Cast in Honor (The Chronicles of Elantra)

by Michelle Sagara

  Gilbert’s eyes couldn’t actually see the Arcanist. Kaylin’s now could. But Annarion and Bellusdeo continued to battle with someone or something Kaylin still couldn’t see clearly.

  “Mandoran, Teela, can you see him?”

  Teela lifted her head; her eyes narrowed. “Yes, kitling.”

  “Can you—”

  “He’s not corporeal,” Mandoran said.

  “What else do we have to do?” Kaylin shouted. She had to shout to be heard over the growing noise of stones, people, combat. She had to shout to be heard over her own fear.

  “Gilbert has to see him!”

  And Gilbert couldn’t. But Mandoran could.

  “Look at him!” Kaylin shouted.

  “I am looking at him!” the Barrani who was not quite Barrani shouted back. Two of his eyes were blue; one was a golden orb.

  She understood, finally, as she met its lidless stare, that the thing that shed light at its heart was a word.

  A true word.

  “Mandoran, look at him with all of the eyes in your head!”

  “I can’t—” His blue eyes widened.

  Kaylin turned the rest of Gilbert’s open eyes toward the Arcanist they couldn’t see. Mandoran turned the single, foreign eye in the same direction, at the same time.

  Light blinded every one of Gilbert’s eyes that Kaylin could use. It might have blinded the one in Mandoran’s forehead; she didn’t know. She couldn’t see out of that one. She couldn’t see out of the one Annarion carried, either.

  But the voices of the three stones converged into a single, resonant voice: a high cascade of syllables that sounded almost like the notes of a song. She nearly joined it, it was that compelling. She could feel it as much as she could hear it—probably because the entire front of her body was now plastered against the oddly warm stone surface. She couldn’t mute it in any other way.

  Almost, she didn’t want to. Almost. But her familiar bit her ear. At this point, she was almost numb—his teeth couldn’t compete with the pain the magic was causing. Or they shouldn’t have—but he wasn’t just a translucent lizard.

  Kaylin lifted her head; she’d tucked her chin, the way she always did when pain was harshest. Tears trailed down her cheeks. She was certain that blood also trailed down her ear, her neck. It was a different kind of pain; it braced her.

  Arms shaking with both tension and the vibration of the stone around which her arms were wrapped, Kaylin understood that when the stone stilled, when this eerie, unintelligibly beautiful song faded, it would be too late.

  She wasn’t the Arkon. She wasn’t an ancient Barrani. She wasn’t Gilbert or Tara or even Helen. She had straightened the lines and shapes of true words; she had touched them, intuiting meaning slowly and with effort; she had held them together. She had carried them—and was still, in some fashion, carrying them now. She had even spoken them.

  She had never spoken them without the aid of someone who was an ancient, powerful immortal standing almost literally over her shoulder and speaking them into her ear. The small, ancient, powerful immortal sitting on her shoulder was only biting at the moment.

  It was possible that Gilbert was trying to speak. It was possible that he was standing over her shoulder and screaming in her ear—if he could even find it, right now.

  She met Mandoran’s borrowed eye, swallowed and spoke the word that gave it its light.

  * * *

  Or she tried.

  Kaylin understood that this word, this word at the heart of Mandoran’s borrowed eye, could be spoken because she had seen Sanabalis do it. She had seen the Arkon do it. True words tugged at her memory. They always sounded familiar; they sounded like something she should recognize, should be able to repeat, should understand.

  But her own fledgling attempts to speak them had always been a fumbling disaster. It had taken months to be able to think and hold the name of fire for long enough to light a bloody candle. She didn’t have months now.

  You do, Kaylin. It was the familiar. If you require them, you do.

  I don’t have time.

  No? You don’t understand where you are or what Gilbert has done. You have time. You have all the time in the world.

  What?

  You have time, Kaylin. The path that makes your minutes and hours is—was—broken here. It is twisted and stretched. And...it is now a contained anomaly.

  What will it cost?

  She felt his approval and hated that it made her feel better. She wasn’t a child, anymore. She shouldn’t need approval.

  To succeed? You have all the time in the world. They do not. To take the time, you will have to do what the Arcanist has done: step out of time. Uproot yourself.

  What if—

  Yes. Think of the life you live now as a cloth. Your Arcanist has slashed it. There is a long cut, but it can be stitched or mended. There are two sides from which you can mend it. One requires speed, and one does not. But if you mend it while you are entirely uprooted, you will not be able to return.

  But won’t I—

  Cause the same disruption as the Arcanist? No. There is a difference.

  She swallowed.

  Gilbert is here now. Gilbert is aware of you.

  She did not want Gilbert to destroy her.

  He will have no need. You will be adrift from the thing he is meant, and was created, to safeguard, and there will be no tear. What happens to you after is not his concern. Understand what he said, Kaylin: he could repair what has been broken here, as can you. But you are needle and thread. He is torch and sword. He will destroy anything that is dependent upon the cloth, and he does not wish to do so. He is trying to preserve you.

  Why?

  Because Kattea was correct. Find a way.

  * * *

  Something hit her in the face. She didn’t lift her arms, because the stone was still vibrating; it was only the muffling that suspended or stretched the moment itself. Her cheek stung. It burned.

  Yes.

  It was Nightshade’s mark.

  Your brother is going to be so pissed off.

  He laughed. The laughter was wild, loud—it was almost the type of laugh she was used to hearing from Mandoran. You stand on the very precipice, and that’s what you think of? That my brother will be angry with me?

  She thought her cheek would blister, and she held on to the sensation. She had always been, and remained to this day, afraid of Nightshade.

  Yes, Kaylin. Nightshade understood the value of fear. I will not allow you to do this.

  Don’t, she told him, weary now. Help me, or leave me alone.

  Help you?

  Yes. She could see the cold expression on his perfect face; she could see the color of his eyes. She couldn’t touch him, but...he was here. She accepted it. She felt the pain recede. She was right, too: her cheek was going to blister.

  But she understood what she had to do. She called Ynpharion, the Barrani whose ambivalence was one part gratitude, one part disgust and three parts resentment; he was the only one whose True Name she held against his will.

  Lord Kaylin!

  I know. I know. I’m in the center of the storm, and I need your help.

  He was instantly wary. Instantly cautious. The High Halls was mobilizing around him, but he had frozen, and when he moved, he moved toward the Consort. I am never far from her now. He said it with pride, with yearning and with—yes—a tingle of fear. The Barrani did not trust. What help do you command?

  Just—stay here. Stay here. Speak to me.

  He was confused. He was suspicious. He was, however, willing. He didn’t fight her at all.

  She then reached farther, to the West March. Lirienne.

  Kaylin? She could see, in the distance, the exterior of the Hallionne Alsanis. Yes. The
Hallionne has summoned me. Sedarias is...concerned, and the Hallionne cannot calm her. What has happened?

  Mandoran, Annarion and Teela are with me, and we’re—

  She gave up on words; she let him see.

  He didn’t ask what she wanted or needed. He didn’t ask what she commanded; if she held his name, it was, in the end, with his permission. All of the power she had over the Lord of the West March was theoretical, and they both knew it.

  This annoyed Nightshade. For once, he kept his criticism to himself.

  The Lord of the West March smiled; she felt the warmth of his expression. When, he asked, will you visit?

  Not right now.

  The smile deepened. She held on to it as she reached for the last of the names she knew, the last of the things that were true and prickly and binding.

  High Lord. His was not a name she called. It was not a name she approached. On most days—good or bad—she buried the knowledge as far away from conscious thought as she possibly could. Lirienne had chosen—as Nightshade had chosen—to gift her with knowledge of his name. The High Lord was more complicated.

  She felt his eyes open and look inward, and they burned like green fire. He did not seem surprised.

  No.

  She wanted to apologize for bothering him, even given the circumstances. She wanted to let go of what she’d touched and back as far away as possible. The only person who agreed with this choice was, of course, Ynpharion.

  But it was too late.

  Show me. The words were a command, and she obeyed instantly; had started to obey before she’d really registered the silent words. His touch was not gentle.

  My sister will be angry, he told her, if I lose you. She saw him so clearly she thought he must somehow be here. In this room. In this fight.

  Ynpharion was annoyed. Annoyed and awed. You feel the presence of the High Lord.

  Yes. But she felt the pull of all of them. She felt their weight. It was a weight she had taken on in ignorance the first time; it was a weight she had required to save a life; a weight she had given, willingly; and a weight she had taken without permission.

  She held on to all of them. She wove them together. They were her tether.

  She turned to Mandoran once again, and she looked at the word that he carried. It was not part of him, but at the moment, it was not separate.

  She listened.

  She listened to the voice of the stone.

  She listened to the sound of Annarion’s sword, of Bellusdeo’s sword; she listened to the crackle of the Arkon’s fire, the Arkon’s magical focus.

  And then she cut herself off from each, one at a time, concentrating until the only sound that remained in the room itself was the quiet, constant hum of a single word. She strained to hear it, because she couldn’t move—and neither could Mandoran.

  Her voice was thin, weak, when she lifted it. It was hesitant, which annoyed at least three of the people whose voices she could not—and did not want to—silence. She knew. She knew that hesitance was very much like silence; it was like the wrong word, the wrong language. She strengthened her voice. She began to struggle with syllables, with stringing them together in a continuous shift of sound. With speaking as if the spoken word had meaning.

  And this annoyed only one man.

  Shouting, he said, is not a sign of strength. It is a sign, perhaps, of bravery or foolishness—but not strength.

  You say it.

  She felt his annoyance. It was bad. But she understood, as well, that the High Lord couldn’t see the word. He could see what she saw, but only to a point. It was like Teela and Mandoran or Annarion. They were willing—sometimes eager—to explain, to let her see, but their explanations made no sense to her. Teela couldn’t process them.

  She let panic go. Of all the weights she carried, it wasn’t one she could afford. She looked through Gilbert’s eyes—the ones that were open. Gilbert’s eyes couldn’t see the word there, either, which made no sense.

  It is your word, Kaylin, the familiar said. It is a word absorbed from you.

  * * *

  The word hung in the air, at roughly the same height Mandoran’s forehead had been from the ground. She listened again. She strained to bring the sound closer. The word drew closer instead. In shape, in size, it seemed simple, but as it approached, she saw that it was more complicated than it had appeared at a distance. The single line that underlay the whole wasn’t actually a line; it was a composite of strokes, of lines that appeared to move in the same direction.

  Closer, she could hear it. It was like a chorus of sound. She had one voice, and she faltered again. She could not repeat what she heard. Not all of it. Not all at once, if ever. But...if this was like a chorus, there had to be a melody. And that, she thought, she could follow.

  Kaylin. Severn’s voice. It was thinner, quieter, than it normally was. All of their voices were. She wanted to tell them to shush, to let her listen. She didn’t, because Kaylin realized that was where it would start: these were the voices that connected her, in some fashion, to a world outside of Gilbert’s eyes and Gilbert’s power. If she lost them, she would never find her way back.

  They couldn’t see what she saw. They couldn’t hear what she heard. But they could see some part of her, and at least one of them could see it more clearly than she could see it herself. She willed them not to let go of it.

  She couldn’t see cloth, as the familiar had described it, and that made her task harder. But she looked at the word, and only at the word, and she felt her panic recede. The marks on her arm were visible, even though her eyes were closed; they were the only other thing she could see.

  No.

  No, that wasn’t true. She could see the Arcanist. His eyes were closed; he looked waxen, graven, a thing of stone. She wouldn’t have said he was alive, because she could see no hint of breath, no motion at all. She could see no sign of life in him.

  This was significant. Had she been able to feel the beat of her own heart, it would have been fast. But she felt oddly disjointed now, as if her own body was no more alive than the Arcanist’s. Her eyes were closed, of course. She shouldn’t have been able to see him. Yet his image filled her vision—as did the glowing marks on her skin.

  But she had always been able to see words.

  How had she taken Ynpharion’s name? He hadn’t chosen to expose it or offer the knowledge of it to her. She hadn’t carried and completed the name that would define both his place in the world and his power in it, as she’d once done with the High Lord. She had taken it because she could see it. She could touch it. She hadn’t had to speak it at all.

  How had she preserved the one rune from the Lake of Life that she had given, in the end, to Gilbert?

  She had grabbed it. She had held it. She had placed it on the only easily exposed skin available: her forehead. The words she had forced herself to speak, with Tara as a crutch, had never been hers. The words that she had placed in the core of Helen were not words she’d spoken. They were not even words she had her own words to express.

  She had a thing or two to say to the Ancients, none of it particularly polite. Why had they chosen someone to speak the remnants of their old stories when that person couldn’t speak the language?

  Because, she thought, speaking it wasn’t necessary.

  They were simultaneously her words, and yet not. She was part of their telling, but they were not, had never been, her story. She didn’t need to be anything other than what she was—whatever that was now. She fell silent, staring at the Arcanist. Loathing—and she really did hate Arcanists—fell silent, as well. She did not understand, and would probably never understand, the why of what he had attempted to do.

  And it didn’t, at this moment, matter. She understood her own “why.” It was in this room: Teela. Tain. Bellusdeo. Maggaron. And yes, Annario
n, Mandoran. The Arkon. Sanabalis. It was Severn and Kattea. Lirienne. The High Lord. Nightshade.

  Even Ynpharion, although he despised her.

  Beyond them, the Halls of Law. Marcus. His pridelea. Caitlin. Joey and the mother she felt she knew, although she’d never met the woman. The Hawklord. Marrin and her foundlings. Evanton. Helen.

  The Emperor. Diarmat. She didn’t even grimace, thinking his name.

  All the things she loved. All the things she hated. All of the people.

  She reached out and caught the floating word at the heart of Gilbert’s eye in both of her unseen hands. If she understood what had happened, it was one of her words, anyway—one of the ones she carried as both responsibility and bane. She felt its edges as sharp, painful things; she felt the whole of its weight.

  And then she turned toward the Arcanist, made hollow by his own action. Fractured by it, so that part of him was fighting Annarion, and possibly killing Dragons, while he somehow remained here. She whispered Severn’s name, over and over, listening for him. Listening for him as she’d listened for him for eight years of her childhood.

  Hearing him in echoes, in fear, in hope. The other voices were there, but so muted, she could barely touch them.

  It is different, the familiar said. You gave Severn your name.

  She placed the word she carried against the forehead of the Arcanist. In the darkness of her closed eyes, the word seemed to melt into his forehead; its golden glow spread from there across the surface of his alabaster skin, changing white to something warmer, something that might actually be alive.

  Kaylin! No!

  She felt Severn’s panic—a sharp tug, an insistent, almost overwhelming pull.

  Not yet. Not yet. It was gone before she had to fight it.

  The Barrani Arcanist opened his eyes.

  * * *

  Barrani had beautiful eyes. She thought this without desire, without warmth. The length of his lashes, the color like a dusting of perfect snow; the width of his eyes and the shape of them; the placement across the bridge of an unbroken, perfect nose.