12 #2
the start of a war that all but destroyed the Dragons. Do you wish to forget that?”
“You were enslaved,” Kaylin replied, voice firm but quiet.
“Your will was not your own.” She spoke the last phrase in High Barrani.
She’d always struggled with the concept of justice, especially in the earliest years of her life.
Or perhaps because of the choices she’d made—because she’d had a choice.
Even if it was a bad one. Even if she’d felt it was the only choice she could make if she wanted to survive.
She’d done things she was the visceral opposite of proud of. But she couldn’t undo them. She couldn’t change the past. She wanted a world in which people didn’t feel that the only choice was to be what she’d
been, to choose what she’d chosen.
Criminals had to be brought to justice; that was her job, her duty, the choice she’d made. But the mastermind was at the heart
of Ravellon, not here. She exhaled.
“You were enslaved,” she said, squaring her shoulders as she faced possibly the most beautiful person she’d ever met. “Calling
you a Shadow suited your role here. But you don’t have that role now. I’m not like you or Abel. I’m affected by the words
I think, even if they’re not True Words. What name, of all the names you’ve been called, was your favorite?”
“They were not my names, but the name I favored most is not one you could even pronounce. It is Wevaran, and half of the calling
is a weave of delicate gestures. You are not as they are, and will not be. I miss them.” Bright eyes widened, because Kaylin’s
thoughts had jumped to Arbiter Starrante.
“Terrano has spoken about the Academia and its library—but not in terms that you would consider fair or flattering. You are
right; thoughts have textures, surfaces, and dangerous undertows. You may call me Ariste.”
“I’m not calling you that,” Terrano said.
“I am not granting you such permission,” the newly named Ariste replied. “It is a word, a name, granted me by mortals in the
distant past. Why do you look so surprised, Lord Kaylin? Mortals as a race have long existed. Do you consider your existence
insignificant because your time is guaranteed to be finite?
“The Barrani in these Halls have eternity in which to create and work—but they kill each other thoughtlessly, their eternity bleeding away in the games they call politics.
One cannot know the future; one cannot even fully understand the present.
Great art was created by mortals, colored by their understanding of their lives and the shadow the brevity of those years could cast.
“Mortals have a flexibility that Immortals lack.”
“Ariste, I have a question. A few. Does the Shadow I absorbed from Terrano still cling to me?”
“Yes, Chosen. But it does not touch your world in any way.”
“Can you remove it?”
“Can you remove hours of yesterday that you dislike?”
Kaylin exhaled more slowly.
“He’s always like that,” Terrano muttered.
“Does Ariste,” who was clearly a woman at the moment, Terrano’s comment aside, “know for certain?”
Terrano nodded. “But that’s not the real question, is it?”
Kaylin frowned. “How did the Shadow touch you at all?”
“Right.” Terrano turned to the former Shadow at the heart of the Tower of testing. “Can you answer that?”
“Not with certainty, but yes, I have some suspicions. Understand that the power of Shadow, like that of fire or water, earth
or air, is not sentient as it exists in the world in which you live. But to summon any of these things touches the heart of the element itself—and that has a crude, visceral sentience. As with all things
of power, it does not wish to be summoned and enslaved.”
“I’ve heard it theorized that Shadow is like the elements—but if it is, it’s not part of the Keeper’s Gardens.”
Brows rose. “You are familiar with the garden of the Keeper?”
Kaylin nodded.
“Shadow is not an element that life requires,” Ariste said.
“It is not an elemental force woven into the fabric of this world, this plane. Without water, we perish. Without air, we perish. Without earth we cannot build homes. Fire is a necessity for those who do not have even the barest traces of magic. But the elements vie for dominance; it is the Keeper’s duty to calm them.
“Shadow is not an element in that sense. But it can be summoned, and its power utilized. It is far easier to summon than fire,
water, or earth, and it does not fight the summoner for dominance. Those of weak will lose control without realizing that
it is lost.”
“Why does Shadow even exist?”
“You must ask the Ancients,” she said with a deep smile. “I do not know. But the nature of the living oft leans toward hierarchies
of power. What constitutes power changes between races, but the struggles to build or maintain it exist within the cultural
context. What seems polite and peaceful to you might seem hostile and aggressive to those within the culture itself.”
“We’d like you to skip the lectures,” Terrano snapped.
“Shut up, Terrano. I don’t want Ariste to skip the lectures, as you call them.”
“It’s just because of his voice!”
“Does it matter why?”
“You got what you came here for.”
She started to ask Terrano why he was so uneasy, but stopped. She wouldn’t get an answer—just more argument. She could ask
him at home.
“You served whatever now rules Ravellon. You served unwillingly—but you served with intent and the abilities you used for other reasons before the fall of Ravellon.”
Ariste nodded, eyes literally glittering. Something about the face froze for a moment, as if the mask chosen couldn’t accommodate
the expression Ariste wanted to make.
“But to do that, wouldn’t that mean you had a clearer understanding of what, exactly, rules Ravellon?”
Silence. The music left Ariste’s voice; the warmth fled as well. In its place was neither cold arrogance nor anger; it was as if embers had faded and only ash remained. “Let me ask you a question in return for the question you have asked.”
Terrano snorted. Kaylin nodded. But she thought she might never ask a question like this one again, given the sudden cessation
of the sound that had so held her attention. Terrano, as usual, was half right.
“You bear the Marks of the Chosen. You are called Chosen, and that is an accurate title, an accurate word—but you yourself
did not choose. Do you, who bear the Marks of the Ancients, understand the Ancients’ will? Do you understand their intent?”
Kaylin shook her head.
“If you were tasked with answering a question about their will—just the small part of their intent that overlaps your own
life—could you answer it?”
She shook her head again.
“Even though your life has been so profoundly changed, so profoundly affected?”
“. . . I understand the point you’re trying to make.”
“You are what you are. You bear the Marks, but you do not allow them to transform you. Had the Ancients paused to speak to
you at all, you would have been more irrevocably altered.”
Kaylin frowned. “Let me ask a different question in response to your question.”
“This is why I hate these conversations,” Terrano muttered.
“Ask.”
“Is the sentience at the heart of Ravellon an Ancient?”
The silence spread. The movement of breeze, the rustle of the stalks of wildflowers and taller grass, ceased immediately.
Ariste looked as she’d looked when Kaylin first climbed the stairs leading to her space—Kaylin couldn’t call it a room—but Hope was now rigid, and when he lifted a wing to cover Kaylin’s eyes—both eyes—she could see what she suspected Terrano always saw.
Ariste was not a single body. What Kaylin had seen upon entering this space was real—but it was not, would never be, the entirety
of what Ariste was. Looking through Hope’s wing, she could see Ariste as if Ariste was standing in a long hall of mirrors,
none of which reflected her truly: in one, she was shorter, in one, wider, in one far taller; in one she was paler, in one
she was darker, and in one she was not a woman at all. Beyond that, spreading out into infinity, those reflections continued
to shift and change; it was dizzying, or should have been.
Hope’s wing wasn’t covering her ears, but she could hear the words these other images spoke; they were part of Ariste’s voice, almost one with it, as if her speech were their anchor.
“You allow your familiar to interfere,” Ariste said, speaking now in High Barrani.
“I trust him with my life, he’s saved it so often,” Kaylin replied. “Can you become any of those images?”
“Images?” Ariste raised a brow as if in confusion. Her eyes widened slightly. “You are looking beneath the surface. How unusual.
Yes. I can. I can, as Terrano implied, become anything. Your brightest daydream. Your darkest nightmare. I prefer the daydream—but
joy and delight are so delicate they are easily shattered. Nightmares produce a fear and dread that lingers for far, far longer.
“Abel once said we were created to be communicators. In some fashion, that is true. But all the creations of the Ancients
require sustenance. Our sustenance was the reaction of our audience, our partners. We had no children, not even as Barrani
do; the Ancients did not consider such an ability a necessity when they first birthed us. We are alive, yes—but not as you,
or even the Barrani, are alive.
“If you desired it, I would entertain you with stories of my lives and my many confidants—but I do not believe Abel would allow me the chance.”
“Her life is too short as it is,” the Avatar of the Halls replied. “You chose to confine yourself within the High Halls, which
is free from the influence of Ravellon. But something is moving in those barricaded streets. Something has been called out, and its influence is growing. The Chosen
might require your aid or your knowledge in the near future if she is to survive.”
“It is not the Chosen for whom you are concerned.”
“You are wrong. She is not my only concern, and perhaps not my chief concern—but I am, as you are, what I was made to be.
We were not created from nothing; by the time such defenses as we were required, the Ancients understood that they did not
fully understand the living. The creation of life? Yes. But living? No. I knew of you,” he added, his voice softening. “All knew of you, in that ancient time.
“But none knew you well. Who could know so much without encompassing your life? I am certain there were those who chose to
serve, constantly, for just that chance. But even I cannot see the whole of you or know all of your secrets.”
“They are not secrets,” Ariste replied. “But I have lived many lives, some so distant they are hard to recall without will
and effort. I live in the world—I lived in the world—and the world changed constantly around me. I respond to change; I must,
to do what I do.” Ariste turned to Kaylin, and as she spoke, notes once again graced her words, although they were softer
and somehow more elegiac in feel.
“I do not have the answer to your question. But I will say this: my service, if compelled, was half-willingly given because
that is my nature. I listened. I attempted to speak, to communicate. What one hears, one is influenced by; what one says will influence others—sometimes with no intent on our part. I do not know what the ruler of Ravellon desires. But I will say this: to you, Chosen, it should not matter.”
“We can’t fight something we can’t even understand,” Kaylin replied.
“Ariste does not condescend,” the Avatar told her. “Do not interpret their words in that fashion. Your duty is to protect
and prevent. Do your duty. Had you the power when you first visited this Tower, you might have destroyed Ariste. Ariste would
not resent it, nor would they cast blame.”
Looking at Ariste through Hope’s wing was giving her a headache, and it was only getting worse. There was too much to see,
and none of it remained still; small movements, large movements, sudden turns occurred hundreds and hundreds of times a second,
and her gaze was caught, darting between the planes that Hope’s wing revealed. But the words spoken were the same, no matter
the form or place they came from. “Have you been teaching Terrano?”
Ariste’s smile was sharp; not all faces offered it. But they turned toward Kaylin as if the question had caught all of their
many attentions. “We have been learning from each other.”
Terrano said nothing.
“Did you show him that path to walk in the borders of the fiefs?”