Not the Ancients. No, wait—one small strand of their story was sharper and heavier than any other strand appeared to be. She drew it into her hands and wrapped it around her arms, as if the spoken word and the marks could be held in the exact same way. But the rest, she fed to the creature.
It was hard. She didn’t know what would happen to the pieces of history that she rejected—for she understood them as history now; they were the foundations upon which Teela stood, at least figuratively. She heard Alsanis’s name. She missed some of its beginning, but she understood enough to know that he was built by the Ancients. By two. She couldn’t hear their names, but understood that an echo of them existed in the history itself.
And she heard grief, she heard farewells. She heard the promise of eternity, and the threat of it. She caught those almost reflexively. To the dragon, she fed the story of the forests and the insects and the brooks and streams, shielding Alsanis from his hunger. Shielding the story of his grief. She couldn’t save the story of his brothers; she had no sense of what they had been before Alsanis became Hallionne, because the creature devoured it.
He devoured, as well, the story of the Dragons. The real Dragons. Sanabalis’s people. She panicked and shouted at him, and lost more words; she couldn’t afford it. She knew it. But she felt that she couldn’t move as fast as the creature now could; she couldn’t see whether or not something was important. She couldn’t assess it in time.
But she caught bits and pieces of the war. Of the Hallionne at war. Of the green at war. Of the Dragons and the Barrani and the weapons forged in the green. She let the weapons go. She let the wars go. She kept only the bare essentials because the stories of the wars were so long and complicated. She thought maybe they would feed the creature enough that he would stop.
Instead, he seemed to grow.
“Kitling—”
“I know, Teela!” But not, apparently, enough not to shut the hells up and ignore all other distractions.
She looked into the creature’s eyes. She could almost step into them, they’d grown so large. She didn’t. She could see the words they contained, now. The words were harder and more angular than the letter shapes she thought of as True Words; they were not golden, not blue. Silver, she thought, or gray, but strangely insubstantial. They looked like—like smoke.
They looked very much like the words that she had seen in the outlands when Iberrienne had attacked Hallionne Orbaranne. The words were not True Words, not in any sense that she understood them. But they weren’t the words that Iberrienne had tried to use at the heart of the Hallionne Orbaranne, either.
She thought she understood.
When she heard Nightshade begin to speak of words, of language, of a language of power and birth, she caught the threads of the story without conscious thought, folding them around herself as if they were now a part of her. Her arms burned, and her eyes teared, and she looked at herself in the creature’s eyes, and saw that the marks on her arms were as insubstantial and smoky in reflection as the words that existed at the heart of what she’d thought were simple, if gigantic, eyes.
And she heard about the blood of the Ancients; she heard about the words around which they’d carved and created the world in which Kaylin now lived. It was one of many such worlds, all contained, all built, on similar words, each of which told a story. They were, Nightshade told her, words meant for these worlds. They existed only here, were meant to exist only here. They defined and created solid spaces—the spaces between two people, the spaces between birth and death, between seed and sapling and tree.
They defined time. They defined its passage.
The creature spoke.
He spoke as Kaylin caught this one thread, and buried it; he pulled at it. She could feel him as if he were a giant, intelligent vortex into which all meaning must vanish.
She didn’t understand his purpose. She didn’t understand why anyone would want to summon something that ate words, that consumed meaning. He was here, yes. But this was not where he belonged.
She understood why fire was summoned; she understood water. Even earth and air made sense to her—but they were inextricably linked to this world. Fire, water, earth, and air existed without will in everyday life. There was no echo of the small dragon, the large dragon, or the creature it had become, in Kaylin’s world. What ate words? What devoured meaning?
And yet, somehow, this creature or one part of it, had been summoned before.
Why?
What did it mean?
“Kaylin!”
She didn’t shout. She had, she realized, been gathering strands of history as if they were objects. Those that spoke to her in some way, she kept. She didn’t question why; it was entirely instinctive, but at this moment, she had nothing but instinct to guide her. She wasn’t surprised to discover that the stories about words and language had drifted into stories about life. About birth. About the first rough attempts to create something small and contained that was nonetheless independent enough that it could live and grow and create in a diminished fashion.
There were rules, she thought. Life had rules. Not the ones parents handed down; not even the ones the Emperor did, although flouting those generally ended the life they were meant to govern. The words that gave life—the names—were True Words. But they were more. She couldn’t quite figure out how; they didn’t change. But they grew, nonetheless. It was the act of living that altered them, in subtle ways strengthening some part of their essential meaning.
It was why the loss of the word—not the life that contained it—was so wrong.
And those words had been given to the lost children, not when they’d been chosen to enter the green, but when they had been presented to the Consort. At that point, no knowledge of what awaited them in future guided her choice. Kaylin wasn’t certain what did, in the end. Nor was she certain the Consort could explain it, if asked.
Something had happened to the children, here. But...their names hadn’t been changed.
Kaylin glanced at her palm; the mark that lay against it was the color of new blood, which was not a color she associated with True Words. It was the color she associated with life, with birth, and with pain. She had kept it, and knew now that it was one of eleven such names. It existed in the green, and only in the green—but it didn’t belong here.
Why had it been protected all this time?
The stories about life drifted into stories about being, becoming, and ending. She didn’t understand that endings meant death until she found the story trapped at the heart of the green, and she lost so much of it to the creature that had ridden on her shoulder for most of his existence.
There were no stories about him that she could hear or touch; she kind of wanted him to choke on them, at the moment. But she concentrated on the stories about death at the heart of the green; death at its edges were part of war, and although they might have hinted at something important, she couldn’t afford to hang on to them. She could keep hold of so little, between the creature and the speed at which the information was offered.
She held on to the deaths at its heart; she did more. She spoke of them. Aside from shouting at Teela in frustration—and in fear—they were the first words she had deliberately spoken out loud.
* * *
The green was alive in some sense; it was sentient. It spoke. It felt—as ages passed—sorrow and inexplicable grief, and it felt joy in equal measure. But it was not alive in the way the Hallionne were; it was not alive in the way the Barrani were. It existed where worlds existed, but it existed apart from them. She didn’t speak of its birth because if its birth was part of the multitude of histories that left Nightshade’s lips, she hadn’t rescued it in time.
It was like—and unlike—the True Names that gave the Barrani life. The words at the heart of the green were not words meant for the living; they could not exist in Kaylin’s world. The words that gave life to the Barrani were words it could read; it could see them so clearly, it defined life by words. Mort
als made distant sense to the Hallionne; they made sense to the green only the way cockroaches, mosquitos, and plants did.
Blood was not forbidden the green: death was.
And death was forbidden the green because the words of the dying could not escape its grasp. They weren’t meant to be part of the green; the green was not of this world. And yet, not of it, it was part of it. It touched and spoke with the Hallionne, who were altered in just such a way that they could hear its ancient, endless voice, its plethora of voices. It heard the Hallionne’s voice, its many voices. It heard the Hallionne’s dreams.
And it heard the voices of the Barrani during the recitation. A window was open, then; a moment permitted in which the two—the lesser, fragile, fixed children of the Ancients, and the greater and eldest—might communicate. It might tell the Barrani their history. With will, and the right combination of Barrani, it might speak to the Barrani of its own history; it might give them a glimpse of the things that did not naturally walk the world. It might speak of its desires and its dreams and—last—its fears.
Kaylin understood these things only as a mortal might, although Nightshade spoke of dreams and desires and fears, and she fed those, her hands shaking, to the creature.
When the Barrani died in the heart of the green, when they shed their blood upon it, they surrendered the thing that gave them life: their name. Kaylin felt horror at this—it was a profound, an endless, loss. Mortals believed in souls. The Barrani believed in names. Teela often equated the two—souls and True Names.
The Barrani lost their souls here. They weren’t trapped, as they were in the High Halls; they were drained of the very thing that made them names. She closed her eyes. Opened them again. She couldn’t see the Consort’s face, and for once, she was grateful. She knew what she’d see in the Lady’s expression.
But the power that the name gave the Barrani conferred the ability to speak directly to the green. It made their desires—their final desires—as clear to the green as the green’s own desires were, because for a moment, before they were extinguished, they were part of the green.
Those wishes, those desires—they couldn’t be coerced; they couldn’t be changed.
The people of the Vale had died in the green. They’d died by order of Teela’s father. His name flitted past, and she let it go with vindictive fury, hating him for just this minute. They didn’t understand what their lost thoughts would do. They didn’t understand what their hatred and, yes, fear, would cost the green.
No, that wasn’t true. One woman did. One woman. Teela’s mother. She was Vivienne, of the line of Wardens and Guardians. She knew. She emptied her thoughts of rage and fury and bitter betrayal. The only thing she wanted, the only thing, was the safety of her daughter. The fact that her daughter bore the blood of the man who commanded the killings meant nothing to her.
She regretted only the fact that she had repaired to the High Court, away from kin and home and green; that her daughter, Teela, had not been raised to hear the distant voice of the green and to understand its ancient and abiding will.
Maybe Kaylin told this story first because it was about Teela. Maybe she told it because she, too, had lost her mother, and she wanted to believe—oh, all children wanted to believe—that if she were to be abandoned, it would be for reasons as perfect and clear as this one.
And maybe she told it because, as she began to speak, she could see Vivienne in the heart of the green.
Chapter 26
Kaylin wasn’t Teela. Vivienne was not her mother. But she was certain that she would have known this woman anywhere. She looked like Teela. Not in the way that all Barrani women, except the Consort, did, although she had all the racial characteristics of her race: the long, dark hair, the slender build, the high cheekbones, and, at this moment, eyes of midnight-blue. No, it was in the shape of her face, the length of earlobes, the way her chin tapered to a sharper point.
If Teela had been run through by multiple blades, she would have looked like this.
Her eyes were on her daughter’s face.
Teela had climbed down from the fountain, somehow. Whatever she’d been holding at bay was forgotten. Her mother knelt by the fountain, and in the distance, Kaylin could hear the shouts and the cries of fighting; she could hear swords against swords, and harsh Barrani orders.
She could hear the prayers of the Warden. She hadn’t expected that; she couldn’t see him. Nor could she see the other combatants; not until they fell. Their dying bodies came into view as they did; they were close, so close, to Vivienne.
Kaylin reached for Teela, and then let her hand fall. She couldn’t call her back; she couldn’t stem the flow of words because she understood that it was her words that had built this image, that had made this history real.
And as Teela walked onto the green—a green that contained no Warden, no Ynpharion, no Severn—they joined her. Kaylin watched as they appeared, translucent at first, but gaining in solidity as she spoke. The eleven children. Some of their names, she knew. Some, she hadn’t heard until this moment.
Sedarias came first. She looked so proud, so aloof, so arrogant. She glanced at the bodies of the dead and the dying without so much as blinking; she stood above them all. But when she looked at Teela, she froze for one arrested moment, her eyes—her blue, cold eyes, shifting in that second to a very rare amethyst. Like Kaylin, she lifted a hand; like Kaylin, she let it drop.
But she turned to Kaylin, her eyes wide, her lips parted as if to speak. Then she smiled and turned away. It was a very Barrani smile.
Annarion came next, seconds behind. He was much like Sedarias—cold and proud of bearing. But what she would not do, he did; he saw the dying Vivienne, and his gaze went immediately to her daughter. He walked over the fallen, pausing only once to touch the side of a man’s neck before he rose again and made his way to Teela’s side.
Eddorian followed. His eyes were almost instantly the same shade of purple that Sedarias’s had taken, but on his face, with his drawn expression, it looked natural. He didn’t approach Teela; to Kaylin’s surprise, he offered Sedarias—a woman who almost certainly would take insult at the implication that she needed support—an arm. And she took it.
Allaron followed. He was, as she remembered him, a giant of a Barrani, and although he had the natural grace of his kin, he seemed to slouch a bit more; he had always been self-conscious about his size; he had always been pushed to excel in acts of physical prowess.
And he had. But significantly, it was Allaron who cried. He didn’t weep; Kaylin had never seen Barrani weep. His eyes were an open amethyst. A Barrani man put a hand on Allaron’s shoulder, and Allaron turned, looking down; he met the eyes of Valliant—who, like any mortal child of Kaylin’s acquaintance, loathed his name. Allaron was one of the few, even among the twelve, who failed to tease him for it.
Terrano, however, had teased him without hesitation. He was mischievous, but he could laugh at himself—which was unusual for a child, and even more unusual for Barrani. He came to Allaron’s left. There was no sparkle, no joke, no witticism; he was drawn and pale. He wanted to go to Teela. He couldn’t.
Not counting Teela, six of the lost had arrived. The seventh was a woman, called Serralyn. She wore her hair in unusual braids that framed her face and made her look older. Had she been motionless, her expression would have matched Sedarias’s; she wasn’t. Even standing, her hands moved; her feet tapped the ground. She looked as if she could burst into motion at any moment.
At this one, she was looking at Teela’s profile, at Teela’s dying mother, and hugging her arms to herself; she opened her mouth to speak, closed it, took two steps forward, and then a step back. Kaylin felt a pang of sympathy: no one who wanted all their teeth offered Teela open sympathy. Ever.
But...Serralyn had known Teela before she’d become a Hawk. Maybe, in the old days, she’d been different. Judging from Serralyn’s growing distress, probably not.
Torrisant appeared—and the first thing he did was stra
ighten his clothing, which, to Kaylin’s eye, was already perfect. He lifted a hand, raising two flat fingers, and a bird—a bird that had been no part of Kaylin’s conscious telling—landed on them, warbling.
Fallessian appeared just in time to kick him; the bird squawked in outrage and flew, tiny claws extended, toward Fallessian’s perfect face. He laughed and fended it off with his hand—taking care not to actually connect with the little ball of fury. He didn’t speak—none of them had—but the look he turned on Torrisant clearly said, “Now is not the time.”
The tenth of the children appeared then, eleven if one included Teela. He looked no younger than any of the rest; to Kaylin, even now, children was the wrong word to describe them. But Karian was grimmer and more controlled than any of the others except Sedarias; he didn’t have the obvious arrogance of the young Annarion, but there was something about him that suggested, strongly, that his arrogance was a wall that couldn’t be breached, climbed, or otherwise opened.
He walked, with purpose, toward Teela.
No, Kaylin thought, toward her mother. But he paused, a frown creasing his forehead, not his lips. He turned to Sedarias and Annarion, and then, when they failed to give him the answers he had pretty clearly demanded, turned to the green, to the clearing, and...to Kaylin.
To the harmoniste.
There were eleven children; Teela was at the center. Kaylin knew their names. She knew their personalities. She knew some of their history, although the creature had devoured their edges because she wasn’t quick enough or strong enough to see the whole of their shape and importance before they had passed her by.
She knew that the twelfth had not yet arrived. Some part of her knew that this was history, and some part of her knew that it was more. Regardless, Mandoran had failed to arrive in the heart of the green—and they were waiting for him. Just as, she realized, they had waited so many centuries for Teela.