City of Night (54 page)

He raised the sword.

But horns sounded again, and they came not from the light that had birthed this living fire, but rather from behind the seer, and this time—this time the notes were accompanied by the sound of light hooves, the clatter of armor.

 

In the light of silver moon—a moon that could not shine,
did not
shine here, but was nonetheless evident by the artifacts of light—the Wild Hunt rode into the streets of the undercity. They rode past Evayne, streaming out of the shadows beneath her cloak to the right of where she stood; to the left stood Rath. He noted that nothing touched the circle she had sketched in the ground; they moved to one side of it, although some leaped above its arc. But they rode through the snow, and above it, weightless and terrifying.

Armor gleamed in the impossible light; helms, with long, narrow visors, pauldrons rising in exaggerated domes. Falling away from the shoulders, lamés narrowed to stylized points that echoed the rise of the helms. The riders bore spears and lances, slender and thin. They did not ride horses; they rode great stags, tines gleaming at the height of antlers that seemed like crowns.

But one rider stopped a moment, by Evayne’s side, and she raised the visor of her helm, for they were all helmed. Her hair spilled down her back, silver in the moonlight; her skin was the color of snow. Rath, who had danced with Sor Na Shannen, fell into a silence that was not interrupted by something as petty as breath: He had never, and would never again, see a woman so beautiful.

A woman so beautiful, and so cold.

“Little sister,” she said quietly. “How long will the road last?”

“Not long,” Evayne replied, although she did not look up, did not meet the rider’s gaze.

“Then we will ride while we can.” She lowered the visor, and from no sheath that Rath could see, she drew a blade. It was blue, a thing of cold, cold light.

“Karathis!” she cried, and the demon of fire and flame turned in that instant toward her. “Have you slipped your leash?”

He hissed, and he spoke, but the words, harsh and guttural, were not in a language that Rath understood.

The Winter Queen laughed. Her answer was the cold tinkle of bells, and just as unintelligible to his ears. She rode toward the Duke of the Hells, then. Toward, and not away. She was not half his height, but Rath understood, as they closed, that here height did not define power; the snow followed in her wake like a cape.

He watched in silence as the woman suddenly vaulted off the back of her mount. The mount reared, leaped, avoided the downward arc of the great, red sword. Ice cracked beneath its blade.

The Winter Queen did not land; instead, she rose, and the air held her, buoyed her. Her hair flew back, against the wind; her cape, which was silver and black, flew with it, as if it were the only standard she required.

And thus, Rath thought, the answer to the question the heights that this city had once possessed posed. What need had they of something so trifling as stairs? The wind obeyed her.

To her side, left and right, the riders crested the surface of drifts, and where they met demons, they clashed; blood fell, darkening snow and freezing against it.

But Rath, who had seen battles large and small, watched in a silence of snow and wind and fire, seeing the undercity, for the first time, as it might once have been when gods walked the world. He did not flinch when riders fell, or demons lost limbs; there was, about the fighting, an orchestration, a choreography, that none of his battles had ever had. Nor would they; he fought like men fought: to survive. If it was graceless, if it was lucky, if it was underhand—in the end, what mattered was that he walked away.

But to the riders, to the demons, the simple consideration of
life
seemed no part of the engagement, no part of the swift and elegant dance.

“Ararath!”

He could not look away, but nodded.

“Ararath, they will close the road. Not all of the
Kialli
here fight. Look.”

He forced himself to look beyond the body of the fighting; to look beyond the armored Winter Queen and her clash with the creature that Evayne had called a Duke of the Hells.

There, in the open and empty streets, two demons stood. One, he did not recognize, and one he did: Sor Na Shannen. Lightning struck from above, shattering stone.

“Fools!” Sor Na Shannen cried, and even at this distance, he saw the flash of her eyes, the moving strands of her midnight hair. “Do not die on the road! Do not give them that purchase!” She lifted her arms in a wide sweep, and threw not light, not fire, but shadow.

Evayne lifted her hands and caught it between her palms, staggering at the contact.

“Run,” she told Rath.

He understood, as she struggled to straighten her arms, that she spoke without thought; that she intended to stand, and fight. It almost made him smile. But he turned again to the streets of a city made forever alien, and he bore witness. It was all he could do; the demons and the riders were well beyond him, and he did not think the dagger that he held, runes dark and almost sullen, would be of use should he choose to abandon Evayne’s side.

Blue sword clashed with red above; below, blood spread as the cold yielded to heat.

Rath was beneath their notice, beneath their contempt. Whatever existed in the streets and the mansions of Averalaan, whatever plots or councils Sor Na Shannen took with her allies, had ceased to exist
now
. The kin—the
Kialli
—could fight like this for eternity; if the world died around them, they might not even notice.

They would certainly not notice the deaths of tens of thousands of people whose lives, measured in a handful of years, would amount to nothing. This was how beauty was defined in this place.
This
was what they faced. The wild, inhuman creatures fought, Rath thought, as if this might be their last chance
to
fight; as if this dance, this death, was all of their desire.

Sor Na Shannen shouted again, raising her voice above the gale. She strode across the cracked stone, toward the border beyond which Winter ruled.

At her back, a lone demon stood. He might have been a man, a slender, tall one. He might have been a rider. The form and shape the other demons took in their graceful savagery was not his. He might have been, as Rath was, a forgotten, inconsequential observer; he even lifted a hand to his chin, resting his elbow upon his palm.

And then he smiled. He did not stride toward the snow. Instead, he bent to ground as casually as a man might who has dropped an item of little significance. But instead of straightening again, he placed one palm against the surface of the stone causeway. He spoke no words, made no gestures, but he lifted his head, hand still splayed against ground, and his eyes traveled past the battles, large and small, to rest a moment upon Evayne.

“Evayne, be wary,” Rath said.

Evayne glanced at him, and he lifted an arm.

She frowned, a counterpoint to the
Kialli
smile, and then her eyes widened.

“Ararath!”

He saw her double over. The robes that had billowed above her like a standard in a gale fell suddenly, heavily, toward the ground.

“Ariane!”
she shouted, as she lifted her head and her arms in one sharp, jerk of motion. Her hands were entwined in shadow that writhed even as it coalesced.

The Winter Queen danced back a step in the air and turned slightly to see the woman who had called her name. Evayne, still crouched upon the ground, pulled her arms back awkwardly against her chest. Her brow creased and her eyes narrowed; she threw her hands forward. Shadow leaped from them toward Ariane, the Winter Queen.

The Queen of the Wild Hunt. Legend, Rath thought. Of course.

Ariane threw back her head and laughed as the darkness swirled around her, melting into the gleam of her perfect armor.

Evayne stood, staggered forward a step—and vanished.

With her went the snow, the trees, the moon’s light—and the riders.

But Ariane remained.

 

She did not stay to fight, although it was clear to Rath she desired as much. Instead, still carried by a wind that no longer howled, she swooped toward the ground, and toward Rath. He had not, until that moment, been certain she had been aware of him at all. Her gauntlets upon his arm, however, were proof, if it were needed.

He had no time to brace himself, no time to speak; cold, metal fingers closed round that arm and bore him up, where he dangled like a mouse in a hawk’s beak. Fire singed his cloak, and a roar of fury followed them. So, too, did flame; the
Kialli’s
wings were not decorative. But he was hampered in this wind; it was hers.

“Come, mortal. We have the gift of my sister’s shadow, but it is fleeting. Let us see what she hoped we would see ere it passes and the Winter Road is closed once again.”

She flew through the city as if she knew its streets. Rath fumbled with his magestone, but she seemed to require no light by which to navigate, and if he was not a graceful burden, he hit no walls, no outcroppings, no broken remnant of bridges. Nor did he fall.

But she came to rest, at last, upon the steps of what, to Rath’s eyes, seemed an open coliseum. He could not be certain, and he whispered light to its brightest. The steps formed benches where he stood; they both ascended and descended. She alighted beside him, and drew blade. It shone far brighter than the light in his hand, but conversely, it did not illuminate.

“So,” she said, softly, and leaped. She did not take to air again, although he thought she tried. There was no wind at all in this place, and very little sound. The magelight had difficulty piercing the darkness, and he unsheathed the second of the two daggers that Sigurne had given him.

There would be no report tendered her, for these.

He followed the Winter Queen down the steps; heard, at his back, the cries and commands of those demons who had not been slain by her riders. But the cries themselves failed to move him here.

She ran across the even floor of the coliseum; he hesitated at the last stair, remembering the glory of her aerial battle. Aware of how little he might add to it, or to her.

But she stopped; in the distance, which was not so very large, he could see her by the glint of armor and the blue light of the sword she carried. She drew no shield, but stood a moment, and he chanced death, leaving the dubious safety of this final ring of stone. Beneath his feet, where dirt should have been, the ground was hard and smooth, and it glinted as if it were polished. He cursed, and whispered light from stone—but this time, the light did not come; whatever magic the stone contained was not equal to this place. He knelt briefly and saw that he stood upon a smoky, marble floor of a kind that might be seen in ornate temples and grand foyers.

He glanced back, and saw the concentric ovals in which spectators might sit, and frowned. The magelight illuminated them faintly; it provided nothing for what lay upon the ground in their center. This was—or had been—an arena; of that, he felt certain. And Ariane stood at its center.

As he approached her, light held, he saw what she faced, and he froze.

An arch stood at the midpoint of the arena floor, within a circle traced by carved runes into which shadows spilled. They were large, these runes, and he did not recognize even the shape of the letters, if indeed they were letters at all. Two columns rose from the floor, and above those two, cut stones rested together to form an arch. The keystone rose above them, and it was the keystone that caught his attention, because engraved in that single stone was a lone rune that glowed. The light was not bright, and it was not lovely; it seemed almost sickly in color, some mix of gray and green that pulsed as he watched.

Ariane surveyed the runes upon the floor before she leaped up and across them, landing heavily—landing loudly—against marble. She did not turn to see if he followed. She was not, he thought, aware of him at all; all of her attention was held by the arch. By what lay, suspended, within it.

He had thought it an odd structure, a freestanding arch with no walls, no room, no building to surround it. But he realized, as he watched it, that he could not see clear to the other side. Something lay contained within the frame of the arch itself. Something moved within it.

He froze then.

Ariane did not. She lifted her sword in both hands, and with a single, angry cry, she brought it down, into the marble upon which the arch now stood. Both hands were upon the hilt, and one remained there as she rose. With the other, she removed her helm and tossed it aside, where its clatter joined the sudden lap of fire.

Rath rolled across the ground, out of its reach.

The fire engulfed her where she stood. Her hair flew up in a wild, platinum wind, but it did not scorch or singe or burn; nor did she. If she felt the fire at all, Winter’s Queen, she did not deign to acknowledge it.

She spoke, hand on sword, hair framing her as it rippled across her cloak and her armor. She gestured, sharply, lifting her head as she did; her voice above the roar of fire and the urgent cries of demons was a song.

And by the golden light that enveloped her, Rath understood what she did. It was a Summer song. How she could sing it, he didn’t know, for she was Winter’s creature. But here, for just this moment, he saw the Summer in her, and at Winter’s height, it was still glorious; he could not breathe for the sheer beauty of it.

Power, he thought. Beauty. He understood why they had once been considered the same.

He heard the demon’s roar at his back, but did not, and could not, turn. He understood, somehow, that her song had weakened the edifice within which darkness resided.

The arch trembled; the ground beneath the sword fissured. And in the center of the arch, the shadows roiled, and the shadows spoke her name.