But not only the earth. She saw that clearly as the crystal pulsed in her hand. The Sleepers turned as one man. They had been entangled in combat in the sky: Shianne, Calliastra, and Avandar remained in that sky, as did Celleriant and Kallandras—but the storm that swept the sky threw them toward the mountain that had risen from the bay, and perhaps beyond.
The princes had control of the air; they had control of the skies above their palace. She had taken the earth because it was in the earth that the trees were planted, and into the earth that their roots sank deepest, and the Sleepers knew. Of course they knew.
They did not fly toward her; she was certain that the wind above these walls would fail to heed their commands. But she saw, rising from their forces, three great stags—golden, not white, as the Winter King was white—and she knew that the permission of the air was not required. They conferred, briefly, as one, and then they separated: one rode toward the combatants that had been swept, momentarily, from their chosen field of battle; one rode toward the Kings, and the third, the last, to Jewel.
Not all the people of the city had escaped it; those that survived were few. She could see their faces in the crystal she held; they passed by in flickers, like a stream of possible loss. She could not contain them, could not reach them all; like the water of a stream, they evaded her grasp, slipping past her ability to memorize, to act.
And she could not. She could stand and face the prince of that ancient court, that other Queen, or she could die. She chose, as she had always subconsciously chosen, to survive.
* * *
• • •
The air obeyed Meralonne. He did not attempt to bespeak the earth; had not once made the attempt since he had returned to the side of his absent, sleeping brothers. Sigurne watched him in silence. She knew that he desired her survival, which meant, here and now, she would survive. She bore witness.
“Is this,” she asked softly, “beautiful to you?”
“Is it not beautiful to you?” was his equally soft reply; the words were laced with awe and loss and a growing sorrow; the latter weighted his words.
“No, APhaniel. It is . . . worthy of awe, of terror, of admiration. It is not beautiful.”
“Can you not see them?”
“I see them. I see what they have built, what they are building.”
“Did you not think me beautiful when first we met?”
Sigurne said, after a long pause, “When I first saw you, yes. And every battle you fought after that first one was an echo of that day, a reminder. You were . . . perfect, to my eye. You were everything that I had dreamed of being, on the nights when I nursed injuries and hatred and helplessness. You were the avatar of my younger self and her pain.”
“And now?” he asked; he had not looked away.
“You do what I cannot. Even had I the power, I could not do as you do. You taught me to do what I could—and I have faced demons since then—but I could not be you. Yet I feel at peace now,” she added. “They are as you were—but more so; what they do now, you did not do. And it does not compel me in the same way because they do not speak to my ancient anger, my pain, or my helplessness. Mortals are, as you said, frail.
“They will destroy—have destroyed—what I have built. Not because there are mortal laws which they might follow, as you did, but because to them, the whole of what we have built is so much dust, detritus. I cannot do what they can do. But I could not do what Darranatos could do, either. I have seen the mountains rise,” she continued. “The harbor destroyed. Moorelas’ fall. Things I could not have conceived of except, perhaps, in the nightmares that linger moments only after waking. I understand what the gods must have done when they walked these lands. I understand why we could not have survived.”
“And yet,” he replied, “you did.”
She nodded.
“She makes her stand.”
“Yes. And Meralonne, she is not what you were to me—but if I am powerless, and I am, I am no longer that young, captive girl barely out of childhood. She is mortal, she is not the scion of gods or their children; she is too short, and her hair is always unruly, and her clothing is dirty and road-worn. I am certain her boots are the same. Her skin is freckled or cracked and reddened by cold; she now has lines in the corner of her eyes, and her eyes are not silver or gold.
“And to me, now, she is truly beautiful.”
“Because she will do what you cannot?”
“No. Because she will try. You do not believe she will succeed.”
“No, Sigurne. We wake slowly, who do not sleep naturally. And as she is now, she might stand for some small time against one of my brothers, but she will not stand against three. She lends power to those in whom she has faith, belief—but it is mortal faith, mortal belief.”
“The Sen once created cities that could stand against the gods.”
He nodded.
“And you said she is Sen.”
“Ah, yes. There is, however, a difference. She is not as they were. She could be, Sigurne—but she is not. And I do not know if she will wake in time.”
* * *
• • •
Jewel moved without thought, her hand tightening around the core of the crystal she was now forced to hold in one hand. Even dodging, she did not lift both feet; she knew that the wall would shatter if she did not remain in contact with it. The attack itself was a thing of sharp fire and ice; the Sleeper did not raise or lower his blade. But her cheek bled; she felt the sting of the cut in the cool air of the height.
“Be careful, Jewel,” Rath said.
Jewel. Two voices. She swept them to the side.
The Sleeper meant merely to dislodge her; she could feel his power seep into and around the stone of the walls. The walls were of far less significance than the mountain that had risen in the bay; altering their shape and their purpose should have been trivial. And it would have been, had Jewel not been standing on the heights. She had no weapon that was equal to the weapons the Arianni carried; no weapon that was equivalent to Avandar’s. She had fire, and she had frost, and she had the leaves she had taken from the dreaming forest of the Winter King—the Winter King who had evaded his own death for so long death had become the only thing he yearned for.
In death, or near it, he would see the Winter Queen again.
She thought, as she dodged again, that the Sleepers were akin to that Winter King, whose existence had thrown the seasons of the hidden world off-balance for so long. He had built his palace of ice, his forest of gold and silver and diamond; he had captured—and held—the cats, encased in stone, but nonetheless living, and he had waited.
And waited.
Perhaps he had refined his palace. Perhaps he had labored to grow the trees in his forest. Perhaps he had spent centuries in search of the proper skin for the cats.
Shadow growled.
But he had built them all, in the end, for Ariane. She understood that now. He had built them all in preparation for the Winter Queen’s arrival, for her attack. He had hoped—and she saw this, too—that Ariane would gaze upon his creation with wonder, with delight, with whatever passed for affection or even love in the heart of the Winter Queen.
She did not know what had become of that Winter King—the greatest and the last. She did not know if he became, like her own Winter King, a mount, a creature of service to her, who might live for as long as Ariane herself would live. But she was certain that he would not be forgotten; even the Wild Hunt must remember him, and when they used the title he had graced for the span of his life, he would be their first recollection.
Three times she dodged; the fourth time, she could not. Shadow’s growl became a roar and a flurry of furred storm struck the Sleeper. His eyes were round with surprise, and then narrowed in fury—but it was a tactical fury. He roared a reply, but it had words in it, syllables that carried enough power to wake the dead.
She was no
t surprised when the remnants of the divided host began to charge in formation up the side of the wall. They met a wall of fire long before they reached the heights, and their mounts could not pass through that fire; nor could they find purchase up its side, as they had with the stone itself.
The wall of fire did not gutter at the command of the Sleeper; nor could he summon air to tear it away or earth to smother it. He broke it instead, and the fury as he landed upon it and rent a great gap in the flames was unmistakable. Lifting his voice, he shouted, and she saw that one of his brothers began to ride toward him; in the air she could smell the faint tang of burnt flesh.
Two, then. She was surprised that fire could rip or tear; no mortal fires did. They required sustenance, but she gave them that: leaves from her crown flew down to that wall. The wall did not impede the Sleeper. It would not impede his brother; it simply stopped the host from joining the fray. She could not dodge the whole of that gathered force as she now dodged the attacks of their master.
Or masters, for the second group had gathered. But the wall of fire was a ring that circumscribed the whole of the walls that now stood around this emerging, faltering vision of a city. And she understood what that city might become.
Anything.
Anything at all.
This was a battle that gods might have engaged in, but on a smaller scale. What the Sleepers wanted of a city, Jewel did not want—and would never want. She had marveled at the palace of ice, of glass, but she had had no desire to live in it; she did not believe that it could be made a home. Home for Jewel was the Common. Home was the Terafin manse. The difference between the two, when she had lived in the hundred holdings, had been the difference, in the mind of a poor child, between mortals and gods.
That difference did not exist in this moment. Home was, and had always been, about the people in it. In the city the Sleepers would create, there would be no people. No patricians, no Kings, no servants, no farmers, no little old ladies with useless sons. There would be no Taverson, no unexpected help, no families. There would be nothing of the life she had stitched together over the past two decades, and she did not want that.
They would throw away the complexity and beauty and frustration of life in this mixed and complicated city to do what? Impress a Queen who would never, in the end, appreciate what they built?
No.
Above the ring of fire, untouched by its heat, there now grew a ring of ice, and it expanded, thinning, until it was a dome. Beneath its height, the two Sleepers now closed. Shadow roared again. A third time. Night came. Night came, and Snow came with him and, on Snow’s back, Angel. Snow paused for just long enough to eject her den-kin, and Angel came to a skidding stop to Jewel’s right.
He wielded a sword openly, understanding that it was not meant to cut flesh or, rather, not only flesh, and his hair flew in the chill breeze at the height of the walls. Jewel could see the ghost of the spire that he had worn as both crown and promise until the moment he had—finally—accepted the House Name. He had always had her back. He wanted nothing more from her than that right of position: at her back, at her side. This road that she had walked he had asked to walk with her, and she had said yes because she hadn’t the heart to say no.
She even smiled, the expression a flicker, lost easily to the sudden flare of light and heat and cold, to the charge of electricity that spoke of storm cloud and lightning, to the gale of wind that could not displace them. There was no curtain wall here, but Angel did not fall, and Jewel would not.
She would not.
And so, at the last, across the heights, grew trees of stone: obsidian and alabaster and jade-green marble. They became her walls; they became her roofs; they became her shelter. Where they were shattered—and they were—they served as shield; they took the blows meant in their entirety for Jewel Markess ATerafin. For The Terafin. For the Lord of this contested land.
She responded with fire. She responded with ice. She responded, at the last, with blood, because she could not dodge everything, no matter how keen or intuitive her reflexes. She remembered her first meeting with Isladar, in an alley in the Common. And she remembered that, bleeding, she had slowed, and in slowing, bled more, until the body’s need to survive could not compensate for the speed of the demon’s attempt to kill her. Being seer-born in that moment had counted for little.
Being den had counted for everything.
She glanced at Angel as she bowed her head, trying to minimize her movements, trying to hoard stamina, and she flashed a brief sign. He wielded his sword in two hands; he could not respond in kind. But he nodded, eyes narrowed, knees bent, weapon once again rising to the ready.
She did not doubt that she could continue to stand—on this wall, beneath these trees and above them—for as long as it took for Ariane to arrive. Nor did she doubt that the Winter Queen—the Summer Queen—would honor her word. She very much doubted that the city would ever again be what it had been, but she knew—she knew—that her own people were within the heart of the forest that she had first discovered, first planted. If she could hold now, she could build later, and what she built would be better. Those who survived could return to dwellings that they had conceived of only in dream—if at all—and by presence make a home of them.
She gestured once, and a barrier of ice rose over one dwelling like a dome, and she knew Hectore had looked up, had seen it; she did not know if he understood, but she whispered his name, even if the sound, too slight for her own ears couldn’t possibly reach him.
* * *
• • •
Hectore lifted his chin as he stood on the balcony that overlooked his estates. The grass was ruined, and he very much doubted the flowerbeds would survive what had become an occupation. Nor would the cellars and the food supplies, but those he begrudged far less.
He turned to Andrei, remembered that Andrei was not present, and grimaced. But he lifted his merchant’s voice—a voice he seldom had recourse to use in the splendor of his manse—and informed those gathered in fright beneath him that the barrier above their heads would protect them from . . . everything. Rescue was coming, and the Kings were on the field.
If it was a field that could no longer be seen, could no longer be recognized, those alterations existed entirely beyond the fence line, and Hectore of Aravan was grateful that he had never given in to demands that a man of his import should be possessed of a manor upon the Isle. There, the grounds—and the safety they now presented to those who had sought refuge here—would have been much, much smaller.
As it was, although he had instructed his guards to turn no one away, it was very tightly packed, and the calming of the crowd was an emergency in its own right; he could see the waves of fear pass through them at every sight, every sound. He missed Andrei and felt a touch of fear himself—but he was no stranger to fear, and it did not ride him or command him.
* * *
• • •
Jester heard her voice. One arm around Birgide, he had pulled the Warden through the ruins of her forest, following a path that she indicated by the heavy movement of her awkward steps. He lifted one hand and signed, although he could not see Jay. He could see the light in the sky, a type of nightmare rendition of the festival of lights orchestrated by the Order of Knowledge every year on this day.
Birgide shuddered, but her eyes had cleared, and when she turned to look over her shoulder, she froze. He felt her stiffen, felt her straighten; he removed the arm that had carried half—or more—of her weight. She turned her gaze toward his, and he was surprised to see her smile. In this place, at this time, he had none to offer in return.
“Can you hear them?” she asked.
Jester, lifting his voice, said, “What?” Before she could repeat the question, he added, “We’re to go to the tree of fire. When she can, she’ll meet us there.”
Birgide shook her head.
Jester put his figurative foot down.
“It wasn’t a request. Those are her orders, and I don’t really think that now is a good time to quibble with them.”
Birgide’s eyes were wide, but they narrowed as her forehead creased. To Jester’s surprise, she then broke into a run. At least, he thought, as he started to follow, she was sprinting in the right direction.
* * *
• • •
Avandar.
He did not answer with words, but images—not unlike the crystal’s—flashed by. Calliastra was bleeding black mist into the skies around the one Sleeper that had not yet come to attack Jewel directly. She was not the only one injured; she was the only one enraged by that injury.
The injury was costly on both sides. Silence, and then: You are bleeding.
She was.
Something had struck her right arm, just above the bend at her elbow; her right hand was numb. But numb or no, her grip on the crystal, its images moving past her so quickly it was a stream of constant color, did not falter. She didn’t tell him it was nothing; it wasn’t. Small cuts like these slowed her down, and she could not afford to be slow. Not here.
She was not surprised when Shadow dumped Adam off his back. Not surprised when the Voyani youth raced the few yards to her side. She did not order the gray cat to take the healer back. Nor did she order Adam to retreat. She understood, knew, that this was why she had brought him here. This was why he had not traced a path through the wilderness to the home—and kin—that waited.
She barely felt his hand touch the back of her neck as she slowed her frenetic dance. This was not the first time he had stood thus; not the first time that he had closed wounds that might otherwise be her death. Shadow did not even tell her she was stupid. He did not speak at all.
None of the cats did.
They roared—but they roared in unison; she could discern which level of bestial power belonged to which of the three. Adam, eyes closed, did not see the three cats. Jewel thought she would have seen them regardless, although her eyes were not closed.
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