Cast in Sorrow

Chapter 9

She fell for what felt like an hour before she saw the first sign of actual geography. As landscape went, it wasn’t promising: it looked like a small, dark pit. From this vantage, she couldn’t see bottom.

As she approached the pit, she realized that small was the wrong word. It was huge. She thought it the size of a city block, and revised that as she fell; it was the size of a city. A large city. When she finally reached its upper edge, she wasn’t surprised she couldn’t see bottom; she could no longer see the whole of its shape.

Turning—which was difficult—she saw the sky recede as she continued to fall. The small dragon dug claws into the skin below her collarbone, and she cursed him in Leontine.

The Leontine bounced back in an echoing, strangled kitten sound—the usual result of the combination of human throat and the deeper Leontine curses. She chose a few of the less throaty words instead, and then, for good measure, switched to Aerian. It was the Aerian that caught her attention, probably because she mangled the pronunciation less. The echo was not attenuated. It wasn’t stretched. It was almost exact, and it continued as she dropped.

She spoke in her mother tongue and listened to herself, growing quieter as syllables bounced off walls so distant they should never have reached them at all.

She then switched to Barrani. All languages had useful words, but it was hard to swear in High Barrani. Kaylin had always believed that High Barrani was the language of Imperial Law because it was the most stilted, pretentious, and boring of the Elantran tongues.

High Barrani returned to her in her own voice, but instead of a diminishing echo, she heard a resonance to the sound, an amplification. The runes in her hands—hands that were gripping tightly enough her fingers were beginning to tingle—shook. She stopped speaking; the trembling, however, continued.

She hated working in the dark. Figurative dark, literal dark—she was hemmed in by her own ignorance. There’d been solutions to that, in the Halls of Law. She’d worked. She’d learned. She’d studied—at least she’d studied the important stuff. Here, she had nothing to go on. Everything was a risk. Every decision had to be made on air and instinct and hope. She was afraid of the consequences because she couldn’t even begin to predict them.

And...it didn’t matter. She could fall forever—seriously, that’s what it felt like—or she could take risks and pray that the only person who suffered when she did was herself.

She returned to High Barrani. She was unsettled enough that random words rolled off her tongue first; she shook her head, and when she spoke again, she began to recite the Imperial Laws. She was rusty, she knew; only the important ones were word-for-word clear: the ones that defined murder, kidnapping, theft, and extortion. She chose those because they were the ones around which she’d based her life.

They’d given her purpose. They’d given her wings. They’d given her family. Hope. Yes, her work regularly brought her into contact with the people most likely to break those laws, but she balanced the constant exposure to the least law-abiding citizens with her work at the midwives’ guild and the Foundling Hall. The worst and the best.

That job had brought her here.

“Go left,” she told the small dragon.

This time, he didn’t warble; he huffed. She had the distinct impression he would have said “about time, idiot” if he’d actually been able to speak in a language she could understand. This was why Kaylin did not own cats. On the other hand, at least the small dragon listened; he spread his extended, diaphanous wings and she drifted toward the left wall. It was not close; it took a long time.

She wondered if time was passing for the Consort; she wondered if her own body had collapsed in the Consort’s room.

Taking a deeper breath, she let go of that thought and returned to Imperial Law. It wasn’t as dry as it should have been because it had meaning to her. She thought of the first murder investigation Teela and Tain had allowed her to tag along on. And of the first investigation she’d attended as an actual Hawk and not an unofficial mascot. Or an official one.

She’d never understood why the Barrani had chosen to take the Imperial Oath to the Halls of Law; she’d never understood why they served. They’d said they were bored. But...they were good at what they did. She’d learned a lot from Teela, and most of it was within regulations.

When she reached the far wall, her hands were vibrating because the runes themselves were shaking. It was as if the component parts wanted to fly free of each other, and that was so not happening right now. Not yet.

The small dragon dug claws into collarbone again. She bit back the urge to tell him to shut up or be helpful, because it was his wings that were moving them both. She forgot frustration as they at last approached surface.

It wasn’t a wall. Or rather, it wasn’t the side of a pit. It looked like—like a carved likeness of the flattened streets of a very, very bizarre city. Parts of that city were laid open, as if they’d been sheared; rooms were exposed—or what she assumed were rooms.

And what had she expected? The Consort had fallen unconscious because of the nightmares of Alsanis—and Alsanis was a building. A sentient building. She looked right, left, up, down—the vista, the flattened, exposed likeness of something that she’d be afraid to police—stretched out for as far as the eye could see. Everything was cast in shadow; it was not, as she’d thought at first glimpse, of black stone or rock.

Nor was it completely without light. Here and there, she caught flickers of something that might have been candle or lamp; she caught movement, but only out of the corner of her eye. It reminded her of cockroaches. She hated cockroaches.

The buildings themselves were not uniform. And, as she drew closer still, she realized they weren’t squashed and flattened. But they had been. They seemed to gain dimension, stories unfolding where her flight brought her close. She could see what might have been streets, but they were dark hatches that grew even less distinct as the buildings themselves emerged following the trail of her flight path.

The runes in her hands, had they been alive, would be agitated and panicked; they’d probably be screaming. She wondered if those screams would be laden with fear or joy, which was an odd thought.

She nudged the small dragon, and he banked to the right; buildings rose out of their flatness, the flickering lights becoming the heart of windows and arches. Stone, she thought, and then reconsidered. This was some part of the Hallionne, if nightmare was a word that could be literally applied. The rules of normal architecture didn’t mean anything here.

She had no idea what she was doing, but seeing a city unfold as she passed above it made her feel almost at home. It wasn’t Elantra—but it wasn’t an endless forest full of insects and talking Ferals, either.

On the other hand, it didn’t seem populated. Small twitches at the corner of her eyes didn’t become people of any stripe when she looked. It was a ghost city, a deserted town, absent the usual decay and dilapidation. She nudged the dragon, and he banked to the right, slowing as he straightened out their gliding path.

She saw why: the building that began its ascent as she approached did not stop unfolding; to avoid running smack into its side, the small dragon would have had to ascend just as quickly. She shouted because he didn’t even try.

“Up! Up!”

He flew straight, the little winged rat. She had the horrible certainty she was about to discover just what these buildings were made of—by splatting against the wall. But beneath a roof with a spire that could impale Dragons in flight form, a balcony opened up. It was longer and wider than Kaylin’s entire apartment. Former apartment. The wall it jutted from was rounded, and it had no doors; instead, it had an arch that was open to air, as if it were a cloister. The dragon flew straight above balcony rails and beneath that arch, tucking his wings so they’d fit. He also wrapped his tail around her neck.

When they’d cleared the arch, he folded his wings entirely, and she fell a good six feet to the ground. Six feet wasn’t usually a problem. Six feet when both hands were occupied wasn’t the usual.

She sprained her ankle. At least, it felt like a sprain because it hurt like blazing fire, but she could stand and it more or less supported her weight. “This is stupid,” she said in Leontine. “I’m not even physically here and I have to hobble through this maze with a bum ankle?” She did not, by dint of full hands, punch the wall. Or kick it.

It wasn’t a maze, though. It was a cloister. Arches cascaded beyond the arch she’d entered; to her right was wall, to her left a shadowed courtyard. The air was still and dry; there was no sound but her breathing. Even the dragon was silent, although he batted her face with one wing. It wasn’t an improvement over ear-biting.

As she walked, simple stone walls gave way to small fountains, small statues; the open courtyard continued. She’d never been in a courtyard this large; she was certain it was at least four city blocks in length, and it showed no signs of ending. What she wanted from a city, she decided, was stable architecture and buildings that made sense. Who made a courtyard this bloody high off the ground?

She stopped, turned, and walked toward the open space to her left to look down. She couldn’t see bottom. The small dragon whiffled, but he didn’t bat the side of her face. “I’m not jumping unless we run into Ferals or a really, really ugly dead end. Got it?”

He exhaled—air, not cloud—and flopped across her shoulders, rolling an eye in her direction before he closed it.

“Now you’re clocking out? Are you kidding?”

He failed to answer.

She started in on a very Leontine reply, but something caught her eye; it was bright, gleaming. She turned to her right; there was a statue against the wall, between the right-hand pillars of two arches. It didn’t vanish when she looked at it. She realized that the gleam she saw was the reflection of the two words she was dragging along at her sides as if they were recalcitrant foundlings on an outing.

The statue was made, not of stone or marble, but...glass. It was glass. It stood on a pedestal of white marble. If it had been standing on the floor, it would still have been taller than Kaylin; Barrani were. It looked like a blown-glass representation of a ghost. A male ghost. Its features were delicate, the glass taking the form of ears, chin, perfect cheekbones. Probably perfect skin. Kaylin didn’t really believe in ghosts, but none of the stories she’d heard indicated bad complexions, and anyway, he was Barrani.

She stood, bracketed by the two words, watching the light play off transparent surface as if it were a window. A very beautiful window in a nonexistent frame. She peered through his chest, which was at eye level, given the pedestal. She did not see stone; she saw—thought she saw—night.

She wasn’t surprised when the window moved his arms. She should have been, but the minute she’d hit balcony, she’d given up on anything making sense. The statue reached out to touch the rune that meant grief and loss. His hand passed through what was, to Kaylin, appreciably solid.

She began to walk again, the statue, the ghost, trailing behind her, his open, empty eyes upon the words she carried. And why wouldn’t they be? They were the only obvious source of light.

He was not the only statue. Immediately ahead, between the pillars of two arches, stood another, also male. His face was broader, the cheeks wider, the chin more chiseled; he was otherwise tall and slender, although she thought him taller than the first. He wore a thin tiara across his brow, although it, too, was made of glass.

She stopped in front of him, watching the first ghost—she couldn’t quite think of them as Barrani, although it was clear that’s what they were meant to be. He, too, reached for the rune that spoke of grief and loss, stepping off his pedestal to do so. He didn’t seem to see the first ghost; nor did the first ghost see him. But his hand passed through the rune, as well, and a ripple of expression moved across his face like a liquid wave.

She would have let them take the runes, because there was something about them that was not Barrani. They seemed younger to her, and drawn only to grief. The second rune might not have existed at all. But she knew the words weren’t meant for them, because as she passed beneath the second such arch, she came to stand in front of a third glass statue.

Unlike the first two, this one was female; the slight swell of breasts and the delicate curve of hips would have given it away, but she also wore a Court dress—a Barrani Court dress—that hung in folds. She wore two rings, two glass rings, and a bracelet that looked almost martial; her hair fell from forehead to knees, unbraided. She was slightly shorter than the second ghost, and of a height with the first; she looked far haughtier than either of the first two. She didn’t attempt to touch the rune, but her chin dropped as she looked at it.

She wouldn’t reach for it, either, Kaylin thought, because she knew she could never touch it. But she, too, stepped from her pedestal, and she followed as Kaylin continued to walk.

She wasn’t surprised to see that there were eleven such statues by the time she reached the T junction at the end of the murderously long, open gallery. The rune had become heavier as she walked; she was practically dragging it, by the end. Two of the glass Barrani were women, nine were men.

Kaylin was annoyed. Not at the rune. Not at the ghosts. Not even at Alsanis.

No, she was annoyed at the High Court. Because they spoke of twelve lost children. Twelve. There were eleven. She had no doubt, in this amalgam of dream, nightmare, and Hallionne, that these ghosts were the ghosts of the eleven who had been so badly damaged by the ceremony in the green. They had been taken to Alsanis after the end of the recitation, when forbidden blood had been spilled during the telling, as if Alsanis was a jail. They had been sent to the West March by ambitious parents—and they had been sacrificed to that ambition.

But they numbered eleven, damn it. Teela wasn’t here. Teela wasn’t lost. Teela had come to the green wearing the dress that Kaylin now wore, and Teela had served as harmoniste. She had come of age. She was a Lord of the High Court.

Teela had lost her mother. So had Kaylin. Kaylin had lost her home. Teela, in theory, hadn’t. But what home had she come back to? The West March didn’t want her. That was so clear even a non-Barrani like Kaylin couldn’t miss it. That left the High Court. No wonder Teela spent as little time there as possible.

Well, the Hawks wanted her.

The small dragon squawked.

“We do,” Kaylin said. She inhaled. “Pretend I’m talking to myself. I need to get this out of my system before I see Teela again. If she thinks I’m worried about her, if she thinks I feel sorry for her, she’ll break both my arms. Without breaking a sweat.”

He nodded.

“Right or left?”

He batted her face with a wing. She considered plucking him off her shoulder and dropping him, but paused. “No, you’re right,” she told him. “That was a stupid question.” And she turned to the right because it was her right hand gripping the rune that had drawn every statue off its pedestal.

There were no other statues against the walls—and there were two walls here. If she’d chosen to go left, the gallery was open—but right led into an enclosed hall. It was an odd enclosure, because as she looked up she could see stars. Moons. The moons looked familiar. She thought there were clouds, thin and stretched, across their faces, but it was hard to tell; the pillars sported arches, even if they didn’t have ceiling, and the arches got in the way.

But Kaylin walked, dragging a rune that seemed to gain weight with each step, and a rune that seemed so light she could forget it was in her hand. She didn’t; she didn’t want to let it go yet.

She only knew she was heading in the right direction when she heard singing, because it was singing. She would know that voice anywhere: it was the Consort’s. The Consort’s voice was not the only voice she heard, and sadly, she’d recognize the other five anywhere, as well: the dreams and the nightmares; the eagles and their shadows.

She glanced at the eleven ghosts; they trailed like shadows—reflecting light—behind her. She wondered if they were responsible for the weight of the word in her hand, but they hadn’t been able to touch it. Then again, did she expect anything that happened here to make sense?

She cursed. Leontine again. Her ankle hurt, the rune weighed a ton, and she wanted to reach the Consort before she finished singing, because she knew—the way she did in a dream that was about to go very, very wrong—that the song was almost done.

She couldn’t run. Her ankle wasn’t broken, but the word had become an anchor. She dragged it down the hall, sweating all over a very fine, very magical dress. She wanted to curse, but saved her breath. The small dragon stopped playing shawl; he rose and stretched, digging claws into various parts of her collarbone and neck as he readjusted his position. The urge to curse grew stronger.

He spread his wings, but managed to do so without batting her in the face—which meant, of course, every other wing-slap was deliberate. She could see him lift and stretch his slender, translucent neck; he inhaled.

“Now is so not the time,” she told him.

As usual, he ignored her. He opened his jaws, with their disturbingly solid teeth, and joined the eagles in song. Kaylin didn’t have the breath to start singing again; she didn’t try. But the runes were warmer and brighter as she struggled with the weight of the one on the right. They served as lamps, but there was no flicker in the light they cast. The fact that they were behind her and she cast no shadow should have disturbed her more.

It didn’t; she was frowning instead at the door she was inching toward. She hadn’t seen a single door so far; it figured that the first one she’d find stood between her and the Consort.

The door did not obligingly roll open when she reached it. Of course not. That would be too easy. Her arms were shaking; if she had to drag the word on the right another foot, she’d collapse from exhaustion.

To make matters so much worse, the door—a door that was at least two stories in height, and made of either stone or pocked iron—was warded. Exactly how was she supposed to touch a door ward when both of her hands were full?

She looked at the small dragon.

Hiss, squawk, hiss. His wings rose, and he whacked her in the face. “Look, I understand that we have to get through the door—but it’s warded. You open it! Just—just bite it, like you did with the tree!”

He hissed again, raising his head and stretching his neck. He inhaled.

Kaylin said, “No!”

Small, transparent creatures should never be able to look so smug. She dragged the two words until she was flush against the closed door, grinding her teeth. She didn’t want the dragon to breathe on the door—and why, she didn’t know. Everything about this space implied dream, which could terrify but couldn’t exactly kill.

Except for her ankle. This wouldn’t be the first time she’d twisted it; she was familiar with sprains; this was not dream pain. Dream pain usually ripped your heart out and left you screaming in fear or rage, or weeping helplessly. It didn’t give you a bum ankle.

But this dream would kill the Consort. She couldn’t treat it like any other dream she didn’t want to be in. She’d seen what the small dragon’s breath could do; she wasn’t willing to risk damaging the Consort.

And you’re willing to damage yourself, idiot? No one is paying you enough for this.

She pressed her forehead into the ward. And of course, given the day—and the weeks leading up to it—alarms began to blare. At least her forehead didn’t go numb and her hair didn’t catch fire—not even when the door did. She jerked her head back. She couldn’t leap away unless she surrendered the words she’d carried all the way here, and she knew it wasn’t the time yet.

It would have been easier if the fire hadn’t been so damn hot. It was almost white; the edges were gold and orange and too damn close to her face; her eyes watered. The small dragon, however, stayed where he was, neck elongated, chin tilted forward; she glanced at him, saw fire reflected in his eyes.

She glanced back and saw the eleven ghosts; they were white with reflected light, and very slightly transparent. They reminded her, for no reason she could think of, of the small creature clinging a little too tightly to her shoulder.

Kaylin had to admit that it was a pretty impressive way to open a door. Most doors didn’t dissolve into ash. The ash clung to her dress. It probably dusted her face, as well, but she couldn’t see her face; it certainly settled on the small dragon’s wings; he shook them out, which probably didn’t help Kaylin any. As the air cleared, she looked through the frame of what had once been a door.

It opened into a very, very large room—but it was a room built in a shape that Kaylin had never seen before; it had so many almost triangular corners recessed into the walls it seemed to be all corners. The floor was tiled, or appeared to be tiled, in a way that suggested flagstones and courtyard, and indeed, it was open to air.

Or it was open to sky—but the sky held no moon; it held sun, sunlight, azure, no hint of cloud. And in the center of this spiky, oddly shaped courtyard stood the Consort.

The Lady was pale; she wore robes as white as she now was; as white as the fall of her hair. Her arms were raised, but they were trembling like a junkie’s; they had always been slender but now—now they looked emaciated. She stood before a fountain; water fell from air into a basin of ivory and gold. It was a trickle, a drip. The Consort’s voice could be described the same way.

On the basin, perched two eagles; the shadows flew above. Kaylin walked, cursing, dragging the rune that seemed determined to scratch the hell out of the stones beneath her feet.

But with the runes, in Kaylin’s wake, the ghosts entered the courtyard. As they did, the Consort, voice wavering, lowered her arms and turned. Her eyes widened as she saw Kaylin, and their color—clear tens of yards away—was gold. Kaylin almost never saw that color in a Barrani face: it meant surprise, and it faded into a more natural green as she watched.

The runes did not magically transform any part of this room. They did not become smaller or lighter; they didn’t fly away. Kaylin dragged them, heading in a straight line toward the Consort and the fountain. She wasn’t certain what she found more disturbing: the fountain or the Consort’s fragility. No, that was a lie; she was worried about the Consort. The presence of water, here, would have to wait.

The Consort nodded encouragement—but she didn’t move. It was almost as if she couldn’t. Kaylin, ankle throbbing, could. As she did, she noticed that the glass statues, the ghosts, began to separate. The first of the statues, the slender man, walked toward one of the triangular corners. His feet left a trail in the stone, which should have been impossible as his steps didn’t actually reach the floor.

But when he came to the corner, he rose, stepping onto a pedestal of nothing but air. Only then did he look back at the others, and he smiled at them. It was meant, Kaylin thought, to be encouraging, to give them strength; it cut her. She had never seen a similar expression on the face of any Barrani she had ever met.

She spun then, Consort almost forgotten; all ten were now departing, walking—as he had done—to different empty corners and taking their positions upon equally invisible pedestals. They weren’t still; they didn’t become statues in the same way; they looked for each other, sometimes wildly and sometimes casually, as if they couldn’t bear to look weak. That, at least, was familiar.

Each of the corners filled this way; only when they were filled did the glass ghosts look into the center of the courtyard, and their gazes fell on the Consort. Kaylin reached her as she lowered shaking arms, and at the last, Kaylin let go of the runes, held out her arms, and caught the Lady as she collapsed.

The eagles fell silent; the shadows fell silent, although they continued to glide.

Kaylin wasn’t Teela; she couldn’t carry the Consort far—but she could now carry her to the edge of the fountain; the water had ceased to fall. The last drop of water hit the surface of the rippling pool beneath it; Kaylin could see reflected light in the basin.

The light grew. It grew, and it rose; the Consort whimpered, lifting her hands; she had no voice left. But Kaylin shook her head. “It’s all right,” she said, although it wasn’t. She turned to look at the runes she had left at the edge of the fountain. They were glowing, but they had done that since the moment she’d touched the Consort and closed her eyes, entering a dream and a nightmare.

She was afraid to let go of the Consort. She was afraid that if she did the Lady would slip away; the dream would swallow her. She would go where Kaylin couldn’t follow.

Lirienne.

No answer. Kaylin set the Consort on her feet and kept one arm around her back, beneath her arms. She stumbled; she’d forgotten her ankle. She didn’t fall. The runes weren’t that far away.

The Consort whispered something; Kaylin couldn’t hear it. It sounded like Barrani, but spoken with a throat so dry only a rasp was left. Kaylin shook her head. She had no idea what the words were supposed to do, and this was the first time she was being asked to decide. To choose the words. To choose their destination.