“She won’t be Chosen, if that’s what you mean. And she probably won’t become Severn without a lot of trauma and training.”
“It is odd. She is like Nightshade, and yet, unlike Nightshade. It was the work of decades to become attached to the sound of his voice, the tenor of his very quiet thoughts. Kattea has none of his power. If Kattea had been pushed into Ravellon, she would have died before her voice could wake me. The air might kill her. The night. The wrong morning mist. She is loud and she feels both pride and shame; she is constantly in motion, even when she sleeps.
“Many were the discussions I had with Lord Nightshade; many were the topics we discussed. I learned the history of the Barrani; he learned the history of my kin; he explored the gardia, where it was safe to do so. I saw wonder in him, and through him, wonder at things that had never moved me before.
“I felt peace when he spoke of his brothers. No, I felt peace when he spoke of Annarion.”
This couldn’t fail to get Annarion’s attention.
“He was subject to time as you were meant to experience it,” Gilbert said to Nightshade’s younger brother. “And you were subject to a type of freedom that you were never meant to have. You did not expect your brother to change. He finds it uncomfortable to be judged by you, because you haven’t changed in ways that are clear to him. What you want and what you believe—of honor, of justice, of duty—he once believed. He does not wish you to see him as he sees himself. He has a very ferocious pride.
“But I wander. Nightshade’s mind is sharp, as is his curiosity. If we did not understand each other immediately, we learned; he asked questions that remain with me now, and I will have the answer, although not soon.
“Kattea is not like Nightshade. Her temper is quick to light, and her tears, quick to fall; she sleeps, she eats endlessly when given opportunity, and she asks no questions that I understand.” He lifted an arm and pointed; the arm seemed like velvet obsidian to Kaylin’s eye. The lamps reflected off wet floor, but not off Gilbert.
The stairs hugged wall.
“What do you mean?”
“How does the sun work? Why do the moons exist? Why are there dogs?”
“Those seem like perfectly reasonable questions to me.”
“Do they?”
Kaylin frowned. “Your room—it’s waterproof, right?”
“Yes. It is proof against any element; it cannot be pushed out of phase.”
“Good. Get up the stairs. Move. Move move move.”
The Arkon was less equivocal about these stairs, although they appeared to be wooden slats; he went up first, quickly followed by Mandoran, Annarion and Gilbert. Kaylin, at the foot of the stairs, turned to face the water as it lifted itself from its bed of ancient stone floor.
*
The water emerged in the shape of a woman with hollow eyes; she wore a dress that literally flowed down shoulders and arms, its hem blending with the inches of water that remained on the floor. “Kaylin.”
Kaylin nodded.
“Chosen.”
She nodded again, aware that her marks had continued to brighten; they were not as sharp a light as Gilbert’s unattached eyes cast, but they were the same color. Two watery hands rose in a swift snap of motion that ended with...eyes. The water then took those eyes and inserted them into her own sockets; golden light was absorbed by the water, changing every element of its color.
In a face of water, the two eyes looked almost natural. “The Keeper is holding the fundaments in place. The only element to escape—to be forced out—is water, for reasons that must now be obvious. Nor is it all of the water—but the part of me that exists in another story, another ending, cannot merge with the containment. I hope your Evanton survives.
“Mine did not.”
“What was done—what’s being done—it breaks the Keeper’s Garden?” Kaylin asked. It seemed the only germane question, because the water might actually know.
“The Keeper’s Garden exists in time; it requires time. We do not, not in the same fashion. It is only in our interactions with you that it is a necessity. We are part of your life. You are part of ours. Someone sought to emulate the Garden itself; they did not understand the construction required. The Keeper’s stones are not stones, except to your eyes. They are names, Kaylin. They are the force of the truth of fire, water, air, earth.”
“There’s more than one truth.”
“There is more than one interaction, and we have loved the stories you tell us of our import to your kind. But those stories are not truth as we understand it. They are not,” she added, her voice darkening, “truth as others understand it; the small moments in which you take joy are not...joy to them. Perhaps once they were.
“The Keeper’s Garden has proved unassailable without internal aid.”
“But—”