Cast in Sorrow

Chapter 13

“How are we going to get to the heart of the green by walking in long caves?”

They both stared at her for that little bit too long.

“Does the Lord of the West March know where we’re going?”

“Given the events of this evening, he will.” Gaedin started to walk.

Serian, however, knelt in front of Kaylin. “Get on my back. I will disgrace my family for the next century—in the best case—if you don’t.”

Kaylin climbed on. “How?”

“I’ll knock you out and carry you.”

“Are you allowed to knock the harmoniste out?”

“I believe intent counts.”

“We do not, however, wish to test that theory.” Gaedin’s voice was clipped. The tunnel branched ten yards ahead; he chose the path to the right, moving at a fast jog. Serian, encumbered by Kaylin, paced him.

“I thought the green would be—I don’t know. Grass. Trees.”

“You were not wrong. But the routes to the heart of the green are many; some are ancient.”

“Tunnels?”

“They weren’t carved by my kin,” Serian replied. “They were carved by underground rivers. These tunnels are ancient. They existed before we arrived in the West March. They will exist long after we are gone.”

“Do they exist beneath all the buildings in the West March?”

“They are seldom carefully explored.” The tone of her voice made clear this was all the answer Kaylin’s question was going to get; to underline that, she’d switched to High Barrani. “But it is difficult to reach the tunnels, which is why—in emergencies—they are used. There are reputed to be many entrances; there is only one exit.”

“And if we’re trapped here by the Ferals?”

She shook her head. “The Ferals—as you call them—will find no way to enter these tunnels. There is, however, a danger that we will not be able to leave.”

“And that?”

“The judgment of the green.”

“The judgment of the green?”

“There is a reason the tunnels are generally considered safe. A risk is always taken when one chooses to enter them.”

“Could I find them, if you weren’t here?”

“It is our belief that you could not—but you wear the blood of the green. It is possible that the heart of the green would allow it.”

“And the small dragon?”

Serian said nothing. The dragon squawked.

Kaylin didn’t like dark enclosed spaces. She particularly disliked the way those spaces narrowed without warning—and with no guarantee they would widen again. During these stretches, Serian would set her down; Gaedin couldn’t move through them quickly, so Kaylin’s hobbling had no consequences.

She was afraid to speak to Nightshade, Lirienne or Severn. Even Ynpharion’s sullen and unending rage had banked; there was no time for hating on Kaylin when he was fighting for his life. Humiliation at her existence wasn’t enough to make him give up.

“Serian,” she said, when they had scraped their way through a gap that would have made a small child squeamish. “No one talks about the lost children. Do you know their names?”

Silence.

“Serian?”

“Yes. Only one is spoken.”

“Teela.”

Serian nodded. She slowed as Gaedin stopped; the tunnel had once again branched.

“If there’s only one way out, why does the tunnel branch? This isn’t the first time.”

“There is only one way out,” Gaedin replied. “There is no guarantee that we will reach it. The tunnels are a test.”

“Like the test of name.”

“Entirely unlike the test of name,” was his curt reply. “We are the people of the green. It is expected that we will be able to find our way to its heart.”

“And if we can’t?”

“We will die here.”

“Does every citizen of the green have to take this test?”

Silence.

“Is there any Barrani culture that doesn’t involve tests where failure is death?”

“It would hardly be a test,” Serian replied, “if failure had no consequences.”

Barrani. “Is there anyone, anywhere, who would tell me the names of the other eleven children?”

Gaedin and Serian exchanged a glance. “There is almost no one you would not offend were you to ask,” Serian finally replied. “Do not ask Lord Avonelle. Do not ask Lord Evarrim. Do not—”

“A list of people I could ask would be more useful.”

“You could, in my opinion, ask An’Teela.”

“She won’t answer.”

“Yes. But she will also refrain from plotting your death.”

“She trusts me to get myself killed,” Kaylin replied.

“I begin to understand why. The lost children are not mentioned because even mention draws attention. They have no names, Lord Kaylin. Your kind is accustomed to this. You have no names. Your life—and your death—your freedom and the coercion you face from the more powerful, are not a matter of name. Even if you believe in souls, as so many humans do, your souls are not controlled and contested in the same way; at the heart of all your stories is choice, and the folly of choice.”

“Serian.” Gaedin’s voice was weary.

“You are not certain?”

“No.” He stepped back.

“Not certain about what?” Kaylin asked, as Serian set her down. The small dragon squawked. “The direction to take?”

They exchanged another glance, which was distinctly more familiar to Kaylin, she’d seen it in the Halls so often.

“You are wearing the blood of the green,” Gaedin finally said. “I believe the choice of path must be yours.”

“How did you choose so far?”

He didn’t answer.

She turned to Serian. “You’ve done this before. You’ve both done this before.”

“Yes. But the path alters, Lord Kaylin. It is not—it is never—the same. It is taken when the alternatives are more immediately dire.”

“And have people been lost here? I mean, people you actually knew?”

Gaedin said nothing. Serian, however, said, “Three. One does not seek the protection of the green for trivialities.”

“So—we could just take a wrong turn and never find our way out?”

“Indeed.”

“So we could have already taken a wrong turn?”

“Yes.” Gaedin exhaled and added, “We have not, yet.”

“How do you know?”

“I know. This juncture, however, is not clear to me. It is not, before you ask, clear to Serian, either.”

And it was supposed to be clear to Kaylin? There wasn’t much in the way of signs. There were no distinguishing marks on the floor or walls that gave any clues.

Lord Kaylin, kyuthe, where are you?

Apparently? In a maze of tunnels. You’re safe?

She felt amusement, anger, and the sharp tang of grief. No. We are not yet done. You were correct; your rooms were not safe.

Where are the eagles?

The dreams of Alsanis are with the Consort.

Kaylin froze. She isn’t with you?

No. She felt his fear, and the deepening of his fury, and she fell silent. She was safe. Days would turn safety into a slow death by starvation if they made the wrong choice here, but safety was like that, in the end. There was no certain safety. Kaylin, of all people, should know that.

She couldn’t touch the Consort the way she could her brother. She couldn’t know—because he didn’t—whether or not the Consort was safe.

She did know that Terrano had been willing to allow the Barrani to pass if they left the Consort to him. Did he want to destroy his former people? Did he want something else from the Consort?

And if he did—

“Right,” she said. She pushed past Gaedin, her ankle throbbing, her visceral fear greater than pain. The ankle wasn’t broken. “Go right.”

Give the Barrani this, they didn’t question her. Having dumped the responsibility squarely in her lap, they followed. She couldn’t tell them what she now feared, in part because she was afraid to name it herself, and in part because she’d have to explain how she knew.

But it was fear in the driver’s seat. Fear, and a sense of helplessness. She couldn’t find the Consort, she couldn’t help her, if she was trapped beneath the ground in a series of stupid and unpredictable tunnels. She didn’t doubt what Gaedin and Serian had told her: there was only one right way, only one true path.

Standing and staring in the near dark while waiting, while knowing—and she touched Nightshade, she touched Lirienne, she even borrowed Ynpharion’s viewpoint—that there might still be time, that there might be something she could do was impossible. She couldn’t do anything from these tunnels. The possibility of being trapped here with no way out became vastly less terrifying, because by the time they were certain they couldn’t leave, it would be way too late.

Speed was of the essence.

Waiting, trying to make the right choice just guaranteed that making the right choice would also be pointless. It would be too late.

She cursed her ankle, and stopped. She couldn’t hobble like this, and she couldn’t depend on Serian’s strength to see her through—not when she had other options. The small dragon squawked.

“I know, I know—I’m going as fast as I can.” But she wasn’t. She inhaled, exhaled, and then looked at her foot—from the inside. From the same mental space she occupied when she healed anyone else. Her body hadn’t been born with a bad ankle; in a few weeks, it would be as good as new. Probably.

But she didn’t have to wait a few weeks. She almost never healed herself. Why? Why was that?

It didn’t matter. Barrani didn’t like to be healed because too much was revealed in the process, but Kaylin was herself. What was there to see that she didn’t already know?

The glyphs on her arms and legs began to warm, but it wasn’t the heated pain that proximity to magic caused, and the heat, instead of scorching, soothed. It sank beneath her skin—maybe because she let it—and traveled down her limbs, settling at last in the ankle she could suddenly feel. She was used to thinking of this as “sight,” although she did it with her eyes closed. But she could sense the torn ligaments, the stretched muscles, and the bruising; she knew what parts of the ankle made walking painful, and she knew how to change the shape of those things, channeling warmth and heat and magic into the shape of what it would become with time and rest.

Rest. Hah.

She stepped, firmly, on the ankle. It held her weight without a twinge. Beyond that, she didn’t think; she began to move, and the Barrani followed in silence. If Serian had questions about her previous injury, she kept them to herself.

Gaedin’s light was steady; it illuminated the tunnel in front of Kaylin, and it didn’t bobble or waver as he ran. She came to two more junctions; she jogged right at the first and left at the second. It was arbitrary; she didn’t feel that one way was the right way, and one wrong. The dragon made the occasional noise, but settled into a more relaxed sprawl on her shoulders. It shouldn’t have brought comfort, but it did.

When they exited the tunnels, she’d expected to feel relief. And she did, but it lasted a handful of seconds. As tunnels sometimes did—at least in story—these ended in a large cavern. The height couldn’t be seen; the light that had served to make a run through the tunnels safe didn’t reach that far.

Serian touched her arm and drew her around. “You have never entered this maze,” she said, voice low, breath completely even. “This is where we must be, Lord Kaylin. You’ve done well.”

“It’s a cavern,” was her flat reply. She’d been jogging along the wall, heading right, and there was no sign of any other tunnels. It was like a giant dead end, unless there were stairs somewhere beyond the periphery of her vision.

Gaedin surprised Kaylin; he chuckled. “It is,” he told her, “and it is not. The walls will tell you nothing; it is now the center that we want.” He took the lead, drawing the light away and forcing Kaylin to follow; he moved quickly.

Kaylin, after the first stubbed toe, was grateful for his speed.

In the center of the cavern were two things that were immediately obvious. The first was the bottom end of a tree, or what Kaylin assumed was the bottom; there were roots. There were a lot of roots. As she’d spent a week stubbing her toes or tripping over smaller versions of the same, she recognized them.

The second was a river. The tree was planted in the river, and the roots, anchored to stone on either side of its current. Water rushed over them, and it seemed to Kaylin, watching, that the river sloped down. She had no desire to jump in to see where it went. Instead, she glanced at her companions, and headed—with care—toward the widest part of the tree she could reach. Reaching involved a fair amount of climbing, but Kaylin was good at that, wide skirts and trailing sleeves notwithstanding.

The small dragon squawked. He batted her face with a wing. This time, Kaylin adjusted the angle of her face and looked through it. She saw a lot of bark. But the bark was faintly luminescent; Gaedin’s magical light had nothing to do with the uniform, silver glow. She continued to climb, letting her hands fall away from wing until she’d reached a stable slope; the dragon stretched his wing again when she came to a stop.

This time, she could see a more concentrated silver; it was to her left, and about six feet above where she was standing. The interweave of roots could just reach that light; it would certainly bring her close enough that she might be able to see its source. When she slid, Gaedin caught her and heaved her up, and she navigated footholds in the rough, but sloped root. There was dirt beneath her fingernails and in the creases of her palms; she didn’t even want to look at what was on the dress, but of the two—Kaylin or dress—she knew which was more important.

She didn’t even swear when she reached the source of the light and saw it was a ward. A door ward.

“I don’t have to bleed on this, do I?”

Silence. After a pause, Serian said, “on the tree?”

“On the ward.”

The glance that passed between the Barrani might as well have been a shout.

“You don’t see a ward here.” Kaylin’s voice was flat.

“No, Lord Kaylin. Do you recognize the rune?”

“Does it matter? It’s a ward.”

“In Elantra, the mortal view of wards has been adopted across the whole of your large and crowded city—but they are not the only use of wards, and indeed, not the first.”

Kaylin, who had lifted a palm in the usual hesitant way, lowered her hand. “What was the first use?”

“They were meant as containments,” Serian replied. “The wards served as warnings to those who might otherwise seek to use magic or to explore what lay beyond the ward itself. They sealed. They imprisoned.”

“You said this was where we needed to be.”

“Yes. But I also said that not everyone who enters the tunnels survives. These are old, Kaylin; it is beyond our ability to build what was built here. Only those who have encountered the traps and threats of the maze understand their dangers—but they have never emerged to share that knowledge. What do you see?”

“It’s a large ward. The center is where I assume my palm is supposed to go—but it’s larger than my hand.”

“Describe the rune, Chosen. Does it resemble the marks on your arms in any way?”

Did it? “I’m fairly certain it’s not one of the marks; it may be the same language. It’s more ornate than the door wards I’m used to; the ones I’m used to are very much like the wards in the Lord’s hall.”

“Yes, they would be.”

She reached for Lirienne and found—pain. She pulled back instantly. She reached for Nightshade and found darkness, movement, flitting impressions of hall and stone floor and sword.

She didn’t reach for Severn, because it wasn’t a word he would recognize, and she didn’t want to burden him with her fear. She was afraid.

Gaedin stepped around Kaylin with an ease that implied sloping, rounded trunks caused him no issue with balance. “Allow me, Lord Kaylin.”

Serian said nothing.

“You can’t even see it,” Kaylin said.

“No. But if it is activated by touch, and there is a risk associated with it, I am not wearing the blood of the green.” He raised an arm, and she knocked it aside. Serian caught her, because balance was an issue for Kaylin.

Gaedin lifted his arm again, and this time the small dragon launched himself at the Barrani man’s face.

“I don’t think he thinks it’s a good idea.” To no one’s surprise—or at least not Kaylin’s, the small dragon’s opinion was, of course, more relevant than hers. Gaedin lowered his arm.

His eyes narrowed, his perfect brow furrowed. He stared at the tree trunk as if he could force it, by dint of glaring, to surrender useful information. Kaylin’s arms were itching; she couldn’t see any visible magical effects, but he was using familiar magic. He bowed to her and stepped to one side. How he didn’t fall off, she didn’t know, and she tried not to resent it.

Kaylin raised her hand, grimaced, braced herself as she usually did when touching a door ward, and pressed her palm into the center of the ward.

The world exploded.

It was not the first time that Kaylin had stood at the center of a magical explosion. She had time to throw her arms over her face to protect her eyes as wood chips and bark flew.

None of them hit her arms. None of them hit her at all. She lowered her arms and looked immediately to her left; Gaedin was standing suspended in midair. The root upon which they’d found purchase was gone. So was the large, curving root on which Serian stood. But Serian still stood.

They were encircled by a globe of familiar, golden light. Flying debris hung in the air around them. Kaylin turned back to the ward. To her surprise, it was still suspended in air, glowing a brilliant silver; the tree was damaged. Kaylin was no expert in trees, but the brunt of the explosion had taken out only the section of tree—and its attached roots—directly in front of the activated ward.

The central element of the ward, the star, was gone. The rest of it—the radial points that looked like designed offshoots of that star, remained, as did the framing. Gaedin’s magic followed the explosion—but it was slower by far than the ward had been; Kaylin felt it crawling along her skin.

“Gaedin—”

“It is not me,” he told his partner. “It is Lord Kaylin.”

“Lord Kaylin who claimed to have studied magic for mere mortal months?” She looked skeptical, and Kaylin—who disliked the superiority Barrani often displayed when dealing with mortals perversely liked her better for it.

“It’s not me,” Kaylin told them both. “It’s him.” She pointed to the dragon who was rigid on her shoulder.

She followed the direction of his wide-eyed stare. “How important is this tree?”

It was Gaedin who laughed.

“Gaedin. Kyuthe,” Serian added.

He reined laughter in. His eyes were a midnight-blue so at odds with laughter it made him more disturbing.

Lirienne, can you tell me about this tree?

Silence. She didn’t even try to reach Nightshade, because it was pointless; she recognized the silence.

Kaylin grimaced and turned to the two Barrani who had led her to comparative safety. “I hate to tell you this,” she said, “but we’re not in the West March anymore.”

“I can see the ward,” Gaedin said.

Serian frowned. The ward was no longer her concern. “Do you know where we are? The cavern looks essentially the same, to my eye.”

“It is substantially the same.”

“And the tree?”

“It is as you see it.”

Kaylin, however, was moving. She wasn’t walking, because at the moment, there was nothing to walk on. But the bubble that surrounded her began to inch toward a ward that was now suspended against air, and not the bark of a trunk.

“Let Gaedin inspect.”

“Gaedin is not as sensitive to magic as I am,” Kaylin replied—in Barrani. “And I am not certain he can move of his own volition.”

Gaedin said, “She is correct.”

“Can you read what’s left of the ward?” Kaylin asked him.

“No, Chosen. The center section is missing.”

“Yes—it appears to have been the magic behind that explosion.” She was frowning now. The bits of bark and wood she was passing beneath and around still hadn’t moved. “Gaedin—this debris—are you suspending it?”

“No.”

“Am I?”

“Not in any detectable way. In my opinion, however, it is either you or your companion. He is a familiar, yes?”

“I don’t know what word means in real life. He’s certainly not the familiar of the stories the Barrani used to tell each other.” She reached out to touch a piece of bark; the small dragon bit her finger. Hard. Kaylin cursed; he gave her one baleful glare, and then once again oriented himself in the direction of the gaping hole in the side of the tree.

“I don’t think it’s the dragon, either,” she said. “Guys, when was the last time someone disappeared into the tunnels? Do you know?”

“You are not going to like the answer,” Serian said.

“Give me the answer anyway.”

“Less than ten of your mortal years ago. I believe it was six.”

There was nothing in the answer that Kaylin could dislike. “That’s good, though—it means the maze has been run and people in it have gotten out. Why did you think I’d be unhappy?”

“One of the two was mortal.”

Severn.

Kaylin carefully avoided touching debris—which would have been harder if the dragon weren’t in the driver’s seat. But she looked at the pieces, at their placement, at their distance from the tree. Her frown deepened. “Gaedin, can you give me more light?”

His reply: illumination. Every piece of debris was sharper, clearer. She could see what she assumed were flight trajectories. She had, with Teela and Red by her side, examined debris in the wake of an Arcane bomb. Pieces of house had embedded themselves in the parts of the walls left standing.

These pieces had traveled out in a sphere seconds after the explosion itself; Kaylin was fairly certain they’d be dotting the cavern’s rough wall had they continued their flight. They hadn’t. Kaylin, Serian, and Gaedin had experienced the force of the blast; they were alive because the small dragon had intervened.

But pieces of wood, of bark, and even dirt, remained fixed in the air, as if time had frozen. Kaylin could move; nothing else did.

“I think—I think this explosion didn’t just happen.”

The small dragon squawked.

“We witnessed it,” Serian reasonably pointed out.

Kaylin nodded. “We witnessed it. I think we’ve appeared at the exact moment the tree did explode.”

“You don’t think the ward was responsible for the explosion itself.”

She glanced at the small dragon’s profile. “No. I think the ward is responsible for dumping us here. Wherever—or whenever—here is.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. The tree looked solid when we approached it.” She frowned. “I’m not much of a mage.”

Gaedin was extremely politic for a Barrani, and said nothing.

“But when I touched the ward, the center portion of the rune disappeared; the tree—this side of it—exploded, or started to—the pieces haven’t moved. So...is it possible that the ward was holding the tree together somehow?”

“It is.”

“Door wards don’t vanish when touched,” she continued. “And most of this rune is still here; only the center portion is gone.”

“You feel that the ward served two functions.”

She nodded. “I don’t understand why. Frankly, I don’t understand how. Either the explosion occurred or it didn’t. If it did, how could someone then reverse it and contain it?”

Serian’s frown was more subtle than Kaylin’s; the color of her eyes made up for it. “It would make far more sense that the rune caused the explosion.”

“And it froze just after it happened?”

“The familiar—”

The familiar rolled his eyes. Kaylin stared at him, and he shrugged his wings. “I’m pretty sure he’s only responsible for the shielding on us. Does the shape of the rune look familiar to you?”

Gaedin had been staring at it in silence; he spoke to answer questions, but his gaze didn’t leave it. Kaylin was surprised when he began to speak. His voice was sonorous, low, the syllables almost familiar. He wasn’t speaking the ancient tongue that Sanabalis had once used to tell a race the story of its birth; he was speaking a variant of High Barrani. She could catch one word in three, but the words she did catch made no sense.

She waited, folding her arms across her chest; those arms shot out when the bubble around the Barrani servant began to flicker. “Don’t drop him!” she shouted at the small dragon. The small dragon squawked. Kaylin was too far away to make a grab for Gaedin as he lurched in midair.

His eyes widened; she saw gold ring his irises and then he was gone.

Serian said, “that was not a failure on your part.”

“What did he say?”

“I will not repeat it,” she replied. “But I think I understand what has happened. Gaedin is safe. He will probably be deeply chagrined, but I believe we will find him in the heart of the green.”

“If we reach it.”

“If, indeed, we reach it.” Serian began to float toward Kaylin. “He recognized the rune.”

“You can’t see it.”

“I have very, very limited abilities in that regard; magery was not my gift. But if I heard him correctly—” A polite phrase, because if Kaylin had heard him there was no way that the sharper-eared Barrani hadn’t. “It is in style and substance similar to runes that exist only in one place.”

“The heart of the green.”

“Yes.”

“Is someone responsible for drawing those runes?”

“If you mean, are they placed there by the Barrani, the answer is no. Not directly. Not even, to my knowledge, indirectly—but as magery was not my gift, there may well be knowledge that was not given to me. But they inform some of the unusual architecture at the heart of the green.

“I think there was enough variance that Gaedin was not entirely certain; he spoke the words of greeting and return, and the rune responded.”

“He disappeared.”

“I believe he returned, Kaylin. He will be displeased with that return; if we do not follow soon, Lord Lirienne will be likewise discomfited.”

“And you won’t—”

“No. If Gaedin had realized what the results of that tentative phrase would be, he would not have uttered it. I admit that being your servant has been an unusual challenge; we were both surprised at our deployment. Unless the green chooses to displace me, I will remain by your side.”

The dragon had once again turned his stare into the ruin of the tree side. “All right, all right. Take me to it.” She wanted roots beneath her feet. She could climb; she could cling to vertical surfaces with a little preparation. Hovering, wingless, over a distant river in the poor light of the cavern, was still disturbing.

Kaylin didn’t know a lot about trees.

Her expertise in wood involved chopping it and carrying it in the yards of the Halls of Law. This was not that kind of tree.

“Is this tree somehow planted in the heart of the green?”

The line of Serian’s lips thinned. “The tree, as you call it, is indeed planted in the heart of the green.”

“What do you mean, as I call it? What does it look like to you?”

“It looks very like the roots of a great and ancient tree. There are no trees within the whole of the West March or beyond it, in the darker forests, that have reached the age of this tree; it is singular in all ways. It is said that it speaks. I have never heard its voice,” she added softly.

Kaylin almost touched the tree; her hand stopped before it made contact with the ragged sharp edge of newly broken bark. Gleaming liquid that might be mistaken for sap caught her attention.

“Lord Kaylin?”

“The tree—it’s infected. Infested. Something.”

Silence. It was bad silence, but at this point there was no way it could be anything else. Serian moved; she seemed to have more control of her movements than Kaylin had. Kaylin glared at the small dragon.

Serian made no attempt to touch anything, but her eyes alighted on the dark, running blackness Kaylin had assumed was sap. She closed her eyes, her lashes a dark, trembling fan against her pale skin. “I believe I understand.”

“Explain it to me?” she said, in frustrated Elantran.

“The tree destroyed part of itself.”

“What caused it?” Kaylin asked.

“I do not—as you must guess—know. Rumor says that you are a healer. That you became kyuthe to the Lord of the West March because of that singular gift. He does not resent you, and he does not fear you—and that was unexpected. The Barrani do not expose themselves to—”

“Healers? No. Believe that I’m aware of just how much they hate it.” She was afraid to touch what she could barely think of as a wound. Even in the darkness, she could see the scintillation of color flowing in the liquid, and if the Barrani of the West March insisted that this black mess wasn’t the shadows that plagued the fiefs, Kaylin couldn’t see what the difference was.

She examined the tree; very little of the dark infection was visible. If the tree had destroyed some part of itself in an attempt to be rid of it, that said something about the tree. “I’ve never tried to heal a plant before.”

Serian looked mildly offended.

Kaylin hesitated for one long minute, and then placed her hand on the tree’s bark, instead of the jagged edge of its wound. She closed her eyes as the marks on her skin began to warm. It is a tree, she thought, but kept her nervous defiance to herself. Most trees didn’t ditch large chunks of themselves in fancy, magic explosions. They certainly couldn’t write, and the rune was complicated enough that it hadn’t happened by accident.

Most trees didn’t think.

This one did.

The problem with healing—from Kaylin’s perspective—wasn’t the exhaustion it left in its wake, although it could certainly have that effect. It wasn’t the physical contact, and the sudden knowledge of the limits of another person’s body; it wasn’t even the sense that, while she healed, there was little separation between her own body and her patient’s.

There was just as little separation between thoughts, between identities. She could feel and sense what they could feel and sense.

She didn’t know what the tree would offer. And the tree seemed content to offer her nothing. A lot of nothing. A great, endless darkness. She wasn’t even certain that she was connected to the tree at all; she saw a lot of what she assumed was unlit cavern.

But there was texture to the darkness, and it was a texture she didn’t like. She remembered what she’d done with the Barrani who had been injured in their skirmishes with the forest Ferals. They’d been infected—by bite—with the same transformative shadow, and she’d forced it out. Torn it out. Which had left injuries that could be healed the normal way.

Her arms were burning, but it wasn’t the usual heat. It took her a moment to realize it wasn’t her marks—although they were warm—but the sleeves that covered most of them. It was the dress, the blood of the green. She felt a moment of sick fear because she knew she was worth far less than the dress to the denizens of the West March.

But the dress was somehow of the green. And the tree, if she’d understood anything—and given how little sense things made, that was questionable—was its heart. She opened her eyes and saw that the sleeves were...flowing. They were drifting off her arms as if they were liquid.

As if they were blood, Kaylin thought.

She really hoped the rest of the dress didn’t follow suit, because appearing stark-naked anywhere in the West March was almost at the top of her list of things Not To Do while on vacation. Dying was the first item.

She closed her eyes again, and this time, she whispered into the silence on the inside of her head. She didn’t have the tree’s name. But she had three of her own: the name of her birth, Elianne. The name she’d chosen when she’d escaped that early childhood, Kaylin. And the name that she had taken from the Lake. It was the most significant of the three—if you happened to be immortal.

But Kaylin wasn’t. She was a groundhawk. She served the Halls of Law. She struggled, every day, to believe in justice and that law. Some days, it was harder than others. Some days, it was blessedly easy.

Hello, I’m Kaylin. Kaylin Neya.

There was no answer. Not that she expected words, because usually there weren’t any. She touched—was certain she was touching—the tree. She tried to get some sense of its form, of its natural, healthy shape, because that’s what bodies knew.

But she touched nothing.

Kaylin is the name I chose for myself. I’m mortal. I can choose the name I answer to. Neya is the short form of my mother’s name. Her name was Averneya, but no one ever used it, not even me. I didn’t call her by name. I called her Mother.

She had no idea what she was saying, or why.

But for just a moment, one clear, perfect moment, she could see her mother’s face. She could see it so clearly she lost all ability to form words. She couldn’t recall her mother’s actual face anymore. She hadn’t been able to do it for years. She could remember being held; she could remember some of the songs her mother sometimes sung to her.

Her mother’s face was so clear. Kaylin forgot the tree. She forgot the healing. She forgot the shadows and the infection and even the Barrani.

She had never seen her mother the way she looked at her now. Had her mother somehow lived, she would still never have seen her like this: she was a young woman. She was—to Kaylin’s eye—not much older than Kaylin now was. She had—Kaylin remembered it only now—a long scar, pale and slender, down the right side of her jaw. Her hair was as dark as her daughter’s, and her skin was only slightly paler; her eyes were so brown the pupil was lost to them.

Her hands were slender, and her arms; she was underfed. Her eyes were sunken, her cheeks slightly hollow, their bones high and pronounced. She wore the nondescript, poorly fitted clothing that anyone in the fiefs wore.

But...she was smiling. She was smiling, her lips turned up at the corners, her eyes gentled by expression. She was smiling at Kaylin.

They could have been sisters.

Is this what Teela saw when she remembered her mother? A woman, much like herself? A woman who had loved her and who she’d loved in return?

A woman, Kaylin thought, throat thick now, that she could never actually touch again, that she could never grow to know better? She tried to etch this image into her mind, into her memory—her imperfect, mortal memory. Because this woman was alive. She had been alive.

Yes. You remember and you do not remember. You see and you do not see.

Kaylin didn’t look away from her mother. She lifted a hand and let it drop. She couldn’t touch her mother; her mother was dead. Gone. This was a gift—a strange gift—and she’d always been aware that asking for more was just asking for trouble. Asking for anything usually was.

No, Kaylin, daughter of Averneya, it is not.

No face, no body, appeared to accompany a voice that was so resonant she trembled at each syllable, as if she were caught in it, as if it came from the very center of her body. She turned to look for Serian, and saw no one.

“Serian?”

She is safe, for the moment. You have come to the heart of the green wearing our blood. What do you attempt?

She felt, as the voice filled all conscious thought, ridiculous and small. She had touched a tree. It was as much a tree as the Hallionne were buildings. “I’m trying to—to heal you.”

Ah. I am wounded. It is regrettable.

“What hurt you?”

The green, was the softer—the much softer reply.

Kaylin hated confusion, especially when it was hers. “Aren’t you the green?”

We are. But we have taken a wound, Kaylin. It has bled, and it has festered since the day it was dealt us; it has not closed.

“Can I heal it?”

She heard—felt—laughter. We can barely feel your touch. You are not of the green; were you not clothed in some part of ourself, we would not feel you at all. Healing us, as you are, is beyond you.

She felt completely deflated, but rallied. “If it’s beyond me, then why am I here?”

She felt confusion for the first time. Not doubt, nothing as large as that. No, this was sort of like the look adults got on their faces when small toddlers were attempting to speak and their words all came out in repeatable gibberish.

Kaylin attempted not to feel the frustration of the person uttering the repeatable gibberish.

You asked for the judgment of the green.

She turned to look at the small dragon because unlike Serian, he was still with her. He yawned. In the darkness, that companion now spread his wings and held them, rigid, to either side. One of those sides covered Kaylin’s eyes.

It wasn’t dark here. And she wasn’t standing in front of the hollow of a damaged tree.

She was standing on the banks of a river. She lifted her face and the river vanished because the thin membrane of wing didn’t follow her eyes. She lowered her face again. The banks of the river were silvered gray—it was night.

She took a hesitant step and realized she could no longer see the bubble that had protected her from the explosion. And gravity. So much of her life since the Devourer had been like this: a waking dream. The problem with Kaylin’s dreams was that they could turn, in an instant, with the slightest of gestures or sounds, into full-on nightmare.

And nightmare was here. Across the sand and rock that hedged the river’s flow was a dark patch. Even at this distance, it had a consistency that had nothing to do with riverbanks. It also pooled beneath a very ordinary streetlamp. Kaylin frowned and glanced at the small dragon. She began to walk, cautiously and quietly, toward the lamp. She knew she was being stupid—no streetlamp in her own city would be incentive to approach a small, roiling mass of chaos.

As she walked, she continued to speak. Caution replaced frustration. “My companion was born in the heart of a magical storm; he hatched after it had passed. When he’s with me, I can sometimes see things I wouldn’t normally see.”

You are like the Barrani, my distant children. You exist in one place, at one time.

“Yes. You don’t.”

I am like—and unlike—your Hallionne. My purpose is less circumscribed. But I exist across all planes, and in all places.

“Then the injury—”

Yes. It exists here, in this place.

“Where is this place?”

The green.

“If this were the green, Serian would be here.”

She is here. She is not in the here you are in. Chosen, if you desired it, you could see her. You could be where in the here she occupies.

Kaylin had drawn close enough that she could see the hanging lamp clearly. She could see the chaos across which its light fell, but for a moment, the chaos wasn’t as important as the light because what lay in the center of the globe was not fire.

It was a word. It was a True Word.

Where the light fell across black and roiling shadow, it fell in strips. It fell in patterns. They were familiar to Kaylin—and they should be. They were very like the marks that adorned over half her skin.