The Chronicles of Elantra 6 - Cast in Chaos (32 page)

Something about this man, in this moment, was like…gravity. It pulled at her. She could enlarge the image, or rather, his face, at will, and did—but the sheer size of it didn’t diminish the effect; she was drawn to him, not because she needed to see more, but for some reason she couldn’t put into either thought or word.

Maybe it was his words. They were bold and certain, and hearing them, she couldn’t imagine another voice could ever speak them: they were entirely what they were, and entirely his. But they were also a wall, and looking past them, she could see that the Devourer had arrived.

It arrived, as it had the only other time Kaylin had seen it, as the fall of night. In the edges of the mirror, like distant, pale stars, she could see light, and the suggestion of trailing cloud, or translucent borealis. She could see no eyes, no mouth, nothing to suggest physical shape. But that nothing had somehow grabbed her damn legs, and Nightshade had been willing to cut them
off
in order to preserve her.

It didn’t reach for her now, although she thought—for just a moment—it might, its presence was that strong. “What do you see?”

Severn didn’t answer.

She turned to glance at him, and caught his face in profile; his expression was now chiseled, it was so sharp and hard. Nothing escaped it. “Severn?”

“What,” he asked, in the quiet tone of voice that precedes some kind of death, “do you see?”

“Darkness,” she answered. “Like…night sky dark, with hints of stars at the outer edges.”

At that, his brow rose.

“That’s not what you see.”

“No.”

But in the darkness, she could still see the living words of Vakillirae, and she remembered that she herself had spoken a word—a true word—when she’d been desperate to keep her legs attached to the rest of her body. She watched now, as the words he spoke began to dim. They didn’t dim instantly, but light fled slowly until they were indistinguishable from the nightscape.

She watched Vakillirae’s face, and she knew that as the words dimmed, they left him; he would never be able to speak them again. And he realized it, as well, and his eyes lost their brilliant wonder, his face lost color. But he spoke, anyway.

“Enkerrikas, it is true. It devours words. The truth of words. I have held it now for some hours. I do not know
why,
or how. I do not know how the worlds were lost if such a devouring might take so long. But I will speak until I have no words to offer it. Do not falter. Do not stop.”

He spoke, his language once again eluding Kaylin. But his actions, the desperation, the steady truth of his voice did not. These, she thought suddenly, were the stories she had told herself in the fiefs—in Barren, after Severn—in the darkness where no one else could hear them. Stories she wanted to believe, and stories she did; stories she hated to believe, stories that might never end. She clung—had clung—to both, loving and hating them, and they had both sustained her.

They sustained Vakillirae, as well, but she saw that they would not sustain him to the end of this night, and he would have no more stories, and find no more, to tell. She had. She’d found Hawks, Wolves, and Swords; she’d found Dragons, and Foundling Halls, and Leontines. She’d learned to entwine these with her silent, nighttime stories. She’d spoken them like prayers.

Her hands became fists as she watched. Severn still gripped her arm, supporting her in an entirely different way, until the last of the words, the last of the stories, was gone, and the stranger stood alone.

“Enkerrikas,
go,
” he whispered.

She understood, then, that they were bound, this Vakillirae whom she would never meet and Enkerrikas. And she understood, as well, that Enkerrikas could watch, could
see
what Vakillirae could see because their names bound them.

“I release you,” Vakillirae said, as if he could hear her, as if he only then understood that the names that bound them might be the thread that the Devourer followed until he found the
rest
of their people. “I release your name. Release mine.
Go,
Enkerrikas.”

Enkerrikas did not respond. Maybe he couldn’t. Maybe he wouldn’t argue with Vakillirae now. But the image didn’t fade or shatter; it didn’t stop, and she knew that was the whole of his answer. Vakillirae would die, yes. They both knew it. But not alone. Not fully, not finally, alone.

Vakillirae grimaced, and then he spoke the last word, and it was a complicated, long word, as true as any of the others he had yet spoken: his name. His true name.

The Devourer roared. The word, the name, she could see—just as she had once seen Nightshade’s name in the heart of his Castle. It was like the words that Vakillirae had spoken before it, but it was also unlike them. Its shape and form, she realized, was different; the lines that bound it were thinner, finer, and of a different shape. She could see some similarity in the boldness of some of the strokes, the placement of some of the dots, the closing arcs—but there were twisting, spiraling lines that suggested the imprecise brush of a painter, rather than the chisel of a sculptor; there was a fluidity to the whole.

It didn’t look like the words that had come—or would come—from the lake. But…it looked as if it once
might
have been. She understood, then, in a way that she’d never understood before, that the true names were only the start of life; it was life, and living, that ultimately defined them.

This man’s life, she hadn’t—and wouldn’t—see. But what he had made of his life, she did, even if she had little context for it. He laid himself bare, and he offered this last wall, this last bastion, against a creature they did not and could not understand.

She heard the sound of weeping.

She knew it wasn’t his, but she saw Vakillirae close his eyes against the pain, and turn, automatically, as if to offer comfort. She wanted to
slap
Enkerrikas, who had probably been dead for centuries—or millennia—for his selfishness and his need. But Vakillirae was absent the same desire.

“Will you not let go?” he asked gently. “Or must you stay until the bitter end?”

This time, Enkerrikas answered. “I must stay. This is the last of you that I will ever see, or know. I cannot face it without pain. I cannot face it without loss. Even pride is beyond me, now, although I will pick it up and wrap it around your memory when memory is
all
I have.”

“You were always stubborn,” Vakillirae replied.

“Never half so much as you.”

“No?” He laughed. It was a wild, dangerous laugh, and he exposed the whole of a white, white throat to the darkness to offer it. “If I made the decision, I would abide by it. I would not stay to witness the end.”

“Liar.”

He laughed again. It was a weaker laugh, for the light of his name was now fading, and Kaylin could see the most delicate of the lines that comprised his name as they began to unravel. But the word shivered in place, and the lines grew stronger and brighter as she watched, and this time, Vakillirae cursed.

“Enkerrikas—”

“No. You have given me back my name. You have released it to preserve me. But I have not released yours, Vakillirae, and I will never willingly release it. While I can, I, too, will fight.”

“We cannot take this risk—you will empty yourself of power, and how will our people survive without you? They will be lost here, and they will starve, or worse!”

“It is no longer your decision.”

Vakillirae did argue. In fury, and in fear. But Enkerrikas, who had wept, was without mercy here. Kaylin thought better of her visceral desire to slap him. The light dimmed, yes, but it dimmed slowly compared to the others.

She thought it might be over when it grew brighter and stronger again.

Vakillirae shook his head. “Enkerrikas—”

“You were willing to die.”

“Yes. Because I would die fighting.”

“And you will. But not alone, in the end.”

And so it went. The dimming and the brightening. Nor was Vakillirae entirely unmoved as he stood, and fought in his fashion against the thing which would destroy them all for no reason they understood. He had no more stories to tell either that darkness or himself. And in the end? Kaylin thought he found comfort in the presence of Enkerrikas. It was hard to tell; his face was so shuttered nothing escaped.

But like Enkerrikas, Kaylin watched. And like Enkerrikas, she wept when the last of the light went out and darkness reigned.

Severn slid an arm around her shoulder in the silence that was left. He asked no questions for a few minutes, allowing Kaylin time to gather herself and ground herself in the present—which had its own crisis and its own imperative. Because of this, she
did
gather herself.

“We’re not done yet.” Turning back to the mirror, she said, “Traveler. Travel between worlds. Portals.”

The darkness of the water broke.

She wasn’t certain what, if anything, this mirror would surrender. She knew that the same question, asked of the Halls of Law Records, would give her only what she already knew; there was no history on record of anything else. What they had cobbled together had come from Tara, in Tiamaris; from the Arkon’s hidden archives; and from the Oracles.

But it wasn’t a question that the Arkon would have asked—if he asked much of this particular mirror at all—because it wasn’t one that he had known
to
ask. Kaylin asked it now.

The mirror, however, didn’t take this as a question. Instead, light across its surface rippled beneath the still liquid, and when it solidified, it showed a vast plain, with something that looked like horses, but smaller, running in herds through the tall grass. There were trees in the distance, and the sky was the type of blue you only really saw in paintings, not that Kaylin had a lot of exposure to fine art.

The point of the image was not, however, art. She understood this when she saw the grass begin to shimmer, the shape of it changing both in color and texture. It was the first change; there was nothing that appeared to have
caused
it. But the rest of the change flowed out from it, touching not only the earth and its shape, but also the creatures that were hidden from view. Insects rose on jade wings, the size of her fists; butterflies trembled and grew, as did…slugs.

The slugs were the most disturbing, because they, like the jade-winged fliers, were the size of her fist, and their bodies gleamed like the multicolored surface of opals.

“Magic,” Severn said.

“Like Elani,” Kaylin agreed. “But there’s less to take advantage of it. I don’t understand
why
it works this way. Magic is supposed to be hard. It’s supposed to be work. According to Sanabalis.”

“Maybe the drawing of magic is hard. Clearly, where magic exists as raw potential, and in huge amounts, it’s somehow used by whatever lives.”

“Mirror, expand.”

The view shifted instantly, drawing back from the strange grass and strange insect life. She could see, in a rough circle, the place in which this odd, transformational magic existed, because the grass of the plains was otherwise normal. But she noted that the horses, and the other, larger creatures, avoided it.

The portal did open. She wasn’t certain who had seen its opening, but someone must have, because it was here. It wasn’t small. It didn’t fill the whole circular area, which was a huge relief, but it did cut across maybe a quarter of it. It was flat, like a standing door with no walls and no frame to bolster it.

Kaylin frowned as the portal solidified; shadows could be seen moving in its frame. But what came out of the frame made her ask the next question: “What world
is
this?”

The mirror’s answer? It was a
word
. Not a spoken word; that would have been too easy. No, it, like so much else, was written, and it was written in a single large and complicated rune that she could barely see in one go. She wondered what Tara would have made of it, and then wondered, more sharply, whether or not Tara had access to
these
Records, this information.

She must have been created by the same people who’d created this mirror. Asking Tara anything was far less risky than sneaking into any part of the Arkon’s collection when he was in a
good
mood. The worst thing Kaylin could do was piss Tiamaris off, and Tiamaris, while he could be damn intimidating, was
not
Arkon class.

“Can you see it?”

Severn was silent, and his arm was rigid. She turned to look at him, caught the whole of his profile. He was staring into the mirror, his eyes flickering back and forth as if it was racing through images so damn quickly he could barely keep up. Whereas what Kaylin saw? Was a word. A complicated, huge mass of intersecting lines and strokes and dots that seemed to be written in three full dimensions.

She frowned, and then she said, “What world am
I
in?”

And the lines of the word the mirror now contained frayed and separated, dancing on the edges of the liquid as if they were far too important to be simply discarded, like any
other
image. They hovered there while the center slowly cleared, and once it was empty, they converged in a rush, collapsing together as if collapse were the only given in their existence.

But what they formed was not the chaos one expected of collapse; there was a joy and a life and a light in their furious motion. They formed, from stray elements, another word, as different from the first as it could be, given the composition of its parts. This word was as complex, as complicated, as the first, but there were parts of it that seemed strangely misaligned, especially given that Kaylin didn’t even know the language or the writing—if something like
this
could be called writing. It was sculpture, or more than sculpture; it was what magic might produce if it was bent toward a living, growing language.

Kaylin remembered to breathe as she watched, because there was something about
this
word that resonated within her so strongly it could have been an overly intellectualized variant of the simple word
home,
which, in the end,
every
language she had ever learned had contained. She was struck by it, and if being stabbed could produce that shock of recognition, she had been stabbed by a word she couldn’t begin to say out loud.