Cast In Secret (34 page)

The portal didn’t open. It thinned. The air between the fake bars began to shimmer, and the bars themselves seemed to slowly dissolve into that light. Although Kaylin disliked magic, she found this interesting; she had never actually seen the portal open or close, being on the inside of its magic.

The fieflord was dressed in black and silver; he wore a sword, and hints of armor reflected light as fabric parted when he moved. His hair was pulled back, exposing the elegant lines of his face.

As usual, that face gave nothing away. “Kaylin,” he said gravely. He did not offer her a bow, as Andellen had done – but Barrani hierarchy would have forbid it, anyway. “There seems to be some difficulty?”

She shrugged. “If you call my inability to actually enter the Castle a difficulty, then yes, there is.”

“Show me.” He stepped lightly to the side, and waited.

Kaylin, not grudging the obedience if it would satisfy her curiosity, walked into the portcullis. And bounced back.

“I… see.”

“Good. Do you mind explaining it?”

“Yes.”

So much for obedience. “I don’t suppose there’s another way in?”

His smile, more felt than seen, told her she wouldn’t like the answer.

He led her around the Castle, leaving Andellen and the nameless guard behind with a few curt words. When they were out of earshot – when they were out of shouting range – he paused. “What exactly have you been doing in the past few days?”

“Not dying,” she replied. “You?”

He surprised her; he chuckled. “The same.” He reached out and touched her cheek, pressing his palm lightly against the mark he had put there when they had first met. She felt a sharp, sharp sting and took a step back. His hands were warm.

“You have twice passed beyond me,” he said softly, lowering his arm. “Only places of power are that well guarded. You were not at Court,” he added. He began to walk, and she fell in step just behind him.

“No.” It wasn’t a question, but she answered it anyway. “Not the Barrani Court, at any rate.”

“The Imperial Court?”

“Only the library.”

“Someone took you to see the Arkon?” His eyes widened almost imperceptibly. It was the Leontine equivalent of a roar of outrage, and it made her laugh. Well, it made her want to laugh. Which, given the events of the day, was welcome.

“I didn’t attract the attention of the Arkon,” she told him. “Lord Sanabalis and Lord Tiamaris were having a heated discussion, and the Arkon apparently doesn’t like noise in the library.”

“I… see. This would not have anything to do with the Dragon’s cry?”

“Which cry?”

“Learn to dissemble, Kaylin,” he replied with a hint of disapproval.

She had the grace to redden. “Yes,” she offered, by way of an apology. “I set him free. He was dead,” she added.

One brow rose. “Dead?”

She nodded.

“But not free to fly.”

“No. If that’s what dead Dragons do.”

“You did not see him?”

She hesitated for a moment, and when she chose to speak her voice was hushed. “Yes. I saw.”

“And seeing, can you doubt?”

“Not him,” she said at last. “But I don’t know if the others are like him. I don’t really understand Dragons.”

“I often doubt that you understand mortals. It is no wonder that Dragons are beyond you. But this… dead Dragon – what did you do to free him?”

Before she could think, she said, “I told him the end of his story.”

Nightshade stopped walking.

Kaylin managed to stop in time to avoid running into his back. She also stepped back, waiting, her hand on her dagger.

He turned. “You told him the end of his story.” The words, coming from Nightshade, had a weight and a meaning that Kaylin had failed to give them.

She nodded.

“And how did you know that this… telling… would free him?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t think about it,” she added. “I just did it.”

“Very well. How did you
know
the end of his story?”

She shook her head. “I wanted to help him,” she said. “I – I wanted to say
something
. He’d been waiting so long. I just – I just started talking.”

“Given the amount of thought you put into your words,” was the cool reply, “it’s not a small wonder that you survived the attempt.”

“I wasn’t in danger. He was
dead
.”

“The dead are a danger. They have always been a danger.” He lifted a hand, palm out. “And where the restless dead are concerned, something binds them to the living. He was a Dragon,” he added. “What was his hoard?”

She lifted a hand to her throat. To the empty space around her neck where a dead man had, for a moment, hung a chain. “Duty,” she told him.

“And you accepted the responsibility that he failed.” It wasn’t a question.

“He didn’t fail it.”

“He failed.” Nightshade’s frown was thin. “And you hope to succeed.”

“I didn’t,” she said. “I – ”

“You must learn to weigh the consequences of your power, Kaylin. But I understand now why you could not pass through the portal. What you carry – whether you see it or not – was too heavy a burden for a Dragon whose will was strong. Ignorance,” he added, “does not change fact. It is dusk now. If you do not wish to spend an evening fighting Ferals, you must either leave or chance the back ways.

“Why
did
you come?”

“To ask you about Donalan Idis.”

Nightshade nodded grimly. “The back ways,” he told her softly. “In truth, I am surprised that it took you this long to return to the Arcanist.”

“You could come to my home.”

His brows actually rose. “Not, I think, while the Wolf prowls,” he said, after a very long pause. “Not while you live in mortal certainty that a home is just a place you
call
your own.”

“And pay for.”

“You don’t yet understand what that means,” was his soft reply. But it was not cold. “Come then, Kaylin. When Lord Tiamaris first visited this Castle, he did not enter through the portcullis. Dare what he dared.”

“What will I face?”

“In truth, I do not know. This Castle is as old as the oldest building in the fiefs, and like the others, it was not built by mortals. I was tested, when I first chose this as my abode. Tiamaris was tested,” he added, “although he arrived with no desire to rule.” He paused and then added, “The Castle, as you’ve seen from the inside, is not quite… fixed in space. The portcullis has never functioned as a portcullis to my knowledge. There is evidence to suggest that previous owners chose to decorate the grounds as they saw fit – and this, the Castle allowed. But to change the Castle itself is neither lightly done or completely possible.”

“So it’s magic.”

He frowned. “You have a way of robbing words of their splendor,” he told her.

“If I had a choice – ”
I’d rob the Castle of splendor, as well. Who wants a home where the rooms change and the front door is an invitation to nausea?
But she thought better of her choice of words because there was something about the Castle that suggested intelligence – and most intelligent beings could be rather easily offended by practical suggestions, in Kaylin’s experience.

“In general, you don’t,” was the quiet reply. Lord Nightshade had navigated one forbidding face of the Castle as he spoke. Kaylin reached out every so often to touch the seams between huge slabs of worn stone, as if seeking the reassurance of weakness. She couldn’t actually imagine that there
was
another way in – but perhaps the designers of the Castle had left another way
out
.

When Nightshade stopped, he stopped a fair distance from the walls, by the side of a well. It was old and disused; there was a pump arm that was more rust than metal, and if there had ever been a bucket on the chain that hung slack – and rusted over – it had long since decayed.

She expected him to keep moving.

He clearly expected her to stop. She did, because he was leading, and following from the front had never worked all that well for her.

But when he didn’t speak or start walking again, she wilted. “This?” she asked, pointing at the well.

“This.”

She looked down. It was very, very dark. Dusk didn’t lessen the shadows, but Kaylin had a suspicion that full noon wouldn’t make much of a dent in them, either. “I don’t suppose you brought a lamp?”

“No.”

Neither had she. She leaned over, balancing her weight on stone that looked as if it should crumble. It didn’t. Along the sides of the well were rungs that had seen better days – probably the same days the pump had. She lost sight of them to darkness. “I was going to ask you if I could use the back way instead of the front one,” she told Nightshade as she swung her feet over the well’s lip.

“You may not have the same desire once you’ve entered the back way.”

“I don’t have the desire now, and I haven’t even started.” She pivoted and placed her feet on the closest rung, slowly surrendering to gravity. The rung held. She grimaced, and stepped down, and down again, until the rungs carried all of her weight. The rust made the bars rough and patchy, as if some metalworker had thought to mimic tree bark. Hanging on the rungs, she looked up at the large circle stone made. Beyond it, Nightshade was watching. “You’re going to follow me?

In response he lifted a hand almost carelessly, upending his palm just above her. Fire flared almost white. It began to descend slowly, until it was just below Kaylin’s feet. Light, she thought. She felt absurdly grateful.

“In a manner of speaking. The Castle cannot keep me out,” he added. “Nor would it seek to try. And where you go, I am not entirely certain I can follow.”

Gratitude was so capricious. “This is like the Tower in the High Halls, isn’t it?”

“Very good, Kaylin. Possibly the most intelligent question you’ve asked about the Castle. It is like and unlike the Tower in the High Halls. Had you not passed the test of those Halls, I would not now allow you to take the risk you are taking.

“I am not even certain that you
could
enter, were that the case. But you have surprised my former kinsmen. Surprise me now.”

“And if I don’t?”

He didn’t answer.

This is stupid,
she thought, stepping down again.
This is completely stupid. Why in the hells am I even trying so hard to get into the damn Castle?

Because there wasn’t a good answer – hells, she’d have settled for a bad one – she kept on going. The light was welcome at least twice – because at least twice, the rungs had fallen free, leaving a gap that might have killed her otherwise. She wasn’t tall, but she stretched, balancing her weight entirely with her hands while her feet struggled for purchase.

The darkness above her, however, grew until she could no longer make out the mouth of the well. Could no longer see Nightshade.

She didn’t trust him. She didn’t
like
him. But she would have felt better had he accompanied her, because the Castle was his in some way, and she couldn’t quite believe that he would knowingly kill her.

She could, however, believe that she could die here.

Everything, she thought, gritting her teeth in frustration,
everything
was a test of some kind. The Barrani knew no other way. You could prove yourself worthy, or you could fail.

There were whole days where even the concept of proving herself worthy was tiring. It was a pointless test. When she helped the midwives, it was different. It was the best fight she knew: she faced death, and she won. The fact that it was someone else’s death – usually a stranger’s – didn’t change the fact. In some ways, it made it stronger.

She stopped her downward crawl.

Was this really any different?

The Castle had denied her because she still carried something that she couldn’t even see, let alone touch. It was linked to water. And somehow, the water was now linked to Donalan Idis, the man who almost certainly held a captive Tha’alani child. He was an Arcanist, which in Kaylin’s vocabulary was just another synonym for
death
.

She wanted to talk to Nightshade.

She wanted to know what change the Castle had sensed.

Neither of these were good enough reason to be here, clinging to the side of a well that hadn’t seen water in decades, by the look of it. But the best thing that Marcus had ever taught her – perhaps because it was something she
wanted
to hear – was to trust her instincts.

The middle of a fight, he used to say, was not the time to worry about the nicety of your stance. You fought as well as you could, you hoped that it was enough – if you had time for even that much thought.
You want to survive,
he’d told her.
Trust your instincts. Don’t second-guess them until the fight is over.

Then you can dissect your performance to your heart’s content.

What if I don’t remember enough of it?

Trust me – you come close to death, you’ll remember how you stepped out of its way.

He’d been right, of course. Marcus was almost never wrong. Kaylin took a deep breath. And then, before she could second-guess herself, she let go.

It was a
long
drop. However, since she had no wings – and if she could have corrected one birth defect, it would have been the one that made her human, not Aerian – long was relatively fast. She had no time to regret her decision; no time to second-guess what had come so instinctively to her. She had time to register falling as a very unpleasant sensation that implied that her stomach had stayed put when everything else had dropped – but even that didn’t last very long; not even as long as the darkness did. Nightshade’s gift of light apparently had to descend the hard way; gravity didn’t mean much to it.

But if she had managed to shock Nightshade, he gave no sign of it at all – and she would have felt it, because she
wanted
to. So much for being grown-up.

What she felt instead was water.

Water surged up to meet her as she plummeted, feet-first, into what was obviously a disoriented tunnel. But the water was strange. It was both clear and luminescent; she could see its shape. It was a giant hand, unadorned by rings, its palm wider and flatter than the length of spray that served as fingers. It was not a fist, and she felt an absurd sense of gratitude as she passed into the mound of its palm.