05 #2
The woman’s face fell into a network of wrinkles, none of which implied amusement. Before she could speak, Kaylin caught her
elbow, which was what she could safely reach. “He isn’t lying,” she said, speaking slowly, voice low. “If anyone could safely
navigate this close to the boundary, it’s Terrano.” She would have said more, but her words were swamped with the very loud,
very angry roar of a Dragon.
Bellusdeo.
The drumming didn’t stop, but the drums weren’t fixed on stands; they were portable—or portable if you had the mass of an
adult Norranir behind them. The Norranir could run while carrying the drums, and did, as they sped up to reach Bellusdeo.
Kaylin whipped around to Terrano. “What happened?”
“Teela told Bellusdeo that she thought Barrani had been making use of the border zone—and had fled into Ravellon.”
“You said the Dragons were arguing!”
“They were.”
“We didn’t hear them. We could definitely hear Bellusdeo.”
“She is our lord. She is our queen. She is calling for us, and we will obey.” The woman exhaled. “We have permission to take
the risk of allowing you to accompany us.”
Terrano blinked. “Wait, you could understand that?”
The older woman muttered something in her native language. Kaylin didn’t know the Norranir tongue, but the woman’s expression
made the meaning of the words clear: kids these days.
The border zone that existed between fiefs wasn’t the same as the borders around Ravellon. Kaylin had seen Shadows emerge from the cracks in a crumbling Tower barrier; they’d passed from Ravellon to the fief she’d been in—Tiamaris, before he claimed it—without apparent pause.
But she knew that barrier was a creation of the Ancients, and the border in Nightshade had more closely resembled the border
between fiefs. The view from the barrier implied something almost normal but deserted—remnants of a city. The view from the
interior did not.
“What is Shadow?” she asked the Norranir elder, as the men with drums positioned themselves at intervals in the forming line.
They never stopped drumming.
The woman offered a word, but Kaylin’s expression made her lack of understanding clear. “It is not a question we are asked
often. In our language, it is another word for death. But in other tongues, it had different meanings. Those languages are
lost to all among us who did not study dead languages.
“Our lord was concerned with survival, with the battles upon which our survival depended. But some were allowed to study,
in the hope that information would aid in those battles.” She exhaled. “It did not help our lord.”
Kaylin filed that away for possible future use.
The Norranir moved quickly, their speed hampered by the smaller stride of those who followed. Terrano cursed Kaylin’s familiar with genuine heat; clearly his ability to solve the problem in his usual way hadn’t yet returned.
“Hope, if you can do something about it, do something.”
Squawk. The familiar shook his head, shrugging his delicate wings.
“Be a little clearer.”
Squawk. Squawk. Squawk.
The Norranir elder squinted down at him. “I believe he is telling your friend it will be fine soon.”
One of the men—not a drummer—spoke impatiently. The elder frowned, but nodded. “You are slowing us down. Accept our aid.”
It was a command.
Kaylin had suspicions about what that aid would be, and she was right: she was lifted off her feet and deposited on the shoulders
of one of the Norranir as if she were a young child and he the adult.
“Sorry,” she said, although she wasn’t certain the man spoke Elantran.
Severn was likewise lifted, as was Terrano. Terrano didn’t consider the Norranir as terrifying as Dragons, but his expression
made clear this method of transport was way beneath his dignity. Rich, given how little he usually cared. But it was faster, and the Norranir were in control; they didn’t have to tell their three companions where to step or not to step, didn’t
have to make certain they didn’t wander outside invisible boundaries and into terrain that had long been ceded to the Shadows
that ruled it.
Kaylin, no longer worried about jogging or sprinting to stay in line, observed.
The elder walked at their head. Just behind her, the first drummers.
Kaylin didn’t understand why drumming was effective as protection.
In Bellusdeo’s world—in the world she had ruled before she had fallen to Shadow herself—there had been no Towers, no fiefs, and no barrier erected around Ravellon.
But in this world, until the arrival of the Norranir, there had been no drumming, no drums of this kind. No use of deliberate,
rhythmic sound, shorn of any other music. Kaylin wasn’t the biggest appreciator of music, but nothing about this was musical.
It reminded her of a heartbeat, even, unstopping, but steady. There was no change in volume, no speeding up or slowing down.
It just continued.
It is very like a heartbeat. She blinked and turned her head. Hope was staring at her, his opalescent eyes unblinking. Can you not hear it?
“Hear what?”
The beating of a heart, Kaylin. The drums beat in time with it. It is a sound that is meant to lull those who can hear the heart it mimics.
“What?”
Squawk. Hope looked vaguely irritated. Kaylin remembered: it took power to make himself understood. Mostly, he didn’t bother. No,
she thought, he expected her to use the power of the Chosen to bridge the gap. She didn’t know how, not consciously. What
had Sanabalis said? Her power responded to need. To focus. To Kaylin’s desperation.
And she wasn’t desperate now. But she filed away his words, because if he thought them important enough to make the effort
to speak, they probably were.
But it did irritate her that the Barrani could understand him. And the Norranir. It didn’t seem to take power to talk to other
people—just to Kaylin. She clearly had time for what she knew was pettiness, because she didn’t have to expend energy running.
Here, she could see the washed-out gray of buildings familiar to the border zones that existed between fiefs.
But these buildings were different. They weren’t the height of the Norranir homes, newly made by Tiamaris, but they were close, and one building in particular caught her eye.
It was three stories in height—rare in the border zones—and very wide; it was almost intimidatingly similar to the Imperial Palace in size, and it seemed to be made of seamless stone.
She could feel her skin begin to prickle, but it wasn’t painful yet—more of a sharp tickle.
Had she been on her own feet, she might have slowed. Instead, she shouted a warning to the Norranir.
But Bellusdeo’s roars—more focused and somehow sharper—swamped her words.
“Terrano—tell Teela there’s something wrong with this building!”
Terrano could barely hear her, if he could hear her at all. But she could hear his cursing—it was pure Leontine. Had she not
known it was him, she’d’ve assumed an actual Leontine had joined the procession.
Bellusdeo roared again, this time the sound staccato, as if she was carefully enunciating words. What Kaylin failed to make
clear, Bellusdeo did: the Norranir could hear her. The elder’s voice rose clearly enough to be heard, and the Norranir line
retreated, moving back in an organized wave, leaving more slowly, more carefully, than they’d arrived.
Retreating, Severn said. If they turned and fled, we’d have called that a rout, back in class.
Which class?
Probably one of the ones you got permission to skip.
She grimaced, regretting her past choices. The man on whose shoulders she rode caught her ankles in either hand to make certain
she didn’t fall off.
The air in the border zone was often foggy.
On bad days, the fog was thick and almost impenetrable; on good days, it was clear enough that the lack of bright colors in the border zone was marked.
Today, it was thin, but present. Because it was, visibility wasn’t perfect.
But it was good enough that Kaylin could see, in the distance, the gold glint of scales in the air just above the height of the building that had stopped her, metaphorically speaking, in her tracks.
Fire burned the fog away. As Bellusdeo approached, Kaylin could see her eyes: they were bright, crimson red. She’d expected
that. This close to the heart of the Shadow that had destroyed her kingdom, her eyes were never going to be any other color.
What Kaylin hadn’t expected was Teela, who was riding on the gold Dragon’s back. Her sword was sheathed, and she was far enough
away that Kaylin couldn’t see her eye color, but she knew it was the Barrani equivalent of draconic red.
The drumming didn’t stop, but the Norranir did, their double line falling into a different formation as Bellusdeo reached
the street, her claws scratching the ground as she came to a skidding halt.
Terrano made his way past the Norranir toward Teela as Teela leaped easily to the ground. Kaylin would have followed, but
she was held more firmly on the shoulders of the Norranir who had carried them this far.
Bellusdeo lost draconic form as Teela walked toward Kaylin.
“Is that a good idea?” the Barrani Hawk asked over her shoulder, without looking back. “We don’t know what we’re going to
encounter here.”
“If we have to go inside, I can’t do it as a Dragon.”
“I’m not sure we have to go inside. This building has gained a story since we made our way to your fief today. If I had fiery
breath, I’d destroy the whole building immediately.”
Tiamaris, red-scaled but shining in the same way Bellusdeo had, landed next. Fallessian and Torrisant were on his back, but
they jumped off almost before he’d finished moving. Neither looked at all comfortable. Kaylin thought it odd that they’d trusted
Tiamaris more than Bellusdeo.
I think Bellusdeo gave them very little warning, Severn pointed out. Teela’s spent more time with her—she probably guessed what Bellusdeo would do and didn’t bother asking for permission or waiting for niceties.