If air could tighten, the air did. It wasn’t cold; it was almost viscous—like liquid one could breathe with effort.
Chosen.
Kaylin grimaced. The marks on her arms had been glowing a steady gold, but as Azoria approached, that color changed: they took on a gleaming green cast. Kaylin had asked what Azoria needed to devour. She’d killed humans; she’d taken over their bodies—imperfectly at first, if the children were anything to go by, and more perfectly thereafter, given the painter. None of those deaths had clearly served the purpose this...space was intended to serve.
But Kaylin’s marks were ancient words, True Words, things given her—without choice on her part—for reasons she had never understood.
It was to those marks that Azoria’s gaze fell, her brows rising, her eyes widening. “What is this?” she demanded, her voice slightly distorted. “Why do you bear the marks of the Chosen?” It was an aggrieved fury, studded with the usual Barrani judgment and arrogance.
Kaylin shrugged, a fief shrug; it was petty, but she knew that nonchalance infuriated people like Azoria. “I was Chosen.”
“Impossible! You are mortal!”
“Then I’m lying and these aren’t mine.”
“They shouldn’t be. They shouldn’t be yours.” The words were heated.
“You can take it up with the Ancients, then—if you can find them. I didn’t ask for them.”
“Give them to me. Give them to me, and I will allow you to leave unharmed.”
Kaylin shook her head. “You know that’s not the way it works. Or maybe you don’t. But that’s not the way it works.” No. If she could have gotten rid of the marks at the age of twelve, she would have given them to anyone who asked. She might have—and she was far less proud of this—given them to some other poor sod, just to be free of them.
And she wouldn’t have the life she had now, and she loved that life. Mostly.
Hope squawked. Kaylin wasn’t certain who he was speaking to—she assumed it was Azoria. Azoria clearly heard the sound of his voice, and turned toward him, her eyes rounding before they narrowed in simmering resentment. Her body blurred in place, flickering as if the form she wore required concentration.
Hope squawked and spread his wings in one sudden snap of motion; the wings extended far beyond their normal size; they stretched across the whole of Kaylin’s face as they continued to expand. She noticed the moment the texture of the wings—still transparent—shifted, from something that might have been a glass rendering of leather to something with actual feathers, and she knew that Hope was no longer sitting on her shoulder; when he spoke, she knew he wouldn’t be squawking.
“No,” he said. “But those who are not meant to hear will hear nothing intelligible. It is the nature of my communication. Do not waste time or breath arguing with Azoria; she understands reality only as it pertains to her. The world beyond her is part of her story; there is no independence in any of it.
“To Azoria, the world reflects her. Whether it bows to her needs or defies them defines whether or not it is ‘good’ or ‘evil.’ The lives she touches are, in some measure, there for her needs, her purposes, her examination. She can empathize only when those other lives map directly onto her own. She has moments of great generosity—which you will, of course, never experience. But the generosity is that of a noble ruler, a noble owner. She will be kind to those things that are hers, and the imperative to do so is entirely internal.
“You are, to her, evil. You attempt to take things which are rightfully hers. You have the marks of the Chosen, and she recognizes them. And Severn has the weapons the green hides from almost all of her kin. She is angry,” he added, lifting a hand, palm toward her, as if rejecting her utterly.
A pale shield spread from that palm in all directions, becoming a sphere. Kaylin had seen it before.
“No, you have not. She is powerful, Kaylin—or she was, while she lived.”
“I don’t think she’s dead.”
“Neither does she. And I see that my assumption was not entirely correct. But she is not alive by Barrani standards.”
Azoria hissed in rage. Clearly Hope had intended that she hear some of his words.
“What do you know?” she demanded.
“I know who you are,” Hope replied. “And I know that you could never pay the price my use demanded.”
If the marks of the Chosen had angered her, Hope’s words enraged her. Her form flickered again, but this time it lost some of the cohesion of a Barrani body. Although the eyes in the hair—and on the perfect skin of her forehead—had been foreign and disturbing, she had nonetheless looked almost normal.
“Severn,” Hope said. “Join us.”
Kaylin couldn’t take her eyes off what Azoria was becoming, but she spoke to Hope. “We can’t—Mrs. Erickson and the children are right there.”
“Yes, Kaylin. As are those who were trapped in this house in Azoria’s webs. But you have failed to understand something important.”
“Go ahead.”
“They are dead. There is nothing you can do to protect them. That time—their time—has long passed. Any intervention you offer here will not bring them back. Perhaps, were they to be taken to Helen, she might create a space in which they could be contained safely, and they might know a fraction of a normal life—but you cannot.”
“Mrs. Erickson isn’t dead.”
“No. No, she is not. Azoria does not appear to recognize her. She considered herself a scholar, a genius, but she was always vain—as are most of the living, the vanity being defined entirely by the lives that have shaped them.”
“What do you mean?”
“She would not now choose Mrs. Erickson, even were her rituals and spells to activate; Mrs. Erickson is old.”
“The Barrani don’t care about that.”
“Because there is no difference to the Barrani. Age implies power. There is no weakness that arises from it. Azoria has lived a mortal life. Several mortal lives. Look at the ghosts that Mrs. Erickson partially freed. Are any of them elderly?”
None were.
“It is not vanity alone, of course; it is power. But she cannot perceive the power in the age and wisdom of mortals; there is too much concomitant weakness. An’Teela will protect Mrs. Erickson.” He raised his voice. “Severn.”
Listen to him, Kaylin said, through the name bond.
I’m actually trying.
You’re standing still.
Yes. Whatever Azoria is, the weapons of the green don’t like. The only reason I’m standing still is because I do have some control.
Kaylin frowned. You’re sure it’s the weapons? You’re certain it’s not Azoria somehow attempting to feed on them?
I’m certain. He didn’t elaborate. Nor did she ask for more information. She trusted Severn to know himself. They want me to attack, but I’m uncertain what will happen to the power of the blades if they strike Azoria in this place. I think it’s what she wants at the moment. There’s something off about it.
You think?
“He can’t come. He’s holding steady instead of charging ahead—the weapons of the green apparently want to dice her into small bits. She can’t hear me, can she?”
“No. She is aware that you are speaking. And she is possibly aware of what I am to you.”
Kaylin shrugged. “She can’t get any angrier, can she?”
Hope didn’t reply. Not to Kaylin. But he lifted his head, retracting the spread of his wings as he gazed at Azoria, or at what she had become.
Her skin had spread, the shape of her face changing, the smooth regularity of Barrani arms bending in the wrong way. From those arms, hands that had appeared to be Barrani began to shift in shape as well, fingers melding together to become pincers, although they retained the color of, the implied texture of, flesh, not chitin. Her body remained more or less as it had first appeared.
“It will change,” Hope said.
“Will ours?”
“No. We are no part of this breeding ground. This was a space she entered as participant; she understood only half of its imperatives.”
“How do you know this?”
“Because sometime in the not-too-distant past, she attempted to summon me. I listened; she was close enough that I could hear her voice. But she could not offer me the sustenance I require. She was—she is—brilliant, but she has never understood the way knowledge and self must fuse.
“It is the weakness of being as she is: she is at the center of the universe, and she sees herself as unchanging; as the one essential element, the only actual truth.”
This didn’t make sense to Kaylin. “She does what Terrano does.”
“Yes, and no. Terrano’s goal when he began his divergence from the laws that governed the body of his birth, was freedom. He did not wish to deprive others of theirs unless it accomplished that goal. He did not see the cohort as a tool; he did not see it as an impediment. He considered it a responsibility. Had they not been imprisoned, he would never have become what he is.
“His is a bright mind, a curious mind; he will always seek answers to the questions that arise. But he is focused only on that. It is why the Academia itself both accepts his presence and rejects his inclusion.”
Kaylin flinched as Azoria’s face began to lose the appearance of a Barrani face. Just as her hands had done, elements of that face warped and distended.
“Sedarias!”
Sedarias glanced at Kaylin.
“Don’t let her touch any of you in any way.”
The leader of the cohort looked annoyed by the words, but she did draw sword. So did Teela. Teela’s sword, however, drew Azoria’s immediate attention.
“Terrano could not have become Azoria because he has no desire to have power over others. Did he cause injury and possible death in his desire to escape captivity? Yes. Yes, he did. But if Alsanis had simply allowed the cohort to leave, he would have ignored his people—and yours—entirely. He made no attempt to justify his actions to either you or his victims. She believes that as she is the center of her own life, she is the center of all. I did not answer her call, but I heard it.
“I answered yours.”
“I didn’t call you! I had no idea that something like you could even be called. I’m not a Sorcerer—why would I even think of summoning a familiar?”
“Why, indeed? But look at you. You have bumbled your way, in ignorance, into becoming Chosen, and you have, at your side, a familiar that might once have served Sorcerers of old. Were it not for Severn and Teela, she would immediately attempt to devour you whole.”
“Devouring me won’t give her either of those things.”
“No—but you do not deserve them, Kaylin. She does, as she worked so hard and so thanklessly. If she is not to have them for all of her effort, no one shall.”
Teela’s sword was glowing a very, very odd color.
“She’s not a Dragon,” Kaylin began.
“Did you believe that the Dragonslayers were only effective against Dragonkind? You have seen the swords in use to great effect, and they were not used against Dragons at that time. The weapons are empowered to fight many things, and they grant their users powers they would not otherwise possess.”
Azoria’s flesh lost the perfect, unblemished Barrani skin. A hint of color began to spread across her face, her arms—an opalescence that Kaylin had seen many times. Shadow.
“Things will become hectic very soon,” Hope said, voice soft. “I can only slow time for a very narrow period.”
“Slow time?”
“Hers. You didn’t think she was standing in the doorway observing us for no reason, did you?”
Kaylin was certain that Severn had heard what Hope said; she shouted a warning to the cohort to let them know that whatever Azoria might unleash was incoming.
Mandoran cursed—in Leontine—and said, “When we get home, we’re exchanging names! This is stupid!”
“Not a great time to get into a screaming match with Sedarias,” Kaylin snapped.
He laughed. “You think we haven’t already been enduring that?” And because of a lack of their names, Kaylin wasn’t.
Kaylin then turned the whole of her attention to Mrs. Erickson and the children. Yes, they were dead. She knew that. And in theory death was the worst thing that could happen to someone; beyond death, the living had no real responsibility.
But that wasn’t true of Mrs. Erickson, because she could see the dead.
And it probably wasn’t entirely true of Kaylin, either.
“No,” Hope said, voice soft, eyes so narrow they were almost closed. “She has discovered that she gains no sustenance from the dead. It is the living upon which she must feed.”
“Is she dead?”
Hope said, “According to the Barrani, she is dead.”
“I know that, but—”
“According to the Barrani, so were the cohort—they were barely attached to the names that had given them life. I do not think the separation the same; they did not use their names the way Azoria attempted to use her own. Alsanis protected their names, and protected the attachment—slender and attenuated—that their bodies retained to those words.
“They shifted and changed their forms because escape required it. But they had as much time to learn the extent of those changes as Azoria herself had. She was not exposed, as they were exposed, to the regalia; the regalia alters people in subtle fashion but children are not yet...fully themselves. Azoria was, when she began to walk this path.”
“I want to know how you know all this, but it’s going to have to wait.” Kaylin pivoted on one foot. “Terrano, Mandoran—somewhere in this house, Hope thinks there’s a name. A True Name. He thinks it’ll be like yours was, except without Alsanis hiding it or preserving it.”
“Did we not assume that her words were drained of power?” Mandoran asked.
“Hope clearly didn’t,” Terrano replied.
“What are you standing there for? Go!”
“Wait—why me? Terrano is the one who can leap through planes!”
Terrano folded his arms. “Did we find our names, or did you?”
Kaylin cursed in voluble, but brief, Leontine. “Hope—talk to them!”
“She will enter the room, and she will see you leave it. Or rather, she will see you vanish. I do not know what she will make of that. Come. You know where we have to go.”
“I don’t want to leave Mrs. Erickson!”
“If you hurry, Mrs. Erickson will be the safest person—living or dead—in that room. You must move quickly, Chosen. If I must keep this up for any longer, you will have to pay the price.”
She knew what that meant.
She had asked him, a few times, to use the power for which familiars were legendary. He was willing to do so, if she was willing to accept the consequences. Had those consequences been hers to pay, she would have done it with fear, and likely future regret.
But no: he demanded that she sacrifice some of the things she wanted, desperately, to protect. She’d stopped asking, but she’d wondered—as she wondered now—what Sorcerers would sacrifice, or would have, in the past.
Anything, he replied, as she began to sprint toward the door in which Azoria was standing. But it was seldom understood that in order to sacrifice something of value, one must value something other than oneself.
She flinched, turned sideways, sliding as she did between Azoria and the destroyed door. She’d long since perfected the art of fleeing through a crowd.
“Then what did they sacrifice, if you did what they wanted?”
Their limbs, some portion of their personal power, whether that be monetary or magical. To sacrifice, one must highly value the thing one intends to exchange. Love is useful, in that regard.
Had she not been running, she would have been outraged.
Love is not necessary. One can value power without loving it; one can prize currency, without loving it. In time, the marks of the Chosen might serve as a sacrifice—but that time has not yet arrived, for you.
“You already ate one!”
Hope laughed. It was a sound more felt than seen; there was warmth and movement in its almost musical cadence. Yes, that is true. But that was not a sacrifice on your part. Were you a different Chosen, it would have been.
Kaylin leaped down the stairs, two and three at a time, her palm skirting the railing. “Why did you eat it, then?”
Power and sustenance. If you do not fully understand the marks you have received, you utilize them instinctively.
She considered that as she hit the foyer floor and turned toward the gallery from which Mrs. Erickson had so gently extracted the dead. Widening her stride, she sprinted down the hall, thinking about Mandoran’s True Name, and wishing that she actually had it.
What she hadn’t wished for was Terrano’s name. She certainly hadn’t wished for Terrano.
“You’re going for the door in Azoria’s self-portrait.” He appeared at her side, keeping effortless pace with her all-out run.
Kaylin said, in slightly labored syllables, “I’m going for the door I couldn’t see, yes.”
“Sedarias sent me, before you try to get rid of me.”
“I can talk to Severn. Stay upstairs where Azoria is!”
“In case you hadn’t noticed, Severn isn’t a big talker, and he has his hands full. Sedarias can’t hear Severn the way she can hear me, and she wants me here.” Terrano wasn’t sprinting, so he had no trouble finding the breath for words. “You couldn’t see the door. I’m here to help with that.”
While Kaylin believed he could help, she was willing to bet that wasn’t the primary reason he was here. He’d wanted to open that door the moment he saw it, and he now had an excuse.
The first thing Kaylin noticed as the painting came into view was the lack of its central figure. Azoria Berranin, framed and larger than life, was no longer in it. The painting’s former background was now foreground. She had thought the outlands more vivid, more real, than the woman to whom they had served as background, and in her absence, that impression solidified. The painting appeared to be a portal, or a window into the outlands.
But this wasn’t a sentient building. She was certain of that.
No. No, it is not.
Azoria had used the High Halls’ connection to the outlands, and the High Halls were definitely sentient. Azoria had clearly learned how to reach that space without tapping into the roots of the High Halls or any other sentient building.
Terrano came to a stop to Kaylin’s right; he offered her a hand. Kaylin grimaced and took it. She glanced at her shoulder, but Hope wasn’t on it; he was at her back in what she thought of as his Aerian form.
Terrano cursed in Leontine. “I have no idea,” he muttered, “how Mandoran manages to move you. You’re like deadweight.”
“What the hells does that mean?”
“Don’t distract me—he’s trying to explain it. Just...let me know when you see the damn door.”
Kaylin muttered a Leontine imprecation and continued to stare at what remained of what had once been a portrait. Something flickered directly in front of her, and as she turned her head to look at Terrano, she caught a glimpse of something that might have been a door from the corner of her eye. She turned to the painting and lost it. “Almost there—I can see something out of the corner of my eye, but I can’t see it when I look straight at it.”
“Yeah. It’s like faint starlight. I’m not standing in the right place yet, but closer. Do not let go of my hand until you have the door in sight. Sedarias says: or at all. Seriously, you don’t want any of our names—you’d never get away from Sedarias.”
Kaylin grinned in spite of the urgency of the situation. “That’s it—I can see the door. It’s very faint, more like the ghost image of a door than a door.”
“Yeah, that’s what it looks like to me as well. There might be a slice of space in which it looks totally normal, but if there is, it’s not one I’ve experienced. Yet.”
“But if it’s a ghostly door, how are we supposed to open it?”
“Pardon?”
“How do we grab the doorknob?”
“Okay, we’re definitely not seeing the same thing; there’s no handle.”
“No? Do you see an actual door?”
“Yes. It’s a door, with a glowing ward in the center.”
Kaylin couldn’t see a ward. “Please don’t tell me that the ward is bright green. No, let me amend that. I don’t want the ward that you can see and I can’t to be bright green.”
“Sometimes we don’t get what we want. What makes you think it’s green?”
“Because you’re green again, and...so are the marks.”
“I don’t look green to me.”
“No? What do my marks look like to you?”
“Colorless.”
“I really hate subjective reality. If you don’t mind, I’m going to try to open the door the normal way.”
“Door wards are the normal way.”
“Fine. The poor person who can’t afford door wards way. Better?”
“Slightly. Sedarias says she will chop off a hand if you let go of me.”
“Yours or mine?”
“She wasn’t specific. She always worries that I’ll get lost.”
Kaylin glared at him for a beat, and then reached out to touch the ghostly door. Because she was moving slowly she noticed that her hands, like the door, were pale and transparent, but that transparency was tinged green.
I’m not sure where this will take us, and I’m not sure we’ll remain in contact, she told Severn.
Severn didn’t answer. Using their bond, Kaylin risked a glimpse of the room she’d deserted; she could see that Azoria had learned the fine art of spitting, Wevaran style. Severn’s chain was spinning; the webs didn’t find purchase there. But they’d found purchase on random parts of the floors—and walls—and Mandoran’s shouted warning made clear that they weren’t just revolting blobs. No one was to stand in them, and no one was to be hit by them; he thought they’d teleport whatever body part they hit into a different place, while leaving the rest of the body behind.
Azoria, in the brief glimpse Kaylin took, had only sprouted two extra arms, but her face was no longer Barrani. It wasn’t Wevaran, either; it was like a flesh mask of a bad artist’s hastily crafted version of a Wevaran, if Wevaran had Barrani skin.
The eyes, on the other hand, were waving in the air at the height of their stalks.
Take the eyes out, Kaylin told her partner. We’ll hurry. She took a deep breath, prayed that the handle worked and the doorway wasn’t an actual portal, and reached out.
The handle of the door felt solid beneath her hand. She gripped it tightly, felt no magical blowback, and twisted the knob. The door, which should have swung open, dissolved instead; only the doorknob remained. That, and the oddly glowing frame.
“Yes,” Terrano said, although she hadn’t asked. “It’s a portal. Don’t let go of my hand.”
Kaylin nodded as Terrano pulled ahead, almost jerking her off her feet. She closed her eyes, which sometimes helped, and entered portal space.
She suspected, as lunch attempted to escape her stomach, that portals from one place in a building to another didn’t cause nausea because she remained in the same general space. She had very little hope that this portal would be like Hallionne portals, and indeed, it wasn’t.
“Just keep your eyes closed,” Terrano said.
She had tucked her chin, and her shoulders were curling toward what passed for ground. She didn’t need to see, given Terrano’s presence—and attempting to see what existed in portal space, as opposed to outlands space, never made things easier.
She felt the passage as if she were walking through molasses—or worse; the air felt heavy in her lungs, and her chest ached with the effort of drawing breath.
“We’re almost through,” Terrano said gently. He spoiled this act of kindness by adding, “I’d’ve been through to the other side ages ago if I didn’t have to drag you along. You can open your eyes but if you’re going to throw up, give me some warning.”
Kaylin opened her eyes slowly.
If she’d hoped that somehow, beyond the door, there would be actual geography, she was bitterly disappointed; she was standing, by Terrano’s side, in the outlands. Here and there light flickered sharply, as if it were lightning in distant, ground-level storm clouds.
She once again looked at Terrano; he was green, the green less vivid, less repulsive, than the green of the flower in the painting.
“Okay,” she said. “We’re here. We need to find a word.”
“No problem. I’ll follow you.”
That, an oddly familiar voice said, would be a waste of time—and I believe time is of the essence to you.
She turned to look in the direction of the voice, and saw nothing.
Terrano sighed. “I forgot about you.”
Apparently so did Lord Kaylin. As the words continued, they became deeper, the slight whir replaced by a rumble. Had she any doubt about whether or not this was the outlands, she lost it as Spike, invisible at the command of the High Halls, began to unfold.
In reality—which was increasingly becoming an extremely ill-defined word—Spike was a small ball with spikes that covered most of his spherical surface. In the outlands, Spike could become enormous, and clearly, he was doing so now.
The High Halls bid me follow you for a reason, Spike said. You cannot perceive what you refer to as the outlands with any subtlety. I believe Terrano can, but it requires work on his part.
“Did the Avatar tell you to tag along because he thought we’d end up here?”
You will have to ask. Spike towered above them. From a distance, he looked Draconic, but neither Kaylin nor Terrano had the advantage of distance. Long neck, long tail, six legs that could barely be seen above the constant, moving fog, only Spike’s eyes retained color, and it was the familiar speckled black Kaylin had always associated with Shadow. No, that wasn’t entirely true. When he opened Dragon-sized jaws, the interior of his mouth was blood red.
Perhaps you wish to ride, he told them both. We will have to cover a great deal of ground, as you call it, and you may lose me otherwise.
In any other circumstance, the possibility of losing something the size of a Dragon would be laughable. Not here. Also: Spike was considerate enough to create a riding space that wasn’t hard, spiky, or scaly.
Look ahead, Chosen. You might be able to see what we are following; it is a very, very fine thread.
Kaylin nodded. She did try, but she couldn’t see what Spike could see. Neither, apparently, could Terrano—but he was more annoyed at the inability. They both climbed up Spike’s back.
“Hope?”
Don’t be ridiculous, her familiar said. He glanced at Spike, shrugged, and transformed, from an almost Aerian-like being to a much more Draconic one. I am perfectly capable of following Spike’s trail without the need to encumber them.
Kaylin nodded. “Hold on tight,” she told Terrano.
Spike began to move.