War

by Michelle West

  • • •

  Jewel. The Winter King was not immediately visible, but his voice was sharper, louder than was his wont. She rose immediately, her lap shedding leaves. Angel rose as well, signing.

  I don’t know, she replied. Winter King.

  The white stag was by her side almost before the thought had ended. His eyes were too wide; he seemed to be trembling.

  What’s happened?

  You must go to your healer now. You must bring him back.

  Back? What do you mean?

  The healer-born do not heal immortals.

  No. Immortals don’t like to be parted from their secrets.

  You are foolish as you oft are, but today such folly will be costly. Go. Order him back.

  She mounted his back; felt his warmth beneath her legs in the chill air. Before she could utter a command, he was off, leaping across roots as if his hooves didn’t condescend to touch them at all.

  They didn’t. Nor did they touch the upturned faces of the Arianni over which he leaped. A backward glance that was more hair than vision still afforded a glimpse of their expressions, the consternation obvious in the width of their eyes. They raised no cry; they made no attempt to halt the stag’s passage.

  He knew where Adam was. No words were necessary, no directions given. But he slowed abruptly as he came face-to-face with Shadow. The gray cat’s wings were high and wide, his fangs completely exposed; his claws had already damaged the roots upon which he was standing. His voice was so guttural it was hard to distinguish words between the snarling.

  But trust Shadow; he could always enunciate the word stupid. It was not a description he had applied to the Winter King before. The Winter King had no voice, but even had he, he would not normally have returned the cat’s insult; in general, he considered the cats beneath him.

  “Shadow! He’s not come here to harm Adam!”

  And Shadow growled, “He has come to stop him.”

  I have come to save him, the Winter King told Jewel. What he does now is not done in the wild. It is not safe for him. It is not safe for you.

  What is he doing wrong? He’s healing the injured.

  No, Terafin. No, Jewel. Perhaps that is what he attempts, but no.

  Shadow growled. The Winter King pulled back on his haunches, bunching them to leap—but so, too, the great gray cat.

  “What happens to them when they die?” Shadow demanded. “Where do they go?”

  And Jewel knew, knew, that the Winter King was right. “Set me down!” she shouted, using voice when it was unnecessary. “Set me down now!”

  “Stupid girl! If he does not do this, how will you find her? You will never find her!”

  The Winter King let Jewel off his back without kneeling or otherwise dropping his guard; how, she didn’t ask. She could see Adam’s bent back, the line of his curved shoulders, the dip of his neck. She could imagine the shape of dark, closed lashes.

  She passed Shadow; he upended her with one slap of a wing. “Think, stupid girl. Think!”

  “I am!” she shouted back as she struggled to her feet. “This won’t help us—we’ll lose him!”

  “If we lose him, we are in the same position! We can’t find her if the hunter doesn’t die!”

  She turned then, and slapped Shadow’s wing to the side; her palm stung. She could not explain her sudden panic to the cat and didn’t try; she couldn’t explain it to herself. But this was the force of the most visceral of her instincts, and she had learned never to ignore it. She could—she’d proved that—work against it when it was utterly necessary. This was not that time.

  She caught Adam’s shoulders; they were tense, almost frozen. He didn’t move, although she shook him. She shouted his name, her lips close to his ear, her hair in her eyes.

  And then she reached down and grasped his hands, her fingers sliding into the spaces between his. His hands were snow-cold, ice-cold; she broke the contact, wrenching them both free of the man’s face.

  She spared that man a single glance; his face was the color of bleached bone, and his hair, Arianni silver, was dull, matted. She had seen the Arianni fight before. She had seen what happened to demons upon death. She could not remember seeing what happened to the dead of the Wild Hunt.

  She thought she might see it now and did not care.

  Adam’s eyes remained closed. She shouted his name again and then untangled her right hand in order to slap him. But Adam, sunk into a healing trance without anything to heal, was beyond her. He did not open his eyes.

  She turned to Shadow, growling in her own fashion. “What’s happened to him?”

  Shadow’s growl was lower, louder. He was almost enraged. But his anger was only barely the equal of Jewel’s.

  “This is not the place for Adam. This is not the place he’s meant to be.”

  “He can do it! If he does it, you won’t have to!”

  “I’m The Terafin, Shadow. He’s not even ATerafin. He’s not of my House, and he’s—”

  “Do you think there will be no sacrifice? Do you think you can take that tree to her without loss?”

  “I won’t sacrifice a child—”

  “He is not a child. And he can do what must be done. Now?” The cat spit. “Now we will have to start over.” He glanced once at the body of the fallen man, took a swipe at the Winter King. His fur had risen, and his claws seemed elongated.

  Jewel needed the Winter King. She needed the gray cat.

  But what she needed of Adam was entirely different, and she was not Matriarch, to simply surrender it to the blight of necessity. “There must be another way.”

  “Then find it.”

  Calliastra joined them, falling like winged darkness into the space their anger occupied. She glanced, once, at the fallen man, and once at the healer.

  “Boy,” she said, her voice soft, her tone sharp and cold, “what are you doing?”

  His hands were clenching and unclenching in involuntary fists; his eyes were closed. Arms straining, he seemed to be reaching for the Arianni, with no true sense that they had been forcibly separated.

  “He’ll die,” he finally said.

  Jewel drew her right hand back and slapped him once, hard.

  He blinked, his long lashes fluttering as awareness of reality finally returned. But he looked down to his hands, curled in white-knuckled, empty fists. “Matriarch,” he said, pulling himself away, his eyes seeking—and finding—the bleeding man.

  “You can’t,” Jewel told him, voice flat. “He’s dying. And the Arianni don’t cross the bridge. Wherever he goes, you can’t follow.”

  Shadow spit and cursed. He even cursed in Torra, which Jewel had never heard him do before. “He can, you stupid, stupid, stupid girl!” And with that, he was done guarding Adam; he pushed himself, with a growl that shook every tree in sight, off the ground. A scattering of leaves fell in his wake, like an afterthought.

  Jewel threw her arms around Adam and tightened them before she could consider what she was doing. But Adam was already straining against them. “He’ll die—”

  “You can’t prevent that now. Adam. Adam. Listen to me.”

  For perhaps the first time, she was grateful that he called her Matriarch because that word had a meaning and resonance that had existed long before he had come into his healer-born power. He froze, forcing everything but his hands—still clenching and grasping at air—to be still.

  “Maybe if the injury were less severe.” She looked up to branch-laden skies and caught no sight of Snow or Shadow. She knew, however, why Snow was avoiding her. “It won’t happen again. But it has happened.”

  He shook his head, and the motion continued for one long breath; he broke free of it, his eyes wide, his lips trembling slightly. He looked much, much younger at that moment than Jewel could ever remember being.

  “Where do they
go?” he asked her, the wilderness in his voice. “Where do they go when they die?”

  She had never asked herself that question, not seriously. She didn’t ask it now. “I don’t know. But,” she drew breath, “not where we go. I know you can heal the dying. You can, according to Levec, heal the newly dead. But he was talking about mortals—”

  “They return to their source,” Calliastra said quietly.

  All sound died. Even the breeze seemed to quiet, as if to listen.

  “What do you mean, source?” Jewel finally asked. She was the only one who would. To the side, she could feel the restive, restless energy that was the Winter King.

  “They are—we are—not born as you are born. We have youth and childhood in a fashion, and it is not dissimilar, but we are not babes in arms, not the way animals are.”

  “And we’re animals.”

  Calliastra folded her arms and looked down the length of her perfect nose. “You are like the animals in your habits and your impulses, yes. You bear young as animals do. But unlike animals, you speak, you think, you make art—and you make war. Your children are born from your bodies, not your mind, not your spirit; they are flesh of your flesh, but they are not you. What you give them is life. You protect them when they are weak. You teach them to walk. You feed them when they are toothless and insignificant.

  “We are not like you. Our youth is a youth of experience—we lack it, when we are first born. But we do not lack awareness, and the experience of our parents is never far from reach.”

  “You know what your parents know?”

  “Not all, because we are not all of either parent. But yes, our birth conveys much of the experience of our parents to us. It conveys, as well, the compulsions that govern their existences. It is why Namann was a failure, who was meant to be a scion of lasting peace.

  “It is why I—” She stopped. Jewel thought, given the way she flexed her shadow wings, that she would not continue. She was therefore surprised. “The Arianni are Ariane’s children, all. Even Shianne. They are not Ariane; they are echoes of her, shells of her; they resemble her in color, in texture, in focus. What delights Ariane will delight them; what angers her will anger them. What moves her will move them.”

  “But they have free will.”

  “Yes, in a manner.” This smile was grim and bitter. “I, too, have free will. But, Jewel, if you decided that food was a great evil, you could force yourself not to eat. And you would die. It is thus with us.”

  “The Allasiani—”

  “Not here,” Calliastra replied. “Never here. Do not mention them by that name. Do not ask the others the question you wish to ask me. It is death.” She bowed her raven-haired head. When she lifted it, her eyes were a shade of gray that was almost black. “Yes. My father is compelling. He is beautiful beyond compare. Of the gods in any form, he was the most striking. Those mortals who saw him yearned for him. You think Ariane beautiful.” It was not a question.

  Jewel nodded anyway.

  “She is a candle to his bonfire. No; she is a candle to his sunlight.”

  “But—”

  “Lord of Darkness. Lord of the Hells.”

  Jewel nodded again.

  “When we speak of darkness, we do not speak of night. He takes, but he cannot give, not truly.”

  “Did he have other children?”

  “Only one. Only one that survived.”

  “What would happen to you if you died?”

  “I would end. I would end, and I would return—or so I believe—to my parents. I would not be aware of this, of course; the spirits of dead mortals and the essence of dead immortals are not the same. The awareness of ‘I’ would be erased, eradicated.”

  “And the rest of your experience?”

  “Perhaps they would know, should they care to look; I am uncertain. My mother was ever busy, and my father was not one of whom one might safely ask questions. But Ariane is like unto me; her parents were different, but she, too, is firstborn. She, however, could do what we could not.”

  “Oh?”

  “She could create, Jewel. She could have children. She could send them out into the wilderness, her scions, her servitors. They are unlike me: they have only one driving force.”

  But Jewel thought, again, of the Allasiani.

  “Yes. That is the flaw. Ariane herself is not one simple thing. Her desires are complex and shifting; she can control them all, but they exist, regardless. I have never asked, nor cared to ask, how she first met my father. Nor have I cared to ask what that meeting involved. Now? She hates him. There is no eternity that will exist in which that is not true.” She looked down at what was now, Jewel was certain, a corpse.

  “Little mortal,” she said, reaching out to gently touch Adam’s cheek.

  He looked up at her—had to look up. She had gained height while speaking, as she sometimes did.

  “What you attempted was folly. It was not wisdom. If you seek a dying mortal and you find him—or her—you hold onto them, and you fall back into your own body. They fall back into theirs. That is the nature of mortality.

  “It is not the nature of immortals. Could you understand the whole of our thoughts, could you contain the whole of our existence, it would nonetheless not be the same. In the worst possible case, you might merge with them, you might be submerged beneath them; you would lose whatever is considered life among your kind. You have a gift. It is a great gift, poorly understood by those upon whom you squander it.”

  Jewel bridled, but Calliastra had not intended the words as an insult. In just such a fashion might she criticize the edge of a dull blade or the behavior of a pet.

  “Do not waste it here. Do not waste it in ignorance. If you intend to truly heal the immortal, you must understand the immortal. Your knowledge of the immortal is superficial at best. It is a weave of stories, half-truths, and awe. Do not approach the wilderness in that fashion, or it will devour you one way or the other.” She lowered her hand; there was a thin sheen of perspiration across her forehead, her cheeks. Her lips trembled, and even as she pulled her hands away, Jewel saw the elongation of her fingers, her nails.

  “And now, I have had enough of your appalling ignorance and your suicidal arrogance. I am beginning to understand why the cats are so disrespectful.” And, so saying, she spread wings—much the same way Shadow had done—and pushed up into the air.

  “What were you trying to do?” Jewel asked, when she was gone. She turned back before he answered but walked slowly in order to keep pace with him. Words and syllables were broken by the effort of crossing the uneven terrain made of exposed roots, but the roots were interwoven so tightly, she couldn’t see the empty space between—or beneath—them.

  “I was trying,” Adam replied, sentence fragmented in the same way, “to save him. But she was right. Their bodies look similar to ours, but they’re not. They’re not the same.”

  “They’re alive?”

  His answer took longer; Jewel looked over her shoulder to see the intent concentration on his face. “Yes.” A lot of effort for a single syllable.

  “Do you feel that, or are you rationalizing?”

  Another pause. “I feel it. I think.” He reddened, which made him look even younger. “I feel it. But it’s not life the way you and I are alive. It’s not life the way Shianne or her unborn child are alive.”

  “And the cats?”

  “I haven’t tried. If I can be killed before my power heals me, it would be by Shadow.”

  “Or anyone else who could separate your head from your body?”

  “Or anyone else,” he agreed, “who would know to do that. But Shadow avoids being in arm’s reach of me. I was shocked when Snow came to get me. I was more shocked when he said Shadow told him he had to bring me. I thought—I thought that it might be because of the injured man.”

  Jewel shook her head.
“Shadow’s worried about Shianne.” In the distance, she could almost hear the outrage in the cat’s voice.

  “I’m not sure I can heal the Winter people. I don’t understand what life is—and what it means—to them, and to learn it will take time. But I’m not certain anyone will give me that chance.” He was hesitant, Jewel thought.

  “I think that’s what Shadow’s afraid of. That you’ll learn. That you’ll know.” The outraged yowling increased. Jewel had never been certain how much the cats could hear, or how far that hearing extended, but the possibility that Shadow himself was afraid was clearly an insult that could not be borne. At least not quietly. Adam grinned. It was something that Jewel did not want to lose.

  Branches cracked as Shadow came down from the heights. Bristling, his eyes were golden slits, his fangs exposed. “Afraid?” Splinters shot outward in a spray as he mangled roots. “Of you?” He was practically spitting.

  On high, the sound of Snow’s laughter was clearer than the rustle of moving leaves.

  Jewel was surprised when the Arianni appeared from around the trees. She recognized the swords they carried; they also bore shields. Both of these were pointed toward her gray cat. They were slender things of blue light that implied steel—or something older and harder—but she felt at that moment that they would not be enough.

  Without thought, guided by instincts more primitive, more certain, she stepped quickly between them and placed a hand on top of Shadow’s head. His growling deepened, but he did not take his eyes off the Arianni, almost as if he knew that he could kill them with impunity.

  “They are weak here,” he told Jewel, as if that were a matter of concern.

  “They follow me.”

  “They are not all needed.” Pause. “We only need one.”

  “Shadow.”

  “What?” Although the word was aimed—like a projectile—at the woman whose hand was on his head, the glance he threw Adam was murderous. But it was different from the usual murderous outrage; he was angry, and the anger was genuine.

  “You will be surrounded by stupidity for as long as you live,” Jewel told him. “There is no point in taking it personally.”