War

by Michelle West

  Darranatos served the White Lady’s greatest enemy.

  Adam strained against her restraining arm, and Jewel shook her head. He couldn’t see this, and even if he could, she thought he would ignore it, the mute denial would make so little sense to him.

  “No, Adam. I’m sorry. This fight . . . is not for us. It is not ours.”

  “She’s—”

  “I know. But even that, she undertook not for the creation of new life, but for the White Lady.”

  “The woman who imprisoned her!”

  “Yes. She is as we are only physically. He could have been her brother.”

  “She will lose the child.”

  “No,” Jewel said quietly. “She won’t.”

  He stilled then. “You swear this, as Matriarch?”

  “The Matriarchs don’t swear oaths of that nature,” Jewel replied. It was not an evasion. It was truth. She gentled her voice, leaning closer to his ear. “But I am not a Voyani Matriarch. Yes, Adam, I swear it. She will not lose the child to this.”

  “But why is she—”

  “She’s forgotten,” Jewel whispered. “She’s forgotten every choice she had that divides her now from her kin. She sees Darranatos; I don’t think she’s even aware of the other four.”

  Shadow growled.

  “We’re aware of them,” Jewel said quietly. She looked up as fire flew from the bare ground toward the air; she saw it splash and fray as it hit shield—or perhaps sword. She could see the whirlwind, and in it, Lord Celleriant. Kallandras was invisible to her eye. He was mortal.

  As Adam stilled, as he slumped slightly back, as if across a wall, she reached for the pouch that was strapped to her waist. In it were the things she had carried from Terafin, from home: leaves of silver, gold, and diamond. Leaves of fire. One dagger. One book.

  She wanted none of them now.

  But as she reached for the pendant she no longer wore, the ring that bound her finger flared to life in the encroaching night; the fire of demon, the wind of Arianni, harmonized with the gradual colors of sunset, the end of the day. And fluttering its way across a howling sky, apparently unperturbed by the wind’s growing rage and the demon’s explosive fire, came the butterfly.

  It was pale, its luminescence gentle compared to the lights of war, but she recognized it immediately across a distance that should have been too great, given its size. She held her breath, watching its flight; butterflies in flight had always seemed almost drunk to her with their lack of straight lines, their elevated wobble suggesting hesitance.

  Without thought, she lifted a hand as the butterfly finally closed the last of the distance; she turned her hand palm up, and it landed, its wings folding together until it was a slender sculpture of delicate glass.

  And she remembered—how could she have forgotten?—that in the dreams of the Wardens, the trapped souls of sleepers who could not wake on their own had taken the form, the shape, of butterflies. She did not close her hand. Wind blew her hair into her eyes, but nothing disturbed the stately resting repose of her new passenger.

  An Artisan had crafted this.

  She wondered what materials had been used. She remembered the fate of the butterflies the Warden of Nightmare had crushed so deliberately: death, not wakefulness.

  In her dream, she had thought the butterfly beautiful. She thought it beautiful now. But she thought the Arianni beautiful as well, and they were death. Adam sat up slightly; the butterfly was in her open hand, very close to his chest.

  A roar broke the stillness; Jewel felt it as if it had come, much diminished, from her own chest, her own throat. Sunlight broke the falling night; fire edged it closer to darkness; swords clashed, and blue light struck the sky from the ground.

  “Angel.” He had moved. His sword was in his hand by his side. Terrick now carried his ax in both hands. They were encumbered by full packs; they did not intend to join the fight unless it came to them.

  He turned to look back at her.

  “Shadow.”

  The cat remained by the Winter King’s side, his eyes as luminescent as Shianne’s. If he heard her, he didn’t acknowledge it; Jewel suspected that he had not. His eyes followed the Arianni, or perhaps, beyond them, Calliastra and Darranatos.

  The first time she had seen this demon, she had seen only the monstrous. In this winter landscape, the only feature that remained identical was his burning wings; he could have been Arianni were it not for the color of his eyes.

  As the Arianni were, he was beautiful; fire to their ice. Calliastra was darkness; velvet night.

  Darranatos’ fire struck her wings as if it were a spray of liquid; her wings shed it in the same way. Flames flickered and pooled beneath her feet, burning nothing, but the shadows that also moved in the light flames cast were not as ineffective. They rose up her legs, twisting and constricting as they did.

  The butterfly sang.

  As it did, Jewel realized that she had forgotten one person, and she turned to either side in a sudden rush of panic. Gilafas. She spoke his name, and when he failed to reply, repeated it.

  She ordered the Winter King to search for him when the guildmaster suddenly appeared. “Apologies, Terafin,” he said. He was once again behind his eyes; the vacancy that sometimes stole over him was gone. “I am not a crafter of weapons.”

  “Where were you?”

  “Here,” he replied softly. There was about him a dignity, a spareness, that underscored the sudden sense of desolation in his eyes. “For how long has the butterfly been singing?”

  “Pardon?” She glanced at the butterfly. “You mean now? It only just started—but it sings frequently.”

  “Not that song,” was his quiet reply. He lifted his hands, fingering the hem of the hood he wore; he slowly lowered it, his hands trembling. “Not that song.”

  She looked at the cloak; he noticed.

  “It was a gift. One of Cessaly’s many creations.”

  “She made it for you? Did she know that you’d need it?”

  “No, not precisely. That is not the way making works.”

  Without another word, Jewel nudged the Winter King toward the guildmaster. When she was in reach of him, she bent, lowering her arm, and with it the hand that so carefully held the butterfly.

  “Ah, no, Terafin. It is not for me.”

  “But it was made—”

  “And remade, as some things are.” He glanced up as fire once again changed the color of the sky. “We must away. In the mortal lands, it is almost Lattan, and I fear that it is only by the grace of the ancient covenants that we will find our way home in time.”

  She didn’t argue. Instead, she righted herself, and after a moment’s hesitation, gently placed the butterfly on her shoulder. Its song was soft, measured, but confident for all that. She could hear it above the clatter of blades, the roar of challenge; could hear it above cries of pain, cries of fury, words of triumph and exultation.

  She could hear it the moment all those things died, could hear it when the echoes of those sounds had died as well.

  She looked up then.

  The Arianni and the demons had not been kind to the winter forest; trees had fallen in the wake of conflict, and trees had burned. Battle had made a makeshift clearing; fire had cleared away the accumulation of snow.

  Shadow had not once joined battle; nor did it look as if he intended to do so now. He sat, his tail moving back and forth, his eyes turned toward that clearing and those it now contained.

  Calliastra was a blur of shadow, of moving darkness; there was a power to her that implied her wings could cleave the deep stone of the hidden earth without effort. But the creature she faced was shining, radiant with a reddened light, as if by light alone he could burn away all darkness, all shadow. Tongues of flame left his hand, stretching, snapping, a many-tailed whip of fire.

  To the sides
, small lights flared: blue, red; his minions were fighting as well. The Wild Hunt had the strength of numbers, but Jewel had faced this demon before; she had no illusions. Here, Darranatos was a power.

  “Shadow,” she whispered. She knew, all sounds of battle aside, she had his attention. “Calliastra—”

  “Yessssss?”

  Even speaking the name, Jewel fell silent; the godchild’s shadow grew, and grew again, enlarged by the fire Darranatos spread. She made some of it her own, and the windswept hair at her back glinted with its sparks, its bright, burning red.

  Winter King.

  It is folly, the Winter King snapped. You will perish, there. Do not be foolish.

  But no, Jewel thought: Calliastra would perish.

  She is the child of gods. This was what she was meant for; this fight, this battle.

  She is not her father.

  She is his vessel; his power is, in part, hers until her death. And her father is strong, Jewel. She will not perish here.

  But she would. Jewel understood that she wouldn’t die—not easily, and perhaps not at all—but the part of Calliastra that had come to her, first as Duster, and then as her own angry, isolated self, would be immolated in fire and shadow.

  The Winter King’s shock was greater than his outrage, but the outrage itself was growing. He did not understand, and Jewel thought it beyond his comprehension. What he saw in Calliastra now, he admired. Calliastra was strong. Her focus, her will, was undivided. She called power, and it came. It came, and she used it. There was no hesitance to mar her, no need for hesitance, no need for delicacy; everything here was raw, true, singular.

  But Calliastra was not singular. Like any other person, she was conflicted, her hopes, her dreams, and her almost unbearable sorrow some intrinsic part of who she struggled to be. And what was she, absent that struggle?

  We already have a Lord of the Hells. We don’t need another one.

  The Winter King struggled against the imperative of command she now laid upon him, but struggled in vain; she had been given his figurative reins by the only living being who could order him into servitude, and he had no choice but to obey.

  It is not for my own survival that I am concerned, he snapped.

  “Adam, get down. Stay with Angel. Or Shadow.”

  Shadow growled low; she could feel the sound as it traveled from ground to air, from air to the Winter King, who seemed to vibrate with it.

  Adam dismounted; he did not approach the gray cat. He did, however, draw closer to Angel. The Winter King leaped up and up again until the ground was distant, and branches of trees brushed her hair. She tensed, but none of that tension was directed toward her height and the possibility of a fall; she would not fall while the Winter King carried her, no matter how reluctantly he did so.

  No, she was watching Calliastra. Even Darranatos dimmed in her vision.

  Jewel had accepted Calliastra, as she had once accepted Duster. And, as with Duster, Jewel needed to know, needed to believe, that Calliastra could rein herself in if that was what was required of her. No, if that was what Jewel required of her.

  Duster had always been dangerous; the shoals of her anger, her pain, her rage, and especially the fear it would have killed her to acknowledge, were treacherous by turns. There was no current without an undertow; there was no place that was consistently safe to stand.

  But, in her fashion, she had given everything she could. She had saved the rest of the den—the people who did not burn with her constant fury, the people who had not taken up a dagger, had not hardened heart and body, had not turned to face an unforgiving world to spit in its eye.

  Beneath the Winter King’s hooves, she could see what lay at the heart of flame and shadow: sundered Arianni and godchild. No snow reflected the light cast; it had been burned away, so much irrelevant detritus. Just as Jewel herself might be were she not cautious.

  Were you cautious, you fool, you would not be here. It was the angriest she had ever heard the Winter King. No, she thought, it was the most disgusted.

  And it didn’t matter. Taking bitter winter air into her lungs, she exhaled a single word: “Calliastra!”

  * * *

  • • •

  The cascade of syllables fled as sound will, lost to the clamor of the battle that had invaded this forest. Jewel opened her mouth to shout again and closed it before sound escaped; she knew Calliastra had heard. She seemed impervious to the name, to the woman who had called it, to the weight of the way the syllables had been shouted.

  Darranatos, however, less so. He looked up—Jewel wasn’t certain she would have taken the same risk—and fire crossed the night sky in an eye blink.

  She was already evading—ducking into the Winter King’s neck—but it was unnecessary; the great stag had moved, and was continuing to move, as fire chased his passenger across the open air, landing, at last, in a tangle of branches. She could almost hear the trees scream and remembered the danger in that: here, the earth was under no one’s command.

  The wind tore at that fire; the wind tore at all of the fire, spreading it thin or extinguishing it by dropping clods of dirt across its surface. In that wind, surrounded by moving debris, stood the bard and Lord Celleriant. They were not static; they were fighting—but they did not fight Darranatos.

  One at least of his soldiers could take to air, and had. His blade, his shield, were luminescent red, a deep, bloodred that nonetheless seemed to shine with internal light. She could almost hear a name in the current of winds; could almost hear Celleriant’s voice, raised in both challenge and recognition.

  Celleriant is not Meralonne, the Winter King said, speaking as he moved through the streams of slender fire with almost contemptuous ease, but he was born prince of the court—the youngest and last. He was born of the White Lady’s power, of the White Lady’s martial prowess, a hunter. It is here that he proves his worth.

  There’s more to worth—

  You do not understand the White Lady.

  No, I really don’t.

  I pity you.

  Don’t bother. Your pity is irrelevant. What you want, I don’t want. What you wanted, I never wanted. And what I want is in my hands. In our hands. Without thought, without something as concrete as words, she ordered him to descend and he did, the dance of hooves and fire and wind becoming intricate and constant. Inasmuch as it could be, that battle was his; hers was different.

  It was impossible to approach Calliastra from behind; her wings were like moving blades. It was unwise to approach in any other way, but it was at least possible. And what did she mean to do if she approached?

  She could not order—or ask—Calliastra to kill Darranatos cleanly, when it was possible she could not kill him at all. But she understood, as she had understood on that distant winter day in Averalaan, that if Calliastra could not bring herself under control, if she could not suborn her rage and her pain to her own will, to the deliberation of choice no matter how difficult that choice might be, Jewel could not take her home.

  Calliastra did not have to be Teller or Arann or Finch to come home; Duster hadn’t been any of them. But she had to be able to live in that home, where random things might rub a raw spot, where inexplicable things—like birthday presents—might send her into a towering rage. Where, even if she had just cause for fury, for rage, for killing intent, she had to be able to take a breath to register, to evaluate, the cost and consequence of that killing.

  This was not the time to have this discussion. But it had not been the time to have it with Duster, either. Why had she, then? Why had she struggled her way back from pain and shock and fear to face that Duster? Why had it been so important?

  Den.

  She was den. She’d been den from the moment Jewel had decided to find her and save her. From the moment she’d saved Finch, really—and no, it didn’t matter why she’d saved Finch. Only that she ha
d.

  Den was her family, her kin. They shared no blood except that spilled between then and now. There was nothing but will, intent, commitment, to bind them together, but it was a strong binding, and it was the one she had chosen as her personal fetters.

  “Calliastra!”

  * * *

  • • •

  She knew the moment she had Calliastra’s attention, and even knew why. If the first cry had been crushed, aurally, by the din of combat, the second had risen above it just enough that it demanded attention. When Darranatos turned to look in her direction, Calliastra’s attention was pulled by his.

  On the back of the Winter King, who was constantly in motion, Jewel faced Darranatos and Calliastra. Only one of them appeared to be demonic. The other was beautiful, compelling, colorful; there was no malice in his expression, no bestiality in his movements. She was drawn to him the instant their eyes met.

  Even memory was not a good enough shield. But, oddly enough, the Winter King’s contempt was. It was not merely contempt for Jewel—that, she recognized, and it never completely left his interior voice; it was contempt for Darranatos, for the mockery of beauty. No, for the insufficiency of it. He was not Ariane, not the White Lady, not the Lord of the Winter King’s choice—the only Lord who would ever be worthy of service, of servitude.

  Jewel had chosen to serve those beneath even the Winter King’s notice.

  It’s not service, she told him, as she pulled her gaze from Darranatos’.

  Is it not? I fail to see the difference.

  I don’t obey.

  He snorted, tossing antlers that seemed, to Jewel, to be almost golden in hue, illuminated in the night sky by some interior light.

  Darranatos turned from Calliastra as if she were now insignificant. He turned to Jewel, and he smiled. “So,” he said, his soft voice nonetheless clear and audible over the clash of swords and the wild, angry voices of the elements, “it is you. Well met, little mortal. You are audacious indeed to leave the perimeters of your own small lands.