Battle: The House War: Book Five (30 page)

It is always a game, with cats. The mice do not understand this
.

The voice was familiar, but unrecognizable, and she accepted its presence the way she accepted anything in her dreams; it was a fact of the now, very like a fact of life. She looked at the weapons again; there was nothing to mark them as extraordinary, except for the fact of their wielder.

Oh. She shifted Snow’s head off her lap and rose. “Adam,” she said, raising her voice without looking back. She held out a hand, and he came to her side, trailing butterflies. “I understand.”

“What must I do?” he asked.

“Hold my hand. This is going to be a little rough.”

He was happy to catch and hold the hand she offered him; she felt his palm. It was warm, rough, and slightly sweaty. She closed her eyes; heard the growl and hiss of one flying cat, and the labored breathing of another; Night was too far away.

Adam’s breath sharpened. “You are going to wake us,” he said.

“Yes,” she replied, squeezing his fingers between her own where they were interlaced, “and no.”

Since the fighting had started, she had heard muffled, distant voices. She hadn’t listened carefully; a face full of Shadow’s fangs made distant voices almost irrelevant. She listened now.

She knew whose voices they were. She knew she was abed, in the Terafin’s personal chambers; she knew that the Chosen would be there. Angel. She was less certain of Teller or Finch; Finch would be at the Merchant Authority, if this were morning.

But was it? Was it only morning?

“Adam, when did they send for you?” Her breath tightened. “Were they careful? Was Levec there?”

“They sent for Levec in a panic,” he replied. “Levec came with me, as he did every day we woke The Terafin while you were gone.”

“Was it morning?”

“It was late morning.”

“I hope we haven’t been sleeping for too long.”

Something about the way his eyes slid to the side caught her attention. “It was late morning when you arrived.”

“Yes.”

“Earlier you said it wasn’t yet morning. Adam—”

“It is not yet morning,” he told her. “Of the second day.”

Her knuckles were white; she was afraid. Waking from a nightmare didn’t frighten her, of course. But this wasn’t waking. It was something other, something different, and if it didn’t work, or if it worked out badly, she might never wake again. Not fully. Neither would Adam.

The Warden of Dreams laughed, and she looked up; Shadow was caught in a web—a web that looked as if it were spun by a giant spider, or several, between the overlapping branches of the great trees. She reached out with fire, and fire began to burn its edges.

“I’ve missed the Council of The Ten.”

Adam’s expression made clear that he thought she’d momentarily taken leave of her senses.

“And the meeting with the Kings.”

“Jewel, now is
not
the time.”

No, she thought, it wasn’t. She once again focused on the voices, on the muffled words, because Shadow was utterly silent. Familiar voices. Familiar—and unfamiliar at the same time—bed and room. Night, not day; moonlight not sunlight. Adam’s hand was probably half its normal width by this time, she was crushing it so hard—but it was better Adam than butterflies. Shadow couldn’t—hadn’t—killed him; nothing Jewel could do to him would be worse.

She closed her eyes, and the sounds—as they often did when her eyes were closed—became louder and more distinct. “Can you hear them?”

“Yes.”

“It’s time.”

“Time?”

“To wake up.” She swallowed. With a free hand, she reached for Snow and felt his unnaturally soft fur. “Snow?”

Snow didn’t answer. His breath was rough and wheezy.

What did the Terafin’s bedroom really look like? What did it
feel
like? Was it large? Yes. And the ceilings were high. The floors were a sharp and gleaming wood, over which rugs had been laid. There were windows limned in a subtle orange glow that did away with the need for bars.

There was a desk, a small desk. Two closets of different sizes. A . . . dresser, a thing in which important and small personal items could be placed. Were there paintings? She tried—and failed—to remember; she often didn’t notice art after a brief glance, and nothing in the room had demanded her attention. Magelights. There were magelights. The room never
had
to be dark; the light that it contained didn’t have to be filled, fueled, watched.

She bent head, bracing herself as if to accept a heavy weight.

This was the heart of her forest. The tree of fire, surrounded by the
Ellariannate
, silver, gold, and diamond. She had identified the forest—and its heart—as the trees. But it wasn’t. It was the land on which the trees stood, sometimes bisected by footpaths, sometimes by cobbled roads.

The land was hers.

It was, in some fashion,
her
. Dreaming or waking, it didn’t matter. She was asleep now, in the waking world; in the realm of the Exalted, the Kings, The Ten, she had failed to wake. But she was not a simple dreamer. She was dreaming, but it was lucid.

And the test of lucid dreaming was volition and understanding. It was time to
wake
.

Chap
ter Nine

S
HE OPENED HER EYES to ceiling. She opened them to walls and the glimpse of a window that she knew was subtly wrong. Adam lay by her side on his back, his hand in hers. His lashes—which had always been ridiculously long—began to flutter and tremble as he, too, opened his eyes.

She turned her head to the side Adam didn’t occupy and saw that Snow was aground just beside the bed; his wings were jerking. Beneath Snow, rug was being shredded because his claws were extended and they were also opening and closing almost at random. He had not diminished in size in the transition between the waking and dreaming worlds.

Beyond Snow, Angel stood; Arann, in armor; Avandar in his usual domicis robes. Everything seemed suspended, still, as if the room were a painting without any of the usual artistry of composition.

Several things happened at once; she heard Angel shout.

She heard Avandar shout.

They weren’t shouting about the same thing, because if the voices that had been so indistinct and muffled had suddenly become clearly audible, the sounds of the forest and the dream hadn’t diminished—at all. Shadow and the Warden of Dreams now stood in the room, by the wall farthest from the bed; the cat remained mired in burning webs, he was still large, and he was enraged. Rage did not tear the webbing down, although the fire ate away at it steadily.

The Warden, however, was no longer concerned with Shadow. He turned, eyes widening, as he took in the sudden shift in surroundings; gone were the trees, the undergrowth, the forest floor; gone were the butterflies—and that caused Jewel’s heart to sink. Where trees had stood, there were men—the armored Chosen.

She heard—felt—the drawing of a single sword and knew Celleriant was very close by. Shadow was no longer in the air—but neither was the Warden of Dreams.

In his hands were an ordinary sword, an ordinary whip; in the room, in less than a minute, other ordinary swords were drawn. One of them was Arann’s,

The Warden’s wings expanded suddenly, as if he were still in the dream world and they could encompass the whole of a deep, clear purple sky. There were walls on all sides and ceilings above; the wings hit wall and parts of the wall crumbled. They hit swords, but the swords did not break.

“Nightmare,” she said, pushing herself up, “is rooted in reality.”

“It is
stronger
than reality.”

“Not here,” she told the Warden. “Never here, again. It’s true that I cannot destroy you.”

Celleriant entered the room at a graceful, deadly run; he saw the Warden, but he did not slow. A shield girded arm—it was the same blue as the sword in his right hand. The Warden’s wings once again shot out, unbalancing two of the Chosen; they did not shear armor, but they dented it.

Once, Jewel would have said that the Warden was beyond the Chosen; the Chosen were men, and the Warden a child of living gods. She would have left the Warden to Celleriant, Avandar, and the cats, because in some fashion, they were part of the same story; not mortal, not human—or in Avandar’s case, only barely—imbued with magics that were wilder, greater, and ultimately incomprehensible to those who did not possess the same.

But the Warden’s sword was
not
an Arianni sword; it was not a golden one; it did not come from the forges immortals—or gods—might use, if they needed them at all to create. That sword, and the swords that were now raised against him—all save one—had come from the dead earth, or the sleeping earth; they had been forged in fires that obeyed the whim of
men
, in heated, enclosed rooms that smelled of sweat and coal and fire and oil. They were wielded by men and women whose oaths of service were simple words, not binding ones.

And here, it was enough. It was enough because they were as real as the people who wielded them.

Celleriant’s sword swung in from the left, and the Warden’s whip caught its blade as if the tongues were prehensile. It was not, therefore, Celleriant’s sword that struck the first blow—it was Torvan’s. The Warden’s eyes widened as blade pierced flesh; his blood fell. It was not red, not crimson; it was gold, and thick, like amber honey.

The walls shifted shape where the Warden’s wings touched them; plaster cracked and shattered; paper, laid across it, tore so quickly the color of the room changed every time the Warden struck. Armor took dents as the Chosen struggled to maintain their footing; Celleriant’s sword finally managed to slice the bindings of leather.

Wind howled in the contained space, its voice growing as it responded to the Warden’s summons.

No
, Jewel told it.
Not here, and not now. Remember
?

And the Wind fell silent. As it did, the bits and pieces of detritus it had gathered fell as well; inkstand, inkwell, quill, stoneholder, and magestone itself; two trays and the contents of two large pitchers, brushes, one small mirror, quivered a moment before crashing to the ground.

Avandar lifted his hands in a wide, sweeping arc; light trailed down the length of his arms like a bright, thick liquid.

Avandar, wait
.

He is—

He is the child of absent gods; I don’t think we can kill him—

It is possible now.

But she hesitated, and he lowered his arms at her unspoken plea. It wasn’t a command.

“You are,” Jewel told the Warden, her voice clear and cold, “like the wild air, the wild earth, the wild water or the very fire. You are
not
welcome in my lands without my permission. I cannot kill you—not yet—but I can contain you; you will take root in my garden and you will grow branches and when I sit under your bowers, the dreams I have will be yours. No more.

“Is this what you wanted? I am awake, Warden, and I am
still dreaming
. I understand the ways in which the dreaming world has its roots—and its heart—in the waking one. These men and women are mine; they will grant you no purchase here, and they will hurt you. But they will not kill you. Leave the dreamers; they
are mine
. Leave the gardens. If you need to return, you will ask my permission. Chosen,” she said, in a sharper voice.

They stepped back, swords still readied; they did not look in Jewel’s direction once.

The Warden of Dreams lowered his weapons in response, although he reserved most of his attention for Celleriant; the Arianni prince did not look peaceful.

“Lord Celleriant.”

His gaze, when he turned to her, was cold; unlike the Chosen, he treated the Warden of Dreams as if he were almost inconsequential. “Lord.”

He stepped back, crossing the subtle line the Chosen made. He was not pleased, and she knew why; like the cats, combat defined him; it was his most visceral joy.

The Warden of Dreams retreated two steps; his back touched the wall that had been shredded by the force of his wings’ multiple blows; it framed him. “Jewel,” he said, his voice changing, his expression altering the lines of his face.

“Does he always leave when—”

“He is like your Lord Celleriant. This is his crucible, his testing ground.”

“And if he’s losing?”

The Warden smiled. “He does not acknowledge loss; all loss, therefore, is mine.”

To Jewel’s surprise, Celleriant immediately put up his sword; the blade and the shield vanished as he tendered the Warden a deep bow. She had never seen Celleriant employ sarcasm, and assumed the gesture of respect was genuine.

“It is over, for now,” the Warden told her.

“Almost,” she replied. She turned to Adam, who was sitting up; he was pale, but grim. “I am grateful to you, but you are inseparable from your brother, and where he cannot go, you cannot go.”

“We are not forbidden the dreams of men,” was the Warden’s grave reply.

“You’re forbidden them in my domain.”

He shook his head. “You do not have that power—even in this place. We cannot entrap the dreamers; we cannot compel them. But the visions we have carried to you, we will carry if it becomes necessary. You are not asleep now,” he told her. “But you will never fully wake again. The dreams will be stronger, and they have the power to harm you, now.”

She knew. They had had the power to harm her from the moment the cats had appeared; Shadow had told her that months ago. She hadn’t believed him—not while she was awake. And in dreams, belief didn’t matter. Everything was true.

“Can you tell me one thing before you leave?”

“If it is within my power.”

“How do I get the cats to change back?”

The Warden frowned; he looked genuinely puzzled. “Change back?”

“Yes. To what they were before—before last night.”

Shadow was now free of the webbing; it had vanished when the Warden of Dreams had once again turned the other face. He didn’t look particularly
happy
about the shift in personality, but like Celleriant, he seemed to recognize it instantly.

“Are they different?” the Warden finally asked.

“They’re half again as large as they were and they look extremely dangerous.”

The Warden bent to the bristling Shadow and whispered a few words that Jewel’s hearing wasn’t acute enough to pick up. The cat hissed. It was a lower, louder version of his laughter.

“He says they are not changed,” the Warden told her gravely.

“But they—”

“They do not appear altered, to me. Perhaps my vision and yours depend on different things.” His frown deepened. “But you are Sen, and it is the way of the Sen to see things as they
are
. It is vexing.”

Shadow’s hiss increased in volume; the sides of his lengthy body began to heave. “She is less
stupid
,” he finally managed. “But not by
much
.” He rose and padded across the room to where Snow lay. Jewel gasped as he jumped
on
the injured cat, hissing in a totally different tone.

“If you break the bed,” she told them both, raising her voice to be heard over the cats—Snow, not to be outdone, had begun to hiss back, “I will—”

“Yessssss?” Both cats said, swiveling to face her, their own brief spat suspended. “What
will
you do?”

“I’ll have to think about it. Turning you to stone has a certain appeal.”

Snow hissed, his eyes widening. Shadow, however, snorted.

“Stop fighting in my room and go find your brother.”

“Oh,
him
.”

“I mean it. Find Night and bring him back.” She paused and then added, “Do
not
fight with each other in the manse if you don’t intend to leave by the window.”

* * *

The room was silent after the cats had departed; they left through the doors. The window was apparently not to their liking.

The Warden of Dreams watched them go.

“Will they be able to find Night?” she asked.

“If that is your desire, yes. You did not, as you fear, leave him behind.”

“And the dreamers?”

“More difficult, but you have begun the work you must do to find them. They will find you,” he added, “if it is possible.”

“In my dreams?”

“There, yes; possibly while you wake. It has been long indeed since I walked through the streets of such a city. I will not counsel caution; you do not require it.” But he turned once more. “Viandaran.”

Avandar stiffened, but nodded.

“You have not yet found the answers you seek.”

“No.”

“And have you now set the search aside? You serve the Sen. I remember when—”

“Enough.” The word was a single, sharp, command. It sounded like thunder.

The Warden raised a brow. “Do you think she does not know?” he asked.

Avandar did not reply.

“The time is coming, Viandaran. We will meet again.”

“No doubt.”

The Warden turned last to Adam. He bowed. “And you, Adam. We will meet again, on the far road. Your sister dreams of you—you must go home, soon.”

Jewel frowned.

“It is the Wyrd, Terafin. It is not just you who bear the burden of dreams of fate.”

“How am I to get home?” Adam asked.

“You will know.” He bowed to them all and when he rose, he vanished. It did not happen all at once; he thinned and grayed, becoming translucent, transparent. “It is good that you are here,” he told Jewel. “Remember it, in the end. There are others who have seen the coming war, and they have surrendered more than their lives to prevent what is almost an inevitable outcome.”

“What outcome?” She demanded.

“There is a god upon the plane. Do you think he will remain in his frozen splendor forever?”

* * *

The Chosen turned toward her in the silence. She stared at the space that had, moments before, been occupied by the Warden of Dreams. She felt curiously hollow. Isolated. Without thought, she turned toward Adam; Adam was watching her with wide eyes. Vulnerable eyes.

“Well done, Terafin,” Avandar said, in a pinched tone of voice that implied the opposite.

“I think there’ll be no new sleepers,” she said, speaking to the halfway point between Adam and Avandar. Her eyelids felt heavy.