“He wants her to stay behind to open it if it slams shut?”
Terrano nodded. “While it’s true the door is likely to open to the porch and the street now, he believes he can interfere in a way that would allow Serralyn to open the door to this place. Or reopen it, if we’re stuck here.”
Kaylin glanced at Teela. The Barrani Hawk shook her head. “If I were willing to remain here, I could keep the door wedged open. I can maintain the spell from a distance, but not indefinitely, and it would take some concentration.” Given her expression, it was a long way of saying she wasn’t willing to be a living door wedge.
“Can we, I don’t know, pull up one of those stairs or something and physically wedge it open instead?”
Severn coughed into his hand.
“We could try. It’s a remarkably mundane solution.”
“I’m a remarkably mundane person.”
Mandoran laughed.
“It’s not like Azoria can storm into the Halls of Law and accuse us of property damage.”
“True. It might be easier to find something in Mrs. Erickson’s living room than it would be to disassemble parts of the stairs on this side.”
“Mrs. Erickson?”
Mrs. Erickson nodded.
“Severn will go with you; he can carry whatever furniture you choose to risk.”
She chose to risk a dining room hutch which was a lot heavier than a chair. Mandoran went out to help Severn move it, which involved removing its contents first. Even empty, it was heavy. Between the two of them, they dragged the hutch into the doorframe, which left very little space to maneuver around. Mrs. Erickson returned to the foyer before they placed the hutch in the doorway; Severn carried the foyer end, and Mandoran slid between frame and hutch, elongating himself to do so.
Serralyn didn’t follow. She saw them through and then returned to the dining room window. Bakkon had, according to Severn and Mandoran, moved his bulk to the porch, so Serralyn didn’t have to lean out the window and shout; they were conversing. Neither were certain the mundane solution would be a solution, which is the only reason Serralyn chose to stay.
Terrano hadn’t taken the stairs; he’d decided to investigate the first floor. There were side doors in the main foyer area, but he avoided those, choosing instead to head past the staircase into the hall beyond it. It was a very, very Barrani hall; it would have been perfectly at home in the High Halls.
Kaylin didn’t understand why the Barrani were so enamored of high ceilings. Probably because they never had to worry about cleaning them. Regardless, these were tall enough she could only see the ceiling in the distance; if she wanted to see the ceiling above her head, she’d be better off lying flat on the ground and looking up.
“I’ve checked the ceilings,” Terrano told them. “The light is magical in nature, but it’s normal magic. There doesn’t seem to be much in the way of interactive enchantments beyond the door itself—at least not on this level. But this hall is interesting. Look at the walls.”
Kaylin nodded. Ahead, at what appeared to be the halfway mark, she could see alcoves in the wall; they were well lit, probably by the same magic Terrano had detected in the ceiling. Or so she assumed.
But as she approached them, she could see that they contained framed paintings.
Hope’s wing tightened against her upper face. The alcoves weren’t symmetrical across the two sides of the halls; they were staggered. She came to the first one and realized she was holding her breath only when she exhaled. The painting was of a Barrani woman.
The painting looked like a painting when viewed without Hope’s wing. It looked the same when viewed through the wing, but the little monster insisted that she examine it with his wing—by smacking her face with it. “Can you give me a hint that doesn’t involve smacking my face?” she snapped.
“You can’t see a difference?” Teela asked.
“No. It’s a well-lit alcove. A portrait of a Barrani woman hangs on the wall beneath the light.”
“I believe I understand the problem,” the Barrani Hawk said. “Terrano. Light?”
“I can see the light without the wing, Teela.”
“There’s no light,” Terrano said. “The ambient light of the hall, yes. The light above the painting, no. But you can see it with or without the wing?”
She nodded, looking at the marks on her arms; they had continued a steady glow, and she realized as she looked that they were the color of the light she could see, winged or unwinged.
Terrano, however, had returned to the alcove and was now examining the lighting slowly. He shook his head. “I don’t want to mutate my actual eyes, but whatever it is you’re seeing, I can’t see.”
It was Mrs. Erickson who said, voice soft, “It’s a ghost. There’s a ghost trapped there.”
Kaylin turned to Mrs. Erickson, remembering clearly what had happened the last time unexpected ghosts had responded to her presence. She then turned to the painting. “It’s a Barrani woman.”
Mrs. Erickson nodded. “It isn’t a Barrani ghost.” She stepped toward the painting and lifted a trembling arm. The children who lived trapped in 14 1/2 Orbonne had always been visible to Kaylin; she couldn’t see the ghosts Mrs. Erickson saw now. She could see the light detach itself from the height of the alcove at Mrs. Erickson’s approach; it traveled to the old woman’s palm.
Since all present knew about her ability to see ghosts—and even believed in it—Mrs. Erickson wasn’t worried about appearing to be delusional. “I’m Imelda,” she said. “What’s your name?”
As she spoke, the marks on Kaylin’s arms brightened. Kaylin, who could see Jamal and the children, could now see a dim, transparent woman who had placed her hand in Mrs. Erickson’s, adjusting the position when their palms failed to connect. She was older than Kaylin, but younger than Mrs. Erickson. All color had been leeched from her, but her hair was long, her cheeks delicate, her chin pointed; her arms were slender as were her fingers.
Kaylin could see her lips move, but couldn’t hear the words; Mrs. Erickson could.
“I’m not trapped, dear, and I’m not sure if you can see the others, but if you can, these are my friends. We’re trying to free the people trapped here.”
The ghost could see her friends, and she froze at the sight of the Barrani, her hand obviously tightening.
“I don’t know when you came here,” Mrs. Erickson said quietly. “I imagine it was a long time ago. Corporal Teela is a Hawk. She works for the Halls of Law. But she’s here because she understands magic in a way most of us don’t. This is Terrano, and this is Mandoran. The young man is Corporal Handred.
“And this is my friend, Kaylin Neya. She’s also a Hawk. You can come with us; you don’t have to stay here.”
The ghost nodded; to Kaylin’s eyes, she seemed close to tears. As if she were much younger than the age she appeared to be, she followed Mrs. Erickson.
All of the paintings that were surrounded by this soft nimbus of light lost that light as the party slowly progressed down the hall. The ghosts remained invisible to everyone but Mrs. Erickson and Kaylin, but they couldn’t speak to Kaylin; she couldn’t hear them. Nor could she touch them, as she had touched—had carried—the ghostly words.
Only once did Mrs. Erickson react with shock. “Kaylin,” she whispered. “Kaylin, can you see her?”
Kaylin nodded.
“That’s—that’s the woman. That’s the woman who painted our family portrait.” Her voice was a whisper of sound; she knew it was rude to speak about other people when they were actually present, something all of the Barrani in Kaylin’s life could stand to learn.
Kaylin had believed that Azoria had approached the Erickson family under an illusory guise. Looking at Mrs. Erickson, she could no longer believe that. But she couldn’t believe that the woman whose ghost occupied this hall had been responsible for the painting, either. Azoria had occupied the woman’s empty body, wearing it as if it were clothing.
Mrs. Erickson attempted to speak with the painter, but the woman remembered neither Mrs. Erickson—as a child—or the painting in question. To her, Mrs. Erickson was a stranger. Or possibly a savior.
In the end, Mrs. Erickson had gathered a dozen ghosts. None of them were children. Something had gone wrong with the children. Something had gone wrong with Mrs. Erickson, whose painting remained unoccupied, if one didn’t count a warped and distorted flower.
This woman’s physical body had entered Mrs. Erickson’s life after the children. Were the children the experiments? Were they chosen because of their youth, because their bodies could, in theory and without mass murder, exist for decades before they would have to be discarded due to age?
Kaylin considered this as she patiently waited for Mrs. Erickson to speak to each ghost. None of these ghosts were children. One was Kaylin’s age, but most were a handful of years older.
The cohort had been exposed to the regalia as children. The results of that exposure were behind the creation of laws that expressly and permanently forbade such exposure going forward.
Maybe human children were similar, somehow, to the cohort: too young to be fully formed—if that was even a possibility for mortals, given how much age and experience changed them. She couldn’t hear these ghosts; she couldn’t ask Mrs. Erickson their names and rush off to the Halls of Law Records to see if these people appeared in Missing Persons—or worse, in legal files about their executions for mass murder.
But...they were here. They weren’t in Mrs. Erickson’s house. They served a purpose; Kaylin couldn’t imagine that it was a purpose they themselves had any say in choosing.
She glanced at Mrs. Erickson and her huddle of moving ghosts. Mrs. Erickson’s quiet voice was a constant stream of gentle words, first to one, and then to another. Interestingly enough, the ghosts could, apparently, see and hear each other.
The hall came to an abrupt end at a T-junction, but aside from a cursory glance to the left and right, the halls that continued were of far less interest than the last of the paintings hung in this hall. All of the other paintings had been portraits; the hall seemed to have been designed to house them. This, too, was a portrait—but it was much larger than life; it was of a Barrani woman.
The background was not landscape as Kaylin understood it; it was almost, but not quite, formless—the fog of the outlands; the fog that existed as material from which sentient buildings created everything. She could almost swear that fog was moving. In its center, as if she were the heart of a building herself, stood a Barrani woman. Her eyes were not Barrani eyes, but everything else about her was: her raven hair, her perfect skin, her relative height.
All of the ghosts huddled around Mrs. Erickson froze in place, but Kaylin didn’t require their reactions to know what she was facing: this was Azoria Berranin. She had painted herself.
Through Hope’s wing, Kaylin saw no hint of the enchantments with which Azoria bound the Barrani in the High Halls; she saw no hint of the darker enchantment that hovered around the painting she had made of the Erickson family. This was a painting on a very, very strange canvas.
“Oh, dear,” Mrs. Erickson said, in the softest of voices. She turned to Kaylin. “I think we should go upstairs before we make any hasty decisions.”
Hasty decisions? Kaylin frowned. “What do you see when you look at the painting?”
“I see a door in the center of the painting, encompassed by Azoria. You don’t see it?”
“None of us see it.”
“I can,” Terrano said.
“Fine. None of us with the eyes we were born with can see it.” She exhaled. “Terrano, scout upstairs?”
“Probably a waste of time,” he said; he clearly wanted to go through the door almost no one else could see. The fact that he hadn’t done so meant Sedarias did not want him to go through said door.
He dragged his feet away from the painting, complaining bitterly.
Mandoran grimaced. “I’ll go with him. I’m not certain he won’t get himself into trouble if he’s left on his own.” He grinned at Kaylin. “Serralyn’s suggestion.”
Kaylin then turned her full attention to the painting. Hope, rigid on her shoulder, was staring at it as well. He squawked. Kaylin reflexively covered the ear closest to his mouth.
“Don’t worry about Terrano,” Teela told her. “He knows this entire building could be trapped, and he knows how to recognize and evade traps most of us will never see.”
“I wasn’t. I don’t have a sense that Azoria is in this picture—but I have a very strong sense that this is not a door we should open. Not yet.”
Hope crooned.
“When?”
Kaylin shrugged, uneasy now. “Let’s go upstairs. I want to find Jamal.”
“You expect him to be here?”
“I think he must be. The house opened up before we opened the door—it’s possible the kids were drawn here. Or worse.” She hesitated. “The ghosts that are trapped here serve a designated purpose.”
“And the children didn’t?”
Kaylin glanced uneasily at Mrs. Erickson. She didn’t reply.
The stairs were solid; if the building had been unoccupied for a century, age hadn’t troubled any of it. It was the silence that made it feel creepy. Yes, she had once lived alone—but she’d lived in an apartment building, and the sounds of other tenants were always present, sometimes annoyingly so. Even when the neighbors fell asleep, the sounds of the street beneath her shutters reminded her that there were other people in the world. And angry dogs.
Here, only the sounds they made as they climbed were present; when they reached the top of the stairs, which then opened up into a wide platform, the only thing that broke the silence was the sound of breathing.
Beyond the landing an open gallery followed the shape of the foyer, hemmed in by delicate railing. On the left part of the oval gallery was a hall with less impressive ceilings than the great hall on the first floor.
Perhaps because she was listening so uncomfortably, when she heard sounds in the distance, she turned instantly. Severn was already on the move.
“Teela?”
Teela nodded. “Mrs. Erickson?”
“That sounds like Jamal,” the older woman said. Kaylin heard nothing that sounded like Jamal, but didn’t doubt that Mrs. Erickson could. She let Mrs. Erickson take the lead, in part because she didn’t think the older woman could be stopped, short of physical restraint.
The sounds that no one else could hear came from the hall, bypassing the second-floor gallery entirely. This was fine; there appeared to be no paintings hung in it, although Kaylin had time to give the statues on display a suspicious glance as she passed them.
The hall was very similar to Helen’s hall of tenant—or guest—rooms, although the doors weren’t adorned by simple silhouettes to indicate who those guests might be. Down the hall was a set of double doors. Kaylin assumed that those doors were the destination to which Mrs. Erickson marched. She was wrong.
Mrs. Erickson veered to the left, to one of the closed doors. She opened it without hesitation, as if all possible risk was negligible in comparison to her desire to find Jamal.
Kaylin didn’t have to call in Terrano or Mandoran—they were both in the room, although Terrano’s physicality was pretty sketchy. She couldn’t see Jamal, and wasn’t certain if Mrs. Erickson could, but the older woman ran into the room, heading toward a door in the far wall.
The room was Barrani in style; the furniture was sparse, but the decor made the emptiness seem a deliberate choice, an evocation of elegance. These looked like guest rooms; they were shorn of any evidence that they had ever been occupied.
Mrs. Erickson paused in front of the closed door; she’d reached for the handle to open it, but pulled back at the last second. Kaylin caught up with her quickly.
“Jamal is behind this door,” she said, voice low. Kaylin glanced at her; there was a ferocity in the older woman’s expression Kaylin had never seen before. “You can’t hear him.”
“No—but I believe you can. Let Terrano open the door.”
Mrs. Erickson hesitated. “I think it may be dangerous,” she finally said. “There’s something off about the doorknob. That wouldn’t have affected Jamal—he can walk through doors and walls—but I’m not sure it will help anyone else.”
“Is Jamal alone, or are the others with him?”
Mrs. Erickson raised her voice and asked exactly that question. Kaylin couldn’t hear the answer. “The others are with him—he held on to them, and he won’t let go. When the door opened into this place, the children were called here. He thinks he might have been able to remain in our house, but they couldn’t.”
Tell her to call him out, Hope said, his voice far deeper than it should have been at his size.
“Jamal doesn’t exactly listen.”
You do not understand her power. She has used it passively because she does not understand it, either. Tell her to command him to come to her. When Kaylin failed to heed Hope’s advice, he snorted; a small stream of silver smoke hung in the air. Do you not trust Mrs. Erickson?
“Intent isn’t everything.”
It will be of great help to the children who have watched over her for the entirety of her life. There are only two wills here. Let her exert hers.
“What about what the children want?”
Silence.
Kaylin knew the answer. Parents grabbed children by the arm—or ears—all the time; they could enforce their will on the children who were their responsibility. How was this different?
“Mrs. Erickson,” she said softly, “my familiar—the squawking thing on my shoulder—feels that if you command Jamal and the children to come to you, they won’t have any choice. They’ll come.”
“I don’t think he’s spent much time with the children.”
“As much as I have.” She exhaled. “He thinks that you have the ability to command complete obedience.”
“How?”
Because they are dead, and she is a Necromancer.
Kaylin looked at the door. “Ask Jamal,” she finally said, “whether he’d choose you as a master over Azoria.”
Mrs. Erickson’s hesitation was marked. She asked the question, gentling it until it had no meaning.
Kaylin’s arms were now almost blinding, the marks were so bright. “Jamal, can you hear me?”
“He can hear you. I’ve told him you can’t hear him. He wants to know why.”
“Tell him it’s the door.”
“He...doesn’t see a door,” she finally said.
“What does he see?”
“A wall. Four walls, actually. A low ceiling. No windows. No doors.”
Kaylin glanced around the rest of the room. Terrano joined Mrs. Erickson and then shouldered her out of the way.
“Not a good idea,” Mandoran said out loud, although the words were clearly meant for Terrano. “It’s not a door.”
“Why would she have a trapped door when she can’t have visitors?” In spite of his snappish reply, Kaylin noted that Terrano didn’t attempt to touch the door. He studied it, instead. “I think it only works in one direction.”
“Then don’t touch it,” Kaylin snapped. “We don’t need to fish you out of a stone block with a hole in it.”
“You don’t need to help me escape at all.”
“If Jamal and the children—who can easily walk through closed doors and solid walls—are trapped there, it might take you longer than we’d like to get out. It might get even messier if the space collapses entirely; the children won’t be injured—they’re already dead. It’s probably not going to do great things for you.”
Mandoran broke out laughing. Terrano glared at him.
“Sedarias implied that it might be better for the rest of us,” Teela said; she stood in the doorway from the hall, her back to that hall, arms folded. “The doors in this hall are enchanted; the enchantments seem consistent with door wards. The enchantment on that door, on the other hand, is different, and it is much stronger. I would concur with your familiar. It is in the best interests of the children that Mrs. Erickson utilize her power.”
To Mrs. Erickson, she said, “They would obey your request if they were capable of it on their own; they are not. But if our legends are true, they will have no choice but to obey.”
Mrs. Erickson clearly had the same doubts Kaylin had.
No, Kaylin thought, frowning; that wasn’t true. There was something in the old woman’s expression that was far, far too troubled.
“It would be best for them.” Teela’s voice remained gentle. “Ask Jamal, if you do not believe me.”
“I promised,” she whispered. “I promised them I would never use that power again.”
Oh.
“Jamal!” Kaylin said, raising her voice. “Mrs. Erickson made a promise to you—I’m going to assume it was when she was a child. She needs to break that promise now. It’s the only way she can be certain she can save you all.”
“He isn’t answering,” Mrs. Erickson whispered.
“Just—let her make this one exception? Give her permission? Please? She’s not leaving this room without you, and I don’t think we have a lot of time; we’ve gathered the rest of the ghosts trapped here, and I think we need to get them out of this building.”
“Jamal—Jamal says that’s what she wanted. That’s what she wants. She wants me to...do what you’ve asked me to do.”
Kaylin turned to Hope. Hope was silent for one long beat. He then sighed. “How does Jamal know that?” she asked.
“I don’t know, dear.”
“Ask him. It’s important.”
She did as asked. “He isn’t answering.”
“But he’s still there?”
“Yes—they’re all still there.”
Kaylin nodded. “Jamal, I can’t hear you—only Mrs. Erickson can. But we need to know how you know that. Nothing you can say will hurt Mrs. Erickson. Nothing you can say will change how she feels about you. You’ve been by her side for her entire life. You’re family. If you know because you were sent to watch over her, that’s fine. You were children. You didn’t ask to serve Azoria; you didn’t ask to be kidnapped. Or killed. Mrs. Erickson is never going to blame you.
“But we’re here. We’re in the...other side of the house. And we need to do something here that will release Mrs. Erickson from whatever danger, whatever plan, Azoria made before she was born.”
“He says you can’t,” Mrs. Erickson said.
“We don’t want to endanger her,” Kaylin continued. “But if we don’t understand what she wanted of Mrs. Erickson, we might do exactly that in our ignorance. If you know, we need to know—especially now.”
Mrs. Erickson’s expression changed. “He’s crying,” she said. “Jamal doesn’t cry.”
Kaylin softened her voice, but continued to put volume into it. “Tell us why. Mrs. Erickson won’t break her promise to you and the rest of the children unless you give her permission. You know that.”
“He—he thinks they can’t be with me now. He thinks I’m in danger. Because of them.”
Kaylin was beginning to get frustrated.
“You are,” Terrano said. “Maybe it’s time to retreat.”
Kaylin looked around the room. Nothing had changed. “What do you see?”
Terrano shook his head. “Not see—hear. You won’t hear it unless you listen carefully. But I hear it, and because I can, Mandoran hears it as well. Teela doesn’t—but that’s deliberate on her part. Something is speaking, but it’s phased; it’s both here and not here.”
Kaylin hated the whole stacking space concept. It was very difficult to get her head around it. She understood the theory—many things could exist in what was theoretically the same space, but they existed in a different layer, on top of or beneath the layer which contained her.
Yes, Severn said.
Why isn’t this a problem for you?
It is a problem, but I don’t use the same analogy you’re using. Layer is the wrong word, it’s the wrong conceptualization; it implies something flat. It doesn’t matter right now. If Terrano can hear someone speaking, someone is speaking. He can exist in multiple spaces simultaneously. I’m guessing Azoria learned how to do the same thing.
Kaylin poked Hope. “I don’t suppose you have a version of wing that works on ears?”
He nipped at her finger, squawking loudly. He did smack her face with his wing, but held it there, baring his tiny teeth.
“He is telling you that the wing is not a literal mask, which you might have noted when you could both hear and interact with Amaldi and Darreno. He assumed that you understood this.”
Kaylin grimaced in the direction of the Barrani Hawk.
“Here,” Mandoran said, holding out a hand. “I’ve got it now.”
She looked at his empty hand, and realized after a few seconds that he intended her to take it in her own. She did. It wouldn’t be the first time that Mandoran had drawn her into a slightly different space.
The moment their palms connected, Kaylin could hear a voice. She couldn’t hear words, or something that sounded like syllables; she heard sibilance and moaning. As she listened, it grew louder. To her ears, it wasn’t a Barrani voice. Nor was it human.
“Before you ask, I’m not the academic here. I can’t tell you what’s speaking.”
“Is it getting louder because I’m actively trying to listen?”
“You wish.”
She really did. She turned to the door. “Jamal—something is coming. You don’t need to come out—but you need to tell us why you think Azoria did what she did. What did she order you to do?”
There was a longer pause, and when it was broken, it was broken by Mrs. Erickson. “He says...he says they were ordered to watch me. From before I was born. They didn’t expect that I would be able to see them because no one else could. But something changed for the children—either here or in my home. Azoria couldn’t see them when they were in my home. She might not have been able to see them at all once they’d left this place.
“They didn’t know that at the time. They discovered it later, when she came to our house—before I was born.” Mrs. Erickson frowned. “My parents considered her their benefactor; they were happy to see her, if a bit embarrassed; she was a grand lady and they were servants. But she came to visit from time to time. That stopped before I would have seen her, but the point Jamal is making, or trying to make, is this: she couldn’t see them.
“He thinks she did look. They could hide from her—they can hide from me—but Jamal became bolder in those years. He’d take more risks. He eventually just stood in front of her and let her know exactly what he thought of her. She didn’t react. He says the only time she did is when he walked right through her; she stopped then, looking around. She whispered because she didn’t want to alarm my parents.
“But her words then weren’t commands. There’s something about this place that seems to give her power.
“The children weren’t drawn to this building until tonight; they just couldn’t leave my house. But they did talk to me, they did interact inasmuch as they could. They were still children then.” They were still children now. They were the age they had been when they died. “When they realized that she couldn’t see them and couldn’t...force them to obey, they chose to continue to watch. They meant to protect me or offer warning if it became necessary.
“They didn’t know what they had been ordered to look for. I don’t think she intended that I see them at all. But they saw her, and she was aware of their presence, when she came to paint the portrait of my family.” Mrs. Erickson’s brows rose.
“Jamal knew that any painting she made—of anyone—was bad. It wasn’t safe. But my parents loved the painting; it was a great comfort to my mother in the years after my father died. Nothing terrible happened to my parents, although they were part of the painting. The children didn’t like the painting, of course. They were deeply worried and deeply suspicious. But my parents spent time in that room, near that painting, and it didn’t affect them. It didn’t affect me. I played in that room as a young child; it was where my mother liked to sit when she was knitting.
“I do remember the children telling me that it was a bad painting,” she added, an odd smile adorning her face. “The artist was bad. My parents looked terrible. My hair looked stupid. I asked about the flower. They couldn’t see it. I assumed that was deliberate, at the beginning. I’m not so sure now.
“After my parents passed, the children began to avoid the room. And as the years passed, avoidance became apprehension, anxiety, and eventually terror. I avoided the room because whenever I drew close to it, the children started to panic. Jamal sometimes breaks things when he panics, and it grew harder and harder to reach them through their fear. But you saw what they were like.”
Kaylin nodded.
“Seeing the painting—seeing images of my parents—became less important than the children; I closed the door to the room, and I acted as if it didn’t exist. The first time the room had been entered in decades was when you visited.” She frowned. “Jamal says the house began to change when the two of you entered the room.
“They began to hear Azoria through the closed front door; they could sense that she was somehow searching for them in an attempt to find them. But, dear,” she added, obviously to Jamal, “that doesn’t explain why you said what she wants is for me to—to break my promise.”
Silence.
“He’s not answering.”
“Jamal—”
“He says she thought I would be special. She did something, made something—I’m not sure which. A necklace or a ring. She gave whatever it was as a gift to my mother, an heirloom that might be given to the child she would bear. Jamal just called it jewelry, and I don’t think he’s being deliberately difficult.”
“Well, that’s a change.”
“He heard that.” She winced, but a hint of smile was preserved; it melted away as she continued to speak. “I’ve told you my parents didn’t have a lot of money. They felt so lucky to be given the land for this house, but they had to build it, and that was costly. My mother ended up selling what little jewelry she had—she had a baby on the way, and they needed to have a roof over that child’s head. I think she must have sold whatever it was she was given; it would have been the most valuable piece she owned.
“Jamal thinks my mother was meant to wear whatever she’d been given during the pregnancy, and possibly beyond it. But...my parents were practical people, and not given to sentiment. If the gift received was too rich, too impressive, too ornate, my mother would have set it aside regardless—she wouldn’t have wanted to tempt thieves.”
Kaylin knew exactly what that was like. Wealth spoke of power if you were careless enough to flaunt it; it meant you weren’t concerned about thieves—or worse. She also knew that in Elantra, not the fiefs of her childhood, there was less fear of theft—but regardless, Kaylin didn’t wear valuables. She thought she would have liked Mrs. Erickson’s parents, had they ever been able to meet.
But she considered one thing as Jamal continued to speak—inaudibly—to Mrs. Erickson. Every single one of the children had not, according to the law, died. Their ghosts gave lie to that, but their bodies had been found, and their bodies had returned to their homes. Every one of them had been arrested for breaking and entering.
She wondered, as she considered, whether or not they had been searching for whatever it was Mrs. Erickson’s mother had sold. All had died, executed for murdering their own families or the people they were living with. What had possessed them? Azoria herself? But she’d inhabited the body of the painter without becoming psychotically insane.
But there had been no further ghosts, or at least no ghosts sent to watch and report on Mrs. Erickson. Had the last child finally found what Azoria had been seeking?
She shook her head. The neighbor.
The neighbor had accused Mrs. Erickson of theft; he wanted to push his way into her house to find...something. Jamal kept him out, and there was enough of his own thoughts, his own beliefs, in him that he was frightened of ghosts. He had never managed to enter.
But upon sighting Teela that one time, he had remained in his own house; he didn’t come out to the lawn to watch for Mrs. Erickson’s arrival. His reaction to Teela implied—heavily—that he had been in contact with a different Barrani woman. To mortals with very little experience with Barrani, all Barrani looked the same.
The neighbor had been broken. His hostility to Mrs. Erickson had come, in the end, from Azoria, even if that hadn’t been her intent. Whatever her intent had been, it had been garbled in the neighbor’s head. He didn’t know what he was looking for. He knew that it was in Mrs. Erickson’s home.
Maybe he wasn’t looking for the same thing the possessed bodies of the dead children had been looking for. Maybe Azoria thought it was somehow still in the house, unused, unseen. Maybe he’d intended to do something with the painting—take it off the wall, make Mrs. Erickson look at it—Kaylin didn’t know.
“Jamal believes that when my mother passed away, I was to have whatever jewelry she’d been given. That I might wear it in memory of my mother, to whom I was quite close. But...he says she did sell it—he heard her talking about it with my father. So...I was meant to wear it. I was meant to sit in the room with the painting. I was meant to...” Her brows rose.
“Mrs. Erickson?”
“I was meant to become a vessel, he says. I was to become like the children—and Azoria would become me.” She looked down at her wrinkled hands. “I don’t understand. What would she want with me? She has forever. She has power. She clearly had wealth.”
Kaylin and Teela exchanged a glance; neither answered the question. But in the room, the answer suggested itself: Mrs. Erickson was a Necromancer. She could control the dead.
Sanabalis had called her a shaman. Someone who could see the dead, communicate with them, possibly help them disentangle themselves from the land of the living.
Why would Azoria want a shaman—or even a Necromancer? What did she intend that she wanted that power?
It was Severn who answered. He said what Kaylin couldn’t quite put into words, solidifying the threat: If she destroys the Lake, the Barrani are essentially dead.
And she would rule them.