Cast in Oblivion

by Michelle Sagara

  “I’d call that denial a choice,” Kaylin said quietly. She was standing beneath a bower formed almost entirely of words. This was the heart of the nameless Tower. Ah, no, it was not nameless.

  You are certain you are not Barrani? That was a very typical Barrani response.

  “I’m only certain that I’m Kaylin.” She exhaled. “Look, if you ask me who I am, I’ve got no answer to give. I can tell you I’m a Hawk. But...that’s what I do, not who I am. I...don’t know who I am.”

  You have been telling me who you are.

  “But...only the bad parts!” This seemed wrong to Kaylin.

  No. Not only, Lord Kaylin, but also. It is part of who you have become. It is part of the matrix of choices that you can make.

  “Can you see what’s going on outside?”

  Outside?

  She reddened. “I mean, not here. Not at the core of you.”

  This question didn’t fare any better, which was the problem with immortal buildings when it came to communication. Undaunted, Kaylin tried again. “Can you see what my friends are doing? Can you see what our enemy is doing?”

  Yes. The silence extended. Understand that Immortals, like any of the living, know weariness, Lord Kaylin. I was injured long ago. The parts of my body that were meant for communication were destroyed, as were most of the functions that governed the living quarters in which the Barrani dwelled.

  You are the first living person with whom I have had explicit communication since the fall. I cannot bespeak the Barrani now; I can hear the Lady. I can sense those who come as supplicants. I can fulfill the functions of testing them. But those who approach the being at the lowest remove of the Tower, I cannot save. They are lost.

  “I don’t understand. No—I understand that they’re lost. I get that. But...if you were always about testing, what did you do before?”

  There was no answer. When it became clear that there would never be an answer, Kaylin lifted both of her arms, elongating her body so that the tips of her fingers could brush, could touch, the surface of the closest of the gathered words.

  They were warm. Of course they were. And they were vibrating gently, invisibly, in place.

  Your friends are dangerous.

  “Yes.”

  They should not be here.

  “Probably not.” The vibrations beneath the tips of her fingers moved to her palms—or perhaps the words moved. Or she did. Her body seemed to hum with the sensation. “But they’re here for a reason. The Lady approves.”

  It appears that she does. You freed the one I could not test.

  She stilled. “You tested us.”

  Yes, Lord Kaylin. I remember.

  “Why is Terrano different?” Before he could mention the marks that girded her body, she added, “Different than Lord Severn, I mean.”

  You already know the answer to that question.

  “I know why he’s different in my view—but I don’t always understand buildings. Helen accepts him,” she added.

  Helen is yours. She accepts what you accept. I am not. But I have chosen to accept his presence on your behalf. A rumble of vibration, felt in the pit of her stomach, accompanied the words—a hint of consequence should Terrano mess something up. The details were left for future consideration.

  The words continued their descent. Kaylin moved to the side, finding room for herself amid the shapes of lines, of curves. But her palm continued to rest against the side of one of the words, and that word remained at face height. The rest sank until their bottom-most elements were flush with her feet.

  They were taller than she was. Broader. Brighter. But the color of the marks on her skin was now a matching gold, and she thought those marks were vibrating in time with the larger words at the Tower’s heart. She didn’t feel caged by any of the words—the ones on her skin that she hadn’t asked for, or the ones that now surrounded her.

  “How can I help?” she asked.

  Do you not know? The thrumming shifted; it wasn’t so much a hum as a scrape of metal against metal, jarring, discordant. Is that not why you have—finally—come?

  Chapter 28

  “If you were whole,” she asked the Tower, her voice soft and hesitant, “if you became what you were before the disaster, would you be able to speak to the Consort? The High Lord? Would the Barrani be able to speak with you?”

  They speak with me now.

  “Would they hear you? Would they be able to hear your voice?”

  Silence.

  And Kaylin understood then. Speaking, listening—it wasn’t the same as being heard. It had never been the same.

  She was no longer a child. She was no longer dependent on the older and stronger to keep her fed or clothed or safe—or what resembled those things in the fiefs. She could feed herself, house herself, protect herself, in ways that had only been daydream when she’d been a child.

  But she needed people. She needed—wanted—company. Yes, she also needed privacy, but privacy was a matter of choice; isolation was not. And living people didn’t appear to thrive in isolation.

  The Tower was alive.

  The Tower was older than the Arkon. It had been injured during the first of the Draco-Barrani wars, and it had never recovered. She didn’t know what it had been before its fall. Didn’t know what it would be.

  Didn’t know what it wanted to be. Helen had injured herself because she knew what she wanted to be: a home. A home to a mortal woman who had died centuries ago. And beyond that, to mortals who needed the home that she could be for them. Kaylin was merely the last in that line, and when Kaylin passed away, the line would continue.

  The Tower hadn’t injured itself. Whatever it had done to withdraw from the rest of the space it had occupied in the living world had been necessary for its survival. Or for the survival of the Barrani.

  Yes. We did not know what had come to the High Halls, in the guise of kin. And when we became aware of it, it was almost too late. Everything I had, every process, every directive, was rerouted to build the cage that has kept it here. But it is a cage, not a coffin. And things have slipped between the bars, in either direction.

  I can hear the voice of Ravellon in the whispers of my prisoner. It sounds like a song.

  She had done what she could to repair Helen, haphazardly and without a clear directive. She had done what she could to preserve the integrity of Tara, in the fief Tiamaris now ruled. She had done the same for Alsanis, although the feel of the struggle had been entirely different.

  This Tower, nameless, wasn’t like any of the buildings she knew. The words here were whole. They were resonant. She could almost hear them; she could certainly feel their pulse. There was nothing she could add to what was written here in ancient blood. Shadow had invaded the central cavern—but the Shadow had not attempted to destroy or alter the heart of the Tower.

  He cannot, the Tower said. These are True Words. They mean what they mean; there is no alteration he can make. Understand that he offers what the living want, to the living—that he uses the tools they provide him. Your fears are not Lord Severn’s fears; your fears are not the Consort’s. Nor are your desires. There is overlap, yes—but he sees to the heart of the individual.

  Even were he to see the heart of the Tower, he could not bespeak it; he could not charm, could not cajole, could not threaten. That has never been his power. The power that he does have was not considered a terrible threat by the Barrani; they are a proud, cold people.

  But they desire power.

  “And he can grant that.”

  In a fashion, yes. But it is not his power that is granted, in the end. Understand that.

  “Whose power is it?”

  Ravellon’s. And that power is growing, here. It is why I hear its music, even at this remove. Can you not hear it?

  “No.”

  Good.

  �
�You want to hear it.”

  Silence.

  “If your words aren’t damaged, if your directives remain true, can’t you be what you were? Can’t you speak to the Barrani of the High Halls?”

  Not while the Adversary is captive here. It is too great a risk. It has always been too great a risk.

  “And you can’t kill it.”

  No, Lord Kaylin. Nor can the Barrani nor the Dragons.

  She had come to the heart of the Tower. She’d been asked to do what only she could do. But...there was nothing for her to do. The words were whole. What the Tower was, she couldn’t change. And if she couldn’t change anything, she had no reason to even be here—not when her friends were fighting for their lives.

  Hope had said she could do something. She’d assumed she understood what that something was. But when she turned to look at Hope for guidance, she could no longer see him. All that existed were the words. The words and Kaylin herself.

  Those words continued their rhythmic beat; they felt alive in a way that even people didn’t, which was a disturbing thought. But as she listened, for want of a better word, she finally realized that not all of the humming itself was coming from the words that she was touching.

  Some of it was coming from Spike. She couldn’t see him when she turned to look over her shoulder, but it was almost irrelevant. Spike—or some part of Spike—was here. She hesitated, and then looked for Ynpharion.

  * * *

  Ynpharion’s vision was much like Severn’s—choppy, frenetic, constantly in motion. She could see the sword he carried, but it moved, as the landscape moved. She didn’t ask him questions; she could see that he was busy. The Consort was behind him, and to the side; Kaylin caught a glimpse of her pale, platinum hair. It was moving in a way that implied magic.

  Ynpharion wasn’t looking for the cohort, and given the Consort’s position by his side, Kaylin didn’t ask. She almost moved to Nightshade, but froze as she heard a very familiar sound.

  The Consort was singing. She couldn’t understand the words, but didn’t need to; she had heard the Consort sing this song before, in the journey to the West March over which her brother ruled. She had called the Hallionne with it, waking them from slumber. She had comforted and strengthened the embattled Bertolle.

  They heard her. They heard her, and inasmuch as a building could, they loved her.

  The Tower was not a Hallionne, but she had chosen to sing the same song. And Kaylin knew that it was costly, that it took power, strength, will. And she was singing it on a battlefield.

  Tell her to stop!

  Ynpharion said nothing. Kaylin could see that he was fighting... Ferals. Ynpharion was bleeding.

  Nightshade!

  He did not reply, not with words. But lightning arced from the center of his vision. It burned what it struck, and the light lingered, as if it were a different kind of flame.

  Ynpharion—tell her to stop. The Tower—the Tower of Test—has always heard her voice. It can hear her now. It’s awake but it has no way of responding. It has no way of communicating. There’s no Avatar!

  There was no Avatar.

  Everything the Tower had built was a cage. A prison. What had it said? All of its power, all of its focus, all of its will, was turned toward the creature trapped beneath the High Halls.

  In fear, in love, in rage, the Barrani who had been tested had approached the Adversary. Those who had not been tempted by despair or desire simply walked away. Kaylin understood all of the impulses that led, in the end, to death at the base of the Tower. Had she not had Severn, had she not had—ugh—Evarrim, she might have died the same way: attempting to save the lost.

  But here, at the Tower’s heart, surrounded by words, she thought: words are meant to communicate. These words could not, and did not; the building created in an era when the Ancients had the powers of gods was caged by them, hemmed by them, of them. All of the power that resided within it was from these words.

  And that power could not be used in a different fashion now. Because of the Adversary. Because of the testing.

  She understood then, or thought she did. She lifted her arms, and as she did, she saw the marks that had risen—as they often did—off her skin, shining through the fabric of her dress, as if the dress itself were just a different variant of that skin. Even the marks she had taken from the Barrani who had served as Feral pillars rose.

  She listened, face lifted as if to see every single word that comprised the heart of the Tower. She heard the Consort’s song. Not as she had the first time, through Ynpharion; it pierced whatever it was that kept Kaylin’s consciousness separate from the battle.

  She couldn’t hear the cohort, couldn’t hear the Hawks.

  I take that back, she told Ynpharion.

  He didn’t reply. He was, however, annoyed at her ignorance, and again, that was a comfort.

  “Hallionne. Tower. Whatever it is that you call yourself, let me tell you a story.”

  Fire moved up and down her arms. The patina of flame reddened the gold she could see almost everywhere. The fire had always wanted stories. Stories of life and the necessity of fire, not stories of its destruction. She couldn’t—and didn’t—tell the fire who, or what, it was. She couldn’t. She could barely answer that question about herself on the best of days, which this wasn’t.

  Her stories, told to fire, were about the overlaps in their lives—if fire could be called alive. They were parts of Kaylin’s story. They were her experiences, cut into small, digestible bits. So telling stories to the fire was also telling stories about herself and her experiences. She could own, did own, the latter.

  What the Tower needed was not those stories. She could tell it stories about people, although those stories were hers in part. She started, stopped. Started, stopped.

  Stopped. “Let me walk that back,” she finally said as a different understanding crashed into the first. Communication was often like this, though: stumbling, tripping, getting up again. Moving, however clumsily, forward.

  She didn’t need to tell the Tower a story. He’d heard all the stories. He was aware of them. He could hear the Consort—could hear her, especially now, as she sang. Her song resonated in corners Kaylin’s voice couldn’t reach. She could see the words almost vibrate with the force of that song, with the strength of it; could see the way the power poured into the singing was like water poured into parched earth.

  Kaylin couldn’t sing. She couldn’t voice whatever it was the Tower needed to hear. But that’s not what the Tower needed from her right now. What it needed was only that she listen. What it needed was to be heard.

  To be heard.

  She didn’t ask questions. She didn’t ask for its life story. She didn’t ask for anything now; she simply waited to listen to whatever it was the Tower wanted to say. What it wanted to be heard. She could hear now. In this space, she could listen and the Tower could be certain that its words would reach her.

  She didn’t know what Towers needed to say. She didn’t know how they felt isolation; it seemed strange, even given her experience to date, that buildings could feel isolated. But most of the buildings she was familiar with weren’t actually alive.

  She wondered, briefly, if the Tower, like Alsanis, had come to feel protective of the very thing it had caged. To Alsanis, the cohort had become almost like family. He cared for them. She was certain he missed them. Certain that some of them missed Alsanis, although they had spent centuries searching for an exit, some way to escape him.

  It wasn’t a comforting thought.

  It also wasn’t accurate. The words at the heart of the Tower, vibrating with the rhythm, the sound, of the Consort’s song, began to move. They didn’t immediately leap up or away; they rotated in place, shifting slightly up or down until Kaylin stood at the heart, the center, of their formation.

  She lifted her arms—she had to, because one hand
was still attached to part of one word—and as she did, the word she was touching grew brighter. Bright enough that she needed to squint to even look at it, which, sadly, was impossible. Her vision here was a metaphor; it wasn’t physical. Her own marks were pulsing slightly; she could look at them, and did.

  She was listening. The Tower was speaking. The words it spoke weren’t words she knew or understood—but as always, with True Words, they felt familiar, as if she could understand them if she worked a bit harder, listened a bit more intently. She tried. She had spoken True Words before, but never without help; she had simply repeated—with effort—what she’d heard spoken into her ear by people who had mastered the art of speaking at least parts of this lost tongue, this ancient language.

  Even then, it had been a struggle; the syllables had slid off her tongue. She’d lost the verbal shape of the word a dozen times. It wasn’t like speaking Elantran. It would never be like speaking Elantran. And right now, it wasn’t her job to speak; she had to listen. She had to hear.

  No, she could hear. She was listening. But she couldn’t understand any of it. She was frustrated; the Tower could speak to Kaylin. It had been speaking to Kaylin the moment she touched the word. Whatever it needed her to hear, it could make clear a different way. She almost asked.

  She didn’t. Because it occurred to her, vibrating as she was with the Consort’s song and the movement of the Tower’s words, the syllables of which continued, that it couldn’t. Whatever needed to be said, it had these words, True Words, with which to say it. She wondered—not for the first time—if the words of the Chosen had been a mistake on the part of the Ancients. There were vessels that could understand this language, and if they didn’t, they had centuries—or forever—in which to learn. Centuries in which to experiment with, to understand the mechanics of, the marks themselves.

  The intelligence with which to learn.

  Kaylin hated to be treated as if she were stupid. She expected it, but hated it, regardless. And yet, in the heart of the Tower, she accepted that she was stupid.