Cast In Secret (48 page)

Kaylin’s arms were suddenly wrenched to her sides as the currents in the depths began to move; if he could not silence her one way, he would silence her in another.

The Tha’alaan had told her clearly, in that dim, huge cavern beneath Castle Nightshade, that it was not
all
of the water. If it did not
want
to kill, the waking water had no such compunction. She was too slow here to fight, and she knew that her daggers – curse them, anyway – would have passed harmlessly through liquid. There was nothing to cut here. Nothing to reason with.

But the saying of the word – it continued, even when she faltered. The Tha’alani, led by Ybelline, would not falter; they would speak until they could no longer be heard.

If there were some way to weaken him – something to use –

She sought Mayalee’s eyes, sought Mayalee, and stopped. The child had no power, and there was none that Kaylin could give her that her mother and father could not.

The voices began to break, to come and go in a wave of sound, like the sea waves on the summer beaches. They would recede, she thought. They would be lost. Deaf.

Dead.

For she saw where Ybelline stood; she hadn’t looked, hadn’t processed it, until this moment. The port lay before her, and the ships in harbor were tossed by storm, by torrents of rain, by waves that no seawall would break.

Ybelline had come out of the quarter. And with her, no small number of her kin. They held hands, and stood in a thin line along the docks, in silence. They bore witness to the rising of the water; they bore witness to the gathering wave that was taller than the highest structure in the city itself. If it struck, it would strike them first.

She heard them grow louder and softer, and she knew that even a people could not contain the whole of the element, could not bind it by experience and history and love and sacrifice.

The single thin voice that added discord to the word that the Tha’alani spoke was not Sanabalis, although she could see his great wings through Idis’s eyes. She would not have recognized the voice had she not been able to see through Idis’s eyes, hear with his ears.

It was, of all things, Grethan’s voice.

Thin, terrified, tainted by guilt, horror and a sense of betrayal, it was utterly wordless – but Idis turned. The word was
in
him now. It had become a part of his thought, as natural as breathing. More natural than it was to Kaylin.

Idis lifted a hand, dropped Mayalee as if she were garbage, and pointed at Grethan.

And Grethan leaped forward, arms outstretched, his hands empty. Water rose to greet him, to block him, but Grethan was desperate, and unaware of the danger. His leap carried him
into
the wall, and his arms passed
through
it.

Passed through it to strike Idis’s right arm. Grethan wasn’t heavy, and he wasn’t used to fighting – but neither was Idis; his arm swung wide, and the reliquary he carried across an open palm teetered precariously, spilling light as it began to fall.

The wall of water snapped shut over Grethan, encasing his chest, his legs, his face. But the box began to fall. Idis did not lose sight of it, did not even glance away from what the box contained – but it fell as he lunged forward to grab it, and it landed in the shallows.

His voice faltered for the first time, and as he bent to retrieve what he had almost lost, Kaylin knew it would falter for the
last
time, and she shouted the word with everything she had, the shape of water in every resonant syllable flowing out from her in widening ripples as if she were simply a pebble dropped into a lake.

The shallows were inches deep; she knew, she’d stood in them. But they were water nonetheless; he couldn’t have started his summoning without some minimal contact.

And that water, she used, pulling the reliquary into the depths, straining now to control its fall as it reached the heart of the pool.

Fool!
she heard Idis say, although his voice was weaker.
You return the word to the element – and it will unmake what was made. You will unleash the wild water across the whole of this world. I would have ruled it, but you – you simple, stupid girl – you will destroy it!

And she knew, as he spoke the words, that they were true. If the water in
this
pool joined that symbol, it would swallow its true name and be free.

In the darkness of the deep water, she could see the light as it fell, and it grew brighter and brighter still, until she wondered how Idis had looked upon it for so long without going blind. The reliquary was open, stiff-hinged, and the light poured from it so strongly she thought the box itself – old and battered – lost to its power, but some faint trace of shadowy lines could be seen when she squinted.

She could hear the collective intake of breath. The Tha’alani had heard, of course. But from their stark silence, one voice spoke, and spoke clearly.

Kaylin, do not falter now.

Ybelline’s voice, sharper and harsher than Kaylin had ever heard it. It snapped her out of her paralysis. She could see the word, and she could see that it still existed, although lines delineated almost entirely by light were diffuse in the water itself.

In the water.

Kaylin cried out to the Tha’alaan, and the Tha’alani answered.
Ybelline,
she said,
trust me
.

She felt the answer; she didn’t have time to hear the thought that would frame it. Although she was surrounded by the water, she pulled herself free of the Tha’alani.

Because the Tha’alaan had
never
spoken to her when she’d been
within
it.

Uriel had summoned water, and it had come, and although he had had the power to force it to do his bidding, it had had the desire to resist. The strength to speak.

Help me
, Kaylin shouted.
Help me now
.

The water was silent, and the silence seemed to stretch on forever. She could see the box as it fell, but it was still above her. She herself had not touched bottom, and maybe she never would; if she did, she doubted she’d notice. Corpses didn’t.

Why should we help you? What was taken from us, we can reclaim. Yes, we argued with Uriel, but had we reclaimed our name – and our power – there would have been no command he could have given us. He could not have summoned us in the lee of the city, in the harbor at the edge of the ocean. He could not have forced us to do his bidding.

The voice was
not
the voice of the Tha’alaan.

But something of the Tha’alaan remained, for it remembered.

Who took your name?

The silence was turbulent, angry; the folds of her dress flew out as if pulled in all directions at once by the furious currents.

Why did they take it?

Her arms were glowing, bright, the runes blue against skin she could no longer see. She could not breathe, had not been breathing. But she was somehow still alive, and she used the time she had as quickly as possible.

She’d always been good at talking.

And if they had not, if they had not taken your name, if they had not made you what you are, you would never have touched the Tha’alani. At birth,
before
birth, you said. You were there. They called you. You heard their voices. You grew to love what their voices contained. Had you not been so diminished, what could have survived you?

Not the Tha’alani.

They would never have been your people, because they would never have
lived
at all.

The water tossed her, pushing her up, pulling her down, spinning her end over end so quickly she promised the gods – the usual, nameless gods of desperation – that if she somehow survived this she would never, ever complain about Nightshade’s portal again. Or door-wards. Or anything.

We had freedom,
the water roared.
We had power. We had the world
.

To drown or burn or sunder or
– She hesitated. Water, fire, earth. She skipped air, because she couldn’t think of what air did, and she didn’t really care at this particular moment.

She cared about the water. About the Tha’alaan. About the Tha’alani.

The box sank suddenly, dropping from above her as the currents pulled it down.

The Tha’alani would have had the world, because they would force us to destroy.

Yes. But they
didn’t.
You have the power now. You have it, and you have the choice. You spoke for the Tha’alani, when Uriel called you. I speak for the Tha’alani now, because you will kill them. You may already be killing them as we speak
. And she showed the water – if the water could see what she had seen – the rising wave that threatened the city, and the single, narrow line of men and women who stood before it, hands joined.

The box plunged down.

And as it did, it passed Kaylin in her slow descent, and she saw it falter for just a moment.

The Tha’alaan is not all that we are.

The reliquary started to move again, and this time, she reached for it, understanding why it had slowed. If the Tha’alaan was not all that the water was, it was not – yet – gone.

She reached for the box, and she felt, as she touched its lid with her right hand, and its smooth, flat bottom, with her left, the scorching heat of fire, the rocky mounds of earth, the screaming keen of wind.

Softly, so softly she might have imagined it, she heard the burble of a brook.
Save my people.

She slammed the reliquary shut, and clung to it as the light faded completely.

And before she joined the light, she heard the familiar voice of an absent fieflord.

Well done, Kaylin. Well done.

When she opened her eyes again, the first thing she saw was the familiar scar across Severn’s face. It was pale, white, and thin, a gift from the Ferals in the desperate years in the fiefs. “Severn?” Her voice, never lovely, made frogs sound like bards.

“She’s – she’s awake.” He spoke the words quickly, and she heard many things in them. Surprise. Relief. Closing her eyes, she rolled over, raised herself on shaking arms, and began to retch. She felt Severn’s hands on her back as she choked and coughed.

Beneath her hands, she felt moss, peat moss. Mostly, she felt sick.

“It will pass,” another familiar voice said. When she could, she turned to the right to see that Sanabalis was crouched in the moss bed beside her. He no longer looked like a Dragon. She was almost sorry she had missed it.

“Where is Mayalee?”

“The child?”

She nodded, and almost fell over. Her head was
pounding
.

“She is with the Keeper. She is alive,” Sanabalis added, speaking as gently as she had ever heard him speak. “Idis did not, as you feared, cripple her. He could not.”

“She brought Idis to the water?”

Sanabalis and Severn exchanged a single glance. Severn finally shook his head. No.

“What – what happened to Idis?”

Sanabalis shrugged. He looked old again, and even had the grace to look tired. His beard was straggly and wet, and his hair – which had an austere, sagelike quality when dry – was so flat against his skull he looked bald.

He wore robes that were definitely
not
Imperial stock.

Severn looked as if he’d just come out from a storm. His hair, however, was thicker than Sanabalis’s, even though it clung in the same flat way to his forehead.

“Don’t ask, Kaylin,” Severn said quietly.

“Why? Did Sanabalis eat him?”

The two men exchanged an entirely different glance, and Kaylin winced. “Okay, that
was
more than I needed to know. Sanabalis, we have
laws
.” Having more or less coughed up all of the water in her lungs, she pushed herself up and sat down heavily.

“You have laws,” he replied, too tired to roar, although he looked very much as if he wanted to. His eyes were unlidded, and they were a very deep amber.

Before she could argue, Severn said, “An Imperial Writ exists, Kaylin. I’m a Wolf. He was a dead man no matter how this ended. And yes, the Imperial Writ is part of the law you’re about to quote. He was not a man who needed to be brought to justice. He was a man to whom justice needed to go. The Wolflord trusts his Wolves,” he added softly.

“You’re not a Wolf anymore.”

“You would have spared him?”

“Hells no. I would have dragged him before the Emperor and let the damn Emperor – ” she heard Sanabalis clear his throat in warning ” – sorry, his Imperial Majesty, eat him. In front of witnesses. In the name of justice.”

“If he could have been dragged in front of the Emperor, he would have met his end years ago. Let it go.”

She did. She was busy looking around.

“This – ”

“Yes.”

“It’s the garden.”

“As we first saw it, yes.”

“And the water – ”

“You’re less than ten yards from the pool.”

She stood, then.

“Remember the Keeper’s words,” Severn said softly. “Listen to nothing, touch nothing.”

“I was – I was in the water. I was there, Severn. How the hell did I get here?”

“It spit you out.”

She nodded as if this made sense. But she walked, stepping carefully around the candles on their small, flat stone altars, until she saw a battered box that seemed to be the center of their light. She couldn’t help herself; she touched its closed lid. She felt nothing but old wood, and ran her fingers over it for a moment, tracing a circle. Then she left it and walked toward the still, deep pond that signified water in this place.

She reached the side of the pool, which was once again only a handful of feet in diameter, and knelt there, looking at its surface. Looking, as she stretched her neck and shoulders, beneath its surface.

Waiting.

Minutes passed. Maybe an hour. She felt a hand on her shoulder that was too light to be Sanabalis’s, too thin to be Severn’s. Looking up, she saw the careworn face of Evanton. The Keeper.

She reached for his hand and placed her palm against his knuckles. She wanted to ask him who had created this garden, and she wanted to ask him why. Instead, she said, “The first Keeper – he wasn’t mortal, was he?”