Michelle Sagara (30 page)

He stared at the ward. “You do not understand,” he finally said.

“No, clearly. This is the first time I’ve been to the West March. It’s also hopefully—no offense intended—the
last
time I’ll visit the West March.”

“It is not a ward of Alsanis. It is, in structure, in form, and in content, a ward intended for the green. It should not be here.”

Kaylin frowned. “The green and Alsanis are connected, though. When Teela and I activated the wards in the green, we were transported to Alsanis.”

“Impossible.”

“It can’t be impossible. The wards are here.”

“You were mistaken, Lord Kaylin. The green is not all of one thing or all of another. You misinterpreted what you saw.”

She stopped herself from folding her arms across her chest. In Barian’s position, she’d probably be dubious. Of course, if she were Barian, she wouldn’t find his attitude irritating. “I don’t know the green, and I don’t know Alsanis. But the nightmares of Alsanis were there, and what I saw was an echo of what the Consort saw when she contained the nightmares themselves.

“We didn’t get back to the green until I called for the judgment of the green. Which—and I may have misunderstood Serian—should have been impossible if I was already
in
the heart of the green.

“And,” she continued, raising a third finger to accompany the two she’d lifted while enumerating the previous points, “the Consort was taken by the eagles of Alsanis
to
the green. We didn’t find her in Alsanis. And given the shape of Alsanis at the moment, that’s probably a blessing. We found her in the green. The eagles told us the wards were inactive—they couldn’t be woken.

“I’m guessing,” she finished, pointing at the ward that hovered in the air just beyond them, “that this is why. Somehow, they’re here.”

Chapter 24

The Warden was silent for a long moment. He looked, not to Alsanis’s brother, but to the Consort. She inclined her head in silence. She did not, however, let go of Kaylin’s left arm.

“I don’t know the greetings and the blessings—or whatever they’re called,” Kaylin continued. “But you do. I don’t recognize specific wards.”

“Lady, with your permission?” Kaylin didn’t understand why he’d asked the Consort; the Lord of the West March was in theory the highest ranking person here.

If he’d committed a subtle breach of etiquette, the Consort failed to correct him—and given the affection in which she held her brother, Kaylin assumed that he hadn’t. “You are guide, Warden. You recognize the wards.”

“Yes. These are meant to mark—and hold—the path to the greenheart. It is possible that they will lead us there, regardless of where we start; the green does not remain in a fixed, geographical state without the wards as anchors.” The implication was clear: neither, at the moment, did Alsanis. “It is just as possible that they will lead us to the heart of Alsanis.”

“Which is where his brother is leading us now,” Kaylin said.

The brother nodded. “You cannot walk the roads I walk. There is nothing within Alsanis that can harm me.”

“Not even Alsanis?”

“Not even Alsanis, although that is a matter of desire, not ability. I believe it is understood that you cannot walk as we walk.” He hesitated, and then added, “You, Chosen, could. Until your familiar is too large, and the bindings break, he could carry you there.”

Lord Barian bowed to the Consort; she stepped to one side of the ward, gently dragging Kaylin with her. The Warden then lifted his palm to the ward’s center. He touched it. It had been blue, lines etched in midair with no wall or visible means of support, not that magic actually required any. When it came into contact with his hand, the light shifted, losing color until it was white, but gaining in brightness.

Kaylin narrowed her eyes against that light; it wasn’t enough. She looked away, and saw, as she did, that the ground beneath her feet was, in fact, becoming solid and uniform. It didn’t coalesce, though; the shifting images, the patches of nearby sky, the puddle of something that resembled green mud, began to fade. They lost color as the ward gained light; they lost substance, almost as if they were sinking through whatever it was that lay beneath them.

And that, to Kaylin’s relief, was a path made of oddly shaped, interlocking stones. Clearly it didn’t come as a relief to the Warden, but at this point, it didn’t come as shock, either. “This is the path into the heart of the green?”

He nodded.

Kaylin had never understood the way the green was connected to the Hallionne; she now knew that the Barrani didn’t, either. But it didn’t matter; there really was only one way out, and it lay at the heart of Alsanis.

* * *

They followed the path until it began to fade. Every time it did, they encountered a ward, and Lord Barian both touched and invoked it, strengthening the fading path as he did. It wasn’t fast, but it didn’t induce overwhelming nausea. It did induce stress; she could feel time falling, as if it were sand in an hourglass that couldn’t be turned over again.

But she counted the wards, because other than walking, there wasn’t much else she could do. Oh, she could look at the no longer small dragon, but he was like that sand. She felt his presence like storm clouds. She was the small fishing vessel too far from port to be guaranteed any safety.

In some storms, there was no guarantee.

When they reached the eleventh ward, the Warden said, “This is the last one.”

“You’re certain.”

“In the green—in the green that I know—it wouldn’t be. But this character means the end of the journey. The end of the path.” He turned to the Lord of the West March and bowed. “I have served as guide, but the arrival is in your hands, Lord Lirienne. Lord Calarnenne, Teller, Lord Kaylin, harmoniste, be prepared; the rest of us are now simply audience.”

The Lord of the West March bowed in turn. He took a step forward on this last leg of the path and paused there. To the left and the right, in the distance, there was horizon; the land—such as it was—was not flat; it was broken in places by things that reminded Kaylin very much of the art that escaped the Oracular Halls. Had it been simple paint or clay, it would have been interesting; it wasn’t.

She was certain she would have found it less disturbing if she had seen any signs of life in that landscape. She hadn’t. The only living things that appeared to inhabit the Hallionne were the people who walked a path that belonged in the green.

The path continued forward. Nightshade fell in to the left of the Lord of the West March, matching his stride. Kaylin understood that she was meant to occupy the position to his right, and found she didn’t want it. The Consort, however, said, “It is not simple ceremony; it is not a matter of etiquette. Nothing in the green is. Come, Lord Kaylin.” And she pretty much dragged Kaylin along with her; she walked to Kaylin’s left.

Kaylin was reminded, then, of Teela. She wanted the reminder, even as she found it painful. “We will find her,” the Consort whispered. As if she could read minds.

As if it were necessary.

What if she doesn’t want to leave? What if she wants to stay with them?
They were the wrong questions, and Kaylin managed not to ask them. It wasn’t what Kaylin wanted—but what Kaylin wanted never made a difference, in the end. What was, was. She couldn’t change it; she could only endure.

The dragon roared. He didn’t land, but at the moment, the path didn’t have a roof; it had a lot of ugly sky. A bit of what might have been lightning, and distant rain. A bit of green sunlight.

No eagles, she thought. No nightmares. None but the ones she carried within her.

* * *

She was surprised when the tree came into view, because it looked exactly like a tree. So much of the interior of the Hallionne had no solid features; you couldn’t call it a building because
building
implied deliberate construction, architecture, things like walls, floors, and ceilings. The tree however had brown bark. It had a trunk. It had roots, or at least the top part of roots, and branches that filled the sky above.

Only as they walked toward it did Kaylin realize it was not a
small
tree, and when they failed to reach it after twenty minutes, she revised that to
huge,
and then
bloody gigantic.
And she knew, then, which tree this was; she knew where the roots rested. She knew that it was the heart of the green.

Then again, Hallionne Sylvanne had been a tree, too.

The path came to an end. Which is to say, it passed beneath the rounded surface of exposed root. It might have continued beyond it, but the Lord of the West March called a halt. There was no ward here that Kaylin could see.

But she recalled that she had only seen the ward when she’d looked through the wings of a small dragon. She heard his magnified voice; felt it in the interlocking stones beneath her feet. He couldn’t fly easily above the tree; he could circumnavigate it, but instead, chose—for the first time—to land.

Every breath she could hear momentarily banked as he did.

“You cannot see him,” Alsanis’s brother said, unexpectedly. “But, Chosen, he sees you. He sees what you cannot see.”

Which was about as helpful as most of the words that fell out of ancient, immortal mouths. “This is where we’re supposed to be?” she asked.

He failed to answer. It was the Consort who said, “No, Lord Kaylin. It is the outer edge of the heart of Alsanis, and it is closed to us.”

“Clever,” Nightshade said.

“What’s clever?”

“They expect us to destroy the tree.”

“We can’t.”

“It would not be wise, no. But it serves as barrier here. If we breach that barrier, we will find them.”

“I don’t think they care.”

“No. They expect to be found; if we destroy the tree—”

“They’ll be able to do what they’ve been waiting to do.”

“That is my guess, yes. You understand what this tree is?”

“Yes. It’s the heart of the green. The living heart of the green.”

* * *

The dragon roared.

Kaylin said, “I know how to enter it.”

The Warden said, “This tree is not like the Hallionne Sylvanne, Lord Kaylin. It is like a body; you do not enter it by asking permission.”

She nodded, and then said, “But there’s a way in, now.”

The Lord of the West March frowned. She felt his surprise, his consternation, and his slow sense of something that felt like approval.
We cannot ask for the judgment of the green here.

No. But I’m certain that if we can approach the base of the roots of the tree, we can find what I found.
A wound. An entry.

He looked at her, waiting. And she looked up at the dragon. “Move back along the path,” she told her companions without looking back. The dragon’s eyes were wide, round, dark; the flashes of color across their surface seemed to have slowed. She could almost see an image in them, but only out of the corner of her eyes; it was like the faintest of stars. She couldn’t see it if she examined it directly.

“I need your help.”

He roared. She was almost certain all of her hair was now standing on end.

“We need a way down. You know where we have to go. You probably know it better than I do.”

The familiar sibilants of his laughter made her smile. Somehow, causing amusement in a creature this size just felt less humiliating.

“Can you do it?”

He folded his wings, lifted his great, long neck, and looked down at her from an almost-regal height. He spoiled the effect by scratching his nose. She thought about the egg hatching, and about the permanent shoulder ornament that had crawled out of it. She’d mostly complained about him.

To be fair, she mostly complained about Teela, too. But Teela hated sentiment. It put her off her lunch, as she so often said. The small dragon couldn’t give her the same warning, and maybe he didn’t care. But she thought she would miss him if he were gone.

She missed so many things once they were gone.

“Help us,” she whispered.

The dragon inhaled. Kaylin inhaled, as well. She dropped her arms, let her shoulders slide down her back. She felt wind; it was cold. But the dress itself was warm. It was, she thought, as she glanced at the folds of its skirt, glowing faintly with a familiar green light. In Iberrienne’s eyes, she had thought it repulsive. On its own, it wasn’t. It was the color of Barrani eyes at their happiest, lit from within.

The dragon exhaled. Kaylin was the terminating point for the stream of silver cloud that left his open jaws. She flinched, but didn’t move.

Kaylin!

But she shook her head at the Barrani voices inside her mind. Ynpharion was silent.

I asked,
she told Nightshade and Lirienne.
I asked for this.

* * *

Her eyes teared. She let them. She felt tears warm her cheeks as they fell. She didn’t take her eyes off the dragon until the cloud had cleared. She’d seen his breath melt steel, changing it into a liquid that she could cup in her hands. She’d seen it kill Ferals. She’d certainly seen its effects on the High Court; they feared it.

There were so many things she feared more at the moment, she had no room for more fear.

Have room for caution,
Lirienne said, with some anger.

She almost laughed. She understood when the time for caution had passed—and it had passed the moment she had left Teela in the heart of the green. She wondered, idly, what the dragon’s breath would do to her; it did nothing, at least at first.

But the marks on her arms began to glow silver. And the dress she wore began to shift color, as well, taking on a sheen that implied iridescence when the cloth rippled. It didn’t seem to change shape, though. She blinked away the last of the tears; to her surprise, the dragon appeared less translucent in her vision.

She turned to her companions. If the dragon looked different, they didn’t, although the Barrani, with the single exception of Nightshade, looked almost shocked, their eyes midnight-blue. It was the dress. Of course it was the dress.

I am not entirely certain,
Lord Lirienne said,
how you survived An’Teela’s temper all these years.

She couldn’t strangle me; she’s a Hawk.
Kaylin was surprised to find herself smiling at the thought.
If it helps, I’m most of the reason she learned to curse in Leontine.
Look
, she added, although it wasn’t necessary. The stones of the path began to sink. They didn’t dissolve, and they didn’t sink in concert; they sank in recessed steps.

“We have to go down,” Kaylin told everyone. The dragon roared; the stairs—the oddly shaped, uneven stairs—shook. “I think we also have to hurry.”

* * *

The Lord of the West March took the lead, almost shoving Kaylin off the path in order to do so. Kaylin was willing—barely—to give it to him. Taking risks—as she had—was one thing; exposing other people to them first, quite another.

“He is Lord of the West March,” the Consort said with a soft smile. “He has his duties and his responsibilities. Even if he did not, it is not his way to throw a stray mortal into the path of the unknown within his own domain.”

Kaylin nodded, but scurried immediately after him. The Consort was forced to let Nightshade follow, which at least two people disliked, Ynpharion being one. This surprised her.

If he kills me,
she told him,
doesn’t that work to your advantage?

The Barrani Lord failed to answer. He couldn’t cut the Consort off, as Nightshade had; he didn’t wear the Teller’s crown. But he followed the Lady stiffly. He could feel Kaylin’s confusion and her amusement, and the last was definitely not to his liking.

“What will you do with the dragon?” the Consort asked as they descended.

“I’m not certain. I don’t think his part in this is done yet.”

“No. Do you understand what his part in this is?”