Cast in Peril

by Michelle Sagara

  And they were windows. They cut through the rolling folds of gray that surrounded Kaylin on all sides.

  The first thing she saw was the Hallionne’s Avatar. What the wings of the small dragon revealed bore no physical resemblance to the Barrani. It was both taller and wider; it had no obvious limbs, no chest, no neck. It wasn’t the gray of rolling mist; it wasn’t a single color or texture. It had something that trailed to its sides, miming the lifted wings she could see if she looked above or below where the small dragon hovered. The mass—and it was a mass, there was no other word for it—appeared to be quivering.

  “Teela.”

  The Barrani Hawk was beside her almost before the last syllable of her name faded into silence. “Yes,” she said, grim now. “I see what you see.” She drew her sword and shouted a single word that rippled through the line of Barrani at their backs. Severn unwound his chain, but he didn’t set it spinning. Not yet, not packed as they were, the only solid ground beneath their feet the stone the small dragon’s breath had created.

  The Consort fell silent. As she did, the form captured in the window of wings that were too small began to move toward them, and the strands that resembled hovering wings became far too much like Shadow tentacles for Kaylin’s liking.

  “The Hallionne,” Teela said, “is lost.”

  At her back, the silence of held breath. No one spoke at the enormity of the two simple words.

  * * *

  No one spoke, but Nightshade began to sing; his voice was the stronger of the two singers’, and he took up the melody the Consort had dropped. As he did, the mass once again came to a halt, quivering in place.

  Kaylin stepped forward and ran into the small dragon. He hissed. “The Hallionne isn’t lost yet,” she said.

  Teela caught her shoulder. “You don’t understand what you see.”

  “Some part of the Hallionne is responding to the song, Teela. The song wouldn’t have any effect if the Hallionne was truly lost. It’s holding itself back somehow.”

  Teela hesitated, seeing what Kaylin saw. “Look at it. If there is something at its core, it is not strong. Kitling—”

  “Let her go,” the Consort said. “An’Teela, let her go.”

  Teela slowly released a shoulder that was growing numb. Kaylin met the small dragon’s eyes. “I need your help,” she said. Reaching up, she caught his body and touched his wing; it was soft, fine, thin. She held it before her eyes like a mask as he settled awkwardly on one shoulder, digging claws into the front of her dress. Taking one deep breath, Kaylin took a step off the only solid piece of landscape in sight.

  She didn’t go alone. Severn came with her. He caught her elbow in a gentler grip than Teela’s, and he held on.

  “Go back,” she told him.

  His silence was denial. He held one blade in his right hand; in his left, her arm. “You can’t see what I see,” she hissed.

  He glanced over his shoulder. “At the moment, all I see is you and something that looks like cloud.”

  “I can see Shadow,” she replied. “And I’m walking toward it. I don’t want you in range of a Shadow you can’t even see.”

  He said nothing. Kaylin approached, and as she did, she realized two things: it was farther away than the Avatar appeared to be, and it was therefore much, much larger. Hints of solidity seemed to exist within its folds, but its edges were in constant motion as forms attempted to assert themselves and crumbled within seconds, pulled back into the density at its heart. Only the tendrils that had traced the line of wings retained form and shape, and it was not a comforting one.

  The small dragon warbled. It was a sound distinct from his usual squawk or hiss. Kaylin, Nightshade’s voice clear and resonant at her back, looked at the ground on which she was now standing, and froze.

  * * *

  There were bodies on the ground. With a mask of dragon wing across her eyes, she could see them clearly; the small window had implied multiple corpses. The larger view confirmed it. Scattered across the ground around her feet, and continuing into the distance, the dead lay in awkward, fallen positions. Beyond them, gray folds of mist seemed to roil; above them, that mist took on the appearance of clouds. There was no sun, but there was light nonetheless; it was harsh and gray, like the light in the morgue.

  “Severn, can you—”

  “I can see them,” was his stiff reply.

  “You couldn’t before.”

  “No. But neither of us are on the path created by Wilson’s brothers.”

  She let the dragon’s wing fall from her nerveless fingers. The bodies did not disappear. The Avatar, however, did, and she forced both arm—and wing—up again. “Can you see the Avatar?”

  “No.” He sheathed his blade for a moment and wrapped a section of rope loosely around Kaylin’s waist; he did the same for his own, giving the rope a large amount of play. That done, he released her entirely and once again drew blade; the weapon chain was loosely looped around his waist.

  “Can you see a large mass of Shadow in the distance ahead?”

  “No.” He knelt as he spoke, reaching down to place fingers against the neck of a middle-aged man in threadbare clothing that might once have been gray or brown; it was so faded it was hard to tell. He withdrew his hand, his expression unchanged, and moved on to the next body, an elderly woman in a dress that was clearly torn across the sleeves and shoulder. Her eyes were wide and foggy with death.

  “These are ours.” Although it was obvious, she felt the need to say the words.

  When Severn reached the third body he stopped. “Kaylin,” he said, voice low.

  She glanced at the Shadow giant in the distance and then knelt by Severn’s side, understanding what her name, in that tone, meant: this one was alive. Severn carefully rolled him over. He was not quite sixteen years of age, in Kaylin’s estimate, although the actual number could be lower, and he—like the previous two—wore the mismatched and poorly sized clothing of the streets. He wore no shoes, which wasn’t uncommon, but his feet were bleeding in a way that suggested they weren’t callused enough.

  “I don’t think any of them were wearing shoes,” Severn said when he noticed the direction of the glance. He made room for her as she knelt and placed a hand on the boy’s neck. She could feel what Severn felt: a pulse. It was slow; the boy wasn’t conscious. And maybe, she thought, as she released the dragon’s wing and placed her other hand on the boy’s face, that was a mercy.

  “What is it?” Severn asked, voice sharpening. “What’s wrong?”

  She had no words. For a long moment, no words. The boy was like, very like, the Barrani who’d been injured by the foreign Ferals: something had infected him. His body had no real sense of itself, no sense of what it meant to be whole or healthy. He was alive, but she had no idea what that really meant for him now. She could only barely reach him. Lifting a hand, she very carefully opened his eyes. They were brown, mortal brown; similar in color and depth to her own.

  She let his eyelids fall. Her arms hurt, and the hair brushing the back of her neck felt like sandpaper. She thought she could hear someone speaking, but at a great remove. Nightshade’s song was the stronger sound, and she tried to derive strength from it; comfort, given the presence of the dead and the dying, was impossible. The people here were his. If they weren’t all his, it made no difference. He’d sold them; he couldn’t have assumed they would survive.

  Bitterness fed anger, and anger grew; her hands were shaking with the need to do something. She felt the marks across her body as they began to burn.

  Kaylin. Severn’s voice. If Nightshade could hear her at all, he chose not to speak. She drew as deep a breath as she could, holding it as she struggled, for a moment, with raw fury. With guilt. They were here, and she could do nothing.

  The small dragon bit her ear as if he was trying to pierce it. She offered him some of her finest Leontine, and he leapt off her shoulder for Severn’s instead. Kaylin was surprised when Severn’s sharp intake of breath made clear th
e small dragon had also bitten him. Having made whatever point he’d intended to make, he came and perched on Kaylin’s head, hissing in agitation.

  “We get it,” Kaylin told him. “You don’t need to pull out all my hair.”

  Still on her knees by the side of the boy, she exhaled. At least one of her angry questions deserved clinical examination. “Severn, why are they here?”

  It wasn’t a question he could answer, of course. But he understood what she was doing. He examined another body as Kaylin once again attempted to figure out what was wrong with the boy. She lifted his hand; it was limp, and when she released it, it fell heavily to his side. Frowning, she lifted him—not easy, given their comparative sizes—until he was mostly in her lap. And unconscious. He made no noise; he appeared to be breathing. Severn came back. “All shoeless.”

  “All bleeding?”

  “Not from their feet.”

  She frowned. “Come here and carry him.”

  He did as she asked, because he could accomplish it more easily; Kaylin was now intent on the ground over which he’d sprawled. “Are they all in physical contact with another body?”

  “I haven’t looked at all the bodies. All the ones I’ve examined are. Those I’ve examined are,” he added, “four dead, and four living; the four living, like the boy, are not conscious. In three cases, the bodies are heavily overlapping one another. They are all, however, in contact with at least two others, and they are all touching—”

  “The ground.”

  “The ground.”

  “Severn, what do you see here?”

  He frowned. “Gray. It has no texture; it’s a color. You?”

  “Stone,” she whispered.

  “That’s not all.”

  “No. It’s not.” Pale against the stone, glowing only faintly in the harsh light, Kaylin could see two familiar sigils. She was silent for a long, long moment, and when she spoke, she didn’t break the silence.

  Nightshade.

  Kaylin.

  I need you to keep singing. She felt his laughter; it was both genuine and bitter. Her own anger was now under control. And I need you to send Evarrim to me. Now she experienced surprise. It was not quite shock, but it was close.

  It is not advisable.

  Look at what I see, she shot back. If you can tell me what the hells this is about, keep the bastard there. Iberrienne did this. Whatever it is. It’s his sigil. His and one other’s. Evarrim is probably the only person here who has a hope of understanding what was done.

  And if he already knows, Kaylin? If he knows and was a willing participant?

  Then she’d kill him. Somehow.

  I will have to stop the singing.

  I think we can survive for a minute. Maybe longer. I don’t know. But the song is hemming the Hallionne in, and we need it to stay that way.

  For how long?

  As long as you can. But send Evarrim.

  There is no guarantee that he will be able to reach you.

  He will.

  * * *

  She saw the circlet first, because the ruby at its peak was glowing. Evarrim came out of the gray as if parting a curtain; the mist eddied at the edges of his robe. His eyes were a very dark blue, and his expression might have frozen water, if any of it could be found. Kaylin didn’t even try to care. “Lord Evarrim.”

  “Lord Kaylin.” He was either angry or alarmed enough that his gaze met hers instead of lingering on the small dragon. “The Consort…requested…that I attend you.” He offered her the stiffest of bows; it made him look as if he’d snap in the middle if it went any farther. Kaylin didn’t rise to offer the same. Maybe later she’d regret it.

  “I need your help.”

  His eyes rounded, the blue in them shifting slightly to make room for a bit of surprise.

  “I’m not an Arcanist. I’m not, by any useful definition, a mage. I have an extreme sensitivity to magic, and to magical signatures. You are an Arcanist. So is Lord Iberrienne.”

  “I have no knowledge of his—”

  “I don’t care if you know where he is. My guess is he’s not far. But he’s done something here. You see the bodies.”

  Evarrim’s expression didn’t change at all. “I do.”

  “Not all of them are dead. Maybe half. We haven’t examined them all, because we don’t have time. But that one,” she continued, nodding in the direction of the boy in Severn’s arms, “has been infected.”

  “Infected?”

  “Yes. In a similar way to the Barrani that were bitten—and wounded—by the Ferals we fought on the road to Bertolle.”

  “They were not Ferals.”

  “I don’t care what they’re called. It’s not the point. The point is, I wasn’t here when they were bitten—if they were—and I couldn’t do what I did for the Barrani, even though they would have appreciated it a lot more. It’s my suspicion that all of them are infected; some didn’t survive it. I don’t understand why. They weren’t eaten; they weren’t otherwise savaged. They were stripped of shoes and left here.”

  “How many?” Evarrim’s question was sharp.

  “We don’t know. Possibly hundreds, in the worst case.”

  “And the best?”

  “Fifty. Sixty.”

  “They are all mortal?”

  “They’re all human. I think.” She drew a deeper breath and added, “And if they aren’t, you would know. A building you own the leasehold for had something to do with the Exchequer and Iberrienne.” He started to speak, and she swatted the words away as if they were flies. “It’s not an accusation. It’s a fact. Iberrienne was with you on the road. He appeared to be helping, in some fashion. I know that lying and subterfuge are highly prized arts. But I also know that the second sigil isn’t yours. Tell me: Do you think the Consort will survive this?”

  His silence was brittle, and it lasted too long. But so had Kaylin’s words. “What,” he finally said, “are you now kneeling on?”

  “Stone. Gray, flat stone. It has no markings that I can see, but it bears two sigils. One of them is Iberrienne’s.” He didn’t insult her. He didn’t ask her if she was certain. “You can’t see them?”

  “I cannot see the stone. Lord Severn?”

  Severn shook his head.

  “How far does the stone extend?”

  Kaylin frowned. She approached the first two bodies with far less care than she had the boy; they were dead, and the dead didn’t care. She didn’t bother to lift them gently; she rolled them out of the way.

  “Be cautious,” Evarrim said sharply.

  He was not a man who would offer any respect for the dead. “Why?”

  “Anything can become a weapon, Lord Kaylin.” He spoke with reluctance; every syllable sounded grudging. “Let me handle them.”

  Before she could reply, she felt the telltale signs of casting—but her arms and legs were already so damn sore, he didn’t make much difference. The bodies moved farther out of the way; she didn’t touch them again.

  Beneath each of the corpses was more stone; it was a continuous piece. It wasn’t cut or marked in any way that implied slabs, although farther down, it might be. She shuffled across the stone, scraping knees as she moved. Here, too, she saw evidence of both sigils, but she saw something else: there was a mark in the stone, an engraving; it was the color of dark blood, and it glistened. It wasn’t wet to the touch; rather, it felt like cool glass.

  “What,” Evarrim said, “are you doing?”

  “Examining a mark.” She described it quickly and looked over her shoulder to see his expression. It was a study in outrage and disgust. This felt oddly comforting. She moved to the place where the last body had been, and found a similar mark, in the same color, engraved in the stone. This one, however, she didn’t touch.

  “There’s a mark here, as well.” She looked to Severn. “I think we need to—”

  “Move the living bodies.”

  Kaylin rose to help and stopped, because the mark she’d been impulsive enough
to touch was no longer engraved in stone. It rose, pulling itself out of the gray, flat surface, becoming, as it did, fully dimensional. It was like, and unlike, the marks on her arm; the components were similar, but not exact. The weight of the strokes was uneven, but not in the way of a hurried, artistic brush; they were too solid for that, too malformed. They rose until they rested at the height of her chest, the longest lines elongated and anchored to the stone.

  Kaylin felt magic again, Evarrim’s magic. “You can see that?” she asked.

  “I can see something, Lord Kaylin. What do you see?”

  “A word. An attempt at a word. It’s distorted, but I think the distortion is deliberate. You?”

  “That is not what I see.”

  Gods damn it. “Severn?”

  “I see a heart,” he replied, and his tone of voice made clear it was a morgue heart. “It’s beating.”

  “Is it bleeding?”

  “Yes.”

  * * *

  Kaylin rose quickly. “The only unmarked stone was the boy’s. We need to move the living bodies off the damn stone.” Severn very gently set the boy down. “Lord Evarrim, what is the stone meant to do?”

  “I am uncertain,” he replied. He was staring at the floating word. “I would have said, before the emergence of the…word…that the mortals were being used to fix or enclose a space.”

  “And the stone?”

  “That would be part of the enclosure. It is not stone; people do not carry stone to the outlands in any great quantity. If they did, it would be lost.”

  “You think the stone was created by the victims.”

  “Yes. I would have said that would be the whole of their purpose.”

  “What purpose would it serve?”

  “I think you will find the bodies form the perimeter of a loose circle. It will not be small. It cannot have been meant to last.”

  “It must have been meant to last—this wasn’t a small endeavor!”

  “Believe that I am aware of that, Lord Kaylin,” was the chilly reply. “Come, we waste time we do not have. Lord Calarnenne will not be able to maintain his song for long. We must move the bodies—alive or dead—off what you perceive as stone, and we must do it quickly.”