Cast in Flame (44 page)

And then she gave up that hope for the song that she now sang. It had words, but she knew that she would never understand them the way she understood any other language she’d been forced to learn. And it didn’t matter. She understood that this song was part plea, part pain, and part desire—not as Bertolle’s song had been; it was less earthy but, for Kaylin, more felt. She spoke
to
Helen; she sang
to
Helen. Because in some ways, Helen
had
been sleeping.

But Helen had chosen sleep.

Helen had destroyed parts of her physical self so that she could continue to sleep: so that she could live with Hasielle, and all the mortal tenants who had followed. Helen had remained sleeping—in the way the Hallionne did—while she waited for Kaylin to find her.

Kaylin needed a place, but she
wanted
a home. She had wanted a home since her mother’s death. She had found only one, and it was gone. Evanton had sent her to Helen. Helen had opened the door.

And she would be damned if some ancient, ancestral, bloody Immortal closed it in her face—because Helen didn’t want her to leave, and at the moment, Helen’s was the only voice that counted. Helen wanted from Kaylin what Kaylin wanted to give; Kaylin wanted what Helen offered.

The marks on Kaylin’s arms began to brighten. The marks on the ground didn’t. Kaylin sang. She caught syllables; she held notes. Into the extended ones, she let loose with the force of all the things she didn’t have words for, because she
didn’t
have words.

The single word that she had chosen to place at the heart of the rest grew warm against Kaylin’s palms. She held it as if it were Helen. Something this size and this shape she could carry—and had. She could protect it, if it was necessary.

But she couldn’t give Helen back what Helen herself had destroyed. She could probably empty her skin of marks, and they wouldn’t cover enough ground. Helen had chosen, long, long before Kaylin’s birth; what she was
now
had come from those choices, good or bad. Kaylin couldn’t judge her—how did one even start to judge a building?—and didn’t try.

This word was
not
the word the Consort sang. It was almost that word. It was as dense and finely written. But this word was of Kaylin, and this word was for Helen. Kaylin had songs of her own, half-remembered. Song made her emotional; it always had; you could say things in song that no one in their right mind would ever put into words—not unless they were four years old.

The word, however, was glowing faintly. It wasn’t gold—it was a pale gray, which was one of the colors the marks on Kaylin’s skin often took.

Give the Lady my thanks,
Kaylin told Ynpharion.
I think—I think I can handle it from here on.

Handle it quickly,
was his curt reply. He withdrew, or allowed Kaylin to withdraw. He really didn’t enjoy being in contact with her. She didn’t blame him. Then again, she didn’t, as he pointed out, have time.

* * *

The songs she finished with were not songs she would have sung had anyone but a child been present. No one else was here. This room—this vast cavern—was Helen’s, and if Helen slept here, if she slept as buildings slept—this was the equivalent of the small rooms that foundlings occupied in Marrin’s halls.

Kaylin sang. She sang softly, because that was how these songs were always sung. It didn’t matter if the parent—or guardian, in Marrin’s case—was terrified and facing imminent death; the only fears that leaked into these songs were the quiet, unspoken fears
for
the child. Fear of what the future held. Kaylin could still remember—dimly—the feel of her mother’s arms and the sound of her voice.

When she offered these songs in the Foundling Hall, she offered comfort, because it’s what she’d taken—and still took—from the memories. She offered Helen, at the end of the Consort’s song, this song of her own; the thunder and strength of Kaylin’s attempt at the Barrani voice dwindling—but not dying—into the end of the day. Into Elantran words and a vocal range that anyone who could speak could manage.

But that was a lie: it wasn’t a song of her own. It was a song her mother had sung. And a song that her mother’s mother had sung to her, when she had—impossible though it had been to believe at the time—been a child herself. There was history, in this song. It wasn’t ancient; it didn’t come from a time when gods—if that’s what they were—walked the world. It wasn’t a song to waken sentient buildings to prepare them for war. It was a quiet song. A child’s song.

But she remembered that the Hallionne had sung to the Consort—and that song, in the end, had been very like the one she sang now.

She even lifted the rune that she had placed as she sang, forgetting—for just one minute—that it was
not
an infant, not an orphan, not a child abandoned on the steps of the Foundling Hall.

The gray light began to pale as it grew brighter. It passed from ash-gray to brilliant white, and from that almost blinding white to blue—blue edged in the gold that the marks on the floor had originally shed.

The cavern remained dark; the light from this single word illuminated only Kaylin and the stone directly beneath her. The ground shook.

Any time you want to do
something,
Kaylin!
Mandoran shouted. He wasn’t, of course, in this room. She didn’t hear his voice as she heard Ynpharion’s, or any of the voices that she knew because of a true name; she heard it as if he were standing in the vicinity of her shoulder. And shouting. In her ear.

She resisted the urge to shout back; she was certain
her
voice wouldn’t reach beyond the cavern.

Squawk.

“All right, all right, I’m coming.”

One word. One word at the heart of a building that had once been a Tower. Helen had made choices that Tara had not. She had learned to live; she had learned to become home to people very like Kaylin in what they were searching for. Maybe she couldn’t go back. Given the damage she’d done to the runes on the outer periphery of this giant circle, there were things she could no longer do. Kaylin wasn’t certain what those things had been.

But it didn’t matter. This was Helen as she was. And
this
Helen, unlike the original one, had offered Kaylin something she desperately wanted.

She understood Tiamaris, she thought, although she knew her understanding was a tiny, tiny echo of his—a whisper in comparison to Dragon roar. She wanted a home that was
hers.
And she wanted to be able to protect her home. She wasn’t doing this out of a misplaced sense of responsibility—or worse, guilt. If she had to make a final stand—for any reason—this is where she wanted to do it.

Home had once been her mother. If her mother moved, home moved with her; she was always at its heart. And maybe Kaylin had been looking for a mother, in some ways, all these years. She was twenty. She was almost twenty-one. She was old enough to have children of her own.

Ynpharion was both astonished and disgusted at the very idea. In his opinion—his elderly, condescending opinion—Kaylin was a
child.
Children did raise children.

She knew she could push him out; she could wall herself off. She was too surprised at the intrusion of his thoughts to immediately lash out. He was listening. He was better at listening than Kaylin was.

You do not guard yourself against displays of weakness.

You’re wrong,
Kaylin told him. She drew the single word away from the cradle she’d made of her arms.
I do. But I don’t consider this weakness.

She set the rune down, afraid that its new light would once again gutter. It didn’t.

Kaylin—idiot!—get out of there!
Mandoran shouted. The ground shook; she wasn’t certain, given the timing, that it wasn’t because of the force of his voice—he could have been a bloody
Dragon,
he was so damned loud.

And there was really only one thing to do when a Dragon was screaming orders in your ear: obey. Her legs were already in motion before thought could catch up; she was racing—in the dark—toward the nearest wall. Which she couldn’t see.

The farther away she got from the center of the room, the more the ground trembled. She was afraid, for a moment, that large chunks of ceiling that she couldn’t see would crush her. The floors had curved slightly in toward the center—but they’d been smooth; there had been nothing to trip on, and nothing that required coordinated jumping to clear. She hoped. She hadn’t really bothered to take a good look at any part of the cavern that hadn’t once contained engraved words.

She reached wall, walking the last few yards. When her palm was against rock, she turned toward the one source of light in the cavern; the gentle glow of her own marks had faded while she’d sung.

Inhaling and exhaling for three breaths, she eased her shoulders down her back. “Helen!” she shouted, her voice—for the moment—as loud as Mandoran’s beneath the curved ceiling of the cavern. “Helen.” Her voice softened. “It’s time to wake up, now. We’re waiting. We need you.”

* * *

Light.

* * *

White erupted in a sphere that expanded outward to engulf the room, obliterating the cavern’s natural darkness. What light touched, it transformed. Words that Kaylin no longer recognized caught fire and retained it as the floor itself was remade, yard by yard.

Kaylin forgave Mandoran for the damage he’d done to her ears, as she flattened her back against the wall. Words radiated golden light, but a trace of blue at their cores implied clear sky. Boundless, clear sky.

She was holding her breath, and realized it only when she needed to exhale—or pass out. Beautiful, yes. But deadly.

Everything unnecessary was gone: the scorched, empty spaces, the melted, deformed stone, and the outer edges of the pattern that had been composed entirely of one or the other. What was left was golden, shining stone. It looked molten, but she felt no heat.

Kaylin could see no gaps in the placement of the words at Helen’s heart.

She could no longer see the words she had chosen to place in the gaps that had existed, and she knew she could search for hours without locating even one of them. All but the one at the heart.

That one was shining a clear, strange blue, ringed, by the gold shed by all the rest of the words. The gold continued to brighten; the stone floor began to rise, as if to lift that one blue rune toward the heights of the cavern.

Kaylin pressed herself farther into the wall as the golden light changed the composition of the floor. No, she thought; the ceiling itself was changing, as well. Everything was.

Kaylin understood that change was part of life. Good change, bad change—it was just life. Until the change was bad enough that there was no life left. She knew everything that now occurred was necessary for Helen.

But if she couldn’t find a way out, she’d change with it. And die. Gold inched toward her feet as she watched, while pressing herself farther into the wall. Next time, she was keeping small and squawky with her. She could now see the entirety of the room. There was no door anywhere, and no convenient arches that at least hinted at exit. In a few minutes, it wouldn’t matter; if a door did open, she wouldn’t have time to reach it; there’d be no path.

“Helen?”

No answer. She wasn’t even certain that Helen could hear her, because she wasn’t certain that the Helen who was looking for someone to make a home for was the Helen that these words now described. Everything had changed.

She was very surprised when the wall at her back fell over. She went with it, toppling out of the boundary encircled by stone and filled by words.

“What,” Mandoran demanded, as she spilled across the floor, “did you think you were doing? No bloody wonder Teela always worries about you!”

She blinked. The room she was in was much darker than the one she’d just involuntarily left. Not that she was complaining about the leaving. She sat up; there were splinters and shards of rock clinging to her legs and tunic.

“Where’s the small dragon?” she asked.

“He went off upstairs. I think.” Mandoran offered a hand up, and she took it. His hands were winter cold.

“Mandoran—you’re bleeding.”

He shrugged. “Nothing’s broken.”

“You are also lying.”

“Oh, that’s right—you’re a healer. I almost forgot. Teela says to tell you it’ll serve you right if you try to heal me.”

“I don’t try to heal Barrani who aren’t dying. Well, or aren’t being transformed by chaos into something that will kill me. It just pisses them off.”

Mandoran’s smile was a shadow of its usual, cheeky self. “What were you
thinking?
”

“I was thinking I could use some of the marks grafted onto my skin to heal Helen.”

He snorted. “And water is wet. I’m not talking about
that.
Why were you standing in the center of the maelstrom? Are you an idiot?”

“I didn’t expect that to happen.” In an effort to change the subject—her stupidity never being one of her favorites—she said, “What happened to the ancestor?”

“You’ll have to ask Helen. Upstairs,” he added. He hadn’t let go of her hand.

“I can stand. I can walk—or run—better without the anchor.”

“He’s not doing it for your sake, dear,” Helen said. Her voice was still disembodied. But it sounded both stronger and younger, to Kaylin’s ear. “He’s doing it for his own. I tried to explain what Mandoran and his friend are.”

“The painting analogy.”

“Yes. Mandoran is now at the entrance to the long hall—he’s gone past the front rooms. He needs to find his way back.”

“But I’m still looking at the outside of a building I can never enter.”

“Yes.”

“And he’s standing beside me.”

“Yes. That’s the trouble with analogies; they only convey the general sense of the truth. The specifics—I’m sorry—are beyond you. And he knows this. Your Teela is terribly angry—at Mandoran, and at herself—and it will make things very, very difficult for her.”

“I got it.” Kaylin shifted her grip on his ice-cold hand, entwining their fingers. “I won’t let him go until he’s back.” Even, she thought, if she wouldn’t be able to tell the difference. “Did you get rid of tall and ugly?”