The names moved like a flock of birds in a distinct formation above her head. Her arms ached, and her skin burned—but it wasn’t because the fire was unleashed; the pain was caused by the intensity of the marks of the Chosen themselves. As if they all wanted to rise, to leap out, to finish this story, this telling. She shouldn’t have been able to discern which of the words were the marks of the Chosen, and which were the captive names, but she could. And it didn’t matter.
She knew, as she watched the words begin to shift their formation, that there were only choices made of—built on—the actions of the past; of the long-ago past and the imperfect creators who had given the Adversary what passed for life to Shadow; of his part in the war that had trapped him here; of the long test, the long offering of choices—bad and worse—and the countless deaths that had come as a result of that. No ending she could offer him could alter the past.
But no. The ending she told here was an ending that existed because of the threads of a past she would never fully understand; they were what she had to work with, even with the words she’d been given.
The part of her that lived for the Hawks wanted some semblance of justice. This creature had been responsible for hundreds—thousands—of deaths. His death wouldn’t change his crimes, but it was what he deserved.
She believed that. It was true.
But everything he’d said caused her to hesitate. She’d heard the justifications of criminals for most of her working life—and she’d used those justifications herself, in a past she still hated to think about on the bad days. In that past she had killed. In that past she had given information to the fieflord of Barren, and he’d killed based on it. She had hunted those who were weaker or stupider because she’d been terrified of death.
Until it had gotten too hard, the burden of guilt and self-loathing too heavy to carry.
She had come to the Halls of Law to die.
If there was justice in the world, if justice were the only thing that mattered, she would have died there. She had tried—and failed—to end her life. It had never occurred to her that the Hawklord wouldn’t do what she was too much of a coward to do for herself: end that life. Put her out of misery. Because if she was dead, the pain would stop.
She had done nothing to deserve the chance the Hawklord had given her. Nothing to deserve the foundations he laid so that one shaky teen could stand on them, could find her footing. He wasn’t her father—she’d never had one—but he was as close as she could come: distant, wise, worthy of both respect and obedience.
It was an ending that she hadn’t foreseen. An ending that she didn’t intend. In no universe, no daydream left her, had she imagined that she would become a Hawk. Yes, he’d offered her a choice—but he’d offered her a choice she could never have conceived of on the day she’d finally wound up her ragged courage, her resentment, her disgust with herself, and gone to the city to die.
She looked into the heart of dense mist—understood, by the movement of flying words, that this was the heart of the Adversary. She felt a hand touch her shoulder and nodded, although she didn’t look away. Terrano.
“Chosen,” the Adversary whispered. He stilled, or the miasma did. “Hurry.”
Lifting the sword that was left in her hands, she took the steps—across solid ground—to reach the heart of the Adversary. She readied the weapon, raising it slowly—her weapons master would have bitten her head off at both the approach and the way she left herself wide open—and brought it down.
* * *
The blade cut the mist, splitting it in two. There was no resistance to the golden edge; she might have been waving the sword—badly—in plain air, as if practicing a strike. It didn’t matter. She had created a wound in the miasma, one her eyes couldn’t detect but her instincts told her was there. As if to shore up that instinctive belief, the words dived down—and in.
She didn’t even lower the blade. It vanished the moment its edge struck the cloud that was the Adversary’s potential form—all of his potential forms.
Terrano’s arms were once again around her midriff. She stiffened, but didn’t tell him to let go. Her entire body tingled and ached; she could hear Terrano’s soft cursing as if his mouth was practically inside her ear.
The words vanished, absorbed, their light once again shuttered. As they dimmed, she heard them: they were louder by far than any spoken True Word had ever been, as if given voice for the first time.
Terrano grunted and cursed. She was almost proud of him: he used Elantran words. He began to haul her backward. “We need to get out of here, you idiot!” She’d have to teach him Leontine sometime. She thought, given his ability to shift form, he could really use it.
“Kaylin!”
That wasn’t Terrano’s voice. It was...Mandoran? As the echoes of the last of the True Words died away, some hearing returned. Terrano’s voice became much, much louder, the insistence and panic it contained finally reaching the rest of her mind.
She blinked, looked up and then looked down—to where the floor once again wasn’t. Up didn’t have better news to offer, though—because parts of the ceiling were collapsing in the regular way.
She would have leaped out of the way, but without ground, nothing would give her the momentum necessary to carry her to safety.
“She’s heavy, right?” Mandoran said. “We should have let Allaron come.”
“He’s busy,” Terrano snapped. “Do something useful for once!”
Mandoran obliged, coming to Kaylin’s right as Terrano readjusted his grip and moved to the left. She didn’t ask them what they were walking on, in part because she probably wouldn’t understand the answer.
“You need to learn how to move,” Terrano added, groaning. Kaylin could even see why. There was no bridge. There was a large, expansive gap of nothing, with colored bits kind of flitting back and forth as if they were alive. She couldn’t see what lay beyond it; she hoped it was what remained of the cavern—if anything did. “You’ve done it before—you’ve phased into slightly different space. You just need to find a space that has floor.”
“You’re not flying?”
Terrano shrieked in frustration. Mandoran chuckled.
“You’ve even done it,” Terrano continued, pausing for breath, “today. What is it with you?” This, too, was Elantran.
“Teela says she operates entirely instinctively, if that helps,” Mandoran offered.
“Did Teela say I hate being talked about in the third person when I’m actually right here?”
“Is it relevant?”
They carried her back to reality. She thought about that. Was she weak, to need their help? Was this something she could do—could have done—on her own? She’d learned in Barren to trust no one. Nothing. Not even Morse, her only friend. Trust was risk. Risk was death. But without it, in the end, life had no value—at least not to Kaylin. She shifted slightly, grabbing on to both of them.
“No, not really. Is everyone else okay?”
“Define okay.”
“Not dead. Not in danger of dying immediately. Not opening a portal for all the Shadow in the Tower to enter the High Halls and destroy everything.”
The two exchanged a glance that seemed to pass through Kaylin’s head.
Severn.
The Shadows have stopped.
Stopped existing?
Stopped attacking. The Consort is safe. He knew this wasn’t her only concern, and turned toward the Barrani. If the Shadows had ceased to attack, the Barrani—those outside of the Consort’s orbit—had not. Through Severn’s eyes, she could see the cohort.
Valliant was down; Serralyn was by his side.
She couldn’t see Torrisant or Fallessian, but stopped looking because Severn wasn’t looking. He had eyes for Sedarias. Sedarias and Coravante, her brother. The Arcanists who had come with Coravante had not immediately panicked when atta
cked; they did not panic now. Coravante An’Mellarionne was the center of their formation, although they’d lost two; she could see a headless body a yard away from where Coravante had chosen to make his stand.
She could see Sedarias’s back, could see Allaron beside her.
The Arcanist crown worn by Coravante flashed almost white. The color leached out of his face. His eyes, however, were a steady indigo. At this distance, she shouldn’t have seen the color. There were no whites.
No. But you can’t see Sedarias’s eyes, either. Only they can.
“So, little sister, you plague our house even on the eve of our ascendance.”
“It is not our house, brother. It is mine.”
“You have been all but dead these many centuries. So much has changed, you would not recognize it.”
“And so much, even given time, has remained the same. Do you remember our early childhood?”
To his left and right, the men standing by his side raised arms. They were also Arcanists, although the gems in their tiaras were cracked and blacked stones now. She recognized neither, and it was irrelevant. Sedarias and Coravante commanded the whole of her attention.
“I remember everything.”
“Good. I took one risk with you. Only one. It was the only time, then or after, that you almost succeeded in killing me.”
He laughed. He laughed, and something black that might have otherwise been blood trickled out of the corners of his lips. “Did you think that that was my desire, Sedarias? Did you think the plan mine?”
“It seemed far too sophisticated for you, I admit.” Her tone was ice, like the white fire that grew in her brother’s hands.
“You were the golden child. You were the hope of Mellarionne. But you were young. You were reckless.”
“I was reckless? You are consorting with Shadow. You are standing in the lee of Ravellon in your ignorance, and I was reckless?”
“There is power in Shadow. Is that not what you yourself discovered? Did you not discover it first?”
Fire lanced out from his palms. Sedarias stood at the heart of its trajectory.
“If I had succeeded in killing you, we would not be here now. I was promised the line if I broke my word to you.”
“Mother?”
“Mother.”
She nodded. “You understand that she expected you to die.”
“Yes. Her expectations were irrelevant. If you were dead, I would have proved myself. Because if you were dead, it would mean that you had been foolish enough, weak enough, to trust.”
If Kaylin had not been in an entirely different space, she would have shouted in rage.
“You are shouting,” Mandoran pointed out. “She just can’t hear you.”
“My apologies, then, for not being weak enough. For never being weak enough. This is where you have led Mellarionne. And now it will have a leader who might—just might—be able to pull the house back from the brink of ruin. The Consort is here. And the High Lord will know.”
She raised her sword. From the left and right, two of the cohort came in: Annarion and Eddorian. And Sedarias stepped forward as white fire did as much damage as light might have. “Do you know what I was promised?”
“The same.”
“The same, brother mine. If you died, I would be guaranteed the house. Do you know why I didn’t try to kill you first? Do you honestly think that it was weakness?”
“It was.”
“No. It was because the house was already mine. I wanted it to be different. I didn’t agree with our mother. But it was already mine. This was the war she wanted. This was the fight she wanted. She wanted none of us to change anything. In the end, she ruled you.”
“She is dead.”
“Yes. The wars killed her. And had they not, one of us would have killed her instead. No,” she amended as her brother drew his own sword and the light dimmed, the gem that shed it cracking so loudly it sounded like lightning, “I would have killed her. You would have served, in your fashion, for all your eternity.”
She drove her sword forward.
Coravante barely attempted to parry.
“You are like her,” he said, his voice breaking on syllables, and on Sedarias. “You are exactly like her.”
“I would almost spare you so that you might come to realize just how wrong you are.”
He nodded. Just that. He had no more words to offer.
* * *
“I think Sedarias has managed to kill her brother.” Mandoran’s expression was grave; there was no triumph in it.
Kaylin blinked and fled Severn’s vision. “She said he’d tried to kill her before. I can’t remember how often.”
“I think this would be the fifth time,” Terrano said. “But it’s only five because we were locked away in Alsanis for so long he didn’t have other opportunities.”
“Her sister also tried to kill her.”
“If it makes you feel any better, her sister tried to kill her brother, as well. And survived one attempt on her brother’s part, that we know of.”
“She was working for him.”
“Yes. Apparently she decided it was better to join than to die.”
And Sedarias hadn’t.
* * *
The cavern was more or less what it had been before she had lifted her sword and walked across what could barely be called a bridge. Mandoran and Terrano decided they’d come far enough and Kaylin could bloody well—Mandoran’s words—carry her own damn weight.
Hope, in his actual, portable form, swooped in to land on her left shoulder. Kaylin couldn’t see Spike. Hope squawked loudly in her ear.
He’s here.
If she’d been carrying him, she would have dropped him—not that it would have done him much harm.
“What did you just say?” she demanded.
He’s here.
She turned to look at him, her mouth half-open. His voice was still unpleasantly squawky, but...there were actual syllables in it. Maybe. She could both understand him and fail to identify the language.
Chosen.
Terrano and Mandoran looked around, as if trying to discern what had surprised her so badly. “Heads up,” the latter muttered as Sedarias marched into view. She was injured; her left cheek was bleeding; blood had run down the side of her neck.
“Allaron looks worse,” Mandoran said, voice much quieter, although there was no hope that Sedarias would fail to hear him, because there was very little noise in the cavern. Even the subtle crackle of fire had vanished the moment Kaylin had returned; the armor that fire had become no longer protected her. She wondered if Evarrim was still conscious, but with an approaching face full of Sedarias, she didn’t have time to look.
She did ask Ynpharion about the Consort.
She survives. She is weakened, he added with just a trace of panic.
She sang, Kaylin told him, gentling her internal voice because she understood the panic. In Ynpharion’s position, she would probably have felt it herself. She felt panic of a different kind as Sedarias, bloodied, reached her, like a nightmare soldier that had once been, in a different land, a friend.
The hush held. Kaylin saw fallen bodies, which she’d expected. She saw the injured; they were huddled somewhere in the vicinity of Evarrim’s feet. Ah, no, not just Evarrim; Nightshade and Teela were also there. She didn’t see Severn immediately, but she felt his presence, and there was a watchfulness in it, but no fear.
“What,” Sedarias demanded, “did you do?”
“I...”
Sedarias’s eyes couldn’t get more blue; her expression couldn’t be more martial. Kaylin would have bet on it. Apparently her betting instincts had atrophied in recent weeks. But Sedarias was looking past Kaylin’s shoulder, and Kaylin, without the anchors called Mandoran and Terrano, could turn to see what Sedarias was seeing.
>
* * *
It was a door.
It was a door in what was now a flat, seamless wall that extended beyond their ability to see its top. Had the door been on any other wall, or in any other location, Kaylin might not have noticed it; it was slightly taller than doors that weren’t meant to impress the public—at least in the Halls of Law—but was otherwise unremarkable.
She started to speak, because Sedarias was still almost in her face, but the ground shook beneath their collective feet, and the words hadn’t been that important, anyway. To Kaylin’s right, near a rough wall, she caught movement and turned. The Consort. The Consort, Ynpharion by her side, also made her way to where Kaylin was standing.
The Consort trumped Sedarias. Even in Sedarias’s opinion.
Where is Edelonne? she asked Ynpharion.
Ask her yourself.
Oh. Right. Edelonne?
I am with Lord Evarrim, Edelonne replied. One of the handful of criminals that have survived. My fate will be decided at a later date. She did not sound fearful; she sounded both weary and bitterly, bitterly angry. Kaylin recognized the anger. It was the worst of the anger she sometimes felt, aimed at herself, at her stupidity, at her own helplessness.
She had no comfort to offer; when she felt this rage, there was nothing anyone could offer that might ease it.
She turned away, mentally, and faced the Consort.
As she approached, Kaylin saw that her eyes—unlike the eyes of every other Barrani present—were green. She was bruised; her left eye was reddened, as if she’d been struck, hard, across the face. She was also paler than usual, and her hair was a bit of a mess.
When she stood five feet away from Kaylin, she hesitated briefly, and then closed the distance and enveloped Kaylin in a hug. If she looked like she’d taken a stroll through fire and death, she smelled like sunshine and comfort. Kaylin had had her disagreements with the Consort, none of them minor. She had no doubt that she would continue to disagree with some of the Consort’s decisions, even if she understood the reason for them.
Cast in Oblivion Page 46
