Michelle Sagara (23 page)

“Which part?”

“The part about bleeding. Or rather, the ‘bleeding now.’”

“Oh, that part.” Kaylin winced. “When we hit the tunnels to escape the attackers, we came to a giant, underground trunk. I mean, tree trunk. With roots the size of a small building. Did you see that when you were there?”

Teela was dead silent. It was the wrong silence, but with Teela, it often was. “What makes you think that I’ve been in those tunnels?”

“Well, Serian said...something. I don’t know. I got the impression that everyone in the West March had seen them.”

“The inferences you draw from a few words would cause most people to shut up forever. Not every citizen of the West March has had cause to seek the judgment of the green. It is not a guarantee of survival, and only when they face certain death—or worse—will they surrender to it.”

“And you—”

“No. I have—I had—my own reasons. This is the first time since the end of my childhood that I have willingly surrendered anything to the green.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re an idiot,” she replied. “I should have known. The moment Nightshade attempted to make his deal, I should have known.”

“I don’t think Nightshade—”

“Don’t think he what? You don’t think he planned this? You don’t think he manipulated you into the position you now hold?”

“Teela—how could he? The green chooses. He couldn’t have known that the green would choose me. He couldn’t have known that you’d be here. He certainly couldn’t have guessed that the Consort would choose
this
bloody recitation to visit.”

“He knew some part of what Iberrienne intended.”

“I don’t think
Iberrienne
understood what Iberrienne intended.” Kaylin bit her lip. “But it’s all tied up in the past, isn’t it? Iberrienne lost someone here. I thought—I thought Iberrienne was younger. He’s not, is he? He lost someone. Nightshade lost someone. You lost—”

“Yes.” Teela started to pace. She disguised this by pacing in a straight line; Kaylin fell in beside her. Their stride and the even, slow fall of their steps were pure groundhawk.

“How long were you with them?”

“Pardon?”

“I thought—I thought you were all chosen and brought here together.”

“We were.”

“But you weren’t just thrown together before you came.”

“No.” Teela exhaled. “Kitling, you don’t like to talk about your past much. You spent years of your life not talking about it.”

Kaylin nodded.

“We knew that your mother had died, that you had grown up in Nightshade. We didn’t know every detail of your life between the time your mother died to the time you became our mascot.”

“No.”

“We don’t know it all now.”

“Teela—”

“And we don’t ask, because it doesn’t matter to us. Can you not do the same?”

They walked what would have been a city block before Kaylin replied. “I would—”

“That’s not a yes.”

“I would, Teela—but I think it does matter. It doesn’t matter to
me.
You’re Teela. You’re always going to be the person who broke my first chair—”

“It was a shoddy piece of furniture.”

“You broke my first lock, too.”

“I replaced that.”

“And the bed?”

“I only broke the slats.” Teela glanced at Kaylin, and added, “But I take your point.”

“I think the green is worried about you.”

Teela said nothing.

“The Hallionne, too. At least the ones who talked to me.” She hesitated. She thought, now, that part of the reason she’d been given the role of harmoniste—and the dress that went with it—was not her role as Chosen, but her friendship with Teela. “I don’t know what you understand. If you told me that you understood what the green intended—and why—I’d leave it alone. I would.”

Teela gave her a look that defined the word
skeptical.
“I’ll allow that you’d
try.
” She stopped walking. “And to be fair, I don’t understand it myself.”

“Do you want to?”

“You’re remarkably perceptive today.” Teela exhaled sharply. “I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about the past—because for me, the minute I start, it’s
not
the past. It’s the disadvantage of immortal memory. None of the edges are dulled—and none of the pain. We hold long grudges,” she added. “Your kin can’t. What you think of as a grudge might last a year. Or six months. Or even a decade. That is not a long grudge for the Barrani.

“It takes effort to be here, kitling. It takes effort to see the West March as it is now, and not to walk it as it was then. Every memory of then leads to one place.” She smiled. It was not a happy expression. “We spent more than a decade together. We lived and trained together. We were young. Even the Barrani are young at one point—but youth is such a tiny fraction of our lives. We dreamed,” she added. “We dreamed of being heroes. Of saving our people. Of defeating the Dragon flights. We dreamed that we would one day be called upon to wield our people’s legendary weapons.

“And we knew that we had been chosen. Each and every one of us. We fancied ourselves the best and the brightest of our kind. We were meant to be powers, Kaylin.”

Kaylin understood what power meant to the Barrani. She said nothing.

“I could tell you their names. I can remember what they looked like, and when. We were...more open. Less cautious. Youth often is.” Her smile deepened. “My childhood was not like yours. I understand that in many ways, I lacked the fears that drove your mother, and you, in the fiefs. I had food. I had shelter. I had the relative safety of my lineage. We all did.

“Perhaps because of that, we could dream in ways you didn’t. I don’t know. But we promised that we would thrive, Kaylin. That we would survive. That we would hold true to our beginnings when the wars were at last ended—we would not fall upon each other. We would not war against each other, not even in the name of our kin.” She shook her head. “Such are the follies of childhood. I do not know if we would have held true to those vows.

“I was not the leader of our group. That was Sedarias. She was everything that neither I nor the Consort can be—even when young. She was cool, collected, perfect; her poise was terrifying. She could, with very little effort, pass for adult; of the twelve of us, she garnered the most praise. She understood politics, and the undercurrents of both power and weakness; she understood desire and how to manipulate it. She understood standing, status. I would say that compared to most of the mortals I’ve met, any Barrani child would be considered sophisticated—but even among our kin, there are standouts.

“But it was Sedarias who suggested the vow; Sedarias who first made it. Perhaps she meant to bind us to her; perhaps it would have worked over the centuries. I don’t know. But she made the vow, and then asked that we respond in kind. She told us that she believed holding true to that vow was simply a matter of will, of power, of intent.

“We were, of course, the children of the powerful. We understood what was intended for us. But Sedarias—and Eddorian—were suspicious.”

“Not you?”

Teela laughed. Or tried. “No. I told you—I wanted it. I wanted to be worthy of my father’s regard and respect. I wanted to be what he wanted. But—I was young. I
liked
the vow, kitling. I liked the idea of forging unbreakable bonds with the only peers, the only friends, I had.”

Kaylin missed a step. Given that the ground was totally flat, and mostly dirt, she had no excuse, and Teela noticed immediately.

“What connection have you just made?”

“It’s just...I can’t imagine even Barrani children thinking that promises could be unbreakable.”

“No.”

“Teela—”

There was so much pain beneath the surface of Teela’s oddly gentle smile. “No, kitling. Not even the children we were could believe in a simple, spoken vow.”

“Teela—what did you do?”

“Show me your hand.”

Kaylin lifted her left hand and opened it for Teela’s inspection.

Teela said, “Mandoran. We called him Manny; he mostly hated it.”

“You can...read...the name.”

“Yes, kitling.”

“But—but—”

“Yes. In theory, it means they could read mine.” She lifted her face to the skies, to the sunlight that fell from no sun. “But only if it had meaning to them. They are not what they were. I call them, Kaylin. I called them then. They did not hear me. They can’t speak the name I gave them.” She reached out and touched Kaylin’s open palm. “And now, I think I understand why.” She exhaled again and looked at the landscape. There was a lot of dirt, and very, very little in the way of foliage; even the dead, standing trees were absent. “This is not getting us anywhere.”

“What happened when you were chosen as harmoniste?”

Teela stared into the vast and empty nothing for a long moment. She turned back in the direction they’d come from—if it was the same direction. They’d walked some distance, but even so, the trees should have been visible. They weren’t, of course. At this particular moment, Kaylin didn’t care.

“I had avoided the West March; I had avoided the green. It was the locus of so many of my losses. I lost my childhood, my friends, and the mother whose love I had always trusted. I lost my father in a different way. We are not—any of us—adept at facing the first loss.

“My father did not trust me—but that is as it should be, in the end. Most of the Lords you will meet who are the heads of their lines became so only after the deaths of their parents. Many of those deaths occurred during the Dragon wars—but some were suspicious, regardless. And that, too, is an accepted part of succession.

“It is not accepted among your kind; when it is done, it is hidden, kitling. It is considered both shameful and a crime. But you have that luxury—your parents
will
die. They will age into their dotage. They will loosen their grip on the reins of power because they have no choice. Were you all to live forever? I do not believe that you would be so very different from my people.”

“Less beautiful, less strong, and less graceful.”

“Of course. I did not care that my father did not trust me,” she added. “I considered it wisdom. But I could not afford the suspicion of the other Lords. And so, in time, I took the risk of returning to the West March, to face the past and all its barbs and losses, and to prove that I was stronger than my pain.” She walked more quickly, and Kaylin had to work to keep up.

“And I did.”

“What was the story?”

“The story?”

“You were harmoniste.”

Teela nodded.

“You were—I’m—supposed to take the strands of story from the Teller.”

“Yes.”

“There was a Teller.”

“Yes. You don’t get
a
story, kitling. You get disparate parts of a thousand stories. You get fragments, you get names and places and small items—it’s like having a hail of rocks thrown in your direction. You have to survive the hits; you have to catch
enough
of the rocks that you can build something from them. While being hit. It’s not trivial. I was arrogant,” she added. “I was full of defiance, rage, loss. I don’t know if that affected what I could hear or see; I don’t know if that affected the pieces I chose, the direction I took.

“But I survived, kitling. I was not transformed; nor, to my eye, were any of the very few participants that year.” This was said with a much sharper smile.

“Teela—what did you do?”

“I listened. I listened, I watched. I wanted to hear their names again. Their names were lost here. Everything about them was. I wanted to hear them call mine again. Just that.”

“But Terrano recognized you.”

“Yes.”

“He was on the road. He was with the Ferals.”

“Yes, Kaylin. Yes. He was there, and he was everything I remembered. Everything—but I could not reach him. And he couldn’t reach me. He had memories. But not—not what we promised. Not what we gave each other.” She frowned. “I think,” she said softly, “that that’s where we need to go.” She pointed.

Kaylin’s eyes were not Barrani eyes. She squinted. But she couldn’t make out what Teela could. Not until they had walked at least another mile.

She did stop, then. It was, to her eye, a pit.

Chapter 18

“What,” Teela said, when Kaylin began to move again, “do you recognize?”

“It’s probably nothing,” Kaylin replied.

“I cannot believe that you expect
me
to bare my figurative soul when you cannot even bring yourself to answer the most obvious of questions. If you are going to demur, at least learn to lie with some competence; give me the option of feeling less insulted.” She batted the top of Kaylin’s head.

“Sorry. I don’t want to think about it because I’m hoping I’m dead wrong.”

“And what are the odds against that?”

“Generally pretty high. Just—not here.”

“Exactly. What do you recognize?”

“When I woke the Consort the first time—after she absorbed the nightmares—I spent a lot of time floating around a sky full of stupid words. I mean, they were in theory my words because they’re all over my skin—but you know, larger and floating in the sky. I knew I had to choose one mark.”

“Knowing you, I’m surprised you managed to do it.”

Kaylin reddened. “I took two.”

“Ah. That sounds more realistic.”

“When I had them, the small dragon kind of dived. Toward a pit. It looked small. It wasn’t. It was huge. It was—” She frowned. “I think, if you could take the sides of the pit and flatten them, they’d be much larger than Elantra.”

“So you’re saying this pit is a lot farther away than it looks.”

“I’m saying I really, really, really don’t want this pit and that one to be the same, because I don’t have wings in reality, and I can’t fly.”

“This is not reality, in case you were wondering. It is—think of it as the inside of a Hallionne’s heart. I believe you did spend some time at the heart of Bertolle. You will find, if it is necessary, that you will either be able to fly, or
I
will.” She frowned. “What else are you not telling me?”

“The pit is where I saw them,” Kaylin whispered.

Teela did not pretend to misunderstand her.

“I think—I’m
sure—
I know who Sedarias was. And this isn’t really getting us to water—” Kaylin fell silent.

“Let me guess,” Teela said. “There was a fountain there.”

Kaylin nodded. “The Consort was by the fountain. She was—she was singing to it, the way she sang to Kariastos and Bertolle and Orbaranne
.
” She bit her lip and stopped moving.

“Kitling—”

“I saw you there. You were there. But—you were made of ice, where they were made of glass—and Teela—”

“Don’t feel compelled to share the rest; I no longer require it.”

“What I don’t understand is, what was Iberrienne trying to do to Orbaranne? I don’t think he meant to just destroy her—or rather, he wanted something from the process.”

“That is not the only thing you don’t understand.”

“Well, no. But—if Iberrienne was somehow doing it because of Eddorian, he was doing what the lost children want. What do they want, Teela?”

“This may come as a surprise to you, but I don’t know. They don’t want what I want, because, Kaylin, I
have
the name I was born for.”

“It’s got to be something to do with names. With True Words. I don’t get it.” Kaylin ground her teeth.

“You are such a Hawk.” It was said with amusement, affection, and a touch of frustration.

Teela slid an arm around Kaylin’s shoulders and began to drag her toward the distant pit. It made Kaylin feel young again, but without the resentment and the insecurity. Her feet left a short trail in the dirt.

* * *

The pit was not a cavernous, flattened, cylindrical city—which was both a relief and a disappointment. It was much larger than it had looked at a distance, but it wasn’t larger across than the city in which Kaylin made her living. It was, on the other hand, pretty bloody dark, and as it had no architectural enhancements that Kaylin could see; there weren’t convenient stairs leading down.

“Is this where we’re supposed to be, do you think?”

Teela gave her A Look.

“Sorry.” She walked to the edge of the pit.

“You’ll be careful, right?” Teela said, joining her. Neither of the two Hawks were particularly height sensitive; they could hug the edge of the pit in relative safety.

“I’m always careful.”

“I cannot believe the things you can say with a perfectly straight face. That
was
serious, wasn’t it?”

* * *

Short of jumping, there didn’t seem to be a way down, and neither of the Hawks carried rope. “You know—if this is the green’s attempt to have a conversation, I wish it’d just use words, like the rest of us.”

“You really, really don’t,” was Teela’s grim reply. “Think before you speak.”

Kaylin glanced at the sky. “Please tell me those are not clouds.”

“I could, but you frequently complain when you think I’m lying.”

“Did they just roll in when I said—”

“You know, kitling, you’ve seen a lot of the noncorporeal world. You’ve walked the outlands. You’ve walked the between. You’ve seen the heart of the Hallionne. Given the number of years you can actually expect to live—on average, and ignoring your total lack of basic caution—you’ve seen more than many of the Barrani who call the Vale home.

“Why do you still
expect
things to make sense?”

* * *

The storm clouds did not shed rain. They did shed a lot of lightning, and the resultant thunder was almost a physical sensation, it was so damn loud.

Lightning struck the ground ten yards in front of Teela.

“Things are going to get ugly,” Teela said without looking back at Kaylin, who came to stand beside her.

“Why?”

“Can you not see them?”

Kaylin squinted as lightning changed the color of the sky. “See what?”

“The nightmares,” she replied. “The nightmares of Alsanis.”

* * *

The thing Kaylin hated most about Hallionne space or Tower space was this: people saw different things. They walked in different versions of reality. What Teela saw, Kaylin couldn’t see. Lightning, yes. Clouds. Thunder. But not the nightmares. She’d seen what the nightmares did to the Consort, and she had no doubt at all that they could do the same—or worse—to Teela.

“How many?”

“Maybe a dozen,” Teela replied, her face still turned toward the sky. “They’re moving so quickly it’s hard to count them.”

“Are they heading this way?”

The Barrani Hawk’s smile was grim. Grim and resigned. “Yes.”

Kaylin closed her eyes. She meant to open them, but the moment her eyes were closed, the lightning became insignificant, as did the pit; it was the thunder she heard. And the thunder had a voice. It spoke words. They weren’t words that she understood, not immediately—but she could pick out the rumble of deeply roared syllables.

The dreams of Alsanis spoke what Kaylin heard as Elantran. Not that many of their words made solid sense—but they could speak. They had never spoken like this. The thunder’s voice was a roar of pain. Of pain, of anger, of loss, of denial. It wasn’t one voice; it was many.

Many, she thought. The nightmares of Alsanis had never spoken aloud, not in a way that Kaylin could hear. “Teela!”

“I’m here.”

“Can you hear them? Can you hear what they’re saying?”

Silence. Well, on Teela’s part; the thunder didn’t stop.

“Yes, kitling.”

“Do you understand it?”

“Yes.”

Kaylin’s eyes flew open. Teela had lifted her hands to the sky. Kaylin grabbed the left one and yanked it down to her side, which took real effort; mortal strength was not a match for Barrani strength—not when the Barrani was determined. “What are you doing?”

Teela looked down at Kaylin, and Kaylin saw that her eyes were now a deep purple, tinged with the blue that spoke of either anger or fear. “What I should have done, kitling. What I should have done years ago.”

“This is
not
what you should have done!”

“I tried. As harmoniste, I tried to call their names. I tried to insert them into the story I was given.”

“What story?” Kaylin shouted. “What story were you given?”

“Does it matter? I couldn’t hold the whole of it. I could only barely choose something that made sense. Some path out of the chaos. But what I
wanted
was to tell the story of the lost. To call them
back,
somehow.”

Kaylin tried to yank Teela’s right arm down. She was now afraid because she still couldn’t see the nightmares. She could hear the thunder’s voice, but she was no longer certain that the thunder and the nightmares were one.

“I tried, kitling. But the truth is, I never left this place.”

“Yes, you
did.
You left it, you left it
whole,
you came back to Elantra. You came to the Hawks, Teela—you came—”

“To you?”

“To me.”

Teela’s eyes were still purple. She looked gaunt. And young, Kaylin thought. She looked young. Teela lifted her arms again. “What you did for the Consort, you cannot do for me. You cannot see what I see, not here.”

“Let me try!”

Teela shook her head. “You will, kitling. You are harmoniste. Nightshade is Teller. Perhaps you will hear what I couldn’t hear. Perhaps your mortality will allow you to see clearly what I could not see.” She staggered; her hands clenched in fists.

Kaylin placed one hand on the back of Teela’s neck. At any other time, she wouldn’t have dared; Teela, like the rest of the Barrani, had a loathing of healers that skirted the edge of murderous rage. What she couldn’t see, she couldn’t feel—but she hadn’t attempted to heal the Consort when the nightmares had landed.

Teela staggered again.

“Teela!
Teela!
”

“I wanted to give them peace. I wanted to save some part of them. I wanted—” Teela shook her head, staggering again, her arms falling slowly, as if she could no longer bear their weight. “Remember this, kitling: there is no way back. There is no way out but through.”

“This isn’t the time for stupid philosophy—Teela!”

Teela shuddered, and Kaylin knew that she would not stop. The nightmares that Kaylin couldn’t see were the only thing that mattered here.

“No,” Teela said, her voice a whisper. “But it’s me, kitling, or it’s you. The nightmares of the Hallionne visit someone when they choose to fly.”

The marks on Kaylin’s arms were gray and flat. Nothing about this storm brought them to life. Nothing about Kaylin’s growing desperation did, either. When Teela fell to her knees, Kaylin dropped to the ground beside her, hand still attached to the back of her neck. But there was nothing physically wrong with Teela; nothing that could be healed.

Kaylin had always thought—had always believed—that if she had been there, if she had been at her home the night of the worst loss she had ever endured, she could have
done something.
Something. Anything. But there was nothing she could do here. Whatever it was that attacked Teela, she couldn’t see it, couldn’t fight it. She tried. She tried to place the backs of her hands over Teela’s shuddering palms; she tried to catch the nightmares before they touched her.

But she couldn’t. They didn’t touch her. They didn’t suddenly become visible, and they didn’t become the eagles the Barrani called dreams. She saw Teela’s face lose all color; only her eyes retained any—and it was purple, the color that Kaylin had almost never seen. There was no green in them; nothing that spoke of happiness or peace.

Kaylin opened her eyes. She opened her eyes to the gray-green sky and the pit, and she understood that the pit itself had taken the rough shape and outline of a word—a word whose elements had somehow been obliterated, but in which the ground had retained a sense of what had once occupied it.

She caught Teela in her arms, tightened them.

“What have I told you about crying?” Teela whispered.

Kaylin told her what she could, in Leontine. “I don’t
care
about the green. I don’t care about Alsanis, either. I don’t care about the lost children—I’m sorry, I
don’t.
I care about you.” She sucked in air that felt heavy and electric—and dry. “We’re somehow in Alsanis, aren’t we? Somehow? We’re attached to the Hallionne.

“And this is
not
where we belong.”

“Kitling—”

Kaylin raised both her face and her voice, and she shouted into and above the thunder. “We ask for and accept the judgment of the green!”

The ground fell out from beneath her. She tightened her arms around Teela and held on for all she was worth.

* * *

Really, as drops went, it wasn’t terrible. But holding on to someone who was, for all intents and purposes, deadweight made negotiating a safe landing impossible.

“You,” Teela said—because she was still conscious, somehow, “are an idiot.”

“Whatever.” Kaylin was afraid, for one long moment, to let go.

“Oh, I’m here,” Teela told her grimly. “I’m glad you think that breathing is optional.”

Kaylin let go. Her arms, however, had stiffened, and her hands were shaking as she tried to pry her fingers off Teela.

“You cannot leave well enough alone, can you?”

“It wasn’t bloody well enough, okay?” Kaylin got to her feet. She was shaking, and she thought she might never stop. Teela’s color hadn’t improved any. “How many?”

“Pardon?”

“How many did you absorb?”

“I wasn’t counting.”

“Don’t give me that look. If you want to commit suicide, you’re going to have to do it when I’m not standing right behind you. Here.” She put an arm around Teela’s back, shoving herself under the Barrani’s left arm and levering them both off the ground. “I don’t know how long the path from here is, but we need to walk it. If we have to walk it in the dark, fine. We’ll do that.”

“Remind me to strangle Nightshade if we somehow manage to survive this.” Light flared in the tunnel. It was a familiar tunnel, of rough rock, low ceilings, and unpredictable widths. “You’re certain that your presence here—so soon after you got ejected—is not going to anger the green?”

“No.”

“Do you understand the reason such an escape is so seldom used?”

“Yes.”

“Then—”