Cast in Oblivion

by Michelle Sagara

  She is trying, Kaylin said, to free the damned.

  That’s—that’s what Coravante is doing.

  Do you honestly believe that?

  Silence.

  Was Bressarian involved?

  He was not like us.

  That’s not a no.

  You don’t understand An’Mellarionne. You don’t understand how much power he has. But he has Fianora, Bressarian’s sister.

  Where?

  Later, Chosen. She turned to the Consort and sank, instantly, into a posture of utter obeisance. “Lady,” she said, speaking mostly to the floor as she didn’t lift her head. “It is not safe for you here.”

  “It is not safe for anyone, Lord Edelonne.”

  “No one else is you.”

  “Ah. I have heard that Mellarionne has a Consort candidate waiting in the wings for my demise.”

  Edelonne flinched. “An’Mellarionne is waiting below. He and a handful of the other Lords of the Court are now engaged in a ceremony of some kind.”

  “Ceremony?” The word was sharp, far sharper than the Consort’s natural voice.

  “They—they believe they can...” Edelonne swallowed audibly. “They believe they can free the dead.”

  “Ah. That is something I very much desire. How, exactly, is this freedom to be achieved?”

  “I—I don’t know, Lady. We—we were not important enough to be—to be informed.”

  Spike was agitated. Very agitated.

  Hope spoke. “Spike asks me to inform you that there is a danger.”

  “No kidding. Can he tell us what it is?”

  “Yes. The Shadows cannot directly draw power from the True Words. The words that grant Barrani life—that grant Dragons life—are meant for the living; they are meant to be eternal, and enclosed, in the forms created for your kind.”

  “Wait. Wait. Power can be drawn from True Names. It was the entire point of the attack on the Hallionne Orbaranne.”

  “Power,” he said quietly, “can be drawn from True Names by your kind. The creature at the base of the High Halls is not your kind; it is not power that he can access. Could he, he would not be captive; every Barrani who failed the test would provide fuel for his eventual escape. He can provide power to your kind—but it requires a bridge, some passage between him and the person to whom he grants power. That power is not the power of the True Names.” Spike continued to click and whir, the buzzing becoming higher and higher in pitch.

  “But...the words in the Lake were meant for your kind. The Barrani draw power and sustenance from those words instinctively and automatically. They do not need to consider the power or the flow of power; it is the heart of their ability to interact.”

  As the words sank it, Kaylin blanched. “He needs Barrani agents.”

  “Yes. It is the nature of Shadow to change what it touches, if it has the power. The Shadows can shift or alter the shape of words, can subtly bend their meaning. You have some experience with this.”

  Kaylin nodded.

  “If a bridge is built between the Adversary and the Barrani, and it is strong enough, the Barrani can then draw enough power through the captive names that they can, in turn, free him.”

  “But if they have that kind of power—”

  “Yes. Those names will be lost for eternity. And we are likely to be lost with them.”

  Chapter 24

  Kaylin repeated what Hope had said. Edelonne remained supine; the Consort did not give her leave to rise, and even if she had, Kaylin had doubts that Edelonne could have done so with any grace at all.

  “Spike is frantic,” Kaylin told them.

  “The Shadows taught the Barrani how to absorb Shadow, to draw power from it.” The Consort wasn’t asking a question. It was a statement, but it lacked a bit in the truth department. Kaylin was afraid that Terrano had been one of their teachers, but understood why this could not be—and could never be—said out loud.

  She believes you to be incorrect, Ynpharion helpfully said. She thinks that what Terrano taught allowed the Barrani involved to be...caught in the subtle deception of the Adversary. The freedom they sought from the burden of their own names allowed them to interact with the Adversary more directly than their Barrani kin. There is a reason that we are Barrani and Spike is not.

  “The Barrani don’t need to be taught how to absorb power. There’s a reason the Emperor has made the study of Shadow illegal. And a reason that the idiots at the Arcanum ignore the laws.” She couldn’t force herself to make an exception for present company, but Evarrim didn’t care what Kaylin thought.

  Spike hadn’t stopped spinning.

  “We need to move,” Kaylin told everyone. “If Edelonne is right, we needed to move before we managed to fight our way through to this hall.”

  “Is there anything else awaiting us?” the Consort asked, voice cool.

  “There probably will be,” Kaylin said, glancing at Averen’s corpse. “If the other person who held his name is on the wrong side, they’ll know what happened here. Even if they aren’t, one of the three fled in the direction of the cavern.”

  “Can your familiar go ahead?”

  “He can’t do anything I couldn’t theoretically do on my own.”

  Evarrim’s expression made clear that he didn’t believe her. Probably because he thought she could do nothing on her own. “Given the legends about familiars, I find that difficult to believe.”

  “I don’t care what you believe.”

  “Perhaps, were your familiar to be in the hands of someone who is competent—”

  “Lord Evarrim,” the Consort said. He shut up. “An’Teela. Lord Severn.”

  They began to move.

  * * *

  What does she want me to do with Edelonne?

  Given your reaction to Averen’s death, she is unwilling to execute her.

  You did the same thing she did, Kaylin said, trying not to bristle. And you’re now one of the Consort’s personal guard. She can’t assume that Edelonne will immediately stab us all in the back.

  She can assume it; she does not hold Edelonne’s name. I offered mine, he continued with a trace of almost desperate pride. She understands what occurred. She understands, in future, what might occur. She knows that I do not and will not fight her—

  Except when she tells you not to scream at me?

  I was not screaming. Regardless, she does not have that certainty with Edelonne, and she will not have it. The only certainty—and I use that word advisedly—that she does have is her trust in your intentions. But you are squeamish.

  Fine. I’m weak. Ask what she wants me to do with Edelonne.

  She is relatively confident that Edelonne will be incapable of harming any of us, even you. When Kaylin failed to reply, he added, She leaves the decision, in its entirety, in your hands; she is aware that we must now move.

  Kaylin turned to Edelonne, who was still a huddled mass on the floor of the stone hall. Edelonne, we need to move.

  Edelonne did not agree.

  “Lady,” Kaylin said.

  The Consort looked at Edelonne, just as Kaylin had done, and said, “You may rise.” Kaylin, in theory, had power over Edelonne that the Consort didn’t have—but theory had always been fuzzy. Could she have made Edelonne stand? Probably. But not without effort and pain on both their parts.

  The Consort’s permission dissolved her resistance, and Edelonne rose.

  “Lady,” she said, voice low, words a thin sheen of control over panic, “it is not safe for you to be here.”

  The Consort did not reply, and Edelonne paled, which should have been impossible, given her already chalky color.

  The Consort called Severn back. Without a word from her, Evarrim took his place by Teela’s side. Kaylin would have vastly preferred that Severn continue to play point here, but she understo
od the Consort’s decision; Evarrim was part of the Arcanum. He had spent most of his life within its confines, and if he didn’t break Imperial Law in the course of his studies—which Kaylin thought impossible—he understood more about those particular illegal things.

  She was not surprised when her arms—already tingling on the edge of pain—began to burn. They weren’t the only things that felt like they were on fire. Evarrim was casting a spell. Kaylin recognized it; it was not the first time she had seen him summon.

  Fire came at his call. She could almost hear its name; it was not a small elemental.

  The Consort’s eyes were blue with a hint of reflected orange. “Lord Evarrim,” she began.

  His response was a grunt, followed by, “Lord Kaylin is present.”

  The elemental was almost the width of the hall; Kaylin half expected the ceiling to melt. It didn’t. Neither did the floor beneath its lower edge, which couldn’t be called feet. It turned to Kaylin, although Evarrim had been its summoner, and spoke. The words were a crackle of flame—the noise wood made when it burned and broke.

  She could almost see eyes emerge from the heart of flame, and the heart of flame was white.

  “I... I’ve talked to the fire in the Keeper’s garden,” Kaylin told the Consort. “Bigger parts of the flame remember it.” She approached the flame. Ynpharion flinched at the heat. Kaylin didn’t. Her power wasn’t the power that was fueling the elemental; that was all on Evarrim’s shoulders. He did not attempt to take control; he passed the brunt of that to Kaylin.

  Kaylin held out a hand, and fire touched her palm, traveling up her left arm. Her shirtsleeve was immediately reduced to ash. Her skin was not.

  “Ask the fire,” Evarrim said, “to protect you.”

  She wasn’t entirely certain she’d heard him correctly the first time. “Protect me?”

  “If I were our enemies,” Evarrim replied in the irritated and condescending tone she expected from him, “you would be the first person I would destroy, had I the opportunity. An’Teela and the outcaste are armed with weapons intended for our wars with the Dragons; they are both powerful in their own right, as am I. But you are the unpredictable power, here—and they will know that it was your hand, not ours, that...freed...their servants.

  “I could not do what you did. The Consort herself could not do it. Ah, that is inexact. The Consort could possibly do what you have done. She has never, however, demonstrated that ability. No, Lord Kaylin, it is your death that must come first if they are to have a chance to finish what they have started.”

  Edelonne cleared her throat. “Lord Evarrim is correct. You have some small chance. This ceremony was not intended to take place now; the arrival of the forsaken—”

  “Forsaken?”

  “The children of the green,” she amended. “It is what they are called by those who reside below. They are not children in any true sense of the word, and I believe they would find ‘forsaken’ less...insulting. Regardless, they were not expected to arrive now.”

  “What difference does it make?”

  “To the ceremony itself? None. But we are a political people. And they are a threat to our security, regardless.”

  “They are not more of a threat than your so-called ceremony!”

  Edelonne was silent; Kaylin could feel her agreement emerge from the chaos of thought and the tangled mess of her memory. Very like Ynpharion, in fact.

  Take what Evarrim offers, Nightshade said. It was almost a command.

  I don’t want—

  To be in his debt? To be obligated to him? There was a dark thread of amusement in the words. You become more like our kin every day.

  I don’t want to exhaust him before we even reach our enemies.

  You will not. I understand that you dislike him, but he has served the Consort for the entirety of her tenure.

  Her tenure is months long.

  Yes. But before then, he was one of her closest advisers. I admit I find your dislike almost inexplicable.

  He dislikes me.

  Ah. He is, in temperament and behavior, much like a mortal. Of all of our kin in the Court, he would be considered most similar to you.

  Not what she wanted to hear. Ever, let alone twice. But she knew from personal experience that he was willing to risk his life in service to the Consort. Where the Consort was concerned, she trusted him completely. She almost asked Evarrim if he was certain this was smart—he was wasting a lot of power.

  She didn’t, because she knew it would annoy him, and at the moment, she’d take no joy out of it. Maybe later.

  * * *

  Surrounded by armor of flame—she hurriedly asked the fire not to burn off the rest of her clothing—she began to talk to the fire. Fire was surprisingly normal, if you discounted its visceral need to melt or burn everything in sight. What it wanted from Kaylin—what it had wanted the first time it had not tried to turn her to ash—were the stories of its place in the universe, of things that were not burning or destruction, because it knew those quite well.

  There was some comfort in providing those stories as they headed—at greater speed—down the hall, until the hall opened up to stairs. Those stairs went down, as expected.

  Hope placed a hand on her shoulder, and Kaylin obligingly called a halt. He did not seem to feel the fire at all.

  “There might be difficulty here. I think these stairs used to be part of the Tower itself, but Hope thinks that the Tower has withdrawn the protections that usually make them safe.”

  The Consort nodded, absorbing the information. “An’Teela, has your cohort emerged?”

  “Valliant has been joined by Serralyn and Mandoran. Or most of Mandoran,” she added with a grimace. “Annarion and Sedarias are not yet done. Mandoran says—” She inhaled. “There are Barrani at the base of the stairs.”

  “Hope says the cohort haven’t been spotted. The Tower knows they are different, but the Tower has decided that the intruders are the greater danger. And Mandoran is doing...something—sorry, I don’t actually understand the word Hope used—to keep the others hidden.”

  “He is,” Teela said. “It won’t last. At the moment, the Mellarionne forces are looking for Sedarias.” She frowned, and then added, “They’re looking for Sedarias and her companions in the wrong place.”

  “Good. That will buy us some time. An’Teela. Calarnenne.”

  Nightshade was not, in Kaylin’s opinion, in any shape to engage even more dangerous Shadows. He did not, however, hesitate. Outcaste or no—and Evarrim had made clear that he was—he obeyed the Consort as if the High Court were still his home.

  The runes on both Meliannos and Kariannos once again flared like lightning in the enclosed space; the fire elemental rumbled in response, tightening its grip. Evarrim did not appear to be suffering from the effects of the summoning, which was good.

  “Evarrim,” the Consort said when Nightshade and Teela leaped down the stairs, the aftereffect of the light cast by their blades tracing the trajectory of a fall, not a regular descent.

  “Lady,” he replied. He followed, but he took the stairs.

  “Yes,” the Consort said, although no one had asked any questions. “They spent some time in the distant past on the same battlefields. It makes me feel almost young again, to see them now.”

  * * *

  Severn walked beside the Consort; Ynpharion took the other side. Kaylin and Edelonne brought up the rear, although the flame itself made that difficult; it had to be cajoled into leaving Edelonne alive. Neither Hope nor Spike seemed bothered by the fire’s heat. And if they weren’t, she didn’t understand why the fire was going to be proof against whatever the Shadow could send against her.

  She didn’t ask, in part because Evarrim had followed Nightshade and Teela and was no longer in hearing range. But she had a suspicion that the fire was meant to reduce creatures like the Ferals to
ash; while they carried some taint of Shadow, and funneled some of its power—somehow—they were nonetheless akin to the Barrani.

  “Lord Kaylin?” the Consort said.

  Kaylin grimaced at the title, but held her peace. “Nightshade?” she asked. She felt Edelonne’s surprise; it was the loudest thing on the inside of her head.

  The Consort nodded.

  She reached for Nightshade’s thoughts, Nightshade’s senses, in response. With the fire as a full-body halo, she felt almost comfortable closing her eyes. You will have to learn, Nightshade said, to speak to us with your eyes open.

  Does it matter?

  Here? No. But it will matter when you are otherwise at Court.

  I’m not going to be at Court again if I have any say in the matter.

  Your optimism is both astonishing and unfounded. Keep your touch light, he added.

  * * *

  The stairs continued for some length, a winding spiral that reminded Kaylin very much of her own basement. Well, Helen’s basement. But Helen’s basement was subject to serious change, and often did. The rest of the house tended to remain consistent; she transformed the rooms depending on the number of people in them, but usually only added chairs or lengthened tables.

  Kaylin. Nightshade spoke with irritation. Focus.

  She flushed. Sorry. “The stairs that they took seem to go down a long way.”

  The Consort nodded.

  “There are no torches or no obvious sources of light; I think Teela’s providing whatever light they need. It’s not Nightshade.”

  “It is possibly Lord Evarrim,” the Consort said. “He is a practicing Arcanist.”

  Right. “They can’t see the bottom from where they are—but they’re no longer trying to defy gravity.” She frowned then. Eyes shut, she focused all of her attention on Nightshade’s vision, on what he could, and did, see. He was hyperaware now; he saw everything. There was a breeze, one not caused by the speed of either his movement or Teela’s, that seemed to come from below.

  Kaylin could feel it disturb strands of his hair.