Cast in Chaos

by Michelle Sagara

  We could not speak to each other, for where we attempted to speak, our wildness was strongest.

  Kaylin frowned. You created, you said.

  Yes. When we were one.

  And your creations were some part of all of you?

  Yes. And we could no longer be one. We did not know, then, what to do. Our creations did. They made this Garden, and appointed its Keeper. They bound us by words that were stronger than ours.

  You allowed this?

  The water’s laugh was bitter. No. We fought it. But when we were at last contained, we could once again speak to our creations. We could hear their words. We could struggle against the imperative to transform everything we touched into what, individually, we are.

  And in this Garden, she added—Kaylin would always think of the water as she—I first heard the voice of the Tha’alani. I answered. I was compelled to answer. But they called me to birth and guide, to succor their field, to stem the harshest of their storms.

  Their voices were not the voices of my own creations. They were so dim and so slight it was many, many years before I understood that they were voices at all. But I learned, then. I grew to value them, and in the end, I made them as much a part of me—unique in the worlds that I know of—as I was once a part of him.

  An echo of what we are exists in the world. The many worlds. And we do not, now, wish to destroy it. But we are tired, Kaylin. We are tired, and we have had little peace and little dreaming. We cannot dream. When word was brought of what you might face—then we knew both fear and hope, and it is in hope that we have opened ourselves to you.

  Since Kaylin had been the one who had given them her name, she felt this wasn’t entirely accurate. Inside of her, she felt darkness stir.

  “What you’ve said—all you’ve said—is about what you want. What you need.”

  “Kaylin,” Evanton said sharply. “Now is not the time—”

  “It’s exactly the time,” she replied. “He can’t be the security blanket they tossed away and want back. There’s nothing in what they’ve said that means they can’t just toss him away again when it’s convenient.”

  “Private,” the Arkon said, his tone conveying the rest of Evanton’s truncated lecture.

  But Ybelline said, “No, she is right. The task given by the elements to Kaylin was to teach trust—if it can be taught. She responds because she herself is not certain that trust, in this case, is warranted—and whether or not she speaks, the Devourer will know what she feels. It is now unavoidable. Kaylin has never been particularly adept at lying well. All of her effective lies are the ones she believes are true. It is why, in the end, she can be at home in the Tha’alaan, where there are no secrets.”

  “She is not dealing with an errant child, or irresponsible parents,” Evanton snapped back. “And it is not entirely clear to me that her understanding encompasses enough for her to make these judgments.”

  “That is unfortunate,” was the cool reply, “because the elements have chosen to rely on that judgment.”

  Kaylin would have added her voice to the argument, but she was waiting; there was only one voice—well, one set of voices—that she wanted to hear from, now.

  She was surprised to find out how wrong she was, because the voice that did interrupt the discussion was not elemental. Nor was it ancient, in the end—but it wasn’t unwelcome.

  You asked me, Severn said, at a remove that made walls and geography meaningless, why I love you. I’ve never asked you the same question. As if he could see the lines of her jaw and shoulders tensing, he added, and I won’t. But I will ask, because it seems necessary, why do you trust me, now? For years, you lived on the dream of my death. But you tried to kill me only once—and we both know why.

  Yes. Because you were standing in the Foundling Halls and I was terrified—

  I know. That I would kill them, the way I killed Steffi and Jade. But I’ve been there since and you’ve never tried again. You won’t.

  No.

  Why? What changed between then and now? Steffi and Jade are still dead, and they still died the same—

  I know! I know that!

  Yes. You do. I’ve never tried to apologize for what I did because there is no apology that could encompass it in scope. There’s almost nothing I could say that wouldn’t trivialize it. I’ve never promised you that I wouldn’t do it again, for the same reason. What you want from the elements is what you’ve never demanded—from me.

  It’s not the same, she told him, aware as she did that the darkness within was listening in a frenzy and trying to absorb something that was so insignificant it should have been beneath him.

  No. We’re human.

  You did—what you did—for love of me.

  No. I told you. I did it for myself because I couldn’t bear to lose you. It’s not the same, in the end.

  The elementals made the choices they did because—

  Yes. They wanted their freedom. They wanted the world. But they were young enough not to understand what he was, and what he ultimately meant to them. They aren’t young, now. They’ve changed enough that even if they originally fought their imprisonment here, they understand why it’s necessary, and they’ve been fighting huge parts of their base nature to save those worlds that remain. Don’t judge them because you’re still so conflicted by your response to me.

  Is that what she was doing? Kaylin had always reacted first and reflected later. Here and now, the “later” was in question. Was she demanding, from the elements, what she had never had the courage to demand up front from Severn?

  No.

  Yes.

  It was stupid. She could ask Severn why he loved her and believe his answers; she didn’t question that. But she hated the part of her that could forgive what was unforgivable. What should be unforgivable. Because it meant there was no justice. And she was part of the lack of it.

  But truthfully, she was part of the lack of it anyway. The Tower of Tiamaris had showed her that. If justice in any absolute sense existed, she was doomed; there was no salvation. All of the good deeds, all of the honest efforts, all of the experience and the learning and the growing—it amounted to nothing. Because she’d done things for which she ultimately had no way of atoning.

  And that was it, wasn’t it? It’s different if I do it. Why? Because I understand why I did it, and I’m me.

  She had let go of the self-loathing, or she thought she had; letting go of the loathing, period, was something she hadn’t even considered. She lived by her judgment; judgment was one of the reasons the Hawks existed. The laws provided guidelines, and in some sense, imperfect justice for those who couldn’t provide it for themselves because, alone, they didn’t have the power.

  And it was imperfect. Because it was, more or less, human. It was hard to remember, when dealing with crime, that the crime itself was not the whole of the person who’d committed it.

  She straightened her shoulders and turned to the water, which was a standing wall that would, if it fell, crush her. “What will you do with him if he chooses to stay?”

  Water undulated; it looked surprisingly like physical distress, given the total lack of anything familiar with which to express it. Then, absent mouth or anything that allowed for speech as Kaylin understood it, the water spoke. It was a long rush of sound and syllable, a tantalizingly familiar tongue that Kaylin failed to understand.

  The Devourer—no, damn it, she would think of him as the Maker—listened in stillness; he had not taken control of Kaylin’s body again. He had let her speak, and look about, as she’d de sired. He understood the words. He hungered for them, wanted them so badly he almost—almost—replied. But he remained silent.

  The water turned to the other elements, and they, too, began to speak, their voices like thunder, but physical. They enjoined the water’s entreaties, if they were that, and the Maker within couldn’t misunderstand their intent; they spoke the oldest of tongues, where meaning had not yet given way to the walls of personal context.
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  And, oh, he trembled. He trembled and he hid. It was ridiculous—something that could devour whole worlds trying to hide behind Kaylin. But he did, and she even understood why. Everything he wanted was here—but for how long? How long?

  It wasn’t the whole of the reason for his silence; there were parts of him that she simply couldn’t understand, couldn’t hear, couldn’t feel. But this one, she understood, and he knew it. After the first big loss, it had always been the question that had driven Kaylin’s life. It wasn’t until she was older and less terrified that she understood two things: there were no guarantees, and in spite of that, the only two choices she had were between the constant risk of loss and the total absence of anything in her life that she loved enough to want to hold on to.

  There were, on the other hand, smart risks and stupid ones. That was still harder to navigate.

  What are you? he asked. If she’d heard it with her ears, she would have tried to cover them; his voice was the essence of Dragon’s roar. The shock almost dislodged the thought that he was…stalling for time. He wasn’t, not really.

  The runes on her arms and legs had fallen silent, for want of a better word, and the absence of ache was almost its own pleasure. Because they were no longer glowing so brightly, because they weren’t trying to escape her skin, she saw them begin to light up, one at a time, and she knew that he was reading her. Reading them.

  In spite of herself, she said, What do they mean? What do they say?

  You do not know?

  His words were different. They were Elantran, her mother tongue. She could repeat them with ease. His voice had shifted, as well; it felt like a strong, deep voice—but not a roar, not a Dragon’s bellow. Her eyes widened; out of her chest, gray seeped, like blood made smoke.

  It coalesced in front of her, between where she stood and where the water towered, and as it did, it condensed, until something that roamed the gaps between whole worlds was the size and shape of a man. A familiar man, rendered in pale, gray flesh.

  Severn. He had finally become something small enough she could clearly see him, and the form he’d chosen to present himself in was Severn’s. But his eyes were the night sky writ small, and even at the distance of a few yards, she could see stars and the empty darkness in them.

  She raised one brow, and he mimicked the expression—about twenty times. It was almost as if he were a toddler and had just discovered he could do something different. He stretched, and his shape solidified, muscles shifting as he moved. He stared at his arms, and then, walking over to her, lifted her own.

  “This is a small shape,” he finally said. “It is very confining. Perhaps you would like to leave it?”

  “No,” she said hurriedly. “I’m used to it.”

  The edge of his ancient hunger had been dulled somehow; she wasn’t certain why. Didn’t want to question it. He was looking at his—at Severn’s—arms. They changed color.

  “Kaylin, what have you done?” Evanton said sharply.

  The man turned. “This is your ancient Keeper,” he said.

  She cringed at the word ancient.

  “And there, by the water, is your beloved Ybelline.”

  She cringed at that one, as well. “And the Dragon Lords are here, too,” she said, in a rush. She did not want her own internal descriptions of either of them to escape.

  He nodded, and turned back to her. “You cannot read what is written.” He touched her arm again, as unselfconscious as a small child. Or a parent.

  “No.”

  “Why?”

  “I’m not immortal.”

  “What is immortal?”

  “Immortal means—it means you live forever, unless something kills you.”

  He raised a brow, the expression not as familiar as the features.

  “It means time won’t kill you. But time will kill me, eventually. I won’t live forever.”

  He frowned. She felt him touch her name, and crawl along the inside of her thoughts, and since she couldn’t stop him anyway, she relaxed into the inspection as if he were part of the Tha’alaan.

  “Mortality,” he said, testing the word.

  She nodded.

  “And change is death?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You change with time. You die.”

  “No,” she replied firmly. “Change is change. Death is death. If we can’t change, we’re usually dead. I’m not sure this rule applies to gods,” she added softly. “As far as I can tell, you weren’t even born—you just existed. Somehow. It’s not something I can really understand.” She hesitated, and then said, “But…the elements came from you. They were a part of you.”

  “They were.” He looked past her, or through her, his glance lingering a moment on the marks she bore. “This…language…of yours, it is difficult.”

  Both of her brows rose before she could school her expression. “Our language is difficult?”

  He nodded. “It has no depth. It is thin, and it makes certain concepts difficult to express. It is like your form.”

  “My form?”

  “It exists in one place. It is small and easily missed, and it does not move. It touches almost…nothing. I did not hear your voices,” he added. “In my wandering and in my isolation, they were too small. But at the core of you, there is a word that I can see. Why do you have it, and why only one? Once, there were people who moved across the vast space who had many. They were a…concert?”

  “Symphony is the word you want,” the Arkon said quietly.

  Since ruckus had been the word Kaylin had been thinking, she was grateful for the interruption.

  “They were a song, each one. I was not aware of them at first, but I learned to listen. I listened to the voices that spoke to the parts of me. The dreaming parts,” he added softly. “The elements. They were wild. They were like—your Everly’s paints. I did not know what they would create. I did not know what I would make of them.

  “Or what they would make of me, in the end. This I, it is cumbersome. You are not a song. You are a single note.”

  Kaylin nodded.

  “When they tore themselves from me, I was—” He searched for a word, and gave up, surrendering the thought to the inadequacy of the language.

  “Upset?”

  The total inadequacy of the language.

  “I had no words. I had no voice. There was an emptiness in me. I could touch nothing, feel nothing. But I could hear—at a distance—the sound of notes, the distant cry of words. They were mine, and yet not of me, and I attempted to alter this. I attempted to return them to what they had once been.” He fell silent, and then bowed his head. “I did not hear their voices,” he said softly. “I hear yours only because of what you have given me, and it will not sustain me.”

  Turning to the elements, he said, “I made worlds so that your creations might live, as you did, but in lands that would not devour their music and their song.”

  The water bowed, and then began to twist, coalescing, in watery form, into a familiar figure: a young girl. She faced the man Kaylin deliberately thought of as Maker, ceding shape and form to the one he had chosen to take.

  “We destroyed many,” she said. “And many of our creations perished at our hands.” She spoke smoothly and without obvious regret; the effect was chilling. “We did not realize that there would be no new worlds, and no new words of our own, in your absence, nor did we realize that we—none of us—would have a home.

  “We did not realize what we were,” she added. “And what we are now…has changed. When we understood…we asked that they somehow summon you back. We were not yet imprisoned here, but we had become weary of death and destruction and silence.”

  “You…asked…that I be allowed to return?”

  She met his gaze, night sky to water, and she nodded. “In the manner of mortal speech, yes, if you will not hear it any other way. It is, as you’ve observed, very limiting, and it allows for interpretation, sometimes not to the favor or benefit of either p
arty. Anger and pain transform human words in a way that they cannot transform ours.”

  He was silent for a long moment. He’d learned hope, Kaylin thought, and had learned, as well, that hope could be painful. “They refused you?”

  “They could not do what we asked, not then. They understood.” She glanced at Kaylin. “They understood, and if we shaped them, they shaped their own in turn, and they attempted the creation of new words.”

  He looked stricken, then. “New words,” he whispered. “Words I have never heard.”

  She nodded. “There was no way to move between the planes of your creation, not for us. We were…aware…that they existed, that there were worlds beyond us. Our children created ways to reach those worlds. They made…” She frowned. “Travelers. But their creations were not stable, not predictable, and some who traveled did not return.

  “Some who traveled found death. Some found their distant kin. They did not understand what we had beseeched them to search for, and even had they, I do not know if they could have done what we asked. They did not continue to try. We had become too great a danger. The travelers discontinued their search and their studies, and they waged war against us. It grieved them,” she added. “And many were destroyed.

  “In the end, they made this place. It was difficult, for it was said to touch all worlds—and none—simultaneously. They confined us here. They appointed a guardian. And thus, we have remained.”

  “But…you are changed,” the Devourer said. “And you speak this mortal tongue.”

  “We do. Even the first of guardians did, long ago—not the same words, but of a similar weight and quiet. Small parts of our consciousness have been called into the external worlds, and we go. We do not often fight it. We fight,” she added, “on occasion, and depending on whim.” She lifted a translucent arm and pointed, not to him, but to Kaylin.

  “If you rip out her heart, both her heart and the rest of her will die. We cannot die, but otherwise, it is the same. We were proud and wild, and if we are proud now, it is an echo of our former pride, as the words we speak are an echo of true words. This garden was built, in the end, to contain not four, but five, for our creations knew mercy, of a type. We have waited. We have waited without hope until the Chosen.”