Skirmish: The House War: Book Four

by Michelle West

  She removed the heavy and easily recognized medallion that marked her as a member of the Order of Knowledge, and at that, mage-born. In her hands, it signified more: it made clear that she was the guildmaster. The House Guards did not, in theory, follow orders from any save the House Council or the regent, but theory often faltered in the face of the unknown and the obviously dangerous.

  “Guildmaster Mellifas,” one such guard said, bowing.

  “I was summoned here at the command of Jewel ATerafin,” she replied, giving him an authority upon which to pin obedience should an authority beyond her own be required.

  “She’s not here,” he replied.

  “No. She is, I fear, much closer to the danger.” Lifting her hands, she passed them—obviously—over her eyes. “If you insist, Sentrus, I will take two guards, but no more. From here it is clear that swords are not our most effective weapon.”

  “You can see swords?”

  “Just one,” was her soft reply. “But if that sword is all but ineffective, nothing we wield will make any difference.”

  “Not nothing, Member Mellifas,” a formal and familiar voice said. She turned. On the terrace, slightly—very slightly—out of breath, stood Devon ATerafin.

  “Ah. You’ve brought weapons.”

  “I had one,” was his grave reply, “at the behest of the Exalted. One, however, seemed insufficient.”

  “Keep your weapons, then,” she replied, “and accompany us now.”

  He nodded.

  Celleriant called the wild air and it woke enraged; like all wild things, it could be coaxed and cajoled, but it resisted a cage. He required a cage, now; he required its force as a weapon he could wield, not just as a landscape upon which he might stand and hold ground. The branches that attacked him did not increase in number; that much, at least, Viandaran’s fire granted him. He whispered the only benediction that mattered: the name of the Winter Queen.

  Then, gathering air, he shifted the position in which he held his shield, and unleashed the heart of the wind’s fury. It could not strike him—although it desperately desired to do so—and chose instead to vent its rage on branches that twisted and moved; it flattened leaves, tore them from their slender, ebon moorings, and as it did, Celleriant dove forward, slicing a narrow path directly in front of himself. The shield was driven back into his chest as the tree attempted to do what the wind could not.

  But nearer the trunk, the lashing branches were not so numerous; they were thicker, wider, and they moved less quickly. The leaves were the danger here; what the trunk lacked in flexibility, the leaves gained; they were launched like daggers, and embedded themselves across the length of his shield. He might have ignored them, otherwise, but to his consternation, they were not easily dislodged, and from their tips, red light began to spread across the shield’s surface.

  It wasn’t—it shouldn’t have been—possible. He raised his sword and swung it with a cry that even the howling wind couldn’t dampen.

  * * *

  The Winter King’s unexpected leap carried them much farther away from the base of the tree. But the distance didn’t seem to faze the roots; they broke earth in a straight line between tree and the stag. Stones, dirt, and bulbs erupted above them. Reaching out, Jewel grabbed the tines of the stag’s antlers; she cut her hand and cursed. Cursing, it seemed, was something that only the den did, when injured; Avandar, Celleriant, Kallandras, and Devon became utterly silent. But she needed that grip; she pulled herself over and around Angel, and balanced, like some street performer, at the base of the King’s neck. There, feet as flat as she could make them, she looked at the tree. Not at Avandar, not at his fire, not at Celleriant or the sudden ferocious storm that whipped more dirt and debris up into the sky, but at the tree itself.

  As if the ground was momentarily transparent, she could see its roots. They were spreading as she watched—twisting, breaking and re-forming as they sought to gain ground beneath them. She shook her head. Not those, she thought, but the deep roots, the roots that never saw sun or felt wind. How far down did those travel? What did they now draw sustenance from?

  She could almost see the answer, but it was insubstantial, like shadow in fog; it had a shape that she couldn’t discern, but must.

  Something was wrong. Something worse than a tree that was no longer a tree breaking earth and sky in an attempt to kill. She had called it demonic, but no. Its power was red and black, yes—but it was like a tidal wave or earthquake; it belonged here.

  Impossible, two voices said, as one: Avandar and the Winter King.

  She staggered as something struck the Winter King in the side; he leaped, spilling blood. The blood wasn’t absorbed as easily by the ground as the fallen black limbs that might once have been branches

  Avandar—

  Her words were lost as she tumbled. Angel joined her; the Winter King was yards away. Yards away and safe. Around Angel and Jewel, roots rose like a thicket, exposing not leaves, but thorns.

  “Sigurne, if you please?” Devon said, voice low.

  Sigurne understood both what he asked and why: she could see Jewel ATerafin, alongside a single member of her den, as the ground shifted to expose ebony vines with jagged thorns. She gestured in silence; Devon flew. He was not the master of his own flight, and in truth, he was ill accustomed to cooperation with the magi; his landing was rough, and it was off by a few inches. He took the brunt of his weight with bent knees, one dagger in each hand.

  “Angel!” He held one dagger out, and Angel, no fool, took it almost before Jewel had turned. He retained the second; if the daggers did their work here, he’d have time to give one to Jewel.

  Jewel shouted a warning; Devon’s body obeyed. He threw himself to the right, landing to one side of a large, moving vine; into this, he thrust the dagger he held. The runes along the flat of the blade blazed with sudden, golden light, and the light grew so bright it seemed white. Something in the distance screamed in mingled rage and pain; the vine scorched and blackened. Devon released the blade and unsheathed another, while Angel struck a different vine.

  Jewel stood between them, watching the ground.

  “ATerafin,” Devon said, more sharply than he intended. He caught her shoulder with his free hand as she knelt. Before he could pull her to her feet, Angel caught his wrist. They exchanged a single, silent glance—a brief one—before Devon released her. She hadn’t even looked up.

  “It’s been a while since you’ve worked with her,” Angel said softly. “If you intend to do it again, remember: Don’t touch her, and don’t interfere if she’s not in obvious danger.”

  Devon looked pointedly at the smoking ruins of blackened vines that encircled them; Angel’s grimace granted Devon the point. Angel turned; enough time had been spent on advice. He watched the broken ground as Sigurne Mellifas at last approached.

  “I think it safe, for the moment,” she told Devon. “At least on the ground.”

  Jewel bent further and laid both of her palms against the exposed earth.

  Celleriant could not dislodge the slender spikes that had attached themselves to his shield; had he time, had he a moment’s respite, it would have been a simple task. But this, this slow decay, was something he had not seen since—

  He roared, his voice like thunder.

  The tree shuddered. He flew up and away, gaining speed above the wild air’s bitter protests; the branches that now sought to follow tore his cape, no more. As he gained speed, he gained height, divesting himself of gravity. Only at the height of the tree did he swerve and retrieve all of gravity in a second. He fell.

  Falling, he sundered branches with sword, cracked them with shield; he accepted the stinging cuts of slender, ruby leaves. They followed him as he plummeted, but they curved in on themselves in a rush, twining and tangling, one over the other, until there was no way back.

  But he had no intention of escape now. He struck the very trunk of the tree with the edge of his sword, and he held nothing back; he had no hope of survi
ving what followed if he showed any hesitance at all.

  Jewel.

  The tree’s roots froze in place. Only the vines that had encircled Jewel were dead. Jewel lifted her face and blinked rapidly as Devon and Angel swam into view. She rose on unsteady feet.

  Avandar, where is Celleriant? What has he done?

  I can no longer see him, the domicis replied. What has happened to the roots?

  I don’t know. Whatever force animated them, it’s withdrawn.

  Gone?

  No. She began to walk toward the tree. Angel cleared his throat.

  “It’s safe,” she told him, without looking back.

  “ATerafin.”

  Jewel stopped at the sound of a new voice.

  “Sigurne?”

  Sigurne Mellifas nodded. She was accompanied by Matteos Corvel, who looked much, much grimmer than she.

  “It’s Winter magic,” Jewel told the Guildmaster of the Order of Knowledge.

  “Yes.” Sigurne lifted one guttered dagger.

  “I thought Winter magic was demonic magic.”

  Sigurne was silent. It was the wrong type of silence. “Sigurne?”

  “Why do you think this is not demonic in nature, ATerafin?”

  Jewel looked up to the tree’s height; it wasn’t a question she could answer immediately—if at all. “Tell me about Winter magic, Sigurne. If it’s not forbidden.”

  “It is not forbidden, but I have very little to say. It is not a mortal magic, and it is not a branch of magic that we can either develop or teach with any reliability. Those among my magi who are interested in Winter—and Summer—magics are also those who study lore and legend.

  “There is a reason that the daggers in Devon ATerafin’s possession are consecrated by the Exalted.”

  “Winter and Summer magics were the forms used by gods?”

  “So we believe.”

  “Meralonne can use Summer magic.”

  Sigurne’s silence shifted and changed. After a long, long pause she said, “So, I believe, can the young man who is now fighting in the air above us.”

  “Avandar, can you—” Jewel stopped. Took a deep breath. “Never mind. I see the Winter King.”

  He came across what might have been a fairy-tale clearing to reach her, and he knelt at once on both slender forelegs, bowing his crown of tines. He was wounded in several places, something she had never seen.

  They will heal, he told her, in a tone of voice that forbade both concern and questions. Climb, Jewel.

  How long had it been since he had experienced Summer?

  Celleriant cleaved bark that was no longer bark, the edge of his sword sparking as it struck. Around him, leaves flew, cutting skin, hair, scraping armor. But the branches could no longer reach him; he stood within the heart of the trunk, in a gap made by the weight, and the force, of his sudden downward plunge.

  How long had he lived in the lee of Winter, with its bitter, bitter ice and its beautiful, deadly cold? He knew Winter. But he remembered Summer, and the memory of the Arianni had no equal.

  The edge of his sword began to shimmer as blue light made way for slow and certain gold; he spoke words that existed for one season alone, and he spoke them now in the secrecy of darkness and the imminence of death. Cold answered. Cold, a reminder that Winter reigned; Summer’s time had passed and might never come again.

  His laughter was wild and angry.

  “Is that the best you can do? Think you that a simple passing regret has the power to destroy a Prince of the Arianni?” The hilt of his sword was warm and sticky with his blood; the leaves were now attempting to sever his arm at the wrist. They understood the nature of the danger, but not the nature of the sword itself, and he drove it down, plunging it into the growing shadow, cracking ice as he did. Black ice.

  Once, he had plunged sword into white ice, burying it to the hilt, as he stood before the Winter face of Ariane. The ice had cracked only an inch from the buried blade, no more, as if making a statement. She could swallow the whole of his self with but a moment’s hesitation, a moment’s discomfort. She could contain him.

  She was the only being that could. She had walked the world when the gods were young, and it had not destroyed her. But she could own it, break it, build it; she could destroy and she could create. On her own ground, there was no force that was her equal. Child and kin to those gods, she had been born, breathing, into the world; she could not forsake it.

  But she had not been the only such child born.

  Ice cracked like a brittle facade. Liquid, dark and thick, some mix of sap and unnatural blood, spilled from that fleshless wound. He began to sink into it as the leaves buzzed like insects near his open eyes.

  Jewel stiffened. “Avandar.”

  “ATerafin.”

  “I need to go to Celleriant.”

  He gave her a familiar, questioning look. Sadly, what it questioned was her sanity. “That is not, at this moment, possible. Not for you.”

  “Can you go?”

  “I could, yes. Not without injury.”

  “Could you command him?”

  That look again. He didn’t bother to reply.

  “We have ten minutes, Avandar. Ten at the outside.”

  “And if we fail? If we choose not to take that risk?”

  “We’ll lose him.” Her voice was flat and hard.

  His was nonexistent.

  Avandar.

  You underestimate Lord Celleriant.

  No, I don’t.

  “My duties as your domicis are focused on your well-being and your safety, ATerafin. Perhaps Member Mellifas might aid you. I, however, cannot.”

  Jewel bit back an angry stream of Torra, the den’s cursing language of choice. She turned to Sigurne, a woman who now made her Oma look young. But before she could ask—if she even could—the Winter King said, again, Jewel, climb.

  This time, she did as he asked. Angel started toward her; she shook her head. He turned to Devon, said something low. Devon nodded and something passed between their hands. Then her den-kin joined her, and not until he was firmly seated on the Winter King’s back for a second time did the great stag rise.

  I serve you, he told Jewel, as the muscles beneath her tensed. But I am not your slave; you are not master of my will.

  Was she?

  Of course. She was—and is—absolute; it is her nature. It is not, and will never be, yours; you are subject to the flaws and imperfections of both change and age. But in those flaws, ATerafin, there is power and a brilliance of a type that cannot be found in the eternal.

  As he spoke, he ran, the cadence of his measured words a counterpoint to the urgency of his stride. The tree was not far from where they had stood in silent witness to the events unfolding above them, but Celleriant was; he was somewhere at the height of the tree, and they were too close to its base.

  That changed. You must hold on, now, ATerafin. Tell your leige. He must hold, as well.

  You can’t carry us?

  Here? I can. But only if you are willing.

  His words made no sense at all; she was on his back, wasn’t she? He was taking her exactly where she wanted—and needed—to go. What, in that, implied that she wasn’t willing? She was becoming accustomed to a total lack of sense in the world. Sense was something small, hard, practical; it was human. It was mortal. Sense was her Oma.

  Yes, he said, as he rose up on his hind legs at the base of the trunk. Sense is practical. How many times, ATerafin, have you walked up the side of a wall?

  It wasn’t, as Jewel quickly discovered, a rhetorical question. She grabbed the Winter King’s tines, and felt Angel’s arms surround her on either side as he scrabbled to do the same. He was silent; she was shouting. Wind tore the words away, made them nothing but a sensation in her throat and on her lips. She tightened her legs around the Winter King’s girth and felt her inner thighs slide inches as he continued to run.

  To run up the trunk, while the wind dropped leaves. Those leaves were deadly; she cl
osed her eyes as they scratched the sides of her cheeks, drawing beads of blood. Behind her, Angel finally let loose with a curse, but he clung to the tines of the King, just as she did. Kalliaris, she thought absurdly.

  It is not in her hands, ATerafin, but yours.

  Her hands were slipping. But, eyes closed, she could feel the Winter King’s muscles beneath her legs. She could feel—and hear—the wind’s howl. She could imagine that she was riding in the middle of a flash flood in the desert, while above, the storm took the form and shape of a great dragon. The Winter King was willing to carry her now; he’d carried her then, as well—and for a similar reason.

  But that ride had been effortless compared to this one.

  Yes. But if you look, Jewel, if you look, seer, you will discern the path I follow, even in this. I cannot run pathless, nor can the Wild Hunt.

  You go where she leads.

  Yes. But she is a pathfinder, Jewel. If there exists a way, the Winter Queen will find it, no matter how narrow or dangerous the journey. This is a gift given to those who call the Hunt.

  Celleriant—

  He rides. It is not the same.

  But the Winter Queen—

  Oh, Jewel. Ariane has run those roads, just as I have run them.

  Without thought, Jewel replied, Celleriant will kill you if he ever hears you say that.

  Yes. But he and I do not speak. Why do you think she gathers the fallen and transforms them?

  …I don’t know.

  She cannot be weak, was his soft reply. But she is what she is, in its totality. What her mounts see, we see as mutes. What we hear, we cannot betray to her enemies.

  You can talk to me.

  Yes, and that is the wonder, Jewel; how often do you think she has ceded her personal mount to one who is merely mortal?

  Jewel had no answer. Although she was mortal—or perhaps because she was mortal—the presence of the Winter Queen was death—but a death so beautiful, a death so all encompassing it made life seem pointless and insignificant in comparison. Jewel had seen gods in the flesh in the Between, but it was Ariane whose face was rooted so deeply within her that she had only to close her eyes to recall the Winter Queen in all her deadly glory.