Cast in Honor (Chronicles of Elantra, #11)(67)

Why do you have to choose one?

Because there’s some part of the story that’s incomplete. This made sense to Kaylin.

How do you know that?

I don’t know, Severn. I just... It’s just...

A feeling. It was just a feeling. It was intuition. She raised her right arm; her right hand held the only True Name in the room that wasn’t already occupied. Her left hand was free, and it grew colder. Her cheeks stung, and the air drew the breath out of her lungs, froze her nostrils. Only the hand that held the name felt any warmth at all. Kaylin did not consider this a particularly good sign.

She glanced up at a cloud of translucent words, made from her own breath and the bitter cold.

*

Kaylin.

I’m moving as fast as I can—

The body is getting colder.

So was the room. Her arms were shaking enough that it was harder to see the brighter, closer marks on her skin; her hands were curved in loose fists that wouldn’t hold anything competently. Her right hand still held the name because it was the only source of warmth in the room.

But even that warmth was fading.

Kaylin—

She touched her arm; her own marks stopped their slow traversal of her skin. The rune she slid her shaking fingers over felt almost brittle to the touch. For one long, held breath she was afraid that she had waited too long. It was frozen. It would not move.

“Kaylin.” Like the words of breath and mist, her familiar was all white, an ice that implied endless cold and death. She couldn’t see his eyes. “I do not know why you were Chosen; were it not for my presence, you would be lost here.” He gestured at the mark on her arm; it rose. It rose and expanded, becoming dimensional as it hovered above her arm.

“I cannot touch you here,” he said, voice quiet. “It would destroy you.” He looked at the words that weren’t hers in the darkness, as if reading them. “Do what you must do, but do it quickly.”

“Can you—”

“No, Kaylin. I can touch neither you nor the tale that is told; what was written here was not of me; it is not mine. I could destroy it. I could refashion it—but then it would be a different story, and not the story of the one you call Gilbert.

“And if I did that, you would also perish. You will perish, regardless. You are not Barrani, not Dragon, not any of the older races; you will age and you will die.” He spoke now, as if to himself.

Kaylin reached out for the word he had freed from her skin.

“But time, to you, is a prison from which there is no escape, except one. You do not feel its immediacy.”

He was wrong. She did. She knew better than anyone what too late meant.

She listened as she moved. Gilbert’s words, revealed by breath and cold, were an arm’s length away, no more, but they seemed to remain inches in front of her, no matter how hard she strained to reach them. The shuddering didn’t help.

She had never been so cold in her life.

There was warmth waiting for her—and food, and family—if she could complete the pattern in front of her. She had a home now. She had a place to go. She cursed in quiet Leontine and lifted the rune that had come from her skin into place; it took four attempts.

She knew when it had successfully joined the mass of the words of ice because gold spread across white, seeping into it as if it were ink on a tablecloth. It spread. What had been mist and ice became, at last, true words as she understood them.

Sadly, they didn’t make the room any warmer.

There was only one thing that could do that. She held it in her hand: life, in the paradigm of the Ancients. It had to go to a body she couldn’t see or touch herself.

Think, damn it. Just...think.

The name in her hand had been created for the Barrani, but it was the only name she had to offer Gilbert.

She had never asked the Consort how names were transferred to the babies that straddled the boundary between life and death, as all Barrani newborns did. The Barrani were understandably protective about the Lake of Life. Any mention of it caused Barrani eyes to darken by several shades, and the resultant blue was uncomfortable. Or worse.

She had a suspicion, though. It involved being able to touch the body. She had no idea how to do that here; she couldn’t even see it.

She needed to be where Severn was. She closed her eyes and returned her awareness to him; to his vision. He was looking at the body that was not a corpse, but not quite a statue; his hands remained gently spread across its chest.

She could feel ice and stone. She could feel them as strongly as she could feel the True Name in her own hands. She could see his hands clearly, but she couldn’t see her own. She didn’t try. Instead, she apologized to her partner and tried to move his.

She lifted his right hand. She flexed his fingers. Curved them into a fist. Opened the hand again and examined the scars across his right palm. Cupped that palm and held it steady until it felt like her own hand to her.

“Corporal?” Tain’s voice.

Severn didn’t answer.

Severn? Severn!

I’m here. It’s bloody cold.

Severn was where Kaylin was. She felt a moment of pure panic; both of his hands clenched in involuntary fists.

Come back. Come back to you.

Silence.

Severn—come back right now. She was terrified; the fear was sudden and sharp and too visceral to be cold.

He didn’t reply.