"There is much loss, yes. Do you understand Barrani youth? It is-like mortal youth-a time of optimism and idealism. It is a time when we do not believe in caution, but choose instead a hope that is not leavened by bitter experience. That follows, with the passage of time. The things we love-and hate-in our youth, the losses we take, the deaths we endure-they scar us in ways that later loves and later losses do not. Those, we expect.
"I cannot judge, Kaylin. Were either of my brothers lost to such a gamble as the High Court chose to take, I do not think I would ever have recovered. I would function, yes. I would go on. But the rage and the hatred I felt for that High Court would never dim. Mortals forget, and that is a kindness, although it does not seem so to you, and perhaps never will. We do not. We remember whenever we choose to think about the past at all. We can almost walk in it, it is so real.
"I do not know what occurred between the twelve; I know only that were Teela to die, they might at last be free. Free to be or do what, I cannot say. They are not Barrani now-but they are not entirely other."
It struck Kaylin then that the Consort suspected the link between the twelve. She suspected that Teela knew the true names of the eleven; that the eleven, in turn, knew hers. She almost asked, but couldn't. It wasn't her secret to tell.
"If Teela died, and the eleven were freed, what would happen to their names?"
"Do you not know? No, perhaps you don't. You have seen the Lake, and you have touched it, and it has left you marked or changed-but you are not Barrani, and will never be Barrani. There are things you cannot understand. Their names will be lost to us. They will not return to the Lake."
Even hearing it felt like a blow to Kaylin. "Can you-"
"Can I preserve them?" The Consort closed her eyes. "I cannot do what you have done, no. But yes, in some fashion, were I to see what you have seen, I might strengthen them in a different way. I see the Lake, Kaylin. I see it all the time. It exists in the High Halls, and I may approach it physically-as you did. But it exists, for me, wherever my people exist." She took both of Kaylin's hands in hers.
"Is that why they want you?"
"Yes. They feel that they might approach that Lake through me. They cannot," she added. "Not even changed as they are. I will not survive the attempt, but they cannot succeed."
"They don't believe that."
"No."
"They're trying to take the words and remake them."
"Yes. They are like your infants; they are trying to speak as gods. They are trying to use the words in a way that the words cannot be used. They are trying," she said, voice soft and sad, "to lie in a language in which lies cannot be spoken."
"Why are they even-" Kaylin stopped. "Do they understand that that's what they're trying to do?"
The Consort's smile was deeper; it was tinged with an approval that Kaylin shouldn't have wanted, but did anyway. "You understand. No. They believe that any thought that can be expressed-no, any desire-is true in and of itself. You see the words that they attempt to speak. What do they look like to you?"
"Like the shadows of words, but-worse."
"Yes. All desires exist; there are words that speak of those desires, those words are true. But not all desire is reality. They believe that what the Ancients desired, they could bring into being by simply...speaking. Writing."
"Bleeding," Kaylin said, automatically.
The Consort said a long nothing.
"Lady, what is it that you think they want?"
"I would guess, if I could, that they wish to transform Teela as they themselves were transformed. I do not know. I do not understand the whole of their spoken tongue-they have created a language, the way the young sometimes do. I understand only parts of it, and not with clarity."
"And your song, the song you were singing when we found you?"
She glanced at the edge of what was no longer stone grove. "A lullaby. They do not hate me," she said. "Nothing they now attempt is personal."
"Would you kill them if you could?"
"Yes. But not with joy, Kaylin, and with no sense of triumph. I understand what Teela's mother asked of the green. But in the end, this is the result. The green is scarred, Teela is scarred, and the lost children exist in a state that is neither life nor death. But I think this time, we will have an ending, one way or the other." She looked up as the water drew close, carrying Teela, cradling her as the fire had done.
"What happened to her?"
"She did what you did-she absorbed the nightmares of Alsanis. I couldn't do what I did for you because I couldn't see them. At all."
"How many?"
"I don't know. I told you-I couldn't see them. There doesn't seem to be anything wrong with her physically, and I can't-I can't touch her."
"I would think it suicidal to try."
"She's unconscious. She can only kill me if she wakes up."
The Consort touched Teela's brow.
"Can you see her name?"
The Consort said, "Never ask that question of me. Never ask it again. It is not safe."
"For me, or for you?"
"For either of us, Kaylin. Do you understand the position of Consort is not hereditary?"
"It was-"
"No. I am offered the opportunity to take the test first; it is a courtesy. I could have refused, without dishonor; I did not. Had I failed, I would have died, and a search for a suitable candidate would have begun. My bloodline gives me no affinity; it gives me nothing special. The test that we face-a test you did not-is not short. It is not a decision made in a moment. There are spaces in which Barrani might live that are nonetheless not the world to which we were born. In those spaces, time has less meaning-but no Barrani, no Dragon, no mortal, can undo the past. We move forward. The testing that I underwent began before you were born. Were I to undergo such a test now, it would end long after you died-of the old age that takes all mortals, sooner or later.
"Some fail the test almost immediately. Some take decades to make the first, false step. There is no going back. No one of us understands what the test entails, Kaylin, until it is far too late. My mother passed. I passed." She smiled. "I passed in-how do you say it? Record time?"
"That's how we say it."
"My father, of course, was proud. Proud. I was his daughter."
"Your mother?"
"She grieved."
"I...don't understand."
"She had undergone the same testing, Kaylin. She knew what both passing-and surviving-in such a short time meant. The Lake chooses; it is not kind in its choice. I am not...the daughter my mother hoped for. I am not harsh enough, not strong enough. But I am not so weak that I could fail. I am not so weak that I could not sacrifice almost everything I loved in order to safeguard the source of all life. But I am weak enough that such sacrifice would never be made for any other reason." Her smile was both fragile and self-conscious, yet it looked strangely at home on a Barrani face. "I am not even determined enough to hate you for what you were willing to risk."
"She thought you'd be hurt. By your life."
"No. She knew I would be. She was Barrani, and Consort-but she was my mother. Even among my kin, the relationship is not without significance." She looked up at the sky, where the dragon hovered. "Do you know what you're doing?" she asked, voice soft. "Is this like your refugees, somehow?"
Kaylin very much wanted to say yes. She chose to say nothing instead.
"What has your familiar done to the trees?"
"They weren't really trees."
"That is not an answer."
"No." Kaylin hesitated, and then said, "I don't know."
The Consort's smile was rueful. "Perhaps I should have accepted the nonanswer. Come. Whatever he has done, he has done; the binding that kept me here has faded." Before Kaylin could speak, she added, "They were here, but they were not here. They are children, Barrani children, at heart."
"They're not Barrani."
"No, Kaylin-they are not. But they are not entirely other. They cannot be both-and they have tried. They do not think they are different; they think they are more powerful, less limited, but still essentially what they were." She closed her eyes. "You must leave Teela here."
Kaylin's jaw dropped. She didn't bother to close it without letting words fall out. "I am not leaving Teela here."
"Yes, Kaylin, you will. She is here, in the end, because of you-but this is where she must be. I am sorry. You anger me so often, I am surprised that I am able to feel compassion for you at all-but I do. Teela came here as harmoniste, once. She came, and she survived. But she failed. She failed and the dreams of Alsanis were dark for a century.
"What you feel for Teela, we do not feel; not in the same way. It is closest to what the lost feel. You wear the blood of the green, although you are like the youngest and least controlled of our children. But you are Chosen. You have drawn me from the nightmares of Alsanis when none of my kin could. You have come to me in the scar of the green, and because you have, we will be able to leave."
"I couldn't have come here without Teela."
"No."
"I won't leave her."
"Then we will never leave." The Consort slid her hands behind her back. "And I admit that I am...weary. I am weary of the grief of both the green and Alsanis. I am weary of the loss and the fear of loss. I am not in pain. If I cannot leave, the failure, in the end, will not be not my fault. That is a terrible thing to confess, is it not? As long as it is not my fault, I can be at peace with failure."