War

by Michelle West

  No. Best to avoid them. Avoid, however, did not mean a wider than necessary circumnavigation. It might, were the guildmaster’s progress not so slow.

  But he knew what—or who—her goal was. In this fight, she had been stripped of the power behind her figurative throne. She had accepted the loss on the face of things, which had not surprised him.

  This, however, did. She was old now. Too old for the office she had held for decades. The Guildmaster of the Order of Knowledge could not afford to be sentimental. Could not afford to be foolish.

  He did not hesitate.

  * * *

  • • •

  They did not speak Shianne’s name.

  Jewel watched, listened; she could hear even the tremor of their breathing at this distance, as if it were the breath of the world. She saw them through the filter of the crystal now; she saw everything through that filter. Distance—the distance between the Sleepers and her actual eyes—no longer mattered. Beneath her feet, tottering unevenly, one of the four pillars began to vibrate. It did not, however, fall; it shivered, it wobbled, and it settled back into the earth.

  The earth had built it; the earth had not, clearly, finished with it.

  It began to teeter again as the old earth ran up against the diamond trees.

  Jewel told the earth to stop.

  The earth, however, did not.

  And in the distance, one of the Sleepers raised his head. Hair spilled down his back, down his shoulders, as if it were liquid, and as Jewel looked into the crystal she held in her hands, he met her gaze. She should have felt a tiny moment of satisfaction when his eyes rounded. She didn’t.

  Beneath her feet, beneath the feet of anyone who had managed, thus far, to survive, the earth reared up, and up again, as if it were an enormous serpent. It was not the only serpent. The wind rose as well. Shadow snarled in annoyance.

  “Do something!” he told his rider, as the air attempted to grab them both and dash them against the nearest waiting surface.

  * * *

  • • •

  Shianne did not speak the names again, but they lingered, syllables carried by a wind that had grown increasingly agitated everywhere but around the princes themselves. Had Shianne not been mounted upon the Winter King, she might have fallen. She allowed the great stag to navigate, although her sword was a brilliant gold, a Summer gold. Here, the wind did not hear her voice as it heard the voice of the three who had once been brethren. She could cut it, could drive it back; she had that power. But of the elements, the wind was the quickest to anger.

  The power of her brothers had not diminished with the passage of time and the changing of the world. They were, in her eyes, all that they had once been, and she ached at the memories because she knew she was not. She would never again be what she had once been; she would never ride out at the White Lady’s side, into a world that was a constant sea of changes, of surprises, half-willing to transform itself to meet the desire and command of the firstborn.

  That world was waking, but it would never again hear her voice.

  Not as her brothers now heard it. Their shields were unadorned, a sheen of blue with no distinguishing marks, nothing to remind those who could see them of the glory of their achievements. To mortals, they were legends, stories. Ah, no. To mortals, now, they were gods.

  They had not changed.

  But the White Lady had. The world had shifted beneath their figurative feet. And they had known that it would.

  So, too, Shianne. Her blade the wrong color, her voice the wrong texture, her life riven—forever—from the White Lady for whom she had sacrificed everything, she could do what had been forbidden every other living member of that Hidden Court. She could speak their names. Their lost names.

  Not even the gods could now do that.

  They had turned to her, their eyes glowing bright, the shock of those names—those felt and familiar and lost names—a compulsion. And they recognized her, even in her fallen state. They knew who she had once been. They could not know what she had done, could not know why she had traveled to the city that had, unbeknownst to her, been their jail and their cage, but she came bearing sword, shield; she came upon the back of a Winter King. That a mortal youth sat before her signified little; he was irrelevant.

  As one man, the three spoke a single word.

  Shandalliaran.

  She reverberated with the sound; it was a force almost as strong as the wind’s gale in the heights. But it was only a sound, now. It evoked memory, and memory in this place was pain, but she had expected pain. There was a hollowness where once there might have been communion, an echo in all ways of returning at last to the White Lady’s side.

  She said, her voice as solid as the firmament far below, “You walk the skies of the Lord of these lands, and the Lord has traveled here at the behest of the White Lady. Stand down, if you will not face her wrath.”

  * * *

  • • •

  Jewel heard each spoken syllable as if it were a spell; the air shook with it, and the stone that now rose from the depths of the earth seemed to shudder. Had the syllables been words, they might have been an anguished cry, a plea, an accusation; they might have listed innumerable crimes as a testament to things broken, things betrayed, things destroyed.

  She could almost see them, they were so solid, so tangible. Had her hands not been occupied, she might have reached out to grasp them, to hold them, to draw them into herself—or to push them away. She could not, did not try, but as each syllable faded, she thought of the spells of the magi, for their spoken words were similar in some fashion. She could not, however, repeat either Shianne’s name or those spells; being witness to either gave her none of the power and none of the control the original words had.

  She was seer-born, but the first of the Sleepers moved toward Shianne so quickly it seemed that the sky had stuttered; one moment he stood beside his brothers, and the next he was away; his sword traced an arc of light in the sky that seemed to leech all color from it. Around him, beneath his feet, above his head, the sky was now gray and pale—but the wind whipped his hair into a stream that seemed to rise and fall as a liquid around his shoulders, his back.

  His blade struck Shianne’s; the result was a lightning that traveled in all directions. Shadow cursed and moved; light singed his right wing and raised gray fur into bristles. The same light reached for Jewel on her perch atop his back; although the gray cat dodged, he could not evade it.

  It was Rath whose hands damped the flames that had spread in a slow, blue crawl up her shoulders; his pale hands were limned in that fire for one long second before the fire went out. The Winter King moved and moved again; the fall of the blade a second time hit the tines of his antlers.

  Winter King.

  Understand, Lord, that I am not—and was never—their equal. I could not face even one and hope to survive for long.

  Then don’t face them. She can’t fight without you.

  Jewel, she can. I do not know what you see in her, but you must understand. Her mortality is not the whole of what she is; I, too, was mortal. If I choose to leave her here, it is here she will stand. She will not back down in the face of the three. She cannot.

  Then take her away.

  To where?

  To the White Lady.

  The ways are not open yet.

  Blades rose, blades met; the clash of strike and parry once again caused lightning that streaked in all directions. Where it hit the ground below, it burned. The fire was blue; blue and gold.

  Jewel had never before seen stone burn. She had never heard it scream.

  There is a danger, Avandar said.

  Can you put the fires out?

  Yes. But not without cost. They will know I am here.

  She did not ask him if he had faced the Sleepers before the judgment of the gods and the White Lady had rendered the
m irrelevant. She knew the answer. Nor did she now command him, because she knew what he would do. She did not tell him not to draw sword; the danger to Avandar that she had always feared was irrelevant now. She understood that he could not die. If the Sleepers destroyed him here, he would cling to life in some fashion; the world itself would build a cage that would contain him, and it was that cage from which he longed to escape.

  War would not, and had not, freed him.

  She knew the moment he unsheathed the sword, and she understood in that instant that the weapon never left him; it was as much a part of him as breath, as power, as the history that he could not escape.

  And she saw the two Sleepers turn, instantly, toward him; only the nameless man who now attacked Shianne in earnest failed to look, even once, in his direction. But to look, Jewel thought, might be death.

  Shianne parried the third blow from the wakened prince.

  The fourth such strike was hers. Her eyes glittered—with power, with tears, even the view from the seer’s heart could not easily divine the difference—becoming hard, cold; her jaw set as those eyes narrowed.

  And Jewel understood that the Sleeper had attacked her in earnest, affording her the respect she had once been due, in a bygone age, when gods still roamed the world, creating and destroying in equal measure.

  Adam was in front of her, behind her shield.

  Winter King.

  The Winter King did not respond verbally to the unspoken command, but Adam fell, toppling from the stag’s back.

  Kallandras caught him in the folds of the same wind that now held the bard aloft. Adam, wide-eyed, flailed a moment before he realized that he would not fall.

  “Kallandras—take him home!” The bard, like the stag, did not answer. He did not carry his lute; he carried, instead, the dual weapons that she seldom saw him use.

  Shadow growled. Without a word, he headed toward Adam; Adam, flailing again, met him halfway.

  Jewel started to tell the cat that there was no room and stopped as Rath gently disengaged.

  “I am dead,” he said, voice gentle. “My weight is entirely a matter of history and regret. And the boy is healer-born. You may need his talent.” He stepped to the side of the cat; Shadow’s wings passed through him.

  Adam sat behind Jewel; there was no room in front. Her hands still cupped the crystal, its light and shadow revealing the battlefield of Averalaan, on earth or in sky. Shadow hissed; it wasn’t silent, but was wordless. He did not like Adam, and Jewel was surprised that he consented—however grudgingly—to bear him.

  * * *

  • • •

  Adam reached into the pouch he bore, his hands shaking so much it was difficult to open the simple, mortal flap. He did not touch Jewel as a healer; had he not been upon Shadow’s stiff back, he would not have dared to touch her at all.

  The Oracle had given him a ring to bear; he was meant to return it to its owner. The Oracle had said he would know when. Now seemed like the right time, but both of her hands were occupied with the crystal she had taken from her chest.

  “Yesssssssss,” Shadow hissed.

  Adam found the ring. Found it. Held it, his right hand a fist. His left, he laid against the back of the Matriarch’s neck.

  * * *

  • • •

  Shianne and the Winter King now began their attack in earnest. Avandar, sword unsheathed, turned to the two and said, “Shianne’s Lord is not my Lord. My Lord has claimed these lands.”

  “And who is this lord who can command the service of the Warlord?”

  “Jewel Markess ATerafin,” Avandar replied.

  “We know of no such person.”

  “Your failure and its punishment have left you, of necessity, in ignorance.”

  The air chilled instantly; the sky darkened. Only where the blades of Shianne and the Sleeper clashed did they brighten—but each time they did it seemed to Jewel that the sky itself would shatter.

  “Do you not hear her name? The trees speak it, and the quiet earth murmurs it constantly. The air did not leap to your command when you first stepped foot on these lands, and it will not carry you for much longer; she has returned.”

  “I hear no such name, and the earth has wakened—as it once did—to our voices.”

  Avandar’s smile was thin, cold, and very proud. “Not your voices alone.”

  Beneath their feet, the first of the pillars finally fell, and no other rose in its place. But it fell across buildings, the weight of rock crushing the stone walls that had not yet fully formed. Shards and dust rose, and the wind caught them, and Jewel remembered how unsafe it was for the elements to mingle.

  The Sleepers who had not moved to attack Shianne moved in concert toward Avandar, but it was Calliastra who drew first blood: her wing clipped the face of the one on the right, and he wheeled in something too cold and proud to be called rage, although at its heart, that’s what it was. The wide, wide arc of sword slashed air and shadow and the stone or metal that composed the second spire of the new palace. It cut an arc through trees and buildings hundreds of feet below.

  Jewel’s hands froze, her grip tightening.

  Avandar continued, unperturbed. “We will offer you free passage from these lands; we will demand no recompense for the changes made, the damages done. But you will leave.”

  “Your Lord is no longer Lord of these lands.”

  “Is she not?”

  “She is mortal.”

  “Yes. None but the mortal may be Sen.”

  The silence that greeted the words was broken only by Shadow’s sharp inhalation.

  “This is not the city of a Sen,” the Sleeper finally said. His casual gesture said behold, and Jewel did, although Avandar seemed both surprised and unmoved.

  * * *

  • • •

  A mountain rose from the bay.

  * * *

  • • •

  Ships in port were upended as if they were paper boats made by children. The air became a battleground of magics such as the magi themselves had never seen. Sigurne, however, continued her climb. She did not trust the wind; it was part of the wilderness. The ring up on her hand glowed, and although the runes were unfamiliar, she understood what they said, what they were purported to say. It was a slender shield, and perhaps a useless one. She had no magic of her own to spare beyond this halting climb; the barrier on the ground absorbed the force of the Sleeper’s strike—a strike that had not been aimed at the Kings or their forces.

  Those Kings were beneath notice, beneath all but contempt.

  As the mountain shed its water and the contents of the bay rolled down its peaked sides, she understood that. But the mountain created a valley and it was the shape and size of those forces; the Wild Hunt rose in the wake of stone and dirt, and some at least would never rise again.

  This was how gods fought, she thought. But no, no. This was how gods must have conversed.

  “Guildmaster,” a familiar voice said.

  “ATerafin.”

  “This is not perhaps the wisest or safest of places to stand.”

  “Your concern is noted.”

  His dry chuckle was broken by the sound of blades and the screech of a bird of prey. “Do you think to engage the fourth?”

  “In a manner of speaking, yes.”

  “You are not his equal.”

  “No. I never was. But I am not you, ATerafin. I accept, and have always accepted, the difference. I have no ambition to become more than I am; I merely desired to become all that I could be.”

  “I believe he said he would not recognize you.”

  Jarven ATerafin was not the company Sigurne wished to keep on her lonely climb, and had she power to spare, she might have attempted to enforce some privacy. But the shields below still held, and Matteos was there. Jewel was here; Sigurne could see her, suspended upon the bac
k of the gray, winged cat. What the gods had expected of that young woman, Sigurne could not say, although she had had some sense of it.

  Meralonne had expected at least as much. But the mountain grew, the harbor was gone, the buildings in a quarter of the hundred holdings had been crushed or supplanted. The trees—they had been a whisper of hope as they spread; were they not called the Kings’ trees? So, too, the warriors of gold and silver, and the butterflies of flame. The weapons The Terafin had granted her Chosen had been used to great effect upon the frostwyrm and the harptalons, and the Chosen had fought their way to The Kalakar’s men, to join them in the defense of the street.

  But no new trees grew to sustain the hope of flight, of escape, and the trees that stood in the city were no more proof against the transformation demanded by the Sleepers than the man-made buildings had been. The mountain’s rise in what had once been bay was the first real threat to the Isle. She could not see the Isle’s fate at all and could only pray that its fate was not that of the harbor.

  “Sigurne, this is not the place for you.”

  The guildmaster said nothing.

  “I have been tasked with your safety. With your protection. And given the battlefield you attempt to enter, I am all but certain to fail at that task. I would prefer not to drag you from your perch . . .”

  “I would almost welcome the attempt,” was her brittle reply.

  He fell silent.

  “Do you believe he would come to your rescue? Have you failed to understand his essential nature?”

  She did not answer.

  “I would not have thought you capable of such risible sentiment.”