The Chronicles of Elantra 6 - Cast in Chaos (11 page)

“Why?”

“Because the Arcanists are now interested, and one or two of them are causing the Swords some difficulties. While I’d like to resolve it by jailing them,” he said in a tone of voice that made jail and death synonymous, “we are understaffed. If it were up to the Lord of Swords, we’d be extending the blockade to the full perimeter of the outer circle.”

“We can’t,” she said, voice flat.

“Funny, that’s what I told him. The perimeter would include the Halls and the Palace. The Emperor declined the Swordlord’s request, and this is the compromise. I can see why he doesn’t like it. We can keep the Arcanists out of this area. We have no hope of keeping them out of the circle. The Emperor had implied that he’d just keep them locked in their damn tower.”

“On what charges?”

“Not my problem.”

She snorted. It would be, if they tried. Still, the Arcanists would be vastly less likely to cause trouble for Barrani Hawks, and if they were babysitting the Swords, the roadblock would probably not spontaneously—and conveniently—combust. Kaylin nodded grimly. “Where do you want me?”

“You’re up on the roster.”

She bit her lip; it prevented suicidal words from emerging. “I’ll check now,” she told him. She was relatively certain it wouldn’t take too damn long to find her name in the hideous mess of ink and pencil marks.

“Good. Go.” He paused, and then added, “You might want to remove your bracer and toss it somewhere.”

She’d found her name. It was beside Severn’s, and was, in fact, their regular Elani beat. “You’re sure?”

“We have Imperial Permission,” the Leontine replied, and she caught the brief flash of teeth that was their version of black humor. “Lord Diarmat looked like he’d just found out he’d been put on a vegetarian diet when he delivered it.”

Leontines, in theory, held Dragons in high regard. It was no wonder that fact had come as a huge surprise to Kaylin, because Marcus did not. “Lord Diarmat was difficult?” she asked.

“Stop gabbing, and get moving.”

Kaylin had once or twice in her seven years with the Hawks—admittedly most of them as unofficial mascot—seen roadblocks and quarantines within Elantra. They were mostly put in place to contain outbreaks of summer wasting sicknesses, but not always. Occasionally the Arcanists on the Wolf hit list didn’t bother to make a break for the outer walls or the fiefs; they headed into extremely crowded areas and attempted to hold out by using sorcery, with whole city blocks as hostages.

This was like the latter case, except there were no Arcanists you could kill to end the threat.

The roadblock was going up when she slid through. On this side of the square, the Arcanists wouldn’t be a problem, so there were no Hawks here. She nodded, briefly, and headed straight for Elani.

Since she had no way of signaling Severn when she reached Elani, she did a quick perusal of the street. The Swords had arrived, and they were, even now, knocking on doors. One Sword carried a very long, very ornate roll, around which was wrapped a long scroll. The writing on the scroll itself couldn’t be clearly seen at this distance, but the illuminated bits for the capital letters
could.
The scroll looked impressive, expensive, and Official.

It was, of course.

The Sword in question wore her weapon around her waist, but carrying it was optional; she was flanked by Swords who had nothing better to carry. Kaylin sometimes envied the Swords their jobs, because for the most part, their jobs
were
easy. But riot duty and evacuation duty made envy pretty damn hard, and the situation was dire enough that petty satisfaction was just as hollow. She cringed when she heard a door slam, because she would have bet money it had just slammed
in
their faces.

But Elani was close to the center of the circular area that rain had allowed them to map; here, there was no leeway possible. She wondered how many people would leave their homes voluntarily, and how many would have to be carried, or thrown, out.

It wasn’t just homes, of course; some of the merchants didn’t live above their storefronts, choosing instead to rent them out. The boarders were, like any other resident, being ordered to leave; the merchants were
also
being ordered to leave. Kaylin was just petty enough to smile at the sound of Margot’s operatic rage as she hurried toward Evanton’s.

There were no Swords at Evanton’s door. The door itself was ajar, and Kaylin could see Grethan standing in the window and staring, eyes rounded, at the commotion that Elani had become. She walked in, and Grethan jumped.

“I’m not here to throw you out,” she said quietly. Glancing around the empty store, she added, “Where’s Evanton?”

“He’s in the Garden,” Grethan replied. “With your partner.”

Grethan had a natural affinity for the Elemental Garden, or rather, for entering it. It wasn’t, however, necessary.

“It’s not locked,” he told Kaylin, half-apologetically. “Not when he’s
in
it.”

“Hmm. Have you considered locking it behind him when he’s in a mood?”

Grethan’s eyes rounded slightly, which was a definite No. On the other hand, if Evanton got
out
of the locked Garden, the minor hilarity of trapping him in it probably wouldn’t be worth the consequences. But the young apprentice’s eyes narrowed again as he grinned. “There’s only one key.”

The itchy feeling that covered most of Kaylin’s body—not coincidentally the
same
portions that were also covered by glyphs—was almost painfully intense as she stood in front of the rickety, narrow door that led into Evanton’s Elemental Garden.

She touched it. It wasn’t warded—she was half-certain that attempting to ward this door would just destroy it, because the wood would probably collapse under any attempt to enchant it—but her palm suddenly
hurt
, and she withdrew it almost instantly.

Suspicious, she examined the door as Grethan’s slow steps retreated. But there was no rune or mark on it, certainly not where her palm had touched it. To make matters worse, the flesh on her arms was now goose-bumping. She grimaced, but still, she hesitated. Since her own hesitations annoyed her, she shook them off and opened the door.

“All right, door,” she muttered under her breath, “take me to the heart of the Elemental Garden.”

The door didn’t open into a gale that would have sunk ships in the harbor if it had happened on the outside of the Garden.

Given the last time she’d visited, this came as a relief. She walked into the Garden, leaving the door open at her back; she didn’t walk very far. The Garden itself seemed, in composition, to be in its rest state: she could see the small shrines and candelabras, the shelves and reliquaries, clumped together in at least three areas.

She could see the surface of the small pond that was water’s domain, and she frowned as the light slid across it. What she couldn’t see was Severn or Evanton. She started forward; the grass was soft, short, and smooth. She even cast the normal shadow one would expect when the sun was at this height. Lifting her face, she felt no breeze. In the Garden, that was rare. But maybe the Elemental Air was calm today.

She headed toward the small pond in the Garden’s center. It was there, as it always was, and moss beds lay against the flat, large stones to one side. There was a small mirror that lay face-down on the stone, as if it had been casually lifted and set aside; she didn’t touch it.

But…the pond looked wrong. She stood at its edge, her toes almost touching the water. The water was still, and it was clear. But some of the darkness that hinted at its endless depth was…missing. Bending, Kaylin touched the ground. It felt like, well, grass with a bit of dirt underneath.

In fact, the Garden itself felt like the cozy, quiet retreat of a rich eccentric. Which was, of course, what was wrong with it. That, and she could see no sign of Severn or Evanton at all. It was as if she’d taken a turn through the wrong damn door and ended up in something that
looked
like Evanton’s Garden, without any of its substance or life.

It was not a comforting thought.

Turning, she headed back in the direction she’d come. The door stood slightly ajar, and she stopped five feet from the narrow glimpse of hall, resting her hands lightly on her hips. She realized, as she looked at it, that there had never
been
a door out without Evanton, something she should have bloody well considered before she’d entered. But here it was, and it looked, from this vantage, to be the same door into the same dim hall, lined with the same bookcases, half of which were so packed they looked as if they were about to dump their contents on the poor fools who wandered by at the wrong time.

This was wrong. It felt wrong. She took a step toward the door anyway, and felt the hair on the back of her neck begin to rise. The fact that the Garden was magical was known. The fact that she felt magic only here, this close to the door, was bad. And, of course, she hadn’t yet removed the bracer that existed to confine her own magic. She had no idea—at all—if the damn thing would follow Severn home, the way it normally and inexplicably did, if she took it off and dropped it here.

Cursing in Leontine, which sounded unnaturally loud in the sudden and suspicious silence of this Garden, she pulled up her sleeves, exposing the gemstones that lay in a vertical line on the inner side of the thick, golden manacle. She pressed them in sequence, and waited until she heard the familiar click. Prying it off her wrist, she looked at the grass, the Garden, and the now-distant pond, and then she shoved it into her tunic, above her belt.

She reached out to touch the door, and her hand froze just before it made contact. The air around her hand was
wavering
. The closest thing she’d ever seen was a heat mirage, but heat mirages generally didn’t come with color, and, aside from the sweat the heat itself caused, didn’t cause sensation.

Something intensely uncomfortable passed through the whole of her body, like a moving, permeable wall. She grimaced, jumped back, and found that the distance didn’t cause the sensation to stop. But it did change the perspective through which she viewed the door, or rather, the hall on the other side of said door.

What had been the span of a door frame away now seemed to be visible through a long, long tunnel. The tunnel itself was not door-shaped; it seemed to have no shape at all. It was as if the frame and the world to which it was attached had been sundered, and what lay between them was a gap into sky, or cloud, or unbound space.

Walking through it to the door was
almost
not an option. She glanced over her shoulder at flat, empty garden, and wondered where it was, truly; it seemed, for a moment, as substantial as the space that now existed between the frame of the door and Evanton’s shop. Color was here, yes, and the grass was not dry or dead. It looked right, but everything else about it was missing.

Note to self
, she thought, clenching her jaw.
Do not enter Elemental Garden when magic is unpredictable right next-damn-door.
On the other hand? There weren’t any shadows here; it wasn’t as if she’d walked into the heart of the fiefs on an aimless stroll. At the moment, whatever might kill her—and given the total chaos of unpredictable magic that wasn’t even her own, that could be anything—was likely to be starvation if she didn’t leave. The shelf-lined hall was not getting any closer.

Backing up, she tensed, bent into her knees, and approached the door at a sprint. Passing through the frame was easy. Getting to the other side, not so much. There was solid ground beneath her feet, but running across it was like running across soft sand; it ate momentum. She couldn’t see what lay beneath her boots; it seemed to exist without any visual component.

And that, of course, was magic; the marks along the insides of her thighs, arms and the back of her neck were now aching in that all-skin-scraped-off way. She clenched teeth, gave up on sprinting, and walked instead. She could walk quickly. The hall on the other side, however, seemed to be moving, and it wasn’t moving in the right direction.

Come on, legs. Come on.
Widening her stride, she tried to gain speed; she managed to gain enough that she wasn’t losing ground. But she wasn’t gaining any, either. A pace like this, she could keep up all day. But magic in its infuriating lack of predictability probably wouldn’t
give
her all damn day, and if the sight of those damn bookshelves suddenly faded, she’d be stranded in the middle of a nowhere that was ancient and totally unknown.

Because she was certain it
was
ancient. The only place she had encountered anything similar was in the heart of a Tower in the fiefs, and those Towers had been constructed by gods. When the rest of the city had started their decline into crumbling ruins, the Towers had mimicked them—but nothing destroyed them. Nothing broke them.

They, on the other hand, were perfectly capable of destroying the people who wandered through their doors. She walked. The hall receded, as if it were teasing her. But it was the kind of teasing that caused tears and heartbreak.

“Severn! Evanton!”

Her voice was clear, strong, and completely steady; she was proud of the last one. There was no echo, no subtle resonance that indicated either geography or architecture in the distance to either side. The only clear reality loomed ahead, always ahead.

She had no idea how long she’d been walking; she broke into a run every so often, but the run was almost as slow as the walk, and it was more tiring. Her arms and legs still ached, and at length she rolled her sleeves as high as they would go because the cloth brushing her skin was almost agonizing.

It didn’t surprise her much to see that the runes were glowing. Their color, on the other hand, did: it was gray, almost an absence of color, in keeping with the rest of her environment. It made the runes seem, for a moment, like windows into the Other, and windows were not meant to grace the arms of living people. She let her arms drop back into the wide pumping swing of a brisk walk, and then stopped and lifted them again.