Cast in Silence

by Michelle Sagara

  And Illien? His outline existed, dusted with light, but it was pale and ghostly; of the three he was hardest to see.

  He is dead.

  She turned at the sound of the familiar voice, and saw Tara.

  But this Tara was not the child she had met hours ago in her own subjective time. This one was a woman, older than Kaylin; she was so gaunt and thin she looked as if she were starving to death. Her hair was pale, and her eyes were the same shade of gold as the light; the same shade of gold that had illuminated the path taken to reach Illien.

  She smiled when Kaylin’s eyes widened; there was something about the lift of her lips that was subtle enough to be Barrani. Not that Teela’s smile was particularly subtle. “You return,” she said to Kaylin. She spoke in High Barrani.

  Kaylin nodded. “The border defenses are falling. The shadows—”

  “Yes. I’ve seen them. You are safe here,” she added.

  “I’m not. He—his name—”

  “He surrendered his name.”

  “No—that would be service, and servitude. He did something else to his name—”

  The Tower nodded. “He did. He was unhappy here. I did not understand why.” She turned so that Kaylin was looking at her face in profile; her chin sank slightly as she spoke. “He said he could not leave, but that was not true. He left. He left often.” She glanced back at Kaylin.

  Kaylin was, admittedly, distracted; Tiamaris had closed with Illien and Illien pushed himself off the ground, and away. Not back, not toward Severn, but down. She could see him, but only barely.

  Tiamaris’s massive jaws snapped at empty air, and then he looked down. Kaylin couldn’t see floors or walls from this strange vantage; she could see only the people—as if all else was stage dressing, or less. But she knew, from the way Tiamaris lifted his head, that Tiamaris and Severn were seeing the room itself. Illien had somehow gone through the floor, and only by breaking it could they reach him.

  She had no doubt that Tiamaris could break stone; she had seen him do it. But he hesitated before he attempted to destroy this floor. She felt a surge of uncomplicated gratitude, and she turned to the Tower, because the Tower had said something that urgently needed clarification.

  “Tara,” she said, voice low, “what did he do to his name? The others—the other undying that I encountered—weren’t like Illien.”

  “No. They are sundered entirely from the name that gave them life. They did not understand the strength that the name signified; they were driven by their fear of its weakness.

  “But Lord Illien understood the strength in a name. He came to Ravellon and its crumbling edges, and he began to search. To learn.”

  “He came to you.”

  She nodded.

  Kaylin hesitated for a minute and then said, “And you spoke with him. As you spoke with me the first time.”

  Tara nodded.

  “Did you speak to the others the same way?”

  “No.”

  “Why this one? Why Illien?”

  “I knew he would take the Tower.” She wrapped her arms around her chest tightly and then met Kaylin’s gaze. “It is not easy, Kaylin Neya. To be a Tower. To have the responsibility. I was just…a place, to the others. I was just a source of power. They understood the boundaries of this building,” she added, gazing around in what looked like darkness to Kaylin. “They understood that they were to hold it, to defend it, with their lives.

  “But it was not a matter of fealty. It was a matter of desire. They were supreme if they held the Tower.”

  “And the Tower?”

  “I was—the word for it is difficult—lonely. I do not know if the other Towers labor under the same difficulty. They were not wakened by you. What I wanted—” She shook her head. “But it is ruins, now.”

  Kaylin saw Tiamaris thrown back, through the air; saw his wings flatten against what she assumed was a curve of wall. She saw Severn leap and roll as if to avoid either a collision or a magical blast. She knew she should be there.

  But she was here. “No,” she said, trying to keep her voice level, “what you wanted was important.”

  “He talked to me,” Tara whispered. “He tried to talk to me. I knew…how to answer. I knew I shouldn’t. It was many years before I did. He asked me questions,” she added. “He asked me about the shadows, about Ravellon, about my goals.

  “He sat there,” she told Kaylin, pointing. Kaylin couldn’t see what she pointed at in the darkness, but it didn’t seem to matter. “He sat there, almost every day, for many years. And one day, Kaylin, I answered.”

  Kaylin’s breath cut across her teeth as Tiamaris roared. She couldn’t hear it; she could only see the shape of his neck, the way his head rose, his jaws opened. And she could, once again, see Illien; he was moving beneath Tiamaris.

  “What happened, then? Why did he seek to lose his name?”

  Tara’s gaze slid away. “It was my fault—” she began.

  Kaylin wanted to grab her by the arms and shake her. She didn’t, but better, she didn’t even try. Golden, diffuse light sharpened and brightened for a moment, and Tara staggered, falling to her knees. Kaylin could hear, as if at a great remove, the timbre of a Dragon’s roar.

  She reached for Tara then. Her hands passed through the Tower’s shoulders and arms.

  “He is strong,” Tara said, struggling to rise. “Even as he is, he is strong.”

  “Tara. Tara.”

  The woman looked up. She made no attempt to rise. “It’s my fault,” she whispered. Kaylin felt the words as if there was no space between Tara’s lips and her ears.

  “What, exactly, is your fault?”

  “I wanted to keep him,” she whispered. “I wanted to keep him forever.”

  “But—but that’s the way the Towers work, isn’t it?”

  She shook her head. “We cannot choose. We can test, we can protect, we can hide where necessary—but we cannot choose.”

  “You chose him.”

  She shook her head. “He chose me. He understood that I was different. He was powerful, Kaylin. Of his kin, one of the wisest. His knowledge is deep. He chose me, but I could not destroy the Lord of the Tower. He challenged the Tower Lord—”

  “Who was the previous Lord?”

  She frowned. “I…do not remember.”

  “And the Lord before that?”

  The frown deepened, as if it were a fracture line under pressure. “I do not remember.”

  “What do you remember of your life before Lord Illien?”

  The Tower was silent for a long, long time, and the silence carried the faint echo of the crackle of Dragon fire. At last, the Tower said, “I remember you.”

  It was not the answer that Kaylin had hoped for. “Why?”

  “I don’t know.”

  The Tower had existed for a long damn time. It had been awake for less, but that less was also a long damn time. What Kaylin tolerated or expected from children and what she expected from adults, was almost entirely different. But she understood loneliness, and she understood the ways in which it could, over time, drive you insane. Or drive you to places that were, in the end, far worse than being alone.

  “What did you do?” she asked softly.

  Tara flinched, and when she looked up, the left corner of her mouth was swollen and bleeding. “I wanted to keep him forever,” she said.

  “Tara—”

  “I brought him to my heart, and I tried to teach him to read what was written there. I thought if he did he might change the rules enough that I could keep him.”

  Severn was bleeding. Ice had driven itself into his arm and splintered; water mingled with blood as it fell. The wound wasn’t deep, but it was also not the only one he’d taken; it was just the most recent. He was fast enough in the red, pulsing light, to avoid death; his chain was fast enough to deflect almost anything the Barrani Lord sent against him. But Illien—if he was indeed Illien—seemed to vanish and reappear at will.

  Tiamaris had the advanta
ge of height; he seldom made contact with either wall or floor and the room itself was so cavernous he could manage small leaps as if they were flight. If he was injured, it wasn’t obvious. He was, however, angry. The Wolves, like the Hawks, learned early that anger was not an emotion that helped one survive contact with an enemy intent on killing you.

  Illien was above rage, or beyond it; he was above the petty pleasure of triumph that power often bestows. He wasn’t human, of course—but Severn had seen enough Barrani to know he wasn’t Barrani, either; they had a ferocious pride in their ability, and an overweening arrogance when displaying it. He appeared, he cast whatever spell he had prepared, and he vanished.

  The light in the room shifted, as if to give warning. Severn swung the chain in a circle in front of his chest, moving with it as he glanced over his shoulder. The walls of the cavern—no, the runes in the walls—began to dim.

  “Severn!” Tiamaris cried. His wings folded as he landed. Severn backed toward him, watching everything—wall, ground, the air encircled by both. The Dragon lost wings, absorbed scales; the neck shrunk, and the jaws began to fold into themselves. As it had before, armor emerged from folds in his skin—scales plating themselves into a roughly man-shaped defense.

  Severn couldn’t watch Tiamaris closely; he could hold his back, that was all. The Dragon Lord said, “Stand close.”

  “How close?”

  A circle appeared on the floor, bisecting the runes that were laid there. “Within the circle.”

  “Lord Tiamaris—magic—”

  “I judge it worth the risk,” was the edged reply.

  Kaylin would have asked what the purpose of the spell was; Severn was not Kaylin. Instead of asking, he said, “The risk to the Tower is not minimal if I understand everything we’ve seen.”

  “The Tower is failing,” was the quiet reply. “If we do not survive, if we do not unseat Illien, it will fail. What we’ve seen in Barren will be nothing compared to what we will see, then, and it will not stop at the Ablayne. Do not leave the circle,” he said again.

  Severn stilled the spinning of his chain. Kaylin, he thought, as he felt the ground ripple. Whatever it is you’re doing, hurry.

  Kaylin heard him; his voice was so clear he might have been standing beside her, his lips pressed to her ear.

  “What did you teach Illien?” Kaylin asked Tara, trying to keep the urgency—and the panic—out of her voice.

  Tara’s face was bruised now; her eyes were swollen. “I told him how the words were written.”

  “What?”

  “They were laid in stone, the way they were laid into the first stone: the Dragons. The Barrani. They were inscribed into the Tower, and they were told to sleep until they were needed. You were to wake us, I think,” she added. “Chosen.”

  “I am not the only Chosen—”

  “No. But there is always one. Always.” She coughed, and the cough continued for a while; her lips were red and wet with blood. Kaylin had seen that type of cough before; it was never, ever good.

  Dammit, Severn, hold on—I’m trying.

  “The words,” Kaylin said urgently. “How were they laid in stone?”

  “How are they laid in the sleeping newborn? No hand crafts those children, but they require the strength of the word to open their eyes; to think, to breathe, to be.”

  Kaylin shook her head. “What did you tell him?”

  “I told him that. I am alive, as he is alive, and I serve, as he serves.”

  She cringed. No Barrani she had ever met reacted well to being called a servant.

  “I showed him the makers,” she added.

  “You…showed him the makers.”

  “Yes. I remember them. Before the long sleep, I remember their voices and their words and their song.” The sentence was broken in three places by wheezing.

  Goddammit, Severn, tell Tiamaris to stop whatever the hells he’s doing!

  It is not, sadly, Tiamaris.

  “Tara. Tara. You don’t—you can’t—you don’t have much time left.”

  She looked up then, and she lifted shaking hands toward Kaylin. Kaylin reached down automatically and caught them in her own—but this time, Tara’s hands were solid. Or possibly this time, Kaylin’s hands were ethereal.

  “I know,” Tara whispered. “Not much time. But it’s better. I failed. Come, let me show you what he saw.” She pitched forward with a grunt and Kaylin tightened her grip around hands that were very cold. “He doesn’t want you to see,” she whispered. “But I know who you are, and you know who I am. He can’t stop me.”

  “Does he know I’m talking to you now?”

  “Of course.”

  “Is he going to try to stop you?”

  “There is only one way that he can,” was her reply. An actual cut appeared across her forehead.

  Yes, Kaylin thought, with growing anger. And he’s trying to do it now. With our help. She wanted to kill him.

  “No, don’t,” Tara whispered. “It’s my fault.”

  Kaylin started to answer, and the light changed sharply. She could no longer see the shimmering forms of Tiamaris and Severn moving around her like golden ghosts. Instead, she could see a room—which looked a lot like the one they had entered to greet Lord Illien—which was covered in runes.

  The runes were carved and precise, but there was a flow to their lines and curves, the way the dots meshed or completed a pattern that reminded her of Tiamaris’s speech about harmony and placement. No chisel had carved these, she thought, and as she did, she turned. And there they were: larger than life—literally—working in a room that dwarfed Kaylin and the avatar of the Tower, but that suited their size. They were not human, did not look human; nor did they appear to be Barrani or Dragon. But they had two arms, two legs; one had wings with iridescent webbing that were folded across giant shoulders. She could not see the face of the creature that owned those wings.

  But she couldn’t clearly see the faces of those that walked: there were three, and they paced the room with care, examining the walls, the floors—and the two small women who now bore witness. They were brilliant, on the edge of painful to look at, they were glowing so brightly.

  Chosen, one said. He was tall, and broad, his face was long, his cheeks high; of the three he looked most like the Barrani, although they fell short of the quiet confidence, the certainty of power, he radiated.

  His companions turned as he spoke the single word, and Kaylin now saw that the owner of the wings had a long face, as well—but it was almost Draconian in form and shape.

  This is the only life we are capable of sustaining.

  Tara turned to her, her eyes now sunken and black, her skin sallow. “This did not happen,” she whispered.

  You will touch this youngest of our seven children, and you will be there when she wakes. Understand what it is that we do; understand what it is that quickens her.

  Kaylin nodded. Her mouth was too dry to manage speech, which, given her ability to offend her superiors, was probably a damn good thing. Her arms began to ache. Her legs. The back of her neck. It was a familiar pain.

  The man—god?—then bent until one knee touched the surface of the floor. He traced the runes that were carved there with care, his brow furrowed slightly in concentration. Light began to fill those runes; the same blue light she had seen once in Castle Nightshade’s forest of a basement.

  It spread slowly, and as it did, the other two began to do as he had done; they did not kneel, but instead moved to sections of the covered wall, touching them, concentrating on them. Gods, Kaylin thought, in labor.

  The runes across the wall came to life slowly, the light filtering evenly across the whole of its curved surface. She watched the light spread, until no surface was not touched by it, and then she turned again to the three. She drew a sharp breath.

  The light that had illuminated them was all but gone. They were glowing, faintly, but the harshest of their brilliance had been shed. It had, she realized slowly, become one with
the runes. It was their power. No, she thought, as they came to stand together, it was their life.

  Their life that gave the words life.

  Their life that had given the Tower life.

  You will touch this child, the man who had first spoken said. What you touch, you will change. Because you are alive. And she, too, is alive. Life cannot long be contained or confined, although we have tried. It is our nature to try.

  It is your nature to grow. Grow in a way that does not destroy life, and we must be content.

  “This didn’t happen,” Tara said again.

  But decide, Chosen. You have influence in this story. Choose wisely. Choose quickly.

  I didn’t ask for this, Kaylin thought.

  No more did they, he replied. No more did we. Not all events of significance, be they birth or death, are in our hands.

  Kaylin turned to Tara, who was staring at her creators. At, Kaylin supposed, her parents. “Tara,” she said quietly. “What did you show Illien? What did he see?”

  “Not this,” Tara whispered. “This didn’t happen.”

  “It doesn’t matter. They’re gods. Gods break all rules.”

  Not all, Chosen, the creature with a graceful variant of a Dragon’s face said. She couldn’t tell if it was smiling or not; that many exposed teeth never looked friendly. But where we can, we try.

  The first god to speak said one sharp word, and the air crackled. But the Dragon god did not seem ruffled. Kaylin turned her back on them because looking at them demanded too much of her attention, and she needed what she could manage to pull together.

  “What did he see?” she asked again.

  “He saw the words graved. He saw the words given life.”

  “He saw the gods? The Old Ones?”

  “He saw the creators, yes.” She staggered. “He’s coming, now,” she whispered. She was afraid—not resigned, not tormented by the certainty of her own failure, but fearful.

  “He has other things to worry about.”

  Tara shook her head. “Not while I live.”

  I was afraid of that, she thought.

  You weren’t. You weren’t even thinking it, Severn replied. It was like having another voice to give her unwanted second thoughts.