This was greeted with a hiss, rather than the usual overly loud squawks, but the familiar did push himself off Kaylin’s shoulder. Bellusdeo accepted him without apparently noticing that he existed, which meant she didn’t approve.
Kaylin, however, trusted the familiar; he’d already saved the Dragon’s life once, in an attack that had destroyed Kaylin’s first home in Elantra. She seated herself on the bench, lifted an arm, and reached out to let the falling water make contact with her palm. The water was clear and cool to the touch.
All of the marks of the Chosen flared to life on her arms; the hair on her neck stood on end. This was not a promising sign, and it wasn’t entirely pleasant. Her skin was tingling, as if it had been slapped. The water, however, caused no pain. Kaylin closed her eyes and reached, in as much as she was able, for the Tha’alaan.
There was a moment of terrifying silence before the thoughts of the Tha’alani group mind opened up to embrace Kaylin’s more human isolation. Usually, this was comforting. Today, it was not.
Kaylin. Not the voice of the water. Kaylin recognized the caste leader, Ybelline. Where are you?
I’m in the West March.
A moment of confusion, a hint of other voices. In the West March.
Yes. Did you not hear it from the water?
We heard only that there was a grave danger and you had been sent to deal with it.
The water is overconfident.
A ripple of amusement. The problem is in the West March?
Apparently. It’s not that simple. I hoped to reach the water, she added. Can you—can you hear the water?
I can—but her voice is very, very faint. We are not certain what was done, or how; it has caused confusion, and in some instances, panic.
The water dropped us in the middle of one of the Hallionne. We didn’t exactly have time to pack.
We.
Yes, sorry. Lord Bellusdeo is with me. Kaylin tried to visualize the events of the past day; she was now worried. Usually Ybelline could touch those thoughts if Kaylin could hear her at all.
The water carried you to the West March?
Yes.
I would not have said that was possible without the intervention of a very gifted, very powerful elementalist. Are you certain—
We were in the Keeper’s garden. We’re now in the West March. I’m pretty certain that random elementalists or Arcanists didn’t have much chance to interfere. And I’d bet my own money that Evanton had nothing to do with it, either. But—I can’t hear the water. I can’t ask why there was an emergency here. Something did go wrong here, but...
What went wrong?
Kaylin explained in the more awkward way: with words that she had to choose herself. Where once she had been terrified of the Tha’alani and their ability to ferret out hidden, dark secrets, now she was comfortable with it, even at home in it. Which is why, of course, it wasn’t working properly.
For the water to make the choice it did requires a vast outlay of power—and will. The water is not, as you are aware, a single individual; it has a will that is divided, and the divisions are not always complementary. The part of the water that is the Tha’alaan was the part of the water that chose to move you. But it moved you instinctively, Kaylin. There is trouble, but...it can’t clearly articulate what that trouble is.
Ybelline sounded troubled as well. Troubled and yet oddly relieved.
We thought the water was under attack by something new and terrifying. We do not have access to the Keeper’s garden, and the rest of Elantra is...not friendly when it comes to my people; we were discussing our possible options. A runner has been sent to Grethan, in the Keeper’s abode. Now, however, we understand that the weakening was at the will of the water, and not due to an outside attack.
I can’t hear the water.
No. I am sorry. We can, but it is very, very weak. The water bids me tell you that she can hear you, and that you must...silence. The silence continued for a beat too long. I am sorry, the caste leader said again. I am forced to contain the communication, to keep it separate from the Tha’alaan. We will...attempt to understand what she is trying to tell us; it is confusing. We can see what she sees—no, we can experience what she experienced—but we cannot...understand it. It is not an experience we, any of us, could have. But Kaylin? She is afraid.
Fear was poison to the Tha’alani; it was the entirety of the reason they avoided contact with other races unless commanded to break into their thoughts by the Imperial service. She felt Ybelline’s presence, as reassuring as a hug offered in comfort, and she thought that fear itself, run rampant, writ large, was poison to anyone, not just the Tha’alani. But it was here, in the Tha’alaan, that she understood what its absence meant. She could be herself. She could reveal her thoughts. They could see her lack of confidence, her lack of intelligence, her lack of strength—and to them, that was part of life. It was not the whole of it. They accepted it so calmly, so peacefully, that Kaylin could accept it all as well. Everyone felt these things some of the time.
But one couldn’t let those thoughts dominate all others; one couldn’t make decisions based only on fear, large or small. She exhaled. If I can, I’ll try to contact the water again.
If?
I have the only female Dragon we know about in the West March, an ancient stronghold of her enemies. I’d like to move to a different stronghold, just in case—but the water is active here, and I’m not certain it’s active everywhere. Its presence in the Hallionne we arrived in was extinguished by our arrival.
And they needed to speak with the Consort. They needed to speak with the Consort someplace safe from eavesdropping. The Consort didn’t trust her brother. Or perhaps she didn’t trust someone close to her brother. Or perhaps she didn’t trust Kaylin herself. The weave of suspicion, of the fear of deception, and of the actual deception itself seemed both fine and delicate—unless one were a fly.
But if you were a figurative fly, you couldn’t ignore that web.
The thing is, she thought as she withdrew her hand, you couldn’t live in it, either. If you were trapped in it, the only thing you could see was the web itself, and the web brought the fear of the spider until that was the whole of the world. But webs were in corners, in out of the way places; they weren’t the whole world. And it would be easy to forget that.
It had been easy to forget it.
But...it was tricky. If the entire world wasn’t treachery and deception, treachery and deception existed. How safely could one approach that web without being caught up in it again?
“You’re thinking,” Bellusdeo said.
Kaylin shrugged. “Brooding, mostly.”
“Well, possibly now is not the best time. Your familiar is chewing on my hair and glaring at everything.”