Cast in Sorrow (Luna Books)(70)

It was why the loss of the word-not the life that contained it-was so wrong.

And those words had been given to the lost children, not when they'd been chosen to enter the green, but when they had been presented to the Consort. At that point, no knowledge of what awaited them in future guided her choice. Kaylin wasn't certain what did, in the end. Nor was she certain the Consort could explain it, if asked.

Something had happened to the children, here. But...their names hadn't been changed.

Kaylin glanced at her palm; the mark that lay against it was the color of new blood, which was not a color she associated with True Words. It was the color she associated with life, with birth, and with pain. She had kept it, and knew now that it was one of eleven such names. It existed in the green, and only in the green-but it didn't belong here.

Why had it been protected all this time?

The stories about life drifted into stories about being, becoming, and ending. She didn't understand that endings meant death until she found the story trapped at the heart of the green, and she lost so much of it to the creature that had ridden on her shoulder for most of his existence.

There were no stories about him that she could hear or touch; she kind of wanted him to choke on them, at the moment. But she concentrated on the stories about death at the heart of the green; death at its edges were part of war, and although they might have hinted at something important, she couldn't afford to hang on to them. She could keep hold of so little, between the creature and the speed at which the information was offered.

She held on to the deaths at its heart; she did more. She spoke of them. Aside from shouting at Teela in frustration-and in fear-they were the first words she had deliberately spoken out loud.

* * *

The green was alive in some sense; it was sentient. It spoke. It felt-as ages passed-sorrow and inexplicable grief, and it felt joy in equal measure. But it was not alive in the way the Hallionne were; it was not alive in the way the Barrani were. It existed where worlds existed, but it existed apart from them. She didn't speak of its birth because if its birth was part of the multitude of histories that left Nightshade's lips, she hadn't rescued it in time.

It was like-and unlike-the True Names that gave the Barrani life. The words at the heart of the green were not words meant for the living; they could not exist in Kaylin's world. The words that gave life to the Barrani were words it could read; it could see them so clearly, it defined life by words. Mortals made distant sense to the Hallionne; they made sense to the green only the way cockroaches, mosquitos, and plants did.

Blood was not forbidden the green: death was.

And death was forbidden the green because the words of the dying could not escape its grasp. They weren't meant to be part of the green; the green was not of this world. And yet, not of it, it was part of it. It touched and spoke with the Hallionne, who were altered in just such a way that they could hear its ancient, endless voice, its plethora of voices. It heard the Hallionne's voice, its many voices. It heard the Hallionne's dreams.

And it heard the voices of the Barrani during the recitation. A window was open, then; a moment permitted in which the two-the lesser, fragile, fixed children of the Ancients, and the greater and eldest-might communicate. It might tell the Barrani their history. With will, and the right combination of Barrani, it might speak to the Barrani of its own history; it might give them a glimpse of the things that did not naturally walk the world. It might speak of its desires and its dreams and-last-its fears.

Kaylin understood these things only as a mortal might, although Nightshade spoke of dreams and desires and fears, and she fed those, her hands shaking, to the creature.

When the Barrani died in the heart of the green, when they shed their blood upon it, they surrendered the thing that gave them life: their name. Kaylin felt horror at this-it was a profound, an endless, loss. Mortals believed in souls. The Barrani believed in names. Teela often equated the two-souls and True Names.

The Barrani lost their souls here. They weren't trapped, as they were in the High Halls; they were drained of the very thing that made them names. She closed her eyes. Opened them again. She couldn't see the Consort's face, and for once, she was grateful. She knew what she'd see in the Lady's expression.

But the power that the name gave the Barrani conferred the ability to speak directly to the green. It made their desires-their final desires-as clear to the green as the green's own desires were, because for a moment, before they were extinguished, they were part of the green.

Those wishes, those desires-they couldn't be coerced; they couldn't be changed.

The people of the Vale had died in the green. They'd died by order of Teela's father. His name flitted past, and she let it go with vindictive fury, hating him for just this minute. They didn't understand what their lost thoughts would do. They didn't understand what their hatred and, yes, fear, would cost the green.

No, that wasn't true. One woman did. One woman. Teela's mother. She was Vivienne, of the line of Wardens and Guardians. She knew. She emptied her thoughts of rage and fury and bitter betrayal. The only thing she wanted, the only thing, was the safety of her daughter. The fact that her daughter bore the blood of the man who commanded the killings meant nothing to her.

She regretted only the fact that she had repaired to the High Court, away from kin and home and green; that her daughter, Teela, had not been raised to hear the distant voice of the green and to understand its ancient and abiding will.

Maybe Kaylin told this story first because it was about Teela. Maybe she told it because she, too, had lost her mother, and she wanted to believe-oh, all children wanted to believe-that if she were to be abandoned, it would be for reasons as perfect and clear as this one.

And maybe she told it because, as she began to speak, she could see Vivienne in the heart of the green.                       
       
           



       Chapter 26


Kaylin wasn't Teela. Vivienne was not her mother. But she was certain that she would have known this woman anywhere. She looked like Teela. Not in the way that all Barrani women, except the Consort, did, although she had all the racial characteristics of her race: the long, dark hair, the slender build, the high cheekbones, and, at this moment, eyes of midnight-blue. No, it was in the shape of her face, the length of earlobes, the way her chin tapered to a sharper point.

If Teela had been run through by multiple blades, she would have looked like this.

Her eyes were on her daughter's face.

Teela had climbed down from the fountain, somehow. Whatever she'd been holding at bay was forgotten. Her mother knelt by the fountain, and in the distance, Kaylin could hear the shouts and the cries of fighting; she could hear swords against swords, and harsh Barrani orders.

She could hear the prayers of the Warden. She hadn't expected that; she couldn't see him. Nor could she see the other combatants; not until they fell. Their dying bodies came into view as they did; they were close, so close, to Vivienne.

Kaylin reached for Teela, and then let her hand fall. She couldn't call her back; she couldn't stem the flow of words because she understood that it was her words that had built this image, that had made this history real.

And as Teela walked onto the green-a green that contained no Warden, no Ynpharion, no Severn-they joined her. Kaylin watched as they appeared, translucent at first, but gaining in solidity as she spoke. The eleven children. Some of their names, she knew. Some, she hadn't heard until this moment.

Sedarias came first. She looked so proud, so aloof, so arrogant. She glanced at the bodies of the dead and the dying without so much as blinking; she stood above them all. But when she looked at Teela, she froze for one arrested moment, her eyes-her blue, cold eyes, shifting in that second to a very rare amethyst. Like Kaylin, she lifted a hand; like Kaylin, she let it drop.

But she turned to Kaylin, her eyes wide, her lips parted as if to speak. Then she smiled and turned away. It was a very Barrani smile.

Annarion came next, seconds behind. He was much like Sedarias-cold and proud of bearing. But what she would not do, he did; he saw the dying Vivienne, and his gaze went immediately to her daughter. He walked over the fallen, pausing only once to touch the side of a man's neck before he rose again and made his way to Teela's side.

Eddorian followed. His eyes were almost instantly the same shade of purple that Sedarias's had taken, but on his face, with his drawn expression, it looked natural. He didn't approach Teela; to Kaylin's surprise, he offered Sedarias-a woman who almost certainly would take insult at the implication that she needed support-an arm. And she took it.

Allaron followed. He was, as she remembered him, a giant of a Barrani, and although he had the natural grace of his kin, he seemed to slouch a bit more; he had always been self-conscious about his size; he had always been pushed to excel in acts of physical prowess.

And he had. But significantly, it was Allaron who cried. He didn't weep; Kaylin had never seen Barrani weep. His eyes were an open amethyst. A Barrani man put a hand on Allaron's shoulder, and Allaron turned, looking down; he met the eyes of Valliant-who, like any mortal child of Kaylin's acquaintance, loathed his name. Allaron was one of the few, even among the twelve, who failed to tease him for it.