“Come. I have seen death, and loss, and it is fresh in me because it is part of me. The greater part of me that sought to preserve you was most tightly wed to the Tha’alaan—but that is not all that I am. We must find your bodies. We must find your stones.”
Kaylin frowned. “The stones in the Keeper’s Garden are meant to contain the elements?”
The water said, “Yes, and no. While we retain a thread of attachment to ancient vows and containments, we will not harm him if he stands thus.”
It was, Kaylin thought, a variant of Ybelline’s protective barrier.
“Why stones?”
“I do not understand the question.”
“Why four stones?”
“They are not precisely stone. But they are anchors, Kaylin. They are the heart of an ancient vow. While they stand, the Keeper stands. While they stand, the attachment to world and time and your kind also remain.”
“And he needs the anchor.”
“The world as you exist in it requires them. The lack of those anchors will not harm us, and it will not destroy us; it will destroy some small part of what we are.”
“And the Arcanist needs anchors.” She spoke the words slowly, as if testing them.
*
“There is a problem,” the Arkon said, from the top of the stairs.
Of course there was.
“What is it?”
“There seems to be no house.”
“You expected that.” It wasn’t a question.
“In some fashion, yes. Mandoran?” To Kaylin’s surprise, the Arkon’s tone implied that he considered Mandoran a peer.
The Barrani hesitated. It was Annarion who said, “The inside of the empty sphere that’s eating the city is not empty.”
Kaylin snorted. “What, exactly, is at the top of the stairs?”
Squawk. Squawk.
Gilbert’s many eyes widened. “I understand,” he said, voice grim. He pushed his way to the top of the stairs, and given the width of the stairs, this took time. “Chosen.” The single word was almost a command.
Kaylin would have followed anyway—because his many eyes had come to rest around her like a swarm, and they appeared to be attempting to adhere themselves, through cloth, to the runes on her skin. If she hadn’t been afraid of squashing them, she would have brushed them all off.
Mandoran caught her arm as she moved past him. “Teela’s voice is much, much clearer.”
“So...we’re probably where she is.”
“Yes. For some reason, this is pissing her off.”
“Can you try to use High Barrani?” Annarion said.
“Why? Kaylin never does. It’s about communication, brother.”
“Has she moved at all?” Kaylin said, hoping to stem the tide of a different kind of brotherly interaction.
“How did you guess?”
“If nothing’s broken, she hates to stay in one spot. Did she find Bellusdeo?”
“...No, sorry.” At Kaylin’s reply, he turned back to Annarion. “See? Completely colloquial.”
“She’s not Barrani.”
Mandoran shrugged. “Popular wisdom says neither am I.”
“Chosen,” Gilbert said, demanding attention that should never have been diverted. Kaylin made it the rest of the way up the stairs.
The elemental water reached out with a single hand. She said nothing, but Kaylin understood what the gesture meant. Before she had learned to hate the world, it had been one of hers. After she had learned that the world was not only pain, disgust and death, she had struggled to learn how to do it again. It was harder, the second time—but maybe it was just as necessary.
Without a word, Kaylin took the water’s hand. The water didn’t have the same trouble negotiating the cramped stairs that Kaylin—and everyone else—did; she simply followed by Kaylin’s side, as if she could walk on air. This was wrong, of course: she rose, the water on the ground her elongating pedestal.
*
There was no small hall. There was no parlor door. There was, however, a front door, if by door one meant a structure that looked as if it had literally been created by a four-year-old with a crazy assortment of chalk. Or fifty four-year-olds, all vying for the same few yards of space.
“Look ahead,” Gilbert warned. “Look only ahead.”
She could hear voices to her right and her left; they sounded like mortal voices. Elantran voices. She froze. She had seen her share of conflict; she knew what battle sounded like. There was fighting—and dying—to either side of this primitive stretch of ground. She turned to the right—or tried. The small dragon smacked the bridge of her nose with his head. Hard.
He followed it up with complaints. Since it was Kaylin whose eyes stung with the force of the blow, she felt this unfair.
“They are echoes. They are not real. Do not make them real.”
“How the hell do I make something real?”
“Obey Gilbert,” the Arkon said. His voice was a great deal louder than the voices to the right and the left. It came from behind; he might as well have picked her up and shaken her until her teeth rattled, because the syllables reverberated throughout her entire body. Even the eyes clinging to her shirt seemed to wince.
“Should you even be up here?”
“Someone has to keep an eye on these two,” he replied. “Do not look back.”
“He means us,” Mandoran said. Annarion, predictably, said nothing.