Cast in Shadow

by Michelle Sagara

  She turned to Tiamaris, but Tiamaris didn’t blink. He nodded, however, to let her know that he was aware of her sudden movement.

  “Welcome,” the fieflord said softly, “to Castle Nightshade.” He stepped forward as they approached the gates, and he placed a hand upon the portcullis.

  It shivered in place, but it did not rise.

  “Follow me,” he said. “Do not stop. Do not hesitate, and do not show fear. While you are with me, you are safe. Remember it.”

  He spoke to Kaylin in his resonant Barrani, and although she’d spoken nothing but Elantran, she knew he knew that she understood him perfectly. Then again, she was a ground Hawk; all of the Hawks had to speak Barrani, or they weren’t allowed on the beat. She wondered, now, why she had thought it was such a good idea.

  It seemed, to Kaylin, that he spoke only to her.

  Dry-mouthed, she nodded.

  He stepped forward through the portcullis. As if it were shadow, and only shadow. Drawing breath, Kaylin looked to either side for support, and then did as he had done: She stepped into the gate.

  It enfolded her.

  She screamed.

  When she woke, her head ached, her mouth was dry and she would have bet she’d had a terrific evening with Teela and Tain in the bar down the street—if she could remember any of it. That lasted for as long as it took her to realize that her bed was way too soft, her room was way too big, her door lacked bolts and had gained height and her windows were nonexistent.

  That, and she had a companion.

  She reached for her daggers. They weren’t there. In fact neither were her leathers. Or her tunic, or the one pair of pants she had that hadn’t been cut to pieces.

  Lord Nightshade stood in the center of the almost empty room. If there were no windows, light was abundant, and it was both soft enough to soothe the eye, and harsh enough to see clearly by. The floor beneath his feet was marble and gold, and he seemed to be standing in the center of a large circle.

  “You will forgive me,” he said, making a command out of what would, from anyone else, have been an apology. “I did not expect your passage here to be so…costly. Your former clothing was inappropriate for my halls. It will be returned to you when you leave.”

  The when sounded distinctly like an if.

  She wasn’t naked. Exactly.

  But her arms were bare to the shoulder, and she hated that. She never, ever wore anything that didn’t fall past her wrists, and for obvious reasons. The thick distinct lines of swirling black seemed to move up and down her forearms as she glanced at them. She didn’t look long.

  Dizzy, she rose. Her dress—and it was a dress of midnight-blue, long, fine and elegantly simple—rose with her, clinging to the skin. It was a pleasant sensation. And it was not.

  Teela and Tain were the Barrani she knew best, and they never came to work dressed like this. It made her wonder what they did in their off hours. Which made her redden. She wondered who had changed her, and that didn’t help.

  But the fieflord simply waited, watching her as if uncertain what she would do. She lifted her right arm, and saw that the gold manacle still encased it, gems flashing in sequence. A warning.

  “Yes,” he said softly. “That was…unexpected. I have not seen its like in many, many years—and I suspect not even then. Where did you get it?”

  “It was a gift.”

  “From the Lord Grammayre?”

  She nodded.

  “It did not come from him. Not directly.” He stepped outside of the golden circle inlayed upon the ground and approached her. But he approached her slowly, as if she were wild. “My apologies,” he said, less of a command in the words. “But I wished to see for myself if you bore the marks.”

  “And now?” she asked bitterly.

  “I know. If you are hungry, you may eat. Food will be brought. These rooms have been little used for many years. They are not fit for guests.”

  “Where are my—where are Severn and Tiamaris?”

  “I found it convenient to leave them behind,” he replied gravely. “But they are unharmed, and they know that you are likewise unharmed. If they are wise, they will wait.”

  “And if they aren’t?”

  “These are my halls,” he said coldly. “And not even a Dragon may enter them with impunity.”

  “But he’s been here before.”

  The fieflord raised a brow. “How do you know that, little one?”

  “I’m not called ‘little,’” she replied. She wanted to snap the words; they came out sounding, to her ears, pathetic.

  “And what are you called now?”

  “Kaylin. Kaylin Neya.”

  His other brow rose. And fell. “Interesting. Yes, you are correct. Tiamaris has indeed visited the Long Halls. If any could find their way in, uninvited, it would be he. But I think, for the moment, he is content to wait. It will keep your Severn alive.”

  “He’s not mine,” she said. And I don’t want him alive. But she couldn’t bring herself to say the words to the fieflord. Didn’t want to know why.

  He held out a hand.

  She tried to ignore it. But she found herself lifting hand in response. As if this were a dream. He took the hand; his skin was cool. Hers was damp.

  “These are the Halls of Nightshade,” he said quietly. “Come. There are things here I wish you to see.” Without another word, he led her from the room.

  She expected the doors to open into a hall.

  So much for expectation. They opened instead into what must have been a forest. Not that she’d seen forests—not up close—but she’d seen them at a distance, when Clint had taken her flying to the Aeries of his kin. Here, the trees grew up, and up again, until they reached the rounded height of a ceiling that she could only barely glimpse through the greenery.

  She walked slowly, her hand still captive to the fieflord’s, but he seemed to be in no hurry. And why would he? If he didn’t manage to get himself killed, he had forever. Time meant nothing to him.

  At his side, in waking dream, it could almost mean nothing to her. She touched the rough surface of brown bark, and then moved on to the smooth surface of silver-white; she touched leaves that had fallen across the ground like a tapestry, a gentle riot of color. All of her words deserted her, which was just as well; she didn’t have any fine enough to describe what she saw.

  And had she, she wouldn’t have exposed it. Beauty meant something to her, and she kept it to herself, as she kept most things that meant anything.

  “There is no sunlight,” he told her, as if that made sense. “But outcaste or no, I am still Barrani Lord—they grow at my whim.”

  “And if you don’t want them?”

  He gestured. The tree just beyond the tip of her fingers withered, twisting toward the ground almost as if it were begging. She stopped herself from crying out. It was just a plant.

  She didn’t ask again, however. And she kept her wonder contained; she looked; she touched nothing else. He had offered her a warning, in subtle Barrani fashion. She took it.

  “Where are we going?”

  “To the heart of this forest,” he replied. “Be honored. Not even my own have seen it.”

  “Your children?”

  His brows drew in. “Are you truly so ignorant, Kaylin?”

  “Apparently.”

  His hand tightened. It was not comfortable. Another warning. But he chose to do no more than that, and after a pause, he surprised her. He answered. “I have no children. I am outcaste.”

  Outcaste was a word that had meaning for Kaylin, but in truth, not much. Although one human lord served as Caste-lord for her kind, the complicated laws of the caste did not apply to the rank and file. It certainly didn’t apply to the paupers and the beggars who made a living—or didn’t—in the fiefs. The Leontines, the Aerians and the humans—mortal races all—were not defined in the same way by caste; they were more numerous, and their lives reached from the lowest of gutters to the highest of towers. Not so, the Barra
ni.

  “I spoke simply of my kin, those who chose to follow me. The forest speaks to them, but it speaks in a language that is…not pleasant to their ears. They will not hear it, and remain. And I am unwilling to release them.

  “I release nothing that is mine.”

  She said nothing for a while. For long enough that she found the silence uncomfortable. Not awkward; awkward was too petty a word. “Did you build this?”

  “The forest?”

  “The…Long Halls.”

  “No.”

  “The castle?”

  “No. I have altered it over the years, but in truth, very little. It was here, for the taking.” His smile was thin. “I was not, however, the first to try. I was the first to succeed.”

  “It had other occupants?”

  “It had defenses,” he replied. “And I forget myself. You ask too many questions.”

  “Questions are encouraged, in the Hawks. When they’re not stupid.”

  “Indeed. Here, they are not. The answers can be fatal.” He stopped in front of a dense ring of trees; their branches seemed to interlock at all levels, as if they had deliberately grown together. She didn’t like the look of them. But then again, at the moment she didn’t like the look of herself, either. What she could see, that is; the dress, the funny shoes, the bold, black design on her arms. She drew her arms down.

  His hand came with one. “You do not understand the marks you bear,” he said, his voice a little too close to her ear.

  “And you do?”

  “No, not completely. But I understand some of their significance. In truth, I’m surprised that you still survive.”

  “Why?”

  He smiled, but he didn’t answer. Instead, he lifted his hand and touched the trees that barred their way. They shuddered. There was something terrible about that shudder, something that looked so wrong she had to turn away. It was as if the trees were silently screaming.

  But they parted. Like curtains, like great rolling doors, their limbs untwining, their trunks shifting. Roots moved beneath her feet—or something did. She really wanted to pay less attention.

  “Come,” he said, when there was room enough for passage.

  Her hand fell to her hips, and came up empty. Daggers, of course, were someplace else. But the desire for them, the reflex, was still a part of her. And it was growing stronger.

  “Nothing will harm you here,” he told her, the smile gone. “You bear my mark. You are in my domain.”

  I’ve lived in your fief for more than half my life, and it wasn’t ever safe. But she said nothing. And it was hard.

  The trees were not as thick as they appeared; the darkness of their branches curved above like a roof or a canopy, but it lasted a scant ten feet, and then it was gone.

  They stood in a great, stone room, beneath the outer edge of a domed ceiling that gave off a bright, green light. And as they walked toward the center of the room, that light grew brighter, changing in hue. She looked up; she couldn’t help it.

  Above her, carved in runnels in the smooth, hard stone, were swirling patterns that were both familiar and foreign. She lifted a hand. An arm.

  “Yes,” the fieflord said quietly. “They are written in the same tongue as the mark you bear. It is known as the language of the Old Ones.”

  “I—I don’t understand.”

  “No one does. There is not a creature alive that can read the whole of what is written there. But I have never seen the writing glow in such a fashion. I believe that the room is aware of your presence.”

  “But who—or what—are the Old Ones?”

  His frown was momentary, but sharp. But he surprised her. “Once,” he said softly, “you might have considered them gods.”

  “But the gods—”

  The derision was there in the cold expression the word evoked. “Mortal gods?” He shrugged. “Mortal gods are mortal. They exist at the whim of your attention, and your attention passes quickly.”

  She didn’t like the room. He continued to walk; she stopped. But although he was slender, he pulled her along, her feet scudding stone. Dignity forced her to follow, given how little of it she had.

  She forgot the ceiling, then.

  The floor itself was alive. Where she stepped, light seemed to squelch like soft mud, and it flared in lines, in swirling circles, in patterns.

  “Here,” he said softly, and stopped. “Go no farther, Kaylin. And touch nothing if you value your life.”

  If she’d valued her life, she’d have stayed out of the fiefs. She nodded.

  In the center of the room, laid against the floor in sapphire light, was a large circle. It didn’t surprise her much to see writing across it. She couldn’t read it, of course; it was almost the same as the writing that was carved high above her head. But it was different. It seemed to move.

  “This is the seal of the Old Ones,” he said quietly, “and from it emanates the power that defended the castle against intruders.” Against, she thought, the fieflord.

  She stared at the seal. The writing seemed to sharpen, somehow. Light flared, like blue fire, and it grew in height along the patterns that had birthed it. She watched as it reached for the ceiling. Watched, forgetting to breathe, as the light from the ceiling dripped down.

  When they touched, she cried out in shock, and then in pain; her arms were on fire.

  “Stay your ground,” the fieflord said, but his voice seemed to come from a distance—a growing distance. She reached out almost in panic, and was instantly ashamed of her reaction.

  She would have reached out for Severn that way, once. And she’d already paid for that. She made fists of her fingers.

  “Kaylin, stay your ground.”

  Her tongue was heavy; too heavy for speech. She wanted to tell him that she was staying her damned ground, but she couldn’t, and probably just as well.

  The light was a column now.

  She felt it, an inch from her face, from her hand. Her hand was moving toward it, fingers twitching, as if pulled by gravity. She’d fallen once, from a great enough height that she’d had time to think about just how much of a pain gravity was.

  She’d choose falling any time.

  She heard the fieflord. She felt his presence. But her hand moved, continued to move. Her skin touched blue fire. Blue fire touched her.

  For just a moment, she could see, in the pillar of light, something that looked like a…man. The way that the Barrani fieflord did. But worse. She could not make out his features, and she knew that she really, really didn’t want to.

  Her hand sank through the light.

  She heard a single word.

  Chosen.

  And then a different light flared; the golden manacle slammed into the pillar and it refused to move farther. She pushed against it with half of her weight and none of her will. She was losing ground.

  She cried out; she couldn’t help it. Years of training fled in the panic that followed. She could see only light, could hear only the indistinct murmur of a stranger’s voice, could feel nothing at all beneath her feet. She had feared the night all her life; this was worse. Her feet were moving. Toward the light, toward the pillar, toward what it contained. She bit her lip, and she tasted blood.

  And then, just before she entered the column, before she lost herself entirely, the shadows came, and they came in the shape of a dark, precise crest.

  She didn’t recognize it. It didn’t matter.

  She hit it and froze.

  The light scraped against its edges, seeking passage the way sun does through stained glass. But this lattice offered nothing; it wasn’t, as it had first appeared, a window. It was a wall.

  It was a wall with something written across it. She stared at it as the light flared, brighter now, and she understood the word in the same way she understood hunger, pain or fear: instinctively.

  She could still taste blood. She could not feel her lips. But they moved anyway. Barrani was one of the languages that the Hawklord had insis
ted she study, and if she hadn’t been his most apt pupil, she’d learned. She’d always learned any real lesson he’d decided to teach her, even the ones that scarred.

  Her lips moved over the syllables; she had to force them. She couldn’t make a sound, but it didn’t matter.

  Calarnenne.

  The light went out.

  “My apologies,” the fieflord said softly. His arms were around her waist, his face against her neck. Black hair trailed down her shoulder in loose, wild strands. Pretty hair.

  She tried to speak.

  He lifted a hand and pressed his fingers gently against her lips. “No more,” he said softly. “You have done enough. I have done enough. Come. We must leave this place.”

  Her knees collapsed.

  Teela would have laughed at her. Tain would have shaken his head. But the fieflord did neither; he caught her before she hit ground, lifting her as if her weight were insignificant. He cradled her against his chest, and because he did, she saw blood well against the soft fabric of his odd tunic.

  It was hers. Her cheek was bleeding.

  “I…can walk.”

  He smiled grimly. “You can barely speak,” he said, “and if you touch the ground again, I am not certain that I will be able to stop you from touching the seal.”

  There were so many questions she wanted to ask him.

  Only one surfaced, fighting its way to the top. “Calarnenne?”

  “Yes,” he replied grimly. “My name. Do not speak it, Kaylin.” His eyes were as blue as the light had been, and just as cold.

  “Your name.”

  “I should kill you,” he replied.

  “Why?”

  “Because you are now a bigger threat than even the Dragon.”

  She shook her head. She knew that. “Why did you—why your name?”

  He stopped walking, but he did not set her down. The trees were above them now, and she found their dark presence almost comforting. “The mark,” he said, touching her wounded cheek, “was not enough. You know the Barrani,” he added, his fingers brushing blood away gently. “How many of them have given you their names?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t know.”

  The frustration on his face was the most familiar expression she had yet seen. It reminded her of the Hawklord. “None,” he said curtly. “Because if they had, you would know.”