Cast in Honor (The Chronicles of Elantra) (16 page)

She hadn’t needed to speak them.

Here, now, she could speak, and Gilbert could listen. She could make herself heard. The purpose of whatever word she chose was not the same.

It was hard to think while her arms hurt, but she had some experience with that. “Hope.”

“I am here, Kaylin.”

“Is the city safe?”

“Yes, for the moment. Yes and no. Gilbert came here for a reason, and I can now perceive it in the edges of his thoughts.”

“I can’t feel his thoughts at all.”

“Yes, Kaylin, you can.”

“I can’t—”

“You are standing on them, or above them, almost literally. You are—carefully—quieting some of them.”

“They’re not thoughts. They’re eyeballs.”

“...Eyeballs.”

“Yes.”

The familiar fell silent for one painful beat. He then said, to Mandoran, “That is what she actually sees.”

Mandoran’s eyes were attached to his face—which was probably good, because he widened them so much, so quickly, they might have fallen off, otherwise.

“What do
you
see?” she demanded, through clenched teeth.

“Not eyes. Why
eyes
?”

It was Annarion who answered, although he spoke without certainty. “Eyes may represent observation. You are an Imperial Hawk. Observation is an integral part of what you do, and what you do defines you.”

Kaylin wanted to laugh. She grunted, instead.

“Observation requires your presence. You can’t observe what you can’t see. Your observation is active. It does not—in your case—rely on vision alone. I would almost expect to see ears—”

“Please don’t. Just—don’t.”

“Gilbert can act and observe in a variety of ways that you can’t. I think he can do so in a variety of ways that
we
can’t.”

“Meaning your cohort, minus Teela.”

“Yes. We think—Sedarias thinks—that what you are experiencing as discrete instances of multiple eyes is a representation of the myriad ways in which Gilbert observes or interacts with your world.”

“Our world.”

“The world we are attempting to live in now, yes.”

“And he’s doing this because he’s
injured
?”

“We cannot clearly perceive any injury.”

“And the chaos? The Shadow?”

There was a longer pause. “We are uncertain. If you were, in reality, standing on Shadow as you perceive it, we would not be having this conversation. You are normally aware of some part of your patient’s thoughts when you heal?”

“If the injury is extensive, yes.”

“She suggests that the Shadow you perceive is some part of Gilbert’s memory or thought. If it hasn’t killed you yet.”

“And the Shadow I perceive in the mess of what is possibly a body?”

Silence again. “Sedarias says, ‘You’re the healer.’”

Which meant she didn’t know. The problem was that Kaylin didn’t know, either. She’d sent her power out. She’d touched the rudiments of the body’s structural components, and it
all
felt wrong to her.

And what if that wrongness was the very thing that allowed Gilbert to be in Elantra safely? What if she got it wrong, made a mistake, brought the
rest
of his Shadow to the fore?

She exhaled. She’d long lived under the principle that it was better to beg forgiveness than ask permission. But corpses didn’t have a lot of meaningful forgiveness to offer.

The power that she had attempted to send to Gilbert had not gone to Gilbert. It had, instead, turned back on itself. It had flowed into the marks of the Chosen, which were probably going to cook her alive if she couldn’t figure out what the hells she was supposed to do.

Words. Shadows. Ancients.

Words.

Shadows.

“Gilbert.”

“I am here.”

“Barrani and Dragons possess True Names. They require them to live. The name is part of their functional identity. It’s not a soul—not in the way most mortal religions define soul—but it might as well be.”

“Yes.”

“The Ancients created Barrani and Dragons.”

“Yes.” He sounded slightly confused.

“I’ve heard the Ancients called Lords of Law and Lords of Chaos.”

“Yes.”

“And the Lords of Chaos, in theory, created Shadow.”

“I fail to see—”

“Did Shadow not require True Names?”

Silence.

* * *

Kaylin lifted an arm and brought it closer to her eyes, squinting to see the shape of the marks through their light. “Hope.”

“Kaylin.”

“When the Arkon spoke in the library, you saw the words, right?”

“Yes.”

“True words have meanings. True words are complete in and of themselves. If you were to speak to someone who can understand them, they would understand your meaning.” She spoke the statements as if they were a question.

“Yes.”

“Names, True Names, true words—these were created by the Ancients. But if the very nature of the Lords of Chaos was transformative, what brought
them
to life?”

“Words, Kaylin.”

“Different words? False words? Did they even
have
the concept for those, back then?”

“Chaos was a whisper. Law was a shout.”

“But whispers and shouts
use the same words
.”

Silence.

Kaylin was bloody tired of silence.

* * *

All of the words seemed to strain upward, as if they needed the space—and looking at them carefully, Kaylin thought they did. They had developed a rough dimensionality; they looked like glowing welts.

“Gilbert, can you see the marks of the—of the Chosen?”

“Yes. I do not think anyone in this room could miss them.”

“Can you read them?” Into the silence that followed, Kaylin added, “I need an answer. I’m not asking for the good of my health.”

“I can...hear them.”

“Pardon?”

“I can hear them, Chosen. They move too quickly to be easily read.”

They weren’t moving at all, not that they weren’t trying. She exhaled. The eyes beneath her feet were now the only eyes she had not closed. If her familiar was right, the Shadow she saw was not actually present; it was the visual artifact of Gilbert’s prior memories.

As she closed the remaining eyes, breath half-held, she thought of every other time the marks on her arms had been somehow used. Twice they’d been eaten. She discarded those; she didn’t think Gilbert could devour the words themselves. She didn’t understand how the words could be physical, could provide sustenance. They weren’t, like True Names, singular. They were mostly like awkward tattoos.

The word on her forehead, rescued in the Outlands, was the only one that wasn’t straining against her skin. It was also the only one Kaylin was certain
was
unique. It had the power to wake Barrani babies. To bring them to life.

The rest of the marks were not like that one, although they looked very similar to the naked eye. But if they weren’t like that, they were just...components of language. She couldn’t read them; it hadn’t occurred to her, when they had first appeared over half her body—they’d spread a bit since—that they were
words
.

Something twitched in her memory. She turned and caught it before it escaped; it was a feeling, an instinct. She had been in this place before.

When? She had certainly never met a sentient Shadow that wasn’t trying to destroy everything in its surroundings. She had never touched one voluntarily; the idea of
healing
one was so foreign, it was almost laughable. She
knew
what Shadows did.

But she had known what the Tha’alani did once, as well: they were evil mind readers who tore a person’s darkest secrets from them. Everyone had known that about the Tha’alani.

And everyone had been wrong. So wrong.

No, it’s different
.
I was afraid of the Tha’alani for
no reason
. The Tha’alani aren’t like the Shadows. They don’t kill. They don’t blackmail. They don’t judge. The Shadows
do
destroy. It’s different.

She shook her head, trying to clear it, but the doubts clung. She had never walked into Ravellon. She had only seen what walked
out
of it. Was it too much to believe that not everything that lived there was evil?

Everyone had their own story. Her eyes narrowed as she rose, turning the thought over. Everyone had their own story.

Kaylin had known very little about Dragons. She’d learned a lot more when Bellusdeo crashed into her life—but she still tripped up, because
Dragon
was a word that had weight; it was almost mythic. Myths did not have bad days. They didn’t have good ones, either. They didn’t suffer loneliness, isolation, despair; they didn’t have desires. Myths were not alive.

The word
Shadow
, like the word
Dragon
, existed as a modern myth. And at base, myths were...stories.

She struggled with this. She had never thought of Shadows as individuals until she had met Gilbert. And were it not for Kattea, she would never have made the attempt to heal him. But if she thought of Shadows as people—with their own lives, their own stories, their own
reasons
...

Silence.

The last of the eyes beneath her feet closed.

Chapter 14

Kaylin breathed a sigh of relief when she did not fall into the whorls of chaos below her.

Cautiously, she looked around the room. She could see Mandoran, Annarion and her familiar; she could see walls, a bed and the very disturbing floor.

She could not see Gilbert.

The walls of the room hadn’t changed the way the floor had; the bed was still a bed. The desk was still a desk; it was a bit battered and dinged, suggesting age. But the shelves nearest the desk drew her eye. Kaylin had noted there were books on them when she’d first entered.

It was to the books she now looked. She didn’t trust the floor, but she trusted her familiar. She walked across the room, her gaze fixed to the spines of Gilbert’s many volumes.

Gilbert didn’t speak, but the temperature in the room plunged; the air was now colder than his hands had been.

The books weren’t uniform in size; the tops of the spines didn’t form a neat and even row. The dust was thick, even on the cobwebs. Whatever Gilbert kept here, he hadn’t touched in a while. Certainly not for cleaning, which was a stupid thought. Shadows as housekeepers.

Kaylin was used to thinking of them as death.

She picked a book up off the shelf—or tried. The books were so tightly packed, the random volume she’d chosen didn’t budge. When she applied strength, half a dozen books came free with it.

“What are you doing?” Mandoran asked.

“Looking for words.”

“You might want to consider doing that later.”

“There’s not going to be a later if I can’t find them now.” She collected the books that had been pulled loose and set them on the shelf’s edge. The book she’d chosen, she opened.

The color of light in the room changed.

* * *

Books generally had pages. This one was not an exception. It had a lot of pages. But it didn’t seem to have a beginning; it didn’t seem to have an end. Opening the cover of the book didn’t lead to a first page of any kind. This wasn’t a problem, because the pages were also blank.

Kaylin closed the book and set it down. She retrieved a different book from the small stack and opened that one instead. The same thing happened. The book opened to some nebulous part of the middle, and it opened in a fan of blank pages.

Grimacing, Kaylin looked at the shelves. There were a
lot
of books.

Was this the right place? Was this where she would find what she was looking for? Ugh. “Gilbert, what’s in the other room?”

Silence. She almost shrieked in frustration.

“Apologies, Chosen, but I am uncertain. To which other room do you refer?”

“The room behind the door on the far wall.”

He didn’t answer. “If you tell me there is no door on the far wall, I’ll consider serious violence.”

Silence.

Kaylin exhaled. “The door opposite the one I entered? Same shape, same general size?” Her eyes narrowed; her shoulders fell. “The one with the door ward instead of a knob?”

When he again failed to speak, she turned to Mandoran. “Please tell me you can see the door. Look—
I
could see the door when I entered the room. Before I tried to heal Gilbert. I don’t know what you’re looking at—but could you try to look at it the way the merely mortal do? Just for a minute?”

Mandoran frowned. “I believe I am looking at the door the way the merely mortal do. Now you’ve done it,” he added, with a little too much glee.

“Done what?”

“Teela’s heading down. She tells me to tell you she’ll break your left arm if you open that door before she gets here.”

“She’s not my partner.”

“Your partner is coming, too.”

* * *

Kattea and Bellusdeo did not appear at the door. Tain, Severn and Teela did. “Yes,” she said, before Kaylin could open her mouth. “I see the door.” Severn nodded. He also unwound his weapon chain.

“What, exactly, are you doing?” Teela demanded.

“Trying to find the right place to put a missing word, if you must know.”

“Kattea said you were—”

“Healing Gilbert, yes. But that doesn’t mean what it normally does. He’s alive, but not in the way any of us are. I think—I think I need to put a word somewhere. To finish a figurative sentence.” She tossed Teela the closed book in her hands.

“Do
not
open that!” Gilbert shouted. It was the first time he had raised his voice.

“Teela, can you see Gilbert?”

“Yes. You can’t?”

“No. I can hear him. I can’t see him.”

To Gilbert, Teela said, “Kaylin opened this.”

“Yes.”

“But you don’t want me to.”

“I do not think it would be wise. Kaylin is Chosen; she is interacting with the book in a way that you will not.”

“What did you do, kitling?” More edge to this question.

“I picked it up and opened it. It’s blank,” she added. “I think they’re all blank.”

“They are not blank,” Gilbert told her. “Or at least they will not be to your friend.”

“Are they yours?”

“They are in my keeping.” Which wasn’t the same thing.

Teela handed the book back to Kaylin; she tucked it under her arm. “The door?”

Kaylin nodded.

* * *

They paused in front of it. Severn was a yard behind them. When Teela lifted a hand, Kaylin caught it before the Barrani Hawk’s palm made contact with the ward.

“Not you.”

“I’m not in the mood to listen to you whine about door wards.” Teela was never in that mood.

“This is a door that Gilbert, Annarion and Mandoran can’t see. If small and squawky were a reasonable size, I’d look at it through his wings; as it is, if he sits on my shoulder it’ll only be because I’m flat out on the floor. I don’t imagine this is a normal door ward. If it is, I will do my level best not to—as you put it—whine.” When Teela failed to move, Kaylin continued, “Gilbert didn’t think it was safe for you to open this book. If he thought it was safe for you to open the door, I’d let you do it and be grateful.

“But since he can’t see it, his opinion doesn’t count.”

Teela glanced at Tain. Tain shrugged.

Kaylin placed her palm against the ward.

* * *

She was braced for the sharp jolt of pain that door wards always caused, and mindful of Teela glowering at her side. She was not prepared for the pain to stop.

But it did. The marks on her arms, although they still shed light, were once again flat, a colored part of her skin. As a bonus, the door swung open.

Teela’s skepticism was practically physical.

The room beyond was dark. The only thing that shed light was the floor, because this floor very much matched the floor in the other room—the one she’d seen only when she made direct contact with Gilbert. It was a steady stream of chaos, colors bubbling up to its surface as if it were lava. The air, however, was cold enough to cause breath to mist.

“What are you hoping to find here?”

“Words” was Kaylin’s flat response. “Don’t close that door.” She rolled back both of her sleeves and lifted her arms. “Can you guys tell me what you see?”

Teela hesitated. “What do
you
see, kitling?”

“Not much. It’s cold and it’s dark. I can just make out the ceiling, which is flat. Teela?”

“It looks like a morgue.”

* * *

“A morgue.” Kaylin exhaled. She moved toward the center of the room, but she didn’t run into any tables. Or chairs. Or, more relevant to Teela’s description, bodies. “No wonder Mandoran and Annarion are having such a hard time.”

“Pardon?”

“There are no slabs here. There are no chairs. There are no cupboards and no corpses. Why morgue?”

“There’s a sheeted corpse,” Tain said quietly.

“Is it human?”

“I said it was sheeted. It is roughly human in size.” He then spoke to Teela so quietly Kaylin couldn’t pick up his words. Teela’s were clearer. She was cursing in Aerian.

“It’s not human.”

“Leontine? Tha’alani? Anything mortal?”

“No.”

Kaylin, frustrated, turned toward Teela, to find that she had vanished. Only her voice remained; hers and Tain’s. It was disorienting and very, very uncomfortable, but it was also a reminder: Kaylin was still, somehow, attached to Gilbert. What she saw now was, in some part, a function of that. “You can’t identify the race.”

“It is not draconian; it is not Barrani.” Teela hesitated.

“Is it an ancestor? I mean, like the ones that woke up in Castle Nightshade?”

“No,” Tain said. “We’re wrong. I don’t think it is a corpse.”

Tain had seen his share of corpses. They all had. It was not an easy mistake for the Barrani corporal to make. Kaylin was frustrated; she wanted to see. She approached Tain—or rather his voice—because that was all she had to go on.

Severn said, “It feels like ice.”

“It’s not ice,” Teela replied. “Marble, maybe; it’s too polished for stone.”

“It looks like a corpse, not a statue,” Tain added.

As she approached their familiar voices, the air grew colder. The mist produced by warm breath in cold air grew more dense. She could not see any of the other Hawks in the room. Nor could she see the body or statue or whatever it actually was. She saw her arms, her breath and layers of darkness that were parted by the light the marks on her arms shed.

She needed to see what they were seeing, and there was only one way to do that.

Severn
.

He was there instantly.

I’m sorry.

Don’t be. You mostly stay on your own side of the fence.
She felt the undercurrent of humor.

You can see what they see?

Yes.

I need to see it, too. This might be uncomfortable—

Kaylin
.

Right. She stopped wasting time on apologies or explanations. She had a True Name. She wasn’t born to it, hadn’t been given life by it, but it was there. None of the Barrani really understood what a True Name meant for a mortal, and as a result, the mortal in possession of that name didn’t understand it, either. But she had given her name to Severn.

She could speak to Severn, and Severn could speak to her. They didn’t have to be in the same room, although in this case being in the same room was no guarantee of anything. More than that, they could see what the other person saw, or hear what the other person heard—with effort.

Kaylin made that effort now.

Through Severn’s eyes, she could see Teela and Tain. Teela was examining the not-corpse, her brows folded in toward the bridge of her nose. To Kaylin’s eye, they weren’t actually in the same room that she was. Their voices were, but otherwise, there was no overlap.

But she saw what Severn saw. What Tain had initially assumed was a body lay, half-covered, on a stone slab that stood two feet above the ground. Given the shape of its upper body, Kaylin assumed it was meant to be male. To Kaylin’s eye, it resembled the Barrani, up to a point: the length of face, the height of cheekbones, the build of the chest.

But the Barrani of Kaylin’s acquaintance didn’t have three eyes.

“Gilbert?”

“I am here.”

“Can you see what—what they see?”

“In this room, Kaylin, I can see nothing. I think it more likely that at the moment, you see only what I see.”

“What they see—it’s real.” There was a hint of question in the statement.

“Yes. It is not precisely what I see. You do not see dreams when you wake.”

“Dreams aren’t real.”

“Are they not?”

She closed her eyes.
Severn, I need you to speak.

“What do you need me to say?”

“Just speak.”

He did. Severn wasn’t much of a talker. He didn’t tell stories; he didn’t offer many humorous anecdotes. What he did, instead, was describe the body. He pulled the sheet down and folded it. The body was definitely male. Severn touched its face, ran the tips of his fingers over the lids of closed eyes.

Through their connection, Kaylin felt what he felt. She saw what he saw. She understood why the Hawks had used both ice and marble as descriptions. What she could not see was herself.

Opening her eyes, she could see the trail left by the simple act of breathing in a very cold place. It hung in the air, and unlike breath, it didn’t dissipate. Kaylin raised her left arm; gold light was reflected by this odd cloud.

“Can you put your palms on his chest?”

Severn didn’t ask her why. Teela did.

“If there are words in this room, this is where they have to be,” Kaylin replied.

“You’re certain?”

“As certain as I can be.”

This didn’t impress Teela. To be fair, it didn’t impress Kaylin, either.

Healing had been the one blessing to come out of the marks that adorned her skin. It had always just worked. It hadn’t required practice or lessons or experience. She had saved lives—for the midwives, in the Foundling Hall, in the Halls of Law—merely by desiring it. She hadn’t studied bodies; she hadn’t studied herbs or plants or esoteric branches of magic.

This was the first time that healing had not worked on its own, as a function of Kaylin’s will. It was the first time she had resented her own ignorance so viscerally. Or maybe not. At heart, she was mostly ignorant. She’d gained enough experience that she could frequently hide it. But not from herself.

Not when it counted.

She kicked herself. Now was not the time for this. She could hate herself later.

* * *

Her breath had come out in mist, and the mist had gathered, condensing. She couldn’t stop breathing, and as she did, more mist joined the mist that hovered just in front of her, above the floor.

Kaylin moved to stand in what she thought might be the position Severn now occupied. She could feel the cold, hard lines of the body’s chest beneath his palms. Fortunately, Severn’s hands weren’t numb yet, despite the chill in the air.

“This,” she said aloud, “is a total pain.”

“You expected something easier?”

The mist before her eyes did not, as Kaylin half hoped, solidify. Not entirely. But it moved more like smoke than air. Strands of silvered white twisted around each other; she could both see them and see through them. They had dimension. She couldn’t see any words; the mist moved too much.