He stood in the slanting light shed by open windows. Dust, like flakes of snow on a dry, cold day, rose and fell in the air around him. “ATerafin,” he finally said. She heard the word as if it had been spoken in her ear.
She saw, for just a moment, the face of a different man emerging from the shifting lines of his unfamiliar expression.
“You do not understand,” he told her, voice still much closer than he himself. “Lord Celleriant is one of the host.”
“I understand.”
He shook his head. “How often do you think an Arianni Prince swears fealty to a mortal?”
Torvan and Arrendas now flanked her, and she wished—for just a moment—that they would go away. Them, the guards that were on display up and down the gallery, the visible servants and pages walking briskly to and from other destinations.
She took a deep breath, expelled it, and let her shoulders sink. “Avandar, I don’t know.” When she met his gaze again, she saw an echo of ancient cities, ancient wars, and ancient deaths. She saw the ghost of a sword in his hand. “Please,” she half whispered. “Let me bury her. Let me pay her the respect she deserves. I’ll think about all of this after, I promise.”
“Jewel—”
“Be what you’ve been for half my life. Until then. Just until then.” She lifted a hand toward him.
His expression slowly shed the ages, but when he walked toward her, it was not as a servant. “I will wait,” he told her quietly. “But, Jewel—”
“I know. You want to tell me that it’s never happened before. You’d be wrong,” she added, before she could stop herself.
He lifted a brow, and this was a familiar expression; she clung to it. “I would like to know more about how I am, as you suggest, incorrect.”
“I don’t know. I know it’s true,” she added almost wearily. “But you’d probably have to ask Celleriant, and I’m betting he’d be damned if he answered.” She frowned, and turned back down the gallery hall. Torvan and Arrendas followed, as did Avandar.
The grounds were, in theory, off-limits. Theory was tenuous; the Master Gardener still had work to do, and if he had been ordered to wait upon the decision of the Exalted, he was nonetheless working at the edges of what had been a disaster some scant hours past, along with some half dozen men and women who all wore the distinctively dirty colors of the House. House Guards, meant to work and not to present Terafin’s best face to visitors of import, were not in the best of moods; arguing with the Master Gardener the day before every noble of note in the Empire was due to descend upon his territory was a task Jewel envied no one.
They did not, however, offer much argument to Arrendas when he spoke with them; Jewel didn’t hear what was said, but whatever it was, it allowed her access to the grounds; the House Guards simply looked through her.
“He is here?” Avandar asked.
Jewel frowned, but didn’t answer; she walked the newly remade path until it once again gave way to a destruction the distraught gardeners had been forbidden to repair. She moved beyond that with care, aware that a stumble or fall in this dress would be disastrous. But she looked, as she walked, to the tree. To the trees, really. They were so tall and so wide they might have been transplanted from the Common, and they’d shed leaves on the turned dirt and broken stone.
“Celleriant,” she called.
She wasn’t surprised when he came out from behind the trunk of the central tree. His hands were empty; he carried no sword. He was pale—although, given his complexion, this wasn’t as obvious as it could have been. She thought him not fully recovered from his fight—with either the dreaming tree or the demon—but something about his bearing prevented her from asking.
He didn’t speak. Didn’t bow. But he left the lee of the tree and approached her, his eyes silver-gray in the morning light.
“Celleriant,” she said, relief warring with a growing sense of discomfort. “The god-born are here, and they want—they ask—you to speak with the gods.”
He raised a pale brow and then shrugged as if gods were of little import. “What is your desire?”
“Politically speaking, that you agree.”
“Very well. I agree.”
She turned back toward the manse, and he fell into step beside her; Torvan and Arrendas had to widen their paths to make room, and at least one of them didn’t like it much. She couldn’t blame him. Celleriant looked very much like the reason one had guards to begin with: wild, dangerous, unpredictable. Deadly. But then again, hadn’t he always?
She could forget it for moments—or days—at a time. She glanced at him; his hair was long and fine, as unlike hers in color, length, or enviable straightness as hair could possibly get. He’d lived forever; she’d struggled for thirty years. She knew he could kill without blinking; knew, further, that he could face death with anticipation and joy. He wasn’t Duster; she knew that. Duster? She’d liked—and hated—foods. Mornings. Cats. She could be embarrassed, could feel guilt, could rage in fury at the oddest moments.
Her ability to kill had never completely defined her.
Jewel stopped walking at the sound of an extra pair of feet—or two pairs. The Winter King had also left the forest.
In the desert, the Winter King and the Arianni Lord had somehow seemed more natural; at the base of the stairs—adorned by House Guards who looked, sadly, a lot less bored as they approached—they clashed with the life she’d worked so hard to build. They weren’t part of it. But they would be, and she knew it. What she didn’t know was what her life would then become.
To Avandar, she simply said, “Let’s go get the cats.”
It was a strange procession that made its way through the early morning halls of the Terafin manse, and Jewel was more aware of it on this occasion than she had ever been. She had managed to pry only two of the cats out of the wing; the third, Snow, was closeted in the closed room within which Haval was working, and wouldn’t come out. She’d stood on the other side of the door, hesitating, when Night and Shadow offered to go in and get him for her; that made the decision to leave him behind much easier.
Besides which, Shadow seldom fought with either Snow or Night, and if one of the two were left behind, she might be able to sustain the faint hope that the cats would behave. They were certainly behaving now, which she found unsettling. They were silent, and their silence seemed to enlarge them; their wings were folded loosely over their backs, and their fur—black and gray—caught light, gleaming with it, as if they were partly metallic. Their eyes were steady, unblinking, their heads were not held high, but rather, closer to ground, as if they were prepared to hunt.
She hadn’t chosen to ride the Winter King, although he had all but insisted; he walked to her right. Celleriant walked to her left; Avandar and the two Chosen took up the rear. The cats, of course, headed the strange procession—and it was strange enough that the House Guard in their full finery couldn’t help but stare.
“Shadow. Night. It’s on the right. The big doors.”
Shadow turned one baleful glare on her, but dutifully headed toward the doors she had labeled as big. Night hissed, but it was a relatively quiet hiss, and did the same.
They entered the audience chamber.
Gabriel was seated upon the distant throne, but between the doors and the throne, the Exalted waited. Chairs—fine chairs—had been brought for their use, but they had apparently been declined; the chairs were empty. Duvari was to the right, nearest the doors, his gaze hooded and unfriendly—but this, at least, was normal. And a day where Duvari came as a bit of a relief was far too strange and uncomfortable.
The cats continued to lead, and Jewel walked past the braziers that had been set up in a very flat, loose triangle on the floor; frail threads of smoke rose from their incense. When she approached Sigurne Mellifas, the guildmaster nodded. Matteos, however, was watching the cats, Celleriant, and the Winter King as if he couldn’t quite decide between awe and worry. On the other hand, it was Matteos; worry was likely to win out.
The cats stopped a few yards from where the Exalted stood. Jewel approached them, but the Winter King and Celleriant likewise held their ground, waiting. This left her with Torvan and Arrendas for comfort, but the Chosen once again took up positions at the end of the House Guards.
Jewel bowed to the Exalted. She held the bow until the Mother’s Daughter bade her rise.
“I’m sorry it took so long,” Jewel told her. “But my companions were scattered.”
The Exalted didn’t answer. Instead, she looked past Jewel’s shoulder to where the priests were milling. The priests, unlike the House Guards, had clearly not been chosen for their ability to stand at attention. They were staring—some of them openly—at the cats and the Winter King.
“We will begin,” the Exalted said, with just enough edge in the simple words that the priests immediately forgot what they were looking at and concentrated on whatever it was they were supposed to be doing. Night snickered.
Jewel turned and glared him into silence, which unfortunately caused Shadow to snicker. She knew they could kill, but it was impossible to keep that at the forefront of her thoughts; mostly she wanted to smack them or send them back to their room.
“Are they dangerous?” The Exalted of Reymaris was staring at the two cats; it was the first time this morning that Jewel had heard him speak.
“They can be.”
“Will they cause difficulty now?”
“No.” Turning to the cats, she said, “Come here.”
They did, although Night hissed a little and lagged behind Shadow. She crouched between them. “We’re going to the Between.”
“What is the Between?”
“The place where men can talk to their gods.”
The two cats exchanged a glance. “Why do we have to go somewhere else?” Night finally asked.
“Because that’s where the gods are.”
“Make them come to us.”
Jewel winced.
The Exalted of Reymaris said, “Oh, they will,” as the mists began to roll in.
Something about the way the mists rolled in felt familiar. Jewel rose, but kept her hands on the tops of the gray and black heads with their twitching ears. The walls of the audience chamber faded from sight first. She was surprised when the throne—with Gabriel on it—did likewise. He wasn’t here. Neither, she saw, was Duvari, and that would piss him off. The House Guards, like the throne, failed to be encompassed by the fog; the Winter King, Celleriant, and Avandar did not. Nor did the magi.
“Duvari is going to be really, really angry,” Jewel said.
“Indeed,” the Exalted of Cormaris replied. “But the request did not come from Duvari; nor did it come from the Regent. It came from our parents, and it was tendered, specifically, to you.”
“I’d rather you included him. He can’t get angry at you—it’s me he’ll—”
“He will not.”
Clearly, the Exalted were used to two things: their position of unassailable power and their position of unassailable trustworthiness. Duvari did not—ever—speak word against the Exalted.
“Child,” the Mother’s Daughter added, “it is, in its entirety, for your sake that we have chosen to exclude him.”
She hesitated and then lifted her chin. “You think something will be said that will make me more of a threat to Duvari than I already am?”
“We cannot say for certain,” the Mother’s Daughter said. But the Exalted of Reymaris said, “Yes. And it is not to my liking to exclude the Lord of the Compact, although we have had our disagreements in the past.”
A glance passed between the Exalted of Cormaris and the Mother’s Daughter; the Exalted of Reymaris frowned. “We have reached an agreement,” he told them in a cool voice, “and not all agreements require consensus.”
The mists rose as they spoke. Night hissed and unfurled his wings; Shadow, however, sat and began to lick imaginary dust off his paw. The cats’ eyes were gold and shining, and Jewel thought it odd how very like the eyes of the god-born they were in color, if not shape.
“ATerafin,” the Exalted of Reymaris said softly. “Mind your attendants.”
Frowning, she turned to look at the two she couldn’t see, as the cats were relatively well-behaved. Avandar was, of course, himself; starched and cool. But Celleriant had drawn sword, and even as the mists rose, they rose to either side of the blade.
“Celleriant, we’re not here to fight,” she said, in quiet, evenly spaced syllables.
He said nothing.
“They like to fight,” Shadow whispered. “It’s what they do.”
She was very glad that Duvari wasn’t here. “Celleriant, the sword.”
He glanced at her, his eyes narrow. “Do you know what you face here?” he finally asked.
“Gods.”
“And now I understand how little meaning that word has to you and your kind. Very well, ATerafin.” To her surprise, he sheathed the sword. It did not, however, vanish. He drew slightly closer to her and waited. Mist continued its slow accretion until there was nothing left of the audience chamber except some of the people who’d been standing beneath its vaulted, impressive ceilings.
Jewel glanced up; those ceilings were no longer visible; the sky was as gray as the ground—if it was ground—beneath her feet. No birds flew in the heights; no wind blew; and if the sky knew sun or moon, neither now graced its height.
Night began to hiss; his was the only voice she could hear. His ears straightened, and his fur rose. Shadow, seated, affected nonchalance, but his ears had risen as well.
Avandar gently tapped her shoulder; she startled and then forced herself to relax. “You have little to fear,” he said softly. “There are some things the gods cannot do, not even in this place, unless you ask it of them. And even then,” he added bitterly, “it is not always within their means.”
They lifted their heads and turned as they heard the screeching caw of an eagle; the gods, at least one, had come.
He came through the mist on the far side of the Exalted, and he towered above his half-kin; Jewel thought him eight or nine feet in height, although she couldn’t be certain. He wore armor, not the robes in which he was so often depicted. The eagle was perched on his left shoulder, and in his mailed hands he carried not sword, but rod. It was a damn big rod. His eyes weren’t gold; they weren’t any single color, and that made it hard to meet them; his skin was likewise difficult to pin to one shade. His hair, however, seemed pale, white to Celleriant’s platinum, and his face was etched with lines that seemed, at this distance, severe.
His son bowed.
“Bird,” Night whispered to Shadow. Jewel swallowed her tongue. She rapped the black cat sharply on the head, and he hissed.
Reymaris came next. Lord of Justice. He, too, wore armor, but he was depicted in a more martial way in the cathedrals of Averalaan. His hair was braided, dark to Cormaris’ white; his eyes were the same non-color. He was bearded; he looked, for the moment, like a man in his prime. He also wielded sword and shield.
His son now bowed.
Last to come was the Mother. She wore the robes that the two men lacked, and in the gray of the mists, they were warm with color: burnt orange, brown, harvest gold. A wreath adorned her forehead, and a garland, her neck. She carried a basket from which the hint of harvest could be seen. Her hair was long, and it fell trailing into the mist, but her age? Her age was elusive; she was young and old and in between, her weight shifting and changing, although her robes did not.
The Mother’s Daughter did not bow to her, but stood instead and waited.
Jewel felt a twinge of envy when the goddess enveloped her much smaller daughter in a hug.
It was the Mother herself, some eight or nine feet tall, who turned to Jewel. “Jewel Markess,” she said. Her voice was not one voice, but a multitude, and it felt like thunder. But in spite of that, it wasn’t unfriendly. Just…alien.
Jewel nodded; she couldn’t speak.
“We meet again.”
The Mother smiled. “We did not meet like this,” she said. “But I heard your voice and I felt your presence. It was not so very long ago.”
Jewel looked, in deepening confusion, to the Mother’s Daughter. The Mother’s Daughter, however, was silent.
“You prayed to me in an ancient place, one long deserted by your kind—or mine. You prayed; I heard you. You were not alone.”
Jewel closed her eyes. “I remember,” she said softly. “I remember now.” She had been with Duster in the undercity. “You opened the door.”
“I did.” The Mother’s expression grew remote. “Do not give me cause for regret.”
This was, in its own way, as confusing as the Mother’s greeting. Jewel opened her eyes and shook her head.
But the Mother moved past the Exalted toward the cats, and there she paused. They eyed her from the ground, wings flexing. “How long,” she asked Jewel, in the same disturbing voice of the multitude, “have you known the three?”
“Not—not long.”
“You summoned them.”
“No!”
Night hissed.
“They came on their own.”
“How did they know where to find you?”
Jewel had no idea, and made that clear. “I met them—in another place. In the forest of the Winter King.”
“It has long been Winter,” the god replied. She bent and touched Shadow’s head, and he looked up at her without fear. “It has been long, little one. Are you weary?”
“We’re bored,” he told the Mother in his sulkiest voice.
The Mother rose. To Jewel, she said, “How did you come to be in the forest of that King?”
Jewel glanced at Avandar, who was both rigid and utterly silent.
The Mother now turned to face him. “Viandaran.”
He bowed then. It, like his posture, was a stiff, rigid gesture.
“You live, as you desired, so long ago. Were you not told to be cautious?”
Skirmish: The House War: Book Four Page 36