Cast in Sorrow

Chapter 23

What do you remember? Kaylin asked Ynpharion. What did you think you were fighting for?

Freedom.

From the tyranny of name?

You understand.

No, I don’t. You still have a name or you wouldn’t be here. Was the name supposed to be transformed, somehow?

If we understood the form of our hidden selves, we could, with will and careful intent, revise it. If it became known, we could change it enough that knowledge was not a weapon that could be wielded against us. And we discovered that we could change more. The tyranny of form no longer bound us. We could walk the fixed lands—the world, as you call it. But we could walk the outlands, and we could walk the space between spaces. We could speak with the hidden and ancient things that live where the living cannot—creatures of which we had had no awareness before we were given the keys to unlock our cages.

He spit.

They were not cages. Had he been speaking out loud, his voice would have trembled with the intensity of his anger. They were the essence of what we are. The shadows bled the strength from the words, but they could not completely change them; they could change their meaning in the gray spaces where names do not exist.

Kaylin frowned. She turned to Barian, who walked by her side as they left his home. “When the Lords come to the West March to listen to the regalia, it is rumored that some are empowered by the experience.” She spoke in careful High Barrani.

His nod was cautious; it didn’t encourage discussion.

The advantage of belonging to a lesser race was the expectations it engendered; he had far fewer of her. “It is why the most promising of the young were chosen, was it not?”

“Yes.”

“How were the Lords changed?”

His eyes widened. They were blue; she didn’t expect their color to shift in any way. “I am not certain I understand the question.”

“How was change measured?”

He frowned.

“Lord Lirienne? Does it still happen?”

“Yes. It is not predictable, Lord Kaylin. It is not a dependable change, and there are no indicators prior to the recitation; men and women with great power are changed; men and women with almost no discernible power are changed.”

“Yes, but—how? The Barrani I know imply a lot of power but don’t demonstrate much of it. I’m certain I haven’t seen a tenth of what Evarrim can do.”

“That is a question that Lord Evarrim would be able to answer.”

“And not the Warden?”

“Very few of the Lords remain in the West March; it is rustic, and the Court of the Vale is less...active. Such changes would not necessarily be marked in a venue in which displays of power are less necessary.”

She thought of Lord Avonelle, and Lord Lirienne graced her with the slightest of smiles.

“Does the change involve elemental powers?”

“Elemental powers?”

“Does it strengthen the ability to summon?”

The Lord of the West March was silent.

“Does it give more insight into the between, the gray spaces, the outlands? Does it change the ability to draw wards and runes, to imbue them with power?”

The silence grew. At length, he said, “Yes. There are other abilities which are also strengthened. What do you now suspect, Chosen?”

What did she think? That something, somehow, was altering the base structure of a name? Nudging it, tweaking it, somehow pushing it into a very slightly different shape? The changes that occurred—where they occurred at all—didn’t destroy the person who received them. It didn’t do what had been done to the lost children, and what had been done, in turn, to the Barrani who had become Ferals.

Why?

A name was a name. It was given at birth. Did the Barrani somehow grow into it? Was it more rooted, stronger somehow, with age and experience? Were the children susceptible because they had not yet grown into the word that would define them? Were they altered because they had no way of protecting what they didn’t fully understand?

Or was Ynpharion altered not because of the shadows but because of the length and constancy of the exposure to the things that weren’t meant to live here? Did the recitation give a glimpse of that world to those who could retain it? Did it sensitize them without altering the nature of what life meant?

Ynpharion—

Yes, I understand the question. I do not remember being told a story.

Did you understand what Iberrienne was attempting to do when we—when we first met?

No. He hadn’t finished, but was silent for a long moment. Yes. I think I believed that he was trying to change the world. To make it freer. To rid it of the constraints and the limits placed upon us by our creators.

Was this his idea?

It was our idea; we believed it. We could see the world that he could see. We did not have the power to change it, but the power exists in the words left us. We could use those words. We could use them to alter reality.

The names.

She felt his revulsion. He didn’t bother to mention the Lake of Life; even the thought of it in this context revolted him. Yet it was what he had believed.

Do you have any idea of how that was supposed to work?

No.

And Iberrienne seems to have only half a brain left. Did you ever see his brother?

Brother?

She took this as a no, but said, Iberrienne lost his brother to the recitation. He was one of the twelve; I think his name was Eddorian.

She felt Ynpharion almost freeze in place. He didn’t answer, but he didn’t need to answer.

Kaylin exhaled, turned, and caught Ynpharion’s arm, dragging him out of his momentary paralysis.

They spoke very little as they walked toward the Hallionne Alsanis. The green of grass and trees gave way to something that might have been stone or ash; it was roughly circular in shape, and the Hallionne stood at its heart. Nightshade, Iberrienne, and the Consort stood at its edge, waiting; the shadow cast by the enormous dragon in the sky above darkened the ground as he flew.

The Consort looked back as her brother approached; they exchanged brief, almost silent words—or at least almost silent to Kaylin. She then turned to Kaylin. “Lord Kaylin.”

Kaylin offered the Consort a perfect bow. She’d had enough sleep that she wasn’t tripping over her own feet. When she rose, the Lord of the West March had stepped aside to make room for her; it was a less than subtle hint. Kaylin took the vacated position by the Consort’s side.

“Can you hear him?”

“Yes.” The Consort glanced at Ynpharion as she spoke. She did not otherwise acknowledge him.

“Can he hear you?”

“I do not know, Lord Kaylin. I have never spoken to Alsanis as Consort.” She glanced at Iberrienne, and then said, her voice gentling, “Are you ready?” It occurred to Kaylin that Iberrienne was theoretically Outcaste, and unlike Nightshade, he didn’t have the protection of the Teller’s crown. Nor did it matter.

Iberrienne nodded. “Eddorian is calling.”

The dragon roared. Kaylin wanted to roar back. Instead, she began to walk.

Ten yards from the edge of the gray circle, she found the first of the fallen nightmares. It retained its shape, but the darkness of shadow had left it; it now seemed like an artist’s impression of a bird—a shape that implied flight, without any of its form. She glanced at the Consort for permission; the Consort nodded.

“None of us now understand what we will face. You are Chosen.” Kaylin opened her mouth; the Consort held out one graceful—and imperious—hand. “What you choose to risk, risk. We will accept it.”

Kaylin glanced at the Warden. Lord Barian’s gaze was fixed on the fallen nightmare. Kaylin had no cause to love those nightmares—but the eagles had emerged from them. Then again, she had no reason to love the eagles, either; they spoke more clearly, but they had taken the Consort from the Lord’s Hall into the heart of the green.

She felt the marks on her arm begin to warm. She touched the fallen nightmare; it felt like stone beneath her palm, rough and porous. At her back, Severn unwound his chain.

“Don’t,” she told him.

“It’s still a weapon,” he replied. “It doesn’t break spells, but it’s effective in every other way.”

“You can’t use it here—”

“But he can, Lord Kaylin,” Barian said. “If it is to become what it was, he must.”

Kaylin bit her lip as she attempted to lift what felt like stone. To her surprise, it was much lighter than it appeared. She turned to say something to Barian and stopped at the expression on the Warden’s face.

The nightmare rose. Its solid wings labored in the air a yard above Kaylin’s hands. The eagles that rested on Barian watched in silence. Kaylin held out both hands as the not-quite-stone, not-quite-bird failed to fly. It landed in her palms.

And then it spoke. Kaylin didn’t understand a word.

The eagles, however, did; they replied, in the same tongue. The creature in her hands shook at the sound of their voices. It had no mouth; it had a crevice that implied beak and emitted syllables. After a sentence or two—judging only by intonation and pauses, it shivered again, and this time, it pulled a head out of the porous mass of its body. It was an eagle’s head. Nothing about its body changed, but Kaylin’s eyes rounded.

“Lord Kaylin?”

“This is—I think this is—”

The eagles leaped from Barian’s arms to Kaylin’s shoulders. Their claws didn’t pierce skin, but it was close.

“What are you?” the creature transforming itself in her hands asked. He asked in Elantran, or what passed for Elantran; Kaylin’s suspicions hardened.

“I’m mortal,” she replied. “Human, even.”

“What is that?”

“I’m not Barrani.”

“You are not one of the children, then.”

“No.”

“Why are you here?”

“Apparently,” she replied softly, “I’m here to wake you. You are Alasanis’s brother, aren’t you?”

“Alsanis is here? Where?”

The eagles answered, screeching. Kaylin couldn’t understand a word they were saying. She glanced at the Consort, who was frowning.

“You could understand it?”

“It sounds like it’s speaking Elantran to me,” Kaylin replied. “And I guess that means it’s not.”

The gray eagle face was joined by wings, and legs. The legs were a little off, possibly because they were of uneven lengths. She watched as he adjusted them. “I don’t like this shape. It is too small.”

“If you’re going to get bigger, don’t do it in my hands.”

“Oh?” He looked at her hands, and she noted, as he did, that his eyes were like black opals. “Will it harm them?”

She set him on the ground. “He’s like Wilson,” she told the Consort. To the bird that was slowly changing and expanding his shape, she added, “How many of you are there?”

He blinked. It was disturbing because he had grown a third eye. “How many?” He turned to the eagles and asked them a question she couldn’t understand; the eagles replied, and whatever they said caused the creature to laugh. “How many are you?”

Kaylin started to count, and one of the eagles tightened his claws. “There is only one of you.”

“Don’t tell me that—tell him.”

“We have. He does not understand the concept. We will fly,” the eagle added. “We will search.”

The dragon roared, and the stone eagle, which was doing a good job of becoming a standing puddle, froze. It looked up—well, the head did; the wings had kind of dispersed into something disturbingly liquid—and its face changed shape. It roared back.

Kaylin was once again reminded of Bellusdeo and Diarmat, minus the outrage on either side. She covered her ears with her hands and rose. But she looked up at the dragon, and felt momentarily happy. Yes, he was larger, and yes, he had changed. But the gift he had given Bertolle, he had attempted to give to Alsanis.

“It is not safe,” the stone said, its shape at last settling into an almost-familiar one. No, not almost. She heard Nightshade’s breath stop—funny, that that was a sound. She recognized the Barrani who now stood before her with his opal eyes, although she had only seen him once. He was Allaron.

But the statue that now began to take on the texture—and color—of flesh shook his head; black hair gleamed in a drape down his back. “We are not. We are the brothers of Alsanis.”

“Why do you look like Allaron?”

“Do I?” He frowned. “Is it upsetting?”

“No,” Kaylin said quickly. “We’re fine with it. You don’t have to change your shape again.”

“It is small and confining, but—small and confined as you are, it is appropriate.” He frowned. “Alsanis is waking. The children are crying. Come.” He paused, and then bowed to the Consort. He appeared content to ignore everyone else. “Lady.”

The Consort inclined her head; her eyes were an odd shade of blue. “Will he hear me?”

“Yes, Lady—but they will hear you, as well. They are troublesome. They occupy us, they exhort us, they demand. Alsanis is...” He frowned. It was not a Barrani expression; it was too quick and too open. Turning, he lifted his arms; light bled from his fingertips like slow lightning. He chased it with the thunder of his voice.

The dragon roared.

The awakened brother roared back, and then turned, his eyes round with outrage. “You have not named him.”

“No.”

“Why? How can he be here without a name?”

“I don’t know his name.”

The brother—Kaylin considered calling him Roger—frowned. “Of course not. You could not contain his name; it would devour you. Did you not impress a name upon him when you summoned him?”

“No.” She wasn’t going to explain that she hadn’t summoned him. On the other hand, it appeared that the dragon was, and loudly.

One of the Hallionne’s distant walls cracked in response, the fault line spreading like fractures in glass.

The brother fell silent. “It is almost too late. Come, Lady. Come, Chosen. Alsanis waits.” He turned to Nightshade and the Lord of the West March. “Be prepared. There are too many stories and too little time.” He began to walk toward the shadowed, crystal building.

The eagles didn’t return. There were no other fallen shadows on the straightest path between their current location and the cracked wall, and Kaylin hesitated. She remembered the brothers of Bertolle.

“We are awake now, and we are here. We are not Bertolle’s kin, but Alsanis’s. More forms are not necessary.” He glanced at the Consort and shook his head. “Now is not the time. No song of awakening is necessary, Lady. He is awake. He does not sleep. He has not slept since the green was washed in the blood of the dying; he will not sleep until the tale is done. And until now, he could not speak with us unless he slept.

“But, Lady, when the time comes, if it does, you will know. Sing then.” He fell silent, his dark eyes narrowing, his frown etching literal lines in his face, his hair spreading down his back and his legs to blanket the ground at his feet. She had seen Bertolle’s brothers lose control of their shape, but still found the fluidity of something that looked almost natural disturbing.

“The children are awake. They are not happy.”

“Have they ever been happy?” Kaylin asked; it was a rhetorical question.

The brothers of the Hallionne did not apparently do rhetorical. “Yes, once. They remember. But it is thin, Chosen. It is an echo. A shadow. They hear Alsanis. They hear what he does not say. They hear his sorrow and his rage and they hear the echoes of us. He has not slept,” he repeated. “And he does not dream.”

Kaylin didn’t argue; they had reached the cracked wall. If she’d expected to see a door, or anything that implied door, she was doomed to disappointment. The brother placed one palm over the point from which the fractures had spread. “They mean to hold the door.”

Kaylin didn’t point out that there was no door.

“They speak to Alsanis now; they are loud.” He drew his hand away from the wall. Kaylin had time to throw her arms over her eyes before he slammed a fist down. She heard the crack of crystal. She didn’t, however, hear the tinkle of falling pieces that generally meant it had shattered.

He struck again, undeterred, with the same effect. Kaylin lowered her arms as he lowered his hand. He turned to face them, his brows a single line across a subtly changed face.

“Bearer,” he said, his voice grave. It was to Severn he spoke. It was to Severn’s blades that he looked.

Severn didn’t hesitate. He stepped forward, one blade in either hand. “They were damaged in the outlands. I do not know if they will succeed where you have failed.”

“You fail to understand the nature of the blades,” the brother replied. “And yet, you wield them. They were not damaged; they served the purpose for which they were forged. They must serve again. I cannot command you, bearer, but we will find no purchase in Alsanis if you do not surrender them to the wall.”

Severn nodded. He glanced, once, at Kaylin, and grinned. She felt what he didn’t put into words, and shied away from it. This weapon was part of his identity; it was as much his as the Hawk’s tabard was Kaylin’s. But he didn’t doubt Alsanis’s brother, and he didn’t argue or bargain. Instead, he pulled both blades back and thrust them into the wall, at the same spot it had been struck multiple times.

The brother spread his hands as the wall shattered, flesh becoming—in an instant—a thin, flexible shield. If the shards of former, crystalline wall were sharp, the brother didn’t bleed; he didn’t seem to notice. But he didn’t shed the bits and pieces, either; instead, the shield shrank, until it once again formed two separate, Barrani hands.

Beyond him, beyond them all, was a gaping, jagged hole. Kaylin was fairly certain that the edges were sharp enough to cut anything that wasn’t a multidimensional Immortal.

The walls were not the only thing that had shattered, though.

The blades had done so, as well. She could see shards of metal among the crystalline pieces, and hilts in Severn’s hands. They shook, briefly; he sheathed their remains in silence. He didn’t hesitate, and he didn’t mourn; he’d made the decision. He’d made the decision understanding exactly what Alsanis’s brother had asked—and what the cost would be.

That much she felt before she tried to avert her mental gaze. She settled on Alsanis’s brother as the safest because there was nothing mortal about him, and the building to which he was related didn’t generally respond to normal grief, rage, or fear as if they were emotions relevant to, well, being a building.

“Do not bleed in the Hallionne,” he helpfully told them. Lifting his face—or some of it, which was just as disturbing as it sounded—he roared to the sky; small pieces of wall shook loose as the sound reverberated.

The dragon descended.

It was a good damn thing the gap in the shattered wall was so large; descent didn’t cause him to lose any of his impressive size. She thought his eyes were the size of her fists, and deliberately avoided looking at his jaws or the curve of claws that seemed to pass through the ground, rather than sinking into it.

But she reached out and touched the space between what would have been dragon nostrils, which would also have been courting dismemberment if this were any other dragon. He met her gaze and blinked.

“He ate one of my marks,” she said, turning to the Consort. “When he first hatched. I don’t think it counts as naming him, but I think—I think it must have provided some sort of anchor.”

“That would explain much. It will not satisfy Lord Evarrim.”

“Nothing satisfies Lord Evarrim.”

“Do you remember what the word was?” the Consort asked. She hesitated for a long moment, and then lifted her hand and set it just below Kaylin’s. “He is not warm.”

“No. I don’t remember what the mark was; if we were in the city, we could dig it out of Records by process of elimination.” She didn’t ask if it mattered; she now believed it did. “How long do you have?” she asked him.

He shook his head, dislodging their hands. Alsanis’s brother approached. He didn’t bow, as he had bowed to the Consort; he met—and held—the dragon’s gaze. “Time,” he finally said, “does not mean, for us, what it means for your kind.”

“Mortals?”

“No. The living. He does not intend you harm; he very much wishes the opposite. But he chose to wear the jess of your mark, Chosen, and he has all but consumed it.”

She didn’t point out that eaten had a specific meaning, because she doubted, for the small dragon—or the large—it did. “Can I give him another one?”

“Yes.”

But of course, no marks rose from her skin, and she really didn’t think that biting off a chunk of her arm would have the same results.

Kaylin was accustomed to the interior of sentient buildings. Judging by the interior of this one, Alsanis was no longer sane. If the exterior wall had resembled shadow-imbued crystal—albeit somewhat malformed—the interior did not match. Here, the ground was uneven, and it was only barely ground. There were patches of what she would bet were sky to the left, shimmering slightly in the uneven light.

Nothing cast that light.

Interspersed with that sky was jagged rock, but the rock itself seemed to be composed of layers of detritus; Kaylin thought she could see a door jutting out from one large, flat curve. She definitely saw windows, and most of them weren’t in walls. Then again, she couldn’t actually see many walls.

The Consort linked arms with Kaylin, to Kaylin’s surprise.

“You have a tendency to get lost,” she said, smiling slightly. “And while it generally has interesting results, I would like to be lost with you should it happen.”

“You don’t—”

“Oh, not for your sake. The men worry; it is unpleasant. What do you see, Lord Kaylin?”

“Everything. I mean—a bit of everything. There’s a pillar, there—it’s broken. There’s a half wall that melts into gray mud. There’s an...arm, I think. I can’t tell, it doesn’t end in a hand. In the distance, I think there are mountains. There are windows in the ground to the far right—or holes that open into sky, because there also seems to be a lot of sky. That one’s raining. I don’t see much furniture, and I don’t see any other people.”

“No.”

“Do you?”

“No; I hear them, though. Can you hear Alsanis?”

Kaylin shook her head. “You do?”

“I do. The lost are with him.”

“All of them?”

The Consort frowned. “I cannot be certain; I cannot count voices.”

“Do you hear—do you hear Teela?”

“No. But that is not a bad sign; were I to hear her from this remove it would mean that we are too late.”

Alsanis’s brother shook his head. “What you fear is impossible, Lady.”

“Oh?”

“Every Barrani in the West March—every Barrani the green might touch—will be altered and lost to you first. Teela cannot be touched.”

Kaylin frowned. After a long pause, spent picking her way over what looked like stone slats, she said, “Why?”

“The price was paid, Chosen. It was paid in life’s blood—Teela is beloved by the green; it feels always, and only, the affection and the terrible fear of her mother, and it has accepted the geas that death placed upon it. No harm, no change, will come to Teela while she stands upon the green.”

Kaylin almost missed a step. She said, quietly, “The children are trying to destroy the green.”

“Yes. They themselves are confined by their attachment to Teela. If she cannot join them while the green exists, they will destroy the green. It will,” he added softly, “destroy them; that is Alsanis’s fear.”

Kaylin didn’t understand why he cared.

“No, you do not. He has labored here these many centuries, with no respite, to find some way of preserving them. They are his guests. He hears their voices. They are not what they were when they came to him; they are not what they might be were they free. But he cannot confine all of what they have become. He cannot speak in a way that moves them; they are too intent upon what they see and hear. They will not be moved.

“Can Teela talk to them?”

“She cannot speak—”

“I mean, can she change their mind? Can she convince them to—”

“To what?”

“To stop trying to destroy the green.”

“An odd question.”

“It’s not—”

“Do you not think Teela desires what they desire?”

“No!”

The Consort’s hand tightened. “Lord Kaylin. Kaylin. It is often more complicated than simply yes or no. Teela was raised with children who were lost to the recitation. They were not rivals. They were not from the same lines; they were not in competition with each other. Had they been blood kin, it is unlikely they would have become as close as they did.”

“There is no way Teela wants the green to be destroyed!”

“No. But I am not so certain, were there not another way, she would not join them. Can you be?”

“Yes!” Kaylin pulled her arm free of the Consort—or she tried. The Consort was Barrani, and she didn’t want to let go. There’d probably be bruises. Teela had certainly left similar ones in her time. And probably for the same reasons. Kaylin knew what she wanted the truth to be. But she’d known Teela for less than a decade. In Barrani time, she was just a passing acquaintance. She fell silent.

It didn’t last. “Where are you taking us?”

“To the heart of Alsanis,” Alsanis’s brother replied.

Kaylin developed a healthy respect for the Tower of Tiamaris as she attempted to follow Alsanis’s brother. Tara kept the halls wide, the ceilings tall, and the windows even and long. The floors were either stone or wood, and they didn’t sag or change texture unexpectedly beneath passing feet. Chunks of roof did not suddenly liquefy and fall on the group like a wet, rotting corpse. Doors did not rear up like frothing, panicked horses and attempt to drop on her visitors, and the landscape wasn’t filled with the sounds of screaming, weeping—or laughter that made screaming and weeping sound good in comparison.

There weren’t any doors between the hole in the wall—a hole that pretty much vanished from sight when they’d walked what Kaylin estimated was ten yards—and their unseen destination.

But there were wards.

The first time they encountered one, the Consort froze. Kaylin could see her eyes darken to pure midnight. The Warden was likewise on alert—but Nightshade, Iberrienne, Lirienne, and Ynpharion didn’t appear to be as upset.

“Lady,” the Lord of the West March said. “What has happened?”

It was Kaylin who answered. “There’s a ward here.”

“I see no ward.” Lirienne glanced at Barian, and Barian nodded grimly.

“Calarnenne?”

“I do not see it.”

Severn?

I do.

Why?

He didn’t answer. And she realized she couldn’t force an answer from him because the ownership of the name went in the wrong direction. Not that she would ever have tried. She felt his amusement at both thoughts.

Kaylin really wanted a name to hang on Alsanis’s brother. It was hard to say, “hey, you” more than once or twice; Kaylin wasn’t always big on manners, but it seemed kind of rude even to her. Absent name, she turned to him. “Can you see the ward?”

He frowned. “This?” He asked her, pointing. “You call it a ward?”

“That’s what it looks like, to me. What do you call it?”

“A place,” he replied. “A belief. A statement of intent. It is meant to mark significance.”

“And if I touch it?”

“Why would you touch it if you do not understand what it is meant to invoke?”

Since this was an intelligent question, Kaylin bit back the short string of Leontine trying to force its way out of her mouth. She turned to Barian, who had, if she understood his position as Warden, more experience with wards than anyone else in the building.

Barian said, “It is as you see it. It is a ward of the green.”

“Do you know which one?”

He stared at the ward. “You do not understand,” he finally said.

“No, clearly. This is the first time I’ve been to the West March. It’s also hopefully—no offense intended—the last time I’ll visit the West March.”

“It is not a ward of Alsanis. It is, in structure, in form, and in content, a ward intended for the green. It should not be here.”

Kaylin frowned. “The green and Alsanis are connected, though. When Teela and I activated the wards in the green, we were transported to Alsanis.”

“Impossible.”

“It can’t be impossible. The wards are here.”

“You were mistaken, Lord Kaylin. The green is not all of one thing or all of another. You misinterpreted what you saw.”

She stopped herself from folding her arms across her chest. In Barian’s position, she’d probably be dubious. Of course, if she were Barian, she wouldn’t find his attitude irritating. “I don’t know the green, and I don’t know Alsanis. But the nightmares of Alsanis were there, and what I saw was an echo of what the Consort saw when she contained the nightmares themselves.

“We didn’t get back to the green until I called for the judgment of the green. Which—and I may have misunderstood Serian—should have been impossible if I was already in the heart of the green.

“And,” she continued, raising a third finger to accompany the two she’d lifted while enumerating the previous points, “the Consort was taken by the eagles of Alsanis to the green. We didn’t find her in Alsanis. And given the shape of Alsanis at the moment, that’s probably a blessing. We found her in the green. The eagles told us the wards were inactive—they couldn’t be woken.

“I’m guessing,” she finished, pointing at the ward that hovered in the air just beyond them, “that this is why. Somehow, they’re here.”