Candallar’s hands were on fire, the fire white and purple; she couldn’t see his eyes in the shadow of his profile.
But she could hear a familiar voice bark orders, and those orders seemed to dim the screaming and the shouting.
Who’s teaching this class? she demanded.
Larrantin.
She could briefly breathe again. She turned to her shoulder ornament, and he squawked, pushing himself off her shoulders as they approached Candallar at a dead run. Severn was armed, a blade in each hand.
Kaylin had a dagger.
Candallar turned as Severn covered distance, his obsidian eyes widening. There was no fear in his expression; his right arm shot out, and purple fire left the heart of his palm, heading toward Severn—and Kaylin, who ran behind him. Severn’s blades came up, bisecting the fire as if it were a living limb. It passed to either side as he cut a path through it. There were benches and chairs in this hall, and the fire devoured them instantly, leaving not ash but an oily residue in their wake.
Candallar was forced back by Severn’s weapons; he raised hands, and swords of purple flame came to them. He parried the strike that would have removed half his throat, but the solidity of the flaming swords buckled as they met Severn’s blades. Around Severn’s waist, the weapon chain was glowing faintly.
Two steps, three, and then the edge of those twisted blades caught Severn’s arm—it was a glancing strike, but purple fire took root instantly in the fibers of the cloth.
Kaylin shouted a warning as Severn retreated; she came in from his side, using the retreat to cut Candallar’s wrist. It was the wrist of the hand that held the book; her blade made contact with skin. But the skin had the consistency of a grinding stone; she felt the resistance and saw the lack of a wound in its wake.
An invisible wave threw her back; she hit Severn in retreat. They had Candallar’s attention now.
The person who didn’t—the person who leaped through the door and above the fog that now covered the floor in front of it—was Nightshade. He was armed, and his sword—his sword did not strike invisible stone.
Candallar’s left blade rose to parry. Kaylin heard the crackle and hiss of fire as Nightshade’s blade hit Candallar’s—but Candallar’s sword was a thing of magic, an emergency measure. It had buckled under Severn’s attack. It was bisected by Nightshade’s. The parry was enough to save Candallar’s life—but the sword was gone, and he did not have the time or concentration to reform it in the wake of Nightshade’s attack.
If you can, Nightshade said, enter the classroom.
Kaylin looked at the floor.
Enter the classroom, he repeated, attempting to force Candallar farther from the door.
She passed the message on to Severn. Severn’s initial attack had driven Candallar out of the frame of that door; he stood maybe two yards from where he’d chosen to make his attack. Nightshade’s attacks drove him toward the wall, between two long wooden benches that were otherwise unadorned.
Kaylin grimaced as Severn asked her wordless permission. She nodded. Facing the open door at an angle, she tensed into a running leap that would, with luck, carry her over the mist on the ground. If it was the same as the one Candallar had used in the chancellor’s office, missing her mark by a few feet would be deadly.
She landed, pushed herself immediately off her feet, and entered the heart of the classroom.
“No—she’s one of us!” Robin shouted, as the hair on her arms and neck stood instantly on end. “So is he! Don’t hurt him!”
“I can hear you, Robin, there is no need to shout.” Standing in the group of assembled students—away from what looked like the blood and the limbs of those who had been closest to the door, and the back of the class—was Larrantin.
Chapter 30
Larrantin’s hair was salt-and-pepper gray. Age didn’t have that effect on Barrani. His skin was flawless, almost luminescent, as Kaylin met eyes that were a familiar shade of indigo.
“Do not just stand there. It is very taxing to protect a larger area than I am already protecting. Honestly—this is the first class in which we have fully advanced our subject in what feels like centuries. You felt a need to interrupt it today? No, do not step there. Come to the right. Immediately.”
Robin was grimacing behind Larrantin’s back, his eyes a bit too wide. Kaylin and Severn obeyed Larrantin; the moment she saw that Robin was uninjured—blood-spattered, but uninjured—she sagged. Severn had torn the arm off his shirt; his skin was reddened and puckered in a ring where the purple fire had taken root.
“You took your time delivering my message,” Larrantin said.
Robin’s glance bounced between them.
“But the message was delivered, in the end, to the right person. I apologize for my inability to be more precise at the time. But the air is changing. Can you sense it?”
She could smell it; things were on fire. She looked at the classroom closest to the door. Not all of the students had survived. And Robin had likely been close to that door when Candallar had destroyed it, given his late arrival to Larrantin’s class.
Hope squawked. Larrantin frowned. “You are certain?” he finally asked the familiar.
Hope squawked again.
Kaylin, standing beside Robin, dared a look through Nightshade’s eyes. The hall in his immediate vicinity was a sparkling darkness, a silent shade of death. Candallar had moved all of his attention to Nightshade. Nightshade who was, demonstrably, a student of the Academia for a little while longer.
Yes, he said. Nightshade spoke a word—more felt than heard—and light brightened the unnatural darkness. In its glow, she could see the dim outline of Candallar, his right arm raised, fingers pointed toward her. No, toward Nightshade.
“That will not do,” Larrantin said softly. He gestured. “Killianas, if you would be so kind, I find the walls here an impediment to the continued health of the students who survived.” He didn’t gesture, he merely glared.
As if the walls that contained what was left of the door were part of the student body, they shifted, pulling out of the way of Larrantin’s line of sight as if they were eager to avoid it.
Kaylin could now see the darkness that surrounded Candallar. In his hand was a book of flame, pages alight not with purple but with a deep red. Around his neck, the medallion burned a pale white-blue; she couldn’t see the rod.
The darkness had devoured the hall where Nightshade fought. Kaylin couldn’t see the floor—which was fair, given what covered it—but she could no longer feel the floor beneath Nightshade’s feet, either. That the darkness had not yet destroyed him was a miracle.
Nightshade didn’t like the thought.
“Killianas,” Larrantin said. “We seem to be having a difficulty that should be resolved. My class—”
A roar filled the hall. It wasn’t Candallar’s, and it wasn’t the roar of Starrante—she would have recognized that. He had said he couldn’t leave the library without damaging himself, and she believed it—but she had seen him spit webs with blood mixed in, and knew that damage to himself wasn’t his primary concern.
“Ah,” Larrantin said softly. “My apologies, Killianas. It has been long, indeed, and I forget myself. Robin, please remain where you are standing.”
“She’s leaving—”
“She is not a student here; she is not my responsibility.”
Kaylin approached what was no longer technically speaking hallway, and she saw, at the far end, a glint of gold: gold scale, gold neck, gold claws. The Arkon had left the library.
The Arkon faced Candallar. “Lord Calarnenne,” he said, his voice a rumble of thunder, “Return to your class.”
To Kaylin’s surprise, Nightshade did exactly as commanded. She felt a flicker of grim amusement as he leaped to where Larrantin now stood. I am a student, he said. I have less freedom of movement than you have been granted.
Now hush.
The Arkon walked to where Candallar stood. Candallar was not idle; he retrieved the rod from the folds of a roiling robe; he held it in his right hand, as if it were a sword, while his left held the open book. He turned to face the Arkon as if all other concerns were irrelevant here, and perhaps they were. Stone halls and short ceilings—short relative to the full height of a Dragon—were not the Arkon’s preferred battlefield. Not in the full Draconic form.
He didn’t choose to adopt the human form in response to his surroundings. That should have told Kaylin something. What, she wasn’t certain.
Bellusdeo and Emmerian didn’t join him. Killian remained absent—although the fading walls showed that he was fully awake.
Only the Arkon and Candallar stood in this hall. Killian could repair the damage done to the furniture and the floor—but he couldn’t repair the damage done to the students; Helen couldn’t bring the dead back to life beneath her roof, either.
“Enough, Candallar,” the Arkon said. “If you will not relinquish the insignia while you live, you will die here.”
“I built this place,” Candallar replied, voice low. “I took the risk of finding it. I claimed it—it is mine.”
“It was never fully yours,” the Arkon replied. “As it will never fully be mine. No more is the Empire fully the Emperor’s, although he rules it. The chancellor is not ruler here—that is what you have failed to understand. He is steward. I am loath to destroy you; you are fieflord, and the Towers bear the weight of the world’s safety in their vigilance. But you are not chancellor here, and you will never be chancellor.”
“I was—until you arrived. I was, until the Arbiters were fully wakened. I will be—”
“No. No matter what you do, no matter what you destroy, you will never be chancellor. You will never again be interim chancellor. The Academia has a chancellor now.”
Kaylin couldn’t see Candallar’s expression; it was turned toward the Arkon. She could see the stiffening of his back.
“You do not understand why. It is not a position of power and endless self-indulgence; it is a gift and a responsibility. A gift must be given. A responsibility must be shouldered. Your shoulders have never been broad enough.”
Light filled the hall, or rather, an absence of darkness as the magic cast by Candallar was lifted. It wouldn’t return.
The Arkon was chancellor now, and Kaylin knew he would remain chancellor while he lived; he had asked for time to think, and Candallar had rejected that time, as not even Killian and the Arbiters had dared to do.
Candallar’s wordless cry was a thing of fury, edged in fear and defiance.
The Arkon’s mouth opened again, but this time he offered Candallar no words; instead, he breathed the fire of his people, and Kaylin understood why he had been feared above most others in the skies in which the Dragon Flights had once reigned. She could feel the heat of that fire as it traveled the length of the Academia’s halls, heading toward Candallar, the man who had almost destroyed the library, and had threatened the heart of what the Academia represented in his rage.
She thought, as the fire engulfed the fieflord, that Candallar’s destruction was what awaited the Dragons who desired a hoard and could not control the emotions that were born of that desire: what they could not own, they would destroy so that no others might claim it.
The heat of the flame was so intense that it moved the air around it; not even the scent of burning flesh remained in Candallar’s wake. Only in the passing of that flame, the dying of that heat, did the Arkon dwindle in size and shape, until he once again wore the plate armor of the Dragons: gold, as Bellusdeo was gold.
He walked down the hall and paused in the spot that Candallar had occupied. Bending, he retrieved the symbols of the office that he had accepted. The fire that had instantly destroyed Candallar hadn’t even marked them. He didn’t require their authority, but he understood that they served a purpose.
Turning to the class, or rather, the lecturer, he bowed. “I have interrupted your lessons, Master Larrantin. You have my apologies; things should never have reached this point.”
“No, they should not. I assume they will not reach this point again in the future.”
Killian appeared by the Arkon’s side. “They will not, but we will have to convene a meeting of those who remain; you are not the only one—but you were certainly the most independent.”
Larrantin nodded. “Shall we dismiss class for the day? It has been long since I have entered the library.”
“Starrante wishes to know how you obtained a book that should never have been removed from it.”
“I recovered it, but was not the person who removed it.”
“Very well. We will require students, of course—but I believe they will come, given our chancellor and our library.” His eyes, both of his eyes, were an odd color—but if he looked like a Barrani, or perhaps an Ancestor, he was a building, and the eye colors of buildings were often unusual.
“Chosen.” He bowed. “Lord Calarnenne.”
Kaylin blinked and turned toward Nightshade.
“Robin was not the only student to engage with the material here,” Nightshade said, with a small smile. “Had the situation been what it will become, I might have been grateful for the opportunity.”
“You are welcome here,” Killian said, his voice gentle.
Larrantin cleared his throat.
“...There are formalities to be observed, of course—but you have been a student, and your status is unlikely to be withdrawn without cause.”
“I see you really are awake,” Larrantin said. “Given the unprecedented disaster to face my class today, I will allow you to clean up. There are, no doubt, authorities of some sort to inform.”
“And you?”
“I have words for Starrante, and would like to deliver them in person—with your permission, of course.”
“You have my permission,” Killian said, the gravity of the words belied by the breadth of his grin. “You will, however, require his. He holds a long grudge when books are removed from the library without permission.”
Larrantin then turned to Robin. “You did well. My attempts to teach you matters of modern import were fractured; it is a wonder you managed to retain any of it.”
Robin was clearly pleased by the praise—but Kaylin would have been beaming at his age. Oh, who was she kidding? She’d be beaming at the age she was now.
“Can I go with you?” Robin asked, before Larrantin had reached what remained of the door.
“As class has been dismissed, you have the remainder of a free period. I see no reason why not.”
Nightshade looked very much as if he wished to join them; he did not ask. “My Tower’s name was Durandel, of old,” he said to Killian. “And if he was not aware of your existence—”
“He was.”
“Or not as invested as Karriamis, I feel he will value it now. I must repair to the Tower. We have much to discuss.”
“I hesitate to advise discussion,” Killian said, surprising Kaylin slightly. The advice did not appear to surprise Nightshade; it did appear to amuse him, if darkly.
“Durandel and I have reached an armistice of sorts. I am fieflord; I am captain of the Tower. He has accepted that, and has even gone so far as to save my life. The method of salvation, on the other hand, left something to be desired—what little I clearly remember of it.
“I will speak with Durandel; if I understand what has happened here, Karriamis was instrumental in preserving what he could of the Academia. There are six Towers. It is not a burden I would see him bear alone.”
Killian bowed again. “I believe you will find all of the Towers are peripherally aware of my existence; they have accepted it in some fashion, if not consciously. I have never quite understood the nature of the dreams of such buildings.”
“Karriamis will
need a new Lord, a new captain.”
“Ah. Yes.”
“And the Dragons,” Nightshade added softly, “a new Arkon.”
“I hope they do not resent him for his decision. He meant to confer with his Emperor and his Dragon Council—but he did not have time. It is typical of Kavallac’s machinations.”
“Oh?”
“Starrante might have built a door such as the one that delivered Robin and the rest of your friends. I note that your mark is upon the Chosen,” he added, voice neutral.
“What caused Starrante to hesitate?” Nightshade asked, avoiding the topic of that mark entirely.
“Kavallac. She pointed out that Starrante was already well past the limits of his endurance—a half truth, given the intervention of the Chosen—but Starrante did not argue; he was becoming frantic.”
“And you were not?”
“No, although it is difficult to move with ease between the library and the rest of the grounds. I understood what Kavallac wished to test.”
“And you were willing to risk the students?”
“You were here. Larrantin was here.”
“You were willing to let Kavallac play this game.”
“I wanted what Kavallac wanted,” he said, which sounded like a multisyllabic yes. “Lannagaros understood that if he accepted what was offered by our very minimal council, he might come immediately to Robin’s aid. To the aid,” he added, “of the rest of the students. He understood Kavallac’s game and Kavallac’s calculus; he understood the damage that might be done to me should that gambit fail.
“It is not as grim a manipulation as you seem to be afraid it is, Chosen.”
“Because the Arkon wants this.”
“Because he wants it so clearly. I am slightly surprised you cannot hear the echoes of his internal roaring. He is old, and he was always responsible; he was responsible enough to walk away from the Academia when he was called to war. So, too, did Aramechtis, the last of the great chancellors. But that war is done; one war hovers on the horizon, now, and it does not require the gathering of the flights—or the sole flight that now wakes and rides the wind. He wants this—and we want him no less intensely.
Cast in Wisdom Page 47
