She approached Terrano first; he frowned, the way any Barrani with little experience of mortals would. She tried not to hold it against him. She wasn’t surprised to find that he wasn’t solid; he had no flesh, nothing to impede the progress of her palm as she pressed it against, and then through, the center of his chest.
He frowned and stepped back. No. His lips moved; nothing else did.
Kaylin closed her eyes. “We don’t have time for this. You can stay, Terrano, or you can go. But you can’t live between, like this. The word at the heart of your existence here, the word the green has tried to somehow preserve, belongs here. Leave it, and go, or stay with it and become it.”
“Terrano,” Mandoran said.
But Terrano shook his head, his lips quirking up in an odd smile. “I can’t go back. There’s nothing for me. My family is dead now. I didn’t even kill them,” he added, without a care in the world, and without any sign of grief. “I waited for Teela. But I waited so we could leave together. There are worlds out there,” he added. “Not like this one. Different. Better. We can be anything. We can be nothing. I won’t. I won’t do it. I don’t want it.” Terrano was part of Teela. Teela was part of Terrano. “Save her mother. Save her, and she won’t lay her curse on Teela.”
“It wasn’t a curse.”
“It was. Save her.”
And at this moment, it didn’t matter. “I can’t do what you ask.”
He laughed. “You are the only one who can.”
And she wanted to. She wanted to do it because if she could, she could save all her own dead. There would be no ghosts to lay to rest. There would be no paralyzing, self-destructive guilt, no self-loathing, no loss.
“This is the lie,” she told Terrano softly. “I didn’t understand how lies could be told with True Words. And they can’t. Everything you can say with a True Word is itself. But we don’t speak True Words. We don’t speak true language; we speak its echoes. We dimly understand the shape of the words—but they don’t mean the same thing to two different people. They can’t.
“This is the lie,” she continued. She turned to the giant eye of the familiar. “I can see what you want. Can you see it? It’s there. And beside it, the heart of what I want. The only thing I’ve truly, desperately wanted in my life; the only thing I would die for.
“And they’re the same, Terrano. They’re the same. There are some words that can’t exist here, not in the real world. Not in our lives. We can daydream them. We can pray for them. We can hope, and plead, and grieve. But we can’t make them real—because they aren’t. There’s no way back. And the lie is that there is.
“Maybe familiars can grant that. Maybe they have the power to make the lie real. I have to guess that’s exactly what they can do. But—it’s still a lie. Because it’s not part of the real world. It’s part of our dreams. It’s part of our nightmares. It’s part of the us that we carry around inside of our heads. But that’s all it can ever be.”
He stared at her for one long, frozen moment. “No,” he said. “It’s not. It’s not.”
And Teela said clearly, “Vote.”
Her voice carried; it rippled through the green. It was, in all ways, a Sergeant’s voice. Marcus would have been proud.
But Kaylin said, “It’s not a matter for vote. Mandoran didn’t have a choice. I’m sorry for that. But you’ve lived centuries since the day your mother died. So have they. If you can’t go back, if you can’t deny what those centuries of living mean to you, they shouldn’t have to do it, either.” She turned to Mandoran and said, simply, “I’m sorry. I can’t undo it.
“I won’t force that change upon anyone else. I can’t. But I won’t let you run wild. Hundreds of people have died because of you. I won’t let you kill the Hallionne or destroy the green.”
“If we die here, the names will be lost—”
Kaylin shook her head. “Chosen, remember? I won’t let the words be lost to the green. I’ll return them, in the end, to the Lake.”
“Terrano,” Mandoran said again.
But Terrano shook his head. “I can’t. I can’t do it. I love you. I love you all as if you’re part of me. But I’d lose all my limbs first. I’d go blind, deaf. I can’t do it.”
Kaylin closed her palm into a fist and withdrew it. Terrano’s eyes widened. They seemed, for a moment, to sparkle. His face lit up with an incandescent smile; it took her breath away. It took all of their breaths away. He began to fade. Even before he was no longer visible, he was no longer Barrani in appearance, but the warmth of his unfettered delight lingered like a pall.
When Kaylin opened her hand again, she wasn’t surprised to see a mark there. A red mark, much like Mandoran’s had been. It was a less complicated letter form, but it was thinner and paler.
She approached Sedarias next, because Sedarias was the de facto leader of this group, inasmuch as it could be led. As she’d done for Terrano, she pressed her palm against, and then into, her heart.
“And so, all our years of waiting and planning have come, in the end, to this? We are to be diminished and returned as a curiosity to the Courts that were willing to sacrifice us?”
The familiar roared.
She raised both brows in a look of autocratic outrage that was nonetheless cool and contained. “Oh?”
“He speaks only the truth,” a familiar voice said.
Kaylin was surprised, because it belonged to the brother of Alsanis. She couldn’t remember the moment at which he’d disappeared; maybe he hadn’t.
“You have been part of Alsanis for a long time, even in the reckoning of your kind. You might remain as guest. Or as ward. He has heard your voices when ours were lost to him. If you make this choice, he cannot compel. He will not be your cage, Sedarias. But if you allow it, he will be...your brother.”
“My brother,” Sedarias said grimly, “attempted to kill me four times in my childhood.” But even saying it, she smiled. “Yes, Lord Kaylin. Terrano found ways to leave us. It was not Eddorian who approached Iberrienne, but Terrano. He was always ambitious, always precocious.
“I will accept what you offer.”
Where Terrano had faded, Sedarias grew more solid. Kaylin’s hand was pushed out; she didn’t withdraw it. She saw the faint tinge of purple to eyes that then shaded green as they widened; she smiled. She didn’t speak. But she looked at Teela and Mandoran, and then turned back to Kaylin. “Will I remember everything?”
Kaylin was surprised. “Yes. At least—I’d bet money on it. Mine, even.”
Sedarias looked confused, and then looked up at Teela. Kaylin left them and moved on. She offered them all the choice, and they accepted what Terrano had rejected. But when she approached Annarion, he frowned. “The mark you bear—”
She had forgotten about the mark. These days, she almost always did. It was now just part of her face. The High Court more or less accepted it. The Vale? Maybe that was part of the reason they had been so unfriendly—but maybe not. They were Immortal; she wasn’t.
“Yes,” she said tersely. “It’s your brother’s.” To her great surprise, he looked concerned, not disgusted.
“You must be mistaken—”
“Believe that I know where it came from. It’s on my skin, remember?”
He glanced at the rest of the marks on her skin, and she grimaced. “It is not like those.”
“No, it’s not. Maybe. Umm, I should tell you two things. Nightshade is Outcaste.”
Annarion’s eyes shaded to indigo.
“And he’s the fieflord of, well, Nightshade. He owns the Castle there. Oh, and—”
“That is three things.”
“Numbers are not my strong suit. He’s here. He’s the Teller.”
“I see.” He turned, then, to Sedarias, and offered her the slightest of bows. “It appears the world has changed since our incarceration.”
“Oh, undoubtedly. Did you have some concerns?”
“Not until this mortal brought them to my attention.” He left Kaylin and m
oved to join the group, and it was a group now; they were standing in the shadow of one gigantic eye; it was the whole of the sky in Kaylin’s view, at least on one side of the world.
And the words—the words she’d wanted, the words that had taken the sheen of gold and truth, filled that sky. And she did want them. If Jade and Steffi had never died, she could live with Severn. She would probably be living with him. It hadn’t been much of a life, compared to the one she’d built in Elantra with the Hawks—but she’d been happy then.
It was just one thing. It was just so small. If she could arrive in time. Just that. Just that one thing. She would save Severn, too. She would save him from the torture of guilt and the absolute knowledge that he was—that he could be—a cold-blooded killer.
“Kitling.”
“Don’t you have somewhere else you need to be?” Kaylin didn’t take her eyes from the sky; she couldn’t.
“Yes.”
“Then go there. I’m fine, Teela. I’ve got this.”
Teela slid an arm around her shoulder. “Yes. You do. You won’t mind if I stay here anyway, just to be as annoying as you generally are when you worry at me?”
“I think the others are waiting for you.”
“Oh, not me,” Eddorian said, joining Teela. “I’ve seen a lot, but to be honest—and if I know Teela, you know how rare that is among our kin—I’ve seen nothing like this. Are you going to destroy the world?”
“I think I understand why Teela likes you,” Valliant added. “Mortals are so unpredictable. You haven’t come all this way to end the world, have you? It would seem a waste of effort. You could have just left this corner of it to us.”
“Oh, leave the poor mortal alone,” Serralyn told him. But they all came to stand beside her, watching, their eyes bright with genuine curiosity. Yes, they were as old as Teela—but they hadn’t spent their life in this world. She couldn’t tell who she felt more sorry for—the children or the rest of the Barrani.
She had a suspicion it was the rest of the Barrani, and that didn’t bother her at all.
She turned back to the giant eye. “No,” she told them all. Looking up at the creature, or across at it, she said softly, “Yes, it’s what I want. But I also want wings. I want to be beautiful. I want to be strong. I want to be perfect.
“If every wish I ever had, if every fear, could become real, instantly, I would destroy the world. I didn’t understand how it could happen, before. The stories about familiars—the ones we have—never make it clear. But I—I understand it now. What I don’t understand is how any sorcerers survived summoning familiars. I’m not even a sorcerer. I can barely light a candle. I still can’t do it reliably on command.” She lifted her arms; her marks were now gray and flat. “You might recognize them. You might even be able to read them. I don’t, and can’t. But it’s—it’s a borrowed power. It’s not mine. I don’t control it. If you came to me because of the marks, I’m sorry.
“Close your eyes. Go back to sleep. We’ll try not to wake you again.”
The eye did not, predictably, close. Instead, the creature inhaled; the words that had filled the whole of a night sky were sucked into a maelstrom of other words, of different light, until they were lost. She reached out instinctively to try to...do what? She forced her hand back to her side.
She’d had the chance. She knew. She would have died for them. If it would end there, she thought, even now, she could do it. If there was some way to trade her life for theirs, with nothing else lost in the balance, she thought she could die. She was grateful that she didn’t believe in ghosts, because she couldn’t imagine facing the two girls to tell them that she couldn’t take the risk. How would they ever believe that they had been important to her?
They would know you.
She frowned. “Who said that?”
“Who said what, kitling?”
They would know you, Kaylin.
“Never mind.” The eyes were closing. Or at least, to Kaylin, it looked as if they were; it took her a few seconds to understand that they were actually shrinking.
You will do.
“Do for what?”
Worlds have been destroyed before. Not one. Many. And it starts, as it almost started for you, with one moment.
“And you couldn’t stop it?”
All possibilities exist in me, some darker and some brighter than others. All words, all languages, all silences, all emptiness, all isolation. I am not the containment. You are. You are what stands between me and the world in which you live. Some of the words are your words. You would recognize them. Many are not.
“But I didn’t summon you.”
No more did you summon the water, Chosen. But she hears you when you call. The fire speaks your name. I did not come to you. You found me. You came to me.
The eyes were now the size of Kaylin, although they existed in the air without a face as a frame.
“Kitling—”
“I’m doing what I can, Teela,” Kaylin said—in brusque Elantran.
She was surprised by the sound of Teela’s laughter. Teela tightened the arm she’d draped around Kaylin’s shoulder. “Yes. You always did. I remember the day you ended up in the lethe dealer’s den—you’d run yourself practically to exhaustion. You didn’t lose them,” she added, fondly. “You were fourteen. I thought it extremely unlikely, with your sense of caution, you’d survive to see fifteen.
“But you did. And sixteen, beyond it.”
“Teela—what did sorcerers do with familiars?”
Teela shook her head. “I didn’t lie; I have no idea. I would have bet against their being real.”
“With your own money?”
“Yes. And I actually have some, unlike some people.”
I contain all words, the creature said. But not all words can contain me. What would you have of me now?
“Go to sleep. Go back to wherever it is the water and the fire go when they’re dismissed.”
I cannot return, Kaylin.
“You can’t stay here,” was her flat reply. She felt Teela’s arm tighten. “You can’t hear him, can you?”
“No. Probably for the best.”
“Why can’t you go back?”
Ask Teela to explain.
Kaylin did. She asked while she watched the eyes grow smaller still; they were now the size of her head.
“You can’t summon elementals without understanding—fully—the name of the element. But the name is not the whole of the thing; you wouldn’t survive the attempt to summon all of fire.”
“How do you know?”
“It’s been tried, historically. You spoke with the elemental Evarrim summoned.”
Kaylin nodded.
“Could you dismiss it?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because I didn’t summon it. I wasn’t its anchor.”
“Exactly.”
“I didn’t exactly summon the small dragon, either, Teela.”
“No.”
“If the summoner dies, the fire can be contained—”
“In theory, yes. Sometimes the death of the summoner frees the fire; it returns to the plane from which it emerged. Sometimes the death of the summoner simply allows fire to burn. It cannot be extinguished by natural water. It cannot be extinguished at all if there is not another adept who can speak its name and forcibly contain it. Dismissing the element requires the name.”
“I know fire’s name.”
“Good. What is the name of the small dragon? If you can’t figure it out, one of us will—and if we do, and we survive the attempt to contain—and control—the familiar, it is us, not you, who will make the decisions.”
Allaron approached. “Teela has always been like this,” he said, his voice soft. “She makes threats that we all know are empty.” He was, to Kaylin’s discomfort, speaking in Elantran. Elantra hadn’t existed when he had entered Hallionne Alsanis. “She’s angry,” he added, which was kind of like saying fire was hot. “But she hasn’t
lived the lives we lived. When the Lady was trapped in the nightmares of Alsanis, how did you reach him?”
Kaylin frowned. “I touched the Consort.”
Allaron shook his head.
“What he means to say,” Mandoran cut in, “is how did you catch Alsanis’s attention? How did you speak to him without entering his domain? You did,” he added. “We heard it.”
“What did you hear?”
Mandoran frowned. He fell silent; Kaylin could almost hear them conferring in the privacy and intimacy granted by True Names.
Teela said, “They can’t describe it.”
“You’ve heard the ancient tongue—”
“Yes, but perhaps the particulars are not appropriate for the venue.” She frowned and added, “They didn’t hear it the way you heard it. They didn’t have to. It was not something that could be contained in our words. I don’t know what you did—but I think it’s what you must do here.”
“Alsanis heard you...speak. He knew, because you did, that you understood,” Mandoran added.
Kaylin wanted to beat her head against something. She lifted her arms. The marks were gray, flat marks; they didn’t glow.
“And we heard you, as well,” he added quietly. “We heard, and we almost remembered. Speak to him as you spoke to us.”
The eyes were smaller now. Smaller than her fists.
“I can’t,” she said softly. “I’m not where I was.” She looked around the heart of the green; there were no corpses here. Vivienne was no longer bleeding to death. Teela was Teela, but the ten who stood gathered around her looked far more solid, far more real, than they had. The fountain’s water was no longer red with ancient blood.
But the ground was not barren stone and dirt, and the trees— Ah, the trees. “It’s almost over.”
Teela nodded.
It is, the small dragon said. It is almost over, and when it is done, I will be uncontained. I have done what I can to limit the damage I will do. His eyes were the size of large cat eyes, and they were once again nested in the translucent face of a delicate, glass dragon.
But Kaylin shook her head. She raised an arm, mimicking Barian, and the small dragon alighted as if he were an eagle, a dream. She put him, gently, on her shoulder.
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