“Chosen?”
She nodded. “We did not craft her. We could not. But those that came after, and those that followed them, knew words in a way that even we did not. Their words were not our words, although you would recognize them in some fashion, and they were wild in a way that even we were not. The whole of their long tale has not yet been told, and it grows in the telling, be coming both small detail and great arc as it unfolds.
“You have listened to her. She is new and her voice is small and complex, and her kind have arisen from the voices that we once woke, aeons ago. There is much, here, to learn, and we think—we four—that it is possible that were we one again, we might rebuild worlds as shelters and marvels.
“And we will never condemn you to silence again, if you will gift us with your presence.”
She didn’t speak of love. Kaylin could have, and she might have tried. But love seemed to be a word that was too small, or too foreign. She looked at the water’s face, and she saw, for a moment, the Tha’alaan, for the Tha’alaan was part of the Elemental Water—and it sustained the whole of a race.
The anger bled from her as she thought of the Tha’alaan, and of the lessons that one of the earliest members of that race had learned there. The water had not been silent, not just a container for thought and speech; it had had will, and it had had judgment, of a type, and it had learned wisdom and mercy through its continued contact with people.
That the water also encompassed anger and wrath, that it could be moved to create tidal waves that could destroy the whole of Elantra was also true. Because it wasn’t one thing, but many, and the many things were larger than she was in all ways.
“You care for the water,” the stranger said.
“I do. I care because it preserved the heart of the Tha’alani people. I hate what it did to you. But I’ve done things I also hate, and I can’t change those, either.”
“And you would trust it?”
Kaylin said, “I already do. But I’m not you, and I’m not an element. I only have to endure my life for decades, and it’s done.”
“There is no joy in your life?”
“There’s joy,” she said, after a long pause. “And hope. And failure. And fear. There’s even magic that I don’t hate.” She lifted her arms; the runes passed beneath his eyes. There were, now, fewer of them, although it wasn’t obvious at first glance; she’d have to check the marks against the ones that existed in Records to be certain which ones she’d sacrificed.
“If I stay, how will I be made part of this Garden?”
Kaylin would have glanced at Evanton, but all she had of him was his voice. “I don’t know. I don’t know if it hurts. I don’t know if you’ll lose anything. But…the hunger that drove you this far isn’t as strong where we’re standing.”
He nodded slowly, and she felt the twinge of that devouring hunger, no more. “Because they are here,” he said. “They are finally here. And you, little one, with your tiny, tiny voice—you are here, as well. You have given me words, a small story—but small, it is sharp, and I have heard it.” He turned to the water. “You are changed, and it has been so long since you were part of me, I am…afraid. Not of losing you again—although that fear is there.
“But of what it means, of what it will mean, when we are joined. What will you become? What will I become? I see in her…mind?…that you hold the thoughts and the memories and the dreams of a multitude. If I remain, will those voices be lost or destroyed?”
He’d destroyed whole worlds, silenced many more voices; his concern was almost surprising. He heard the thought, and lowered his head. It was not my intent, he said. I did not realize that you existed at all. That hundreds such as you could exist in the confines of one complex word…
I created worlds so that the voices I could hear would have a chance to flourish. He raised his head. I mispeak. Your tongue—it is subtle and it is easy to say what is not meant. We, he continued, lifting his chin, and throwing one arm wide to encompass the contents of the Garden, created worlds. If I was their sleep and their peace, they were my dreams and my thoughts.
I did not want to be alone.
“And now?”
He turned to the water, who waited.
“I do not, now, want to be alone.” He lifted an arm, a hand, toward the water’s Avatar, and she looked at it; when her arm rose it was visibly trembling. “And if, in my wandering, I destroyed worlds—and dreams—I am willing to live in your cage until I better understand this new order.
“It was not my intent,” he repeated, his voice softer. “And perhaps I can, as you have, learn to build in the wreckage of the things I have destroyed. I cannot remake them, not yet. And even if I could, those voices would still be lost to me.” He whispered the word Keeper, and Evanton suddenly appeared before him, looking about as comfortable as Kaylin would have, had she walked through Castle Nightshade’s portal.
He, however, recovered more quickly and more gracefully. He bowed to this shadow of Severn, this god who had borrowed Kaylin’s memory of the form.
“What must we do?”
Evanton straightened his shoulders, and his dusty robes fell like a mantle. “Eldest,” he said, bowing in turn, “this is the wild Garden. In it, you will hear the voices of fire, water, earth, and air. They are ancient voices, and they know and speak of much that was beyond the ken of even the most ancient of Keepers.
“Every Keeper who comes to the Garden to accept his investiture speaks with the elements, and every Keeper, since the first, has heard their lament. I will ask them to sing it now, so that you will understand.”
He looked at the water. “I think,” he said softly, “that I have already heard it.”
“No,” was the Keeper’s grave reply, “you haven’t. And it’s tradition.”
“Tradition?”
“Yes. A rite that is repeated at significant times. It marks change or renewal, here. If you would summon the others?”
The stranger nodded, and in an eyeblink, Ybelline, Sanabalis, and the Arkon stood arrayed before him. Neither the Arkon nor Sanabalis were in their human forms, so it made things dangerously crowded.
Evanton turned to them. “It is time,” he said gravely, “for you to leave.”
“I would hear this,” the Arkon replied.
“If you hear it,” Evanton countered, “I won’t need to look for an apprentice. You’ll be bound to the duty of this Garden for the rest of your natural life.” He paused and added, “It tends to wear on the immortal after a while.”
“It is a binding?”
“It is. And no, before you ask, I have no idea how it works. But you might, if you witnessed it. You wouldn’t be able to change it, however. It’s been tried.”
The Arkon looked as if he would say more; his jaw literally snapped on the Dragon version of a growl, which made rabid dogs sound friendly. He glanced at Sanabalis and then nodded, and the two began the slightly discomforting transformation from Dragon form to human form. Their robes had, of course, weathered the transformation the way cloth usually did; they ended up wearing the armored plating of scales, which made them look decidedly different. For some reason, Tiamaris in Dragon armor looked more natural.
“Very well. I ask your permission, Keeper, to visit. I am, as you are well aware, conversant with Hoard Law, and if you will grant me permission, I will cede a similar permission should you ever desire to visit the heart of my own domain.”
Evanton’s eyes widened. Then he bowed to the Arkon. “I am honored,” he said quietly.
Sanabalis said, “Far more than you know.”
“Lord Sanabalis.” The Arkon’s voice was chillier. “That will be enough.”
“He was one of your students?” Evanton asked.
“Indeed. In a different time, and when I was younger and perhaps more ambitious.”
“Ah, well. Students.”
“Indeed.”
Kaylin grimaced, and lifted a hand. The subtle sarcasm of this gesture was lost on both th
e Arkon and Evanton.
“Yes?” They said in unison.
“I’m not sure I can leave yet.”
But the stranger who still wore Severn’s face over eyes of endless night, turned to her. “You can,” he said. “I will not keep you here. I can hear you, now, wherever you might go. Go into your strange, fragile world, and hear its stories. When you sleep, I will listen to them. You find it difficult, now, but you are already concerned about…strangers?”
She grimaced. “I am. I don’t know how long we’ve been here—but they’re a small, desperate army, and they’re facing my friends. We need Ybelline there.”
His smile was entirely unlike Severn’s smile. “One day, I will make a world for you.”
“Thanks. But I like this one.”
He lifted a brow.
“I mostly like it.”
They gathered, and Evanton opened a door. They got wet on the way out.
CHAPTER 31
Grethan was in the front of the store, his hands and face pressed against the window beneath the arch of letters. He didn’t even hear them approach, but Kaylin, glancing past his stiff back, couldn’t blame him. How often did he get a chance to see Dragons—in Dragon form—in the streets of Elani?
Because there were three Dragons yards away from the window, shedding sunlight. Kaylin glanced, briefly, at the two non-Dragon Dragons that were standing a few feet behind her; they were bouncing a look between each other which she didn’t have time to interpret. She caught Ybelline’s hand and all but dragged her past Grethan to the door.
At the door, she paused. “Are you ready for this?” she asked, letting all of her anxiety show—which would have pissed Marcus off to no end, because it reflected poorly on her training.
Ybelline brushed Kaylin’s forehead with her stalks. Show me what you saw before you arrived. It won’t make me “ready,” but it will help.
I wanted the Linguists to handle this.
So did I. But we’ll make do.
They would have run through the doors, but Dragons had grips like steel vises.
“We,” Sanabalis said gravely, “will go first. Stay behind us, both of you.”
It had been a long damn day, and as war hadn’t yet been declared, she was still a representative of the Law—and the Law didn’t hide behind anyone else. “It’s kind of hard for her to talk from behind your back,” Kaylin snapped. “And I go where she goes.”
Her teacher, looking more remote than he usually did, raised a brow.
The day was going to get a lot damn longer if she didn’t rein in her fraying temper. “They—I think they must have had their own version of the Chosen back home. They recognized the marks on my skin, and they didn’t try to hurt me. I’ll be safe.” She grimaced as Tiamaris roared. “Or as safe as I can be if we’re starting a Dragon War in the middle of Elani.”
The Arkon, however, said, “They are rather tall.”
Kaylin grimaced. “Welcome,” she said, as she stepped firmly between the two Dragons, still hanging on to Ybelline’s hand, “to my life.”
The first things she noticed were the small river running alongside the street and the decidedly unusual fauna poking up between the cobblestones. The gate whose opening had been so chaotic, and whose consequences still waited to be assessed in the future, had vanished. The sky was more or less blue, which meant no further water was about to upend itself on her head.
The streets, given how crowded they were, were also silent. It was the wrong type of silence, but considering the alternative in this tension, it was the best they could hope for.
Severn had found a safe patch of cobbled ground in between three Dragon bodies. How, she didn’t know—but he usually managed. He raised a brow as Kaylin approached, and she let go of Ybelline because she remembered that a castelord did have some public dignity requirements. “We’re good,” she said. “Well, Evanton and his Garden, at any rate. Are they pulling out drums?”
“Looks like,” Severn replied.
The strangers were, indeed, carting drums. They were tall and deep, with pegged, stretched skins at their height. No blood had yet been spilled, and the Swords, mindful of Dragons—and what Dragon form meant about Imperial dictate—had formed up behind the three Court members in a wide, loose half circle.
The old woman, Mejrah, was standing behind the drums, her arms folded tightly across her chest. At this distance, she looked pale.
“There’s one man there I can speak with,” Kaylin told Ybelline. “I think he’s the traveler.”
“Can you see him?”
The answer, sadly, was no, because the strangers were tall, and all of the guards had formed up in the front of the rest of the refugees. They had left room for the old woman who seemed to be some sort of Matriarch, but none of the others that Kaylin privately thought of as Elders were in easy sight.
Ybelline pushed her way past folded wings until she stood at the shoulder of Tiamaris. “Lord Tiamaris,” she said, as if she had met him in a guest room in the Palace to discuss a matter of very minor import.
He didn’t swivel to look at her, but he did answer. “Yes?”
“I am here on behalf of the Imperial Court, in position of Linguist. It is not my area of expertise, but I believe better verbal communication would be of benefit to everyone present.”
He might as well have been carved out of stone.
“Private Neya has had some exposure to the strangers, and she believes that she can safely approach them.” She paused, and then asked, in an entirely different tone of voice, “Has the Emperor been summoned?”
That made his wings twitch. “No. We are not yet at the point where that is considered utterly necessary.”
“In which case, you will allow us passage.”
“Castelord—”
“The castelord’s request is not unreasonable,” the Arkon added, and this time, Tiamaris did turn to look.
“Arkon?”
“Indeed. The situation that the Court thought most dire has been dealt with, and has left me much to think about. The situation that the Lords of Law were more focused on clearly has yet to be resolved. It is not, unless there has been open warfare, a matter for the Dragon Court.”
“They have magic,” Tiamaris replied. “And numbers. It was our thought—”
“That three Dragons would deter them sufficiently that no war would be required. It appears to have been an accurate assessment, given the lack of blood. Have the Swords sent for—”
“Yes. Word has been sent.”
“Then step aside. The Private—and possibly Corporal Handred—will serve as escort for Ybelline. I do not think their line will hold peacefully if any of you three attempt to draw closer.”
It was a pity, Kaylin thought, as Severn joined them, that the strangers were so damn big. Had they been smaller than the average human they wouldn’t have seemed so instantly dangerous. On the other hand, danger enforced caution. The old woman, spotting Kaylin—which, once they’d cleared Dragon cover wasn’t that hard—turned to one of the nearby armed men and shouted something. Like Tiamaris, he answered without moving.
Unlike Tiamaris, he got a lot more words in response. Kaylin listened carefully out of habit; tone of voice alone made these words sound useful, in the street sense. There wasn’t a spoken language that the Hawks couldn’t curse in if it was remotely possible in the language itself; they were multilingual that way.
He spoke, and two of the younger men broke away; the guards readjusted their formation to cover the gaps they’d left. When the two men returned, they had a third with them, and Kaylin recognized him: Effaron. He offered her a tentative smile as he approached. The guards, of course, offered nothing. But Mejrah hollered something at them, and they did lower their weapons slightly in response.
Effaron was staring—down—at Ybelline. Her stalks were exposed, and they were weaving in the air. He wasn’t, clearly, a soldier; his face showed instant worry, instant fear. Ybelline was used to this. So was Kaylin.
>
“Effaron,” Kaylin said.
He frowned, and she stepped forward and touched the back of his hand. She tried his name again. “Effaron.”
He blinked, shook his head and turned his much larger hand so that he could hold Kaylin’s. “This woman with you,” he said quietly. “She is clean?”
It wasn’t quite what Kaylin was expecting. Maybe they had different words or phrases for telepathic. “I don’t understand the question. Can you try it again?”
“Is she—” He grimaced, and looked once again at Ybelline. “Her forehead. It is…mutated. Her eyes, however, seem human. You do not fear her?”
“No. Never.”
“But her forehead—”
“All of her people have those. They’re born with them.”
He relaxed then, and turned back to Mejrah. He shouted words that Kaylin couldn’t understand, and Merjah nodded rather smugly.
“She has faith in you,” he said quietly.
“I’m glad someone does.”
He struggled not to smile, probably because the two men to either side of him had faces of stone. But his amusement faded as he looked over Kaylin’s head—with ease—toward the Dragons who stood sentinel in streets that really weren’t meant for three of them. “They were men, when we arrived,” he said gravely. “And now they are not. But your people have not destroyed them. Do they serve them?
“They—”
Mejrah interrupted him before he could finish, and judging by the way he was groping for words, it came as a bit of a relief.
“We have ways of detecting the corrupt,” he said, after a pause in which he—clearly—made her words less barbed. Ybelline, however, tilted her head, listening. “And it is our fear that those ways might prove ineffective, here. This world—these buildings, these uniform streets—they are not our world. Your people are formed as people, but…small. We do not know which of our guidances will now prove true, and we have not yet attempted any of them because we don’t know if this would be seen as a hostile act.
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