Oracle: The House War: Book Six (50 page)

But Shianne, who had come closer to where Jewel stood, said, “That was unwise, Matriarch.”

“Please, just call me Jewel. Which part was unwise?”

“All of it, I fear. I was willing—barely—to approach the Oracle. Not even when I was immune to the death she carries within her would I have dared Calliastra. She is too willful, too unpredictable, and too spiteful; her malice is frequently petty, but the means by which she expresses it, less so.”

“Will she kill my cats?”

“No—although she will try. She blunts the edge of her fury, here; if I did not know better, I would say she chooses to do so deliberately. Her anger is unlike yours—or mine; when it reaches a point beyond her endurance, the manifestation is as you see it now. Thus, the anger of those born to gods.” Her voice held no revulsion; it held the faintest tinge of awe. “But I, too, remember.

“If she sorrows, however, you must be well away. Nothing, with Calliastra, is safe: not her fury, not her contempt, not her desire. Even her love is deadly, it is so twisted and impure.”

“You may be mortal,” Jewel replied, “but you don’t know much about mortal love.”

“We are not speaking of mortals,” Shianne said.

“. . . No,” Jewel replied, tearing her eyes away from the aerial, deadly, dance. She signed. Angel approached; she had maybe half of his attention. Fair enough. Given Calliastra and the cats, she knew she didn’t merit more of it.

Duster
, her fingers said.

His eyes narrowed, subtly altering the contours of his face; she could see the shadows of the former spire of his hair.
Not Duster
, he signed, emphatically.

Duster
, she said again. Her fingers rose, making a question of the name.

He hesitated, and turned, again, to the sky. “I can see it,” he said, choosing to forgo den-sign; it wasn’t meant for subtleties. Experience lent the gestures weight and meaning, but sometimes, not enough. “But, Jay, she’s not.”

Jewel nodded. It was not in agreement.

“Is it worth the risk?” He didn’t speak of the cost—to Jewel—of Duster’s eventual acceptance of the den. He knew it only secondhand.

“Yes.”

“It’s not a small risk.”

“No.”

“She’s a—”

“Yes. Like a goddess. She’s lived forever. She’ll outlive us both.”

“As long as she’s not the reason she does,” he replied, with a tight, crooked smile.

“You don’t like it.”

He shrugged. “I didn’t care much for Duster, truth be told.”

“She saved your life.”

He nodded. “She wasn’t the type of person it was safe to care much for; she’d take it badly.”

Jewel grimaced; it was true.

“She’s like Duster, that way.”

“I think she’s like Duster in a lot of ways.”

“And you think we need her.”

Jewel hesitated. Angel marked it.

“Will you survive her?” he asked instead.

When Jewel failed to answer, he turned to the Oracle in her dark gray robes; they drifted in a breeze that touched nothing else—at least not on the ground. Her hands hung by her sides, but they were curved in loose fists as she watched Calliastra rage across the heights.

“Angel—”

He stepped past Jewel toward the Oracle; she glanced at him. “You do not want to ask me a question, child.”

“I do,” he replied. Terrick proved that he could pay attention to two things at once; he lessened the distance between Angel and himself, coming to stand at his back, ax in hands.

“You do not. Understand that your Jewel has come this way seeking only to ask me a question.”

“She wants more than that.”

“No. But to ask it, she must endure more.”

“You answered Teller’s question.”

“He did not ask a question. He asked for a glimpse of what I see, no more. Tell me, do you think he has benefited from it? What he sees he does not understand; he knows only enough to fear it. Fear of the future does not—and has never—stopped it from arriving.

“Fear casts a shadow long and dark, and he has chosen—perhaps unwittingly—to walk within it.” She lifted her left hand, uncurling the fingers and exposing a very scarred palm. “It is costly to afford those born without vision a glimpse of it.”

“He doesn’t want to look,” Jewel told the Oracle.

“He does. He wishes to know if you will survive the choice you make today.”

“I’ve made no choice, today.”

The Oracle smiled for the first time, a hint of genuine approval in the lift of lips.

“But I understand why you’re here. I understand—I think—what you want.”

“You might understand some small, small part of what I want—but you are mortal, Jewel. I have called you Sen; you are not. Not yet, and perhaps not ever. You have set foot upon my path; you have not reached the heart of my home. You hope to have Shianne lead you there. You understand why it is impossible for her.”

“I don’t.”

“Her question is not yours. Her choices—like your Teller’s, or your Angel’s—are likewise unique to her. What she loves and what she fears, what she hopes to lose and what she cannot bear to let go of—all of these things are defined by her existence and her experience.”

But Jewel shook her head. “You might not choose the whole of the path I walk—but you chose where it started. It started here. You meant me to find Shianne and her sisters.”

“No, Jewel. I knew that you would. But there were many, many choices you might have made when presented with this forgotten footnote in our ancient history. Many.” She turned, then, to where Adam listed against Kallandras. “The choices he might make are fewer. He is young. But I did not choose him as your companion; you did. Why?”

“Because I think he needs to learn whatever this path of yours has to teach. I can’t learn it for him. I would, if I could.”

“Yes. That is your besetting sin, if you can be said to have only one. You understand much, and yet, do not know that you understand it.”

“I understand one thing.”

“And that?”

“You want me to keep Calliastra.”

“She is my sister,” the Oracle replied; she did not deny it.

“What does that even mean to the children of gods? You don’t share parents. You weren’t raised the normal way—not according to Shianne. They’re
all
your siblings. Ariane. Coralonne. The Warden of Dreams—both of him.”

“Yes. Tell me, Jewel, did you love your Duster?”

Angel sucked in air; it whistled across his teeth.

Jewel lifted her chin, no more.

“Given what she cost you, given that it was in part her hand that pushed you into Lord Waverly, given the difficulty she caused the weaker and more vulnerable members of your den—”

“Enough.”

The Oracle nodded gravely. “More than enough, I think. Your answer is yes. And it is no. And it is yes. It revolves, evolves, shifts. It is built on the folly of hope; it is shredded by frustration and despair; it is tainted by guilt and grief. And yet, at its core, it remains. You are mortal, and yet you contain these complexities with ease.”

“It was never easy.”

“Let me ask you a different question.”

“Can I demand something in return?”

The Oracle’s eyes narrowed. Something about her expression reminded Jewel of Jarven, of all people. “What would you have in return for the simple, spoken answer that is all you have to offer?”

“At a time of my choosing, an answer to a like question. A simple answer.”

“You are bold.”

“No. I’m a merchant. I don’t need to answer your question. You don’t need to ask it. Neither of us will starve or die.”

“And how will you enforce compliance? I might receive your answer and choose to withhold my own.”

“I’ll trust your word. Words seem to have meaning, for you.”

“Do they?”

“Yes.”

“You are certain.”

“Yes.”

“You have grown since you last walked the Stone Deepings. Very well. Yes, I will accept this exchange. I cannot guarantee you will like my answer—but you cannot guarantee that I will appreciate yours. And if you fail to answer it, for reasons of your own?”

“An answer for an answer,” Jewel replied. “Your question?” She cringed at the sound of metal against stone, and did her best to ignore it; Angel didn’t. If the hall was about to lose support pillars, she trusted him to tell her.

“Why have you considered taking Calliastra as companion? You are aware that you can neither command nor control her; you are aware that her love is death. There has never, in her long history, been an exception. If she travels with you, all of your companions—saving only the Arianni and Viandaran—will be at risk. She has never been master of her base nature; she will keep no promise she makes to you, even if she intends to do so.

“You understand this. You are not fool enough to lie to yourself, even if you paint pretty pictures with words for the benefit of your followers.”

Jewel nodded.

“Why, then? She is as you see her now: rage, fury, and death if you are not powerful enough. You are not,” she added, in case this needed to be said. “Yet you stand beneath her long shadow, and you do not see her power. You see the similarities to a mortal girl, dead over half your lifetime ago. Am I mistaken, Jewel? Do you now tell yourself pretty, mortal lies? You cannot believe that you need her, as you once claimed to need your Duster.”

“You know a lot about our lives,” Angel said.

Jewel lifted a hand in sharp den-sign. He subsided, but it clearly took effort. “No,” she said softly. “I would like to believe that I need her. I would like to believe that this—this impulse—is an artifact of my talent.”

“By which you mean it is not.”

Jewel exhaled. She didn’t even consider lying; she did consider silence. “I didn’t understand the nature of the Stone Deepings when I first walked them. I didn’t truly understand them when I held the road against the Wild Hunt.”

“You do not feel you understand them now.”

“No. But I understand that it’s not just because I’m seer-born that I can walk this path. It’s not because I was seer-born that I could walk the Stone Deepings. I thought, at the time, it was because Avandar showed me the way. Avandar could have held the road against Ariane; I’m certain of it.”

“He would not be so unwise.”

Jewel ignored this. “He couldn’t have held the road the way I did. And he couldn’t have walked this path.”

Avandar said nothing.

Jewel exhaled. “He couldn’t follow me into the dreaming. He can’t follow me into the forest unless I consciously desire it.”

The Oracle inclined her head, watching; she didn’t blink. It was hard to pin her eyes down to a single color, and Jewel gave up trying; the color of the Oracle’s eyes was almost entirely irrelevant. The contours of her face, the lines—or the lack of lines—that defined it were likewise irrelevant. Calliastra’s winged shadow passed over them both, accompanied by the growls and hiss of the three cats.

“I walk these paths. Even this one. I don’t know if the others could without your direct—and continuous—intervention.”

“If you refer to those born in the mortal world, Viandaran could,” the Oracle replied. “But it would be costly.”

“For him, or for you?”

The Oracle did not answer.

“I don’t walk these paths because I’m seer-born.”

“You most assuredly do.”

“And all seers walked them?”

“Terafin,” a familiar voice said, “you play the Oracle’s game. It is costly in ways that even you, with your experience, cannot imagine.”

Jewel turned. To Evayne she offered what she hadn’t offered the two firstborn: a full bow.

‘‘W
ELL MET, TERAFIN,”
the seer said. Her robes—the same deep hue of midnight—looked at home in these ancient halls, cats squalling like vocal storm overhead. They caught her attention and earned a grimace, no more.

“Well met. Before you ask, I have no idea what the date is.”

Evayne’s smile, glimpsed briefly as she drew her hood away from her face to rest across her shoulders, was sharp but genuine. She glanced, once, at Kallandras, who offered her a bow that put Jewel’s gesture of respect to shame.

This Evayne was the older Evayne. “You walk a path of the Oracle’s choosing. You walk in her shadow. You no doubt intend to take and pass her test.”

“Will I succeed?” she asked, bluntly.

“I am not the person of whom you must ask that question,” was her counter. “But it is, as you suspect, a pointless question, here.” She turned to the Oracle, who waited. “I did not expect to find you here.” Her tone, as Shianne’s, was chilly.

“You did not look,” the Oracle replied. “But you seldom do.”

“For you? No. If you require my presence, you will find me.”

“And did you expect to see Jewel?”

Voice even cooler, Evayne said, “I do not know why you persist in playing these games. I thought I might—might—meet Shianne, and I see that she is here.”

Shianne was silent.

“My apologies, Lady.” Evayne bowed. “I am Evayne. Evayne a’Neamis. I walk, with my lord’s permission, across the paths carved by time. I recognize you because we have met before—in my life. In yours, we have not.”

“A’Neamis?” She turned to Celleriant and spoke. His reply, soft, was almost inaudible.

Shianne turned again to Evayne; her face was still. Her eyes, however, were unblinking. “You . . . are the child of a god?”

Evayne nodded, grave now. “I am. But I was born as your child will be born, not as your Lord was.”

Shianne said, to Celleriant, “I do not understand.”

Celleriant replied, but not in Weston. Before Jewel could ask him what he’d said, the Oracle spoke again.

 • • • 

“You have not yet answered my question.”

Evayne turned. She lifted a hand, and let it fall as Jewel drew breath.

“I want Calliastra because I see something in her that I might—just might—be able to reach. I want her because yes, she’s deadly, and yes, she’s dangerous. I’d say I want her in spite of that—but I’m not sure it would be true. She is beautiful,” she added softly, “but not because she offers death or temptation; she’s like—like this place. This ancient, empty hall.

“She’s like my forest. She’s like my rooms. None of these things is of me. None of them are part of how I perceive myself. But they respond to me, regardless. The strength of my own belief—or my anger—defines how and where I walk in these spaces.

“It defines how I touch the dreaming. And it defines how I touch people—like me—who are trapped there.”

“And is that the answer, Jewel Markess?”

“Yes. Because if I had met her when I was twelve years old, I would have offered her a home. It would have been hard. It
was
hard, the last time I tried something similar. I would have offered anyway, knowing it.

“Calliastra is not the only daughter of darkness I’ve met.”

The Oracle stilled.

“And I offered a home to the last one, as well. She even accepted it, for a brief time.”

“And you offered for the same reasons?”

Jewel shook her head. “I offered because she was sixteen years old and alone in my city, and the Kings had been advised to execute her simply for existing. I offered because Sigurne Mellifas spoke against that execution. And I offered because yes, she reminded me of Duster. I couldn’t save Duster. If I could go back in time, right now, I
wouldn’t
save her. Because to save her would be to lose everyone else.” Jewel closed her eyes for a long second. Opened them to see that the Oracle hadn’t moved. She wasn’t the color of stone—but she had all of its substance.

“I gave her orders. She followed them. It killed her. It saved everyone else.”

“My sister will never follow your orders; she will never obey your commands.”

“No.”

“You seek to expatiate your own sense of guilt?”

“Who doesn’t?” Jewel countered. “Who among us doesn’t? Only the people who feel no guilt at all. I can’t bring Duster back. I can’t save her life. She’s dead. She will be dead for the rest of my natural life. In that regard, no.

“But it’s not as simple as that. Calliastra has come to me twice as Duster. Twice. Duster is not the only person I’ve loved—and lost—in my life. If you asked me on a calm day, I’d tell you she’s not even the most important. It’s said that Calliastra takes on the appearance that is most beguiling and tempting to her victims.”

The Oracle nodded.

“Not a single member of my family would tell her—or you, or anyone—that
Duster
is my temptation or my secret desire. And, Oracle, I wouldn’t either. If there are faces and voices that have that power, Duster’s not one of them. She puts me on my guard. She reminds me that I need to keep perfect control of everything I do while in her presence. I can’t lose my temper. I can’t lose
control
.

“Did I love Duster? Yes. In the complicated way you love people who cause damage on most days just by opening their mouths. Not in the way you love people in whom you want to be lost—forever. And yet, Calliastra chose her.

“There are only two reasons I can see for that. The first, that Calliastra’s ability to discern love or desire is weaker than myth or legend claims. I don’t believe that. I believe she has that power. Yet if she has, she uses it poorly against me. The second is more complicated.”

“I would have your complicated answer.”

Of course she would. “She chose Duster because she understood what Duster meant to me. She understood that I saw Duster as she was. Not as she
could
be, although I saw that, too—but as she
was
. She understands enough about people to know that I did love Duster—even as she was. Did I want her to change? Yes, probably. I wanted her to be happy.

“But if she had never changed, if she could never be happy, I’d’ve kept her until the end anyway.”

“You did.”

Jewel nodded. “That’s most of the answer,” she added.

“But not all.” There was no question in the Oracle’s tone.

Jewel exhaled. “Not all. In the Stone Deepings, I had Avandar. He knew that road. He found it, and if I understand what’s followed, he kept it hidden. Not from you,” she added, “and not from the other firstborn.

“I should have died there. Had it not been so close to Scarran, I would have. But it was. I survived. I survived because I could root myself in my own life. My life is not yours. It’s not Shianne’s. It’s not Angel’s—although his is probably closest. But it wasn’t my life in Terafin that I drew on; it was the life that drove me, in the end, to the manse.

“Duster was part of that life. Everything I wanted for her. Everything I feared. And I need those things, going forward. Not just about Duster—but about everything else. I won’t survive this place, I won’t survive your test, if I lose sight of who I was. It’s the root of everything I am now. It’s the foundation for everything I hope to be.”

“And everything you fear to be?”

Jewel nodded. Shadow could apparently fight, hiss, growl,
and
eavesdrop—and he let her know exactly how impressed he was by her admission of fear.

The Oracle actually smiled at that. “My sister is not wrong; you let them run far too wild.”

But Jewel shook her head. “I’m not Calliastra or Ariane; I’m not you. I only have the time for so many battles in a day, so I have to choose the right ones. I’ve been called far worse than stupid in my life; it’s mostly harmless.”

“An interesting approach.”

“It’s the only one I have. I don’t know what I’m doing. I don’t know where I’m going. But I know who I am, and I know why I’m here. And I have to remember both.” She lowered the hands she had lifted; she often gestured when she talked.

“You have fulfilled your end of our bargain,” the Oracle said. “But I think it wise, for the moment, to draw my sister away. She will return to you,” she added. “But in her current state, it is likely that she would kill at least three of your party; she seldom rages so openly. I will admit that I am curious.”

“Will you admit that you’ve seen how it ends?”

The Oracle inclined her head. “I have seen how it ends in all its various permutations, for good or ill. I will admit I have my favorites. But my ability to affect the outcome is slender.”

Jewel frowned.

“I cannot force anyone to walk my road. I could not force you to do so. I did not meet your Duster; I know of her, of course. I can see the way her story is still tied to yours. The effect you had on your Duster, I cannot have on my sister; I can anger her, irritate her, sting her pride. I cannot move her in any other way.”

“How do you intend to get her to leave, then?”

“As I said: I can anger her. And I am likely to survive it.” She lifted her arms. Jewel had just enough warning to turn away before the Oracle’s hands plunged into her own chest; from there, she pulled the crystal that Jewel thought of as her heart.

“Follow the road you deem wisest,” the Oracle said, as she lifted the crystal in both hands. “There is—as you have come to understand—no other way to reach me.” She spoke three loud, thunderous words; her voice—always measured and always soft—rose above wind and cats and angry daughter of darkness, drowning them all.

From out of the crystal itself, lightning flew. Pale, white, it dimmed all other light in the hall. It dimmed the darkness of Calliastra. It grew wings as it traveled; wings, shape, form. Calliastra turned, cats forgotten; the cats themselves yowled as lightning branched without warning and hit them all.

“
How DARE you?
”

No mistaking that voice. There was nothing of velvet or desire in it; it was pure, raw, rage. “Angel!”

Angel nodded, although his gaze was fastened to lightning, shadow, and howling, enraged cats. He spoke to Terrick in Rendish. Terrick, like Angel, was instantly wary.

Avandar.

I have been ready to depart for some time
, he replied, his inner voice so dry it should have caught fire.
Well done, Jewel. There is some hope, in the end, that you will survive this.

Winter King
.

The Winter King knelt. Jewel did not give orders to Kallandras, but they weren’t necessary. He braced—and settled—Adam upon the Winter King, and the great stag rose, bearing his weight. Any other mount would have dropped him.

“Celleriant—we’re leaving.”

He, too, implied that he had been waiting. But he turned to speak, briefly, with Shianne before he joined her. Shianne followed, gathering the skirts of the dress Snow had made for her. Jewel almost told her it wasn’t necessary, but stopped; she suspected Shianne knew. The woman who had once been Arianni seemed to appreciate Snow’s work in a way that Jewel herself probably never could.

“Evayne?”

“With your permission, I will accompany you. I cannot say how long I will remain by your side.”

“I know. But permission in this place is not mine to grant or withhold.”

“But it is, Terafin. You understand these byways on a visceral level; understand them in a more deliberate fashion, now. You accepted the Oracle’s invitation; the path you walk is in some small part yours.”

Terrick and Angel retrieved the packs; they slung carriers over the Winter King’s haunches. The cats had served as mounts, but Jewel didn’t call them down from the literal storm above; she saw them in brief flashes as lightning continued to break the darkness. She was certain they would survive.

She was far less certain about the fate of the rest of her companions.

 • • • 

Adam was snoring; she’d sidled toward him to place the back of her hand on his exposed skin. He wasn’t hot.

“Mage fevers,” Kallandras said quietly, “seldom kill the healer-born.”

“Seldom isn’t never.”

“No.”

“How long do you think he’ll sleep?”

“He will wake if wakefulness is required. I do not have vast experience with mage fevers; I recognize them in most cases. Adam is merely exhausted.”

Winter King
, Jewel said.
Will you not carry Shianne?

I have told you, I cannot.

Will you not try?

If you command it, I will make the attempt. But I will not do so willingly.

Jewel surrendered. She also repented of abandoning the cats to their momentary lesson.

She is young; she is strong. The fact of pregnancy—beyond its cost to her—does not diminish her. She will not thank you for your concern; she is not weak.

I don’t want her to go into labor while we’re on the road.

I fear you have little say in the matter. You are not, and were not, midwife. You will have to trust her assessment of her own condition. The child and its health are of great value to her; she will do nothing to risk its safety.
You have a healer on hand
, he added,
if her understanding of her own condition is poor.

Jewel hesitated.

You are not her servant. You are not her liege. You are not, in any way, responsible for her well-being. You wish to be kind; I will not belabor all of the ways in which this is a weakness. But understand that her world was—and is—the White Lady. Your attempt to
be
kind will make her wary and suspicious, at best; it will not make her comfortable.

And how do I make her comfortable?

See her as I do,
he replied.
She is beautiful to you, yes—but even that is not a comfort; her concept of beauty is foreign to you.

But not, Jewel knew, to the Winter King.
I don’t understand how you see her.

Then see her as Terrick does. She is worthy of awe, yes—but she is deadly. Even stripped of power, she will always be that. You have some experience with containing the deadly; use it here.