... And it’s the fissure that causes the disaster. It almost wasn’t a question.
I am not the Hawk, Kaylin. Those answers are not mine to find.
Ybelline’s confidence in Kaylin underlined every word. Kaylin did not have any of it, and wanted it very badly. What she had, however, was a probably half-drowned Gilbert and a drenched Keeper and Keeper’s apprentice. It was a start.
But before she went in search of them, she headed back up the ruined stairs, keeping her back to the wall. “Severn?”
The single door at the top of the stairs opened.
“We have to go fish Gilbert out of the water—but I think it’s safe now. As long as you’re careful on the steps.”
Chapter 20
The rain in the storefront had stopped. The water had receded. The mess caused by both was still very much present—but a mess of that kind wasn’t Kaylin’s problem. She felt a twinge of sympathy for Grethan, because it was going to be his.
Elemental water, like fire, could withdraw completely. Had the water been natural—well, never mind. Natural water didn’t start a passing monsoon on the inside of a small, narrow building. Natural water didn’t take on the form of a woman, and it couldn’t be solid enough to hold on to without causing frostburn.
The water, however, was now evident only in the form of its Avatar. “I do not think the Keeper is going to be very happy.”
“Probably not,” Kaylin agreed. “On the other hand, he can’t exactly kill you. Believe that if I’d caused this mess—” She shuddered.
Kattea was impressed by the mess; the chaotic jumble of unsold junk seemed to be more worthy of attention than the elemental water. She did give the water the side-eye, though, and she kept Kaylin and Severn between them.
“The hall here is narrow,” Kaylin told the girl, as they made their way past the kitchen. Water had risen quickly enough here that the dishes caught in the flood hadn’t shattered; they rested on the ground. That was about the only positive thing that could be said for the state of the kitchen.
She started to lead the way out of the kitchen and stopped; Evanton’s back hall was not two people wide, even if one of them was pure liquid. Before she could disengage her hand, she heard voices. Well, to be precise, she heard squawking.
Small and flappy sailed into view. He paused in front of the water’s Avatar, screeching like an outraged seagull. This didn’t appear to upset the water. It gave Kaylin a headache.
“I see you were busy.” Evanton surveyed the mess of his kitchen with pursed lips and very narrow eyes. Grethan, coming up behind his master, viewed it with dismay. Gilbert, on the other hand, had to be reminded—by Kattea—not to step on the dishes.
The water’s Avatar shifted in place. Kaylin tightened her grip. The last thing she wanted—at this very moment, as last-things-wanted was a moving list—was for hostilities between the water and Gilbert to resume. Gilbert, in his disheveled clothing, was not dripping wet. He turned to face the water—or maybe the familiar, it was hard to tell. Gilbert’s eyes—the eyes Kaylin thought of as natural—were unfocused. His third eye was open, unblinking black.
“Gilbert,” she said, before he could speak. “You said that you were created for a specific purpose, sort of like Helen was.”
“Yes.”
“What, exactly, was that purpose?”
Silence.
No, Kaylin thought, as she waited for a reply, he wasn’t silent. She could feel the rumble beneath her feet that implied Dragon “discussion”; she just couldn’t hear it.
Gilbert regarded the water. The water’s Avatar returned his regard. Water, when frozen, became ice, and Kaylin could feel the drop in temperature.
“You have spoken with the water,” Gilbert said. Since he spoke while looking at the water, it took Kaylin a few seconds to catch on.
“Yes.”
“Do you understand what now needs to be done?”
“No. Understanding it is high on my list of emergencies, though. You didn’t come here to destroy the water, did you?”
This did get his attention, or at least the attention of two of his eyes. “Of course not. The water cannot, in any meaningful way, be destroyed.”
“Did you manage to speak to the water?”
“We did not,” Evanton said, before Gilbert could. “The Garden was in some disarray.” He looked, pointedly, at the water’s Avatar. “Nor does it appear to be necessary. I am an old man, Kaylin.” This was code for: I don’t have much time left, so you better not be wasting it. “The water, however, appears to be calm at the moment.” The irritation left his expression as he approached the water’s Avatar.
Almost gently, he said, “You should rest.” As if the water were, in fact, a very exhausted mortal woman who had been pushed just past the edge of her limits—and was not wearing a Hawk tabard.
“I am not here to destroy you,” Gilbert added. “And if that is your fear, you fail to understand my purpose.” He turned to Kattea. Kattea was hovering uncertainly at his side, and he bent and lifted her.
“I fail to understand your purpose,” Kaylin interjected. “And I’m trying really, really hard. You have something to do with time?”
He nodded. “I can traverse time because my nature is not your nature. What I said of you—and your companions—is true. You live in time. It is necessary for you to function.
“The Ancients were not so bound. Their understanding of causality was therefore different. Causality implies a before and an after; it connects them. Causality is at the heart of ancient stories. You carry them,” he added. “I do not understand why those forces sought to create stories—and to you, Kaylin, those stories would be so vast, world might be a better description.
“The place you call ‘world’ is comprised of many things. The water is one. The Keeper’s function is to contain the water, to constrain enough of its movements that ‘world’ is stable.”
“He doesn’t—”
“He does. You think of storms and the lives lost in them; of fires and the lives lost in them; of earthquakes, perhaps, and the lives lost to them. The Keeper’s role is not simple safety; it is not for the benefit to one life. Were it not for the Keeper, you could not live at all. You were structured, you were iteratively created, to live in this cage.
“I am not cognizant of all of the iterations. Nor am I cognizant of all of the failures. I am not aware of the minutiae. I am aware that it exists.”
“Wait—is the water trapped here, then?”
“No,” the water replied. “And yes.”
Great. More questions.
“You exist,” Gilbert continued. “It is not that you are invisible to me. But I do not look at specific elements, and if they are like you or Kattea, they are too brief; by the time I turn to look, they are gone. The water, I see. Your familiar, I see.”
“But Mandoran and Annarion—”
“They exist in multiple ways. There are places to which I can go, elements which I can study in less chaotic, less frenzied, environs. They are part of those, and yet also, part of here.” His smile was almost rueful. “As am I now; I believe I understand it better than I did.” He abandoned his smile. “Water exists. But in its ability to interact with your kind, it is constrained—must be constrained—as you are constrained.
“If you were to be aware of every minute of your existence, you would be bound by none of it. You could not think, speak, function; your existence would dwindle to introspection. Your ability to interact with the world itself is contingent on your perception of time. It is true of you. It is true of Lord Nightshade.
“It is true,” he added, “of Kattea. You understand that when the water folded in on itself in the fashion that it did, there were—and are—consequences.” This didn’t sound like a question.
I can hear the T
ha’alaan. I’m afraid I’ve broken it.
She nodded. She wondered how she would live if she could, at any time, experience her own death. She wondered how much of her life would be lived in an effort to prevent it, how much of her life would be fear and nothing but fear. She wondered if she would view every person in the room as dying or dead if she knew, in advance, what their fates would be.
“It is to prevent such ruptures that my kin were created. In some cases, we could not mend what was broken. We were not required to destroy the resultant chaos, but to quarantine it. We were not required to save individual lives, such as yours.” He looked at Kattea. “We could not, as I said, see them. Not without risk and effort.”
“Gilbert?”
“Yes?”
“If your job isn’t to save individual lives, why are you here?”
“I explained this to you.”
He had. She’d even understood it, but frustration had dimmed the effect of the words. Or maybe lack of knowledge about Gilbert had. She looked at him now, Kattea in his arms, and understood. He had chosen to befriend Nightshade. He had chosen to look at a presence he could only dimly register. He had somehow taught himself to hear and then to speak.
And he had then gone searching for a way to restore Nightshade to his own time. Nightshade. One man, not a world, and not an epoch.
Squawk.
Gilbert exhaled. His breath was visible. “The water is correct. What was done should not have been done. It should have been impossible. And were such impossibility to be detected, it would be corrected.” He hesitated.
Kaylin really hated Gilbert’s notion of time. “So, let me get this straight. Time is directional, for us.”
“Yes.”
“And time is meant to be directional. We’re not meant to be shoved into the past or thrown into the future.”
“Yes.”
“And if it’s possible to break this unspoken rule, people like you come in and fix it.”
“...Yes.”
“So the Castle broke the rule.”
“Yes.”
“And you’re attempting to...fix the problem?”
He had the grace to look vastly less certain. “...No.”
“I give up. Let’s move on to point two. The water said that the reason you’re here—and now—is because it’s the only moment in which there was a break, or a space.”
Gilbert’s eyes narrowed—all three of them. “The only moment?”
“Yes—and I don’t think it’s a coincidence that you yourself said when you arrived here, you could no longer see time. Something’s happening here. Or it will happen, soon. Something is broken for only a very small window of time—our version of time.” Her thoughts raced ahead of her ability to express them. Or retain them. “If you notice big breaks, big things that are wrong, then this must be something that you can’t or haven’t noticed. Maybe you don’t see us because our lives are too short and too slight—”
“You think this break is something that we would not have noticed.”
She nodded. Hesitated. “Do you know what happened? The Tha’alaan is going to be lost. Part of you was there, in the future in which it disappears. Do you know why?”
“My perception of your life is filtered through the Tha’alani. It is why I can speak to you and understand you as well as I do.” The water lowered her head. “Ybelline is attempting to find an answer to your question. She cannot...move...through time. She knows that something is coming. She may know...when.”
“Severn?” Kaylin asked.
He came forward to join her.
“Gilbert, you’d better come with us. I think you...destabilize...the Garden.”
Gilbert nodded. The water, however, asked, “Why do you have that child with you?”
Kattea shrank into Gilbert’s chest, trying to look smaller.
“He needs Kattea to get back,” Kaylin replied.
The water’s frown etched itself into Kaylin’s vision. “Is that what the child told you?”
“It’s what Gilbert told us.” Kaylin felt the water’s grip on her hand tighten. “You don’t think she’s in any danger from him?”
“This is not perhaps the safest time in which to introduce a mortal,” the water replied. It wasn’t an answer. There wasn’t going to be an answer—at least not while Kattea was present. Kaylin decided it was a provisional “no.” No, Gilbert did not intend to harm her, and yes, there was danger regardless.
But it couldn’t be worse, at this point, than death by Ferals. Clinging to that thought, Kaylin said, “Evanton, can I use your mirror?”
* * *
Bellusdeo was with the Arkon when the mirror connected. She took one look at Kaylin and her eyes darkened to the orange with which Kaylin was becoming increasingly familiar. “We’re fine,” she said quickly. “But—there’s a problem.
“We spoke with the Keeper.” Which was, strictly speaking, true. “And the elemental water. Gilbert is here because of the water. Kattea was right about that. But the water didn’t choose a specific time and place—it brought him here because it was the only option available. This was the only time to which Gilbert could be moved.”
The Arkon pinched the bridge of his nose.
Kaylin failed to mention the Tha’alani, weighing the options. The Emperor forced the Tha’alani to work on interrogations—and it was a work that twisted and broke them without extreme care. It damaged the entire race. She didn’t want the Tha’alani exposed to any more Imperial scrutiny without a damn good reason.
But if the death of their race didn’t count as a good reason, she would never be able to come up with one. She cleared her throat. The Arkon looked even more irritated. “For a member of a short-lived race, you have a propensity to waste time.”
“Sorry. You always get angry if my explanations are ‘inadequate.’ I’m just trying—”
“To waste more time.” His eyes were still open, but only barely.
“The elemental water brought Gilbert and Kattea here. Through an underground tunnel. Into large, stone halls underneath a basement on the Winding Path. The reason they’re here is because it was possible to bring them.”
“And?”
“Sometime in our immediate future—the future that Kattea is ostensibly part of—there’s some sort of disaster that apparently destroys Elantra—or at least the parts of Elantra that are not the fiefs.”
“You think it has something to do with the murders,” Bellusdeo said, when the Arkon failed to find words.
“The maybe-murders,” Kaylin said.
“Pardon?”
“Gilbert insists that they’re not actually dead.” She hesitated. She needed to stop doing that, because Bellusdeo’s eyes narrowed until they matched the Arkon’s. The Arkon let out a small stream of smoke. “But...Gilbert said that he thought all the previous attempts to cast magic in that particular basement were an attempt to speak certain words.”
“Please repeat that slowly,” the Arkon commanded. The mirror’s image shifted, cutting Bellusdeo out of the frame.
“I asked Gilbert to inspect the bodies, because he sees things I can’t,” Kaylin said, resigning herself to the longer explanation. “To me, they’re dead. I’ve seen corpses. But...they disappear if I view them through my familiar’s wing. I thought there was some chance he’d see a dimension to the difficulty that would explain why they disappear.”
“Continue.”
“When we descended into the basement, Gilbert looked at the sigils left by other casters. He—” She grimaced. “He pulled words out of the sigils that I see when I detect traces of prior magic use. He did so in such a way that they were visible to everyone present, even Gavin.”
“Did the Sergeant capture these words for Records?”
“Not while
we were there—Gilbert thought there was a significant danger that the mirror network would be compromised.” She shook her head. “Compromised is the wrong word. He thought it would be a total disaster. It wouldn’t be the first time magic caused problems via the mirrors.
“But—the night before the murder, Gilbert’s house was visited by four men. One of those was an Arcanist. Gilbert did not, according to Kattea, react well to the visitors—but Gilbert has no recollection of a conflict.”
“Was he injured enough to sustain memory loss?”
“Not exactly.” Kaylin thought explaining Gilbert to a very cranky Arkon was the definition of “career-limiting.”
“Teela and Tain headed out to the Arcanum—or the High Halls—without the rest of us. If there’s any information, they’ll dig it up. Oh,” she added, “there was one detail. The Arcanist in question was apparently wearing a tiara with a diamond in its center.”
The Arkon’s eyes slid from orange to something very, very close to red. “This theoretical Arcanist visited Gilbert.”
“Kattea said Gilbert was angry; to Kattea’s eyes, magical hostilities were exchanged. I’m not certain Gilbert sees this as conflict. And no, before you ask, I don’t think Gilbert in the Palace is a good idea. Do you recognize what a diamond-wearing Arcanist entails?”
“I have work to do, Private.”
Kaylin surrendered. “The water of the future blended—somehow—with the water of right now. The Tha’alaan resides, in great part, in the elemental water’s core. It brought some of the memories of the future Tha’alaan with it when it arrived.” She exhaled. “Every Tha’alani in their quarter dies. The experience of each and every death has been dumped into the Tha’alaan; it’s uneven, and I think the Caste Court is attempting to mitigate the obvious damage that’ll cause.
“But Ybelline is aware now of how significant this is, and she is examining the memories of the last few deaths, to attempt to give us more information about what caused it.”
“Very well. I wish to have the visible words examined. I also wish to have the basement beneath Gilbert’s house examined. I am not in a condition to examine them personally, and even were I, Tiamaris was as close as we come to an expert in ancient buildings and writing. He does not, of course, have my wealth of experience—but he has a particular focus.
Cast in Honor (The Chronicles of Elantra) Page 29