Cast in Deception

by Michelle Sagara

  “It is by the use of that name that we can be enslaved, should a greater power discover it.”

  “But it’s by the use of that name,” Kaylin countered, “that you could speak with your cohort, even when you were nowhere near them. The name is a bridge between all of you. All of them,” she corrected herself.

  “It’s not doing them any good here,” he pointed out. She’d annoyed him. But he was right. None of the people who knew Kaylin’s name could talk to her now. And she imagined that at least one of them would be panicking.

  “We needed that bridge,” Terrano finally said, “because we were trapped. We were prisoners. We needed it because we were weak. It’s the reason mortals—and Barrani—congregate in a way that adult Dragons don’t.” It was the first time he had said anything positive about Dragons.

  Bellusdeo, however, shook her head. “Dragons congregate. That’s what the Aeries are. The only time a Dragon breaks away from his people is when he finds his hoard. It is considered the mark of true adulthood, among my kin. Or it was.

  “And Terrano? Some Dragons find their hoard, and it drives them insane. They cannot exist among their own kind because they are terrified, possessive, obsessive; they no longer see their kin as anything but predators and encroachers. Barrani youth are, to my eye, very similar to mortals.”

  His brows rose into his hairline in outrage, but Bellusdeo held up one hand as he opened his mouth.

  “It is not an insult. You exchanged names with your cohort. There were twelve of you. The cost to mortals of such an entanglement—were they able to make it—would be decades of their lives, at best. The cost to you—the cost to us—would be eternity, should even one of that number go rogue, go insane. You might, because of that one decision, exist as a slave to the will of another. You could make that decision as a gesture of trust—no, that’s the wrong word. There is no word that describes it. You were not blood kin; you made that oath, and it brought you far, far closer than even ties of blood could.

  “You say you did it because you were powerless, you were alone, you were being sent to a ceremony that might harm or even kill you in the worst case. You promised, if I had to guess, that you would put the cohort before any others, and the name was the way of proving that.

  “It is entirely possible Dragons would have done the same, but we do not come into our names in the same way. Regardless, the desire for company, for companionship, is not merely the detritus of lack of power. I think everyone who lives as we do experiences isolation and loneliness.” She had slowed down, and now seemed to hesitate. “I understand the fear of weakness. I understand what weakness means. Love is always a risk.”

  Kaylin had turned to stare at the gold Dragon.

  “If we love, we open ourselves up to hurt, to pain. When we love, we allow people beneath the necessary armor of social interaction. I include war in that, by the way. And when we love, we hand those who would harm us their most potent weapon—because the loss of that love is profound and terrible, and we never fully recover from its absence. To us, then, love is a weakness.”

  Kaylin wasn’t the only one who was staring.

  “I was one of nine girls born to my clutch. We were sisters. We did not trade names as you have done, but we didn’t require names, we knew each other that well. I am the only one who remains. The rest did not survive. I see the echo of their loss everywhere. In the end, in the life we lead, Shadow was the enemy, not you.

  “I am here because of Kaylin. I am here because she brought Mandoran and Annarion back from the West March. I am here because I know what the cohort means to each other. It is an echo of what my sisters and I meant to each other, while they lived. I frequently have to stop myself from breathing on Mandoran. Or strangling him. But in some fashion, he and Annarion remind me of my own youth—and my own losses. And I do not want them to suffer that loss.

  “Because they are Immortal, they probably will. This is probably pointless. Love is a weakness. But...it is a weakness, in the end, that I value. Life without it is safer, yes. For us, it is safer.” Silence again, weighted, heavy. This time Terrano didn’t try to break it. “But I am not certain that survival without love or affection means all that much to me, anymore.”

  Standing in her plate armor, looking like the warrior queen she had once been, she did not evoke either love or affection. Terrano stared at her as if she’d grown an extra head. Kaylin tried hard not to do the same. But her familiar lifted his head and crooned.

  “I am no longer queen. I am no longer ruler. In the beginning, it made me feel useless. But...because I am no longer either, I do not have to doubt. I don’t have to be suspicious of Kaylin, or her friendship—which would, I think, have been impossible when I ruled. I don’t have to doubt either Annarion, who I almost admire, or Mandoran. I don’t have to sleep behind guarded doors. Yes, there are people who want me dead—there always were. But I have no reason to believe that the people who live with me are among them.”

  “And that makes up for the lack of power?”

  The Dragon was honest. “I don’t know. Perhaps, because I lack power, I huddle as the weak have always huddled. But I am not certain, now, that I would trade this life for the life I left behind.” She exhaled a small stream of smoke. “We need to leave,” she said, and turned away.

  * * *

  “Is she always like that?” Terrano whispered.

  Kaylin blinked. “No.”

  “Do you remind her of her sisters, or something?”

  “Her sisters, from what little I’ve heard, were...more bratty.”

  “She’s...not what I expected of a Dragon.”

  Fair enough. “You’re probably not what she expected from a Barrani. I know Mandoran isn’t.” She hesitated herself, partly because Dragon hearing was so acute. “But I think she’d go to war herself to protect Annarion and Mandoran from anything in the world except herself.”

  “She hardly knows them!”

  “She has to live with them, and on some days, that’s harder than others. She’s fond of Teela, as well.” Kaylin shook herself. “Right. Sorry. How do we get them out of here, again?”

  Spike began to vibrate, which caused her entire body to tremble. “Kaylin.”

  “Is the Shadow moving?”

  “It is moving.”

  “Toward us?”

  “Yes. No.”

  “Which is it?”

  “Bellusdeo!”

  The gold Dragon nodded. Her body began to shift from the human to the Dragon form, flowing as if molten gold.

  “I believe there is—or are—others of your kind here. The Shadow is moving toward them.” Spike’s words were interspersed with a type of clacking sound that made Kaylin think of chitin.

  “My kind?”

  “He means living people like you. Either of you,” Terrano helpfully explained.

  “Are they going to need rescuing?”

  Both Terrano and Bellusdeo snorted in disgust, which Kaylin took as no.

  “Can the Shadows sense you?”

  “No.”

  “Can the Shadows sense us?”

  “I do not think so. The ground here has been established across a spectrum.” He whirred and clicked, and the spikes that were responsible for Kaylin’s impulsive name choice began to extend, changing the space he occupied.

  “Spike, do you recognize the person or people the Shadow is moving toward?”

  A whirring, clicking noise was his only response.

  The air in the immediate vicinity began to shimmer. Sedarias moved closer as an image coalesced from that sparkling air at Spike’s unspoken command. Kaylin glanced at Terrano, who was fidgeting. She didn’t expect to recognize whatever it was Spike chose to show them. The only person here who might was Terrano, whose left foot was now doing the equivalent of a nervous dance all on its own.

  The man in the
image was Barrani. The woman beside him was also Barrani. Nothing unexpected there. But the third person in the still tableau was human.

  “There’s a human here?” Kaylin all but demanded.

  Spike whirred and the human faded from view, but not before Kaylin had gotten a pretty good look at his face. It was an older man’s face, lines worn into the forehead and the corners of his mouth; he was clean-shaven, his nose was slanted slightly to the left of his face, as if it had once been broken. He was not otherwise well dressed, but something about his expression implied power. Very little of Kaylin’s experience of power made that a positive.

  “So, he’s not here. Are both of the Barrani?”

  Whir, click. Squawk.

  “That’s a yes,” Bellusdeo said, in the quietest of her draconic voices. She tensed to leap and Terrano shrieked.

  “You need to stay on the ground! The familiar can fly because he’s not like the rest of you, but we’ll lose you if you take to the air. You won’t find the Barrani you’re looking for, and you probably won’t be able to find us again. Whatever was done to the portal paths has completely sundered them from the influence of the Hallionne at either end. Sometimes there are storms or environmental effects that will damage the path, but the path itself begins—and ends—at the terminal points.”

  “Which is not what happened here.”

  “Obviously. I think the path does exist as created, but neither my friends nor our group ever stepped foot on it.”

  “Did we even see it?”

  “I don’t see the way you see; I don’t know.”

  “You were there, too.”

  A brief shift in expression that might have indicated guilt or humiliation chased across his face. “I was preoccupied.”

  “We all were. So...whatever we stepped on wasn’t what the Hallionne created; it was something created by someone else.”

  “I...think so.” He frowned. Like Mandoran, Terrano’s expression moved the map of his face; not for Terrano the almost neutral subtlety of adult Barrani. “I think if things had worked out as intended, my friends would be lost, but the path itself wouldn’t have been. It’s like someone put a rug across the road, waited until someone stepped on it, and then rolled it shut and carried it off.”

  “Except for the Shadow devouring the people who stepped on it?”

  “Except for that, yes.”

  Kaylin glanced at the Dragon. “Can we find that path if we clear away the Shadow garbage?”

  Squawk.

  “It’s not that simple,” Terrano began.

  “Yes or no are pretty simple answers.”

  “And if you want to get devoured by Shadow, flip a coin and pick a random one,” he snapped. He started to pace in a tight little circle; judging by the expression on Sedarias’s face, she found this as frustrating as Kaylin did.

  “What I want to know is why Mandoran and Annarion lost contact with the cohort. It’s not the outlands path—they were in contact until the moment the cohort encountered the trap.”

  Terrano nodded.

  “Well, we didn’t encounter the same trap, but I’ve been cut off in the same way.”

  Silence. It was, judging by the contortions of Terrano’s expression, a thinking silence. He closed his eyes. “We need to move,” he finally said.

  “Do you even know which way back is?”

  “Yes.” The word was resolute. “...But you’re not going to like it.”

  “I don’t like any of this. Which part in particular is going to bother me?”

  “You’re right.”

  “That doesn’t bother me.”

  “You lost contact with your own people—”

  “They’re technically mostly your people, for what it’s worth.”

  “—the minute we hit this path. We didn’t enter it quite the normal way,” he added. “So I could be wrong.”

  Sedarias appeared to be shouting in frustration, but her voice was inaudible. She was, however, mouthing something at Terrano, the movement of her lips slow and exaggerated. Kaylin caught some of it, but Barrani wasn’t her mother tongue. She turned to Kaylin and made a second attempt at communication; Kaylin missed the first few words because Sedarias had switched languages.

  Of course she had. Mandoran spoke Elantran like a native, and Sedarias knew what Mandoran knew—probably including the bits she wished he’d keep to himself.

  “Sedarias doesn’t think the Hallionne paths are safe—at all—for the cohort. If Terrano’s right,” she added, almost apologetically.

  “Why?” the Dragon demanded.

  “She thinks it’s possible that Alsanis was instructed to create the path in a very specific way.”

  “Pardon?”

  “She thinks Alsanis is partly responsible for what happened.”

  “What do you think?” Bellusdeo asked.

  Kaylin had no immediate answer. When it did come, it seemed, for a moment, almost unrelated. “The Consort can speak directly to the Hallionne; she can clearly speak to the Hallionne from a distance. When we arrived—in Orbaranne—Orbaranne had been given specific instructions to house and protect my companion.”

  “But you didn’t think the Consort knew that the companion would be me.”

  “I don’t think it mattered. The Lady knew that we were gone—that we were somehow heading to the Hallionne. The water sent us, in a panic. I don’t think the water was trying to save the cohort—I don’t think the water was even aware of it. Something was done that upset the water—and I think it’s bigger than kidnapping. Or murder. Sorry,” she added, remembering that the intended victims were standing, in as much as ghosts could, around her.

  “What could be big enough to upset the elemental water?”

  “I don’t know. I’m not an integral part of the existence of the world. But I’m afraid we’re very likely to find out.”

  22

  Kaylin turned to Terrano. “When you broke into Orbaranne you said you weren’t aware that you were standing in a Hallionne.”

  Terrano nodded, looking suspiciously at the familiar perched upright on Kaylin’s shoulder.

  “You didn’t mean to slide under her defenses—but you said you had to push through to enter the safe space.”

  He nodded again, looking even more suspicious, although this time suspicion was aimed at Kaylin.

  “What, exactly, were you running from that you needed the space?”

  He paused to consider this. “It’s not something that would harm you. Or could harm you. I don’t think it’s sentient the way we are—but there are predators in the outlands. Like wild animals, but hungrier. You get used to them,” he added, shrugging. “I recognized the space Orbaranne occupies as a space that predators wouldn’t go. They were avoiding it.”

  “Those predators wouldn’t see me?”

  “Not as you are now. I think.”

  “Could you lead us there?”

  “To where? Orbaranne?” He looked doubtful, and glanced at Sedarias as if for guidance. Which would have been ridiculous, except the ghostly Sedarias shook her head.

  “I was thinking of Alsanis.”

  Terrano frowned. “I think so.” The frown grew edges. “Dragon lady, you said you had experience fighting Shadow?”

  Kaylin glanced at the gold Dragon; her eyes were now a deep blood red. “Yes.”

  “I think now would be a good time to prepare.”

  Kaylin, however, shook her head. “We need to get back to Alsanis.” She remembered, clearly, the way his Avatar had begun to melt, its form lost to what Terrano had called anger. And she remembered, as well—how could she have forgotten for even a minute?—what the cohort had tried to do to Orbaranne. They had not intended to destroy her, although that would have been the outcome of their goal; she would have been simple, collateral damage.

 
No, what they had hoped to derive from Orbaranne was the power inherent in the True Words at her heart. They required that power to free themselves, fully and finally, from Alsanis.

  The war band led by Lord Barian’s mother had distracted the Lord of the West March and Lord Barian. Neither man remained within the Hallionne. Spike said there were two presences toward which the Shadow was moving. He had shown them two Barrani, with a human associate who had not accompanied them here.

  And here, she thought, was the outlands. Of course he hadn’t.

  Kaylin had asked if the Barrani were in need of rescue. What she hadn’t asked was if those two presences were actually in control of the Shadow, if it moved at their command. If it did, and if the Barrani Arcanists—and she assumed they must be Arcanists—were here in the outlands, they might be trying to do what Terrano had taught them, however imperfectly, to do.

  She doubted very much they intended to approach Orbaranne. Not again. But she and Bellusdeo had fallen through the literal floor of Alsanis to land unceremoniously here. Here, where the cohort had been entrapped and almost devoured. They must be much closer to Alsanis than Terrano immediately realized.

  “We need to go back to Alsanis,” she said. “That’s where the Shadows are heading.”

  This time, the words caught the easily distracted Terrano, and his eyes widened. He had spent centuries perfecting his escape from Alsanis’s confines—but he did not hate the Hallionne. In some fashion, that Hallionne had become his only true home.

  He was not the only one who felt that way; the whole of the cohort stiffened and turned. Sedarias spoke—silently, of course—but Terrano didn’t bother to make the attempt to catch her words. Grimmer now, he seemed older as he turned. This time, he nodded.

  “Bellusdeo—”

  “Get on,” the Dragon rumbled—at Terrano.

  “The others—”

  “It’s your duty to drag them with us. It’s your only duty.” Kaylin didn’t like the sound of that. “Kaylin—you find Alsanis.”

  What Kaylin wanted to know was the how. Given that Barrani—Lords of the High Court—were demonstrably involved, she understood the why. People in power wanted more power, and people in power often felt that the rules that applied to others could be safely circumvented, rules being meant for the powerless.