The Chronicles of Elantra 5 - Cast in Silence (51 page)

“And I’m expected to be able to tell that you’re speaking the truth how?”

“I am here. I did not risk existence and sanity to free myself from the grip of one master in order to become puppet—and less—to another, especially not an unknown. I failed,” he added. “She is bound to me, and I to her. I am free of her compulsion. I am not free of this place.”

“What would you have of me?”

“Death,” he replied. “True death. I have not achieved it.”

The Tower whispered, “I’ll die if he dies.”

“That,” Illien replied, “was a story you told yourself. It was never the truth.”

It was a story that Kaylin had told herself, as well. “Tara,” she murmured.

“In the end,” Illien continued, speaking to Tara, “I have never been able to give you what you feel you need. I was able to give you only what you required to function.”

The Tower looked up. She was crying. Not weeping; not sobbing. Just…crying. “I’m sorry,” she whispered to Kaylin.

“So am I. Lord Illien?”

“You understood what she showed you?” he asked, as if it were only barely a possibility. She’d had teachers take exactly that tone of voice before, but she didn’t bridle. Instead, she nodded.

Tara grunted in pain.

“I believe your companions are now attempting to reach you.” The color of his eyes was a braided mixture of blue and black. “Time, now, to have an end.”

“The world will fall into shadow if you—”

“Is it possible you believe that I care? One way or another, mortal, that end is coming. Were I whole, were I not encumbered by the ties I chose to accept and chose to break, even I could not long stand against it.”

“I could have kept you safe!” Tara said, her voice rising.

“And what force could keep me safe from you?”

“I would never have hurt you! I wanted to keep you safe!”

“Safety,” he said sharply, “is illusion. It has always been illusion.” As if it were an old argument.

Kaylin could no longer feel her hands, and the bones in her forearms were aching. But she could see, and she could see clearly. The room. The shape of the floor, the rounding of the walls. The contours of Tara’s cheeks, the wetness of them some echo of any tears Kaylin had ever cried in her childhood. She saw the Old Ones flicker past her vision like ghosts going about their business, uncaring—or unaware—of observers.

She heard their voices. She could no longer understand their speech—if they had spoken at all—but the texture of those voices, the rise and fall of syllables, their distinctly individual tones blending and harmonizing as they worked, calmed her. Tara’s eyes widened slightly.

She turned to look just over Kaylin’s shoulder—at what, Kaylin couldn’t tell because she couldn’t move at all—and shook her head. The voices grew softer, as if the speakers were finally moving away.

These things, in this name, are they good?

To me? Yes. They’re some of the things I want, and I want them enough to try to build them, even on days when I’m certain I don’t deserve them.

It was a shock to Kaylin to hear her own voice, because she didn’t recognize it at first; she might not have recognized it at all had the spoken words not been so clear, and so clearly Elantran. The words weren’t level; they weren’t soft; they weren’t mysterious and ancient.

But they were confident, and they were spoken with that little bit of heat that’s on the right side of temper. They didn’t clash with the voices of the Old Ones; they didn’t clash with their meaning; nor did they shout over it. They blended, her words; theirs.

She understood, then.
I did this, Tara. I did this to you.
But…she hadn’t called the storm that had taken them to the moment of the Tower’s awakening. She hadn’t called the storm that returned her to her own time. Tara had done that. But Tara’s knowledge was the knowledge imbued in her—written in her foundations—by her creators. It was more than confusing.

Kaylin pushed confusion to one side. It didn’t matter. What she’d done in her own bumbling way was to give the Tower a name that meant something deeply personal—to Kaylin. She had given her a definition of home that meant something deeply personal—also, sadly, to Kaylin. They were things that Kaylin remembered so clearly, and still wanted so badly, no matter how hard it was to believe in them.

And Tara had taken them in, blending them with the imperatives of unknown and unknowable Ancient gods. No wonder she was broken. No wonder. How can you want human things and still be immortal and unassailable?

She felt the cold as she turned just her head to look at the walls. They were gray, stone walls; the livid red of Illien’s Tower had left them, but so had the soft, blue glow of the Old Ones. She saw cracks in those walls, and wondered if the cracks were literal. It didn’t matter.

Severn.

She felt his surprise; felt the sudden surge in worry.

No, don’t. I’m fine. What you’re doing—whatever you’re doing—stop it. The Tower will break. Tell Tiamaris—the Tower will fall. It’s on the edge of existence now, and if we break it, we don’t have the power or the knowledge to build it again.

Where are you?

In a room. In the same room that you’re in, by look and feel. I think it’s the real room,
she added.
The one we saw was Illien’s illusion
.

Illusion?

He wants to destroy the Tower. Or rather, he wants Tiamaris to do it. He was goading us. He was playing on our fears.

There was a pause, and then Severn said,
Well, he
is
Barrani.
Another pause.
Tiamaris asks what you would have him do. He is…not himself.

Tell him to come to me.

The pause was longer.
Kaylin, he’s not
—

I don’t care. I don’t care if he’s gone Dragon again. You know how to talk to him, and I need you to do it. He’s been in a Tower before. If he thinks, he can figure out a way into this one. I need him here.

Why?

Because he knows something about ancient runes and the Old Tongue, and I need his help. I need to—to realign things. I need to harmonize what’s already written.

Meaning you need him to do it.

Something like that
.

Silence. Then,
He’s thinking
.

Is he breathing? I smell something burning—

That, too. But he isn’t melting stone, if that’s any consolation.

Lord Illien frowned. His eyes were darkening as he watched Kaylin. “You’ve stopped them, somehow.”

“It’s not in our interests to destroy the Tower.”

“And it is in your interest to allow the Tower to relieve you of your power?”

But she wasn’t afraid. She felt cold, yes, but she did not feel as if she were losing anything but heat. And when Tiamaris suddenly arrived in the heart of the Tower—inches from the huddled and wretched avatar who would not let go of Kaylin’s hands—even heat returned.

His eyes were red. She’d thought she’d seen Dragon red before, but realized that she’d been mistaken, and she understood Severn’s hesitance now. But Tiamaris’s inner membranes were up, and his movements were minimal and very tightly controlled.

Severn stood by his side. He nodded at Kaylin, but it was a clipped motion; his attention caught by Illien and couldn’t be pried away.

“So,” Lord Illien said, gauging the Dragon’s mood in much the same way Kaylin had, “you fail, here.”

“It is your failure we attend, now,” was Tiamaris’s brittle reply. The air eddied around his face, the way air does on a very hot day.

Illien nodded, and folded his arms loosely across his chest. “And how, now, will you compensate for my failure?”

“Not him,” Kaylin replied. “Me.” She still couldn’t free her hands, but she didn’t need them. “Tiamaris, look at the room. No,
look at it.
Listen, if you can.”

He drew breath, and she was afraid, given his expression, that its expulsion would be accompanied by flames. He closed his eyes completely; no one spoke. “I hear nothing,” he finally admitted.

“I hear words,” Kaylin told him. “I don’t understand them, but I’ve heard similar words before. Sanabalis once told a story using only those words.”

“You could see his words.”

“I can almost see these ones. They’re engraved in the floor at your feet, and in the walls around us. There are cracks through some of the runes.”

“What would you have of me, then?”

“Look at the runes, if you can’t hear the words. I can’t move.”

He glanced at the avatar for the first time, which didn’t help the color of his eyes much. “Tara,” he said, which surprised Kaylin.

It surprised the Tower, as well; she looked up, her skin still bruised and wet with tears. “I remember you,” she said softly.

He nodded. “You gave me the gift of flight.”

“I can’t fly.”

“No.” His lips curved a moment in a smile and the red of his eyes lost a little of its livid intensity. “But you had wings, for a moment, and so did I.”

“They weren’t mine,” Tara told him. “They were hers.” And she nodded in Kaylin’s direction.

“I definitely don’t have wings.” Kaylin said.

But Tara didn’t argue, and didn’t seek to clarify. “I’m broken,” she told them both, and she turned, once again, to look at Lord Illien.

“So is he,” Kaylin told her, gentling her voice. Tara hesitated for a moment, and then she opened her hands enough that Kaylin could pull away. Kaylin turned her hands around and caught Tara’s instead, which was hard, given her own felt like stone mittens at this point. She pulled Tara to her feet. “Come,” she said. “Walk with me.”

Tara nodded. Illien remained where he was standing; Tiamaris joined them. Severn did not; he simply watched Illien in silence. Which was smart.

“You know this room,” Kaylin told Tara. “And you know what was written here. Can you show us?”

Tara hesitated.

“Show us the words as they were when they were complete. Show us the words as they were when you first woke.”

Tara glanced at Tiamaris, as if she were nervous. Kaylin shook her head. “I’m not an Ancient,” she told Tara. “I’m human. I live for a brief span of years, and I die. Everything I learn will die with me. He’s lived for longer than I have, and he’ll live forever if nothing manages to kill him. I need his help.”

“It is wrong to need help,” she told Kaylin.

“Then I’m destined to be wrong.” Kaylin drew breath, held it, and expelled it without adding any colorful words. “Look, if we were meant to
be
Towers, we wouldn’t need you.”

She frowned, and Kaylin realized the metaphor made no sense to her. “We’re not meant to stand alone,” she added. “If we were, there wouldn’t be any other people.”

“But people betray you.”

“That,”
Kaylin said, with some annoyance, “is Illien speaking. The Barrani don’t
have
a word for trust.”

Tara hesitated. And then she said a phrase that Kaylin didn’t understand. Tiamaris, who had been silent, looked at the avatar. “Private,” he said. “Repeat the word.”

“Repeat the what?”

“The word.”

“All that was one word?”

His eyes had shaded to orange, and simmered there when he turned them on her. Kaylin took a step back—a small one, because she was still attached to Tara—and then, haltingly, she began to pull syllables from short-term memory.

Tara watched her, and for a moment, her face lost its look of strained desperation. Like a child who suddenly realizes that someone else might—with effort—be capable of understanding them, she began to fill in the gaps provided by Kaylin’s decidedly mortal memory. When Kaylin got a syllable wrong, she shook her head and repeated it; when she got it right, she nodded, as if to encourage her.

Illien said, “What is the point of this futile exercise, Dragon Lord?”

Tiamaris snorted flame, which caused Kaylin to wince. The Tower didn’t seem to notice. She did, however, notice that Kaylin’s attention had been diverted, and she frowned and pulled on her hands. Or rather, pulled at her own, which Kaylin still held.

Kaylin mumbled an apology, and Tara made her start from the beginning again. This time, Kaylin managed the syllables more quickly, stumbling on fewer. When she had them all in place—and she thought there were twenty of them—Tara made her start it
again
. This time, she watched intently as Kaylin spoke, her eyes unblinking gray windows through which the faintest hint of internal luminescence shone.

But when she’d finished this final time, she saw the gray, misty wreaths of a moving, living
word.
It took shape both before and behind her, terminating lines curving around the three of them, dots and crosses and delicate loops adding something to the way they now stood, almost huddled together.

“What does it mean?” Kaylin asked Tara softly.

“It means…trust?”

Kaylin turned, then, and saw the word, absent three living people at its core, embedded in the far wall. It shone silver in the gloom. “That wasn’t one of the words they wrote,” she told Tara faintly.

Tara didn’t seem to hear her, and she turned to Tiamaris. “Tiamaris—”

He lifted a hand, as if her words were gnats in serious danger of needing to be crushed. She started to argue, but she stopped when she heard Severn’s voice; the sound of it made her hair stand on end.

“We’ve got trouble!”

Turning, she saw a wreath of black, black shadow, like the grease from tribal torches, climbing up through the cracks in the floor. At its center, immobile as a pillar, stood Lord Illien.

“Illien, don’t—”

Tara tugged at her hands, and Kaylin tightened her grip. “It’s not him,” she whispered. “He’s not doing it.”

“Tara—”

“It’s not him.”

Kaylin opened her mouth again, and Tiamaris stepped on her foot. “Continue what you have been doing, Private. I will deal with Lord Illien and the shadows.” He glanced once at Tara. “I will endeavor not to harm him,” he told her, after a brief but significant pause.
“Private.”