Cast in Honor (The Chronicles of Elantra) (15 page)

As they walked, the word
mostly
echoed in the invisible heights above their heads. The sound of their steps in unison made the kind of noise that suggested vaulted ceilings and a deplorable lack of carpeting.

“Kattea—is this how you found the house?”

She didn’t answer.

“Tell Gilbert that he’s right. I need the light.” It was funny how little it helped when light flooded the basement.

* * *

The ceilings were fifteen feet off the ground, and the ground was, as Kaylin had suspected, stone. If not for the utter absence of natural light, this could have been a grand hall in a manor into which Kaylin would never be invited. Or a palace.

There was no way that this was the basement of the house in which Gilbert and Kattea claimed to live. There was no way it would
fit
.

“Is it too much to ask,” Kaylin murmured, “that something be normal for a few days? Just—normal? Normal, venal criminals, ordinary stakes?”

“You are clearly not immortal,” Bellusdeo replied. She glanced at Kaylin; her eyes were fully orange now.

“Meaning it’s not boring.”

“Normal—for me—for centuries was the heart of Shadow. I do not yearn for it. Normal, for me, was the war that eventually destroyed my home.”

“I get it. I suck. I’ll stop feeling sorry for myself. Or,” she added, when Bellusdeo raised a brow, “I’ll at least stop whining out loud.”

“The latter is conceivable.”

“Thanks.”

“You should never have accepted the marks of the Chosen if you wanted a boring life.”

“I wasn’t offered a choice.”

“What is the phrase that Joey uses?”

“Joey? Oh, you mean at the office?”

“Yes. I think it’s ‘Sucks to be you.’ Did I say that right?”

“Yes.”

Kattea snickered.

“That’s funny?” Kaylin asked her.

“No. Gilbert doesn’t understand what it means.
That’s
funny.”

Gilbert was not present. Any hope that Kattea was not communicating with him in his absence—and it was very scant hope, given the observable facts—wilted.

“It’s around here somewhere,” Kattea told them. “There should be a door.”

“Should be?” Bellusdeo asked, her voice deceptively soft.

“The basement here is a bit confusing. It changes shape, sometimes. Gilbert says that’s normal.”

“It is
so
not normal,” Kaylin told her.

“I told him that. I think it confused him.”

“Gilbert sounds like he’s easily confused.”

“He really is. He says—he says that’s why he needs me.” The words trailed into silence. Kattea was a child. She was not a young child, but she was a child. But that meant nothing in the fiefs.

“Do you think he’s lying?” Bellusdeo asked. She had apparently decided to ask all the difficult, awkward questions that Kaylin had so far managed to keep to herself.

Kattea’s shrug was pure fief. Answer enough, as well. Gilbert was clearly competent, powerful, dangerous—any need he had for an orphan in Nightshade didn’t bear examination. Not when he was the only reason that orphan was still alive.

Had Gilbert found Kaylin after Steffi and Jade had died, she would have followed him. She would have asked no questions unless he invited them. And she would have done whatever she could to protect him, no matter what
else
he did. Because he represented food and shelter and another day or two of life.

No fear Kaylin had for Kattea would measure up against that, and why should it? The concern of an uninvolved stranger was worth nothing but sentiment and air. She couldn’t judge the child. She couldn’t ask that she make wise choices. What choices, in the end, did Kattea really have?

* * *

The door did not appear until they’d walked another thirty yards, and it did not appear where Kattea was looking for it. Bellusdeo was less obviously disturbed by this than Kaylin, and Kattea did not appear concerned at all. She did look very pleased when she sighted it, but she didn’t look relieved. She had expected she’d find it.

It was, in Kaylin’s estimation, not that hard to miss. It looked far more like a closet door than a door that would normally be found in halls like this one; even the doorknob looked old and worn.

Kattea didn’t open the door. Instead, she knocked. “Don’t touch the handle,” she said, although neither Kaylin nor Bellusdeo had moved to do so. “Gilbert will open the door.”

At her words, the door swung open into a large room, which was rectangular in shape. The floors of this room were covered in rugs—at least three, none matching. To the right was a large bed; to the left, a desk and two standing shelves. Those shelves had gathered books, dust and what looked, at this distance, like impressive cobwebs.

Kaylin took these details in before her gaze returned to the man who had opened the door. He looked pinched and drawn; his eyes were fever-bright, but a normal color. His face was long, but otherwise looked normal.

He did not look like the Barrani.

He did not look like a Dragon, either.

But Kaylin felt certain that he had to be immortal, because she thought Kattea must know his True Name.

* * *

Gilbert stepped away from the door to allow them to enter.

Bellusdeo went in first, cutting Kattea off to do so. Kaylin almost reached out to grab Kattea’s shoulder, but she knew how she would have reacted to that at Kattea’s age. Kattea’s trust of Gilbert was not trust as Kaylin had grown to understand it. It was necessity.

“Kattea said you were unwell.”

“I know.”

“You look...”

“Unwell.”

“Yes.”

“I
said
—” Kattea began.

“Kattea and I have a bit of a bet going.”

“Kattea has been attempting to explain betting to me. It is confusing.”

“It can’t be more confusing than basements that change shape and size and doors that aren’t where you left them.”

Gilbert frowned.

Kattea said, “That’s what I told him.”

“Did any Barrani come to this house yesterday?”

“No.”

“But something else did?”

Gilbert was silent for a long beat.

“Let me lose a bet.”

“I do not think that would be wise. The injuries you heal are not the same injuries that my people sustain. My injuries would not, I believe, make sense to you.”

“They don’t have to make sense to me.” Kaylin lifted her arms. Gilbert, seeing them, froze. He turned to Kattea.

“Her arms—were they glowing like that when she entered the halls?”

“You couldn’t see it? You can see
everything
.” Kattea said this without apparent sarcasm.

“I can see it now, yes. I— May I examine your arms?”

Kaylin unbuttoned the cuffs of her sleeves in reply. She rolled up the loose material and winced; the marks were
bright
. She rolled her sleeves down again instantly.

“Kaylin?”

“Sometimes they— Sometimes the words leave my skin.”

“Yes.” Gilbert now looked confused.

“You’ve seen marks like these before. You called me—”

“Chosen.” The most disturbing thing about his gaze, Kaylin realized, was the fact that Gilbert didn’t blink. Nor did he look away. His glance never strayed.

“You lived in Ravellon,” Kaylin said, changing the subject.

He nodded.

“How do you know what these marks mean?”

Bellusdeo folded her arms. Her eyes remained a bright, intense orange as she studied Gilbert.

Gilbert frowned. “I do not understand the question.”

“Ravellon is at the heart of the fiefs. Kattea’s told you about at least one of them—you found her there.”

“Lord Nightshade’s home.”

“Yes. The fiefs exist
because
of Ravellon. The Towers—or castle, in his case—exist to prevent Shadow from encroaching upon the rest of the city. Gilbert, was Ravellon your home?”

* * *

Gilbert turned to Kattea. “Go upstairs,” he told her quietly, “and entertain our guests.” He glanced up, as if the ceiling of this very ordinary room was transparent to his gaze. “Kattea. Go. We do not have much time.”

Kaylin glanced at the girl. She had folded her slender arms tightly, clearly intending to stay.

“Kattea, you gave me your word.”

Mutinous, the child hesitated.

“Do as he says,” Kaylin told the girl. “It’s never wise to break a promise made to someone as powerful as Gilbert.”

“I didn’t promise to obey,” Kattea said, voice low. “Not
everything
.”

“You must go to our guests. While you are with them, they should be safe.”

“From what?” Bellusdeo demanded.

“I would tell you to leave with Kattea, but it would be pointless. You will remain with the Chosen. I intend her no harm.”

“But you send the child from the room.”

“I am not what you are. I am not what she is. She has made a bet with Kattea.” He spoke the word as if it were a sacred oath. “I am not what I
was
. I am...ill. There is a possibility that she can heal me.”

“Healing is not, generally—”

“But there is a possibility that she will fail. Or that I will. You will, in all likelihood, survive such a failure. The Chosen is likely to survive. Kattea is not.”

“Are you sure you know what you’re doing?” Bellusdeo demanded of Kaylin.

Since the answer was more or less no, Kaylin didn’t bother with it. Kattea was already afraid. “Keep your promise,” Kaylin said.

“You don’t even know what the promise was.”

“I don’t have to. You know, and Gilbert knows.”

Gilbert cut in. “Go upstairs. I will meet you there.”

“You promise?”

Gilbert was silent. He was pale now, far paler than he had been when he’d opened the door. His eyes, however, were just as bright, just as clear. No, Kaylin thought, they were brighter and clearer; it was as if light was now attempting to escape his body, and his eyes were the only possible exit.

“Bellusdeo.”

“I am not leaving you here.”

“Kattea has to go. I don’t want her to get lost in the halls—”

“I
won’t
get lost in the halls!”

“You don’t get lost because Gilbert guides you. He’s telling you he might not be able to. You need to be somewhere safe.”

“There’s
nowhere
safe!”

“Fine. You need to be somewhere
safer
. There are two Imperial Hawks in your parlor. Go there and stand behind them if something
else
comes to the house. But do it
now
.” Speaking, she reached out and grabbed Gilbert’s hands. The light that she saw in his eyes was familiar. It was not the gold of Dragon calm or Barrani surprise; it was the gold of the marks on her arms, legs, back and, she imagined, the mark on her forehead, which had not yet returned on its own to the Barrani Lake of Life.

Bellusdeo’s eyes were a deeper orange. Her gaze moved from Kaylin to Kattea and back. Kaylin wasn’t certain that Bellusdeo would, in the end, do what she’d asked, but she had hopes.

“If you do not return unharmed,” the Dragon finally said, “I will find your remains and burn them to ash.”

“Fine. But only if I’m dead.”

“No promises” was the dire response. Bellusdeo then turned her glare on Kattea. “We’re leaving. Now.”

Kattea didn’t argue.

* * *

“Ravellon was my home.”

Gilbert’s hands were ice. Kaylin had handled warmer corpses. “You should lie down.”

“Kattea said this, as well. I do not completely understand it.”

Realization came to Kaylin as she held Gilbert’s hands. “You’re not used to the body you inhabit.”

“I am not used to the smallness of the form I inhabit, no.”

“Why do you bother?”

“Because I cannot walk here if I do not. Not safely. The seals are breaking.”

Kaylin understood that this was important, but it made no sense, and to make sense of it would probably require time. Or someone else. She had a hundred questions to ask, and all of the answers were equally important. She chose one. “How much time do you have?”

To her surprise, he laughed. The laugh echoed in the room; it was almost a Dragon’s laugh. This did nothing to make Kaylin any calmer.

“Time,” he said bitterly, “I have.”

“You just told Kattea—”

“Time is what
you
do not have. It is what Kattea will not have.”

“Can you tell me what’s wrong?”

“I am wounded, Chosen. I am bleeding in ways you cannot see.” His hands tightened on hers. “Lord Nightshade’s brother is here.”

Kaylin frowned and turned. She was relieved to see that Annarion wasn’t present in the room. Relief shattered when she heard a very familiar—and very close—squawk. If Annarion was present, however, he remained silent; unlike Mandoran, he was good at that.

She closed her eyes, in part because her marks were now glowing so brightly that they hurt to look at, and in part because Gilbert’s eyes were doing the same thing. “Should I be able to choose which word leaves me?”

“Can you not? If you cannot, how can you use the power you’ve been granted? How can you fulfill the responsibility that comes with it? The words are your power. Without them, you are merely mortal.”

Kaylin was more or less used to this, but still found it annoying. Annoyance, on the other hand, was better than fear; she held on to it because it was familiar. Eyes closed and holding the coldest hands in the world, she let her awareness expand.

Chapter 13

If Kaylin did not heal immortals often, she did have some experience. She didn’t expect Gilbert’s body to conform to the rough shape and functionality of her own. She did expect to at least find wounds, because Barrani wounds and Dragon wounds had a lot in common with merely mortal ones, and in general, bleeding implied that kind of injury.

Gilbert was not Barrani; he wasn’t a Dragon. He had chosen to adopt the appearance of a mortal—possibly for Kattea’s sake. It wasn’t, however, a simple illusion.

Gilbert’s appearance was in some ways like Kaylin’s skin. It was attached to him. It was part of the whole, not separate from it. But the whole was not simple interior—organs, muscle, bone; the skin didn’t
contain
the rest of him. Even had it, she would have found it disturbing. She didn’t expect Shadow to be living and organic. She expected it to be...well, shadowy. Deadly.

This...wasn’t like that. Parts of Gilbert were physical; they were almost what his form suggested. But they didn’t...attach to each other in a way that suggested those parts had an actual function. If Kaylin could look at the contents of a working stomach—she’d seen the dissection of a dead one in the morgue—she imagined they would look similar to Gilbert’s body. Except for the things that a stomach couldn’t contain.

She wondered, queasy now, if that was what his interior was—a collection of the things he’d swallowed, consumed and only partly digested. As a living body, this one didn’t
work.
And yet it was alive. She could sense that much.

A body knew its healthy state. Kaylin’s healing wasn’t like doctoring or surgery. Had it been, she would have failed the first time she tried; she’d been twelve or thirteen, and she’d had no words for any of what she did. The words, the knowledge, had followed from the time she’d spent on a stool in the morgue at Red’s side.

The morgue would not give her the words for what she touched now.

Kaylin often felt fear when she healed, but this fear was different. It was visceral. Gilbert felt
wrong
. He was alive, yes—but in his case, life was inimical, dangerous. She was afraid to heal him, because at the core of the mess that was Gilbert, she felt and touched traces of the unpredictable Shadow that grouped in the heart of the fiefs, traces of the Shadow that crossed the boundaries created by active Towers, and in so doing, transformed the landscape and the living they encountered. Shadow was death. Shadow meant nothing else, to Elantra.

Shadow, however, was part of Gilbert.

It would have been easy to assume that the Shadow existed in Gilbert as contamination. As something that needed to be cut out and excised in order to save his life. It wouldn’t be the first time Kaylin had had to do it. But she’d
known
then. She had known what Barrani health looked like. She’d been able to see the Shadow corrupting the Barrani body it infested and knew that if it wasn’t stopped, nothing Barrani would remain.

But she did not understand what healthy Gilbert looked like. Her power—if power had sentience—didn’t understand it, either.

Squawk
.

Annarion was definitely here. Mandoran was probably with him.

“I need to heal him,” she told the familiar, without opening her eyes.

Squawk. Squawk.

“He apologizes for intruding,” Gilbert said, his voice so close to her ear, his mouth might have been plastered to the side of her face. “He feels you will need...help.”

“Did he happen to say what kind of help?”

“No, Chosen. I believe he expects you to understand.”

And after a long moment, she did. It did not make her day any better. “He’s here to help contain you. The other two are somehow with him because they need to be within range of him or...”

“Or?”

“I can’t explain it because I’m not them. You probably understand it, if he’s here.” To the familiar, she said, “I don’t know what he’s supposed to be when he’s not—not injured.”

Squawk
.

“No, you don’t
understand
. I don’t usually
have to
know. The—the patient’s body knows.”

“And Gilbert’s doesn’t.” This was Mandoran. Kaylin didn’t open her eyes.

“No.”

“Do ours?”

“I have no idea. I’ve never been allowed to heal either of you. The only Barrani I’ve healed wanted to kill me for it.”

“I wouldn’t,” Mandoran helpfully said.

“Great. If you get mortally wounded or infected, I’ll keep that in mind. Annarion wouldn’t let me touch him.”

“That is possibly for your own safety,” Gilbert told her.

* * *

Healing went one way, in theory. Power flowed from Kaylin to the injured. Information—scattered and diffuse—also traveled, and that was a two-way communication.

What surged through Kaylin now was not information. Not as she understood it. It was not—quite—Shadow, but it was
of
Shadow. She pulled her hands away from Gilbert’s; she no longer had to be in contact with him to be aware of what he was.

She could, with her eyes closed, see Gilbert’s eyes. He had two of them, in the expected place. Not all Shadows did; many had multiple eyes, of different sizes, different shapes. Those eyes often occupied body parts that eyes normally didn’t, at least not in any race or species with which Kaylin was familiar.

But...he didn’t have two eyes now. The quality of the eyes, the harsh clarity, the solid physicality, remained. They were Gilbert’s eyes. They just weren’t attached to his face anymore, and there were a lot more of them. She stepped back—or felt as if she was trying to—but it didn’t help; the eyes ringed her, surrounded her, cocooned her. There was no way out.

She opened her eyes, her physical eyes.

Gilbert’s eyes remained, but the rest of the room returned. With it, she caught a glimpse of Mandoran, Annarion and her familiar.

Her familiar.

He was not in his small dragon state. He was not in his large, rideable state, either; he was somewhere in between. He had wings, yes, and he was slender, but he had lost the reptilian look that had defined his relationship with Kaylin. If what stood before her now bit her ear or stole her accessories, she’d probably try to stab him before she could override her instincts.

And yet, she knew him. The fact that she could now see Annarion, Mandoran and her erstwhile familiar was far less disturbing than it would have been at any other time. What
was
disturbing was the lack of Gilbert.

“What are you doing?” Mandoran asked her.

“I am trying to heal Gilbert.”

“Possibly not your brightest idea. Teela says you take betting to unacceptable extremes. She’s worried,” he added.

“This is not about a bet,” Kaylin said, through clenched teeth.

“Teela offers a wager.”

“Tell Teela to shut up. I need to concentrate.”

“On what?”

On Gilbert.

“Yes,” the familiar said. He stepped toward Kaylin. She recognized his voice, although she heard it seldom.

“I understand you.”

“It is a function of your state. You cannot maintain it for long; you will be absorbed. You are too thin an existence to avoid it.”

Kaylin shook her head. “Kattea has avoided it.”

“Gilbert has avoided absorbing Kattea—or anything else he has touched in this city. His efforts mirror those of Annarion and Mandoran, but he is not entirely as they are.”

Kaylin lifted a hand. Holding her breath, she placed her palm as gently as she could against the nearest eye. The eye closed. Until she’d touched it, it hadn’t appeared to even have an eyelid.

“What are you doing?” Mandoran asked.

“Thinking of strangling you,” Kaylin snapped at him. Even as she spoke, she reached for the next eye, the movement both deliberate and hesitant. This eye also closed. It made her feel vaguely better, but there were a lot of eyes. This was not
at all
like healing.

“Your feet, Kaylin.”

Kaylin looked down. She was practically standing on a bed of eyes. She could no longer see the stone floor. What she saw in its place was chaos. Opalescent Shadow; hints of broiling color that glittered and moved as if being disgorged. The eyes rested above it.

“This is
not
healing,” Kaylin almost shouted.

“Then stop,” Mandoran told her.

She would have if she’d any idea how. But the eyes formed a layer between her feet and the Shadow that would transform them, and that Shadow seemed like a very, very large pool. She left those eyes alone, for the sake of self-preservation.

The rest, she continued to close. After half a dozen such closures, she no longer hesitated. After a dozen she finally noticed that the marks on her arms, which were still glowing brightly, had begun to develop dimension. They were still attached to her skin, but they were attached to her skin the way Gilbert’s human appearance was attached to his body: they were part of Kaylin, and yet at the same time separate from her.

“How did you get here?” she asked Gilbert as she worked. “You said you crossed the bridge.” She closed an eye.

“That was not entirely accurate.”

“No kidding. Did you come underground?” Another eye. And another.

“As you have surmised, yes.”

“You didn’t find Kattea underground.” She reached for the eyes that hovered above her head, as if closing them would give her more space.

“No. I found it difficult to find Kattea at all.”

“Were you looking specifically for her?” She crouched; more eyes closed. With them went some of the light in the room. The balance of the light now resided in her marks. They hurt.

“No. I was simply looking for someone who existed in this time and place. Time is a dimension and an anchor. To people like you, who are wed to it, it is unavoidable. It is part of your essential nature. Without time, you do not exist.”

“And you do.”

“Yes, Kaylin Neya. I do. So, too, does your Lord.”

She bristled; her hand froze. “If you’re referring to Nightshade, he is not my Lord.”

“I feel his presence only when I am near you, but I find your language so limiting, I may be expressing myself poorly.”

“Very, very poorly,” she replied. “The floor—”

“Yes?”

“It’s not—it’s not stone anymore.”

The shape of Gilbert’s open eyes changed; she could almost trace the expression—confusion, possible frustration—from the subtle narrowing. He asked a question—or at least it sounded like a question by the intonation.

The familiar answered in the same language. Kaylin couldn’t name it, but she recognized it; it was the language the Arkon had chosen to speak to Mandoran. It was, however, a language that Kaylin thought, with time, she could learn; it didn’t have the enormous weight and echo of true words.

“The floor does not look different to my eyes,” Gilbert said. “There are patches of your city that do—but they are not areas I can navigate.”

More eyes shuttered. Kaylin’s arms began to burn. It wasn’t pleasant. The words seem to be struggling to escape her skin, but it was almost as if they were trapped, and the burning was a simple consequence of their attempt to break free.

This had never happened before.

Then again, no healing had ever worked this way, either. The fact that she could see her familiar made it clear that she was not entirely in the space she had occupied before she had taken Gilbert’s hands in her own. She was in a place that Annarion and Mandoran occupied if they didn’t focus properly. They at least looked normal, for Barrani.

* * *

“Choose.” Like the eyes, the voice seemed to come from all around. It did not sound like Gilbert’s—but maybe it was. Gilbert had a thousand eyes; he quite possibly had a thousand mouths, as well.

She had chosen words before—in a dream, or in what she thought of as a dream. This was not the same. That choice had been painless, and the words had been giant representations of themselves, things that could not fit on her skin.

She had needed them. She had known it, the way one knows anything in a dream.

But that dream had profoundly affected the reality it wasn’t a part of. She had apparently skipped the dreamlike state that had made the entire endeavor of choosing words somehow safer. This was reality.

“Kaylin.” Her familiar’s voice brought her back to herself.

“I have no idea what I’m supposed
to do
.”

“Choose a word.”

“But I—”

“Choose a word, Chosen, or lose them all. If Gilbert has time—and he does, although not in a fashion that you would understand—you do not. Were it not for those words, you could not be here at all. Choose.”

“You can read them—you choose.”

“If I could, I would make that choice for you. But it would change all of the bindings that hold us together, and in ways that you would not, in the end, appreciate. You live, as Gilbert said, in time; once you have made a choice, taken an action, there is no way to undo it, no way to return to what existed before.”

“I think I like it better when I can’t understand you.”

He smiled.

Her arms ached. So, now, did her legs, her back, the back of her neck—any part of her skin that was marked. She wondered if her entire body was bulging the way her arms now were. Probably. She could only see her arms.

What purpose did these words serve, in the end?

What purpose did any words serve? The Barrani Lake of Life was a repository of true words—those that could become names. These words weren’t the same—and even thinking it, she realized that the lone mark on her forehead did not burn or struggle to escape her skin. So: the words she bore, and had born, were not True Names. They didn’t grant life. They didn’t wake stone.

She had lost such marks before. The Devourer of Worlds had eaten the ones she had offered. But so had the familiar, when he had managed to struggle his way out of his shell. She hadn’t chosen which words she’d surrendered either time. She hadn’t chosen the word that had freed the trapped spirit of an ancient Dragon, deep within the bowels of the Arkon’s collection.

But she’d chosen the words that had freed the Consort from her sleep in the heart of the green. She had had the time to choose. She had had some understanding that she needed to communicate, somehow, with the heart of the green; that she had to show it an experience that was similar to its own. She couldn’t speak the words necessary.