Cast in Chaos

by Michelle Sagara

  It wasn’t Feral growling; it wasn’t angry dog; it wasn’t the Leontine sound that meant you were a few seconds away from needing a new limb or a new throat. She’d dreaded all of these in her life, but the sound she heard now?

  It was death.

  Kaylin personally preferred a civilized, more or less human personification of death, which was the one that usually got into the stories she’d heard as a child. Hells, as an adult. She drew her daggers for the first time since entering the nonworld. They looked pathetic in her hands, but they were all she had, and they were better than nothing.

  She began to curse the growling noise in soft, steady Leontine—because that seemed to make no difference, either, and it made her feel better. A little. She threw in an Aerian curse or two, and dropped a few brittle words of High Barrani into the mix; she saved the most heartfelt of her curses for later use.

  But cursing, she finally heard something that wasn’t a growl, although it was, in its own fashion, as deadly, as dangerous, and ultimately, as unknown.

  Kaylin.

  She froze. She had just enough experience with the Lord of the fief of Nightshade to know when he wasn’t particularly pleased by something she’d done, and she’d had twelve years in the fief he ruled to develop a visceral and instinctive fear of his anger.

  But she’d had seven living well away from Nightshade, and if her automatic reaction was to drop or hide, she could fight through it and remain more or less calm. Less, today, but she didn’t usually have conversations like this while standing in the middle of nothing.

  Nightshade.

  You…called me.

  She swallowed. I did. I can’t—I didn’t—

  You did not mean to compel.

  She hadn’t even tried. In theory, she could, if she were strong enough. She held his name. But she’d always doubted that she would be strong enough, and if she weren’t, and she tried, she’d be dead.

  I only wanted to get your attention.

  Ah. And now that you have it?

  There’s a difficulty in Elantra. She swallowed. It was habit; she wasn’t actually speaking. But if she had stopped, the growling hadn’t, and she heard it clearly.

  Kaylin. His voice shifted, the sound simultaneously sharpening and losing some of its edge. Where are you?

  Funny thing, she began, as the growl grew louder.

  Kaylin. Sharper, sharper. Wherever you are, leave. Now. When she didn’t answer, he added, This is not a joke. It is not a matter for your mortal sense of humor. You are in danger. You must leave.

  I…I don’t know how. It was hard, to say it. To admit it. Especially to Nightshade. Ignorance was weakness.

  No, she thought. Ignorance was only weakness if you clung to the damn thing. Obviously, hours in gray nowhere had unsettled her, and Nightshade’s voice pretty much always had that effect; they weren’t a good combination.

  But he could hear her. She thought he was possibly the only person she knew who would.

  I can hear you, he continued. But I cannot see where you are. I cannot see what you see.

  Kaylin. Call me.

  Running, she closed her eyes and she called his true name again, putting a force into the syllables that she never spoke aloud. And this time, she felt the syllables resist her; she felt them slide to one side or the other, their pronunciation—if you could even call it that, because she didn’t open her mouth—shifting or changing as they struggled to escape.

  Again.

  She ignored the urge to point out who held whose name, be cause there was, in the absolute intensity of the command, the hint of desperation. That, and the damn growling had finally reached a level where she could feel it. Not as strongly as she could feel Nightshade’s voice, though. It almost seemed—

  Whatever it is—it can hear you. It can hear you clearly, she told him. And then, before he could answer, she struggled with his name. Struggled to say it, while he pulled back, while he fought her. Because she suddenly understood what the point of the seemingly pointless exercise was. When she struggled for control of the syllables, when she struggled to force them to snap into place, she could feel him pushing back against them; she could feel the way they slid when he exerted his will.

  But more significant, she could feel, for just the moment she encountered each small act of resistance, the direction from which it came.

  It can hear me. It is surprising that it cannot clearly hear you. Come, Kaylin. Come to me.

  She called his name once more, and this time she let the syllables slide as far as they could without losing them; she existed for as long as she could in the moment of the struggle, as if conflict were the only road home.

  Opening her eyes, she saw, in the gray folds of nothing ahead, something dark that wavered around the edges. It wasn’t Nightshade, but it was something.

  Closer. Closer, Kaylin. Be ready.

  For what? She didn’t ask.

  But he heard it anyway. You will not have long. I do not know how you came to be where you must be—but I cannot join you. I can hold a window open. You must take it.

  The growling—

  Yes. A very small window. I am sorry. I have neither the resources nor the ability to offer more.

  The dark patch of space became larger and more distinct as she approached it, and she saw, standing at its heart, the Lord of Nightshade, his eyes almost black in the shadows, both hands extended to the sides as if, by physical force, he had ripped a hole in the world. His arms were shaking with the effort.

  The gray beneath her feet began to ripple, as if it were the back of a horse that was trying, with unexpected savagery, to unseat her. Spikes formed, like stalagmites made of cloud, glittering although there was no source of light. She dodged them, because she could, but the ground directly beneath her feet still felt like soft sand.

  Soft, hot sand. Or miles of flesh.

  She pivoted sideways between two growing, jagged spikes; one clipped the inside of her arm. She bled. Where blood struck ground, it sizzled.

  She felt Nightshade’s curse. It had the force of Marcus in fury, although it was entirely subvocal; High Barrani lacked the words to encompass it. But she kept running. Nightshade didn’t recede the way the halls of Evanton’s shop had, and she knew that if she lost sight of him now, it would be because he couldn’t hold.

  She felt his response; he didn’t form words around it. He was not, however, pleased at the doubt the thought implied. You had to love Barrani arrogance.

  And at the moment, she did.

  She stopped trying to say his name. She stopped trying to do anything but reach him. He didn’t offer her a hand; he couldn’t. The weight of the world—as if strange, shapeless clouds could have weight—wasn’t something he could support with one hand.

  But all she could see was Nightshade: Nightshade and darkness. There was no hall behind him, no stone floors beneath his feet, no glimmer of torches or lamps; even his hair seemed to blend with the background, highlighting pale skin and sapphire eyes by contrast.

  Kaylin—quickly. Quickly.

  Gods, the ground was thick now. She’d run across mud that had less give—and that had been ankle bloody deep.

  Kaylin!

  She tensed, grinding her teeth as she felt something sharp cut the back of her left calf. She heard roaring; the growling had clearly escalated into something that could handle primal rage. Dragon roars were just as loud, but far less threatening.

  She saw the wavering shape of this hole in the middle of nothing begin to collapse, and although she wasn’t close enough to make a clean leap through what was left of it, she tried anyway. Nightshade—

  She felt his curse; he didn’t speak. But more than that? She felt the mark on her cheek begin to burn. She felt the hairs on the back of her neck straighten as if they were made of fine quills, and she felt the inside of her thighs and her arms almost freeze in sudden protest.

  Magic. His magic. The momentum the ground and her own legs couldn’t give her, his power c
ould. She cleared what was left of the dwindling rent in space, her arms and right shoulder hitting his chest and driving them both back. His own arms fell instantly; he grabbed hold of her, and he pulled.

  Which was good, because something began to pull from the other side. She could feel it grab her legs, and the wound in her calf ached and burned with the unexpected solidity of its grip. She didn’t want to lose her leg.

  But she knew that Nightshade didn’t care if it was only her leg that was lost; she could feel the thought, absent words to shape or form it. All that mattered now was that she remain here, with him. He lifted his face; she felt his chin rise, although hers was pretty much plastered to the front of his robes. She could almost see what he saw: the small gap in space, through which her legs had yet to emerge, and the edges of the place she was trying so hard to escape. Closing her eyes didn’t help; the sudden disorientation, the unwelcome glimpse of Barrani vision and Barrani sight, made her head and her stomach do the same hideously unpleasant lurch that Castle Nightshade’s portal did.

  But even as she began to spin into the nausea of portal passage, she saw what now existed on the other side of the rapidly shrinking tear: darkness, broken by stars and the borealis of a foreign sky. And in it, some shape that was not shadow as she understood it; it was far too solid, far too real, for that. She could see no eyes, no mouth, nothing that made it look like the monsters of her nightmares—but in the lack of those things, she thought the darkest of nightmares lay waiting. And it needed no form, no face, no pathetic rendering of shape to devour.

  No, it just needed her damn legs.

  I am sorry, Kaylin, she heard Nightshade say. Knew that he meant to cut those legs off at midcalf. Knew, as well, that she couldn’t allow it—how could she be a Hawk without legs? How could she patrol, how could she run, how could she do the only things that defined her? She cried out in anger and fear and even the darkness on the other side of life—which was death, all death—didn’t look so bad.

  But she was spinning, disoriented, even while clinging so tightly to him that her hands crushed the fabric of his shirt and his hair. She kicked, struggling to pull herself free. His magic enveloped her, and she felt his desire to preserve her life over what her life meant to her, and she spoke a single word of denial.

  It was not, however, an Elantran word. It wasn’t a Barrani word. It wasn’t Leontine, or Aerian or Dragon, the last of which would have been impossible anyway. It was a true word.

  And true words, she discovered, like true names, had power.

  She heard, for the first time, something rise out of the roar at her back that sounded like language. It had syllables, the shape and texture of words, the small dips and rises in tone; it had the elements of voice, which had always been important to Kaylin. It had the force of will behind it, a force just as visceral as hunger or desire—she knew, because it had those, too.

  What it didn’t have, what she couldn’t hear, were actual words, and she was grateful for it. She spoke again, and this time—this time she heard Nightshade raise a cry of alarm; she felt his arms slide away from her as if she could no longer be safely held.

  But for a minute more of her weight was on the right damn side of the portal. She kicked, and fell free. It would have helped if there had been anything to land on.

  “Kaylin.”

  She pushed herself up off the ground, and saw, as she opened her eyes a crack, that she was looking at gleaming, polished marble. She wanted to heave, she really did. Which was not outside of the norm, because she recognized this room: it was the foyer that graced Castle Nightshade. She had never arrived through the front door feeling human.

  This time, she hadn’t even bothered with the portal.

  Nightshade was considerate, as always; he waited until she could lever herself off the ground and stand—very shakily—on her own two feet. He hadn’t, however, dimmed the damn lights, and they stabbed her vision in a very unpleasant way. She exchanged a few words of Leontine with their bleeding bright haloes; they didn’t respond.

  “Kaylin,” Nightshade said, when the last of the syllables had stopped echoing.

  She looked up. His eyes were a shade of green that was almost, but not quite, blue. This was about as safe as he ever got. Waiting until the last of the nausea subsided would mean she’d be silent for another hour. Keeping her head very still, she said, “Thank you.”

  He raised a dark brow, and offered her the briefest of smiles. It didn’t really reach his eyes. “I admit,” he said quietly, “that I was surprised.”

  “That I called you?”

  “Ah, no. That you have not, since the fief of Tiamaris was founded, returned to Nightshade. One would think it was almost deliberate.”

  The problem with portals, and with Castle Nightshade’s portal in particular, was that she arrived feeling like she’d mixed alcohol on an all-night drinking binge. It wasn’t the best state of mind in which to have a conversation with her friends; it was a dangerous state of mind in which to have a conversation with the fieflord whose mark she bore. “It was deliberate,” she told him, because she knew he knew it anyway.

  “May I ask why?”

  She stopped herself from shrugging, and then met his eyes for a second time. “Do you mind if I sit down?”

  “No. Forgive my lack of hospitality. Let us repair to a more useful set of rooms.” He hesitated, and then added, “Take my arm.”

  “Pardon?”

  “My arm, Kaylin. The Castle will be slightly more difficult for you to traverse at the moment than is the norm.”

  Given what the Castle was normally like, this said something. He offered Kaylin his arm, in High Court style, and she placed her hand on it. It was difficult not to also place a large part of her weight on it. She made the effort. “Why will it be harder?” She asked, because it gave her something to focus on that wasn’t her nausea or his nearness, both of which were difficult for entirely different reasons.

  He ignored her question as he led her along a hallway that seemed familiar.

  They stepped through doors into the safety of a very large, and as usual, sparsely, but finely, furnished room. Only when the doors closed did Kaylin release his arm and step away. While the halls seemed to expand or collapse with no warning and no rhyme or reason, she had never seen the rooms change around her.

  She made her way to the long couch, and sat heavily on cushions that were that little bit too soft. Nightshade remained standing. He had the decency not to offer her either food or drink. Her cheek was warm; the rest of her skin felt cold.

  “How did I travel through the portal? Did you carry me?”

  “No.”

  “Did I walk?”

  “No.”

  Are we going to play twenty bloody questions while my head pounds and I want to throw up?

  She didn’t say the last out loud. It didn’t make much difference; his smile was very chilly when he offered it.

  “You dislike the portal of Castle Nightshade. I would have thought, given how deep that dislike is, that you might recognize it when you see it.”

  “Oh, I do.” She paused as her thoughts, such as they were, caught up with her mouth.

  “You were standing in the portal when you found me.”

  Very good.

  She closed her eyes. It helped, a little. Portal travel was bad enough to make her queasy—or worse—but it usually passed a lot faster. At the moment she wanted to fall over onto her side and curl her knees into her chest. Maybe sleep a little. Instead, she was having a conversation with Lord Nightshade.

  “I was at Evanton’s,” she said, speaking slowly and clearly. “I walked into his Garden. Or I thought I walked into his Garden. But it wasn’t. It looked the same. It wasn’t the same.”

  He nodded.

  “So I tried to leave it. I ended up…nowhere. I could see his shop—but I couldn’t reach it. And eventually, I couldn’t see it, either.”

  “That is when you…called me?”

  She no
dded. “You know where I was.” Not a question.

  “I have some suspicion. Don’t rearrange your face in that expression. I am a Barrani Lord, Kaylin. I am not more, or other.”

  “What was chasing me?”

  He said nothing.

  “Nightshade—”

  “I have no definitive answer for you. I will not condescend to pointless conjecture.” He wasn’t quite lying; he was certainly not telling the truth. Which was about as much as anyone sane could expect from the Barrani, although given the turn the afternoon had taken, Kaylin wasn’t certain she qualified as sane. “But I could not find you by conventional means. I chose a…less conventional approach, through the Castle’s portal. It would not be an approach open to many. Perhaps the High Lord, or another fieflord—but only if you held their name.”

  She opened her eyes. “What happened in Evanton’s store?”

  “The Keeper’s domain is bound by many, many magics. Most of those are older than any known Empire. I cannot say for certain what happened. You might wish to speak with him, but I am not sure he will be able to enlighten you. May I suggest, for the duration of the current crisis, that you avoid wandering in his shop when he is not actively present?”

  She grimaced, and then her eyes narrowed. “Current crisis?”

  “I believe you are suffering from rains of blood, among other difficulties.” He raised a brow. “Come, Kaylin. You did not honestly think a difficulty of that magnitude would stay across the Ablayne?”

  “I wasn’t thinking about it much at all. It’s not fief business.”

  “Not yet, no. But I believe that your difficulty in the city and the difficulty you encountered in the Keeper’s abode are linked. “Remain here. I will return with food and water, now that you are somewhat more settled.”

  Kaylin drifted off while Nightshade was absent. The room was quiet, the couch too comfortable. She was cold, here, and there were no convenient throws that she wanted to touch; she felt too damn grubby, and even at its simplest, Castle Nightshade was out of her league. But her stomach had settled enough that the complaints it now issued were the usual ones. She was hungry, damn it.