Cast in Oblivion

by Michelle Sagara

  She was at the heart of the Tower.

  Terrano was not by her side, and she now doubted that he could return. Hope, however, was present; his wings, like the distant True Words, were imbued with a golden light that spoke of power and life. She could not see Spike at all.

  “He is not here,” Hope said quietly, a reminder that her thoughts were as clear as speech to her familiar. “But he will be here soon, if things go poorly.”

  “If things go poorly?”

  “You should not be here. You are here. The landscape that you viewed prior to this one should have been as close as you were allowed to come.”

  “It’s not the first time I’ve seen the heart of a Tower.”

  “It is not. It is why you are here, or can be here, at all.”

  “Because I’m Chosen?”

  “Because you have seen the heart of Towers and Hallionne before, and you have accepted what lies at their heart.”

  This did not make sense to Kaylin.

  “You have not attempted to make them your own. You have not attempted to shift or alter the structure of the words that were written. You have not attempted to draw power from those words to use in ways that even the Ancients could not conceive.”

  “I don’t know how to do any of that.”

  “Yes. Perhaps your ignorance is our salvation. But I do not believe it is ignorance that has opened this path.”

  “I’m supposed to grab the rest of the names—”

  “I do not believe,” Hope replied, “that that will be possible now.”

  “But there are still six pillars.”

  “Pillars? An interesting choice of words. Yes. Six remain. But there should have been thirteen. The three that were sent to stop the Consort were what could—in an emergency—be spared.”

  “I can’t see them, either.”

  “You will,” he said softly. “Approach the words, Chosen. Do what you must do.”

  * * *

  Kaylin had no problem doing what she had to do—when she understood what that was. In general, when orders were passed down the chain of command, the person handing them down knew the desired results, even when some poor private actually had to do the work.

  But whining, while it bled away some of the tension, didn’t actually get much done. It was acceptable if you were doing the work. As a way of avoiding work, it was definitely third class, although on bad days, it was all she had to offer.

  Today was a different kind of bad. She might have some idea of what needed to be done if she was closer to the cluster, but closer was its own challenge. Here, no matter how she walked, distance between that cluster and Kaylin seemed to be a constant. She didn’t get any closer. She could run—and did—to no effect whatsoever.

  There was no point in expending energy running if it made no difference. She needed to think. She had approached words like this before. She’d approached them in a panic. She’d approached them when the cost of failure could be measured in lives, one of them her own.

  But approaching the words themselves hadn’t been the problem; figuring out what constituted success had. She closed her eyes—which, as usual, changed nothing—and tried to think.

  “I don’t understand metaphor,” she told Hope.

  He chuckled. “You don’t understand the mechanics of breath, either; you manage to breathe without that understanding. You know what will happen if you can’t.”

  “This isn’t like breathing.”

  “Isn’t it? You are here, where none of your companions—no matter how versed they are in the Arcane—can join you. You could find Lord Nightshade using the tools at hand, without a complete understanding of how those tools function. You have only a base idea of how your daggers are forged, but you know how to use them. This is not different.” He drifted, for the first time, ahead of Kaylin; she could see the spread, the reach, of his wings.

  Those wings were the color—the exact color—of the marks on her arms.

  But her skin was the color of fire. Looking down, she realized that the fire had accompanied her.

  “It is better to say you have not left it,” Hope told her gently. “Although here, its voice is muted, its desire banked. There is nothing here to burn. There is no cold, no ice to melt, no iron to forge; it is, for the fire, a world without conflict.”

  “There’s almost nothing here, Hope.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Why can the fire be here?”

  “You must ask.”

  “Or you could tell me.”

  “No, Kaylin, I can’t. I could try—but I do not have the language to explain it.”

  The fire didn’t, either. The communication between element and summoner had never been particularly subtle. She opened her eyes again. The words were at the same distance, unless she was looking at them the wrong way. At that distance, they had no answers to give her.

  So she looked, instead, to her feet.

  “I think I see the problem.”

  Hope said nothing, because he realized she was thinking out loud. She often avoided words when there were other people present, afraid in some fashion that they were the wrong words—either too offensive or too stupid. Here, there was no one but Hope who could judge. Hope, she thought, and some hint of Spike.

  The words appeared to exist on an entirely separate platform. Kaylin had been doing the effective equivalent of running into an invisible wall. Had there been some impact—any impact—she would have realized it sooner. She lifted a hand, an arm, and reached out with the flat of her palm.

  She felt a very gentle resistance. Pulling her arm back and making a fist, she drove the fist forward. The resistance was the same; it was gentle, almost unnoticeable.

  “Why does everything have to be so complicated?”

  If it helps at all, it’s not any better here. Severn’s voice. She couldn’t hear any of the others, but didn’t try.

  What’s happening there?

  The usual.

  The usual was bad. Let me see. Hope returned to her side as she looked through Severn’s eyes.

  * * *

  She had no control over what she saw. She wasn’t part of it in any real sense. Nor could Severn easily shift his line of sight, because that line of sight was broken by a spinning chain. What he saw, what he looked for, was magic. What was strange—to Kaylin—was his sensitivity to it. He couldn’t see magic—neither could Kaylin. But he responded to it as if it were a sound, an incoming projectile.

  Even if it was beneath his feet.

  The weakness of the spinning chain as a spell break was the ground itself. He had to shift, and spinning chains with deadly blades on the end weren’t conducive to throwing himself to the left or right. He jumped instead, timing that jump, the motion carrying him slightly forward as the stone beneath his feet cracked.

  She could only barely see what had broken through the patch of stone, cracking it but not fully shattering it. Seeping through those cracks—straining against the barrier of stone—was a livid, deep purple. If it had a form, Kaylin couldn’t see it. But she had no doubt that it was not going to be good for Severn if it reached him.

  He landed, adjusted his grip on the chain, moved again, this time sideways. The ground wasn’t the only avenue of attack. She was aware of the Consort. She was aware of Ynpharion. Severn had taken the front, and Nightshade had pulled up the rear. Lightning lit the cavernous heights.

  Nightshade had taken the rear, and whatever Meliannos required of him to be fully active, he’d done. But she knew, now, that it wasn’t done trivially; it wasn’t done without need. Severn trusted Nightshade in combat. He did not assume that the fieflord required protection or warning.

  She wanted to know what the cohort was doing, but realized that asking could be almost fatal. He paid attention to what he needed to see to survive.

  A secon
d spike of lightning illuminated the cavern, this from in front of Severn. Teela, she thought. She wondered if she was actually standing motionless in their world, while Teela was forced to protect her. She didn’t ask.

  Severn, however, said, Yes. Hope is with you; whatever shielding he provides from magical attack is more comprehensive than my chains.

  Beneath that answer was the unspoken need for speed.

  Your friends, Spike said, are there. Teela is attempting to keep you safe. She understands what must be done.

  “Why can’t you move my actual body here?”

  “Because you are mortal, Kaylin. You are not the cohort. You are not Spike, or me. You are part of the world into which you are born, inextricably rooted in it. The marks protect you,” Hope added. “But they cannot make you invulnerable; they cannot make you other than you are.”

  What she was, at the moment, was frustrated—at herself, at her inability to be useful, at her need to be protected by Teela, when Teela should have been with her cohort.

  “Lord Evarrim is aiding Teela.”

  The words that fell out of her mouth were all Leontine. Leontine or no, they caused ripples in the air, as if her breath here had force. No, she thought, not the air. The wall. This made no sense; the Leontine wasn’t visible; it wasn’t a true language in the way the marks, created by the Ancients who were more than gods, were.

  She spoke in Leontine again. Nothing.

  She spoke in Aerian next. Nothing.

  Barrani netted the same results. But she was certain that the wall, impermeable, had shifted at the first spoken Leontine. And she knew what the difference was. She abandoned the language that made her throat hurt if she spoke it for too long, and slid once again into Elantran.

  “I don’t like Evarrim. I am never going to like Evarrim. But he wants the same things I want, right now. I hate having to depend on him. I hate owing him anything.” Movement, there. Movement in front of her. She tried to take a step forward, and found that she could. A small step.

  “He’s arrogant. He’s powerful. He’s never had to struggle the way I’ve struggled.” Another step. “But that’s not why I hate him. I hate him because it’s become clear to me that he does care about other people. He can. Just...never about me. I’m never going to be worthy of anything in his eyes.”

  A larger step. Unfortunately, she’d run out of things to say about Evarrim. There were many things she hated. There were many things she feared. She understood, as she stood here in this moment, that she had to separate the truth from the lies, because some of the things she said were lies. They were believable lies. Credible lies. They were things she believed about herself; she just didn’t examine them very carefully.

  “You know,” she told Hope, hesitating, “I really, really hate this.”

  “This is the Tower of Test,” Hope replied, his voice almost entirely neutral.

  “I didn’t have to do this the first time.”

  “No. But there is only one first time, Chosen. And you were not then where you are now. Nor is the Tower.”

  “This is a test.”

  “Of a kind, yes. You must approach the Tower as yourself.”

  “I’m always myself,” she snapped.

  Hope’s wings shifted. “You are always yourself, yes. But you understand the difference.”

  “Do I have to like it?”

  “Demonstrably not.”

  She wanted to say it was none of the Tower’s business, and gave herself a very deserved mental kick. Teela was fighting for her life—for both of their lives. Severn was fighting for the Consort. The Consort was fighting, in the end, to free the names of the trapped. Kaylin was only being asked to be completely honest.

  An exchange was being demanded: the Tower’s truth for Kaylin’s truth. It was better than having a face full of Feral armed with only two daggers. It was. She knew it was. It didn’t feel that way, but feelings were irrelevant.

  She’d learned the hard way that the secrets she kept, she kept because they had the power to destroy her; because they lived on the inside of her, and forced her to acknowledge, time and again, things she didn’t want to be true about herself. She judged herself harshly, which was what she deserved. But even so, she didn’t want others to see and judge her the way she saw and judged herself.

  This, she thought, was the real cost, the real weight, of some of her earliest decisions. They were a shadow from which she couldn’t escape. She could understand why she had made them. She could even justify them with a semblance of logic, of reason. She could point out all the ways in which the choices she’d made were only barely choices: do something terrible, or die. She’d chosen to survive.

  On bad days, she wondered about that. And there had been very bad days. They were fewer now. Less overwhelming. Why? Because she believed that she would never make—never have to make—those same choices again. She thought this time, as a Hawk, she could choose “or die” and mean it; that fear wouldn’t swamp everything else.

  Of course, with people, you never knew. Especially when one of them was you.

  But conversely, her history gave her a sense of confidence in the future. She knew where she’d been. She knew where she was. And if even Kaylin could cross the divide between self-loathing and self-respect, no matter how much of a struggle it was, others could do it, as well. There was no never, no immediate dismissal of the potential of a person.

  Sometimes other Hawks did. She understood why. It was hard to give the benefit of the doubt to someone who was trying to kill you, rob you or make your life vastly more difficult. When knives and clubs were drawn, there was no thought, because there was no time for it.

  But after, there could be.

  So she spoke to the Tower. She discovered, as she did, that she didn’t need to speak out loud. But she needed to think, clearly. She needed to examine herself truthfully enough that the Tower could hear her thoughts, could touch them, could test them—and, ultimately, could accept them. If there was judgment offered, it would be offered only when she reached the Tower’s core.

  There were all kinds of ways to protect oneself. Kaylin knew most of them. From early childhood on, the easiest, simplest and therefore first of those lessons was: hide. As a child, there hadn’t been many other options. She’d resented that enough to learn how to fight. To learn how to protect herself—and others. She’d learned to push fear out of the equation, although she’d left enough there for caution.

  Clearly, some visceral impulse to hide remained, rooted very deeply in the fear of others. She pulled those out, as well.

  Sometimes she hated the Barrani. They were proof that the universe wasn’t fair. They lived forever, they were beautiful and the strength they were born to was enough to make the Ferals that had terrified the mortals in Nightshade a nonissue. She hated the fact that money and power devolved to them, and to those they chose as allies in the mortal Courts. No, the Human Court. She hated the way they looked down at mortals for the very differences Kaylin resented. She resented being born mortal, when they had been born Barrani, with all of the advantages of their race.

  She accepted this. Sometimes it stung. Sometimes, when things were dark or days had been too damn long, she resented them for having everything that would have made her life so much easier.

  She didn’t argue with herself, as she so often did.

  She didn’t resent the Aerians in the same way. She envied them flight, but they were mortals.

  And the Dragons? No. She didn’t resent the Dragons. They were far enough above her that she couldn’t imagine being one. Couldn’t imagine the power of the dual forms. Couldn’t imagine possessing their breath, their muscular flight. Didn’t want to imagine the weight of the crown.

  Why?

  Ah. Because the Barrani were her friends. They were her comrades. They were Hawks. They had the same responsibilities, and pay was
defined by rank. She saw them all the time. She heard them all the time.

  And it would kill her to lose Teela or Tain. Because if she hated the Barrani some of the time, she loved Teela and Tain all of the time. Did they have things she lacked? Yes. They always would. But their lives hadn’t been simple or easy, either. Kaylin’s mother had died, impoverished, of an illness. Teela’s mother had been murdered in front of her eyes. All of the advantages that accrued to Teela because of her birth hadn’t saved her mother, her friends or the things she had, as a child, loved.

  It was hard, most days, to think of Teela as Barrani. Or Tain. It was hard, she thought as she continued to walk, to think of Bellusdeo as a Dragon. To think of the cohort as Barrani—although, to be fair, Sedarias was probably the ideal Barrani to her own people. Why? Because she thought of them, first, as friends.

  As people. Only as people. Their advantages and disadvantages weren’t things to be measured on most days. On the bad days? Yes. She did. But on the bad days, so did they. It was a waste of time. It was stupid. But...living people had bad days. Barrani did. Dragons certainly did. Mortals did. Marcus probably had more bad days than anyone else Kaylin knew, but maybe that was only because his bad days were death to ignore.

  No two people were alike. Severn was mortal, but he was Severn; he wasn’t like Kaylin at all. The Dragons? They were all different. And the Barrani were all different, as well—but they looked very similar if one didn’t know any Barrani.

  She couldn’t get rid of the darker impulses, the darker thoughts, the envy or the resentment—not entirely.

  No, a new voice said. But understand that they are not all of you, as they are not all of any person. How much of your life they define is a choice that you make, and make consistently, constantly. It is not a choice that you make and forget. You cannot make choices if you cannot understand or accept the option available to you. You cannot choose when you deny that you have ever chosen.