Holding on to Spike was more work than ideal. If he’d offered to carry them, he clearly wasn’t accustomed to passengers—or to keeping them neatly on his back while he was tearing up the fog that passed for ground in the outlands. Kaylin regretted not asking for Hope’s help, because she was certain he wouldn’t let her fall.
She was distracted by a distant building—an oddly shaped blur that seemed faintly familiar. It had no tower, and what appeared to be walls or roof were uneven in composition. It was the only feature in the otherwise gray, foggy landscape, and it appeared to be Spike’s destination.
As they approached, she revised her opinion. It wasn’t a building. It was a large—a giant—word, in shape and form similar to the marks on Kaylin’s arms. Long before Spike slowed to a stop, she could see the curve of line, the placement of the dots and strokes that implied meaning. Something—besides its existence and its height—felt off about it.
She slid off Spike’s back. Terrano did the same, but he hovered above the fog that obscured the ground. Kaylin, sadly, didn’t. Beneath her feet she could feel something with the give and consistency of flesh. It didn’t collapse beneath her weight, which was all she could really ask of ground—but she wished she could walk above it the way Terrano was.
Spike raised his head. His neck, extended, was longer than Hope’s in his full Draconic form. Here, Lord Kaylin.
Kaylin nodded. She reached out to touch what she assumed was a terminating stroke; it was cold and hard beneath her palm, and it had the consistency of rough stone. “Hope, do you have any idea what the word means?”
It does not, as you suspect, have innate meaning. It is not a True Word. It is not a name.
“I’m pretty sure it’s why Azoria isn’t technically dead.”
Terrano, never one to be unnecessarily cautious—or cautious at all—approached the area beyond this long stone line, where the mass of the characteristics that defined the marks Kaylin bore were gathered. “Hey—come here. Over here.”
Kaylin nodded. “Over here,” however, had to be reached the hard way: by climbing up onto the stone and walking across it until there wasn’t enough room between the flat, slight curve of its shape and the elements that rested above it.
This wouldn’t be the first time she had seen True Words as enormous, but again, this felt off. It felt wrong. Maybe because it was stone—and felt like stone—beneath her feet, and to her touch. “Does this look like stone to you?”
“Yes—badly quarried, badly finished stone,” Terrano replied. “But I want you to come here. Look at this part.”
“I’m trying,” she snarled. “Can you still hear the rest of your cohort?”
“No. Not easily.”
“I don’t care if it’s easy or not—is it possible?”
“Maybe? It’s a bit jumbled, but I recognize Sedarias’s voice; it just doesn’t resolve into words.”
Kaylin couldn’t hear Severn at all. Nor could she reach any of the Barrani whose names she held. She could—and did—manage to wedge herself between two levels of stone to finally reach a visibly impatient Terrano. “Is she worried?”
“She’s always worried. Don’t look at me like that—worry won’t solve anything. But figuring this out might.”
“I’m sorry I can’t walk through stone,” she snapped. “What are you looking at?”
Terrano muttered a brief word in mangled Leontine. He knew what Teela knew, but actual pronunciation took a bit more practice. “Here, can you see this?”
She shook her head. “It looks like stone, to me.” The stone in question was a vertical line that rose far above their heads, possibly to support a horizontal line at the height. “But I couldn’t see the door in the painting, either. Is it a door?”
“Not exactly.”
“What exactly is it?”
“I’m not certain. From one angle it looks like a crack.”
Kaylin couldn’t see a crack, but given Terrano’s color at the moment, that wasn’t surprising. “Hope, do you think you could go back to normal size?”
I do not think it necessary. What Terrano perceives as a possible crack, you are capable of sensing on your own.
Spike, however, whirred and clicked; if Hope was reluctant, Spike wasn’t. Kaylin held out a hand, and he came to her palm immediately, the protrusions for which she’d named him biting into her palm. He then proceeded to melt there, vanishing into a vaguely metallic puddle.
Kaylin joined Terrano. He lifted a hand, but she shook her head. “Hope says I should be able to sense it on my own, and I don’t need any more complaints about my weight.”
Terrano grinned, but lowered his hand as Kaylin reached out to touch the column.
Hope was right. If she couldn’t see a crack, as Terrano, still tinged vivid green, could, she could feel a sudden difference in texture. It wasn’t door width; it was only person width if the person was a starving four-year-old. But it was warmer than stone, and when she pushed against it, it had give.
It reminded her of the unseen ground that occupied most of the outlands.
“Spike, is this where the connecting thread is?”
He whirred and clicked in response, which was the largest disadvantage of small-Spike form. Hope, however distant he might have been, said, “He does not understand your question.”
“We see a very, very large structure in the shape of a word.”
Click. Whir.
Spike sees a word. The thread is attached to the word. I do not believe the stone structure both you and Terrano see is visible in the same way to Spike.
Which made no sense, but the outlands, combined with an almost dead Arcanist, was a place where sense was always going to be in short supply. And that was unfair. Spike could see clearly enough to bring them here at great speed. What he could see or sense was real.
“Is the word Spike sees as large as the one Terrano and I see?”
He does not understand the question, but says that it is like your marks.
Her marks were small enough to fit across her arms. But she knew enough now to know that how those marks were perceived varied by observer—one of them being Kaylin herself.
“Hope—does the building itself look like a word to you?”
What does it look like to you?
“Like...an attempt at a word, or an attempt at several words.”
But not a True Word?
She shook her head slowly as the import of the question grew roots. “This isn’t a word,” she finally said. “It has the right components, the right...parts, but it’s not a True Word. It’s...an attempt at creating a True Word.”
“With delusions of grandeur,” Terrano added, his tone implying agreement.
“But there’s a word here somewhere. A real one. It’s that that we need to find.”
Terrano nodded. “I think that’s your job,” he said. “I don’t see words the way you see them.”
Kaylin placed her hand flat against the part of the structure that felt disturbingly fleshlike. “I can’t see the word; I can only see the larger structure. But...it has to be here.”
Barrani—some Barrani—hated the existence of their own True Names, because the names that granted them immortality were a weakness that could be used against them, rendering them slaves to the will of another. Attempts to free themselves from those shackles had not historically gone well. Kaylin couldn’t tell if this was another attempt to do the same, but doubted it.
This was different. Azoria had taken something from the Wevaran, something from the Ancestors; she had learned enough to place her home in a pocket space that was attached to Mrs. Erickson’s home or land. She had learned enough to somehow capture the souls of living mortals and bind them, as if they were equivalent to Barrani names.
Kaylin wondered if some of the dead were here, in the outlands; if those she had devoured or those she had murdered had become the clay out of which this edifice of words had been built.
Where would Azoria’s name reside? At the heart of the structure. At its center.
Kaylin withdrew her palm because she needed it. She unsheathed her dagger.
“Are you sure that’s a good idea?” Terrano helpfully asked.
She wasn’t. But she was angry and she knew it. “If you’ve got a better idea, I’m all ears. Short on time, though.”
“I think I could fit in there, if it’s passable.” Passable to Terrano didn’t mean the same thing for Kaylin.
“And I think that would be about the stupidest idea ever if you don’t want to become part of a large, fake word.”
“What?”
“This is what she’s been building. I don’t know how long it’s taken, and I don’t know if it’s stable or if it gives her the power she hoped for when she first thought of it. I don’t think adding your name—an actual True Word, a word imbued with eternity—is going to help us in any way. But it won’t hurt her.”
“So stabbing it is better?”
“I’d be willing to bet on it.”
“You’re willing to bet on anything. Fine. Go ahead.”
Kaylin drove her dagger into the invisible fault line, praying that the structure didn’t scream in response.
Praying never worked.
The screaming wasn’t the worst thing—it sounded like the voice of a terrified crowd, one that anticipated pain and death. No, the worst thing was the blood. As if this small patch of the outlands was actually alive, Kaylin’s dagger pierced skin; as she withdrew the blade, liquid followed.
It was a pale liquid, golden in color, and it reminded Kaylin of the pool in Tara’s Tower, of the ancient mirror in the heart of the Imperial Palace. Of the blood of the Ancients, spilled so long ago, its true purpose lost to time. She almost dropped the knife, the impulse to reach—to treat—the wound she had caused was so visceral.
Her marks flared to life, gold as the blood that continued to spill from the wound.
What has she done? Hope said, his voice unnaturally soft, as if shock had robbed it of volume.
It was a rhetorical question; Kaylin made no attempt to answer it. Nor did she answer Terrano’s sharp “What are you doing?” when she placed both hands against the cut.
“Can you see the blood?” she asked.
“Yes. It’s golden,” Terrano replied. Spike was silent. “But you made that cut for a reason.”
It didn’t seem like a good reason now. Kaylin couldn’t explain and didn’t try. As the marks of the Chosen continued to glow she used the only power they’d granted her that she could deliberately invoke: she attempted to heal the damage she’d done.
The wound wasn’t wide; it was deep. She felt that as she began to push her awareness into the foreign body, seeking the damage, and seeking the damaged blood vessels that were shedding so much liquid. The wound, however, was far deeper than she’d realized. She knew better than to act in anger; the cause for that anger seemed petty now. If Azoria had built this place, it wasn’t Azoria she’d stabbed.
I’m sorry, she said, as she continued to expand her awareness. I’m sorry I hurt you. I didn’t—I didn’t know you were alive. She knew now. Something lived here. She couldn’t sense any of the usual features she expected from living bodies—lungs, heart, limbs—but she did find a head, a face, something that might have been the remnants of a person, trapped here and suspended somehow in a tangle of stone and steel. Had it been a corpse, she wouldn’t have been surprised; there was only so much damage and shock a body could take.
It wasn’t a corpse. She felt the truncated nerves and bones where limbs might have once been: four, all absent. The scalp had been scarred, the skin abraded so badly the flesh had rippled beneath it; she found a mouth, and the stub of a tongue, evidence of teeth, where teeth might have once been. Only the eyes—two eyes—were whole.
There was no word here, no True Name. Just what remained of a person of indeterminate race. Human, Barrani, Aerian, Tha’alani; the jaw was wrong for Leontine.
“Kaylin?”
“I’ve—I’ve found a person. But...their blood shouldn’t be golden.”
“You’ve found a person?”
She nodded. “I don’t think I can heal them—they’re really badly injured—but I’m not sure fixing those injuries when they’re stuck in whatever this stonelike substance is will work.”
Spike clicked.
“It is not stone, Spike says.”
“What is it?”
“Carapace.”
“But—it’s not their shell. I’d swear it.”
“Carapace can be removed.”
She nodded, and reached for the external skin of the entrapped entity. “Oh.”
“Oh?”
She shook her head. It was never wise to act in anger, but she was beyond anger now, and well beyond wisdom. Whatever was entrapped here wasn’t human. The sides of this pillar weren’t stone; they were calcified scabs. She couldn’t tear them off—it would take days, equipment, and manpower, none of which she had. But she could heal the skin beneath them; could try to force the body into its ideal, healthy state.
That is not wise, Hope said. You are expending far too much power.
But the marks were now glowing, and as Hope’s words trailed off into unanswered silence, they began to rise from her skin, flat forms becoming three dimensional forms that grew in size. They were all True Words—this much she recognized, in part because she could hear them, and the language felt familiar—a tongue she felt she should know, or could. She’d tried to speak True Words, but had never succeeded without aid; she did not try now. But she trusted the marks of the Chosen; she trusted their power to heal anyone who wasn’t dead yet.
It had always been borrowed power.
She didn’t hear the first crack. She did hear Terrano’s shout, half alarm, half glee, words garbled and distant. She saw new skin grow, shimmering faintly as it dislodged what she’d wrongly assumed was rough stone. And she heard voices as she reformed the missing part of the tongue; felt the ground beneath her feet shift. She almost lost contact, but the land stabilized—as if what she healed was now aware of her presence. That wasn’t unexpected—it’s the way healing worked with normal people of all races. But she wasn’t aware of them in the same way; she couldn’t hear thoughts or brush against stray memories. She tried, but only once; she got swept away in a torrent of images and sounds that she couldn’t process.
What had Azoria done? What had she found? What had she made?
The ground shook again; she could hear the loud thud of heavy objects striking softer ones. Also: Terrano cursing. Nothing hit her on the way down, which she attributed to Hope’s interference. Or Spike’s.
But her arms began to ache; her legs joined them. She felt sweat dribble down her eyelids.
Yes. I told you—you use far too much power.
“It’s not my power!”
A sword is useless without a wielder. Wielding the finest of blades takes effort, will, practice—it is not trivial. But...I would have said this was beyond you; it would have been beyond the Chosen in the distant past. You have done enough; pull back.
“I’m not finished yet—”
You are finished, Kaylin, Hope said. She was grabbed by the arms and borne almost instantly aloft, but she was carried by hands, not Draconic claws.
“What is it? What was I healing?”
If you cannot answer that question, no one here can. But come, look. You will not see this sight again should you live another century.
They didn’t have time to sightsee, and she opened her mouth to say as much, but forgot how to speak for a moment.
The building—the large word—was collapsing as Hope hovered, the slabs of...dead skin falling into the fog of the outlands as if they were thunder. It wasn’t the collapse that caused the loss of speech; it was what lay beneath her feet, shaking itself loose. It was a giant, with skin of shining gold. The missing arms and legs weren’t Kaylin’s work, but she understood why Hope had pulled her out; the giant was free enough, whole enough, to do that work themselves.
Shoulders emerged, and when they did, Kaylin saw that the creature had been almost prone; it rose, twisting shoulders to either side to shake off the last of its captivity. It lifted its head last, and it had fire for eyes, fire for hair—but that hair waved in the air as if the fire were serpents. Or some progenitor of the Tha’alani, writ large.
When it spoke, Kaylin understood why it had sounded like a crowd: multiple voices came from that single mouth. She really hoped that being stabbed hadn’t angered it.
It continued to unfold, to grow in height, in width; she could see golden filaments streaming out from its shoulder blades, as if they wanted to be wings. A gauze of light clung to those filaments. As she watched, that light spread, and spread again, until wings had formed.
Hope was utterly silent; had he not been forced to hover, Kaylin was certain he wouldn’t have been aware of her at all.
“Spike?”
Silence.
The only person who seemed willing to break the silence was Terrano. “I think the small lights might be the remnants of your people.”
“My people?”
“Mortals. There’s something about the quality of it that’s different, if you look at it the right way.”
“There are no words, though?”
“There must be,” Terrano replied. “Azoria didn’t build whatever that is. She might have found it, but she didn’t build it. Given what she was attempting to do with Mrs. Erickson—assuming she could somehow see or sense Mrs. Erickson’s gift at all—it may be that whatever we’re looking at isn’t actually alive. But Spike was certain that this was where the strand of Azoria’s life led.”
Kaylin nodded, frowning. “It felt alive to me. You can’t heal the dead.” As she spoke, she could see movement in the fog of the outlands, as if they had become clouds. Storm clouds. She could not see the creature’s feet, but the storm was gathering around where legs implied they would be.
“We need the word,” she said, voice even softer. “We need to separate it, somehow.”
“You think it gives her some kind of power over a god?”
God. The word rippled. Hope and Spike didn’t take issue with it.
“I don’t know. I don’t even know if what the word was is what it is now.”
“What were ours, when you found them?”
She frowned.
“We weren’t attached to our names when we first attempted to escape; we’d drifted from them, but we didn’t intend to desert them. Our ability to speak to each other the way we do is the name bond. When I refused to have the name fully returned to me, I couldn’t hear the others anymore. I liked the peace and quiet, but...I missed them. Their voices and their opinions had been part of me for so long it felt as if I’d lost something essential. What did my name look like?”
“Almost transparent; it was small and diminished—but it was still a True Name, a True Word. The thing that you were changing—the thing that changed—was you.” Her frown deepened. “I think your name might have become different had you not relied on the name bond. And I know there are things you can’t do because you accepted it. It defines some essential part of the physical you. Just...not as clearly as it does for people who weren’t subjected to the green, the regalia, and centuries of captivity.
“You think I’m looking for something like that.”
Terrano nodded.
“I wouldn’t have found your names had Alsanis not preserved them. You were his captives, yes—but you were his guests. I think he grew very fond of all of you, like a foster parent. She doesn’t have Alsanis—and frankly, I don’t think he could have grown fond of her in the same way.”
“Why?”
“Because she’s not like the rest of you. You’re all different people, and I really only know half of you at all—but you’re all capable of loving.”
Terrano grimaced, as if he were a teenager at that awkward age. Kaylin recognized the expression because she’d been one herself.
“What Azoria wanted wasn’t that, in the end. Look, if I’d met Sedarias under any other circumstance, I would have assumed she was the usual cutthroat Barrani.”
“She is.”
“Yes, she is—but she’s more than that. I think, if she had to choose between the cohort and being that typical Barrani, she’d choose the cohort.”
“Never let her hear you say that.”
Kaylin laughed. “Hope, I need to approach that being.”
Hope failed to move.
“You heard what Terrano said, right? I think, if we don’t get that word out of him, we’re never going to be free of Azoria.”
I think you have nothing to fear now. If that word is foreign, They will remove it themselves. There was a reason that you were forced to heal that being; Azoria simply took advantage of it.
“Will it make her stronger, if her name is somehow part of him?”
You have a very ghoulish imagination.
“I’m a Hawk. We tend to see a lot of the worst people can be. Will you let me take this risk?”
I don’t want to.
“You’re my familiar, right? In theory that means you don’t have the choice.”
I could drop you.
“Yes, but I’d like you to do it gently. Look—I think the wings are the gathering of the life force of mortals Azoria somehow stole. I kind of hoped they’d be released—but I don’t know what that would mean in this place.”
And Azoria’s name might be likewise absorbed. You do not understand what you are seeing.
“I know we don’t want that. Not if it’s somehow still attached. She’s a murderer several times over. If she’s not stopped, that will continue forever.” Probably literally forever. She lifted an arm; her marks circled it, like a moving, layered bracelet. “And I think I can get their attention.”
And if you have Their attention, what will you do with it? Will you surrender the marks of the Chosen in their entirety?
“That wasn’t my intent.”
Your intent might matter very little.
“I’m used to that. Put me down.”
I will, when the transformation is complete.
“Transformation?”
The outlands are responding to the will of this being, just as they would to the Hallionne. Watch, if you can, without talking.
Hope was right. He almost always was, which was the kind of extremely helpful that could also be annoying. Fog rose, and rose again, changing color and texture: pillars of something pale, by the dozen, reached for what passed for sky in the outlands. The sky itself shifted color as they rose, as if persistent gray was as much part of the outlands as the ground fog; gray gave way to a deep azure—the ideal of a cloudless, perfect day. In the distance, stars emerged in great numbers, as if they were accessories to the radiance of this single being.
No walls rose between pillars, but the ground became paneled wood beneath his feet, and the wood did not instantly become ash. There was a moon in the sky, low and bright, but no other light was necessary; the being shed it continuously, as if they meant to be living sun to the moon’s light.
Trees grew last, but grew tallest. Kaylin, not a botanist, didn’t recognize them. She thought it likely that Serralyn might, but Terrano couldn’t bespeak her from whatever this place was becoming.
Only when the trees’ branches began to bud and blossom did this being turn their attention to Kaylin. Hair rose in tendrils, as if they were fingers, but they fell short of the trees that had grown like forest. The only place the trees didn’t touch was the space in which Kaylin and her companions hovered.
“Come. I would speak with you, Chosen.” Even at this distance, his words were clear, and there was nothing that implied he’d raised it to cover the distance.
Hope flew Kaylin to the ground, where a path of stone formed beneath her feet.
He then dwindled in size and took up his perch on her shoulder, lifting a wing to smack it across her face. She noted that the wing, for the first time, trembled as it lay across her eyes. The wing didn’t change anything she could see. The ground-side vantage, however, made the being who had emerged seem even larger than it had from the air. It—he?—was beautiful. Barrani beauty, so envied by the merely mortal, was a pale, pale shadow of the beauty of this creature, which was odd: fiery tendrils for hair, fire for eyes, wings that looked far more Draconic than Aerian, and skin that looked like gold lit from within, wouldn’t normally have implied beauty to Kaylin.
“Did he just call you Chosen?” Terrano whispered.
Kaylin nodded. The marks on her arms still rotated at a distance from her skin; she imagined the other marks were also active, but less visibly so. Whatever power she’d used to heal what she could touch hadn’t dimmed their radiance at all, but she was uneasily aware, as she began to walk down this path, that that radiance was the color of the person who’d summoned her.
He stood, arms by his side, eyes upon her progress; she began to walk more briskly.
By the time she reached him, he had dwindled in size, but not in presence; he towered over her, but she could actually meet his gaze without toppling over backward making the attempt.
“Chosen, welcome,” he said, before she could speak. Which was good, because her mouth was dry and words had deserted her, probably for her own safety. “You may speak without fear of giving offense. I owe you a great, great debt, and the ability to cause offense is not in you; you might even stab me and be forgiven.” As he spoke, his eyes kindled briefly; Kaylin didn’t believe him.
“You have done so,” he said. “And my blood has fallen—as it fell before—upon the words you bear. You are a very, very fragile vessel; were the choice mine, I would not have chosen you to contain them. But those who know life know change and error; I would have been wrong.”
He didn’t ask her why she’d come, why she’d stabbed him, or even why she remained.
“No, but it is not necessary, in this space. I know. And I understand what it is that you seek; I understand—far better than you know—why you do so. Come.” He held out a hand. Kaylin found herself walking toward it, her own left hand raised as if to take it, before she could even consider movement.
She was uneasily certain that had he demanded that she kill herself, she’d be bleeding before she’d fully processed the command. Regardless, her palm was against his palm before she’d had time to form intention. Or anxiety. In a disturbing way, obedience felt as natural as breathing.
“You have questions.”
She didn’t, but the minute she heard the words, she did. “Why were you here? Why were you trapped? How could Azoria—how could anyone—imprison you?”
“We do not die as you die. We do not live as you live. You have seen my blood,” he added, “before you injured me here. It was not the only blood I shed, not the only blood required to build what we desired to build. We are purpose, Kaylin.”
She hadn’t given him her name, but wasn’t surprised to hear it. She had healed him, after all.
“My purpose was to die.”