Cast In Secret (47 page)

His hands were adorned with rings, one on each finger, all gemmed; his brow was adorned with a circlet in which sat a large ruby. She had seen such a circlet before, on Lord Evarrim’s brow.

But if his left hand wound itself through Mayalee’s hair, his right held a box. A small, ordinary, slightly battered box that wouldn’t have held snuff, it seemed so slight.

The box was open. The lid faced Kaylin; she couldn’t see what was inside it. But she could see the light that it shed, and she knew the light was very like the one around her neck.

As they reached the pillars, Severn and Sanabalis let go of her hands, which was good; she could barely feel her fingers, they’d gripped so hard. She raised those numb, tingling hands to her throat, and felt the full weight of the pendant she had taken from a dead Dragon. And why had she taken it, in the end?

To free him.

To free him from a duty that he had chosen because
no one else could fulfill it
.

He had failed. He told her he had failed.

And she thought she knew why.

“Evanton,” she said, her voice stronger than she thought it would be, “the box – ”

“Yes,” he said, wearily. “I have never seen it, Kaylin. Understand that I have never
seen
it. But it is what you fear.”

Her hands pressed the amulet.

“What you wear,” he continued, “is a copy. It was a great magic, the making of that copy. It had power, because it was formed in the light of the true word, and it captured from that light some of the true essence of the word. But it was inscribed.”

“And inside the box – ”

“
Is
the word.”

“Why didn’t they just give the damn box to the Dragon?”

Evanton’s brows rose in shock.

All in all, she probably deserved it. It wasn’t the right time or place to ask that question.

But Donalan Idis answered. “They could not trust a Dragon with the true word.”

“They couldn’t trust anyone with the true – ”

Sanabalis stepped heavily on her foot.

She looked at Evanton then, and understood what the word
Keeper
meant. This old, bent man, this man she had come to to have her daggers enchanted so they’d come silently out of their sheaths – he had taken the burden of the word – the words, she realized,
all
the elemental names – without ever once
seeing
them.

“I have touched the Tha’alaan,” Idis said.

It wasn’t what she wanted to hear. It was the
last
thing she wanted to hear.

“Through this child, in this place, I have touched it. Finally. And completely.” He smiled, then, looking at the terrified face of a child who was maybe six years old – if that. But her stalks were weaving in panic across her forehead; he hadn’t cut them off. He hadn’t crippled or deafened her.

“Yes,” he said. “I could cut the Tha’alani off from the source of their knowledge because I could create barriers against the elemental forces. I discovered it quite by accident,” he added, as if he were merely another teacher with more arrogance than actual authority. “But I
understood
what it meant.

“And I know, now, who you are.”

“Private Neya, of the Imperial Hawks,” she replied coldly.

“Yes. I heard the Dragon’s roar,” he added softly. “And I guessed – I could not be certain. The Arkon never trusted me fully, and I gleaned less information from the Royal Archives than I would have liked, but a great deal more than he had intended.

“You forced my hand,” he added. “I guessed at what you might bear, although I confess I did not understand it.”

He looked at her, at the marks that were exposed to the naked eye. “But even in the Arcanum, there was word of a girl who bore the marks of the Old Ones. There was worry. The Emperor consulted those considered wise. All these pieces of a puzzle,” he added with a friendly smile.

“But I came here, in time, and I touched what I intended to touch. I have learned much about my art, and I will have the names of the earth, the air and the fire before I leave this place.”

“You will never have them,” Evanton replied. There was no defiance in the words. It was a simple statement of fact, shorn of all arrogance, all irascibility, all character.

“Keeper,” Idis said softly, “you are almost done here. Look around you. The shape of the world exerts itself. The reliquaries will break, and I will be here. I will be their new master.”

“I was never their master,” Evanton said quietly. “Never that.”

“No. Had you been, I would not now be here. But
I
will be their master, and the world will have an Emperor such as has never before been seen.” He pulled Mayalee up until she was standing on her toes, her body dangling. Her eyes were red and swollen, her face bruised where he had gripped it.

“You like children,” Donalan Idis told Kaylin, and she understood the threat. “You may leave with her, but you will leave.”

This was her nightmare. This was Kaylin’s fear. Never her own death – not that. But the deaths of the children. The deaths that she had never been able to prevent.

And Mayalee, waiting to be the latest in a series of victims, another mark of failure.

Because Kaylin
could not
leave.

“If you kill her,” Severn said quietly, unmoved by the way the child’s eyes widened, the way she found energy to struggle and whimper, “you have nothing at all to stop us.”

But he did. Kaylin saw it in his hands: the word. The
very
shape of water.

And she understood, as well, that Idis knew she would fight him, if she could, and that he would kill the child slowly
because
it would hurt her, because it would weaken her, because it would break her ability to speak, to do anything but scream in the rage of helplessness and her inability to save the girl’s life.

She swallowed bile. “Idis,” she said, keeping her voice as level as possible, “you will not be able to do this. The Oracles have seen the death of the city – ”

“The city is not a concern,” he said coolly. “This place will survive. I will survive. But you, I’m afraid, will not.”

Kaylin felt the surge of magic like a body blow, and she saw Mayalee’s mouth open in a silent scream.

She had no time. Time had run out. She cried out a word, but her scream, like Mayalee’s, was silent. Slowly, she thought, he would kill the child slowly – and she heard the form and shape of syllables leave his lips, and she felt the tug of water at her feet, and she saw the depths of the pool that stood between her and Donalan Idis, mad with the dream of power.

She drew breath, sharp breath. What she did next was not exactly decided; she had no time for decisions or thought. She leaped forward, toward him, and into the watery abyss.

For just a moment, his voice faltered; she had surprised him. The water closed over her head as she sank, and as she sank, she, too, began to speak.

It was not speech; had it been, she would have drowned before she could truly finish the word. But it was not thought, either. It was speech deprived of – of flesh, of tongue, of teeth, of air. It was not something private, it was not something sheltered inside the privacy of thoughts she believed no good – no kind – person would ever have.

She
shouted
the word in the water, and she gave the whole of her attention to the word. Before, she had watched the Tha’alaan, she had concentrated on not letting go of her companions. Of Severn, Wolf, Hawk, and history. Here, she held nothing at all in her hands, not even her own life. Mayalee was beyond her, blessedly beyond her; she could not see the child’s agony, and she would not allow herself to imagine it.

Water, here. And around her neck, an echo of what Idis held in his palm.

But how could a
word
be the whole of water? How could a
word
be held by a man, by any single man? Her skirt billowed as she fell, glimmering, the last thing to fade into the darkness.

Reaching out now, Kaylin embraced the water, lost herself to its voice.

And its voice was, for a moment, the Tha’alaan. The history of a people. The thoughts of every Tha’alani it had ever touched, from birth to death. The thought of every
living
Tha’alani in Elantra. And beyond Elantra.

How could any single person hold water?

She laughed, and bubbles trailed out of the corners of her lips, felt but not seen.

Ybelline!

The Matriarch – if that was the right word – of the Tha’alani answered her, the voice so calm and so inexplicably gentle, it destroyed all fear.
We are here, Kaylin. We are with you. We are waiting.

The shock of it, the joy of it, the relief –

But no, no.
Ybelline – your people – they mustn’t see
–

We are
all
with you, Kaylin
.

But… I’m deaf
. And unworthy. And so stupidly self-indulgent, to doubt now, to fear
now.

No, Kaylin. You hear the voice of the Tha’alaan, and you value it as we value it, love it as we love it. Speak, Kaylin, and we will speak. Do what
must
be done
.

A hint of fear now graced Ybelline’s words.
Idis is calling the water
–

She felt Ybelline’s voice break, ebb, like a tiny eddy in a vast, vast ocean. She cried out and held
on
and even holding, especially holding on to this woman, she began to speak again, to renew the syllables of a word that could not be spoken anywhere else.

Anywhere but here.

Ybelline’s voice was strongest. If Kaylin had feared to touch Uriel’s memories again, the fear was lost. What she needed from Uriel, she had already learned, and the Tha’alaan itself was fighting at their side. She heard older voices, stronger than even Ybelline’s, but not as clear for all their force. She heard Epharim’s voice, could
see
the face of the young man who had first led them through the quarter to Ybelline’s dwelling; Onnay and Nevaron; she heard the voices of those who dreamed of the Tha’alaan.

But more clearly than any but Ybelline, she heard the children’s voices, she heard and knew their confusion, their curiosity, and yes – their fear. The softest and weakest of the voices, they nonetheless took up Kaylin’s rhythmic incantation, speaking it as if it were a prayer. Speaking
only
what she spoke, no more and no less.

She felt their hands in their mother’s hair, or their brother’s or sister’s hands; she felt them enveloped in the arms of their grandparents, felt them
cradled
in the arms of their parents, felt them swimming in the small, warm ocean of the womb, and waking to her voice, to her presence in the Tha’alaan.

And she felt Mayalee, Mayalee who – who somehow, through the strength of her people, whispered, whimpered, what Kaylin now forced herself to repeat, over and over, as if it were
law
and she was once again in the only classroom that
truly
mattered.

They were her anchor. They were
more
than her anchor. They were the water, as she was, for just a moment.

But louder, stronger, harsh and terrible, was the voice of Donalan Idis. A man who cared nothing for the Tha’alaan, who had taken what Kaylin had taken from Uriel, and had heard only the beginning of the tale, and not its end. He called water, and she felt it reach up to answer his call, and she felt herself fall farther and farther into its depths. She was dizzy now; the air she had swallowed before she had made her instinctive leap could not sustain her. She would die here. She should have been afraid.

But worse than that fear, much worse, was
his
voice in the Tha’alaan. She heard his contempt and his anger and his desire and his triumph.

You know nothing of power,
he told them with a contempt that words were too weak to frame.
Do you think to stop me? You crippled yourselves, weakened yourselves, stripped yourselves of strength. The only true leader you had listened to the element and was undone.

You have
no
power. You chose.

You have nothing, now, but me
.

In the darkness and the dizziness that came with the struggle not to breathe, Kaylin saw light. Not the light at her neck, for the amulet was now dim and spent. But her arms were glowing blue, and the water’s haze carried that light, gave it shape and texture. Each unreadable word touched the water, was touched by it.

They… have… me.

She could see what Idis could see; he could see what she could see. Neither of them were accustomed to this disoriented vision, and neither of them had been born to the Tha’alaan; they could not shut their inner eyes. Idis meant to unmake this broken vision, to silence the voices of thousands, tens of thousands.

To be deaf again, and alone.

She
knew
this because she could feel it, and what she felt, they all felt.

But she knew more: Uriel had called the elements because Uriel had borne the marks that Kaylin now bore. She had power here. She drew breath because she needed it, and, breathing, she did not drown. Because the words that now echoed throughout her were water, in all its forms, and she had made herself, for a moment, part of what
it
was.

You are a fool,
he said. He knew what she knew – he knew that she had never learned to use the power that had been engraved upon her skin.
Power is knowledge and you have none.

Severn threw a dagger, followed it with a second; they bounced. She saw it as Idis saw it. She heard Sanabalis
roar,
and saw the disturbing shimmer of flesh as flesh expanded, exploding in an instant into a shape and form she had seen in paints upon the wall of a young boy in a Hall very like the Foundling Halls.

Water roared up in a wall between Idis and Sanabalis; Severn was dwarfed by it. But she felt him, as if he were part of the Tha’alaan, and she heard the sudden tug of her name, her true name. Elianne.

He was not dead. He would not die. Not while she lived. Dying, after all he had done, would be surrender, and he had never surrendered anything. Except to Kaylin. To Elianne.