Nightshade had implied that he’d had to go to the portal to find her. Which said something about the portal. One of the many things it said? Entering it at the moment was probably not a great idea, so leaving might prove difficult.
But one of the other things it implied was that the portal existed in an entirely different space than the rest of the Castle. Or at least the rest of the fief. She turned that one over for a few minutes. What did she know about the Castle, after all? Its well, if you fell all the way down to the bottom and miraculously survived, contained a cavern with a vast lake that the Elemental Water could actually reach out and touch; its basement contained a literal forest of trees that seemed sentient—certainly more sentient than the Hawks when they’d been out drinking all night and had work the next day; somewhere beyond that forest, there was a huge cavern that was covered in runes that were very similar to the ones that adorned half of her skin.
She grimaced. What else?
There was a throne room. She’d seen it once. It contained statues of almost every living race in the Empire, and when Nightshade desired it, those statues came to life. Were, in fact, in some way, always alive. He’d said he used the power of the Castle to create them, but made it clear that he had started from flesh. But…how? How had he used that power? What had he told it to do?
She stood, found that her knees no longer wobbled, and began to pace in a rectangle around the low table.
What was the Castle, at heart? It was not the Tower of Barren. Or rather, of Tiamaris. It didn’t speak, or think, or plan, or love.
Or did it?
“No,” was the quiet reply.
CHAPTER 8
Nightshade stood in the open doors, a tray in his hands. Or rather, between the open palms he held to either side. She hesitated, and then walked quickly over to where he stood and lifted the tray the normal way. Watching the Lord of the fief play servant always unsettled her.
He raised a dark brow; his eyes were still the shade that exists just before emerald falls into sapphire. His hair, unbound, draped across both shoulders; his skin was pale. The tray shook in her hands; she looked at what was on it. Water, or a liquid just as clear and colorless, fruit, cut cheese, meat. No bread. She carried the tray to the table. He followed in silence.
She was always aware of where, in a room, Nightshade was. It might have been because of the mark; it might have been because she knew his true name. But she thought she’d have been just as aware if she’d had neither. Even his silences demanded attention. She could more easily ignore the Dragon Lords whose company she kept than the Lord of Nightshade.
He knew. It amused him. Which annoyed her. “Why doesn’t Castle Nightshade speak?” she asked, veering away from both annoyance and compulsion.
“I think you know the answer to that better than I.”
Clearly, if she were interested in forcing the conversation into safer channels, she was going to have to carry most of it. “You were there. You were there when the Tower of—of Tiamaris—woke.”
“I was there for only some part of it. My knowledge of the Towers at that time—and it was not without significance—was based in its entirety on their nascent forms. I understood, how ever,” he added, voice softer, gaze fixed on her face, “that I was not to be bored. I had encountered a mortal—a mortal with the unfortunate manners of a wild human, or a coveted one—and she bore my mark.” His glance brushed the sleeves of her shirt, and his eyes flared—literally.
Magic caused her skin to tingle and the hair on the back of her neck to rise. Before she could speak or move, the ties at her sleeves fell open, and those sleeves were rolled, end over end, up her arms until the inside of those arms were exposed. Both arms, simultaneously. It was a neat trick, for a value of neat that was also distinctly uncomfortable.
“You bore, as well, the marks of the Chosen. And you seemed both powerless and ignorant, in the main, of what those marks might mean to you should you survive them.”
“But the Tower—” she began, attempting to control the conversation. Or anything, really.
“The Tower of Tiamaris heard you,” was his reply. “As did I. You were there when his Tower woke. You were not, however, here. Nor were you in the other fiefs in which such Towers woke and found they were powerless. What you touched, Kaylin, you changed. You have not touched the heart of Castle Nightshade, and before you ask—if you are so foolish as to entertain the notion—no, you will not wake the Castle’s heart.”
But as he said it, she felt both the force of his declaration, and the tremor of uncertainty that lay beneath it. He wasn’t sure that she could be kept from it if she wanted to go to the heart.
“You are wrong,” was the cool reply. “But the only certainty is your death, and I am reluctant, at this moment, to kill you.”
“But at this moment,” she replied, half touching his thoughts, half speaking them as if they were also her own, “you can kill me. And you’re not certain that’s always going to be true.”
One brow rose, revealing more of the blue his eyes had become. He didn’t deny it, however; there wasn’t any point. Not that he wouldn’t have lied if there was any chance it would be effective; the burden of truth for any Barrani was decided by the gullibility of the audience, and the possible consequences of the lie itself to said Barrani.
She glanced at her arms.
“Yes,” he said quietly.
“You knew. You knew I would live in Nightshade. You knew it centuries ago.”
“I knew,” was the quiet reply, “that you would be born in the fief of Nightshade. I knew that you would grow here. I also knew that until the moment you were old enough, there would be no way to distinguish you from any other motherless human urchin.”
The words, and the callous sentiment that informed them so perfectly, caused Kaylin’s jaws to ache.
“I knew, when Severn Handred came to my Castle for the first time, that the long wait was almost done. Barrani are immortal, but we are not famed for our patience. I was not, initially, absorbed by the boredom and frustration of waiting. There was much, indeed, that I had to discover, much to achieve, before your arrival.”
“You knew that the Outcaste—the Dragon—would be here.”
“No. That, I did not know, not immediately.” He stepped toward her, and she stood her ground, tensing slightly as he raised his hand to touch her cheek. It was, oddly enough, the cheek that was unmarked. “I was not, then, the man I am now. What I could read from you—and I did try—was not so complete.
“But I waited, Kaylin.”
“You marked me.”
“Yes.”
“But you never said a word.”
“No. I knew, when we first met, that the time for speech would follow. But I did not wish to influence or change what might occur in the Tower in my past and your future. Had I, who knows what might have occurred in the darkness there? We might have no fieflord, no Tiamaris, and the shadows might now be spilling across the Ablayne, and from there, to the whole of the Empire.
“I interfered very, very little in your life. I knew very little of my role in it. I learned, for instance, that you would go to the High Halls, that you would face the test of the Tower there. You are not guarded or careful with your knowledge. Perhaps, if you lived to be my age, you would learn this caution.
“But perhaps not.” His fingers stroked her cheek; his eyes were a blue that spoke of sky, not cobalt. She didn’t know what it meant, and didn’t want to know. “I have been careful. I have been cautious.
“But the fief of Tiamaris now exists. The moment our paths crossed at that Tower in your timeline, I was free. I am no longer constrained by the possible future. I am no longer constrained by any attempt to meet the future as promised, by a single day, in the past.
“I understood,” he continued, “when Illien fell, what the significance of that long-ago meeting might be. I understood what the fall of Illien might presage. And I understood, as well, that you might face death when you return
ed, after centuries, to the Tower you had wakened.”
“That’s why you were there?”
“It is why I took that risk. Understand that I have played many games in the long stretch of years between our first meeting and that one. I explored, as Lord Tiamaris explored, and I learned what was possible for one with my abilities to learn. The Castle was not entirely expected, but I had explored such buildings before. I could not be certain that you would survive this entry into the Tower.”
“I might not have.”
“No. But I could no more join you in Illien’s Tower than Illien could join you in mine.”
“Would the Tower have known?”
“That I am bound to another? Yes.”
She wanted to ask how he knew. She didn’t.
“And in truth I would not risk my fief in the attempt. Had the Tower fallen, or had you fallen in the Tower, the shadows at the heart of the fief would now have two borders to my lands, and my power and ability to defend what I have taken—and held—would be taxed. Possibly to the point of failure.” He let his hand trail down to the underside of her jaw, and then, slowly, let it drop.
“But Tiamaris now exists. I feel his name as strongly as I have ever felt Illien’s or Liatt’s. In truth,” he added with a grimace, “it is stronger. He will never again venture across this border, and I fear that any forays I make across his will be instantly known.”
She took a deep breath, because now that his hand was not so close to her skin, she could. “Why does Castle Nightshade have a portal? The Tower doesn’t.”
“Tiamaris’s tower…does not?”
She mentally kicked herself. “No. The Tower’s Avatar thought it wasn’t needed.”
He raised a dark brow. “You mean, the Tower’s Avatar felt that you disliked them enough that she chose not to have one where you might be forced to use it.” Not a question.
Since it was more or less true, Kaylin shrugged. It was a fief shrug.
“It will compromise her security,” Nightshade offered, his eyes darkening into a more familiar shade of annoyance at the gesture itself. “But if you think there are no portals in her domain, you are mistaken. There will be at least one. She cannot be so foolish as to leave her heart unguarded.”
“I know what lies at the heart of that Tower,” Kaylin replied.
“I know. But there will be a portal somewhere within the Tower. You might never see it, although I think it unlikely that you will be able to avoid it entirely. The Tower trusts you, inasmuch as it is allowed to trust one not its Lord.” He walked over to the low table, and lifted a silver goblet. The contents absorbed some of his attention. “You gambled, Kaylin. It is an interesting gamble.
“A Dragon has never, to my knowledge, been fieflord before. It will also be interesting.” He sat, slowly, on the couch opposite Kaylin, who stood, motionless, to one side of the low table. “You cannot know how you intrigued me, the first time we met.
“You, dirty and underslept mortal urchin, bearing marks of power that even now you do not understand. Severn, who bears a weapon that whispers if you are aware of how to listen accompanied you, and Tiamaris, Dragon Lord, was by your side but clearly not your master.
“I had spent much of my life in the West March, and some of it at Court. I had endured—and passed—the test of Name. I had survived my family and my extended family’s particular exuberance for political power plays. It is something that whiled away time, and I learned to excel at it.”
No surprises there.
“But the entry into the Tower made the first meeting almost unremarkable. The Tower’s voice…I can still hear it. I can see her wings,” he added softly, “and see the obsidian glint of her skin as she landed and took the throne itself.”
“I can still see the bodies,” Kaylin replied, and this time, she did sit.
“You could see those before the Tower,” he answered. “The Tower did not tell you anything you did not already know. She helped you, in a fashion, to unburden yourself. Not more, and not less.”
Kaylin nodded; it was true. She was uncomfortable here, in this room, and she couldn’t really tell herself it was because of the portal transition—if that’s what it was—because she didn’t believe it. Nightshade’s gaze was now upon her face; it was as if there was nothing at all between his eyes and hers. Honesty with Severn, she could manage.
Honesty with a Barrani had never been desired—either by Kaylin or by the Barrani she knew. “You waited. For me.”
“I waited.”
“Why?” As she asked the word, she listened. She listened through the tenuous connection of his true name; she listened through a different, but equally tenuous connection, because the mark on her face was as warm as the touch of his palm.
His answer, when it came, seemed to belong to a different question. “To my kin, to my people, history is not story. But we have stories. We dignify them by calling them legend, where it is appropriate to refer to them among outsiders, but we have words for story in High Barrani that we do not speak among outsiders. I do not know if Dragons have similar words in their own tongue—in my youth I would have denied even the possibility.
“Now? I feel they must. But it is of little consequence. The stories that we have, the stories that we tell, we tell seldom. Human stories are like human gossip and human greeting. Human religion is often the same. It skirts the surface of things, but it has no heart.”
Kaylin didn’t bridle. She’d spent enough years around Barrani to understand that this particular type of arrogance was proof against all merely mortal annoyance.
He felt the annoyance she hadn’t bothered to vocalize. But because she hadn’t, he took no offense. “You tell stories to children,” he said quietly. “We do not. If the Barrani can be said to have crimes in any mortal sense of the word, telling these stories to our children would be one of them.”
“Why?”
His silence was both verbal and internal; she felt the lull, and knew to wait until he had gathered the words he cared to gather.
“The Dragons feel,” he finally began, “that they are the only ones with any memory of, and knowledge of, the oldest of tongues, the ancient words.”
His words, once offered, took root quickly, like fire spreading through the floorboards and joists of a dry, wooden building. “These…stories…are in the language of the Old Ones?” She thought of the Leontines, then.
“They are,” he said softly. “And they are told nowhere but the West March. It is why the West March is ruled by a Barrani High Lord who is attached by blood to the High Halls. When—and if—we pass the test of the High Halls, we journey to the West March, and there, we listen.”
“Could you speak the words?”
He lifted a brow. “No. Not I, Kaylin. And I have heard them. Mortal memory is a cracked vessel. Whatever it holds leaks quickly away, and in little time. Barrani memory, like Dragon memory, is immortal. But there are some things that our thoughts cannot easily contain. Very, very few of our kind can hold those words, and use them. It is my belief that the Dragons have more success, but it is not a popular opinion among my sundered kin.” His smile was sharp and bitter, although he was genuinely amused.
“Why do you make this journey? I mean, why do you listen at all?”
“Some of us will hear the words, see them, feel them, and remain unmoved by what they contain. Others will be…transformed…in some fashion. The language is harsh,” he added, “and it is almost imperative.”
“And children?”
“Irrevocably changed.” There was no doubt in the words; they were dark. She wanted to ask him how he knew this.
“It was tried,” he replied, because she didn’t have to ask the actual words, not now. He was as close to her as he had ever been, even given the table between them.
“The change itself isn’t bad.”
“It is not always bad, no. It is considered another rite of pas sage, and those who can adapt to the tale gain both power and prestige. It is wh
y some felt we would gain in our wars with the Dragons if we exposed our young to the tale.
“But that is not what happened. They were not anchored in kin and custom. They were not, yet, wholly themselves. Nor were they ever destined to become so.” He lifted a hand. “And that dark bit of our history was not the purpose of this tale. I will not address it now, and if you are lucky, you will never hear it addressed.” He drank quietly, watching her.
She waited for his words, breaking no silence, because in some ways, there was no silence to break. His mute but constant presence was, in its own way, too loud to be ignored.
“Such stories, we call the Regalia. We encounter them once.”
Nodding, she lifted her own glass. She brought it to her lips; felt the cold, silver lip of the goblet against the dryness of her own.
“You asked me why I waited,” he said, reminding her because mortal memory was so ephemeral, and her attention was now wholly upon the fate of those unknown Barrani children.
She drank.
“In you, centuries ago, in the heart of what is now the fief of Tiamaris, I heard the beginning of a Regalia, Kaylin.”
She choked.
His smile was slightly malicious and slightly smug; he had, of course, expected her reaction. He waited, his eyes once again a clearer, paler blue than Barrani blue generally was, until she could breathe normally again; her eyes however were still tearing.
“It was subtle. I fear your companions are also listening to the tale, and they are being tested—and transformed—by it, although I do not believe they are aware of its significance.”
She shook her head. “That makes no sense,” she finally managed.
“Oh?”
“Your…stories…your Regalia…they’re in a language I can’t even speak. I don’t know them. I don’t have any goal here. I just want to do my job. At the end of the day, I want to eat and sleep. I want to complain about the office and the bureaucrats that sometimes interfere in our work.”