Oracle: The House War: Book Six (80 page)

We are coming,
the Winter King replied.
But, Terafin, understand: these are Immortals. Do not trust their response to sentiment, memory, or pain to be similar to your own. In the end, Immortals are concerned with power.

She thought of the Winter Queen.

Yes,
he replied.

Darranatos called upon his shield before Jewel had time to raise her chin. His eyes were silver edges in the pale, perfect contours of his face; he was—of course he was—beautiful. Isladar was not. And yet, when Jewel managed to pull her gaze from Darranatos, he, too, was armed—and his sword and shield were almost the twin of the armaments that the
Kialli
carried.

Jewel
.

Darranatos moved before the domicis could finish giving instructions. He moved before Avandar could draw breath. So, too, Jewel, who had dropped to her knees as the arc of the demon’s sword pierced the magical shield that Avandar had erected. It failed to separate Jewel’s head from her shoulders; Isladar moved before the blade returned.

Avandar moved as well, grabbing both Jewel and Adam and leaping back through the trees.

“Put me down,” Adam told him. “Put me down
now
.”

Avandar was not Adam’s servant; it surprised Jewel when he obeyed. Adam dropped to the snow-covered ground, and sank. His hands were red and slightly wet as he once again attempted to press them through snow and into the earth itself—the earth that had not stopped rumbling.

Jewel, this is unwise
.

It was. But it was necessary. She
knew
, watching Adam, that they would not survive if he did not complete whatever it was he had started. And because she knew it so viscerally, Avandar sensed it as well. His jaw tightened.

You will let me summon my weapon.
It wasn’t a question.

Jewel caught his arm, briefly, between her hands; she was mute. She opened her mouth to a roar that wasn’t her own. In the distance, the serpent was trumpeting anger and pain.

 • • • 

Terrick leaped back as two red swords clashed. Sparks of fire scattered across the surface of broken snow as the two strangers met, head on. For a moment the one who had been called Darranatos turned his back to the Rendish warrior; he shrugged himself free of the confinement of straps, shifting his grip on his ax as he divested himself of their necessary supplies.

He did not, however, attempt to take advantage of the opening; it closed too quickly. Angel motioned and slid around the trunk of a large tree; the snow on its bark implied the movement of wind in a single direction. There was no wind now. The roar of thunder above blended with the roar of armed men and the disturbing rumble of earth beneath his feet.

Gray fur appeared to his left; he looked down to meet the golden eyes of the disrespectful, talking cat. The cat’s fur had risen inches, but even so, the line of his tense shoulders could be clearly seen.

“What is he?” he asked of Shadow.

“You would call him
demon
,” the cat replied—in Rendish. “
Your
ax could cut him.”

Terrick was not so certain. “I’m not sure I can get close enough to land a blow.”

The cat growled. “He is
dangerous
.”

Terrick nodded. Dangerous and fell. His roar was not a sign of anger; it was wild and almost joyous. But his opponent did not likewise descend into the same battle-maddened state. Although they appeared to be of the same height and weight, Isladar was driven back, as if Darranatos’ size belied his strength. They left runnels in the surface of snow; Terrick would not have been surprised had they broken frozen earth.

Shadow watched, tense; he did not leap. Nor did Terrick. He did not and could not look away from the fight as it progressed in a wider and wider area through the standing trees. Bark flew; branches shed snow where one—or the other—hit trunks. Wood cracked.

Neither slowed, but Darranatos roared again. “Come, come, brother!” he shouted, his words moving the earth. “How long has it been since you’ve truly given yourself over to the glory of the moment?”

Isladar failed to reply.

“Be ready,” Terrick told the great, gray cat.

 • • • 

Darranatos, in combat with Isladar, had not forgotten his original purpose. His sword’s arc passed through the trunks of standing trees, and they fell, almost as afterthought, in his wake. But they fell toward Jewel.

Toward Adam.

Avandar lifted his left hand; light flared across the length of his forearm. In the winter landscape, it scattered across snow in a thousand little reflections that hurt the eye. Jewel raised her arms to cover Adam’s head, shutting her eyes briefly, although she knew—

What are you doing?

Jewel!

—That neither Avandar nor the Winter King would approve. They didn’t understand her gift. They didn’t understand that of all the people standing in this winter forest, the only person she was certain her gift would save was herself. She had never been able to rely on it to save anyone else. Not her father, in the end; not her mother or her Oma; not Fisher or Lefty or Lander—or Duster. Not Rath. Not even Rath.

She had buried The Terafin, the strongest woman—outside of her Oma—she had ever met. Morretz had died.

She had had no warning at all when Carver had walked into a damned
closet
and disappeared. Hovering protectively over Adam while Avandar’s shield radiated sunlight and heat was the
only
thing she could do for him; if the trees somehow pierced Avandar’s magic, her body would move before she could think.

It wasn’t Jewel the falling trunks or branches would crush.

Shadow roared. Even over the distant thunder of serpent and the growing presence of shaking earth, she knew his wordless voice. At any other time he would have wrapped it around insults and sibilants and hurled them at her. It was not at her that his ire was directed.

Nor was it Angel, who came out from behind a tree, his sword in hand, his expression both alert and grim; he stepped onto the battlefield as if it were a graveyard. Avandar gestured, and falling trunks burst instantly into flame, descending as ash and splinters.

Angel took up his position at her back.

She gestured; he couldn’t see her hands. Or he didn’t look, which was more likely. She knew there was very little he could do—but he had her back. He had always had her back. He had almost died because, unlike Kiriel, he could think past both his fear and his rage, and he had come to her aid when Isladar had attempted to kill her.

He occupied the position he had occupied since she’d found him in the streets of the holding.

Isladar is no match for Darranatos
, Avandar said.
And I am not, as I am.
The shield he bore shunted aside a trunk that would have easily broken Jewel’s arm, if only that.
Let me join him, Jewel.

She shook her head.
If I die,
she told him,
you are free to do as you must.

Silence.

If I thought you a match for him fully armed—if I thought you a match for him as Warlord—I would let you do it. I don’t.

Why?

Because
you
don’t.
It was true. She felt his momentary amusement; it was a grim, dark humor.

You have become more perceptive.

She shook her head.
How many of them were like this?

Them?

The Arianni. The—whatever they were called when they left the White Lady to join—

Do not name him. Not even in this fashion. And the answer is very, very few. Meralonne is not their match—not yet. But the three who sleep were, and possibly will be. They were his closest kin, his closest brethren.

She exhaled.
Speak to the earth
, she told her domicis.
Speak to it, calm it.

I cannot do that and protect you.

You won’t need to. Angel is here.

He was astonished. And annoyed.

 • • • 

Angel’s hair rose as wind gusted through the remaining trees, catching and dampening the fire that burned on fallen logs. He shifted his grip on his sword. He had no illusions about his ability; he could not meet the demon in combat and survive for more than half a breath. Nor could he stand long against Isladar. But he had faced the latter once, and he had managed to stand for
long enough
.

He intended to do so here, as well.

Jay hovered over Adam; the young healer’s eyes were closed. His face had gone from wind-red to white; he neither spoke nor moved.

The forest was not like the manse; it was not like the crowded, tiny apartment in which the entirety of the den had eaten, slept, and wintered. But in this moment, it didn’t matter. Carver was gone. Duster was gone.

Angel remained. He carried the sword upon which, in the end, he had sworn his oath to the House while Jewel ruled it. Strands of his hair had escaped the confines of the Northern braid; the wind pushed it back from his face; it was bracing and somehow clean. He shifted, bending knees slightly; the snow compressed beneath the wide, flat snowshoes he wore. It was strange, to feel at home in this place—but for a moment, he did.

He knew what he wanted. He knew exactly what he was meant to do—and he was doing it. Nothing stood between him and Jay.

 • • • 

Darranatos had not come alone.

From between the trees in the distance, the rest of his companions emerged.

 • • • 

Adam felt their presence.

It was tangled in the body of the world itself—because the world,
this
world, was alive. If it had no heart, no lungs, no brain, no limbs, it nonetheless had something that felt like a living form beneath his spread palms. At a remove, he felt snow; he knew that his hands were—or should be—numb or even frostbitten, as Terrick called it.

He dealt with it almost without thought, as he dealt with most of the injuries he had sustained since his awakening. His own body knew its correct shape; it knew what it required to continue to exist. So, too, the bodies of the mortals Adam had been allowed to heal in his tenure in Averalaan. The earth was not, in any way, like them.

He had only once encountered anything that was.

He understood instinctively what Isladar was trying to achieve. He could see, with his eyes closed, the weaving of musculature, the altering of earth that occurred just beneath his hands. He could sense light and heat and starscape; could feel the tang of salt against his lips. All of these were things that were not
of
this place, this white, silent world.

He felt fire—and fire was not of this world, either.

He worked to douse it, and the world worked, naturally, with him. But he held the other things that were foreign to it in place, and the earth accepted them. It was not like healing; it was like weaving. Adam had seen the looms in the Terafin manse; Carver had showed him. They were large and intimidating. He could not weave, but watched, where watching was permitted; there was something almost like magic in the process of creation; one took threads and skeins and made of them something that was more than the sum of its parts, and yet also exactly that.

Fire, fire, fire. He felt it surge; he extinguished it. It took effort and focus, very like the effort of healing. In the chill of winter, sweat beaded his forehead; he thought it would freeze there, while he worked.

But he worked in the Matriarch’s shadow, and he wove that shadow into the whole, grasping it as if it were, among all things present, the most precious, the most necessary.

And it was, to the Voyani. Adam was of Arkosa. Jewel was of Terafin. But she had taken him in and allowed him to care for the children—even if there was only one. She had touched the sleeping dreamers that had fallen to the beguiling lies of the ancient world, and they had woken to her touch, as they had to his—but each time, for Adam, sleep had returned.

For the Matriarch, never. She had banished it. She had led them back to the lives they must lead: lives of pain and duty and loss. And yet, also, lives of hope and dreams and joy.

Adam understood what he was weaving; he understood it in a way that even Lord Isladar did not; Lord Isladar was, as he had claimed, dead. The dead, Adam knew, could drive the living almost mercilessly, because the dead could not change. They were trapped, by the living, in their rage, their fear, or their resentment; trapped, by the living, in their sorrow and their loss. The lands here would not free them; they remembered, and their anger was endless. But so, too, their sorrow.

Adam had seen the strange combination of sorrow and rage wreak havoc among his own kin. And he had, as a child, and later, as a young man, interceded. Anger had frightened him, as it frightened many children. But sorrow moved him in a different way.

He was not as Isladar was: he was not eternal. But he was alive.

 • • • 

Angel’s sword caught the long, dark claws of the first demon to reach him; the creature was casual and careless, as if swords such as Angel’s were harmless. That cost the demon a hand.

Angel had seen how ineffective regular swords and daggers could be against demons; with enough strength behind them, they could be wielded as clubs, but their edges did not cut demonic flesh. This sword had come from the armory in The Terafin’s personal chambers, and it had refused to leave its sheath until he had sworn his oath to The Terafin—to Jay. He suspected that Meralonne had some inkling of the sword’s history; he suspected that Avandar did as well. Neither had chosen to share.

Demonic eyes widened.

Shadow roared.

Flames rose in sudden fury, demolishing snow. Angel didn’t burn. He wasn’t certain why, but didn’t pause to question it: the demons didn’t pause. There were two here; one was winged. It rose, bleeding where it had lost part of its left arm. The other shifted in place. What had once been a large, four-armed creature now condensed in all dimensions.

Neither spoke.

But the constant rumble beneath Angel’s feet grew stronger. The fires banked suddenly; given the reaction of the demon that remained on the ground, the absence of fire was not his choice. He leaped back, and back again; Angel followed the first swift retreat, but held his ground for the second leap. He was there for Jay—Jay and Adam. He did not intend to let himself be lured away.