The brother spread his hands as the wall shattered, flesh becoming—in an instant—a thin, flexible shield. If the shards of former, crystalline wall were sharp, the brother didn’t bleed; he didn’t seem to notice. But he didn’t shed the bits and pieces, either; instead, the shield shrank, until it once again formed two separate, Barrani hands.
Beyond him, beyond them all, was a gaping, jagged hole. Kaylin was fairly certain that the edges were sharp enough to cut anything that wasn’t a multidimensional Immortal.
The walls were not the only thing that had shattered, though.
The blades had done so, as well. She could see shards of metal among the crystalline pieces, and hilts in Severn’s hands. They shook, briefly; he sheathed their remains in silence. He didn’t hesitate, and he didn’t mourn; he’d made the decision. He’d made the decision understanding exactly what Alsanis’s brother had asked—and what the cost would be.
That much she felt before she tried to avert her mental gaze. She settled on Alsanis’s brother as the safest because there was nothing mortal about him, and the building to which he was related didn’t generally respond to normal grief, rage, or fear as if they were emotions relevant to, well, being a building.
“Do not bleed in the Hallionne,” he helpfully told them. Lifting his face—or some of it, which was just as disturbing as it sounded—he roared to the sky; small pieces of wall shook loose as the sound reverberated.
The dragon descended.
It was a good damn thing the gap in the shattered wall was so large; descent didn’t cause him to lose any of his impressive size. She thought his eyes were the size of her fists, and deliberately avoided looking at his jaws or the curve of claws that seemed to pass through the ground, rather than sinking into it.
But she reached out and touched the space between what would have been dragon nostrils, which would also have been courting dismemberment if this were any other dragon. He met her gaze and blinked.
“He ate one of my marks,” she said, turning to the Consort. “When he first hatched. I don’t think it counts as naming him, but I think—I think it must have provided some sort of anchor.”
“That would explain much. It will not satisfy Lord Evarrim.”
“Nothing satisfies Lord Evarrim.”
“Do you remember what the word was?” the Consort asked. She hesitated for a long moment, and then lifted her hand and set it just below Kaylin’s. “He is not warm.”
“No. I don’t remember what the mark was; if we were in the city, we could dig it out of Records by process of elimination.” She didn’t ask if it mattered; she now believed it did. “How long do you have?” she asked him.
He shook his head, dislodging their hands. Alsanis’s brother approached. He didn’t bow, as he had bowed to the Consort; he met—and held—the dragon’s gaze. “Time,” he finally said, “does not mean, for us, what it means for your kind.”
“Mortals?”
“No. The living. He does not intend you harm; he very much wishes the opposite. But he chose to wear the jess of your mark, Chosen, and he has all but consumed it.”
She didn’t point out that eaten had a specific meaning, because she doubted, for the small dragon—or the large—it did. “Can I give him another one?”
“Yes.”
But of course, no marks rose from her skin, and she really didn’t think that biting off a chunk of her arm would have the same results.
* * *
Kaylin was accustomed to the interior of sentient buildings. Judging by the interior of this one, Alsanis was no longer sane. If the exterior wall had resembled shadow-imbued crystal—albeit somewhat malformed—the interior did not match. Here, the ground was uneven, and it was only barely ground. There were patches of what she would bet were sky to the left, shimmering slightly in the uneven light.
Nothing cast that light.
Interspersed with that sky was jagged rock, but the rock itself seemed to be composed of layers of detritus; Kaylin thought she could see a door jutting out from one large, flat curve. She definitely saw windows, and most of them weren’t in walls. Then again, she couldn’t actually see many walls.
The Consort linked arms with Kaylin, to Kaylin’s surprise.
“You have a tendency to get lost,” she said, smiling slightly. “And while it generally has interesting results, I would like to be lost with you should it happen.”
“You don’t—”
“Oh, not for your sake. The men worry; it is unpleasant. What do you see, Lord Kaylin?”
“Everything. I mean—a bit of everything. There’s a pillar, there—it’s broken. There’s a half wall that melts into gray mud. There’s an...arm, I think. I can’t tell, it doesn’t end in a hand. In the distance, I think there are mountains. There are windows in the ground to the far right—or holes that open into sky, because there also seems to be a lot of sky. That one’s raining. I don’t see much furniture, and I don’t see any other people.”
“No.”
“Do you?”
“No; I hear them, though. Can you hear Alsanis?”
Kaylin shook her head. “You do?”
“I do. The lost are with him.”
“All of them?”
The Consort frowned. “I cannot be certain; I cannot count voices.”
“Do you hear—do you hear Teela?”
“No. But that is not a bad sign; were I to hear her from this remove it would mean that we are too late.”
Alsanis’s brother shook his head. “What you fear is impossible, Lady.”
“Oh?”
“Every Barrani in the West March—every Barrani the green might touch—will be altered and lost to you first. Teela cannot be touched.”
Kaylin frowned. After a long pause, spent picking her way over what looked like stone slats, she said, “Why?”
“The price was paid, Chosen. It was paid in life’s blood—Teela is beloved by the green; it feels always, and only, the affection and the terrible fear of her mother, and it has accepted the geas that death placed upon it. No harm, no change, will come to Teela while she stands upon the green.”
Kaylin almost missed a step. She said, quietly, “The children are trying to destroy the green.”
“Yes. They themselves are confined by their attachment to Teela. If she cannot join them while the green exists, they will destroy the green. It will,” he added softly, “destroy them; that is Alsanis’s fear.”
Kaylin didn’t understand why he cared.
“No, you do not. He has labored here these many centuries, with no respite, to find some way of preserving them. They are his guests. He hears their voices. They are not what they were when they came to him; they are not what they might be were they free. But he cannot confine all of what they have become. He cannot speak in a way that moves them; they are too intent upon what they see and hear. They will not be moved.
“Can Teela talk to them?”
“She cannot speak—”
“I mean, can she change their mind? Can she convince them to—”
“To what?”
“To stop trying to destroy the green.”
“An odd question.”
“It’s not—”
“Do you not think Teela desires what they desire?”
“No!”
The Consort’s hand tightened. “Lord Kaylin. Kaylin. It is often more complicated than simply yes or no. Teela was raised with children who were lost to the recitation. They were not rivals. They were not from the same lines; they were not in competition with each other. Had they been blood kin, it is unlikely they would have become as close as they did.”
“There is no way Teela wants the green to be destroyed!”
“No. But I am not so certain, were there not another way, she would not join them. Can you be?”
“Yes!” Kaylin pulled her arm free of the Consort—or she tried. The Consort was Barrani, and she didn’t want to let go. There’d probably be bruises. Teela had certainly left simil
ar ones in her time. And probably for the same reasons. Kaylin knew what she wanted the truth to be. But she’d known Teela for less than a decade. In Barrani time, she was just a passing acquaintance. She fell silent.
It didn’t last. “Where are you taking us?”
“To the heart of Alsanis,” Alsanis’s brother replied.
Kaylin developed a healthy respect for the Tower of Tiamaris as she attempted to follow Alsanis’s brother. Tara kept the halls wide, the ceilings tall, and the windows even and long. The floors were either stone or wood, and they didn’t sag or change texture unexpectedly beneath passing feet. Chunks of roof did not suddenly liquefy and fall on the group like a wet, rotting corpse. Doors did not rear up like frothing, panicked horses and attempt to drop on her visitors, and the landscape wasn’t filled with the sounds of screaming, weeping—or laughter that made screaming and weeping sound good in comparison.
There weren’t any doors between the hole in the wall—a hole that pretty much vanished from sight when they’d walked what Kaylin estimated was ten yards—and their unseen destination.
But there were wards.
The first time they encountered one, the Consort froze. Kaylin could see her eyes darken to pure midnight. The Warden was likewise on alert—but Nightshade, Iberrienne, Lirienne, and Ynpharion didn’t appear to be as upset.
“Lady,” the Lord of the West March said. “What has happened?”
It was Kaylin who answered. “There’s a ward here.”
“I see no ward.” Lirienne glanced at Barian, and Barian nodded grimly.
“Calarnenne?”
“I do not see it.”
Severn?
I do.
Why?
He didn’t answer. And she realized she couldn’t force an answer from him because the ownership of the name went in the wrong direction. Not that she would ever have tried. She felt his amusement at both thoughts.
Kaylin really wanted a name to hang on Alsanis’s brother. It was hard to say, “hey, you” more than once or twice; Kaylin wasn’t always big on manners, but it seemed kind of rude even to her. Absent name, she turned to him. “Can you see the ward?”
He frowned. “This?” He asked her, pointing. “You call it a ward?”
“That’s what it looks like, to me. What do you call it?”
“A place,” he replied. “A belief. A statement of intent. It is meant to mark significance.”
“And if I touch it?”
“Why would you touch it if you do not understand what it is meant to invoke?”
Since this was an intelligent question, Kaylin bit back the short string of Leontine trying to force its way out of her mouth. She turned to Barian, who had, if she understood his position as Warden, more experience with wards than anyone else in the building.
Barian said, “It is as you see it. It is a ward of the green.”
“Do you know which one?”
He stared at the ward. “You do not understand,” he finally said.
“No, clearly. This is the first time I’ve been to the West March. It’s also hopefully—no offense intended—the last time I’ll visit the West March.”
“It is not a ward of Alsanis. It is, in structure, in form, and in content, a ward intended for the green. It should not be here.”
Kaylin frowned. “The green and Alsanis are connected, though. When Teela and I activated the wards in the green, we were transported to Alsanis.”
“Impossible.”
“It can’t be impossible. The wards are here.”
“You were mistaken, Lord Kaylin. The green is not all of one thing or all of another. You misinterpreted what you saw.”
She stopped herself from folding her arms across her chest. In Barian’s position, she’d probably be dubious. Of course, if she were Barian, she wouldn’t find his attitude irritating. “I don’t know the green, and I don’t know Alsanis. But the nightmares of Alsanis were there, and what I saw was an echo of what the Consort saw when she contained the nightmares themselves.
“We didn’t get back to the green until I called for the judgment of the green. Which—and I may have misunderstood Serian—should have been impossible if I was already in the heart of the green.
“And,” she continued, raising a third finger to accompany the two she’d lifted while enumerating the previous points, “the Consort was taken by the eagles of Alsanis to the green. We didn’t find her in Alsanis. And given the shape of Alsanis at the moment, that’s probably a blessing. We found her in the green. The eagles told us the wards were inactive—they couldn’t be woken.
“I’m guessing,” she finished, pointing at the ward that hovered in the air just beyond them, “that this is why. Somehow, they’re here.”
Chapter 24
The Warden was silent for a long moment. He looked, not to Alsanis’s brother, but to the Consort. She inclined her head in silence. She did not, however, let go of Kaylin’s left arm.
“I don’t know the greetings and the blessings—or whatever they’re called,” Kaylin continued. “But you do. I don’t recognize specific wards.”
“Lady, with your permission?” Kaylin didn’t understand why he’d asked the Consort; the Lord of the West March was in theory the highest ranking person here.
If he’d committed a subtle breach of etiquette, the Consort failed to correct him—and given the affection in which she held her brother, Kaylin assumed that he hadn’t. “You are guide, Warden. You recognize the wards.”
“Yes. These are meant to mark—and hold—the path to the greenheart. It is possible that they will lead us there, regardless of where we start; the green does not remain in a fixed, geographical state without the wards as anchors.” The implication was clear: neither, at the moment, did Alsanis. “It is just as possible that they will lead us to the heart of Alsanis.”
“Which is where his brother is leading us now,” Kaylin said.
The brother nodded. “You cannot walk the roads I walk. There is nothing within Alsanis that can harm me.”
“Not even Alsanis?”
“Not even Alsanis, although that is a matter of desire, not ability. I believe it is understood that you cannot walk as we walk.” He hesitated, and then added, “You, Chosen, could. Until your familiar is too large, and the bindings break, he could carry you there.”
Lord Barian bowed to the Consort; she stepped to one side of the ward, gently dragging Kaylin with her. The Warden then lifted his palm to the ward’s center. He touched it. It had been blue, lines etched in midair with no wall or visible means of support, not that magic actually required any. When it came into contact with his hand, the light shifted, losing color until it was white, but gaining in brightness.
Kaylin narrowed her eyes against that light; it wasn’t enough. She looked away, and saw, as she did, that the ground beneath her feet was, in fact, becoming solid and uniform. It didn’t coalesce, though; the shifting images, the patches of nearby sky, the puddle of something that resembled green mud, began to fade. They lost color as the ward gained light; they lost substance, almost as if they were sinking through whatever it was that lay beneath them.
And that, to Kaylin’s relief, was a path made of oddly shaped, interlocking stones. Clearly it didn’t come as a relief to the Warden, but at this point, it didn’t come as shock, either. “This is the path into the heart of the green?”
He nodded.
Kaylin had never understood the way the green was connected to the Hallionne; she now knew that the Barrani didn’t, either. But it didn’t matter; there really was only one way out, and it lay at the heart of Alsanis.
* * *
They followed the path until it began to fade. Every time it did, they encountered a ward, and Lord Barian both touched and invoked it, strengthening the fading path as he did. It wasn’t fast, but it didn’t induce overwhelming nausea. It did induce stress; she could feel time falling, as if it were sand in an hourglass that couldn’t be turned over again.
But
she counted the wards, because other than walking, there wasn’t much else she could do. Oh, she could look at the no longer small dragon, but he was like that sand. She felt his presence like storm clouds. She was the small fishing vessel too far from port to be guaranteed any safety.
In some storms, there was no guarantee.
When they reached the eleventh ward, the Warden said, “This is the last one.”
“You’re certain.”
“In the green—in the green that I know—it wouldn’t be. But this character means the end of the journey. The end of the path.” He turned to the Lord of the West March and bowed. “I have served as guide, but the arrival is in your hands, Lord Lirienne. Lord Calarnenne, Teller, Lord Kaylin, harmoniste, be prepared; the rest of us are now simply audience.”
The Lord of the West March bowed in turn. He took a step forward on this last leg of the path and paused there. To the left and the right, in the distance, there was horizon; the land—such as it was—was not flat; it was broken in places by things that reminded Kaylin very much of the art that escaped the Oracular Halls. Had it been simple paint or clay, it would have been interesting; it wasn’t.
She was certain she would have found it less disturbing if she had seen any signs of life in that landscape. She hadn’t. The only living things that appeared to inhabit the Hallionne were the people who walked a path that belonged in the green.
The path continued forward. Nightshade fell in to the left of the Lord of the West March, matching his stride. Kaylin understood that she was meant to occupy the position to his right, and found she didn’t want it. The Consort, however, said, “It is not simple ceremony; it is not a matter of etiquette. Nothing in the green is. Come, Lord Kaylin.” And she pretty much dragged Kaylin along with her; she walked to Kaylin’s left.
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