Michelle Sagara (26 page)

The statue lifted its hands; the water that had been streaming from its palms froze instantly. Kaylin recognized the shape the ice took: it was a sword.

She almost called the dragon back—but she didn’t. Because she understood that whatever this statue was, it
wasn’t
the water she knew; it was some other thing. If it animated the statue, it wasn’t bent on the protection of the memories of a mortal race; it was bent on something entirely other.

At the moment, that was the destruction of the dragon.

The dragon wasn’t having any of it. Kaylin moved as his tail swung, gripping Teela’s arms tightly enough she’d probably cut off circulation. The sword of ice glanced off the side of dragon jaw—but its blade didn’t shatter. Neither did the dragon’s jaw. It sounded like steel hitting stone.

The dragon reared up as the blade bounced; it inhaled. Kaylin knew what had to follow; she opened her mouth to tell the dragon to stop, but no words fell out. It was too late for them. Either that or they were the wrong words.

Breath, a stream of silver mist, engulfed the statue and its weapon. For one long second, Kaylin thought the mist would dissipate with little effect. The statue brought its sword down—but it hit water. Water froze in a circle that spread across the surface of the shallow pool. It spread everywhere that Kaylin’s hand didn’t touch.

She waited, her own breath held, and for far less reason.

The statue began to crack, as if it were made of ice, not stone. The dragon roared. The statue, lips crumbling, roared back. Its voice was not a dragon’s voice—but it might as well have been. The statue didn’t exhale breath the way dragons normally did when they were fighting.

No, it exhaled words, a dark cloud of lines and dots and hatches, a cloud of letter forms. Or at least they looked like letter forms to Kaylin. Not, of course, Barrani forms—although there was similarity in the components—and certainly not Elantran. But they were dark, like the smoke from burning flesh; they didn’t attain the solidity of form that Kaylin’s words could and sometimes did. They didn’t look like True Words.

They looked like the shadows those words might cast, distorted by the landscape that underlay them. She watched as they coalesced; the dragon fell silent.

“Fly!” Kaylin shouted. “Get
out of there!
”

The dragon gave her a side-glance that, in any other immortal face, would have been dismissive.

“
I mean it!
Get out of there
right bloody now!
”

He pushed himself, slowly, out of the ice; it clung to his feet. Kaylin swore a lot. The statue cracked as the ice did. If the surface of the stone was a white-gray, the interior wasn’t; it was dark, and it glittered.

Kaylin hadn’t been worried about the stone; she’d been worried about the words. They looked familiar to her, and not in a good way; they reminded her of the words that Iberrienne had attempted to draw from the citizens of the fief. They reminded her of the words that Iberrienne had attempted to say in the heart of Hallionne Orbaranne.

Kaylin stopped breathing for one long minute. And then, in a desperate, almost unreasoning frenzy, she began to call the water she knew. She didn’t use words; words would take too long. She was never good with words when she was terrified. She was afraid of what the words would do to the water—if the water was actually really here at all.

She almost cried when she heard a single word.

Kaylin.

Come to me,
she thought.
Come to me right now. Come to where I am.

I am here.

“Come here, come away from the—”

The water rose in a pillar; it was the shape of a woman, and it held Kaylin’s hand. You couldn’t hold water in your hands; it always slid through, dripping between your fingers. Kaylin tried anyway—but at least this time she had the water’s cooperation. She pulled the water out of the shallow pool that was otherwise now ice.

You should not be here.

The water looked down at Teela, and Kaylin realized that while she’d been almost shocked to see fire take a human form, she expected the water to do so. The form wasn’t natural to either.

The dragon roared. The ice—which Kaylin now understood was not, in any way, actual water—shattered. Gravity in the environs of the shallow pool broke. Hand still encased in water, Kaylin watched as the shards flew away to reveal the dark, roiling mass of words that remained.

“Can you read them?” she asked the water.

The water shuddered.

Kaylin glanced at her; her eyes—if
eyes
was really the right word for something that shouldn’t actually have any—were closed.
Do you understand what has happened, Kaylin?

“No.”

A pity. You are Chosen; if you cannot understand, you will tell no story that the green can hear, and you will offer no healing to the wounds that now bleed freely.

Kaylin hesitated. “Can you carry Teela?”

I can. It will not help her now. You intend to return to the greenheart.

“Yes, I think so. But we need you there.”

She lifted her face.
There is a risk.

There was always a risk. “What risk?”

Watch, Chosen. Watch and understand.

* * *

Kaylin turned to the cloud. It was dense now, and it sparkled as if it had developed a surface that was hard and reflective. The density apparently made it heavier, because it began to sink. It touched the pool bed and it continued to sink, eating away at the stone beneath it; eating away at the earth beneath that stone. Kaylin watched as it slowly submerged.

The water rippled, but said nothing. Kaylin started to move; the water held her back, in the way undercurrents could.
Wait.

“For what?”

There was no further answer. She looked up to see the dragon—the huge dragon—hovering above the sinking mass. Only when he landed did the water let her go. She walked to the edge of what was now a pit. The water lifted Teela and followed.

The blood of the green is rooted in me.

Kaylin looked down at her dress; she felt the water’s amusement—and she felt, as well, its sorrow.

It is like, and unlike, the dress you wear. The green is injured; the blood from that wound runs through my veins in this place. I cannot stop it, and I cannot contain it; it becomes part of me, while remaining other.

Kaylin had reached the pit’s edge. This was not the first time today she would stand at the edge of a pit. It wasn’t, she realized, the first time that she’d stand at the edge of a pit that had this shape. It wasn’t round. It wasn’t oval. Its edge implied shape—the outline of a word.

It was, in miniature, the same pit that she and Teela had seen.

“Was this—was this caused by the blood of the green?”

No.

“Then—then what?”

The blood of the dying,
the water replied.
Mortality is anathema to the green. Understand, if you can, that the green is not of you or your kin. It has an interest in what you do, but it can touch you only in one place—it is bound in all other ways. Or it was.

Kaylin turned to face the water. “What does this word mean?”

The water was silent. But the dragon roared. The water spoke—to the dragon. The dragon, at far greater volume, replied.

You should not be here, Kaylin.

“No. Can you take us back?”

Yes. But I will not remain for long. I cannot now.

“Why?”

The water pointed at the pit.

* * *

There was no instant shift of scenery. The water, carrying Teela, began to walk away from what had been a fountain. A path opened on the other side of the pool, and she led them toward it. Kaylin was hungry. She was tired. She was aware that the dragon now flew in lazy circles above them.

She didn’t ask him to carry her. She was almost afraid to do so.

“Will he—will he shrink again?”

The water was confused. She glanced at the dragon, and then glanced at Kaylin.
I do not understand the question.

“He was smaller before. About this size.” The explanation didn’t appear to make the question any clearer.

I do not understand. Kaylin, when you light a candle you summon fire. You speak its name in a whisper; it is almost inaudible. When you summoned fire here, you spoke its name, and it was louder. But in both cases, you called fire, and fire came.

It was Kaylin’s turn to be confused.

The nature of fire is fire. The nature of the—dragon?—is dragon. But I do not think the Tha’alaan would recognize this creature
as
Dragon. I do not understand your question.

“I didn’t summon him. I didn’t learn and speak his name. I didn’t call him into being. He just—he arrived on his own. And he was a lot smaller when he did.”

For one long minute the water ceased to move at all. Above her head, the dragon’s shadow covered them.
You do not know him. You do not know his name. You
must
know his name, Kaylin. You
must
name him.

“But—”

It is only by naming that he can exist in your small life at all.
She spoke to the dragon. The dragon replied. The earth trembled.
He cannot long remain what he has been, now. There is too much of him here.

Understand what the water wants. It is complex, as you know. You have seen the tidal wave; you have seen the drowning. You have seen the infants. I am not all of one thing, or all of the other. But, Kaylin, it is only by the grace of the Tha’alani that I can speak with you as you see me now; it is by the grace of their constant experience and thought that I have some small control—and it is small—over my nature.

I am storm. I am death. I am life. I am all of these things—but at times, with will and effort, I can choose. I cannot always choose.

Nor, in the end, can he.

Chapter 21

The path ended abruptly, giving way to tall, dry grass. The water didn’t pause; she continued. Because she was carrying Teela, so did Kaylin. Watching the water walk over the dry grass was a revelation. In the water’s wake, the grass became the color of Kaylin’s dress, and small flowers began to push themselves out of the dirt, budding and blossoming as if seasons existed beneath her feet.

It was striking; it was even beautiful.

“Look, can you tell me something? I don’t understand how the green and the Hallionne are connected. I’d swear when we activated the wards we entered Hallionne Alsanis—but the wards exist in the heart of the green. To reach you at all we had to drop through Alsanis and into the tunnels.”

You think of the green as a place. You think of the Hallionne as places. They are not that. They are, in a much larger way, like your cities and your citizens. They are not all one thing, not all the other; the Hallionne are bound by the words that form the reason for their existence, but they are not fixed as you are. And yet, Kaylin, some part of them once was.

The green, never.

They are part of the green. The green is part of what they have become.

“And the lost children?”

They are also part of the green. They are part of Hallionne Alsanis.

“But...they’re trying to destroy the Hallionne.”

Yes. They understand, in part, the nature of words. But they do not understand in full. The pit that you see as an outline of a word is their attempt to tell a tale. We are almost there.

But Kaylin knew, because in the distance, she could hear singing.

* * *

This was like, and unlike, her first trip through the nightmare of Alsanis. The Consort’s voice was unmistakable; the song, however, was different. It took Kaylin one long minute to understand why, and when she did, it confused her. The Consort was singing in High Barrani. Given the extension of syllables and vowels, it wasn’t immediately clear, because the songs the Consort sang to the Hallionne also contained similar vocal sounds.

But the sounds were words that Kaylin could actually understand. She saw a ring of standing trees—or of things that looked, at a distance, like trees. They weren’t. They were stone structures, but branched, rooted. Something about them made Kaylin very uncomfortable.

Above these nontrees, the dragon roared. Kaylin was afraid that he would breathe; before she could shout at him, he did.

She shouted something different instead, and the singing banked sharply. Clearly this song was not like the songs of awakening.

Grey mist hit the strange stone grove, billowing at the edges like cloud, not fire. Where it touched stone branches, the branches melted, running like molten rock toward the ground. But they burned nothing they hit; instead, they shimmered, like silver liquid. The water passed over them without concern. Kaylin wasn’t as brave; she leaped over the small rivulets that seemed to flow, like giant, exposed veins, into one small pool.

The Consort stood on the other side of this network of tiny streams, but as the cloud spread, they surrounded her. She didn’t touch them, either. Instead, she looked at the water. No, Kaylin thought, at what the water held.

The Consort’s eyes darkened as she finally met Kaylin’s gaze. She was either angry or afraid, and opened her mouth; she shut it before she spoke.

“Lady.” Kaylin fell to one knee.

But the Consort shook her head with obvious impatience. “Not here. At Court, yes. But not here. Do you know what you’ve done?”

“We came to find you.”

“And you could not come here with any other Lord?”

“Teela wouldn’t stay.”

The Consort’s expression softened. “No,” she said at last. “She wouldn’t, would she? And no one of us, not even the High Lord himself, could command her when she did not wish to obey. It was never wise to make the attempt.” She watched as the trees finished melting.

“How did you get here?”

“The dreams of Alsanis.”

Kaylin blinked. “I don’t understand.”

The Consort’s smile was bitter. “No. No more do I.”

“I doubt that.”

“Do you imply that I lie, Lord Kaylin?”

“Clumsy of me. I’m not usually that subtle.”

To her surprise, the Consort laughed. Kaylin thought she would never understand the Barrani. “Great harm was done here when An’Teela was a child. You know of it.”

“I know what’s said.”

“Teela is of the Warden’s bloodline.”

Kaylin nodded.

“As was her mother. The Warden’s bloodline is dear to the green; it is gifted. Its gift does not extend beyond the green and the Hallionne; it does not touch the High Court in any significant way. But the green hears the Wardens and Alsanis speaks with them.”

“He doesn’t anymore.”

“Ah, but he does. The nightmares come to the Warden.”

“Unless you’re here?”

“It is my privilege,” the Consort replied. Kaylin privately thought it wasn’t much of a privilege. “While I am in the West March, I can ease the Warden’s burden. The nightmares of Alsanis are strong, and they are painful. The Warden can bespeak them, at times, and he can calm them, when they can be calmed at all.

“Of late, that has been seldom. Yet without the Warden, the whole of the West March would suffer their pain. Very, very few would survive it.”

“You—”

“Yes. I am aware that I had some difficulty. It was perhaps hubris on my part. I believe Lord Barian would have endured in a way I could not without your aid. It is for this reason there has always been a Warden. There will always
be
a Warden. No politics of the High Court can alter that.

“The nightmares and the dreams are entwined. You think of them as shadow and light, but they are perspectives, Kaylin. They come from the same place. The dreams of Alsanis brought me here.”

“To save you?”

“No. In the end, no. It is to save them.” She turned, then, and gestured at the rivulets that once had been trees. “And you have brought Teela. The green has been waiting. Alsanis has been waiting, as well. Understand that the green is wounded. It is not dying, Kaylin; that is not the nature of its existence; it will not die. Nor is it injured in the way you and I might be injured.”

“Why did they bring you here?”

The Consort, however, frowned. “What,” she asked, her voice chillier by several degrees, “is on your left palm?”

Kaylin held out her hand.

The Consort caught it, pulled Kaylin almost off her feet, and examined it; she did not touch the mark. But her eyes, when Kaylin looked at her face, were gold; gold with a heart of pure green. She let Kaylin’s hand go. “Do you understand what you’ve done?” she asked, voice soft.

Kaylin hesitated, and then said, “No. No, and maybe yes. I saw the word. I knew it was a name. And it seemed—fragile. If words can be fragile.” She thought of Iberrienne. “I was afraid to leave it where I found it, so I gathered it up and took it with me when I left. I didn’t—I didn’t leave myself room for doubt. I thought I was helping, somehow.”

“You have seen the Lake of Life,” the Consort replied.

Kaylin nodded.

“But you have also touched it, Kaylin. You have touched it, and you have taken words from its depths. You carry one within you; you carried part of one to my brother. What you see is not what the rest of my people will see, not even here. I think Teela might have, but she could not have done what you have done.” There was a brief hesitation, and then the Consort said, “No more could I. I am not Chosen. I am Consort; I am guardian of the names by which my kin know life.

“But you are a vessel. A container. You are the parchment on which the words might be both written and preserved. What will you do with the name?”

“I don’t know. It’s not—it’s not like the other words. It’s not like the other name.” Kaylin tapped her forehead. “It doesn’t react the way the marks I carry react.”

“No. It wouldn’t.”

“Because they’re not dead?”

“Because they are not dead. They are not of their name, but they cannot fully escape it. Not while Teela lives.”

“They don’t want to kill her.”

“No. No, they do not. They want to save her. Teela doesn’t wish to be saved. But she doesn’t wish to be free, either. And so, she is here. And you are here. And I, in the end, am here with both of you.”

“Did you expect this?”

The Consort shook her head, her eyes shading to the green-blue that was normal for Barrani. “When I chose to accompany you I was angry with you, yes. But I was also concerned. Calarnenne has history with the green. I believe you now understand what it is.”

“I don’t. I know it has something to do with the lost children.” She hesitated. “But—so did Iberrienne.”

“There is much loss, yes. Do you understand Barrani youth? It is—like mortal youth—a time of optimism and idealism. It is a time when we do not believe in caution, but choose instead a hope that is not leavened by bitter experience. That follows, with the passage of time. The things we love—and hate—in our youth, the losses we take, the deaths we endure—they scar us in ways that later loves and later losses do not. Those, we expect.

“I cannot judge, Kaylin. Were either of my brothers lost to such a gamble as the High Court chose to take, I do not think I would ever have recovered. I would function, yes. I would go on. But the rage and the hatred I felt for that High Court would never dim. Mortals forget, and that is a kindness, although it does not seem so to you, and perhaps never will. We do not. We remember whenever we choose to think about the past at all. We can almost walk in it, it is so real.

“I do not know what occurred between the twelve; I know only that were Teela to die, they might at last be free. Free to be or do what, I cannot say. They are not Barrani now—but they are not entirely other.”

It struck Kaylin then that the Consort suspected the link between the twelve. She suspected that Teela knew the true names of the eleven; that the eleven, in turn, knew hers. She almost asked, but couldn’t. It wasn’t her secret to tell.

“If Teela died, and the eleven were freed, what would happen to their names?”

“Do you not know? No, perhaps you don’t. You have seen the Lake, and you have touched it, and it has left you marked or changed—but you are not Barrani, and will never be Barrani. There are things you cannot understand. Their names will be lost to us. They will not return to the Lake.”

Even hearing it felt like a blow to Kaylin. “Can you—”

“Can I preserve them?” The Consort closed her eyes. “I cannot do what you have done, no. But yes, in some fashion, were I to see what you have seen, I might strengthen them in a different way. I see the Lake, Kaylin. I see it all the time. It exists in the High Halls, and I may approach it physically—as you did. But it exists, for me, wherever my people exist.” She took both of Kaylin’s hands in hers.

“Is that why they want you?”

“Yes. They feel that they might approach that Lake through me. They cannot,” she added. “Not even changed as they are. I will not survive the attempt, but they cannot succeed.”

“They don’t believe that.”

“No.”

“They’re trying to take the words and remake them.”

“Yes. They are like your infants; they are trying to speak as gods. They are trying to use the words in a way that the words cannot be used. They are trying,” she said, voice soft and sad, “to lie in a language in which lies cannot be spoken.”

“Why are they even—” Kaylin stopped. “Do they understand that that’s what they’re trying to do?”

The Consort’s smile was deeper; it was tinged with an approval that Kaylin shouldn’t have wanted, but did anyway. “You understand. No. They believe that any thought that can be expressed—no, any
desire—
is true in and of itself. You see the words that they attempt to speak. What do they look like to you?”

“Like the shadows of words, but—worse.”

“Yes. All desires exist; there are words that speak of those desires, those words are true. But not all desire is reality. They believe that what the Ancients desired, they could bring into being by simply...speaking. Writing.”

“Bleeding,” Kaylin said, automatically.

The Consort said a long nothing.

“Lady, what is it that you think they want?”

“I would guess, if I could, that they wish to transform Teela as they themselves were transformed. I do not know. I do not understand the whole of their spoken tongue—they have created a language, the way the young sometimes do. I understand only parts of it, and not with clarity.”

“And your song, the song you were singing when we found you?”

She glanced at the edge of what was no longer stone grove. “A lullaby. They do not hate me,” she said. “Nothing they now attempt is personal.”

“Would you kill them if you could?”

“Yes. But not with joy, Kaylin, and with no sense of triumph. I understand what Teela’s mother asked of the green. But in the end, this is the result. The green is scarred, Teela is scarred, and the lost children exist in a state that is neither life nor death. But I think this time, we will have an ending, one way or the other.” She looked up as the water drew close, carrying Teela, cradling her as the fire had done.

“What happened to her?”

“She did what you did—she absorbed the nightmares of Alsanis. I couldn’t do what I did for you because I couldn’t see them. At all.”

“How many?”

“I don’t know. I told you—I couldn’t see them. There doesn’t seem to be anything wrong with her physically, and I can’t—I can’t touch
her.
”

“I would think it suicidal to try.”

“She’s unconscious. She can only kill me if she wakes up.”

The Consort touched Teela’s brow.

“Can you see her name?”

The Consort said, “Never ask that question of me. Never ask it again. It is not safe.”

“For me, or for you?”

“For either of us, Kaylin. Do you understand the position of Consort is not hereditary?”

“It was—”

“No. I am offered the opportunity to take the test first; it is a courtesy. I could have refused, without dishonor; I did not. Had I failed, I would have died, and a search for a suitable candidate would have begun. My bloodline gives me no affinity; it gives me nothing special. The test that we face—a test you did not—is not short. It is not a decision made in a moment. There are spaces in which Barrani might live that are nonetheless not the world to which we were born. In those spaces, time has less meaning—but no Barrani, no Dragon, no mortal, can undo the past. We move forward. The testing that I underwent began before you were born. Were I to undergo such a test now, it would end long after you died—of the old age that takes all mortals, sooner or later.