“Helen—”
Helen, however, was not done. She spoke in a language that Kaylin did not know, but nonetheless felt she should. And Orbaranne responded in kind. The floor shook, rumbling as if the earth beneath it was about to break open.
The Lord of the West March looked surprised. Helen did not. Bellusdeo might have been carved of stone for all the expression she was willing to surrender.
“Kaylin,” Helen said. “Find the water. Find it while it can still speak. I will leave you now to speak with the Consort, if she is available.”
She is, Ynpharion said. His interior voice, usually so loaded with condescension and disgust it was a wonder it could be used to convey anything else, was utterly neutral.
The mirror’s image didn’t shatter; it swirled like liquid leaving a basin, taking the images with it in elongating streaks of color that no longer suggested Helen or the interior of the one room in which she allowed the mirror network access.
Bereft of color, the silver surface reflected the people in the room before it: the Lord of the West March, the Avatar of the Hallionne, Bellusdeo and Kaylin herself. Before Kaylin could speak, that silver faded, and with it the interior lights of the great hall. Instead, a shadowed darkness seemed to envelope the mirror itself, and it was slow to return even the outline of an image.
Kaylin almost stopped breathing as her eyes adjusted. This was not the Consort’s room. Nor was it the cavern that was home in some fashion to the Lake of Life over which the Consort stood guardian, and to which she was servant.
The hair on Kaylin’s neck suddenly stood on end. So did the hair on her arms, which were covered, as they always were when she was on any sort of duty. This was not shock, although she certainly felt shock; it was entirely other. When asked, Kaylin said she had an allergy to magic. It wasn’t precise, but it was close enough. On most days.
This was not most days.
She was silent as the marks on her arms began to glow. The glow was faint, but she knew that everyone in the room had noticed, save perhaps the Lord of the West March, who was staring at the mirror as if nothing else existed.
“Sister,” he said, his voice itself a kind of hush.
“Lirienne,” she replied. She could not be seen. Her voice could be heard. But hers was not the only voice Kaylin could hear, and she lifted both hands to her ears almost instinctively as the hall filled with the sounds of the damned.
The Consort was at the base of the High Halls—the reason the High Halls existed. “Can you hear them, brother?”
The Lord of the West March did not reply. Kaylin glanced at his profile; he was white, his jaw clenched. His hands had become fists by his side, but his expression was otherwise almost neutral. Almost. His eyes were midnight.
What is she doing there? Kaylin demanded of Ynpharion.
I am not at her side, Lord Kaylin. His voice, like the Lord of the West March’s expression, was neutral, devoid of the usual contempt, which was oddly creepy. This thought, on the other hand, annoyed him enough that his usual personality spilled out. Unlike a simple mortal, I respect and value the orders that I have been given. Nor do I need to be where she is now standing to see what she sees.
How in the hells did you let her go down there by herself? Kaylin wasn’t shouting, but had she opened her mouth, she would have been.
She is my lord, he replied, all ice. When she commands, I obey. She did not wish company.
Did you even know that she was going down there?
She is safe there. She has passed the Test of Name. What exists within the bowels of that place no longer has the ability to harm her.
And yet, the screaming, the weeping, the verbal pleas—those hurt. Kaylin knew it, because they hurt her. And she was not the guardian of the names—the guardian of Barrani life. Ynpharion was wrong.
She is not alone, he finally, and grudgingly, said.
But Kaylin could almost see that, now. There was very little light in this darkness, but not none. And the man she saw made her freeze in place for one long breath.
Do not even imagine, Ynpharion said, before she could gather up anything that resembled a coherent thought, that I have any control over the High Lord himself.
The High Lord was there, his profile as tense as his brother’s, half a continent away. What the Consort heard, the High Lord heard; that was the price of rulership. But the High Lord had almost failed the test. No, Kaylin thought, he had failed it. What had saved him—the only thing that had saved them all—was his name; it had been incomplete, unfinished, the weight of it too much for the previous Consort to bear.
If Kaylin had problems with the Consort being in this cavern, it was nothing compared to the issue she now had. She wanted to scream into the mirror. And because she did not know the High Lord’s name, because she did not hold it, she had no other choice.
“What are you doing there?” she demanded, shouldering his silent brother out of the way without conscious thought.
It was the Consort who answered, her voice cool with warning. “It is not the first time I have traversed this long, long hall. Nor, I fear, will it be the last.” She did not appear in the mirror; it was as if she was holding a portable one in her hand, and had it turned out and away.
“But—your brother—”
“No one, not a single Barrani, be they Lords of the High Court of long-standing, would ever consider telling the High Lord what he can, or cannot, do. He is not what he was—and you, of all people, should understand this.”
“Why are you there, then?”
“Consider it a patrol, Lord Kaylin.”
That was garbage. It was stinking garbage. Kaylin opened her mouth and shut it again, hard enough that the snap of her teeth made her jaw ache. “I...apologize...for interrupting you,” she said, in slightly stilted High Barrani. “I would not have—” what was the word? “—been so presumptuous, but I had extended an invitation to dine in my home, and I do not believe I am able to meet with you on the agreed upon date.”
“And why would that be? I must confess I looked forward to that dinner with some anticipation. It is not every day, after all, that I come face-to-face with Dragons outside of the Imperial Palace.”
“The Dragon is also unable to attend.”
Silence.
“She currently finds herself in the same situation I do.”
More silence. Kaylin could feel the sudden absence of Ynpharion, and whispered a mental coward at his retreating presence.
“And that situation?” The Consort’s High Barrani had developed an almost martial edge.
“We both appear to be guests of the Hallionne Orbaranne at the moment.” Kaylin resented having to say this out loud, since the Consort bloody well knew where Kaylin was. But...that was politics all over: a bunch of powerful people saying, diplomatically, what everyone at the table already knew. And then acting surprised. It seemed like a huge waste of time, and it didn’t seem to serve any functional purpose.