Cast in Wisdom

by Michelle Sagara

  “Your classes, Robin. Do not neglect them.” He straightened. “I believe you will find them much changed in the near future. Go now.”

  Robin clearly wanted to stay. But he recognized the authority inherent in a giant spider, and he understood that the library itself was a hazard zone. He reached for the doorknob, opened the door and stopped.

  A familiar man stood in the doorway.

  Killian.

  It was a Killian that Kaylin had never seen before, although she did recognize him. He had both of his eyes. Those eyes were narrowed, glinting and completely black. The Arkon was angry, yes.

  So was Killian. He glanced at Robin. “You took a detour while attempting to find a bathroom, yes?”

  Robin cringed.

  “This is not the place for you, and you missed the oral portion of your test. I’m afraid it will be reflected in your overall evaluations.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Good. I believe you are already late for your next class. Do not let us keep you.” He stepped into the library but held the door open. Robin glanced once at Starrante, nodded and stepped out, leaving the door ajar.

  Killian closed it.

  “Killianas, you are late,” Androsse said.

  “I believe I requested, through an intermediary, that you open the library.”

  “Ah. There were some impediments to your request.”

  “Yes, I see that.” He lifted his face, and his hair, a pale sweep of color that now matched the pallor of the Arbiters, hung down his back like a cape—a cape of office. “You could not deal with them?”

  “We were not given permission to remove chancellors. I believe you argued against it, at the dawn of things. My memory, however, is not what it was,” Starrante said.

  “He did,” Androsse said. “I believe it took some decades to come to an agreement.”

  “A compromise,” Killian pointed out.

  “There is a reason that ‘compromised’ is not considered a good thing.”

  To Kaylin’s surprise, Killian laughed. “Come,” he said. The Arbiters nodded as one. Killian made his way to the Arkon’s side.

  Candallar was, for a moment, at a loss for words. He did not find them quickly enough.

  “Killianas,” the Arkon said.

  “You might consider the number of people in this area, Lannagaros.”

  The Arkon’s eyes had gone from red to orange in an instant, and—as if he were as much a student as Robin—he made haste to return to his human form. He was forced, by lack of clothing his transformation into Dragon form had caused, to wear golden scales as plate armor, just as Bellusdeo did, but he was now recognizably the Arkon with whom Kaylin was most familiar.

  He carried three books as he turned to face Candallar.

  “Do you know me?” Killian asked of Candallar—or his companions.

  Candallar nodded, the nod stiff. “You are Killian.”

  “I am, at last, Killianas of old.” To Kaylin’s dismay, he tendered Candallar a very low bow; it practically seethed respect. “Respect is due, Chosen, and it will be offered. It was Karriamis who set you upon this path; Karriamis who guided you to what remained of the Academia of old. Did he tell you of our history?”

  Candallar was almost at a loss for words. Given the words he did speak, that would have been a boon to him. “Karriamis is mine; I am Lord of the Tower that once bore his name. It bears mine now.”

  The Arkon said something that didn’t reach Kaylin’s ears; it did reach Killian’s.

  “And I bear the symbols of the highest office in the Academia. I am chancellor here. I am lord.”

  “I do not believe Karriamis intentionally misled you,” Killian said. “But what he is, and what I am, are not the same. We were not built for the same purpose, and we were not built in the same environment. Chancellor is the word for one who rules the Academia—but it is a word that implies responsibility, not power.

  “You are, I perceive, young. Young and afraid, as the young oft are.”

  Candallar’s eyes were indigo. Beside him, Illanen took a step back.

  “I owe you a great debt. If you failed to understand what the Academia represents, you nonetheless offered me a new beginning. The reasons for it matter little to the boon itself. I am loath to reward your service with death.” As he spoke, a breeze caught the drape of his hair.

  His hair, now the same color as the Consort’s.

  Kaylin had never asked the Consort why her hair, alone of all the Barrani, was white—but she would, the next time they met.

  “I am not Barrani,” Killian said, and Kaylin remembered that Killian was a building. “Nor was I, before the Academia at last came into being.”

  Ancestor, she thought. Just as Androsse had once been.

  Illanen stepped to the side, to increase the distance between him and Candallar; his gaze briefly touched the book he had surrendered into Candallar’s keeping. Baltrin, noting the Arcanist’s subtle retreat, retreated, as well. Neither ran nor gave voice to their growing discomfort.

  Candallar was alone. He was not afraid. Not yet.

  “The items you possess are keys,” Killian continued. “They are keys to a home that are left should disaster strike; you have used those keys, and you have entered the Academia. I hear Karriamis now, although his voice is distant; I hear Durandel, as well.

  “If you ever desire it, you are welcome to study here—but those keys must now be left behind, waiting upon another emergency, another great cataclysm.” He stepped forward and held out his left hand.

  Candallar retreated, the movement slow. The indigo of his eyes developed flecks of livid color.

  “That,” Killian said in a sterner voice, “is forbidden here. You play at magics you do not understand, seeking power; in your ignorance, you—and your foolish allies—will doom yourselves.

  “It is not your doom that is my concern. You are free to play at power—but you will not do it here.”

  His voice was soft; the room shook anyway. The light went out of Candallar’s eyes.

  “You have heard that knowledge is power.”

  Candallar said nothing.

  “And in some fashion, it is. But incomplete knowledge is not power; it is death and destruction. In some things, you cannot merely retrieve knowledge at your convenience and disregard the rest. I say again: I owe you a boon. But a boon is not, in the end, a form of mindless slavery. What the Academia was, and what it will be, is not a simple game of power and control.

  “In the meantime, I will ask you—and your followers—to leave. You may leave by the front doors, or you may be ejected in a harsher fashion; the choice is up to you.”

  He then turned to Illanen. “Yes,” he said, although the Arcanist had not spoken a word. “There is knowledge here—and should you desire it, you are free to apply to join the student body. Your application will be considered by the masters on the committee—and by me.”

  The three Arbiters turned toward each other, their backs forming a triangle as Killian continued to speak. Their voices were muted; barely audible.

  “You will, however, leave the keys; the keeper is now awake and aware, and they will no longer be necessary.” Once again, he extended his hand.

  To Kaylin’s surprise, Illanen said, “Give him the...keys.”

  Candallar did not move.

  “Can you not sense it? The building is alive, just as the Hallionne are alive. There is no unguarded thought you might have that the building does not immediately hear. If he will allow us to walk through the front doors on our way out, accept that offer.”

  Candallar shook his head, at a loss for words. Kaylin, under different circumstances, might have pitied him.

  “Open the library, Arbiters.”

  Kavallac cleared her throat. “It is not,” she said gently, “your command to give.”


  “It was a request.”

  “Very well. And it is not a request to which we can accede at the current time.” She walked toward Killian and stopped as she approached the Arkon. Although she was pale and ghostly—as she had been the first time Kaylin had seen her cohere from the pages of a book—her eyes were a luminous gold.

  “Lannagaros,” she said, voice gentle. “You are Arkon. You are Arkon in a time of peace. Will you relinquish that responsibility?”

  The Arkon turned toward Kavallac then. His eyes were a color that Kaylin had never seen Dragon eyes take. No—that was wrong. She had—but the Arkon’s refused to remain in any of the many color states; they were a flickering of colors, a constant shift, as if no single emotion could anchor them for long enough.

  He was the Arkon.

  Kaylin understood, at this moment, that Kavallac was asking him to walk away from that. While he considered her words, Kaylin approached Emmerian. Bellusdeo had eyes only for the Arkon.

  “I don’t understand,” Kaylin said quietly.

  “I think you do. He has been the Arkon since the end of the last of the wars between the Barrani and our kind. He has held the medallions of the flights, gifted us in times long lost to ancient history. Kavallac now asks if he can relinquish the one responsibility that has defined him to the Dragons.”

  “Okay, yes, I got that part—but why?”

  Emmerian’s smile was slight and informed in every motion of lip and eye by melancholy. “Do you think that he could command the Arbiters to remain without reason? Do you think that he could do so only because he carries those books?”

  “...Yes?”

  “Yes, perhaps. Perhaps that might be true of you, had you continued to carry them. Understand what this place is.”

  “It’s a library.”

  “It is the library, Lord Kaylin. Corporal Neya, if you prefer. It is the library of his youth; it is the library that existed before war all but devoured us all over the passage of centuries. This, then, is the place that he was forced to leave to go to war. This is the place that was lost—forever, he thought—when the Towers rose.

  “And he stands here, now, in a place that was not destroyed. Lost, yes—but it has been found. He has returned.” Emmerian hesitated. “You understand—you understood—that the Arkon’s hoard was the library and the things it contained.”

  She nodded.

  “He built it in both sorrow and rage, in regret and, yes, desire. What could be saved, he would save. What could be learned, he would learn. What could be taught, he would teach—or failing that, allow others to teach. He could not build this place—none but the Ancients could, and when the Towers rose, the Ancients faded. Had he been offered the chance to become what Killianas was—and perhaps will be—he would have taken it in an instant.

  “No such offer was made. No such campus was built. He understood—as all must—why the Towers were created; what use was knowledge if there are none to learn it, none to question it?”

  “And he can’t be both Arkon and chancellor?”

  “No. He cannot be Arkon and chancellor both—and yes, I believe that is what he has been offered.”

  “So...who would be Arkon?”

  “That is a question that I cannot answer. So few of my kin survive, and of those, half sleep the long sleep, while the ages pass around them. You do not ask who might be chancellor in his stead.”

  She shook her head. “I think... I think I’ve seen this before.”

  “Ah—you were present when Barren became Tiamaris.”

  She swallowed and nodded. “But—it’s different. I don’t...” The words faded. Tiamaris had found the heart of Tara, and Tiamaris had—at that moment—desired to possess it, to protect it, to know it.

  This was not the same.

  “He was always, of all of us, the most quietly responsible. Irascible, yes, and opinionated. But in his fashion, indulgent and even, for a Dragon, gentle. But this is what he wants. This. It is the thing that he will willingly devote the entirety of his remaining life to, the thing he would die to protect.”

  “The thing,” Bellusdeo said, speaking for the first time, “that he would kill to protect.” Her eyes were copper and gold. “And they know it. All of them understand—the Arbiters, Killianas. Us.”

  None so well as the Arkon. Kaylin saw him and thought he had never looked young to her. She’d never been able to conceive of an Arkon in youth. But he hadn’t been the Arkon in his youth. Hadn’t been a soldier, a warrior. There had been no Empire, the Aeries of the Dragons still existed in the heights, and the wars themselves were a distant, distant storm on a horizon that had already been darkened by Shadow.

  It was Emmerian who shook his head. “This is his hoard,” he said softly. “I think it always has been. If the city were under attack, the Emperor would call up every man and woman at his disposal to defend it, yes?”

  Kaylin nodded.

  “Where the attack was surgical, he would send in the ground forces; Dragons in flight do much damage, and only in cases where necessity dictates the risk of that damage be taken will we fly.”

  She thought of the attack on the High Halls.

  “But were he to lose half the city, and yet emerge triumphant, the city would survive. It would be no less his, no less the heart of his hoard. He would rebuild. His hoard is larger, grander, and less physical than it first appears.

  “So, too, the Arkon. How does one own knowledge? How does one own the thoughts of others? What does such knowledge become if it is not shared, if like minds are not invited to discover it, and to add knowledge of their own?”

  “Lord Candallar,” Killian said for a third time. “The keys you carry have no value now. Set them down and leave.”

  Illanen and Baltrin—the latter silent—had already begun to fade. Candallar wheeled in Illanen’s direction, but the Arcanist’s head was bowed; his expression could no longer be seen.

  “If you desire it now,” Killian said, “Karriamis will free you. He will free you without devouring you, without destroying you. He has long been the most intense, the most focused; it is difficult to command him, and difficult to ignore him. You have said—you have thought—Karriamis a cage.

  “But Candallar, you have made of me a cage for others, and that cage, too, is open. Those who do not wish to remain are free now to enter the stream of the lives they once had. I do not understand what you desired of the Academia. Freedom? Power? These things might exist here. But your cage is of your making; Karriamis did not cage you.

  “Go. The Arbiters are restless, and none of the three are inclined to accept my judgment in this regard. Should you choose to remain, I cannot guarantee that I can continue to protect you from the consequences of your actions in this space.”

  Candallar faded. He did not, however, release the objects that in theory governed the Academia.

  “That,” Starrante said, “was unwise in the extreme.”

  “It was Karriamis’s only request of me.”

  “Candallar is a small man; it is not in him to allow others to enjoy what he himself does not control or possess. If he cannot have you, Killianas, he desires that no one does. Can you not feel it? I could feel it from here.”

  “He cannot harm me now.”

  “It is not for you that we fear, you fool. Think: Candallar understood—in a rudimentary, solipsistic fashion—how he might set about waking you. He understood you required a student body to function; he did not understand what a student is. But in his slipshod way, he has provided you with one: one significant student. There might be others—but they are not his equal.

  “That student is no longer in the library. And if the insignia of office, of control, is no longer absolute, it is not a mere trifle.”

  Kaylin understood. She understood at least as well as Starrante, and she turned to the Arbiter. “Send me,” she sai
d, voice low. “Send me to Robin.”

  * * *

  Starrante built a door; the entire process seemed agonizingly slow. Hope sat on her shoulder, silent, as that door solidified and emerged; Starrante opened it.

  “I cannot leave the library,” he said, “and remain as I am now. You retrieved me the first time, Chosen.”

  Killian vanished as the door opened, and Kaylin stepped—or jumped—into an empty hall. Severn was beside her; he cleared the door first, both of his feet hitting solid stone on the other side before hers did. He ran, and she followed.

  Nightshade!

  Here, he said.

  Where is Robin? Is he with you?

  He is. He has taken his seat.

  She couldn’t risk running and looking through Nightshade’s eyes at the same time; she didn’t. She trusted Severn to know where he was going.

  Nightshade said nothing more. But she heard the breaking—the shattering—of a door long before she could see that door. And she heard distant shouts and screams.

  Candallar didn’t understand that Robin was the heart of this tiny student body. He understood that students were necessary—and he intended to kill them all before he retreated—if he retreated.

  She hated Arcanists, the instinctive emotion fueled by years of experience with the Hawks—but she was grateful that Illanen had chosen to retreat. Candallar was on his own here.

  ...Candallar was enough. Robin was bright, yes—and better fed, in the end, than Kaylin had been at his age. But he was as much a match for Candallar as Kaylin had been for Nightshade at the same age. She didn’t assume that the older students were in any better situation—they were here, after all, and they hadn’t chosen to be here.

  Severn rounded the last corner, and the hall in which the classroom was situated came into view. Kaylin could see Candallar. His hair and his cloak were a mass of swirling darkness, lifted by arcane winds that touched nothing else. No, not nothing. She could see the advance of mist, of fog, lit on all sides by sparkling, moving color. She’d seen this before.