Cast in Chaos

Which was good, because something began to pull from the other side. She could feel it grab her legs, and the wound in her calf ached and burned with the unexpected solidity of its grip. She didn’t want to lose her leg.

But she knew that Nightshade didn’t care if it was only her leg that was lost; she could feel the thought, absent words to shape or form it. All that mattered now was that she remain here, with him. He lifted his face; she felt his chin rise, although hers was pretty much plastered to the front of his robes. She could almost see what he saw: the small gap in space, through which her legs had yet to emerge, and the edges of the place she was trying so hard to escape. Closing her eyes didn’t help; the sudden disorientation, the unwelcome glimpse of Barrani vision and Barrani sight, made her head and her stomach do the same hideously unpleasant lurch that Castle Nightshade’s portal did.

But even as she began to spin into the nausea of portal passage, she saw what now existed on the other side of the rapidly shrinking tear: darkness, broken by stars and the borealis of a foreign sky. And in it, some shape that was not shadow as she understood it; it was far too solid, far too real, for that. She could see no eyes, no mouth, nothing that made it look like the monsters of her nightmares—but in the lack of those things, she thought the darkest of nightmares lay waiting. And it needed no form, no face, no pathetic rendering of shape to devour.

No, it just needed her damn legs.

I am sorry, Kaylin, she heard Nightshade say. Knew that he meant to cut those legs off at midcalf. Knew, as well, that she couldn’t allow it—how could she be a Hawk without legs? How could she patrol, how could she run, how could she do the only things that defined her? She cried out in anger and fear and even the darkness on the other side of life—which was death, all death—didn’t look so bad.

But she was spinning, disoriented, even while clinging so tightly to him that her hands crushed the fabric of his shirt and his hair. She kicked, struggling to pull herself free. His magic enveloped her, and she felt his desire to preserve her life over what her life meant to her, and she spoke a single word of denial.

It was not, however, an Elantran word. It wasn’t a Barrani word. It wasn’t Leontine, or Aerian or Dragon, the last of which would have been impossible anyway. It was a true word.

And true words, she discovered, like true names, had power.

She heard, for the first time, something rise out of the roar at her back that sounded like language. It had syllables, the shape and texture of words, the small dips and rises in tone; it had the elements of voice, which had always been important to Kaylin. It had the force of will behind it, a force just as visceral as hunger or desire—she knew, because it had those, too.

What it didn’t have, what she couldn’t hear, were actual words, and she was grateful for it. She spoke again, and this time—this time she heard Nightshade raise a cry of alarm; she felt his arms slide away from her as if she could no longer be safely held.

But for a minute more of her weight was on the right damn side of the portal. She kicked, and fell free. It would have helped if there had been anything to land on.

“Kaylin.”

She pushed herself up off the ground, and saw, as she opened her eyes a crack, that she was looking at gleaming, polished marble. She wanted to heave, she really did. Which was not outside of the norm, because she recognized this room: it was the foyer that graced Castle Nightshade. She had never arrived through the front door feeling human.

This time, she hadn’t even bothered with the portal.

Nightshade was considerate, as always; he waited until she could lever herself off the ground and stand—very shakily—on her own two feet. He hadn’t, however, dimmed the damn lights, and they stabbed her vision in a very unpleasant way. She exchanged a few words of Leontine with their bleeding bright haloes; they didn’t respond.

“Kaylin,” Nightshade said, when the last of the syllables had stopped echoing.

She looked up. His eyes were a shade of green that was almost, but not quite, blue. This was about as safe as he ever got. Waiting until the last of the nausea subsided would mean she’d be silent for another hour. Keeping her head very still, she said, “Thank you.”

He raised a dark brow, and offered her the briefest of smiles. It didn’t really reach his eyes. “I admit,” he said quietly, “that I was surprised.”

“That I called you?”

“Ah, no. That you have not, since the fief of Tiamaris was founded, returned to Nightshade. One would think it was almost deliberate.”

The problem with portals, and with Castle Nightshade’s portal in particular, was that she arrived feeling like she’d mixed alcohol on an all-night drinking binge. It wasn’t the best state of mind in which to have a conversation with her friends; it was a dangerous state of mind in which to have a conversation with the fieflord whose mark she bore. “It was deliberate,” she told him, because she knew he knew it anyway.

“May I ask why?”

She stopped herself from shrugging, and then met his eyes for a second time. “Do you mind if I sit down?”

“No. Forgive my lack of hospitality. Let us repair to a more useful set of rooms.” He hesitated, and then added, “Take my arm.”

“Pardon?”

“My arm, Kaylin. The Castle will be slightly more difficult for you to traverse at the moment than is the norm.”

Given what the Castle was normally like, this said something. He offered Kaylin his arm, in High Court style, and she placed her hand on it. It was difficult not to also place a large part of her weight on it. She made the effort. “Why will it be harder?” She asked, because it gave her something to focus on that wasn’t her nausea or his nearness, both of which were difficult for entirely different reasons.

He ignored her question as he led her along a hallway that seemed familiar.

They stepped through doors into the safety of a very large, and as usual, sparsely, but finely, furnished room. Only when the doors closed did Kaylin release his arm and step away. While the halls seemed to expand or collapse with no warning and no rhyme or reason, she had never seen the rooms change around her.

She made her way to the long couch, and sat heavily on cushions that were that little bit too soft. Nightshade remained standing. He had the decency not to offer her either food or drink. Her cheek was warm; the rest of her skin felt cold.

“How did I travel through the portal? Did you carry me?”

“No.”

“Did I walk?”

“No.”

Are we going to play twenty bloody questions while my head pounds and I want to throw up?

She didn’t say the last out loud. It didn’t make much difference; his smile was very chilly when he offered it.

“You dislike the portal of Castle Nightshade. I would have thought, given how deep that dislike is, that you might recognize it when you see it.”

“Oh, I do.” She paused as her thoughts, such as they were, caught up with her mouth.

“You were standing in the portal when you found me.”

Very good.

She closed her eyes. It helped, a little. Portal travel was bad enough to make her queasy—or worse—but it usually passed a lot faster. At the moment she wanted to fall over onto her side and curl her knees into her chest. Maybe sleep a little. Instead, she was having a conversation with Lord Nightshade.

“I was at Evanton’s,” she said, speaking slowly and clearly. “I walked into his Garden. Or I thought I walked into his Garden. But it wasn’t. It looked the same. It wasn’t the same.”

He nodded.

“So I tried to leave it. I ended up…nowhere. I could see his shop—but I couldn’t reach it. And eventually, I couldn’t see it, either.”

“That is when you…called me?”

She nodded. “You know where I was.” Not a question.

“I have some suspicion. Don’t rearrange your face in that expression. I am a Barrani Lord, Kaylin. I am not more, or other.”

“What was chasing me?”

He said nothing.

“Nightshade—”

“I have no definitive answer for you. I will not condescend to pointless conjecture.” He wasn’t quite lying; he was certainly not telling the truth. Which was about as much as anyone sane could expect from the Barrani, although given the turn the afternoon had taken, Kaylin wasn’t certain she qualified as sane. “But I could not find you by conventional means. I chose a…less conventional approach, through the Castle’s portal. It would not be an approach open to many. Perhaps the High Lord, or another fieflord—but only if you held their name.”

She opened her eyes. “What happened in Evanton’s store?”

“The Keeper’s domain is bound by many, many magics. Most of those are older than any known Empire. I cannot say for certain what happened. You might wish to speak with him, but I am not sure he will be able to enlighten you. May I suggest, for the duration of the current crisis, that you avoid wandering in his shop when he is not actively present?”

She grimaced, and then her eyes narrowed. “Current crisis?”

“I believe you are suffering from rains of blood, among other difficulties.” He raised a brow. “Come, Kaylin. You did not honestly think a difficulty of that magnitude would stay across the Ablayne?”

“I wasn’t thinking about it much at all. It’s not fief business.”

“Not yet, no. But I believe that your difficulty in the city and the difficulty you encountered in the Keeper’s abode are linked. “Remain here. I will return with food and water, now that you are somewhat more settled.”

Kaylin drifted off while Nightshade was absent. The room was quiet, the couch too comfortable. She was cold, here, and there were no convenient throws that she wanted to touch; she felt too damn grubby, and even at its simplest, Castle Nightshade was out of her league. But her stomach had settled enough that the complaints it now issued were the usual ones. She was hungry, damn it.

Nightshade had implied that he’d had to go to the portal to find her. Which said something about the portal. One of the many things it said? Entering it at the moment was probably not a great idea, so leaving might prove difficult.

But one of the other things it implied was that the portal existed in an entirely different space than the rest of the Castle. Or at least the rest of the fief. She turned that one over for a few minutes. What did she know about the Castle, after all? Its well, if you fell all the way down to the bottom and miraculously survived, contained a cavern with a vast lake that the Elemental Water could actually reach out and touch; its basement contained a literal forest of trees that seemed sentient—certainly more sentient than the Hawks when they’d been out drinking all night and had work the next day; somewhere beyond that forest, there was a huge cavern that was covered in runes that were very similar to the ones that adorned half of her skin.

She grimaced. What else?

There was a throne room. She’d seen it once. It contained statues of almost every living race in the Empire, and when Nightshade desired it, those statues came to life. Were, in fact, in some way, always alive. He’d said he used the power of the Castle to create them, but made it clear that he had started from flesh. But…how? How had he used that power? What had he told it to do?

She stood, found that her knees no longer wobbled, and began to pace in a rectangle around the low table.

What was the Castle, at heart? It was not the Tower of Barren. Or rather, of Tiamaris. It didn’t speak, or think, or plan, or love.

Or did it?

“No,” was the quiet reply.

CHAPTER 8

Nightshade stood in the open doors, a tray in his hands. Or rather, between the open palms he held to either side. She hesitated, and then walked quickly over to where he stood and lifted the tray the normal way. Watching the Lord of the fief play servant always unsettled her.

He raised a dark brow; his eyes were still the shade that exists just before emerald falls into sapphire. His hair, unbound, draped across both shoulders; his skin was pale. The tray shook in her hands; she looked at what was on it. Water, or a liquid just as clear and colorless, fruit, cut cheese, meat. No bread. She carried the tray to the table. He followed in silence.

She was always aware of where, in a room, Nightshade was. It might have been because of the mark; it might have been because she knew his true name. But she thought she’d have been just as aware if she’d had neither. Even his silences demanded attention. She could more easily ignore the Dragon Lords whose company she kept than the Lord of Nightshade.

He knew. It amused him. Which annoyed her. “Why doesn’t Castle Nightshade speak?” she asked, veering away from both annoyance and compulsion.

“I think you know the answer to that better than I.”

Clearly, if she were interested in forcing the conversation into safer channels, she was going to have to carry most of it. “You were there. You were there when the Tower of—of Tiamaris—woke.”

“I was there for only some part of it. My knowledge of the Towers at that time—and it was not without significance—was based in its entirety on their nascent forms. I understood, how ever,” he added, voice softer, gaze fixed on her face, “that I was not to be bored. I had encountered a mortal—a mortal with the unfortunate manners of a wild human, or a coveted one—and she bore my mark.” His glance brushed the sleeves of her shirt, and his eyes flared—literally.

Magic caused her skin to tingle and the hair on the back of her neck to rise. Before she could speak or move, the ties at her sleeves fell open, and those sleeves were rolled, end over end, up her arms until the inside of those arms were exposed. Both arms, simultaneously. It was a neat trick, for a value of neat that was also distinctly uncomfortable.

“You bore, as well, the marks of the Chosen. And you seemed both powerless and ignorant, in the main, of what those marks might mean to you should you survive them.”

“But the Tower—” she began, attempting to control the conversation. Or anything, really.

“The Tower of Tiamaris heard you,” was his reply. “As did I. You were there when his Tower woke. You were not, however, here. Nor were you in the other fiefs in which such Towers woke and found they were powerless. What you touched, Kaylin, you changed. You have not touched the heart of Castle Nightshade, and before you ask—if you are so foolish as to entertain the notion—no, you will not wake the Castle’s heart.”

But as he said it, she felt both the force of his declaration, and the tremor of uncertainty that lay beneath it. He wasn’t sure that she could be kept from it if she wanted to go to the heart.

“You are wrong,” was the cool reply. “But the only certainty is your death, and I am reluctant, at this moment, to kill you.”

“But at this moment,” she replied, half touching his thoughts, half speaking them as if they were also her own, “you can kill me. And you’re not certain that’s always going to be true.”

One brow rose, revealing more of the blue his eyes had become. He didn’t deny it, however; there wasn’t any point. Not that he wouldn’t have lied if there was any chance it would be effective; the burden of truth for any Barrani was decided by the gullibility of the audience, and the possible consequences of the lie itself to said Barrani.

She glanced at her arms.

“Yes,” he said quietly.

“You knew. You knew I would live in Nightshade. You knew it centuries ago.”

“I knew,” was the quiet reply, “that you would be born in the fief of Nightshade. I knew that you would grow here. I also knew that until the moment you were old enough, there would be no way to distinguish you from any other motherless human urchin.”

The words, and the callous sentiment that informed them so perfectly, caused Kaylin’s jaws to ache.

“I knew, when Severn Handred came to my Castle for the first time, that the long wait was almost done. Barrani are immortal, but we are not famed for our patience. I was not, initially, absorbed by the boredom and frustration of waiting. There was much, indeed, that I had to discover, much to achieve, before your arrival.”

“You knew that the Outcaste—the Dragon—would be here.”

“No. That, I did not know, not immediately.” He stepped toward her, and she stood her ground, tensing slightly as he raised his hand to touch her cheek. It was, oddly enough, the cheek that was unmarked. “I was not, then, the man I am now. What I could read from you—and I did try—was not so complete.

“But I waited, Kaylin.”

“You marked me.”

“Yes.”

“But you never said a word.”

“No. I knew, when we first met, that the time for speech would follow. But I did not wish to influence or change what might occur in the Tower in my past and your future. Had I, who knows what might have occurred in the darkness there? We might have no fieflord, no Tiamaris, and the shadows might now be spilling across the Ablayne, and from there, to the whole of the Empire.

“I interfered very, very little in your life. I knew very little of my role in it. I learned, for instance, that you would go to the High Halls, that you would face the test of the Tower there. You are not guarded or careful with your knowledge. Perhaps, if you lived to be my age, you would learn this caution.

“But perhaps not.” His fingers stroked her cheek; his eyes were a blue that spoke of sky, not cobalt. She didn’t know what it meant, and didn’t want to know. “I have been careful. I have been cautious.

“But the fief of Tiamaris now exists. The moment our paths crossed at that Tower in your timeline, I was free. I am no longer constrained by the possible future. I am no longer constrained by any attempt to meet the future as promised, by a single day, in the past.

“I understood,” he continued, “when Illien fell, what the significance of that long-ago meeting might be. I understood what the fall of Illien might presage. And I understood, as well, that you might face death when you returned, after centuries, to the Tower you had wakened.”

“That’s why you were there?”

“It is why I took that risk. Understand that I have played many games in the long stretch of years between our first meeting and that one. I explored, as Lord Tiamaris explored, and I learned what was possible for one with my abilities to learn. The Castle was not entirely expected, but I had explored such buildings before. I could not be certain that you would survive this entry into the Tower.”

“I might not have.”

“No. But I could no more join you in Illien’s Tower than Illien could join you in mine.”

“Would the Tower have known?”

“That I am bound to another? Yes.”

She wanted to ask how he knew. She didn’t.

“And in truth I would not risk my fief in the attempt. Had the Tower fallen, or had you fallen in the Tower, the shadows at the heart of the fief would now have two borders to my lands, and my power and ability to defend what I have taken—and held—would be taxed. Possibly to the point of failure.” He let his hand trail down to the underside of her jaw, and then, slowly, let it drop.

“But Tiamaris now exists. I feel his name as strongly as I have ever felt Illien’s or Liatt’s. In truth,” he added with a grimace, “it is stronger. He will never again venture across this border, and I fear that any forays I make across his will be instantly known.”

She took a deep breath, because now that his hand was not so close to her skin, she could. “Why does Castle Nightshade have a portal? The Tower doesn’t.”

“Tiamaris’s tower…does not?”

She mentally kicked herself. “No. The Tower’s Avatar thought it wasn’t needed.”

He raised a dark brow. “You mean, the Tower’s Avatar felt that you disliked them enough that she chose not to have one where you might be forced to use it.” Not a question.

Since it was more or less true, Kaylin shrugged. It was a fief shrug.

“It will compromise her security,” Nightshade offered, his eyes darkening into a more familiar shade of annoyance at the gesture itself. “But if you think there are no portals in her domain, you are mistaken. There will be at least one. She cannot be so foolish as to leave her heart unguarded.”

“I know what lies at the heart of that Tower,” Kaylin replied.

“I know. But there will be a portal somewhere within the Tower. You might never see it, although I think it unlikely that you will be able to avoid it entirely. The Tower trusts you, inasmuch as it is allowed to trust one not its Lord.” He walked over to the low table, and lifted a silver goblet. The contents absorbed some of his attention. “You gambled, Kaylin. It is an interesting gamble.

“A Dragon has never, to my knowledge, been fieflord before. It will also be interesting.” He sat, slowly, on the couch opposite Kaylin, who stood, motionless, to one side of the low table. “You cannot know how you intrigued me, the first time we met.

“You, dirty and underslept mortal urchin, bearing marks of power that even now you do not understand. Severn, who bears a weapon that whispers if you are aware of how to listen accompanied you, and Tiamaris, Dragon Lord, was by your side but clearly not your master.

“I had spent much of my life in the West March, and some of it at Court. I had endured—and passed—the test of Name. I had survived my family and my extended family’s particular exuberance for political power plays. It is something that whiled away time, and I learned to excel at it.”

No surprises there.

“But the entry into the Tower made the first meeting almost unremarkable. The Tower’s voice…I can still hear it. I can see her wings,” he added softly, “and see the obsidian glint of her skin as she landed and took the throne itself.”

“I can still see the bodies,” Kaylin replied, and this time, she did sit.

“You could see those before the Tower,” he answered. “The Tower did not tell you anything you did not already know. She helped you, in a fashion, to unburden yourself. Not more, and not less.”

Kaylin nodded; it was true. She was uncomfortable here, in this room, and she couldn’t really tell herself it was because of the portal transition—if that’s what it was—because she didn’t believe it. Nightshade’s gaze was now upon her face; it was as if there was nothing at all between his eyes and hers. Honesty with Severn, she could manage.

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