Part 40 (2/2)

No, wait... It wasn't an answer.

It was a story. It was a smaller story than the one that had given birth to the Leontine race, but it was a story nonetheless. It wasn't her story; it was defined by Bellusdeo and Maggaron. No, she thought as more words began to form around them, it was defined by more than just those two. But they were here now. The other runes floated in the air, rotating and gleaming as they touched one another. They could clearly see them as well as Kaylin could-which the Arkon had implied wasn't possible unless Kaylin touched them. Then again, the last time she had touched the words she'd seen, they'd been his words. He'd spoken them.

Here, they were hers.

Bellusdeo lifted a hand and touched one of the interwoven runes. As if she were a gla.s.s vessel, the light from the rune began to fill her, or perhaps to drain into her. She turned in wonder to Kaylin, Dragons fighting and roaring above their heads, and said nothing, but her eyes were pure gold. Kaylin was aware that gold was the happy color for Dragon eyes-or for anyone who happened to be in the company of said Dragons-but she'd never seen a gold like this.

Bellusdeo reached out with the hand that wasn't touching the word and Maggaron clasped that hand, dwarfing it in his own. Kaylin wasn't surprised to see that same golden light touch him-but it didn't fill his eyes; it didn't change his skin color; it surrounded him like a halo. Without thinking, Kaylin said, ”No, Maggaron. That one's not yours.”

She cursed as she realized that without their bond, her words would sound like a crash and clatter of syllables and nonsense. Except they didn't. Come to think, Bellusdeo had understood every word she'd spoken. She'd understood, in turn, every word the Dragon had spoken, as well. Maggaron turned to her, unaware that he shouldn't understand what she'd just said. ”Mine?” he said, looking mostly confused.

Kaylin nodded. ”It's that one. No, the one to the right, the one that's large and very bold.” But also spare and simple.

He hesitated, and then turned to Bellusdeo. Bellusdeo smiled for him. At him. Kaylin felt a pang of inexplicable envy at the sight of it.

”You've been part of each other for a very long time,” she told them both quietly. Not even the renewed roar of Dragons could drown out the words. ”I don't know how it's changed you. I don't even know if it has. But that rune-that one's Maggaron's. Touch it.” When he hesitated, she added, ”Just touch the d.a.m.n thing. I know you're humble and you're modest-but we honestly don't have time for either right now.”

Maggaron still hesitated. Bellusdeo reached up and smacked him. The gesture was so at odds with her expression Kaylin was almost shocked. She started to say something and the words bottomed out as she felt Severn's sudden pain. She wheeled and saw that he was standing far, far too close to a melting patch of ground. His weapon's spin wobbled before he gritted teeth and righted it.

Without thought, she reached for him, grabbing his shoulder and pulling him back-and into the light of the words she'd spoken. He tensed as she wrapped her arms around his chest; she could feel his heart beating beneath her glowing arms; could feel his chest rise and fall. ”Stay here,” she told him. ”Just stay here. Stay with me. It's-it's sort of safe.”

His weapon slowed; he must have been injured, because it also clattered.

”It's proof against the fire,” he told her.

”You're not.”

”No.”

She closed her eyes. She could smell fire and sweat and, of all things, soap. But she could hear words. Feel them. She opened her mouth and began to speak again, and this time, the words were visible; a thing above and beyond her, but rooted in her, as well, as if they were the crowning branches of a very tall, very ancient tree, and she was, well, dirt.

She opened her eyes and slowly released Severn. Turning to Maggaron, she saw that he had one hand on the thickest and brightest of the vertical strokes of the rune Kaylin had called his. His other hand was still wrapped around the hand of the woman-or Dragon-that he'd served all his life. Kaylin had no idea how long that life had been.

But his eyes began to s.h.i.+ft color as he held both the woman and the word. They became gold, as well; gold, however, wasn't the Norannir happy color. Brown was. ”Lady,” he whispered.

”Chosen,” Bellusdeo also whispered.

”It's a story. No, it's the story,” Kaylin told them both.

”And you are the teller of the tale?”

”Yes.”

”Then tell us its ending, who was there at the beginning.”

”I can't tell you how it ends, not really; I think...I-I think I can tell you how it finally begins.”

She didn't know what she was doing. She knew she was making it up as she went along. She wasn't Rennick, the Imperial Playwright; she couldn't throw out the bits that didn't work-in an ever-increasing pile-and start it again. But she knew, watching the two, Ascendant and Dragon, that they were linked, and she knew, as well, that every single rune she had spoken was part of Bellusdeo.

She counted them.

There were ten.

She really didn't understand how words and names worked; she realized that. She had a name and she didn't understand what that meant for her, either. Then again, she didn't understand bureaucracy, and she theoretically worked at the behest of the most powerful bureaucrat in the Empire: the Emperor himself.

”You said that you were always one. The nine of you.”

”Yes.”

Kaylin took a deep breath. ”Then I understand, Bellusdeo, what the rest of the words say.”

Bellusdeo wasn't stupid. Her eyes rounded as she, too, counted words that were jostled up against each other in their confined-and comforting-circle. ”Chosen-this isn't possible. There is now only one of me.”

”Yes. But there were nine, and each and every one of those words is yours.”

”How can you know this?”

”I don't know. How can you know how to transform? I know it. It's here,” she added, lifting her arms and exposing the runes. ”Will you trust me?”

”I already have-with my life. With his. But I do not know how I can do what you ask. I am one; they are nine.”

”The others-”

”Are dead. You cannot wake them; they do not sleep.”

”It doesn't matter. You were nine, Bellusdeo-and you must be nine again.” Kaylin wanted to smack herself to stop the flow of words, because even if she was the one who'd said them, they made no sense if she thought about them for two seconds. Which was about all the time she had.

She cursed-in Leontine, which apparently didn't get translated into ancient and eternal words-and approached the circling runes. She grabbed the ones she could reach and began to push them together, as if the s.p.a.ces between the individual elements that comprised them were s.p.a.ces that could be filled by elements that had never been part of their original form at all. As if they were cards and she was shuffling them back into a single deck again before she started to deal them.

She could feel Severn wince at the a.n.a.logy, and it made her laugh.

Bellusdeo was watching her with eyes that were widening as Kaylin worked. She opened her mouth, closed it, opened it again, and then pulled herself closer to Maggaron. That might not have been what she intended, but in her current form-and at her current weight-that was what happened. She held the rune she had first touched, and she told Maggaron not to let go of his.

Kaylin found that the runes did collapse into each other-but not easily, and not without strain. It was like moving furniture into an apartment that started out empty; it got progressively harder to work with as it filled. Hard wasn't the same as impossible; she reminded herself of this as her arms began to tire; reminded herself again as they started to tremble with exertion. The runes, however, hadn't collapsed into a messy pile of random scribbles, as she'd half feared they might. They had a different shape, a different form, a different density. Some of the lines thinned, some shrunk, some bent-but always in a way that suggested a pattern, an emerging whole.

She wished writing reports worked the same way.

The light had drained out of the marks on her arms as she'd worked; she knew this only because she'd paused for a moment to ma.s.sage them. The marks were still glowing-but only very faintly. She wouldn't honestly have been surprised had the marks simply vanished with their light, but for perhaps the very first time she would have felt a twinge of regret at the loss.

Sadly, they weren't the only thing the light left; the barrier that had stood as a slender but absolute wall against fire, smoke, and rock that was close to melting had also dimmed. Frustrated, frightened, she cursed herself, wondering if it was somehow her power, in the marks, that had maintained that s.h.i.+eld-and if it was something she could have learned to do consciously if she'd been a better student.

It didn't matter. If she was to have any hope of saving Bellusdeo and Maggaron now, she needed to finish what she'd started; the anger and the self-recrimination would just have to wait. She'd no doubt she'd return to it later; unlike laundry, she'd never left self-recrimination undone. She took a deep breath, felt its sting in her lungs and at the back of her throat, and struggled.

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