Cast in Honor (Chronicles of Elantra, #11)(83)

“This is what they were attempting to say, in this place.”

Kaylin started to tell him that that wasn’t how magic worked. She stopped. What she knew about magic, in any practical sense, amounted to the lighting of one candle after months of useless attempts. And how had she achieved that?

By knowing the name of fire. A word. A word that defied easy pronunciation or comprehension; a word that dribbled through the figurative cupped palms of her concentration. “All of them?” she asked, instead.

He nodded. “They were not standing in the right place, but close.” He lowered his hands, the words on the wall reflected brightly in only his third eye. “This was not meant for you.”

“Was it meant for you?”

“No.” He bent slightly and retrieved the edge of his coat from Kattea’s hands. “I think you should wait upstairs.”

Kattea let his coat go, but folded her arms, looking the very definition of mutinous. And frightened. Only one of these held sway. “What are you going to do?”

“If we are very, very lucky, nothing.”

“And if we’re not?” she demanded, and Kaylin again felt a pang of recognition.

Gilbert, predictably, didn’t answer. He looked to Kaylin instead. “You said there were bodies.”

“Yes.”

“Mortal bodies.”

“Uncertain.”

Gavin said, “Mortal bodies,” with a side-eye at Kaylin.

“They are in a room?”

“Yes. The stairs lead to the only room in the subbasement.”

“No,” Gilbert said quietly, “they do not.” But he pulled his gaze away from the words he had arranged out of nothing on the wall and followed Gavin without further interruption.

*

The large room in the subbasement had not changed much. It was better lit than it had been on first visit. This didn’t bother Kaylin. The fact that the bodies were now in entirely different positions, however, did. Where they had once been laid out in a row, they were now laid out in a triangular position; their feet were touching, their heads pointing outward.

“When did Red examine them?” Kaylin asked.

“Two days ago. Corporal Danelle recommended they not be moved; Red concurred, after his examination.”

Kaylin turned to Gilbert and said, “These are the corpses.”

“They are not dead,” Gilbert said.

Gavin’s gaze attached itself to Gilbert’s face for one long, silent moment. To Kaylin, he said, “You should really report to the office if you want full details.”

“I’ll take what I can get.”

“Red didn’t say they were alive. We’ve seen our share of corpses. But he was concerned.”

“Because?”

“They haven’t decomposed at all. Some very basic magical protections have been laid across the bodies to preserve them, but Red says they’re working too well. No pulse. No breath. They don’t bleed—he did check that. But he’s not comfortable.”

“What, does he think they’re undead?”

“He didn’t say. Before you make that face, stranger things have happened.”

“Yes—but with Barrani. You know, the ones that have to have True Names to animate them at all?”

“Red doesn’t care. He wasn’t willing to cut them up here. He did as thorough an examination as he could, given that, but that’s it. The Sergeant wouldn’t give leave to have the bodies moved; apparently the Dragon Court had a word or two to say about that.”

Kaylin had a few words to say, too. She kept them to herself and turned to Gilbert. Gilbert was staring at the three corpses. She wasn’t certain what a healthy skin color was supposed to be in a member of Gilbert’s race—but she was pretty certain that white-gray wasn’t it.

“They are not dead,” he said again. She walked to where the bodies were laid out and knelt. Or tried to kneel. Gilbert had grabbed her shoulder.

“I’ve touched them before,” she pointed out. Gilbert released her shoulder reluctantly, and she poked the small familiar. He sighed and lifted a translucent wing so that it covered half her face. She didn’t watch him do this; she was looking at the corpses.

They vanished.

She’d expected that, given her previous experience.

What she didn’t expect to see—inches beyond where the top of each man’s head was positioned—were three oddly luminescent, standing stones.

At first glance, they were uniform in size. She frowned and once again readjusted the familiar’s wing until it covered both of her eyes; he bit her hand in annoyance, but not hard enough to draw blood. The bodies were no longer visible.

With the exception of the lack of bodies and the presence of the stones, the room was the same. So, to Kaylin’s relief, were the people standing in it.

“Gilbert,” she said, as she cautiously approached the closest of these standing stones, “what do you see here?”

“I see three of your kind.” There was a moment’s pause and then he continued, “They are far, far clearer to me than anyone in this room, save Kattea. If I understand what Kattea has said about mortality, these men are not dead.”

Kaylin opened her mouth.

Gavin spoke first. “Red had some concerns. I told you: you want that information, you’ll need to mirror in for it, or talk to Red yourself.”