Cast in Chaos

by Michelle Sagara

  “Come.” She climbed the stairs until she stood in the shadows cast by the huge statues that seemed almost pillars, and waited until Kaylin caught up. “We expected that there would be news of grave difficulties facing the city. The incident in the former fief of Barren has been much on our mind.

  “We did not expect—I did not expect—your news, and I am perhaps not as capable as the High Lord or the Dragon Lords at dissembling. But it is grave news, Kaylin.” She entered the silence of the High Halls.

  The Consort led Kaylin through vast, high-ceilinged halls until they reached the interior gardens in which the High Court convened. Here, more of the Barrani gathered in twos and threes, but they were silent, and they did not greet the Consort as she passed. Nor did she acknowledge their presence.

  But it was not to the familiar thrones that she went, Kaylin in her wake, and only as she passed them and headed toward a familiar fountain, did Kaylin understand exactly where she intended to go. To the lake of names, the spiritual birthing place of the Barrani race.

  The path from the fountain became wilder and less precise, and the land surrounding it far less tended, although it was still lovely because it was Barrani. But there was a worn footpath just beyond the fountain. That path led, at last, to the mouth of a cave. Entering the cave brought light with it, but it was a soft illumination, not a harsh one.

  Kaylin hesitated in the glow, and the Consort paused, as well.

  “Why are we going to the lake?” Kaylin asked her.

  “It is not entirely to the lake that we now travel. But the information that we seek is there.”

  “Why there? No one comes here but—”

  “No one,” the Consort replied, “except the Consorts. And those,” she added softly, “who have seen, and touched, the lake. You are the only non-Barrani to have come here since the awakening, but the name you chose to carry was of such import, you have every right—and perhaps a duty—to see.”

  She would have asked what she would see; in the High Halls, surprise had frequently been synonymous with danger, near death, and pain. She suspected the answer would be a very quiet, very polite lecture on the nature of patience, and she nodded instead. The Consort once again began to lead.

  The path within the cave was not created by any Barrani architect; it was rough, and although it was wide enough to walk in, its lack of windows suggested shadow and confinement. But it wasn’t the fact that it was a cave that was disturbing; it was the sound that grew with every step she took. She slowed.

  “Lord Kaylin?”

  She couldn’t remember the sounds of the overlapping, inscrutable words—moving, living words—being so strong the last time she’d walked into this cave. Then again, the last time she had come here, she had come to bear witness to the passing of the former Consort, a woman whose ability to choose names and carry them to the sleeping infants of her race had begun to falter.

  “I’m sorry,” she said at last. “I think—I think I can hear the lake.”

  The Consort nodded, as if this were natural—and perhaps it was. For her. “The waters are restless,” she added.

  “Why?”

  “It happens sometimes. When there have been too few births. Or when a birth of some significance might soon occur. It is…like the storms in your harbor, but it threatens nothing.”

  Kaylin wasn’t as certain, but the Consort was calm and entirely unperturbed by what she said. Trusting her—inasmuch as one ever wisely trusted a Barrani Lord—Kaylin followed her through the last leg of tunnel and onto the open plateau that overlooked the turbulence of golden, roiling…water. It wasn’t water of course, although Kaylin could see hints of green and blue in the waves of lines, of dots, of moving squiggles.

  The Consort paused briefly above the lake, lifting her arms, exposing her palms to the stone sky. Then she bowed, and the voices quieted.

  “They can see you.”

  “No. But we are aware of each other in some fashion. Come. This way.”

  Kaylin had seen the Consort’s mother walk off the edge and disappear beneath the waves. She wondered if, at some time, bodies of the fallen or the dying had been brought here in similar fashion, returning to the source of life at its end. She didn’t ask. Instead, she took the hand the Consort held out, and she followed her not over the edge, but to the side. There, carved into the stone just beneath the lip of the plateau overlooking the waters was a narrow flight of stairs that headed down, in a steep incline, from the front of the flat toward the cave wall below. There was no true darkness in this place, and no need for any light, magical or otherwise; the water’s light was enough.

  As they reached the bottom of the stairs, a small path opened up, close enough to the lake that one could crouch, reach out, and touch the lake itself. The noise was louder here, as well. But the Consort didn’t stop, and Kaylin continued to shadow her.

  She wasn’t surprised to see that the path led toward a cavern just beyond the lake itself. Nor was she surprised to see that the floor, the walls, and the rounded heights of that cavern were glowing faintly, and not as a result of the golden light shed by the lake. They were covered in runes. If she didn’t recognize them individually, she recognized what they meant: this, like the heart of the only two Towers she’d seen, had been chiseled by the Old Ones.

  The Consort said, “You are not surprised.”

  Kaylin could have lied; the Barrani were never offended by lies. Only the really obvious ones—because those were an insult to their intelligence. But she wasn’t Barrani. “No. They made this lake. They must have.”

  “Yes.”

  “What did they give to the Dragons?”

  The Consort raised a white brow. “I think you would have to ask the Dragons. Tactfully, and when it was relevant.”

  But Kaylin now walked toward the center of the cavern. “This isn’t part of the High Halls?”

  “No. If the Halls fall, they fall. This is guarded by older and wilder magic, and if the lake falls, so, too, the whole of the Barrani race. The Lords and the Court are not the same as the whole of a people, and we at least must understand this.”

  “I’ve never had a problem understanding that,” Kaylin said.

  This was followed by a moment of silence, and then the light and musical laughter of the Consort. “No,” she said, her voice still soft and sweet, “you haven’t, have you?”

  “But…why did you have to bring me here? Why couldn’t you just tell me this in the Palace?”

  The Consort shook her head. “Chosen,” she said softly, “you have lived half your life in the company of Barrani, be they the outliers of our society, or no. I do nothing without reason. The story of the Devourer came to me—and to my mother before me, and hers before her—in the heart of our responsibility. Here.”

  “But you clearly don’t talk about it at Court. I don’t think the High Lord recognized the words as clearly as you did.”

  “We talk little about things that must be hidden and kept safe, for obvious reasons. Nor will I speak now, Lord Kaylin. You will speak. You will ask the Old Ones for our stories. What they tell you, I am not responsible for, nor am I responsible, in the end, for the actions you choose to take.

  “But you will understand the whole of the threat to us. You will understand why, to me, it is the worst of our ancient Nightmares.” When Kaylin failed to move, the Consort placed slender palms between her shoulder blades and gave her a little push. A cattle prod would have been softer.

  “Does it matter where I ask the damn question?”

  The Consort didn’t reply.

  “And can you at least tell me what question I should be asking?” She half turned. “Look, I’m not really good at speaking with nobles. Of any race. I’ve never been allowed to meet the Emperor because the rest of the Dragons I’ve worked with are certain he’ll be forced to eat me. Or execute me. I’m thinking that gods are possibly trickier than nobles. Can you at least give me a hint?”

  “Yes.”

  “Goo
d.”

  “You are facing the end of a world.”

  “That’s not—”

  “It is. Ask, Kaylin. Ask what you can possibly do to prevent it. The desperate cannot afford to—”

  “Offend?”

  “To hesitate.” She backed away from Kaylin, then. “You are young. The young stumble constantly. But you either stumble, or you fail to move at all.”

  Easy for her to say. Kaylin closed her eyes, drew three deep breaths, and forced her shoulders to relax enough that they weren’t bunched up so close to her ears. The Old Ones had talked to her before, and it hadn’t required much in the way of conversation, after all.

  But…was it easy for the Consort to say, in the end? She gave life, choosing true names, for every Barrani that was born. She was, in some way, their mother; she chose each name with hope for the future. And she knew where that hope must end for so many. Humans had no shot at immortality; they were born, they lived, and they died. All of history, much of myth, and much of legend, involved the catastrophes wrought by those who tried to avoid death.

  The Barrani? Could live forever. Therefore every death was a failure of promise.

  And every death diminished the Consort. Kaylin turned to gaze at the Consort, at the woman who willingly accepted this burden. And then she turned away, because she saw none of this in that woman’s composed and beautiful face. She saw patience; she saw the depth of the blue of her eyes.

  “All right,” she said, to the heights of the cavern. “We’re facing the Devourer. How do we survive?”

  CHAPTER 16

  “Interesting,” the Consort said. “I think most would ask first about the nature of the threat.”

  Kaylin thought it more than a little unfair that the Consort had been unwilling to offer advice before the fact, but was obviously willing to criticize after. She might have said as much, adorning the words with Leontine just for a little emphasis, but her skin began to ache in a very familiar way.

  It was an early warning.

  So, a voice that was both familiar and entirely unknown, said. It has come.

  She looked up, and then around; she saw no one. But the runes across the floor had begun to dim.

  Chosen. We greet you, we who remain.

  Light began to coalesce in front of her or around her; she lifted her arms and her arms passed through it.

  “What,” Kaylin now asked, mindful of the Consort’s mild criticism, “is the Devourer?”

  The silence lasted for just a little bit too long, and it implied surprise. Surprise, Kaylin thought, that the question had to be asked at all.

  It is the Devourer.

  Which wasn’t helpful. “How long has the Devourer existed?”

  It is old. Ancient. We cannot say for certain. When we woke to the world—to the worlds, Chosen—it existed at the edges of what we had written. We were young, the voice added. No helpful face or form came to join it. And we created what we created with abandon. But what we created we could not contain. What we created grew in ways we had not predicted.

  Some of our kin chose to begin again, aware of the errors of past creations. Some chose to raze what they had writ, and start anew. Where we did not…agree…in our decisions, we left.

  “Left.”

  We left the lands in which we first woke. Those lands were bound in ways that we had not foreseen, and it took time and effort to step beyond the boundaries.

  Beyond the boundaries, the Devourer also waited. We did not under stand what it was, at first. We, who created and destroyed at whim, did not fear it, not then. We did not fear its silence or its voice. We attempted to change it, the voice added. It cannot be changed. What it touches it absorbs, but it is not affected by that absorption.

  Not so, our kind.

  But no more. These lands are ours, although they are not what we first envisioned. They have grown, and they grow strange. You, Chosen, you are not ours, and your life, and the life of your kin, did not begin on our pages, in our dreams. Yet you are here.

  When we left our home, we had ways of speaking to distant kin. Our words did not disturb their creations, nor their words, ours. We traveled, we few, to see what had been made, and we returned. We created pathways that might be taken to do so. We were content to experiment, to create, and to communicate with our distant kin.

  And then, one day, we walked a familiar path that led to…nothing. To silence and a death so profound there was nothing to inter. You will understand this. We did not. Not then. We saw the emptiness, the lack of words, the lack of where words might be spoken or written or imagined. What had once existed there was gone, and nothing might now exist there at all.

  Twice more, it happened, but the third time, some word was sent before the end, at risk, and it propagated to all of creation. The Devourer had come.

  It left nothing in its wake. But the first layer of destruction was simple, the rest, less so.

  The paths, little one, were closed then. The barriers were built. We understood that the paths themselves existed as a beacon for the Devourer who waited to feed. It was…difficult. We sundered ourselves—each world—forever from our brethren. We made this choice.

  But…life is surprising. There exists—there have always existed—some fleeting thoughts that combine in ways we could not expect. We discovered that some of our children could travel. They could make paths or find paths between one world and the next that were now closed, even to us. We do not know how, or why.

  They risk the Devourer. Perhaps they flee the Devourer. We cannot say.

  “Some do,” Kaylin said quietly, because she could. “They flee, where they can.” For she remembered the face of the stranger in the waters of the mirror hidden at the heart of the Imperial Palace. “What does it want?”

  We must say, to destroy. To utterly destroy. We cannot and do not know why. We attempted to communicate with it, once. Twice. A third time. There is silence now, where those attempts were made, and nothing will break it. We will not try again.

  “How did they fight it?”

  Silence. Kaylin waited for that silence to break in growing agitation. She turned to look back at the Consort, who had not moved.

  “If it can devour everything, why does anything still exist?”

  It lives in the void between worlds, the voice replied. And only there. But if it finds purchase, it brings the void with it, slowly and completely, until only that void remains.

  “And it finds purchase by entering the world.”

  Yes. We do not think it can find the worlds on its own, but it is drawn to life.

  No, Kaylin thought. And then, yes. Because behind her, the lake waited, moving and speaking in a voice that never quite coalesced into something Kaylin could comprehend. “It’s drawn to words. To your words. To echoes of them. We arrived here, somehow. My people. And the Devourer didn’t follow because the world is still here.”

  She turned back to the Consort, in the lee of a god’s ghost, and said, “Can you hear what he’s saying?”

  “I can.”

  “People are coming, Lady. I don’t think there’s anything we can do to prevent it.”

  “The Devourer will follow if we cannot.”

  “They’ll all die if we do.”

  The Consort’s brows rose, the delicate shape of her eyes rounding in obvious surprise. Kaylin had shocked her. “They are not even native to our world, Lord Kaylin. If I understand everything that I have heard this past day, they are travelers and they flee the ruins and destruction of their own. They lead the Devourer to us.”

  “Humans aren’t native to your world,” Kaylin replied. “I don’t think—if what Sanabalis guesses is correct—that the Aerians are, either. But…if we somehow figure out a way to keep them out—they all die. And possibly with them the last of their race.”

  The Consort’s eyes were a shade of familiar blue; she was angry.

  Kaylin’s cheeks, however, had gone a shade of familiar red; so was she. “You didn’t hear or see the Orac
le. I did. Yes, they’re coming in numbers—but if you listen, if you hear what the Old Ones are saying, or did say, or whatever—they’re fleeing. There were children there. Old people. This, whatever it is—it’s the last act of desperation. Somehow, some one of them, was able to figure out how to escape.”

  “I did not bring you here,” the Consort said, in a voice that defined ice in an entirely new—and unpleasant—way, “so that you might turn your back upon our responsibilities. And our responsibilities as lords of the High Court and guardians of the lake—”

  “I’m not a guardian of the lake,” was the quiet reply. “I’m a Hawk. You’ve lived here for all of your life. In the High Halls, or in the West March. You’ve had power, money, parents, and even siblings who weren’t trying to kill you. I had no fixed home, in the fiefs. I never had enough to eat, I was never certain I would have enough to wear, and I did whatever I had to do to survive.

  “I know what that means. I even know what it might mean to people whose language I don’t understand. They want what I wanted. They want,” she added, “what you want.”

  The Consort opened her mouth.

  Kaylin continued. “And it doesn’t matter. The Oracles are clear. The portal is coming, Lady. It’s going to open, here, in the heart of our city, a stone’s throw from the High Halls and the Imperial Palace. If we can’t find a way to stop the Devourer, somehow, we will all die. Strangers, Barrani, Dragon, Aerian. It won’t matter if the Chancellor of the Exchequer is a slimy, cheating bastard. It won’t matter if the Arcanists are looking for new and interesting ways to rule the world by killing anyone who can prevent them. It won’t matter that the Shadows overrun the heart of the fiefs—nothing will matter.”