The Chronicles of Elantra 5 - Cast in Silence (31 page)

His eyes were very blue when they met hers. “But?”

Tiamaris was stepping on her foot. Not literally, but his expression would have frozen water at fifty paces.

“But I might not be?” Nightshade said quietly. He glanced, not at Tiamaris, but at Severn, who hadn’t moved. At all.

“No.”

Nightshade moved, then. He moved so damn fast she barely had a chance to take a step back. But she did; it wasn’t nearly enough. He caught her wrist, pulled her forward, and raised his hand to touch her cheek. The mark, where his fingers traced it, burned. But it was heat without pain; she drew one sharp breath at the shock of it, and exhaled slowly when her skin didn’t shrivel and blacken.

And then he lifted the wrist he held, and he unbuttoned the cuff of her sleeve while she watched, almost hypnotized. Severn stepped in, and Nightshade released her instantly, raising his hands and taking a step back. But her arm remained where he’d raised it, and gravity tugged the heavier fabric down just a few inches.

Enough, really, to reveal the edges of the symbols that spread across most of her body. She felt his surprise, then; he contained its physical expression perfectly, but he couldn’t keep it from her; she wasn’t even certain he tried.

He looked at Tiamaris, whose expression was about as open and revealing as Nightshade’s. “She bears the marks,” he said softly.

“She does. Will you now listen to her?”

At that, the Barrani Lord offered a very wry smile; it was almost remarkable. “I would have no choice if she insisted,” he said. “But I do not think she will.”

“It is not generally in her nature, where whining and badgering will do in its place.”

“There are no storms here,” Lord Nightshade finally said. “Not now, not yet. We have had some trouble in the West March, and in the plains—but some of those troubles you are no doubt familiar with.”

Tiamaris nodded. “But storms do come,” he said.

“When?”

“What year is it, in your reckoning?”

“Demetrad is the Lord of the Flight that is our greatest concern.”

“That is not much of an answer.”

“It is not. It is, however, true.”

Tiamaris frowned. “How much of the land does my kin now hold? How much is held by the High Lord of the Barrani?”

Nightshade began to gesture, and then stopped. “Perhaps,” he said, glancing at the Tower’s height, “this was not such a wise choice of venue. I think, however, that there are few choices that would be safe for either you or your unusual companions.”

Kaylin said, quietly, “There are no shadowstorms here?”

Nightshade agreed.

“None? None recorded?”

“None.”

“But you have records of the storms’ existence elsewhere.”

“We have had some difficulty with the storms. As,” he added quietly, “have the Dragons, if rumors are to be believed. They do not trouble us here.”

She nodded, holding that thought as she moved on. “Who lives at the heart of the fiefs?” When he raised a brow, she grimaced. “At the heart,” she said, “of this City, now?”

He glanced at Tiamaris. It was Tiamaris who replied. “No one.”

“But if there are no shadows—”

“There is still danger, Kaylin. The unknown in the heart of this City has teeth. It draws blood and destroys life. What we explored, what we searched for—it was known because it had been previously approached during the absence of the darkness.”

She’d seen that darkness. She hesitated, glanced at Nightshade, and let it go. “But in the here and now, you have people who are exploring it?”

Nightshade nodded slowly. “You are concerned that they dabble in things that pose a threat to us all.”

“They’re probably Arcanists. They always do.”

“Arcanists?”

“Sorcerer,” Tiamaris supplied.

Nightshade nodded. “Continue.”

“They’re doing something now.”

He raised a brow. “And you know this how?”

“I don’t. It’s a guess. They’re doing something now, and it’s already started whatever chain of events leads to the City as
we
know it.”

“And who rules the City as you know it?”

“The Eternal Emperor.”

He raised a brow, but he did not press her further. “Why do you assume that something is happening now?”

“Because we’re here.”

“Ah. Mortal reason.” There wasn’t more than the usual Barrani condescension in the tone.

She lifted a hand and pointed. The clouds that had gathered had gathered solely above the Tower. But they weren’t the swirling chaotic dark of roiling shadow; they were—seemed—gray and silver. No wind moved them. She thought no wind could. But they had come anyway.

“Kaylin?” Tiamaris said softly.

“You can’t feel it?”

“Not without using spells.” He didn’t even lift a finger.

“I think,” she said, looking up at the cloud at the Tower’s height and feeling the stretch of exposed throat begin to ache as she did, “we should move.”

“I concur,” Nightshade replied. He made his way to the fence, moving both quickly and gracefully enough that none of his movements suggested the clumsiness of forced flight.

They followed, and stopped a foot from his back; his hands were spread out along the fence posts, but they weren’t moving.

“Please tell me that you haven’t tried to open them yet,” Kaylin said to his stiff back.

“Are you required to believe it?”

She swore, spinning with far less grace than Nightshade had so that she could once again crane her chin up and look at the clouds. They were now shining as if made of new steel. “Tiamaris—”

“It’s not shadowstorm,” he told her, in a tone of voice that provided exactly no comfort.

“Then what the hell is it?”

“I fear we are about to find out.”

The clouds parted, then, as if they’d been waiting for exactly that comment. Lightning—or something that would have been lightning if lightning was slow, thick, and solid—groped toward the Tower’s height.

When it touched the Tower, it changed. The light that had appeared as a slow-moving liquid suddenly stiffened, and for just a moment, looked like a hand, tendrils becoming fingers that gripped—and held—tight. The clouds, with their odd flecks of light, stiffened, as well, losing all motion, all sense that wind might have any effect on them.

Those clouds now bled into the Tower, light trailing down its walls as if it were, indeed, rain; as they did, they began to dwindle. But the clouds could almost be forgotten; the Tower glowed, bright and silver, as if it were in the running to become moon number three.

“So,” Tiamaris said softly.

Nightshade glanced at his profile. So did Kaylin, but something dragged her eyes skyward again, toward those shrinking, condensing clouds. Her skin ached, but no surprise there; so did her jaw, but that was because she’d clamped it shut.

The clouds had thinned so much they were simple tendrils now, and they were fast being absorbed by what, on the surface, looked like stone. But as they moved, they teased themselves apart into separate strands. Those strands, thin and pale, glowed now with the same steady light that touched the Tower walls. They moved, rising as if pulling against the gravity the Tower exerted, dancing, not by the grace of wind or breeze, but deliberately, as if each turn, each slow twist, was a predetermined step.

And it was. Kaylin saw that as she watched.

“Kaylin,” she heard Severn say. She lifted a hand; she didn’t look down. She knew that she had to see this; if the Arkon’s memory crystal was somehow still functioning in this shadow-born version of their past, she had to allow it to capture her vision as perfectly as possible.

So she watched as the individual tendrils continued to weave. Some, she saw, divided into two or three strands; one would cease its motion, and the other two would carry some variant forward. This happened again and again until all motion stilled. When it did, she saw, clearly, what those strands had been doing: they had been writing, in light, a very complicated rune. A word.

It shone there, as clear as glass, light illuminating it from within. It looked…familiar. But even as she tried to identify it, it began to fade. She felt a hand on her sleeve, on her arm, as she tried to memorize the intricate lines and strokes. It was a lost cause, and normally she gave up on those immediately; it saved effort.

Here? She was mesmerized until nothing at all could be seen but night sky and moonlight. Only then did she look down.

Nightshade was standing in front of her—directly in front of her. He had rolled the sleeve up her arm, and exposed to light, glowing in the same way that the rune in the sky had, were the marks on her arms.

“I didn’t do that,” she told Lord Nightshade softly.

He nodded. “What do you think was done?”

“I don’t know. Something.”

That produced a very dry chuckle.

“Enough,” Severn said quietly. He stepped in, but did not touch Nightshade. They fenced with stares for a minute, and then Nightshade let her arm go, dropping his own to his sides. “So,” he said softly to Tiamaris.

Tiamaris was staring at the Tower. Nothing about it appeared to have changed, and even the light which illuminated it faded as they watched. “It has started,” he said quietly.

Nightshade, this Nightshade, had no knowledge of the fiefs because the fiefs didn’t exist. But he had never been, frequently to Kaylin’s regret, a fool. “What do you think caused this?” he asked.

Tiamaris considered his words with care. “Something, or someone, in the heart of the interior, has caused a disturbance.”

“And this?”

“I would say that this…” and here he gestured toward the Tower “…is our—your—last line of defense.”

“Against?”

“The ferals,” Kaylin broke in, “for one. They’ll come. I don’t know when.”

“Ferals?”

She cursed. “They’re like hunting dogs. Except larger. Smarter. They’re black, or so dark a gray it’s almost the same. They don’t come out during the day.” Which no longer applied in Barren, but she let that go. “They hunt in packs. They kill whatever they can find in the open street.”

He raised a brow, and she cursed again, this time in Leontine. “No, they wouldn’t be able to kill
you.
But it’s not you they’ll hunt. It’s us. It’s people like me.” She hesitated.

“Can they be killed?”

“Yes.”

“Then this does not sound like a disaster.”

When he put it like that, it didn’t. It certainly didn’t seem like more of a disaster than street gangs and drug dealers and loan sharks. She turned to look between the tines of this very well-kept gate, to the equally well-kept streets beyond them. How would it happen? How would the City go from this—where no one looked as if they were starving or prematurely aged by a life on the streets—to the fiefs she’d been born in?

“There will be more than her ferals,” Tiamaris said softly. “I do not know what form it will take, but I am certain, Lord Nightshade, that you will recognize it when you see it; you or your kin. There is a reason the High Halls stand where they stand. A reason, in the end, that the capital of the future Empire will
also
stand here. That reason lies in the ruins and the buildings that your kin now explore. And that we also do, to our lasting regret.”

“Could we stop them?” Kaylin asked them both.

They stared at her.

“Could we go out—now—and head toward the center of the City? Could we find them and stop them before—before—”

“Before what?”

“Before they release or invoke whatever it is they must have to cause things to change so damn much.”

“It is centuries, Kaylin,” Tiamaris told her gently. “There are those who live here in relative wealth. How long do you think they will stay once the ferals come?”

“But it’s—it’s their home.”

“They will find another. They will still be wealthy, and they will be alive.” He watched her. “It will not happen overnight, but it
will
happen. I think it has already happened. The start.”

She started to speak, and stopped. “Because of what just happened to the Tower.”

“If I guess correctly, there are six such buildings, ringed by the river. They have all been touched by similar clouds. They will all…wake. Soon.” He glanced at Nightshade, and then back. “Even if we go now, and we are against all odds successful, you delay, you do not prevent. There are always men of power—in any race—who will be drawn to what lies at the heart of our fiefs.”

“Why?”

“I do not know why they—”

“Why were you?”

He raised a brow. His eyes had shaded from gold to bronze so slowly she hadn’t really tracked the change. But in the end, he merely said, “I am not considered of significant power among my kind. I was sent to investigate.”

“And the Outcaste?”

“It was different.”

Lord Nightshade lifted a hand. “I believe the time for your conversation is at an end,” he told them both softly.

Kaylin didn’t even need to ask him why.

The Tower at their back had suddenly developed something that looked suspiciously like a door.

It was not a terribly
fine
door. The frame that contained it was solid and blocky, one piece with the stone of the Tower. There were no letters above it, or, as was often the case in parts of Elantra, adorning the wall to either side. In fact, it looked as if the door had been added as an afterthought. Given that the door seemed flat, rectangular, and plain—the type of door behind which someone like Kaylin or Severn would live—it might have been. It had a doorknob. The hinges were on the inside. It seemed—at this distance—to lack a keyhole.

Kaylin glanced at Severn.

“No,” he said quietly. “It wasn’t there before.” He’d spoken very little since they’d arrived on this cold, night street—but she was used to that. Severn had never been much of a talker. He looked at the door.

So did Kaylin. “Tiamaris?”

The Dragon didn’t seem surprised. He didn’t, on the other hand, seem amused or curious, either. Nightshade did. “An invitation?” he asked softly.

Kaylin said, “How? No one’s home. Not yet.”

The door swung open.

The universe, on occasion, had a very irritating sense of humor.