He’s not. He’s silent, now.
Can you see him?
Yes.
Has he changed?
Yes. He doesn’t look mortal, if that’s what you mean. But he’s not the whole of the sky or the landscape. He seems to have…condensed.
She had no idea how to frame a story about what the Devourer meant to the living, because as far as she knew, he meant death.
But he appears to be following our refugees.
She had never spoken to the air in the Garden; nor had she spent much time attempting to converse with the dirt. She wouldn’t have bothered talking to the fire, either, if it hadn’t been carrying her. She regretted that now, but began, once again, to talk about her own experience with the elements; she made them part of her story, and offered them to the only audience she had. If she stumbled or hesitated or went on too long, the audience didn’t yawn or shout or snicker, and for that, she was grateful.
Air was breath. Without it, there was no life. It carried seeds—in the city, they were usually weed spore—and scent, the aroma of baking or cooking or less pleasant but no less present things. It carried…words. Speech. At its worst it carried ice and made it hard to stand or walk, and she added that, as well. It carried Aerians and Dragons, and although the only flight she usually experienced, with one notable exception, was wheedled or whined for, she did tell the Devourer, because she loved flight, and envied it. Flight was freedom. Flight was escape from the confinement of…earth.
Earth, she thought, and cages.
But that was a different story, a way of expressing a restlessness or helplessness that had nothing to do with the fact of earth, because usually what she wanted to escape from was herself. Earth? Without earth, there was also no life. There was no grass, no wheat, no corn, no trees from which most homes were built. There were no cliffs, no cliff faces into which Aerians built their Aeries.
Sometimes she did want to fly. Sometimes, though, she needed to make a stand. Then, she needed earth, stone, something beneath her feet that wasn’t so capricious it couldn’t bear her weight. Earth was the place in which the dead rested, in the end.
The Devourer was silent, but it was an attentive silence.
She looked at her arms. The marks on her skin were also words; they’d never felt heavy, had never really felt like anything but skin at all, except in the presence of strong magic, in which case they felt like selective sunburns.
The Devourer was attracted to the use of the names; he had come when Vakillirae had made his stand, his name hanging in the air before him like a translucent, luminescent shield. Regular speech hadn’t caught his attention; on her first visit to this empty wasteland, she’d cursed liberally in every language she could, which was basically, with the exception of Dragon, any language she knew.
What is the name of fire?
Funny, that she should hear Sanabalis, of all people, now. His lessons, his endless, quiet lectures, returned in those words. The name of fire. She focused, as she had never managed to focus on the candles he set in front of her, lifted her head, and spoke.
Out of the gray-black insides of the Devourer, fire came at her call. If she’d called fire like this in the West room, she’d’ve lost her job, and quite possibly her life: it raged. It raged, it danced, it roared, spanning the spectrum from white to red.
Careful, Kaylin. Severn’s words were jarring. They were also an anchor.
What’s happening?
The refugees are now walking through fire. No, it’s not burning them, not yet.
She started to speak, and stopped at the next interruption.
Private Neya. It was the Arkon. She looked at the fire and she could see his face. Or what she assumed was his face; he was a Dragon.
The fire will speak, he told her. Repeat what it says, if you can. Repeat it exactly. Do you understand?
She nodded and listened more carefully than she had ever listened as a bored student in a distant classroom. The fire spoke. She couldn’t understand it. No, more than that, she had a sense that it was speaking, but she couldn’t make out syllables; there was nothing there to repeat.
Arkon, she said, trying to keep panic out of her voice, I can’t— I can’t hear the fire clearly enough to repeat what it says.
Dragon jaws didn’t lend themselves to frowning, but they had other ways of showing displeasure; admittedly fire, at this stage, was not the most effective.
I can hear the fire’s voice.
You’re touching it.
You must be touching it, he said, his voice quite cold given everything, or we would not now be speaking. Try again.
The fire had not stopped its rumble, and none of what it said was any closer to being audible, never mind repeatable. Can you understand it? she asked, in frustration.
He was silent for a moment. Yes.
I can’t. Understanding doesn’t matter—but I can’t hear it well enough. At all.
This is an unwelcome complication, was the Arkon’s response. Have you called the other elements?
Even through the wavering heat of fire, he could read her expression quite clearly. Sadly, she could read his just as well.
I will not ask you how far you progressed in your lessons with Lord Sanabalis, because I am well aware of the answer. This is not a classroom, Private. You will now have to repeat your first success three times. I do not think, he added, that you have much time left. Grethan has reported that the ground in the street is looking distinctly less…solid.
The problem with time was that there was never enough of it. Just once, she thought, straightening her shoulders, it would be nice to know what I’m doing instead of groping around in the dark. In this particular case, the darkness was no longer literal; it was lined by fire.
Fire, she thought, and the attention of the Devourer. He was utterly silent now, and his silence was almost another presence, it was so strong.
What, she thought, was the name of air? She had already described what air meant in the context of her own life, and she held those disparate pieces of information while she tried to find the pieces that she hadn’t experienced, but could guess. The flight of Dragons. The flight of Aerians. The winds on the ice of mountains that were more myth than fact. She cursed her lack of imagination, or at least its lack of speed, and once again reaffirmed the fact that without breath there was no speech; she hadn’t bothered to curse silently.
Nor was the fire silent; it sounded almost like a heartbeat. But there was another sound, like the quiet humming of bees, and Kaylin realized, as she looked around, that the sound came from her. Lifting her arms, she listened; it was the runes. They were vibrating against her skin.
She looked at them as if they were art. Or text. Or some mix of both. And then, looking, she began to speak. It was disturbing because she could hear her voice clearly and it sounded completely unfamiliar. She began to rise in what was only barely air, until her toes were dangling, point down, with nothing to impede them.
Her hair rose, as well—or the parts that always escaped any confinement—and something tugged like an insistent toddler at her fingers. She had spoken the name of air, and air had come.
With it, ghostly and translucent, a familiar figure: Lord Sanabalis in miniature. Kaylin. He was still a Dragon, his wings extended in a hover that wasn’t quite flight.
Sanabalis. I—the Arkon said—
What the Arkon said is something to discuss if we survive this. We may not, he added, which wasn’t precisely comforting. You must listen to the air, Kaylin—and it is not a chore.
Listen and repeat what it tells me?
Dragon faces didn’t lend themselves to surprise, either. But his silence was a beat too long.
Yes.
Earth came next. It was slower than air or fire, but it was easier in all ways to build; what she found, she held, as if it were innately solid. With earth came the Keeper. He wasn’t seen through heat haze or wind; he looked as solid as he might have, had he been standing on her foot.
He didn’t seem particularly surprised to see her. Are you sure, he said, as if they were seated in the storefront, you don’t want a job?
She chuckled. Even here. “I’d just mess up the kitchen,” she said, speaking out loud. “Although you might not notice the difference.” The smile slid from her face, leaving her expression stranded. “The Arkon and Sanabalis—”
“They’re there?”
“As much as you are. Well, maybe less. They’re telling me the fire and the air want me to repeat fire and air words—and I can’t even hear them as more than a crackle and hiss.”
He frowned.
“You can hear them. Can you tell me what they’re saying?”
The frown deepened. “No,” he said, after a long pause. “I can’t. What they say to you, what they need you to repeat, isn’t meant for my ears.”
“Great. It’s not meant for mine, either.”
“But the Devourer hasn’t destroyed you.”
“No. He’s…quiet, now. I think he’s listening.”
“Good. You will need to repeat the Elemental words.”
“How if I can’t bloody hear them?”
“I have confidence in you, Private. Call the water.”
Kaylin hesitated, and then continued. She had deliberately saved water for last, because it was the element to which she felt closest. She didn’t have to struggle to turn water into a metaphor; to Kaylin, water had a personality. It had intent. Yes, it was also necessary for life; yes, people needed to drink it, and rain was required for plants and the fields of farmers.
But the Elemental Water was the heart of the Tha’alaan. Over the centuries of being the receptacle for the memories and emotions of an entire race, it had developed the ability to speak, to feel, and ultimately, to love. It understood home in a way that only the Tha’alani could.
Kaylin would never, ever be more than a visitor to the Tha’alaan. She both hated and accepted it, because when she did manage to sneak in the figurative door, she was treated as if she were family. Here, in an emptiness that was not the solid, confining state of the real world as she knew it, she called the water, because she knew the name of water.
It came. It came in a pillar that immediately took form and shape as it rose: Female, and at that a familiar woman. The water, translucent-skinned, with hair that stretched through the gray nothing and vanished from sight, looked very much like the Tha’alani castelord.
Kaylin, Ybelline said, as if to underscore the likeness.
Kaylin reached out to hug this blend of castelord and element, but the element lifted a hand. You will fall through me, she said, in a voice that was entirely her own.
It doesn’t hurt to fall, here. I’ve tried. But she stilled. You need to speak to the Devourer.
That is not what we call him, but yes. We cannot. You must speak for us, here.
I can’t even hear what you’re saying. I mean, the other words.
The water began to speak, and…Kaylin heard gurgling—the gurgle of a brook or a clear stream.
It’s the same, she began. The words faded.
The ground beneath her feet was changing. What had been gray and almost formless mist—albeit mist that supported weight if you wanted to walk on it—was developing color.
CHAPTER 28
The color wasn’t the gray of stone or cobbles; it wasn’t the pale brown-gray of packed dirt, or even the green and yellow brightness of weeds. It was, at once, all of those things.
What does it mean? Kaylin asked the water.
The gate is opening, was the water’s reply. It was both the answer Kaylin expected and the one she didn’t want to hear. You will no longer be able to speak with us when the landscapes merge. This, on the other hand, was unexpected, and even less welcome.
Why is the inside of the Devourer changing?
The water didn’t answer. Kaylin had a momentary vision of being slowly enveloped by the digestive system of a giant beast. Given the rest of her fears, that one was almost funny.
She could hear the slow grind of stone and the rush of falling water; she could hear the whistle of wind and the crackle of flame. She could speak of these things, but the Devourer didn’t respond in any way that indicated that he understood. He could hear her, yes; his silence and the sudden cessation of the activity for which—clearly—he’d been named made that clear.
Kaylin—she could hear Severn.
Let me see.
He didn’t even hesitate. Can you?
All hesitance was hers. She felt his presence as if he weren’t quite a separate person; as if she could reach out through him and touch the world in which he now stood. She did, and she opened her eyes to a landscape that looked like a chaotic sketch. A sketch that Everly might have done before he started painting. In its center, however, more solid than anything but the massing crowd of refugees, was a very familiar image: the portal.
It stood like a mad mage’s idea of a door meant for giants, and it rose into the scintillating colors of what had once been gray. But the portal was not yet open; what lay around it and what lay in its center looked almost exactly the same.
Except the colors within the frame were starting to roil.
She turned as Severn turned, and saw what he saw: the outside of the Devourer. She saw the way the colors that had infested the landscape now clustered around the mountainous and amorphous form of something that might just be nightmare. On a good day.
Kaylin, Ybelline said, her voice softer, the syllables attenuated.
Kaylin opened her eyes to colored mist and the embodiment of the elements; to Dragons, Evanton, and Ybelline. She thought of Vakillirae, of Enkerrikas, and of the cost of their flight and their escape from the Devourer. And she thought, as well, of the one thing that neither of the two had ever considered trying.
She even understood why.
She began to speak her name, not as an affirmation of power, not as an accidental summoning, but as an invitation, as an opening of a door. The door, really. She tried to give the elements her name.
Sadly, this was not as easily done as she’d hoped.
She tried three times, and then, clenching her jaw, she smacked herself in the side of the head, and turned to the elements. The elements that she couldn’t hear and couldn’t, therefore, understand.
Listen, she told them, putting years of training into what was, in the end, an unspoken word. They weren’t raw recruits; they didn’t snap to attention. But they turned to her.
I want to tell you a story.
She couldn’t tell them a story about the gods, or the Ancients, because she’d only seen their echoes. She could have told them the stories she’d told the Devourer, but it would have taken too long. So she told them, instead, about the Barrani High Court, and its lake of life, in which the names of the living waited to be joined to the infants who would bear them.
Not an infant, she’d chosen one name for herself—but she’d chosen it blindly, and she’d hidden it. She was already alive. She needed no name and no word to define her; she needed no midwife to breathe life into her still form. She hadn’t even meant to take a name for herself at all.
Fire roared; water sizzled. The elements had moved closer to her in the oddly confined space.
She described the name, line by perceptible line, and as she did, the play of simple syllables stretched out, beginning to end. But this disparate description had no resonance for the elements; she saw that.
In frustration, she said, “Sanabalis, how the Hell do you give your damn name to someone else?”
It is not something I have ever tried. His nostrils flared.
No? But…she had. She had given her name to Severn. And it hadn’t seemed like such a big deal, at the time. No, that wasn’t true. It had been important, but the name itself had come easily, as if it were a simple word, some part of her constant vocabulary.
But she’d tried that a dozen times now, and it did nothing.
The giving of a name, when it is done at al
l, is personal, Kaylin. It is as much an individual act of emotion as any declaration of love. No two people mean precisely the same thing when they say it. It is an act, an avowal, that exists entirely in the moment, although the consequences stretch out in either direction, past and future.
He was silent for long enough that she thought he’d finished.
Love is defined by individuals and their response to each other. Even the love of Dragons, although it is deeper and rarer. To give your name to me—if you were so willing and so entirely foolish—would be entirely different from giving your name to your Sergeant. Or your Corporal. They are not the same in intent, in the end, because your intent is defined by your past experiences with each individual.
But, Kaylin, whatever you intend to do, do it now.
She nodded. Thank you. She turned, once again, to the elements and their companions. Those companions were the bridge between Kaylin and the heart of fire, water, wind and earth, but they were also the bridge between the rest of the people of her City. Her world.
She understood the ways in which the elements—or the shadows they cast into the world, all the worlds—were part of her life, almost indivisible from it. But, part of her life and necessary to it or no, she was not part of theirs except when crisis drove her to Evanton’s shop. She didn’t, and couldn’t, understand them; they lived forever, and they needed nothing. People needed them to be contained, which is why the Garden existed at all.
But they, like any living thing, could listen. What they heard, what they made of what she said, she couldn’t control—but then again, that was true of any other listener. But she could see the scorn, confusion, anger or surprise of other listeners, so she could add more words, or attempt to retract the ones she’d already spoken.
Here, she saw, there would be no retractions. They would understand the core of what she said, or they wouldn’t.
So she tried to keep it clear and simple, inasmuch as anything ancient and mystical could be either. She didn’t choose complicated words; she chose the ones that described only how she felt, because she knew that. This is who and what I am, right now. I know it’s strange and insignificant, and I know I break things sometimes, but only by accident. I’m on the outside, looking in. I’m always on the outside, looking in. But I will knock, now, and I will wait at the door instead of staring through the window like a thief.
Cast in Chaos Page 39
