Cast in Wisdom

by Michelle Sagara

  “And Candallar only has two.”

  “Yes. It would appear so.”

  “They can hear you, you know,” Sedarias then said.

  “Ah, no, they cannot, unless their ears are a reconfigured version of the ones they were born with. And in my opinion,” the Arbiter continued, “if they could hear it would be to our advantage. It is not possible that your Candallar did not understand that the three separate items were necessary—which implies heavily that there is a lack of trust or cohesion among his council.”

  The ground beneath their feet shook—but it wasn’t the ground that was the problem; Kaylin saw this perhaps seconds before the Arcanist gestured at the ceiling. The ceiling came down in large stone chunks.

  Starrante turned a clicking motion into a roar of sound and the chunks of rock dissipated, as if they were illusion or fog.

  “If we close with them, they’d be more careful about what they drop.” This was Bellusdeo. Chunks of falling ceiling were unlikely to kill her in either of her two forms. Before Starrante could answer, she exhaled a plume of fire in a much wider cone than the size of her current mouth should have made possible.

  It melted rock.

  It didn’t touch the chancellor or his companions, although Lord Baltrin blinked rapidly as it passed them by. In spite of himself, Robin’s fear diminished. “She’s a Dragon!”

  “She is. Her name is Bellusdeo. When she transforms, she’s the color of the armor she’s wearing now.”

  Purple fire raced down the hall in response to Dragon fire, but with as much effect. No, Kaylin thought, that wasn’t true. It left a pale, opalescent wash across the stone floor, colors glittering there like shards of glass. This time, Starrante cursed in his clicking, toothy tongue.

  He lifted his face toward what remained of the ceiling, and when he exhaled, a stream of sticky white took root; he caught it with his front legs—four of them—and began to tease it into threads. While he did, Bellusdeo once again took aim at the chancellor’s party, and this time, Emmerian did the same; the former aimed directly at the floor beneath their feet, and the latter, at the ceiling above their heads.

  The flames obscured normal vision—in both directions. Starrante, however, didn’t appear to notice. He was, as his form suggested he might, building a web. This web was like a spider’s web to begin with—but the strands and their configuration seemed somehow more mathematical, more precise. Robin, in Kaylin’s shadow, drew his fascinated gaze from the fire to the web itself, as if compelled.

  His eyes narrowed as his chin rose; the whole of his neck was revealed as Starrante’s web began to spread.

  “I’ve—I’ve seen this,” Robin whispered.

  “You’ve seen this web?”

  He shook his head as if the web itself were irrelevant. “That.” He pointed at one section of the web—the section almost directly in front of Starrante, rather than overhead. “That pattern. That one there. I’ve seen it before. Look—it’s repeating.”

  “What is he doing?” Kaylin asked, bending as the fire cleared and the fire resumed. “What are the patterns meant to do?”

  But Robin barely heard her. His gaze drifted from the webbing being constructed, up the limbs that were constructing it, and to the eyes of Starrante himself, because Starrante was looking at Robin, not the pattern he was creating. “What do you see?”

  “You’re walking a pattern,” Robin replied with vastly less fear than he had shown moments before. “You’re walking a pattern with your limbs. Are you Wevaren?”

  “Yes. That is not what we call ourselves, but yes, that is what I am.”

  The Dragon fire was answered by purple flame—but this flame glistened, and it moved like a wave, not a cone. It was darker in color than the purple fire Kaylin had seen used before, and something about it set her teeth on edge.

  “Don’t let it touch you!” Kaylin shouted, mostly at Bellusdeo, who stood at the outer rim of Starrante’s protections.

  “You think?” the Dragon replied in annoyed Elantran.

  Robin’s gaze moved, briefly, to this new wall of ugly flame, this new wave. Kaylin could see that the opalescence was stronger here. She had always considered this type of glittering, ugly color to be a thing of Shadow, a property of the Shadows—but she knew that was wrong; Hope’s eyes sometimes glittered in the same way.

  “No,” Robin said, looking at what now approached them like a wall of death, all sight of the three behind it obscured. “I think—I don’t think that’s the pattern you want.”

  Starrante’s eyes didn’t seem possessed of lids, but they widened at the effrontery of Robin.

  “Master Larrantin said that that was the way it was done a long time ago—but he said there were other, more efficient patterns that had been developed since.” His Barrani was astonishingly good, given his age and the area he’d called home before his disappearance.

  “Larrantin?” Starrante did not spit but might have had he a normal mouth and the usual saliva. “And what, exactly, would you suggest?”

  “Can I touch it?”

  “Boy—”

  “No!” The two words collided.

  Robin nodded. He was frustrated; there was no way to draw what he wanted to draw, and he clearly did, because his hands were moving almost as if he held a quill. Those hands, she now saw, were ink-stained, the nails chipped. “That line,” he said, shouting to be heard over the roar of two Dragons. Their breath could keep the purple fire at bay, but it was a losing battle; they slowed its advance but did not destroy it.

  “This one.”

  “It’s—you’ve created five diamonds, repeating—but you don’t need five.”

  “You have no idea what path is being traced.”

  “I do. I know what path you’re tracing—Larrantin said it’s an important pathway.”

  “Larrantin thinks his hair is important on a bad day.”

  “Move that line and that one. Shorten them. In the center, the shape should be different.”

  “Different?”

  Robin nodded. He could speak High Barrani, but communicating what he could see on the inside of his head was almost beyond him. Starrante, however, studied the pattern for a long beat while fire approached. He did not call a retreat; he didn’t appear to notice the fire itself.

  “I understand,” he finally said, “why Killian considered you promising. Very well. Let us walk a different pattern. You wish the center to be more curved, then—the diamonds less exact?”

  “Not less exact, just less diamond-shaped. Master Larrantin said if the structure is looser it flows as one would expect.”

  “I will have a word with Larrantin later. You seem young to be so advanced in your studies.” His limbs moved as his mouth did.

  Robin said, “The shiny bits in the purple stuff match the patterns better. You’re trying to collect them, right?”

  Kaylin was almost dumbfounded.

  “I am. Now hush; this takes concentration.”

  And spinning the complicated web didn’t. Kaylin had never heard of Starrante’s race, but clearly Robin had—and he had done so in the Academia. For one moment, while Starrante’s entire body tensed, she wondered what else she might learn if she were a student here. Whatever it was, it seemed vastly more valuable than etiquette.

  The fire hit the web directly in front of Starrante—and everyone else, for that matter. Both of the Dragons took a measured, deliberate step back, retreating into the space between two of Starrante’s legs.

  As the wall of flame hit the web, it stuck there, struggling to push forward. Kaylin flinched, half expecting the fire to break through the holes circumscribed by strands of web. It didn’t. It seemed to travel along those strands, lighting the web, and darkening it, as well.

  But if the fire that contained opalescence spread, the glittering bits didn’t. And as Kaylin looked at t
hem—really looked at them, studying them as if she were Robin—she could see them not as scintillating, ugly colors, but as windows.

  Small windows, opening to landscapes of blue, dark blue, green; of red and orange, of the white of terrible blizzard and the white-gray of fog.

  Starrante had said that these were like small shards of portals, and she understood now. None of these shards, none of these spinning splinters of moving color, were large enough to fit through. But they were large enough individually to take her body apart if she stood in one place while they advanced.

  “If Terrano taught them this, I’m going to kill him,” she heard herself saying.

  “Terrano did not teach them this.” Sedarias, eyes midnight blue, watched the web, her glance flitting to the Dragons and back.

  The pieces of color were caught between strands and held fast there. She could almost feel them click into place, as if the web itself were the frame into which colored glass might be fit. But all of those pieces still opened into disparate spaces—spaces she could see much more clearly now that they weren’t in motion.

  Robin was practically vibrating in place, excitement and fear mingling. He counted as pieces were caught by the web and locked in place; the whole of the slowly growing window shuddered violently each time it happened.

  “Be ready,” Starrante told them.

  Clink. Clink. Clink. The sounds grew louder as the web retained the pieces; the pieces themselves began to shimmer with a gray, almost reflected light—probably Starrante’s body. The lower corners of the web and the upper corners on both sides caught pieces, as well—smaller shards that did not fit precisely, but were being kept at bay. Kaylin’s skin felt normal now; whatever magic was being done was not the magic that caused agony when it was cast.

  But it was magic, and when the last of the pieces—or the last of the useful pieces—fell into place in the center of the web, there was a loud, shattering sound—a sound that was the exact opposite of what she would have expected, given what her eyes could see. The strands of webbing between the disparate pieces shivered in place, the motion itself like the refrain of a familiar, wordless song. Starrante’s clicking seemed to keep a beat, a rhythm, as those strands vanished and left, in their place, a single plate of what might have been glass.

  “Now!” Starrante barked, his voice as loud as a Dragon’s. And speaking thus, he swept Robin and Kaylin into that glass plate.

  * * *

  It wasn’t glass.

  They passed through it, as Starrante had no doubt intended. So, too, did the rest of their companions, their feet hitting stone, their eyes bouncing off darkness. It was dark here.

  It wasn’t quiet.

  “Do not touch anything,” Starrante said, his voice a rumble of thunder as he made his way through a pane that was almost too small to contain him.

  “Where are we?” Bellusdeo demanded—just before Sedarias could.

  It was Kaylin who answered. “We’re in the library.”

  * * *

  On the other side of a portal that had not closed was a hallway. It was familiar, and the gaping hole left by falling roof framed the top edge of the portal.

  “Can you close the portal?” Emmerian asked. Kaylin was surprised by this because he seldom spoke in larger gatherings.

  “With effort that I do not choose to expend, yes.”

  “They can follow us.”

  Starrante’s grin was, again, disturbing. The portal shed light—probably the light of the hallway—which caused his fangs to glint in the darkness. And he did have fangs. “One can only hope. Ah, this is much, much better.” His head rose on the stick-like neck he could contract to invisibility. His eyes were red.

  “What are they doing?” His feet shifted direction, even if the rest of his body remained fixed in place.

  Kaylin was viscerally relieved not to be part of that they. His neck seemed to extend forever as he lifted his head; outrage seemed to cause this buoyancy. The library wasn’t silent, but the sounds that she could hear were muddied, almost unidentifiable—as if there were crowds of people in every direction, engaged in...something.

  “You’re certain this is the library?”

  Starrante failed to answer.

  Bellusdeo, however, did. Sort of. She spoke a word—a sharp word that caused Kaylin to flinch—and light flooded the area. Starrante had been right: this was the library. But it was the library in pieces. Not collapsed and not damaged—but disjointed, as if seen through a broken mirror.

  No one moved; Sedarias seemed to be examining the floor. As it was the floor across which they’d otherwise be moving, Kaylin did the same. But even the floor, like the shelving and the hint of distant wall, was cracked and disconnected. It wasn’t like the bits of portals that were certain death; it was different. This was the library—but Kaylin didn’t like their odds of surviving should they attempt to move across it.

  Starrante didn’t like those odds either, because the only thing that moved now was his head. And his mouth.

  “What have they done?” he finally asked, apparently of no one.

  “I believe they attempted—or Candallar attempted—to break the power of the Arbiters within this space.” It was Sedarias who answered.

  Kaylin swallowed. “Where is the Arkon?” she asked.

  “He is with Terrano,” Sedarias replied. “I can’t say he’s happy to be there, but they are both alive. Terrano advises us to move very, very carefully if we’re going to move at all.”

  “Speak in a language I understand,” Starrante then said—in Barrani.

  “My apologies, Arbiter. We have been advised not to attempt to traverse the library floor—by which I assume he means that we are not to move. The Arkon and Terrano are currently standing on a patch of floor very like the one we occupy now.”

  “And the other Arbiters?” Kaylin asked—also in Barrani.

  “Terrano is uncertain. Mandoran attempted to keep them in one location but believes that Kavallac might have been injured in the fracturing. There is one bit of welcome news, however. Candallar’s erstwhile allies in the library did not survive the attempt to disempower the Arbiters, and the Arkon has not once set the three books he carried aside.”

  “That’s two bits,” Robin said.

  * * *

  “The library,” Starrante said, “is the heart of the Academia.”

  “I thought it was the students. The people,” Kaylin amended, when Starrante’s head swiveled in her direction.

  “If you insist on being pedantic, call them the brains of the Academia. But the library is its heart. It has been damaged,” he added, although this was unnecessary. “But the space is not yet broken.”

  “I am not at all certain that Illanen will be pleased by this turn of events.” It was Sedarias who spoke, her voice laced with grim humor.

  He will certainly not be, Nightshade said.

  Kaylin caught—and held—the threads of his internal voice; they were muted and almost distant. How is Killian?

  He has dismissed the class, Nightshade replied.

  Did he finish his test?

  No. The dismissal was not, in my opinion, planned. He is no longer in the classroom. Robin is with you?

  Yes. Robin, Sedarias, your brother, Severn and the Dragons. Can Starrante fix what was broken?

  I am not the person of whom you should ask that question, Nightshade replied. It sounded a lot like no. But the day’s schedule appears to have resumed; we are expected at our next class.

  “Arbiter,” Kaylin said, remembering at the last moment to inject respect into her urgency. “Can you repair the damage to this space?”

  “I am attempting to do so—I cannot assess the full extent of the damage unless we move. And we will move—but you will all have to be mindful of where you step, and how. I will repair the space beneath and around us as we move�
�but you will lose limbs—or worse—if you do not observe carefully where you place those limbs.

  “This was not well done, on the part of the chancellor. It is clear to me that he does not understand what the library is; clear, as well, that his understanding of Killianas is flawed in the extreme. If his companions have a better understanding, they were not willing to share it.”

  Kaylin doubted they did—but regardless, neither had been present when Candallar had attempted to divest the Arbiters of power.

  “I don’t understand,” she admitted.

  “A good first step in the gaining of knowledge,” Starrante replied. He coughed up a large blob of glistening white; it hung suspended in the air in front of his space. “Robin,” he said.

  Kaylin blinked.

  “Larrantin clearly had much to say about paths that could be woven and walked.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Did he speak about cohesion?”

  Robin’s yes was slightly more hesitant.

  “Very well. If you could stand here—between the front legs, beneath my head—I would have you watch what I am about to do. You may interrupt at will, until I am finished.

  “I apologize,” Starrante added. “But it is the safest place for you to stand. You have a value to Killianas that the rest of the people present lack, and it is important, now, that you be preserved, even if they cannot be.”

  Robin glanced over his shoulder at the Dragons, at the Barrani, and at the Hawks. He was both worried for them and pleased for himself; in such company as this, he’d probably never thought to considered valuable at all.

  “My apologies, Chosen. Unless Robin interrupts you, you may tell me what it is, exactly, you do not understand.”

  “I was in the library before the chancellor tossed us out. He threw us into the halls in which we first met you.”