The Chronicles of Elantra 6 - Cast in Chaos (13 page)

Kaylin!

She tensed, grinding her teeth as she felt something sharp cut the back of her left calf. She heard roaring; the growling had clearly escalated into something that could handle primal rage. Dragon roars were just as loud, but far less threatening.

She saw the wavering shape of this hole in the middle of nothing begin to collapse, and although she wasn’t close enough to make a clean leap through what was left of it, she tried anyway.
Nightshade—

She felt his curse; he didn’t speak. But more than that? She felt the mark on her cheek begin to burn. She felt the hairs on the back of her neck straighten as if they were made of fine quills, and she felt the inside of her thighs and her arms almost freeze in sudden protest.

Magic. His magic. The momentum the ground and her own legs couldn’t give her, his power could. She cleared what was left of the dwindling rent in space, her arms and right shoulder hitting his chest and driving them both back. His own arms fell instantly; he grabbed hold of her, and he pulled.

Which was good, because something began to pull from the other side. She could feel it grab her legs, and the wound in her calf ached and burned with the unexpected solidity of its grip. She didn’t want to lose her leg.

But she knew that Nightshade didn’t care if it was
only
her leg that was lost; she could feel the thought, absent words to shape or form it. All that mattered now was that she remain here, with him. He lifted his face; she felt his chin rise, although hers was pretty much plastered to the front of his robes. She could almost see what he saw: the small gap in space, through which her legs had yet to emerge, and the edges of the place she was trying so hard to escape. Closing her eyes didn’t help; the sudden disorientation, the unwelcome glimpse of Barrani vision and Barrani sight, made her head and her stomach do the same hideously unpleasant lurch that Castle Nightshade’s portal did.

But even as she began to spin into the nausea of portal passage, she saw what now existed on the other side of the rapidly shrinking tear: darkness, broken by stars and the borealis of a foreign sky. And in it, some shape that was not shadow as she understood it; it was far too solid, far too real, for that. She could see no eyes, no mouth, nothing that made it look like the monsters of her nightmares—but in the lack of those things, she thought the darkest of nightmares lay waiting. And it needed no form, no face, no pathetic rendering of
shape
to devour.

No, it just needed her damn legs.

I am sorry, Kaylin,
she heard Nightshade say. Knew that he meant to cut those legs off at midcalf. Knew, as well, that she couldn’t allow it—how could she be a Hawk without legs? How could she patrol, how could she run, how could she do the only things that defined her? She cried out in anger and fear and even the darkness on the other side of life—which was death, all death—didn’t look so bad.

But she was spinning, disoriented, even while clinging so tightly to him that her hands crushed the fabric of his shirt and his hair. She kicked, struggling to pull herself free. His magic enveloped her, and she felt his desire to preserve her life over what her life
meant
to her, and she spoke a single word of denial.

It was not, however, an Elantran word. It wasn’t a Barrani word. It wasn’t Leontine, or Aerian or Dragon, the last of which would have been impossible anyway. It was a true word.

And true words, she discovered, like true names, had power.

She heard, for the first time, something rise out of the roar at her back that sounded like language. It had syllables, the shape and texture of words, the small dips and rises in tone; it had the elements of voice, which had always been important to Kaylin. It had the force of will behind it, a force just as visceral as hunger or desire—she knew, because it had those, too.

What it didn’t have, what she couldn’t hear, were actual
words,
and she was grateful for it. She spoke again, and this time—this time she heard Nightshade raise a cry of alarm; she felt his arms slide away from her as if she could no longer be safely held.

But for a minute more of her weight was on the right damn side of the portal. She kicked, and fell free. It would have helped if there had been anything to land on.

“Kaylin.”

She pushed herself up off the ground, and saw, as she opened her eyes a crack, that she was looking at gleaming, polished marble. She wanted to heave, she really did. Which was not outside of the norm, because she recognized this room: it was the foyer that graced Castle Nightshade. She had never arrived through the front door feeling human.

This time, she hadn’t even bothered with the portal.

Nightshade was considerate, as always; he waited until she could lever herself off the ground and stand—very shakily—on her own two feet. He hadn’t, however, dimmed the damn lights, and they stabbed her vision in a very unpleasant way. She exchanged a few words of Leontine with their bleeding bright haloes; they didn’t respond.

“Kaylin,” Nightshade said, when the last of the syllables had stopped echoing.

She looked up. His eyes were a shade of green that was almost, but not quite, blue. This was about as safe as he ever got. Waiting until the last of the nausea subsided would mean she’d be silent for another hour. Keeping her head very still, she said, “Thank you.”

He raised a dark brow, and offered her the briefest of smiles. It didn’t really reach his eyes. “I admit,” he said quietly, “that I was surprised.”

“That I called you?”

“Ah, no. That you have not, since the fief of Tiamaris was founded, returned to Nightshade. One would think it was almost deliberate.”

The problem with portals, and with Castle Nightshade’s portal in particular, was that she arrived feeling like she’d mixed alcohol on an all-night drinking binge. It wasn’t the best state of mind in which to have a conversation with her friends; it was a dangerous state of mind in which to have a conversation with the fieflord whose mark she bore. “It was deliberate,” she told him, because she knew he knew it anyway.

“May I ask why?”

She stopped herself from shrugging, and then met his eyes for a second time. “Do you mind if I sit down?”

“No. Forgive my lack of hospitality. Let us repair to a more useful set of rooms.” He hesitated, and then added, “Take my arm.”

“Pardon?”

“My arm, Kaylin. The Castle will be slightly more difficult for you to traverse at the moment than is the norm.”

Given what the Castle was normally like, this said something. He offered Kaylin his arm, in High Court style, and she placed her hand on it. It was difficult not to also place a large part of her weight on it. She made the effort. “Why will it be harder?” She asked, because it gave her something to focus on that wasn’t her nausea or his nearness, both of which were difficult for entirely different reasons.

He ignored her question as he led her along a hallway that seemed familiar.

They stepped through doors into the safety of a very large, and as usual, sparsely, but finely, furnished room. Only when the doors closed did Kaylin release his arm and step away. While the halls seemed to expand or collapse with no warning and no rhyme or reason, she had never seen the rooms change around her.

She made her way to the long couch, and sat heavily on cushions that were that little bit too soft. Nightshade remained standing. He had the decency not to offer her either food or drink. Her cheek was warm; the rest of her skin felt cold.

“How did I travel through the portal? Did you carry me?”

“No.”

“Did I walk?”

“No.”

Are we going to play twenty bloody questions while my head pounds and I want to throw up?

She didn’t say the last out loud. It didn’t make much difference; his smile was very chilly when he offered it.

“You dislike the portal of Castle Nightshade. I would have thought, given how deep that dislike is, that you might recognize it when you see it.”

“Oh, I do.” She paused as her thoughts, such as they were, caught up with her mouth.

“You were standing
in
the portal when you found me.”

Very good.

She closed her eyes. It helped, a little. Portal travel was bad enough to make her queasy—or worse—but it usually passed a lot faster. At the moment she wanted to fall over onto her side and curl her knees into her chest. Maybe sleep a little. Instead, she was having a conversation with Lord Nightshade.

“I was at Evanton’s,” she said, speaking slowly and clearly. “I walked into his Garden. Or I thought I walked into his Garden. But it wasn’t. It looked the same. It wasn’t the same.”

He nodded.

“So I tried to leave it. I ended up…nowhere. I could see his shop—but I couldn’t reach it. And eventually, I couldn’t see it, either.”

“That is when you…called me?”

She nodded. “You know where I was.” Not a question.

“I have some suspicion. Don’t rearrange your face in that expression. I am a Barrani Lord, Kaylin. I am not more, or other.”

“What was chasing me?”

He said nothing.

“Nightshade—”

“I have no definitive answer for you. I will not condescend to pointless conjecture.” He wasn’t quite lying; he was certainly not telling the truth. Which was about as much as anyone sane could expect from the Barrani, although given the turn the afternoon had taken, Kaylin wasn’t certain she qualified as sane. “But I could not find you by conventional means. I chose a…less conventional approach, through the Castle’s portal. It would not be an approach open to many. Perhaps the High Lord, or another fieflord—but only if you held their name.”

She opened her eyes. “What happened in Evanton’s store?”

“The Keeper’s domain is bound by many, many magics. Most of those are older than any known Empire. I cannot say for certain what happened. You might wish to speak with him, but I am not sure he will be able to enlighten you. May I suggest, for the duration of the current crisis, that you avoid wandering in his shop when he is not actively present?”

She grimaced, and then her eyes narrowed. “Current crisis?”

“I believe you are suffering from rains of blood, among other difficulties.” He raised a brow. “Come, Kaylin. You did not honestly think a difficulty of that magnitude would stay across the Ablayne?”

“I wasn’t thinking about it much at all. It’s not fief business.”

“Not yet, no. But I believe that your difficulty in the city and the difficulty you encountered in the Keeper’s abode are linked. “Remain here. I will return with food and water, now that you are somewhat more settled.”

Kaylin drifted off while Nightshade was absent. The room was quiet, the couch too comfortable. She was cold, here, and there were no convenient throws that she wanted to touch; she felt too damn grubby, and even at its simplest, Castle Nightshade was out of her league. But her stomach had settled enough that the complaints it now issued were the usual ones. She
was
hungry, damn it.

Nightshade had implied that he’d had to go to the portal to find her. Which said something about the portal. One of the many things it said? Entering it at the moment was probably not a great idea, so leaving might prove difficult.

But one of the other things it implied was that the portal existed in an entirely different space than the rest of the Castle. Or at least the rest of the fief. She turned that one over for a few minutes. What did she know about the Castle, after all? Its well, if you fell all the way down to the bottom and miraculously survived, contained a cavern with a vast lake that the Elemental Water could actually reach out and touch; its basement contained a literal forest of trees that seemed sentient—certainly more sentient than the Hawks when they’d been out drinking all night and had work the next day; somewhere beyond that forest, there was a huge cavern that was covered in runes that were very similar to the ones that adorned half of her skin.

She grimaced. What else?

There was a throne room. She’d seen it once. It contained statues of almost every living race in the Empire, and when Nightshade desired it, those statues came to life. Were, in fact, in some way, always alive. He’d said he used the power of the Castle to create them, but made it clear that he had started from flesh. But…how? How had he used that power? What had he told it to
do?

She stood, found that her knees no longer wobbled, and began to pace in a rectangle around the low table.

What
was
the Castle, at heart? It was not the Tower of Barren. Or rather, of Tiamaris. It didn’t speak, or think, or plan, or love.

Or did it?

“No,” was the quiet reply.

CHAPTER 8

Nightshade stood in the open doors, a tray in his hands. Or rather, between the open palms he held to either side. She hesitated, and then walked quickly over to where he stood and lifted the tray the normal way. Watching the Lord of the fief play servant
always
unsettled her.

He raised a dark brow; his eyes were still the shade that exists just before emerald falls into sapphire. His hair, unbound, draped across both shoulders; his skin was pale. The tray shook in her hands; she looked at what was on it. Water, or a liquid just as clear and colorless, fruit, cut cheese, meat. No bread. She carried the tray to the table. He followed in silence.

She was always aware of where, in a room, Nightshade was. It might have been because of the mark; it might have been because she knew his true name. But she thought she’d have been just as aware if she’d had neither. Even his silences demanded attention. She could more easily ignore the Dragon Lords whose company she kept than the Lord of Nightshade.

He knew. It amused him. Which annoyed her. “Why doesn’t Castle Nightshade speak?” she asked, veering away from both annoyance and compulsion.

“I think you know the answer to that better than I.”

Clearly, if she were interested in forcing the conversation into safer channels, she was going to have to carry most of it. “You were there. You were there when the Tower of—of Tiamaris—woke.”