Cast in Deception

by Michelle Sagara

  “Or skill,” the Dragon muttered. She was visible, but sort of visually smeared. Kaylin lifted her hands to rub her eyes. It seemed that smoke—or mist—was creeping up from the ground in a way that obscured vision.

  “Unlike the rest of you,” Terrano snapped, “I don’t spend my time doing nothing but pointless, boring, political talk!”

  “That’s what your friends are going to be doing when they arrive in Elantra.”

  Terrano shrieked in frustration. It reminded Kaylin of the sound Mandoran made when he got stuck in walls. The air grew more foggy as they began their descent.

  “Bellusdeo?”

  “Here.”

  “Do you see a lot of fog?”

  “It seems more like smoke, to me—but yes, it’s interfering with visibility.”

  Kaylin considered asking the Dragon to go back up the stairs, but decided against it; the stairs didn’t seem particularly fixed in either form or shape. Whatever Alsanis was doing, he was doing in a rush.

  “I do not see this smoke,” Spike said. Terrano was unwilling to explain offended to Spike, but had no trouble with smoke.

  “What do you see?”

  “The atmosphere of the area which you are entering is not fully compatible with your species. This may cause difficulties with your perception of the space.”

  Kaylin ground to a halt. “My species? Or our species?”

  He whirred a bit and then said, “You are human and Dragon. This area is not compatible with your kind.”

  “And him?”

  “It’s not a problem for me,” Terrano replied.

  “What exactly is his species?”

  Spike whirred. She thought there were more sounds in it, but they didn’t resolve into anything like language, at least not the languages she knew. “Alsanis?”

  “Terrano has gone ahead,” the Hallionne replied. “But there is an instability in the portal room, and I do not believe it will be possible to entirely contain its appearance. Please accept my apologies for the discomfort, Lord Kaylin.”

  “Will he help us?” Bellusdeo asked, her voice a rumble of sound.

  “I am certain he will try.”

  The familiar squawked loudly, which was a warning. It wasn’t a timely warning. The step on which Kaylin had leapt ceased to exist just as her left foot hit it.

  * * *

  Bellusdeo caught her before the ground—if there was ground—could. Gold-tinted claws grabbed both of her arms, and Kaylin, who could climb up the side of a building with a little bit of luck and equipment, managed—with effort—to twist her way up to the Dragon’s back. Spike, on the other hand, didn’t require rescue. If he no longer had wings, or what looked like wings, he seemed immune to simple things like gravity. He floated alongside Kaylin.

  “I am going to be really displeased if I hit ceiling or walls,” the gold Dragon said. She roared. In the depths of whatever it was that lay beneath her feet, something answered. This did not fill Kaylin with anything remotely resembling hope.

  “Are you all right? Nothing’s injured?”

  “Well, I’m not bored.”

  “Where’s Spike?”

  “I’m not sure. I can’t see him.”

  Kaylin shrieked and clung for dear life as the Dragon veered to the side. “Concentrate on driving—I’ll look!”

  * * *

  Down was a long way away. Kaylin half doubted they would ever reach it; it felt as if they had been in flight for a long time. But the smoke—or fog, as there didn’t seem to be a fire—that had made visibility so terrible seemed to clear as they descended. Beneath the Dragon, she could see what appeared to be ground.

  It was, sadly, ground covered in trees.

  A cursory glance at those trees didn’t immediately surrender a clearing, and while the trees probably didn’t pose a problem for Dragons, they weren’t going to do Kaylin any good. She tightened her legs and clenched her jaw as Bellusdeo buzzed the tree tops, but the Dragon rose again, searching for somewhere convenient to land.

  She settled, in the end, for inconvenient; the trees opened up around a lake, and the lake was possessed of something that might have been shore—if it had been longer and less rocky. Less inconvenient became hazardous as the rocks rose to impede the Dragon’s skidding halt.

  Bellusdeo corrected course and pushed up off the ground before impact, but it was close.

  Squawk! Squawk! Squawk!

  “You could try to be a little helpful!” Terrano shouted. A quick scan of the lake failed to expose his presence, and his voice seemed to be coming from the rocks.

  “I think he wants us to stop right in front of the...rocks,” Kaylin told the Dragon, who was now hovering. Hovering made the landing far easier, and she did as Kaylin suggested.

  The rocks immediately fell, and Terrano climbed out of them, looking distinctly battered. “Honestly, the two of you. Could you not hear me screaming?”

  “We heard the last bit,” Kaylin said, before Bellusdeo could reply; Terrano looked frazzled enough that the inevitable sarcasm or condescension wasn’t going to help the situation any. “What are you doing?”

  “We’re in trouble,” he replied.

  “Alsanis?”

  “That’s part of the trouble. He’s not here. Or rather, we’re not there anymore.”

  Severn?

  Silence.

  Kaylin swore.

  * * *

  The good news, such as it was, was that they were materially unharmed. The bad news? They appeared to be in the middle of nowhere. A kind of forest nowhere that reminded Kaylin of an insect-filled walk overland to the West March.

  “Don’t touch that,” Terrano snapped. Since Kaylin hadn’t moved, she felt this unfair. “It’s not actually water.”

  “And the rocks?”

  “Not rocks, either.”

  “So...this is like the portal paths.”

  He raised a brow at her, which conversely made him look younger than he usually did.

  “The portal paths—at least at inception—could look like anything. The first time I walked the portal pathways, I entered a path that mimicked forest perfectly.” Until it hadn’t.

  “It’s not the same.”

  “How’s it different?”

  “When Alsanis creates the path, he does so deliberately. It’s a narrow path—more like a tunnel through noise and chaos than an actual road—and it’s sustained, in theory, by the Hallionne.”

  “How? It’s not part of the Hallionne.”

  “It’s—ugh. Everything in the outlines is supposed to be inert. It’s supposed to be like the rest of his body, just outside of his absolute control. He does have some influence on the shape it takes. Inside the Hallionne, he can create anything he wants. The portal roads are not on the inside. He can influence the shape of the road, but it’s as if he’s made an object, say, a glass, that he’s given visitors to take with them. He can’t do anything about the glass if the visitor drops it and it shatters.”

  “So, he creates the path, and we walk it.”

  “Yes. But the path that he creates has layers. It’s like—it’s affected by weight. Sometimes some of those who walk the paths have different weights. It’s like they sink to different levels. They all reach the portal’s exit, eventually. In theory. He must have told you, last time, that portal paths were tricky if you needed to arrive at the Hallionne at the same time as your companions.” He gave the gold Dragon—who was definitely draconic now—the side-eye.

  “The last time we took these paths,” Kaylin told her companions, “they disintegrated into shadow around our feet. By the end, we were walking on one of the siblings of Hallionne Bertolle. While he talked. He lay down, stretched out and made himself a road that the rest of us could more or less follow. And the stuff underneath that road didn’t particularly want us there.
Long story short, it sure didn’t seem inert to the rest of us.”

  “It was. The Hallionne wasn’t the only person trying to influence its shape or form. Or direction.”

  “That was you?”

  “No, not directly. I was busy elsewhere.” But he looked distinctly uncomfortable. “I may have taught some people a bit about how to manipulate it.”

  “May have.”

  He shrugged.

  “May have.”

  “I didn’t think it would matter!”

  The Dragon breathed fire; it melted the ground a few inches to the left of Terrano. Kaylin hoped that his physical form currently represented the entirety of the space he chose to occupy, but even if it didn’t, he didn’t seem unduly bothered by the fire. He did, however, avoid the lake and its water.

  “Spike,” Kaylin said, to the floating, spiked ball to her left, “take a note of this. I am never coming back to the West March again.” She looked at her familiar who, to her surprise, seemed to have slumped into his bored posture. “Well, we wanted to investigate the portal paths anyway.”

  Terrano snorted.

  “And at least this way, my head won’t be filled with people who are giving me constant advice.”

  Terrano stared at her. Something in the shape of his eyes, the brief tightening of his lips, made Kaylin think of...envy.

  * * *

  “What we need to know,” Bellusdeo said, “is what you taught the people who might just be using that knowledge against us now.”

  “Could we learn it?” Kaylin added. The small dragon bit her ear. Spike was largely nonverbal, and he tended to move along at a steady pace. A slow pace. Even Hawks on patrol weren’t this sluggish, and Hawks paid attention to everything. Ah, no. If she thought about it that way, Hawks didn’t; not like Spike did. He was like an ambulatory recorder, like an external portable mirror.

  “Spike.”

  “I am here.” That had become his response to most uses of his name.

  “You said that you were ordered to the edge of the fief—”

  “I do not believe that is what I said. I can replay—”

  “No, please.” Spike’s replay took a lot longer than the average Records response. “I don’t need the exact phrase, only the gist of it. You met a man at the edge of Ravellon. You were supposed to stay with him. He was to carry you somewhere.”

  A long pause, which generally meant Spike was thinking. Or reviewing his own Records without sharing. “Yes.”

  “Fine. Could you ride with me the same way?”

  Both Bellusdeo and Terrano said, “No.”

  Without the help of the familiar’s wing, Kaylin couldn’t see the Shadow’s facial expression, but the sound of confusion was relayed quite clearly in its voice. “Yes?”

  To her much less sluggishly moving companions, Kaylin said, “I have Hope. I can carry Spike. Hope doesn’t even look worried. If we wait for Spike, we’ll never get anywhere.”

  “Where, exactly, are we trying to go?” the Dragon asked, folding her arms.

  Kaylin shunted the question to Terrano.

  “I’m trying to follow the echoes of the path Alsanis created for my friends. It was,” he added, “destroyed. It no longer exists as a functional path.” Eyes narrowing, he glared at the Dragon. “I am also attempting to build a path that the rest of you can walk. I don’t need it. If I weren’t trying to do it without overwhelming the possible traces of what existed before, it wouldn’t require so much concentration.”

  Bellusdeo shrugged, but fell silent. Watching her, Kaylin was grateful that the Dragon lived with Helen in the same house as Mandoran. Yes, they squabbled and took digs at each other across a dining table that never quite reached the level of battlefield, but she’d grown accustomed to the Barrani’s attitude, his general nonchalance. An echo of that relationship formed the basis for her response to Terrano.

  “Spike.” While the Dragon and the Barrani were glaring at each other, the ball of silver floated toward Kaylin’s outstretched left hand. “I’d really like it if you didn’t actually make me bleed.”

  The Dragon pushed Kaylin’s hand away.

  “If a Barrani lord could carry it, I can carry it. Neither of us are Terrano.”

  “Even Terrano couldn’t carry it for long, if you recall. He was bleeding.”

  “Was not.”

  “It was bleeding or disincorporating, which we happen to find more disturbing.”

  “Did I mention concentration?” To Kaylin he added, “Of all the companions you could have chosen, why a Dragon?”

  “Among other things, she’s never tried to kill me.”

  “I wasn’t trying to kill you.”

  “The forest Ferals?”

  “They were trying to kill you. It’s not like I’m Shadow—I wasn’t controlling their bodies or their minds.”

  “No, just conveniently leading them to us. Oh, and doing something to help them shift the shape of their bodies.”

  “I’m telling you—”

  “Don’t bother.” Kaylin was torn between the strong desire to strangle Terrano and the desire to let Bellusdeo breathe on him. Terrano was unlikely to die, but if he got singed just a little...

  He won’t.

  She blinked. This was a different voice.

  Yes. It’s mine.

  She looked down at her hand. Spike had, apparently, passed through the less intimidating human draconic form to settle on Kaylin’s left palm. She looked up at Bellusdeo, who was staring grimly at the ball, her eyes very orange. “Please don’t breathe on it. Spike will survive. Probably. I’ll lose my hand.”

  “You’re right-handed.”

  Her familiar emitted a lazy squawk, and the gold Dragon surrendered. “Honestly, I’m beginning to understand why Tain is so attached to boredom.”

  Kaylin, however, was staring at her hand, because the lower half of Spike began to melt.

  “I’m not sure that’s a good idea,” Terrano said, as if he had eyes in the back of his head.

  “You focus on the cohort. I’ll worry about me.”

  “You don’t do a very good job of it.” He stiffened, lifting his head. “Hold on tight.”

  “To what?”

  “Anything.”

  Kaylin grabbed Bellusdeo—with her right hand. Spike was now half a ball; the other half had apparently become a thin, shining glove around her left hand.

  I’m here.

  “Tell me what he’s looking at.”

  That is something you do with the eyes that you have, yes?

  “Yes.”

  “Nothing.” Spike spoke the last word aloud, so that Bellusdeo could also hear his reply.

  Bellusdeo snickered at Kaylin’s muted shriek. So did the familiar. “What is he sensing, Spike?”

  “There is an anomalous fragment in the material.” Hearing his voice, the Dragon stiffened.

  Kaylin ignored her. “You mean the landscape?”

  “The landscape? No. Terrano is shaping it as we walk.”

  “Bellusdeo?”

  “Ahead of you,” the gold Dragon replied, the sound of her voice shifting as she once again surrendered the human form for the draconic one. It was far easier to leap up on her back from flat ground than it had been from curved claws, and Kaylin did.

  “The air isn’t that much different,” Terrano said, although he hadn’t looked back. “Keep your feet on the ground unless you have no choice.”

  If Bellusdeo was reluctant to take orders from the equivalent of a Barrani child, it didn’t show. “If we’re swept off this path, can you find us?”

  Terrano didn’t answer.

  Kaylin, however, said, “Probably not.”

  “No?”

  “If he could find us, he would have already found the cohort. I’m not sure he knows where we
are.”

  * * *

  Anomaly was not the right word. Kaylin had traveled portal paths that had almost—but not quite—disintegrated beneath her feet before. She had retained her footing on increasingly unstable ground. Those of her companions who had not been as lucky had vanished; Kaylin had been informed that most of them had made it back to the Hallionne eventually.

  Given that Bellusdeo was the only female Dragon, and given her importance to the Eternal Emperor, Kaylin understood that eventually was more than just career-limiting. And, if she were honest, Bellusdeo was her friend. She was part of Kaylin’s daily life. If Bellusdeo were lost in the whatever it was, Kaylin firmly intended to be lost with her.

  Yes, Spike said.

  “Is something coming?”

  Something is already here.

  Terrano was cursing, now. Or at least Kaylin assumed that’s what he was doing; she only recognized two of the words. “I’ll teach you Leontine,” she told him. “It’s better. More visceral.”

  More cursing, but some of it was now aimed at Kaylin. She laughed.

  He stopped.

  “Bellusdeo.”

  “On it already,” the Dragon said. She took two steps, and caught Terrano by the collar. With her teeth.

  The land upon which he’d been standing reared up in a wave. It rounded, as if about to burst, and when it did, Kaylin was reminded of an egg, because something emerged from it. It had eyes, or what looked like eyes; it was hard to count them because they opened and closed at random. There was a least one mouth, but Kaylin had the queasy impression that mouths, like eyes, appeared and disappeared as they opened or closed. There were teeth, though.

  She wondered, then, if this is what the cohort had faced.

  Bellusdeo couldn’t breathe fire without dropping Terrano. She didn’t try. She lifted off, having secured him, and the moment her claws lost contact with the ground he had somehow created, the creature began to fissure and melt simultaneously.

  Terrano was not familiar with Leontine, and unlike Mandoran or Annarion, couldn’t hear Teela’s internal voice; he hadn’t learned it. Kaylin was therefore learning a lot of new Barrani words. “Land!” he shouted. “Land there!”

  Bellusdeo’s reply was muffled. Given she was speaking with full Dragon throat, this didn’t mean inaudible. “There’s no there!”