"Look—"
"Jewel. They hear almost every word you speak."
"And I should care?"
She felt, rather than saw, his momentary smile in the easing of his grip. She also subsided.
The mounted man—no, not that, but something very like— lifted a hand and the small host ceased as if it had been moving in time to his movement, as if it were dependent on him. Perhaps it was.
He lifted the visor of the helm she would have said was decorative it was so fine and thin. The smile on his face dimmed in that instant, but it lingered in memory: the expression of a predator, who, catlike, plays with its food. She did not like the look of his fine, fine features any better on closer inspection.
It irritated her that the breaking of the smile had had nothing to do with her; she had seen the gray gaze flicker up over Avandar's face and freeze a second before falling.
The silence that engulfed them was no longer underscored by the voice of the horns. She suspected it was magical in nature.
Very good, Na 'jay. Very good.
"You are strangers on this road," the stranger said. "And ignorant of our ways, no doubt."
"Indeed," Avandar replied, before Jewel could.
"Therefore I will ask you to give way on the road; we ride to meet our Lord, and She is neither patient nor forgiving of the intrusion of strangers into lands She has claimed."
"Indeed," Avandar said again, his voice even softer.
The man's mount took a step back, and then another, before he brought it to bear. She wondered what Avandar's expression looked like at that moment, because the creature was definitely frightened.
Which was good, because Jewel knew, as she watched him, that there was no way for her to leave this road in safety. She said, as quietly as she could, "Avandar."
His fingers brushed the curve of her collarbone in warning. She did not shake his hand off—hated that she couldn't.
"Avandar?"
"Jewel."
"We can't."
"We can't?"
"We can't leave this road. If they're to pass, they can go left or right; they can dig a damn tunnel through the rock or build a stinking bridge. But we can't surrender the road."
His silence lasted only a moment longer than it usually did, but that was enough. Acknowledgment. "You are," he said, and she was certain that his voice didn't carry, "such a rarity, Jewel. Had I found you at the height of my power, and not this nadir, had I found you at the peak of this world's glory—
"You are correct. Which will require a change of tactics. Come, stand by my side. You will see the circle I draw upon the ground; no matter what is said or done, do not cross it. Do you understand?"
"Perfectly."
"You've never been particularly good at following the orders of others," he continued, as if she hadn't spoken, "not even when your life depended on it. Pretend, for a moment, that it is not your life that depends on it, but theirs. And obey."
She took a step back and to the side, swallowing more than just words. "What are you going to do?"
"With your permission."
"As if you need my permission?"
He said softly, "I do."
"But I—"
He stared down the road at the waiting riders. She had never seen that expression on his face before, although Avandar's face didn't exactly define the word expressive. He seemed on the verge of words, but when he finally spoke them, she had to strain to hear them, they were so low.
"Arann, Carver, Teller—especially Teller—or any of the rest of your den with the possible exception of Kiriel—could act without your permission on this road. I believe The Terafin could. I… cannot."
"I don't understand."
"Perhaps not consciously. And I would lie to you and tell you that our time grows short, but you have always been a difficult person to lie to."
"Except by omission."
His brows lifted in surprise, fell in amusement. "Except," he said, nodding quietly, "by omission. Your permission?"
"Yes."
He turned. Lifted his arms as if to strike the air, and at that, in a way that would kill. It wasn't his way to warn her, but the gesture itself was warning. She flinched, but did not jump, when blue-and-orange light burst up from the ground in a coruscating, visually abrasive wall.
She started when the light grew bright enough—in literally an eye blink, bad timing on her part—to momentarily blind as it traveled up, and up again, toward the stars that Avandar said were not there.
But she did cry out when that power bent back toward the earth like a whip's lash, crackling and branching out as if it were a living tree, but one formed in the heavens of lightning, and not for the benefit of the ground below.
The man on the stag's back was engulfed by it; she heard screaming, a terrible, terrible wailing that grew louder as the seconds passed and her vision returned to her. But she didn't realize that she'd jammed her hands up against her ears until Avandar touched one of them.
"Make it STOP!" she shouted at him.
His face was as warm as stone. She understood from this that he expected her to be strong, where strong was defined as either not caring that someone, anyone, could be in that much pain, or in Jewel's case—because he wasn't stupid enough to expect a miracle—at least not showing it.
But it was just so bad.
Na'jay, her Oma said, voice as gentle as Avandar's expression. Don't.
Don't tell me what to do, Jewel snapped back. He needs my permission, and I don't give it. Not for this.
She turned to him. Caught his very fine robe; clenched the arm beneath, and shouted words to that effect in his ear, or as close to his ear as she could get when he made no move to meet her halfway. Gods, she hated tall people.
He's wrong about you, you know, her Oma said, subsiding into irritability. You would never have survived in his time; you would have been devoured whole by his enemies.
Fine. We're not living in his time, thank Kalliaris. We're living in mine. And I'll damn well define part of it.
She felt the words leave her lips; she couldn't hear them.
Avandar caught her by the arm—one arm, the way one would catch a careless thief and not a member of the House Council— and shook her slightly. It had the effect of forcing at least one of her hands from her ears. And when she did: silence.
Sudden silence. In it, all eyes—his, and the mounted riders ahead—were turned to her. The road was blackened and scarred by the magic Avandar had wielded; there was a pit about a foot deep that ran the road's breadth, and seemed edged—slightly— in an angry red glow.
In that pit's center stood the leader of the strange host: His armor was blackened, and his skin somewhat darker for its exposure to Avandar's power, but he was otherwise untouched. He was staring at Jewel.
From the ground.
The mount on which he'd ridden was nowhere to be seen.
I'll be damned, her Oma said quietly.
Isn't that already decided one way or the other?
The old woman's laughter was a warmth and a comfort. She tried to hold on to it. But it was a pale echo in the silence.
Only two faces were exposed: Their leader's and her domicis'; both were inscrutable.
She hated that. Hated the silence, and did what she usually did when silence made her uncomfortable: she broke it. "Well," she said, squaring her shoulders as Avandar released her arm. "Uh, we'd like to get past, if you don't mind."
The silence got worse.
This time, she decided to be prudent; she bit her tongue and squirmed, but quietly, quietly. Gods, what was I thinking?
You weren't thinking, her Oma replied, but without the sting such words should have had. That's the point of the path you've taken, Na 'Jay.
Well, I'm going to start now, if no one minds.
Voice dry as autumn leaves, her Oma said, I don't believe that
the Warlord would mind, and I certainly would be pleased to have raised no fool.
The st
ranger said, "Viandaran. Warlord. Tell her what she has done."
"Lord Celleriant," he replied, inclining his head as he cast off the polite fiction of being unknown, "I am disinclined to take your orders."
Silence. The man stepped from the pit in the road's heart.
"Avandar?"
"ATerafin?"
Wonderful. "What happened to his mount?"
"A very good question," he replied. "And I believe that Lord Celleriant is about to demand an answer to it."
"Which means," Jewel said, in a voice that was becoming quieter and flatter as she spoke, "That you don't have any idea either."
"None whatsoever." The two words were polite and conversational, neither of which Avandar generally was. She flinched; she couldn't help it. "And before you ask," he continued, again in that pleasant tone of voice, "no, I did not attack his mount; my spell was aimed directly at Celleriant. But you will come to understand—if you are unlucky—"
Which means it's certain, Jewel thought.
"—that the mount and its rider are bound in a particularly unpleasant fashion, especially for the mount."
"It was the mount that was screaming."
"It was, indeed, the mount."
"But—but I heard it. It wasn't a deer's voice—if deer even have voices."
"No."
"But it—"
"Yes. I'm surprised that you didn't see it."
"See what? What do you see?"
"I? I see what you see. But I do not have your gift. This close to High Winter, my dear, you could hear the truth. But on Scarran, you will see what these mounts actually are, if you are ever foolish enough to be in the path of the Hunt during the Dark Conjunction."
"Or perhaps," another voice said, "she will become more intimately acquainted with the truth than that, and sooner."
The voice was a woman's voice.
If blood were water, Jewel's would have frozen. She turned, slowly, to that part of the road that she had left behind, and there, at her back—and at Avandar's—was the most beautiful person she had ever seen in her life.
And, inexplicably, the most terrifying.
* * *
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Avandar bowed at once; a signal.
Jewel started to, but her knees locked in place—and not just from terror, although terror would have been a good excuse. It would have been helpful if she'd understood why she couldn't bow; she'd done her share of bowing and scraping in her time, and had learned not to take the protocol personally. But she was fighting against an instinct as strong as any she'd ever felt, and she'd never learned to beat her instincts. She struggled for breath, found its rhythm, forced her lungs to adhere to it.
The Winter Queen.
The lack of obeisance did not escape her notice.
"You are bold," she said softly, "and boldness is not always unpleasant."
"Just now," Jewel replied.
"Indeed." Her hair was not as long as the hair of the rider Avandar had named Celleriant, but it was like silver, and not like ice or snow. Her eyes were gray, and her skin pale, and she was taller than Avandar; taller, in fact, than any woman Jewel had ever met. Her gaze narrowed and slid off Jewel's face. "Warlord," she said softly. "We are destined to meet on strange roads."
He rose then, at her acknowledgment. Jewel would have found it galling in any other circumstance; it seemed merely natural now, which was warning enough. "As you say, Lady."
Her smile was genuine, but it was not warm. Nothing about her was warm. "You would have been a King without compare, Viandaran."
"You honor me, Arianne," he replied, bowing again. "But I flatter myself: I believe that I was a Warlord beyond compare."
"You were. It is a surprise to find you here, and so diminished."
His facial expression did not change at all, but Jewel knew that her words had found their careless mark. She did not wish to fence with the Winter Queen, so she offered no defense of the man Whose service she had reluctantly accepted so many years ago.
But Avandar needed no defense.
"Come here, child," the Winter Queen said, and Jewel started to walk. Started, and stopped. Avandar's hand was on her shoulder, and her foot was an inch away from the magical line that was still glowing incandescently against the rock at her feet. She had failed to note it. A very bad sign.
"Viandaran, I will offer you warning: do not interfere."
"I have pledged," he said, "my service. Understand that that pledge would have had meaning in your court not through your power or your guarantee, but through my own sense of honor. It has that meaning here, Arianne." He bowed again. "And I have made no pledge to you or yours to break."
"No. But there is wisdom, Warlord. The political extends to all realms, wherever power gathers."
He bowed again. Jewel didn't think she had seen him bow this much before in her life—even if you counted every half nod that acknowledged an authority greater than his own.
"I say to you again, do not interfere."
"I understand, and thank you for extending your grace. It is with great regret that I must refuse you."
"So be it. It is noted." She turned back to Jewel. "You have taken something that is mine, little mortal, and I will have it back, or I will have an equal measure of obedience and servitude from you in its stead."
Jewel felt her breath lurch, and she steadied it again. "I'm sorry," she said, and she truly was, "but I don't know what you're talking about."
"No?"
Avandar closed his eyes.
"No."
"Perhaps, Warlord, you might care to explain to your charge the nature of her crime."
He turned to Jewel then, as he had not done when Celleriant had offered a more roughly worded and less dangerous order. He spoke quietly, but he looked just to the left of her eyes, and she could not read anything in the cast of his expression. Avandar was not a histrionic man, but he was not a subtle one; by word, lack of word, or stiffness of bearing he made certain she knew exactly what the right—and the wrong—thing to do in any given situation was.
And she realized, as she waited upon him for a signal that it slowly dawned wasn't coming, that she'd come to depend on that. That she had, in fact, grown dependent on a man she had never much liked, and truthfully didn't like much now.
It pulled her up. "What laws, exactly, have I broken?"
Neutrality answered. "Celleriant is a rider in the Queen's service."
"Not anymore, he's not."
"Yes, and that is the problem. The creature that he was riding was the Queen's creature; gifted and bound to Celleriant by her magic. In… expelling the creature… from this realm, you have stolen property that she has claimed as her own."
A claim isn't the same as ownership, she thought; she wasn't stupid enough—not quite—to expose the words by speaking them. She chose instead to speak a less difficult truth. "I didn't choose to expel it. It was expelled. There is a difference."
"There is a difference," the woman he had called Arianne said quietly. "But in your case, while you speak what you believe to be the truth, you lie. I do not understand how, because the art is long lost, but in walking this path, you have made it your own."
And what you own, you have power over, her Oma said, in a voice that Jewel almost didn't recognize. It is a lesson that Arianne understands better than any of the Firstborn. You would do well to heed it.
Jewel glanced quickly at Avandar, lifting one brow.
"There is no other way," he said, answering the question she hadn't bothered to put into words, "to have torn the creature from the grip of the Winter Queen. Her power is tantamount except where she does not reign; in lands unclaimed or unowned, the… binding that grants her power over her subjects is—"
"Unbreakable," the Queen said quietly. "You have therefore taken from me something of mine. I will have it back, or I will have something in return that I value as much."
"If the bond were unbreakable, it couldn't have been broken." Jewel stra
ightened her shoulders. She would have rolled up her sleeves if she'd been in her kitchen; would have rolled them up if she'd been heading into a tricky political encounter.
Of course, Avandar would then berate her for ruining the sleeves of the garment he'd chosen, but there were certain habits that were ingrained. "All right, Queen of Winter," she said softly, and with as much respect as she could put into what was, essentially, a counterthreat. "Maybe if these lands were unclaimed, I might have committed some sort of crime. But if I understand what you're saying correctly, these lands are claimed. By me."
Avandar's face might have been made of stone; he did not flinch, he did not smile, he did not nod. But he did not take his hand off her shoulder, and the line he had drawn in the ground was glowing as brightly as a living flame.
"Viandaran."
"Lady," he said quietly. But this time, he did not bow.
"Tell your mortal that she plays a dangerous game."
"Does it matter," Jewel countered, "as long as I win it?"
A gleam of a cold smile touched the most beautiful face in creation. "No," the Queen said softly, "it does not. But this is the only place in which you might have the smallest of chances to win, and you cannot remain here, in this pass, for eternity. My memory is long."
"Actually," Jewel said softly, lifting a hand and gently prying Avandar's fingers free, "this is the one place that I can stay for an eternity. I don't really need to eat. I don't need to rest. Sleep is a permanent state. Anyplace else, and you could wait me out."
She motioned her mount closer.
"I wouldn't if I were you," Jewel said quietly.
"You could not conceive of what it means to be me," the Winter Queen replied. She motioned the mount forward, and it obeyed her. The two closest riders made to follow, and she raised a hand without looking back; they froze in place.
"Do you know who we are?"
"No."
The word was so blunt and so forceful Jewel thought the two who had stayed at their lord's command might charge forward. But Arianne lifted a hand again and continued to edge her mount forward, until it stood at last on the edge of Avandar's circle.
"Do you know who I am?"
Michelle West - The Sun Sword 03 - The Shining Court Page 54