* * *
• • •
“Finch. It’s time.”
Finch shook her head. She could see the line of stragglers, thinner now but no less desperate. She could almost see an end to them but knew that there would be no end; not while there were still survivors. “We need to move.”
“Yes.”
“I mean, we need to move down the tree line.”
“No.”
She glanced at Torvan; he had folded his arms.
“He is your Chosen,” Haval said. Finch, accustomed to Jarven, didn’t even startle at the unexpected voice. “It is time to retreat. Can you not hear the horns?”
She could; they all could. “We’re not done yet.”
“Finch, you are done. You feel that greed is emblematic of the patricians who see both financial gain and their own pleasure. This is true; I will not deny it. But you define desire as greed when you do not approve of that desire.”
“Haval—”
“You are, now, being greedy. You have saved many, but they gather in the forest in which they are lost. Unmoored, they will seek order, seek hierarchy, seek petty power.”
“They’re alive,” was her flat response.
“Yes. And I say again, you are being greedy. You want just one more. Just two more. Just that handful. Value what you have already gained. What you have done here is more than Jewel could have asked; more than she would have dreamed of, in her terror.” Haval could see that he had failed to make his case, but he was Haval; he regrouped.
“You have value to Jewel. You are, therefore, of value—incalculable value—to the forest and its denizens. If you now take the risk that you intend to take, the whole of their power will be focused, not on those who have none, but on you. I will remain,” he continued, when she finally stiffened.
“You’re important, too.”
“Not in the fashion that you are, and I will not play word games with you. I will remain with the forest guard; you will retreat. I will continue to oversee the evacuation. If I die here, Jewel might grieve—but she has long expected that my death at least will not come at the hands of time.”
Torvan could see the moment her resolve shifted.
“Will you go with Haval?” she asked him.
He shook his head. “You have a detail of two. It is a number meant, in its entirety, for trusted friends and allies. Marave and I will remain with you.”
She turned then and gave the House Guards orders. “Take the banner and follow Haval Arwood.”
Haval grimaced. “I am not of Terafin.”
“You have never had ethical issues with lies. If you would like, I will give you my House ring; you may use it to its best advantage.”
Torvan did not blanch. Marave, however, had more difficulty containing her outrage; it could be seen in the stiffening lines of her hands. Her face, however, was blank.
Haval smiled.
Finch removed the House ring from her cold fingers and held it out. The man who had been her tailor had never been her advisor; he had considered her, in some fashion, too close to Jarven. He did not lift his hand; instead, he shuffled his until they were clasped behind his back. “You waste time.”
“I am regent,” Finch replied. “This decision is within my power to make.”
“I will not require the ring. If necessary, I will, no doubt, have the aid of one who wears the ring legitimately. I had hoped to avoid it, but he is a plague that returns at moments of weakness.” Haval then bowed to her and turned, as if she had nothing of relevance to add.
* * *
• • •
Into the streets of a city transformed rode the ghosts of the Wild Hunt. They could be seen through the trees; could be heard across the whole of the city, their horns raised, the notes eerily omnipresent. They did not come from a single direction, but many, as if each of the three Sleepers commanded a separate force. They came from the north, from the south, and across the bay.
The one small mercy was that if they did cross the water, the hooves of their mounts skimming the surface of gentle waves, they did not stop to wreak their destruction across the Isle itself, where the Ten and the Kings made their homes. Perhaps it was because they were drawn by the lords they served; perhaps it was because they aimed for the dark cathedral that even now cast shadows that seemed to grow longer, grow darker, in the winter light.
It was not winter in Averalaan; Lattan was the height of its summer. But on this day, beneath these skies, it felt as if winter had never ended, might never end. The cold was sudden, bitter; the frost touched buildings, touched trees, reddened faces already bright with exertion. The skies were not clear, but the largest of the creatures that had held dominion in them had landed. Its breath was not the flame of children’s stories, but the frost of the far, far North.
And the predators, winged all, continued to land. Where they could, they angled themselves toward the citizens who bore no arms and had no martial training, picking off the slowest of the runners, or those who were in the most open of spaces. Many fell attempting to reach the cover of trees, for the dragon had destroyed dozens in its bid to create a space from which it might rule land as it had ruled sky.
The bards had ranged far in their quest to catch the attention of the citizens of their capital, but distance was not the impediment to the bard-born that it might have been to any other such searchers. The trees, however, thinned markedly as the bards and the Kings’ Swords rode out from the Common, and reaching the safety of trees was no longer a given; where the trees were thinner the creatures from above found it far easier to hunt.
Nor did the bards have weapons other than voice or instruments by which they might defend the helpless. They had walked before, each and every man and woman, upon fields of battle, and those fields had left scars in memory. Those scars would be deepened by today’s work, if they survived. So many had not.
The Kalakar and The Berrilya had commanded much larger armies in service to the Twin Kings than the forces they now commanded, but they had not gathered those forces in haste, had not taken the reins of command without plan. Their plans, however, had not included the winged; nor had they included a dragon. What they had expected to face were the hunters, and those hunters came, beneath the cover of hostile skies.
To the south, The Kalakar’s men were readied; to the north, The Berrilya’s.
And toward the bay, where the last of the forces drew closer, stood the Kings themselves, in the lee of the cathedral. In Averalaan, by royal decree, no buildings save cathedrals were to have spires taller than the spires of Avantari, the palace of Kings. This building therefore defied royal law; the height of its tallest spire was greater by far than the tallest of Avantari’s, taller than the height of the cathedrals that were home to the Exalted and the god-born of the Triumvirate.
The magi stood with the Kings; the Exalted stood with the Kings. Solran Marten, Bardmaster of Senniel College, stood with the Kings, passing royal commands through her bard-born aide to the bards who had passed through the Common, heading into the wilderness of the city streets in a bid to save those they could. Solran reported every lost Master Bard in a dry, neutral voice, the names a way of marking both time and loss, as if loss would be the only marker of time in this long, terrible day.
She could not count the number of lives saved in the exchange of Master Bards for citizenry, nor did she try. The cold had become bitter, as if brought by the amethyst skies and the dragon who had ruled them; although the magi could, to some extent, protect those enclosed in their magics from the worst of the winter bite, no one had come to the Sanctum prepared for cold.
Nor could the power itself be casually spent; the magi husbanded their gifts against future need. And that future was fast becoming present as the horns continued to sound.
* * *
• • •
Finch, escorted by Torvan and Ma
rave, returned to the heart of Jay’s forest. The din and clangor of battle faded with every step she took, and she longed, now, to turn back. But Torvan had reminded her of her duties: she was regent, and the Terafin forests were, in Jay’s absence, her responsibility. Ah, no. They were the Warden’s responsibility, but the people who had entered the forest because of some vague promise of safety were not.
She was cold; her hands ached with it, and her skin was numb. She sought the tree of fire. No footpath showed her the way, but one had never been required before, and indeed, it was not required now; she could see the red-orange glow of that tree’s many leaves and branches as she walked past the standing trees of metal, of diamond.
She was not prepared for what this tree had become. Its fire had always been warm, but the growth of its trunk and its many branches had never reached the height of the Ellariannatte; it had only barely been equal to the trees of silver, gold, and diamond. She saw, now, that it had, in the space of time she’d spent in the streets of the Common, become far larger, far grander; it burned more brightly.
Leaves fluttered in a gale of wind that touched only its height; she almost forgot to breathe as those leaves were torn free. If such a tree knew seasons, this tree had finally come into them: the leaves were carried by a wind that otherwise touched nothing, and she watched their graceful flight, light tracing arcs that remained in her vision as the leaves floated past.
She would have been afraid to touch them; would not have lifted a palm to catch them if they fell. Or so she thought. But when a leaf plunged suddenly to land a yard from her feet, she bent. Her hand was shaking as she reached for the leaf; she had come to understand that no leaves fell in this forest without intent. Not yet.
But before her fingers touched its white-gold stem, another hand interceded; another hand lifted the leaf.
“This is not for you, little mortal—not yet. Perhaps not ever.”
Finch exhaled and glanced to the side, to meet the eyes of Calliastra. Her pulse quickened, whether due to excitement or fear, she was never certain. “Is Jay—Is Jay back?”
“Not yet. Don’t look so disappointed. She paused a while in the gardens of my sister, but I do not believe my sister will either detain or destroy her; there is too much that depends upon your Lord.”
Calliastra felt, to Finch, like the absent Kiriel. There was something about her that made it very hard to turn one’s back—and Finch had lived with raging, furious Duster. She was not, however, the child she had been when Duster had been alive; she could, and did, expose her back to Calliastra.
Calliastra had come with Jay. And Calliastra wished, somehow, to stay with her. Calliastra was in the forest; Calliastra’s shadow—longer and darker than height dictated—was acceptable to the forest. There was only one way that could happen.
“Is it for you?” Finch asked softly, finding her voice quickly and without apparent struggle.
“It is . . . hot. Almost too hot for my fingers. I think yours would be charred to bone—but the forest is Jewel’s, and Jewel is . . . unlike any other Lord I have met in the wilderness. The forest accepts me.”
Finch nodded.
“Perhaps the Warden is unaware of my presence.”
“No. Jay meant for you to be den, and all of the den is welcome here. Not all of the den is beloved, but it doesn’t matter. What Jay accepts, the forest accepts, warts and all.”
Calliastra laughed. Her voice was winter and darkness and velvet and . . . light. Finch felt her mouth dry, her lips open; she had lifted her hand slowly toward Calliastra’s face before she realized it was in motion. Calliastra brushed that hand away. “It is true that Jewel accepts me, but I do not think she would forgive—ever—the loss of you. It is hard, to be in the forest; I feel the lives of the hundreds that gather beneath and between the trees; I hear the voices of those trees raised in warning. They . . . are not friendly.”
“They will not hurt you,” Finch said quietly.
“No. But not, perhaps, for lack of trying.” She lifted the leaf. “I will take this, I think, but I will not remain. There is work, now, for me to do.” She turned, and Finch watched wings unfurl from between her shoulder blades, stretching like thunderous clouds across a clear sky. They were almost as wide, tip to tip, as the dragon’s wings. Calliastra looked up, to the cover of trees, as if they were a simple veil her gaze could easily pierce. But she said, before she leaped into the skies, “I spent much of my life among your kind, your mortal kind. It is the only place, in the end, that I could find sustenance.”
Finch understood exactly what that meant, but Calliastra meant for it to be understood.
“People thought to use me, confusing one desire for another; I was weapon, to some, assassin to some, dream to some. I have been desired all of my existence. Desired and dreaded, desired and feared. I have been loved,” she added, not lowering her gaze. “And that was worst of all. But, Finch, I have been the echo of your Duster, in my time; it was how I first approached your Jewel. I understand that Duster needed some duty, some sense of her position within your den, that belonged to her alone. And perhaps I am no different.
“What I do now, you cannot do. Not any of one of you.”
Finch said, “The Sleepers.”
“Yes.”
Finch struggled for words and found none.
“They cannot easily kill me. One to one, I would say it would be impossible, but they are the greatest part of my sister’s power—the greatest part remaining her. She is coming,” Calliastra added.
“Jay?”
“Yes. And my sister. It is only to hold them in check for long enough that I have arrived here—and I have arrived late, I see. Go, now, and see to your terrified flock; they will let fear drive their actions soon, and fear is a genuinely ugly driver.” She pushed herself off the ground, then, and leaves fell in the wake of her great wings.
* * *
• • •
King Cormalyn gestured, rod in hand, and the trees surrounding the royal gathering parted, roots pulling back as if they were the toes of misbehaving children. Beneath the roots that had formed a path in the absence of the cobbled streets of the Common lay a smooth road of stone. It unfolded as the trees moved, stretching the new gap in what had been the seawall.
Duvari glanced, once, at Sigurne, which surprised the guildmaster; she nodded in answer to his wordless question. The road would hold. The road might extend from the ruins of this Common to the Isle itself, and it would not falter; not while the King wielded Fabril’s rod.
The Kings’ Swords made to move into defensive position around the monarchs, but King Reymalyn bid them stand their ground, and they froze almost to a man, although the Verrus looked to Duvari, and not the Kings themselves. Sigurne could not see Duvari’s expression, and it did not concern her. While he would take advice from the guildmaster on magical matters, this matter of safety was not magical in nature. As Cormalyn had done, Reymalyn wielded Fabril’s gift; it was like lightning in his hand; the edge of the blade seemed to extend far beyond the reach of the sword itself.
Matteos focused his gaze not upon the approaching host, but behind, to where the cathedral stood. She understood this, as well. Let the Kings now face the enemies that rode across the waves in the bay; the magi were meant to defend against the dangers that might come unbidden upon them.
No, she thought, not unbidden. For if the Sleepers had demanded the very skies shift, if they had commanded the cathedral rise, if they had called forces from the air and through the city streets, they had not yet themselves made a move.
She thought of Gyrrick and his warrior-magi, now; thought of the trees of Terafin, still growing and spreading their roots across the streets of the hundred holdings, and thought, last, of the ring that encircled her finger. Meralonne had never made explicit the ring’s purpose; she had assumed, presumed, that it was meant to preserve her life in the face of the wrath
of those who had been laid to sleep by the very gods, when the gods had last walked this world.
She did not know if that would be boon or bane to her.
If she alone survived in the wreckage of the city that had consumed her waking hours for the whole of her adult life, what purpose had her life served?
And yet, even so, she remembered the first flight of the man who had come to kill one rogue mage and the demons he had enslaved, and some small part of her remained that young, desperate woman, resigned to death in the winter world of her distant youth.
Resigned to death, she had shown no fear, and in truth, had felt none. She had made her choice, had understood the price to be paid for it. Meralonne had been a singular gift at the end of that life, a brief glimpse of something that could not be swayed by mage or Kialli, that could not be destroyed. He was not heroic; no more were storms that swept the wastelands. She had labored under no hopeful illusions. Meralonne was a predator. Just as the mage and his demons were. He hunted different things.
Ah, no. No, she thought, he dabbled. He fought. He was at his brightest, at his best, when presented with the possibility of death; he threw himself into combat with a ferocity he reserved for nothing else.
He had obeyed her commands, when she chose to give them, and he obeyed them precisely because she seldom chose to do so. His had been, in many ways, the power behind the figurative throne. He had been the foundation upon which she stood.
And that age was ending.
A light illuminated the cathedral that had grown in place of Moorelas’ Sanctum. It traveled up the side of a black, bleak tower, changing in one flash the whole of its appearance as it drove the shadows away. She was not a master of architecture, but she did understand the basis for its structural stability; thus it was, with those who could summon magics capable of destroying that stability.
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