One brow rose. “Why?”
“There’s something else…out there. Wherever there’s no world. I…met it, when I was lost between worlds.”
“And what was it?”
“I don’t know, Evanton. But smarter people think it’s the Devourer. We’ve pretty much confirmed the Worlds theory, by now.”
“Confirmation was necessary?” he asked in that clipped tone of his.
“I’ve got my hands full with a city, never mind a world. I didn’t really care one way or the other.”
“A failing of the young. They don’t bother to learn what they can when it would actually be convenient to learn, because they have a very narrow concept of necessity. Continue.”
“I’m not sure I want them to stop the portal from opening. People will die if they do,” she added. “Probably thousands. They’ll starve or they’ll meet the Devourer. I don’t think he’s found them, yet.”
“But he found you.”
She frowned. “Yes. He found me.”
“How?”
“I called…someone who lives in Elantra. By his True Name.”
Evanton didn’t seem surprised.
“When I did, he heard me.”
“Interesting.”
She grimaced. “The portal. Do you also think it shouldn’t be allowed to open?”
“I think it will cause a great deal of havoc when it does,” he replied.
She waited.
“And I’m not entirely certain that anyone can prevent it.”
“Evanton—”
He lifted a hand. “I speak theoretically, of course. It irritates you, and I should apologize. I won’t. No, I don’t think the attempt to keep it closed should be made. But, Kaylin—understand that I am the Keeper of this Garden, and there isn’t another like it in the whole of the many realities, past or present. It’s unique, and it’s here. It exists within the confines of a Dragon’s hoard. It exists half a city away from the heart of the fiefs. It exists in the shadow of the winged flight of Aerians—and if I understand events in the fiefs correctly you’ve brought at least one winged Dragon back into play.
“It exists in streets crossed by Barrani, by humans, by Tha’alani and by Leontines. Without its existence, we would have no world.”
She lay back against the flat grass and let the wind run across her face as she closed her eyes. “Gardens like this don’t exist in the other worlds?”
“No.”
“How can you be so certain?”
Silence. That silence was the worst thing about talking to the powerful and the knowledgeable. She folded thought into it. “Evanton?”
“Yes.”
“The heart of the fiefs. Ravellon.”
“Yes?”
“Does it—did it—exist anywhere else, or only here?”
“I am not the Keeper of the Library,” he finally replied, after a long pause. “Nor am I at all certain that the Keeper of the Library still exists. But he—or she—would have the answer to that question.”
It took Kaylin a minute to figure out that he wasn’t talking about the Arkon. “You think it only existed here.”
“Yes, I do. But I am not certain of it. I am certain that the Elemental Garden existed only here.”
“And the Devourer?”
“I don’t know where the Devourer started, Kaylin. I don’t know precisely where the Ancients started, either, if it comes to that. I know the stories about the births of Dragons and Barrani. I know the stories of the births of other races and other creatures, some of whom could breed and some of whom were unique.
“But the Devourer? No. I would say, if I had to guess, that he is as old as the gods, possibly one of them.”
“I think he’s like your wild elements,” she finally said. “Only he has no Keeper. Or maybe he had one in the nothing, but whoever that was, he didn’t pass the job on to someone else. If he even survived it.
“I know the Devourer has destroyed worlds.”
“How do you know this?”
She shook her head; he didn’t press her.
“I don’t understand how, or why, but…I guess, if the elements were finally unleashed, they’d destroy the world and they wouldn’t have a reason that made much sense, either, at least not to me.” She rolled onto her side, bending an elbow so she could prop her head up on one hand. “Why do you think the portal should be allowed to open if the Devourer is a danger?”
“I allow that the Devourer is a danger. But the world…is the world. It has changed, and continues to change, and one of the ways in which it does are these travelers. Your people. The Aerians. The Tha’alani. They bring something new, each time. It strengthens us.” He waited, and she understood that he was waiting for her to draw some sort of conclusion.
She glanced at Severn, who nodded. It was a slight motion.
“Was this the first world?” she finally asked.
“Very good,” Evanton replied, with just the hint of a smile. “Yes. I believe that this was the first world. It fits with what we know.”
“Does it matter?”
“No. Nor am I saying that no other world was real. They were real. Some, I believe, still exist, but we do not speak so readily with them as we in theory once did.”
“How do you know all this? You couldn’t possibly have been alive when—” She stopped. Thought about the depths of the Elemental Water’s small, quiet pool. “Oh.”
“Oh, indeed. It’s not relevant on most days, and in spite of the fact that I fear your adherence to the purely relevant is shortsighted, it is also practical, and I am a relatively practical man. Mistakes were made on a grand, even a divine scale, and lessons were learned. Rather than war over the fabric of this one world, the Ancients chose to travel. It was long ago.
“They were free, in their slow creations, to make different choices. Often, they simply made different mistakes, but…they learned, and they spoke to their kin across the divide.”
“How did they create worlds?”
“No one knows, Kaylin. Or at least no one who is not an Ancient knows, and they seldom speak, except in echoes.”
She nodded.
“But they experimented with life and the living, and they created, in the end, new races. Yours, the Aerians, the Tha’alani—races that could live, breathe, think, and die, without ever possessing a Name. Some experiments were made here, which I believe you are aware of.
“But that continued elsewhere. And here you now are.” He glanced into the distance made of horizon and light. “And the travelers who struggle toward us now are your distant cousins, or mine, or the Dragon’s. They’re kin, in some way. They’ve come home.
“And I think the worlds allow the creation of these portals or these gates for that purpose. The magic required to penetrate a world is not—as you’ve seen—slight, and it isn’t easily controlled. The Ancients did not uniformly hate or decry those who had left, and they allowed them the safety of return.
“So, they now come.”
She sat up, hunching her back so she could wrap her arms around her shins. “You don’t think they can stop the portal from opening.”
“This seems to be your only concern at the moment,” he said, with faint disapproval. If faint was a loud and thunderous expression.
“Did you ever teach?” she asked.
“Ask Grethan.”
“Never mind. It’s not my only concern. But it is my concern.”
“If, indeed, it’s your largest concern, I suggest you apply some of the pragmatism of which you are theoretically so fond to the difficulty.”
When she didn’t immediately leap up and look enlightened, he added, “What are you going to do with thousands of people who have only the clothing they’re wearing when they appear in the middle of these streets? Do they speak the language?”
She shook her head. “Our meeting at the Palace this morning was supposed to address that issue.”
“See that it is addressed. The Dragon Court is, at heart, a p
ractical body, and the Dragon Emperor, in spite of all publicity to the contrary, does not expect the universe to conform to his whims. He will entertain contingencies in the possible case of failure.”
“He’ll be worried about the larger problem.”
“The Devourer?”
She nodded.
“Yes. But in the event that the Devourer doesn’t immediately end the world—”
She frowned. “What did you say?”
“I believe you heard me.”
The frown deepened. “Severn?”
He nodded.
“The travelers—Enkerrikas and his people—they had time. They knew what was coming. They didn’t believe it would be their deaths. Well, some didn’t. They had time to prepare.”
“Yes.”
“What did they do? Why are there no Records of the worlds that fell? Why did they send so little warning? Enkerrikas recorded everything.”
“He recorded what he saw and he carried it with him,” Severn reminded her.
“But…they implied they could speak with other worlds, or people on other worlds.” She was frustrated now, and she rose. The grasslands stretched out forever. Turning, she said, “Ask the water if we can talk to it?”
“The water is not a mirror, Private.”
“No. But…it remembers. I’m sure it remembers.”
“You said you were short on time.”
“How far away is the water?”
“Across the plain. It’s not more than two days by foot.” He waited.
She wilted, but only slightly. “You said you could make the Garden conform to its usual state—”
“With effort, which I also said was not the wisest use of power at the present time.” Evanton folded arms across his chest.
“Ask, please?”
He grimaced and let his arms fall to the side. “I’m only willing to try,” he told her, “because you attempted to use manners in an appropriate way, and rewarding such attempts is in my future interest. You may wish to wait outside.”
“Is that your way of telling us to wait outside?”
“No. I leave it up to you.”
“We’ll stay.”
“Corporal?”
“The last time she wandered around in your store on her own, I was threatened with demotion,” Severn replied. “I’ll take my chances here.”
Evanton did not immediately begin; instead, he told them—curtly—to follow. There was either a beaten track through the dry, sharp—and mostly flattened—stalks of grass, or one created itself for the Keeper’s convenience. He led them to what appeared to be a large, flat circle in the ground; as they approached, Kaylin saw that it was made of stone. It wasn’t carved, and it wasn’t runed—she thought it was green because of moss.
“Stand on it,” he told her. “And you as well, Corporal. It will remain where it is. The rest of the landscape will…compress. It is not in theory fatal, but it is entirely uncomfortable. While I can’t think of any reason this should apply, I’ll warn you anyway. Touch nothing.”
“Nothing. Got it.” Kaylin sat on her hands. The rock was actually cool to the touch. Severn sat beside her. Evanton cleared his throat and they both moved to make room for him. Standing, he lifted his arms and began to speak. Kaylin didn’t understand a word he was saying.
But without understanding any of it, the language still sounded familiar. Frustrated, she frowned and closed her eyes, to better concentrate. Severn broke that concentration in the easiest way he knew how: he touched her shoulder, and she startled.
“I don’t understand the language, either,” he said quietly. “And you won’t, no matter how hard you try.”
She would have argued, but there was no sting and no judgment in the statement. Severn never judged her; he never had. Judgment, where it had happened in their lives, generally came from Kaylin. She glanced at Evanton, and her frown deepened, just before her eyes widened.
He was speaking the names of fire, water, earth, and air. Not as names, but as language, as story, as something that, at the end—and only then—would finally have a finished shape, a solid truth. Evanton was speaking in the language of the Ancients.
She’d heard Sanabalis do it once, had heard the Arkon do the same. Each time they spoke, she had seen some representation of what they said form in the air around them, as if they’d invoked the spirit of the word itself.
This time? She saw the elements instead. They weren’t dots and strokes and lines; they didn’t look like carvings or glowing sigils. They converged, and the whole of what they were, flame or gale or flood or the thunderous movement of ground, surrounded the very small and very insignificant stone on which they were now seated.
She heard their voices overlapping each other, like the cry of a crowd—or worse—a mob; she heard their desire to be, and to be entirely, what they were. For a moment it was a visceral, necessary thing, a primal need. It was wordless, yes—but wordless was not the same as voiceless.
Without thought, Kaylin began to speak, as well. If Evanton heard her, he gave or made no sign, and he didn’t pause in his own long, precise speech. Hers was imprecise, and she couldn’t later recall the words she spoke because she wasn’t deliberately choosing any. She couldn’t remember most of the things she said to newborn infants, either, because the infants were completely innocent, and nothing she said had meaning beyond the comfort of sound and presence.
She wasn’t an idiot; she didn’t treat the elements like newborn children. But she’d spoken to them once before, when the Garden had almost been destroyed by a very ambitious Arcanist. She spoke not of what they were in their elemental state, nor of what they’d been when they’d first been born—if elements could be said to be born at all. She didn’t know those things any more than she understood mountains or oceans or the empty stretch of plains that knew no streets, no buildings, and no people.
Instead, she spoke of what they meant to her. Fire in the cold of winter in the fiefs, and in the hearth of the Foundling Halls when evening had finally descended and stories—when Marrin allowed them—could be told. Water in the fountains and in the wells, and water as a track of tears that expressed both joy and sorrow when words just weren’t enough. Earth that was plowed and earth into which seedlings were planted—in boxes and small plots and the distant fields of farmers. But the air? She breathed it. It was always, always present, always necessary. It could move freely through open windows and closed doors, and it carried the Aerians—and the Dragons—when they took to the skies.
In all of this, there was beauty, but especially in the flight of those who could meet the sky on their own terms. She didn’t deny it, didn’t resent it: it was what it was. So, too, the elements. She didn’t and couldn’t describe all of what they were; only what they were, at the moment, to Kaylin. But she wanted, and needed, to tell them what they were to her.
Around her, as she continued, the elements began to subside. She could hear their whispers, their shouts, their endless anger and their endless desire—but she could hear, as well, the way they responded to her own beliefs, her own ways of interacting with—and depending on—their very existence for her own life.
In their clamor and anger and constant, restless motion, they asked for something. She couldn’t find the words for it, but as they spoke, she felt it clearly: a yearning. A sorrow.
Elemental sorrow?
Yes, the water replied. For a moment—for just a moment—she heard the word as clearly as if it had been spoken by a young girl, and she saw the face of the water as she had seen it the first time. We were one thing, Kaylin. Once, we were one thing. The others cannot speak as I can now speak. They are not the voice and memory of a people. I am changed by that choice, made so long ago. It is part of me.
But even were we four to be one again, we would never be whole.
“Because you’ve changed so much? Because we’ve changed you?”
No, Kaylin Neya. We were one, and then we were many. But in the act of separation,
one was lost.
“But there are only four elements.”
Yes. There are only four.
“Then what was lost?”
The silence, Kaylin. The emptiness. The peace. The ending. There is only conflict now, between us. We cannot do other than struggle to spread. The Keeper contains and lulls us as he can, and we see and touch and hear the voices of the world. Of the worlds. This is…difficult, for me. To converse here, like this.
But, Kaylin, we can hear it, too. What you heard, what you hear. We know it.
“Can it—can it hear you?”
It can hear us. It has always heard our voices, and the echo of our voices. But it does not see or feel as you see or feel, and like fire—or water, or earth, or air—it is capable of great destruction.
When Kaylin opened her eyes—she couldn’t remember closing them—she saw that around the single flat stone on which she was now standing, the Garden was the Garden she had first seen: larger than a room, yes, but placed in such a way that all shrines could be reached by a swift stroll. The shrines themselves, their odd candelabras and old stone shelves, were once again nearest the symbolic representation of their respective element, and in particular, she could see the small, deep pond that was water, here.
Evanton was staring at her; his brows had drawn together across the top end of his face so they were one long line. But if he wanted to say something scathing, he kept it to himself. “Your Garden,” he said.
She hopped off the rock, started to walk toward the pool, and then hesitated. “Evanton?”
He moved more slowly, and he looked tired. But he nodded.
“How can the elements have always existed?”
“Private, this is not the time for a philosophical discussion.”
Kaylin never had time for a philosophical discussion. “I’m serious,” she said. “I’m having trouble understanding.”
He didn’t look surprised. Nor did he look encouraging. She moved on.
“How can this Garden exist in only one place if there are whole other worlds? I mean, those worlds would need the elements, as well.”
Cast in Chaos Page 28
