Michelle West - The Sun Sword 03 - The Shining Court (50 page)

"You'll never know," Jewel snapped back. "Because you'll never get the chance to eat me."

The cat hissed and raised a paw. Jewel raised a fist—which, given the circumstances, was stupid, as she knew if she hit the cat all that would happen was the sacrifice of a few layers of skin, all of them hers.

"Peace," the Winter King said. "Girl, can you travel in your waking world?"

"I'd better be able to travel."

"And which god claims you?"

"Pardon?"

"Which god protects you?" The lines of his brow creased; his eyes narrowed. He spoke more slowly, as if the words were meant for an imbecile. "Who do you serve?"

"I—I don't think things work the same way they did the last time you lived on the outside."

"Oh?"

"The gods don't
claim
anyone. If we choose, we follow their suggestions, and in the end, if we've learned enough in this life, Mandaros lets us pass through His Halls rather than sending us back to learn more."

"If you choose?" the Winter King said. "And are you from the Cities of Man, then, that you can be so bold?" His head rose and fell as he examined her carefully. "You are dressed like a slave," he said at last, "and not a finely trained slave at that. You do not smell of magic or magery, but I sense a depth of power in you that might be trained. In the Cities of Man, you might find freedom if you are canny."

"I—I'm sorry," she said, because she suddenly was. "But I don't know what the Cities of Man are. I come from a city on the coast that two Kings rule. They're god-born, so there are no wars for succession."

"And where do their parents reside?"

"They live in the heavens, or wherever it is gods live."

The silence was long and cold. And into it, not disturbing it in the least, were intimations of a different mortality. Jewel thought of Henden, and
Allasakar
, and what Meralonne had said about the time before the fall of Vexusa.
The gods walked
.

The Winter King returned to his throne and sat there, stiffly.

"I came," he said, "from the Cities of Man. From Tor Haval. I was a man of power and rank, and the Winter Queen paid court to me. She offered me my desire and her power, and made clear that the reign was to be for the Winter and the Winter alone."

"And at the end of the Winter?"

"It was not a mortal Winter, not that small a time, but at the end—at the end, she would take from me my life, in the Hunt, the full Hunt, if she could. And if she could not, she would release me to the world without, all knowledge and all memory intact. I asked her how many of her consorts had survived the reign and the Hunt, and she smiled, and her smile—" His expression was lost to memory, and in the shadows, he was handsome. He was young.

"Her smile was so very cold. It was answer enough. 'I will not come for you in Summer,' she said, 'I do not choose the strongest for the Summer Court. Mortals are the Winter Kings.' I came. I wanted her, and I wanted the challenge of the fight that she offered at the end. These," he said, lifting a hand, and pointing at the gray gargoyle that now stood at such perfect attention it might well have
been
a statue, "were my masterpiece, the making unencumbered by the least of her influence. They are undefeated, although they have never been tested against her."

He was silent. His silence was intense, awkward, disturbing.

At last, Jewel said softly, "I don't know who the Winter Queen is."

The cat hissed.

The man, frozen, said nothing for a long time. When he did speak, he said, "The gods are not dead."

"No."

"Then she is not dead. But she is Winter, and the Hunt is the most terrifying thing you could ever see. The most beautiful. She brings the Winter with her; the shadows and the promise of eternal ice. She rides with her host, She hunts with her beasts; She is undeniable, inevitable. If she hunted at all, you would know it, you would know of it. Your world—it must be so pale and so lacking in wonder.

"I should have known, when she did not come, that there had been changes we had never dreamed of."

She started to answer. Stopped. Thought about a palace of glass and a cat with stone wings, about pillars of stone with branches that grew into great, solid arches at their heights, about leaves of silver, gold, and diamond. About the wild, wild magic that seemed to glimmer beneath the transparent surface of everything she could see in the room, both standing wall and the ruined shards beyond.

"Lacking in wonder, yes," she said, thinking of what it must have been like to live in the age of gods. Thinking, and
knowing
. "But not in life. Not in justice."

"And you are then one of those who would trade beauty for safety." He did not keep the chill contempt from his words. The answer was obvious enough.

"You chose beauty. Live with it," Jewel said, and turned to walk away.

His laughter stopped her. It was, indeed, beautiful. "Well played, well played, little mortal. That would have cost your life in another time, on another day."

"You want something from me."

"Yes."

"I'm a merchant. I know when to walk and when to talk. You want to talk? I'd suggest a little change in attitude."

"You have dreamed of my Lady," he said. "I can feel it in the words you can't even think of saying."

"You know what I've been dreaming?"

"You are dreaming now, and you are in my lands, and I know what is thought in my lands if I bend my mind to it. I do not know the whole of the dream, but the dream itself has the taint of truth to it. I will not believe the Winter Queen dead.

"And if she is not dead, you will take three things to her, and a fourth will come, and you will remind her of her oath. Tell her that the way has been opened just enough that if her hunters are competent and not the fools they once were, they will be able to find it."

"I think I'll reword that, if you don't mind."

He laughed. "As you please. The night of the Hunt is coming. It is coming. The host will ride." He laughed, yes, and the sound would define laughter for years, it echoed so deeply inside. As if her ears had trapped it, hoarding it for memory. "I will gift you, child, if you will carry this message."

"With what? If I guess right, you'll be dead."

The cat hissed. Loudly.

The man did not blink. "With the Summer Queen," he said. "For the Summer Queen and the Winter are two very different creatures, different sides of the same coin." He rose. "There is a man who is calling your name. He calls it loudly, and he stoops to magic." His expression changed. "It is a familiar magic. I would ask you to kill him, but I fear that you will never find my Lady if he is dead.

"Go." The shadows left his face in a rush. The life left it; he was skeleton once more, strewn like a corpse in a glass throne that sat in the center of four golden pillars. Trapped here, and aware of it.

She nodded.

The cat said, "Only do this, and we will be grateful."

Jewel waited until they had left the presence of the Winter King before turning to the cat and saying, "And that would be helpful how?"

He didn't have time to answer; he disappeared in a flash of blinding, painful light. She cried out; the pain stopped.

Avandar Gallais sat beside her, in her bed, one hand on either shoulder. She could see the traces of magic, wound tight around those hands like multihued, delicate nets.

"Let go," she whispered, as his eyes widened.

He did as she bid—rare, but beside the point.

She fell backward. Felt something dig into her skull. Rising swiftly, she walked to the oval mirror that was one of her few prides. The glass, silvered so perfectly, had been a gift from the Terafin. Reflected there, she could see quite clearly in the tangled mess of hair it would take
hours
to comb out, if it could be tamed at all without judicious clipping, three leaves. One was silver. One was gold. And one, of course, was diamond.

"Wait!"

He was halfway across a room that seemed suddenly too small before her word bit him. He turned, his expression dark. He was, of all things, angry. "I have a matter to attend to, Jewel."

"No, you don't."

Shock robbed him of words for a moment, and she took that moment, leaving dignity behind, to do the run around him and end up in front of the room's only exit.

"Do you know what those leaves mean?" he asked her, his voice almost as cold as her memory of the Winter King's.

"Better than you think. Probably better than you'd like."

"Jewel, let us have this conversation after I've seen to the defense of my citadel."

"No."

His smile was chill. She wondered if the mountains themselves held some taint of Winter; she could not remember Avandar's expression ever being so frosty at home, although he had never been a warm man. "You
will not
tell me what to do in my own domain."

"I will," she replied evenly, "
Domicis
."

The slightly crimson tinge to his skin paled. She watched, unblinking; she had his attention now and she wasn't going to let go. Tenacity wasn't her middle name, but back when they named children for stupid character traits, it would have been a good bet.

"You don't understand," he said softly. "Those leaves—"

"They came from the forest of the Winter King."

He closed his eyes. "Yes."

"He's still there, Avandar."

"He will
always
be there."

"He won't. She'll hunt him. I get the impression that something
you
did," she added, without bothering to take the accusation out

of her voice, "prevented the Winter Queen from actually finding him."

"And from hunting him, and sacrificing him. He should have been grateful."

"Avandar."

"You do not understand, Jewel. The Winter King isn't just a man, isn't even a man imbued with the powers she grants. He's an aspect. The man who speaks—and I assume that was the nature of the dream that held you—is a servant to the aspect, not its master; he sacrificed the essence of his mortality when he agreed to become the consort to the Winter Queen. He could no more walk these roads than the gods could, not now."

"He's trapped there."

"Yes. Whether or not he is given reign of these lands. These… were not his. But they are on the true road, and had they been what they were before I… stumbled across them… they would have led to him. And to her."

"We have to free him," she said.

"Everything is simple for you. Do you not understand? She will choose another to take his place. He will be what he was; the geas laid by the title itself is more powerful than the force of a merely human life. Free this human, as you desire to do, and she will merely find another to take his place, and another after his death, and another. There will be a stream of sacrifice.

"Let this man remain upon his empty throne, and there will be no further deaths."

She hated choices like this one. Hated them. But she didn't move out of his way.

"Jewel," he said, using the most persuasive tone he had— which, given his general imperious arrogance, wasn't all that impressive. "He can't hurt
me
. There is nothing at all that he can do to injure me. But you are vulnerable. Do you think she chose the kind, the just, the honorable, as her Winter Consort? She chose the hunters. She chose the powerful. She chose the merciless. You offer this… man… a kindness that he would despise.

"And I will not have him take advantage of you. I will not have his magic go where—"

"Where yours can't?" She lifted her wrist, exposing the scarlet S.

"Jewel—"

"We need to do this," she said softly.

He caught her face in his hands, cupping it and pulling it up before she could move. She saw his eyes flare; orange light, and green, and a hint of white, swirling just at the edges: magic. She held her ground, but it was difficult; his grip was strong enough—she was certain it was unintentionally so by the look of concentration on his face—that she clung to the ground by the balls of her feet.

"Very well," he said at last, lowering her. "You are not en-spelled. This is merely your usual foolishness."

"No," she said, and she was certain, suddenly, that it wasn't.

Years had given him the key to her tone of voice. His eyes narrowed.

"He offered mea gift."

"You refused it, of course."

"He offered to give me this gift
after
we'd given him what he desired."

"And his desire?"

"Just the Hunt," she said softly. "Just the Hunt and, I think, the death. Not more."

"If he expects death at her hands—"

"He'll get it," she snapped. "He'll get it. She might use others that way, but she won't disgrace the title of consort. Not
this
consort. Not this King." It was there again, the steel in the words, the edge of them cutting away all that wasn't truth. And the truth was her gift, her curse. Seer-born.

"I did not know that you knew so much of the Winter Queen."

"I don't. I don't want to. But—but he mentioned the Summer Queen."

Avandar looked away.

"Avandar."

He did not meet her gaze. She studied the shuttered neutrality of his expression; no way in there. So she did what she usually did. She kept talking.

"The Summer Queen must be the opposite of the Winter Queen, and maybe—just maybe—she'll help
us
."

"You understand so very little; you're like a child with a large sword. You have the weapon; you know the edge is sharp; but you are incapable of wielding it, of even understanding what wielding it
means. Yes
, Jewel. There will be a Summer Queen. But She is no mortal Queen, and even as the gods could not, She can hold a soul without mercy."

"She won't be the Dark God's friend."

"The
Winter
Queen is not the Dark God's friend- Nor will she ever be. They contest the same land, They struggle for the same Dominion."

"And won't we be better served if it's the Summer Queen that fights that war?"

"The seasons of the Firstborn," he said coldly, "are not the seasons of creatures who march toward death with the passage of time."