Oracle: The House War: Book Six (2 page)

Shadow hissed.

She glanced down at him. “I won’t order you to accompany me,” she told him. “But I swear to all gods living and dead that you will suffer if you cause any injuries while I’m in the room.”

He glanced pointedly at Night and Snow.

“They count. I mean it.”

Snow sniffed and turned his head to look at anything else.

Night, however, said, “
How
will we suffer?”

“I’m not sure yet,” she replied, without pause for anything but breath. “I’ll need time to come up with something appropriate.”

He hissed.

“I could plant you,” she offered.

His eyes rounded and his ears flattened. Celleriant—damn it—drew sword, and the resultant blue light scattered across the flat, smooth surface of stone in its various shapes as if it were water.

“Celleriant,” she said, her voice far colder than it had been when she had admonished the cats. “They are never going to try to kill
me
.”

His silver eyes narrowed. “Will they not?”

“No.” They had already tried once, and Celleriant knew it; the Kings and the Exalted did not.

Arianni lips thinned into a shape that resembled a smile. “A pity.”

“They’re not
Kialli
.”

“No, Terafin, they are not—but you have seen them kill my kin.”

And she had.

“They are a challenge. They are a test. They ride the storms with an ease only the adepts can achieve.”

“They have wings,” she pointed out.

“Wings are not required.” He did not sheathe his sword. “Viandaran.”

Avandar nodded and preceded Jewel through the arch. Celleriant followed as Angel came to stand by her side. “You don’t trust the room,” he said quietly.

She really didn’t. She had walked once through the arch opposite this one, but on that day, she’d been terrified of the Kings, the Exalted, and the Lord of the Compact; the contents of the room—right up until a statue began to move—had been of lesser concern.

The Kings did not wait in this one. As she stepped beneath the arch, the shadows deepened; her eyes did not adjust quickly to the lack of the harsher magelights that now adorned the outer halls.

Avandar.

Light flared in the darkness directly ahead of her as Avandar responded to her request. A spark of pale gold appeared in his cupped palms, lending an orange-red glow to his hands. He whispered a word and it rose, gaining brightness as it did. The floor beneath his feet—beneath all of their feet—took on visible texture.

Jewel stiffened. Beneath her feet, the floor was stone—but it was not the impressive, worked stone of the palace. It was worn and rough, as if rivers had carved their way, slowly, through dense earth, long before she chose to tread here. It reminded her of the narrow pathways carved through the Stone Deepings.

“Yes,” Avandar said, although she hadn’t spoken. “They quarried the Deepings, when they built these foundations.”

“The palace isn’t old enough—” She caught the words and held them. She felt his smile as she approached his back. “The undercity.”

“Yes, Jewel. Except in your dreams, I have never seen the ruins of that ancient place—but I know what it looked like at the height of its power.”

“It didn’t look like this.”

“No.” He let his arms fall to his sides; the light continued to shine, as if it were a trapped star.

“I don’t understand the purpose of this room.”

“No. No more do I, or the god-born. Do you understand the purpose of the room you call a statuary?”

She started to say yes, and paused. “I understand the purpose it serves for
me
.”

“Yes. But it is not in the Terafin manse; it is housed in its entirety within
Avantari
.”

“It’s not.”

He smiled, and this time, turned to face her. “No, Terafin, it is not. It touches wild and hidden places; it does not travel
to
them, but it is of them. As is this.”

“It looks exactly like the Stone Deepings in the mountains.”

He glanced, briefly, around the shadowed cavern of a room. “It does not,” was his soft reply. “Not to me. But you are seer-born. Lord Celleriant?”

Celleriant’s blade shed as much light as Avandar’s spell, although it was a colder, harsher illumination. He said nothing.

Jewel turned to Angel. She gestured in the dim light.
What do you see?
The question had once been meant for those rare situations in which Duster or Carver played point while the others remained hidden, but Angel understood what she asked.

“I see a room,” he told her. “The ceilings are as tall as the Terafin foyer. The floors are smooth, slab stone—not marble—and they look well traveled.” He hesitated. Gestured.
You?

“I see a cavern. The only light in the room is the one Avandar cast. I can’t see the cavern’s height; it’s too far up. I can’t see the walls, either. The floor is rough, rough stone; a groove runs down the middle, like a rock riverbed, and we’re in it. I don’t see anything up ahead besides shadows and rock formation.”

“That’s . . . not what I see.”

“Celleriant?” she asked the same question that Avandar had asked, and in the same way. The Arianni Lord glanced down at her, as if from a great remove. “I do not see what you see,” he finally said. “Nor do I see what your liege does.”

She frowned. “When you rode with the Wild Hunt through the Deepings, did they not look like this to you?”

“No. But these were not the roads we traveled, Lady.”

“Would you recognize every road you traveled?”

His brows rose. After a long pause, he said, “Yes.”

“What do you see?”

He did not answer. Her hands curled into fists.

Do not ask again, Jewel
, Avandar told her.
This room is wilder—and therefore more dangerous—than the room you call the statuary. We define, in some ways, what we see.

She had been walking, and stopped, lifting a hand in swift den-sign to make certain Angel did the same. “It’s not safe to walk here.”

“Can you not hold the road?” Celleriant asked her softly.

“Hold it how? We don’t even see the same thing.”

“We did not see the same thing when we first met.”

It was true. But she felt the hair on the back of her neck begin to stand on end, and in the darkness, she heard the slow, heavy sound of breathing. “Angel, can you hear that?”

He was silent. She turned to look at his hands; they were still.

“What do you hear?” Celleriant asked, his voice sharper and colder.

“Breathing,” she whispered. “Very loud, very deep breathing.”

Celleriant turned to Kallandras, who had fallen silent. Bards were, in general, far more talkative than Kallandras, a fact Jewel seldom noticed. She noted it now. He watched her for a long moment. “I cannot hear what you hear.”

He was bard-born. The bard-born heard everything that lay beneath the surface of words, if they were skilled enough. And powerful.

Celleriant exhaled. “Viandaran.”

“I do not hear what she hears,” Avandar replied. “But she hears it. It is not mortal fear of the darkness or the unknown.”

“Do you recognize it?” Celleriant asked, acknowledging the bond that Jewel herself did not, on most days.

“I am mortal,” was Avandar’s evasive reply. “Time is a current that wears the edges off memory.”

“You have your suspicions.”

“I have some.”

Avandar
.

Silence. Silence interrupted by breath, by breathing that she felt beneath her feet as the rumbling of earth.

“Matriarch,” a soft voice said. She turned so quickly she would have tripped had she been wearing skirts.

Adam was standing beside Terrick; the Northerner carried his ax. He was grim and silent, but his presence suited this vast, stone space.

Jewel swallowed words as she struggled for composure. If there was any person in the palace she did not want in this room, it was Adam—but she was taking him someplace no safer, no better known, in the end. After a significant pause, she said, “Yes,” in Torra.

“I see a cave.”

This caught Celleriant’s attention. Avandar, more accustomed to the random outbursts of the merely mortal controlled any outward expression of the surprise Jewel nonetheless knew he felt.

“And I hear breathing. It is loud and rolling, like distant thunder.”

“You see what I see.”

“I think so, yes.” His voice was very grave. He knelt and placed one palm above the ground, then hesitated, watching her.

She shook her head, deciding. “Not yet,” she told him softly. “We have to confront what we see at some point, but not yet.”

“Soon?” he asked, withdrawing his hand.

“Soon. Come. You haven’t seen the statuary yet.” As Jewel turned to leave the room, the almost hypnotic breathing shifted; the rumbling became, for a moment, a voice. Syllables cut the silence like lightning, absent illumination. Jewel froze. Her own breath stopped; she held it, waiting for the foreign words to pass.

All eyes were upon her. What she had heard, her companions had not. All save Adam, whose eyes widened, and whose breath momentarily ceased as well. She realized then that something slept in this chamber, something vast, immortal, ancient. Her steps, her presence, were an intrusion, and if she did not leave, that unknown creature would wake.

She did not expect that waking to be gentle or joyful; she certainly wouldn’t be if mice crept into her bedroom and skittered across the surface of her counterpane. She felt very like she suspected the mice would, if they could speak. Without another word, she turned and headed toward the open arch.

Unlike the arch that led from her personal chambers in the Terafin manse, this one seemed to stay put.

 • • • 

The Kings were waiting in the statuary, as were the Exalted. Sigurne Mellifas stood to one side of the Mother’s Daughter. The
Astari
, if they were present at all, were dressed as Swords, and the Lord of the Compact failed to appear. It was the one bright spot in an otherwise grim and early morning.

The cats were pacing back and forth in the stretch of hall that contained the arches, but their ears twitched the moment Jewel stepped across the threshold that divided cavern from architectural stone. Shadow immediately shouldered Avandar out of the way; Snow cast a speculative glance at Celleriant.

“The Kings are waiting,” Jewel told him.

He sniffed. Night hissed. But they fell in behind Shadow and did not, as far as Jewel could see—or hear, really—attempt to step on his tail. Angel and Terrick, Adam between them, brought up the rear. Angel was not in a particular hurry to see more of the Kings, but Terrick did not appear to find their presence discomforting. He was not, on the other hand, required to speak. Had he been in House colors, he might have been one of the Chosen; he had the same peculiar ability to be aware of every element of his surroundings while simultaneously appearing to notice none of them.

The statues appeared as they had the first time Jewel had seen them.

This time, she thought she understood what they signified, and turned to the Mother’s Daughter, whose slight nod implied that she had expected some questions.

“I recognize at least five of the figures carved here,” she said softly.

“We noticed,” the Exalted replied.

“I met them in the South, in the Stone Deepings. I don’t know all of their history. This,” she said, approaching the first, a figure only partially emerged from the wall, “is Calliastra.” She glanced at the Mother’s Daughter, and was not surprised when the older woman nodded.

“The child of the god we do not name and the god we have oft called Love.”

Jewel continued to walk. The rest of her party, except for the cats, remained just beside the Kings; only her domicis shadowed her steps. “This,” she said, “Is Corallonne.”

“She is the Mother’s Daughter.”

“And her father?”

“I have never been bold enough to ask,” was the wry reply. “The information was never offered me. But Corallonne is sister to all who bear the Mother’s blood. You did not fear to touch her likeness, here.”

“No,” was the soft reply. Jewel did not, however, touch her again.

She walked instead to Ariane. Of the statues here, only Ariane’s was not trapped in the wall; she stood—as the statues of the gods in the palace proper—as if the red-brown stone beneath her feet was a pedestal. Jewel swallowed, reached up, and touched the hand of the Queen of the Wild Hunt.

Beneath her fingers, the stone was cool and hard. It did not respond at all.

“Winter Queen,” she whispered.

Wind swept into the room, curling around strands of her hair. But the statue itself was silent and still.

“She will not hear you,” Celleriant said softly.

She moved on, pausing once to examine the only figure contained in this room that did not take mortal likeness. Frowning, she glanced at Avandar. “The last time we were here, this figure was different.”

“Yes.”

“Now it looks almost human.” And it did. The feathers, the scales, the uneven mismatch of limbs, had receded. Its face no longer looked like a carving of quilted flesh, each piece belonging to a different species. It looked almost like a man.

“You are certain?” the Mother’s Daughter asked.

Jewel nodded slowly. “I am.”

“And troubled.”

“Yes, Exalted.” She hesitated for a long moment, and then glanced at Shadow. Shadow was staring at the statue in challenge; the statue, being stone, failed to respond. “Do you know its name?”

“No, child. In any real sense, it has none.”

“Do you know its parentage?”

“No. But I know this: it claims no single parent, no duality; all of the gods were some part of its creation. It is not like Moorelas’ sword, but it is not like the others depicted here.”

Jewel nodded and continued past the figure. She glanced once at the Warden of Dreams; he was almost as discrete as Ariane in appearance. And then, because it could not be put off any longer, she approached the cloaked and hooded figure of the Oracle. Like all of the statues except Ariane, she was part of the wide, curved sweep of wall; like all of those statues, she was chiseled and polished and presented as a gray-white likeness of life.