His name tugged at memory, forming syllables that she could not actually speak when anyone could hear them.
“But you have not tried.”
She shook her head. What would be the point?
He frowned. “I am not considered unpowerful, among my kind. It is seldom that the attempt to use power is considered pointless.”
“I’m not Barrani.”
“No. And you are not—entirely—human. But you seem to be cold.”
She was. “And wet.”
“Yes. I would have considered it ill-advised to leap down the well,” he added. “But I will not question your decision. It brought you here.”
“I think—I’ll be able to enter the normal way from now on.”
“Kaylin—”
She lifted a hand. “I need to find Donalan Idis,” she told him. “That’s why I came.”
“You will not find him this eve. And I suggest that before you start chattering like a waif, you repair to your rooms above. There is much here that I have left untouched, and my power this far beneath the surface does not always go unchallenged.”
“You don’t sound like that bothers you.”
He shrugged. “It is seldom boring.”
“I could use a little boredom, about now.”
“Care less.”
She was really cold. It was hard to talk through the unfortunate chattering her teeth seemed intent on.
He frowned, and before she could answer—or at least answer in a way that didn’t make her look pathetic—he stepped forward and caught her in his arms, lifting her as if she weighed nothing. If he noticed that she was cold and clammy, he offered no comment as he pushed the door open and began to walk down a long hall.
But as he walked, he said, “I seldom give advice, Kaylin. But if you want boredom, you must care less.”
“About what?”
“About everything.”
“If I care less,” she said, turning her face into the soft fabric of his robe, “Mayalee will die.”
“Yes. But when dealing with mortals you operate from the certainty that regardless of what you do, they will die anyway.”
“I want her to die when she’s old, and on someone else’s watch.”
“Ah. It is only a handful of years.”
“We feel them more keenly.”
“Scarcity often makes things more valuable than they would otherwise intrinsically appear. But it is not only the fate of one child that concerns you now,” he added. “It is not for that reason that you were sent.”
“I wasn’t sent—”
“Not directly, no. That is not the way the Court works.” He stopped outside of a door that looked vaguely familiar. In a bad way. “Come. You must walk through these doors on your own. I cannot bear you.”
She mumbled something ungracious about magic and what could be done with it, but she could more or less stand on her own. Her knees were weak, and the ground seemed to refuse to stay still—but she’d seen worse.
The doors opened as he touched them, rolling back in a grim sort of silence. Beyond them stood trees.
“Yes,” he said, saving her the effort of asking. “You’ve seen these trees before.”
She grimaced; the trees weren’t, at this point, as much of a concern as the glowing frame of the door itself. She’d seen door-wards for most of her life on the right side of the law—but this was worse.
Lord Nightshade stopped and turned. “Kaylin?”
“I can’t help but notice that the doorway is glowing.”
“Ah.”
“Is it going to dump me somewhere else?”
“That depends.”
“On what, exactly?”
“On you.”
He reminded her, at that moment, of every teacher she had ever disliked. But she’d come here for a reason. Squaring her shoulders and clenching her hands into fists, she took a step.
She felt the light as if it were ice; she lost the ability to see the moment she crossed its threshold, taking care to place her foot squarely on the path that led to Nightshade. Her legs froze, her arms were suddenly trapped by her side, and the cold…She bit her lip. She could move enough to do that.
But she didn’t feel the pain of it. It was too minor.
Something didn’t want her to enter the Castle. That much, she could think. The rest of her thoughts were subsumed by ice, by Winter’s heart. The cold could kill. It could kill her, here, and everything she’d ever done would count for nothing.
She forced her hands to move. She wasn’t sure why until they touched the base of her throat, and then she knew.
What is the essence of water?
Closing her eyes, she remembered what lay at the heart of the pendant she had accepted from the ghost of a Dragon lord. A single, complicated character, a series of strokes and crossed hatches and dots, pattern so precise it might take years just to write it.
Writing it wasn’t the point. She stopped struggling to move, and began, instead, to speak. Speaking was far harder than lifting her arms had been. The cold intensified; the ice grew thicker. It was hard to even breathe.
She couldn’t later say what the word was; she couldn’t later repeat it. It wasn’t that kind of word. She wasn’t even sure, in the end, if her lips formed the syllables at all—but she felt them, each one, as if they were an enormous step, a series of hurdles, that she had to clear if she were going to survive.
A spare thought floated past: I hate magic.
And another: Don’t hate it. It’s part of what you are.
And last, at a great remove, a familiar voice: Kaylin. It’s time to wake up now.
The ice was gone. She staggered forward, because staggering backward would mean she might have to do it again. She found the ground with her hands, and it was firm and hard—more rock than dirt, although she could feel the curved roughness of tree roots beneath at least two of her fingers. Her hands were blue. And her arms.
She thought it was because of the cold, until she realized what exactly she was seeing.
The marks.
Her arms were bare.
“Well done,” Lord Nightshade said softly. “I thought you might be lost, there.”
And what would you have done? What would you have done then?
The soft sound of a shrug—yards of fabric, traveling up and down by an inch or two—told her clearly that he had heard what she hadn’t said.
“The Castle will test you,” he told her. “It is your test, to pass or fail.”
She nodded, as if that made sense. Maybe in his world, it did. It was certainly a very Barrani attitude. Before she could say as much, she felt arms under her arms, and she was lifted to her feet, which she still couldn’t feel.
“You’ve become acquainted with the elements,” he said, waiting while she placed her feet more or less beneath the rest of her. She could see that she was wearing a dress that was pale ivory in color; the skirts brushed the ground, obscuring her toes.
“Elements?” She could see the trees now. She could see that she wore something metallic around her waist, something fine and thin.
She felt his frown; she couldn’t see his face. Could see a lock of his hair as it trailed down her shoulder toward her waist. It reminded her, absurdly, of Teela’s hair, when Teela couldn’t be bothered to braid it—it got into everything.
And Kaylin had loved it, as a child new to the Hawks. She could think of herself at that age as a child, now. Teela had let her brush it, sometimes, and braid it, sometimes—always with dire threats of physical pain if she was careless enough to actually pull any of it out.
She hadn’t been joking, either—Kaylin had seen enough of the Barrani Hawks to know that much—but even knowing it, she had done it anyway.
“Elements,” Lord Nightshade was saying.
She tried very hard not to shiver. Not to be cold. She tried to make sense of the single word he’d spoken twice. After a moment, still swaying on her feet, she said, “Water?”
&nb
sp; He said nothing, but she had a suspicion that anything else would have been dripping sarcasm.
“There are many ways to kill with water,” he told her, voice almost gentle. “This is one.”
“Your castle tried to kill me with water?”
“No.”
“But—” She stopped talking and actually looked at the dress. At her arms, which were bare. At her shoulders, which were also bare. No damn wonder she was so cold. “I’ve seen this dress before,” she said in a flat voice.
“Ah.”
“Talk to me,” she added, taking an experimental step forward. Her knees wobbled. Nightshade’s hands were warm. “And either carry me or let go.”
He carried her.
She’d carried children before in the Foundling Halls, sometimes at a run, but never with such graceful ease. Lord Nightshade spoke as he walked, and he walked slowly, the cadence of his words matching the rhythm of his step. She lost the words, sometimes, her lids drifting toward her cheeks, her head nodding forward. But when she opened her eyes again, he was still speaking softly. His voice was not the voice of the Tha’alaan, not the voice of the water. But accompanied by footsteps and breath, it was calming. Soothing.
But he didn’t carry her to her room—or the room that she had stayed in before; he carried her to a long, empty room that was clearly meant for greeting guests. He paused in front of a tall, oval mirror and set her on her feet. Hands on her shoulders, he said, “Look.”
She disliked mirrors on principle. They showed what there was to see, and not what she wanted to believe she looked like. Either that or they interrupted her sleep with the ill-tempered snarls of a disgruntled Leontine.
“It isn’t necessary,” she said, her eyes sliding away from her own gaze. “I know the dress.”
“Where have you seen it before?”
“In the Oracle Hall,” she replied. She turned, slowly, to face him, forcing him to let go of her shoulders. Or to shift position, which was what he chose to do instead. He was much, much taller than she was.
“Where have you seen it before?” she asked him.
His smile was slight, but she thought it genuine. “You are guessing.”
“Am I wrong?”
“No.” His hands lingered a moment on her shoulders, and she didn’t even mind—they were warm. She seemed to have swallowed the ice that had failed to kill her—if that was its goal—and it was hard to stand straight without shivering.
The far doors opened, and a Barrani in armor let himself into the room, carrying, of all things, a tray. Nightshade gestured, and the guard put the tray down on a table near the mirror. He bowed deeply and then retreated, his face entirely free of expression.
“We will eat,” Nightshade said, leading her to a long couch. “And while we eat, you may ask the questions you came here to ask, if any remain to be answered.” But he lifted the cloak from his shoulders as he spoke, and draped it around Kaylin’s, and although he turned it sideways, it settled there as if it had been made for just this moment.
Her hair, however, was still a bedraggled mess.
CHAPTER 18
He sat in a high-backed chair opposite her, pausing only to pour something steaming out of what was, after all, a very shiny, very fancy kettle. Nor were the crystal goblets, or the silver, anywhere to be seen; instead, round and stout earthenware mugs with a handle on either side. He passed one to her; he took nothing for himself.
This should have made her suspicious, but she was tired of suspicion. Tired, in truth, of everything that didn’t involve a few days of solid sleep. And in the mug, steaming, was…milk. Goat’s milk, she thought, although it was hard to tell without drinking it.
Her brows rose when she brought the mug to her lips. “It is milk.”
“I am informed that you drink it.”
“Once in a while,” she managed to say. “When I was young.” Before her mother had died in the fief of Nightshade. Before Severn. She cupped her hands around the sides of the mug and sat there, dwarfed by yards of expensive, sturdy cloth.
“I used to be so afraid of this place,” she told him softly.
“And now?”
“I think…other fears have crowded it out.”
“Your missing child.”
She nodded bleakly.
“You understand that saving this one child will not bring the others back?”
“It won’t add to their voices.”
He nodded. “You came to ask me about Donalan Idis.”
“Yes. Where is he?”
“I am not entirely certain.”
“I was afraid of that. Let me ask you a different question. You had him here—as a guest, since apparently he did walk out. What did he study?”
“Besides the Tha’alani?”
She kept her face carefully neutral. Unfortunately for Kaylin, the less appropriate words were very loudly thought.
Nightshade raised a brow.
“Sorry,” she mumbled. She let the steam rise from the milk, breathing it in as if it were the only air in the room. “Yes, besides that.”
“He was—and is—an elemental mage of some note.”
“Water?”
“All of the elements of which he is aware.”
She nodded. She understood now how he could cut the Tha’alani off from the Tha’alaan—but she wondered if he understood it himself. “And he was invited here because of that?”
“That? No.”
“Then why?”
“He is powerful, Kaylin. The Imperial Order of Mages is beholden to the Emperor, and it is winnowed by the Dragon lords. No one who is interested in power will cultivate associates from the Imperial Order.”
“But what does he have that you want?”
“Ah, a different question.”
“You’re not going to answer it.”
“No. But it is pointless, now. I understand your presence here, at this time. I understand less well the route you were forced to take to enter the Castle—but the water spoke with you. Do not look so surprised—you were still dripping when I met you.
“Whatever it is that was of…interest in Idis is no longer of import. He is too great a threat at the moment, and I cannot see any meeting between the two of you that does not end in either his death or yours.”
“If it’s mine, the city goes with me.”
He raised a dark brow. “You’ve grown arrogant.”
She shook her head. “The Oracles,” she told him.
“And the Dragons?”
She burrowed farther into the folds of his cape, aware that the cloth smelled of him, that it was warm. That it was not a defense. “I can’t answer that.”
“No. But you also visited the Keeper, twice to my knowledge.”
She said nothing because it seemed safest.
“I do not believe that Idis would deign to visit Castle Nightshade at this time.”
“No?” She hadn’t realized that she’d been hoping for precisely this until he took the hope away.
“He cultivated my association because he desired power or the friendship of the powerful. If he is what you fear, then he no longer labors under that desire.”
“But you knew how to reach him?”
“I knew how to reach him.”
“And now?”
“I do not believe he is ready to be found.”
“In as much as an Arcanist is sane, he wants power for a reason, yes?”
Nightshade nodded.
“How does destroying the city we’re pretty certain he’s still living in count as gaining power?”
“It is not clear to me that his desire is Elantra’s destruction.”
She frowned. “That was my next question. What does he stand to gain by it?”
“If it were sacrificial magic, a great deal of power.”
“I don’t think it’s that.”
“I would not be entirely certain. But his past history does not indicate magic of that nature.”
“Then why—” S
he hesitated, studying what little there was of an expression on his face. “You think he doesn’t intend to destroy the city, but that’s what he’ll accomplish.”
“I have not visited the Oracles,” Nightshade replied gently. “But at this moment, that is what you are beginning to think, and I will not gainsay you. Summoning elementals is tricky, even for the powerful. History is littered with the corpses of those who have made that mistake. If that is the case, I am not certain you will be able to control what Idis cannot. Even given your entry into the Castle. In time, Kaylin, I think such control would not be beyond you—”
“We don’t have time,” she said flatly.
“No.” He paused. “The dress you wear—”
“What there is of it.”
“As you say. It is in a style that you will not be familiar with, and even when it was worn, it was worn by very few. But those who did wear it were those who were sensitive to the elemental forces.”
“And this one?”
“The dresses were not coded. What the adepts did is not clear to me, even at this remove. Kaylin—what happened when you touched the water?”
She shook her head, and thought about the midwives for a while. It was easy to think of them; they were always at the back of her mind.
“Very good.”
Her smile was brittle.
“You are a mystery to the wise,” he told her. “Even your gift is not clear. I offer you this, then, and in spite of yourself. When you showed yourself capable of standing against one form—not an inconsiderable one—of water’s death, the Water formed the robes you wear.”
“What? But—but how?”
“I do not know. But the robes are yours, and they were meant for you. It is some sign of the water’s choice,” he added, “and the robes will not save you, if it comes to that—but you have impressed the elemental force in some way, and it has granted you the equivalent of a title.”
Which of course made no sense.
“This isn’t magic,” Kaylin said forlornly. “This is…gods.”
“In a manner of speaking.” He was quiet for a moment. “Do you know what Donalan Idis intends for the child?”
“Most likely? To finish the experiments that were dropped.”
The Chronicles of Elantra Bundle Page 106
