Cast in Sorrow

Chapter 14

The small dragon was silent. He wasn’t draped across her shoulders, either; he looked like he meant business.

“We need to get that word,” she told him softly.

He nodded, and lowered his wing. The landscape went dark immediately.

“You’re right. It’s going to be a pain in the butt. Can you deal with the shadow?”

He failed to hear the question. Fair enough; on bad days in the office, so did Teela. She took it as a definitive No. The small dragon lifted his wing again.

The landscape hadn’t changed in the interim. She was ten feet from the amorphous boundary of the chaos mass; the lamppost was in its center.

“Why,” she said, directing her question to the invisible but encompassing presence in which, she suspected, she walked, “Is there a name here? Why is it trapped like that?” To Kaylin’s eyes, it was captive. It moved, elements of the whole battering ineffectively against the globe, like a trapped moth.

Or a trapped bird.

The voice, like the small dragon, failed to hear the question. It was the most pressing question Kaylin now had. The word seemed small and almost forlorn, which was ridiculous. But it seemed diminished somehow by its cage.

All such words are caged. And all such words are cages.

Where it cast light in the shape of itself, the shadows were clearest; colors shone and moved beneath the bands of the rune’s form. They seemed, in the light, to have a consistent texture—and the chaos in the fiefs didn’t. And in the fiefs, wherever it was possible, the shadows spread. They infested land, buildings, and people; the people died.

Here, they touched nothing but lamppost—and ground. They didn’t appear to respond to Kaylin’s approach, either. Small mercies. She inched closer. The urgency to flee the tunnels, to escape them, to somehow be of use in the battle above, had bled away. She felt she was suspended in time; that time, here, had no meaning.

But the word did.

She thought it belonged, not to a lamppost in the middle of nowhere, but to the Lake of Life. It belonged in the keeping of the Consort. It was a name. Kaylin had no idea how to distinguish between True Names and True Words; five minutes ago, she would have said there wasn’t any difference.

She didn’t believe that now; she couldn’t make herself believe it. It was a name, and she couldn’t leave it here. “I think,” she said, “it’s time to breathe.”

The dragon said nothing. She was two feet away from the edge of the chaos, and she realized, watching it, that it reminded her of something beside the deadly shadow in the heart of the distant fiefs. It reminded her of Wilson, Hallionne Bertolle’s lost brother. It reminded her of the brothers she hadn’t tagged with an inappropriate name; they had become almost exactly this in the race through the outlands, creating something that had form and substance in a sea of gray fog and nothing.

That path had kept them together. It had probably saved their lives.

“Or not.”

The dress that had caused her so much trouble was now sleeveless. It looked like a summer shift. Everything else about it remained the same, but the marks that had been partially obscured were completely visible. She grimaced. It was the least of her problems now; she’d worry about it later.

She took off one boot and placed it at the edge of the puddle; it was the only thing she could throw that wasn’t a weapon, and she didn’t have enough of those.

She watched the dark sludge beneath it. She wasn’t surprised when it started to move, bubbling beneath the very green leather. She was, however, surprised when it inched away, leaving a gap through which sand and a few rocks became visible. Those and the boot itself.

Said boot hadn’t been devoured, and it hadn’t—as far as she could see when looking through dragon wing—been transformed. It was still a boot. On the other hand, she thought, as she bent, stretched, and caught it in two fingers, the boots had come with the dress.

She slid her foot back into it, squared her shoulders, and began to walk into the dark mess. Almost everything in her direct experience screamed retreat; her feet were steady but her steps were hesitant. They were also small.

Around her feet, iridescent color rippled and surged away. Only where the light of the word—the name—touched it, did it remain solid beneath her feet. She reached the lamp, and discovered once again that height—or more specifically the lack of height—was a disadvantage. She could touch the globe with the tips of her fingers, and it swayed. It didn’t fall into her hands.

What do you seek to do?

She lowered her hands. “I don’t understand why it’s trapped here, but I want to take it with me.”

The silence was longer and deeper. Do you understand what it is?

“It’s life,” Kaylin replied. And to her eyes, for a moment, it was. It suggested movement and fragility and energy and bursting pride; it suggested quick wit and quick temper. Eyes narrowed, she stared as it revolved; it stopped struggling against its confinement, as if it were suddenly aware of her.

As if it were holding its breath.

What you desire has been tried.

“Not by me.” She turned her arms; the marks were glowing. They were the same color as the name that floated above her fingertips, but flat, confined in a different way.

Can you speak the name?

“That’s not the way it works.” But looking at it, she thought it might if she stared for long enough. “Can you?”

No, Chosen.

She blinked. “Why is it here?”

It is safe here. It is safe only here. Too much has been changed.

She bit her lip. Teela hated it when she did that, but Teela wasn’t here.

She is.

Kaylin froze. She looked at the name, but the name—it wasn’t Teela’s. It couldn’t be.

No. You are harmoniste. Take the name, but understand that it is one of the words that you must examine, one of the many, many choices you must make. The Teller will speak, harmoniste; but you will take the words that he speaks and you will choose a path that touches those words you feel must be touched. It is almost time.

“It’s so not time.” She lowered her hands. “When you say Teela is here, is she here the same way Serian is?”

She is here as you are here. She speaks, Chosen. Can you not hear her?

“No. No, I can’t.”

And you cannot hear him, either.

She looked at the name he referred to; as she did, the globe began to descend, floating as if almost weightless until it rested in her cupped palms. The glass was not glass; it was warm, and it felt almost like skin, but it dissolved as it met hers; the name did not. She shifted the position of her hands, cupping the name, enclosing it.

It bit her.

She didn’t even curse. She’d taken two words from the Lake of Life—not that it had looked at all like a lake to her at the time—but neither of those had felt like this one, and in theory, one of the two was hers.

She knew, then. She knew what she carried. “He’s not dead yet.”

Silence.

She looked down, at the ground, at the darkness. It seeped into the sand, avoiding her boots. Avoiding her shadow, as if it were a danger. It made no protest, threatened no attack. She watched it go.

“Are there others?”

Yes.

“Where?”

It is time for you to join Gaedin and Serian.

“Wait!”

I am not constrained, as you are, by time. What do you require?

“The injury—the names—”

Yes. They are connected. They are the same. Taking the names, however, does not heal the wound. Do you understand?

No, of course she didn’t.

“Can you take me to—take me to Teela?”

No, but I will send you to Teela, Chosen.

The dragon folded his wing and squawked. Loudly. Kaylin, hands still cupped with care around a name, felt the hair on the back of her neck stand suddenly, sharply, on end.

Light cut the shadows, shattering them; it was bright enough to blind. And blind, given the way her marks were physically burning, was going to be bad. Vision returned with tears; her eyes were burning.

Smoke did that.

“Kitling!”

She could see the blackened, charred ruin of what she assumed had once been wall. Standing beside it was Teela. She was armed; she carried a Barrani war sword. In her hands it looked wrong—Kaylin was used to seeing the long club there. She preferred it.

“What are you doing, you idiot! Don’t just stand there!”

Kaylin blinked tears out of her eyes; she was afraid to move her hands. Teela cursed in rousing Leontine, her voice hitting a pitch of growl that only the Barrani Hawks could. She leaped over the two feet of burning wall and grabbed Kaylin’s left arm.

Kaylin cried out; Teela yanked her arm, dragging her off her feet. Her carefully cupped hands flew apart as she stumbled. Teela’s grip would leave bruises. Her eyes were so blue they looked black in the smoky hall.

Kaylin looked at her empty hands in a panic.

Against the palm of her left, flattened as all of the marks on her body were, was a word. A new mark. It wasn’t gold, the way the rest of her marks now were; it wasn’t the blue they sometimes became. It was red. But it was there. For now, that was all she needed to know.

She drew her daggers as she found her footing. The small dragon squawked. “Don’t you start,” she told him. “Be useful or be quiet. Teela—where in the hells is everyone else?”

“With luck, they’ve evacuated. The Lord’s hall was attacked at several points.”

“Why are you here alone?”

Teela glanced over her shoulder. “I wasn’t,” was her grim reply. Kaylin followed the direction of Teela’s brief glance.

Kaylin! Three voices spoke at once. Only one of them twisted at her; only one caused pain because only one of them knew her name. She shuddered at the force of it, at what it contained, at the visceral fear; it was so strong, so raw, it almost overwhelmed her. She reached up to cover her ears. She only had one free hand, but tried anyway.

Severn! Severn—stop—I’m fine—I’m alive. I’m with Teela. I’m alive, Severn. She inhaled, inhaled, inhaled; exhalation was too short, too shallow.

Teela was cursing up a storm. Kaylin found it calming. Given the color of her eyes, that said something.

Severn—I’m alive. Please—think of kittens or bunnies or something normal. Think of Mallory.

He laughed. It was a wild laugh; she felt it; she was shaking. “This name thing,” she told Teela. “I think I’m beginning to understand why the Barrani fear it so much.”

“I am not going to ask.”

“Let go of my arm. I’m not going to run off into the Ferals—or the fire. Let me check the guards—”

“They’re dead. We were three,” she added, “when the portal opened. We contained five of our enemies in the hall.”

Kaylin looked pointedly at the wall.

Teela nodded; she ran a hand across her eyes. “You are the last person I wanted to see. And—don’t take this the wrong way—but what did you do to the dress?”

Kaylin opened her mouth to answer and Teela caught her by the arm again. “Never mind—it’ll have to wait. The halls aren’t clear, and we cannot stand here talking.”

“Teela—the Consort—”

“I didn’t see her. I’m sorry.”

Nightshade—the Consort?

Tell An’Teela to go west. Cut through the dining hall, avoid its center.

The Consort?

We don’t know.

Lirienne? Where is the Lady?

She is not with us; her chambers were empty.

Did she go to the tunnels? Did she ask for the judgment of the green? Kaylin felt her internal voice rising; if thoughts could squeak, hers would be.

Her chambers were empty. If she is in the heart of the green, we will know, soon. He shut her out then. She began to widen her stride, to pace Teela. The small dragon dug claws into her shoulder and stared straight ahead.

The geography of the Lord’s hall had changed. It wasn’t the walls, although many of them sported new holes, or rather, it wasn’t the destruction of the walls. It was the patches of floor, wall, and ceiling that looked melted and deformed. “Tell me again why this isn’t shadow?”

“If you have enough breath to ask stupid questions, you have enough breath to run faster,” Teela snapped, and picked up the pace. She paused twice, threading her way back through halls that still had visibly normal—if scarred and scorched—floors. “Where are your servants?”

Kaylin considered bouncing Teela’s previous answer back at the Barrani Hawk, but decided against it—Teela could probably run faster; Kaylin wasn’t so certain she could. She was already short of breath, given the length of the run, and it wasn’t over yet.

But when they reached the dining hall, Kaylin froze in the ruins of the doorway. “Teela!”

Teela could stop on a pin. She did, and pivoted. “What do you see?”

Kaylin was staring at the center of the room that Nightshade had told them to avoid. “It’s a portal,” she said, voice flat.

“Then don’t step in it.”

“It’s anchored in the center, Teela—but it’s not contained there. Can you see the signature of its caster?”

Teela exhaled. Kaylin’s arms were too numb to feel what she assumed they otherwise would; Teela was casting. “I can see one,” Teela said.

“There are two. I recognize them both.”

Kaylin didn’t take her eyes off the sigil. The first time she had seen it, she had been suspended in the wreckage of her home. The second time, she’d been in the fiefs. This sigil mirrored the second sighting: it was strong, bold—and not small. But it was shadowed by a second signature.

The first time she’d seen the effect, she’d assumed the hand of two mages.

But she’d seen the inverse in the outlands, and she knew that the second sigil was barely visible because it so closely mirrored the first. The color was faint, the signature so weak it was barely visible. But she thought it faintly green—green smoke. Green shadow.

The small dragon sighed—audibly—and lifted a wing; it drooped. Clearly they weren’t the only ones who were tired.

“Lift both.” Teela came to stand on the dragon side of Kaylin. When the dragon failed to obey, she grimaced and added, “Please.”

He hissed at her, but condescended to lift his second wing.

“Honestly, kitling, I’m thinking of removing them and making them something more dependably wearable.”

The dragon batted Teela’s face. Kaylin felt she deserved this and said nothing. But she looked, as Teela looked. Through the wing, the sigils were clear, and they were both distinct.

“There are two,” Teela said. Kaylin glanced at her; in profile, she could see pursed lips. “I concur.”

“With what?”

“The portal is active.”

“Can you contain it, or should we try to find another way—” A thunderous roar ate the rest of the sentence.

“Teela—are they here to find you?”

Teela stiffened. “Why,” she said, in the conversational tone she used on drug dealers who thought the Barrani Hawks were bribable, “would you ask that question?”

“Because you’re not dead, and the guards are.”

“They—and who exactly do you mean by that amorphous ‘they’?—didn’t stop to ask questions. The guards,” she added, “are dead because they were not powerful enough. I am. How did you get here?”

“Gaedin and Serian dropped us through the floor.”

Teela’s eyes widened slightly. They couldn’t get any bluer. “They risked the judgment of the green?”

“Yes. We were kind of hemmed in by the equivalent of an Arcane bomb and a looming shadow portal; there wasn’t a lot of out left.”

“And the green accepted you.”

“More or less. Look—could we just do it again?”

Teela’s eyes widened for real this time. “Only you could say something that careless. Kitling, there’s a reason that men are now dead throughout this hall.”

Kaylin had been wondering.

“It is the same reason that many of my kin choose to avoid the wakened Hallionne where they have any reasonable choice.”

“This wasn’t reasonable,” Kaylin pointed out.

“No. Understand, Kaylin, that not all of the men who serve the Lord of the West March are native to the West March. They have all witnessed the recitation, and they are all Lords—but they are Lords of the High Court.”

“Could you enter the tunnels?”

Teela said nothing. Kaylin thought that was the whole of the answer. The roaring—and the sound of cracking wood—continued at their back. “No. If I enter the tunnels, I will never leave them.”

The small dragon lowered both of his wings. Before either Teela or Kaylin could complain, he pushed himself off Kaylin’s shoulder, squawking in a way that suggested frustration and anger. It was almost comical to watch his chest swell in outrage.

Almost.

“If you surrendered to the judgment of the green, why are you here, kitling?”

“Where should I be?”

“In the heart of the green, of course. The Lord of the West March rules the green, but his power is political; it is not of the green, and his hall is in no way at its heart.”

Great. “Teela—”

“Stay away from the green.”

“I can’t exactly fly. This entire place is the green, as far as I can tell.”

One black brow rose. “You are meddling in things you don’t understand.”

“So what else is new? Believe that I wouldn’t be meddling if anyone actually took the time to—oh—explain things first!”

The roaring banked sharply. Kaylin wilted. “...Sorry.”

Teela shook her head. She nudged Kaylin out of line of sight of the door’s damaged frame. The doors were present, but they were off their hinges. Nothing short of a small workforce could close them. “You watch your familiar.” Sword held loosely in hand, she turned her back on Kaylin; Kaylin held her daggers.

Kaylin—it is not safe to remain in the hall.

Yes, we’re aware of that. The center of the dining hall is a portal and we’d like not to accidentally walk back into the outlands.

You are certain? Nightshade’s voice was sharper.

Yes. It’s Iberrienne’s work, or I’m Barrani.

The frame of the door cracked; it made the sound best associated with lightning, except up close and personal. Kaylin turned to see something the size of a large horse. It looked like a forest Feral—but larger, clearer, more distinct. Teela spit out three harsh syllables as the Feral roared.

Purple flame—at least judging by the sudden heat of it—flew from its mouth. Teela raised sword and split the stream; it passed to either side of her without singing her hair. Kaylin, standing behind Teela, felt the heat; she held her ground, raising her daggers. There was no way to close with a creature like this; she could throw.

She wouldn’t, unless Teela moved.

The small dragon turned. But he did inhale in that long, slow way that dragons sometimes did. When he exhaled, he exhaled a stream that was gray and white to the Feral’s purple. It didn’t reach the Feral because it wasn’t aimed there. His target was the sigil, the signature that any significant use of magic left in its wake. Signatures weren’t the magic itself; they were the traces it left behind.

She opened her mouth to tell him that this was a waste of breath—literally—but considered the waste of her own breath and shut up. The magic that Iberrienne used wasn’t a magic that the Hawks studied—and generally loathed. It wasn’t the typical Arcanist fare. The clouds that the small dragon breathed were unique, and what the small dragon saw—or knew—he couldn’t communicate.

But he’d saved her life a handful of times, and she chose to trust him now. She didn’t pause to see the effect of his breath, because big, huge, and ugly had pretty much crushed the obstructing remnants of the doors, and he was way too close for comfort.

She turned back to Teela, and Teela—without warning—sent her flying into the nearest wall. Since it wasn’t that near, Kaylin bruised her shoulder before finding her feet; she dropped one knife and retrieved it in a running roll that brought her back to her feet again.

Teela was already on the move. She carried the sword as if it weighed nothing—as if it were just an extension of her arm. Purple fire hit the floor in a splash; Kaylin expected said floor to darken and scorch. It didn’t. As long as she dodged breath—and jaws, and claws—she’d survive.

Given the presence of a Feral that really didn’t look all that Ferallike up close, she considered a portal to elsewhere to be less of a risk than it had seemed a few minutes ago. Teela, however, didn’t. Kaylin saw sparks fly as her sword scraped the lower edge of creature jaws. It did about as much damage as it would against flat stone.

The creature roared.

Kaylin leaped out of the direct path of its open mouth, narrowly avoiding flame. The creature appeared to be herding Teela toward the center of the room; Teela was having none of it. If the creature were larger, it wasn’t faster. It was as fast, but the momentum gained when rushing made it harder for the creature to maneuver.

Teela didn’t have that problem.

Light was reflected off the whole of the creature’s face. Kaylin guessed that the only damage done in this melee would be to the edge of the sword, and she grimaced when Teela struck again; she hated the sound of metal against stone.

The creature’s eyes were small and inset into the black bulk of a face that was mostly jaw; it moved fast enough Kaylin couldn’t get a direct shot at them—but she tried anyway. When Teela’s sword bounced for a third time, the creature’s neck elongated, its jaws snapping instantly, and loudly, shut at the spot where Teela had been standing. Teela slid sideways and they closed on empty air; the Barrani Hawk brought her weapon down across a momentarily closed jaw, with enough force to drive its head into the ground.

Kaylin threw her second dagger at the creature’s exposed neck.

It stuck its landing.

“Teela!”

Teela didn’t answer, but she’d seen. As the creature raised its head again, its neck retracted; the dagger Kaylin had thrown was dislodged, and clattered to the ground. Kaylin watched it fall; it wasn’t in the best position for retrieval.

She cursed; if she’d been Barrani, she’d have a sword, and the next time it extended itself she could attempt to remove head from neck.

If the creature hadn’t been so adept at fighting on two fronts—when, admittedly, the second front was Kaylin and almost insignificant—Kaylin would have taken the time to watch Teela in action, because Teela in action had some of the deadly, beautiful grace of—of Dragons. She couldn’t. If she wasn’t causing damage, she was drawing fire, and if she wanted to continue to do so, she had to make sure none of it caught her.

She ducked and rolled when something flew at her face, and realized only when it landed that it was the small dragon.

“Wing!” she told him, leaping. He dug claws into her shoulder, which was fair—she wasn’t certain he’d still be attached otherwise. His squawking was lost to the fury of bestial roar. She didn’t need to hear his complaint; clinging to a shoulder while balancing one open wing was difficult.

He pretty much plastered said wing to her face when she flattened herself against the wall, facing the creature’s side. He was a good fifteen feet away, but she’d had experience fighting shadow one-offs, and knew the flank was no guarantee of safety; he could sprout an extra head with no warning. But she took the moment to look.

She froze, but the creature’s lunge at Teela carried him farther away; he didn’t take advantage of her momentary stillness.

He had a name.

She could see it as clearly as she had seen Ynpharion’s, in his altered form. This creature’s physical shape was larger; fur had been supplanted by obsidian, but it preserved a lot of the same characteristics; four legs, huge jaws. It also sported a tail that was split, and terminated in at least three strands. They etched grooves in stone when the creature had tried to cut Kaylin into several pieces with it.

“All is forgiven,” Kaylin said, still staring.

The dragon said nothing.

“I don’t think I can grab this one.”

The nothing was somehow louder and frostier.

She hadn’t lied. The name that she could see was twisting and shifting in place. It was golden, as most words were—but its light was uneven, brighter in some of the components, and so weak it could barely be seen in others. All around its shape and form was shadow; the shadow, however, was green. As green, seen through the mask of dragon wing, as the creatures eyes now were.

Iberrienne.

It was, she was suddenly certain, Iberrienne.

And his name, like Ynpharion’s, was shadowed, twisted. The transformation went deeper; the name was larger. A thought occurred to her then: Ynpharion, drawn back by the use of his name into his Barrani life and Barrani self, had loathed Iberrienne.

But what if Iberrienne himself were corrupted in exactly the same way? What if he, too, had been changed? He wasn’t so changed that he hadn’t attempted to kill Bellusdeo, the only known, living, female dragon. Nor so changed that he couldn’t move among the Lords of the High Court and the Arcanists.

Whatever the transformation’s power, it had to work on what it had. She highly doubted she’d care for an uncorrupted Iberrienne.

The small dragon bit her ear, hard.

Teela hadn’t slowed; neither had the creature. Kaylin had a weapon she could use against him. She just preferred him to be dead. But it wasn’t going to happen soon, and soon was necessary. No one knew where the Consort was.

And so she began to gather what she thought of loosely as syllables. Ynpharion’s name had been a name. Iberrienne’s was only barely that. She could make out what she thought its shape had once been, but she couldn’t be certain—and lack of certainty would get her nothing, in the end. Nothing but his rage if she came just close enough.

Teela could keep this up for another hour, in Kaylin’s opinion; possibly longer if she pushed.

Just how long had Iberrienne been compromised? What had he been promised, and what, before he had listened to some unknown tale of ancient malice, had he hoped to achieve?

He wasn’t as young as Kaylin had assumed—but she realized she’d made the assumption because he seemed so impulsive. He had the visceral hatred of Dragons that only the older Lords of the High Court held.

That melting part of his name was a stroke, not a squiggle; it was meant to tuck in, turn up in a slight slope at the end farthest from Kaylin. The center of the word was unbalanced, as words often were, but the light there was the most familiar. She started there.

Syllables gathered, but she realized, as she amassed them, that they weren’t, in any real sense, syllables at all. She heard them as syllables. She heard them as Barrani words. But Nightshade was called Calarnenne by any member of the Court who didn’t wish to offend the Consort. What she said, when she spoke his name, was not what they heard. What they said was too thin; it was flat.

Kaylin spoke something that had dimension and strength; it had shape, it had depth, it had structure. The syllables weren’t sounds; they were blocks or bricks. If they interlocked in the right way with her intent and her will, they had form.

And that form was a cage.

The marks on her arms were glowing; she felt the mark on her forehead join them. Only the mark on her hand remained as it looked: red, wet with sweat, untouched by light. The small dragon crooned and nudged the side of her face with his head; she felt it at a great remove.

She hated the green wisps of smoke. She hated the purple flame. She hated the vulnerability that ownership introduced—because, damn it, it did. But Ynpharion had remembered. Iberrienne would remember.

And she needed to know what had happened to the Consort.

The syllables snapped into place; she opened her mouth and as she spoke them and they sounded, to her ears, like thunder.

Iberrienne.