Cast in Wisdom

by Michelle Sagara

  “Bellusdeo is willing to remain outside of the action—” Something thudded against the closed doors. The Arkon paused until it was clear that no entry was going to follow, then said, “Not because she can’t theoretically see the enemy, but because it will keep me here.

  “Because the results are the correct results—Bellusdeo remains in the safest position—I accept this. But I dislike intensely her claim to be wiser or more prudent than she actually is. I feel that my own wisdom and prudence is being used as a tool.”

  Bellusdeo laughed. Her eyes were almost gold. Without pause, given the second thud against the door, the gold Dragon turned and enveloped the Arkon in a hug. Emmerian glanced away. Kaylin almost did, as well; there was something intensely personal in that simple gesture. “You are the only thing that remains of my childhood,” the gold Dragon said.

  “I will singe your hair,” the Arkon replied.

  Kaylin did not understand Dragons. Emmerian, however, seemed to understand this, and so she turned once again to the doors. Her eyes stopped part of the way there, because Larrantin was present.

  Larrantin was looking at the Arkon. Not through him, but at him. His expression was intent, but devoid of anger; a hint of confusion colored his eyes.

  “We’re going to deliver your message,” Kaylin said.

  He adjusted the direction of his gaze.

  “Killian has guests.”

  “Wanted guests?” A third thud. “Perhaps that is a foolish question.”

  “I’m not entirely sure he realizes he has guests. Certainly, we don’t want them.”

  “You chose to deliver my book to Lannagaros, in Killian’s stead?”

  Larrantin recognized the Arkon. “I promise I’ll explain it all later.”

  The Arkon, however, turned toward Larrantin, frowning as he did. Given that they were standing in what was a magical building, and there were magical people on the other side of the door if one didn’t include the cohort, it shouldn’t have surprised Kaylin to feel the effects of a strong surge of magic travel across most of her skin. It was painful, not tingly.

  He then looked at the book he carried. She wondered if his magic had changed what he saw, or could see, because the magic had definitely been his.

  “I could almost hear Larrantin,” the Arkon said. “He’s here.”

  Kaylin nodded. “He seems to recognize you. I mean, he spoke of you by name.”

  The Arkon said nothing. Bellusdeo, however, cursed. The final thud against the doors had been no louder than the several that preceded it—but this time the doors burst open. They hadn’t shattered, but it didn’t matter.

  Standing in the frame of the door was Candallar.

  Chapter 17

  Everyone in the entryway could see Candallar—except for Larrantin, whose gaze remained fixed to the Arkon, even as the Arkon stepped back. His eyes did flicker to the open doors, but Candallar seemed to be as much of a nonentity as the rest of the gathering.

  Candallar had eyes for the Dragons, or specifically for the one in the gold plate armor. Bellusdeo lifted a hand, flicked a wrist, and a beam of purple fire struck the air in front of her face, rather than her face as Candallar had no doubt intended.

  Clearly, the time for negotiations had passed.

  The fire itself spread, the single beam aimed at Bellusdeo’s head splitting into multiple strands. The strands, unlike the beam, weren’t single lines of purple flame; they were much more like tentacles. Severn’s chain was up and spinning; he was fine. The tentacle shattered before it could reach him.

  The Arkon was, elderly or no, as fast as Bellusdeo when it came to magic or shields—and he seemed prepared for the purple fire. Prepared enough that he turned instantly to breathe in the direction of his opponent.

  Candallar leaped up, and the fire passed through him.

  Emmerian didn’t gesture or cast; he simply breathed fire; yellow-white flame hit purple fire, and the two sparked and exploded, one shattering and the other dissipating.

  Kaylin could leap out of the way of a simple beam—and had. But tentacles were always more of a problem. Always, she thought, in Leontine. Hope managed to stay rigid on her shoulder, his wing affixed to the front of her face. He opened his small, translucent jaws; Kaylin saw a flash of crimson and then a stream of what might—at a safe distance—have been smoke. It wasn’t. Hope’s breath threw small flecks of sparkling color into the air.

  Given that his silvered stream of smoke had struck the purple flame, she couldn’t complain—but while his breath persisted, it remained a hazard for anyone else who was fighting in the foyer. The foyer had seemed large the first time she’d seen it—but it wasn’t large enough to be a significant and easily traversed battlefield.

  She wanted, for one visceral moment, to be a good student in Sanabalis’s much-neglected class. Or a Dragon. She tossed away her bracer, releasing the potential for her magic. It would find its way back to her at some point, probably through Severn.

  I have the weapon, Severn pointed out. You have Hope.

  She exhaled, finding her footing. Maybe this isn’t the time to talk about this?

  It wasn’t. You have time to start beating yourself up about what you lack. This is more constructive.

  Ugh.

  I think Candallar’s going to try to take a window.

  Larrantin could see two things: Kaylin and her familiar. He could also see the trajectory of the familiar’s breath. Ah. He could see what that breath struck. For just a second, for as long as the purple flame struggled against the transformation forced on it by Hope’s breath, he could see the tendril.

  Larrantin’s frown transformed his expression. His eyes were a midnight blue that rivaled Teela’s at their worst. His hair, white and black, intensified in color, the white becoming so bright and harsh that it caused an instinctive squint; the black becoming a void, a thing that implied the absence of living color forever.

  He could see the open door. He could see the encroachment of something. Kaylin had a second—less—to shout. “Close the doors!” She turned instantly toward Larrantin.

  He froze, his midnight eyes returning to her face.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, holding on to the visceral fear this much anger and magic invoked in anyone sane, “but I think that’s a really, really bad idea here.”

  “Where,” he asked, his voice thunder, “is here?”

  “Can these windows be broken?”

  Annarion and Sedarias had passed through them. But Candallar had opened the doors anyway, and there was no sign of the two members of the cohort anywhere. Severn moved to the open doors but stayed on the right side of them as he scanned the stairs and the grounds immediately in front of the building.

  “Not easily. There was some difficulty with younger students and their various games. What,” he added, voice sharpening, “was that?”

  “The purple fire?”

  “Is that what you saw?”

  “That’s what it looks like to me. To us,” she added. “I’m not alone here. I think Candallar might be trying to find another way in.”

  “Candallar is the source of that...fire?”

  She nodded.

  Larrantin exhaled. “Take the book—or see that the book is delivered—to Killianas. I will guard the building.”

  “You couldn’t see him.”

  He was clearly not a man accustomed to argument, even if the argument made sense.

  “We’ve lost Sedarias and Annarion,” Bellusdeo said. “Can you see bodies?”

  It was such a pragmatic question. Kaylin turned toward the open door. She didn’t borrow Severn’s vision; what she could see through Hope’s wing, he couldn’t see. Nor did she tell Hope to fly to Severn and allow him to look through the same wings.

  Instead, she crossed a hall that suddenly seemed short and squat, it provided so litt
le time to gather her thoughts, to center herself. Battlefields of any kind always contained corpses.

  This one was no exception. She’d seen Annarion fight. She’d seen Sedarias fight—although that fight, broken as it was with fights of her own, was less fixed in her mind.

  Kaylin could immediately see the injured; she could see the dead. Some had lost limbs, and the bleeding would probably kill them. Some had not. But neither Annarion nor Sedarias were among the fallen.

  Did she care about the people no one else could see? Did she care about people who had intended to kill them? Was she willing to spend the power to try to heal those who might—just might—survive if she did?

  No. Not now, and maybe not ever.

  She exhaled and turned.

  “Your color is terrible,” Bellusdeo said.

  “Try looking in a mirror before you tell me that,” Kaylin snapped. “Sedarias and Annarion aren’t on the field. Candallar hasn’t come down, either. And if you are going to go full Dragon, inside is not the place to do it. If you break parts of the building, Larrantin is going to be upset.”

  “You are speaking to Lannagaros?” Larrantin asked.

  “No, I’m speaking to Bellusdeo. Lannagaros is less martial.” But not, Kaylin thought with a twinge, less desperate.

  “I do not know this Bellusdeo. She was perhaps not a student here.”

  Kaylin was silent for a long beat. “No,” she finally said. “Lannagaros wants to know why you’re here at all.”

  One brow rose.

  “He didn’t ask, but he does want to know. I think he’s hoping that he’ll be able to see and speak with you soon. You can’t leave this building.”

  At this, a slender smile graced the Barrani man’s face. His eyes were blue. “No.”

  “Have you tried?”

  “I have opened the doors,” he replied after another pause. “What you see when you cross the common is not what I see. The area beyond the doors is nigh impassible.”

  “Can you take a look outside the doors now? Without using magic that could level a standing army?”

  “There are few demands on my time at the moment.” He walked to the doors and opened them. Candallar hadn’t returned; Kaylin was almost certain that he didn’t intend a frontal attack from the doors again.

  “What do you see?” she asked.

  “Corpses.”

  He could see the corpses. “Bellusdeo?”

  The gold Dragon shook her head. She’d only heard Kaylin’s half of the conversation, but understood where Kaylin was going.

  “So you can see the people who were gathered here. The rest of my companions can’t.” Kaylin exhaled. “I think they’re like you. Except for the corpse part. How much do you know about the Academia?”

  This was the wrong question, given the shift in Larrantin’s expression.

  Kaylin.

  She turned automatically in the direction of Severn’s voice before she realized that he wasn’t speaking out loud. Widening the arc of that turn, she realized that he wasn’t anywhere close enough to speak out loud.

  Candallar?

  I believe he’s trying to enter the building from the third story. You’ve lost Sedarias and Annarion?

  Yes.

  You might want to send Bellusdeo upstairs.

  “Can these windows be breached?”

  “You have already said that two of your companions left through the windows without breaking them.”

  Kaylin cursed.

  Bellusdeo, however, said, “I am not certain that Candallar has the flexibility—yet—to do the same.”

  Larrantin sighed. Loudly. It reminded Kaylin of the Arkon—on a normal day. “I am unaccustomed to the building being quite so empty, but I assure you I am capable of defending it.”

  “I didn’t notice that you were defending it from those guys.”

  “They had not yet had the temerity to force entry; merely the temerity to try. I will deal with intruders here. You will deliver my message to Killianas.”

  “I’m not sure it’s safe.”

  “It will become less safe if what you fear is true.”

  “What do you mean, what I fear?”

  “You believe that the corpses that both you and I can see are somehow part of the student population of the Academia; you believe that I can see them because I am a teacher at the same place. We are bound here.”

  “Most of those people weren’t students when you were teaching here.”

  “How are you so certain?”

  “Lots of humans.”

  “You think there were no mortals here? I would find your ignorance appalling in other circumstances.” His eyes began to glow, which was arresting because they were such a dark color. “But those circumstances are not these. Take my message to Killianas, Chosen.”

  The marks across Kaylin’s arms—and probably the rest of the skin she couldn’t easily see—began to glow.

  * * *

  Did you catch most of that?

  Yes. I’m coming back down the stairs.

  Good, because Larrantin is going up. I’m still not convinced that he can stave off encroachment by people he can’t see—but he can see me and is likely to reduce me to ash if I bring it up a second time.

  He could see the marks.

  Yes. I’m not sure how. I’m not asking, either—if he has an “undress person” spell I do not want to know.

  Severn’s chuckle was felt, not heard.

  I mean, obviously he can see them now—they’re glowing. But they didn’t start until he gave me my orders.

  Severn didn’t ask the obvious question, but Kaylin’s mind was beginning to chew on it. Why? Why had the marks responded to him?

  He rounded the bend in the stairs and came to stand beside her. Kaylin then turned to the Arkon.

  “Larrantin feels that it is essential—utterly essential—that we deliver his message to Killianas. He could see the bodies that Sedarias and Annarion left in their wake.” She spoke Barrani. “I think they would have seen him. But I also think they would see us. Larrantin can’t be seen by the rest of you.

  “I think Sedarias should strangle Terrano,” she continued, “but not before she steps off a cliff herself. This might be something Terrano taught—but I’d bet any money that he taught it at her command. Let’s go find them.”

  “You think they’re trapped the way Mandoran and Terrano are?”

  “And Nightshade, yes. Which implies that Candallar can somehow trap people within the school. Or someone who is with Candallar.” She glanced once at Bellusdeo. “Ready?”

  The gold Dragon nodded.

  * * *

  Candallar was not floating above the front doors when they exited the building. There was no fiery death, no purple tentacles or streams of fire-like color, waiting for them. Kaylin tried only one experiment as she headed down the walk; she asked Hope to lift his wing.

  The wing was dutifully lifted, and the bodies that Kaylin could see vanished. She could—and did—step through them. They weren’t merely invisible; they weren’t there at all. Hope slid the wing back into place across her eyes. The bodies were there, and her feet—the single time she tried—didn’t pass through them.

  So...this was some kind of shift in plane.

  She wanted to pause and study the corpses. She wanted to match them to what she remembered of the wall in that first building they’d encountered in Candallar’s border zone. Mindful of Larrantin, of Candallar’s presence, and of the four missing members of the cohort, she didn’t take that time.

  They walked—or marched—across the grass, cutting between two large trees to do so. Candallar had headed out of Killian’s building, closing the doors behind him. He hadn’t, that she’d seen, returned—but he might have beaten a retreat after his trick with the purple fire failed. The doors ha
d been closed, if briefly.

  She doubted it, though.

  Her fear, at this point, was that he intended to kill them; if not kill, then imprison them. And that he had some method to do so that didn’t depend on a building in the border zone. What she didn’t understand was why. If he’d stumbled across this building, this academy, what did he want from it?

  How was it useful?

  He was fieflord. He had a Tower at his disposal. Then again, so did Nightshade—and Castle Nightshade would probably happily murder his visitors in their sleep, or starve them to death by getting them lost in a maze of twisting passages that had no exit.

  Which was not, come to think of it, that different from the odd basement space they’d encountered when they’d been transported into the wall room.

  She shook herself and realigned her thoughts. She didn’t know enough about sentient buildings, and would probably never know enough about them; they were people, at heart, with a lot of very complicated power that worked in a contained space. She’d learned what little she knew of each building by spending time with, or in, the building.

  And Killian was damaged. This whole place was off-kilter.

  Helen had damaged herself in order to be able to make choices of her own. Killian wasn’t damaged in the same way that Helen had been. Why was his Avatar missing an eye? Had that eye been deliberately moved?

  The wall had existed for longer than Candallar had. Kaylin was almost certain of it. And she wondered, as they strode closer and closer to Killian’s doors, if one of the Barrani who had stood at the very back of that carved crowd of people was Larrantin.

  There were other Barrani in that background.

  Some of the people in the foreground had been caught and trapped recently. Nightshade might now exist as part of that wall. Nightshade, however, couldn’t leave the building, couldn’t leave the classes.

  The men and women who had gathered to attack Kaylin and her party, which contained one very obvious Dragon, could and had. Ugh. She resented the lack of perfect memory a great deal right now.

  Kaylin slowed as she approached the front doors and the brick that had served as a doorbell. She reached out to grab Bellusdeo’s shoulder, because playing point was clearly a job for the most important Dragon in existence, not a lowly Hawk. Bellusdeo, to her credit, stopped instantly.