The Chronicles of Elantra 6 - Cast in Chaos (50 page)

What, she thought, was the name of air? She had already described what air meant in the context of her own life, and she held those disparate pieces of information while she tried to find the pieces that she hadn’t experienced, but could guess. The flight of Dragons. The flight of Aerians. The winds on the ice of mountains that were more myth than fact. She cursed her lack of imagination, or at least its lack of speed, and once again reaffirmed the fact that without breath there was no speech; she hadn’t bothered to curse silently.

Nor was the fire silent; it sounded almost like a heartbeat. But there was another sound, like the quiet humming of bees, and Kaylin realized, as she looked around, that the sound came from her. Lifting her arms, she listened; it was the runes. They were vibrating against her skin.

She looked at them as if they were art. Or text. Or some mix of both. And then, looking, she began to speak. It was disturbing because she could hear her voice clearly and it sounded completely unfamiliar. She began to rise in what was only barely air, until her toes were dangling, point down, with nothing to impede them.

Her hair rose, as well—or the parts that
always
escaped any confinement—and something tugged like an insistent toddler at her fingers. She had spoken the name of air, and air had come.

With it, ghostly and translucent, a familiar figure: Lord Sanabalis in miniature.
Kaylin.
He was still a Dragon, his wings extended in a hover that wasn’t quite flight.

Sanabalis. I—the Arkon said—

What the Arkon said is something to discuss if we survive this. We may not,
he added, which wasn’t precisely comforting.
You must listen to the air, Kaylin—and it is not a chore.

Listen and repeat what it tells me?

Dragon faces didn’t lend themselves to surprise, either. But his silence was a beat too long.

Yes.

Earth came next. It was slower than air or fire, but it was easier in all ways to build; what she found, she held, as if it were innately solid. With earth came the Keeper. He wasn’t seen through heat haze or wind; he looked as solid as he might have, had he been standing on her foot.

He didn’t seem particularly surprised to see her.
Are you sure
, he said, as if they were seated in the storefront,
you don’t want a job?

She chuckled. Even here. “I’d just mess up the kitchen,” she said, speaking out loud. “Although you might not notice the difference.” The smile slid from her face, leaving her expression stranded. “The Arkon and Sanabalis—”

“They’re there?”

“As much as you are. Well, maybe less. They’re telling me the fire and the air want me to repeat fire and air words—and I can’t even hear them as more than a crackle and hiss.”

He frowned.

“You
can
hear them. Can you tell me what they’re saying?”

The frown deepened. “No,” he said, after a long pause. “I can’t. What they say to you, what they need
you
to repeat, isn’t meant for my ears.”

“Great. It’s not meant for
mine,
either.”

“But the Devourer hasn’t destroyed you.”

“No. He’s…quiet, now. I think he’s listening.”

“Good. You
will
need to repeat the Elemental words.”

“How if I can’t bloody hear them?”

“I have confidence in you, Private. Call the water.”

Kaylin hesitated, and then continued. She had deliberately saved water for last, because it was the element to which she felt closest. She didn’t have to struggle to turn water into a metaphor; to Kaylin, water had a personality. It had intent. Yes, it was also necessary for life; yes, people needed to drink it, and rain was required for plants and the fields of farmers.

But the Elemental Water was the heart of the Tha’alaan. Over the centuries of being the receptacle for the memories and emotions of an entire race, it had developed the ability to speak, to feel, and ultimately, to love. It understood home in a way that only the Tha’alani could.

Kaylin would never, ever be more than a visitor to the Tha’alaan. She both hated and accepted it, because when she did manage to sneak in the figurative door, she was treated as if she were family. Here, in an emptiness that was not the solid, confining state of the real world as she knew it, she called the water, because she
knew
the name of water.

It came. It came in a pillar that immediately took form and shape as it rose: Female, and at that a familiar woman. The water, translucent-skinned, with hair that stretched through the gray nothing and vanished from sight, looked very much like the Tha’alani castelord.

Kaylin,
Ybelline said, as if to underscore the likeness.

Kaylin reached out to hug this blend of castelord and element, but the element lifted a hand.
You will fall through me,
she said, in a voice that was entirely her own.

It doesn’t hurt to fall, here. I’ve tried.
But she stilled.
You need to speak to the Devourer.

That is not what we call him, but yes. We cannot. You must speak for us, here.

I can’t even hear what you’re saying. I mean, the other words.

The water began to speak, and…Kaylin heard gurgling—the gurgle of a brook or a clear stream.

It’s the same,
she began. The words faded.

The ground beneath her feet was changing. What had been gray and almost formless mist—albeit mist that supported weight if you wanted to walk on it—was developing color.

CHAPTER 28

The color wasn’t the gray of stone or cobbles; it wasn’t the pale brown-gray of packed dirt, or even the green and yellow brightness of weeds. It was, at once, all of those things.

What does it mean?
Kaylin asked the water.

The gate is opening,
was the water’s reply. It was both the answer Kaylin expected and the one she didn’t want to hear.
You will no longer be able to speak with us when the landscapes merge.
This, on the other hand, was unexpected, and even less welcome.

Why is the
inside
of the Devourer changing?

The water didn’t answer. Kaylin had a momentary vision of being slowly enveloped by the digestive system of a giant beast. Given the rest of her fears, that one was almost funny.

She could hear the slow grind of stone and the rush of falling water; she could hear the whistle of wind and the crackle of flame. She could speak
of
these things, but the Devourer didn’t respond in any way that indicated that he understood. He could
hear
her, yes; his silence and the sudden cessation of the activity for which—clearly—he’d been named made that clear.

Kaylin
—she could hear Severn.

Let me see.

He didn’t even hesitate.
Can you?

All hesitance was hers. She felt his presence as if he weren’t quite a separate person; as if she could reach out through him and touch the world in which he now stood. She did, and she opened her eyes to a landscape that looked like a chaotic sketch. A sketch that Everly might have done before he started painting. In its center, however, more solid than anything but the massing crowd of refugees, was a very familiar image: the portal.

It stood like a mad mage’s idea of a door meant for giants, and it rose into the scintillating colors of what had once been gray. But the portal was not yet open; what lay around it and what lay in its center looked almost exactly the same.

Except the colors within the frame were starting to roil.

She turned as Severn turned, and saw what he saw: the outside of the Devourer. She saw the way the colors that had infested the landscape now clustered around the mountainous and amorphous form of something that might just be nightmare. On a good day.

Kaylin,
Ybelline said, her voice softer, the syllables attenuated.

Kaylin opened her eyes to colored mist and the embodiment of the elements; to Dragons, Evanton, and Ybelline. She thought of Vakillirae, of Enkerrikas, and of the cost of their flight and their escape from the Devourer. And she thought, as well, of the one thing that neither of the two had ever considered trying.

She even understood why.

She began to speak her name, not as an affirmation of power, not as an accidental summoning, but as an invitation, as an opening of a door.
The
door, really. She tried to give the elements her name.

Sadly, this was not as easily done as she’d hoped.

She tried three times, and then, clenching her jaw, she smacked herself in the side of the head, and turned to the elements. The elements that she couldn’t
hear
and couldn’t, therefore, understand.

Listen,
she told them, putting years of training into what was, in the end, an unspoken word. They weren’t raw recruits; they didn’t snap to attention. But they turned to her.

I want to tell you a story.

She couldn’t tell them a story about the gods, or the Ancients, because she’d only seen their echoes. She could have told them the stories she’d told the Devourer, but it would have taken too long. So she told them, instead, about the Barrani High Court, and its lake of life, in which the names of the living waited to be joined to the infants who would bear them.

Not an infant, she’d chosen one name for herself—but she’d chosen it blindly, and she’d hidden it. She was already alive. She needed no name and no word to define her; she needed no midwife to breathe life into her still form. She hadn’t even meant to take a name for herself at all.

Fire roared; water sizzled. The elements had moved closer to her in the oddly confined space.

She described the name, line by perceptible line, and as she did, the play of simple syllables stretched out, beginning to end. But this disparate description had no resonance for the elements; she saw that.

In frustration, she said, “Sanabalis, how the Hell do you
give your damn name
to someone else?”

It is not something I have ever tried.
His nostrils flared.

No? But…she had. She had given her name to Severn. And it hadn’t seemed like such a big deal, at the time. No, that wasn’t true. It had been important, but the name itself had come easily, as if it were a simple word, some part of her constant vocabulary.

But she’d tried that a dozen times now, and it did
nothing.

The giving of a name, when it is done at all, is personal, Kaylin. It is as much an individual act of emotion as any declaration of love. No two people mean precisely the same thing when they say it. It is an act, an avowal, that exists entirely in the moment, although the consequences stretch out in either direction, past and future.

He was silent for long enough that she thought he’d finished.

Love is defined by individuals and their response to each other. Even the love of Dragons, although it is deeper and rarer. To give your name to me—if you were so willing and so entirely foolish—would be entirely different from giving your name to your Sergeant. Or your Corporal. They are not the same in intent, in the end, because your intent is defined by your past experiences with each individual.

But, Kaylin, whatever you intend to do, do it
now.

She nodded.
Thank you.
She turned, once again, to the elements and their companions. Those companions were the bridge between Kaylin and the heart of fire, water, wind and earth, but they were also the bridge between the rest of the people of her City. Her world.

She understood the ways in which the elements—or the shadows they cast into the world, all the worlds—were part of her life, almost indivisible from it. But, part of her life and necessary to it or no, she was not part of theirs except when crisis drove her to Evanton’s shop. She didn’t, and couldn’t, understand them; they lived forever, and they needed nothing. People needed
them
to be contained, which is why the Garden existed at all.

But they, like any living thing, could
listen.
What they heard, what they made of what she said, she couldn’t control—but then again, that was true of any other listener. But she could see the scorn, confusion, anger or surprise of other listeners, so she could add
more
words, or attempt to retract the ones she’d already spoken.

Here, she saw, there would be no retractions. They would understand the core of what she said, or they wouldn’t.

So she tried to keep it clear and simple, inasmuch as anything ancient and mystical could be either. She didn’t choose complicated words; she chose the ones that described only how she felt, because she
knew
that.
This is who and what I am, right now. I know it’s strange and insignificant, and I know I break things sometimes, but only by accident. I’m on the outside, looking in. I’m
always
on the outside, looking in. But I will knock, now, and I will wait at the door instead of staring through the window like a thief.

I want to be part of your home. I want to be part of what you are, even if it can only ever
be
a small part. I will do everything I can, give everything I can, listen when I want to talk, and—and help in the kitchen after dinner. I will try to understand what you are, and not what
I
want you to be.

It was hard, to wait. Hard to open yourself up for inspection, because inspection implied…judgment. And she’d been judged for things she had no control of all her life.

Ellariayn.

The only thing Kaylin could hear for one long moment was her name. It was also the only thing she could feel, as if she were a gong or a perfect, resonant bell. She understood some part of why names were hidden,
must
be hidden, then. People built invisible, social walls between each other all the time; if they didn’t, all the police in the world couldn’t stop the carnage that would follow. What worked for the Tha’alani worked in part because they had been born into a world without emotional defenses, and the lack was so utterly natural, the polite lies that maintained civilized interaction were unnecessary.