Cast in Oblivion

by Michelle Sagara

  “No,” Hope said quietly. “You are ignorant. They are not the same.”

  They were, to Kaylin.

  “You learned to speak Barrani. You learned to read it, to write it. You were not stupid; you were ignorant. You are not ignorant of that now.”

  “It’s not the same thing. Anyone can learn to speak Barrani!”

  “Ah. I will say this, and only this—” She doubted that very much, given past experience. “You believe that anything you can learn, anyone can learn, because you feel, on some level, that you are stupid or incompetent. If you can do it, anyone can do it. But...you resent people who therefore can’t do what you can do, because you do not believe it has value.”

  “I do!”

  “No, Kaylin, you don’t. How valuable can it be, if anyone can do it? You could be replaced by anyone. And your fear, of course, is that you will. If you can’t make yourself seem worthy or special, there’s no reason that you’ll be needed. By anyone.”

  She started to argue. She wanted to argue. Argument here was impossible. Hope was right. All of her fears were exposed here, but she’d only made it this far because she’d exposed—and accepted—everything. The ugly bits. The things she was ashamed of. No one but Kaylin was here to judge them, because the Tower wouldn’t.

  The Tower wouldn’t. What it needed to know—even the first time—was what she could do. What she was willing to do. Hating things, fearing things, were part of who she’d always been. It was what she did with them—or didn’t do with them—that defined her, in the Tower’s eyes.

  Maybe in everyone else’s eyes, as well.

  She bit her lip; she tasted blood. She didn’t feel pain. Instead, she concentrated on the sound of syllables, rolling around her, above, beneath and through. She didn’t attempt to speak the words. She attempted to understand them—because words had meanings.

  She wasn’t prepared for the results, because on some level she could achieve understanding. She couldn’t—in Elantran, or any tongue she knew—convey to anyone else what the words meant to her. She couldn’t convey it to herself, not clearly, not in a way she could ever share with anyone else.

  But she thought, for a moment, that she did understand what the Tower was telling her. It was a blend of things—of emotions, sheared for the moment of context. It was the flickering impression that life might give had she lived it constantly blinking. It was like seeing something so strange, so large, so outside of her prior experience, that she had no way to describe it. The words she could choose might convey her emotions, but they couldn’t convey the vision. They couldn’t make clear what had caused those emotions in the first place.

  But...these were words.

  For one long minute she struggled to find words of her own, and then she gave up. She let the sensation of sound and song take root; she let herself feel the weight of the words, the differences in their timbre. As she did, two things happened. The first, no longer surprising or unusual, was the marks placed across more than half of her body rising from her skin, joining the floating marks across her forearms.

  The second thing, however, was new. The words of the Tower that surrounded her began to shrink. These were not the words she had carried since the age of twelve; they were the words the Tower had carried for centuries. Maybe millennia. She stopped breathing, stopped moving, lowered stiff, stiff arms, afraid for one stretched moment that all the smaller words would somehow join the ones she carried.

  This was not a groundless fear. At least two of the Tower’s words joined the halo of floating words that were anchored to Kaylin; the words that were hers shifted slightly in place to accommodate them. She didn’t want the Tower’s words. She didn’t want more words at all. The Tower’s words had been written—for want of a better word—for a reason, and the reason itself was murky; Kaylin understood the theory in the same way she understood that being stabbed generally caused bleeding. The details of what lay beneath the breached surface of skin, not so much, not immediately. There were people who would, and did, but usually at leisure after the fact.

  To take on the weight of the Tower’s words was to accept a responsibility that she didn’t even understand. She exhaled slowly. Yes, that was true—but it was also true that she didn’t understand the words she did carry, either. She couldn’t take on the Tower duties; she couldn’t be a Tower.

  But even thinking that, she thought of Tiamaris. Of Tara. Of any living being who had somehow consented to become the will of a Tower such as this. She wasn’t that being, couldn’t be that being. But she understood, instinctively, that that wasn’t necessary here. The Tower had a heart, and the heart, if troubled, was sound.

  Words lifted themselves from the formation around her arm; she felt two work free from her legs, and looked down. Perhaps this was a conversation on some level; those words, four in total, floated free of their invisible containment, and they joined the Tower’s words. One word from the Tower shuffled itself into hers; three more left—one from the back of her neck. She watched them go, remembering as she did that Hope had devoured one when he had first emerged from his shell.

  She understood what the Tower needed. No, she understood what she thought the Tower needed, which was not the same thing. But she had only her own understanding and experience to work with, and she accepted that; the Tower was talking to Kaylin. Not to anyone else, whose experience might be greater or broader. She could only do what she could do.

  People will die if you can’t do more. People might already be dead. And it will be your fault.

  “No,” Hope said as panic began to add knots to her neck, her shoulders, her gut. “You are not responsible for their lives or deaths here. If they die, you are not the hand that has killed them.”

  More of the Tower’s words joined hers, but now she could see a difference in the patina of gold that surrounded them; she could feel their weight. It was different from the words she carried, because the words she carried had no literal weight. Yes, sometimes they had heat, intense heat; sometimes they felt as if they scorched the skin they rested above. But not weight, not substance.

  The weight, she accepted. She didn’t have a choice.

  But even that was wrong. She had a choice; she had chosen to listen. She had offered, wordless and desperate, to help. And this was the Tower’s response to that offer. More words. Different words. She accepted these, too. She wondered if, in the end, half of the marks on her skin would be these words, these new words.

  Spike was clicking in her left ear. Buzzing like the insect he had first appeared to be in the West March. He could speak to her, but didn’t; she wondered if he’d forgotten how. It didn’t matter, though. The words that hadn’t joined her own words began to gain height, width, substance; they shot up—and down—until they once again dwarfed her.

  She felt even smaller and less significant than she had when she had first struggled to reach them, when she had first thrown away the fear of being seen, of being known. Whatever the Tower meant to communicate had been communicated. Kaylin didn’t feel enlightened. But she understood that the Tower had seen her, had understood what it had heard, had made a decision.

  The words, the marks on her arm, began to recede, flattening and darkening until they could no longer be seen. But the words that the Tower had left her, the words that had been exchanged, did not. They remained prominent, dimensional and heavy. She wasn’t surprised to see them grow; she hoped they didn’t grow to the same size as the rest of their former companions had, because there was no way she could carry even one of them in that case; she’d probably be unable to move.

  What are you doing? The words were Nightshade’s. They were joined by Ynpharion’s. Edelonne was silent; the question was there, but it wasn’t given voice. And Severn said nothing.

  Severn couldn’t find the space for even the thought. He was aware of her, as she was aware of him; she felt the burns and blisters across the
left side of his neck. She felt apprehension, but it was contained, controlled. She wanted, suddenly, to be where he was. He was her partner.

  He had always been her partner.

  Not always, Nightshade very unhelpfully said. Nightshade was also fighting; his enemies, however, were Shadows. Not Ferals—but the one-offs that occasionally appeared at the boundary of Ravellon, seeking a way into the rest of the city. She knew, from the flash of lightning, the crackle of air, that Teela was doing the same. That Tain was beside her, with an ordinary sword, wielded with the deadly grace and speed of the Barrani.

  That the cohort—or at least Annarion, the only person of import among them to Nightshade—was fighting in the same fashion; he looked ghostly, to Nightshade. All of the cohort did. They were an almost liminal, translucent silver.

  They fought, not Shadows, not one-offs, not Ferals, but Barrani who were more solid. One of those Barrani was An’Mellarionne. He didn’t condescend to draw a physical weapon, but the gem at the height of his Arcanist tiara was glowing. He could see what Nightshade registered as ghostly. He could attack.

  He could be attacked. He registered all of the gathered cohort; he had eyes only for his sister.

  Kaylin opened her eyes.

  * * *

  In her hands, she now carried a long sword. No, it was too large to be that; it wasn’t as big as Meliannos or Kariannos, but it was a hand-and-a-half blade. Easily. Kaylin had never been good with swords; she had some basic training, but the weapons master had made clear that the training would serve to prevent her from accidentally lopping off her own toes—or anyone else’s limbs. He didn’t expect her to be good with a sword and, as swords were not the Hawk’s standard patrol weapon, had decided to expend his effort elsewhere.

  The sword was not the only thing that glowed gold; she appeared to be wearing armor. Unlike Bellusdeo’s, it wasn’t plate; it was a mesh of something that might resemble chain at a distance. She glanced quickly around the room; it was a mess of visual chaos. What Nightshade had seen as almost ghosts, Kaylin saw as the cohort. Annarion was bleeding. His blood was red.

  Valliant’s right arm hung by his side; it seemed almost boneless. It, too, was bleeding, although the fingers of the hand, exposed, seemed to be smoking and blackened. She could see Allaron, the giant, carrying a blade that was meant for his size; he was in front of Sedarias, who was also armed.

  But Mandoran was at his side, his hands free of weapons; they were splayed in front of him—in front of the three of them—as if pressed against an invisible wall. She wanted to go to Valliant. She didn’t. If there was time to heal the injuries done here, it would be later—if at all.

  She looked for Spike. She found him.

  He was the size and shape of whatever he had been in the outlands, when he had chosen to divert the attention of unseen pursuers so that the cohort might make their escape. Everything about him screamed Shadow, to Kaylin. She accepted it. None of the cohort attacked him. Nor did Teela or Nightshade.

  Above the din of battle, Kaylin could hear only one thing: the Consort’s song. Every attack seemed to fold itself into the break of syllables, the rhythm of her song, as if the song itself now defined the actions of those—friend or foe—contained in this space. Even the splash of purple fire, purple lightning, from above or below seemed to be part of its cadence.

  She dared one backward glance at the Consort and froze. “Lady! It’s enough. Stop. The Tower has heard you, and the Tower has responded.”

  The Consort, however, did not stop singing. She was, even at this distance, sweating—and in the strange light created by magical attacks, magical defenses and the natural, ugly darkness of a living cavern, that sweat looked like blood. Her eyes were closed, her hands clenched in shaking fists. But her head was lifted, as if she could see the Tower’s words, and looked only at them.

  Kaylin was terrified for the Consort. No magic touched her; Ynpharion had not moved and Edelonne had joined him in his defense of the Consort. Evarrim stood between them, a blur of something red and white forming a circle beneath his feet. The three stood, however, behind Nightshade, because if Annarion was the only member of the cohort he valued, the Consort was important in an entirely different way. It was the difference between love and duty.

  The Consort’s song was a blend of both. And Kaylin understood then that she would not stop until she collapsed, or until the conflict ended. The conflict didn’t look to be ending anytime soon, but the time limit that Kaylin could see was contained in the Consort.

  “She cannot stop,” Hope said quietly. “If she stops, she will perish. If she stops,” he added softly, “you will all perish.”

  “But why?”

  “Because she lends power to the Tower, Lord Kaylin, and the Tower requires it now.”

  “But—”

  “Look.”

  Kaylin turned, as if Hope had placed both hands on her shoulders and repositioned her forcefully, toward what she had considered the back of the cavern. The Adversary appeared to be perched on the equivalent of a throne, and he wore a crown of Shadow, and the face of the High Lord.

  Chapter 29

  Around the throne stood the subjects of this dark kingdom. They stood in the hundreds, perhaps the thousands, their presence faint but liminal. To Kaylin’s eyes, they looked very much like the cohort had looked when seen through Nightshade’s. Seen through her own, there was one distinct difference: their ghostly, translucent bodies had, at their heart, a golden glow. She was almost certain that if she approached them, she would see the words that had woken them from the slumber of Barrani infancy.

  Even thinking it, she saw the appearances of those who had been trapped melt away from that glow, until only words remained. Unlike the Tower’s, they were small, discrete; they looked like artistic renditions of...fireflies. She could not hear the keening or the wailing of the damned, and realized that she hadn’t heard them since she’d entered—or touched—the Tower’s heart.

  She wondered what her companions heard, above the crashing din of magical conflict and steel. She knew what the Consort heard, what the High Lord heard—what they had lived with since they had come into their power.

  The Consort was called the Mother of her race. Kaylin had no desire to have children of her own—she was certain she was too broken to ever become a good parent—but she could imagine what it would do to any parent to hear the screams of their children. The Consort had no easy, acceptable out: she was Immortal. Until and unless she was replaced, those sounds were one of the backbones of her existence.

  And in front of her, surrounded now by the names that should have returned to the Lake, was the creature that had tortured the long line of Consorts for centuries, wearing the face of the High Lord.

  Kaylin’s arms were warm with fire, hot with the burning sensation of the marks of the Chosen. In her hands, she carried a sword that she had not been trained to use. But the sword was lighter by far than even the crude metal clubs that had served as training weapons, and it moved easily, as if responding to her will.

  “Spike,” she said.

  The bulk of the giant Shadow that had served as stopgap barrier in this heavily compromised Tower did not move—but tentacles did, shuffling over the height of shoulders or haunches in the direction of Kaylin’s voice. She didn’t even find the opalescent eyes they sprouted disturbing.

  Chosen.

  The eyes on the ends of those tentacles seemed to widen—or to lose their lids. Your cohort has interrupted the completion of the summoning. You yourself have destroyed half of the anchors that held the power in place and provided the sustenance of the words themselves. But it is not safe here.

  It had never been safe here.

  “I need you to move,” she told him, looking ahead as the creature on the black throne rose.

  It is not safe, Chosen. Not yet.

  “It’s never going to be compl
etely safe,” Kaylin replied. The hilt and the hand guard of the great sword was becoming warmer as she held it; she wasn’t certain if this was an artifact of the fire that served as a living shield.

  Spike didn’t move.

  “He’s right, you know,” a familiar voice said. Terrano materialized. He didn’t come from nowhere, though. He appeared to exit the side of Spike that was closest to Kaylin. Spike’s body disgorged him, coated with something that looked like black mucus. It wasn’t the most disturbing thing she’d seen today—but it was close.

  He grinned as the mucus dried and dissolved, shaking bits of detritus from his sleeves. “Took you long enough.”

  “What are you doing?”

  “Offering Spike a different perspective. A slightly different perspective.”

  “From the inside?”

  “He couldn’t understand me, otherwise.” Terrano shrugged. “It also took me out of the combat. The rest of the cohort have some built-in stability. I lack it. Spike understood that it would be a little bit too easy for me to be swept up in the summoning.” He held up a hand as she opened her mouth. He placed the flat of his palm against Spike. “There’s only one way to confront the Adversary.”

  She lifted her sword.

  “Pretty much. But to approach him at all, there has to be a gap in the wall that serves as his cage. He’s not like us,” Terrano added with just a hint of pride. “Or he’s not what we were. There’s no gap, for him.” Terrano glanced and then said, “There’s no gap for the Tower, either. What the Adversary is, the Tower can’t destroy. If it could, it would have.”

  “Could Helen?” she asked, because Spike had still not moved.

  “I don’t know. Maybe? I don’t understand all of the Tower, or all of Helen. I understand more of Alsanis—but only the defensive bits, and even those...” He shrugged.

  “You should probably stand clear.”

  “Me? No. I’m not like them,” he said, glancing at the cohort, who were still fighting for their lives. “I’m not like you.” He lifted the hand he’d placed on Spike’s side, and came to stand beside her, his arms folded, his gaze fixed on the man on the throne.