“You can’t possibly believe that.”
“I believe it because it’s true. None of you are prisoners. None of you are forced to stay with Alsanis. Not even you,” she added. “All of you are free.”
Terrano almost lost control of his face again, but managed to hold it—and his limbs—together. “Don’t confuse what you wanted with what she wanted.”
“She hasn’t tried to harm you since.”
“Hasn’t she?” He shrugged. “If we’re all free, where are my friends?”
“I have no idea. That’s why I’m here.”
“You.”
“Chosen, remember?” she demanded, lifting her left arm and pulling back her sleeve. The marks were glowing brightly as they were exposed.
He spoke, then. She didn’t understand a word he was saying, but felt that if she listened hard enough, she would. And because she’d had this feeling before, she thought Terrano might be reading the marks somehow, that he might be speaking True Words. None of the marks became physical words; none separated themselves from her skin.
“Look—if you could find them on your own, you would have found them by now, right?” She let her sleeve fall back into place as she lowered her arm.
“‘By now’ signifies nothing. Time is only a constraint for the lesser races.”
“That is not true,” Bellusdeo said, coming out from behind Kaylin. “Time is a factor in a state of emergency. We live forever, all things being equal. But all things are never equal. There are things that will kill us—in our mutual history, usually each other. It is possible that for the cohort, time is in short supply.”
Terrano’s eyes were black again. “You speak good High Barrani.”
“In which case,” Bellusdeo continued, ignoring the observation, “Lord Kaylin is best equipped to offer aid: she is a creature who is wed to time, her existence indivisible from it. What to either of our kin would be insignificant is not to her.”
“Why are you even here?” Terrano demanded. And Kaylin remembered the reason the twelve children had been surrendered to the ceremony in the green: the Draco-Barrani war. The High Court had decided to imbue the twelve children with the power necessary to defeat their ancient enemies. Those enemies, of course, being the Dragons.
“She lives with us,” Kaylin said quickly. “With Annarion and Mandoran. Mandoran doesn’t really like her,” she felt compelled to add, “but Annarion does, and so does Teela.”
“Teela?” This was said with open scorn. “Teela fought in the war. There’s no way—”
“She goes out drinking with Teela and Tain.”
“...And they get along?”
“Yes. Or at least no one’s reported them to the Halls of Law yet, and they all return home without wounds or burns.” She folded her arms.
Terrano seemed outraged. “I leave them alone for a little while, and they forget everything.”
“Sedarias forgets nothing.”
“She’s obviously forgotten how to use the portal paths.”
“I see that you have more in common with Mandoran than the rest of your cohort,” Bellusdeo said, voice cool.
The ground buckled beneath the Dragon’s feet. Since the Dragon could more or less fly with a brief change of shape, this was only a minor inconvenience. For her. Kaylin, however, couldn’t. She didn’t want to leave Bellusdeo’s side, because she was pretty certain that her presence was the one thing that kept Terrano from going all out.
“Not your presence alone, no,” Hallionne Orbaranne said. This time, she appeared in the center of the room, her Avatar form girded with armor that seemed made of crystal, and weapons that seemed made of night sky. Her eyes, however, were much like Terrano’s—black, opalescent.
Terrano met the unnatural eyes of the Hallionne with unnatural eyes of his own. He didn’t draw blades; he didn’t turn his physical arms into weapons. But Kaylin thought he could. “Orbaranne. Hallionne. I don’t think he’s a danger—”
“Do you not understand the danger he does pose? I cannot hear the whole of his thought. I can hear fractions of it, but his thought is a multitude of voices, and not all of them are clear to me.”
Kaylin inhaled, remembering the forest Ferals. She exhaled, remembered the rest of the cohort. Especially the three that she knew. “Your eyes,” she said, to Orbaranne, “are exactly the same as his.”
Both Orbaranne and Terrano seemed surprised by this. Terrano was the only one who appeared to feel insulted.
“Is that how you see it?” he demanded. “You think our eyes look the same?”
Kaylin glanced at Bellusdeo; Bellusdeo shrugged. “I said it, didn’t I?”
“And you?” he demanded of the Dragon, which surprised Kaylin.
“They look the same to me. They are not the same shape—the Hallionne seems to have much better control of her physical dimensions than you do—but they appear to be black, with flecks of moving color. I would not hazard a guess as to the physical composition.”
Orbaranne, however, had lowered her swords. She was staring at Terrano as if she were truly seeing him for the first time, but her eyes were unblinking. Kaylin doubted she’d remembered something as trivial as eyelids when composing this particular Avatar.
“They are there,” Orbaranne replied, distracted.
To Kaylin’s surprise, she turned to Bellusdeo. She offered the Dragon a bow—which should have been impossible given the armor—before speaking again. “Your experience of Shadow is greater, in the end, than my own; I have knowledge, but Shadows are unique enough that that knowledge might not be relevant in all situations. What do you see?”
“As I told Terrano, I see what Lord Kaylin sees. When I ruled, I would have considered him a danger, but I would have considered you a danger as well.”
The Hallionne had not looked away from Terrano. The swords she was carrying vanished as she began to speak. Her words shook the floor. They might have shaken the walls; Kaylin couldn’t tell because her body was shaking, too. But Kaylin recognized the language that she couldn’t understand when it was spoken—and it was spoken at a volume that made her instantly cover her ears. Only Dragons spoke this loudly naturally.
Bellusdeo had Dragon hearing; she didn’t even flinch.
But Terrano’s eyes widened. He waited while the Hallionne spoke; her words seemed to continue forever, as if the speaking of True Words nailed them into place, made them solid, real, as eternal as mountain edifices. Only when the words had become echoes, only when the Hallionne’s lips had ceased their motion, did Terrano begin to speak.
It didn’t surprise Kaylin that he spoke the same tongue, although he spoke it as if it were his native language.