“At what age did you first encounter ghosts?” Sanabalis’s question was softly voiced.
“I’ve always seen them,” Mrs. Erickson told the Dragon.
“Always? You have no memories of a time when the ghosts did not appear before you?”
“No. I don’t remember a time when they weren’t part of my home. My memory isn’t what it used to be,” she added. “But I can remember incidents from my childhood. My mother in particular was angry—at me—because Jamal had thrown a vase across the room, shattering it. She was certain I’d done it, and she didn’t believe in Jamal. I can still remember her disappointment that I would lie to her.”
“If she took you to the Imperial College, that must have changed.”
Mrs. Erickson nodded. “With time, yes. There were too many coincidences, too many things I had heard of that had nothing to do with our family.”
“And your father?”
“I always thought, as a child, that he believed me. As an adult, I’m less certain. He wanted me to know that he loved me, that he would support me. I think he was afraid of what the ghosts meant to me, and of what it said about me.
“When I was a young child, I asked them if I had had brothers or sisters who had died.” She winced, even at the remove of decades. “They said no. But I could see Jamal. It was Jamal’s idea to prove his existence to my parents.” The grimace became a slight smile. “I’m not certain they believed a ghost existed, but his trick—to be in the room with them when I was not, and to report what they’d said or done—caused concern. In the end, my mother chose to have me tested for magical potential.”
“And you were assessed as without talent,” Sanabalis said.
She nodded. “I think my mother was disappointed. We weren’t wealthy, and she worried about my future. I was odd,” she added. “So odd. I might have made friends had I understood that, but... I was young. Children are not unkind, but they are not always accepting; I think some of the people I met felt I was lying to gain attention.
“As you can imagine, it didn’t make finding friends easier. My mother hoped that if I had talent, I might find company among the mages—mages aren’t normal to begin with.” Sanabalis raised a brow, and Mrs. Erickson actually chuckled. “Dragons would definitely not have been considered normal; I’m certain my poor mother would be beside herself with anxiety if she could see me now.”
“Perhaps not,” Helen said. “You are healthy and you have friends—I think she would be far more at peace.”
“You didn’t know my mother.”
“No. But I have known many parents in my life. I confess I did not always understand their fears; to me, they seemed largely needless or misplaced. But I am not as you are, and I did not consider the worries pointless; I considered them an element of life that a sentient building could not experience.”
Mrs. Erickson seemed surprised by this. “It’s our way to worry when we have some responsibility. I worry about my invisible family. I’m not getting younger, and they’ve...never aged. They can’t be seen. They can’t be heard. And it’s important for children to be seen and heard. I know that—I was one. I still remember the pain of not being believed. Their entire existence is something no one believes in.
“But even the children my age who were willing to believe weren’t accepted. Jamal drove them away.”
“Did he not understand what that did to you?”
“He’s a child.”
“So were you. His age does not excuse his behavior.”
“I don’t think ghosts age. They’re trapped, and these ones are trapped in the house. They can’t wander. They can’t watch other people, and even if they could, they can’t talk to them. They can’t be heard.”
Helen lowered her head, as if in respect. When she raised it, her expression was complicated. “What do they look like, for you?”
The question was not the one Mrs. Erickson was expecting. “The children? They look like children of about ten years of age—possibly younger, possibly older. So much depends on environment. I was small for my age until I hit my growth spurt.”
She was small now. Kaylin failed to say this, but Helen heard it anyway.
“No, I didn’t mean the children. I meant the ghosts still cradled in Kaylin’s hands.” She smiled as she said it.
Mrs. Erickson blinked. She looked at Teela, at Sanabalis, and then at Helen herself. Last, she turned to look at Kaylin’s hands, her eyes narrowed, some confusion in her expression.
“They look like children, to me.”
“Mortal children?”
“Children. Children of all races look like children to you, no? This isn’t different. They’re smaller than I am, their voices higher and weaker when raised. They remind me most of Jamal, not in physical appearance, but in feel. I think they’ve been trapped for a long time—longer than Jamal. Longer than Darreno and Amaldi—although the young corporal tells me she doesn’t think Darreno and Amaldi are actually dead.”
“We cannot see what you see,” Helen said, a note of mourning in her voice.
Helen could; she could read minds. She could read thoughts. Mrs. Erickson was not a Barrani Lord, nor an ancient Dragon. Kaylin highly doubted that she was shielding her thoughts against Helen; she probably didn’t know what Helen could do.
“No. But she is a shaman, and what she sees, as she sees it, I cannot translate, for want of a better word. I see as Terrano sees. And no, dear,” she added, to the aforementioned Terrano, “try as you might, you will not see what she sees.”
“If it keeps him occupied and out of trouble, the attempt itself is useful,” Teela told her.
“Terrano is incapable of remaining out of trouble, and his attempts might cross boundaries none of us wish to see crossed,” was the very reasonable reply.
“I’m actually standing right here,” Terrano told them both.
“We know, dear.”
Helen shook herself and began to lead.
“Arkon?” the second Helen said to Sanabalis.
Sanabalis shook his head. “You will forgive me, but I would take great comfort in seeing your new visitors properly housed. It is your ability to house disparate elements in safety that swayed my decision to allow Mrs. Erickson and her new ghosts to leave the palace.”
Helen frowned, but nodded, and the second version of her quietly faded.
The hall to which she led Mrs. Erickson was not the hall the cohort—and Kaylin—otherwise occupied; nor was it the end of that hall, with its door that led into an outside that wasn’t part of Elantra. She walked past it. Kaylin hadn’t been aware that there was a way to walk past it, probably because there hadn’t been, until now.
“It was here,” Helen said, voice gentle. “But it was not of relevance to you—and you don’t really like big, open spaces, even in a home. There’s a reason Sedarias has such extensive, expansive quarters while yours are much smaller and more cramped.” To Mrs. Erickson, she added, “I am Helen. All of this—the halls, the rooms in which Kaylin and her friends live—are part of me. They are part of what I was built to offer guests—the part I wished to keep when I finally had the choice.
“Kaylin has not seen all of the rooms that exist within me, but with the coming of the cohort, as the others are called, she has seen more of them than most of my tenants ever saw. This, too, is an aspect of me.” And so saying, she gestured, and a new hallway appeared at the far end of the gallery, railings to one side, walls to the other.
“I cannot guess what your ghosts see when they walk here; I cannot guess what they might expect of a home. But we can only offer what is ours to offer. Come. You might stay with them, were it not for your other children; I understand that they need you at home. If you are not as I am, you give them something that no one else can give them.
“With your permission, I will attempt to understand what it is Kaylin has brought into her home.”
“I don’t think you need my permission for that,” Mrs. Erickson said. “This is such a lovely home.” But if it was, the home itself was not where her gaze went. She paused once, and spoke to whatever Kaylin now cupped in her palms. “She won’t hurt you.” Her voice was soft. “She won’t use you. All she hopes to offer you for the moment is someplace to rest.”
Helen nodded. She then led them down the new hall; it was unadorned by anything as common as doors, except at the far end. The doors there were similar to the doors that terminated the hallway in which Kaylin’s room—and everyone else’s—was situated.
She then opened the doors, gesturing rather than touching them, which was unusual for Helen. The doors rolled to left and right, and as they did, a gray light filled the hall, brighter than it should have been, given its color.
Kaylin frowned. “Helen—that’s...”
“Yes, dear?”
“It looks like the outlands. Almost.”
Sanabalis’s eyes were narrowed, as if he, too, were forced to squint. But his eyes had lost their orange tinge at some point between the foyer and this hall; they were gold, but flecked with a color the light made impossible to catch.
“Does it? It has been long indeed since I have seen the many paths between us. Ah, I forget myself. It does not look like that to my eye, but I understand the confusion. All of the rooms the cohort call home begin here. All of the rooms I have offered my many guests over the centuries begin here. And when those rooms are no longer wanted or necessary, they return.”
Kaylin didn’t understand the difference between this place and the words at the heart of Helen.
“It is the difference between brain and heart. You might ask Red in your morgue about them, if this is a bad analogy.”
Kaylin shook her head. She understood the point.
“Come,” she said. “The only reason you are seeing hospitality—my hospitality—in its nascent form is that I cannot see your guests, cannot read them or hear them. I do not know what they want or need. But if they rose in the presence of Mrs. Erickson, if they somehow inhabited Lord Sanabalis, they are clearly looking for something.”
“I’m sorry,” Mrs. Erickson said. “It’s hard to hear their voices, and they seem to be talking over each other. Mostly, they’re anxious. Excited, but anxious. I really do think they’re like Jamal, at heart.”
Jamal was mostly anxiety; if he’d been excited—ever—Kaylin had missed it beneath anger and possessive resentment.
Terrano, on the other hand, was excited. Teela grabbed him by the shoulder, as if to keep him pinned in one place. Not that that would work if he was determined.
The odd words in Kaylin’s hand quivered in place, as if straining to move toward whatever it was they could see in the pale, luminous fog. They didn’t leave Kaylin’s hands. It occurred to her that they couldn’t; that somehow, she contained them. It was probably the marks; they were glowing, their color now similar to the color of the fog.
“I think I have to carry them there,” Kaylin told her home.
“I think so, too. You will be safe should you choose to enter the room; if they are willing to leave you—if they are capable of it—it will be there. I would suggest you leave as quickly as possible, if that proves to be the case; I am uncertain what the room itself will become, and it may be inhospitable.”
Kaylin nodded. “Can Mrs. Erickson come?”
Helen’s hesitance was an answer.
“Stay on the hall side of the door,” she told Mrs. Erickson. “You can speak to them from there—but Helen’s concerned that you might be injured.”
“And she isn’t concerned about you?” The question was asked with no edge or ego; Mrs. Erickson was genuinely curious.
“Not in the same way. I have special marks that offer some protection.”
“The marks of the Chosen,” Mrs. Erickson agreed.
Everyone turned to look at her, and she reddened slightly. “Amaldi mentioned them. I’m sorry for interrupting you.”
“Everyone does. I’m used to it. You can’t expect a lack of interruption if you live with Terrano.”
“Hey!”
Kaylin grinned and then turned once again to the open door. She couldn’t see anything as solid as floor on the other side of the doorjamb, but she’d run through the outlands without any visible ground beneath her feet. She was worried, but it was a nebulous worry; she had brought...something into her home that could possess a Dragon. Something that had somehow been trapped or attached to an altar in a hidden room in the bowels of the Imperial Palace.
“Yes. They responded to Mrs. Erickson. If she has spent her life quietly, she has great power.”
“She doesn’t know how to use it,” Sanabalis said.
“It is not something that is easily taught by those who do not have a similar power,” Helen replied. “It is not magic as the Arcanum understands it; nor is it magic as the Imperial College does. But I would argue that she has used that power, unbeknownst to her, since she first opened her eyes. Whatever these are—ghosts or spirits as she calls them—they could see her, and she could see them. They understand her when she makes the effort to speak. No one present can do the same.
“But Kaylin is very fond of her, and I understand why. She intends no harm.”
“Harm can be caused, regardless,” was the sober reply. “But yes, I agree; if harm is to be caused with intent, there will be no harm. Corporal?”
Kaylin nodded and took a step over the threshold.
In the odd light of this gentle miasma, Kaylin could see the words more clearly; they grew more solid, and they gained an unfortunate weight. She was by no means weak, but she knew that carrying this weight in her palms, arms partially extended, couldn’t be done for long. She turned, slowly, toward Mrs. Erickson.
Mrs. Erickson’s eyes were luminous, wide, almost unblinking; the color of the fog itself was so strongly reflected in those eyes, they seemed to be one and the same for a disconcerting moment.
It was Teela who caught Mrs. Erickson by the shoulder, her grip on the older woman almost the same as the grip she maintained on Terrano. Kaylin could see that much before the fog rolled over her eyes, obscuring anything as mundane as a doorway. The marks on her arms were glowing more brightly, gold at last coming up through a sheen of silver gray.
She closed her eyes; the landscape that emerged from the fog was painfully disjointed to look at, the colors that she could perceive clashing like a visual screaming match at a volume that would deafen the unprepared. Into the reddened darkness of closed eyes in bright light, came physical sensation: the ground beneath her feet—which in this case wasn’t so much ground as puddle. She could hear words being spoken, words being repeated, in a language she didn’t understand, but nonetheless recognized.
Words, like the marks on her arms.
“Is it safe to open my eyes?” she asked, assuming that the door was still open and the rest of the people she’d come with were still bearing witness.
“It is safe,” a familiar voice said. Only one.
“Helen?”
“Yes. I am here. I could not guarantee Mrs. Erickson’s safety, but I can guarantee yours.”
Kaylin opened her eyes.
She realized, belatedly, that the burden she’d carried no longer resided within her cupped palms; her hands were empty. Instead of lowering them, she stretched out both arms, up and to the side, regaining normal movement absent heavy weight.
She was standing in a pool, but the liquid the pool contained wasn’t water; her feet weren’t wet. Or soaked. She would have stepped onto dry land, but there wasn’t any in sight as far as the eye—or hers, at any rate—could see. She was surrounded by shallow, still liquid. The color was golden.
“That is not what I see,” Helen told her. Her voice was measured, but it wasn’t entirely calm.
“Is everyone else on the outside of the room?”
“They are. The doors closed when the fog began to clear.”
“You closed them?”
“It was a precaution. The room itself is secure for now; I believe even Terrano would have difficulty breaching the protections; they are not entirely of my design.”
“The occupants?”
“I do not believe they are what you would consider ghosts.”
“Are they like Amaldi and Darreno, then?”
“From what you have witnessed, no, they are definitely unlike the two. I do concur with your belief that the two are displaced or trapped—but I am not certain what will happen to them should they somehow be freed. Come away.” Helen reached out with a hand, indicating Kaylin should take it. “You will not be able to reach the door the usual way, but a door does exist.”
“Can you hear them, now?”
Helen shook her head. “No. But I can see what was built to provide them comfort and a sense of safety.”
“Does that give you any clue as to what they are?”
“Perhaps. But you perceived them as words, and that is not entirely inaccurate. These words I cannot hear, cannot speak; I perceive them only because you carried them and they came...here. But they spoke to Mrs. Erickson.” Helen’s eyes were obsidian. “You have not asked my advice, and the advice I give is therefore without weight, but...”
“But?”
“Mrs. Erickson is mortal. Her gift, such as it is, has never been detected until now. She is as you perceive her—and as you suspected, I do like her. But she is nonetheless dangerous, Kaylin, if Lord Sanabalis’s possession did not make that clear.”
“She had nothing to do with that!”
“She did not possess him, no. Nor would she, in my opinion. But they would not have woken were it not for her presence. In your stories, you speak of ghosts. In my experience, there were mortals who could see the echoes of those who had passed on; they called themselves shamans. But there were others that spoke with the dead; others who could command them.”
Kaylin stared at the Avatar of her home.
“I believe they were called Necromancers.”
“Necromancers don’t exist! And they weren’t about talking to the dead or freeing them or comforting them—they were about raising an army of mindless undead!”
“Is that what you’ve been told?”
“I haven’t been told that—they’re stories, Helen.”
“Would you like to hear the stories I heard, long before I found my freedom?”
“Do you actually remember them?”
“I do. The loss is not entirely predictable, and I retained more than I feared I would, although I accepted the possibility of a greater loss. What I protected—what I tried to protect—were memories I made with those few who saw me as Helen. As you do.” She smiled then. “Necromancers were not like the Sorcerers of old. If your stories now speak of those who raised the dead—as shambling monsters, meant to terrify mortal armies—some of those stories have roots in the truth.
“But Necromancers were far more subtle in the stories I was told. As you suspect, I did not get out of the house much, and the information I retain came to me through visitors. But some of those visitors were my first lord’s servants and accomplices. And among them was one who could, as Mrs. Erickson does, see the lingering echoes of those who once lived.
“I do not understand what causes those echoes; nor do I understand how the dead persist, because most do not. But if my tenants were somehow trapped here as ghosts, it would grieve me. Ah, it starts.”
As Helen spoke, Kaylin could see the pool beneath her feet begin to shift, as if currents were struggling to rise to the surface. What she had thought of as liquid was more viscous than simple water—or blood, if it came to that; it was thick, more molasses than water.
No, not molasses; that didn’t rise the way this pool was now rising: in spikes, in columns, in strange shapes that seemed to echo the human form without ever truly cohering completely.
“What do you hope I can do here?” Kaylin asked her home.
“I’m uncertain. If it were safer, I would ask to invite Mrs. Erickson in. But perhaps it’s better this way. She woke them, somehow.”
Kaylin wanted to argue, but couldn’t. “But I could somehow carry...whatever they are...because of the marks.”
“Yes, I believe so. But I also believe they would not have come to you were it not for Mrs. Erickson’s presence.”
“So...Necromancers.”
“She can speak to the echoes that linger. I would have said mortal ghosts couldn’t exist,” Helen added. “But I am certain in the darker places and ancient recesses, ghosts of Immortals do. Sometimes words echo, and the words at the core of the first races are enough to support a life that would, without war or accident, continue for eternity.
“Those echoes have some hints of the power the living once possessed, but that power is irrelevant to any who cannot somehow bespeak it; who cannot hear the echoes. Mrs. Erickson could. I do not understand how,” she added. “If you could, it would not surprise me.”
“I can see the dead children trapped in her house.”
“You have the marks of the Chosen; were they absent, I do not believe you would have seen them at all. Even with the marks, you did not see what rose from the ancient mirror at the heart of the Imperial Palace.” Helen fell silent for a moment, and then said, “Perhaps they could not hear you; perhaps it is not that she could hear them, but that they were aware of her.
“Once aware, they panicked.”
“That...didn’t seem like panic, to me.”
“No. But they were afraid when they arrived.”
“And now?”
“Cautious. Possibly hopeful; I sense no rage, no malice. But I cannot hear their thoughts as I hear yours or the cohorts’. I cannot speak to them the way I speak with any of you. It is, I admit, a challenge.”
Kaylin wondered if it was safe. If they could possess Sanabalis, what could they do if they could possess Helen?
“It is not without risk,” Helen admitted. “But it is a risk I choose to take. It is...a challenge to my hospitality. If they cannot speak to me as you do, they speak to some part of me—it is why things are taking shape in this room. I believe Terrano might have some chance of actual communication should he choose to try—but I also believe he would be at the most risk. He made choices in his captivity in the Hallionne that allowed him, in the end, to escape what the Ancients built—but he has difficulty at times retaining his form. His connection with the cohort helps in this regard—Teela is the anchor, there. She spent most of her life as the Barrani you now know.
“But I believe it is time to leave.”
“Why?”
“Because they are waking fully, and I am uncertain that I will be able to keep enough of a separation between you and whatever it is they are or were. You may be safe, regardless; the marks of the Chosen may protect you. But I am unwilling to risk your safety until I have learned how to listen, to hear, and to speak with them.”
Kaylin nodded; the landscape was now shifting constantly, and she found it hard to watch as up became down and down turned sideways. Closing her eyes helped, but not enough.
“This way, dear,” Helen said, her voice coming from Kaylin’s right.
Kaylin nodded, which was a mistake. “Helen—is this a portal?”
“Not in the traditional sense, no. Does it feel like that to you?”
Kaylin didn’t answer; she was trying to hold on to her last meal.
“I’m terribly sorry,” Helen then said, in the softest of her voices. “We will be out of the room soon. You didn’t feel this way when you entered?”
“No.”
“When did it start?”
Later, Helen. Just—get us out of here first.
“Wow, you look terrible,” was the first thing Kaylin heard when she could safely open her eyes again. She didn’t need to see the speaker to recognize him.
“Don’t be rude,” Helen said to Terrano. “She is not feeling well.”
“What was rude about that? She does look terrible.”
“I look about as good as I feel.”
“What happened?”
Kaylin was seated in the parlor, in a chair that was more cushion than structural furniture, which suited her at the moment, as she didn’t have the fortitude to sit up straight. She found deep breaths helpful, and took a few before she tried to answer.
“I went into the room Helen created for our new guests. It was fine—I mean, it looked like an oddly colored pool of honey or molasses. Helen didn’t see it the same way.”
Terrano grimaced. “She wouldn’t let me enter, so I couldn’t check. Sedarias was against it, given what purportedly happened to the Dragon.”
“How was Sanabalis?” Kaylin asked Helen.
“You can ask him yourself; he’s been waiting for you to recover. I believe, given the color of his eyes, he is somewhat concerned, but he is far more adept at hiding his thoughts than most of your guests.”
“He’s still here?”
“He has—and I quote—‘canceled all appointments for the rest of the evening,’ one of which includes the Emperor. Are you feeling up to speaking with him?”
“He’s not leaving until we talk, is he?”
“I don’t think so, dear—unless you wish me to forcibly eject him.”
Kaylin grimaced. “I like my job.” Her legs were wobbly, but she rose. “And I’m feeling better—portal nausea doesn’t usually last.”
“No. But, Kaylin, there was no portal. It’s possible the protections I put in place to keep you safe caused the same reaction—they are not protections I have employed until now.”
Terrano, bright-eyed and interested, bounced between Helen’s Avatar and Kaylin. “What protections?”
“Terrano, now is not a good time.” Kaylin’s jaw was slightly clenched. She knew she had as much chance of getting rid of Terrano as she did of getting rid of Sanabalis. Or less.
“I can create a space around Kaylin—and only Kaylin—due to the nature of our contract. It is expensive, in terms of power; should I come under attack, it would be difficult to properly defend myself while maintaining it. I did not expect she would be attacked, but it is clear to me that these guests are impulsive, given their possession of Lord Sanabalis.” She emphasized the title.
“The Arkon,” Kaylin said, trying not to feel petty.
“But those protections were in place for the entirety of your time in that space; you did not react to them until the guests began to influence the space.”
“No. I didn’t notice them at all until then. It might just be visual—the entire landscape was spinning and transforming from second to second.”
“You don’t believe that.”
“It really felt like a portal tunnel.”
“That is interesting, and I will keep that in mind.”
“Is Mrs. Erickson with the Arkon?”
“She was, but she had become somewhat worried about the children. Teela and Mandoran offered to escort her home—with the Arkon’s very reluctant permission—and she eventually accepted their offer. She was also worried about your new guests, but understood my explanation.”
Kaylin was surprised Sanabalis had let Mrs. Erickson leave. “Which explanation?”
“They need time to establish comfort in their new home. I do believe she will return if you allow it.”
“Do you think she’ll be safe?”
“I think she is the only person in this house who will be.”
Terrano clearly felt mildly insulted, which Helen gracefully failed to notice.
“She did speak with the Arkon for some time. He is concerned, but he does not believe she intends harm.”
“Because she doesn’t.”
“Indeed.”
Kaylin sighed loudly. “Let’s go face the Dragon. Unless you’ve invited him for dinner, I won’t get to eat until he leaves.”