"Yes, Anya, I give you my word. But I think it best that we leave now. I do not think it healthy for you to be that… sick… again."
"If you are behind this, Isladar," Ishavriel said softly, "you will pay."
"Indeed." Isladar shouldered the child who had conveniently fallen back asleep.
The shadows took them all.
Alesso nodded. "Done, old friend."
He gestured; Sendari let the spell lapse. The vision of distant kinlords became just that: distant.
"So it would seem. But in time?"
"We will know in the morning."
"Yes. And that leaves us only one other problem. Look at the Lake."
In the center of the Lake, land was rising.
Not drowned mud, this; not straggling rushes; not the sediment that swimmers might touch whose dive was clean and fast; this was an isle that the Lady Herself could claim as home. Trees, here, taller than the palace upon the plateau, and between their branches, moonlight, shadow, stars. Grass, Nightshade, rushes near the retreating edge of water.
No buildings here; none needed. All who could see it understood its meaning: This was the heart of the Tor. This was the true palace.
When Margret heard the horns, she knew.
She turned to the old woman and the boy, and she said, "No matter what you see now, no matter what you hear, you must not leave this circle. Do not speak. Do not answer any questions you might be asked. And do not interrupt me."
She drew her dagger and with a grimace that was becoming far too common, she cut herself. She submerged that bleeding hand in the water. It burned.
Then she turned her back upon the old woman, for the child's sake, and she carefully pulled the mask from the sash she wore. She met a dead man's eyes, and she said, "This Hunt—it's for you, isn't it?"
He said, "I am honored to serve Arkosa, Matriarch."
"You serve more than Arkosa, Andaru, and I wish—" The horns again.
"Matriarch," he said quietly, "you were my audience; everything we have to say to each other has already been said. It is my time."
"Yes." Margret planted her feet against rock and her back against rock. Then, swallowing air as if it were a foreign substance, she placed the mask upon her face.
From the land in the Lake's center, there grew a bridge that stretched to the shore; it was made not of wood or stone, as bridges are, but of moving earth; lilies were tossed aside or crushed as it progressed. The people surrounding the Lake—and they were many—began to back away. Some fled.
Alesso wished them well. He lifted a goblet to his lips and drained it. "Sendari?"
"I am weary," Sendari said. "And if strong magic is required this eve, I fear that neither of us will survive."
The Serra Teresa's eyes widened. "There," she said, raising an arm. Someone hurried toward them carrying a large, awkward bundle; it was dark enough that Jewel did not get a clear look at her face.
But it didn't matter. "Okay," she said softly, her eyes on the newly made bridge and the strange light that seemed to emanate from the ground like a processional carpet. It was, in a fashion. She heard the horns. She knew what was going to follow. "You two?"
"Yes?" Serra Teresa's voice was sharp and alert.
"Leave. Now."
"But—"
"No—I'll meet you back at the camp. Or somewhere. But leave." Jewel began to elbow her way through the crowd.
"Why now, ATerafin?"
"Because some of those people didn't get their masks to the Lake in time, and now—now there isn't any. Get moving."
The strangers left. The Serra Diora di'Marano looked at her aunt; the silence between them was profound. They had been forbidden the pleasure of each's other company since the Festival of the Sun, and they were both much changed; the Serra Teresa in her poor clansman's clothing, with only Ramdan in attendance, and the Serra Diora in the clothing of a powerful man's property. The Serra Teresa had learned with time to school her voice so that one bard-born might hear nothing noteworthy in it; Diora had learned some of that art as well.
But neither woman wished their first meeting to be full of phrases so polished they were hard and shiny, things of surface beyond which any depth was unattainable.
At last, Teresa said, "You have changed, Na'dio."
Diora offered her aunt a very tentative smile. "I have, which is one of my burdens; and I cannot be seen to, which is the other."
They did not speak in words that any one else could hear. "Who is the stranger? Is she one of your Voyani friends?"
"No. She is from the North. The far North. She is well acquainted with Kallandras, and she is so honest it is hard to believe she holds political power, although the ring that she wears is a symbol of power in the House Terafin; I have therefore chosen to overlook the quality of her manners."
"But Kallandras' are so perfect."
"Yes," Ona Teresa smiled. "And while the world ends, will we stand in the moon's shadow and speak of the manners of Northern barbarians?" and she held out her arms.
Diora closed her eyes and walked into them, shunting her burden to one side. It was an awkward embrace for many reasons, and when the older Serra pulled away, her expression was troubled.
"Na'dio?"
"It is… nothing. But I fear that we are not yet free."
"Ah. And I fear the opposite."
"The opposite?"
"That we are, indeed free. I have been the mistress of a domain in which all is perfectly circumscribed; in which perfection is therefore attainable. What shall I do in the wilderness of a world that knows such poor grace and such ill ease?"
She spoke lightly, but buried within each word was a grain of truth.
"Ona Teresa?"
The Serra looked at her niece's cumbersome burden. She did not speak.
"Kallandras is calling us."
"I cannot hear him, Na'dio," Teresa replied quietly.
"His voice is not… strong."
"Where is he?"
Diora shook her head; strands of her perfect dark hair pulled free from the knot at the back of her head. "I do not know. He says that we are not to travel to the Arkosan camp.
"We are to meet…" She frowned.
"Yes, Na'dio?"
"At the merchant Court."
The Serra looked at the retreating backs of the two Northerners. Then she nodded. "Let us go, then, and quickly. There will be time to brood over our fate and our future if we survive."
Almost before the shadows lifted, Anya a'Cooper was gone. The Lord summoned her in a voice both pleasing and beautiful, and she chose to put aside her fear and her distrust. It had been some time since the Lord had consumed mortal souls, and some portion of His memory and power had grown wild. But the wildness was less of a danger than the sentience; Anya understood it better.
She appeared in the center of a large circle, and above her, for she was in the basin, the demons crowded, glad of the distance. Anya did not care for the kin, but she was no longer terrified of them. They had become her special game; she attempted to kill them, and they attempted to survive.
It weeded out the weak and the foolish, for while she was devious, she was easily surprised and easily distracted.
The first question she asked when she arrived was directed to the Lord Isladar, and when he assured her that he had indeed kept his promise, she allowed herself to be anointed. But first, she complained bitterly about the presence of that awful Southern barbarian, and he was dutifully removed from the circle. Then, she decided that she didn't like Lady Sariyel because, you know, Lady Sariyel was often not very friendly, and she, too, was removed. And last, she decided that she did not want to share space, or in fact anything, with Krysanthos, who, she suspected, thought she was stupid.
And so she stood under the Lord's hands, her skin glowing darkly with His earthly blood, the power washing over and through her as she stood on the old road.
The kin watched.
The Lord began to anchor the ways between the worlds. An
d as he worked, they all heard it: the calling of the Wild Hunt. The horns sounded three times in perfect unison.
The Lord laughed with a very rare joy; for it was wild law that once the Hunt had been called, the hunters would hunt their quarry; and nothing, not god, not mage, not even the Queen of the Hunt herself could call the hunters back.
The Arianni spilled across the plateau into the mortal world, and the old paths grew strong.
Margret of the Arkosa Voyani lifted hand out of water in a clenched fist, and she saw it with two sets of eyes; her own and Andaru's. Her eyes saw her hand, wet, tinted pink with water-thinned blood. But his eyes saw a vein of light, white and glistening, wrapped around the darker core of her flesh. She lifted her hand as if holding it up to inspection by moonlight, and the light flew skyward like an arrow from her palm, but it left a trail that began at the cut she'd made. It stretched out as far as the— well, as far as the mask's eyes—could see. She watched, fascinated by it, and she saw that it did have an end; it met a light in the sky above that was almost a mirror image and together they formed a narrow arch.
And then from the East and the West, light also rose, and when those four trails were joined, branches of light shot out from the center to the ground until the Tor Leonne was engulfed in a cage made of pale-colored light. It was beautiful.
Hold your ground, Matriarch." Andaru's familiar voice said; she felt the words more than she heard them. "You have just defined the boundaries of the Hunt, and the Wild Hunt does not like to be contained.
"And you know this how?" Margret said uneasily.
It is one of the advantages of being dead.
"And not being dead at the same time?"
Yes. I see clearly; I see things that living eyes cannot see. And they, Matriarch, see me. Brace yourself. They come.
"W-what's that?" the old woman on the Fountain, forgotten until now, said.
The earth was shaking. Margret stood up and then stopped. "Remember what I told you: Do not leave this circle no matter what you hear."
Jewel had seen the hunters on the hidden path. At all times, and in all ways, they had deferred to the Winter Queen. She had known that they would come here; her dreams had been very precise.
She had, however, expected some stately procession, some parade, some celebration of the Winter Queen and the fact that she ruled them all. But the minute the eerie and disturbing growth of earth touched the shoreline, the riders burst forward like fire in the hands of a crazed mage. The stags which had been still and silent on the road now stretched their long, fine legs.
Jewel was nearly trampled. Avandar pulled her out of the path of the Hunt. The mounted stags traveled far, far faster than any horse she had ever seen as they raced toward their destination.
"Where's Arianne?" Jewel shouted, over the thunder of hooves that had appeared so delicate in the otherworld.
Avandar shook his head.
Jewel stood. The isle was still in the Lake, but the Winter Queen and her cohort were nowhere to be seen. She knew this was bad. Her eyes, lids suddenly heavy, closed—and she could hear the screaming in the city below the plateau. Could see in the darkness behind her lids, what the Winter Queen hunted.
Those who were not her prey lived if they left the path the host rode; they died otherwise, but quickly. Cleanly.
But they died, Kalliaris, they died. And those who wore the masks—those who, by some unfair ancient rites that had nothing to do with humanity…
For just a moment she stopped breathing. And then, smacking her forehead hard enough that it hurt—which given the thickness of her skull at the present moment said something—she fumbled in her satchel and pulled out Yollana's "gift."
"Well?" she said to her domicis.
"If you wind that horn, I can almost guarantee that she will turn back."
"How?"
"Her name is etched in sixteen different languages in circles on the bell of the horn," he said quietly, "and at the moment, twelve of them are glowing."
Jewel nearly dropped the horn. She didn't. And she cursed mildly under her breath because Avandar was right. "What about the other four?"
"I don't know. Perhaps you might summon her and ask her."
Jewel shrugged.
"then she lifted the horn and winded it.
It made a truly pathetic sound.
She lifted it again, but Avandar caught her wrist. "It was heard," he said. "Wind it again and you will only annoy her."
Jewel laughed. "As if she could be any more annoyed with me."
But her domicis saw no humor in the words. "She will come, ATerafin, because both she and the horn are bound by the same wild law. But she is the Winter Queen, and when she ruled these lands and she was summoned by such a thing as that horn—and I would advise you to return it to Yollana as soon as this ordeal is finished, should we survive it—she was treated with the deference due her birth and her title."
"I don't know much about her birth, and I don't much care for her title."
"Learn," Avandar said coldly, "because this is not the last that you will see of her."
"But if—"
"You have walked the road, Jewel, and you have claimed— and held—a part of it. You will see her again." He looked up. "And soon. Be prepared, ATerafin."
Jewel looked down the road and beneath the eye of the Scarran Moon, at the head of a group of twelve mounted riders, the Winter Queen came. She wore moonlight as if it were silk, and the wind that blew through the white, icy length of her hair made her hair seem sensuous and alive. Seemed desirable, or worse, necessary. She had forgotten how beautiful Arianne was; she faced that truth squarely. Mortal memory—at least not Jewel's— was incapable of preserving the truth of her beauty, her presence.
"Ummm, Avandar?"
"Yes?"
"Isn't she supposed to slow down?"
Avandar's smile was cold. "Learn the first lesson when you deal with the Firstborn. Let me use small, succinct words."
"What a pleasant change," Jewel snapped back, through clenched teeth.
"If you have no plan for surviving what you want to summon, think twice."
"You couldn't have said that before, right?"
He laughed. "I merely wished to illustrate a point. You are in no danger." He smiled.
"They don't seem to be stopping."
Avandar lifted his hands; Jewel saw blue light follow the mound of his palms. But before it left him, something else occurred: A mounted hunter came out of the bush and took up his position in the road.
In front of Jewel ATerafin and her domicis.
"Celleriant?" Jewel said, the last syllable uncomfortably close to a squeak.
The hunter turned to look over his slender shoulder; he offered her a nod, no more. "But your mount—"
The stag turned. He dug dirt with his hooves and snorted.
"And that's animal talk for 'How dare you insult me?' right?"
"I believe," Avandar said quietly, "that Celleriant and the stag have reached an accommodation for your sake. Consider yourself honored, ATerafin." There was no humor in his voice.
"I thought—"
"You thought—"
"They didn't come with us. I thought they were—I don't know, like the rocks or the mountain pass or the falling asleep and never remembering it."
"Oh, no," he said softly. "They are quite real. But the path that the Oracle made for you and me was facilitated by our lives in this world, and neither Celleriant nor the Stag who has condescended— for your sake, I believe—to bear him, can claim that."
"And when the Hunt is over?"
"When the Hunt is over, they will remain."
"What am I going to do with a stag that size in Averalaan?"
"May I suggest that you wait to see if you survive to reach Averalaan before you worry about that?"
"Good suggestion. Is she going to ride him down?"
"No. Celleriant is powerful enough, even without her gifts, that she could not be guaranteed to ride him down a
nd retain her mount or her composure. She will not lose face here; she gave him the order that protects you now."
Jewel held her breath until it did nothing but make her lungs ache. The Winter Queen and her escort came charging down the road at full speed.
"Where are the others?" she asked.
"The others?"
"The other hunters. There were a lot more than this."
He stared at her as if she had lost her mind. "Jewel, this is the night of the Wild Hunt; it has been called. Where do you think they are?"
"I don't know." She said it. She lied.
"They are hunting and killing anyone who wears one of the Kialli masks."
* * *
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
The woman who held the boy in her arms bit her lip to stop her- , self from screaming. She held her grandchild who had fallen, inexplicably, asleep. Better to let him sleep than to wake him for what she was certain would follow. She backed up into the Fountain's lip, and she looked wildly from side to side.
There was only one way out of the deserted yard that held the Lady's Southern Fount: the gates.
And in the gates, long and dark as shadows, eyes glinting, with an unnatural brilliance, were men mounted on great, horned beasts, the like of which she had never seen.
Margret lowered her fist and looked to the hunters through the mask. She reached for the flippant words that had momentarily decided to evade her, but when she spoke, she didn't recognize anything that came out of her mouth because none of it was hers.
"I am Andaru of the Arkosa Voyani," the man whose face she literally wore said. "And the Hunt has not been called which can catch me. The mounts that you have are heavy and slow, and the horns that you wind are of little concern. You call yourself hunters? Then hunt."
Spears and the tines of great antlers tore at the gates, until, with the angry toss of antlered head, the great brass gates were uprooted. Into the hollow created by Voyani art and the willing sacrifice of Arkosan kin, the Wild Hunt came. They knew their quarry, although what they saw when they gazed upon Margret's masked face, she couldn't say. And was glad of the inability.
They circled, but their spears did not pass the circle that was etched—and glowing—in the stone. The old woman had closed her eyes. Margret wanted to offer her some comfort, because she understood that the source of her fear was the child she now held.
Michelle West - The Sun Sword 03 - The Shining Court Page 83