Cast in Oblivion

by Michelle Sagara

  The first of the words emerged in the distance. Or rather, the closest. At this remove, Kaylin couldn’t see the Feral that contained it. But she had a direction now. She wondered if Teela could follow her. Wondered if Teela could even see her. Or if Teela saw some of the strata of this place simultaneously. The only thing that mattered was that Kaylin had something solid enough to walk across beneath her feet.

  Or it was the only thing that mattered until she got closer.

  * * *

  Edelonne startled; Kaylin could feel the tremor of surprise—or shock—that words couldn’t contain. What Kaylin now approached was, by all accounts, one of Edelonne’s companions in transformation. It did not look like a Feral. It didn’t look like a Barrani, either. It was a pillar of Shadow with bits that seemed to be churning beneath its opaque surface. Sadly, those bits were things like eyes. Kaylin was familiar with the internal organs that lay beneath skin in most living things, but even if she hadn’t been, she’d’ve recognized them.

  Edelonne was horrified. Ynpharion was not. Or if he was, he’d clamped down on his reaction enough that it wasn’t immediately obvious. Why this was worse than Feral forms, Kaylin didn’t know. Well, no, she did, but considered it impractical. The name that the Ferals bore—the name that had brought them to life after birth—had been hovering between their pointy ears. This name was not. If the surface of the pillar made the entire thing appear to be some variety of marble from a distance, the name was beneath that surface—along with the churning body parts.

  Kaylin so did not want to touch that name.

  “What do they look like to you?” Kaylin asked Teela, describing what she could see.

  Teela didn’t answer. Not with words. Kaylin could feel all her hair stand on end as Teela once again invoked the power of Kariannos. It was too much to be hoped that Kariannos would somehow remain invisible or out of phase. Of course it was.

  She hesitated for one long second, lifted her arm and felt a surge of pain—something like fire, but not persistent.

  The pillar crumbled. The fleshy bits leaked out of the shadow pooling across the ground. Kaylin knew instantly, instinctively, that this was very bad—and not just for her. Spike almost screamed in alarm.

  Chosen—tell her to stop! Tell her to stop now!

  “Teela! Stop—you’re making it worse!” Kaylin said, straining to lift her voice. She didn’t open her eyes; she was already casting about the room for the next nearest name, angry at herself for her squeamishness.

  But she heard Teela’s curse. It was Leontine. “This is why they’re here.”

  Yes, Spike said. If the Adversary destroyed them, they would no longer be conduits through which he could send power. They are windows now; they are anchored here. Teela has broken the glass. She has not removed the window. There is nothing except the size of the window to contain what was trapped behind it. She must not kill them here. Not while they are attached to him.

  “Why wouldn’t they be windows if he killed them?”

  “They’re the raw material out of which those windows were made,” Teela said, voice grim. “Destroy the raw materials before the window is in place, and you have no window. You have wall. The Adversary couldn’t create those windows with only his own power. But the Ferals here? They have all passed the Test of Name. They are all Barrani. They are alive, and they have been rooted here. If he orders them to move—as he did with the three in the halls—the link is tenuous. Had we killed the Ferals there, it wouldn’t have been this disastrous.

  “We’re meant to meet them here. We’re meant to kill them here.” More cursing. More Leontine. Silence followed, and in that silence, Kaylin made her way to the next word, encased in a similar pillar. She wondered, briefly, if Teela saw what she saw now, or if, to Teela, they were large Shadow dogs with the requisite face full of fangs.

  It didn’t matter. She told Teela to join the cohort—or tried.

  Hope said no. Spike no longer seemed to be aware of Teela. “Be ready,” Hope said.

  She was already bracing herself, because this pillar—which presumably looked like a Feral to some observers—was exactly like the one Teela had smashed. The name that she needed to touch was on the inside of a mess of moving—but otherwise undamaged—internal organs.

  The eyes, however, alighted on her as she approached, and the currents that seemed to move body parts began to roil.

  “Don’t kill it!” Kaylin shouted. “Just...stop it from killing me.”

  Kaylin had no idea what the rest of the cohort—or the rest of her companions—were doing. She could have asked any of the name-bound, but didn’t.

  Steady, Severn said, anyway. Just be steady. I can see Teela now.

  Can you see me?

  No. But... Teela is now facing one of the Ferals. I’ve passed on your message—but I don’t think any of us could do what Teela just did.

  Is one of the Ferals down?

  Yes. But something is taking its place. Nightshade is headed there. He hesitated, and then said, Evarrim believes that offense and defense—by us—will not cause the harm that Teela’s attack did. If we can see Teela, she’s reached the same conclusion.

  Have any of the rest of the cohort appeared?

  Only Mandoran, and only to give us warning of their intentions.

  Severn’s voice was the calm in the growing storm, and Kaylin clung to it. She spoke while extending her left hand toward the name that she could see in the moving mass of unattached body parts. She drew back, cursing, when one of those parts became Feral teeth, unattached to the rest of the mouth or head.

  “Hope—can we move at all?”

  “You are moving.”

  “Can we move so that I can’t see...this? Severn sees Ferals. And Ferals would be better.”

  “No, Chosen, they would not. I believe there is a reason that you see what you see now. While you may accomplish the necessary if you step to one side and join Teela, you will not accomplish it as easily.”

  This was not easy. She snapped her arm back as disembodied teeth once again attempted to separate her hand from the rest of her arm. This time, however, the teeth glanced off one of the marks that defined Kaylin’s adult life, and she could hear the Feral’s screech. She could feel it, as well; the entire pillar shuddered. She gritted her teeth, shoving her hand back into the pillar. There was some resistance.

  Did Mandoran say what his intentions—or Sedarias’s intentions—actually were?

  Yes, but not in great detail.

  She couldn’t hear the name at all. It made no sound. The syllables that comprised it she would have to find herself. Closing her eyes didn’t help, because her eyes were closed, in theory. They’d been closed for a while. Or maybe they hadn’t. Hope had implied that Kaylin used closing—and opening—her eyes to transition between states in a subtle fashion.

  Subtlety had never been her strength.

  She caught the name as the Feral’s teeth bounced off the marks on her skin. Caught it, but couldn’t hear it. She had no way to take a name she couldn’t hear; no way to speak it that would demand the entirety of the creature’s attention. Her Leontine joined Teela’s, except that Teela’s could no longer be heard. The teeth, however, were no longer snapping at Kaylin’s hand.

  What the hell was she supposed to do? She drew the name out of the miasma of moving parts; red and pink liquid clung to it like bloody mucus.

  Teela wants you to keep doing what you’re doing, Severn said. And now we have a problem.

  More of a problem?

  She...wasn’t subtle while making that suggestion. She certainly wasn’t quiet.

  Everyone’s noticed her?

  Everyone who could possibly reduce her to ash, yes.

  Have they noticed the Consort?

  Not yet. But it’s only a matter of time.

  * * *

  The word that
now nestled in the cup of Kaylin’s left palm was slight; it was smaller than Edelonne’s name. This could have been an artifact of the way she viewed this name—and its container, for want of a better word—but Kaylin didn’t believe that was the case. There was power in True Words, and power in True Names. It wasn’t a power that the Adversary could use directly; it was a power that the Barrani and the Dragons could use, because they were born to it, made for it.

  This was the truth that Spike feared, because Kaylin was certain that the diminished name had been slowly leached of power. She wasn’t certain if that was a conscious choice on the part of the Ferals here.

  It wasn’t, Edelonne said.

  But conscious or not, it didn’t matter. Somehow, the words that had the power to drive an eternal life contained within their component parts could be drained entirely by the Barrani. Kaylin wondered what would happen to the name, to the Barrani that possessed it, if that power guttered. She expected that they would die, but not conveniently: they’d be undead. And she’d seen that before, as well.

  She suspected that this would be different.

  She didn’t understand Shadow. Didn’t understand how it worked. Didn’t understand why some—like Gilbert—had words at their core and some didn’t. She thought Spike might, but didn’t give much for her chances of understanding his explanation at the moment. He was busy; she could see that. One tendril—only one—was wrapped around the base of this pillar. But she could see tendrils snake out across her lidded vision.

  And she didn’t ask what he was doing with them, either. She looked at the diminished word in her hand. The color itself was faded; instead of gold, it looked like aged silver—silver that hadn’t been properly cleaned. Evidence of tarnish existed in every bend and on the interior of every curve.

  It wasn’t tarnish, of course; it was a metaphor.

  But it was a metaphor, suddenly, that she could work with. Housework had never been her strength, although Caitlin had tried to teach her how to both clean and set up a schedule that enforced cleaning. Growing up, clean house was of vastly less import than shelter at night, and shelter had been a moving target.

  Even in her own home, silver was nowhere in great abundance, and what there was of it had been Caitlin’s gift: teapot, tray, two very large spoons. They had all pretty much become gray-black, and had been tucked away in a chest beneath the bed until an Arcane bomb had destroyed her home. She had treasured them because they had come from Caitlin at the start of her life in Elantra. Treasured, however, didn’t mean they had to be cleaned and polished—just kept.

  She began to clean this particular tarnished surface. Her sleeve—the one that hadn’t been reduced to ash—was long, but unbuttoned; she used the silk as an awkwardly placed rag, because it was better than nothing. As she rubbed the darker surfaces, the patina of clean silver was exposed. She wasn’t certain that it would ever be golden again—not as it had been. Not if it didn’t return to the Lake.

  But when she looked up, she could see that the pillar was no longer a pillar, that it had dwindled into a shape that was almost Barrani. There wasn’t room inside that pillar for all of the parts it contained to swim and move; they were being compressed into more or less the proper places. She could still see them, but it didn’t make her want to lose her lunch.

  The Lady asks that you continue whatever it is you’re doing, Ynpharion said.

  Kaylin nodded. She didn’t have the name of this particular Feral in any binding way, but she was carrying it. She hesitated, and then she dropped the word itself onto her exposed skin—the back of her left hand. It stuck there.

  She turned, looked toward the next faint word and began to run.

  Chapter 27

  Between one step and the next, the ground changed. What had been fleshy and warm became harder, although the uneven shape it retained made running more difficult. Kaylin couldn’t decide if this were a good thing or a bad thing.

  Spike made clear it was the latter.

  Tell Teela, Kaylin told Severn, to tell the cohort to do something. I don’t know what’s happening—but Spike says things are getting worse. She hesitated. The Ferals are using their own names—depleting them somehow—to be the Adversary’s anchors. They’re in a state that allows some physical connection to the Adversary’s native power; they’re using their own names to maintain that connection somehow. The cohort can see what’s being done. And it’s possible the cohort could do what the Ferals here are doing. But the cohort had centuries to achieve the ability. The Ferals didn’t. Everything they’re now doing they learned from the Adversary. And if they can use their own names, there’s a good chance they can use other names. Like the ones in Orbaranne or...

  The Lake.

  The Lake, Kaylin agreed. Spike says the Adversary can’t use the names it hasn’t released. It can’t use their power. But these Ferals probably could. The Barrani attacked Orbaranne because she contained exactly those words. If the Adversary is somehow linked to these Barrani—these Ferals—it will finally have tools to use that power outside of its cage. I’m trying to break the conduits. But the power they’re absorbing from Shadow and their own names is somehow related to what the non-Feral Barrani are doing.

  How?

  I don’t know. Spike thinks An’Mellarionne and crew are trying to summon a lot of Shadow. She stumbled. Or maybe they’re trying to summon the Adversary directly.

  They wouldn’t dare.

  Not if they knew that’s what they’d get, no. The Adversary doesn’t want the Ferals dead. If they’re dead, there’s nothing to convert words to power.

  But killing the Feral had done no good. It had made things worse. She had to think, and thinking while running and squinting—or its analogy—was difficult. This time, when she reached the next pillar, there was no hesitation, no squeamishness, at all. She shoved her left hand into the miasma that was—on some other plane—a body, and she easily grasped the name. Like the first, it was shadowed and half-blackened; like the first, it was wet and covered in something like red mucus. The latter, she swept away; the former, she left. Using the back of her hand as a container, she ran to the next word, the next pillar, leaving something that appeared to be human shaped—but not human—behind.

  She was surprised to see Terrano when he appeared directly in front of her. She was almost surprised when she ran through him, while attempting to slow down enough to avoid a collision. He grimaced.

  “Don’t stop. Go. Go.” Reorienting himself, he followed. Kaylin noticed that he didn’t appear to have feet, but that was all she noticed; she focused on the next pillar.

  “What are the rest of you doing?” she demanded as she retrieved a third name, a third word.

  “In my opinion?”

  That wasn’t good. “You see anyone else here? Besides me?” She reached the next pillar and used it to break her stride.

  “Sedarias wanted me to tell you to keep doing whatever it is you’re doing. She’d tell you herself, but she’s a bit occupied.”

  “And they couldn’t send Mandoran?”

  “He’s more than a bit occupied.”

  Fourth name down. Seven to go. “What are they doing?”

  “They’re trying to kill everyone who isn’t us.”

  “Any success so far?”

  “None whatsoever. If it helps, whatever Teela did to the first Feral has caused a lot of smaller Ferals to spawn. I don’t think they’re the original, though; they might be transformed rats. Literal rats,” he added when he saw her expression. “Those rats are smaller, faster, harder to pin down and kill. They don’t exist here,” he added. “Which is what I was sent to check.” He glanced up, and up again, while keeping pace with Kaylin.

  “Where are your feet?” she demanded when name number five had been added to the back of her hand, which was getting crowded. The hand itself felt heavier, as if something was attached at the wrist
. Or the palm. As long as it didn’t slow her down, she could deal with the extra weight.

  “My what?”

  “Never mind.” The sixth name was not nearly as easily grasped as the previous five had been. The external skin of the pillar was harder; it felt like literal glass. She could see the name itself, but the light it emitted was fainter.

  He understands what you have done, Spike said. And he is now attempting to prevent it. My apologies, Chosen.

  Spike had nothing to apologize for, and Kaylin opened her mouth to tell him that when the entire world shifted; the floor slanted up to become a pocked, hard wall, and the pillar, attached to the floor, went with it. Kaylin didn’t waste breath shouting; she reached out for the pillar itself, to break a fall she felt certain was coming. Her arms didn’t pass through it, but the world had only begun to spin.

  She’d have to remember that some apologies were preemptive.

  “Terrano?”

  Silence. Whatever Spike had done, Terrano hadn’t immediately followed. She couldn’t see him, couldn’t hear him, and gave up on trying. She closed her eyes. Again. With her eyes closed, she saw a circle made by extended wings; it enclosed her. She saw the marks of the Chosen. She saw a darkness that wasn’t terrifying, and she thought—for one confused moment—that she could hear its voice.

  * * *

  The pillar remained in the circle of her desperate clinch. Nothing else did. The world stopped spinning, although the sensation of movement remained, an echo of the transition itself. And it was a transition, from one place to another; it wasn’t the world that had been rotated, but Kaylin.

  Or at least that’s how she explained it to herself.

  She opened her eyes. She half expected to see the cohort, the Lords of the High Court, even the remaining Ferals; she thought to see Teela and Nightshade with their named swords. No one was here.

  But she knew, now, where she was, because she had been in similar places before. She saw words: tall, liminal words, huddled together in the distance. How great a distance was more difficult to discern without actually moving—and she began to move, her hand heavy with the True Names of what had once been Barrani.