Battle: The House War: Book Five (25 page)

Her hands stiffened; she couldn’t curl them into fists without partially crushing the small, small bit of sky within which these butterflies flew. Vast? Huge? Impressive?

She thought of the palace of the Winter King—not hers, but the man who had reigned for centuries in the heart of his forest, with cats, stone cats, for companions during the long, long wait for his release. Had his storybook dwelling been impressive enough? It had impressed her—but it had impressed her the way the forests had: they were gold and silver and diamond, those trees, and the palace was all of glass. Or ice; it had been cold, she thought. She couldn’t feel the cold now; it didn’t touch her.

But no, no that would not impress the Warden of Dreams; such a castle had stood for centuries, and if it changed at all, it was slight. She thought of the fallen buildings of the undercity—the great, stone bridges now shattered although their pieces were larger than any single member of the den. What had those bridges occupied when they stood? How high off the ground had they reached? And what—or who—had walked across their chiseled, cut splendor?

Yet even that, she dismissed. City of gods, she thought—and knew it, the way one knows any facts in a dream, even a dream in which the only reality is six inches of amethyst sky and three white butterflies.

You have nothing
, the Warden said.
And if you have nothing, nothing is all you can hold
.

“No,” she told the Warden softly. The ground no longer bucked at her weight, because it didn’t exist. Nothing did; there was no fall, no flight, no destination. The only voice she could hear was his, but without form, what threat could he be?

He chuckled.
You will see. These lands are mine now. You will have no dreams and no Companions, except those I allow—and I think I will allow you
nothing
for a very long time. It discomforts mortals,
he added.

Nothing, on the other hand, was better than some of the things she’d faced.

Oh, indeed. If you prefer it, I can give you something; not dreams, but nightmare. Endless fear, endless flight.

She shook her head. “No, you can’t.”

Silence.

In her hands, she held sky. It was a sky that no waking person would ever see. “I don’t know who you are,” Jewel said softly to the three butterflies, “but while you’re here, I will do what I can to protect you.”

You can do nothing
.

She ignored the Warden of Dreams, and felt the wind blow cold from her right. It was her first sensation in the gray. She frowned. The gray was so much like the Between—a land where gods and mortals might meet, and where such meetings might have consequences.

Dreams had driven her to the South. Dreams of Diora. Dreams of a massacre. Dreams had given her her brief glimpses of the Cities of Man—those powerful, ancient homes in which even the dead could be trapped, and against which gods might break themselves, rather than walls. Dreams, she thought, had driven her to House Terafin: dreams of gods.

She heard the distant growl of a predator, although the landscape remained gray and lifeless. She heard the buzzing of insects—which she viscerally detested—and the sounds of swords leaving scabbards. Small noises, but significant. She heard a child screaming; that was worse.

But it was the only truly human sound in this place.

Frowning, she reached into the scrap of handheld sky. The small piece of dream in her hand had dimension, if approached from the front. She inserted her hand among the butterflies, and to her surprise, they immediately alighted, attaching themselves to her palm, her inner wrist, and her fingers.

It wasn’t the Warden of Dreams, she thought. That wasn’t what they were seeking in their long sleep.

Build
, he told her.

She nodded. “Tell me,” she said to the butterflies. “Tell me where you live.”

* * *

The butterflies had no mouths with which to speak, but mouths weren’t necessary when reality was so profoundly subjective. This was the first lesson the dreamers taught Jewel. They answered her in a rush of tiny voices, and not a single voice was constrained by the need for words. They were so pale, she thought, so perfect in form—they were delicate but at this range she could see they were faintly luminescent.

Dreams were subjective. She’d had so many of them, she’d fled so many. Most of them weren’t real unless she was in them. But when she was, they were the whole of the world. Conscious thought stopped; dream logic ensued instead, with its odd panoply of best friends she’d never seen or met in real life, relatives she’d lost, stations to which she had never aspired, familiar homes that she had never lived in. In dreams, it was not truth that mattered; truth couldn’t be measured.

Yet, conversely, dreams worked because they felt true; there was no defense against them.

What she could dream into being was a product of every dream she had ever had. Every dream and every experience that also walked to one side of the solidity of the real world. That wasn’t what she wanted now.

What she wanted now, oddly enough, was Shadow. Even in her dreams, he was still an annoying, whiny, insulting cat. He was utterly himself; he was proof against her imagination, large and small. No, she thought, she wanted to
be
Shadow, or like him. Herself, in a place where there was no other anchor.

She did not want the dreams of the butterflies; she wanted them to wake.

There is power in dreaming
, the Warden said, his voice colorless and uninflected.
You dismiss it at your peril. You do not understand what you might build here.

“No. I understand it. But it wouldn’t be real.”

It would
be
real.

She shook her head. “Why are you allied with the Shining Court?”

It suits my purpose
.

“What do you want?”

I want freedom
, he replied.
I want an end to cages and walls. I want your sunshine and your fields in which only plants grow. I want their dreams, at my leisure, and not in a hurried rush at the turn of seasons that
do not
turn.

“You kill them.”

I would not need to kill them
, he said,
if I were free. There would be enough, could I but touch all dreamers. There will be enough
, he added, voice shifting again,
if I have yours.

“But then I won’t wake.”

Silence.

“And if I don’t wake, the House descends into war.”

Then take them, take them and make these lands unassailable.

She shook her head.

Do the Kings not raise armies?
he asked, his tone shifting.
Do they raise armies assuming each and every soldier will survive?

“No.”

Without armies to defend them from their enemies, will they not fall? This is not different. You will never rule well, if you do not understand the choices a ruler must make
.

Anger was a texture. The gray of the landscape shifted by slow degree. Splotches of color without distinct shape or boundary began to grow. Was he wrong? Right? She started to tell him that people who joined the army
had
a choice. But had her den stayed in the streets of the twenty-fifth holding, it would be one of the only options left to those who were healthy and physically whole.

Choice was never black and white. It was informed by context, by fear, by hope, or by desperation.

The butterflies were motionless as they rested on her arm. Some of their light trailed in dust across her skin, as if they were shedding it simply by proximity. She slowly pulled her arm out of the small patch of sky, and the butterflies came with it. She let the sky go and closed her eyes.

* * *

Bread was baking. She could smell it; the scent was so sudden and so strong she could almost taste it. It was the bread her Oma would sometimes buy when she was being extravagant. Because that wasn’t often, it had been special, and Jewel remembered it that way.

She heard splashing, felt water strike her cheeks and her eyelids. She didn’t open them. She knew this sound, and knew it better, in some ways. It was fountain water. Someone was laughing—someone young—and as she laughed, other children laughed as well, the sound high and sharp. There was no malice in it, although there was plenty of mischief; Jewel knew which fountain they were playing in. The summer sun fell hot against her face and her arms; her feet were bare because shoes were expensive and water wasn’t good for them, or at least that’s what her mother said.

She could hear the sound of the magisterial guard that patrolled the Common; could hear the shrieks of running children who were not to play in the water—but who always did. You couldn’t put water like that in easy reach of children and expect them to keep their hands dry.

Last, she could feel heat: not sun, but fire. She could hear its sharp, harsh crackle and above its constant din, louder cracking. Ah. Screams, screams of terror. Jewel knew what fire did to the old buildings in the hundred. She had seen an entire building consumed in flame. Although the fire had been magical, the effects were similar.

On a windy day, fire was more of a threat than dark gods.

It was to the fire that Jewel turned first, and when she opened her eyes, she could see it. She flinched; the smoke was black and thick, and the building’s roof was ablaze. Wind? Yes, there was wind, and it tore parts of the burning roof away, carrying fire to other buildings—and spectators. There were buckets in a line, there were people with blankets and water and wet towels. There were men and women lying on the ground, chests heaving, eyes wild.

She didn’t recognize the street—but she only knew three holdings like the back of her hand, and in dreams, all reality shifted and contorted to enfold the dreamer. It didn’t
matter
what holding contained the dream, after all. It only mattered that someone was dreaming.

Jewel wondered, as she began to walk toward the fire, if this dreamer had been caught in the same dream since they had fallen asleep. Did dreams shift and change, the way they naturally did?

She didn’t know. Adam had made clear to her that the sleepers he woke had no memory at all of their dreams; as far as they were concerned, they hadn’t had any. Only during her flight up the side of the dream-twisted tree, and her defense of her new forest against a demon lord, did they remember their dreams. They also remembered the dreams, in fragmented, fractured images, of the first day of The Terafin’s funeral.

Jewel looked at her arms; there were no butterflies here.

Only fire, fear, the streets of the holding looming large and impersonal in the face of impending loss. It was a fear she understood so well her mouth went dry. Love opened you up, always, to the possibility of loss.

The inevitability of loss
.

She started to argue with the disembodied voice—but stopped herself because she was no longer certain that it was the Warden of Dreams who was speaking. Her mother was dead. Her Oma. Her father—and her father’s future had shadowed her days with a terrible fear and certainty until the accident she’d foreseen had come to pass. Lefty was dead. Lefty, Fisher, Lander. Duster. Rath—gone. Alowan. Even Amarais, their shield and their savior.

You build, but it breaks. That is the nature of the world of your birth; it is a land of mortals, it is a land of death. Build where mortality does not reign if you wish to build eternity
.

“It’s not mortality,” she whispered, her words cracked and broken by the roar of the fire.

It is
.

She shook her head. She walked easily through the crowd, lifting her hand and exposing the signet that signified her position as
The
Terafin. The gesture was instinctive; it was a sweep of hand that was, wordless, a command. A command and a promise. When had she learned that? Why did it work?

The crowd parted, although she took care to avoid the line of men hefting buckets against the roar of flame. It was like making an argument in whispers when your opponent was roaring like the very dragons of legend; it made
no difference
at all. Yet they tried, in this dreamscape.

They tried, she thought, when they were awake. She squared her shoulders. She couldn’t douse this fire in reality. She could douse it in the dreaming.

No, you cannot. Unless you are willing to take her dream and make it your own, the flames will not respond to you—they are hers.

Would that be so much worse? Jewel, who’d known the fear that had created the whole of this landscape—who had known, worse, the end of that fear, and the truth of that death, wanted to say, No. No, it wouldn’t be worse. This was a nightmare that plagued her conscious, waking moments; to live it for—for however long this dreamer had been trapped here—

But no. No. This was how it would start. This is often how things
did
start. Good dream or bad, it didn’t matter. This was
all
dream, and it wasn’t—couldn’t be—hers. She reached the side of the dreamer, and knew—without knowing quite how or why—that this woman, small, stout, her face and hands lined with labor and lack of sleep, anchored this dream. Her face was red with exertion, wet with tears, her body bent with the burden of fear and the pain of hope when hope was so scant.