Cast in Wisdom Read online

  “Corporal Handred?”

  Severn, who had said almost nothing since their arrival, nodded. “I concur. I have crossed the borders between many of the fiefs. They are not fixed; they appear so, from the outside, and when one emerges, the streets are very much the streets that would be expected between one step and the next. But the internals shift, sometimes dramatically, sometimes more subtly, when one has taken that step. If the Towers served as anchors for the lands that surrounded Ravellon, this would make some sense.”

  “And the building you discovered today?”

  “The exit, and the building itself, seemed in keeping with the building Kaylin saw in her initial view of the pre-fief period.”

  The Arkon didn’t ask Severn how he knew what Kaylin had seen, and Kaylin didn’t bother to explain it. She was a bit surprised because Severn almost never acknowledged the actual connection.

  “The placement of the exit was also in keeping with that vision. When I crossed that border, however, I did not see the building in question. I either crossed in a different place—”

  “Given the size of the former building’s lands, it would be difficult to miss,” the Arkon countered.

  Severn nodded. “Or other forces are at work within the border. I’m inclined to assume the latter.”

  “Do you also agree with Corporal Neya’s conclusions?”

  “It would not have been my initial guess, but...yes. If Kaylin believes that the Barrani man we met in the building was somehow the Avatar of the building itself, I would give that belief strong weight.”

  “Bellusdeo?”

  She shrugged, the fief shrug that the rest of the cohort had taken up almost upon their arrival beneath Helen’s roof. “I have far less experience with sentient buildings than any of you. But given their creators, I would guess that destroying them would be difficult if the creators themselves were not responsible for that destruction.

  “The building clearly fell off the map that Kaylin’s words invoked when the Towers rose. If it is indeed the same building, the permeability of the border zone might explain how we entered it at all.”

  “You don’t believe that.”

  “No, sadly, I don’t. I do, however, believe that Kaylin is materially correct. We were in that building. The building itself somehow survived the fall of Ravellon and the creation of the Towers; it surrendered its hold on the lands that it had once stewarded.” She frowned.

  So did Kaylin; the expressions were almost a mirror image. “If the lands, if the composition of the lands, changed—were changed—by Shadow or the fall of Ravellon, those lands wouldn’t be the lands the Towers now hold, would they?”

  “That, I believe, is an excellent question,” the Arkon replied. Since Kaylin had asked it, he even nodded in her direction. “If it is necessary for you to return, make an appointment.” He then turned his back and headed toward his desk.

  It took Kaylin a moment to realize they were all being dismissed. Bellusdeo, however, snorted. “You have not changed at all, Lannagaros.”

  * * *

  “You’re worried about the Arkon,” Kaylin said on the drive home, carriage provided by the palace.

  Bellusdeo nodded, although she continued to stare out the open window, as if hoping something would distract her. “He was not himself.”

  “You said he never changes, and he seemed pretty normal to me.”

  “He failed to ask real questions,” said the person who wasn’t being grilled. “He seemed tense. I feel something is off, something is wrong.”

  Kaylin glanced at the Dragon and understood. The Arkon was the only remaining friend from a distant, distant childhood. “Given our luck, we’ll find out what it is soon.”

  * * *

  Helen was at the open doors when Kaylin entered the grounds. With her came Bellusdeo; Severn returned to the Halls of Law to make his report. Kaylin was grateful that he was willing to do it. Of all Hawk activities, the writing of reports was the one she still hated most. Especially given the joy with which their sergeant received them.

  Keep an ear out, Kaylin told him.

  I will. I want to pay a visit to Missing Persons. He was silent for one long moment and then said, Yes, I saw what you saw.

  And you have a better memory for faces.

  She felt his nod, but whatever she’d meant to say in response withered as she caught sight of Helen’s face. The eyes of her home’s Avatar were obsidian, and this was never a good sign.

  Bellusdeo noticed, as well; the Dragon’s eyes darkened to an orange that implied martial caution. At least Helen wasn’t wearing armor. She looked like her usual gentle, maternal self if one didn’t look at her eyes.

  “Where,” Helen said, dispensing with the usual welcome home that characterized her, “did you meet Killianas?”

  Kaylin blinked. “You mean Killian?”

  Helen stepped into the house to allow both Kaylin and Bellusdeo to enter. She then shut the door—a little more firmly than necessary—and exhaled sound. The sound had syllables in it, but also the roaring of ocean, the crash of lightning that followed the rumble of thunder, the crackle of fire as it devoured wood.

  Bellusdeo waited, an almost bored expression transforming her features; the color of her eyes remained orange.

  “What’s happening?” Mandoran said from the height of the stairs that led to the foyer, and therefore, the door.

  “I am trying,” Helen said without looking up, “to find the right words to express a phrase.”

  “I don’t think that’s working out well for you.” Mandoran descended the stairs.

  “Did you understand it?” Bellusdeo asked.

  “Not well, no. Serralyn thinks she might understand the gist of it.”

  “Pardon?”

  “She was always good with language, in the old days.” He reached the ground. Helen had fallen silent and seemed slightly pinker than usual. “Where did you guys go, anyway? Helen’s not happy.”

  “You think?”

  Bellusdeo snorted smoke. “We attempted to reach the fief of Candallar by crossing the border of Tiamaris. I believe it was meant to be a shortcut. It was not particularly short.”

  “What happened?”

  Helen steered them to the dining room. Although the parlor existed, Kaylin was never entirely comfortable using it; that was a room meant for visitors who were above her pay grade and needed to be impressed somehow. The dining room could double as a mess hall, and given the cohort these days, it usually did. Although Helen tended to change the furniture when important guests visited, she didn’t attempt to maintain it that way when they left.

  The parlor, however, was always stuffy and fancy.

  Helen could, and did, pick information from Kaylin’s thoughts as she walked the stretch of hall that led to the comfortable common room. Hope was slumped across her shoulder, looking bored. Boredom apparently afflicted anything immortal.

  They took their usual seats, although Teela came down to join them, her eyes a shade of midnight. Mandoran glanced at her, grimaced, and dropped his head to the tabletop. Repeatedly.

  “If you don’t want her to help you with that,” Kaylin told him as she took her own chair, “I’d suggest you stop right now.”

  “Teela’s in a foul mood.”

  Of course she was. Severn, Kaylin and Bellusdeo had gone to the fiefs as Hawks. Since Bellusdeo was a Dragon, Kaylin privately felt they had enough of a power escort that they didn’t need to also take Barrani Hawks. Teela clearly disagreed.

  “Remember when you said you’d make an effort to trust me more with my own survival?”

  “I trust you to be yourself.”

  Mandoran grinned. “In Teela’s defense—”

  “Teela,” Teela snapped, “will never be desperate enough to require your defense.”

  “—you manage to wander into
more trouble than anyone we’ve ever met. Except Terrano.” He laughed out loud. Terrano felt the same as Teela did. “Teela is now annoyed—”

  “And Teela will speak for herself.”

  “Fine. But you’re taking too long, and Terrano wants us all to shut up so Kaylin and Bellusdeo can get to the interesting bits.”

  The cohort didn’t need to be present to be part of any conversation—as long as one of its members was. Teela didn’t count; she was so accustomed to keeping everything to herself, she had an excellent game face. She wouldn’t ask questions or offer answers at the cohort’s demand. Which was why Mandoran was here.

  Kaylin glanced at Bellusdeo. “Do you want to continue, or do you want me to do it?”

  “I’d prefer Severn, to be frank, but he managed to escape the debriefing by never passing through the front gate.”

  “Fine. We were taking a shortcut across the borders.”

  “You cannot possibly have considered that remotely sensible,” Teela snapped.

  “It’s not the first time I’ve done it.”

  “The first time, you had no choice. You made it through. But the second time? You were attacked by someone wielding purple elemental fire.”

  “Probably Shadow fire, given what we now know.”

  “Fine, quibble. You took Bellusdeo into the border zone.”

  “Bellusdeo has been in far worse than your border zones.” It was the Dragon’s turn to snap.

  Please don’t mention the Emperor. Please don’t mention the Emperor. Please. Since Kaylin wasn’t part of the cohort, Teela couldn’t hear her.

  “Very well. Tell us what happened when you chose to save time.” Teela folded her arms. She’d not yet taken a seat, and by the looks of it, wasn’t about to start. Bending in half would have cracked something, given her mood.

  “We found a building in the border zone, midway between the city and Ravellon. It had no doors, no windows, and seemed to be two stories in height. The one distinguishing feature it possessed, other than the pristine condition it was in, was a large, stone-appearing eye.”

  “Appearing?”

  “Well, it moved. I mean, the lid opened, and the eyeball it contained moved. When it saw us—or when we stepped into its field of vision—we were instantly transported into a large stone room. It was one story; the ceiling was very high.”

  “To my eye,” Bellusdeo added, “the walls were stone and featureless. It appeared to be of the same pristine manufacture as the exterior walls.”

  “In the border zone?” Teela asked. “That I know of, there has been no construction within that zone; the desperate might choose to take up residence within the dwellings, but the placement of those dwellings does not appear to be fixed or stable.” She lifted a hand before anyone else could speak and added, “Some basic research has been done by scholars who make the High Halls their home.”

  Great. Another source of information that was likely to be more prickly and more difficult to navigate than the border zones themselves.

  Helen’s eyes were still the wrong color.

  “Kaylin, however, did not see the room in the same way I did; she had her familiar’s wing plastered to her face.”

  Teela raised one dark brow in Kaylin’s direction; Kaylin picked up the story. “I saw carved reliefs across one wall—the wall facing us when we arrived.”

  “Carved reliefs?”

  Kaylin nodded. “Hope breathed on one of them, and when he did, Bellusdeo could see it. She believes—and Severn has gone to confirm—that that figure is a boy reported as missing.

  “There were a lot of people, besides the possible missing person, engraved across the wall. It was like a sculptor’s rendition of a crowd; the boy was one of the figures at the forefront. There were a couple of Barrani, but they were farther back, and therefore less visible to me.”

  “You didn’t recognize them.”

  “No. We can assume,” Kaylin continued, “that they’re really old Barrani.”

  “Bellusdeo didn’t see them.”

  “No—I thought it was risky enough to have Hope breathe on one section of the wall, and he breathed on a figure in the foreground. The Barrani were well back. It’s because Bellusdeo could identify one of the figures—a missing person—that I thought Killian might be living in a sentient building.” She didn’t cringe but failed to mention Nightshade’s intimidating audience chamber.

  “But it’s when he used my name that I thought he might be a building, somehow. He was missing an eye.”

  “And you think the eye that served as a portal was that missing eye?”

  Did she? She considered the question with some care and then nodded. “If he’s a building, the eye is figurative. But...”

  Helen’s eyes were obsidian, even if both remained firmly in her face. “He said he is not the master, and he does not seem to have control over the architecture?”

  Kaylin nodded. She then turned to the Avatar of her house. “What is Killian, exactly? We know that there was a sentient building near the heart of the fiefs; it existed when the Towers were created.”

  Helen nodded.

  Mandoran, however, demanded to know how Kaylin knew this—which was probably Sedarias speaking, given his tone and his expression.

  Teela, however, said, “The Arkon?”

  Which was more or less the truth. “Yes. He wasn’t happy to see us, but he did confirm that before the creation of the Towers, there was a building near Ravellon. It existed between what’s now Nightshade and Liatt. It appears to have vanished when the Towers—and their perimeters—were established.” She now turned to Helen.

  “You knew Killian.” The last syllable tailed up slightly, but it wasn’t really a question.

  Helen nodded.

  “How? As far as I can tell, buildings are entirely anchored in the lands they occupy. I mean, they are the lands they occupy.”

  Helen nodded again. “You use your mirrors to communicate with those who are not currently sharing the same space you share. The cohort,” she continued, before Mandoran could speak—and he had opened his mouth, “use the bond of True Names. You have some experience with that.”

  It was Kaylin’s turn to nod.

  “We had something similar. Not as dire as True Names in the worst possible case, and not as flexible, in the best. But... I lost the ability to speak with others such as I when I made the choice to become as independent as I could.

  “Some of the strictures that guided and enforced my behavior could not be changed—not safely. And yes, before you ask, every decision on my part was a calculated risk. But one of the things that could not be altered was the part of my function that required a lord, a master.

  “I call them tenants,” she added. “And I choose. But once chosen, that master cannot easily be displaced.”

  “It would be easy for you to kill them,” Mandoran said.

  “It would be impossible for me to kill them,” Helen replied.

  “Sedarias asks if that’s why you choose mortal masters.”

  “No. It is not. Were I to meet a Barrani who was, in temperament and personality, identical to Kaylin, I would choose the Barrani as a tenant if I were otherwise empty.”

  “...Yeah, that’s not likely.”

  “But you existed without a tenant before me,” Kaylin pointed out.

  “I did. There are things I could not do without a tenant. There are rooms and worlds I could not create; there are things I could not easily see. It is not all of one thing, or all of another. In order to make my own choices, I had to surrender the ability to obey a wider range of commands. I do not regret it, on most days.”

  “Now?”

  “I am concerned, as you must know. Killianas and I were not friends; perhaps it is better to say we were kin. His function was not my function; the space he occupied was both larger and m
ore flexible.”

  “So...he’s like you were, when you had no tenant?” Mandoran asked.

  “I do not know. I imagine, were he damaged in the fashion I damaged myself, he would operate under the last orders he received from his Lord.”

  “The Towers take different lords from time to time.”

  “Yes. But the Towers are not what we were or are. They were built for specific functions; all else is meant to serve those functions. The Towers accept lords for different reasons than we did. Perhaps.

  “I am disturbed by two things. Killian’s eye—and the eye that served as portal—and Killian’s presence in the building itself, a building that does seem subject to some oversight. It is clear to me that he is operating by a very strict interpretation of the mandates of his construction.”

  “And the wall?”

  “I am uncertain. People age, people die. If someone requires people of different ages, the wall—as you call it—might be the perfect containment. But you said or implied that Killian was not aware of the wall.”

  “That might not be what he considers it.” Kaylin frowned. “When I attempted to contact the building itself, he didn’t answer. But I think he heard me; he moved us out of the reiterating halls and into halls that would eventually lead to an actual exit. I’m not sure what his function was supposed to be, when he was created. The Arkon seemed to think he might have been a giant school. A university.”

  Helen nodded.

  “So we might have been classed as lost students?”

  “Very possible. But he did not lose the eye, or the ability to materialize it, on his own. It is quite possible he created the trap of endless hallways; it is almost certain that he created what you viewed as wall.”

  “If he has a lord, though, it’s going to be hard for us to investigate at all.”

  “Perhaps. I find it interesting that the exit, as you call it, was within the border zone where he might otherwise have been standing after the tragedy. It is not easy to destroy a building; it is not trivial to command one.”