“You believe I will require it.”
“Haval—you are Councillor. You accepted that role in the wilderness.”
Silence.
“Did you think, truly, that you would remain unchanged? Birgide accepted the role of Warden, and she is not what she was.”
“I accepted the authority of the title because it seemed of value to the forest to grant one.”
But Jewel shook her head, her hair flying into her eyes. She shoved the strands out of those eyes, and Haval thought it had been quite some time since he had seen that gesture. It was almost endearing. “You cannot lie to me here. You will never be able to lie to me again.”
“I will never be able to successfully lie, no. And that was not a lie, except perhaps by omission.”
Jewel nodded. “What you have accepted, you cannot now discard. There is no honorable retirement. You are Councillor, and the forest hears you. I hear you,” she added softly. “And I am aware that offering protection from Jarven is perilously close to insulting. It will, however, be of great comfort to your wife.”
He stilled, then. “She does not dislike him.”
“She adores Lucille. She does not trust, will never trust, Jarven. I have been speaking with Hannerle,” Jewel added, with a wry smile. “She will not decry the responsibility you have undertaken, and she wants her home to be more or less what it was. I have tried, but—” She closed her eyes. “It is hard to remake a city when so many versions of that city overlap. It won’t be the same,” Jewel added, “and I apologize for that.
“I will keep Hannerle safe. No harm will come to her unless the walls fall. No assassin will touch her, and no threat against her will be safe, because no threat—while I live—will remain hidden. She understands what I need from you.”
“You require—”
“I need you to watch over Finch. I need you to guide the regency.”
“If you can preserve my wife—”
Jewel’s expression grew strained. Ararath placed one hand on her left shoulder, and this seemed to steady her.
“The Kings will rule. The Ten will be the Ten. Finch will be Terafin—” She exhaled. “Finch won’t be Terafin. She will be regent. And don’t argue with me—argue with her. I’ve tried, Haval. She will not listen. Unless I’m—” Jewel swallowed. “Unless I’m dead, she will be regent, and she will not allow the regency to end.”
Haval bowed his head. “I am not anticipating an angry wife with any great joy, and Hannerle is fond of Finch. She persists in thinking of Finch—and Teller—as children.”
“But not me.”
“No, Jewel. You are seer-born. My wife understood from the first that you could take care of yourself; she understood that you would probably have no choice in the matter.” He paused. “Thank you for seeing to Hannerle.”
She could have pretended to misunderstand him but did not.
He watched her as she gazed up at herself as she stood atop the walls, a tremulous smile adding to the impression of her youth. The woman on the wall did not seem slender and youthful to Haval’s objective gaze. She did not seem human at all. The young woman at his side, however, he knew—had known—for half of her life. And he wondered, then, if the Sen were truly mortal. He did not know enough, not yet. But he was certain that if he paid attention, he would learn.
* * *
• • •
Later, it would be said that The Terafin was, literally, everywhere. Every living person in the city, every living person in the forest, could see her standing upon the city walls, no matter where they were. Those walls, so high and so unnatural, were a song, a story in the making, and that song was raised by every bard who had survived. But every living person could also see her standing beside them or in front of them; each person could hear her speak. She did not linger long at the side of those who had never met her, but they heard, in her words, the promise of safety, of survival. Those who had remained in the city and its ruins, those who had managed to survive the breaking of earth, the rising of stone, the falling of trees and the detritus of what had once been their homes, she led to the forest itself. Nothing that fell—and things continued to rise and fall in loud and terrible waves—caused any further harm, and in some cases, The Terafin lifted the injured and bore them to the harbor of trees.
There, they met the tree people, and the tree people were so obviously The Terafin’s servants that they felt no fear. The panic caused by sudden, catastrophic change—and death, and loss—receded across the survivors of Averalaan in a single wave, and they turned their attention to the Lady on the Wall and the battle she fought for their sake, and in their name.
The forest grew in a more orderly fashion throughout the city, and the Ellariannatte that had been felled in the Common were replaced; renewed as if they had never been destroyed or harmed.
The dead, however, did not return to life.
* * *
• • •
The Sleepers could not gain purchase. They could cause damage—and did—but the city over which they had claimed dominion was no longer a mortal city; it fought their commands, fought their intentions; all harm done to buildings or trees reverted, as if time itself had become a thread that the woman who was Lord of these lands had pulled. She wove with it. She gestured, and the earth quieted and would not respond to the Sleepers again within the confines of the city. So, too, the wind and the water, and the harbor had been rebuilt around the absence of the mountain.
The sky was a clear azure, the sun high; a glimpse of the moons could be seen in the height of the daylight sky.
Adam of Arkosa’s palm retained contact with the back of the Matriarch’s neck, but not because by doing so he could preserve her life; he knew that she would take no further injury from the Sleepers. Not yet. She might stand thus for hours, for days, for a week, and their attacks would no longer reach her. He thought nothing would.
In his days in Averalaan, this strange, crowded city, he had healed many people. Levec had taught him everything he could; had lectured him—almost endlessly, like any angry Ono—about the things he could not. Nothing Adam had learned in the Houses of Healing, nothing he had learned in House Terafin, had prepared him for this. He knew the Matriarch. He knew her well; he had called her back from the brink of death, and some part of her remained within him. And he could feel that, feel the familiarity of it—but it was one small echo, and it was almost overwhelmed by the constant, shifting, subtle differences.
This is what he might have felt had he attempted to heal a countless number of people simultaneously, something that was—according to Levec—impossible. And dangerous. Adam, young and foolish, had asked how something could be both impossible and dangerous, and Levec’s icy response had made clear that this subject was closed. It was impossible. Adam should not even attempt it.
When Adam had nodded and ducked his head, Levec’s growl could be heard anywhere in the very large room.
“Use your head for something other than toughening the palm of my hand, boy.”
Some of the students found this intimidating. It made Adam feel almost nostalgic.
“The body knows its healthy state. But it can’t achieve that state without the healer’s intervention. We move the body toward health. We remind it of its natural state.”
“But—time—”
“No.” One growl of an exhalation followed. “. . . And yes. The young always remember the wrong words at inconvenient times. I would not waste breath, but you are dangerously powerful. Dangerous to yourself, for the most part.
“There is a reason we do not attempt to heal two people at the same time. It is not only a matter of time, but a matter of . . . state. It is far too easy to get those states confused.”
Adam had considered this in the lee of Levec’s ferocious glare. “We might . . . mix them up?”
“It is possible to confuse the best state for each, yes. It is possi
ble to cause an overlap which is not good for the patient. Each person obeys the laws of their natural bodies, when no harm is done. They will age in certain ways, their hair and eyes will be certain colors, their skin certain tones. Consider those natural laws. No single person can be two people at once, and no single body can bear the weight of two different laws. It is possible to force them to make the attempt.
“It will not turn out well.”
But the Matriarch was more than one physical law. More than two. The whole of her body was now a blur beneath his hand. It was a familiar blur, but the edges, the limits that a body naturally set upon Adam’s talent, were so rough he thought that healing her would possibly break something in her. But she was not like the earth; was not like the Arianni. She was mortal, but . . . a multitude of mortality, standing in one place.
* * *
• • •
The dead man shook his head. “Let her go,” he said, in rough Torra. “She is safe now.”
Adam understood the ways in which the dead could drive the living; this was new, and were it not for the obvious comfort the Matriarch derived from this dead man’s presence, he might have been afraid. He was not. He had learned, however, that it was unwise to let the dead rule the living, and he turned to look at Angel.
Angel’s expression robbed him, briefly, of breath. He was of an age with the Matriarch, but seemed much younger, his eyes shadowed, his hair hanging in a loose and unruly frame around his gaunt face. He had lowered his sword.
Adam lifted one hand in slow, deliberate den-sign. The movement was enough to draw Angel’s attention. Angel did not speak but signed instead; his hand was trembling. Of course, it was. He was injured, and those injuries had not been miraculously healed as the city itself was being healed.
Adam let his hand fall away from the Matriarch. He walked beneath the lines of trees at the wall’s height, covering the two yards that separated Angel from his Lord. Angel’s eyes narrowed, and he shook his head. Adam, however, ignored this. Angel, he knew, would never hurt him. When the healer, half Angel’s age, held out a hand, it was steady.
Angel’s grimace deepened as he shed the haunted look that had stolen all other familiar expressions. “This is nothing.”
“Do not make me summon Levec.”
At that, while the Sleepers drove themselves into and around the Matriarch, Angel laughed.
And the Matriarch turned instantly toward the sound of laughter.
* * *
• • •
Every singular instance of The Terafin turned toward that sound, and for a moment, it could be heard by all of Averalaan, just as she herself heard it. It was warm, that laugh; it implied a history that was not all pain, and it implied—by its very existence—a future that would likewise not be all pain, no matter how grim the present.
And the words of one man, she lofted above the din of every other voice, even her own. Levec’s words. “If you summon me, he’s not the one who will be in trouble.” Other voices joined in Angel’s laughter, even Adam’s: the voices of Levec’s healer-born students. His colleagues. Anyone who had history with the healer not known for the sweetness of his temperament or patience.
On the height of the walls, Angel ATerafin placed his palm firmly across Adam’s, and Adam did what he could to staunch the flow of Angel’s blood, his lips folding in a frown that was familiar to anyone in the den who had seen him heal.
Angel did not speak. He did not ask Adam if The Terafin had somehow changed. The answer was obvious to both of them. Nor did he ask Adam how. Even had he, Adam would have had no way of answering, because words could not convey what his gift had revealed. Nor did he think it necessary. Angel would not leave her service while she lived.
Or while he lived.
Adam, however, said, “She must stand only for a handful of hours now. And she—”
He stopped speaking.
In the heart of the city—in what would become the heart of the city—the white tree that she had planted from the captive breath of a dying frostwyrm began to grow. It had been as tall as the tree of fire when it had first pulled itself from the dragon’s corpse; Angel had thought it twin in some fashion to that tree, whose full growth had been modest in comparison to the rest of the trees in Jay’s forest until the very end.
It was not; he saw that now. White bark, white branches, and delicate, translucent leaves reached toward the wall’s heights until, at last, it stopped. It was now taller than the tallest of the Kings’ trees, and it caught light, absorbed it, and reflected it as if it were the heart of winter—the heart of what made winter beautiful.
He had not expected that, but as he watched, the leaves that had formed a burning crown across Jay’s brow at last unraveled, and those leaves now flew to that same clearing. They did not bind the tree, did not attempt to melt it or destroy it; instead, they sought purchase in the same ground, some little distance away from the most obvious of the ice tree’s roots.
The earth did not devour them; it made room for them, as if they were seeds. Angel watched as those seeds—like all the seeds of Jay’s various trees—blossomed. He recognized the tree of fire as it emerged, leaves of flame—white, orange, gold, red—budding and unfurling as branches thickened and spread. And this tree also stretched for the sky, gaining a height it had never achieved in the heart of Jay’s forest.
It grew until it was the height of, the width of, the tree of ice, and its flames were reflected in leaves that had been almost without color. But these trees now looked oddly unbalanced to Angel, as if they were two points of a triangle and the third had not yet been decided. He glanced at Adam, who still held his hand; Adam’s eyes were closed, his brows drawn together.
One of the Sleepers flew down to the trees. He was bleeding, but everyone on the walls, with the exception of Adam, had been.
“Shadow.”
The amorphous cat hissed.
“Snow. Night.”
Angel did not understand what Jay intended. The cats were not pleased to be drawn away from their battle; the Sleepers were worthy foes. But he watched as the cats rippled, briefly, their colors and fur solidifying, their shapes almost retracting into themselves. Night roared in rage when an Arianni blade swept through his left flank. It was not a deep wound, but in Night’s opinion, it should never have happened at all.
He’d blame Jay.
She didn’t seem to notice.
Something flew from each of the cats; they looked almost like leaves to Angel’s narrowed eyes, although they might have been feathers. At this distance, they had no color. But they, like the leaves of fire, were accepted by the earth, and from those leaves or feathers, the third tree grew. It was—no surprise—taller than either the tree of fire or the tree of ice, although not by much, and while its branches spread and grew, the buds across them remained closed.
* * *
• • •
Meralonne watched the trees grow in almost silent wonder. He seemed young, even youthful, to Sigurne’s eye, and his own eyes were bright with excitement. He, who had lived millennia, had not yet grown jaded enough that excitement was beyond him. Sigurne, however, offered a wary awe.
“How long?” she asked.
He did not answer until the third tree outstripped the first and second in height, and even then, his answer was a chuckle. After a pause, in which it became clear that the existence of buds must remain a promise for the future, he turned to Sigurne. “How long?”
“How long can she stand?”
“Against my brethren?” His smile was a mix of both joy and sorrow. “Had you asked me in my youth, my answer would be different. But even against Darranatos as he was, she could stand thus indefinitely. The cities of man were proof against even gods—as long as those gods remained beyond the walls.
“And we are—we were—powers in the ancient world, but we were not the equal of gods.”
“Ah. Yes. But we were four, then, and the fifth was Moorelas. It was not our hand that could slay that god. Even had we abandoned Moorelas, even had we taken to the field of that god’s stronghold with our full power, our own armies, I do not believe we would have been enough.”
“Moorelas was mortal.”
“Yes, Sigurne. But the weapon he carried was a weapon made by gods and the maker-born when magic was freely available, and the wilderness was all of the world. That blade was lost—lost to us all—when we failed in our charge. The mortal world could not contain it, and I believe it slept as we slept.”
Sigurne was silent for a brief moment. “That was informative in a fashion, but it was not an answer.”
“Against us? She could stand until exhaustion drove her from her feet—and even then, Sigurne, when she slept, I believe she could defend what she is, even now, building. Do you not understand what the trees signify?” When Sigurne did not reply, he said, “This is the heart of her domain now. This city is her forest. She will take the weapons that are wielded against her, and she will forge from them weapons of her own; she will make them a part of her lands.
“It is not how other cities were built,” he added.
“The cats, then? Surely they were not wielded against her?”
“I believe she intends that they never be wielded against her again. I admit I am surprised that they offered what she asked of them—but it is done.” He closed his eyes; he was almost trembling. “But she will not have to stand until exhaustion drives her to sleep. Do you not know the date?”
Sigurne’s eyes narrowed as she considered the question and widened slightly as she answered. “Lattan.”
“On the longest day the roads are open, and those who have been constrained by the fraying rules of an ancient covenant are free to travel.”
Sigurne did not ask him what was to happen. Instead, she turned, once again, to the trees. “Will you take me to them?” she asked.
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