“Think you to reach Ariane? She is lost to you and all of your kind.”
A roar rose then, swamping his words. Even the Winter King reared up in fury.
“But do not fear, little mortal. You will come under the aegis of my chosen Lord, and you will understand, in the end, that his is the greater power.” And he gestured, his fingers dancing elegantly, limned by fire and shadow.
He was beyond her hatred, beyond her desire, beyond her rage; like earthquakes, like tidal waves, like hurricanes, he was a thing that existed outside of her, regardless of the terrible loss he might inflict. Some niggling thought intruded: she was not worthy of him. Would never be worthy of him, no matter how high she might climb, no matter what she might become.
It didn’t matter. She had not been worthy of Amarais Handernesse ATerafin, either. But she had given her word to the departed Terafin, she had taken the House Seat, and she had struggled, in her fashion, to live up to it. To be worthy. It was the struggle, she thought, that defined her, not the success. Even thinking it, she lifted a hand, and with it, the ring that had been made of light and metal and strands of Ariane’s hair.
Where fire and shadow touched it, they screamed.
The whole of the battlefield heard their cry, and silence descended: cold, Winter silence. Even the hooves of the Winter King were momentarily still.
Calliastra was first to recover, first to renew her attacks, first to return to the fire and heat of fury, of a history that was implied by that fury and of which Jewel was no part.
Darranatos glanced at her as if, for a moment, she existed in a separate world; as if her fury were no part of the place he now found himself; his eyes were riveted to the hand that Jewel had lifted and had not yet lowered. She saw how much of a game his combat with Calliastra was; he gestured, a movement that was almost a shrug, and the darknessborn woman flew into the trees that had not yet been leveled to the ground by their combat.
Calliastra understood, and the shadows rose, and rose again, as she herself did. She took to air, and Jewel moved, the Winter King almost part of her, as the godchild once again returned to air and Darranatos.
So much rage. So much pain. So much fury.
“Calliastra,” Jewel said.
This time the wind carried her voice to the firstborn; her flight slowed, but her shadows did not diminish. No, Jewel thought; they grew, like shoots or tendrils, traveling to where Jewel herself now waited, as if seeking the light on her hand. As if seeking to destroy it.
She understood, as she waited, that the seeking was almost instinctive; that destruction itself was not the intent, not the desire; that a woman who had known the harsh shadows of hell and its many demons could not fathom what to do with warmth, with light: she might cage it, keep it, prove that she had the right of might to rule it. And ruling it was not, in the end, what she needed—it was just the only way she knew how to want.
“Calliastra.”
Calliastra growled in response, a sound shorn of syllables, of anything but rage and pain. The temptress, the seductress, the vision of desire that had hunted in the streets of mortal cities was nowhere in evidence. No one, seeing this, could feel anything but fear or disgust.
“Is this what you want?” Jewel demanded. “In all the time I’ve known you, you’ve barely touched your father’s power; now you have swallowed it. How many centuries, how many millennia, have you fought to be something other than his daughter?”
“And how many times have I failed?” Calliastra demanded, but she was arrested, mid-flight. “You do not know what he was like in the Court of Hells.”
“Your father?”
“Him.” Shadow raced from her hands, her wings, streaking like unleashed vermin toward Darranatos.
“No. I don’t. I’ve faced him only once.”
“Impossible.”
“Because I’m alive? I don’t know what he was like. You do. But what he was, what he is, is not what you have to be. It’s not what you are.”
“This is the only way I can stand against him!”
“No. No it’s not. I’m seer-born. You know this. There are other ways. You want him to suffer. You want him to suffer what you suffered, and I get that. But to make him suffer what you suffered, you would have to be as he is: pawn and slave to your father’s every whim and desire. Is he powerful? Yes. But he was powerful before he made that choice, and none of that power is now his own.”
Be wary, Jewel. He is listening.
Let him listen. She felt movement—Avandar’s movement—saw orange and a hint of violet and blue as her domicis moved into position.
I can buy time, but given Darranatos, not much of it. If you must do this now—
It has to be now.
“You could have his power. You could have more than his power. You could make him pay for every humiliation, every terrible thing he has ever done to you. All you have to do is submit. Become what he is. Want what he wants.”
“Never!” It was a shriek of rage, of fury and, beneath that, all of the twisted desire and the denial that had only barely held it in check for so long.
“Then come home. Come back to yourself. Come back to me.” The hand with the ring remained steady; it did not tremble at all.
Terafin, be wary.
I am, she thought, recognizing the bard-born voice of Kallandras. She did not even glance in Darranatos’ direction as she waited; no impulse, no seer-born instinct, forced her to move.
“So that you can own me instead?”
“I can’t. I’m mortal. All of the ties that bind me to my den are ties of choice; they are not chains of command.”
“But even you won’t accept what I am.”
“I will accept what you are; I will not accept all that you might do. You cannot eradicate the darkness because you were born to it. You will always feel it; you will always be subject to its whisper. But you can choose what you do with it. And yes, I could never accept the Kialli into my den.”
“And if I feed?”
Jewel shook her head. “You won’t have to.”
“I will starve. I will wither.”
Jewel shook her head. “You will, however, have to put up with the cats.”
A low growl came from somewhere on the ground. It was followed by a volley of outraged words. “She will have to put up with us? With us? We will have to put up with her!”
The child of darkness and love seemed to shrink, to dwindle, to falter. She still had wings, and the wings still sliced air, but Jewel could see the feathers become something less ebon, less metallic. A choice was being made, or rather, Calliastra was struggling to make one; she stood on the boundary.
And she looked at Jewel, her eyes wide, a hint of brown, a hint of white implying that they were almost normal. There was hunger in the stare, a fierce, desperate hunger, and beneath it, around it, a self-loathing that seemed so deep it might be without end.
Jewel was not afraid. Later, she would be—that was the way it always went. Later, she would wonder what she’d been thinking. Later, she would wonder how she could have thought this was a good idea. She’d had whole days like that with Duster, and Duster had not been Calliastra’s equal; she’d only had a short lifetime of pain and loss and rage to control.
Jewel’s hands moved in den-sign. Home.
The darknessborn woman blinked, slowed, stopped. She then turned to glare at the ground. “I will deal with you later.” And her voice was less full, less rumbling, less godlike; her expression was one of dislike, disgust, and . . . annoyance. It shifted, sharpening as she turned to face Darranatos once more.
But he was not looking at her.
Nor was he looking at Jewel.
Jewel bowed head.
Shianne had, at last, taken the field; she stood, sword golden, shield the same bright color, her light splitting the shadows across the ground as i
f it had been created only to burn them away.
Chapter Nine
JEWEL THOUGHT SHE COULD feel no sympathy for the Kialli. But she felt the strangest glimmering of pity, its distant cousin, as Darranatos stood, wings spread, before Shianne; he seemed frozen, almost paralyzed, by her presence.
He could not fail to note the color of her sword and her shield.
From his hand fell the whip; to his hand came the sword of the Kialli: long, red, shining. He raised his other arm, and to it came the shield. It was the first time he had drawn either on this field. Nor had he been pressed, forced, to wield them. Inasmuch as he was capable of it, Jewel thought this a gesture of respect; the only such gesture he was likely to offer.
He did not speak, did not strike, did not attack. Other combats, other fights, continued above or beyond him, but they were insignificant now. The only enemy of whom he was truly aware was Shianne.
Winter King.
The great stag drew closer to the ground, although his hooves did not touch it.
What would you now have me do? But he, too, was staring at Shianne; at the fall of her almost white hair, at the sword she wielded, the shield that hid the protuberant belly from immediate view.
She is not the White Lady.
No. No, she is not. But, Jewel? I see the echoes of the White Lady in her now, and I remember. How much worse must it be for him? I am the White Lady’s. I serve you at her command, but she has not forsaken me.
Jewel did not agree.
Had she, she would have given no command. I am still hers. He is not. He will never return to her side. He will never, again, be hers.
But he was of her.
Once, perhaps. He is dead now. He is dead, and in Shianne’s presence, he is aware of the enormity of the loss.
I don’t understand why he—why they—left.
No. No more do I or any of the Arianni; it is inconceivable to us.
Jewel glanced at Calliastra; she was smiling. Nothing about the expression was warm, nothing about it, kind. She didn’t notice Jewel at all. No, Jewel thought, she noticed only one thing: Darranatos’ pain.
* * *
• • •
“Shandalliaran.”
Shianne said nothing as she gazed at Darranatos, and the demon seemed to shrink, to dwindle, his wings of fire becoming raiment of the same bright, harsh color. The transformation was slow but steady, and when it was done, he faced her as if he were still, in truth, one of her kin. He did not set aside sword or shield; nor did she.
“Shandalliaran,” he said again. “What has become of you?”
“Of me? How can you ask that, who stand as you stand? I see the shadows in you, and I see death—but not the death of our kind. What has become of you?” She was strong enough, Jewel thought, that she felt no need to hide her pain; it was in every syllable, mixed with confusion and a muted horror. He was not the first of the Kialli she had seen, nor the first with whom she had dared to speak.
But something about this Kialli lord was different. It wasn’t his power, although he was by far the most powerful demon she had ever encountered—it was something other.
“We did not know,” he said, after a cold, still pause, “what had become of you. Did you know that we searched? Did she tell you?”
“I have not spoken to her since the day she made clear her displeasure at what was done.” Before he could speak again, she lifted a hand—the sword hand. “But what we did, we did for her. What has become of you, Darranatos? What have you done?”
Silence. In it, shadows gathered.
“Not for anything but the love of the White Lady would we have taken the measures that we thought necessary. Not for anything but her safety, her existence, would we have stepped off the path she decreed. In our long captivity, we listened for her song, and we sang it—those of us who were given that voice. We lived and dreamed and yearned for the day we might once again prove ourselves worthy of her.
“We did not—we never—abandoned her.”
“Shandalliaran—”
“Why? Why, brother? You were the first of the princes of the White Lady’s court! You were the best, the brightest; we looked upon you, and we knew you to be second only to the White Lady. In you we could see—we could all see—the radiance of her glory, reflected perfectly. You were—” She stopped speaking for one long minute as if struggling, now, to find words.
And Jewel realized, listening, that she could understand their words.
Yes, the Winter King said.
Why?
You wear that ring, he replied. And you have wakened it. Wish you to remain in ignorance, you must remove it, if that is even possible.
“If I understand what I now see in you, I was not the first to leave her. And if you ask how, if you can ask why, you will never understand. Nor does it now matter. If you seek her, you will never find her. She made her choice, long ago, to stand against our Lord—and she alone, he would have taken and exalted above all others. She alone.” The last two words were bitter, a grimace of sound, an echo of pain.
“Exalted as you are exalted?” The golden light grew brighter; shadows became dark streams of bitter smoke in its wake. “Valued as you are valued? We were none of us as worthy as you, none. I knew—I had heard—of the loss, the defection, the betrayal—but I had never imagined that you would be among them.”
“I had never imagined that I would face you again while the world remained diminished, its glory hidden. And yet, here you are. And you, too, are diminished and much changed; more so even than I.”
“Far, far less than you,” was the soft reply. “Nothing I have seen—nothing—has grieved me more than this.” She raised sword.
“You cannot think in your diminished state that you can harm me?” he asked. His own sword did not move, did not rise; nor did his shield. “Had we found you, I might never have been forsworn.”
Even as he spoke, Jewel knew that forsworn was not the right word.
Shianne lifted sword, raising it as if it were a staff; sunlight illuminated the world, changing the color of the night sky. She did not bring the blade down; she was not close enough. But she lifted her chin and drew breath that sounded as if it were sucking in the sounds of the battlefield—those that still remained. Silence was all that was left; not even the voice of fire or air could be heard.
Into that stillness, she began to sing.
Jewel had heard her song before. This was a visceral reminder that memory could not contain the truth of the experience; what existed in memory after the fact was a phantom, a ghost, a haunting. One could yearn for it, as one might yearn for one’s beloved dead, but could never return to it.
And to hear it again was a gift that demanded silence, awe.
Even from Darranatos. What her song demanded, he gave; he made no attempt to join her. Nor did Kallandras, this time; this song was Shianne’s; it was of her.
It held them all; demons, Arianni, mortals; every note, every breath, every pause. As if they were all mere instruments, she drew the silence of awe, enlarged it, made of it a tribute, an offering.
Jewel did not weep.
The Arianni did.
And so, too, the demons. She heard the descant of their cries as they at last broke their silence—all but one. All but Darranatos.
Winter King—
No. No, Jewel. This battle is not yours, and the consequence no longer yours to bear. In this moment, Shianne has decided.
He’ll kill her.
Perhaps. And perhaps that might be for the best.
The child will die!
She has given up eternity, she has surrendered her place by the White Lady’s side. She is already doomed, already damned.
But she did it for the child.
No, Jewel. She did it for the White Lady. And if the child is lost, it changes nothing. She has chosen t
o take this risk, and you must allow it. You are not her Lord, not her master; you are a companion only, and if you walk by her side, the road you walk is not her road.
Darranatos lifted his sword, held it aloft; he alone, of all the Kialli, remained silent. Once again, his wings unfurled, spreading across the sky as if they were horizon. Jewel was not surprised when he brought his weapon down; was not surprised when Adam alone cried out.
But the song did not stop. She had understood the words that both Darranatos and Shianne had spoken, but the words of this song, relentless though they were, did not cohere or resolve themselves into something Jewel understood as language.
Darranatos was not so lucky.
He brought the sword down; it struck Shianne’s raised sword, and the clashing light of the two—gold and red—burned the rest of the shadow away. But the gold sword held, and the voice of its wielder barely faltered.
Darranatos threw the shield he held away; it spun through the air and vanished before it struck anything as mundane as tree or earth. He brought the shield arm, now free, to the hilt of his sword and raised that sword again, this time in both hands.
The Wild Hunt did not move. The demons—if any remained standing, save Darranatos—were likewise frozen, immobile. Adam did—but someone caught him by the shoulder; she could see that, but no more. Whoever had caught him held him fast; he did not dart into the path of the red sword.
And the red sword came down again with far more force. Jewel opened her mouth on a wordless, silent cry.
The golden shield, raised against the blow, absorbed it; Jewel was certain it would shatter. It did not, but the ground split beyond Shianne; trees fell; debris rose.
He raised sword a third time.
He brought it down.
This time, Shianne lost her shield; she did not, however, lose her voice or her song, and it was the song that was her most potent weapon.
Darranatos did not lift sword a fourth time.
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