Cast in Flame (53 page)

Fire—purple flame—engulfed them both.

It didn’t burn. It didn’t—to Kaylin—
feel
hot. She looked beyond Annarion to the ground, where the ancestor stood; mist surrounded his feet in swirls that reminded her more of sand than liquid. His hands were gloved in flame as the mist thickened. Purple flame. She couldn’t see his eyes, although he was looking up, at Annarion.

Annarion, dangling over the familiar’s side, cursed and attempted to turn; Kaylin tightened her grip. She was aware that the familiar was somehow helping, because her arms were not strong enough to hold Annarion above the ground for long. Or maybe it was just the outlands, and the laws of gravity didn’t apply.

The familiar didn’t insert his usual opinion. The mist continued to thicken around the ancestor’s feet. It also rose. The fire that surrounded the ancestor’s hands left them, flying upward, toward where Annarion dangled. It enveloped him again. It failed to burn. It failed to find any purchase at all, and if flames weren’t normally purple or magical, these still appeared to need some kind of fuel.

Annarion wasn’t a Hawk; he didn’t curse. “What are you doing?” he demanded.

“Breaking my arms, by feel,” she replied.

“The fire—”

“That’s probably the familiar.” Her arms were still glowing with harsh blue light; her clothing dampened the brilliance—but not by much. “You can thank him later.” The mist continued to rise until it obscured the ancestor completely. “I don’t think he can follow us.”

“He’s not going to try to
follow,
” Annarion said. “He’s going to retreat. He’ll try to escape.”

Kaylin, watching the mist thicken, agreed. “I think you damaged him, here. I’m not sure he can escape the force he’s facing on the other side of the divide as easily.” She hoped not. “Is he still on the other side?”

“Yes. The outlands are more...flexible.” He grimaced as the pillar of mist collapsed, dispersing to ground fog. No sign of the ancestor remained. Annarion levered himself up and onto the back of the Dragon, sitting rather than dangling by her arms.

* * *

Ynpharion.

Lord Kaylin.
She felt his tension—and also, fractured leg. He was exhausted, in pain, worried—but underlying all that was a subdued, strange sense of triumph. His usual suspicion and disgust at the hint of her presence was entirely absent. It felt...odd.

What is the ancestor doing where you are? Is he still there?

He is.
There was a long pause.
The Dragons are landing.

The Emperor?

Yes. The Emperor and the members of the court who remained in the air. Do you wish to see what unfolds?

She did. She knew it was hard on him, and wondered why she approached Ynpharion—the only person whose name she knew who despised her. Severn was there. But she had never been comfortable reaching out to Severn this way. No; she had never reached out to him like this. This was like...invasion.

Ynpharion’s general sense of disgust returned. Kaylin was guarding her thoughts about as poorly as she always did when frazzled and stressed.
I do not understand mortals,
he finally said.

Would you take the name of someone you—you cared for?

In a tone that was very like Teela’s on a bad day, he said,
Watch, Lord Kaylin.

* * *

The indigo Dragon was the first to land.

He looked like a gleaming shard of night; his wings did not settle, but spread. To either side, Barrani fanned out; they faced the ancestor, but were extremely aware of the crimson-eyed Dragon in their midst. He lifted head, elongated neck and looked down to the center of the basin, where the ancestor stood his ground, alone in a field of glinting, twisting strands.

The Emperor roared. Kaylin didn’t understand any of the actual words—but the sound crushed syllables, compressing them into an expression of rage so intense fire would have been superfluous. She knew why. Something had attacked his hoard.

Something would pay.

He leaped; Sanabalis and Tiamaris found room to land in the space he vacated. Neither of the two shifted into their human forms.

Above the basin, Aerians deserted the sky; one or two remained. They would carry the crystals that would add the evening’s events to Records; even if they fell, the crystals would retain what they saw.

The Emperor landed as the ancestor leaped. The ancestor didn’t sprout wings—but he didn’t apparently need them. Depriving him of the power of true words had not deprived him of power. His fire, here, was white. White and blue.

The Emperor’s was red.

White and red met in a horizontal pillar; the ground, frozen briefly by the ancestor’s magic, once again began to melt. The heat, on the other hand, didn’t bother the Dragon. It bothered Kaylin; she was so tightly enmeshed in Ynpharion’s view, she could feel it. She would have taken an involuntary step back, but she wasn’t in her own body, and Ynpharion’s leg was in bad shape.

Tiamaris leaped into the air above the basin; his breath fanned the ground upon which their enemy had chosen to make his stand. The fire burned nothing that wasn’t already molten.

The ancestor didn’t turn; he shifted only his left arm. He didn’t even look over his shoulder to see where he was aiming. But his fire—if it was fire—hit Tiamaris’s left wing, just as it had hit Bellusdeo’s. Tiamaris was silent as he crested awkwardly toward the ground. Sanabalis chose to leap, rather than fly; the reasons for that were obvious. He added breath in an orange-white cone, and this caused the ancestor to stagger for the first time.

Diarmat and Emmerian weren’t immediately visible.

What is the Arkon doing?
Kaylin demanded. She was, in the safety of the outlands insubstantiality, holding her breath, which was about as useful as it sounded.

Bleeding,
was Ynpharion’s calm and unconcerned reply.

What? Why?
But she knew. The chains were still spinning. They inhibited the ancestor’s power, somehow, and the cost of that inhibition was still being paid.

Arrows flew. Kaylin couldn’t tell whether or not they’d been fired by Swords or Barrani. It didn’t matter. They disintegrated feet away from their target; ash remained in a growing cloud. The advantage of having a Dragon for an opponent was its size. At a distance there was just that much more of a target.

The Arkon’s counter enchantment will break,
Ynpharion said.
The speed at which the ancestor casts will be matched, once again, by his power.

Sanabalis moved closer, bridging the distance between landing and enemy; his fire continued to burn, and it struck the white fire shields of his enemy as if it were a battering ram. But the white fire wasn’t a gate; it wasn’t a door. It was a wall. Kaylin looked for cracks; she found none.

The street beyond the basin’s lip exploded in small columns of flame to either side. They trailed down the street’s center as far as the eye could see.

Kaylin lost sight of the combat in the center of the conflagration because Ynpharion threw himself out of their range. Ynpharion’s hair wasn’t as lucky; it burned; white flames seemed to cling to whatever they touched. Like anything that clung, it could be removed—but not without effort. Not without power.

She turned to see the high ridges of indigo wings. She saw similar ridges of gray—or silver; given white fire, they were one and the same. She saw the peak of tail slam ground, again and again, as if to break something. Whatever it was, she couldn’t see it.

But she could see the minute gold joined the battle. She knew it wasn’t the Arkon, either; it was—of
course
it was—Bellusdeo. She was of a size with the Emperor, but her eyes were the darker red. She didn’t draw breath; she didn’t roar. She didn’t attempt to land in a triangular point to close off any obvious avenue of escape; instead, she rose.

Kaylin, who’d healed her damaged wings once this evening, would have cursed in perfect Leontine had she been the owner of Ynpharion’s throat.

What is she
doing?
Tell her to stop! Tell her to stop right now! If Tiamaris couldn’t remain in the air, she won’t—

Do you honestly think I have any control over a Dragon Empress-in-waiting?
Ynpharion’s disbelief colored the force of his words.

Of course not. And if she did step fully into Ynpharion’s body—if she did take the control he had offered—Bellusdeo was just as likely to breathe on her as she was to listen. The golden Dragon—the erstwhile roommate—rose to dizzying height—at least to Kaylin. The Dragons had remained high above the ground during the early leg of the fight, because at a distance the ancestor’s magic was too attenuated to instantly kill.

But she knew Bellusdeo. That wasn’t what was happening here.

* * *

Take us to Bellusdeo,
she told the familiar.
Take us there
now.

Silence.

You can stop him—

This time the silence was Kaylin’s. She hated everything about the marks and the familiar and the outlands and the ancestors for one long, solid breath. It burned the back of her throat. She returned to Ynpharion.

* * *

Ynpharion might have been the bearer of a memory crystal. He had gained his footing—bracing his leg with magic and will. He stood to one side of the Barrani warband, which now separated like a curtain. Through the gap walked the Lord of the High Court. He wore armor that looked like it would have been at home on a Dragon in human form. Kaylin prayed desperately that that’s not where it had come from.

Ynpharion’s sudden silence was not the right answer to that prayer.

The High Lord carried no obvious weapon. No greatsword. No staff. He wore a circlet very like Evarrim’s, but the gem in its center was not a ruby. Nor was it diamond or emerald or sapphire. At this distance, Kaylin couldn’t identify it; she only knew that it was huge.

Where he walked, flames guttered. Where he looked, rock solidified. His eyes, from this distance, were almost...green. Kaylin was shocked at the color.

Do not be,
Ynpharion said, grim now.
What he does, he cannot do in rage; it will consume him. There are very, very few of our kin who can wield the power he has chosen to wield—and of those who might, only one—in my opinion—who could do so safely. He must maintain perfect awareness—and perfect control.

But green? Green is the happy color!

Do not be facile.

The High Lord walked; the ranks of the Barrani closed at his back. Kaylin couldn’t see the Consort’s distinctive white armor anywhere.

“Arkon,” the High Lord said, the spoken words delivered as if they were incantation. “We are in your debt.”

It was a signal. The fire that burned in patches between melted rock suddenly expanded. The fire didn’t burn the Emperor or Sanabalis. But it didn’t
touch
the High Lord as he made his way toward the ancestor.

The ancestor glanced—for the first time—away from the Emperor. What he saw in the High Lord caused his eyes to widen. To widen and then narrow into dark, lash-framed edges. A silence fell upon them all, broken only by the sound of fire. Elemental fire had a voice that Dragon fire didn’t; Dragon fire sounded a lot like miles of breaking earth. It was hard to even see the ancestor, the heat caused so much distortion.

Is
nothing
going to drop this guy?

As if she could hear the thought, the hovering golden Dragon reversed the direction of her skyward climb, folded her wings, and dived.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

She dropped the way a bird might have; her body straight, her legs drawn in close. Weight increased the speed of her descent. She came in on a very steep angle, and once she’d set her course, she didn’t deviate.

Even Ynpharion was impressed.
We once spent our lives at war with them. She is the essence of the historical flights.

She seemed to fall forever; it was barely a few seconds. She disappeared beneath the eddies of ash and the height of flames.

The earth shuddered at the impact. For one long breath, silence reigned.

And then the flames went out.

* * *

It is over, Lord Kaylin,
Ynpharion said.

Where is Bellusdeo?

She is alive. She is with the Emperor. Perhaps you can hear them.
The last was said with just a touch of humor.
He does not appear to be pleased with her intervention.

Thank you,
she said. She let him go. Or let herself return. She had been, in the past ten minutes, more aware of his body than her own.

Exhaling, she leaned back into Annarion. This was not, sadly, deliberate. He put his arms out to either side of her.

“I’m not going to fall,” she told him, as the familiar continued his flight. Her voice came out in a whisper barely louder than the familiar’s wings.

“No, you’re not. Teela would kill me.”

“It wouldn’t be your fault.”

“How long did you say you’ve known Teela?”

She laughed. It hurt. The laughter faded as she gazed into gray and seamless horizon. “Do you know why your brother was made outcaste?”

“No. Because you are not Barrani, I will take no offense at the question.”

“Is it more offensive to ask you than to ask anyone else?”

“He is blood of my blood. Your question implies that my knowledge implicates me in his crime—whatever the alleged crime might be. In the hands of my people, the question would be highly political; it is the type of question that Evarrim might ask. He would, of course, drip with sympathy while speaking. Regardless, I do not know.”

“The Consort doesn’t know either. Or she lied to me.” Kaylin was exhausted enough that the thought didn’t offend her. “But the Consort seems to like your brother.”

“Yes. The Consort’s position, however, is unique. She can afford to like—and forgive—whomever she pleases. Social stigma cannot be wielded as a weapon against the Consort; she cannot be toppled. She can be killed, but that serves none of my kin.”