Battle: The House War: Book Five (12 page)

“Member APhaniel.”

“ATerafin.”

“The grounds are off-limits to anyone currently resident within the manse, by order of The Terafin.”

“I have just retired from an audience with The Terafin, and I enter the grounds at her request.” It was more or less the same claim he had made in the face of the younger guard’s nervousness.

“Very well.” The Chosen turned to the guard who’d been sent for greater authority. “Member APhaniel is granted a temporary leave to enter the grounds. He is the only exception.” Thus, the power of the Chosen in the Terafin manse. The man accepted responsibility for allowing Meralonne to leave when no countermand had been given to prior orders.

Meralonne turned to the young guard who blocked his way, and the man almost gratefully moved.

* * *

He heard the voice of the wind. It was playful, light, sweet with the scent of hidden flowers, clear water. He heard the movement of leaves; a different man might be mistaken in thinking their rustle entirely due to the passage of air. His pipe, he put aside as he approached the path crafted by the Terafin gardeners. It did not conform to the forest, but it did not confine it, either. The trees that lined this walkway, tended like the path and the flower beds, nonetheless surrendered the white stag and Celleriant as Meralonne walked.

“I have come,” he said gravely, “with your Lord’s permission. I am no longer entirely certain that I could do so, otherwise.”

The Winter King lowered his tines briefly; the gesture was tense.

“It is not Summer, here,” the mage said.

“But it is not Winter, not quite.”

Meralonne smiled. It would have shocked Jewel, had she seen it. “No, it is not quite Winter. You truly serve her, now.”

Lord Celleriant nodded. He was unarmed, in the way that the Arianni are. “Will you walk the forest, Illaraphaniel?”

“I will.” He took a step forward, hesitating in a way that was almost foreign. Lord Celleriant did not hesitate, as the Winter King had; he stepped aside and Meralonne stepped off the tended path, and onto the wild one.

* * *

He could feel the difference in the earth beneath his feet almost instantly; could sense the playful breath of the wind. There was, as yet, no water here, although he was certain, if Jewel explored, she would find brooks, streams, perhaps even a significant river. He wondered if she would know what to do with them, or rather, if she would attempt anything at all.

He walked until he reached a tree of living diamond. “It has been so long,” he said, lifting a hand to the tree’s cool bark. “And I have been so entwined in the affairs of this mortal city I am almost ashamed of my thoughts.”

“Oh?”

“Her House might cull a leaf or two and sell it.”

Celleriant’s silence was sharp and sudden. It did not last. “You have, indeed, been too long in the company of mortals.”

“Your Lord is mortal.”

“Yet she has never considered such an enterprise.”

“Not yet. Would you stop her?”

“. . . No. But I would make my feelings quite clear.”

“And you would survive it, no doubt; Jewel ATerafin was ever a woman comfortable with an excess of feeling.” He lowered his hand. “Diamond, gold, silver.”

“You did not expect them.”

“No. And yet, they feel natural to me.” He lifted face and gazed at the height of the
Ellariannatte
. “But these? One could almost feel young again beneath their bowers. I have served as the Terafin mage for decades; I have worked in this City for longer. These trees are at the heart of the hundred holdings—where any child might play atop exposed roots. Did you not see them?”

Celleriant nodded.

“Did you not wonder?”

“The trees in the mortal city are silent, Illaraphaniel. They do not speak, they do not wake.”

“Yet they grow. I do not think they will remain sleeping; before this is over, even in a forest of wood and stone and human foibles, you will hear their song.”

“It will not please my Lord.”

“No, perhaps not. Perhaps she will be content to let them sleep; they have slept long. But where other trees might wither in mute silence, these do not, not there. In the Terafin grounds they are not mute, but their voices are subtle,” he added, “and curious.”

“Curious?”

“They do not speak with a single voice. They speak with two, and one of them is Jewel Markess ATerafin’s.”

“She does not realize how much of a danger you are.”

Meralonne chuckled. “No. No more does she realize how much of a danger you are.” He turned; the Winter King had followed at a safer distance than the Arianni Prince. “Will you not bespeak your Lord?”

“No. I will leave that in your hands.”

“I do not serve Jewel.”

“No, you do not. But I perceive that you better understand the subtleties of her thought than I.”

“Did you not first encounter her upon the hidden path, Lord Celleriant? Were you not then part of the Winter Host?”

Celleriant nodded. “And I have waited, APhaniel. I have listened. I have remained in this forest. But I have not heard the song of the Summer Queen. I have not felt the call of the Summer Court.” He smiled, and to Meralonne’s surprise, it was rueful, not bitter.

“What is this?” the mage asked softly.

“The Summer is not for me, now.”

“It is not,” Meralonne replied as he stepped away from the trunk of the rising
Ellariannate
, “for any of us.”

Celleriant stiffened and turned. “Explain yourself.”

“Have a care, Lord Celleriant. I do not wish to engage in combat here, but your Lord will allow it if it does not endanger either your life, or mine. She might not notice it at all if we do not damage her trees.”

For a moment the very air around the Arianni Lord’s hands seemed to waver. Merlonne’s hands, however? They now contained his pipe. “I have become accustomed to mortal arrogance,” he said, when Celleriant failed to draw sword. “It never fails to amuse. But you are not as they are, Lord Celleriant.”

“. . . No. Why has there been no Summer? She called the long hunt against the Winter King; I heard the horns; I saw the host pass.”

“She did. The Winter King perished, as he must, at her hands.”

“Then—”

“There are no Summer trees.”

Celleriant stared at Meralonne APhaniel as if the mage had lost his mind.

“I make no cruel, tasteless jest. There have been no Summer trees, and it is my fear that there will be none. She will not reign in Summer, nor again ride in Winter; both faces of her power will be denied her.”

“Illaraphaniel—what could now prevent it?”

“The Lord of the Shining Court removed the Winter seedlings. His
Kialli
planted them in mortal lands—in the newly killed flesh of mortal children.”

No words escaped the Arianni Prince, but Meralonne did not expect them, not yet. “I traveled the length of the borders of the Terrean of Averda, at the side of Kallandras of Senniel College.”

“Kallandras.”

“Yes.”

“He has returned?”

“No, but he will. The South holds him until the coronation of the new Tyr—but it is to Averalaan that he is drawn. The trees were planted in such a corrupting fashion along the border of the Terrean. We hoped to find one we could purify without destruction.”

“You did not.”

“No.”

Celleriant closed his eyes briefly. “They will die, for this. Does she know?”

“That the seedlings are gone? Almost certainly. But if the
Kialli
sought to remove Ariane from the game, they have also hampered themselves; there is no Winter upon which to draw power.”

“They have never derived power from Summer.”

Meralonne was silent for a long moment. “Not never, Celleriant. But if not for the suspension of all natural law, I do not think your Lord would have survived this first meeting. Darranatos was always powerful.”

“If he is upon the plane—”

“Yes. He was not summoned. Could not be summoned by any save the Lord of Night. They have opened their gate, and the demons now cross the barrier without the need of name as a binding to hold them here.”

“And the Summer Queen cannot take arms against him.”

“Not yet. I am not—entirely—without hope, but it is scant.” Shadows touched the forest floor and spread. Meralonne frowned, his eyes narrowing. These were not shadows cast by light. They were sharp, cold. Celleriant was angry. “Your Lord does not understand what she holds, here. It is a small miracle that she holds it at all.”

The Arianni Lord stiffened and glanced at the shadows that had caught the mage’s attention. “She does.”

“I have seen that; the
Ellariannate
speak her name.” He continued to walk through the trees until he found the lone tree of fire. “But this, Celleriant, this is a sign.”

Lord Celleriant was silent, shuttered; the news had disturbed him greatly. Here, too, the shadows that lay across the forest floor had darkened. The red light of fire did not dispel them; it deepened them.

“Does she understand at least this much?” Meralonne asked. He reached, carefully, for the trunk of this rooted flame; it could not be said to have bark. It was, in height, the shortest of the trees.

“I do not know. She has entered this forest only twice; she skirts its edges timidly, otherwise. She lets the
Master Gardener
play at arranging life as he sees fit; she will not touch his flower pots or his flower beds. She will not alter his tame, tepid saplings, his lifeless stone pillars; there is only one work worthy of note here at all, and it is all but hidden.”

“The fountain on the terrace?”

“Yes. She could change all of the lesser things. She might build a garden here, and a palace, that would be reckoned truly beautiful, even by our kin. But she will not welcome the forest into her home.”

“You did not expect otherwise, surely?”

“Mortal men once wielded power of this magnitude. They were not terrified of what it signified. They did not doubt themselves because they had touched it. They built, Illaraphaniel.” Celleriant lifted his face toward the bowers of fire, his lips curved in reminiscence. “Even I, who seldom had cause to visit the Cities of Man, remember what they wrought. They came, at times, to the Summer Court with gifts for the Summer Queen—and those gifts rivaled ours, not in execution, but in conception, in urgency. We know death,” he added softly, “but a life as long as ours so seldom instills that urgency, that bright desire, that obvious desperation.” He shook his head and lowered it. “She is not—entirely—at home here.”

“Yet she is at its heart.”

“Is she?”

“You serve her, Lord Celleriant. Can you not feel her presence? It is at the heart of this tree—and a tree such as this, I have seldom seen planted. Not even the Winter King could hold it in the heart of his lands. It does not burn the trees; it does not burn the undergrowth.”

“It will burn the birds that currently fly here.”

“They are not foolish enough to land. Tell me, if you will: why did she plant it?”

“It was Lord Ishavriel’s fire. I believe she sought to contain it or use it; I am not certain. But its fire has not guttered.”

“No. And she did indeed use it. It is one of the few defenses she might have brought to bear against Darranatos. And,” he added, slowly lowering his hand. “She did.”

“It was sloppy.”

“It was.” He turned to Lord Celleriant. “They fear her.”

The Arianni Lord pretended no ignorance. “No more than she fears herself. It is only when she is pressed—and today, she was—that she overcomes her fear.”

Meralonne shook his head. “She does not overcome it; she merely gives way to a stronger, more visceral fear. That fear moves her to protect what she claims to love. Without it? She is afraid to be a threat to the Kings, the Exalted, The Ten. No—it is not even that. She fears the cost of this magic upon the people who dwell in the old city, the hundred holdings.”

“They cannot harm her.”

“No, not in any way that would be of significance to us—but we are not Jewel, and we are not Sen.”

“What will you then do?”

“I? I will bespeak Sigurne Mellifas. I will counsel the Kings. I will serve as House Mage, and in that capacity, I will counsel your Lord.”

“To what end?”

“You were in the South, Lord Celleriant. What we saw there is only the beginning. I have never been one to believe in destiny or fate; destiny or fate is something applied after event, when bards create their narratives. But having said that, I will say this: without Jewel, this city faces annihilation.”

“And with her, Illaraphaniel?”

“War. But that was coming, regardless. There is power, in this city, to withstand much.” He walked away from the tree of fire. As he did, he frowned. “Lord Celleriant, there is a presence in this place that is not hers.”

Celleriant fell silent.

“It is elusive,” the magi continued, as if the pause were insignificant. He glanced at the Winter King, not the Arianni Lord. “Do you sleep here?” The words were sharper, colder. The mage knelt, touching the ground with the flat of one palm. He spoke a word, two, and the wind grew stronger, pulling at the strands of his pale hair.