Excerpt of House Name by Michelle West

Prologue

THE RUINS OF THE ANCIENT CITY lay undisturbed in almost unbroken darkness. Sunlight did not trouble its roads, and the moons, with their scant silver light, were likewise invisible; the sky was a thing of curved, uneven rock.

Great stone slabs and the bases of statues lined empty streets; crevices, created by the slow shift of the earth beneath those streets, had widened into a darkness so complete that even demon eyes could not easily penetrate it. But in the ruins, there was a silent, funereal majesty that demanded, and held, the attention. Echoes of voices that had perished centuries ago existed in some of the small statues and maker’s works that still adorned deserted buildings— rotting floors in the dry, dark air notwithstanding.

There were gardens in this city that had been swallowed, at once, by the abiding earth, but they were not living gardens; no one tended them. Nor had they any need; they were creations of stone that suggested the fragile and enduring beauty of memory, not life. That they were modeled on living things signified little; they were not, and had never been, alive. Which is why they endured.

Lord Isladar wandered through the subtle pathways of this garden, slowly examining flowers, delicate trailing ivy, shrubs, and the stone legs of benches; the actual seats had long since rotted away. Everything here had been carved in stone by the hand of the maker- born, but the stone seemed to move and breathe and grow; it was an artful and pleasing illusion. He was alone not because it was safest— although in the Hells of his experience this was often the case— but because he had no desire for the company of his kin; the world had opened, had allowed him entry, and he had accepted it. He had forced from it a shape of his choosing, neither too tall nor too short; it was slender and seemed much like the form that had been his when he had first left childhood behind.

Childhood.

He bent, his fingers brushing dust and webs from the delicate curl of open petals before he rose. He admired what remained of this hidden city, but it was not for the city that he had been summoned from the side of the Lord of the Hells by the ambitious, and surprisingly competent, Sor Na Shannen so many years past.

No, Lord Isladar had been chosen because he was one of the few who understood the men who had made gardens such as these; who had watched and encouraged them, in his fashion, during the ages when the gods had walked the world. It was for his curiosity, his observation, and his ability to predict what the merely mortal would say— or do— when placed in a difficult position.

The kin understood pain. They understood how to break things. Even cities as glorious as this one at its height had not been immune. But mortals, especially those born to the gods in their ethereal Between, were still capable of posing a threat, and if not mortals, then the others, firstborn and hidden.

Mortals.

Isladar smiled. Regardless of the danger or the consequence of the summoning, mortals played their fraught games of demonology. They did not, of course, understand what lay at the base of those games; they merely understood that it was both forbidden and powerful. Could he but choose one avenue to open up the world to the demonic kin, again and again, it would be that one. It was convenient, then, that the men and women charged with guarding against just such uses of magic understood their own kin so poorly.

This time, a mortal mage, sequestered in the relative solitude of a rich man’s manse, had taken forbidden texts and cobbled together just enough knowledge that he might begin the summoning of lesser creatures. He understood the spells and protections but, again, did not understand that what he was opening was a small door through which something might walk. Yes, demons— but as relevant to the Kialli lords as rats might be to mortals— came at his call, and they danced his cautious tune until they were returned to the Hells.

There, they made their way— as all denizens of the Hells must— to the foot of the mountain upon which the Lord of the Hells ruled, in the heat and the sway of the charnel winds, beneath the angry sky. They were expected to make the climb on their own, and they were expected to survive it; not all would, but this was not considered a loss.

In Isladar’s opinion, it was. Because word of a possible mage, a possible entry into the world that was ever on his Lord’s mind, would thus escape detection for many years, and by the time the existence of such a mortal reached his Lord’s ears, the mortal would likely be dead— of the consequences of his own ambition or of age.

If the mage was foolish or of middling will, he would escape detection completely; if the lesser kin escaped that mage’s control in mortal lands, they would seek vengeance and cause inestimable pain— and death— before they were apprehended by other, less foolish mages and sent back to the Hells as dust.

But their vengeance would open no doors, and it was a single such door that was required.

And so it went. Here and there, the promise of a particular mage’s name would be whispered in the throne room upon the peaks, and Isladar would listen and nod. He would take the measure of the kin who made his enraged report— for who among their kind willingly submitted the whole of their will to another and, at that, a lesser, being?— and in so doing, would gain some measure of the summoner. But the powerful were not summoned often, and if they were, they did not return to the Lord in a way that provided useful information.

Instead, they lived in the mortal world, evading both detection and the absolute grip of the Lord’s rule. It was as close to freedom as the Kialli could now come.

Time passed in the Hells, as it passed everywhere: slowly. The screams of the damned, or their whimpers, were sedating and soothing; they brought comfort and peace to the kin. Not so Lord Isladar, although he, like any of the kin, felt the call strongly. What he wanted, what he had wanted from the moment he had first set foot upon the plains of the Hells and understood just what his service had brought him, was more complicated.

To his surprise— and he, like any of the Kialli, abhorred surprise, be-cause it was so often the final emotion in a powerful existence— Sor Na Shannen, a cunning but ultimately insignificant demon, had been summoned by an enterprising and ambitious mage. It was not the first time she had been summoned, and it was unlikely to be the last, for even mages had their base desires, and she had littered her name across the ancient texts and reliquaries with deliberate malice; it was not hard to find. She had not returned, but in her captivity she had found the privacy and the time to call her Lord’s name across the divide. He heard.

He heard, and he informed Isladar of both her captivity and her master: Davash AMarkham, a mage- born mortal in the city over which the godborn now ruled in relative peace. It was not the ideal geographic location; it was too close to the most dangerous of their enemies and far too close to those who might detect such summoning and end it abruptly before larger work could be done.

It was Isladar’s suggestion that she subtly provide the mage enough information to summon one of the Kialli lords in the stead of a less powerful creature. Only the lords— and even then, not all— had the power and knowledge to open gates and to struggle with the names and the will of those they summoned, binding them.

But Sor Na Shannen had, again, proved clever and resourceful, and perhaps it was a gift that she was not a significant power in the Hells, for she was accustomed to both the loss of dignity and the cunning indirection necessary for those who could not contest power in any direct fashion. She had captivated the mage, reducing him, over the course of months, into a willing servant, transferring lust for power to a more malleable lust. What she could not do, she was not willing to summon a greater Lord to do; she now demanded the mage give her the knowledge she lacked, and she learned.

Over the months, molding her power and her understanding of the mortal world in which she increasingly moved freely, she studied, practiced, swallowed her pride— such as it was— and became one of the few of the kin who might summon her kind to the mortal plane.

The Lord of the Hells had bid her summon Lord Isladar. Had he not, had Isladar not witnessed the command himself, he would have destroyed Sor Na Shannen for her arrogance and her hubris the moment he reasserted his existence in the lands of the living. As it was, it was close, far closer than he cared to admit— for she had attempted to control him, to subvert his ancient and unfaltering will to her own. She had, of course, failed. He played at subservience, thinking it was useful; he had played at the contest, allowing her some sense of her own worth. But it was never in doubt; only she could assume as much, if vanity dictated such an assumption. It did, of course, and he allowed it. After Isladar, she had summoned— again at the behest of the Lord— Karathis. She did not even attempt to control him; the only compulsion Karathis felt at all was the compulsion to travel to the point at which she stood, and even prepared for it, he was enraged. But he was also well apprised of the Lord’s growing regard for the resourcefulness and the knowledge of this singular lesser kin; he held his hand.

Holding it, he had watched Isladar. Isladar had said nothing, indicated nothing; he observed, no more, no less.

I will kill her for her presumption, Karathis had whispered.

Yes. But not now. Not yet. She is needed. Come, brother, let us open the ways; we will disinter the oldest of our cities, and we will find what we need there. Do you not wish to walk its streets? Do you not wish to see what remains of its glory? Karathis had not replied.

Nor had he need; the only one of the Kialli who might openly express such a foreign desire to see the site of their greatest failure was, indeed, Lord Isladar.

But there was beauty in failure. It was an understated, attenuated beauty; it could be seen only if all pride could be cast aside. Isladar alone of his kin had both the memory of the city in its living glory and the ability to cast aside the rage and the fury caused by its fall, so it was Isladar who walked these streets, guided by memory, even when that memory failed to unearth the map of what now remained. It was Isladar who could see the promise of the city as it had once been; it was Isladar who could remember the beauty of its heights, could hear the echoes of the whisper of the wild wind as it drove them to those heights at their command; Isladar who could see the ghosts of the great statuary erected in reverence and fear of Allasakar.

It was Isladar who could see the beauty not in defeat but in the strange dignity of defeat, in the effort to grab and hold what little remained. There, he thought, fell Siandoria, who could not— would not— bow to the will of the conquering gods. He could mark the spot, although it now lay shadowed by fallen rock and natural darkness.

Siandoria, bloodied but calm, his face white, his hands mailed, his eyes a flashing silver gray. His armor had been rent as if it were cloth, and the wild wind no longer heard his voice, but these were simple, calculable losses from which he might recover in time. His shield had been riven and his sword, broken, their light forever guttered. Yet without them, he fought.

Siandoria understood that he faced death; he had no hope of survival and needed— at that moment— none. As if memory were stone, Siandoria’s expression was now chiseled, in just the same way the garden had been, into the hollows of Isladar’s mind. He could look and see its exact likeness, and feel life in it, although it spoke only of, always of, death. Not for Siandoria surrender; not for Siandoria the choice to follow or abandon Allasakar in his defeat.

Siandoria, we will not see your like again. There was pain in that. But in pain, there was also beauty; no architect of the Hells could deny that. He bowed his head a moment before he continued to traverse these empty streets.

They had worked to open the ways, and the work was long and arduous. It was not work that Sor Na Shannen could sustain for long; indeed, it was work that, in its entirety, depended upon the powers of Lord Isladar and Lord Karathis— and it was not to Karathis’ liking to be sent to dig in the dirt like the least of human slaves. Karathis was quick to show displeasure, and Isladar intervened in his subtle fashion to ensure the survival of Sor Na Shannen.

But if Karathis had the arrogance and the power of a Duke of the Hells, he also had wisdom and cunning; he understood that she was necessary. It chafed. But any form of dependence on others always did.

The first such labor undertaken by Karathis and Isladar had nearly destroyed the Cordufar manse, for Lord Karathis had attempted to leash the Old Earth in their service. It was a mistake he would make only once, for that was the nature of mistakes: If one survived, one learned. Many did not survive, but that, as well, was the nature of the Hells.

Isladar could still hear the echoes of the Old Earth’s voice; it was angry. Slow to wake, it was also slow to sleep, and the rumble of its anger, its sense of betrayal and loss— had they not, in the end, chosen to disavow it, to leave forever the lands under which the Earth held dominion, in its fashion?— lingered for weeks.

So the excavations under Cordufar were undertaken the arduous, slow way, and Karathis did not suggest, then or ever, that the Old Earth be invoked. Do you feel the loss, brother? Isladar thought, and had thought. If he did, he did not expose it.

Those excavations were the most complete; they were the most heavily guarded. The first door opened, foot by onerous foot, into the most ancient of cities.

Even Sor Na Shannen, not notable for her tact or her self- control, fell silent when they had first set foot not into dank tunnel or new earth but into the streets of the city itself. Only the lesser buildings now remained, and of those, only the ones that had relied less heavily on wooden beams and supports. Facades, however, stood in the black day of the city. Glimmers of ancient magic, contained by stone shapes, statues, gargoyles, could be felt or detected, but it was not for these that they had come.

No.

They had come for one thing and one thing alone, and although it took weeks, they finally found it: the coliseum. “Here,” Isladar told them softly. “We will build here.”

The stone, of course, had proved problematic. To build the arch, to enchant the stone, to inscribe it in the necessary fashion, had been both difficult and costly. In this impoverished, mortal world, there were no great quarries; the mortal quarries were simple things of dead stone, and it was not dead stone that they required. Even so, Lord Isladar had traveled to several quarries to the east of Averalaan; he had inspected both the visible rock and the rock that had not yet been broken, seeking some hint of the ancient in their sleeping forms.

It was not to be found, not there.

Sor Na Shannen was ill pleased. Karathis might have been as ill pleased, but her foul humor often amused him. What, then, shall we do, brother? he asked.

I will retreat, Isladar replied gravely, to the Deepings, if they even remain. If not, we will work with what we can obtain.

It is too much of a risk.

It is a risk, he agreed. But if we have no choice, we will take it. The arch will either hold, or it will not, and it is my suspicion that we will know before the long summoning begins. If you desire, begin your construction and your invocation now; I will search while you . . . experiment.

That had been to Sor Na Shannen’s liking. Although she, like the rest of the kin, did not age, she was nonetheless impatient. Such impatience had often been their downfall; Isladar had no intention of allowing it to run unchecked here.