Cast In Secret (46 page)

“How? We’re not done yet.”

He looked back at the fire. “When did you learn to summon an elemental? You, who could not even light a candlewick?”

She looked at the ground. It seemed safest; she’d always been a terrible liar.

“Very well, Kaylin. The powerful have always had their secrets. But… I heard the story you told the fire. I heard the fire’s words. The time is coming,” he added, “when you will be called to Court. To the Imperial Court. You did not do well with your etiquette lessons,” he added, and for just a moment, he was simply a teacher, and not a Dragon lord, “but you will take them again, and this time, you will excel. The Emperor will not tolerate disrespect. He cannot.”

She nodded.

“And we have come to the most treacherous part of the garden, I fear.”

“What do you mean?”

“Water,” Sanabalis said quietly. “I would not counsel you to summon water, here. Not given the Oracles, Kaylin.”

She swallowed. “I won’t.” A thought occurred to her. “But – you can fly, can’t you? I mean – if you – ”

“If I break Imperial Edict, and assume my true form?”

“Kaylin,” Severn began.

“We’re not
in
the Empire, as far as I can tell. If we’re not in the Empire… ” The words dwindled into silence. “Sorry.”

But Sanabalis smiled. “I would,” he told her. “Even at my age, I
would,
Kaylin. But I would fight the very air with every beat of wing. And if the air could not destroy me – and I am arrogant enough to believe that it could not – it would easily destroy you both. I could not carry you.”

His smile vanished as his eyes narrowed. “And I do not appreciate being thought of as a mule.” But his eyes were golden. “We will follow the river,” he told them both, gazing into the distance in either direction.

“Which way?”

“Can you not tell?”

She studied the river, hating tests, especially the ones that came with no warning and had such a high price for failure. The river flowed to the – call it east. She couldn’t quite make out the far bank, but lakes didn’t usually move like this. So, river.

Rivers ran, according to one of her teachers, to the ocean or the sea, and the sea – if there was one in this place – would be where the water would be the strongest. It would be where most of it
was
.

But even if it made sense, she felt uncertain enough to dare a question. “Do we want to go where it ends or where it begins?”

Sanabalis lifted a brow.

She sighed. “It’s been a long day,” she told him, as she turned and began to walk.

Severn was beside her.

“An interesting choice,” Sanabalis said.

“Well, it makes sense to go to the sea, and nothing about today has made sense – so we might as well see where this river begins.”

The terrain was very odd, and Kaylin was certain enough to bet her own money that if she had described it for her geography teacher she would have been given an instant fail. The ground was
hard,
and the sun was scorching, and an inch from packed, dry dirt, the river was tumbling over itself in swirls of transparent clarity. She had never seen a riverbank like this one, and even if the geography teacher had eventually given up on her in disgust, she actually remembered enough to know it wasn’t possible.

But as it was
also
obviously here,
possible
was now a negotiable word. She reached for the hilt of her daggers, and cursed in Leontine. Sanabalis raised a brow.

“What?” she snarled. “We’re not at Court.”

“What is heard, is remembered.”

Her snort could be recorded for the benefit of history. She brushed her hair out of her eyes, cringed at the crinkled texture of parts of it, and kept trudging. For about ten minutes. Or an eternity.

When she stopped, Sanabalis stopped. “Kaylin?”

She looked at the water with a type of longing that properly belonged in the fiefs, to starving children in sight of food. He saw the look and understood it. “I do not advise it,” he told her quietly. “If for no other reason that it appears to be flowing in the opposite direction from the one you have chosen.”

She looked to Severn, although she could feel his presence so strongly, the glance was more habit than necessity. He said nothing, and of course, his nothing spoke volumes. This was hers. Her decision.

Her consequences.

“Evanton’s not without power,” she finally said. “Not yet. But I think – ” She hesitated. “It’s hot,” she finally said. It was lame, even by her standards.

“Heat often affects humans adversely,” Sanabalis replied. “I find it – ”

“Do
not
say
refreshing
. Please.”

One salt-and-pepper brow rose, and Dragon hands – which really did look like large human ones – touched the length of his beard. But she hadn’t angered him; she’d managed, instead, to evoke a smile.

“I recognize some elements of the dress you wear,” he told her. “And I am willing to take the risk, even if it is not wise in my estimation.”

She held out both of her hands. “Take them,” she said, to Severn and Sanabalis. Severn covered her right hand with his left, as easily as if it were natural. Sanabalis raised a brow and slowly did the same. Kaylin took a deep breath and began to walk toward the water, uncertain until the last moment whether or not she was their anchor or they were hers.

When she touched the water, it didn’t matter.

The stream passed over her in one huge wave, a giant, watery slap. She stood against the current, blinking at the grit that had landed in her open eyes.

She
knew
what the shape of water was. Or what the only shape she cared about was. She had managed not to tell Sanabalis, and if Severn guessed, he would say nothing. He’d watched her for seven long years in absolute silence; she trusted him with the fate of a people.

Teller of Tales, the fire had called her. She wondered, briefly, why. But clinging to Severn, to Sanabalis, struggling to maintain her footing and succeeding only because a Dragon’s weight is never negligible, she tilted her head, and spoke a single word.

It was not a word of syllables. It was not a word of sound. It was not, really, a word at all – but she understood it to
be
a word in some complex way, simply because she could utter it. She had seen it twice, and she could feel it now, burning like cold ice at the base of her neck:
water.
The word. The true name.

And
gods,
a world in which the elements had
names,
in which the elements themselves, like the least of the Barrani, could be controlled – it wasn’t a world she wanted to live in.

No? The ships at port would be safe, if you could control the water. The winter would be warmer. The ice would melt. People wouldn’t drown. The babies –

No.

No.

No.

Maybe she was weak. Too weak to want the power. Too weak to trust herself with it. Or too cowardly to shoulder the burden and the responsibility. It didn’t matter. It wasn’t
right
. She wasn’t a god. She was barely a decent person, and that took so much bloody work. All she wanted – all she needed – was…

Kaylin.

The shape of a girl on the edge of the long climb into adulthood.

Swirling water was her body, her hair, her face; she stood in the stream, but she was
of
it. Its movement was her movement. For now.

Severn and Sanabalis held her hands, or she would have reached out to grab the girl, to hold her. She almost shook them free – but she was afraid of where the water would take them if she did.

But the Tha’alaan nodded, and offered her a smile that was perfect. Cool in the heat, but not cold. A benediction. It turned, all her voice lost, her hair cascading literally down her back, shedding small pebbles as it fell.

Ask,
the water said, and she heard its voice as the roar of a tidal wave.
Ask.

As if she could ask one thing, and only one thing. The urgency in the command – or the request, it was so soft – was clear. One thing, and not much time to decide what it would be.

But she was, in the end, Kaylin Neya.

“Take me to Mayalee. Take me to your child.” It could have been the wrong request; the Tha’alaan in the Castle had not known
where
Mayalee was, couldn’t sense her. But it was the only thing that mattered, for just a moment.

The Tha’alaan spun in that instant, as if beginning the first steps of a glorious, transcendent dance, and she captured the sunlight that had made itself torture, reflecting it, coloring it. Reminding Kaylin that even deadly things were beautiful.

Follow. Do not let go of your companions.

She couldn’t be certain that either of her companions could hear what was said, but she tightened her grip on their hands; water had made that grip suspect, but they weren’t going to get any drier.

The river parted to let her pass. There was water beneath her feet. Water beneath their feet, as well. But it was like… a carpet. Thin, the streams and eddies robbed of power. To either side, the river swelled up in a wall, and the wall was loud, but if it threatened to fall at any moment, it was held in abeyance by the girl.

Severn said, “This was what you saw the first time we came to the garden.”

She nodded. Added, “
She’s
what I saw.”

“I don’t think water has gender,” Sanabalis said. Not even the sodden weight of his robes could rob the words of their innate dryness, but that was Dragons for you. Fire and air.

They walked quickly; the air was now damp and cool in this narrow corridor. Water didn’t run uphill, but it
walked
uphill with a majesty that Kaylin thought she would never forget, as long as she lived.

But when the water stopped, when the girl doubled over and the river suddenly pressed in on both sides, she thought that might not be very long at all.

Because she had heard what the water had heard, and felt it now like a physical blow: it was the same word that she had uttered.

Worse, she recognized the voice.

“Kaylin!” Severn shouted. A warning. For all it was worth – the river was collapsing, and they were in the middle of it. On the wrong side of an incline that was a little too steep.

No, we’re almost there, damn it all to hell!

She held their hands, almost paralyzed by the sudden rage, the sudden fear, she felt. Marcus had taught her two things in the drill circle when she’d been young – both of them the hard way. Do not fight in anger. Do not fight in fear.

She had one scar from the second lesson; the bruises from the first had long since faded in all but memory. But all of life was just memory, really. Marcus’s voice was a roar in her ear that even the water couldn’t dislodge. She listened to Marcus because, in the end, she trusted him.

She knew what she had to do; the light emanating from the amulet was a surge of white that was almost blinding. She spoke the name of water again, but this time there was no hesitation. No doubt, no fear. She wasn’t a god, and she wasn’t perfect, and it
didn’t damn well matter
. Something had to be done, and this was the only thing she could think of. She spoke the word as loudly, as strongly, as she could, holding nothing back.

And the girl who was doubled over as if in pain straightened suddenly. She was no longer twelve, no longer a child; she was hardly a person at all – but it didn’t matter. Kaylin could still see her, could still see her desire, her fear, and yes, her love. Of all the elements that Uriel had called, of all the elements that he had urged to destroy, and destroy and destroy – water was the only one who raised voice against him
when he held her name.

Loss of love was a tragedy for Kaylin. Wasted love was a tragedy. Murder of love was a crime she could touch and feel and fight, here and now, in her own shape and in the water’s. She urged the water forward, and the water moved so quickly they had to run to keep up.

They weren’t stupid. They ran.

They ran up a hill, the river now so close on either side that they had to walk almost sideways, hands still clasped as if they were children. And what of it? They were. Compared to the water, the fire, compared to the ancient elements, they would never be anything else.

But the hill’s slope flattened, and the water now spread out, and they could see the stillness – the strange stillness – of what appeared to be a lake.

“Stop!” Kaylin shouted, and dug her feet in. Or tried. She didn’t try to stop the water – the water would be fine. It was returning home, after all. But home was not a place two humans and a Dragon could go, if they had any choice at all.

Sanabalis heard her, and Severn felt her sudden panic. This wasn’t a lake – or it hadn’t been the last time she’d seen it. She’d looked into
this
pool once. If it had been small, it had been so deep she knew that if she fell in, she would sink forever.

And if it had shown her the bruised eyes of a twelve-yearold-girl – a girl who had called her by name – it didn’t change the facts: this would kill them all.

She heard Idis – it could only be Idis – as he spoke the name of water, but this time she was ready for the bastard. The lake had its shallows, and standing in those shallows were six pillars. “Over there!” she shouted.

Severn knew what she wanted instantly – he always had, and she had never loved him so much for it as she did at this moment. Sanabalis followed his lead, and Kaylin let them drag her, let them take the whole of her weight, as she struggled with the word.

Evanton was there, between two pillars; he was drenched and bent with fatigue; he looked old, now, and she wondered if he would ever regain the majesty that his robes had once implied. But his robes had led her here, his robes as they had been painted by a mute boy.

And here, at last, she saw Mayalee, and she saw the man who stood above her, his hands twisting her hair, pulling her head up.

Donalan Idis wore the red of the Arcanum. His long, fine robes were wet only at the edges, where his feet stood in the shallows. His eyes were dark, his beard darker than Sanabalis’s beard, his skin the fine, pale skin of those born to rule and not to work in the fields.