Evanton frowned.
“The number of stones.”
“These have words,” Evanton replied. “At their base. And before you ask, no, I am not turning them over for your inspection.” Instead, he spoke, his voice low and resonant; it might have been a Dragon voice, given the way it carried.
Words appeared in the air above each of the four stones, and Kaylin recognized them instantly, although she only knew two: fire and water. The other two, air and earth, she had never attempted to use. She understood the purpose of these stones.
No, she thought, that was wrong. “Evanton, why do you have these stones? I mean, why are they here and why couldn’t you hear or see us until we were practically standing on top of them?”
“They are the foundation of my garden,” he replied. “They are...tent pegs, driven into the fundamental layer of reality in which we live. They are not cages,” he added, “but containers; the words at their base are words given willingly, and written by the elements. Water as you drink it, water in your wells, water when it is not summoned, exists. It exists as part of the world, and it is not sentient. The glass of water you drink doesn’t think. The water with which you bathe doesn’t think.
“The fire over which you cook, the earth over which you walk—they are part of the elements. They are like—like fingernail cuttings, or the dead skin you scrub off. Within my Garden, the elements are sentient. They are also contained—but understand, Kaylin, that they are ancient, ancient forces. They do not exist in one simple fashion; there is water here. There is water where the familiar guides you to look. There is water in the past and water in the present and there will be water in the future; it persists.
“We persist in a similar way until our deaths—but only on the narrow path of ‘world.’ Pretend the world is like a very fine, many-layered cake. We cannot exist on any layer but the top. Or the bottom. The limitations on our perceptions, the limitations of our physical forms, demand it. There are stories—old stories that perhaps even your Arkon has forgotten. During the time of creation, many creatures were made.
“But many of them could not survive. Just as fish need water, men—and in this, I count all the races that have ever lived in Elantra or beyond its borders—need solidity. They need a fixed place, a living world.
“Worlds were made. They were made like the cages small rodents live in. They were made larger, of course, and the bars were meant to be invisible.
“But the elements you see and touch and summon can live in any layer of existence, and do. What they are in the other layers is—should be—irrelevant to us, here.” He hesitated.
She marked it. In general, Evanton’s hesitations were a sign of growing temper—but this was different.
“Mandoran does not live the way Teela lives, although he is trying. He can walk, speak, think, in dimensions to which he was not born. It is why the water reacted so poorly when he visited the Garden the first time.”
“It’s not doing that now.”
“No. It cannot see him now.”
“I don’t know what you’ve done to the Garden, but we need to know how it works.”
Evanton, in shadow, could still somehow stare a hole through her. “Do you think this is something I do regularly? Perhaps you are unaware of the term emergency? Perhaps—”
Grethan caught his master’s arm.
“Your Garden isn’t the only place in the city that’s functionally disappeared. A space like this—very like this—exists in the center of the Winding Path. And it’s growing. We need to stop it.” She hesitated. “The water told you what happens in the future. The city is destroyed—or at least the Tha’alani quarter is. Gilbert is here—no, Kattea is here, from the future after that destruction.
“I have no idea where here is,” she continued. “But...I can hear Nightshade. He’s alive.”
“You could not hear him until you entered this space?”
“No.” She hesitated. “Does this mean we’re somehow outside of...time?”
* * *
Kaylin.
The voice was stronger. It dispelled doubt. It was Nightshade.
What...is happening? Where are you?
Look, she told him.
I am. I see darkness. I see...shadow. My brother?
He’s somewhere safe. Well, safer. Do you know the date?
Silence. She filled the silence with a furious rush of information. Nightshade didn’t interrupt her; he had no need. What her words couldn’t convey, her thoughts did. But she felt his growing uneasiness.
Kaylin, who is Gilbert?
She froze. Gilbert. You met him in Ravellon.
I am not foolhardy enough to enter Ravellon unless at great need.
Silence then. It took Kaylin a moment to reorient herself. Or Nightshade. Where are you?
I am in my Castle. It is...difficult to maneuver here.
Andellen?
I...do not...know. Nor, at the moment, did he appear to care. Who is Gilbert? he asked again.
She told him. Or tried to tell him. His frustration grew. Whatever she was telling him, he couldn’t understand. She tried again. She tried to visualize Gilbert as she’d seen him when she’d healed him. She knew she was speaking, knew she was thinking, could visualize it herself. But Nightshade couldn’t hear her when she did.
Nightshade was no longer uneasy; she thought he was afraid.
“Evanton, are we outside of time?”
Gilbert, however, answered. “You cannot be outside of time,” he replied. “Were you, you would be very like your fish out of water. You would die.” As he spoke, darkness condensed until it resembled a silhouette of Gilbert. He looked much like Evanton did, to the unmasked eye.
“Would it be instant?”
“Very close. Perhaps the fish analogy is incorrect.” He approached Kaylin, Kattea in his arms. Kattea, unlike Gilbert or Evanton, looked like her normal self. She was pale but silent, and her fingers, where they gripped Gilbert, were white-knuckled. She looked through Kaylin, her eyes blinking rapidly.
“Kattea?”
“She cannot hear you,” Gilbert said gently. “I do not have the gifts that your familiar does. She is...safe, with me. But she perceives only darkness. She does not speak, and she doesn’t see or hear.”
Kaylin could see nothing in this darkness as clearly as Gilbert’s eyes. There were the three he’d been left with when she’d healed him.
And there were the dozens that she had gently closed. They surrounded him like a swarm of moths might surround the fire that would kill them.
She’d thought that this darkness, this shadow, this swirl of gloom and fog, were familiar. She now knew why. They reminded her of Gilbert’s rooms. Of Gilbert’s endless rooms. They reminded her of the darkness in which she’d found—and closed—his eyes.
She had called it healing. But when she’d finished, she had no better idea of what Gilbert actually was. She didn’t have that now, either. But she watched as Gilbert’s eyes—the ones not immediately attached to his face—began to open.
“Gilbert—don’t—”
He smiled. The light from his embedded eyes revealed his familiar face, although the rest of his body remained in darkness. The unattached eyes did not stop opening; lids curled up and vanished. This was not comforting.
“I believe I understand some part of what has occurred here. Keeper, we have disturbed you in your very necessary work.”
“But—”
“No, Kaylin. This choice is not the choice your Keeper would have made had it not been for the recursion of the water. It is a choice he must make if your city is to have any chance of survival. But you—and I—have other tasks. I understand now.”
Kaylin wasn’t certain if it was Nightshade’s fear or her own that made thinking difficult. She hated fear.
What good was it? If Evanton’s Garden was—tenuously—in Evanton’s hands, the rest of the city wasn’t. While Evanton tended to the Garden, in whatever form it currently existed, the Winding Path waited.
And time. Time had passed. Breathe, idiot. Time had passed, but if Gilbert was right, what Evanton was doing now bought them more of it. The regular, garden-variety version that Kaylin actually lived in.
“Evanton, how do we get to your basement?”
“My what?”
“Your basement. The hall is gone. I guess it’s here, wherever this is. But beneath the hall I could see the basement—and it’s not much of a basement.”
Silence.
“There are halls—there are stone halls. They’re a hell of a lot wider than your actual hall, and you could probably ride an army through them without threatening the stability of the floor.”
More silence.
“Grethan, tell him.”
Grethan, however, was silent, as well. His silence, on the other hand, didn’t last. “There—there were no halls. I mean, I didn’t see them.”
Figures. Kaylin poked the familiar. The familiar pretended she didn’t exist. “We’re leaving—if we can. But if you’ve got some sort of mirror access here, don’t use it.”
“Is there difficulty with the mirrors?”
“Severe difficulty, actually. And no, before you ask, we have no idea what it is. But in their future memories, Ybelline and the Tha’alanari made a last stand in the long house. They cast a barrier spell of some sort—one meant to repel elements—and it worked. It was the use of the mirror that killed them. Something came through the mirror, which was on the inside of their defenses.”
“Noted.”
“We’re leaving Grethan with you.”
* * *
Gilbert’s eyes continued to open, but they opened slowly. “Are you sure you should be doing that?” Kaylin demanded, in as much of a whisper as she could.
“I am not certain to what you refer.”
“You’re opening all your eyes.”
Squawk. Squawk.
Gilbert smiled. It was the wrong kind of smile. “It is necessary, Kaylin. We must find our way back to the store.”
The ground still felt like mud beneath her feet. “I can reach Nightshade here.”
“Yes. That is not necessarily a good sign.”
“Gilbert...”
“Yes?”
“...I don’t think he knows who you are.”
“Yes. Come, Kaylin.”
“I’m following, but I don’t understand—he thinks he’s in his Castle.”
“Yes.”
Understanding, when it came, was fractured. “You think—I’m speaking to him before whatever emergency occurred that caused the Castle to expel him.”
“Yes.”
“But—”
“He was not meant to live in Ravellon; not as it is currently constituted. There was a time—” He shook his head. “But no.”
“But you said you were trying to find a way to bring him back.”
“Even so.”
“Gilbert—you wanted to help him because he became your friend.”
“Yes.”
“I don’t understand.”
“No, you do not. What confuses you now?”
“If we can reach Nightshade now, he’ll never go to Ravellon. He’ll never meet you. You’ll never—”
“Yes. Yes, Kaylin. The only way back, for your Nightshade, is now. If we resolve the difficulty before it engulfs your city, the Castle will release him. He will be, as he once was, Lord of Nightshade.”
“And you?”
“I do not understand your question.”
It was Mandoran who answered. Of course. Kaylin understood only half of what he said.
“I will return to Ravellon.”
“But he won’t be there.”
“I do not know.”
“You’re lying.”
“Yes. The Arkon is impatient.”
“The Arkon is always impatient.” She picked up the pace, trusting Gilbert.
Mandoran kicked her ankle; she turned to glare, and he whispered, “He knows what he’s doing. He’s made his choice. No, it’s not a happy choice—but immortals are accustomed to that. All of us. Leave it?”
She opened her mouth.
Annarion—who wasn’t even present—added, “Please.” The desperate tone of his voice hit her, hard.
She closed her mouth. Next topic. “Why do you look like Shadow?”
“I do not know what you see when you look at me. I am certain that what I see of you is not what you see of yourself. When you speak of Shadow—or when Kattea does—she refers in large part to what she calls Ferals.”
She would.
“But, Kaylin, the Shadow of which you speak exists in you, as well. It is not so large a component as exists in me, but it is unfettered.”
He must have seen her expression with one of his floating eyes, because all she could see was his back and he didn’t have eyes in it. “The Shadow in you is slight and unrestrained. In me, it is contained, confined. It is a necessary component of my existence. It gives me...flexibility.”
“But the Towers were created to guard against Shadow.”
“Yes.”
“And the Shadows in Ravellon—”
“Yes. It is complicated. Shadow as it exists in me has no will. In you, it has no will; you are in control of most of your actions. You require sustenance. You require rest. You do not classify these as particular weaknesses. If, in sleep, a differing sentience arose, you would. Change is a fundament of your world. If you could not change, you could not exist. Time is the allowable axis around which that change revolves.”
Time. Again.
“Change was revered, before I, and my kin, were created. What you classify as Shadow is ancient. It was the work of many and its existence, the cause of many debates. Perhaps you would call them wars, if you could witness them at all; I do not think you could.”
“Could we?” Mandoran asked.
“It is possible you could perceive it. You are not as Kaylin is. But it is not relevant, at least not now. The malleability of Shadow was considered a gift; it was a medium in which much that had been impossible became possible. It was not, itself, sentient. But in the way of things, Shadow itself could alter what could not otherwise be altered.”
Kaylin frowned. After a pause, she said, “The words?”
“Yes, Kaylin. The words. The words that gave life, even to those who were of Shadow. They could not destroy the words, of course—but they could, with time, alter their construction, and in so doing, change the meaning. I do not believe this was the intent of their creators, and at first, it was not seen as a threat; it was...new. Unexpected. A surprise. Not all such surprises are pleasant.
“I was created long after. I was not meant to police the Shadows, or even to guard directly against them; that was not my function. Only where their actions crossed my directives did I seek to destroy them. Kattea has said she hates Shadow.”
“Who doesn’t?”
“I do not. It is what it is. It is, in the end, the sum of its experiences. Does it destroy? Yes. But so do the Towers and the Guardians. It is not personal.”
“And are Shadows involved in this?”
“No. Not directly, and perhaps not at all.”
“Then what is?”
“Shall we see?” He took one step forward, and as Kaylin followed, the world reasserted itself. Annarion, Severn and the Arkon waited. Annarion gave her a tiny nod of acknowledgment; his eyes were blue. Blue and...gold. It was a very striking combination.
“We found Evanton,” she said—to the Dragon. “And I think we need to take a differe
nt road to the Winding Path.”
“What exactly does that mean?”
“See those halls?” She pointed to the spherical absence that had once been worn, wooden flooring.
The Arkon frowned.
“We need to go there.”
* * *
She lost Nightshade when she regained sight of the rest of the world. She noticed his absence instantly. “I don’t understand time.”
“No. But you are not meant to understand it except in one way. You follow time; you are captive to it.” This was not the usual variant on the inferiority of mortals; Gilbert didn’t seem capable of genuine condescension.
Kaylin nodded. Severn fell in beside her. “We’re looking for stairs,” she said. “Down.”
“My function is not to preserve you or your kind. That is, perhaps, the function of what you call the Towers.”
“The Towers don’t—”
“They have their limits and their instructions, yes. Within the confines of the Tower—as with Helen—they are...elastic. They have enlarged functionality. But their confines are very, very strictly drawn, very strictly contained. It was not always so,” he added. He looked as if he would say more, but fell silent as he glanced at Kattea.
Kattea said, “I’m better at finding stairs than you are.”
“This is true.”
“Put me down.”
“I do not wish to lose you, Kattea.”
“You’re the one who gets lost all the time.” She squirmed her way out of Gilbert’s arms, and he let her go. She then took off for the kitchen and paused to grab something from the table before heading out into the mess of a storefront.
“She’s eating your cookies,” Severn observed.
“Hey!”
The Arkon coughed. “They’re probably stale, anyway,” Kaylin muttered. To Gilbert, she said, “So...back to your function.”
“My function is simply to preserve the structural integrity of time.”
“Is that why the water was afraid you would destroy her?”
“Yes.”
“But you’re not going to destroy her.”
“No.”
“Would you have?”
Cast in Honor Page 37
