The Chronicles of Elantra 5 - Cast in Silence (54 page)

The syllables were hard. She pushed them out, stumbling on vowels or the harsh clash of consonants. She had never thought of the name as long, but this? It was like telling a story when you could only barely remember what happened. But as the syllables emerged, she felt the lines of her chosen words hardening and developing a clarity that diffuse light couldn’t give them—and, more important, that shadows couldn’t eat away.

She felt them take shape, felt the structure underlying their composition grow denser. She saw—for just a second—the shape that her name was meant to fill; it was the last gap, the last hole, in the wall. She drew breath, and stepped toward it.

She wasn’t expecting the Dragon that materialized in the center of the construct; she certainly wasn’t expecting to be knocked off her feet—and most of the way toward the far wall—by the swing of his massive head.

Severn was in front of her before she’d fully gained her feet. She turned almost wildly toward Tiamaris. His scales were red, tinged now with bronze, and infused with the glow of the runes Kaylin had built. They lit up the underside of his massive jaw as he lifted it and roared.

The shadows splintered at the sound, shattering as they fell away from the whole of the pattern. Tiamaris roared again, and a storm of fire left his open jaws.

Illien, still floating in the air above the ground, froze there, his wide eyes the color of sapphires. Beneath him, Tara froze, as well, her gaze caught between the fief lord who had changed the nature of his existence in an attempt to escape her, and the Dragon Lord who had entered the ring of words from which he might never again be free.

Between these two, there was Kaylin, and it was Kaylin who caught and held Tara’s gaze. Stone didn’t cry, but Kaylin already had some experience with Tara’s tears. These were quiet; they traced her cheeks in the odd light. Her face was still bruised, but at this distance, the bruises looked like shadows.

“Tiamaris!” Kaylin shouted, turning away. “You don’t have to do this!”

He turned as the runes began to glow, free from the constraint of shadow. He roared again; she thought that might be his answer. But she understood, as the roar grew in volume, extending until it shook the ground, the walls, and the runes themselves, that that was
not
what he was doing. He was speaking his name.

It was a long damn name, but he didn’t falter once, and he didn’t appear to need to struggle with anything but breath. She saw the runes begin to separate, to leave the formation she had made of them; she saw them move slowly away from him in an expanding circle. Glancing back at Tara, she saw the Tower’s avatar begin to smile. It was not a triumphant smile, nor was it fearful, but there was an element of surprise in it.

It was, Kaylin thought, so entirely peaceful it was in its own class of beauty—because at that moment, for the first time, the avatar
was
beautiful. She raised her hands in front of her face, examining them, and as she did, all scratches, all bruises, all obvious signs of injury began to fade as if they, like the shadows, had been dispelled by the roar of a Dragon.

A Dragon.

“Tiamaris—you don’t know what you’re doing—”

His roar didn’t shift or change, but the glance he gave her should have been impossible in his current form, it was so obviously derisive. He knew. He knew exactly what he was doing—and as was so often the case, he was doing a better job than Kaylin had in her attempt. The runes continued to move, and as they did, for just a moment, Kaylin could
see
the small lines, the small hatches and crosses, that seemed to touch Tiamaris from every single one of them.

As they moved away from him, she saw their shape change; they moved not in a ring, but a sphere, expanding until they touched walls that were now completely blank. No engravings had been writ upon their surface; no runes, no circles, no complex designs; they were solid, smooth rock. They weren’t the walls Kaylin had studied in her attempt to somehow fix the Tower. She wanted to ask Severn what he saw, but his back was toward her; he trusted her there, and clearly trusted nothing else in this room.

The roar stopped. The sigils didn’t. But Tiamaris, still a Dragon, lowered his massive jaw. It was hard to tell, given the size of that jaw and the size of the teeth it exposed while open, what his expression was. But it didn’t matter; he didn’t turn it on Kaylin. He turned it, instead, upon the Tower’s avatar; she was shining, now, as if she were a ghost, or a human vessel for diffuse, gentle light.

“Interesting,” Illien said softly. “You understand, Lord Tiamaris, that had she taken the Tower, this fief would be all but unassailable? You might have seen a power to rival—”

“She did not want it,” he replied. “Like you, she would have taken it, and like you, she would have failed the Tower.”

“The Tower? I failed the Tower? The Tower failed me.”

Flame wreathed the Dragon’s muzzle. “You do not know what you want. Either of you. You,” he said, nodding at Kaylin, “with your doubt and your fear, and you,” he continued, turning to the Barrani Lord, “who chose this place as your own because you were
bored.
It has always seemed to me that the Barrani were almost mortal in the weakness of their focus.”

Illien was Barrani enough to find Tiamaris’s observation offensive; Kaylin was self-aware enough to accept it.

But Tiamaris, his deep quake of a voice gentling, said, “It is not enough to accept responsibility for another life as an act of fear or duty, Private.”

“You serve the Emperor,” Kaylin pointed out.

“That was never simple duty. When you see him, you will understand. If you survive that meeting, you will have to come and tell me what you saw. I will not be there to see it.” His wings extended slowly.

“But—”

“I
want
this, Kaylin. I have never wanted anything but this. This is
mine.
Nothing but death will take it from me.”

“You’ve been to other Towers before—”

“They were not mine. This is.” He lifted his head again, and spoke a single word in his native tongue. She recognized it, although she shouldn’t have. It was the Dragon word for
hoard.

Tara seemed to recognize it, as well, but she had the advantage of being a Tower. She stood transfixed for a moment, and then she whispered a word that Kaylin couldn’t understand. It was followed by words that she could, however.

“It was you. It was you I heard.”

His eyes were golden, bright, incandescent. “Yes. It was me. It was both my emptiness and my desire.” His voice shook the ground, but managed, conversely, to be gentle. “Now come, Tara. There are shadows and invaders in my domain. Their presence does not please me.”

“I—I can’t.”

“You do not wish to join me?”

She did. Only a moron could have asked that question. Kaylin was wise enough to keep this opinion to herself.

But he shook his head. “You do not understand what Kaylin intended. You cannot leave
me.
That she could not change. But she thought you capable of learning to love the people your very existence protects if you could walk, and live, among them. Today, however, you—and I—will fly.” He waited.

She stared at him for a moment longer, and then she made her way across a floor that was now, once again, defined by carved runes and symbols. She did not look at Illien; Illien watched her.

“Come,” Tiamaris said again, and he lowered himself to the ground—or as close to the ground as something his size could get. Kaylin thought—although she wasn’t certain—that he was larger, in Dragon form, than he had been any other time she’d seen him.

Tara climbed up on his back, and Tiamaris then turned to face Kaylin and Severn. “You two, as well,” he said. “Come. There is work, now, to be done.”

“You’re not—you’re not going to fly?”

“I am,” he said, voice rumbling in something that sounded suspiciously like the Dragon equivalent of a cat’s purr. “This is mine, now, Kaylin. I will fly these skies, and if the Emperor wishes, he may come in person to contest the aerial territory.
Come
.”

She glanced at Illien.

“He will not leave the Tower yet,” Tiamaris told her. “He cannot.”

“But he—”

“He is, for the moment, my guest.”

“If you can hold me,” the Barrani Lord said quietly.

“Do you doubt it?” Tiamaris shrugged, as if Illien’s doubt were insignificant. “Tara?”

She nodded, and the ceiling opened, as if the stone were the cleverly designed aperture of the Hawklord’s tower. The sky appeared, azure against the darkness of the previously enclosed space, as the walls unfolded.

“Kaylin. Severn. Climb.” He paused, and then said, “Am I more terrifying than the Hawklord? Kaylin, you love to fly. You begged, pleaded, cajoled, and nagged the Aerians to take you flying. Come. Fly.”

She looked at Illien once again, and then glanced around the room. No trace of him remained in it except he, himself. “Go,” he said, lifting a hand almost carelessly. “I consider myself in your debt, to some degree. I will wait.”

She didn’t trust him.

“Go, while you still have time. Nothing new will enter the fief, but nothing that is already here will leave it untouched.”

She turned, then, and crawled her way up Tiamaris’s back, lodging herself between the others in a position suspiciously close to the place where his wings joined the rest of his body. He flexed them and laughed when she jumped.

Before she could say anything, his body tensed beneath her, and he pushed himself up and off the ground, heading for a collision with the open sky. The Tower fell away as if it were a veil; what lay beneath them, when Kaylin had opened her eyes again, was Barren writ small.

Tara, seated in front of her, shouted something; the wind carried it back.

“They’re people,” Kaylin shouted back. “Isn’t that what they looked like to you before?”

“No!”

“Well, what did they—Tiamaris! Stop here!”

He roared, but the sparsely crowded streets were already emptying, and no one had time to spare to look skyward at a new threat when the threat they faced was so much closer. People were fleeing—as they could—from something that looked, at this remove, like a feral pack. Except for the part which had them roving in broad daylight.

The ground rushed up to meet them. As far as flight went, this was almost exactly like falling, except the landing only tossed Kaylin off the Dragon’s back and into the streets; it didn’t kill her.

The ferals—which weren’t ferals, seen up close—tried, on the other hand. They were larger, for one, and while the bulk of their bodies resembled giant dogs, the resemblance ended there. Kaylin personally discovered that their tails were both prehensile and barbed when one wrapped itself around her leg and sliced into her thigh.

Tiamaris snapped the creature in half.

The others, like ferals, were too stupid to know when to run, which was good; they were also too stupid to stop hunting, turn around, and face what was otherwise certain death. Bodies lay beneath them in the street. Most of them had long since stopped moving.

But Tiamaris made certain that the only additional corpses would be theirs; he was so fast, and so light given his size, that Kaylin only had time for defensive maneuvers; all the offense was delivered by the Dragon. It was glorious and brief.

Tara clung—literally clung—to his back for the entire fight; only when the sound of the not-quite-ferals had been silenced did she straighten her back and look around her. Her eyes were wide and shining, the latter no trick of the light.

“Not yet,” Tiamaris told her, in a voice that was so gentle it seemed impossible that it came from a Dragon’s mouth. “There is more—much more—to do. But we have time,” he added. “Come, Kaylin. We go to the borders.”

She glanced up at the sky. “There might be trouble,” she said softly.

“Here?” He snorted. Smoke came out of his nostrils in tufts.

She pointed. In the distance, in the air, she saw what the rest of the City—fief or no—must have seen: the extended wings and graceful necks of Dragons in flight.

CHAPTER 29

The Dragons were high enough above the ground that Kaylin couldn’t place their colors. She didn’t try. She could see numbers: there were three. Three to one.

Tiamaris, however, elongated his neck and nudged her—where nudged, in this case, meant knocked her over. “Climb,” he told her grimly. “We are needed.”

“Where are we going?” She glanced again at the sky as Severn wound his chain around his waist and joined them in silence.

“The White Towers. There is a man who calls himself the fief lord. He needs to be disabused of the notion.” All of the smile in the words was in the tone, and none of that smile was pleasant.

It caused the shadow of a similar smile across Kaylin’s lips, but it was tenuous, and it broke when Severn’s hand gripped her shoulder. She shifted, turning to meet his glance, and was jerked backward when Tiamaris left the ground. He was clearly unaccustomed to passengers. Then again, he hadn’t had to watch Kaylin grow up.

And even if he had, to give in to her desperate desire to escape the confines of gravity would have been his death. Looking over her shoulders to see the circling Dragons above, she wasn’t certain it wouldn’t be his death now. He didn’t care. She felt the ferocity of a savage joy in the freedom of his flight, and she thought she would never understand Dragons or the Dragon Court.

But that Court remained at a distance, circling. She noted with heat that they didn’t attempt to land or help the people who were running in the streets. Later, maybe, she’d have a few words with at least one of them. Now? She went where Tiamaris went, landed where he landed, and managed not to lose any more clothing to the unpredictable placement of limbs, jaws or tails. She did get her hair singed twice, but unpredictable placement of small eyes that shot magical beams was a bit trickier.

The streets nearest the White Towers were already pretty damn empty of anything but the shadows; here or there, those shadows had dissolved, or staved in, walls. Tiamaris caught them all as he moved toward the border, and she wondered if he now had the same connection to Barren that Nightshade had to his fief. She didn’t ask; there wasn’t time.