“If I break Imperial Edict, and assume my true form?”
“Kaylin,” Severn began.
“We’re not in the Empire, as far as I can tell. If we’re not in the Empire…” The words dwindled into silence. “Sorry.”
But Sanabalis smiled. “I would,” he told her. “Even at my age, I would, Kaylin. But I would fight the very air with every beat of wing. And if the air could not destroy me—and I am arrogant enough to believe that it could not—it would easily destroy you both. I could not carry you.”
His smile vanished as his eyes narrowed. “And I do not appreciate being thought of as a mule.” But his eyes were golden. “We will follow the river,” he told them both, gazing into the distance in either direction.
“Which way?”
“Can you not tell?”
She studied the river, hating tests, especially the ones that came with no warning and had such a high price for failure. The river flowed to the—call it east. She couldn’t quite make out the far bank, but lakes didn’t usually move like this. So, river.
Rivers ran, according to one of her teachers, to the ocean or the sea, and the sea—if there was one in this place—would be where the water would be the strongest. It would be where most of it was.
But even if it made sense, she felt uncertain enough to dare a question. “Do we want to go where it ends or where it begins?”
Sanabalis lifted a brow.
She sighed. “It’s been a long day,” she told him, as she turned and began to walk.
Severn was beside her.
“An interesting choice,” Sanabalis said.
“Well, it makes sense to go to the sea, and nothing about today has made sense—so we might as well see where this river begins.”
The terrain was very odd, and Kaylin was certain enough to bet her own money that if she had described it for her geography teacher she would have been given an instant fail. The ground was hard, and the sun was scorching, and an inch from packed, dry dirt, the river was tumbling over itself in swirls of transparent clarity. She had never seen a riverbank like this one, and even if the geography teacher had eventually given up on her in disgust, she actually remembered enough to know it wasn’t possible.
But as it was also obviously here, possible was now a negotiable word. She reached for the hilt of her daggers, and cursed in Leontine. Sanabalis raised a brow.
“What?” she snarled. “We’re not at Court.”
“What is heard, is remembered.”
Her snort could be recorded for the benefit of history. She brushed her hair out of her eyes, cringed at the crinkled texture of parts of it, and kept trudging. For about ten minutes. Or an eternity.
When she stopped, Sanabalis stopped. “Kaylin?”
She looked at the water with a type of longing that properly belonged in the fiefs, to starving children in sight of food. He saw the look and understood it. “I do not advise it,” he told her quietly. “If for no other reason that it appears to be flowing in the opposite direction from the one you have chosen.”
She looked to Severn, although she could feel his presence so strongly, the glance was more habit than necessity. He said nothing, and of course, his nothing spoke volumes. This was hers. Her decision.
Her consequences.
“Evanton’s not without power,” she finally said. “Not yet. But I think—” She hesitated. “It’s hot,” she finally said. It was lame, even by her standards.
“Heat often affects humans adversely,” Sanabalis replied. “I find it—”
“Do not say refreshing. Please.”
One salt-and-pepper brow rose, and Dragon hands—which really did look like large human ones—touched the length of his beard. But she hadn’t angered him; she’d managed, instead, to evoke a smile.
“I recognize some elements of the dress you wear,” he told her. “And I am willing to take the risk, even if it is not wise in my estimation.”
She held out both of her hands. “Take them,” she said, to Severn and Sanabalis. Severn covered her right hand with his left, as easily as if it were natural. Sanabalis raised a brow and slowly did the same. Kaylin took a deep breath and began to walk toward the water, uncertain until the last moment whether or not she was their anchor or they were hers.
When she touched the water, it didn’t matter.
The stream passed over her in one huge wave, a giant, watery slap. She stood against the current, blinking at the grit that had landed in her open eyes.
She knew what the shape of water was. Or what the only shape she cared about was. She had managed not to tell Sanabalis, and if Severn guessed, he would say nothing. He’d watched her for seven long years in absolute silence; she trusted him with the fate of a people.
Teller of Tales, the fire had called her. She wondered, briefly, why. But clinging to Severn, to Sanabalis, struggling to maintain her footing and succeeding only because a Dragon’s weight is never negligible, she tilted her head, and spoke a single word.
It was not a word of syllables. It was not a word of sound. It was not, really, a word at all—but she understood it to be a word in some complex way, simply because she could utter it. She had seen it twice, and she could feel it now, burning like cold ice at the base of her neck: water. The word. The true name.
And gods, a world in which the elements had names, in which the elements themselves, like the least of the Barrani, could be controlled—it wasn’t a world she wanted to live in.
No? The ships at port would be safe, if you could control the water. The winter would be warmer. The ice would melt. People wouldn’t drown. The babies—
No.
No.
No.
Maybe she was weak. Too weak to want the power. Too weak to trust herself with it. Or too cowardly to shoulder the burden and the responsibility. It didn’t matter. It wasn’t right. She wasn’t a god. She was barely a decent person, and that took so much bloody work. All she wanted—all she needed—was…
Kaylin.
The shape of a girl on the edge of the long climb into adulthood.
Swirling water was her body, her hair, her face; she stood in the stream, but she was of it. Its movement was her movement. For now.
Severn and Sanabalis held her hands, or she would have reached out to grab the girl, to hold her. She almost shook them free—but she was afraid of where the water would take them if she did.
But the Tha’alaan nodded, and offered her a smile that was perfect. Cool in the heat, but not cold. A benediction. It turned, all her voice lost, her hair cascading literally down her back, shedding small pebbles as it fell.
Ask, the water said, and she heard its voice as the roar of a tidal wave. Ask.
As if she could ask one thing, and only one thing. The urgency in the command—or the request, it was so soft—was clear. One thing, and not much time to decide what it would be.
But she was, in the end, Kaylin Neya.
“Take me to Mayalee. Take me to your child.” It could have been the wrong request; the Tha’alaan in the Castle had not known where Mayalee was, couldn’t sense her. But it was the only thing that mattered, for just a moment.
The Tha’alaan spun in that instant, as if beginning the first steps of a glorious, transcendent dance, and she captured the sunlight that had made itself torture, reflecting it, coloring it. Reminding Kaylin that even deadly things were beautiful.
Follow. Do not let go of your companions.
She couldn’t be certain that either of her companions could hear what was said, but she tightened her grip on their hands; water had made that grip suspect, but they weren’t going to get any drier.
The river parted to let her pass. There was water beneath her feet. Water beneath their feet, as well. But it was like…a carpet. Thin, the streams and eddies robbed of power. To either side, the river swelled up in a wall, and the wall was loud, but if it threatened to fall at any moment, it was held in abeyance by the girl.
Severn said, “This was w
hat you saw the first time we came to the garden.”
She nodded. Added, “She’s what I saw.”
“I don’t think water has gender,” Sanabalis said. Not even the sodden weight of his robes could rob the words of their innate dryness, but that was Dragons for you. Fire and air.
They walked quickly; the air was now damp and cool in this narrow corridor. Water didn’t run uphill, but it walked uphill with a majesty that Kaylin thought she would never forget, as long as she lived.
But when the water stopped, when the girl doubled over and the river suddenly pressed in on both sides, she thought that might not be very long at all.
Because she had heard what the water had heard, and felt it now like a physical blow: it was the same word that she had uttered.
CHAPTER 22
Worse, she recognized the voice.
“Kaylin!” Severn shouted. A warning. For all it was worth—the river was collapsing, and they were in the middle of it. On the wrong side of an incline that was a little too steep.
No, we’re almost there, damn it all to hell!
She held their hands, almost paralyzed by the sudden rage, the sudden fear, she felt. Marcus had taught her two things in the drill circle when she’d been young—both of them the hard way. Do not fight in anger. Do not fight in fear.
She had one scar from the second lesson; the bruises from the first had long since faded in all but memory. But all of life was just memory, really. Marcus’s voice was a roar in her ear that even the water couldn’t dislodge. She listened to Marcus because, in the end, she trusted him.
She knew what she had to do; the light emanating from the amulet was a surge of white that was almost blinding. She spoke the name of water again, but this time there was no hesitation. No doubt, no fear. She wasn’t a god, and she wasn’t perfect, and it didn’t damn well matter. Something had to be done, and this was the only thing she could think of. She spoke the word as loudly, as strongly, as she could, holding nothing back.
And the girl who was doubled over as if in pain straightened suddenly. She was no longer twelve, no longer a child; she was hardly a person at all—but it didn’t matter. Kaylin could still see her, could still see her desire, her fear, and yes, her love. Of all the elements that Uriel had called, of all the elements that he had urged to destroy, and destroy and destroy—water was the only one who raised voice against him when he held her name.
Loss of love was a tragedy for Kaylin. Wasted love was a tragedy. Murder of love was a crime she could touch and feel and fight, here and now, in her own shape and in the water’s. She urged the water forward, and the water moved so quickly they had to run to keep up.
They weren’t stupid. They ran.
They ran up a hill, the river now so close on either side that they had to walk almost sideways, hands still clasped as if they were children. And what of it? They were. Compared to the water, the fire, compared to the ancient elements, they would never be anything else.
But the hill’s slope flattened, and the water now spread out, and they could see the stillness—the strange stillness—of what appeared to be a lake.
“Stop!” Kaylin shouted, and dug her feet in. Or tried. She didn’t try to stop the water—the water would be fine. It was returning home, after all. But home was not a place two humans and a Dragon could go, if they had any choice at all.
Sanabalis heard her, and Severn felt her sudden panic. This wasn’t a lake—or it hadn’t been the last time she’d seen it. She’d looked into this pool once. If it had been small, it had been so deep she knew that if she fell in, she would sink forever.
And if it had shown her the bruised eyes of a twelve-year-old-girl—a girl who had called her by name—it didn’t change the facts: this would kill them all.
She heard Idis—it could only be Idis—as he spoke the name of water, but this time she was ready for the bastard. The lake had its shallows, and standing in those shallows were six pillars. “Over there!” she shouted.
Severn knew what she wanted instantly—he always had, and she had never loved him so much for it as she did at this moment. Sanabalis followed his lead, and Kaylin let them drag her, let them take the whole of her weight, as she struggled with the word.
Evanton was there, between two pillars; he was drenched and bent with fatigue; he looked old, now, and she wondered if he would ever regain the majesty that his robes had once implied. But his robes had led her here, his robes as they had been painted by a mute boy.
And here, at last, she saw Mayalee, and she saw the man who stood above her, his hands twisting her hair, pulling her head up.
Donalan Idis wore the red of the Arcanum. His long, fine robes were wet only at the edges, where his feet stood in the shallows. His eyes were dark, his beard darker than Sanabalis’s beard, his skin the fine, pale skin of those born to rule and not to work in the fields.
His hands were adorned with rings, one on each finger, all gemmed; his brow was adorned with a circlet in which sat a large ruby. She had seen such a circlet before, on Lord Evarrim’s brow.
But if his left hand wound itself through Mayalee’s hair, his right held a box. A small, ordinary, slightly battered box that wouldn’t have held snuff, it seemed so slight.
The box was open. The lid faced Kaylin; she couldn’t see what was inside it. But she could see the light that it shed, and she knew the light was very like the one around her neck.
As they reached the pillars, Severn and Sanabalis let go of her hands, which was good; she could barely feel her fingers, they’d gripped so hard. She raised those numb, tingling hands to her throat, and felt the full weight of the pendant she had taken from a dead Dragon. And why had she taken it, in the end?
To free him.
To free him from a duty that he had chosen because no one else could fulfill it.
He had failed. He told her he had failed.
And she thought she knew why.
“Evanton,” she said, her voice stronger than she thought it would be, “the box—”
“Yes,” he said, wearily. “I have never seen it, Kaylin. Understand that I have never seen it. But it is what you fear.”
Her hands pressed the amulet.
“What you wear,” he continued, “is a copy. It was a great magic, the making of that copy. It had power, because it was formed in the light of the true word, and it captured from that light some of the true essence of the word. But it was inscribed.”
“And inside the box—”
“Is the word.”
“Why didn’t they just give the damn box to the Dragon?”
Evanton’s brows rose in shock.
All in all, she probably deserved it. It wasn’t the right time or place to ask that question.
But Donalan Idis answered. “They could not trust a Dragon with the true word.”
“They couldn’t trust anyone with the true—”
Sanabalis stepped heavily on her foot.
She looked at Evanton then, and understood what the word Keeper meant. This old, bent man, this man she had come to to have her daggers enchanted so they’d come silently out of their sheaths—he had taken the burden of the word—the words, she realized, all the elemental names—without ever once seeing them.
“I have touched the Tha’alaan,” Idis said.
It wasn’t what she wanted to hear. It was the last thing she wanted to hear.
“Through this child, in this place, I have touched it. Finally. And completely.” He smiled, then, looking at the terrified face of a child who was maybe six years old—if that. But her stalks were weaving in panic across her forehead; he hadn’t cut them off. He hadn’t crippled or deafened her.
“Yes,” he said. “I could cut the Tha’alani off from the source of their knowledge because I could create barriers against the elemental forces. I discovered it quite by accident,” he added, as if he were merely another teacher with more arrogance than actual authority. “But I understood what it meant.
“And I know
, now, who you are.”
“Private Neya, of the Imperial Hawks,” she replied coldly.
“Yes. I heard the Dragon’s roar,” he added softly. “And I guessed—I could not be certain. The Arkon never trusted me fully, and I gleaned less information from the Royal Archives than I would have liked, but a great deal more than he had intended.
“You forced my hand,” he added. “I guessed at what you might bear, although I confess I did not understand it.”
He looked at her, at the marks that were exposed to the naked eye. “But even in the Arcanum, there was word of a girl who bore the marks of the Old Ones. There was worry. The Emperor consulted those considered wise. All these pieces of a puzzle,” he added with a friendly smile.
“But I came here, in time, and I touched what I intended to touch. I have learned much about my art, and I will have the names of the earth, the air and the fire before I leave this place.”
“You will never have them,” Evanton replied. There was no defiance in the words. It was a simple statement of fact, shorn of all arrogance, all irascibility, all character.
“Keeper,” Idis said softly, “you are almost done here. Look around you. The shape of the world exerts itself. The reliquaries will break, and I will be here. I will be their new master.”
“I was never their master,” Evanton said quietly. “Never that.”
“No. Had you been, I would not now be here. But I will be their master, and the world will have an Emperor such as has never before been seen.” He pulled Mayalee up until she was standing on her toes, her body dangling. Her eyes were red and swollen, her face bruised where he had gripped it.
“You like children,” Donalan Idis told Kaylin, and she understood the threat. “You may leave with her, but you will leave.”
This was her nightmare. This was Kaylin’s fear. Never her own death—not that. But the deaths of the children. The deaths that she had never been able to prevent.
And Mayalee, waiting to be the latest in a series of victims, another mark of failure.
Because Kaylin could not leave.
“If you kill her,” Severn said quietly, unmoved by the way the child’s eyes widened, the way she found energy to struggle and whimper, “you have nothing at all to stop us.”