“Why are they even—” Kaylin stopped. “Do they understand that that’s what they’re trying to do?”
The Consort’s smile was deeper; it was tinged with an approval that Kaylin shouldn’t have wanted, but did anyway. “You understand. No. They believe that any thought that can be expressed—no, any desire—is true in and of itself. You see the words that they attempt to speak. What do they look like to you?”
“Like the shadows of words, but—worse.”
“Yes. All desires exist; there are words that speak of those desires, those words are true. But not all desire is reality. They believe that what the Ancients desired, they could bring into being by simply...speaking. Writing.”
“Bleeding,” Kaylin said, automatically.
The Consort said a long nothing.
“Lady, what is it that you think they want?”
“I would guess, if I could, that they wish to transform Teela as they themselves were transformed. I do not know. I do not understand the whole of their spoken tongue—they have created a language, the way the young sometimes do. I understand only parts of it, and not with clarity.”
“And your song, the song you were singing when we found you?”
She glanced at the edge of what was no longer stone grove. “A lullaby. They do not hate me,” she said. “Nothing they now attempt is personal.”
“Would you kill them if you could?”
“Yes. But not with joy, Kaylin, and with no sense of triumph. I understand what Teela’s mother asked of the green. But in the end, this is the result. The green is scarred, Teela is scarred, and the lost children exist in a state that is neither life nor death. But I think this time, we will have an ending, one way or the other.” She looked up as the water drew close, carrying Teela, cradling her as the fire had done.
“What happened to her?”
“She did what you did—she absorbed the nightmares of Alsanis. I couldn’t do what I did for you because I couldn’t see them. At all.”
“How many?”
“I don’t know. I told you—I couldn’t see them. There doesn’t seem to be anything wrong with her physically, and I can’t—I can’t touch her.”
“I would think it suicidal to try.”
“She’s unconscious. She can only kill me if she wakes up.”
The Consort touched Teela’s brow.
“Can you see her name?”
The Consort said, “Never ask that question of me. Never ask it again. It is not safe.”
“For me, or for you?”
“For either of us, Kaylin. Do you understand the position of Consort is not hereditary?”
“It was—”
“No. I am offered the opportunity to take the test first; it is a courtesy. I could have refused, without dishonor; I did not. Had I failed, I would have died, and a search for a suitable candidate would have begun. My bloodline gives me no affinity; it gives me nothing special. The test that we face—a test you did not—is not short. It is not a decision made in a moment. There are spaces in which Barrani might live that are nonetheless not the world to which we were born. In those spaces, time has less meaning—but no Barrani, no Dragon, no mortal, can undo the past. We move forward. The testing that I underwent began before you were born. Were I to undergo such a test now, it would end long after you died—of the old age that takes all mortals, sooner or later.
“Some fail the test almost immediately. Some take decades to make the first, false step. There is no going back. No one of us understands what the test entails, Kaylin, until it is far too late. My mother passed. I passed.” She smiled. “I passed in—how do you say it? Record time?”
“That’s how we say it.”
“My father, of course, was proud. Proud. I was his daughter.”
“Your mother?”
“She grieved.”
“I...don’t understand.”
“She had undergone the same testing, Kaylin. She knew what both passing—and surviving—in such a short time meant. The Lake chooses; it is not kind in its choice. I am not...the daughter my mother hoped for. I am not harsh enough, not strong enough. But I am not so weak that I could fail. I am not so weak that I could not sacrifice almost everything I loved in order to safeguard the source of all life. But I am weak enough that such sacrifice would never be made for any other reason.” Her smile was both fragile and self-conscious, yet it looked strangely at home on a Barrani face. “I am not even determined enough to hate you for what you were willing to risk.”
“She thought you’d be hurt. By your life.”
“No. She knew I would be. She was Barrani, and Consort—but she was my mother. Even among my kin, the relationship is not without significance.” She looked up at the sky, where the dragon hovered. “Do you know what you’re doing?” she asked, voice soft. “Is this like your refugees, somehow?”
Kaylin very much wanted to say yes. She chose to say nothing instead.
“What has your familiar done to the trees?”
“They weren’t really trees.”
“That is not an answer.”
“No.” Kaylin hesitated, and then said, “I don’t know.”
The Consort’s smile was rueful. “Perhaps I should have accepted the nonanswer. Come. Whatever he has done, he has done; the binding that kept me here has faded.” Before Kaylin could speak, she added, “They were here, but they were not here. They are children, Barrani children, at heart.”
“They’re not Barrani.”
“No, Kaylin—they are not. But they are not entirely other. They cannot be both—and they have tried. They do not think they are different; they think they are more powerful, less limited, but still essentially what they were.” She closed her eyes. “You must leave Teela here.”
Kaylin’s jaw dropped. She didn’t bother to close it without letting words fall out. “I am not leaving Teela here.”
“Yes, Kaylin, you will. She is here, in the end, because of you—but this is where she must be. I am sorry. You anger me so often, I am surprised that I am able to feel compassion for you at all—but I do. Teela came here as harmoniste, once. She came, and she survived. But she failed. She failed and the dreams of Alsanis were dark for a century.
“What you feel for Teela, we do not feel; not in the same way. It is closest to what the lost feel. You wear the blood of the green, although you are like the youngest and least controlled of our children. But you are Chosen. You have drawn me from the nightmares of Alsanis when none of my kin could. You have come to me in the scar of the green, and because you have, we will be able to leave.”
“I couldn’t have come here without Teela.”
“No.”
“I won’t leave her.”
“Then we will never leave.” The Consort slid her hands behind her back. “And I admit that I am...weary. I am weary of the grief of both the green and Alsanis. I am weary of the loss and the fear of loss. I am not in pain. If I cannot leave, the failure, in the end, will not be not my fault. That is a terrible thing to confess, is it not? As long as it is not my fault, I can be at peace with failure.”
Kaylin stared at her.
“You have felt it yourself.”
And she had. “Why can’t you leave without me?”
“Because without you, Chosen, we will fail.”
“Fail what?”
The telling, the water said, unexpectedly joining a conversation Kaylin hadn’t even been certain she could hear. You are harmoniste. The Lord of the West March will speak, Kaylin; the Teller will expand upon every possible strand of the story he chooses to begin. No story has only one beginning, and no story has only one end. No story has only one strand; it involves the lives and the possibilities of so many that you will never even meet. Understand your audience when you begin to choose. Understand who the story must reach, and why. You have seen the wound at the heart of the green. You do not fully understand what it is or why it has waited; you must.
The green cannot wait forever; the los
t speak sorrow and grief and untruth in their rage and their pain. The joy they know is too fixed and too slight; it feeds nothing but despair.
You are Chosen. You have told stories before. It is your nature.
The dragon roared. Kaylin looked up; he spun around in a large circle, and then, slowly and deliberately, landed. He was not small. He would never, she was afraid, be small again.
Teela is part of this place. She is part of its wound. She is loved by the green, and the green grieves for her. She has given it no cause for joy and none for hope—but the green hopes. I will guard your Teela, as I have guarded the blood of her kin for so many of your centuries.
“And if I fail? If I fail, will you give her back?”
The water did not reply.
“Eldest,” the Consort said. She tendered the water a flawless Barrani obeisance. She caught Kaylin’s arm. “Understand your own question, Lord Kaylin.”
Kaylin said nothing.
“Success is not yours alone; nor is failure. But if you fail, the green will succumb. The names of the lost will be lost. Teela’s name will be lost in a like fashion. But perhaps, in the end, she will be at peace. This is where she must be if there is any hope of success. And you, Chosen, must be at the heart of the green—in our world. The story you tell, the story you hear, the truth and the lies—they will be evident nowhere else. Do you understand?”
“No.”
“The heart of the green exists in our world. It is not easily reached because it is a window into the worlds that exist beyond our reach. We cannot see as the green sees. We cannot feel as it feels. We cannot speak as it speaks; that was never to be our gift. But we can touch the green, and the green can—in that moment, at that time, touch us in a fashion. It listens, Kaylin.
“Our names were created for our world. True Words were created for our world. While we bear them, we might traverse the wilderness, but they cannot exist without flesh; we keep them safe. We are their roots and their connection to their origins.”
The dragon roared.
Kaylin said, without thought, “He has no name.”
“No. And I cannot understand him. But the eldest does. The green does. He is not of our world. Nor can he be, as he is. I do not know if he will be able to leave the green, but if he can, I am not certain he will not be more of a threat, in the end, than your Devourer.” She sounded oddly unconcerned as she held out both of her hands and took Kaylin’s. “I am sorry, Lord Kaylin. We cannot wait. They know what has happened, and they come now.”
“How—how do you know that?”
“I hear the green.” She lifted her face, raised her perfectly, clear voice, and spoke three words.
* * *
The world hardened instantly around them; the ground cracked and dried beneath their feet. They stood by the small basin of an empty fountain.
Except the fountain wasn’t empty; the basin was full, the water rippling as water from above trickled into it.
“Lady!”
Kaylin turned, her hands numb the Consort was holding them so tightly. The Lord of the West March practically knocked Kaylin over in his rush to his sister’s side. He felt her outrage, and ignored it, the rage and the worry and the fear of hope overwhelming anything as small as her offense. He caught his sister in his arms, lifted her off her feet, and half dragged Kaylin with her, because the Consort still had a death grip on the Hawk’s hands.
He saw the color of the Consort’s eyes, and the sharp pitch of relief banked. He glanced at the water, at the miracle of water in this place, and then, as the Consort did, he raised his eyes to the sky.
Hovering above them and casting the outline of shadow over the whole of the clearing was the small dragon. Except, of course, he wasn’t small now.
It was Severn who said, Where is Teela? He was the only one who asked, and he didn’t ask out loud.
Kaylin yanked her hands free of the Consort’s, and the Consort allowed it. She turned, almost blindly, toward Severn because she knew where he was: by her side. As close to her as the Lord of the West March was. He didn’t hug her; he didn’t pull her off her feet. She wasn’t the Consort, in the end.
But when she met his expression, he did lift an arm, and she tucked herself beneath it, turning her face toward his chest. He said nothing. He asked no further questions. Not about the dragon that had captured the attention of every Barrani present; not about the Consort, whose rescue was the one thing that brought joy and relief to them all, no matter their rank or political affiliations; not about the water.
The eagles of Alsanis were sitting on their dead-tree perches.
“It is not the time,” they said in unison. “Lord of the West March, Warden, we will lead your people out of the green. We will return three days hence; the Teller and the harmoniste must come to the green.”
“And the rest of us?” the Lord of the West March all but demanded.
“Those who will take the risk, bear witness. Understand that the risk is as great as it has ever been for your kind. Only four must venture into the greenheart at the appointed hour: the Teller, the harmoniste, the Lord of the West March, and the Warden.”
The dragon roared, and the eagles cocked their heads toward the sky. Birds couldn’t frown; their beaks were fixed and hard. But the eagle on Kaylin’s right said, “You should not be here.”
The dragon roared again; Kaylin lifted a free hand to cover her ear. The other, she pressed farther into Severn’s chest. She didn’t close her eyes, and because she didn’t, she saw the heads of the eagles swivel in her direction.
“So be it,” they said. They didn’t sound happy. “Three days, Chosen.”
Chapter 22
It was well past dawn when the eagles and their nausea-inducing method of travel deposited the pilgrims at the edge of the green, where a thunderous, midnight-blue-eyed Lord Avonelle waited. She wore the armor of the war band; she wore the sword. She had no less than a dozen similarly armed attendants.
The color of her eyes lightened when she caught sight of Barian; they did not, however, shade to green. “Where is Lord An’Teela?”
Lord Barian glanced, not at Kaylin, but at the Consort.
The Consort said, in a clear, resonant voice, “Lord Teela chose to remain in the green as the price of my release.” Her eyes were a lighter blue, but they were tinged with a hint of purple.
Lord Avonelle was not satisfied with the answer, but she couldn’t accuse the Consort of lying without offending the rest of the Court.
“We have been commanded by the dreams of Alsanis,” the Lord of the West March now added, “to return at the appointed hour of the recitation. It was suggested that we number only four.”
The lightening of Lord Avonelle’s eyes reversed in a spectacular dive back into the near-black range. She was bristling with rage.
“Guardian,” Lord Barian said, stepping directly in front of the Lord of the West March and the Consort whose weight he now supported. “It was suggested by the dreams of Alsanis. They feel that it is more of a risk than even the tale told to the lost. The Lord of the West March offers no disrespect to our line or your guardianship. The wards could not be activated. The propicients could not invoke them. Were it not for the dreams of Alsanis, we would never have reached the heart of the green.”
She said a very tight-lipped nothing. Kaylin wondered, not for the first time, what the relationship between this Barrani mother and her son was like. Teela’s mother was dead. Kaylin’s mother, dead. Maybe the Consort’s mother was right: those who survived had to be harsh and cold.
Lord Barian now turned to the Lord of the West March. “My domicile is not as fine as the Lord’s hall, but the Lord’s hall is compromised. It would be my honor to offer you, and your people, the hospitality of the Warden’s perch.”
The Lord of the West March bowed. It was not a perfunctory gesture. “It would be my honor to accept your generous offer.” He glanced at his sister. She was, to Kaylin’s eye, much paler than usual.
She offered the Warden a smile, but no other courtesy; judging from the color of his eyes, the smile was enough. He bowed to her and rose.
To Kaylin’s surprise, the eagles landed on his shoulders. They were broad, Barrani shoulders, but the eagles were not small, and the Warden raised both of his arms, elbows bent, to offer them a less crowded perch.
Kaylin said nothing. She hid behind Severn. She didn’t want to speak with Avonelle. She didn’t want to speak with anyone. She couldn’t. What she wanted to do was to go back to the heart of the green, throw herself into the water in the fountain, and swim all the way back to wherever Teela was.
She wasn’t certain—couldn’t be certain—that the Consort was lying to Avonelle. That was the worst of it. Everything she’d said in the heart of the green—every single word—could have been a lie, a way of leaving the green. And she’d do it, too, not because she valued Teela’s life so little, but because she was the conduit to life for the rest of her people. No one would think what she’d done was wrong; no one but Kaylin.
Kaylin.
I don’t want to talk to you right now, she told Nightshade.
Then perhaps it would be best if you were not shouting. I am not the only one who will hear your thoughts and your grief. I will not use them against you; can you be so certain that no others will?
She couldn’t, and he knew it.
You must learn to hide this, Kaylin.
I am hiding it. It’s on the inside of me.
You have learned how to hide thought, Kaylin; you have learned how to shield what must be shielded. You are mortal; you are exhausted. Even exhausted, you must not forget. You found the Lady.
Yes.
Understand that the High Court is, once again, in your debt.
Kaylin said nothing.
Yes. You understand what that means. You are not wrong. Given a choice between her own life and the life of any other member of our race, she is duty bound—honor bound—to save herself. If you think this does not grieve her, you fail to understand her.