Part 37 (1/2)
It was hard to believe there was still sunlight when they finally hit the streets. Morse was absent, but that was probably for the best; Kaylin had difficulty with Dragon formality, and Kaylin was an etiquette master when standing beside Morse. Severn, on the other hand, walked between Kaylin and the Arkon; Sanabalis pulled up the other side. Tara walked ahead beside Maggaron, which was fair, as it meant the Dragons had his back in plain sight. If Maggaron found the arrangement uncomfortable, it didn't show.
He looked taller, to Kaylin's eyes; taller and prouder. No, not exactly proud-that was the wrong word for it-but determined or focused. They walked down Avatar Road for several blocks before Tara called a halt. The streets were surprisingly busy, although only in fief terms; there were still people on them. If the people gave them nervous glances, that was to be expected-but Tara's presence seemed to calm them.
Given the size of the sword Maggaron now wielded, that said a lot about Tara, or their faith in her. It had only been a few weeks since Tiamaris had taken the Tower-and through it, the fief-but those weeks had eroded decades of raw fear.
Subtle fear would take a lot longer to loose its hold. She glanced at the sun; it was heading toward the horizon.
”Ferals?” Kaylin asked Tara.
”My Lord and Morse will be on patrol within the half hour; so will the Norannir. We've been trying something unusual for the fief.”
”Oh?”
”We've been taking the young men and women who want to come with us. We arm them if they aren't armed.”
”They hunt Ferals with you?”
”Yes.”
Kaylin shook her head. The world had changed.
”They've slowly grown accustomed to the sight of my Lord as a Dragon,” Tara added. ”It used to upset them more-but word has spread from those young men and women and filtered into the streets; his Dragon form has become synonymous with protection from the things that hunt in the night.”
”Was this Tiamaris's idea?”
”Yes.”
”Thought so.”
Tara smiled. ”I approved of it. I still do. No other Lord of the Tower hunted Ferals.”
”No other Lord of the Tower considered the fief his h.o.a.rd.”
”Then this h.o.a.rding must be a good thing.”
Kaylin nodded. ”Possibly because it's Tiamaris.” A thought struck her. ”Sanabalis-” The Arkon cleared his throat, and she quickly appended his t.i.tle. ”Dragon personalities differ hugely; in that, they're not so dissimilar from the rest of us.”
A beat of silence followed. ”The point of this observation?”
”If a different Dragon had taken the Tower, would he have tried to effect this much change? Would he have cared the same way? The whole fief would still be his h.o.a.rd, no matter who he was.”
The Arkon snorted. ”Sanabalis,” he said sharply, forgetting the t.i.tle that he demanded Kaylin use, ”what have you been teaching the hatchlings?”
Sanabalis fingered his beard. It was his most familiar gesture. ”I've been attempting to teach them to make reasoned deductions with the information they have at hand.”
”Clearly, you have more work to do.”
”Clearly, Arkon.” To Kaylin, he said, ”Yes, of course it would be different. The whole of Tiamaris's att.i.tude has been informed by his service to the Emperor. He has learned, because of his youth and his ability to accept the Emperor's rule at all, that mortals-such as yourself-have intrinsic value. They are not livestock, they are not cattle, and they are not vermin.”
”Arcanists.”
”Many of the Arcanists are not mortal.”
”Good point.”
”It is not an att.i.tude that was...common...in the days of the Arkon's youth.”
”Neither was it common in Sanabalis's youth, which is lamentably more recent,” the older Dragon interjected.
”Of the Dragons, Lord Tiamaris has had the least difficulty adapting to the Emperor's particular vision. In some ways, the fief is a mirror of the Empire, writ small. It is Tiamaris's h.o.a.rd. It is governed by his desire and his possessiveness. But so, too, are mortal infants, even when their parents' affection is not in doubt.
”It is my suspicion that no other Immortal would have given the Tower the freedom it-she, my pardon, Lady-now has.”
”Oh, it's not that,” Tara said brightly, smiling at Kaylin. ”When Kaylin attempted to help me, to protect me from the Shadows that had breached my defenses, she gave me some different words.”
”So did Tiamaris,” Kaylin said softly, remembering the first time they had walked into the Tower together, marked mortal and immortal Dragon. But she returned Tara's smile-it was hard not to. She was like a foundling who'd been adopted by a loving family. Remembering the Foundling Hall, there were more who hadn't, but thanks to Marrin's intervention, those situations didn't last long. At all.
Marrin was family to children who, through no fault of their own, had none. She herself had lost her child. She could have hated children, could have hated people who had what her child didn't: life. But she built.
So did Tiamaris. Maybe it wasn't family in the traditional sense-Kaylin had no idea what a Dragon family was actually like. But if he could protect the people that Kaylin herself had failed so badly, it was enough. More than enough, really. She inhaled and nodded.
Maggaron lifted his sword and they all turned.
”Kaylin,” Tara all but shouted.
The Ascendant was stiffening as the syllables faded. Kaylin looked immediately for the color of his eyes; they were almost indigo. ”Tara, can you-”
”There is no Shadow here,” the Avatar replied as her eyes lost their patina of mortality and became obsidian to his indigo.
But that was irrelevant. Kaylin knew that the Shadows didn't have to be here to call a name that could be heard across whatever it was that divided worlds. She reached for his name, as well, as if drawing a dagger. For the first time since she'd taken-or, to be fair, been all but given-his name, she felt resistance; her attempt to say the name faltered on syllables, as if her voice was sliding across whole scales in an attempt to hit the right key.
No, she thought, as she stopped moving entirely, hers wasn't the only discordance there. Another voice had dropped into the mix. It was a soft, low voice-but in the way that a dog's voice is when said dog has descended from furious, yapping bark to quiet growl. She was bitterly aware that this was exactly what had made Tara so reluctant to let Maggaron out of the Tower. She was even more bitterly aware of her implied promise to protect Maggaron-and indirectly the rest of the fief-from the consequences of a distant Shadow attempting to use his name against him.
She wasn't about to let that happen. But she felt this other voice as if Maggaron's name was a bridge that it had crossed to reach her. She glanced at the sword's blade. It was now a greatsword that seemed to repel sunlight. Etched across the center flat of its blade were Maggaron's runes. They pulsed faintly, as if they were signaling to her, and without thought-the sudden compulsion was so strong-she reached out and placed her palm against them.
Fire shot up her arm. Blue fire. In its wake, the exposed marks of the Chosen began to glow the same brilliant azure. They didn't change shape or form; they didn't rearrange themselves. But she felt them all as distinct and separate ent.i.ties from the rest of her. Sharp, stabbing, distinctive ent.i.ties.
She tried, once again, to speak Maggaron's name. It didn't matter where it came from or why it was his; here and now, it was, and she had to own it, or the Dragons would be forced to kill him. Given the sword and his size, it would be a slightly more equal battle than Kaylin would be facing-but not, in her opinion, by enough.
Every syllable she spoke-and she realized that was the wrong verb because her lips didn't move at all-made her arm ache. But it was only one arm; the rest of her marks remained untouched by whatever had fired up these ones. Painful or no, the sharp jolts made each syllable a physical sensation. They grounded her.
Maggaron began to shudder; his arms shook and his hands spasmed. Even the hand that held the hilt of the sword-perhaps especially that hand. He fell to one knee and the sword's edge tottered precariously against the cobbles, sc.r.a.ping them in an edge-killing way-if a magical sword had to worry about keeping a sharp edge.
”Maggaron,” she said, hand still on the blade, which meant she was now crouched in a much more awkward position, ”can you tell me who holds your name?”
The Arkon said, ”It is a master-slave connection, Private.”
”Yes-but you can't have a totally absent, totally faceless master. I'm not asking Maggaron for his-or her-True Name; I'm asking if he knows where or what the other ent.i.ty is.”
Maggaron's eyes rolled up toward his skull, exposing whites.