“Only in that I need his help to see it,” she offered. “To be honest, I’m slightly more concerned about the basement.”
Silence.
“The basement?” Mandoran asked.
“The stone halls beneath this one. You can see them where there should be floor.”
They exchanged another glance.
“Please tell me you can see them.”
“We can see the hall, but it is...transparent. We can’t see what’s below it. Severn?”
Severn said nothing.
“Kattea?”
“I think I see dirt. It’s kind of dark.”
Kaylin fished a flare out of her kit. “I don’t suppose you have another rope, Grethan?”
* * *
She tossed the lit flare down into the basement she could see without her familiar’s wing, taking care to avoid following it.
The light illuminated the hard sides of walls, and the rope seemed to sink forever; the flare didn’t actually reach the floor on the first two attempts. “Can you see the walls now?”
Silence.
“Okay, tell me what you guys see.”
Mandoran said, “I think I see what you see.”
“You think?”
“The walls are old and crumbling, to my eye. If the street is built over this, it’s a wonder it hasn’t sunk.”
“They’re not crumbling, to my eye. They look almost new.” She frowned. “They look...” She turned to Gilbert and Kattea. “They look like the walls in your basement.” She paused. “They look exactly like the walls in your basement.
“Gilbert—”
But Gilbert had come to the edge of the hall that the rest of them could see—or rather, the edge of space where the hall had been. “Yes,” he said softly. “You are right.”
“Share,” Mandoran said, in exactly the intonation Teela would have used.
“Gilbert’s basement is a giant hall, or a series of halls. There are doors, which imply rooms—but Kattea said—”
“The rooms move,” the girl said. She glanced at Gilbert. “Gilbert has a room. Sometimes it’s hard to find the room.”
The Arkon’s very orange eyes fixed themselves on Kattea. “How do you find the room without getting lost?”
“There’s a mark on the door. Gilbert’s name.”
Silence.
“When you say Gilbert’s name—” Mandoran began. Kaylin stepped on his foot.
“The rooms...move,” the Arkon said slowly. “But you find them. How long does it take you to find them?”
“Not very long. Well, once it took hours.”
“And you said the water carried you to the basement, and you found the house above it?”
Kattea nodded, uncertain now; she looked to Gilbert for confirmation. “We found the stairs,” she said. “And they weren’t like the rest of the halls. I mean, they were more...normal. So, we climbed those.”
“Where did you think they would lead?”
She glanced at Gilbert again. He seemed to be interested in the answer; Kaylin wanted to scream with frustration. Time. Time. Time.
“Somewhere safe,” she said quietly. “Somewhere on the other side of the bridge.” More silence. “I thought... I thought maybe I might find my dad.”
* * *
Kaylin said, “Grethan, I think you should join Evanton.”
He blinked. “Do you really see stone halls?” he whispered.
“Yes. But I think Evanton might need a bit of help. It’s just a guess. I can’t hear or see him.” Which was probably a mercy.
Grethan, having found more rope, nodded, and slid an arm around Kaylin’s again. The small dragon complained but lifted a wing. Kaylin walked Grethan down the familiar hall to the familiar door. “You guys can see us, right?”
Silence.
Severn?
No. There is some panic, but it is muted; Gilbert believes he can see you, and the Arkon has chosen—barely—to trust him. Hurry.
Mandoran? Annarion?
I am attempting to keep them in one place. Annarion is worried.
Worried?
His eyes are almost black. Mandoran’s are the regular blue.
Don’t let them follow.
No. But, Kaylin—hurry.
* * *
The door opened into the Garden, and to Kaylin’s surprise, it didn’t open into torrential storm or mudslide or raging fire or windstorm. She could hear the relief in Grethan’s breathing. “Evanton!”
The Keeper was nowhere in sight.
Kaylin, clutching Grethan’s arm, told the familiar to drop his wing. The wing folded; Grethan’s arm was still attached to Kaylin’s. The apprentice, however, froze in place, his eyes widening, his stalks doing the panic dance while attached to his forehead.
There’s a problem, she told Severn. And there was. She had thought—she nudged the familiar—that the Garden existed; she assumed it was just the hall that was a problem. But Grethan couldn’t see the Garden without the familiar’s help. And Kaylin was afraid to let go of Grethan because she wasn’t certain she would be able to find him again if he moved.
“We’re switching places,” she told the apprentice. “Do not let go of my arm unless you want to lose me forever.”
“What—”
“I need to know what you see when you’re not looking through his wing.” Before he could reply, she said, “Keep an eye out for Evanton. I think we’re going to need him.”
* * *
The familiar raised his wing to cover Grethan’s eyes again as Kaylin slid out from behind the other. He bit her hair and smacked her face—twice—to let her know just how smart he thought this was. He also tucked his tail, tightly, around her neck. “Grethan didn’t fall through the world when you removed your wing,” she reminded the squawky pest. “And you’re hardly likely to be able to stop me from falling at that size.”
She regretted the words the minute they left her mouth, and pretended they hadn’t. Grethan was calmer, but true calm was not going to return until they had at least found Evanton.
“What—what do you see?” he asked her.
She was asking herself that, as well. She had walked the gray space between worlds before. She tried to remember the experience, because it was a lot like this—and yet, nothing like it. Nightshade had torn a hole in the world—a literal tear—to free her before she was eaten by the thing the gray space contained.
“Kaylin?”
“Still here,” she said. But she had no idea where “here” was. The ground—if it was ground—felt slippery but hard, like wet mud. She couldn’t see it. She couldn’t see her own feet. She couldn’t see the shrines, the grass, the braziers; she couldn’t see the path that led to the small stone hut that could be the size of a mansion—on the inside.
She couldn’t see the shrouded gray of nowhere, either. The air was oddly luminescent. There was no horizon, no landscape. Even the light, folding in on itself like short auroras of color, did not suggest distance or geography. This was not where Teela and Tain were.
“We need to find Evanton,” Kaylin said. She could feel Grethan’s arm in hers, but wasn’t surprised to note that she couldn’t see him. “I think you’re going to have to take the lead here.”
If Grethan answered, she couldn’t hear him. Then again, she wasn’t certain her words had reached him, either.
“Why,” a familiar voice said, “are you just standing there? Teela says hi, by the way.”
Kaylin turned toward the sound of Mandoran’s voice. She wasn’t particularly surprised to discover that the Barrani, at least, was visible.
* * *
“Teela’s about ready to give up,” he added, with so much cheer Kaylin knew she wasn’t giving up on survival.
“Your name?”
“Got it in one. She hates the idea—but she hates the idea that she has no other way of reaching you more. I suggested she give you her name, but she said it would be a conflict of interest.”
“What?”
“She’s a Hawk, she’s not going to give up her job and she’s your superior.”
“If she gave me her name, though—”
“She doesn’t think it would make much of a difference. She’d still be the one in power.”
Barrani arrogance made Kaylin want to scream. “Why are you even here?”
“I could see the hall. I could walk across it—but not easily. I didn’t expect the Garden to just let me in—but Grethan didn’t close the door, and apparently, unseen doors don’t work the way the normal ones do.”
“What do you see now?” she demanded.
“You. Clearly. I mean it. You look exactly the same as you always look: dirty, cranky and clumsy. Emphasis on cranky.”
“Where is Annarion?”
“He’s on the other end of the rope, theoretically. It’s not a long rope.”
“Fine. Can you see Evanton?”
“No.”
“More looking, less talking.”
He snapped a pretty sharp salute, and Kaylin didn’t bother to tell him all the ways in which the gesture itself was incorrect.
* * *
She didn’t understand time. She didn’t understand space, not as it applied to layers. But it was clear to her, as she followed Mandoran, that the space she was now in was layered in some way; that she could see layers of it, depending on how she looked. No one else could see them without the help of the familiar. But the world itself still existed. Somehow.
Kaylin?
She missed a step. Since she couldn’t even see her feet, this shouldn’t have been surprising.
Nightshade? Nightshade, is that you?
She felt faint disapproval—blending with condescension—which was answer enough. Turning to Mandoran, she said, “I can hear Nightshade!”
Mandoran did not react with excitement.
“Tell Annarion?”
“I did. Gilbert is on his way.”
“Pardon?”
“Gilbert thinks he understands what the difficulty might be. He’s on his way.”
“He can’t bring Kattea with him. Tell him.”
“You’re going to have to tell him yourself,” Mandoran said, turning. Kaylin’s grip on Grethan’s arm tightened as the entirety of the landscape went dark. Gilbert, apparently, had arrived.
* * *
Kaylin said, “What do you see?” to the Barrani beside her.
Mandoran frowned. “I see Gilbert. You?”
“Shadow.” And it was. The faint iridescence of moving chaos had become embedded in a growing darkness. Kaylin had seen this before. She had never seen it from the inside, but she had seen what it had done to people who had.
Every instinct in her screamed to run—or fight. The small dragon smacked her, hard, with his wing. It was purely to get her attention; he didn’t leave the wing over her eye. And to be fair to him, it worked: he got her attention.
Mandoran’s eyes, she realized, were like the rest of the surroundings. They looked like...liquid Shadow. She couldn’t tell if this was just a reflection of the environment, but she doubted it. Strongly. She knew he could be an impulsive, feckless, condescending idiot—but she wasn’t afraid of him. She wasn’t certain that she could be.
Severn—I don’t think Grethan can hear me.
He can’t.
Can he hear you?
Yes. He is shouting for Evanton. I suggest—
Got it.
“EVANTON! EVANTON!” She stopped. “It just occurs to me—if he’s actually alive and he’s not trapped and he’s doing something finicky, that’s going to piss him off.”
“Too late.”
* * *
Angry, cranky Evanton was the definition of No Fun Whatsoever—but the relief Kaylin felt at the pinched irritation of his voice made the risk of actually encountering him up close and personal seem tiny.
“Evanton?”
“I heard you the first time.”
“Can you—can you see me?”
“I can see something moving, yes.”
“Great, keep talking. We’re kind of walking around in darkness here.”
“She’s walking around in darkness,” Mandoran said, correcting her.
“Mandoran. Kaylin thought it was a good idea to bring you here?”
“Actually, technically, Gilbert wanted us to tag along, and the Arkon brought us here because Kaylin insisted on visiting you before we went to the actual disaster.”
It was hard to forget the visceral fear that had driven her here when her friends were in unknown trouble. She pushed them out of the way—barely—and said, “The water shouldn’t have been able to rain—or flood—your store.” As she walked in the direction of his voice, the dark outline of the Keeper finally resolved itself, as if he were simply part of the Shadow that had chosen to solidify.
“Yes.”
“I think the water—the water that brought Kattea and Gilbert here because it could—exists in a place where there is no Garden. In the future that Gilbert and Kattea come from, the water wasn’t confined.”
“You have spoken to the elemental water outside of this garden before.”
She nodded. “One of those places was beneath Castle Nightshade—which is where Kattea and Gilbert met the water. But...the water brought something of itself from Kattea’s time, and I think that something is the reason containment of water has become...difficult?”
“Difficult is too mild a word. The water is attempting to communicate something to me, and I am clearly unable to translate.”
“Did the water do this?”
“No.”
“Then what—”
“I did it,” Evanton replied. “If you refer to the phasing here, it’s a choice I had to make. There is something that is attempting to attack the foundational stability of the Garden in ways you cannot perceive.”
Gilbert said, “I can.”
“I thought,” Evanton said, “you might be here.” There was a thread of very, very dry humor running through his colossal understatement. “Is Grethan with you?”
Kaylin answered. “I’ve attached myself to his arm; he’s probably having circulation problems. If I—if I let him go, will he be where we are?”
“Where does he think he is?”
“In the Garden. The normal Garden. I can see it if I look through my familiar’s wing—and that’s what he’s doing now.”
“Are you certain?”
“I was, when I walked in.” She poked the small dragon; he snapped at her finger, but not hard enough to draw blood. His annoyance didn’t prevent him from lifting his spare wing and setting it against Kaylin’s upper face, however. She saw Evanton, standing in the rock garden, his apron askew, his robes of office absent. Mandoran vanished, as did any evidence of Gilbert and his innate darkness.
“Grethan, can you see Evanton now?”
Grethan’s entire body relaxed. Answer enough.
She asked the familiar to lift his wing from Grethan’s view. The Tha’alani tensed again.
“Now?” Kaylin asked.
He squinted. “...Yes. Yes, I can see him now. He looks like a shadow.” She then asked the familiar to let her see without his wing, and he folded it in silence.
A pale Grethan stood by her side in a dark and almost featureless landscape. The only thing the two views had in common, beside some variant of Evanton, were the stones of the rock garden. But not all of the stones.
Here, there were four, like little monoliths
. Kaylin walked Grethan to Evanton; the older man caught the younger man by the shoulder and moved him into a position that was central to the standing stones. She asked the Keeper one question. “Is there a reason you’re in the rock garden?”
“Yes.”
“Do you have time to explain it to me? I think—I think it could be important.”
If he did, the explanation would have to wait. “Grethan, you will not be able to return if things do not go well here. I am not,” he added, “expecting that things will go well. I believe there would be a home for you in the Tha’alani quarter—”
Grethan shook his head, his face flushing.
“Yes, there will be anger. There are always consequences for ill-considered actions. But the Tha’alaan is aware that you saved that child’s life. If there is anger over the part you played in her kidnapping, there is also gratitude. I believe Ybelline would accept you into the Tha’alaan; she would become your water in the outside world.”
He shook his head again. “I learned to hear and remember and experience life in a way that Tha’alani don’t. It’s too late—and I don’t want my life to be part of theirs. I think it would hurt them.”
Kaylin shook her head. “They have the lives of warlords in their past. There’s nothing you’ve done that compares to the pain of those memories.”
Evanton cleared his throat. “If, however, you are determined to remain, come stand where I’m standing and do not move until I tell you to move.”
Kaylin, however, understood. “He wants you to leave,” she said quietly. “He wants you safe. You found the Garden on your own. The Garden let you in without Evanton’s permission. If something happens to Evanton here, you can find your way in again.”
But Grethan shook his head, his eyes dark and shadowed. “There will be no Garden,” he said. “The water said that the Garden will be broken and lost.”
Chapter 25
“Grethan!”
Grethan jumped at the change in Evanton’s voice. He moved to Evanton’s side. “You see the stones,” he said.
So did Kaylin. There were four in all. Not three, as there had been in the basement of the house on the Winding Path. “Is the number significant?” she asked.
Cast in Honor Page 36
