Michelle Sagara (25 page)

“She has
words.
She has
words
on her skin.” He took two steps toward them; Teela stiffened. The fire stepped in front of them both, and to Kaylin’s eye, his flames grew almost white.

“Teela.”

“I can’t leave the way you can,” Teela told Terrano. “And I can’t give the Chosen to you, I’m sorry; she is
kyuthe
to me. One of the only friends I’ve found in centuries who is almost what you were.”

“Does she know your name? Does she hold it?”

Teela shook her head. “I would never risk the pain of that loss again.”

Loss, Kaylin thought. Not vulnerability. Not weakness. Loss. “Do you know hers?” Kaylin asked.

The silence was profound. After a pause in which the fire began to crackle, Terrano said, “We don’t
need
names anymore. Teela, come with me.”

“I cannot. I have absorbed the nightmares of Alsanis, and I have accepted the judgment of the green. There is only one way I can leave this place, if I am to leave at all.”

“Try,” Terrano said. He held out a hand.

The fire reached out and pushed it away. Terrano’s eyes widened; his skin blistered.

Teela whispered a single, Barrani word. “Kaylin—the fire—”

“I’m not telling the fire what to do,” Kaylin replied, with more heat than necessary. She didn’t want Terrano touching Teela. She just...didn’t.

“You can’t let fire do whatever it wants!”

“You can’t let Terrano do whatever he wants, either!” Kaylin struggled to lower her voice. “We’re going up the stairs.” She offered Teela a shoulder; Teela stiffened, but accepted it because she had no alternative.

Terrano backed away from the fire as the fire advanced. He backed into a hall. This hall reminded Kaylin of the High Halls in Elantra; the ceiling was so far above the ground she could kink her neck looking up at it. She didn’t try. She could see that the walls were no longer roughly worked; they were smooth, and they were pillared. The pillars were carved in likenesses of Barrani, in alabaster, or something that looked like alabaster at this distance; they weren’t close.

“Don’t come here,” Terrano shouted. Kaylin couldn’t be certain who he was shouting at until Teela stiffened. “It’s not the right place, it’s not the right time—you’re not ready yet!” He shrieked in outrage as the fire struck again.
“Teela!”

“Kaylin—stop it. Stop the fire!”

Kaylin heard the pain and fear in Teela’s voice as if it were a mirror of her own. She closed her eyes, and she called the fire.

He does not belong here.

No. But neither do I.

It is not the same, Chosen. He must be destroyed.

She thought he was right. But Teela’s expression cut her.
Yes, but not now. Not right now. Come back to me. Carry Teela again. Please.
Please.

The fire hesitated. In the hesitation, Terrano saw an opening; he ran toward one of the pillars, leaped at the feet of the sculpture carved into alabaster, and vanished. Kaylin looked at the statue. She wasn’t surprised to recognize it.

“I don’t know if this leads us out,” Kaylin said. “Or in.”

Teela, however, was looking at the pillar. She mouthed a name.

“There are twelve,” Kaylin told her.

“Of course there are.” Teela glanced up at the fire as he lifted her.

“Does the green have nightmares?”

“You ask the oddest questions.”

“It keeps my mind busy. What did he mean, Teela? Did you understand him? What was he hoping to fix?”

Teela laughed softly. “They left me behind. My mother’s life blood was meant to buy my safety—and it did. It did that. But my friends don’t see it as safety. They see it as abandonment. They left me. They went where I could not follow. Had I stayed in the Hallionne, had I stayed with them, they might have been able to do for me what was done to them.

“But my father escaped, and took me with him.”

“Would you have stayed with them?”

“Does it matter? I’m here. I can’t enter the Hallionne. If the green considers me unworthy, I will never leave the green. I am
tired,
kitling. You were right,” she added.

“About what?”

“That is not what Terrano looked like. The statue, though, is.”

“How did you recognize him?”

“I knew his name. I
knew
him. I don’t know why he looks different, now; I imagine he—like most of us in our distant youth—had insecurities about his physical presence. He is no longer confined to that form; he has choice.”

“Does he?”

“Demonstrably.”

Kaylin frowned. “I’m not so certain about that. Iberrienne didn’t, in the end. Ynpharion didn’t. Whatever they absorbed, whatever they agreed to, it changed them in some fundamental way.”

“It would have had to—they could transform.”

“It changed what they
wanted,
Teela.”

“And are our desires so fundamental? Is that what defines us?” She shook her head. “You will have to lead, kitling. I will have to trust you.” Teela smiled at Kaylin’s expression. “I don’t think doubt will serve you well in the green. It slows you down, it teaches you not to trust yourself. I understand my own doubts and my own weaknesses, in this. They are constraining, but they have claws here; I cannot escape them.”

“Except through me.”

“Yes.”

Kaylin exhaled. “Let’s go.”

* * *

She had to stop at the twelfth pillar, and she was relieved to find that it, unlike the other eleven, was one great column that seemed to almost hold up the sky. There was no likeness of Teela here.

“No,” Teela said, as if reading her mind. “But there are twelve.”

“I just think it’s weird that they’re pillars. I don’t understand the symbolism. I think I understand why they were made of glass in the nightmare—it makes more sense to me.”

“Why?”

“Because they’re empty. They’re vessels. Whatever made them real, for want of a better word, is all but gone.”

“But not gone.”

Kaylin lifted her left hand, exposing the mark; it was the only one that hadn’t changed color. “But these pillars kind of hold up the roof.”

“You are looking for too much logic.”

“There’s nothing wrong with logic.”

“No—but you’re trying to understand a book when half of it’s written in a language you’ve never heard, let alone read. You’re missing half of the story because it’s not a story you can inhabit in any way. The Hallionne are not mortal. The green is not mortal. You are.”

“You’re immortal—do you understand it any better than I do?”

Teela shook her head. “The green and the Hallionne don’t differentiate between your kin and mine. Oh, they understand there is a difference—but to them, we are locked into our shapes and we exist in an entirely superficial way. We live in the world. We are of it.”

“And they’re not.”

“No. They exist in a space of their own. They overlap many roads. I think that visitors sometimes came to the Hallionne from the outlands.”

“We did.”

“Yes—but in an emergency. We don’t, and can’t, live there. If not for Bertolle’s...brothers...most of us would never have arrived at Orbaranne. You would. Nightshade. I’m tempted to say the Consort.”

“And you?”

She didn’t answer, but turned her face up toward the light because there was light now. It was sunlight. It was the type of sunlight that artists painted, the type that fell through branches into the quiet of forest floor. The forests without insects and burrs and things that were all thorn with a tiny bit of root beneath. An arch opened up in the wall at the end of this gigantic hall, and it framed—at last—green.

Kaylin could see trees; she could see grass, or at least wildflowers. She could hear the trickle of water in the distance, which implied either river, brook, or possibly fountain. She could see sky, and the sky was the normal azure.

“I think we’re almost there,” she told Teela.

Teela nodded and closed her eyes.

* * *

There was no sun in the sky, which was the first oddity. Kaylin was so grateful to see life—or at least its imitation—that it took her some time to realize what was missing. There were no insects or birds. In all, this should have been idyllic.

It wasn’t. It was giving her hives. The marks on her arms were glowing brightly. Of course. When they could have been useful, they’d been flat, gray, and lifeless.

She viewed the garden from a terrace. The terrace, like the hall itself, suggested Barrani architecture, and a path led from both the height and the base of its steps. Kaylin hesitated. She looked to Teela for an opinion; Teela was utterly silent.

The fire set her—carefully—down.
I will leave you now, Chosen.

“I’m not—”

You are. I have been in this place before; it is peaceful, but it is not mine. Go. My part of this story is told.

“I can’t carry her.”

You can, if you must.
Come back to the Keeper’s garden when you are done. There are stories to be told.

* * *

The fire took warmth with him. Kaylin didn’t need it, not here—but Teela did. She knelt beside the Barrani Hawk she’d known and envied and—yes—loved for so much of her life. And she was afraid—that was the truth. She hadn’t understood, at her mother’s deathbed, what death
meant.
Severn had.

But she’d learned. It was endless. It was loss. It was loss every day. It was an emptiness and a permanent lack of warmth.

Teela had been nothing like her mother. Teela was Barrani. Teela was
immortal.
Teela had taken her places her mother would never have taken her; had forgiven things her mother would never have forgiven. She wasn’t always kind. No, scratch that, she was almost never kind. It wasn’t her way. But she was solid. She was—mostly—safe.

And she wouldn’t wake up.

Kaylin shook her. She shouted. She whispered. She even pleaded—because Teela couldn’t hear her. That was the point, wasn’t it? Teela couldn’t hear her. God, Tain was going to kill her. Tain would be so upset.

They’d
all
be upset. This wasn’t supposed to happen—if anyone was in danger, it was supposed to be Kaylin. Kaylin, who was going to die sometime anyway. She was crying, now. She was crying, and she had to stop because tears were useless. They’d get them nowhere, and they had to move.

But she hadn’t lied to the fire: Teela was heavy. She was wearing too much armor. The armor could be mostly removed—and Kaylin did remove it. The sword, she kept; she attached it to her own waist, where it dragged across the ground. She would have tried to sling it across her back—half the Barrani war band did that—but if she had any hope of moving Teela at all, it was going to be by taking the brunt of her unconscious weight across that back.

Kaylin caught Teela by the arms, inserting her back between them; she bent at the knees and used momentum to propel herself to her feet. Teela came with her—but only barely, and her feet dragged across the ground. It was, short of just dragging her by the arms, the best Kaylin could manage—and she couldn’t manage it for long.

No, she thought, clenching her jaws. She
could.
She could manage for as long as it took because she wasn’t going to leave Teela behind. The path that led from the terrace was wide enough, flat enough, and solid enough. Kaylin followed it, letting it lead.

Chapter 20

The sun was high, even if it didn’t exist; the day grew hotter as she followed the path. The grass that bounded the path on either side gave way to trees with silver bark; they provided no shade—only the disappointed hope of it. Kaylin had to stop several times, partly because her legs were shaking, and partly because she needed to check Teela’s pulse. She couldn’t hear Teela’s breathing, even though Teela’s head was more or less tucked beside her left ear.

She could hear water. It sounded too loud to be a fountain, but it didn’t matter. The dreams of Alsanis had told them to find water. If she found water, she might find a way back. If she found a way back, if she was in the actual world, and not the dreams of perverse pocket realities, she might—just might—be able to help Teela.

She had woken the Consort, after all.

But she couldn’t do that for Teela, not here. She’d tried. Kaylin frowned. The words on her arms were bright and golden, but they lay still. They didn’t prompt her, and they didn’t offer assistance on their own.

The sound of water grew closer, but Kaylin was practically crawling. She couldn’t move quickly; desperation gave her enough strength to carry both of their weights, no more. Not until she heard the roaring.

She was immobile for one minute, glancing wildly at the trees she’d barely registered. She wasn’t Teela. She couldn’t fight Ferals on her own. But the roaring didn’t disturb Teela at all, and Kaylin lowered her, roughly, to the ground. She drew the sword because it had the greater reach—and then set it down. Greater reach, or no, she wasn’t competent enough to wield it against a truly dangerous opponent. She drew daggers instead.

But the roaring, when it came again, made her look up. Squinting against a daylight shed by no sun, she thought she could see a familiar winged shape. It was small—it was slight; translucence made it hard to be certain she wasn’t mistaken. She stood in front of Teela as the winged creature flapped closer. Even when she was certain that it was the small dragon, she didn’t move. She felt relief at the sight of him, but the hair on the back of her neck started to stand on end, and her skin—where the marks weren’t—began to goose bump.

She had never been afraid of the small dragon. He had saved her life at least twice. Yes, he criticized her, and yes, he smacked her face—but so did the Hawks, or at least Teela on an annoying day. He had also killed Ferals, simply by breathing into their faces. She
knew
he was deadly, or could be deadly. The Barrani treated him with healthy respect.

Until this moment, she hadn’t.

Then again, until this moment, his voice had never been a Dragon’s voice. It was, now. As he approached, it shook the earth she was standing on. Yet when he did descend, hovering, he was still tiny. His neck was delicate, his wings wider and broader than they had been in any place but the dream of Alsanis. She could see, briefly, through their membranes—and the sky was violet and black.

He roared. It was like listening to Bellusdeo and Diarmat; Kaylin had two hands full of daggers or she would have covered her ears.

He snorted smoke. It looked like steam, not the usual clouds. He then landed—on the ground a yard away from Kaylin’s feet. He looked up at her face, his eyes dark, the colors that skirted their surface bolder.

“I don’t even know what you are,” Kaylin told him, as he lifted his face and opened his small jaws. “I don’t know where we are. But the whole dive into the stone basin, nose first? Don’t do that again.”

The small dragon cocked his head. He squawked. Except, of course, it was a roar of sound.

When Kaylin failed to answer, he snorted again; she knew, if he were on her shoulder, he would either smack her face or bite her ear. Instead, he stalked—which, given his feet, looked funny—toward Teela. Kaylin stiffened, shifting both position and daggers; the small dragon looked at the knives and hissed.

It was the hissing she associated with amusement.

She didn’t sheathe her weapons. She watched him as he headed toward Teela, and she stiffened again. “Don’t breathe on her. Don’t even think it.”

His eyes widened, and then he shook his head, looking for all the world like a child’s version of a dragon baby. He did, however, nudge Teela’s hand with the tip of his nose. He even bit her fingers, but gently, as if she were a dead bird and he were her mother.

Then he turned to Kaylin again.

And she understood what he was offering. He was tiny, yes—but his voice implied that size wasn’t necessarily an issue. He could, if she asked it, carry Teela. He could, if she agreed, carry her.

And if he did, she thought, as her throat went dry, he wouldn’t
be
a small dragon anymore. He would be a large dragon, as much hers as Tiamaris was when he went Dragon. She couldn’t own Tiamaris—or any member of the Dragon Court. She relied on their sense of humor, their indulgence, and her own relative insignificance in order to survive her mistakes and the many, many social gaffes she was learning to obliterate.

Except that he wasn’t a Dragon. His eyes—his eyes were like Terrano’s, like the fire’s. They always had been. They were shadow eyes. Did she trust him?

She wasn’t certain. Trust hadn’t really been an issue before. He was like a cat. You could love them, and you could trust them to
be
cats. But you couldn’t trust them not to wreck your furniture or your carpets, and you couldn’t trust them to stay out of your food; you couldn’t trust them not to kill helpless mice and leave parts of their corpses scattered around your home. It just didn’t matter because cats couldn’t kill you. They couldn’t kill your neighbors or your friends.

Why was life like this? Why was she asked, so often, to choose between two different fears?

Because, she thought, that was mostly what life was: choosing between two different fears.

“Yes,” she told him, before doubt and uncertainty made her change her mind. “Please. Carry her. Carry us.”

* * *

He stepped back. Actually, that was the wrong word—he launched himself into the air, and flew ahead down the path. Kaylin returned her daggers to their sheaths as she knelt beside Teela. Teela was still breathing, or at least, she still had a pulse. She didn’t wake.

Kaylin watched the small dragon.

His wings expanded first. She’d seen that, before; they’d become the size of Aerian wings in the dreaming world of Alsanis. They weren’t Aerian wings. They were more membrane, less feather; they seemed less substantial only because they were translucent. They spread. They spread, and as they did, Kaylin could see a purple sky unfold in the azure that could be seen at any spot his wings didn’t touch.

She vastly preferred the azure.

His neck elongated, thickening; it was still much longer than normal Dragon neck, and seemed flexible in the fluid way snakes were. His jaws grew, his face thickening and stretching; his legs developed a heft and musculature she wasn’t sure she cared for. She couldn’t see his tail; it was lost to the bulk of his growing body.

But he didn’t seem to have scales; his body seemed smoother, more glasslike. And he wasn’t actually all that far away from them when his transformation had been completed.

He roared. She could swear it sent her hair flying. Then, before she could say anything else, he pushed himself off the ground. His shadow covered both of the Hawks. Kaylin discovered that he could hover in pretty much the same way he had at a more compact size; his claws, however were not the pointers he used to get her attention; they were thicker and attached to feet that couldn’t actually grip her shoulder; they were too large.

They could, however, surround her entire body, and one of them did. The other clasped Teela firmly. He rose.

“Can you carry us to the end of the path?”

He roared.

She needed a different method of communication; her own voice hadn’t changed, but she’d be deaf by the end of the day if his continued like this. She reached out to grab Teela’s hand, although she was fairly certain the small—the nonsmall—dragon wouldn’t drop her.

They began to move.

* * *

She didn’t know what a familiar was. Truth? She’d been uncomfortable with the idea. Anything that made Barrani Arcanists covetous was never going to work out well for a mortal. She already had the marks of the Chosen, and she’d more or less made peace with those, in part because she was certain it was the marks that allowed her to work with the midwives. They saved lives.

No,
she
saved lives, using their power. It didn’t make up for the lives she’d taken. Nothing would. There was no going back. But going forward, she could prevent deaths that would happen without her intervention. She could make a difference in the lives of strangers—and this time, it would be a positive difference.

The small dragon—she really had to stop thinking about him that way—wasn’t like the marks. He clearly had a mind of his own, and he could make it known, even if he couldn’t speak. And he could speak—she just didn’t hear his squawking as language. The Hallionne did. Hallionne Bertolle’s brothers had. The fire had.

If he was something as ancient, as wild, as they were—why would be live as a
pet?
A pet owned by a mortal Hawk? How could she bind him and command him when she could barely keep Ynpharion from scorching what little self-esteem she managed to maintain? She’d relied on what she assumed was his interest or affection; she did treat him like other people treated their cats.

And she was beginning to realize that she couldn’t keep doing that. She had no idea how to change that. What had the Hallionne said?

She had to name him. The thought was terrifying; the only thing that calmed her was the fact that she
had
named the fire. She could. But she’d learned the fire’s name; she hadn’t had to come up with something that meant fire—because what would that be? Hot? Pretty? Deadly?

Did the dragon even have a name?

Terrano didn’t now.

She froze, considering that. Iberrienne only barely had a name. His memories were not Barrani memories; they were broken and confused. She didn’t understand why, but then again, Barrani birth was pretty much mystical; it made no logical sense. Work with the midwives had made it seem far less sensible than it had to start, and it hadn’t made much sense when she’d first heard it, either.

She also understood that the Consort, the giver of names—and therefore the Mother of the Race—might be able to help Iberrienne. She doubted very much that she could help the lost children; what they wanted from her wasn’t what Iberrienne required.

Kaylin closed her eyes; wind swept her hair out of her face. Water. Consort. Teela. Everything else could wait, unless it tried to kill her first. Opening her eyes, she looked down at the path. It was a slender, gray-white line in a field of green and silver that continued on, to the horizon—like a road might. She attempted to look behind, but the dragon’s leg was in the way, and maybe, given the geography in places like this, that was for the best.

Forward, she thought. You had to keep moving because if you stopped you might never start again. Who’d said that to her? Oh, right. Teela.

She wasn’t surprised when what was sort of road through picturesque wilderness ended in a large, large circle. At the center of that circle, seen from this height, was, at last, a fountain.

“Is this where you were?” Kaylin shouted.

The dragon roared.

“Take us down. Do
not
drop us!”

He laughed. It wasn’t the normal hiss, either; it was full-throated laughter; even his legs shook with it.

He did set them down before he landed, but he didn’t land on them, which Kaylin had been half-afraid he’d do. He set them down a yard or two away from the fountain itself. This fountain was very much like the fountains in the grounds of the Imperial Palace. Water didn’t trickle from thin air; it poured from the stone structure that stood in its center. It was not a small statue; the basin itself was almost a pool, it was so large; it was set into the ground, not over it.

Sprays of water caught light and made small rainbows of it. It was quiet here. There were no obvious shadows, no obvious threats. She felt the ground shake as the dragon landed.

Kaylin found her feet and immediately turned to Teela, supine on the ground. She then caught Teela’s arms and draped the bulk of her body across her back, as she’d done once before. “I think we’re here, Teela.”

* * *

The statue at the center of the fountain was familiar, but until Kaylin was almost in the water—she stopped at its edge—she wasn’t certain why. It was a figure—and it seemed to Kaylin’s eye to be a human figure. A woman, or a girl on the edge of adulthood. Water spilled from her open palms—palms that were held in front of her chest, upturned as if in offering or supplication. Water trailed from strands of her hair.

Blood trailed from her eyes.

At this distance, it shouldn’t have been obvious, but it was, and Kaylin didn’t doubt what she saw. It was red. It was the only color in an otherwise white-gray.

Kaylin recognized the girl: it was the Avatar of the water. Here, in the heart of the green. If Kaylin had wondered how much of the landscape was drawn from her memories, she had her answer. This was Kaylin’s version of the water. This was how her mind had seen the element the first time she’d encountered it.

There was no Consort by this giant fountain, but the eagles had said the water would tell them where the Consort was. First things first, then. She knelt by the edge of the basin, and she lowered her palm into the water. It was surprisingly cold—but the cold was bracing, and therefore welcome.

She should have been surprised when the statue moved; the water didn’t usually take the form and shape of stone—and given the way the stone grated as it moved against itself, she knew it couldn’t be liquid. Water splashed as the figure moved slowly toward Kaylin, lowering its hands to its sides and lifting its chin as it did.

The dragon roared.

Kaylin froze as the statue frowned and looked beyond her to what she presumed was the dragon itself. She was unprepared for the dragon’s sudden leap. He landed in the water and sent it flying in a large spray which left every part of Kaylin that wasn’t covered in emerald dress soaked. It soaked Teela, as well. It didn’t wake her up.