Battle: The House War: Book Five

by Michelle West

  “There is not—”

  Adam lifted a hand and signed. It was den-sign. There is.

  She frowned. Adam had not deliberately or consciously touched the dreams of the sleepers—except once. He was staring at the two, slender and other, as they moved to stand between Jewel and the waiting crowd. They turned to face each other, lifting their long and slender hands and clasping them in such a way that they formed a living arch.

  “Why do you know this?” she whispered.

  He shook his head. “An old story,” he whispered back. “A lap story.”

  “I want to hear it. Later.” She would have said more, but the crowd began to form into a line, the head of which stood on one side of this arch. And to Jewel’s eyes, it was an arch, now: a thing made of slender, twined branches that reached a sharp and perfect peak well above their heads. She started to walk around it; it made her uneasy. But her legs wouldn’t take the steps she intended them to take.

  It was not an artifact of the dreaming, though; she stopped because she knew, as she pivoted to move, that she must not. To pass from the lands in which they’d been trapped, these people had to travel beneath that arch—to her. To her side, and Adam’s.

  The first to do so was an older man. He was beardless, but still possessed hair; his eyes were a narrowed dark brown. He bowed before the arch, straightened, and passed beneath it, carrying as he did a leaf in the palm of his hand. He stopped three feet from where Jewel and Adam stood, and bowed again, his brows furrowing as if he were seeing Jewel for the first time.

  “Terafin,” he said. He offered the leaf to her.

  She hesitated for a long, silent moment before she held out her hand to receive it. It was cool to the touch, metallic, and sharp; it sliced her palm so cleanly she felt no pain until the blood started to well.

  He said nothing, but his eyes were wide and unblinking when she looked up from her bleeding hand and the leaf it now contained. He was, she realized, waiting for her to speak. She had no idea what to say; nor did the imperative of dream come to rescue her.

  After a long moment, his eyes narrowed. “You are not accustomed to command,” he said, as if the concept was a novelty. Given the Terafin signet upon her finger, it should have been. “But you must learn.”

  “I don’t like to tell other people what to do.”

  “No. Do you understand why?”

  She started to answer. Stopped. “Not really. I expect people to be responsible enough that they don’t need to be told what to do.”

  He smiled. It was arresting. “You have given commands in your time.”

  She nodded slowly, aware that he, at least, was dreaming. This was a conversation that could take place nowhere else. “Usually only in emergencies. Almost always, then.”

  “That is better than nothing. Perhaps you should consider all of life as an emergency.” He smiled. “May I leave?”

  “Yes.”

  He took a step forward—or tried. “It will not do. Here, Terafin, there is no room for plea. Command me.”

  She wanted to argue. She didn’t. Shifting her shoulders down her back, she straightened, stiffened. She held out her left hand, and he bowed over it, lifting the signet ring to his lips. “Leave these lands,” she told him softly, meaning it. “Wake. Return to your life.”

  He didn’t need to take a step forward; he faded from view within seconds.

  Jewel exhaled and glanced at Adam, who was staring at her. “Well?” she asked, in soft Torra. He did not reply. Nor had he time; a woman bent before the arch, and then passed through it. She held, between two fingers, as if it were verminous, the stem of a leaf. As the man had, she approached Jewel, and as he, she laid the leaf across Jewel’s palm. It stung.

  Jewel offered her the signet ring of Terafin, and the woman bowed over it. When she rose, Jewel ordered her to leave. To leave and to wake.

  “Adam,” she asked, as the woman also vanished, “will all of the dreamers survive when they return?”

  He was silent. After a significant pause, he said, “I think there are two who will not.”

  “Let me know who they are when they arrive.”

  He said nothing until Jewel turned to face him. He was pale. “I understand why you ask.” His Weston was stilted but perfect. “But I will not.”

  “I don’t want to send them to their deaths.”

  “I know. But Jewel—if they do not die, they will never live again.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “They will never cross the bridge. They will never enter Mandaros’ Hall. They will be trapped here, in the wilderness, until even the wilderness dies.”

  “You’re Southern. You don’t even believe in the bridge or the gods.”

  “I am healer-born, Matriarch. I have seen your bridge. I know what waits.” He hesitated again, and then said, “This is like the Southern Winds, this place. They will be trapped here. While you live—while you rule it—they will be safe. But no ruler lives forever.”

  “I could order you to tell me.”

  He smiled. “Yes. You could. You are Matriarch, and even if I am not Terafin, while I am beside you here, I am yours.”

  She turned as a young man approached her, leaf in open palm. She could give the order. But she was afraid he was right, and did not.

  * * *

  The crowd thinned. None except the children attempted to evade the arch; they were caught and corralled by the adults who remained. Nor did they avoid it because they were frightened; they were, to Jewel’s eye, bored. Had she been in charge, she would have sent them through first. Or second, after ascertaining that what waited on the other side wasn’t deadly.

  The last of the sleepers approached. She was young and slender. Jewel wondered if she would be gaunt and skeletal upon waking. When she passed beneath the arch, the arch unraveled, peak becoming hands and forearms before those hands unclasped. A man and a woman of indeterminate race remained; they turned from each other toward Jewel, following in the sole remaining sleeper’s wake.

  She carried a leaf that was lighter in color and texture than any of the previous leaves; it seemed almost blue to Jewel’s eye, but not a living, growing blue.

  “Terafin.” She bowed. “I am Rebeccah.”

  Rebeccah was the first sleeper to offer her name. The only sleeper to do so, Jewel realized. “Rise,” she said, and the girl unbent, her hair flying in a gentle, inexorable wind.

  “I was chosen. I was chosen to tell you.”

  Jewel waited. When the girl offered no further words, she said, “Tell me what?”

  But the girl smiled, the expression exposing dimples that made her seem much younger.

  Jewel exhaled. “Tell me.”

  “The sleepers are part of this place, but we cannot stay.” She lifted her arms briefly to indicate the two immortals, who now stood to either side of her, their arms by their sides, their eyes bright, the earlier blue gone to green that seemed endless and quick with life. “They are of this place, and they cannot leave. You, Terafin, are not of this place—and you must never become so.”

  Jewel looked, carefully, at the two who had once formed the arch through which each of the sleepers had passed. They were grave, but even in gravity, they suggested vibrant joy simply by standing.

  “If I am of this place, as you put it,” Jewel said, when the girl fell silent, “I would be subject to its laws? Instead of making them?”

  “Yes. I remember my first dream. This is my last, and I would cling to it, if I could. In it, I have been subject to your laws and your whim.”

  “I did not command the guardians.”

  “No. They are rooted here; until you command it—and only then—they cannot leave; if they leave, they cannot return. But they understand your dreams; they understand the shape of your desires and your hopes. We do not, not without the words.” She set the blue leaf atop the pile in Jewel’s hands. It was a precarious pile, now—or it should have been—but until this single, blue leaf with its delicate ivory veins
, was set atop the rest, it hadn’t been.

  This leaf, however, possessed the weight of them all. It pressed them into the hands she had exposed to receive them, and she felt the sting of new cuts in a dozen places at once. But she did not drop them; instead, she watched as the blue leaf finally came to rest. It began to glow.

  “The leaves you were offered came from the oldest of dreams; they are called the bones of the earth, but I’m not sure why.”

  Jewel nodded. “What am I to do with them?”

  “What you must.”

  * * *

  When she was gone, the two who had served as entertainers and guardians bowed.

  Jewel glanced at Adam. “If I order him to wake, will he?”

  The woman laughed, as if Jewel’s question were vastly humorous. The man by her side chuckled. “He is your guest, Terafin; he does not sleep. The orders you give, he chooses to follow—or not, as the case may be. You might as soon order him to sprout wings or roots as order him to wake; they will meet the same end.”

  Remembering what had happened the last time she had wakened to escape this place, Jewel exhaled. She turned to Adam to offer him a hand; hers were still full of leaves, and her palms were no doubt bleeding. “Grab my elbow,” she told him.

  He did as she asked.

  * * *

  When they left the clearing, it vanished. Jewel knew; she looked back not ten yards distant, and all she could see was forest. It was a forest of thick, tall trees that somehow allowed steeply slanted beams of light to touch the forest floor.

  “How are we going to get back?” Adam asked.

  “I don’t suppose you can open your real eyes?”

  “No.” Before she could ask, he added, “I’ve tried. I’ve closed my eyes here, but I can’t feel my waking eyelids. I can’t feel Maria’s hand; I can feel your elbow. I can feel the breeze. I can hear the silence of forest.”

  Jewel frowned. “You can’t feel Maria’s hand at all?”

  “No. Not since we arrived here.”

  “The night that you found me in Leila’s dream—were you aware of me?”

  “Yes.”

  “I mean, were you aware that you were—”

  “Healing you? Touching you in the waking world? Yes. I was aware.”

  “Could you have woken, then?”

  He shook his head. “No, not then.”

  “And now?”

  “Now is different. I am no longer holding Maria’s hand in the waking world.” The gravity of his expression was broken by a sudden smile. “I do not think we are sleeping, Matriarch. I do not think—for us—this is a dream.”

  “That’s what I’m afraid of,” she replied, failing to see the humor in the situation.

  “Can you imagine Levec’s face? Or the mages?”

  “That’s what’s making you smile?” Her brows rose into her hairline as she considered the exact same scenario. “If I had a free hand, I’d smack you.”

  He laughed then. “You are very like my sister.”

  Jewel slid into Torra as she stepped carefully over the large, exposed roots of a tree. “She doesn’t have to wear stupid dresses or watch her tongue.”

  “No.” His laughter faded. “But like you, she will kill.”

  “Adam—”

  “Nicu envied the Matriarchs,” he continued, as he walked.

  “Nicu? Your cousin?”

  “Yes.”

  “The man who betrayed your clan?” Jewel was surprised at the lack of anger with which he spoke the name. And she shouldn’t have been; she knew Adam. Adam was not a boy to whom anger or contempt clung.

  “Yes. He envied Margret and Elena, because in time one of them would become Matriarch. One of them would rule Arkosa. He asked me once if I did not. Envy them,” he added, as if this wasn’t clear.

  “He didn’t know you very well,” she replied. Of all the questions she might have asked Adam, that wouldn’t have been the first; it wouldn’t have even been on the list.

  “He didn’t understand them very well,” he replied. “He understood the power the Matriarchs wield. He understood the obedience they command. My mother was not so terrifying as Yollana of the Havalla Voyani; Yollana commanded even other Matriarchs. They did not like her, but they did not disobey her.”

  Remembering the old woman, Jewel grimaced. “I wouldn’t have dared.”

  “No.” He tightened his hold on her elbow when she stumbled, easing his grip when she was once again steady on her feet. “She is lonely.”

  “Pardon?”

  “Yollana. She is lonely. Margret is lonely. My mother. Nicu did not see this. He didn’t understand how their responsibility isolates them. He only saw the power—and it was a power forever denied him.”

  “Or you.”

  “Or me.”

  “Why?”

  “Why what?”

  “Why can’t men be Matriarchs? Well, like Matriarchs, but with a different title.”

  “Women guarantee the bloodline,” he replied. “Men do not bear children. Their wives might carry the children of other men. But a woman’s child is of her bloodline. There is no doubt.”

  “And if the Matriarch bears no daughters?”

  “It does not happen. But if their daughters die, there are the daughters of their sisters.”

  “And if not?”

  He frowned. “It doesn’t happen often. But even the Matriarch’s daughters are not guaranteed to become Matriarch if they do not have even a hint of the gift.”

  Jewel said nothing. It sounded far more complicated than becoming the ruler of one of The Ten. “You never envied your sister.”

  “No. You must not tell her, but sometimes I pitied her.”

  Jewel looked sharply at him. Pity was galling; it was not something one offered one’s sister.

  “She is like you, Jewel,” he said, for the second time. “She does not want to kill. She does not want to command. She wants to be part of a family.”

  “Mine are all dead.”

  “They are not. Your den is your family.” His hand tightened again, but this time, Jewel stepped over the root without almost landing on her backside. “I would spare Margret, if I could. I would take her burdens.”

  “Adam—”

  He met her gaze and smiled. It was not a happy expression. “No,” he said, although she hadn’t asked, “I do not want to kill, either. But I think I could do it.”

  “You’re healer-born,” was her surprisingly gentle reply. “And the healers are not known for their ability to end life.”

  “You are wrong,” was his soft reply. “They can kill.” He spoke with utter certainty.

  Jewel felt uneasy then. “This is not something to discuss outside of the Houses of Healing.”

  “Do you know what happened to Daine?”

  “And if you do discuss it outside of the Houses of Healing, you don’t discuss it with the ruler of one of The Ten.”

  “Finch said I am one of your den,” he replied. “So it is not as Terafin that I approach you.”

  She had nothing to say to that. “I know what happened to Daine. He was abducted by a member of the Terafin House Council, and he was forced to heal the man.”

  “And that Council member?”

  “He died later.”

  “Do you think he died by accident?”

  “Daine wasn’t kidnapped and forced to heal him because he was accident prone,” was her bitter reply.

  Adam accepted the sense of that. “Levec knew. Alowan knew.”

  Jewel stiffened.

  “His name was Corniel ATerafin. Daine healed him, bringing him back from the brink of death. His men would have killed Daine after the healing; Corniel would not allow it.”

  She could not think of anyone who had been called back from the shadow of the bridge that could.

  “Levec arranged for his assassination.”

  “Adam.”

  “Levec would have killed him, but he could not reach him. Levec is a healer.”


  “You are not Levec.”

  “No. But, Jewel, without Alowan’s aid, without the information Alowan, as a resident of the Terafin manse, could provide, the assassins would never have reached Corniel. If I am not Levec, could I not, in time, be Alowan?”

  Alowan. She stopped walking, shrugged her elbow free of what was, she realized, his protective grasp, and turned to face him fully. He was young. He was so young she couldn’t remember being his age in any way except numerically. He was—he had been—gentle with the Serra Diora when she had first joined the Arkosan caravan; he had been as gentle with his furiously resentful sister. He had been exuberant and silly when given the care and the feeding of the children and he had, by presence, made life less tense between his hordes of relatives.

  She had watched him do it, thinking him young and inexperienced.

  She watched him now. There was no laughter in his eyes, but no fear, either. He faced a woman he thought of as Matriarch armed only with facts and a desire to protect the people he loved.

  But his facts were weapons. “Why did Levec tell you this?”

  “I asked.”

  “And he answered?”

  “Not the first time. Not the second. But, yes, in the end, he answered. You have no trouble imagining that Levec could do what he did.”

  “No. It’s not Levec—”

  “It’s Alowan. But it was Alowan who brought Daine to Terafin—to heal you. Alowan understood the damage done to Daine, and in his way, he provided Daine what he felt was the only opportunity to heal it. And he provided safety from Corniel. Do you doubt it?”

  Did she? The answer she wanted to offer was yes. Yes, she doubted it. Alowan’s healerie had been an oasis of peace, a refuge, a place of life and light.

  “Do you doubt that I can become what he was?”

  Yes. Yes she doubted it. But the word wouldn’t leave her lips because she could see—for just a moment—the steel of the older man in the youthful lines of the younger man’s face. She swallowed. “I hope you can,” she said softly. “And at least you wouldn’t be Levec.”

  He laughed, the sudden shift in expression and tone shattering the brief glimpse she had had of his future. She turned to face endless forest; he once again caught her elbow. They both understood that it was important they not be separated, although neither had said it in so many words.