Michelle West - The Sun Sword 03 - The Shining Court (83 page)

"Indeed, neither of you can. I expect no better from you, little sister," she said. "You choose your ignorance carefully and willfully. And you, Na'jay, you are a child; you are learning. And you will understand this, in time."

"In time for what?"

The Oracle smiled. She didn't answer.

"Very well," Arianne said. "You are a pawn, and you will therefore suffer a pawn's fate, and not a willful enemy's—if you but leave the road now."

"I'll leave the road," Jewel responded, "When you—"

"Enough." The Oracle's voice was cool.

Jewel knew a warning when she heard it; she'd heard them enough. But the gravity in the Oracle's voice was astonishing because her expression was so mild. This woman was not, like Arianne, exquisitely lovely, but there was about her face a depth and a certainty of knowledge that implied true safety and not just safety's illusion; that implied the ideal of a mother's comfort rather than its reality.

Jewel didn't want to say no to her. Inexplicably and suddenly, she wanted to nod obediently and follow.

She even turned away from Arianne before she stopped herself. It had been a long, long time since she had obediently followed anyone just because they had told her to. The person she had followed, and the person who
could
follow that unquestioningly were both dead.

And besides, Jewel had something to settle.

"I'm sorry," she said, turning back to the Winter Queen, "but we haven't finished yet."

Arianne did not look surprised or perturbed. She nodded, as if expecting no less—or perhaps no more—from one merely human. At her back, the host, horns silent, swords sheathed, mounts restive, waited upon her word, moving in time with a slightly mistimed breath. "What do you hope to gain?" she asked calmly.

Jewel said nothing.

"Riches? I have none that would not destroy you and your kin. Power? The only power I have left to grant one of mortal kind is not a power you could be trapped into accepting if you are marked by the eldest." Her smile was thin. "And I believe you are one of the few who would refuse the gift of immortality; perhaps there is some wisdom in you after all.

"If there is, find it now. I am not what I once was, thanks to the interference and the trouble caused by your kind. But I will not be diminished in my world. I have nothing to offer you but death, and if you have gleaned truth, that I cannot offer you death on this road, understand this: the eldest has commanded you to
her
road, and on the way to that one, you must cross many of
mine
. There is no place you will not be hunted in my lands if you pursue this.

"You forsake the wisdom of the eldest in order to make an enemy," the Winter Queen said. "Be aware of what you are doing. On this road, there is no illusion."

"This road is only illusion," Jewel countered.

"As you will. I say to you again, do not press this."

"You didn't drive that beast into my circle for nothing. Congratulations. You won. You got what you wanted: I'm upset. Happy?"

"ATerafin," the Oracle said quietly.

"What, you're still here?"

"Yes." She looked to the woman she had called sister. "The Winter is coming, and you have much to do before it arrives."

"Take your human from my path."

"The human is not going from your path without that—that creature," Jewel said quietly.

The moments stretched, and stretched again. And then Arianne smiled. The expression transformed her face. Jewel was instantly on her guard—which was hard, given she'd thought she couldn't be more wary.

"Very well," she said. She moved away from the beast, every ripple of cloth, every movement of hair, every clink of armor noteworthy, fascinating.

"My Lady," the man closest to her said, dismounting at once. He made his way to her side, taking care never to pass her, and knelt. The joints of his armor against the stone were resounding, bell-like. Magical. She could not see the face behind the helm, but the voice was compelling; almost as beautiful in its way as the Queen's, but infinitely less cold.

"No," she said to the kneeling man. "For I have already lost Celleriant, and I will not lose another."

"Avandar," Jewel said, although she knew Arianne could hear every word, "what does she mean by that?"

Avandar did not reply. As if he were one of Arianne's followers, his gaze was fixed upon the Queen's every movement. Jewel knew this because she forced herself to tear her own away to look at him.

"I do not believe you wish the answer to that," he said quietly. "But you will receive it. I do not understand what has happened here. But something has changed. Be wary of accepting what she offers you."

"But I—"

"Be wary."

"Celleriant," the Queen said, her voice passing between Jewel and Avandar as if it were the wind in the highest of the passes through the Menoran chain. Celleriant knelt at once into rock that Jewel would have sworn hadn't had the time to cool. His hair hung long, obscuring his face, but before he bowed it, Jewel thought she saw him pale.

"Avandar—"

The Queen handed the reins of her mount to the man at her side. "Take him," she said, "to his new master."

"My Lady," he replied, hanging on to the reins of his mount in one hand while retrieving hers with the other.

"You have served me well," she said to the stag. "In all ways. I have received pleasure from the Hunt, both of you and with you; serve your new mistress as well and perhaps
she
will grant you what I never would." She reached up; touched the tip of his magnificent tines, and pressed hard; when she drew back, her hand was red with blood.

Jewel was shocked.

For some reason, she'd expected her blood to be a different color, if it ran at all.

Or perhaps she just never expected to see it run. Arianne had, about her, that complete invulnerability that allows for no injury, acknowledges no pain.

The Queen's rider brought the beast. The beast followed, docile, without a backward glance at the woman who had been—who was, in some sense—his absolute master. The rider brought him to the edge of Avandar's circle and stopped there. His face looked vaguely familiar; Jewel was almost certain she had seen it, or its kind, before—probably in a dream. Which she thankfully didn't remember.

"I am Celleriant's brother," he said. "Called Mordanant in my youth by mortals. We are of the Firstborn, and of the First family, and you have harmed us considerably.

"When the day comes and the road is open, the Queen may forgive you." He dropped the reins of the Queen's former mount with contempt. "I will not. Winter court, or Summer, there is blood to be shed between us."

"That sounds like ritual," Jewel said to Avandar as the rider wheeled his mount with a vicious tug to the bit and rode back to the side of the Winter Queen.

"It is," Avandar replied. "A ritual of the Arianni. You've made an enemy today. I will, however, be impressed if you make only one."

She stared to reply, but the beast was walking toward them, and her words were swallowed whole by the expression on its face. The humanity that had showed through the wall of Avandar's magic was gone—and coward or no, Jewel thanked every god in the pantheon for its absence.

"Avandar," she said, "what exactly is it doing?"

"It is coming," he replied, "to its new master."

"Me."

"Yes."

"But I don't—"

"Jewel."

What she'd been about to say was lost to the shock of hearing her name. She turned, saw that his lips were closed. Realized that he was speaking to her in a way that didn't involve sound at all—and that she didn't particularly like. She started to say something, stopped. Turned.

The beast loomed above her, beyond the magical barrier Avandar had laid. This close, and bereft of agony, it was absolutely silent, great eyes unblinking and either depthless or endless brown-black. Intelligence, in those eyes, and something else. Madness, maybe. She really didn't want to think about it.

"What do we do now?" she said softly, not to Avandar, but to the stag.

In reply, he lowered his head. Tines as tall as men—or so they seemed to Jewel in the not-quite-real environs of the path the Firstborn walked—were lowered, not in challenge, but not in greeting.

Mute, she tensed as the uppermost tips of the tines, sharp and pale as the sun-bleached bone that sometimes made its way up through seaweed to sand, breached the barrier. Fire flared where it touched what Avandar had built, but the blood on the horn's tip glowed as brightly as flame, and this time there was no screaming.

"You are meant," Avandar said softly, "to mark him."

"Pardon?"

"You are meant to mark him. The tine," he added. "Lift your hand."

She did as Avandar bid, feeling it: a sudden pull, a warmth beneath the skin of her palms. For a moment, just a moment, the stag stood as a knight might, as a member of the Chosen, as one who stands to swear service with his life as his oath and his death as its end.

She had no sword to swear by, no ritual to bind the moment with, to hallow it or to grant it meaning. But she had understanding. She brought the fleshy part of her right palm to the tine the stag lowered—the only part of its antlers that had breached Avandar's protections—and biting her lip, she pierced her skin.

As the Queen had done.

Fire shot up her arm; Avandar's magic, seeking and finding something foreign within her. She refused to show the pain the spell caused; on some level she had expected no less, and besides, she could not take her eyes from the face of the stag.

Beneath fur, beneath the width of open, clear eyes, beneath the weight of tines that must surely count, on this road, as a far greater burden than any crown, she could
see
the face of the man that had once offered just this oath to the Queen of all Winter. It was not a young man's face, but not an old one's; it was the face of a man at the peak of his power.

She wondered what crime he had committed, if any, in the eyes of the Winter Queen. Wondered what he had done to catch her attention, or if power—and he had possessed it once, she was certain of it—had been enough.

"You don't understand what you've accepted," the Oracle said quietly.

But Avandar placed a hand on Jewel's shoulder and said simply, "Of all people who have walked this road, I believe that this one, better than any, understands the weight of the burden. She has agreed to bear it."

"Are they all like this?" Jewel asked quietly, unable to look away.

"I cannot see what you see," he replied quietly, "but if I could venture a guess, I would say no. The mount the Queen rides is in all ways special."

The rider who had delivered the stag into Jewel's keeping said, "The bargain has been kept, mortal. You will stand back now, or you will be driven from the path by the force of the Old Laws." He lifted his helm a moment, and his expression made clear which of the two choices he favored.

He lowered the helm; she had seen what he intended her to see; a glimpse of his perfect, of his beautiful face, forever beyond her. He rode to join his Queen, and his Queen nodded. Although she alone was on foot, she was not diminished by the height that separated her from the riders who waited upon her word.

Their silence was heavy; they waited.

"Celleriant," Arianne said, looking
through
Jewel as if she had become—had never been anything but—inconsequential. "You have failed me."

"Lady."

"Let your failure serve a purpose; let it be a warning to those who might fail me through their carelessness."

He was absolutely silent. Jewel looked back at him once, but he did not move, and she was certain that he wouldn't. She gave the whole of her attention to Arianne. Not hard to do. The Queen, alone of her host, was unmounted; Mordanant stopped before her and made to dismount a second time, and a second time she denied him, by gesture, this sacrifice.

"Understand what you are seeing," Avandar said softly. "Mordanant offers to go into exile for the sake of his brother. Exile or worse." When Jewel did not speak, he continued. "There arc rules that bind the Hunt, Jewel. It is forbidden for the Arianni to go unmounted."

"Forbidden by who?"

"Arianne, of course. They are hers, and she is theirs. Celleriant lost his mount to you. You are mortal; he is not. He has proved himself unworthy of her host."

"And if she wanted to save him?"

"I believe you already understand some part of her nature; she has made the law, and the law rules her. To unmake the law is to unmake the Arianni, and that, she will do by dying, if at all."

"She's going to kill him?"

"No," he said quietly. "I fear she will do far worse than that."

Jewel had never been young enough to wonder what was worse than death. She was silent.

And in the perfect silence, the words of the Winter Queen rang out with the weight of geas. "Celleriant of the green Deepings, you have failed me. Let me give your service to a mistress whose demands may be up to your lesser ability. In my stead, you will serve the human who bested you."

"My Lady—" Mordanant's voice. Celleriant did not speak.

"Denied," she replied, without looking back. "The Winter is almost upon us, and I will not be hampered by the weakness of affection. Your family has long suffered the stain."

"Lady."

"And if I don't want his service?"

"It matters little what you desire. It is what
I
desire that defines the Arianni. Lord Celleriant has failed me, but he
is
of the host, and perhaps he will serve you well."

/
doubt it
, Jewel thought, daring a backward glance at the man who was not quite a man, and who had not moved an inch from the supplicant posture he had taken while awaiting the outcome of her decision.

"You are fighting our ancient enemies," the Winter Queen said quietly, "and it may be that I have been… merciful. Lord Celleriant will be recognized should he choose to use the power that is his birthright."

"Lady," Mordanant said.

The lightning fell.

Celleriant lifted his head as its absolute brilliance lit the night sky beyond the summer day Jewel had created as harbor for herself, Avandar, and the Oracle. Mordanant was pale with the unsaid—but she had left him his mount. And his life. He did not interrupt her again, and Jewel knew he would not. But in spite of herself she felt a twinge of respect, of kinship, with the only one of the Arianni to speak for his fallen comrade. She wondered if the brother—hard to imagine that these men were brothers, as brothers seemed a thing of flesh and blood, of messy family fights and reunions—would have done as much if their positions were reversed. Had a bad feeling she would find out.