Teela exhaled. Kaylin’s arms were too numb to feel what she assumed they otherwise would; Teela was casting. “I can see one,” Teela said.
“There are two. I recognize them both.”
* * *
Kaylin didn’t take her eyes off the sigil. The first time she had seen it, she had been suspended in the wreckage of her home. The second time, she’d been in the fiefs. This sigil mirrored the second sighting: it was strong, bold—and not small. But it was shadowed by a second signature.
The first time she’d seen the effect, she’d assumed the hand of two mages.
But she’d seen the inverse in the outlands, and she knew that the second sigil was barely visible because it so closely mirrored the first. The color was faint, the signature so weak it was barely visible. But she thought it faintly green—green smoke. Green shadow.
The small dragon sighed—audibly—and lifted a wing; it drooped. Clearly they weren’t the only ones who were tired.
“Lift both.” Teela came to stand on the dragon side of Kaylin. When the dragon failed to obey, she grimaced and added, “Please.”
He hissed at her, but condescended to lift his second wing.
“Honestly, kitling, I’m thinking of removing them and making them something more dependably wearable.”
The dragon batted Teela’s face. Kaylin felt she deserved this and said nothing. But she looked, as Teela looked. Through the wing, the sigils were clear, and they were both distinct.
“There are two,” Teela said. Kaylin glanced at her; in profile, she could see pursed lips. “I concur.”
“With what?”
“The portal is active.”
“Can you contain it, or should we try to find another way—” A thunderous roar ate the rest of the sentence.
* * *
“Teela—are they here to find you?”
Teela stiffened. “Why,” she said, in the conversational tone she used on drug dealers who thought the Barrani Hawks were bribable, “would you ask that question?”
“Because you’re not dead, and the guards are.”
“They—and who exactly do you mean by that amorphous ‘they’?—didn’t stop to ask questions. The guards,” she added, “are dead because they were not powerful enough. I am. How did you get here?”
“Gaedin and Serian dropped us through the floor.”
Teela’s eyes widened slightly. They couldn’t get any bluer. “They risked the judgment of the green?”
“Yes. We were kind of hemmed in by the equivalent of an Arcane bomb and a looming shadow portal; there wasn’t a lot of out left.”
“And the green accepted you.”
“More or less. Look—could we just do it again?”
Teela’s eyes widened for real this time. “Only you could say something that careless. Kitling, there’s a reason that men are now dead throughout this hall.”
Kaylin had been wondering.
“It is the same reason that many of my kin choose to avoid the wakened Hallionne where they have any reasonable choice.”
“This wasn’t reasonable,” Kaylin pointed out.
“No. Understand, Kaylin, that not all of the men who serve the Lord of the West March are native to the West March. They have all witnessed the recitation, and they are all Lords—but they are Lords of the High Court.”
“Could you enter the tunnels?”
Teela said nothing. Kaylin thought that was the whole of the answer. The roaring—and the sound of cracking wood—continued at their back. “No. If I enter the tunnels, I will never leave them.”
* * *
The small dragon lowered both of his wings. Before either Teela or Kaylin could complain, he pushed himself off Kaylin’s shoulder, squawking in a way that suggested frustration and anger. It was almost comical to watch his chest swell in outrage.
Almost.
“If you surrendered to the judgment of the green, why are you here, kitling?”
“Where should I be?”
“In the heart of the green, of course. The Lord of the West March rules the green, but his power is political; it is not of the green, and his hall is in no way at its heart.”
Great. “Teela—”
“Stay away from the green.”
“I can’t exactly fly. This entire place is the green, as far as I can tell.”
One black brow rose. “You are meddling in things you don’t understand.”
“So what else is new? Believe that I wouldn’t be meddling if anyone actually took the time to—oh—explain things first!”
The roaring banked sharply. Kaylin wilted. “...Sorry.”
Teela shook her head. She nudged Kaylin out of line of sight of the door’s damaged frame. The doors were present, but they were off their hinges. Nothing short of a small workforce could close them. “You watch your familiar.” Sword held loosely in hand, she turned her back on Kaylin; Kaylin held her daggers.
Kaylin—it is not safe to remain in the hall.
Yes, we’re aware of that. The center of the dining hall is a portal and we’d like not to accidentally walk back into the outlands.
You are certain? Nightshade’s voice was sharper.
Yes. It’s Iberrienne’s work, or I’m Barrani.
The frame of the door cracked; it made the sound best associated with lightning, except up close and personal. Kaylin turned to see something the size of a large horse. It looked like a forest Feral—but larger, clearer, more distinct. Teela spit out three harsh syllables as the Feral roared.
Purple flame—at least judging by the sudden heat of it—flew from its mouth. Teela raised sword and split the stream; it passed to either side of her without singing her hair. Kaylin, standing behind Teela, felt the heat; she held her ground, raising her daggers. There was no way to close with a creature like this; she could throw.
She wouldn’t, unless Teela moved.
The small dragon turned. But he did inhale in that long, slow way that dragons sometimes did. When he exhaled, he exhaled a stream that was gray and white to the Feral’s purple. It didn’t reach the Feral because it wasn’t aimed there. His target was the sigil, the signature that any significant use of magic left in its wake. Signatures weren’t the magic itself; they were the traces it left behind.
She opened her mouth to tell him that this was a waste of breath—literally—but considered the waste of her own breath and shut up. The magic that Iberrienne used wasn’t a magic that the Hawks studied—and generally loathed. It wasn’t the typical Arcanist fare. The clouds that the small dragon breathed were unique, and what the small dragon saw—or knew—he couldn’t communicate.
But he’d saved her life a handful of times, and she chose to trust him now. She didn’t pause to see the effect of his breath, because big, huge, and ugly had pretty much crushed the obstructing remnants of the doors, and he was way too close for comfort.
She turned back to Teela, and Teela—without warning—sent her flying into the nearest wall. Since it wasn’t that near, Kaylin bruised her shoulder before finding her feet; she dropped one knife and retrieved it in a running roll that brought her back to her feet again.
Teela was already on the move. She carried the sword as if it weighed nothing—as if it were just an extension of her arm. Purple fire hit the floor in a splash; Kaylin expected said floor to darken and scorch. It didn’t. As long as she dodged breath—and jaws, and claws—she’d survive.
Given the presence of a Feral that really didn’t look all that Ferallike up close, she considered a portal to elsewhere to be less of a risk than it had seemed a few minutes ago. Teela, however, didn’t. Kaylin saw sparks fly as her sword scraped the lower edge of creature jaws. It did about as much damage as it would against flat stone.
The creature roared.
Kaylin leaped out of the direct path of its open mouth, narrowly avoiding flame. The creature appeared to be herding Teela toward the center of the room; Teela was having none of it. If the creature were larger, it wasn’t fast
er. It was as fast, but the momentum gained when rushing made it harder for the creature to maneuver.
Teela didn’t have that problem.
Light was reflected off the whole of the creature’s face. Kaylin guessed that the only damage done in this melee would be to the edge of the sword, and she grimaced when Teela struck again; she hated the sound of metal against stone.
The creature’s eyes were small and inset into the black bulk of a face that was mostly jaw; it moved fast enough Kaylin couldn’t get a direct shot at them—but she tried anyway. When Teela’s sword bounced for a third time, the creature’s neck elongated, its jaws snapping instantly, and loudly, shut at the spot where Teela had been standing. Teela slid sideways and they closed on empty air; the Barrani Hawk brought her weapon down across a momentarily closed jaw, with enough force to drive its head into the ground.
Kaylin threw her second dagger at the creature’s exposed neck.
It stuck its landing.
“Teela!”
Teela didn’t answer, but she’d seen. As the creature raised its head again, its neck retracted; the dagger Kaylin had thrown was dislodged, and clattered to the ground. Kaylin watched it fall; it wasn’t in the best position for retrieval.
She cursed; if she’d been Barrani, she’d have a sword, and the next time it extended itself she could attempt to remove head from neck.
If the creature hadn’t been so adept at fighting on two fronts—when, admittedly, the second front was Kaylin and almost insignificant—Kaylin would have taken the time to watch Teela in action, because Teela in action had some of the deadly, beautiful grace of—of Dragons. She couldn’t. If she wasn’t causing damage, she was drawing fire, and if she wanted to continue to do so, she had to make sure none of it caught her.
She ducked and rolled when something flew at her face, and realized only when it landed that it was the small dragon.
“Wing!” she told him, leaping. He dug claws into her shoulder, which was fair—she wasn’t certain he’d still be attached otherwise. His squawking was lost to the fury of bestial roar. She didn’t need to hear his complaint; clinging to a shoulder while balancing one open wing was difficult.
He pretty much plastered said wing to her face when she flattened herself against the wall, facing the creature’s side. He was a good fifteen feet away, but she’d had experience fighting shadow one-offs, and knew the flank was no guarantee of safety; he could sprout an extra head with no warning. But she took the moment to look.
She froze, but the creature’s lunge at Teela carried him farther away; he didn’t take advantage of her momentary stillness.
He had a name.
She could see it as clearly as she had seen Ynpharion’s, in his altered form. This creature’s physical shape was larger; fur had been supplanted by obsidian, but it preserved a lot of the same characteristics; four legs, huge jaws. It also sported a tail that was split, and terminated in at least three strands. They etched grooves in stone when the creature had tried to cut Kaylin into several pieces with it.
“All is forgiven,” Kaylin said, still staring.
The dragon said nothing.
“I don’t think I can grab this one.”
The nothing was somehow louder and frostier.
She hadn’t lied. The name that she could see was twisting and shifting in place. It was golden, as most words were—but its light was uneven, brighter in some of the components, and so weak it could barely be seen in others. All around its shape and form was shadow; the shadow, however, was green. As green, seen through the mask of dragon wing, as the creatures eyes now were.
Iberrienne.
It was, she was suddenly certain, Iberrienne.
And his name, like Ynpharion’s, was shadowed, twisted. The transformation went deeper; the name was larger. A thought occurred to her then: Ynpharion, drawn back by the use of his name into his Barrani life and Barrani self, had loathed Iberrienne.
But what if Iberrienne himself were corrupted in exactly the same way? What if he, too, had been changed? He wasn’t so changed that he hadn’t attempted to kill Bellusdeo, the only known, living, female dragon. Nor so changed that he couldn’t move among the Lords of the High Court and the Arcanists.
Whatever the transformation’s power, it had to work on what it had. She highly doubted she’d care for an uncorrupted Iberrienne.
The small dragon bit her ear, hard.
Teela hadn’t slowed; neither had the creature. Kaylin had a weapon she could use against him. She just preferred him to be dead. But it wasn’t going to happen soon, and soon was necessary. No one knew where the Consort was.
And so she began to gather what she thought of loosely as syllables. Ynpharion’s name had been a name. Iberrienne’s was only barely that. She could make out what she thought its shape had once been, but she couldn’t be certain—and lack of certainty would get her nothing, in the end. Nothing but his rage if she came just close enough.
Teela could keep this up for another hour, in Kaylin’s opinion; possibly longer if she pushed.
Just how long had Iberrienne been compromised? What had he been promised, and what, before he had listened to some unknown tale of ancient malice, had he hoped to achieve?
He wasn’t as young as Kaylin had assumed—but she realized she’d made the assumption because he seemed so impulsive. He had the visceral hatred of Dragons that only the older Lords of the High Court held.
That melting part of his name was a stroke, not a squiggle; it was meant to tuck in, turn up in a slight slope at the end farthest from Kaylin. The center of the word was unbalanced, as words often were, but the light there was the most familiar. She started there.
Syllables gathered, but she realized, as she amassed them, that they weren’t, in any real sense, syllables at all. She heard them as syllables. She heard them as Barrani words. But Nightshade was called Calarnenne by any member of the Court who didn’t wish to offend the Consort. What she said, when she spoke his name, was not what they heard. What they said was too thin; it was flat.
Kaylin spoke something that had dimension and strength; it had shape, it had depth, it had structure. The syllables weren’t sounds; they were blocks or bricks. If they interlocked in the right way with her intent and her will, they had form.
And that form was a cage.
The marks on her arms were glowing; she felt the mark on her forehead join them. Only the mark on her hand remained as it looked: red, wet with sweat, untouched by light. The small dragon crooned and nudged the side of her face with his head; she felt it at a great remove.
She hated the green wisps of smoke. She hated the purple flame. She hated the vulnerability that ownership introduced—because, damn it, it did. But Ynpharion had remembered. Iberrienne would remember.
And she needed to know what had happened to the Consort.
The syllables snapped into place; she opened her mouth and as she spoke them and they sounded, to her ears, like thunder.
Iberrienne.
Chapter 15
He roared. She felt it as a physical sensation, like an earthquake. The ground beneath her feet broke, cracks appearing in flat stone as the creature turned. His eyes were glowing green—as they had the last time she’d encountered him.
“Kitling!”
Iberrienne turned the whole of his attention toward where Kaylin stood. To her surprise, she saw that the folds of her dress were glowing—and they were almost the same color as Iberrienne’s eyes. It was the most disturbing thing about him now.
What was the blood of the green?
Iberrienne.
His hind-legs hunched; he intended to leap.
“Kaylin, move!”
She held her ground; every instinct screamed against it—but no. It wasn’t her instinct; it was his. He fought her. She was surprised when her arm developed sudden gashes, because Iberrienne hadn’t reached her. She cried out and raised her arms because she was wearing the damn dress and bleeding on it was bad.
It was unspecified bad. Iberrienne wasn’t. He’d coiled to spring; he even attempted to do it. But she held him—barely—in place; he staggered. The stagger brought his impressive jaws closer to her face.
The small dragon reared; he didn’t breathe and he didn’t leap free of her shoulder.
“Kaylin!”
She heard Teela’s sword strike the Feral. She heard it bounce, heard Teela’s angry Leontine fury. If she survived this, Teela would shake her until her teeth rattled.
But she pushed, and she pushed hard, and it hurt. It burned. Her thoughts spiraled out of her grasp, returning in shreds—she let them go. She held one thing at the center of her thoughts: a name. His name.
She met and held his gaze. The green of his eyes lost illumination, shifting as they drained of light, into blue. Barrani blue. He staggered, dropped belly to floor; his growls became whines. Beyond the fire and fury and killing rage, there was—emptiness.
She thought then that had she tried this on the uncorrupted Lord Iberrienne of the High Court, she would have died. “Teela, don’t! We need him!”
The Barrani Hawk lowered her sword; it appeared to take effort, as if gravity was pulling in the wrong direction. She didn’t sheathe it. She didn’t move. She stood to one side of the shrinking, black creature that was slowly dwindling, the strength of its external shape giving way to the more familiar form and figure of a Barrani man.
He was, unfortunately, naked. Kaylin couldn’t remember Ynpharion being naked.
“What,” Teela said, in a voice that made ice seem warm, “did you do?”
“I took his name,” Kaylin replied evenly. There was blood in her mouth. It was, of course, her own. “Can you do something about my arms?”
Teela’s eyes widened before they narrowed.
“I didn’t cut myself, Teela. And so far no blood on the dress.”
The Leontine curse was a comfort. “I do not know how you lived to be twenty.”
“Twenty-one. And I’m not certain mortal blood will count—do you think it will?”
Teela glared her into silence. She didn’t have random bandages on her person; the dining hall had tablecloths. She cut a chunk off one of them, and then tore it into strips.
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