Yes, Kaylin. Yes, and no, as you must now understand. The fiefs exist because the Towers could contain those living within their boundaries. But the fiefs of Kattea’s experience are dangerously unstable. She has not spoken of all of it; I am not sure she is even aware of the differences, although she will grow to be so. There are four stones in the Garden.
Yes.
There are five cages, in your time.
The Devourer.
Yes, Kaylin. But he, too, is not what he was. He has heard our voices, and Evanton’s voice. He sleeps. When he wakes—and he will wake—the Towers will not be proof against him. It was always, and only, a matter of time for the small pocket of your world that remains. For Kattea and her kin. For the Barrani. She hesitated. The worlds the Devourer destroyed were all part of your world, in some fashion.
Kaylin’s head began to hurt.
The way in which they were connected is through time. But time, for many beings, is flexible. It can be manipulated. Such manipulations are not guaranteed to destroy. Think of creation as a vast plane. It seems endless. It is endless. You cannot see its beginning; you cannot see its end. You can dig. You can build. You may build a city. A country.
But you cannot take the whole of the plane and fold it.
...
The Keeper’s Garden is built on a foundation of elements and emptiness. Out of this, the natural order arises in this world.
Other worlds have different—
Yes, of course.
Even the ones that are part of that plane?
Yes, of course. When the plane is folded, it wakes—or once woke—Gilbert and his kin. He flattens it. It is what he does. He can see the plane as it extends through layers of time—but each layer must be distinct, its own. The layers do not contain him; he can pass between them, at need.
If the perturbation is concise, distinct, if it does not materially alter the shape of the plane, it is possible to ignore or overlook. Or to miss. But that is not, I think, what occurred here. What occurred here did not fold the plane—my appearance did.
What occurred here? Kaylin paused. Stopped. Thought about three non-corpses, three stones which must have been meant as anchors, and Arcanists. She hated Arcanists. The familiar—still in his most common form—bit her ear. Clearly, this was not the time for ranting, even if she kept it to herself.
“They didn’t fold the plane,” she said aloud, which probably caused some confusion to everyone who wasn’t the elemental water. “They just cut a chunk out of it. Or they tried to cut a chunk out of it—and they’re trying to anchor it, somehow. The chunk.”
“Yes,” Gilbert replied. “That is what I believe occurred. I do not know the reason for the attempt. Perhaps it is not about immortality as you define it. Perhaps it is...more.”
“What was this building supposed to do? Do you even know?”
The Arkon said, “I think that largely irrelevant.”
“But if we know what it was supposed to do, if we understand how it was supposed to work—”
“Private, your grasp of subtlety is nonexistent. It is almost a negative. When I say irrelevant, what I mean is forbidden.”
“Forbidden?” Mandoran asked, voice cooler.
“By Imperial Decree.”
“You’re the Emperor now, are you?”
“I am the keeper of the archives; things ancient within the boundaries of the city are my responsibility, by Imperial Decree.”
Gilbert said, as if the Arkon had not spoken, “We have assumed this is a matter of time. I do not believe this is necessarily accurate, given the lack of overall disturbance. But there are other factors involved in this plane you call your world. There are actions the Ancients could take that you cannot take. You are Chosen, but you are confined, in all ways, by the limits of your state.
“The Ancients were not. I am not. You see me, now, as I am—but you cannot see all of me. Nothing I could do to you would permit it. Mandoran and Annarion can see more—but it is that ability that makes their existence so tenuous in your world. They are trying...to invert themselves. Do you understand?”
“You mean—invert themselves the way you inverted yourself to talk to Nightshade?”
“Yes.”
“Uh, that’s not how we see it,” Mandoran cut in.
“No?” The eyes—even the ones on Kaylin’s arms—swiveled to try to get a glimpse of Mandoran.
“Definitely not.”
But Kaylin said, “Do you think that someone like me—or Teela, or the Arkon—is trying to invert themselves in the opposite direction?”
“I fear that is very much the case. I do not know how Annarion or Mandoran came to be who, or what, they are, but it is not, in my opinion, something that you could survive. Not even as Chosen.”
“So...the person who did this is probably dead, and we’re left with the disaster?”
“I do not know. I do not know who did this. I can make guesses as to why—but it is my supposition that they sought to be free of all confines.”
“Which means?”
Mandoran snorted in derision. “They wanted to be gods.”
Kaylin, looking at the eyes on her shirtsleeve and the swirling Shadow tendrils that seemed to be the whole of what Gilbert now was, said, “I bet it’s overrated.”
“I don’t know. We’re not gods. We have trouble being whatever it is we now are. Gilbert?”
“Yes.”
“The door’s not getting any closer.”
“No. No, it is not. Please brace yourselves.”
The Arkon grunted.
The familiar said something in a language Kaylin didn’t recognize. The meaning, however, was plain. Just use Leontine, she told him. That’s what the rest of us do.
It does not come to me as naturally. Forgive me any pain I cause you.
* * *
Kaylin had time to brace herself, but only barely. Many things seemed to happen in a frenzied rush, but they were each distinct enough that she could catalog them.
First: the water roared. The sound was similar to Dragon roaring, but it resonated in a different way. Possibly because the water was in her ears. Literally. The Avatar lost form and shape as it rushed up Kaylin’s arm to surround her in a moving pillar. Kaylin didn’t even have time to hold her breath.
Second: Gilbert reached for the door. He reached with a multitude of tendrils, each of which ended in an eye. Kaylin could see the eyes dissolve, and wasn’t squeamish enough—barely—to look away or close her own. It was as if the door was exactly what it appeared to be: a chalk drawing on cobbled stone. Flat and unreal.
Gilbert’s eyes were crushed; Kaylin swore she could hear them squelching.
Third: the door moved. Under the locomotion of tentacles of creeping Shadow, it moved—directly toward where Kaylin now stood. Protect the Arkon! she thought desperately to the elemental water.
The water expanded. It expanded to encompass him, just as the door hit with the force of an Arcane bomb.
* * *
Kaylin was very, very, very grateful that Severn had chosen to remain with Kattea—because if he hadn’t, Kattea would be here. She would be at the heart of the explosion, because that was where Gilbert was.
She would be at the very center of the expanding wave of something that was like Shadow, but paler, brighter and harsher. Water streamed away, as if the column that had protected Kaylin from the impact was wounded badly. Kaylin’s arms were glowing a brilliant gold. She hadn’t released the water’s hand; her own still clutched it as if it were still in that form.
She instinctively tried to heal the water.
The familiar squealed in her ear. He didn’t speak, but clearly she was about to be so stupid she didn’t deserve actual words. She cursed him in gurgling Leontine and held on to the wa
ter as if her life depended on it.
“Remind me,” the Arkon said, his voice very watery, “that I am never to be involved with one of your excursions again. It makes me angry.”
For once, Dragon anger was not the biggest threat in the room. And room was entirely the wrong word for it. It was a space, yes—but it wasn’t confined by walls or ceiling, or even a visible floor. Nor was it empty.
Kaylin, the familiar said. Close your eyes. Now. Before she could—and honestly, closing her own eyes should have been simple—he reached around her face with his wings and covered them.
The wings did not instantly ease the pressure of sight. Around her in a swirl of motion were faces, bodies, crowds; she could not pick out a single person because they moved so quickly that they were a blur. But even as a blur, she could recognize basic shape, basic form. She could see wings, eyes, skin color, limbs—even fur. She could gain a basic sense of height, of age; she could hear a plethora of voices, some raised, some muted.
And she realized that this was what had existed to either side of the strange corridor they had been walking. She had been told not to look. She wondered if looking now would have the same effect as turning would have had then; it would be so easy to be lost here.
But the water was in her hands, the familiar on her shoulder, the sound of an extremely disgruntled Dragon at her back. Something touched her gently—gently enough, carefully enough, that she didn’t react violently.
“Kitling.”
“Teela!” She turned then. Or she tried to turn. The small dragon’s wings were incredibly strong; she couldn’t move her head.
Mandoran cursed. In Leontine. “Grab Tain!” he shouted. Kaylin could hear his voice so clearly that the sound of the moving throng—the continually moving, dizzying crowd—was almost silent. She clung to the sound of his voice.
“I can’t— He can’t hear me!” Annarion’s voice.
Kaylin was suddenly very, very afraid for Bellusdeo and Sanabalis. Because she suddenly understood that they must be here, as well.
Kaylin, close your eyes.
Bellusdeo and Sanabalis were here, among the hundreds. The thousands. The tens of thousands, even. They were here in every second of the whole stretch of their lives, compressed and overlapping. She had the sickening sense that she had to grab them. But she could only grab one of them, one each, and there were too many.
Kaylin. Your eyes.
And she understood, then, that these were the layers of which Gilbert had spoken; that every time, every second of time, was in some fashion its own discrete identity. That she existed in all of them, but that she could not live aware of each and every one. It would destroy her. She couldn’t see past the blur; couldn’t hear past the noise. She couldn’t move without colliding with someone or something.
And she understood, as well, that in this throng, if she concentrated, she had to find one Bellusdeo. One Sanabalis. One Maggaron. And they had to be the ones that belonged where she belonged, in the same when, the same now. But it was worse than that. Because more than just Bellusdeo and Sanabalis and Maggaron were trapped here.
Teela. Tain.
Anyone who had lived or worked on the Winding Path. Most of those people were people she did not know and had never met. Most of those people were not yet aware of where they were or what had happened—but as she watched, as she failed to close her eyes, she realized that they were becoming aware. They didn’t see as she saw—but they saw something. The tide of voices turned to confusion, and from there, to panic.
Panic was never good in a crowd. And this crowd was endless, eternal. It went on forever.
She wasn’t sure when the first death happened.
She wasn’t certain when it spread. But it did spread. She could see blood. Could hear screams. Could only stand, helpless, while the world spun and spun and spun.
* * *
Kaylin.
Severn. Severn’s voice. And Nightshade’s. They overlapped—but each voice was singular. It was not a crowd of voices. It was not multiple Severns or multiple Nightshades. They were on the outside. They were the people she had known. They were not every possible person she might know or could know at every stage of their lives or her own.
They were the people with whom she had a known history. She wanted to weep.
Can you see it? she asked them. Can you see what I see?
Yes. Again, they answered in concert.
Nightshade said, The disturbance has not spread to the fiefs. I am, however, unable to use the mirror network within the Castle.
She nodded. I think—I think we’ve been walking in the mirror network.
Doubt, from Nightshade.
Cautious, surprised agreement from Severn.
What did Gilbert do?
I—I’m not sure. I think he may have collapsed the network completely. I don’t understand how, or why, but—something was done to the network and its power, and I think... Gilbert could make halls or paths out of it.
The world around her became silent as she spoke.
She opened her eyes. She couldn’t remember closing them; she could remember being nagged to close them. She almost closed them again. She stood in the streets of her city. The street itself, the cobbled stones, had a curious, blurry quality. The bodies did not. They were stacked; they overlapped; they should have been a mountain of corpses. And they were, but they occupied the same space.
There was no clear path from this street to the house in which the theoretical murders had taken place, and Gilbert made it clear that he intended to climb over them.
Kaylin had seen corpses before. She had never seen a battlefield.
“Mandoran?”
“Here.” She turned, or tried to turn; the familiar bit her.
“Oh for hells’ sake, you stupid—” She bit back the words, because she could, once again, see Gilbert—and she decided that she did not need to see Mandoran and Annarion. Gilbert, in the great, carved halls beneath the city, had looked like the epitome of a one-off Shadow: tentacled, walking death. In the streets of Elantra, now, it was worse.
He didn’t climb over the bodies that littered the streets in uncountable numbers.
He ate his way through them. She could hear every bite, every swallow. Her hands were on her daggers; her arms glowed. So did Gilbert’s many eyes, because the damn things were still attached to her.
* * *
She looked at the eyes while Gilbert’s very disturbing meal continued. One part of her brain told her to calm the hell down: the people were dead. They couldn’t feel pain, and they didn’t care what happened to their bodies. It wasn’t as if they could use them for anything, anymore.
The other part of her brain was actually working.
“Gilbert,” she said while she looked at one of the many eyes. “I need you to find my friends.”
“Your friends?” he said. He swallowed. She really, really wanted to be sick.
“Bellusdeo. Sanabalis. Maggaron. I think Mandoran has Teela. And I think Teela has Tain.”
“And the rest?”
She said nothing for one long breath. “And the rest. But I don’t know them. I can’t tell you who to look for.”
“No, Chosen.” The eye to which she’d been directing most of this conversation began to blink rapidly. “But it is not necessary. I am not what I was when you first encountered me.”
He certainly wasn’t. The creature that he had become couldn’t fit in his house, for one. “What you did for me, as Chosen, was necessary, and I thank you.” The eye rose from her shirt. So did the rest of the eyes. “But what I must do cannot be done while I am so confined.”
As he spoke, he rose, and rose again, until the skies were all of Shadow, and eyes. He descended upon the house in which the murders—the non-murders—had taken place. A
nd he froze part of the way there, in midmotion.
“This...is not good,” Mandoran said, from behind her.
The Arkon roared. There were words in it. Kaylin turned, and this time, the familiar did not attempt to prevent it.
A golden Dragon reared its very large body in a street with a lot fewer corpses, and roared again.
And another Dragon answered.
* * *
“Bellusdeo!” Kaylin shouted. The bodies that had been a mountain and a nightmare were sparser now. Kaylin could see the house in which the three men had first been discovered. The front of the house was irrelevant; the Arkon breathed, and fire turned it to ash and melted stone almost instantly.
“Arkon—stop—”
He roared again. Kaylin said, to the familiar, “Stop him from destroying the house—”
Stop him from attempting to enter it, Kaylin.
Her brows rose in outrage. The Arkon was full-on Dragon; she was full-on Kaylin. She couldn’t stop him from walking across a street when he was in human form; she had no chance—at all—of stopping him if he decided to go on a rampage.
Stop him; it is not safe.
“For him or for me?”
For any of us.
Bellusdeo is there—
Yes.
Kaylin nodded. “Arkon! Bellusdeo is in the house; if you destroy it, we’ll lose her!” She wasn’t actually certain that this was true. But she was certain it was the only way to catch his attention. And it worked. Of course, this meant she had the full attention of a red-eyed, raging Dragon.
“Gilbert?”
Silence.
She looked at her hand. It was wet, but the water was now absent. All that remained of what had been a pillar was...two eyes. She could no longer hear the water’s voice. She could no longer hear the voices of anyone who wasn’t actually standing in the street beside her. Well, plus Severn and Nightshade.
The two eyes the water had taken had not returned to Gilbert. They floated at roughly eye level, as if they were still part of the nonexistent element. As she repeated Gilbert’s name, they swiveled to look at her.
“Were you trying to destroy the house? Or preserve it?”
Cast in Honor Page 40
