Cast in Honor (Chronicles of Elantra, #11)(142)

She felt his annoyance. It was bad. But she understood, as well, that the High Lord couldn’t see the word. He could see what she saw, but only to a point. It was like Teela and Mandoran or Annarion. They were willing—sometimes eager—to explain, to let her see, but their explanations made no sense to her. Teela couldn’t process them.

She let panic go. Of all the weights she carried, it wasn’t one she could afford. She looked through Gilbert’s eyes—the ones that were open. Gilbert’s eyes couldn’t see the word there, either, which made no sense.

It is your word, Kaylin, the familiar said. It is a word absorbed from you.

*

The word hung in the air, at roughly the same height Mandoran’s forehead had been from the ground. She listened again. She strained to bring the sound closer. The word drew closer instead. In shape, in size, it seemed simple, but as it approached, she saw that it was more complicated than it had appeared at a distance. The single line that underlay the whole wasn’t actually a line; it was a composite of strokes, of lines that appeared to move in the same direction.

Closer, she could hear it. It was like a chorus of sound. She had one voice, and she faltered again. She could not repeat what she heard. Not all of it. Not all at once, if ever. But...if this was like a chorus, there had to be a melody. And that, she thought, she could follow.

Kaylin. Severn’s voice. It was thinner, quieter, than it normally was. All of their voices were. She wanted to tell them to shush, to let her listen. She didn’t, because Kaylin realized that was where it would start: these were the voices that connected her, in some fashion, to a world outside of Gilbert’s eyes and Gilbert’s power. If she lost them, she would never find her way back.

They couldn’t see what she saw. They couldn’t hear what she heard. But they could see some part of her, and at least one of them could see it more clearly than she could see it herself. She willed them not to let go of it.

She couldn’t see cloth, as the familiar had described it, and that made her task harder. But she looked at the word, and only at the word, and she felt her panic recede. The marks on her arm were visible, even though her eyes were closed; they were the only other thing she could see.

No.

No, that wasn’t true. She could see the Arcanist. His eyes were closed; he looked waxen, graven, a thing of stone. She wouldn’t have said he was alive, because she could see no hint of breath, no motion at all. She could see no sign of life in him.

This was significant. Had she been able to feel the beat of her own heart, it would have been fast. But she felt oddly disjointed now, as if her own body was no more alive than the Arcanist’s. Her eyes were closed, of course. She shouldn’t have been able to see him. Yet his image filled her vision—as did the glowing marks on her skin.

But she had always been able to see words.

How had she taken Ynpharion’s name? He hadn’t chosen to expose it or offer the knowledge of it to her. She hadn’t carried and completed the name that would define both his place in the world and his power in it, as she’d once done with the High Lord. She had taken it because she could see it. She could touch it. She hadn’t had to speak it at all.

How had she preserved the one rune from the Lake of Life that she had given, in the end, to Gilbert?

She had grabbed it. She had held it. She had placed it on the only easily exposed skin available: her forehead. The words she had forced herself to speak, with Tara as a crutch, had never been hers. The words that she had placed in the core of Helen were not words she’d spoken. They were not even words she had her own words to express.

She had a thing or two to say to the Ancients, none of it particularly polite. Why had they chosen someone to speak the remnants of their old stories when that person couldn’t speak the language?

Because, she thought, speaking it wasn’t necessary.

They were simultaneously her words, and yet not. She was part of their telling, but they were not, had never been, her story. She didn’t need to be anything other than what she was—whatever that was now. She fell silent, staring at the Arcanist. Loathing—and she really did hate Arcanists—fell silent, as well. She did not understand, and would probably never understand, the why of what he had attempted to do.

And it didn’t, at this moment, matter. She understood her own “why.” It was in this room: Teela. Tain. Bellusdeo. Maggaron. And yes, Annarion, Mandoran. The Arkon. Sanabalis. It was Severn and Kattea. Lirienne. The High Lord. Nightshade.

Even Ynpharion, although he despised her.

Beyond them, the Halls of Law. Marcus. His pridelea. Caitlin. Joey and the mother she felt she knew, although she’d never met the woman. The Hawklord. Marrin and her foundlings. Evanton. Helen.

The Emperor. Diarmat. She didn’t even grimace, thinking his name.

All the things she loved. All the things she hated. All of the people.

She reached out and caught the floating word at the heart of Gilbert’s eye in both of her unseen hands. If she understood what had happened, it was one of her words, anyway—one of the ones she carried as both responsibility and bane. She felt its edges as sharp, painful things; she felt the whole of its weight.

And then she turned toward the Arcanist, made hollow by his own action. Fractured by it, so that part of him was fighting Annarion, and possibly killing Dragons, while he somehow remained here. She whispered Severn’s name, over and over, listening for him. Listening for him as she’d listened for him for eight years of her childhood.