Michelle Sagara – Cast In Shadow (страница 16)

In the center of the room, laid against the floor in sapphire light, was a large circle. It didn’t surprise her much to see writing across it. She couldn’t read it, of course; it was almost the same as the writing that was carved high above her head. But it was different. It seemed to move.

“This is the seal of the Old Ones,” he said quietly, “and from it emanates the power that defended the castle against intruders.” Against, she thought, the fieflord.

She stared at the seal. The writing seemed to sharpen, somehow. Light flared, like blue fire, and it grew in height along the patterns that had birthed it. She watched as it reached for the ceiling. Watched, forgetting to breathe, as the light from the ceiling dripped down.

When they touched, she cried out in shock, and then in pain; her arms were on fire.

“Stay your ground,” the fieflord said, but his voice seemed to come from a distance—a growing distance. She reached out almost in panic, and was instantly ashamed of her reaction.

She would have reached out for Severn that way, once. And she’d already paid for that. She made fists of her fingers.

“Kaylin, stay your ground.”

Her tongue was heavy; too heavy for speech. She wanted to tell him that she was staying her damned ground, but she couldn’t, and probably just as well.

The light was a column now.

She felt it, an inch from her face, from her hand. Her hand was moving toward it, fingers twitching, as if pulled by gravity. She’d fallen once, from a great enough height that she’d had time to think about just how much of a pain gravity was.

She’d choose falling any time.

She heard the fieflord. She felt his presence. But her hand moved, continued to move. Her skin touched blue fire. Blue fire touched her.

For just a moment, she could see, in the pillar of light, something that looked like a … man. The way that the Barrani fieflord did. But worse. She could not make out his features, and she knew that she really, really didn’t want to.

Her hand sank through the light.

She heard a single word.

Chosen.

And then a different light flared; the golden manacle slammed into the pillar and it refused to move farther. She pushed against it with half of her weight and none of her will. She was losing ground.

She cried out; she couldn’t help it. Years of training fled in the panic that followed. She could see only light, could hear only the indistinct murmur of a stranger’s voice, could feel nothing at all beneath her feet. She had feared the night all her life; this was worse. Her feet were moving. Toward the light, toward the pillar, toward what it contained. She bit her lip, and she tasted blood.

And then, just before she entered the column, before she lost herself entirely, the shadows came, and they came in the shape of a dark, precise crest.

She didn’t recognize it. It didn’t matter.

She hit it and froze.

The light scraped against its edges, seeking passage the way sun does through stained glass. But this lattice offered nothing; it wasn’t, as it had first appeared, a window. It was a wall.

It was a wall with something written across it. She stared at it as the light flared, brighter now, and she understood the word in the same way she understood hunger, pain or fear: instinctively.

She could still taste blood. She could not feel her lips. But they moved anyway. Barrani was one of the languages that the Hawklord had insisted she study, and if she hadn’t been his most apt pupil, she’d learned. She’d always learned any real lesson he’d decided to teach her, even the ones that scarred.

Her lips moved over the syllables; she had to force them. She couldn’t make a sound, but it didn’t matter.

Calarnenne.

The light went out.

“My apologies,” the fieflord said softly. His arms were around her waist, his face against her neck. Black hair trailed down her shoulder in loose, wild strands. Pretty hair.

She tried to speak.

He lifted a hand and pressed his fingers gently against her lips. “No more,” he said softly. “You have done enough. I have done enough. Come. We must leave this place.”

Her knees collapsed.

Teela would have laughed at her. Tain would have shaken his head. But the fieflord did neither; he caught her before she hit ground, lifting her as if her weight were insignificant. He cradled her against his chest, and because he did, she saw blood well against the soft fabric of his odd tunic.

It was hers. Her cheek was bleeding.

“I … can walk.”

He smiled grimly. “You can barely speak,” he said, “and if you touch the ground again, I am not certain that I will be able to stop you from touching the seal.”

There were so many questions she wanted to ask him.

Only one surfaced, fighting its way to the top. “Calarnenne?”

“Yes,” he replied grimly. “My name. Do not speak it, Kaylin.” His eyes were as blue as the light had been, and just as cold.

“Your name.”

“I should kill you,” he replied.

“Why?”

“Because you are now a bigger threat than even the Dragon.”

She shook her head. She knew that. “Why did you—why your name?”

He stopped walking, but he did not set her down. The trees were above them now, and she found their dark presence almost comforting. “The mark,” he said, touching her wounded cheek, “was not enough. You know the Barrani,” he added, his fingers brushing blood away gently. “How many of them have given you their names?”

She shook her head. “I don’t know.”

The frustration on his face was the most familiar expression she had yet seen. It reminded her of the Hawklord. “None,” he said curtly. “Because if they had, you would know.”

When this didn’t seem to garner the right response, he shook her. But even this was gentle.

“If you called their names, they would hear you. They would know where you were. And if they were not strong, they would be drawn to you. Names have power, Kaylin.” He paused. Frowned. “They have power, if you have the power to say them.”

And then he spoke the whole of her given name, her new name. “Kaylin Neya.”

She felt it reverberate through her body as if it were a caress.

He laughed, then.

CHAPTER

5

He took her back to the rooms she had woken in, and there, she found her daggers. Her clothing, however, was nowhere in sight. When her brows rose, he smiled. His smile was so close to her face it was almost blurred; she could pretend it was something else.

Her arms ached. Her head hurt. And her cheek? It continued to bleed.

The fieflord set her down upon the bed. He reached out to touch her cheek and she shied away—which overbalanced her. She really was pathetic. “Don’t.”

The word displeased him; his face fell into its more familiar, cold mask. “I have no intention of harming you,” he replied. “And I seek to take no screaming mortal children to my bed. Those who are fortunate enough to come to the Long Halls come willingly.”

“Willingly.” She snorted.

“Kaylin, I have perhaps made an error in judgment, and you have paid for it. Do not presume overmuch.”

Another warning. Too many warnings. She fell silent. But she did not let him touch her again, and he didn’t try. They were quiet for some time.

“My clothing?” she asked at last.

“It will return to you when you leave the Long Halls. It is, as I said, unsuitable.” He rose. “We will return you to your Hawks for the moment.”

She waited until he had reached the door; when he did, she rose. “I want to cover my arms,” she said.

He said nothing; he simply waited.

Her legs were wobbly, and she made her way, clumsy and entirely graceless, toward him. When he offered her an arm, she bit back all pride and took it; it was either that or fall flat on her face.

Teela had taken her drinking when she had been a year with the Hawks. It had been something like this, but with more nausea. Not a lot more, though.