Cast in Ruin (7 page)

Kaylin cursed as the earth shook again. This was getting them nowhere; the giant could make cracks in the ground all damn day and he didn’t seem to be running out of Shadow to fill them. He couldn’t cross the border; that much was clear. He tried; she could see him straining to move, and she could see the sudden stillness that made his failure clear.

Her arms and legs were aching now, which she expected, given the magic. What she didn’t expect, as she turned her full attention to the armored giant, was the way her vision began to blur. This was
not
the time to pass out, and as she’d had some experience with that on her drinking binges with Teela and Tain, she recognized some of the signs.

But she hadn’t been drinking with the two Barrani Hawks in months; she
certainly
hadn’t been drinking today. She forced herself to focus, and as she did, the whole of the armored giant snapped into place with a sharp clarity that was so sudden it made her teeth rattle. It wasn’t his size or his shape or the way his blade—which she doubted she could even lift—was drinking in both Shadow and light; it wasn’t the way his armor glowed, or even the way his eyes did—because he had eyes and she could suddenly see them.

It wasn’t even the movement of his mouth, the way his lips formed a continuing chain of syllables that she couldn’t quite force into words. It was his
name.
She could see it as clearly as she had ever seen a name before, but for the first time, she actually understood what it was she was seeing. The border that he struggled against was also completely visible to Kaylin as she watched him. It, like his name, had form and shape in a way that it had never had before.

It was hard to look away, and she could only manage it for a few seconds. But the brief glance the effort afforded made at least one thing clear: the Shadows that crossed the border had no similar words at their heart; they had no substance. Which was a stupid thing to think of creatures that could destroy anything standing in their way.

Then again, so could tidal waves and earthquakes, and no one tried to reason with
them.

She turned back to the giant, and to the word that was at his heart. The rune itself wasn’t dark, and it wasn’t ugly; it was, just as any other ancient word she’d glimpsed, composed of familiar broad strokes, fine lines, dots, and hatches. Its meaning wasn’t reflected in its visible shape. It wasn’t necessary. She could read it. What she couldn’t easily do was tease meaning out of it, which was what reading was supposed to be about.

“Kaylin!” Severn shouted. Something was wrong with his voice, although it took her a minute to figure out what it was: it was the only shout she could hear; all the rest of the noise had vanished. The movement of blades, the shouting of indecipherable orders, the crackling of Dragon breath, had suddenly gone mute. She turned—tried to turn—in Severn’s direction, but her legs had locked in place. She couldn’t take her eyes off the rune. Even the form that enclosed it on all sides was now a translucent black with shiny bits. The weapon that extended from both of the giant’s long arms was the only other part of it that was as solid as the word—but the two weren’t connected.

She squinted, looking at the sword, in part because she could. There, along the flat of the blade she could see carved—and glowing—runes. They were, like the giant’s name, ancient words. She cursed in Leontine, but the words apparently failed to leave her mouth, because she couldn’t hear them, either.

What
could
she hear?

The movement of a giant. The whistling fall of his sword. The muted movement of Shadow, which sounded like the rustle and gather of fallen, dead leaves in a dry wind. The earth, in the universe her ears now inhabited, was not being broken; the Shadows, in the same universe, weren’t speaking.

She was still frozen in place, although time hadn’t stopped. She tried to step back, tried—again—to turn, with no effect. Taking a deep breath, she accepted the inevitable and took a step forward. Forward worked. Of course, forward led her to, and not away from, the giant; forward led her to, and not away from, the border. She was momentarily glad that she couldn’t hear anyone else because she was fairly certain at least a handful of people were now shouting choice phrases at her in their native tongues.

But the border yielded to her in a way that it didn’t yield to the would-be invaders: with ease, and without the necessity of a lot of collateral destruction. The landscape didn’t magically change with the crossing; the colors didn’t return; neither did sound. But the runes developed a texture and a dimension as she approached them, which made the sword look decidedly more unwieldy.

The giant noticed her only when she was five yards away. His eyes widened slightly, and his sword arm—well, arms, given the overhand swing—stilled. He then turned toward her; the word at his core didn’t shift at all.

But it wasn’t a complicated word. It wasn’t like the name of the Outcaste Dragon; it wasn’t as immense as the name of a world. Kaylin began, as the giant slowly ambled toward her, to speak it. To speak his name, even though she couldn’t understand what she was saying.

Speech was now an act of instinct. She wasn’t speaking to make herself heard or to be understood; she wasn’t speaking to communicate. She
was
buying time, because she had no doubt at all that if the giant reached her, speech would be impossible. Breathing might also be an issue.

Names in the old tongue had syllables that, in any other language, would compose an entire paragraph’s worth of words. Or a page. Or a book. They couldn’t be spoken quickly in a breathless rush; enunciating them at all was like trying to speak with a mouth full of molasses. It was messy, it took effort, and it was probably unpleasant to watch.

But as the syllables came, the giant’s steps slowed and faltered, as if he was keeping time to her awkward struggle to speak. To speak, she realized, to him. The giant was, or had once been, a man. Not a human; humans didn’t have names like this at their core. But inasmuch as Dragons and Barrani were alive, he had once been alive.

His sword was no longer raised above his head; he lowered it, letting one hand fall away. The free hand, he raised in her direction, where it tapered from fist to point. She continued to speak, but as she did, he began to speak, as well. His voice was the low rumble of moving earth—a Dragon’s human voice, but slightly deeper and slightly fuller.

She couldn’t understand a word of it.

But even as she thought it, she realized that understanding what he meant to say wasn’t quite the same as understanding its effect: he was trying to
tell her
his name. He was trying, as she was, to speak the whole of it even as he closed the distance. He was also going to kill her if he could; that was clear. But he
knew
that if she knew his true name, she could prevent him. This utterance was the whole of his attempt at self-control.

And he wanted it.

His desire gave her strength; his speech gave her attempt a more solid foundation. She continued to speak, but as she did, she understood why Mejrah and her companions chanted in unison: she was speaking his name as a harmony to his speech. It was like song, like music, like a chorus of two. It grew louder as she grew more certain; it came faster, because she was no longer struggling to find, to
feel,
the syllables. Every syllable spoken caused him to lose height.

When he at last reached her, he was a mere eight feet—or eight and a half—in height, and his blade was no longer so big it could stave in rooftops. And as she spoke what she knew were the last three syllables, the blade fell from his hands, landing on the ground between their feet.

She looked at him. The armor still girded him, but he was now the size and shape of…of a refugee. He wasn’t young; he might have been older than Severn, but it was hard to tell; if he had a
name,
he should be immortal.

At least in this world.

His hands were shaking as he lifted them and removed his helm. In the dark light of altered vision, the helm shone like polished ebony as it rested in the crook of his arm. His eyes were clear, and they were a shade of gold that looked both familiar and wrong in his face. He spoke again, and this time, she lifted a hand and walked toward him slowly, until she could touch what she could still clearly see: his name, the name he had spoken with her, and by speaking, had given into her keeping. When she touched it, she could hear his voice so clearly it was almost a song.

“Chosen,” he said softly. “You are Chosen.”

Kaylin nodded; her arms were glowing so strongly the runes could be seen.

“But you are not of the People.”

“Not of your people, no. Do you know where you are?”

“I am in the heartland,” he replied. It made, of the word
heart,
something to be dreaded or loathed.

“Do you know what you were doing?”

“Yes. I was summoning my forces to do battle against the fortress of…our enemy.” He lifted a mailed hand, and removed, with effort, a gauntlet. His hands were callused and scarred; he lifted them to those startling eyes, dimming them a moment.

“Call them back.”

He nodded, and lifted the mailed hand. “I cannot hold them for long,” he told her. “Not as I…am.” He bowed to her then. “I can send them from the border for now.”

“And what will you do?”

“I will be called, sooner or later, and I will follow.”

“You can’t—”

“Can you give me back my name, Chosen? Can you, when you cannot take it and use it as your own? I would serve you, could you hold me. But the name is not known to you alone.”

Even as he spoke, she heard the whispers of a distant voice.

“Maggaron,” she said softly. And then, in the silence of thought,
Maggaron.
It wasn’t the whole of his name as she’d struggled to pronounce it, but it was the expression of what she’d achieved. Just as Nightshade’s name had been, and was, although this was the first time she understood the fact
as
fact.

He smiled; it was a pained, tortured expression.
Yes.
The mental bond came with the true name.

Are you alive?

Is this life? I would not be considered alive by the People.

Could they cleanse you?

Ah. No. It is not…an infestation or a contamination of that nature, Chosen. I am used against myself; nothing else is required.

Kaylin snorted. “You’re not a twenty-foot-tall giant; you didn’t get that on your own. You’ve been living in shadow, in the Shadows, for how long?”

“What does time signify here?”

“Spoken like an Immortal,” she snorted. She heard shouting, voices, and one loud roar, as the world suddenly returned; she turned to meet it.

The road was a mess because it wasn’t really
road
anymore; there were patches of it that were still glowing an unpleasant orange, and whole new ditches that would kill any horses anyone was stupid enough to drive this far into the fief’s interior. But there were only a few bodies on the ground, and most of those were moving, albeit not without help.

Morse was bleeding; something had lanced her cheek. She didn’t appear to notice, and not even Tara fussed over Morse when she decided an injury was beneath contempt. But it was Mejrah’s voice that was clearest, because Mejrah was shouting or crying—or both—as she pointed at Kaylin.

No, not at Kaylin. At the man who stood before her in his odd armor, his name exposed and held beneath the flat of her open palm.

CHAPTER 5

“Kaylin.” Tiamaris’s voice was the low rumble of moving earth. “Step back across the border.”

Kaylin frowned. From where she was standing, she could no longer see it—not that it had ever been all that clear when there wasn’t a small army of Shadows waiting along its edge. “Can I bring him with me?”

Smoke—a literal stream of it, forcefully expelled—eddied around her feet. Before the fieflord could follow it with words, Mejrah approached Kaylin, her hands lifted and turned palms out as if to imply that she was helpless. She spoke to the armored man, her voice low enough that it broke on syllables.

The man, still facing Kaylin, moved his head toward the old woman. His expression as he did could have broken stone hearts. Mejrah, however, turned to Kaylin and spoke rapid, agitated words—none of which made any sense. Language lessons had never seemed so profoundly important; unfortunately, no one present was yet expert enough to teach them.

“What is she saying?” Kaylin asked Maggaron.

“Can you not understand her words?”

“I wouldn’t be asking if I could.”

His brows rose in genuine surprise. “But—you are Chosen.”

“I can’t walk on water,” she replied tersely. “And you clearly understand her. What did she say?”

“She wishes to know if what you have done is stable.”

“Tell her I have no idea.”

He did. Kaylin was running through Leontine phrases in her mind.

“She asks if you know who I am.”

“Tell her—” Kaylin bit back the flippant response. “Does she know who you are?”

He didn’t repeat the question; instead, he nodded. When he began to speak again—to Mejrah—Kaylin listened. But she listened, if it were possible, with her hands; she listened to the word that she hadn’t released. It was warm, and it was bright; if she looked at it too long it burned itself into her vision, the way the sun could at the wrong height.

“Ascendant,” Mejrah said. Kaylin could hear two words overlapping each other as the older woman spoke. It wasn’t cacophony, but it was disturbing. “How is it that you come to be here?”

“Do you not understand? You are here.”

“We came through the emptiness. We—all of our people that could be gathered—walked the gray space and the hungering void. We
are
here. But you…” She hesitated.

“I fell in battle.”

“Yes. On plains far from these streets and this…city. But even here, the Shadows exist.” This last was said with resignation and bitterness.

“Yes.”

“They are not so strong here; the war in these lands has barely begun. We will fight,” she added, her voice a low growl.

Maggaron’s smile was sharp and brief. He raised an arm in salute.

But the older woman was not yet done. “We did not think to see Ascendants again. How did you travel here?”

“I…did not travel here.”

Mejrah was silent for a long moment. When she spoke again, her voice was harder—but it was also more brittle. “How is it that you command the darkness? How is it that you fight at the behest of our enemy?”

He flinched and turned away from her—but turned back as if shorn of will. “There is truth,” he finally said, “in the stories of the Ancients. The Shadows spoke my name, and they knew me, and when they bid me follow, I could not disobey for long, although I did struggle. I came, at last, to the heart of the Shadow—and it is the heart of the world, Mejrah. What I have seen—what I have touched—” He fell silent. “I have fallen. But there is beauty and majesty in the Shadows; there is—there could be—freedom.”

“If you were free,” Kaylin asked, “would you stay in the Shadow?”

His smile was bitter. “No, Chosen. There is no freedom for me now. What they have, they hold, and they will hold it—”

“Until they’re destroyed.”

He shook his head, and his face developed the expression that Kaylin most loathed: pity. “They cannot be destroyed. They are eternal; they live and breathe and move and change. They defy death, just as—”

“As you do.”

“No, Chosen. Their will is stronger than any other force they have encountered. They live in the web of the knowledge of worlds, and they feed from it. They move along its strands, and they change whatever they touch. They speak all languages, they can live in any environment. They require no breath, no warmth, no food.”

“If they were that powerful, all worlds would already be Shadow. All of them. We can fight them. There are people here who are also powerful and ancient.” She was acutely aware she wasn’t one of them.

He did not speak; instead, he looked toward Tiamaris and Sanabalis. And then, to her great surprise, he bowed. His armor clanked. She wondered, given its weight, if he’d be able to stand up again without teetering, because she doubted she could have. “They are Dragons,” he whispered.

“Yes.”

He rose with an enviable ease. “They are the firstborn, and the oldest. Do you not understand what they are?”

A brief memory of Diarmat’s first class came to mind. It was hard to feel any awe for someone you wanted to strangle so badly. “They’re Dragons,” she said.

“
Kaylin.
”

Kaylin turned to the fieflord. His eyes weren’t orange; they were an unfortunate shade of red. Sanabalis was now standing by Tiamaris’s side;
his
eyes were orange. And unlidded.

“I have his name,” she told them. And then, after a pause, “He has one.”

The two Dragons exchanged a glance. Sanabalis said almost gently, “I do not believe that is possible if he is of the People.”

“Why?”

“They are mortal. They age and they die.”

“So am I, and
I
have one.”

The Dragons exchanged a more familiar glance. It was Tiamaris who answered. “And that is, of course, information that is best shouted loudly at the edge of a fief, where Shadows are dominant.” His breath was a plume of bright-colored flame. “Do you
hold
his name?”

“Yes. But so do they.”

“They?”

Actually, that was a damn good question. She didn’t have an answer, but hazarded one anyway. “The Shadows.” Frowning, she added, “What does happen if more than one person holds a true name?”

“It depends,” Tiamaris replied. He glanced at Sanabalis, and Kaylin could almost see him passing the question off.

Sanabalis ran a hand through the long strands of thin beard. “It would depend. Let us assume that you speak of only two entities: yourself, in this case, and the Shadow. If you have opposing goals—and again, we will assume for the sake of simplification, that this is true—you will exert the force of your will upon the name.

“The name will not break; it is not a physical object. But the man will be pulled in two directions. The best that can be achieved in that case is that he will be rendered immobile and will do nothing.”

“And the worst?”

“You sleep. You are easily distracted. You are not accustomed to enforcing your will and your desire upon others. I do not believe any of these three things can be said of your enemy. Kill him, if it is possible for you to do so; leave him, if it is not. If he follows you now—and I believe he will—there is no guarantee that he will not turn upon you, or upon any of
us,
the moment your will flags.

“And he will be dangerous then. The power that he can easily reach will be lessened, but he will be able to draw it; he will be a window from the heart of the fiefs into the fief of Tiamaris, and we are
already
undermined by some Shadow we cannot yet locate.”

She turned back to Maggaron. He smiled. It was not a happy smile, but unlike most smiles one saw in the fiefs, it wasn’t cruel, either. Bending at the knee, he retrieved the sword that had fallen between them. “Chosen,” he said. “Learn to speak the tongue of the People. Ask Mejrah what the Ascendants are, and how they are born.

“If I understood the Dragon Lord correctly,
you
bear a name much like mine, but you are, like the People, a thing of flesh and mortality. Take this. It will serve you well in your coming war.”

She looked at the runed sword in his hand. It was no longer the greatsword of a giant; it had lost that form and shape when he had lost the same. But at its size it was still something even Severn would have difficulty wielding with any grace; it was a weapon of brute force.

“Take it, Chosen. Take it, or it will serve
me,
as it has done.”

She shook her head. “I can’t—”

But Mejrah shouted in her ear loudly enough that her teeth were rattling by the end of it. She didn’t need to understand the language of the People to understand exactly what the old woman’s demands were. She wanted Kaylin to take the sword. Kaylin’s sword training was such that she was competent; she doubted she would ever be
good.

And she didn’t doubt, looking at the blade whose runes still glowed, that good was what
this
sword deserved. But she lifted her hand, and Maggaron placed the sword across her palm hard enough that the blade bit the skin of the single hand she’d lifted; the second was occupied. She wasn’t willing to release him yet, and she therefore kept her hand around his name.

He shuddered once as the sword left him, and then took a step back.

Mejrah shouted at him.

Tiamaris, however, roared at Mejrah, and the old woman stilled. She didn’t, however, shut up; instead, she lowered her voice and spoke quietly to Kaylin. Quiet didn’t have the force of imperative behind it. “What is she saying?” she asked Maggaron. She couldn’t focus clearly enough to pick up the language again.

His smile was slow and sweet around the edges; it was also sad. He shook his head. “Go with her, Chosen.”

“Maggaron—”

“She wishes you to bring me to the People here. I cannot take that risk.”

“You can’t destroy yourself.”

“No. But…the Shadows have less purchase here, and I do not think they will send me to the outlands again.” He bowed. “I must go. Can you not hear them?”

Kaylin frowned. The rune beneath her palm was still warm, but it felt…less solid. “No,” she told him, staring at the hatches and curved strokes beneath her palm. She began to speak the word again, and it gained brilliance, as if her syllables were filling it. His brows rose, and his eyes took on that light.

“How important is this?” she asked him. “Ask Mejrah.”

Mejrah replied almost before he’d finished the sentence.

“She says it is very important, Chosen.”

Kaylin nodded. “Tiamaris!”

The Dragon rumbled, his language as unintelligible for the moment as Mejrah’s. “He’s been to the heart of the Shadows; he knows something about them that we don’t—or can’t—know safely. I think it’s worth taking the risk—but it’s not my fief.”

“Good of you to remember,” the Dragon Lord replied. She couldn’t see what he did next, but she heard steps, and Sanabalis entered her peripheral vision. “How strong is your hold?”

“I
don’t know,
Sanabalis. I haven’t fought many wars
inside
a living person before.”

“If you aren’t careful, you’ll cut your hand in half,” he observed. He walked past her until he stood like the third point of a very tight triangle, the other two of which were Kaylin and Maggaron. “I am aware of your dislike for magic,” he told her calmly. “Unfortunately, some magic is now required.”

She nodded. While she couldn’t hear what Maggaron clearly could, she could
feel
it beneath her hand; the texture of the rune was shifting and changing. Not the word itself—the parts didn’t bend, split, or fold. But it was, once again, losing solidity. She knew that when it became permeable enough, he’d be gone.

Sanabalis had given her warning. As usual, he had mastered the art of understatement. If she’d plastered her entire body—both sides, bottom of feet and top of head—against the most extreme door ward in the Imperial Palace, it would have tickled in comparison. She bit something—her tongue, her lip—and her mouth filled with the familiar and unpleasant salt of her own blood.

It was followed by the worst Leontine phrase she knew; it was all she could do not to drop the sword
and
the damn name simultaneously.

Sanabalis didn’t seem to be particularly concerned—at least not with her. But he studied Maggaron’s face, and as he did, Maggaron’s eyes began to shift colors in a rapid cycle. She’d never seen anything like it before, and had she, she would have immediately assumed the person possessing those eyes was dangerously insane. But Maggaron’s expression didn’t change at all; he continued to stare at Kaylin. It was very disturbing.

“Sanabalis,” she said, forcing the syllables through gritted teeth, “is this entirely necessary?”

“It is.”

“Will-it-be-over-soon?”

“Yes.”

She didn’t even ask him what he was doing because his answer might have prolonged the casting. But her eyes began to water, and her vision began to blur; she saw two or three of Maggaron begin to separate as she watched. The blood in her mouth did
not
help. People began to speak—shout, cry, babble, and
hiss
—in a way that destroyed the actual weight of syllables. She bent slightly into her knees to brace herself, and then bent slightly more, because if her legs were too stiff she’d probably topple, and folding usually left fewer bruises.

She could barely see Maggaron now; she could see—and feel—his name, and she clung to that, tightening her fingers into rigid claws. Unfortunately for Kaylin, her suspicion that the sensation of hand-on-rune was a metaphor that didn’t
actually
involve her real hands was proved correct. It didn’t hold her up.

Nothing did; she felt as if she were walking—slowly—through the portal in Castle Nightshade. Or rather, that Sanabalis had uprooted said portal and had dropped it, in one go, on her head.

Kaylin.
The single word was cool and clear, and none of its syllables—all two—clashed with anything else. Even given the source, it was a relief.

Nightshade?

Where are you? In Tiamaris.

You are not in Tiamaris,
was his edged reply.