The Chronicles of Elantra 6 - Cast in Chaos (35 page)

“You’ve been to the Palace?” he said as he shuffled down the hall.

“Yes.”

“And the High Halls?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Evanton, you
know
I’m not supposed to talk about this.”

He shrugged. “I’m an old curmudgeon and I don’t get out much. I certainly wouldn’t spend my free time studying the protocols of either Halls or Palace. Or Hawks, for that matter.” He unlocked the door to the Garden. Kaylin looked inside and cringed.

CHAPTER 19

“Oh, please,” Evanton said. “This is a walk in the park compared to what it was like yesterday.”

It was no longer a room. The door opened onto a landmass that seemed to extend forever. In all directions. There
was
grass around the door frame, but it was a wild, seedy grass. Kaylin could see no small pool, and wondered—if they walked far enough—if she would see ocean instead. The sun, and there was sun here, was hot, even though the wind had all but flattened the grass.

“This,” he said, as he stepped through the door, “is the Elemental Garden, in case you were wondering.
Next time
there is a magical disturbance of this magnitude,
do not
attempt to enter it without
me.
”

Crossing the threshold had caused the usual transformation in both Evanton and his clothing: he was robed, and he looked wiser and somehow more powerful for the wisdom. He didn’t, however, look any happier. Since he expected an answer, Kaylin nodded. “I hadn’t intended,” she said, in a slightly clipped voice, “to come back to the Garden at all.”

“I hadn’t intended,” he replied, in the same tone, “to become its Keeper. So much for intentions. Are you going to stand there all day?”

“Evanton—we don’t have the time to get lost in the Garden. Not now. The Imperial Court is meeting to discuss—” She bit her lip; it stopped the words.

He grimaced, and let his hands fall to his sides. “My apologies, Private. I have had a
very
trying few days, and I’d hoped that you would—when you returned—come to see me instantly. I did attempt to send Grethan out with a message, but you’re apparently hard to pin down, and in any case, I don’t have the same weight with your Sergeant as the Imperial Court or the High Halls do. Corporal?”

Severn nodded and entered the room; the door then closed with a slam.

“Why are we having this discussion here?” Kaylin asked Evanton.

It was a perfectly reasonable question, given the difficulties in the Garden. Even Evanton allowed that. “I’m required to spend more time in the Garden—not less—given the magical instability the storefront is otherwise suffering. I can—with effort—force the elements to conform to the shape of the Garden you’re most familiar with, but it is not, at the moment, the best use of my energy, and the elements are not yet unleashed. They are—more or less—peaceful.”

She frowned. The grass wasn’t particularly inviting as a place to sit, but she sat on it anyway. “When the fiefs were having trouble, the elements knew. They more or less told you.” She’d been in the Elemental Garden during this “conversation,” and it had involved a gale, a lot of mud, and very poor visibility. “But this—”

“They’re aware that something is changing,” he replied. “But it’s not—yet—a matter of this world.”

Her frown deepened. “The door to the Elemental Garden—is it a portal of some kind?”

“It is, very loosely, a portal of some kind. It’s not, in the traditional sense of the word, a portal. It’s not something you might experience in the Towers and the Castles constructed by the Ancients.”

“Why is it different?”

“It doesn’t take you someplace different. It takes you to the heart or the foundation of
this
world.”

“But the portals in the Castle—”

“Those exist,” he said softly, “to take advantage of the places that are not
quite
here. This,” he continued, lifting an arm to take in the whole of the world as far as they could see it, “is.”

“But when I tried to enter—”

“Yes. And I don’t, frankly, understand how it was that you entered the wrong place. I don’t like what it implies.”

“What does it imply?” It was Severn who asked; Kaylin had had enough of the sharp edge of Evanton’s tongue, and had no intention of offering another opening for his criticism. At least for a few minutes.

“That, among other things, she is adept at the art of travel, enough so that the small perturbation could open the ways to her. She is
not
well studied in any of the magical arts, and she is as cautious as…”

“Thank you,” she said, when he failed to come up with a suitable ending for the sentence.

“What,
exactly,
did you do when you attempted to enter the Garden?”

Since she was already more or less frowning, her expression didn’t change. “I walked in.”

“That’s
all
you did?”

“Well, yes.” The frown deepened. It had been one of those weeks, and she lost track of events that seemed, on the surface, to be insignificant. “No. The door was—”

He waited. Not patiently, but he did wait.

“I touched it, and it hurt.”

“Hurt?”

“Like a door ward does. It was like putting my palm into fire.”

“And then you opened the door?” When she didn’t immediately answer, his frown deepened—and on his face, whole lines had been carved by his frown over the years. “Private, this is not a game.”

“I…may have said something. I talk to myself when there’s no other alternative.”

“What did you say to yourself?”

“Technically? I said to the door, ‘Take me to the heart of the Elemental Garden.’”

He stared at her as if she’d lost her mind. She didn’t even object, because that’s how she was starting to feel. “You don’t normally talk to doors.”

“Most doors don’t normally lead into the
middle
of a grassy plain and disappear when they’re closed.” She felt Severn’s glance as if it were a weight, and grimaced. “Why should it have made any difference? It
didn’t
take me to the heart of the Garden. It didn’t take me to the Garden
at all.
It took me to a—a mirage.”

“An interesting choice of words, Private. It took you to an echo, an externalization. There was no substance to it—and you recognized this instantly.”

She nodded.

“Why?”

“I don’t know. The Garden feels
alive
to me. I mean, more alive than grass or trees or plants. It’s—it’s not what it looks like. What it looks like is just…makeup.” She looked at the grass, and then lifted her head. “Have the elements ever spoken of the Devourer at all?”

Evanton looked at her. “No,” he finally said. “But I know that a portal will open in the streets a few yards from the storefront. It’s happened before. It hasn’t happened as
close
to the Elemental Garden before, for which I’m grateful.”

“The Garden told you this?”

“Not in so many words, no. But…my understanding of the event is derived in part from the communication with the elements.”

Although she knew she wasn’t in theory supposed to speak with Evanton, her shoulders slumped. “I think the Emperor and the High Lord of the Barrani Court want to stop it from opening.”

One brow rose. “Why?”

“There’s something else…out there. Wherever there’s no world. I…met it, when I was lost between worlds.”

“And what was it?”

“I don’t know, Evanton. But smarter people think it’s the Devourer. We’ve pretty much confirmed the Worlds theory, by now.”

“Confirmation was necessary?” he asked in that clipped tone of his.

“I’ve got my hands full with a city, never mind a world. I didn’t really care one way or the other.”

“A failing of the young. They don’t bother to learn what they can when it would actually be convenient to learn, because they have a very narrow concept of necessity. Continue.”

“I’m not sure I want them to stop the portal from opening. People will die if they do,” she added. “Probably thousands. They’ll starve or they’ll meet the Devourer. I don’t think he’s found them, yet.”

“But he found you.”

She frowned. “Yes. He found me.”

“How?”

“I called…someone who lives in Elantra. By his True Name.”

Evanton didn’t seem surprised.

“When I did, he heard me.”

“Interesting.”

She grimaced. “The portal. Do you also think it shouldn’t be allowed to open?”

“I think it will cause a great deal of havoc when it does,” he replied.

She waited.

“And I’m not entirely certain that anyone can prevent it.”

“Evanton—”

He lifted a hand. “I speak theoretically, of course. It irritates you, and I should apologize. I won’t. No, I don’t think the attempt to keep it closed should be made. But, Kaylin—understand that I am the Keeper of
this
Garden, and there isn’t another like it in the whole of the many realities, past or present. It’s unique, and it’s here. It exists within the confines of a Dragon’s hoard. It exists half a city away from the heart of the fiefs. It exists in the shadow of the winged flight of Aerians—and if I understand events in the fiefs correctly you’ve brought at least one winged Dragon back into play.

“It exists in streets crossed by Barrani, by humans, by Tha’alani and by Leontines. Without its existence, we would have no world.”

She lay back against the flat grass and let the wind run across her face as she closed her eyes. “Gardens like this don’t exist in the other worlds?”

“No.”

“How can you be so certain?”

Silence. That silence was the worst thing about talking to the powerful and the knowledgeable. She folded thought into it. “Evanton?”

“Yes.”

“The heart of the fiefs.
Ravellon.”

“Yes?”

“Does it—did it—exist anywhere else, or only here?”

“I am not the Keeper of the Library,” he finally replied, after a long pause. “Nor am I at all certain that the Keeper of the Library still exists. But he—or she—would have the answer to that question.”

It took Kaylin a minute to figure out that he wasn’t talking about the Arkon. “You think it only existed here.”

“Yes, I do. But I am not certain of it. I am certain that the Elemental Garden existed only here.”

“And the Devourer?”

“I don’t know where the Devourer started, Kaylin. I don’t know precisely where the Ancients started, either, if it comes to that. I know the stories about the births of Dragons and Barrani. I know the stories of the births of other races and other creatures, some of whom could breed and some of whom were unique.

“But the Devourer? No. I would say, if I had to guess, that he is as old as the gods, possibly one of them.”

“I think he’s like your wild elements,” she finally said. “Only he has no Keeper. Or maybe he had one in the nothing, but whoever that was, he didn’t pass the job on to someone else. If he even survived it.

“I know the Devourer has destroyed worlds.”

“How do you know this?”

She shook her head; he didn’t press her.

“I don’t understand
how,
or
why,
but…I guess, if the elements were finally unleashed, they’d destroy the world and they wouldn’t have a reason that made much sense, either, at least not to me.” She rolled onto her side, bending an elbow so she could prop her head up on one hand. “Why do you think the portal should be allowed to open if the Devourer is a danger?”

“I allow that the Devourer
is
a danger. But the world…is the world. It has changed, and continues to change, and one of the ways in which it does are these travelers. Your people. The Aerians. The Tha’alani. They bring something new, each time. It strengthens us.” He waited, and she understood that he was waiting for her to draw some sort of conclusion.

She glanced at Severn, who nodded. It was a slight motion.

“Was this the first world?” she finally asked.

“Very good,” Evanton replied, with just the hint of a smile. “Yes. I believe that this was the first world. It fits with what we know.”

“Does it matter?”

“No. Nor am I saying that no other world was real. They were real. Some, I believe, still exist, but we do not speak so readily with them as we in theory once did.”

“How do you know all this? You couldn’t possibly have been alive when—” She stopped. Thought about the depths of the Elemental Water’s small, quiet pool. “Oh.”

“Oh, indeed. It’s not relevant on most days, and in spite of the fact that I fear your adherence to the purely relevant is shortsighted, it is also practical, and I am a relatively practical man. Mistakes were made on a grand, even a divine scale, and lessons were learned. Rather than war over the fabric of this one world, the Ancients chose to travel. It was long ago.

“They were free, in their slow creations, to make different choices. Often, they simply made different mistakes, but…they learned, and they spoke to their kin across the divide.”

“How did they create
worlds?
”

“No one knows, Kaylin. Or at least no one who is not an Ancient knows, and they seldom speak, except in echoes.”

She nodded.

“But they experimented with life and the living, and they created, in the end, new races. Yours, the Aerians, the Tha’alani—races that could live, breathe, think, and die, without ever possessing a Name. Some experiments were made here, which I believe you are aware of.

“But that continued elsewhere. And here you now are.” He glanced into the distance made of horizon and light. “And the travelers who struggle toward us now are your distant cousins, or mine, or the Dragon’s. They’re kin, in some way. They’ve come home.

“And I think the worlds allow the creation of these portals or these gates for that purpose. The magic required to penetrate a world is not—as you’ve seen—slight, and it isn’t easily controlled. The Ancients did not uniformly hate or decry those who had left, and they allowed them the safety of return.

“So, they now come.”

She sat up, hunching her back so she could wrap her arms around her shins. “You don’t think they can stop the portal from opening.”