Michelle West - The Sun Sword 03 - The Shining Court (82 page)

But Anya wasn't stupid; she knew that the rules of the Court— the Shining, secret Court—were different from the rules of the rest of the world, at least until Allasakar revealed Himself. She had to be careful. She had to be
nice
.

But when he
touched
her, when his words, which smelled a pale, ugly green, accompanied the taste of black, she couldn't , remember what nice meant. It was only for a minute or two. It was such a
short
time. But the ground here was so
soft
and the people were all so frail it reminded her of—

Of things she hated to be reminded of.

Just a glimpse of her mother's face, her father's stern expression weakened by affection, and both of them useless, helpless— she couldn't think of them
here
. They might find her. And what would they do if they found her? What would they say?

She remembered to be nice now, but it was too late; the earth was broken and the ground was all black and the rock of the fountain— there had been a fountain, she'd been sitting on the edge of a fountain—had melted beneath her feet, but not before the heat on the inside cracked it and sent splinters flying everywhere.

Blood.

Dead people.

Screaming people.

She didn't like the screaming. It reminded her of other things she didn't want to remember, so she had to make the screaming stop—and when it stopped, when it finally stopped, everything was just
too
quiet.

Anya a'Cooper stood in the center of a large crater. The sides of the homes that had cramped the old streets had been either splintered or melted depending on how close they'd been to her fire. She could see whole living areas, barren of life; could see blood being absorbed by dirt that never got quite enough moisture.

She knew Lord Ishavriel was going to be angry with her, and she was—just for a moment—afraid.

Which made her angry.

She hadn't
come
here to kill all these people. But that man shouldn't have touched her. He shouldn't have touched anyone. He shouldn't have shouted.

She didn't like the open sun and the heat and the cloudless sky. But she'd come here looking for something and she didn't want to go home before she found it.

She didn't remember what it was.

As she walked away from the mess, a little child reached up and grabbed the edge of her robe with his three-fingered hand. She started to yank herself free, but stopped as she looked more closely at the face. It was a little girl's face, her dark, long hair sheared by fire's touch, her skin bruised and reddened, her eyes terribly wide. She opened her mouth, but no words came out.

Anya understood children. She had always liked them. She had planned to have them herself, lots of them, before—No. No, she wouldn't think of that, not here. Not yet.

"It's all right," she said, as she bent at the knees and picked up the little girl. The child drew sharp breath. "You're
hurt
," Anya a'Cooper said softly. "Don't worry. I'll help you. I'll take you to where it's safe." She propped the child up on her shoulder; heard the girl's muffled exclamation of pain, and winced in sympathy. "He won't hurt you, you know," she said. "He won't hurt anyone anymore. He's quite dead."

427
AA

Stone
Deepings

Na 'jay.

Not now, Oma.

Now.

Not
now
.

She stood beside Avandar, or rather, in front of him. She allowed herself to be grateful that he had chosen to be her shadow; it seldom happened, and she hoped it wouldn't become habit, but if she labored under any other illusions, her ability to survive this encounter without him wasn't one of them.

His magical line burned the vision but not the ground, and the host of the Winter Queen stayed on either side of it: Celleriant, on foot, and the Queen to the side of a wounded creature that seemed to be healing as Jewel watched.

Na'jay
, her Oma said again.
You can keep her here until the sun sets on High Winter. But you don't have the power to hold her for longer. The Warlord might
—
but I wouldn't bet on it. If you use your head, you'll let her pass. You've proved your point
.

Fine.

The silence that followed was a little warm for Jewel's liking. The child that lay buried beneath years of responsibility didn't remember her Oma being such an interfering nag.
I'm not sure what more you want
, the old woman continued, after the silence had done its work.
She
did
heal the creature
.

That's not what I asked for, and she knows it.

Would you have her approach the Winter Hunt without a mount?

I'd have her forget the Hunt altogether if it were in my power.

It's not. Na 'jay, let it go now. ,

But she was looking up at the night's scattered face, little glittering lights strewn, as if thrown by some careless deity, across the dark heavens.

"Mortal," the Winter Queen said, her voice as much part of the heavens as the stars. "The Winter is coming."

Jewel nodded.

If it were in my power.

She looked at the ground beneath her feet, wondering why she had chosen to see a mountain's pass beneath the open night sky. Avandar's gift, perhaps; he had spoken of building safety beneath the mountain's vastness. She had seen what she expected to see. Wondered what Avandar truly saw.

She closed her eyes for an instant.

He had built safety out of what was hidden beneath the mountain. And she? She had built as much safety as she could, in a different way. She had never thought to leave it. Jewel ATerafin began to roll up her sleeves. This was her road, this was the path she had chosen. She wanted to make it her own, and she knew that she could.

Difficult, though, to know exactly what that meant.

She had thought she would build Terafin, as she had in Avandar's fortress. She had thought she might see the perfect, ancient masonry of its walls, the cultivated, necessary privacy of its grounds, bisected by Avandar's magic, but otherwise familiar, her own.

Instead, beneath the thick soles of her boots, the stone was changing shape, and texture—but it was still hard. The cliff walls to either side began to shift, losing substance and form until they appeared very like the clouds that Meralonne APhaniel birthed illusion from.

Na'jay
. Her Oma's voice. Harsh and sharp.

Her Oma.

We always see what we want to see
. She looked at the ground. There, beneath her feet, cobbled stone that had seen better decades, but was still serviceable, still practical. The walls that formed out of mist were the exterior walls of tall, narrow buildings, grouped together in a haphazard way that spoke of both age and lack of street space. A sign, paint faded—but not so much that it had to be redone—hung over them all.

Her eyes fell from sign to sign: Arianne's frown was the most sensuous expression of disapproval she had ever seen. It did not mar her face at all; perhaps the opposite. It added warmth. Of a type.

She felt a hand upon her shoulder; Avandar's. But he did not seek to restrain her; his fingers applied a distinct, but faint pressure, no more. She turned to look back at him, met his gaze, saw the warning in it. She opened her mouth. Shut it. Wondered if he'd appreciate the rarity of her silence.

As she wondered, she realized that he hadn't used her name once since Celleriant and his riders had answered the summons of the horns.
Names have power
.

There is a danger in what you do
, her Oma said, in a very distinctive voice.
You have avoided giving the Winter Queen your name
—
more due to wisdom on his part than yours, but for now the reasons don't matter
—
but you give her more when you do this: You give her a glimpse of yourself
.

Of my history
, Jewel said.

That is all you are
, the old woman replied gravely.

Yes. But that's not what you are.

Silence, the quality of it very different from any silence she had yet offered.
What do you mean
?

I mean
, Jewel said,
that you're no part of my history, but you

know it well enough. I should have known. Avandar couldn't see Duster and Duster almost killed me
—
but he could see you. You aren't my ghost
.

The streets grew harder and sharper; memory supplied the smell of the sea and the cracks in the stone and the feel of sweat in the heat of a summer sky.

The passes were gone; the Winter was gone—momentarily— with it. Surrounded by Summer in Averalaan, Jewel looked up at the Winter Queen.

"You need my permission to pass, and you know what my price is: Free him."

"And go unmounted into the Hunt?"

"And go unmounted."

"Or you will do what? Wait until Winter is upon you?"

"Wait until it is upon us both," she said grimly. "Or should I say, upon us all?"

Her gaze did not waver from the face of the Winter Queen; it was the Winter Queen who broke first, her brows rising like perfect, pale crescents, into the line of her hair. "
You
."

Jewel turned to one side to see the woman she had mistaken for the dead. "It almost worked," she said.

"It worked well enough. But you benefit in this case from being both gifted and untrained."

"Oh?"

"You see with your heart, which is not uncommon. But your heart won't let you see what you want to see; it forces you to see what is there. An unusual combination." Her face, her much-loved, wind-cracked face, began to lose all wrinkles, all signs of age, all peppery lines around eyes and mouth that spoke of ferocity of expression, both in anger and joy.

"Hello, Arianne," the woman who had been Jewel's grandmother said.

"Very clever," the Winter Queen replied. "I should have seen your hand in this."

So easily dismissing Jewel's. Jewel knew she would see all of these women again. She
knew
it. The woman whose name she did not know, but who had known
her
well enough to take the face of the dead grandmother who had been as close to Jewel as her parents. Calliastra, Corallonne and Arianne.

And if she was going to be part of their future, and they were going to be part of hers, the groundwork was going to be set in a way she could live with. Yes, she was mortal. Yes, it was a flaw that they didn't possess.

But she wasn't about to be disregarded out of hand because she only lived a handful of years. One minute and the right weapon could destroy eternity.

"Did you know who she was?" she asked Avandar softly, her gaze flickering between the Winter Queen and the silent woman who stood at her side; the two had become absorbed with each other's presence, to the exclusion of all else.

Avandar said nothing. "Avandar?" Jewel turned, ready to take her temper out on the only safe target in sight. But when she saw that he was staring at her, she subsided.

"No," he said quietly.

"Did you guess?"

"No."

Silence. Then, "Who
is
she?"

"Firstborn," he replied.

"I mean, what is her name?"

"Name? She has none that I know of. There were whole sects devoted to either her worship or her study when man's power was at its height."

"Oh." Pause. "And what did they call her?"

"Fate. Destiny." He shrugged. "The Oracle."

The Oracle
. The two words held a sudden power that stood out in a landscape that was rich with it the way a bolt of lightning might claim attention coming from the heights of storm-laden sky. What had Evayne said?
You must walk the Oracle's Path
.

As if she could hear the words, spoken as they were in another woman's voice—and in memory, that fortress of privacy—the stranger who had worn her Oma's face turned. Her eyes were like Kiriel's eyes; shrouded in darkness and shadow. The effect was curiously unlike the effect Kiriel often had.

"You have not begun to walk my path," she said, her voice completely devoid of the familiar cadences.

"But I will." Not a question.

Full lips curved in a smile, but the Oracle's eyes were unblinking, and unchanged. "Oh, yes."

"How did you know?" Avandar asked.

Jewel shrugged. "It was the only thing that made any sense. You didn't see Duster. There had to be some reason for that."
Duster
. "It's too bad. Duster, you'd've liked."

"She was a member of your den?"

"Yeah. She defined it," Jewel added softly, "by being everything they weren't. Except loyal. I suppose all rulers, no matter how decent they are, need their killers."

"You are not—"

She lifted a hand. Waved it, batting away the words as if they were mosquitoes. "Don't. Doesn't matter. What matters is that you can't really see my ghosts. I should thank
Kalliaris
for that."

"Oh?"

"Means I can't see yours, and I have the strong feeling that I'm grateful for that."

"Na'jay," the woman Avandar called the Oracle said quietly. "You have served my purpose, Arianne's, and your own on this road. It is time to leave it."

"No."

For the first time, Arianne's expression broke into a semblance of warmth and amusement. "You see? I have told you, and told you frequently, that humans make poor tools unless you shape them."

"Or inform them," the Oracle said, completely unruffled by Jewel's blunt refusal. "What do you wish, child?"

"I want to know what's happening. Who are you, and why are you here?"

"I am as the Warlord has told you. Of the Firstborn. But what he has not told you, perhaps because he does not know it himself, is that I am
the
Firstborn. I existed before any life that was not the wilderness we called gods, and I will exist beyond it as well."

"Which means, of course," the Winter Queen said quietly, "that she has seen some element of all of our fates. Those of us who have power have never willingly lived, ignorant, in the shadow of her knowledge. Come, tell the child how she has served
my
interests. It might be amusing to both of us, since I believe that neither of us can see it."