She noted he did not deny it. “I’m not bard-born. I’m seer-born. It’s not a reliable gift,” she added, as she approached the heat of the burning tree, “but in this case, it’s accurate. Where have my cats gone?” She turned to face him, the tree at her back like an angry sentinel.
“They are here,” he replied. “And not here. It is a state you should understand.”
“I don’t.”
“Do you not? I sense the dreaming here, Terafin. It is strong.” He paused to light his pipe again. “You should sense it, as well. You should sense it almost as clearly as you can sense demons; you should certainly be able to sense it more clearly than you can a simple mage. Where is Lord Celleriant?”
“He’s over there.” She lifted an arm to point, and dropped it again, turning to stare at the mage. He was smiling; the smile was cool.
“You do not question what you know. You do not question what you feel. You accept, without thought, the instincts that drive you to safety. It is understandable, Terafin. Jewel. But it is no longer enough. You saw Darranatos. Had you the full range of your power, you could have prevented him from arriving in the Common.”
She was silent, staring at him as if he’d lost his mind. “How?” she finally demanded. The Winter King drew closer to her, gliding above the undergrowth as if afraid to break it beneath his slender, sharp hooves.
“The land—in your Common and behind your manse—is not separate. There is a reason the Ellariannate grow in either place. There is a reason that they now grow here—and they are connected. In the age of living gods, a city once stood across the bay. It was a city such as you have never seen.”
But, she thought, she had. Not in life, although she had seen the deserted remnants of such a city rise from the desert sands in the heart of the Sea of Sorrows, but in dream. In Avandar’s dream. “Many cities have been built here.”
“Yes. At least one, of notable power, was built on the ruins of the ancient; it, too, is gone. It will not rise again. People fail to understand the nature of gods, the nature of demons—the nature, Jewel, of the Immortal. Why do you think, in a Henden seventeen years past, Allasakar was summoned beneath the streets of this city? Do not say because it is large; I will bite off the stem of my pipe in frustration.”
“They required sacrifices, Meralonne.”
“So they did. But there were many cities more amenable to their intrusion, and many places in which such trifling sacrifices might be found. Yet they chose this city, Averalaan, a city ruled by the god-born—the only city likely to survive a concentrated attack by all but the god himself. Did you think it only due to their arrogance?”
“Truthfully? Yes.” She shook her head. “No. I didn’t really think about it at all. This is where I lived. This was my whole world. When they attacked the hundred, they attacked the whole world. I was sixteen,” she added, as his brows drew together. “I knew nothing about demons except stories. They love to kill, and kill slowly. They devour souls.”
“That part is fabrication.”
“It doesn’t matter. They define evil.”
“Yet you sheltered the daughter of darkness for a time. What was she called?”
He knew. It irritated her. “Kiriel. Kiriel di’Ashaf. She didn’t choose her father, and she caused no harm to us.”
“Perhaps. God-born or no, she is mortal; she has a choice. Let us return to the nature of the forest here. It has lain unclaimed for centuries, and it has been an open path to those who understand how to walk the Winter road. It is not difficult—although it is costly; only the powerful may walk its ways. It is my suspicion that the source of the demons within the Terafin manse was this hidden way.
“It is almost certainly the explanation for the appearance of the kinlord in the Common.” He glanced at her. “But he did not choose to come here, and the Common was not the most fortuitous of places in which to make an easy kill; not today. Do you understand?”
“Why did the kinlords not claim this land when they hid beneath the streets of the city?”
“They could not. Do you think such a claim is trivially made? This forest, this path—it is not gold. It cannot simply be grasped and