Jim Butcher - First Lord's Fury

Alera’s fingers looked like that—like a wax sculpture an industrious mouse had been nibbling upon.

“What is this?” he asked her quietly.

“Inevitability,” the fury replied. “Dissolution.”

He frowned for a moment, both at her hands and at her reply. The meaning sunk in a few seconds later. He looked up at her, and whispered, “You’re dying.”

Alera gave him a very calm, very warm smile. “A simplistic way to view what is happening,” she replied. “But I suppose that from your perspective it does share certain superficial similarities.”

“I don’t understand,” Tavi said.

Alera considered her hands in his for a moment. Then she gestured down the length of her body, and said, “Know you how this form came to be? Why it is that I speak to your family’s bloodline?”

Tavi shook his head. “No.”

She gave him a chiding glance. “But you have conjectured.”

Tavi inclined his head to her. “I hypothesized that it had something to do with the mural in the First Lord’s meditation chamber.”

“Excellent,” Alera said, nodding. “The mosaic in the chamber floor is made from pieces of stone brought there from all over the Realm. Through those pieces, the original Gaius Primus was able to communicate with and command furies all across the land to bring him information, allow him glimpses of places far away, and to do his will.” She pursed her lips. “That was when I first began to become aware of myself, as a discrete entity. Over Primus’s lifetime, I continued to… congeal, I suppose, would be the best word for it. He sensed my presence and, in time, I understood how to speak with him and how to manifest a material form.” She smiled, her eyes distant. “The first words I remember actually hearing with my own ears were Primus’s: Bother, I’ve gone mad. ”

Tavi let out a short, choking laugh.

She smiled at him. “The mosaic was the focus upon which this form was predicated. It was what drew thousands upon thousands of furies with no individual identity into something more.” She put a hand flat to her own chest. “Into Alera.”

“And when my grandfather destroyed Alera Imperia, the mosaic was destroyed with it,” Tavi said.

“Unavoidable, from Sextus’s perspective. Had it remained intact, the vord Queen would have possessed it. She would almost certainly have understood what it meant and attempted to control me through it. She might even have succeeded.”

“And that’s why the First Lords never spoke of you to anyone,” Tavi said quietly. “Why there’s not a word of you in any of the histories.”

“No foes of the House of Gaius could attempt to usurp control of me if they did not know of me.”

“But they could kill you,” Tavi said quietly.

“Indeed.” She drew in a deep breath and let it out in a sigh. “In a very real sense, I have been killed by the vord invasion—but it took a certain length of time for me to form. It will likewise take time for me to return to my original state.”

“I hadn’t… I didn’t realize,” Tavi said. “I’m so sorry.”

She arched an eyebrow. “But why? I do not fear what is to come, young Gaius. I will feel neither loss nor pain. My time in this form is almost done. All things must come to an end. It is the way of the universe.”

“After so long helping my family and the Realm, you deserve better.”

“In what way is that relevant? What one deserves and what one experiences are seldom congruent.”

“When they are, it is called ‘justice,’ ” Tavi said. “It’s one of the things I’m supposed to help provide, as I understand the office.”

Alera’s smile took on a bitter undertone. “Bear in mind that I have not always helped your family or your people. I am unwilling to place any creature before any other. And every action I take mandates a reaction, a balance. When Sextus wished me to moderate prevailing weather in the Vale, it would cause half a dozen furystorms elsewhere in the Realm. When he would ask me to lend strength to the great currents of wind, it would spin off cyclones hundreds of miles away. Until the vord came, I and my kin had killed more Alerans than any foe your folk had ever faced.” Her eyes glinted with something savage and cold. “The argument could be made, young Gaius, that what is happening to me is justice.”

Tavi took that in for a moment, mulling it over in his mind. “When you are gone… Things will change.”

Her eyes went unreadable. “Yes.”

“What things?”

“Everything,” she said calmly. “For a time. The forces so long bound up in this form must settle out to a balance once more. The countryside of all the Realm will become more active with wild furies, more turbulent, and more dangerous. Weather patterns will shift and change. Animals will behave oddly. Plants will grow at unnatural rates, or wither for no apparent reason. Furycrafting itself will be unstable, unpredictable.”

Tavi shuddered, imagining the chaos that would grow from such an environment. “Is there no way to prevent it?”

Alera looked at him with something almost like compassion. “None, young Gaius.”

Tavi sank down onto a camp stool and put his elbows on his knees, his head bowed. “Nothing. You’re sure.”

“All things end, young Gaius. One day, you will, too.”

Tavi’s back hurt. Some motion during the fight with the Canim assassins had pulled a muscle. It would be simple to ease the pain in a tub, a mild watercrafting. Even if he didn’t have a tub, the discomfort was minor enough to alleviate with a few moments of intense focus. But at the moment, he wasn’t sure he was capable of that. His back hurt.

“You’re telling me,” he said, “that even if we somehow overcome the vord, it won’t be over. Someday soon, the land itself is going to turn against us. We might overcome this nightmare only to drown in chaos.”

“Yes.”

“That’s… a lot to have in front of me.”

“Life is unfair, uncaring, and painful, young Gaius,” Alera said. “Only a madman struggles against the tide.”

She didn’t make a whisper of sound, but Tavi lifted his eyes to find Alera kneeling, facing him, her face level with his. She reached out and touched his cheek with her frayed fingertips. “I have always found the particular madness of the House of Gaius singularly intriguing. It has fought the tides for more than a thousand years. It has often failed to attain victory. But it has never conceded the struggle.”

“Has it ever faced something like this?” he asked quietly.

“When the first Alerans came here, perhaps,” Alera said, her eyes distant. “My memories of it are very distant. It would be centuries before I knew your people. But they were few. So very few. Eleven thousand lives, perhaps.”

“About the same size as a Legion and its followers,” Tavi said.

She smiled. “And so it was. A Legion from another place, lost, and come here to my lands.” She gestured toward the entrance to the tent. “The Canim, the Marat, the Icemen. All lost travelers.” She shook her head sadly. “The others, too. Those that your people exterminated, over the centuries. So much lost to fear and necessity.”

“When they came here, they had no furycrafting?” Tavi asked.

“Not for years.”

“Then how did they do it?” he asked. “How did they survive?”

“With savagery. Skill. Discipline. They came from a place where they were unrivaled masters of war and death. Their enemies here had never seen anything like them. Your forebears could not return whence they had come. They were trapped here, and only victory gave them survival. So they became victors—no matter the cost.”

She met his eyes calmly. “They did things you would scarcely believe. They committed the most monstrous and heroic deeds. The generations of your people in that time became a single, savage mind, death incarnate—and when they ran short of foes, they practiced their skills upon one another.”