The disdain of the powerful had never bothered Sigurne. The ambition frequently had, because those with ambition were those most likely to become kin to the man who had enslaved her in her youth. Her own family had performed funeral rites for her so many years ago the memory no longer caused pain. She had given her life over to the task of ensuring that it did not happen again—not in the distant North, and not here.
She understood, however, what the Kialli were.
She understood what Meralonne was. She could see, in the wakened Sleepers, what he must have been in his youth—if youth was a word that had meaning to the immortal at all. He had no shield, but had he, it would have been the only one of four to bear his heraldry.
But Meralonne’s herald had not arrived in the city. She did not understand why the arrival of the heralds had changed everything, but demonstrably it had. She understood only one thing. Meralonne had closed with the dark-winged, dangerous creature who responded to Jewel’s voice, and he had closed from the air. The Sleepers themselves had not taken to air until the advent of the heralds.
Could not, she thought. She understood the significance of their sudden, physical rise; she could not be certain that this climb served any true purpose. But she climbed the stairs of her own tower, and in the past few years the ascent had grown longer. After today, tonight, she might never ascend the tower again.
She lifted one hand, and Jarven’s irritant of a voice failed to mar the moment.
Across the sky, Meralonne APhaniel turned to look at her. She met his gaze, held it, her eyes narrowing in a squint necessitated by distance, by age. Beneath her, more of the city fell, more—and different—rose, the Kings fought, the warrior-magi trained by Meralonne himself by their sides. She saw the mountain, saw the sudden shift in the water, the river itself widening, the banks changing color into something that was emerald green and pale white. The movement of people—and there were people in the shifting streets—seemed inconsequential, the movement of dust or grit thrown by wind to no ill effect.
She saw the Sleepers, engaged in their combats; saw the domicis of whom the Astari had always felt such bitter suspicion unmasked at last; saw the white cat beneath Angel ATerafin as he circled The Terafin he served.
And she thought of Meralonne the first time she had seen him in flight, in combat; that image had been burned into memory. He was cold, yes, and deadly, he was savage and joyful and proud, he seemed at home in the Northern Wastes, and at home among the demon-kin to whom he then laid waste. He had not, then, been the equal of what he now was.
She had waited for death at his hands, and because she waited, it had never arrived. But she had expected death, had felt entitled to no more. She was a repository of all knowledge forbidden by the Kings, by the laws of decency and sanity by which they attempted to govern the ungovernable: curiosity, experimentation, discovery.
In some fashion, her life had always been in his hands; he had opened those hands and returned it to her, teaching her, in all ways but one, how to fly. The hand she lifted trembled in the gale; she did not fall.
Illaraphaniel, the gods called him; the gods, the immortals. His silver eyes narrowed, his perfect brow creased. He had shed—as he habitually did when he forgot himself—all semblance of age, and even wisdom. What wisdom was required by the storm, the earthquake, the tidal wave?
Mortals gathered, finding strength in numbers. Sometimes they found companionship; sometimes friendship; sometimes they built family. The whole of the city was defined—had been defined—by moments too small to attract the attention of the immortal. Even the untold deaths beneath them seemed inconsequential, an oversight, a side effect.
But it was for these mortals, in the end, that Sigurne had toiled.
And it was on the shoulders of a mortal far more given to sentiment than she that the fate of what remained of this city—and perhaps the Empire beyond it—rested. Sigurne did not know how and could not ask. Her part in the whole tapestry was almost finished because the tapestry that had defined that life was done. The world was waking, a god walked the plane, and the immortals now returned to lands they had been forbidden by the covenant of gods long vanished.
It was time.
“Guildmaster,” Jarven said, his voice sharper. He had been a dangerously perceptive man, aware always of weakness, of folly. He took risks. He played games. Where the coin the game demanded was his life, he laid that upon the table—but deliberately, not recklessly. This would not be a risk he would take; this would not be a game he would join. He would not, she knew, see the possible gain in it, even should the risk be rewarded.
Sigurne lowered her hand; the ring, of course, came with it.
She then stepped deliberately off the last of the magical stairs she had expended the power to build.
Chapter Twenty-One
SIGURNE FELL. SHE DID not close her eyes; nor did she attempt to protect herself from the impact of the ground that now rushed up to meet her. The wind was gravity’s wind, the fine debris in the air the result of wyrm’s breath or the breaking—in too many places—of the merchant roads. The flash of light, the extension of lightning and fire, changed the color of the world; the shadow of the spire that had grown first darkened it. She thought the sky blue, now, leeched of its deeper amethyst.
Jewel had returned.
* * *
• • •
“That was a very foolish gamble.”
Her descent had slowed, but not by a cradle of air; a hand gripped her left arm with enough force she was certain it would bruise on the morrow, should there be one. She found voice, if not heart. “You are an interesting man, ATerafin. I am absolutely certain that the magic you now use is not covered by writs of exemption.”
“You are?”
“I sign them all.”
“And you read them first?” He chuckled at her expression. “It has been my curse in life to encounter, always, those completely absent any sense of humor. I apologize for the harshness of the landing, but I am new to this.”
“You have not, yourself, leaped off any great heights as a test of this trick?”
“Of course not. I do not take risks for the sheer joy of the risk itself; there must be some goal, and in the case of this particular party trick, some reward that is worth the possible failure. I,” he added, “am likely to survive in any case.”
Jarven’s face was pale, insubstantial, above hers; he was transparent, now, the field of his invisibility dampened, perhaps by the strain of this half-flight, half-controlled fall. Because it was, she could see what occurred beyond him; her face was turned, now, toward the sky.
Her eyes widened, rounding; she found her voice in a desperate rush, gilding it, for the first time since she stepped into the sky, with power.
“Meralonne! No!”
“Ah. I see I have become dangerously superfluous,” Jarven ATerafin said. He released her arm instantly, throwing himself across the gap of air toward the height of a new stone building. It was Sigurne’s weight he braced himself against; Sigurne’s momentum he used to fuel his own.
Blood touched her arm and face, regardless.
The air caught her before the earth did, and she rose in its folds.
Meralonne glanced in the direction Jarven had leaped; he did not pursue, although his flashing eyes were narrowed edges. He looked down at Sigurne’s hand and then up, to her face. With one hand, he brushed away the spattered blood. “That was foolish.”
She said nothing.
“And all but fatal.” He turned to the skies but did not rise again. “Why did you take such a risk?”
“The Terafin gave the air permission to heed your commands until such a point that the forest itself no longer recognized you. And you never truly landed.”
“I cannot fight them,” he said, voice soft, gaze raised. “I had thought that I might stand against them for some small time, but it
is not in me, Sigurne. Not for any reason, save one. I engaged Calliastra only because my brothers had not yet been freed of their final moorings. Do you see them?”
She nodded.
“They are not yet what they were, but they are becoming. You will not recognize an inch of this city when this battle is done—and it is almost at the precipice.”
“The Terafin has returned.”
“Yes. But she is merely Jewel ATerafin. She has the seeds of the absolute power required to defend these lands, but they have not blossomed—and I am uncertain, now, that they will.”
“She has visited the Hidden Court,” Sigurne said.
For the first time, Meralonne wheeled to face her.
“Evayne a’Nolan came to us with this news: Jewel has visited the Hidden Court, she has carried the sapling to the Winter Queen, and the Winter Queen has agreed—for reasons of her own—to come. The Terafin does not need to defend this city against your brothers indefinitely. She only has to hold out until the White Lady arrives.”
“She cannot. As she is, she cannot.”
“Not all of our people have perished. They shelter in safety in The Terafin’s forest.”
“She cannot hold even that,” was Meralonne’s soft reply.
“Can you not bespeak them?”
“They will take only one thing of import from any attempt to stay their hand: that the White Lady is coming. You do not understand. It will not stay their hands. If the White Lady is to come, they will create a city worthy of her visit. Think you the change in the landscape extreme? It is nothing to what it will become.”
* * *
• • •
The city rose and rose. The buildings that had lain in ruins beneath the mortal city streets seemed to rebuild themselves as they struggled skyward for dominance of the landscape. Jewel could not bespeak the earth, here. No, she thought, she could not command it. Avandar could, and did, but even his will did not halt what occurred beneath their feet; it altered the buildings created, it altered the earth’s becoming.
But the sky, now, was a deep azure, and the winged creatures that had harried the troops on the ground were dead. No more joined their number. It didn’t matter. The Kalakar and The Berrilya became increasingly isolated on the flats of the roads they had chosen—the only surface in the changing city that seemed to hold its original form.
“It is no accident,” Rath said.
Jewel nodded; she understood. She glanced, once, over her shoulder and saw that walls had risen, unimpeded, around the city. They were not walls that could be manned; they were not walls that could be guarded. They were all of a piece, a gift from the earth or the stone of the Deepings, and they shone orange and violet and gold, in her vision. “Shadow.”
Silent, the cat flew to the height of the wall, and for the first time since entering her own city, Jewel stepped off his back. Nor did he remonstrate with her.
He would not, however, allow Adam to climb off his back, although he cursed and threatened the young man as he refused. He hovered, however, his paws skirting the height of the curtain wall.
Adam tightened his knees, flailing, but Shadow remained almost still, suspended before Jewel. The Voyani youth held out one arm, one fist. “The Oracle,” he said. “The Oracle asked me to return this to you.”
Her eyes widened. She held out an arm, opening her palm into a cup beneath his shaking fist. He managed to pry his fingers open, and she felt the heavy weight of the Terafin ring—the ring worn by the House ruler. She had surrendered it to the Oracle as the price for her passage through the wilderness, and it had not been returned.
Until now.
She didn’t know why the Oracle had chosen to give that ring to Adam, rather than return it to her in person; she didn’t have time to care. Although it had been the easiest thing to surrender, it had not been easy. And here, above the whole of the city in which she’d been born, she placed that ring upon her finger.
She was The Terafin.
She lifted her head to thank Adam, but Shadow had moved.
* * *
• • •
Jewel had not created the walls on which she stood—she was certain of that. But they were solid beneath her feet, and from their height, she could see everything that occurred in the city. She could, she thought, see everything that occurred in the city through the lens of the seer’s crystal, as well, but it was . . . not the same.
Ararath Handernesse joined her. She glanced at him—at him, not into the crystal—and frowned a moment. “You have a shadow.”
He said nothing, turning instead to look out upon the city. “The Handernesse estates,” he said, “are gone. Can you see them? I think only my godfather’s remain untouched, but they are, even now, overshadowed by what is emerging to replace them.”
Araven would stand, she thought, because Andrei would stand. She would not worry about Hectore. She did not worry about the Kings. Her Chosen, yes. But she had given them the weapons that she could, and she believed in them without reservation. It was, now, that belief that was definitive, and she knew to think too deeply was to rock it, shake it, possibly break the full force of that spell. No—not a spell. Not that.
She heard, thinking of her Chosen, a loud, Rendish cry: a war cry. It was clearer in that moment than it should have been; she should not have heard it over the breaking of earth and the thunder of magic and the arms of those who had chosen to stand, to fight.
She knew where Terrick had gone.
She lifted one hand, and in the howl of wind, in the clash of dark lightning and bright, butterflies flocked to her hand. No, not butterflies: leaves. Leaves of fire. They did not burn her; they warmed her. Angel, hovering on Snow’s back, looked down from the height, but Snow, in spite of his urging, would not land on the wall. More leaves flew to her, and more, until she had not one leaf, but a wreath, a crown of fire. She set it upon her head, without thought. This crown existed, this fire existed, because she had been attacked upon her own ground, her own land.
And now, she thought, it was time to stand her ground. Again.
At last.
Leaves from the forest that could no longer be seen flew, just as the leaves of fire had flown; leaves now of gold, of silver, of diamond, leaves of Ellariannatte, the trees that she had loved in her childhood in the Common that was only a memory now. The streets she had played in were gone; so, too, Moorelas’ statue. Moorelas was lost. She knew. But the trees would grow again, and the people would return.
These leaves she gathered; they graced the palm she freed, shifting her grip on the seer’s crystal, but did not remain there as the fire had done; almost, they seemed to seek the contact as if they were living children in need of comfort. As she had done the first time, she opened her hand and she let them go, and they flew of their own accord toward the earth beneath these walls. This time, however, she knew what they would do. They flew, as if they were tiny birds of prey, and they landed, and where they landed, they took root.
They grew in an instant, and as she watched them spread, she felt the breeze against her upturned cheeks, and she felt the ground beneath her feet, although she stood on the height of stone walls. She felt the currents of rivers; she did not look into the crystal itself. As she had done on the first day of The Terafin’s funeral rites, she did now, deliberately lifting her voice to bespeak the elements.
Now it was her roots in the earth, and the earth—stirred by fire and gold and living Ellariannatte—seemed to lift its figurative face, turning toward her. So, too, the breeze at the heights, playfully rearranging the stray curls of hair that usually managed to fall into her eyes, and removing, as it did, any hint of the dust and dirt accumulated by travel.
And she heard—oh, she heard—the voices of the bard-born, raised in a song that had terrified her in the rapidity of its spread, the ridiculousness of its depiction, and she did not even grimace, beca
use the song itself was part of this wilderness, part of this forest, part of this dream. It was The Wayelyn’s song.
The earth continued to create its buildings, but those buildings were hers. Ah, no, not all of them. To The Kalakar and The Berrilya, she spoke, and her voice was the earth’s voice, deep and endless, but it was Jewel’s voice as well.
“To the Kings.”
As one, they looked up; the soldiers under their command did not. Jewel could meet their gaze at this great remove; could see the shift of lines, the acknowledgment.
She saw them begin their retreat, although the retreat was complicated by the presence of the host that served the princes. Walls of fire grew, and branches from it, between the body of the host and the body of the two units of the army, and she saw—clearly—that Ellora had accepted the strategic command. The Berrilya was slower to do so; Jewel was Terafin, not King, and he did not owe her obedience.
She gave her Chosen the same orders, and they were quicker to obey, for the dragon was bleeding out the last of its life in the streets it had cleared. It lifted its head and roared a final time, its broken wings fluttering as if it might still escape. And she caught its breath before it could freeze or shatter her newborn trees; caught it as she had once caught fire, compressing it in her free hand, as if she stood before the dragon. And this, too, she planted.
As the tree of fire, it was singular. There was one tree, and only one, and it grew, or seemed to grow, from the failing body of the dragon. The Chosen retreated, making their way to the Kings as if they knew where the Kings must stand; there was no clear path, but she noted that it was Arann who now led the way, and smiled before she turned once again to look at the single tree.
It was all white, a tree of frost, of ice, its bark the color of snow, its leaves the color of frost; no two leaves were alike; they budded and blossomed and even the earth stilled for one long breath.
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