“You don’t arm yourself,” Terrick observed.
“Neither do you.”
Terrick nodded. “When we entered the forest the first time, it felt watchful. Hostile. It was silent like a predator.”
“And now?”
“It is silent like a grave. Even the wind is too quiet.” He exhaled, his breath wreathing his face. “If we have enemies here, they are in hiding. I do not understand the winter of this wilderness.”
“It is the winter of all of the wilderness,” Celleriant said. “It is these lands themselves that confound you.”
“And I would find other wild lands less incomprehensible?”
“No. But this road was once walked by Fabril, and the hint of his name remains.”
“He claimed these lands?” Jewel asked.
Celleriant was silent for a beat. “Yes, Lord. The time I have passed among your kind has given me some insight. You did not intend to claim the lands you claimed. You fought no battle of dominance; you did not unseat a different Lord; you did not understand the nature of the lands themselves. And yet, Lord, you did. The lands in which your home and court are situated are now—and while you live—yours. But even when you have passed away, those lands will remember your name. They will remember until they bow to the will of another Lord.”
Kallandras glanced at him, the gesture subtle but pointed. It was unnecessary. Jewel heard Celleriant’s words as if they were the shell that covered an enormous egg; while they were true, there was something beneath them, something substantial.
“Do you hear my name here?”
Silence, as if Celleriant were struggling to find an answer, as if the answer that came to him was not, somehow, in a language Jewel understood. And yet, the Arianni—all the Arianni—appeared to be able to speak any mortal tongue at will. His answer, when he finally offered it, did not seem to justify the hesitance.
“Yes.”
“Is it the trees?”
“Perhaps.” He was, once again, not lying. But something else had caught his ear, something else had disturbed him. He turned to Kallandras. “Can you not hear it?”
The bard frowned. “My hearing is not the hearing of your kin,” he finally said. “I do not even hear the echoes of Fabril’s name in this place.”
“It is not the echo that is of concern to me. Fabril was an Artisan, and even in the high wilderness, the lands knew his name; they would not take it as their own, would not shelter behind it—but it was known. It is not unexpected to hear it here, so close to his home.”
Shadow, however, hissed. The irritated hiss. “We will die of boredom here.” He clawed the ground, flicked his wings out, clipped Angel’s shoulder. Jewel pressed the palm of her hand down on the top of his head.
“This is important,” she told the gray cat. “I’m sorry.”
“Are not!” He hissed. “We will be late, sssstupid stupid girl.”
Angel threw the cat a look that could best be described as disgusted. “If you’re worried that Snow and Night are having ‘all the fun,’ stop.”
“They are!”
“I doubt it. They have to watch the rest of the den.” And they’re probably complaining about it just as loudly, his expression added.
“Why do we have to wait?” He pawed the ground again. And then, lifting his head, Jewel’s hand notwithstanding, he roared.
The trees that comprised this winter forest shook. The earth beneath the gray cat’s feet trembled. Ice cracked, lines radiating out from where Jewel sat, for as far as the eye could see, as if she were a heavy object dropped onto the surface of a frozen pond.
No, she thought, it was not she herself that was that object, it was Shadow. Shadow, the giant, frequently annoying, winged cat. Shadow, whom the immortals called eldest. She knew, knew, that he was not simply a cat writ large; that he could follow her into her dreams, could stand guard while she slept. But some part of her failed to hold on to this thought; it slipped away, as dreams did. What he was, what he had been, was a very mouthy, very sulky, very demanding . . . cat.
But reality intruded, shattering—quite literally—that perception, that visceral belief.
Shadow growled: It can all be true. Stupid, stupid, stupid girl.
The cracks expanded; the ice shattered.
As it did, the landscape changed. The patina of winter—and blood—broke, dissipating; the forest itself remained. The skies were no longer dusk skies or night skies, not as Jewel recognized them. But she did recognize these skies; they were a deep, clear amethyst. It wasn’t the skies that drew—and held—her attention, though. It wasn’t the sudden lack of snow; the air was biting in its chill, even in snow’s absence.
It was the man who stood down the footpath that traveled in a narrow line that jogged around trees in the distance. She knew instinctively that that way was home, but the forest behind that man was darker and far more intimidating beneath these sudden skies.
It didn’t matter.
She leaped off Shadow’s back—or tried; he growled and pushed himself off the ground, as if forbidding it. But he did not roar again; his impatience was now banked. “It is him,” he said. “He is calling you.”
“Take me to him. Shadow—take me to him right now.”
The cat sniffed. “You don’t need him,” he said. “You have us.”
“If I’d never met him, I wouldn’t. Shadow.”
Beneath her feet, she could see Angel begin to move. In the taut line of his shoulders, his arms, in the purposeful length of his stride, she saw a recognition that was twin to hers. But he drew sword, as well.
She signed, but of course he couldn’t see her hands, couldn’t therefore take comfort from the message she instinctively sought to impart. And if Shadow did not take her down, he would reach the newcomer first.
The cat, however, understood. He was put out, but not in a way that implied great danger—which was good. Jewel herself felt none.
No, what she felt was wordless because there were too many words jostling for position, for prominence. She let only one escape.
“Rath!”
* * *
• • •
He looked up at the sound of her voice. Although he was at a distance—a distance Shadow closed in a lazy, defiant spiral—she could nonetheless see his expression. And she had no words for that, either, almost as if finding words to describe it was crossing the high walls he had always placed between them. She had loved Rath. He had been family to her, while he lived.
He had never said this out loud, never put it into words. He was, had been, cynical, suspicious; the reluctance he had felt when he had first found her, homeless and beneath a bridge in the poorer holdings, had not been feigned. He needed and wanted that separation. He needed, and wanted, to think of Jewel as temporary.
Even when things changed.
She knew. She knew and understood. How could she not? She’d been raised by her Oma, a woman who believed that joy and love offended the gods enough that they would destroy a person who did not hide them carefully. Gods were envious, spiteful creatures in her Oma’s experience. In Jewel’s, they were not so simple; she understood only that she would never truly understand them.
And none of that mattered. Rath was here. She had thought—had believed—that he was dead; he had disappeared, and he had never returned.
But even as Shadow came to land, she realized that that knowledge had been deeper and more certain than belief. She had known.
“Yesssssss,” Shadow said.
Rath was dead.
And Rath was here. Here was not where he should be. How long had he been here? How long had he been waiting? It had been years since his death. This was not the bridge that separated the living from the Halls of Mandaros. She had seen that bridge. She had almost crossed it herself, shedding the fear and the terror and the weight of responsibility.
She understood that it was peace and freedom that awaited him there.
And this wilderness, these lands, did not contain them.
She was angry, and it was an unfocused anger, but none of it was on Rath. Angel had not reached him; he had slowed, and as she gestured, she heard the sword return to its sheath. She reached out for Rath, and then let her arm fall away.
He looked the same as he looked in her very foggy memory. He had not aged. She had. The hand she lifted did not bear the Terafin signet, as it should have.
“Rath,” she said again. Doubts developed gravity, weight—but they were not doubts about his existence, about the truth of what she now saw; she knew that this man was Ararath Handernesse. And the Handernesse ring, she did carry.
His smile was the same smile that she had seen so seldom, a splash of warmth on an otherwise weathered, closed face. “Jewel. You’ve grown up.”
She did not feel the truth of that as she faced him. She did not feel that the half a lifetime she’d lived since she had fled the Hundred Holdings at his written command had changed her—or strengthened her—at all. What she wanted, for a brief, visceral moment, was to go home with Rath. To go back to the apartment he had found for them. To go back to the time when Rath knew everything, and she herself knew almost nothing.
And that time was gone.
The fact that it had existed, however, had changed everything. If the past was a country that could never be truly revisited, it was nonetheless a forge in which things were made, tempered, honed. And things that were forged in such a place must eventually leave it in order to act in the world.
“Why are you here?” she managed to ask.
He saw the fear and the shadow of guilt in her expression.
“It is not because of you,” he told her. His voice was neutral, but for Rath, neutrality had always been gentle. “It was a choice I made. A choice I was given. I did not understand, at the time, that this is where that choice would lead—but I have learned some things since then.”
“But the bridge—”
“Yes, Jewel.”
“Your sister—”
“Yes. I know. But I believe she will wait for me, and perhaps it is a mercy that I have been trapped here; I am not certain that I am ready—ever—to face her.”
“She’d be so happy to see you.”
Rath said nothing.
“She’s the person I talked to. About you. About our life in the holdings. When I felt grief, it was to The Terafin that it was safe to express it. She didn’t know you as I did; I didn’t know you as she did. But . . . we shared the experience of being part of your life.”
This seemed to embarrass him. Embarrassment, clearly, was not the province of the living alone.
“Have you been trapped in this forest for the entire time?”
He didn’t answer.
“Can you leave it?”
Again, he met the question with silence.
Shadow, however, growled. “You are wasting time.”
Jewel ignored his words, but said to Rath, “Shadow came to the den only recently.”
“You still have your den?”
“Every one of them that survived. Not all of us did.”
“I see Angel behind you. I did not recognize him.”
“It’s his hair.”
“Yes. There is a story in that, no doubt.”
She lifted a hand again; held it out, palm up, in invitation, not command. “Come with us,” she said. “Come home.” Her voice shook. She let it.
He lifted his arm and placed his hand gingerly across hers, as if testing the contact. But his hand did not pass through hers. It was solid. It wasn’t warm; it wasn’t the hand of a living man—and it wasn’t, in the end, the hand of a corpse, for which she was profoundly grateful. It was tangible. It was real.
He seemed almost surprised by this.
“Can you climb?”
Shadow hissed. “Why do I have to carry him?”
“Because,” Jewel replied, “You’re the only one who can.” She spoke with absolute certainty because she was.
Shadow hissed. “Why don’t you carry him?”
“I will. But I’m riding you, and if he’s coming with me, you’re carrying him as well.”
Shadow had never been fond of practical, logical replies when they didn’t suit him, although to be fair, he wasn’t fond of them when they did, either. Rath, looking dubious, climbed up on Shadow’s back.
“Are we done now?” the cat demanded, stalking across the forest floor to where the rest of Jewel’s companions waited.
“Yes. Now we’re done. Let’s go home.”
* * *
• • •
She discovered the slight flaw in that plan an hour later. Although the Winter King had said he could retrace the path they had taken—and Jewel believed him—the path seemed to have lengthened. Traversing it did not seem to bring them any closer to the home that she now desired.
8th day of Lattan, 428 A.A.
Terafin Manse, Averalaan Aramarelas
The first time Teller approached the wrong door, the tree spirit grabbed his wrist before he could touch it. He froze instantly. His fear of failing the House—be it staff or junior members who had managed to crawl up the hierarchy enough that they had the right to be quartered in the manse—had all but driven the other fears out of his mind.
There was, however, a reason they had lost Carver, and the bruising grip of his forest guards reminded him, instantly, of that loss.
“The manor is not stable,” the tree said softly. “And the doors are becoming less and less safe. It is why,” he added, “the inhabitants are to go to The Terafin’s personal chambers. That door will open, only and ever, into lands that she rules.”
“And the rest?”
“They will open into lands ruled by others. We have almost no time, Teller. The ways are opening, and these halls will not be safe. Can you not hear it? Can you not hear the awakening?”
Teller could feel the earth shake, as if in response to the question. But he could only hear his heart and the creak of wooden joists. “We’re almost done,” he said. “There’s only one or two places left to check.”
He could not tell them, did not even try, that he was worried about his cat.
8th day of Lattan, 428 A.A.
Terafin Forest, Averalaan Aramarelas
Finch stood on the interlocking path that bridged the manicured gardens designed and labored over by the gardening staff, and the forest that had grown in the wake of Jay’s leaves. The sky was brilliant with the colors of dawn; she could see that sky clearly because she faced the manse, not the forest. The colors were not the most striking thing she noticed.
It was the spire, the tower, that had risen, was still rising, in the hundred holdings. It seemed a thing of jet or ebony, but it reflected the light of day as it rose; there was a majesty to its sudden presence that almost drove fear away, the sense of awe was so profound.
Jay had told them about the Sleepers. Finch would have sworn she understood; was she not standing here? Had they not made preparations? But words alone, dread alone, could not convey the truth of the experience. As the spire rose, as it reached a height equal to Avantari’s and still continued its climb, she understood in a visceral way why the Sleepers were so terrifying, even to the distant gods.
She was regent to one House. She was not King, nor Queen. She was not magi, had been born with no talent, no hint of magic, to help her navigate the world. What she knew, she knew well—but the Merchant Authority was not the training ground for this kind of emergency.
She missed Jarven. Jarven would have been at home here.
But Jarven was not regent. Jarven was not the de facto ruler of Terafin; Finch had taken that mantle. She wore the clothing that Haval had made for her in the wake of an assassination atte
mpt, and she wore the House ring. She was dressed for the type of battle she understood well: political.
Her role here was not to fight Sleepers or immortals or the beings the wilderness birthed. If the city depended on her ability in that regard, it was doomed. No, she thought, squaring her shoulders. She could not fight as the guards fought. But she was here to save lives. If this were a battlefield, Finch was now the Terafin standard. And she understood the importance of a standard on a field of battle.
Arrayed behind her were guards; not House Guards, but the denizens of the wilderness that Haval had both armed and instructed. She found their presence comforting, yet knew that most of House Terafin would not. She had, therefore, asked the Chosen to stand beside her and to stand among the forest guards, and the Chosen had instantly understood why and agreed.
Torvan was with Finch; Arrendas was not. Most of the guards who wore Terafin colors were House Guards, though. Because Finch was regent, and Finch was here, they accepted the orders she gave with alacrity. They accepted the golden-skinned, much taller forest guards the moment they understood those guards took orders from their regent. They were ready; they were watchful.
When the earth began to tremble beneath their feet, the forest guards did not seem to notice; the House Guard did. So, too, Torvan. He had asked—not commanded—that she retreat to a safer position; she had refused. Nor did he press the issue; she understood both why he must ask and why she could not accede.
She glanced, once, over her shoulder. Haval had remained in the forest; he had sent Finch out. She was surprised at how much she missed his presence; he was not a comforting man. But she had Torvan.
Torvan had been their first friend in the House. It was because of Torvan’s intervention that Arann had survived. He was not, and could not be, den—but he understood the den, and inasmuch as it was possible to do so, supported it. Jay was now The Terafin the Chosen served.
In her absence, the Chosen supported the regent, and if historically they had had to hold their noses to do so, there was nothing perfunctory about that service now.
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