She hadn’t walked to the cave in which the Lake was physically housed; there’d been no one there to show her the way. But she had touched the Lake, regardless. She had run her hands through the flow of the current of words, fingers sinking through what appeared—to her eyes—to be wood grain.
She had been in the High Halls, then—in the oldest part of them. She was standing outside of that building now, in streets that were barely patrolled by Swords, and never by Hawks. There was no desk, no table; there was no cavern, containing endless, golden waves, composed of words such as these, moving as if alive—as if joyfully alive.
Inhale. Exhale.
No desk. No table. But the streets—broken, melted— beyond which the rich and the powerful sheltered—were the streets of her city. They were Elantran. The men who flew in the air above where she now knelt were Aerians; the men who ran toward death and danger, mortals, all. Almost all.
The whole city was her home. The High Halls were part of that city. The High Halls, and the Barrani, and the doorway that lead, at last, to the Lake itself. She had sworn the only oaths that really mattered—to her—so that she could join the Hawks.
She couldn’t reach the Lake of Life from here. If she could, so could the ancestor—and that was never, ever, going to end well. It was what, she knew, he wanted. Why else come here?
To harvest, Ynpharion said.
Over my dead body. And that seemed increasingly likely as time wore on, even if it passed much, much more slowly in this small space. Tell the Consort that nothing’s happening. Nothing’s changing!
No, not nothing. The slow, slow bloom of white fire with tips of blue grew in front of her eyes, spreading in slow motion. From its heart stepped the ancestor, and to her eyes, he moved far more quickly than the fire she knew sprang almost instantly from the ground.
He met her eyes, his slowly rounding; his lips parted.
He spoke.
He spoke, but it was not his voice she heard. She looked down at the words on her skin, at her full hands. The Hawks’ weaponsmaster would have had her head for looking away from her opponent—but watching him told her nothing she needed to know to survive.
She heard the words speak. No—she heard the words as if they were part of a long recitation that someone else was speaking. Just as she heard the Arkon’s distant words. Only these two—the ones she held—had voices, if they could be called voices. And yes, she thought, she understood. When she could hear their voices—and that was the wrong word, but she didn’t have a better one—she set them down. In this space, they were as whole as they could be.
She heard the long, slow syllable of a cry of rage—the beginning of a word that could be heard by ears alone, elongated.
She could still see the words she had finally released; he couldn’t. Not any more. And she could still hear them. She moved quickly—as quickly as pain and shaking legs allowed—to gather two more words, one in each hand. They grew heavy and cumbersome as she held them; she had already knelt, lifting her face as she did to watch the slow approach of the ancestor.
She knew he’d kill her when he reached her; it was only a matter of time. Time, she thought, knowing Severn would be here soon, his weapon’s chain breaking magic or reflecting it. Severn wouldn’t survive. Not unless she finished what she’d started.
And she couldn’t rush it. She tried. But she’d never been able to rush a birth, either; swearing or praying didn’t work. She held the words until she could hear them speak—and simultaneously be spoken—and only then did she let them go.
* * *
She wasn’t prepared for the Barrani.
She wasn’t prepared for Teela, who moved as quickly as the ancestor, slowing to his speed as she cleared whatever temporal barrier the Arkon had erected around Kaylin. She seemed to be flying—which was wrong; Teela did many things, but flying wasn’t one of them.
She carried a sword. A greatsword.
Kaylin’s hands were full; the weight dragged them to her lap. She tried to shout Teela’s name; nothing left her lips. Nothing. She closed her eyes. She had to close her eyes.
The ancestor’s power was rooted in these words, and if she couldn’t break the connection and send them back to the Lake, they were all dead. And Teela knew it. Severn knew it. So did the Arkon. Kaylin needed to listen to something that wasn’t her fear; to listen for the voices of the words in her hands, speaking in a language she didn’t, and couldn’t, understand.
Only when she heard them did she set them down and open her eyes again; she was still standing—or kneeling—in the streets, and moving without vision was just asking for trouble. It was just Teela. Tain was running toward the gap between the ancestor and Teela, and behind him, the Barrani Hawks. They carried swords—but their swords weren’t the equal of Teela’s, which seemed like forged lightning.
The Dragons were no longer unleashing fiery death on the streets. But the Aerians were flying low, now.
Focus, Kaylin. She shook her head to clear it, and inhaled slowly, which helped. She lifted the next two words, and closed her eyes.
The Consort is coming, Kaylin. She heard the fear in Ynpharion’s voice and her eyes snapped open.
The Consort is not coming! Has the High Lord lost his mind?
She is coming, he replied, and it was clear that he agreed with everything Kaylin hadn’t yet put into words. She understands exactly what you are doing, Lord Kaylin—but she does not feel you will finish in time; our enemy will destroy the streets and half of the High Halls, or he will retreat, taking what he has gathered over centuries with him.
She’ll die. And then, upon the heels of that thought, if he has her, he can reach the Lake—
She says it is not that simple.
It is exactly that simple!
What you are doing she can do more quickly. She will not let him flee if there is any chance—at all—that she can save what he holds. She does not worry about the lives she spends here. She worries about what he can do with the names of the Barrani who have fallen tonight. The Dragons harry him. He cannot do what he must do to harvest the fallen—but he has altered the conditions of the terrain upon which they now lie. The words will not be his without work on his part—but without the Lady, they will not now return to the Lake itself.
I can do it—I’m here.
He didn’t believe her.
And because he didn’t, the Consort wouldn’t. You don’t believe it, Lord Kaylin. You want it to be the truth—but you don’t believe it. You are willing to risk your life—but you are, in the end, mortal; she is the Consort. She is the guardian of the Lake, the mother to us all. What you face and survive, she is certain to face and survive.
He was disgusted to have to explain this. And frustrated.
And it didn’t matter. I’m not the mother of an entire race—I risk so much less— She stopped. She had to stop. The buzzing of fear in her mind was the only thing she could hear—and it wasn’t helping anyone. Not even Kaylin. As she inhaled—slowly, as she’d been taught—the voices of the words in her hands became sharp and clear.
Almost as if they were people. She set them down—gently, although it probably didn’t make a difference—and moved again. And again. She could beg the words to wake—if that’s what they were doing. It didn’t make a damned difference. Begging never had.
Teela landed, both feet planted and knees bent, five yards from where Kaylin now knelt, runes in hand. Her back was all Kaylin could see of her. Severn was where Kaylin had left him; it was Kaylin who had moved out from behind the magic-breaking barrier of his chain.
The ancestor spoke. In High Barrani.
The words—all the words that Kaylin had not yet wakened—shuddered with the impact of each syllable. Kaylin was already sitting; if she hadn’t been, she might have frozen. Or fallen. There was a force in the ancestor’s s
poken words that only magic could give it.
Teela was not as fast as the ancestor, and the ancestor was very close to her. But she was hit—in a manner of speaking—by the sound of Dragon fury: a roar. The roar shook the earth beneath everyone’s feet.
Kaylin recognized the voice. Bellusdeo. Bellusdeo had come. Maggaron came in from the ancestor’s right, weapon raised. He wasn’t as fast as Teela, but he had both stride and reach. Bellusdeo—in full Dragon armor—was steps behind.
And above her head, like the heart of a very bad storm, Kaylin heard the Emperor’s roar. It was perhaps the first time she was honestly grateful that she couldn’t understand native Dragon speech. Teela, having caught the ancestor’s attention, moved toward Severn; Severn shifted position.
The words spoke, and Kaylin set them down, picking up the next two.
Teela shouted. Her voice wasn’t as loud as Bellusdeo’s— Bellusdeo who was carrying a sword, of all things—but Kaylin heard it clearly. She had only heard it a handful of times in her life; it was a Barrani battle cry. She was calling the Hawks. Tain, almost at Teela’s side, skidded to a halt and turned, repeating Teela’s shout almost, but not quite, exactly.
“Kaylin!” a familiar voice shouted. The syllables were elongated and stretched, but recognizable. “Get the hells out of the way!”
Teela replied in her stead. “She can’t! Whatever aerial attack you employ is going to hit her!”
Cursing. Long, Leontine words. They were almost immediately swamped by angry Dragon. And by the sound of horns.
The ancestor dodged the downward arc of Maggaron’s mace. The street didn’t. Ice cracked. Stone. The ancestor lashed out at the Norannir with his weaponless hand—he carried no weapons that Kaylin could see—but the blow clanged off Bellusdeo’s armor. It sent Bellusdeo staggering back, out of Kaylin’s line of vision.
The pillar of white fire rose in a column. Kaylin was sitting within its radius. Everyone one else was standing.
A familiar golden bubble enveloped them all.
“Teela—call the Hawks off. The familiar can’t protect all of them!”
“Not now!” Teela snarled as if she were Marcus.
Kaylin knew why; the words. She tightened her grip on them, because something had almost pulled them out of her hands. In panic, she looked at the rest of the words that the ancestor had summoned; they were moving. They were moving away. He was calling them back.
Panic didn’t describe what she felt—the word wasn’t strong enough. It didn’t change anything, either. The words—the words would be lost. Only the ones she had managed to grab would return to the Barrani.
The Barrani Hawks had arrived. They were armed—with swords, not their usual sticks—but wearing the tabard of the Halls of Law: the Hawk. They didn’t attempt to close with the ancestor. There was no room left; Severn, Teela, and Maggaron—especially the wall of Maggaron—were already too tightly packed for fast maneuvering.
Teela was attempting to move the fight. It was working. But the words would go with their enemy.
No, Kaylin, the familiar said. She had almost forgotten about him. The Consort has arrived.
* * *
She wore white armor, and her hair was a white spill; her brows, white, were furrowed, her lips thinned. She came in from the left, in an opening created entirely by Teela. The ancestor was parrying her blade—with his hand. He’d yet to lose his hand. Teela, on the other hand, hadn’t lost the sword.
The Consort didn’t speak. She glanced once at Kaylin, nodded, and sprinted toward the words that were farthest away from the private. She didn’t lift them; she didn’t touch them. But it was clear to Kaylin that she could. Instead, she spoke.
And her language, like the Arkon’s, like the ancestor’s, was opaque to Kaylin. It was not opaque to their enemy. He turned, leaping above the arc of blade and mace; he leveled one hand in the Consort’s direction.
Ynpharion was there before the blow landed. He knocked the Consort to the side, rolling as lightning crackled an inch to his left. Kaylin had never watched him fight before. But Ynpharion was a Lord of the High Court; he could. Of course he could. He knew—as Kaylin did—that one hit was death.
The Consort stumbled and righted herself. She was still speaking. Not singing, not quite—but there was a musicality to her voice that the Arkon’s lacked. The ancestor lacked it, as well.
The ancestor leaped toward the Consort as if gravity were meaningless. As he did, the Aerian Hawks finally dropped whatever it was they’d been carrying. It was a net. It was a net made of steel or iron or possibly glass; it reminded Kaylin of a spider’s web. She set the words in her hands down and scrabbled toward the next two.
* * *
Bellusdeo returned to the fray. She was limping. Had Kaylin’s hands not been full—but they were. She called the Dragon by name—but she wasn’t the only one trying, and her voice didn’t even register as sound in comparison.
Diarmat’s did. Kaylin couldn’t see him; the ground on which she knelt was the bottom of a basin, and the voice came from somewhere up top. Whatever he said, Bellusdeo ignored. Or mostly ignored. She didn’t charge in to the fight; she came, instead, to where Kaylin knelt.
Kaylin looked up. Not me, she mouthed, over Diarmat’s bellow. “Go to the Consort. Keep her alive.”
Bellusdeo nodded, grim now. “You understand that I’m in the position I’m in because of the Barrani?” she asked, as she turned.
“Yes.” Kaylin held her breath after the single word escaped her mouth.
“And that you’ll owe me for this?”
She exhaled. “Yes.” She wasn’t certain that Bellusdeo could hear her answer, given every other noise—but Dragons had good hearing. The Consort didn’t appear to notice Bellusdeo; she spoke, and spoke, and spoke. But Bellusdeo came to stand between the ancestor and the Consort’s white back, lifting her hands as she did.
Kaylin couldn’t tell if the Dragon was using magic; at this point, her skin had passed beyond agony to blessed numbness. But she recognized the start of a sigil, and she saw the air around the two women thicken.
Maggaron shouted, “Bellusdeo.” The Dragon nodded, no more. She’d chosen the ground she was going to stand on. Light—fire light, reflected light, magical detritus—bounced off golden armor. The armor was dented. The breastplate just below the ribs had buckled.
Bellusdeo’s magic was no match for the ancestor’s.
But the Consort had not arrived alone.
Ynpharion was not an Arcanist. Evarrim, however, was. It was Evarrim’s magic that now filled the uneven, small basin. Kaylin recognized his signature. She couldn’t see him, but she could hear him. She could hear the sound of combat. She realized, as she squinted, that he wasn’t suddenly going to become visible. He was in the basin, but he wasn’t in the basin that could be seen by almost anyone else in the street.
Evarrim was doing what Mandoran had done, somehow. What he himself had done in the outlands when he had crossed into the gray mists to deliver a message to Kaylin and Severn. She was never, ever going to like the Arcanist, but the contempt in which she held him lost what little traction was left.
Two more. Two more words to set loose.
Maggaron roared. He wasn’t a Dragon; he had a giant’s voice. Kaylin squeezed her eyes shut, bowing her head. She was doing everything she could do. Rescuing an eight-foot-tall, armed Norannir wasn’t on the list. He was fighting alongside Teela and Tain; if they couldn’t keep him alive Kaylin had no hope of doing so.
The netting dropped by the Hawks landed in the basin. Where it touched ground, fire instantly guttered. Kaylin had never seen anything like it. Then again, she’d never seen a full mobilization of the Swords and the Hawks before—certainly not as backup for Dragons.
The Arkon roared; the ground shook. Kaylin ducked instinctively, curling ove
r the words in her hands although magical fire and Dragon breath wasn’t going to harm them. The ancestor gestured; strands of net parted. The Arkon roared, and Diarmat shouted in response.
Kaylin wasn’t privy to their plans. She set the words loose and looked up as the Consort’s voice banked. The Consort herself had not moved or shifted position; nor had Ynpharion. But both wavered slightly in the air before Kaylin; the Consort looked vaguely transparent. So did Bellusdeo.
Hands empty, Kaylin rose. She covered the uneven ground in striding leaps, reaching for both Bellusdeo and the Consort. Ynpharion’s eyes widened; the barrier surrounding them let Kaylin through. She caught both women by the arm, and as she did, the marks on her arms began to glow an even, bright blue.
What are you doing? Ynpharion demanded.
Keeping them both here!
The Consort continued to speak as if neither Kaylin nor Ynpharion were present; as if the ancestor was not struggling to either reach her or put her out of reach—possibly permanently—of the names that he used for power. Kaylin had weakened him. She would need another hour at a conservative guess to free the rest of the names.
The Consort wouldn’t. She didn’t appear to need to touch the individual words; she only had to speak. This left Kaylin’s hands free; she tightened her grip on both Dragon and Barrani as the ancestor spoke again. The ground tilted.
Although Teela, Tain and Severn were moving in concert, none of their blows seemed to land. Some were deflected, but most were simply sidestepped. Maggaron’s luck was no better, but he was slower than either of the Hawks, and the ancestor landed a kick that sent him flying. Bellusdeo cursed softly, but didn’t move.
“I don’t think he can crack your protections,” Kaylin said, surprised.
“That is the hope.”
“But I think he can move the ground they’re centered on.”
“I noticed a shift in the texture of the landscape—but he’ll kill her if I move. I don’t think whatever it is he’s doing is guaranteed to end in our deaths.”
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