Cast in Honor (The Chronicles of Elantra)

by Michelle Sagara

“Not leaving your backup behind, you won’t.”

  Kaylin cursed but kept on walking. Gilbert found the door to his room. It was not in the same location it had been when Kaylin had come to heal him—if healing was even what she’d done. But as she crossed the threshold, her arms began to glow. Kattea’s giggle made it clear that her neck was doing the same; the girl thought it funny because Kaylin had a soft halo around her head.

  Severn settled down at the desk; Kattea sat cross-legged on the bed. “Can you read?” she asked.

  “I can—any book in particular?”

  It was the last question Kaylin heard as she closed the door.

  * * *

  “My thanks,” Gilbert said to her. “It is difficult to do what must be done while Kattea is so close. I fear to injure or break her. She is delicate, her connection to life so tenuous. Will she be stronger when she is older?”

  “She won’t be Chosen, if that’s what you mean. And she probably won’t become Severn without a lot of trauma and training.”

  “It is odd. She is like Nightshade, and yet, unlike Nightshade. It was the work of decades to become attached to the sound of his voice, the tenor of his very quiet thoughts. Kattea has none of his power. If Kattea had been pushed into Ravellon, she would have died before her voice could wake me. The air might kill her. The night. The wrong morning mist. She is loud and she feels both pride and shame; she is constantly in motion, even when she sleeps.

  “Many were the discussions I had with Lord Nightshade; many were the topics we discussed. I learned the history of the Barrani; he learned the history of my kin; he explored the gardia, where it was safe to do so. I saw wonder in him, and through him, wonder at things that had never moved me before.

  “I felt peace when he spoke of his brothers. No, I felt peace when he spoke of Annarion.”

  This couldn’t fail to get Annarion’s attention.

  “He was subject to time as you were meant to experience it,” Gilbert said to Nightshade’s younger brother. “And you were subject to a type of freedom that you were never meant to have. You did not expect your brother to change. He finds it uncomfortable to be judged by you, because you haven’t changed in ways that are clear to him. What you want and what you believe—of honor, of justice, of duty—he once believed. He does not wish you to see him as he sees himself. He has a very ferocious pride.

  “But I wander. Nightshade’s mind is sharp, as is his curiosity. If we did not understand each other immediately, we learned; he asked questions that remain with me now, and I will have the answer, although not soon.

  “Kattea is not like Nightshade. Her temper is quick to light, and her tears, quick to fall; she sleeps, she eats endlessly when given opportunity, and she asks no questions that I understand.” He lifted an arm and pointed; the arm seemed like velvet obsidian to Kaylin’s eye. The lamps reflected off wet floor, but not off Gilbert.

  The stairs hugged wall.

  “What do you mean?”

  “How does the sun work? Why do the moons exist? Why are there dogs?”

  “Those seem like perfectly reasonable questions to me.”

  “Do they?”

  Kaylin frowned. “Your room—it’s waterproof, right?”

  “Yes. It is proof against any element; it cannot be pushed out of phase.”

  “Good. Get up the stairs. Move. Move move move.”

  The Arkon was less equivocal about these stairs, although they appeared to be wooden slats; he went up first, quickly followed by Mandoran, Annarion and Gilbert. Kaylin, at the foot of the stairs, turned to face the water as it lifted itself from its bed of ancient stone floor.

  * * *

  The water emerged in the shape of a woman with hollow eyes; she wore a dress that literally flowed down shoulders and arms, its hem blending with the inches of water that remained on the floor. “Kaylin.”

  Kaylin nodded.

  “Chosen.”

  She nodded again, aware that her marks had continued to brighten; they were not as sharp a light as Gilbert’s unattached eyes cast, but they were the same color. Two watery hands rose in a swift snap of motion that ended with...eyes. The water then took those eyes and inserted them into her own sockets; golden light was absorbed by the water, changing every element of its color.

  In a face of water, the two eyes looked almost natural. “The Keeper is holding the fundaments in place. The only element to escape—to be forced out—is water, for reasons that must now be obvious. Nor is it all of the water—but the part of me that exists in another story, another ending, cannot merge with the containment. I hope your Evanton survives.

  “Mine did not.”

  “What was done—what’s being done—it breaks the Keeper’s Garden?” Kaylin asked. It seemed the only germane question, because the water might actually know.

  “The Keeper’s Garden exists in time; it requires time. We do not, not in the same fashion. It is only in our interactions with you that it is a necessity. We are part of your life. You are part of ours. Someone sought to emulate the Garden itself; they did not understand the construction required. The Keeper’s stones are not stones, except to your eyes. They are names, Kaylin. They are the force of the truth of fire, water, air, earth.”

  “There’s more than one truth.”

  “There is more than one interaction, and we have loved the stories you tell us of our import to your kind. But those stories are not truth as we understand it. They are not,” she added, her voice darkening, “truth as others understand it; the small moments in which you take joy are not...joy to them. Perhaps once they were.

  “The Keeper’s Garden has proved unassailable without internal aid.”

  “But—”

  “Come. I have seen death, and loss, and it is fresh in me because it is part of me. The greater part of me that sought to preserve you was most tightly wed to the Tha’alaan—but that is not all that I am. We must find your bodies. We must find your stones.”

  Kaylin frowned. “The stones in the Keeper’s Garden are meant to contain the elements?”

  The water said, “Yes, and no. While we retain a thread of attachment to ancient vows and containments, we will not harm him if he stands thus.”

  It was, Kaylin thought, a variant of Ybelline’s protective barrier.

  “Why stones?”

  “I do not understand the question.”

  “Why four stones?”

  “They are not precisely stone. But they are anchors, Kaylin. They are the heart of an ancient vow. While they stand, the Keeper stands. While they stand, the attachment to world and time and your kind also remain.”

  “And he needs the anchor.”

  “The world as you exist in it requires them. The lack of those anchors will not harm us, and it will not destroy us; it will destroy some small part of what we are.”

  “And the Arcanist needs anchors.” She spoke the words slowly, as if testing them.

  * * *

  “There is a problem,” the Arkon said, from the top of the stairs.

  Of course there was.

  “What is it?”

  “There seems to be no house.”

  “You expected that.” It wasn’t a question.

  “In some fashion, yes. Mandoran?” To Kaylin’s surprise, the Arkon’s tone implied that he considered Mandoran a peer.

  The Barrani hesitated. It was Annarion who said, “The inside of the empty sphere that’s eating the city is not empty.”

  Kaylin snorted. “What, exactly, is at the top of the stairs?”

  Squawk. Squawk.

  Gilbert’s many eyes widened. “I understand,” he said, voice grim. He pushed his way to the top of the stairs, and given the width of the stairs, this took time. “Chosen.” The single word was almost a command.

&nb
sp; Kaylin would have followed anyway—because his many eyes had come to rest around her like a swarm, and they appeared to be attempting to adhere themselves, through cloth, to the runes on her skin. If she hadn’t been afraid of squashing them, she would have brushed them all off.

  Mandoran caught her arm as she moved past him. “Teela’s voice is much, much clearer.”

  “So...we’re probably where she is.”

  “Yes. For some reason, this is pissing her off.”

  “Can you try to use High Barrani?” Annarion said.

  “Why? Kaylin never does. It’s about communication, brother.”

  “Has she moved at all?” Kaylin said, hoping to stem the tide of a different kind of brotherly interaction.

  “How did you guess?”

  “If nothing’s broken, she hates to stay in one spot. Did she find Bellusdeo?”

  “...No, sorry.” At Kaylin’s reply, he turned back to Annarion. “See? Completely colloquial.”

  “She’s not Barrani.”

  Mandoran shrugged. “Popular wisdom says neither am I.”

  “Chosen,” Gilbert said, demanding attention that should never have been diverted. Kaylin made it the rest of the way up the stairs.

  The elemental water reached out with a single hand. She said nothing, but Kaylin understood what the gesture meant. Before she had learned to hate the world, it had been one of hers. After she had learned that the world was not only pain, disgust and death, she had struggled to learn how to do it again. It was harder, the second time—but maybe it was just as necessary.

  Without a word, Kaylin took the water’s hand. The water didn’t have the same trouble negotiating the cramped stairs that Kaylin—and everyone else—did; she simply followed by Kaylin’s side, as if she could walk on air. This was wrong, of course: she rose, the water on the ground her elongating pedestal.

  * * *

  There was no small hall. There was no parlor door. There was, however, a front door, if by door one meant a structure that looked as if it had literally been created by a four-year-old with a crazy assortment of chalk. Or fifty four-year-olds, all vying for the same few yards of space.

  “Look ahead,” Gilbert warned. “Look only ahead.”

  She could hear voices to her right and her left; they sounded like mortal voices. Elantran voices. She froze. She had seen her share of conflict; she knew what battle sounded like. There was fighting—and dying—to either side of this primitive stretch of ground. She turned to the right—or tried. The small dragon smacked the bridge of her nose with his head. Hard.

  He followed it up with complaints. Since it was Kaylin whose eyes stung with the force of the blow, she felt this unfair.

  “They are echoes. They are not real. Do not make them real.”

  “How the hell do I make something real?”

  “Obey Gilbert,” the Arkon said. His voice was a great deal louder than the voices to the right and the left. It came from behind; he might as well have picked her up and shaken her until her teeth rattled, because the syllables reverberated throughout her entire body. Even the eyes clinging to her shirt seemed to wince.

  “Should you even be up here?”

  “Someone has to keep an eye on these two,” he replied. “Do not look back.”

  “He means us,” Mandoran said. Annarion, predictably, said nothing.

  To the water, Kaylin said, Can you look?

  Yes. But I understand what Gilbert fears; I consider his advice wise. You will not make things real, as he states—but you will be drawn to them; they will be like gravity, and you, like a person who has taken steps off a very high cliff. They are possibilities, Kaylin—but you exist in a world of constant possibility. To look—left or right—is the equivalent of making a decision, of acting on it, yes? The action decides the course you follow; reality asserts itself around that choice. Your reality.

  But people are—

  Dying. Yes. And they are being born. And they are loving. And hating. And weeping in sorrow or joy. They are pleading. They are screaming. They are singing. Those are the sounds of your lives. She smiled as she spoke, but it was not a happy smile.

  Kaylin nodded, exhaling. “We’re walking between possibilities.”

  Yes.

  “And if we choose one, we’ll fall off this path.”

  Yes.

  Fine. It made sense, in a strange way. To the Barrani, Kaylin said, “Do you guys see a door ahead of us?”

  “If you call that a door, yes.”

  The Arkon’s magic made Kaylin’s skin itch. As they walked, itch transformed to pain. She didn’t ask him what spells he was attempting to cast, because she was certain he felt they were necessary, and his was the voice that counted here, according to the Hawklord. But she was very grateful Kattea was no longer with them, because Gilbert...was losing solidity as he walked.

  No, not solidity, exactly—but form. The darkness of his silhouette spread and thinned, and as it did, she could see the moving squiggles of opalescent color she associated with chaos, and only with chaos.

  The small dragon squawked loudly and then, to make a point, exhaled.

  He exhaled a stream of silver that was flecked with the same opalescence. Kaylin froze, and because she had, the Arkon walked into the back of her feet. “Private?”

  “My familiar just exhaled.”

  “Yes, and?”

  “I’ve seen that breath destroy Ferals from the inside out, and I’d rather not get a face full of it.”

  Squawk. SQUAWK.

  “I believe you have insulted your companion,” Gilbert said.

  “Not intentionally.” She straightened her shoulders. “Fine. I apologize for my instinctive and very reasonable reaction.” She closed her eyes and continued to walk. The air smelled of wilderness and forest and...cinnamon. When she opened her eyes, the particulate mist had not cleared; if anything, it had thickened. But it didn’t sting her face or her eyes.

  “Does this count as you helping me do something I can’t do on my own?” She knew the price he had demanded for it the last time she’d asked, and she was not any more willing to pay it now.

  No, her familiar replied. She recognized his voice instantly, and felt both gratitude and fear. Any place in which she could hear his actual words was never a good place. No, Kaylin, it does not. It is a variant of what your Arkon is attempting to do.

  What, exactly, is he attempting to do?

  Survive Gilbert.

  Chapter 27

  Survive Gilbert?

  Look at him, Kaylin.

  I’ve been looking at pretty much nothing else. Given that his eyes were part of him, this was mostly true.

  You have not, the familiar said, with some exasperation, seen him.

  She looked, and she saw it now: Gilbert was Shadow. Gilbert was darkness.

  The halls beneath the city had reminded Kaylin of the High Halls because the ceilings were so tall.

  Gilbert filled them. Not only in height, she saw that now, but in width. He was a moving cloud—a dense cloud, but one that implied spaces and gaps. His eyes were part of that; they weren’t, as they had appeared on first—or fiftieth—glance, separate. They existed on the end of shadow tendrils, and they moved around Gilbert as if he were some kind of Shadow octopus, but with more tentacles.

  She had no idea how he had carried Kattea on his shoulder or in his arms, because she couldn’t see that he actually had either of those things.

  Had she been standing on the border of Tiamaris, she would have tried to kill him.

  No, actually, she would have accepted that she couldn’t, and she would have retreated, a fancy word for “run for her life.” She felt a moment of very visceral fear, but the fear was double-edged. The expected fear—of Gilbert—she accepted. She
had no choice; it was there, rooted deeply by every other experience of Shadow she had ever had. But the unexpected fear, that maybe those other Shadows had been like Gilbert, and she had done her level best to kill them—that one was new.

  And hadn’t she feared—and hated—the Tha’alani in exactly the same way? Hadn’t she viscerally, forcefully, made this clear every single time she mentioned them?

  And hadn’t she been wrong—so very, very wrong—in the end? But she hadn’t killed the Tha’alani. She’d hated them, but she’d never killed them.

  Shadows, she’d killed.

  Yes.

  Was I wrong?

  Kaylin, it doesn’t matter. If Gilbert—for reasons of his own—attempted to kill you now, and you stood still and reasoned with him, you would die. The Shadows may have their reasons; they may have motivations that you could—with effort—understand. But they would devour you whole if you did not flee or destroy them. You faced the Devourer.

  I didn’t hate him, though.

  It doesn’t matter. Hate him, not hate him, he would have destroyed not only this city, but the world in which it is situated. Sometimes motivation doesn’t matter when survival is immediately at stake.

  Gilbert’s eyes glared pointedly at her. “What?” she demanded. “I’m still moving!”

  She was, but it was hard. The badly drawn door didn’t seem to be getting any closer.

  “Gilbert,” she said, to take her mind off the multiple fears that were all screaming for attention she really didn’t want to give them, “you said it was your job to fix time, right?”

  “A vast simplification, but yes. Why?”

  “How do you know when it’s broken?”

  He stared at her, or rather, his eyes did. At this point, he was dark enough, amorphous enough, that she had no sense of which direction he was facing, and had to take it on faith that it was forward. “Ask the water, Kaylin. The water feared that I would destroy it.”

  The water was easier to talk to, in all ways, than Gilbert. Do you understand it?

  Yes. I hold the Tha’alaan within me, but it is not the whole of what I am. When I returned, some part of me was not bound by the Keeper and his Garden. The Garden is gone.