Cast In Courtlight (38 page)

“There is a risk in this, Lord,” Andellen said quietly.

She stared at him. For a long time. And then she asked him a question.

“Where do the ferals come from?”

He frowned.

Severn frowned, too.

“The fiefs,” Andellen said eventually.

She turned to Severn. “So, what we faced weren’t ferals?”

“They were ferals.”

“They weren’t real?”

Severn’s frown deepened in that I-don’t-like-where-this-is-going way. “They were real,” he said at last. But he said it as if it were dragged out of him.

“You don’t want to go, stay in the room,” she told Andellen and Samaran curtly. And in Elantran. “But I have to go.”

“Why?”

“Because I had a dream, okay?”

“Kaylin – ”

“And I want to see how
much
of a dream it was.”

“The Lord of the High Court – ”

Kaylin told Andellen what the Lord of the High Court could do. Given it was anatomically possible, Andellen shut up.

For five seconds. “You had best hope that whoever’s listening doesn’t speak Elantran, Lord Kaylin.”

“At this point? I don’t give a rat’s ass.”

He looked oddly nonplussed. And she realized that he was trying to take the comment literally. She snorted. For smart, immortal people, they could be awfully dense. She stomped off, and everyone followed. They even followed quickly. Had she been wearing her boots, they wouldn’t have had much choice.

The tower arch opened up before them out of nowhere.

And it looked different. The keystone was still there, but the rest of the arch beneath it seemed to have been rebuilt; it was wider, thicker, and a lot more craggy. it was the
same
arch. Kaylin knew it the moment she laid eyes on it. She glanced at Andellen. He said nothing.

Beyond them, beyond the arch, was an unfamiliar set of stairs, and it offered only one passage: down. There were no brass rails to gird it either; a clumsy person would get down much more quickly than they probably wanted.

And Kaylin, looking at those stairs, had a very strong feeling that jumping was not a viable option, unless the goal was suicide. She glanced at the wall the stairs ran up against; it had the look of sheared stone, rather than worked stone, as if this had been taken, whole, from a cliff face. Or was part of one.

There was a rune there, as she had expected. In fact, there were several. None of them were the one she now thought of as hers. She looked at Andellen again. Caught his stiff profile.

“This isn’t a test,” she told him quietly.

“It is, Kaylin. It is not the test of Lordship, however.”

“What do they say?”

He shook his head. “I recognize only one of the thirteen.”

“And that one?”

“Death.”

“Great.” She lifted one arm, and shoved the sleeve up to her elbow; it went with ease. “That’s… this one, right?”

Andellen looked at her arm. “No.”

And she deflated. “No, why?”

“The shape is right. The center portion is slightly wrong. Here,” he added. “And here.” He paused, and then offered her the faintest of smiles. “I cannot read the old tongue.”

“But you recognized – ”

“Yes. But this,” he said, his hand above her arm without touching skin, “is older still. The Dragons could tell you some of what it said – but I have grave doubts that they would allow you to retain the arm.” She’d heard it before. And wished that the Dragon who had said it – Lord Tiamaris – were beside her. Wearing the Hawk.

He wasn’t. “Will you risk a second time what you risked a first?”

Lord Andellen nodded.

“Samaran?”

“It is not my test,” he began. And then he straightened out. “Nor, I think, is it yours. The High Halls will decide. If we
can
pass through the arch with you, we will.”

“Good enough.” And she turned and walked through the arch, while the keystone flickered above her. They followed.

One difference, one immediate difference, was that the arch didn’t vanish at their backs. Kaylin considered this a sign, but wasn’t certain whether or not it was good or bad. “The light here sucks,” she said to no one in particular.

Severn glanced at Andellen, who raised a brow. “Light is seldom a difficulty for the Barrani,” he finally conceded when Severn failed to look away. The Barrani Lord lifted a hand, and light began to trail from it, as if it were mist. Or liquid.

Kaylin cursed.

“It is not magic,” Andellen told her. “It is part of the High Halls.”

“I can’t do it.”

“In a century, it will come naturally.”

She wanted to kick him but refrained. Instead, with the comfort of light – even this odd, amorphous light – she began to make her way down the stairs. The darkness that waited beneath her feet was eaten away by the light, but only slowly; her progress was difficult. She didn’t, however, remove her shoes. She didn’t want to touch the stone steps themselves; they seemed to shine in a way that implied light without actually giving any.

Severn was unwinding his chain.

Andellen, when she looked up to see him, had already drawn his sword, as had Samaran. She, like a human noble, didn’t actually
have
a weapon, and looked up at Severn, who indicated his dagger sheaths. He must be nervous; he wasn’t willing to let go of the chain to get them himself.

She pulled them free, and continued to walk, hoping she didn’t trip and impale herself. On the whole, though, there were probably worse things.

Like, say, that distant sound of growling.

The expression “hair stood on end” did not do Kaylin’s justice; the skin on the back of her neck seemed to ripple, and not in a good way. As if it were Leontine fur.

“It’s not ferals,” Severn said. One look at his face made it clear that this wasn’t meant as comfort.

“Severn?” Two more steps passed beneath her before she turned, her back against the wall. “I told you about the Old Ones, right? And the beginning of life? The Barrani and the Dragons? That they were made of stone, and lifeless, until they were given their names?”

He nodded slowly.

“Why did they only make two?”

“Two races?” She nodded.

His expression shifted.

And Andellen said quietly, “They didn’t.”

The heart of the High Halls was a dark, dark place. It wasn’t precisely a dungeon; it wasn’t, however, enough like anything else that Kaylin bothered to find a word for it. The steps did not, as she had feared, descend forever; they walked for some time, but reached the end. The growls had grown in volume, but they weren’t near enough yet.

And because they weren’t, Kaylin now agreed with Severn’s assessment. Not ferals.

They stood in a stone corridor that looked more like a tunnel. Evidence that it wasn’t natural existed; there were runes on the walls at odd intervals, although some had been cracked or damaged. And there were no rats.

The hall’s ceiling, such as it was, looked like it had been gouged out of rock by large hands, it was that uneven. In places, it went high enough that it couldn’t be seen by the light Andellen offered; in places, it was low enough that it skirted Barrani hair. The ground was also uneven, but not as much; someone intended people to walk here.

Where people was a very broad description.

The growls were closer now. Which meant they were heading in the right direction. Or the wrong one, given that there
was
only one; there were no branches, no other halls, nothing at all in the rock itself.

She thought she would be happy to see a door.

Until she did.

Even Andellen took a step back as they approached it. Because it was made of ebony, or seemed to be, and it absorbed every damn bit of light that wasn’t the single rune on it. She cursed in a loud, loud voice that echoed in the cavernous ceiling above.

Andellen caught the bits that weren’t swearing and shook his head. “It isn’t a door-ward,” he said calmly.

She stopped midstream, her hand half raised. “What is it?”

“A warning.”

And she realized then where she’d seen this type of black before. The portcullis in Castle Nightshade. This occasioned less swearing and more actual worry. But she looked at the door, and said softly, “He came here.”

They all looked at her, as if waiting for more.

“The Lord of the Green. He came here. So we have to go, too.” And sucking in air as if she might not get more of it, she walked into the door, just beneath the glowing rune.

She expected to be dizzy and disoriented. She expected the world to change. She expected to be spit out someplace different. the passage through this door was entirely unlike the passage through the portcullis, because it looked like it wasn’t going to end. She was trapped in darkness; mired by it; it clung to her in ways that nothing should be able to cling. She felt it almost on the inside of her skin, and had she been able to, she would have taken her skin off just to be rid of it.

She hoped that she wasn’t trying. She could see very little, and feel very little. She could hear growling, which didn’t help much. This
wasn’t
a place. She couldn’t step forward – or back, which at this point seemed preferable. She wasn’t really aware that she was moving at all, or even that she could; she couldn’t feel her feet. Couldn’t tell if she was shouting, either, because she couldn’t feel her lips.

She could feel her arms and her thighs. She could feel them as if they were furrowed, living stone; could feel the shape of words engraved there that she still didn’t understand, and usually did her best not to think about. she thought about them now because they were almost her only sensation in this place, and sensation reminded her that she was somewhere. That she was, in fact, alive.

And as she did she heard words that sounded entirely unlike language. Not chanting, although she couldn’t say why, because it seemed to be carried by a multitude of voices. She felt cadence in those voices, but she couldn’t make out syllables; they spoke, and spoke, and spoke.

As they did, she became aware of physical sensation, a deepening of the odd tingling in her limbs. It moved, darting back and forth. As if –

As if she was being read. Literally read.

And judged. She had endured judgment in her life; had come to expect it. Some of it angered her because it came entirely out of profound ignorance. Some of it shamed her because it didn’t. But none of it stood so far beyond her that she couldn’t react.

The last word, the last word she
heard
. And
felt
. It resonated not across her limbs, but within her, as if it had been struck, as if she were a bell. It had a noise, and a shape, a sharpness and a sweetness, that she had experienced before – but it had been outside of her then.

Her name. The name she had chosen.

She held on to it ferociously. It took no thought, no deliberation, no active decision; it was far more primal than that. It was like fear, except that it defined fear. She felt vulnerable in ways that she had never felt vulnerable. As if this word could be riven from her, and everything she knew, thought or felt could be sucked out of it, leaving her with
nothing
.

She spoke it to herself, again and again, as if repetition made it more familiar. Or as if it made it
hers
.

But if this was what Nightshade had felt, if this was what the Lord of the West March had felt, she wondered how they could have given her what they had: how they could surrender their names to her keeping. And decided that Barrani acting lessons? She wanted them.

Easy to think of those things. Easy to think of Marcus, and his Leontine ability to be utterly himself. He wouldn’t need a name, and even if he had one, it wouldn’t make a difference; he couldn’t be anything other than Marcus.

Easy, as well, to think of the Hawklord, his wings spread, his feet upon the ground. To think of his name, which wasn’t a name, and to feel it profoundly as if it had the same meaning.

She was Kaylin. She was Elianne. They had been her identity long before she’d taken the word that was supposed to define her and give her life, and she suddenly found that the syllables of her name – her two names – replaced the ones that she had taken. She spoke these, or felt them, not as magical things, but as something more profound. Herself.

Her true self.

If she didn’t understand the whole of that self, if that self changed – and it might, given it had once – it didn’t matter. What she was
now
, at this minute, was in those two words.

The darkness parted.

She wasn’t spit out; she didn’t get dizzy; she wasn’t disoriented; she felt it open, and then saw it open, as if it were a great curtain in which she’d been entangled. And she saw, as it opened, that Severn, Andellen, and Samaran were standing beside her; they were ashen. The light from Andellen’s hand had banked. “I will not follow you here again,” he told her gravely. His breath fell like mist from his mouth, although it wasn’t cold here.

“I won’t ask it.” She meant it.

Samaran said nothing.

Severn shook his head once, as if to clear it, and looked up; his hands were on his chain, and his knuckles were white. But she knew that if she had to come here again, he would follow. And she knew, as well, that she would let him.

She turned from them, and looked into darkness.

“Andellen?”

“I do not know if light will come here.”

“Try?”

He nodded, gathering himself as Severn had done. His sword was in his hand. She could see that, and wondered how.

But in his other hand, light did come. It hovered above the hand, rather than trailing away, as if the hand itself were a torch.

“Still not a mage?” she asked him softly.

He raised a brow but said nothing further.

They were standing in a cavern. Or half a cavern. It was bisected in the middle by something that looked like a dark gap. One that went down a long way. There was, however, a bridge. If, by bridge, one meant an outcropping of slender rock that had no guardrail, and looked like it might collapse if enough weight passed over it.

She nodded. They began to walk toward the bridge, and out of the chasm, mist rose in response, growling and snarling with familiar hunger. Voices, she thought, contained there. The mist had form and some substance; as they approached, it seemed to solidify. But it remained dark and ghostly.