The Chronicles of Elantra 5 - Cast in Silence (26 page)

“Let me add that many of our kin sympathized with this—they are not all young, and they are not all foolish. We suffered great losses at the hands of the Dragons.”

“They probably suffered similar at yours.”

He shrugged. Unlike Kaylin’s fief gesture, his was smooth and elegant—but it amounted to the same thing. “My father, the previous High Lord, saw the benefit of the Dragon Emperor. The Dragon Emperor does not visit the High Halls, and he does not interfere in internal Barrani affairs. He was not of a mind to intrigue against the Emperor, except as it suited his purposes in the Court political structure.

“I am not my father. I accept the Dragon Emperor and his claim.” The High Lord turned, as if he heard something that even Kaylin couldn’t hear. “The Halls beneath are restless,” he said after a moment.

The consort lifted a hand, and he shook his head; she was slow to lower it.

“I understand why the Emperor chose to build his city here. I understand why the High Halls stand as they stand. And I understand, in some small part, the nature of the fiefs. It is why we can prepare at all.” He paused. “Understand, Kaylin,” he said, as he turned to face her. She took a step back, because the emerald of his eyes was now laced with dark shadows, glints of ebony. “That the holding of a true name is not a simple affair. Stories say that when you know the true name of another living being, you can compel him to the action of your desire. I believe you understand why this is not always true.”

“Some names are…too big.”

“Yes. But if there is balance, the binding works both ways. I remember,” he added, “some part of what the Other knew. It is not knowledge that the High Halls have had before, not in this fashion. Nor would I suggest it in future,” he added, with a grim smile. “But he held my name, in secret, for many years.”

She nodded.

“I did not, and could not, hold his. He has no name.” He glanced at her, as if testing her reaction. What he was looking for, she didn’t know.

“He’s—it’s—an Old One. Do they even
have
names?”

“We don’t know. Not even the most ancient of Dragons does. What information we once might have possessed, we lost in the shadowstorms and the wars. It did not seem entirely relevant at the time—the Old Ones were lost. They were gone.”

“They’re not entirely gone.”

He nodded. She didn’t like the color of his eyes. “Illien was undying, in the end. He was not undying when he found his way across the Ablayne; he was not undying when he took—and held—the Tower.”

“Did he tell you what the Tower was?”

The High Lord laughed. It was a brief burst of sound, startling when coming from a Barrani. “Yes, Kaylin. Has Lord Nightshade never told you what his Castle is?”

“It’s his,” she replied with a shrug. And then, because it was important, she set the fief attitude aside. “It conforms to him. It’s not entirely solid—it changes shape. The halls move.”

He waited, but she fell silent. “You have described the Castle, to some extent,” he said when her pause had grown long enough. “And in your fashion, you have answered my question. Let me tell you what the Tower of Illien was, for Illien.”

She nodded, glancing once at Severn, who was now utterly impassive.

“It was—as no doubt Castle Nightshade is—far larger on the interior than the exterior suggests. When he wrested control of the Tower away from its former occupant—”

“Barrani?”

“No. When he wrested control of the Tower from its former occupant, the Tower began to shift and change. He had expected something of the sort,” he added quietly. “And if I were to guess—for he never put it in words—he enjoyed his early occupation. The fief itself was not of concern to Illien, not at the time. But the Tower was.

“I am under no illusion. I do not, nor would I, claim to know all that Illien knew. He was Barrani, as am I. But in part, his love was the ancient and the powerful, and he was drawn to the fiefs because they stood against the rule of the Dragon Emperor. I think he thought he might find freedom there.”

“It wasn’t freedom he found,” Severn said, speaking for the first time.

The High Lord raised a brow. “You are perhaps mistranslating. It is a failure with the spoken word. Freedom, for the Barrani,
is
power. Without power, you are beholden to others, and you live—and die—at their whim. You are aware, Kaylin, that this City, in one form or another, has existed for a long time.” It wasn’t a question.

“It was occupied, but it was occupied not by Barrani or Dragon although they did live within its boundaries. We think—we are not certain—that the Old Ones made their home here for some time, mimicking the lesser mortals, as if to see what they gained from their odd communities. We are not certain.

“What we are certain of is this—the Towers, the Castles, were not created by Barrani, Dragon or any mortal race. Yet in our muddled histories, we have the odd record that indicates that the fiefs themselves, as they now exist, were not a barrier when the city was discovered. The…present difficulty…was a gift of shadowstorms and possibly the nature of the fiefs themselves.

“But that does not answer your question, and I see you are impatient.”

As she was actually listening with interest, Kaylin grimaced.

“Lord Illien remade the Tower for a time in his own image, and he explored what he found within. Some of our knowledge of Old runes comes from that time, for there were parts of the Tower that were…akin in some fashion to the High Halls. Frequently, he would leave his Tower to venture into the High Halls during this period, and he would speak with one or two of his friends about his discoveries. But he traveled less and less with time. He was not Outcaste, he was not denied his role in the Court—but it ceased to interest him. Or so we thought.”

“Nightshade can leave his Castle. He’s crossed the Ablayne.”

The High Lord nodded. “He does not leave it often, however.”

“How often do you leave the High Halls?”

“Seldom,” was the quiet reply. “And perhaps, in the end, for similar reasons. Lord Illien discovered, as he rebuilt his Tower, that the hold that the Tower
also
exerted over him was substantial. It was subtle, but it was always present.”

She hesitated, and then said, “I don’t think Nightshade views it the same way.”

“Perhaps he does not.”

“He
is
the fief, in some ways. That much, we know. He can be aware of almost anything that occurs in the fief if he
wants
to. I got the impression it was a lot of work to be that aware, and it requires a lot of focus. If he’s homing in on the small things, he can miss the bigger ones. Well, some of them—if you wanted to storm the Castle, he’d know no matter what he was doing.”

The High Lord nodded.

“But Nightshade is definitely not undying.”

“No.”

“And Illien wasn’t.” She frowned. “I don’t think—”

“Yes?”

“I don’t know enough. But I don’t think he could have taken the Tower if he’d been undying.” She frowned again. “Nightshade told us something.”

“Us?”

“Tiamaris. Lord Tiamaris,” she added. “He’s one of the—”

“Dragon Court. I am familiar with all of the Lords who comprise it.”

She nodded. “He told us that Liatt—the fief of Liatt—is held. I don’t think it’s held by Barrani. I think—I’m not sure—that it’s held by a human. A woman.”

The High Lord inclined his chin slightly.

“But humans don’t
have
names. So I don’t understand how—” She stopped speaking for a moment, and looked at Severn. “If he attempted to divest himself of his name, and he succeeded, he wouldn’t, strictly speaking, be dead. But if it’s not entirely based on name—”

“He would not lose the fief, no.”

“But the fief—the fief has no name,” she told the High Lord.

“You said it was Barren.”

“It’s Barren, at least that’s what the people who live there call it. But I call Teela Teela; you call her Anteela. In either case, we’re not using her true name. People know who we mean. It’s the same with Barren. I think.” She stopped. She was missing something, and knew it.

Swallowing, she looked up at the High Lord, enclosed by the circle and surrounded by sickly torches. “When you attempted to divest yourself of name,” she asked softly, “how did you do it?”

CHAPTER 14

The consort stiffened, and turned to look fully at Kaylin. Kaylin had the strong sense that she could have asked for the particulars of their sex life and caused less offense. Not that she was tempted to try, because one of them might actually answer.

The High Lord said, after a pause, “If this Liatt can somehow name a fief, it is
not
a Barrani name, not an immortal name.” She recognized a deflection when she heard it. She almost accepted it, given the fact that the consort was still staring sharply at the side of her face.

But even if it was true—and it was, she couldn’t deny it based on what she knew—it was also beside the point. “The fief of Liatt,” she replied, in her most reasonable tone of voice, “still
has
a name. Barren—” and it struck her as she said it that it was an appropriate name for the fief “—doesn’t. Not in a way that means something to the fief lords.”

“Or,” Severn added softly, “to the shadows at the heart of the fiefs.” He took a step forward, although he did not attempt to step over the carved boundary of the circle itself. “What is occurring in the fiefs now—at least in the fief of Barren—has something to do with Illien, with the name that he attempted to surrender.”

The High Lord
laughed
. It was a bitter, dark laugh, and his eyes were a green that looked like dead plants, not the heart of a living forest.

The consort reached out, her arm crossing the circle, her feet remaining at its edge. He did not take her hand; didn’t even seem to notice it. Kaylin did; she also noted that the consort didn’t withdraw what was ignored.

“Do you understand, Kaylin Neya, that I
failed
the test of the High Halls? Do you fully understand?”

She nodded. “I would have failed,” she replied quietly.

“You are not—you were never meant to be—High Lord.”

She nodded again, but some of the edge left her expression as his shifted. “I would have failed that test,” she told him, “if I had taken it. I would fail it now,” she added softly, thinking of the darkness of the caverns below the High Halls, in which the damned waited in the only Barrani version of hell she had ever heard of. “You didn’t have your full name.”

“It wouldn’t matter. It wouldn’t have mattered then. My brother, the Lord of the West March, and my sister, my consort—” he met her gaze, then, although he still did not touch the hand that remained outstretched before him “—passed.”

Kaylin said nothing. “You knew,” she finally said. “You knew, then, that you’d failed. But you didn’t attempt to strip yourself of your name until later.”

“Until I knew that my father intended to perform the rites and surrender the High Halls—to me. Had they come to me, the creature that held my name would have controlled the Halls.”

Kaylin swallowed. “I’m not Barrani,” she said, speaking in her native tongue. “I know it won’t mean much to you—but I can’t judge you, not in this. I would have tried the same thing. Except in my case, it would have been simpler.” Suicide, in theory, was. Give this to the Barrani: they couldn’t do anything simple if something more complicated and twisted could be done in its place.

She looked at the consort. “The waters,” she finally said, “of life.”

The consort nodded, but the nod was not an agreement; it was an acknowledgment of the words, no more.

“All names, past and present, are there—somehow.”

She nodded again. “You’ve seen them,” she finally grudgingly added.

“The babies—your babies—they don’t wake without names.”

“No.”

“And you go to the waters to find their names. But you don’t
know
them.”

“No.”

“But the children—they’re not dead. Before they’re joined to their names.”

“No.” The consort shook herself, and her face lost the cool chill of anger. “They breathe,” she said, her voice softening. “They can open their eyes, but they see nothing. We believe they hear little, as well.”

“They eat?”

The consort lifted a brow.

“I’ll take it that’s a no.” It was her turn to frown. “But they don’t starve.”

“They’re not mortal,” was the consort’s reply.

“Do they grow?”

“No. They do not change at all. They…wait. Only when they have their true name do they begin to interact with the world.”

“The undying—”

The consort grimaced. “Understand that our knowledge is limited, Kaylin. The undying are
not
children. We are not certain
what
they are. They have lived, often for centuries, and the rhythm of life does not leave them. They can speak, they can eat, they can sleep—although they do not seem to require it. They can converse and interact.”

“Then why do they need the name at all?”

“It is a question that our sages have oft asked when discussing philosophical issues. It is not a question that I, as consort, and mother of our race, will ever ask.” She glanced at the High Lord; her hand was steady, but still outstretched, and its silent grace was almost a demand.

He ignored it.

“When the Barrani die—if they die—their names are freed. Those names,” the consort added softly, “will return to the lake of names, to the waters of life, and they will flow there, among the others, until they are chosen again.” She paused, and then added, in a softer voice, “this is our lore, and this is our understanding.

“But I am not my mother, or my grandmother. I have seen the dead, and if I do not know their true names in any way the Barrani understand, I can almost sense the
shape
of them. But I cannot—I have never been able—to find that shape in the waters. I looked,” she added quietly. “When my mother chose her end. When she allowed the waters to wash over her a last time. I looked for her.

“Perhaps I couldn’t find her because if I did, I might choose that name for another because of my own attachment to it. I do not know. We have no gods,” she added softly. “But perhaps our creators meant this as a kindness.”