Cast in Sorrow (Luna Books)(41)

"Wing!" she told him, leaping. He dug claws into her shoulder, which was fair-she wasn't certain he'd still be attached otherwise. His squawking was lost to the fury of bestial roar. She didn't need to hear his complaint; clinging to a shoulder while balancing one open wing was difficult.

He pretty much plastered said wing to her face when she flattened herself against the wall, facing the creature's side. He was a good fifteen feet away, but she'd had experience fighting shadow one-offs, and knew the flank was no guarantee of safety; he could sprout an extra head with no warning. But she took the moment to look.

She froze, but the creature's lunge at Teela carried him farther away; he didn't take advantage of her momentary stillness.

He had a name.

She could see it as clearly as she had seen Ynpharion's, in his altered form. This creature's physical shape was larger; fur had been supplanted by obsidian, but it preserved a lot of the same characteristics; four legs, huge jaws. It also sported a tail that was split, and terminated in at least three strands. They etched grooves in stone when the creature had tried to cut Kaylin into several pieces with it.

"All is forgiven," Kaylin said, still staring.

The dragon said nothing.

"I don't think I can grab this one."

The nothing was somehow louder and frostier.

She hadn't lied. The name that she could see was twisting and shifting in place. It was golden, as most words were-but its light was uneven, brighter in some of the components, and so weak it could barely be seen in others. All around its shape and form was shadow; the shadow, however, was green. As green, seen through the mask of dragon wing, as the creatures eyes now were.

Iberrienne.

It was, she was suddenly certain, Iberrienne.

And his name, like Ynpharion's, was shadowed, twisted. The transformation went deeper; the name was larger. A thought occurred to her then: Ynpharion, drawn back by the use of his name into his Barrani life and Barrani self, had loathed Iberrienne.

But what if Iberrienne himself were corrupted in exactly the same way? What if he, too, had been changed? He wasn't so changed that he hadn't attempted to kill Bellusdeo, the only known, living, female dragon. Nor so changed that he couldn't move among the Lords of the High Court and the Arcanists.

Whatever the transformation's power, it had to work on what it had. She highly doubted she'd care for an uncorrupted Iberrienne.

The small dragon bit her ear, hard.

Teela hadn't slowed; neither had the creature. Kaylin had a weapon she could use against him. She just preferred him to be dead. But it wasn't going to happen soon, and soon was necessary. No one knew where the Consort was.

And so she began to gather what she thought of loosely as syllables. Ynpharion's name had been a name. Iberrienne's was only barely that. She could make out what she thought its shape had once been, but she couldn't be certain-and lack of certainty would get her nothing, in the end. Nothing but his rage if she came just close enough.

Teela could keep this up for another hour, in Kaylin's opinion; possibly longer if she pushed.

Just how long had Iberrienne been compromised? What had he been promised, and what, before he had listened to some unknown tale of ancient malice, had he hoped to achieve?

He wasn't as young as Kaylin had assumed-but she realized she'd made the assumption because he seemed so impulsive. He had the visceral hatred of Dragons that only the older Lords of the High Court held.

That melting part of his name was a stroke, not a squiggle; it was meant to tuck in, turn up in a slight slope at the end farthest from Kaylin. The center of the word was unbalanced, as words often were, but the light there was the most familiar. She started there.

Syllables gathered, but she realized, as she amassed them, that they weren't, in any real sense, syllables at all. She heard them as syllables. She heard them as Barrani words. But Nightshade was called Calarnenne by any member of the Court who didn't wish to offend the Consort. What she said, when she spoke his name, was not what they heard. What they said was too thin; it was flat.

Kaylin spoke something that had dimension and strength; it had shape, it had depth, it had structure. The syllables weren't sounds; they were blocks or bricks. If they interlocked in the right way with her intent and her will, they had form.

And that form was a cage.

The marks on her arms were glowing; she felt the mark on her forehead join them. Only the mark on her hand remained as it looked: red, wet with sweat, untouched by light. The small dragon crooned and nudged the side of her face with his head; she felt it at a great remove.

She hated the green wisps of smoke. She hated the purple flame. She hated the vulnerability that ownership introduced-because, damn it, it did. But Ynpharion had remembered. Iberrienne would remember.

And she needed to know what had happened to the Consort.

The syllables snapped into place; she opened her mouth and as she spoke them and they sounded, to her ears, like thunder.

Iberrienne.                       
       
           



       Chapter 15


He roared. She felt it as a physical sensation, like an earthquake. The ground beneath her feet broke, cracks appearing in flat stone as the creature turned. His eyes were glowing green-as they had the last time she'd encountered him.

"Kitling!"

Iberrienne turned the whole of his attention toward where Kaylin stood. To her surprise, she saw that the folds of her dress were glowing-and they were almost the same color as Iberrienne's eyes. It was the most disturbing thing about him now.

What was the blood of the green?

Iberrienne.

His hind-legs hunched; he intended to leap.

"Kaylin, move!"

She held her ground; every instinct screamed against it-but no. It wasn't her instinct; it was his. He fought her. She was surprised when her arm developed sudden gashes, because Iberrienne hadn't reached her. She cried out and raised her arms because she was wearing the damn dress and bleeding on it was bad.

It was unspecified bad. Iberrienne wasn't. He'd coiled to spring; he even attempted to do it. But she held him-barely-in place; he staggered. The stagger brought his impressive jaws closer to her face.

The small dragon reared; he didn't breathe and he didn't leap free of her shoulder.

"Kaylin!"

She heard Teela's sword strike the Feral. She heard it bounce, heard Teela's angry Leontine fury. If she survived this, Teela would shake her until her teeth rattled.

But she pushed, and she pushed hard, and it hurt. It burned. Her thoughts spiraled out of her grasp, returning in shreds-she let them go. She held one thing at the center of her thoughts: a name. His name.

She met and held his gaze. The green of his eyes lost illumination, shifting as they drained of light, into blue. Barrani blue. He staggered, dropped belly to floor; his growls became whines. Beyond the fire and fury and killing rage, there was-emptiness.

She thought then that had she tried this on the uncorrupted Lord Iberrienne of the High Court, she would have died. "Teela, don't! We need him!"

The Barrani Hawk lowered her sword; it appeared to take effort, as if gravity was pulling in the wrong direction. She didn't sheathe it. She didn't move. She stood to one side of the shrinking, black creature that was slowly dwindling, the strength of its external shape giving way to the more familiar form and figure of a Barrani man.

He was, unfortunately, naked. Kaylin couldn't remember Ynpharion being naked.

"What," Teela said, in a voice that made ice seem warm, "did you do?"

"I took his name," Kaylin replied evenly. There was blood in her mouth. It was, of course, her own. "Can you do something about my arms?"

Teela's eyes widened before they narrowed.

"I didn't cut myself, Teela. And so far no blood on the dress."

The Leontine curse was a comfort. "I do not know how you lived to be twenty."

"Twenty-one. And I'm not certain mortal blood will count-do you think it will?"

Teela glared her into silence. She didn't have random bandages on her person; the dining hall had tablecloths. She cut a chunk off one of them, and then tore it into strips.

"Is it clean?" Kaylin asked, looking dubious.

"It's clean enough."

Kaylin considering reminding Teela that bandages that were too tight were a problem, and decided against it because Iberrienne was stirring. "Grab the other tablecloth," she said, wincing.

"Why?"

"He's naked, Teela."

"Yes, I'd noticed. I prefer it to what he was wearing."

Kaylin flushed.

"You've seen far worse in the morgue."

"None of those were alive."

"True-but you won't have to look at his internal organs unless he attempts to do something foolish. I trust a disembowled, dead man who happens to be naked will be less upsetting?" She prodded Iberrienne with her very booted foot.

Kaylin retrieved her daggers. "Are we out of danger?"

"If this creature was responsible for the fires, yes."

"Lord Iberrienne," Kaylin said.

He lifted his head. His eyes were blue; they were not, however, the shade she associated with Ynpharion's eyes whenever they happened to meet hers. He blinked and looked around the dining hall as if seeing it for the first time; had he been human, she would have said he was suffering from shock.

Teela grimaced and sheathed her sword. Bending, she caught him by the upper left arm and yanked him more or less to his feet. He stumbled. "I do not believe this. If I have to carry you-"