Cast in Honor (The Chronicles of Elantra) (33 page)

“The Keeper’s Garden has proved unassailable without internal aid.”

“But—”

“Come. I have seen death, and loss, and it is fresh in me because it is part of me. The greater part of me that sought to preserve you was most tightly wed to the
Tha’alaan
—but that is not all that I am. We must find your bodies. We must find your stones.”

Kaylin frowned. “The stones in the Keeper’s Garden are meant to contain the elements?”

The water said, “Yes, and no. While we retain a thread of attachment to ancient vows and containments, we
will not
harm him if he stands thus.”

It was, Kaylin thought, a variant of Ybelline’s protective barrier.

“Why stones?”

“I do not understand the question.”

“Why four stones?”

“They are not precisely stone. But they are anchors, Kaylin. They are the heart of an ancient vow. While they stand, the Keeper stands. While they stand, the attachment to world and time and your kind also remain.”

“And he needs the anchor.”

“The world as you exist in it requires them. The lack of those anchors will not harm us, and it will not destroy us; it will destroy some small part of what we are.”

“And the Arcanist needs anchors.” She spoke the words slowly, as if testing them.

* * *

“There is a problem,” the Arkon said, from the top of the stairs.

Of course there was.

“What is it?”

“There seems to be no house.”

“You expected that.” It wasn’t a question.

“In some fashion, yes. Mandoran?” To Kaylin’s surprise, the Arkon’s tone implied that he considered Mandoran a
peer
.

The Barrani hesitated. It was Annarion who said, “The inside of the empty sphere that’s eating the city is not empty.”

Kaylin snorted. “What, exactly, is at the top of the stairs?”

Squawk. Squawk.

Gilbert’s many eyes widened. “I understand,” he said, voice grim. He pushed his way to the top of the stairs, and given the width of the stairs, this took time. “Chosen.” The single word was almost a command.

Kaylin would have followed anyway—because his many eyes had come to rest around her like a swarm, and they appeared to be attempting to adhere themselves, through cloth, to the runes on her skin. If she hadn’t been afraid of squashing them, she would have brushed them all off.

Mandoran caught her arm as she moved past him. “Teela’s voice is much, much clearer.”

“So...we’re probably where she is.”

“Yes. For some reason, this is pissing her off.”

“Can you
try
to use High Barrani?” Annarion said.

“Why? Kaylin never does. It’s about
communication
, brother.”

“Has she moved at all?” Kaylin said, hoping to stem the tide of a different kind of brotherly interaction.

“How did you guess?”

“If nothing’s broken, she hates to stay in one spot. Did she find Bellusdeo?”

“...No, sorry.” At Kaylin’s reply, he turned back to Annarion. “See? Completely colloquial.”

“She’s not Barrani.”

Mandoran shrugged. “Popular wisdom says neither am I.”

“Chosen,” Gilbert said, demanding attention that should never have been diverted. Kaylin made it the rest of the way up the stairs.

The elemental water reached out with a single hand. She said nothing, but Kaylin understood what the gesture meant. Before she had learned to hate the world, it had been one of hers. After she had learned that the world was not only pain, disgust and death, she had struggled to learn how to do it again. It was harder, the second time—but maybe it was just as necessary.

Without a word, Kaylin took the water’s hand. The water didn’t have the same trouble negotiating the cramped stairs that Kaylin—and everyone else—did; she simply followed by Kaylin’s side, as if she could walk on air. This was wrong, of course: she rose, the water on the ground her elongating pedestal.

* * *

There was no small hall. There was no parlor door. There was, however, a front door, if by door one meant a structure that looked as if it had literally been created by a four-year-old with a crazy assortment of chalk. Or fifty four-year-olds, all vying for the same few yards of space.

“Look ahead,” Gilbert warned. “Look
only
ahead.”

She could hear voices to her right and her left; they sounded like mortal voices. Elantran voices. She froze. She had seen her share of conflict; she knew what battle sounded like. There was fighting—and dying—to either side of this primitive stretch of ground. She turned to the right—or tried. The small dragon smacked the bridge of her nose with his head. Hard.

He followed it up with complaints. Since it was Kaylin whose eyes stung with the force of the blow, she felt this unfair.

“They are echoes. They are not real. Do not
make them
real.”

“How the hell do I make something
real?
”

“Obey Gilbert,” the Arkon said. His voice was a great deal louder than the voices to the right and the left. It came from behind; he might as well have picked her up and shaken her until her teeth rattled, because the syllables reverberated throughout her entire body. Even the eyes clinging to her shirt seemed to wince.

“Should you even be up here?”

“Someone has to keep an eye on these two,” he replied. “Do
not
look back.”

“He means us,” Mandoran said. Annarion, predictably, said nothing.

To the water, Kaylin said,
Can you look
?

Yes. But I understand what Gilbert fears; I consider his advice wise. You will not make things
real
, as he states—but you will be drawn to them; they will be like gravity, and you, like a person who has taken steps off a very high cliff. They are possibilities, Kaylin—but you exist in a world of constant possibility. To look—left or right—is the equivalent of making a decision, of acting on it, yes? The action decides the course you follow; reality asserts itself around that choice. Your reality.

But people are—

Dying. Yes. And they are being born. And they are loving. And hating. And weeping in sorrow or joy. They are pleading. They are screaming. They are singing. Those are the sounds of your lives.
She smiled as she spoke, but it was not a happy smile.

Kaylin nodded, exhaling. “We’re walking between possibilities.”

Yes
.

“And if we choose one, we’ll fall off
this
path.”

Yes.

Fine. It made sense, in a strange way. To the Barrani, Kaylin said, “Do you guys see a door ahead of us?”

“If you call that a door, yes.”

The Arkon’s magic made Kaylin’s skin itch. As they walked, itch transformed to pain. She didn’t ask him what spells he was attempting to cast, because she was certain he felt they were necessary, and his was the voice that counted here, according to the Hawklord. But she was very grateful Kattea was no longer with them, because Gilbert...was losing solidity as he walked.

No, not solidity, exactly—but form. The darkness of his silhouette spread and thinned, and as it did, she could see the moving squiggles of opalescent color she associated with chaos, and only with chaos.

The small dragon squawked loudly and then, to make a point, exhaled.

He exhaled a stream of silver that was flecked with the same opalescence. Kaylin froze, and because she had, the Arkon walked into the back of her feet. “Private?”

“My familiar just exhaled.”

“Yes, and?”

“I’ve seen that breath destroy Ferals from the inside out, and I’d rather not get a face full of it.”

Squawk. SQUAWK.

“I believe you have insulted your companion,” Gilbert said.

“Not intentionally.” She straightened her shoulders. “Fine. I apologize for my instinctive and very reasonable reaction.” She closed her eyes and continued to walk. The air smelled of wilderness and forest and...cinnamon. When she opened her eyes, the particulate mist had not cleared; if anything, it had thickened. But it didn’t sting her face or her eyes.

“Does this count as you helping me do something I can’t do on my own?” She knew the price he had demanded for it the last time she’d asked, and she was not any more willing to pay it now.

No
,
her familiar replied. She recognized his voice instantly, and felt both gratitude and fear. Any place in which she could hear his actual words was never a
good
place.
No, Kaylin, it does not. It is a variant of what your Arkon is attempting to do.

What, exactly, is he attempting to do?

Survive Gilbert.

Chapter 27

Survive
Gilbert
?

Look at him, Kaylin.

I’ve been looking at pretty much nothing else.
Given that his eyes were part of him, this was mostly true.

You have not
, the familiar said, with some exasperation,
seen him
.

She looked, and she saw it now: Gilbert was Shadow. Gilbert was darkness.

The halls beneath the city had reminded Kaylin of the High Halls because the ceilings were so tall.

Gilbert filled them. Not only in height, she saw that now, but in width. He was a moving cloud—a dense cloud, but one that implied spaces and gaps. His eyes were part of that; they weren’t, as they had appeared on first—or fiftieth—glance, separate. They existed on the end of shadow tendrils, and they moved around Gilbert as if he were some kind of Shadow octopus, but with more tentacles.

She had no idea
how
he had carried Kattea on his shoulder or in his arms, because she couldn’t see that he actually
had
either of those things.

Had she been standing on the border of Tiamaris, she would have tried to kill him.

No, actually, she would have accepted that she
couldn’t
, and she would have retreated, a fancy word for “run for her life.” She felt a moment of very visceral fear, but the fear was double-edged. The expected fear—of Gilbert—she accepted. She had no choice; it was there, rooted deeply by every other experience of Shadow she had ever had. But the unexpected fear, that
maybe
those other Shadows
had been
like Gilbert, and she had done her level best to kill them—that one was new.

And hadn’t she feared—and hated—the Tha’alani in exactly the same way? Hadn’t she viscerally, forcefully, made this clear
every single time
she mentioned them?

And hadn’t she been wrong—so very, very wrong—in the end? But she hadn’t
killed
the Tha’alani. She’d hated them, but she’d never killed them.

Shadows, she’d killed.

Yes
.

Was I wrong?

Kaylin, it doesn’t matter. If Gilbert—for reasons of his own—attempted to kill you now, and you stood still and reasoned with him, you would die. The Shadows may have their reasons; they may have motivations that you could—with effort—understand. But they would devour you whole if you did not flee or destroy them. You faced the Devourer.

I didn’t hate him, though.

It doesn’t matter. Hate him, not hate him, he would have destroyed not only this city, but the world in which it is situated. Sometimes motivation doesn’t matter when survival is immediately at stake.

Gilbert’s eyes glared pointedly at her. “What?” she demanded. “I’m still moving!”

She was, but it was hard. The badly drawn door didn’t seem to be getting any
closer
.

“Gilbert,” she said, to take her mind off the multiple fears that were all screaming for attention she really didn’t want to give them, “you said it was your job to fix time, right?”

“A vast simplification, but yes. Why?”

“How do you
know
when it’s broken?”

He stared at her, or rather, his eyes did. At this point, he was dark enough, amorphous enough, that she had no sense of which direction he was facing, and had to take it on faith that it was forward. “Ask the water, Kaylin. The water feared that I would destroy it.”

The water was easier to talk to, in all ways, than Gilbert.
Do you understand it?

Yes. I hold the
Tha’alaan
within me, but it is not the whole of what I am. When I returned, some part of me was not bound by the Keeper and his Garden. The Garden is gone.

But—the world exists
because
of the Garden.

Yes, Kaylin. Yes, and no, as you must now understand. The fiefs exist because the Towers could contain those living within their boundaries. But the fiefs of Kattea’s experience are dangerously unstable. She has not spoken of all of it; I am not sure she is even aware of the differences, although she will grow to be so. There are four stones in the Garden.

Yes.

There are
five
cages, in your time.

The Devourer.

Yes, Kaylin. But he, too, is not what he was. He has heard our voices, and Evanton’s voice. He sleeps. When he wakes—and he will wake—the Towers will not be proof against him. It was always, and only, a matter of time for the small pocket of your world that remains. For Kattea and her kin. For the Barrani.
She hesitated.
The worlds the Devourer destroyed were all part of your world, in some fashion.

Kaylin’s head began to hurt.

The way in which they were connected is
through
time. But time, for many beings, is flexible. It can be manipulated. Such manipulations are not guaranteed to destroy. Think of creation as a vast plane. It seems endless. It
is
endless. You cannot see its beginning; you cannot see its end. You can dig. You can build. You may build a city. A country.

But you cannot take the whole of the plane and fold it.

...

The Keeper’s Garden is built on a foundation of elements and emptiness. Out of this, the natural order arises in this world.

Other worlds have different—

Yes, of course.

Even the ones that are part of that plane?

Yes, of course. When the plane is folded, it wakes—or once woke—Gilbert and his kin. He flattens it. It is what he does. He can see the plane as it extends through layers of time—but each layer must be distinct, its own. The layers do not contain him; he can pass between them, at need.

If the perturbation is concise, distinct, if it does not materially alter the shape of the plane, it is possible to ignore or overlook. Or to miss. But that is not, I think, what occurred here. What occurred here did not fold the plane—my appearance
did
.

What occurred here?
Kaylin paused. Stopped. Thought about three non-corpses, three stones which must have been meant as anchors, and Arcanists. She hated Arcanists. The familiar—still in his most common form—bit her ear. Clearly, this was not the time for ranting, even if she kept it to herself.

“They didn’t fold the plane,” she said aloud, which probably caused some confusion to everyone who wasn’t the elemental water. “They just cut a chunk out of it. Or they tried to cut a chunk out of it—and they’re trying to anchor it, somehow. The chunk.”

“Yes,” Gilbert replied. “That is what I believe occurred. I do not know the
reason
for the attempt. Perhaps it is not about immortality as you define it. Perhaps it is...more.”

“What was this building
supposed
to do? Do you even know?”

The Arkon said, “I think that largely irrelevant.”

“But if we know what it was supposed to do, if we understand how it was supposed to work—”

“Private, your grasp of subtlety is nonexistent. It is almost a negative. When I say
irrelevant
, what I mean is
forbidden
.”

“Forbidden?” Mandoran asked, voice cooler.

“By Imperial Decree.”

“You’re the Emperor now, are you?”

“I am the keeper of the archives; things ancient within the boundaries of the city are my responsibility, by
Imperial Decree
.”

Gilbert said, as if the Arkon had not spoken, “We have assumed this is a matter of time. I do not believe this is necessarily accurate, given the lack of overall disturbance. But there are other factors involved in this plane you call your world. There are actions the Ancients could take that you cannot take. You are Chosen, but you are confined, in all ways, by the limits of your state.

“The Ancients were not.
I
am not. You see me, now, as I am—but you cannot see all of me. Nothing I could do to you would permit it. Mandoran and Annarion can see more—but it is that ability that makes their existence so tenuous in your world. They are trying...to invert themselves. Do you understand?”

“You mean—invert themselves the way you inverted yourself to talk to Nightshade?”

“Yes.”

“Uh, that’s not how we see it,” Mandoran cut in.

“No?” The eyes—even the ones on Kaylin’s arms—swiveled to try to get a glimpse of Mandoran.

“Definitely not.”

But Kaylin said, “Do you think that someone like me—or Teela, or the Arkon—is trying to invert themselves in the opposite direction?”

“I fear that is very much the case. I do not know how Annarion or Mandoran came to be who, or what, they are, but it is not, in my opinion, something that you could survive. Not even as Chosen.”

“So...the person who did this is probably dead, and we’re left with the disaster?”

“I do not know. I do not know who did this. I can make guesses as to why—but it is my supposition that they sought to be free of all confines.”

“Which means?”

Mandoran snorted in derision. “They wanted to be gods.”

Kaylin, looking at the eyes on her shirtsleeve and the swirling Shadow tendrils that seemed to be the whole of what Gilbert now was, said, “I bet it’s overrated.”

“I don’t know. We’re not gods. We have trouble being whatever it is we now are. Gilbert?”

“Yes.”

“The door’s not getting any closer.”

“No. No, it is not. Please brace yourselves.”

The Arkon grunted.

The familiar said something in a language Kaylin didn’t recognize. The meaning, however, was plain.
Just use Leontine
, she told him.
That’s what the rest of us do.

It does not come to me as naturally.
Forgive me any pain I cause you.

* * *

Kaylin had time to brace herself, but only barely. Many things seemed to happen in a frenzied rush, but they were each distinct enough that she could catalog them.

First: the water
roared
. The sound was similar to Dragon roaring, but it resonated in a different way. Possibly because the water was in her ears. Literally. The Avatar lost form and shape as it rushed up Kaylin’s arm to surround her in a moving pillar. Kaylin didn’t even have time to hold her breath.

Second: Gilbert reached for the door. He reached with a multitude of tendrils, each of which ended in an eye. Kaylin could see the eyes dissolve, and wasn’t squeamish enough—barely—to look away or close her own. It was as if the door was exactly what it appeared to be: a chalk drawing on cobbled stone. Flat and unreal.

Gilbert’s eyes were crushed; Kaylin swore she could hear them squelching.

Third: the door
moved
. Under the locomotion of tentacles of creeping Shadow, it moved—directly toward where Kaylin now stood.
Protect the Arkon!
she thought desperately to the elemental water.

The water expanded. It expanded to encompass him, just as the door hit with the force of an Arcane bomb.

* * *

Kaylin was very, very,
very
grateful that Severn had chosen to remain with Kattea—because if he hadn’t, Kattea would be here. She would be at the heart of the explosion, because that was where Gilbert was.

She would be at the very center of the expanding wave of something that was like Shadow, but paler, brighter and harsher. Water streamed away, as if the column that had protected Kaylin from the impact was wounded badly. Kaylin’s arms were glowing a brilliant gold. She hadn’t released the water’s hand; her own still clutched it as if it were still in that form.

She instinctively tried to heal the water.

The familiar squealed in her ear. He didn’t speak, but clearly she was about to be so stupid she didn’t deserve actual words. She cursed him in gurgling Leontine and held on to the water as if her life depended on it.

“Remind me,” the Arkon said, his voice very watery, “that I am never to be involved with one of your excursions again. It makes me angry.”

For once, Dragon anger was not the biggest threat in the room. And
room
was entirely the wrong word for it. It was a space, yes—but it wasn’t confined by walls or ceiling, or even a visible floor. Nor was it empty.

Kaylin
, the familiar said.
Close your eyes. Now.
Before she could—and honestly, closing her own eyes should have been simple—he reached around her face with his wings and covered them.

The wings did not instantly ease the pressure of sight. Around her in a swirl of motion were faces, bodies, crowds; she could not pick out a single person because they moved so quickly that they were a blur. But even as a blur, she could recognize basic shape, basic form. She could see wings, eyes, skin color, limbs—even fur. She could gain a basic sense of height, of age; she could
hear
a plethora of voices, some raised, some muted.

And she realized that this was what had existed to either side of the strange corridor they had been walking. She had been told not to look. She wondered if looking now would have the same effect as turning would have had then; it would be so easy to be lost here.

But the water was in her hands, the familiar on her shoulder, the sound of an extremely disgruntled Dragon at her back. Something touched her gently—gently enough, carefully enough, that she didn’t react violently.

“Kitling.”

“Teela!” She turned then. Or she tried to turn. The small dragon’s wings were
incredibly
strong; she couldn’t move her head.

Mandoran cursed. In Leontine. “Grab Tain!” he shouted. Kaylin could hear his voice so clearly that the sound of the moving throng—the continually moving, dizzying crowd—was almost silent. She clung to the sound of his voice.

“I can’t— He can’t
hear me
!” Annarion’s voice.

Kaylin was suddenly very, very afraid for Bellusdeo and Sanabalis. Because she suddenly understood that they must be here, as well.

Kaylin, close your eyes.

Bellusdeo and Sanabalis were here, among the hundreds. The thousands. The tens of thousands, even. They were here in every second of the whole stretch of their lives, compressed and overlapping. She had the sickening sense that she had to grab them. But she could only grab one of them, one each, and there were
too many
.