But given the absence of words, it was a pretty funereal walk. Kaylin followed where Nightshade led, tracking the buildings, the cross streets, the shape of the road that lay beneath the nearly pristine winter surfaces. They moved out of the more tightly packed central streets, and here, the landscape was entirely different to the eye; the buildings, set back from the streets, were placed at very wide intervals, and the fences that girded them were solid and obviously kept up. There were occasional guardhouses as the streets widened, passing around a central well over which a large stone statue towered.
It was not a statue that existed in the Barren of Kaylin’s experience, at least not one that she remembered, and she was certain she would remember this one: it was of a Barrani Lord, armored, armed, his helm’s visor raised. She had seen similar statues only in the High Halls from which the Barrani were ruled, and wondered if this particular one had crumbled naturally, or if it had disappeared when the Dragons truly arrived in Elantra. Which hadn’t happened here.
Yet.
She wondered. The Arkon had said a lot about shadowstorms, but none of what he’d said covered this. She had expected something bad to happen; she had expected some assault on Tiamaris—and judging by his tension, so had he. She’d even expected to have to fight. Instead, she was walking down the safest Barren streets she’d ever seen, in the company of a man who was fief lord one fief over. That the streets were occupied said, more clearly than anything, that there were no ferals here.
Had they just somehow been thrown back in time? Had some curtain been pulled back across all of history, as if everything that had ever happened still existed if you scratched the surface of the here and now? No, the Arkon hadn’t mentioned this as a possibility.
Then again in order for him to know it was one, there had to be witnesses or reporters to the event; if it had happened before and no one returned, wouldn’t everyone just assume they’d been eaten by the damn storm?
What if they were stuck here, now? What if there was no way back?
As if he could hear every word she was trying so hard not to think, Lord Nightshade said, casually, to Lord Tiamaris, “What brings you to our fair city?”
But Tiamaris didn’t appear to hear the question. It might have been deliberate, but Kaylin thought it wasn’t, because she saw what had caught his attention.
Rising up, between the separate faces of the two moons, was a tower. Not the White Towers; they were well away from the border—and whoever lived in the here and now wasn’t the fief lord because there was no fief. No, it was the tower beneath whose shadow Kaylin had found her first shelter within the fief of Barren.
Illien’s Tower.
Except that it wasn’t Illien’s Tower, not yet. Illien hadn’t come to the fiefs because the fiefs didn’t exist. Looking around these very ordinary, if somewhat upscale streets, she couldn’t imagine that the fiefs could exist. The half-standing buildings that often characterized the wider streets were missing entirely, as were the various odd standing structures that suggested—strongly—that whatever had once lived here, it wasn’t human. Or any of the other races Kaylin knew.
“You choose an odd location,” Tiamaris said quietly.
“For privacy?” Lord Nightshade replied, looking up at the tower, and the moons, himself. “I think, if we must choose neutral ground, there is none better in these streets.”
“You do not occupy that tower.”
“I? No.”
“Who does?”
Lord Nightshade raised a brow. “For a stranger,” he said, “you understand much.” It was an accusation, but there was no rancor and no suspicion in it; he expected no truth from Tiamaris. “No one occupies it. But we will be undisturbed if we spend a moment upon its grounds. There is no better neutral territory in the City,” he added. “Although its like does exist elsewhere.”
“You are…bold,” Tiamaris finally said. But he nodded, and turning to Kaylin and Severn, made clear that they were to follow.
“Are you sure this is a good idea?” Kaylin asked.
“I am certain it is a poor one,” he replied, without any apparent concern. “But it is very unwise to attempt to use magic upon the grounds of such a place, as I’m certain Lord Nightshade knows well. We will both be somewhat disarmed.”
Kaylin snorted. She had seen both Nightshade and Tiamaris fight, after all; they didn’t need a whole lot of magic when they were cleaving limbs off people with either their swords or their claws.
The fence that surrounded the tower wasn’t falling over. There were no gaps through which she could easily slide. Stone foundations—foundations that weren’t cracked or absent—supported the thick posts that rose well above their heads.
“Your fence?” Tiamaris asked.
Lord Nightshade shrugged. “I was not personally responsible for it, no. But it is not original to the tower itself.” He touched two of the posts, and Kaylin felt the familiar and distinctly uncomfortable presence of magic. She sucked air between her teeth.
“Private?” Tiamaris said.
“Magic,” she replied.
“The fence is safe,” Nightshade told them both. “Beyond it, however, is less…certain.”
The fence posts warped beneath his hands, until they were wide enough to allow passage to even Tiamaris. Lord Nightshade nodded, and after a pause, he went in first. Tiamaris turned, then. “Do not speak,” he told Kaylin quietly. “If you feel the presence of magic—any magic—interrupt us immediately and make it known.”
“Without speaking.” She raised a brow. Severn stepped, gently, on her foot. “You don’t trust him.”
Tiamaris rolled his eyes, which were bronze. “Of course not. He’s Barrani. But at the moment, he means us no harm. Or rather, he will not harm us personally.”
“You know that how?”
“I have spoken with the fief lord,” was his quiet reply. “And the Barrani are very slow to change. Come.”
CHAPTER 16
The first thing Kaylin noticed—and it was a stupid thing to notice, but she was off her stride—was that there were no weeds. No wild, unkempt long grass, no thistles, no clinging vines, no burrs. It was like stepping into a different world. Memory didn’t make this one.
As if to remind her of this, the Tower stood above the grounds, surrounded by—of all things—empty, weedless flower beds. Kaylin wasn’t a gardener; she had black thumbs. Gardening was more of a mystery to her than magic, but she knew weeds grew everywhere there was space.
But the Tower? It was almost of white stone, and it stretched, unbroken and undiminished, toward the moons in the dark sky. What had become crumbling, broken walls now seemed to float above something as petty as time.
She felt Lord Nightshade’s gaze upon her face, and turned to meet it.
“Have you seen this tower before?” he asked softly.
She opened her mouth, caught Tiamaris’s sharp glance and closed it again. But she was annoyed. You already know the answer, she thought, curtly, at him. What’s the point in asking the question?
His brows rose, and she remembered that this particular Nightshade had not yet had the experience of dealing with humans for so damn long; she’d probably been enormously—and even dangerously—rude.
But after a pause, his brows fell, and his smile, which was both strange and familiar, lifted the corners of his lips. Manners, he replied, in kind.
Her Nightshade seldom spoke this way to her, although he could; he knew she didn’t like it. This Nightshade probably knew it, as well—but as she’d started it, there wasn’t a lot she could say.
“Manners,” he said, aloud, “are severely underappreciated in my opinion.”
“Oh?”
“Where practiced well, they remove the probability that someone in my position will be forced to go through the effort of killing someone in yours. Believe that on occasion that much death can become tedious.” He gazed at the Tower.
“Are we going in?”
And then, turned to look a
t her. “She is not,” he said, to Tiamaris, “well informed or well trained.”
“No. We have chosen to find it endearing.” He raised a hand before Kaylin could speak.
“Ah. That might present some problem.”
“It often does. But it occasionally presents solutions, as well, if unorthodox.”
“You show surprising flexibility for one of your kind.”
“I am not considered old, by my kin.”
“Ah.” His gaze left Kaylin’s face slowly. “Why have you traveled here?”
Tiamaris heard the sudden edge in Nightshade’s voice. His stance shifted, but he did not otherwise move. “You are aware,” he finally said, “of the shadowstorms?”
“I am.” Lord Nightshade’s brows actually rose.
Tiamaris nodded. “They are here,” he said softly, turning to gaze toward what was, in Kaylin’s time, the heart of the fiefs. “Or they will be, soon. We did not intend to visit you here,” he added softly, “but we were interrupted in our journey by one such storm.”
“Impossible,” was the flat reply. “You do not bear the taint.”
“And has shadow become so predictable that you can, with certainty, know what is either possible or probable, Lord Nightshade?”
The Barrani looked as if he would speak, but turned to Kaylin instead. She tried to think of something harmless, and ended up with a very strong image of pork buns because she was, among other things, hungry. Which caused him to raise one brow. And, to her surprise, laugh.
It was a wild, electric laugh; the hair on the back of her neck rose at the sound—and the feel—of it. “She believes you,” he told Tiamaris, without looking away.
“She should. She traveled with me.”
Kaylin started to speak, saw Tiamaris’s face and stopped. But the hair on the back of her neck didn’t settle down, and her arms began that awkward tingle that spoke—strongly—of magic. It wasn’t Nightshade’s; she was almost certain of that.
“Tiamaris,” she said softly.
He froze. Nodded.
She pointed up to the tower’s height. There, in the moonlight, clouds were beginning to gather.
Nightshade gazed up, as well.
“We didn’t bring them with us!” Kaylin said quickly. She turned to Tiamaris.
He shrugged. It was a tense, tight motion. “We have no records of the City at this time, or very few of them. The Barrani would have more, if they were accessible. I’m not aware that they rely on records for their history.”
“Records?” Lord Nightshade said quietly.
Kaylin grimaced. The shadows were coalescing; they looked dark against the moonlight, and they seemed to travel quickly—but that high up, she had no idea how windy it was. They didn’t quite look like the storm that had swept them off the streets of the Barren she knew and into these ones.
“Kaylin Neya,” Nightshade said, and this time, she did look down. “I have tired of this game. You know me. I know you. I do not yet know why. But you speak of time, and you speak in riddles.”
“Not on purpose, trust me. It takes too much effort. Look—I’ve seen the High Halls.”
His brows rose a fraction.
“Because of your interference—and no, before you ask, you have no idea what I’m talking about—I passed the test of the Halls.”
His brows rose again. This younger Nightshade seemed infinitely easier to surprise.
“So I know what lies there. In the High Halls. I know why the High Halls stand where they do. But the rest of this?” She threw an arm wide. “In my time—and it is time, I think—it doesn’t exist. Not like this. Not even the Tower.”
“The Tower…is gone?”
“Oh, no. The Tower is there—but it doesn’t look like this. And in my time, it’s not empty. Not in theory. This—this City, these streets—the Barrani rule here?”
“Who else?”
“And the heart—the heart of this City?”
His eyes narrowed, then, and his gaze flickered across Tiamaris’s face. “What do you know of this place?”
“Nothing much. Except this. We can’t get to the heart of it. Whatever lies in the center of the City, we can’t touch. It’s surrounded by shadow, and by the things that come out of the shadows. It’s like the caverns below the High Halls, but run wild.”
“You cannot lie to me,” he said softly. It was half a question. She felt the tail of it rising.
“I don’t see the point in trying,” she replied. “I don’t know why we’re here. I don’t know what sent us this way, or why, and before you ask, I certainly don’t know how. But where we are—where we were—there’s shadow, and it’s going to spill out into the rest of the City. The High Halls will be safe,” she added, and then stopped.
His eyes were very blue when they met hers. “But?”
Tiamaris was stepping on her foot. Not literally, but his expression would have frozen water at fifty paces.
“But I might not be?” Nightshade said quietly. He glanced, not at Tiamaris, but at Severn, who hadn’t moved. At all.
“No.”
Nightshade moved, then. He moved so damn fast she barely had a chance to take a step back. But she did; it wasn’t nearly enough. He caught her wrist, pulled her forward, and raised his hand to touch her cheek. The mark, where his fingers traced it, burned. But it was heat without pain; she drew one sharp breath at the shock of it, and exhaled slowly when her skin didn’t shrivel and blacken.
And then he lifted the wrist he held, and he unbuttoned the cuff of her sleeve while she watched, almost hypnotized. Severn stepped in, and Nightshade released her instantly, raising his hands and taking a step back. But her arm remained where he’d raised it, and gravity tugged the heavier fabric down just a few inches.
Enough, really, to reveal the edges of the symbols that spread across most of her body. She felt his surprise, then; he contained its physical expression perfectly, but he couldn’t keep it from her; she wasn’t even certain he tried.
He looked at Tiamaris, whose expression was about as open and revealing as Nightshade’s. “She bears the marks,” he said softly.
“She does. Will you now listen to her?”
At that, the Barrani Lord offered a very wry smile; it was almost remarkable. “I would have no choice if she insisted,” he said. “But I do not think she will.”
“It is not generally in her nature, where whining and badgering will do in its place.”
“There are no storms here,” Lord Nightshade finally said. “Not now, not yet. We have had some trouble in the West March, and in the plains—but some of those troubles you are no doubt familiar with.”
Tiamaris nodded. “But storms do come,” he said.
“When?”
“What year is it, in your reckoning?”
“Demetrad is the Lord of the Flight that is our greatest concern.”
“That is not much of an answer.”
“It is not. It is, however, true.”
Tiamaris frowned. “How much of the land does my kin now hold? How much is held by the High Lord of the Barrani?”
Nightshade began to gesture, and then stopped. “Perhaps,” he said, glancing at the Tower’s height, “this was not such a wise choice of venue. I think, however, that there are few choices that would be safe for either you or your unusual companions.”
Kaylin said, quietly, “There are no shadowstorms here?”
Nightshade agreed.
“None? None recorded?”
“None.”
“But you have records of the storms’ existence elsewhere.”
“We have had some difficulty with the storms. As,” he added quietly, “have the Dragons, if rumors are to be believed. They do not trouble us here.”
She nodded, holding that thought as she moved on. “Who lives at the heart of the fiefs?” When he raised a brow, she grimaced. “At the heart,” she said, “of this City, now?”
He glanced at Tiamaris. It was Tiamaris who replied. “No one.”
“But if there are no shadows—”
“There is still danger, Kaylin. The unknown in the heart of this City has teeth. It draws blood and destroys life. What we explored, what we searched for—it was known because it had been previously approached during the absence of the darkness.”
She’d seen that darkness. She hesitated, glanced at Nightshade, and let it go. “But in the here and now, you have people who are exploring it?”
Nightshade nodded slowly. “You are concerned that they dabble in things that pose a threat to us all.”
“They’re probably Arcanists. They always do.”
“Arcanists?”
“Sorcerer,” Tiamaris supplied.
Nightshade nodded. “Continue.”
“They’re doing something now.”
He raised a brow. “And you know this how?”
“I don’t. It’s a guess. They’re doing something now, and it’s already started whatever chain of events leads to the City as we know it.”
“And who rules the City as you know it?”
“The Eternal Emperor.”
He raised a brow, but he did not press her further. “Why do you assume that something is happening now?”
“Because we’re here.”
“Ah. Mortal reason.” There wasn’t more than the usual Barrani condescension in the tone.
She lifted a hand and pointed. The clouds that had gathered had gathered solely above the Tower. But they weren’t the swirling chaotic dark of roiling shadow; they were—seemed—gray and silver. No wind moved them. She thought no wind could. But they had come anyway.
“Kaylin?” Tiamaris said softly.
“You can’t feel it?”
“Not without using spells.” He didn’t even lift a finger.
“I think,” she said, looking up at the cloud at the Tower’s height and feeling the stretch of exposed throat begin to ache as she did, “we should move.”
“I concur,” Nightshade replied. He made his way to the fence, moving both quickly and gracefully enough that none of his movements suggested the clumsiness of forced flight.
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