripherally aware of a figure that moved in from his right; he recognized Terrick’s height in the brief glance he could afford.

  The demon saw more; he leaped again, as if he were weightless. The height of the arc of his single jump implied wings, although he had none. In the air, above the demon’s knife-slender body, the whole of the sky seemed to shake.

  Angel looked up at the roar of rage and fury that accompanied the sudden appearance of a giant, winged serpent. It was a deep, sapphire blue, with glints of obsidian and green along its underbelly. That underbelly was exposed and, for the first time today, visible.

  Had the demon not been likewise distracted by the presence of the serpent, Angel would have died. As it was, he had enough time to bring his sword up as the demon leaped once again; the deflection was messy, and he staggered at the weight of the blow.

  If fires were easily doused, the wind that came in the serpent’s wake was not. But the wind was a storm. If it was under the control of any creature present, it wasn’t obvious who: everything standing in the forest was caught in its howling folds; branches, dry with winter, were torn from the trunks of standing trees; debris-littered snow rose in a gritty veil.

  Avandar cursed in an unfamiliar language.

  Jay cursed in Torra. She folded herself over Adam.

  “Matriarch.” The healer-born boy shouted to be heard over the wind and the serpent. “I must remain in contact with the ground.”

  “Are you bespeaking the earth?” Avandar demanded.

  “No—but we will not be able to leave if I cannot finish here—unless we wish never to return.”

  • • •

  Speak to the earth, Jewel told her domicis. She slid her arms around Adam’s; she covered the backs of those hands with her palms. Snow had not so much melted as evaporated in the wake of waves of fire. The fire had not been enough—not quite—to wake the earth.

  But the wind would do it. She listened for Kallandras but heard only wind and silence. His was the only distant voice she was certain to hear.

  Not the only voice, the Winter King said. Two of the kin are destroyed. One kept the serpent invisible. The serpent is not pleased, he added, in case this wasn’t obvious. Shianne bespeaks it, but says it is confused because it is so newly wakened. It rides the wind, and the wind reflects its mood.

  She had never been so grateful to hear the Winter King.

  He was amused. Your memory is poor, Terafin.

  Bring Kallandras and Celleriant; tell Snow to bring Shianne here.

  And Calliastra?

  She doesn’t need to use the road we’re going to use. If she wants to find us, she’ll find us. Jewel exhaled. And if she wants to follow, lead her.

  You are opening a door?

  Not me, she replied. Adam.

  She felt the Winter King’s uneasiness. He is not
Sen.

  It doesn’t matter. As she said it, she knew it was true.

  There is a danger—

  There’s always a danger. The earth is about to wake. Avandar might—just might—be able to stave off its rage for long enough that we all survive—but not if we’re still here. We need to move.

  And the kin?

  She swallowed. Lord Isladar is fighting Darranatos—the demon we met during the victory parade.

  He will perish.

  That won’t break my heart—as long as he does it after we’re clear.

  His chuckle was dry and cold. We will make a power of you yet.

  That was very much what Jewel feared. She settled her weight across Adam’s back, bracing herself with her hands and her feet.

  Night roared above her. Shadow roared back. She could almost hear words in the cadence of their bestial voices—but the words didn’t matter. They were wild, yes; they were deadly; they could not be easily contained or commanded. But in some fashion, they were hers.

  They didn’t change when the world itself did. They weren’t impressed by gods, the firstborn, or the immortal. They were entirely themselves, a kind of touchstone when things got too strange. She herself was prone to awe, to a sense of her own insignificance in the greater scheme of ancient things. She could fall silent, caught by the certainty that there were people to whom she should not so much as raise her eyes, let alone speak.

  The cats? Never.

  Something struck her back. Water, she thought. Or blood. The latter made her tense, but no instinct forced her hands from Adam’s or her feet from the ground. She heard the low sound of Terrick’s voice, although the wind tore most of it away. Strange, then, that she was aware of Angel’s strained, but familiar, breathing; strange that she could hear the familiar weight of his steps. The earth tilted, but did not dislodge her. Nor did it dislodge—or worse, swallow—Adam.

  She thought she could hear the breaking of stone.

  She could not hear Avandar’s voice at all; she knew he spoke to the ancient earth only because of their connection. She could not hear the earth’s answer, except in the absence of shouting or screams—but that was enough, for now; she could certainly hear the keening, angry wind.

  “Adam,” she said, into his ear. “Hurry. I don’t think Isladar can hold out for much longer.”

  He did not respond—not in words; she didn’t expect it. Her hair was a tangle in her eyes, and she couldn’t push it aside. But she could see Isladar and Darranatos in the distance; much of the debris that also clung to unruly curls had come from the trees their far-ranging combat had destroyed.

  She could see flashes of red lightning.

  She could see the shadow that suddenly fell across the earth against which she and Adam huddled. She lifted her face, turning her neck at an awkward angle to see the underbelly of a serpent. Dragon, she thought, her mouth suddenly dry. But that was wrong. She knew it.

  She wasn’t particularly surprised to see lightning shafts illuminate an otherwise cloudless sky.

  • • •

  Adam understood instinctively what Jewel wanted from him.

  Isladar had begun a weaving similar to Adam’s—but the strands he had chosen were subtly different. If Adam completed what Isladar had begun, they might arrive anywhere. It wouldn’t save them; the demons here were too strong, and nothing Adam did would prevent them from following.

  There was only one place that offered the possibility of safety—or at least survival—to the Matriarch of Terafin. To Adam it was a strange, foreign place—but he had been offered food, shelter, and what passed for kinship among the Northerners. He knew the manor. He knew the West Wing.

  What he did not know, or had not known, until he touched the earth with the intent to somehow heal, was this place.

  Each person’s body was different. Each healing was therefore likewise different, although the variances could be great or small depending on the circumstance. Levec said that even the same person’s body, with the passage of months or years, required shifting perspective.

  Healing, Levec said, was by nature invasive. But many things were invasive and yet, still welcome. If the patient had both the will and the fear, they could reject a healer’s touch.

  This had shocked Adam, at the time—but he knew so little about the healer-born he accepted it as truth. Levec was many things, most of them some flavor of angry, but he was not a liar. No one, however, had rejected Adam. No one had tried.

  No, Levec said, as if greatly weary. And I do not think they will, in future. You see them as they are, Adam, and even when you heal them, you accept them as they are. Not everyone can do this; among the healers, there are those who find it very, very difficult. When you heal, you must accept what is. You must not offer horror at the injury, or judgment of it, right or wrong.

  For the first time, Adam understood Levec’s admonishment, because the body beneath his hands was not mortal. It was not human. It did not breathe or bleed. But it was alive; it had something that resembled the faintest of pulses, the faintest of heartbeats—absent the heart with which Adam was familiar.

  Winter nestled in that heart. Adam, who had been born in the South, knew deserts and plains and sea, but the sense of winter, the poetry of it, the story, resided here. Yet it was not the only story. He could hear the faintest echoes of others; could see their shadows buried beneath his feet.

  “Adam.”

  Jewel’s voice tickled his ear at a distance. He almost turned away from those small shadows, those tiny, odd sounds. But he recognized the bare outline of one of them, and stopped. He saw a city. Not the crowded, smelly city of Averalaan, but one that stood in the almost unreachable distance: its heights were so great they vanished into clouds.

  The towers shed light, the way still lakes reflected sun, and even at this remove he could make out a single shining figure who paced the walls above which the towers rose.

  This was not Arkosa. He wondered if it were Havalla, Lyserra, or Corrona. He wondered if the city in the distance had once stood here, where winter now reigned. The answer returned in a shudder.

  No.

  Or perhaps not: the earth beneath his feet was rumbling, moving; rocks beneath the snow and the scattering of dirt fire had exposed ground together, producing a sound that was harsh, grating—and almost syllabic.

  Adam almost lifted both of his hands; had Jewel’s not been laid across them, he would have. The ground that he touched and the earth beneath it were two different entities—but the earth was loud. It was growing louder as the minutes passed.

  This, then, was what Isladar hoped to avoid: the waking of the earth. Adam was not certain he could communicate with this ancient, wild force; he did not try. Instead, he kept contact with the world itself, which was moving and shifting to make way for the earth’s passage.

  But the earth stilled a moment, for no reason Adam could discern. He took the strands of this place in his hands, and he continued to weave.

  Not like that, stupid boy.

  He opened his eyes to demons and fire and snow; he heard the sound of clashing blades, and the guttural cursing of a blessedly foreign tongue. His cheeks stung as the wind roared past—and as it did he could almost hear words in its folds. They were as cold, as chill, as the wind itself in this place.

  Not like that.

  “Then how?” Adam shouted back, just to be heard.

  She needs to come back.

  “She can come back the way she arrived in the first place!”

  She can’t. The way is closed. She cannot return if she leaves.

  “We have to leave—” He could no longer hear the wind over the roar of something louder and angrier; he saw the skies shift color as lightning struck, and struck, and struck. None of it hit him—but he was almost certain some of it should have.

  Yes and no. You must make thi
s place part of hers. They must be woven together. Snow should do it, but he is lazy.

  “You do it!”

  Silence. It was a silence particular to the cats. Adam accepted it; he knew how to translate. Shadow could not do what he felt must be done. But he thought Adam—stupid and stunted and mortal though he was—could. With help. Which generally meant insults and growling.

  But that’s what the cats did. They were raw and self-indulgent and they denied any weakness—as if love could be a weakness—and yet, somehow, Shadow was willing to watch over Ariel.

  Adam smiled. In the midst of the chaos of a small, strange battlefield, his lips curved involuntarily; his hands relaxed as he pressed them into the slender, living body of this world. He thought of Terafin, of Jewel; he thought of deserts; he thought of ancient cities and a time when the Northern gods had once walked the earth. He thought of cats, great and small; of Ariel, the child who had lost her family and home on a night when honesty was celebrated behind the masks of the Festival Moon.

  And he thought of Matriarchs, of the burden they must carry and the way the weight of it aged them. He had never truly seen power in their burden; he had seen responsibility, and he had feared it. He had never believed he could shoulder the weight they carried. He did not believe he could do so now.

  Yet this work was the work of Matriarchs; he knew it in his bones. What he did not know—and would not, until it was too late—was whether or not he could do it successfully. It was not the effort that was difficult, although it was; it was the fear. The cost of failure was so very, very high.

  Yes, he thought: the work of Matriarchs. And he had never desired to be one.

  • • •

  Jewel looked up, and up again, and raised voice. “Kallandras! Celleriant! Return to us now!”

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  16th of Morel, 428 A.A.

  Terafin Manse, Averalaan Aramarelas

  THE OFFICE OF THE right-kin was not empty. Teller sat behind the desk once occupied by Gabriel ATerafin. Finch sat on its outer edge, her feet dangling above the floor. She wore a brown dress, one made by Haval; it did not appear to be particularly noteworthy, given his reputation as clothier to the powerful and the wealthy.