Cast in Chaos

by Michelle Sagara

  Kaylin never wanted to communicate with anything ancient or immortal again. She also wanted to throw up. Instead she lifted her hands and placed both palms against the door, and this, the Devourer allowed.

  She remembered what she’d lost now, because he made her remember it, and she also remembered why she had loathed and feared the Tha’alani so damn much. This, this invasion, this stranger tromping through the bits of her life that interested him, invading and exposing all of the darkness, was everything she had ever dreaded the Tha’alani would be. She’d been wrong, and tried to remember it.

  She struggled with the anger, because now was not the time for it, and the anger was—she knew, although it was hard—misplaced. He was trying, in some small way, to communicate with her; he didn’t have all of the words. These emotions, these losses—they were the only similarity he could easily find.

  Knowing it helped; knowing—or praying—that it would stop when he reached the Garden did the rest.

  She opened the door. There were no wards, and she had no key, but her arms were burning, her legs almost shuddering with the tingling that had long passed the barrier between pleasure and pain. I am trying, she said, clenching her teeth, to get you home, damn you!

  The door swung in, the hinges creaking as if it were exactly as careworn and rickety as it appeared to be, and what the Devourer feared he would never find again, Kaylin found in an instant: she could hear the voice of Elemental Water, and through it, the voice of Ybelline.

  Kaylin, the castelord said, making a question of the name that held all of her concern, her worry, and her vast affection.

  If she could have, she would have dropped to her knees and hugged the ground. But the Devourer wouldn’t cross the threshold, and at the moment, he occupied most of her.

  I’m here, she told Ybelline.

  You must bring him into the Garden, the castelord said carefully.

  I think he’s afraid.

  The castelord’s silence was slightly more complicated than usual. How do you know this? she finally asked.

  Because he’s dredged up every memory I’ve ever had that’s grim and ugly, and he’s made it so strong I— She shook her head, or tried. I think he’s trying to tell me that this is how he feels. She was somehow touching the Tha’alaan because she stood on the border of the Elemental Garden, and the water had her name.

  Thank you, Kaylin, Ybelline said. I believe the water will speak with you now.

  The water, wordless, wasn’t silent; Kaylin heard its movement. She opened her eyes, and she saw, not the garden with which she was mostly familiar, but the heart of the ocean itself. From it rose a wave that would have destroyed half the City had it hit. It was framed by a door that Kaylin only briefly considered shutting; she didn’t try.

  No, the water said. You won’t.

  Maybe because he won’t let me.

  Water thundered and fell in denial. Kaylin got very wet. So, sadly, did Evanton’s books. If he survived, he was going to be pissed.

  It is not because you have no volition, the water said, but because you trust me. You are not elemental, and you are not wild. You are not ancient. You live, and die, so quickly your thoughts are fleeting and hard to grasp. I am not, and will never be, what you are.

  But you trust, regardless.

  He will never be what you are, and of all of us, he is the least affected by the brevity of your lives. He destroys them because he cannot even comprehend them, they move past so quickly. What he sees in you now is confusing. Were it not for your name, Kaylin-who-is-not-immortal, he would not see it at all.

  He struggles to do what you have chosen to do, time and again, according to my daughter.

  Daughter?

  Ybelline Rabon’alani. You have chosen, time and again, to place trust and hope over fear and uncertainty. Teach him, Kaylin. Teach him this. He is changing the world in which you stand. If you did not stand in the lee of the Garden, you would not even recognize that world now.

  But why—

  It is his nature.

  Tell him—

  We have been speaking, Kaylin? Can you not hear us?

  She nodded, because she could—but she was tired and in pain, and the sounds were natural sounds, not words, not deliberate communication.

  Teach him. Show him how.

  She wanted to argue. She wanted to tell the water that it wasn’t true. On bad days she didn’t even like people. Trusting them?

  She spent her days patrolling Elani street, where sandwich boards and gaudy merchant windows made a mockery of trust; trust was for fools and the quirky rich. Trust, Morse had told her, was fine for corpses. Trust, she had learned in Nightshade, was just another tool to exploit, a weapon that you gave the exploiter if you weren’t careful.

  Trust was for the willfully blind. She’d seen the corpses of women murdered by their husbands, their fathers, and once, their sister; she’d seen husbands murdered by their wives, and children murdered by strangers that they had inexplicably chosen to trust. It wasn’t a daily occurrence, not even in her years in the Hawks—but it was reality.

  She was not a trusting person.

  You trusted the Hawklord.

  She was used to arguing with herself, and she even tried. I thought he would kill me. I expected him to kill me. Trust didn’t cost anything.

  You trusted Marcus.

  He came with the Hawklord.

  You trusted—and still trust—Severn.

  Severn. The memories the Devourer had rifled through were so raw she wanted to scream. In fury. In denial. A scream that might change the world and time and everything in it.

  He had done this. Severn had killed them. She had trusted him. Steffi and Jade had trusted him. Gods—gods—gods—

  She screamed, instead, at the water. You didn’t do this to him!

  The water fell utterly silent then. The fire’s hiss and crackle vanished. The wind stilled. But beneath her toes—the toes that were just a hairbreadth across the doorjamb, the earth was trembling.

  Oh my god, she whispered, and she bent and placed a palm across the threshold. You did. The Devourer was as still as the elements; he didn’t seek to stop her as she pressed a hand into the soft, warm sand. Nor did he stop her when she rose and walked, at last, into the Garden itself. You did.

  The Devourer was in the Garden, now, but he was not, as Kaylin had hoped, any closer to the home she had promised him. And she had promised him that much. She was angry—and anger against the elements had always been futile. Anger against the snow, or the rain, or the humid, sweltering heat made as much sense as anger against disease. They were things that happened. It wasn’t personal.

  But this? This was, she saw clearly, personal. She’d never been good at pointing anger in the right direction, and she was willing to admit—privately, where the entire Garden could actually listen in—that she had trouble letting go. The Devourer had brought to the surface everything she kept buried. She now had fury to spare, and it was easier—it was always easier—to turn it outward.

  What did you do?

  Silence. It was the silence of gathering storm, and had she an ounce more sense, she’d’ve been afraid. Anger was a shield.

  But it wasn’t the storm who spoke, and it wasn’t Ybelline—although she would have welcomed the soothing presence of the Tha’alani castelord. It was, to her surprise, the Arkon.

  “Private,” he said, his voice dry and clear. “Look at the ground upon which you are standing.”

  Confused, she did exactly that, and she saw that the sand dunes that framed the ocean had given way to the wild and unkempt weeds one found in the deserted yards of dilapidated manors throughout the fiefs. But the weeds themselves were fine-veined and totally different in color than any others she’d encountered before.

  “Evanton?”

  The Keeper was silent.

  “If I am correct,” the Arkon said, “he is attempting to make certain that the changes made in the Garden conform in some small way to our accept
ed understanding of life. It is not guaranteed, and in this, his elemental control has been…compromised. It would be best if you failed to touch the earth at all.”

  She didn’t point out that she didn’t have wings, and also had no control over the Elemental Air. Instead, she said, “I need to know what happened in the past.”

  “Ask them,” he said.

  “I was—”

  “Not that way. If I understand what has happened, Kaylin, the elements now have your name. Use it.”

  “They have my name.”

  “That is what I said.”

  “I can’t use—”

  “You cannot compel, Private. And if they desire it, you will never be free of their compulsion. But it is a bond that works both ways. You will see, and hear, more clearly than anyone present, with the possible exception of Evanton, and in a limited case, Ybelline Rabon’alani.

  “Use the bond. If you require information, gain it. But do it quickly. The Garden will not survive, and if it does not…”

  “And if they don’t want to tell me?”

  He didn’t answer.

  Had the Devourer destroyed whole worlds in an attempt to ease his pain? She couldn’t turn to face him, but if she could have, she would. She was still raw from his inspection and his forced unearthing of her past, and perhaps that had been his intent; it had worked.

  She spoke to the water. Tell me, she said, trying to keep her mental voice even and clean.

  The water was silent, and Kaylin realized that no matter how even or clean her voice, her fury was utterly visible to any of the immortals present who were gifted with her name. She said, Live with it. If I don’t know what happened, I can’t teach him what you need him to learn. What we need him to learn.

  You learned.

  I learned after the fact. I learned reasons, and I could even understand them. I would never, ever make the choice Severn did. I would never do what he did. Yes, she snarled. I do trust him. With my life. With almost everything in it. And I’m not proud of that fact. It was true. Here, all words had to be true.

  He knew me better than anyone. He still knows me better than any one else does. He asks for almost nothing. And he will never, ever do that again.

  You are certain.

  Yes. Tell me.

  Can you convince him—

  I don’t know. I don’t know if I’ll even understand what you did, and if I don’t, I don’t know if he will. Her damn arms were aching so badly she thought the fire must be caressing them. Tell me, she said again.

  The water did.

  The problem with listening to immortal and endless elements—any of them—was nothing they said made any sense. Or rather, they made as much sense as snow or storm or earth quake; they happened, and if you were lucky, you survived. They didn’t have intent, and they didn’t have observation—not of the people who they happened to.

  These four, though, could learn. The water could speak as clearly to Kaylin as Ybelline did. But with strength of name to bind them, Kaylin understood that the water’s interpretation of the words it sometimes spoke were…different. Although the water did speak, Kaylin couldn’t figure out what the hells it was saying. Anger ebbed into frustration. How angry could she be, when the crime itself was something that had no place in the context of the crimes—large and small—that she’d seen, experienced, or had some hope of understanding?

  You are too small, the earth said, unexpectedly adding its voice. You are too small and you vanish before a thought is finished.

  Try anyway, she said, but she spoke more softly.

  The roots of the trees, he said. They deepen year by year. They last longer. They require water and sun, and they reach the wind. They are multiple in their shape and form—

  Kaylin coughed. I know what a tree is, she said, because she suddenly knew he hadn’t even started, and when he warmed up he’d go on until she’d died of old age. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to hear it, either; there was something about the way he spoke that made her wonder when trees had become a work of inexplicable art, each unique.

  But not today.

  He rumbled beneath her feet, and she stumbled. Even elements, apparently, didn’t appreciate bad manners. He was the only one speaking.

  We were like trees. Like the seeds of trees which contain the possibility of the whole, before wind, rain and sun, before life. He was our earth.

  The fire hissed. That is not how I perceive it, he said, his voice a crackle of heat and indignation.

  Nor I. Patience, the water added. They are limited by their language, and it is hard to fit our concepts into words they will—or can—understand. He uses a word that makes sense in the context of her life.

  Then perhaps we should let the old one expand their pathetic concepts—

  Hush.

  The earth continued. We grew. We grew quickly, by our reckoning, and we grew wild. We took shapes that no tree will ever take, and we knew freedom in our growth. But we were not free.

  We built. We made. When I first learned of the other elements, I felt…young. Curious. We could not reach each other, but we could speak. And we spoke, and those words were words, of which your own are the barest of echoes. We slept, and we dreamed, and we spoke.

  We were not aware of him, then. We became aware of him as a boundary and a division, and we labored long to overcome him. It was not possible. He did not speak to us, not then.

  But he listened.

  We grew. We made. One day, we made children. We taught them to speak. It was slow, and arduous, and not all of our children were capable of this task, and those that were not, the dreaming consumed, and we tried again. But at length, when we understood the whole of their making, they woke, and they spoke to us. They were fragile, these children, and easily destroyed, and we did not understand why. But their voices fell silent, and it grieved us.

  It grieved, the water added, as the earth fell momentarily silent, him. We felt the weight of his grief, living as we were in isolation. Our creations could travel between us, but even the travel was fraught, and more perished in the traversal than survived. We felt the weight of his grief, and he spoke then. Because the voices had vanished.

  He had learned, listening to our attempts to bespeak our creations, to speak himself. But his speech was slow and the effects of his words vast and unpredictable, and when we heard his words, we were finally aware of him. The water stopped speaking.

  The wind continued. His words made mountains and valleys and rivers. They made plains and cliffs and canyons. They made moons. They made sky. They made worlds. To make these things, he took some part of each of us, and we were diminished.

  But our creations could flourish, and they did.

  They were free, the wind continued. And they learned what we could not learn, trapped in the darkness and the heart of ourselves. We yearned for the vistas that our creations opened. But he did not, or would not, listen. He refused us.

  And we burned, the fire said. We raged. We waited. We do not mark time the way you mark it, for you are frail beyond even the ken of our weakest creations. But time did pass, and one day, in the heart of fire, we were offered an answer. Our children, our creations, had mastered language. They could speak the words that might free us.

  We hid them, the water said. And we kept our counsel. In time, the plans of our creations grew to fruition, and they…unmade him.

  “Unmade?” Kaylin said softly. Nothing hindered her.

  He was powerful. But they had learned words and their craft, and they used words to draw him and to sunder us, one from the other. And from him.

  We heard his cry. He broke worlds in his grief and terror. But worlds, we could make anew. Those that survived—and there were few—cast him far from the bounds of their homes, into darkness and deafness and silence, for only in silence could he do no harm.

  And then, we were free.

  Kaylin felt the heat of fire singe loose strands of her hair—and her eyelashes. She lifted her arms to cover h
er eyes.

  CHAPTER 30

  Kaylin turned to the darkness. The water had said he wouldn’t like to be called the Devourer, but she was reluctant to saddle him with a random name, not because it hadn’t worked out well the last time she’d done it, but because he was beyond naming. She needed to make things small enough so that she could grasp and understand them; he couldn’t be made that small.

  But she thought she understood some part of him anyway.

  To the water she said, It’s not the same.

  Is it not? He was mute, and we gave him language. It was ours. We marveled at him, and in our arrogance, we thought of him as a…child. We gave him the voices of our creations, and he came to love them. We took them from him, and in order to free ourselves—

  This wasn’t about freeing himself. She spoke of Severn.

  Then perhaps it is different. I understand only that we harmed him greatly and removed him from everything he valued and trusted. Trust is not the right word. It implies its opposite, and the opposite, for him, did not exist.

  It exists now, Kaylin thought.

  Yes. Ybelline says to tell you that we tore out his heart, and it did not kill him. I am not sure why she feels this will help.

  Kaylin nodded. The darkness was waiting inside her, and it had done a pretty good job of making itself damn small, as if it were hiding. Hiding its longing and its pain and its hope and its fear. But she could hear them all, because she had given him her name.

  “If you did all of this to be free, why does the Garden exist? Why is there a Keeper at all?”

  We did not understand that we were part of him. He was our sleep and our dream and our retreat from the burden of waking. Without earth, the trees cannot grow. Uprooted, they perish. We taught him what it meant to wake. He could not teach us what it meant to do otherwise. We were free, but we found that we were subject to words and language in a way that we had never intended.

  And we found that we could no longer make, because we could no longer dream as one. We could be. We could destroy, and we did—for we were entirely uncontained—but what we could destroy could not easily be rebuilt. In our madness and our exultation, we destroyed much, and it was only in the grim silence that followed that we understood the bitter cost of freedom.