The Arkon stared at her. “What,” he finally asked softly, “did Lord Nightshade see?”
“I…don’t know.” As far as this went, it was entirely accurate. “But…he didn’t hear what I heard, either. He didn’t hear growling. I would swear he heard words.”
“What were those words?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think he recognized them, either. But…when I heard what he heard, when I listened to what he was listening to—which was hard, by the way—they sounded like syllables. Like language. But not a language I knew.” She hesitated, and then added, “I used my own magic, somehow. It let go.”
“‘Somehow’?”
This time, Kaylin did glance at Sanabalis; the Dragon Lord was watching the Arkon as closely as the Arkon had been watching her.
“I’m not entirely certain,” she finally replied. “I don’t always know how the magic works. If I pay attention while I’m using it, I pick up the details on a conscious level—but I don’t need the details to use it.”
The answer did not appear to please him; nor did it enrage. “You left the nonworld, as you call it, and you entered Castle Nightshade, in the fief of Nightshade.”
“Yes.”
“From there you went to the fief of Tiamaris.”
She nodded.
“Continue.”
She managed a brief version that left out Lord Andellen entirely, but when she reached the room with the pool, the Arkon lifted a hand. His eyes were now a golden-brown; he was troubled, but focused. “A moment, Private.”
She nodded, and glanced at the food that had not been turned to ash. Her stomach was vastly less subtle, and she heard Sanabalis snort. He didn’t tell her to eat, and she wasn’t stupid enough to start without the Arkon’s permission.
“Lord Tiamaris.”
Tiamaris nodded. Unlike Kaylin, he’d chosen to sit, and he didn’t vacate his seat when his name was called. To be fair, the Arkon didn’t seem to expect it, either.
“You hold the Tower in your fief.”
“Indeed.”
“It is, by all accounts—and those accounts are scant and very underdocumented in my opinion—unique.”
Tiamaris inclined his head; Kaylin cleared her throat. The latter caused the Arkon’s baleful glance to fall on her for a second. “Private?”
“I think all of the Towers are unique. I mean, I don’t think generalizations will give you much useful information.”
“Understood.” He turned back to Tiamaris. “Your Tower has an Avatar that speaks and interacts with the people who live in the boundaries of your fief.”
“Yes.”
“Does the Avatar maintain the information that existed at the time of its creation?”
“Her,” Kaylin inserted.
This time the Arkon failed to look at her at all.
“The events that occurred at, or after, her creation have not been relevant to the ruling of the fief,” was Tiamaris’s reply. He glanced at his hands as he spoke. “We have been much occupied with repairs and rebuilding. The fief took severe casualties before the borders were stabilized, and we are still uncovering evidence of damage, and attempting to recover from it.”
“If this is your way of telling me that you do not know…” The Arkon didn’t finish the sentence; instead he lifted a hand to his eyes. “Sanabalis,” he finally said, “finish this for the moment. I fear to become too frustrated.”
Sanabalis coughed slightly. “As you wish, Arkon. Will you retire to the Library?”
“No.”
Sanabalis, however, had, in theory, years of practice dealing with recalcitrant students. “The Tower,” he said, gesturing for Kaylin to sit, “has more freedom. She can communicate directly with people who are not her Lord. What she did, Private, has not been done for a very long time.”
“What do you mean?”
“The creation of a water-based mirror.”
Kaylin couldn’t recall having seen one before. “I’d bet money the Barrani High Halls have them.”
“I would not take that bet. I did not speak of the use of such mirrors, only of their creation. You did not note what the runes on the walls were.”
“No. They’re Old Tongue, like my marks—but you know I can’t read them.” Kaylin shrugged. “It’s a Tower, Sanabalis.” Glancing at the Arkon, she added, “Lord Sanabalis. Tower space, Castle space—it’s not normal space. It shifts and changes.”
“You said, however,” the Arkon interjected, “that you were not required to enter a portal to reach this particular room?”
“Yes. So?”
All three Dragons exchanged a similar glance. Sanabalis finally said, “In fief parlance, it is a good bet that this room exists in the here and now. Its dimensions and its functions will not now change, unless she desires it. Beyond the portal, you are deep in the heart of her territory, and her territory is stable and solid only to her, and possibly to Lord Tiamaris. But…what you have said so far is troubling, and I think you are not yet done.”
“Not…quite.”
“Then please, continue.”
“She made me review what I’d seen. When she reversed the mirror view, when she forced me to examine what I’d managed to see through Lord Nightshade’s vision, she was…upset. She touched the surface of the water itself—I think she meant to stabilize it—”
“She did not,” Tiamaris said quietly.
“What was she trying to do?”
“I am not entirely certain. It was defensive,” he added.
Kaylin didn’t ask him how he knew. Instead, she said, “She called what she saw the Devourer. She told me to come to the Arkon.”
“I think, old friend,” Sanabalis told the Arkon, “that your particularly old-fashioned attachment to the Worlds theory of magic and Genesis is about to be proved indisputably true.”
The Arkon, however, was now looking at Kaylin. “What did you see, Chosen?”
She closed her eyes, and then opened them quickly, because his question had returned a glimpse of the dark and hungering void that made a lie of any definition of nothing she’d ever known. “I saw what she saw. I understood why she called what she saw the Devourer.”
“And this Devourer touched you.”
She nodded.
“We need Records, Lord Sanabalis. We need them now.” The Arkon rose swiftly, the grace and economy of his movements belying his supposed age. “Come.”
“The Library?” Sanabalis asked.
“Yes.”
The Arkon could move. His walk was generally stately and even; today it was almost a run. This silenced Tiamaris and Sanabalis—who were careful enough not to speak much when the Arkon was present anyway. Kaylin could talk, or shout, while running, but didn’t bother. The Imperial Guards basically made a beeline for the nearest wall or section of hall that didn’t contain three heavy Dragons.
The Library door’s ward was glowing as they approached, and Kaylin flinched automatically, but this time she wasn’t required to touch it; the Arkon spoke at it instead, and the doors practically flew to either side in their rush to avoid him. Sanabalis and Tiamaris exchanged a glance, no more, and Kaylin walked in behind them, pulling up the rear. The fact that the rear was farthest from the Arkon was purely coincidence.
He led them past the shelves with their obvious books, but this time, instead of heading to the rounded room at the end of one hall, he jogged to the right, to where the shelves and their odd rolling ladders compressed into a tangle of narrow walkways, teetering papers, and stairs. The stairs were just larger than one Dragon in width.
Kaylin wondered just how large the Arkon’s collection of expensive odds and ends actually was as she dutifully followed. She hadn’t been in the Library often, but suspected at this point that Library was not the accurate word. Or maybe it lost a lot in the translation from Dragon to Barrani. The small hall that opened at the head of the steps had the advantage of not being lined by packed, crammed shelves. It had the disadvantage—to the Dragons�
�of being slightly shorter than six feet in height. This didn’t bother Kaylin; everyone else was crouching.
Sanabalis asked a question that Kaylin caught only around the edges, and the Arkon grunted in response. Light brightened the hall. In this case, it wasn’t that much of an improvement, because most of it was held by Sanabalis, and his back blocked it.
But they continued to walk; the hall seemed to be built at a slight incline, and it ended in yet another door. The door was the height of the hall, and it looked as if it were wooden, although bands of something like iron or steel cut across it in three places. It had, of all things, a handle, and three locks that were obviously meant for keys.
“How old is this place?” she asked. She’d never seen doors in the Imperial Palace that weren’t protected by door wards; door wards could be enchanted to serve a variety of different levels of privacy, and they captured Records information about who had triggered them and who had crossed the threshold, not to mention when.
“Old enough,” was the reply. It was curt. “If you refer to the absence of door wards, there is a reason for it.”
“I’m in favor of absent door wards,” Kaylin said quickly. “But…they’re considered state of the art, and the Emperor’s not exactly hurting for money or mages.”
“No, he is not. This, however, is relevant to my duties, and door wards would not be beneficial here.”
“Why?”
“They would be an entirely foreign source of magical energy.” He pushed the door, and it opened into the type of natural darkness you get when there are no windows. This darkness didn’t last long, but it was broken by dragon’s breath and—of all things—torches. There were torches in a large, long basket attached to the wall. He lifted one, lit it; she could smell the oil as the fire started to burn. He passed this torch to Tiamaris, and lit two more.
None of them were offered to Kaylin.
“This,” the Arkon said, his voice echoing oddly in this new, and mostly unseen, room, “is the heart of the most ancient parts of my collection. I feel the need to remind you of the rules of the Library at this juncture.”
“Touch nothing, or die?” she said, in Elantran.
The Arkon’s brow looked bronze in the torchlight. “A fair summation, if perhaps a bit unadorned.” He nodded at the other two Dragons. “Follow me, Private. If you feel the need to examine something more closely, give me warning. I should also add that if you feel a need to discuss the contents of this room with anyone you will discuss it with Sanabalis or myself.”
She thought about Marcus’s final expression and grimaced. But a Dragon in your face was more of a concern than a Leontine in a mirror, so she nodded and began to walk.
She’d been in a similar dark room before, and she had assumed—at the time—that it was the repository of all things ancient; clearly the Arkon had enough of them scattered about in nooks and crannies that she’d been mistaken.
“Was this where you were working before you were interrupted?”
“By you?”
“By us,” she replied, nodding in Tiamaris’s direction.
“Ah. No. The light here is poor, even for Dragon eyes, and some of the items in this particular room appear to be sensitive to the use of external magic.” He frowned and paused. “The last time you entered one of the more unusual artifact stores, you interacted with a skeleton and removed one or two items of value.
“The Emperor, however, felt your presence in the city necessary, or you would have taken their place. Is that understood?”
“Yes, Lord—yes, Arkon.”
“Good.”
This room, unlike the previous room, did not seem to be lined with shelves—although it was hard to tell, because torchlight didn’t seem to extend as far as the walls. It was a much larger room, and the floors were rougher, like hewn stone, rather than the wooden planking that was common in most buildings meant to house living people.
“Tiamaris,” she whispered.
He glanced at her, lifting a brow that was dark, in contrast to the Arkon’s ivory.
“Please tell me this is not a cavern.”
“If you insist. Is the statement meant to be accurate?”
“Why is it that so many buildings in this damn city have caverns either beneath their floors or—or wherever this is?”
“I think, if you consider the question, the answer will present itself,” Lord Sanabalis interjected. “And this is perhaps the time to consider the question in silent contemplation.”
“I thought the reason this city existed in this place was because of the fiefs and the High Halls.”
“Yes. You did.”
Kaylin continued to follow in the Arkon’s steps, while trying to remember that, for the most part, she liked Dragons. They were straightforward when compared to the other Immortals she saw a lot of, namely the Barrani, and while they were undeniably arrogant, they didn’t make too much of a point of expecting you to confirm all the reasons why they had every right to be that way, in public.
But she stopped thinking about Dragons as the Arkon slowed, because if the torchlight didn’t touch walls, it did touch what he now approached. It was an altar.
Kaylin didn’t spend a lot of time in churches or cathedrals. For one, murders seldom happened in them, and for two, she had never quite decided which of the various gods it would be advantageous to worship. But she had seen her share of altars, and she had long since past the age where the phrase “stone table” came to mind.
This altar, however, was different from any other that she’d seen in one respect: it was huge. The flat of it was, at best guess, about twenty feet across. Sadly, it was also at least eight feet in height—or possibly more. There was no easy way, short of climbing a ladder, to get a good look at what lay on top of it. On the other hand, there were carvings on the sides of the base, and to no one’s surprise—or at least not Kaylin’s—they were familiar.
“This is the Old Tongue,” she said quietly.
“It is, indeed,” was the Arkon’s reply.
“Did you move this, or was it already here?”
“What do you think?”
“It was already here.”
He nodded. “I cannot think why you were considered such a poor student.”
Because none of the other teachers I had could threaten to turn me to cinders or eat me? She said nothing when Sanabalis politely coughed. “No one tried to move it before the Flight arrived here?”
“It is possible it was tried. There was no clear evidence remaining, but you will note that the rock of the floor forms the shape of a basin only here.”
“Is this the reason the Palace is actually standing where it stands?”
“It is not the only reason, and before you ask, if you are unwise enough to do so, I am not at liberty to discuss more. I feel it is somewhat unwise to have you here at all, but the situation merits the lack of caution. You will, if you approach the altar, note the runes graved here.”
She nodded.
The Arkon lifted one hand. “We will stand back,” he told her. She stopped walking, and he frowned. “Perhaps my Barrani is insufficient to the task of instruction, Private Neya. We will stand back. You, however, will approach.”
“Can I take a torch?”
“Lord Tiamaris, give her your torch. At this point, there is very little that she can damage.”
Tiamaris complied. Kaylin, who hated most tests and utterly loathed impromptu ones, took the torch and obligingly approached the base of an altar that was clearly meant for giants. Well, small giants. “Did Dragons use this, do you think?” she asked the Arkon. “It’s about the right height for the form.”
“It is possible,” was the neutral response.
“You’re not certain?”
“Dragon form doesn’t lend itself to finer manipulation, and most ceremonies that involve altars require that ability.”
How much fine motor control did it take to dump a large carcass on an altar top? Kaylin didn’t ask. As s
he approached the altar’s side, she saw that the runes engraved there had begun to glow. This was not, in and of itself, all that surprising. What did surprise her was that specific runes began to fade. She stopped walking.
“Continue, Private. You are not, in fact, defacing the altar. The shift in the runes appears to be a function of the altar’s magic.”
She started to walk again, and as she did, the runes that remained—at least on the one side of the altar’s base she could easily see—began to glow brighter; light passed from faint to bright, and it was a golden light, unlike the blue that her marks often became. There was more than one rune; she thought there were five. They grew larger.
She began to walk around the sides of this pedestal; they weren’t as long, but they also contained golden runes: two. They were not the same as the ones on the front, if it was the front. She fumbled with her sleeves, while holding the torch; it took a long damn time.
“Private?”
“Just checking something.” She shoved the left sleeve up to her elbow. The marks on her arms, like the marks on the altar, were glowing—but not all of them. “Arkon?” she asked, arms still exposed.
He nodded and approached, and after a hesitation, so did the other two Dragon Lords, who had apparently been relegated to the category of inconsequential for the moment. Tiamaris took back his torch. The Arkon caught her wrist, and she allowed it—in part because his grip reminded her a lot of stone, and the effort to shake it off would probably cost her skin, to no notable effect. The Arkon’s presence didn’t seem to cause the runes on the altar’s side to change significantly, either.
“Does it normally do this?”
“A variant, yes,” was his quiet reply. He hadn’t taken his eyes off the marks on her arms. She, on the other hand, was now watching his eyes, because those were the weather vanes of the Dragons. This one indicated an upcoming storm.
“What do they say?” she finally asked.
“I am not completely certain. I would like to see your other arm. Tiamaris.” His voice was flat; he was talking to a lackey, now, not a colleague. “Get the ladder on the far wall—the one with the platform. Put it on the other side of the altar.”
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