The Chronicles of Elantra 6 - Cast in Chaos (49 page)

I would have done that with the Wolves, if I could have. I couldn’t. I don’t understand home the way you do. But I understand this. You’re where home is. You always were.

He fell silent, and if she could have, she would have turned to look at him, even if she couldn’t find anything to say.
Home
. She gathered the pieces of her Barrani true name as carefully as she could, righting them until they formed a rune she recognized.

The Devourer was all she could otherwise see, with its huge desert eyes that didn’t reflect her. It was no longer attempting to rip her name apart as if it were packaging; it no longer roared. But it watched her as she worked, and when it spoke again, it spoke a single word.
Home.

Severn’s words had been a gift, and she had almost wept to hear them, because she was still so certain she didn’t deserve them. But the Devourer’s word made her want to weep in an entirely different way. It—he—wasn’t a child. But some of the empty, desolate bewilderment that older orphans faced was in its tone.

She’d dealt with those orphans in the Foundling Halls, as they struggled with the truth of their new existence, and with the changes they had no choice but to accept. She’d done it herself, on the morning her mother had not woken up. She understood that for those children, home and safety were the same thing, and with the loss of home, safety had vanished. The Foundling Halls could
be
a new home, but home wasn’t something that could be built and forced on them in a single day, and what they wanted, at heart, was for time to turn backward and death to be a nightmare they could wake from, preferably in the arms of their parents.

They, on the other hand, didn’t destroy whole worlds in their grief and need. Maybe that was why small children—hells, most
people
—didn’t have the power to destroy whole worlds. In the grief of the moment, they would—and there wouldn’t be a lot left standing.

She had seen, trapped in ancient Records, the death of Vakillirae as he faced the Devourer. She’d seen his determination, and she’d seen what Enkerrikas had done to succor him while his life was slowly drained. This was different.

How? Why? The Devourer hovered, drifting slowly toward her. As it did, the noncolor of its form enveloped her.

Kaylin!

I’m here. I’m here, Severn.

I can’t see you!

I think he’s swallowed me. Good damn thing he has no digestive system.
Severn smiled at the gallows humor; it was brief, and she couldn’t see it, but she felt it anyway. She opened her eyes. Or she tried, and realized they weren’t closed. In the center—or at least inside—of the Devourer, it made no difference. She’d often closed her eyes when she wanted to think; it lessened distraction. Here, it didn’t matter; it was almost like being on the inside of her own head.

Because it’s empty?

She laughed again. She was going to hit Severn, on the other hand, if she ever made her way out.

Vakillirae had sacrificed himself for his people. His people had done what they could to help him make his final stand. In the end, it hadn’t saved him; it had saved at least some of his people, because those memories were preserved on
this
world, somehow. But she’d seen his face, his expression. There was no way he didn’t understand what
home
meant, or what family meant.

And yet, he’d died. During the whole of their almost static combat, the Devourer had never fallen silent. What was the difference, besides race and gender? Kaylin had a feeling the Devourer didn’t consider the living significant enough to assign value to, either.

Home.

The word was like an earthquake; it shook everything. She understood it. But…Vakillirae must have understood it, as well.

No,
Severn said, and she realized how closely he must be listening.

What do you hear?

Two things. When I listen to what I’m hearing, it’s roaring or thunder. If I listen to what you hear? Words. Or syllables. But…I can’t hear what you’re hearing, Kaylin. To me, even through the bond of the name, it doesn’t sound like
home.

But this is different. The Devourer—he’s not behaving the same way. I don’t understand why.

Severn’s voice fell silent for a moment, and then he said,
You laughed.

Pardon?

You laughed, Kaylin. You were in pain, and you were afraid, and you’re here in the end for essentially the same reasons that Vakillirae was—but you laughed.

I laughed because you—
She stopped. She would have turned to face the Devourer, but that was impossible given his eyes were on the outside. She’d laughed, yes. She almost said
You made me laugh,
and in some ways that was true. But on the surface of things, there wasn’t all
that
much that was funny about his actual words; she laughed because they implied history. A history of affection, arguments, teasing, a little smugness.

A history of being
at
home. Of being known. Of, she thought, belonging. As she so often did, she began to speak, and as often happened in situations like this, the markings on her arms, her legs, and her back began to
hurt.
They also began to make themselves visible in a way they’d never done before: they burned through her clothing.

Her first almost irrelevant thought was:
Damn it, I can’t afford this!
Followed quickly by
I need a raise
and
if you mention budgeting, I’ll break both your legs.

Again, the Devourer stirred, but he didn’t resume his frenzied unmaking.

Get ready,
she told Severn.

The runes on her arms weren’t a frame; they were almost a cage. But hadn’t she sought the comfort of cages in the past? Their bars formed guidelines, made options clearer. And there was only one way to leave the damn thing, anyway. She drew breath and she began to tell the Devourer a story. It wasn’t a child—she understood that. But if it had learned from the experience it absorbed in its attempts to find what it sought, there wasn’t any evidence of it.

The story she told was one she’d told only once before: it was a story meant for elemental fire, and it spoke of what fire meant to the
living.
In it, she described the raging fires that consumed whole city blocks; she told of the fires that consumed whole forests—although these, she had never personally seen. But she also spoke of the way the necessary warmth of fire sustained life in the bitter cold of winter; the way it warmed water, cooked food, brought light to dark places. It wasn’t, strictly speaking, a story; it had no narrative, no beginning, and no real end. The foundlings, especially Dock, would have been rolling their eyes in boredom long before she’d finished.

But the elemental fire had listened, seeing itself—seeing most of itself—in the words that related the experiences of those who lived around its edges. It had carried her across the wild miles of the Elemental Garden as she’d spoken, without once burning or blistering her skin; it had offered her both attention and warmth, instead of what seemed almost inevitable death.

She wondered, briefly, what kind of story the Arkon would tell the fire, because Dragon experience of flame was beyond her; it wasn’t her story to tell.

As if the Devourer were fire, he listened.

He’s moving,
Severn told her.

Quickly?

Meaning, can I keep up? I can. Not without effort.

She didn’t tell him to make the effort; she knew he would, while he breathed.
I don’t hear him roaring. Or speaking.

He’s not. He’s silent, now.

Can you see him?

Yes.

Has he changed?

Yes. He doesn’t look mortal, if that’s what you mean. But he’s not the whole of the sky or the landscape. He seems to have…condensed.

She had no idea how to frame a story about what the Devourer meant to the living, because as far as she knew, he meant death.

But he appears to be following our refugees.

She had never spoken to the air in the Garden; nor had she spent much time attempting to converse with the dirt. She wouldn’t have bothered talking to the fire, either, if it hadn’t been carrying her. She regretted that now, but began, once again, to talk about her own experience with the elements; she made them part of her story, and offered them to the only audience she had. If she stumbled or hesitated or went on too long, the audience didn’t yawn or shout or snicker, and for that, she was grateful.

Air was breath. Without it, there was no life. It carried seeds—in the city, they were usually weed spore—and scent, the aroma of baking or cooking or less pleasant but no less present things. It carried…words. Speech. At its worst it carried ice and made it hard to stand or walk, and she added that, as well. It carried Aerians and Dragons, and although the only flight she usually experienced, with one notable exception, was wheedled or whined for, she did tell the Devourer, because she loved flight, and envied it. Flight was freedom. Flight was escape from the confinement of…earth.

Earth, she thought, and cages.

But that was a different story, a way of expressing a restlessness or helplessness that had nothing to do with the fact of earth, because usually what she wanted to escape from was herself. Earth? Without earth, there was also no life. There was no grass, no wheat, no corn, no trees from which most homes were built. There were no cliffs, no cliff faces into which Aerians built their Aeries.

Sometimes she did want to fly. Sometimes, though, she needed to make a stand. Then, she needed earth, stone, something beneath her feet that wasn’t so capricious it couldn’t bear her weight. Earth was the place in which the dead rested, in the end.

The Devourer was silent, but it was an attentive silence.

She looked at her arms. The marks on her skin were also words; they’d never felt heavy, had never really felt like anything but skin at all, except in the presence of strong magic, in which case they felt like selective sunburns.

The Devourer was attracted to the use of the names; he had come when Vakillirae had made his stand, his name hanging in the air before him like a translucent, luminescent shield. Regular speech hadn’t caught his attention; on her first visit to this empty wasteland, she’d cursed liberally in every language she could, which was basically, with the exception of Dragon, any language she knew.

What is the name of fire?

Funny, that she should hear Sanabalis, of all people, now. His lessons, his endless, quiet lectures, returned in those words. The name of fire. She focused, as she had never managed to focus on the candles he set in front of her, lifted her head, and spoke.

Out of the gray-black insides of the Devourer, fire came at her call. If she’d called fire like
this
in the West room, she’d’ve lost her job, and quite possibly her life: it raged. It raged, it danced, it roared, spanning the spectrum from white to red.

Careful, Kaylin.
Severn’s words were jarring. They were also an anchor.

What’s happening?

The refugees are now walking through fire. No, it’s not burning them, not yet.

She started to speak, and stopped at the next interruption.

Private Neya.
It was the Arkon. She looked at the fire and she could see his face. Or what she assumed was his face; he was a Dragon.

The fire will speak,
he told her.
Repeat what it says, if you can. Repeat it
exactly.
Do you understand?

She nodded and listened more carefully than she had ever listened as a bored student in a distant classroom. The fire spoke. She couldn’t understand it. No, more than that, she had a sense that it
was
speaking, but she couldn’t make out syllables; there was nothing there
to
repeat.

Arkon,
she said, trying to keep panic out of her voice,
I can’t— I can’t hear the fire clearly enough to repeat what it says.

Dragon jaws didn’t lend themselves to frowning, but they had other ways of showing displeasure; admittedly fire, at this stage, was not the most effective.

I can hear the fire’s voice.

You’re
touching
it.

You must be touching it,
he said, his voice quite cold given everything,
or we would not now be speaking. Try again.

The fire had not stopped its rumble, and none of what it said was any closer to being audible, never mind repeatable.
Can you understand it?
she asked, in frustration.

He was silent for a moment.
Yes.

I can’t. Understanding doesn’t matter—but I can’t hear it well enough. At all.

This is an unwelcome complication,
was the Arkon’s response.
Have you called the other elements?

Even through the wavering heat of fire, he could read her expression quite clearly. Sadly, she could read his just as well.

I will not ask you how far you progressed in your lessons with Lord Sanabalis, because I am well aware of the answer. This is not a classroom, Private. You will now have to repeat your first success three times. I do not think,
he added,
that you have much time left. Grethan has reported that the ground in the street is looking distinctly less…solid.

The problem with time was that there was
never
enough of it.
Just once,
she thought, straightening her shoulders,
it would be nice to know what I’m doing instead of groping around in the dark.
In this particular case, the darkness was no longer literal; it was lined by fire.

Fire, she thought, and the attention of the Devourer. He was utterly silent now, and his silence was almost another presence, it was so strong.