Cast in Sorrow coe-9

by Michelle Sagara

  Kaylin raised her hand, grimaced, braced herself as she usually did when touching a door ward, and pressed her palm into the center of the ward.

  The world exploded.

  * * *

  It was not the first time that Kaylin had stood at the center of a magical explosion. She had time to throw her arms over her face to protect her eyes as wood chips and bark flew.

  None of them hit her arms. None of them hit her at all. She lowered her arms and looked immediately to her left; Gaedin was standing suspended in midair. The root upon which they’d found purchase was gone. So was the large, curving root on which Serian stood. But Serian still stood.

  They were encircled by a globe of familiar, golden light. Flying debris hung in the air around them. Kaylin turned back to the ward. To her surprise, it was still suspended in air, glowing a brilliant silver; the tree was damaged. Kaylin was no expert in trees, but the brunt of the explosion had taken out only the section of tree—and its attached roots—directly in front of the activated ward.

  The central element of the ward, the star, was gone. The rest of it—the radial points that looked like designed offshoots of that star, remained, as did the framing. Gaedin’s magic followed the explosion—but it was slower by far than the ward had been; Kaylin felt it crawling along her skin.

  “Gaedin—”

  “It is not me,” he told his partner. “It is Lord Kaylin.”

  “Lord Kaylin who claimed to have studied magic for mere mortal months?” She looked skeptical, and Kaylin—who disliked the superiority Barrani often displayed when dealing with mortals perversely liked her better for it.

  “It’s not me,” Kaylin told them both. “It’s him.” She pointed to the dragon who was rigid on her shoulder.

  She followed the direction of his wide-eyed stare. “How important is this tree?”

  It was Gaedin who laughed.

  “Gaedin. Kyuthe,” Serian added.

  He reined laughter in. His eyes were a midnight-blue so at odds with laughter it made him more disturbing.

  Lirienne, can you tell me about this tree?

  Silence. She didn’t even try to reach Nightshade, because it was pointless; she recognized the silence.

  Kaylin grimaced and turned to the two Barrani who had led her to comparative safety. “I hate to tell you this,” she said, “but we’re not in the West March anymore.”

  * * *

  “I can see the ward,” Gaedin said.

  Serian frowned. The ward was no longer her concern. “Do you know where we are? The cavern looks essentially the same, to my eye.”

  “It is substantially the same.”

  “And the tree?”

  “It is as you see it.”

  Kaylin, however, was moving. She wasn’t walking, because at the moment, there was nothing to walk on. But the bubble that surrounded her began to inch toward a ward that was now suspended against air, and not the bark of a trunk.

  “Let Gaedin inspect.”

  “Gaedin is not as sensitive to magic as I am,” Kaylin replied—in Barrani. “And I am not certain he can move of his own volition.”

  Gaedin said, “She is correct.”

  “Can you read what’s left of the ward?” Kaylin asked him.

  “No, Chosen. The center section is missing.”

  “Yes—it appears to have been the magic behind that explosion.” She was frowning now. The bits of bark and wood she was passing beneath and around still hadn’t moved. “Gaedin—this debris—are you suspending it?”

  “No.”

  “Am I?”

  “Not in any detectable way. In my opinion, however, it is either you or your companion. He is a familiar, yes?”

  “I don’t know what word means in real life. He’s certainly not the familiar of the stories the Barrani used to tell each other.” She reached out to touch a piece of bark; the small dragon bit her finger. Hard. Kaylin cursed; he gave her one baleful glare, and then once again oriented himself in the direction of the gaping hole in the side of the tree.

  “I don’t think it’s the dragon, either,” she said. “Guys, when was the last time someone disappeared into the tunnels? Do you know?”

  “You are not going to like the answer,” Serian said.

  “Give me the answer anyway.”

  “Less than ten of your mortal years ago. I believe it was six.”

  There was nothing in the answer that Kaylin could dislike. “That’s good, though—it means the maze has been run and people in it have gotten out. Why did you think I’d be unhappy?”

  “One of the two was mortal.”

  Severn.

  * * *

  Kaylin carefully avoided touching debris—which would have been harder if the dragon weren’t in the driver’s seat. But she looked at the pieces, at their placement, at their distance from the tree. Her frown deepened. “Gaedin, can you give me more light?”

  His reply: illumination. Every piece of debris was sharper, clearer. She could see what she assumed were flight trajectories. She had, with Teela and Red by her side, examined debris in the wake of an Arcane bomb. Pieces of house had embedded themselves in the parts of the walls left standing.

  These pieces had traveled out in a sphere seconds after the explosion itself; Kaylin was fairly certain they’d be dotting the cavern’s rough wall had they continued their flight. They hadn’t. Kaylin, Serian, and Gaedin had experienced the force of the blast; they were alive because the small dragon had intervened.

  But pieces of wood, of bark, and even dirt, remained fixed in the air, as if time had frozen. Kaylin could move; nothing else did.

  “I think—I think this explosion didn’t just happen.”

  The small dragon squawked.

  “We witnessed it,” Serian reasonably pointed out.

  Kaylin nodded. “We witnessed it. I think we’ve appeared at the exact moment the tree did explode.”

  “You don’t think the ward was responsible for the explosion itself.”

  She glanced at the small dragon’s profile. “No. I think the ward is responsible for dumping us here. Wherever—or whenever—here is.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. The tree looked solid when we approached it.” She frowned. “I’m not much of a mage.”

  Gaedin was extremely politic for a Barrani, and said nothing.

  “But when I touched the ward, the center portion of the rune disappeared; the tree—this side of it—exploded, or started to—the pieces haven’t moved. So...is it possible that the ward was holding the tree together somehow?”

  “It is.”

  “Door wards don’t vanish when touched,” she continued. “And most of this rune is still here; only the center portion is gone.”

  “You feel that the ward served two functions.”

  She nodded. “I don’t understand why. Frankly, I don’t understand how. Either the explosion occurred or it didn’t. If it did, how could someone then reverse it and contain it?”

  Serian’s frown was more subtle than Kaylin’s; the color of her eyes made up for it. “It would make far more sense that the rune caused the explosion.”

  “And it froze just after it happened?”

  “The familiar—”

  The familiar rolled his eyes. Kaylin stared at him, and he shrugged his wings. “I’m pretty sure he’s only responsible for the shielding on us. Does the shape of the rune look familiar to you?”

  Gaedin had been staring at it in silence; he spoke to answer questions, but his gaze didn’t leave it. Kaylin was surprised when he began to speak. His voice was sonorous, low, the syllables almost familiar. He wasn’t speaking the ancient tongue that Sanabalis had once used to tell a race the story of its birth; he was speaking a variant of High Barrani. She could catch one word in three, but the words she did catch made no sense.

  She waited, folding her arms across her chest; those arms shot out when the bubble around the Barrani servant began to flicker. “Don’t drop him!” she shouted
at the small dragon. The small dragon squawked. Kaylin was too far away to make a grab for Gaedin as he lurched in midair.

  His eyes widened; she saw gold ring his irises and then he was gone.

  Serian said, “that was not a failure on your part.”

  “What did he say?”

  “I will not repeat it,” she replied. “But I think I understand what has happened. Gaedin is safe. He will probably be deeply chagrined, but I believe we will find him in the heart of the green.”

  “If we reach it.”

  “If, indeed, we reach it.” Serian began to float toward Kaylin. “He recognized the rune.”

  “You can’t see it.”

  “I have very, very limited abilities in that regard; magery was not my gift. But if I heard him correctly—” A polite phrase, because if Kaylin had heard him there was no way that the sharper-eared Barrani hadn’t. “It is in style and substance similar to runes that exist only in one place.”

  “The heart of the green.”

  “Yes.”

  “Is someone responsible for drawing those runes?”

  “If you mean, are they placed there by the Barrani, the answer is no. Not directly. Not even, to my knowledge, indirectly—but as magery was not my gift, there may well be knowledge that was not given to me. But they inform some of the unusual architecture at the heart of the green.

  “I think there was enough variance that Gaedin was not entirely certain; he spoke the words of greeting and return, and the rune responded.”

  “He disappeared.”

  “I believe he returned, Kaylin. He will be displeased with that return; if we do not follow soon, Lord Lirienne will be likewise discomfited.”

  “And you won’t—”

  “No. If Gaedin had realized what the results of that tentative phrase would be, he would not have uttered it. I admit that being your servant has been an unusual challenge; we were both surprised at our deployment. Unless the green chooses to displace me, I will remain by your side.”

  The dragon had once again turned his stare into the ruin of the tree side. “All right, all right. Take me to it.” She wanted roots beneath her feet. She could climb; she could cling to vertical surfaces with a little preparation. Hovering, wingless, over a distant river in the poor light of the cavern, was still disturbing.

  * * *

  Kaylin didn’t know a lot about trees.

  Her expertise in wood involved chopping it and carrying it in the yards of the Halls of Law. This was not that kind of tree.

  “Is this tree somehow planted in the heart of the green?”

  The line of Serian’s lips thinned. “The tree, as you call it, is indeed planted in the heart of the green.”

  “What do you mean, as I call it? What does it look like to you?”

  “It looks very like the roots of a great and ancient tree. There are no trees within the whole of the West March or beyond it, in the darker forests, that have reached the age of this tree; it is singular in all ways. It is said that it speaks. I have never heard its voice,” she added softly.

  Kaylin almost touched the tree; her hand stopped before it made contact with the ragged sharp edge of newly broken bark. Gleaming liquid that might be mistaken for sap caught her attention.

  “Lord Kaylin?”

  “The tree—it’s infected. Infested. Something.”

  Silence. It was bad silence, but at this point there was no way it could be anything else. Serian moved; she seemed to have more control of her movements than Kaylin had. Kaylin glared at the small dragon.

  Serian made no attempt to touch anything, but her eyes alighted on the dark, running blackness Kaylin had assumed was sap. She closed her eyes, her lashes a dark, trembling fan against her pale skin. “I believe I understand.”

  “Explain it to me?” she said, in frustrated Elantran.

  “The tree destroyed part of itself.”

  “What caused it?” Kaylin asked.

  “I do not—as you must guess—know. Rumor says that you are a healer. That you became kyuthe to the Lord of the West March because of that singular gift. He does not resent you, and he does not fear you—and that was unexpected. The Barrani do not expose themselves to—”

  “Healers? No. Believe that I’m aware of just how much they hate it.” She was afraid to touch what she could barely think of as a wound. Even in the darkness, she could see the scintillation of color flowing in the liquid, and if the Barrani of the West March insisted that this black mess wasn’t the shadows that plagued the fiefs, Kaylin couldn’t see what the difference was.

  She examined the tree; very little of the dark infection was visible. If the tree had destroyed some part of itself in an attempt to be rid of it, that said something about the tree. “I’ve never tried to heal a plant before.”

  Serian looked mildly offended.

  Kaylin hesitated for one long minute, and then placed her hand on the tree’s bark, instead of the jagged edge of its wound. She closed her eyes as the marks on her skin began to warm. It is a tree, she thought, but kept her nervous defiance to herself. Most trees didn’t ditch large chunks of themselves in fancy, magic explosions. They certainly couldn’t write, and the rune was complicated enough that it hadn’t happened by accident.

  Most trees didn’t think.

  * * *

  This one did.

  The problem with healing—from Kaylin’s perspective—wasn’t the exhaustion it left in its wake, although it could certainly have that effect. It wasn’t the physical contact, and the sudden knowledge of the limits of another person’s body; it wasn’t even the sense that, while she healed, there was little separation between her own body and her patient’s.

  There was just as little separation between thoughts, between identities. She could feel and sense what they could feel and sense.

  She didn’t know what the tree would offer. And the tree seemed content to offer her nothing. A lot of nothing. A great, endless darkness. She wasn’t even certain that she was connected to the tree at all; she saw a lot of what she assumed was unlit cavern.

  But there was texture to the darkness, and it was a texture she didn’t like. She remembered what she’d done with the Barrani who had been injured in their skirmishes with the forest Ferals. They’d been infected—by bite—with the same transformative shadow, and she’d forced it out. Torn it out. Which had left injuries that could be healed the normal way.

  Her arms were burning, but it wasn’t the usual heat. It took her a moment to realize it wasn’t her marks—although they were warm—but the sleeves that covered most of them. It was the dress, the blood of the green. She felt a moment of sick fear because she knew she was worth far less than the dress to the denizens of the West March.

  But the dress was somehow of the green. And the tree, if she’d understood anything—and given how little sense things made, that was questionable—was its heart. She opened her eyes and saw that the sleeves were...flowing. They were drifting off her arms as if they were liquid.

  As if they were blood, Kaylin thought.

  She really hoped the rest of the dress didn’t follow suit, because appearing stark-naked anywhere in the West March was almost at the top of her list of things Not To Do while on vacation. Dying was the first item.

  She closed her eyes again, and this time, she whispered into the silence on the inside of her head. She didn’t have the tree’s name. But she had three of her own: the name of her birth, Elianne. The name she’d chosen when she’d escaped that early childhood, Kaylin. And the name that she had taken from the Lake. It was the most significant of the three—if you happened to be immortal.

  But Kaylin wasn’t. She was a groundhawk. She served the Halls of Law. She struggled, every day, to believe in justice and that law. Some days, it was harder than others. Some days, it was blessedly easy.

  Hello, I’m Kaylin. Kaylin Neya.

  There was no answer. Not that she expected words, because usually there weren’t any. She touched—was certain
she was touching—the tree. She tried to get some sense of its form, of its natural, healthy shape, because that’s what bodies knew.

  But she touched nothing.

  Kaylin is the name I chose for myself. I’m mortal. I can choose the name I answer to. Neya is the short form of my mother’s name. Her name was Averneya, but no one ever used it, not even me. I didn’t call her by name. I called her Mother.

  She had no idea what she was saying, or why.

  But for just a moment, one clear, perfect moment, she could see her mother’s face. She could see it so clearly she lost all ability to form words. She couldn’t recall her mother’s actual face anymore. She hadn’t been able to do it for years. She could remember being held; she could remember some of the songs her mother sometimes sung to her.

  Her mother’s face was so clear. Kaylin forgot the tree. She forgot the healing. She forgot the shadows and the infection and even the Barrani.

  She had never seen her mother the way she looked at her now. Had her mother somehow lived, she would still never have seen her like this: she was a young woman. She was—to Kaylin’s eye—not much older than Kaylin now was. She had—Kaylin remembered it only now—a long scar, pale and slender, down the right side of her jaw. Her hair was as dark as her daughter’s, and her skin was only slightly paler; her eyes were so brown the pupil was lost to them.

  Her hands were slender, and her arms; she was underfed. Her eyes were sunken, her cheeks slightly hollow, their bones high and pronounced. She wore the nondescript, poorly fitted clothing that anyone in the fiefs wore.

  But...she was smiling. She was smiling, her lips turned up at the corners, her eyes gentled by expression. She was smiling at Kaylin.

  They could have been sisters.

  Is this what Teela saw when she remembered her mother? A woman, much like herself? A woman who had loved her and who she’d loved in return?

  A woman, Kaylin thought, throat thick now, that she could never actually touch again, that she could never grow to know better? She tried to etch this image into her mind, into her memory—her imperfect, mortal memory. Because this woman was alive. She had been alive.