“Oh, we suffer it,” Bellusdeo replied. “But it is often a choice: isolation or war.”
“Ah. Then perhaps your kin and mine are not so different.”
*
Kaylin wanted to know why blood was required, or if not required, useful. She didn’t ask. Instead, she waited while the hairs on the back of her neck and arms began a slow, painful rise. As the discomfort grew, the rock in front of the Lord of the West March sprouted what looked like tentacles, which was very, very disturbing. It also appeared to be expected; neither Orbaranne nor Lirienne so much as blinked.
Those tentacles reached up, and up again, and when they were eight feet, ten feet, off the ground, they suddenly bunched and gathered, coiling as if they were springs. They leapt toward each other, stone fusing with stone, until, in the end, an arch stood in front of the three visitors.
Kaylin started toward the arch, moving slowly because she could still see the shapes of tentacles, when Orbaranne shouted a sudden warning. “Lirienne!”
He did not look in the direction of her voice, because there was no direction. It surrounded them all. Bellusdeo lifted both of her hands in a deliberate sweep of motion; she spoke three words, all harsh, resounding draconian. Or at least that’s what they sounded like, they were so damn loud.
A small barrier flared to life around her; it extended to cover both Kaylin and the Lord of the West March.
From the heart of the new arch, light flared; the stone that contained it began to melt. Kaylin had seen fire melt the stones in the expensive streets that surrounded the High Hall, and she locked her knees to prevent herself from leaping, automatically, out of the way. The shield that Bellusdeo had cast wouldn’t follow her.
But as it happened, the melting stones shed no heat; they did not become molten. Kaylin wasn’t certain if this was because they were in the Hallionne, or if this was like the effect her familiar sometimes had when he breathed. He could melt statues without heat, and remake the thick, almost liquid mess into something else entirely, which would have been more disturbing had he not spent most of his time on her shoulder, whining a lot.
“Bellusdeo, I think we should move back.”
“I don’t think it’s safe to move at all. Hallionne?” the Dragon asked.
Orbaranne was silent. After the first anguished word, she had said nothing. Kaylin turned to look over her shoulder. The Avatar was not present.
But someone else was.
In the darkness of a cavern alleviated by magical light that seemed to have no real source, stood a familiar young man. He was Barrani in appearance; only his eyes made clear he wasn’t Barrani in substance. They were a shade of obsidian; there were no whites. Kaylin thought of the ancestors, then—the ones who had almost singlehandedly destroyed the High Halls while simultaneously facing the entirety of the Dragon Court. This man was not, however, an ancestor.
He was one of Teela’s cohort, or he had been when he had first come to the West March.
He was the only one who had elected not to return from the green. He was also the only one who had attempted to either kidnap—or kill—the Consort.
“Terrano.”
*
The Lord of the West March turned the moment the name left Kaylin’s lips, his attention torn from the misshapen, falling archway.
Terrano offered a perfect, Barrani obeisance to the Lord of the West March, the movement fluid and controlled. “Lord of the West March.” His eyes remained obsidian, flecked with speckled colors; they were almost opalescent, which made Kaylin queasy.
She remembered Terrano’s attack in the forests of the West March. She remembered the Ferals that had come with him, and had appeared to obey his commands. And she understood all of Orbaranne’s hesitation about the rest of the cohort. But the rest of the cohort had chosen to stay. The rest of the cohort were learning—in as much as it was possible—to be Barrani again. To be what they had once been before the decision of powerful men had sundered them from everything they had once held dear.
“You are Terrano of Allasarre,” the Lord of the West March said.
“No. Not any more.”
The Lord of the West March stiffened, but it was slight in comparison to Kaylin’s physical reaction; had she not held Lirienne’s True Name, she would have missed it entirely. “Terrano—”
“Lord Kaylin.” He bowed to her as well, and to her consternation, the bow was slightly deeper than the one he’d offered the Lord of the West March.
“Please don’t call me that.”
“It is what you are, in this place.”
“Yes, but the only people who use that title use it for two reasons. The first: to mock me. And the second: as a warning to other Barrani.”
His answering smile was pure, delighted urchin. “Then yes, I am using it correctly. I feel as if I have been gone from this place for many, many lifetimes. But I remember you.” Since she’d been willing to kill him to preserve the Consort, this didn’t make her feel any better.
“Why are you here?”
“I heard them. I...cannot hear them as I once did.” He said this, his open expression turning pensive. She was surprised. He had seemed so jubilant at the prospect of freedom it had never occurred to her that he might miss what he’d left behind when he was finally unshackled.
But why wouldn’t he?
She did not miss the fief of Nightshade. She would never miss it. She would never return there to live. But there were days—fewer and fewer as she aged—where she would have turned back the clock completely for just five minutes of her mother’s warmth. The Barrani never exuded warmth, and frankly, were as likely to kill their parents as love them, if history were any guide. The cohort had therefore offered the rarity of absolute trust and acceptance. Who wouldn’t miss that?
The Lord of the West March, however, was not thinking of love or sentiment. His voice as hard as Terrano’s eyes, he said, “What have you done to Orbaranne?” And in the silence that followed the demand, Kaylin heard the sound of drawn sword.
*
Terrano did not draw a weapon in response, and the slightly confused glance he offered the Lord of the West March didn’t seem to register that that Lord was now armed.
“Orbaranne?”
“The Hallionne.”
Terrano turned to Kaylin, as if he expected her to be his personal interpreter. But the confusion in his expression seemed so genuine, she couldn’t resent it. Much. “You are currently standing inside the Hallionne Orbaranne. You were, until very recently from our perspective, living in the Hallionne Alsanis with your siblings.”
“Siblings?”
She shrugged. “At home, we call them the cohort.”
“What do they call themselves?”
“Depends. I only hear Mandoran and Annarion, because they live with me.”