Cast In Ruin Part 29

"We're going to the border."

"But the bodies weren't discovered there."

"No. But I need to speak with Mejrah as soon as possible."

"But the Arkon-"

"I know what he said. But anything that keeps us out of his way right now is a good thing. Trust me on this."

"Do you find him frightening?"

"You don't?"

"No. He is very agitated. And I find it difficult to read his thoughts."

"Well," Kaylin said as she turned a corner and headed down the widest street that led to the borders of the fief, "he probably can't turn you to ash just by breathing."

"No," was the grave reply. "But I don't think he'd try. Or is that a figure of speech?"

"I wish."

The fief of Tiamaris had almost become two distinctly separate fiefs. There were streets the normal humans traveled, and given it was only afternoon, those streets were nowhere near empty. But the streets where the Norannir patrolled might have existed in an entirely different world; the only visible humans in easy or direct sight were Kaylin and Severn. Even the buildings that girded the street had begun to look different as the Norannir decorated them.

"Oh, those aren't decorations," Tara said when Kaylin pointed them out.

"No?"

"No. They're warding charms. And alarms. They change color in the presence of Shadow. The Norannir want to put them up on every door or wall in the fief; you'll note that some of the streets have also been painted."

Kaylin could imagine how well that would go over.

"My Lord doesn't think it's necessary."

"What do you think?"

Tara shrugged. It was such a fief gesture, Kaylin's brows rose. But then again, the Avatar's most constant companion was Morse, a woman who'd perfected the art of the shrug be fore Kaylin had been born. "I don't think it would be harmful, but I don't think the panic it might cause would be helpful."

"I think the rest of the citizens of Tiamaris would accept the wards if the Norannir would agree to disarm a bit."

Tara looked surprised. "Why would they want to do that?"

"They clearly don't. But weapons like that ax, for in stance-half the people in the fief probably couldn't even lift it." She pointed at one of the larger-and older-men in a patrolling group of four. The gesture attracted his attention.

"Yes. But they aren't required to lift it. Without weapons, the Norannir patrols can't deal with the Shadows they might find. They certainly can't kill the Ferals as easily."

"Yes, well. The problem with weapons is they're neutral. Yes, they can be used to kill Ferals, but in the wrong hands, they can do a bang-up job on people, as well."

"But they're not trying to kill people."

"I know that. But even I find them intimidating." The patrol approached as Kaylin finished the words. Tara took a step forward. In her gardening clothing, she really didn't cut much of an imposing figure, but the Norannir clearly recognized her; they stopped their advance, and they knelt on one knee, resting the weapons under discussion against the flat ground.

Tara spoke to them. She spoke in their tongue. Kaylin recognized the word Mejrah; she didn't recognize much else.

"They'll take us to the Elders," Tara said cheerfully. "Although they did say Mejrah is very busy."

Mejrah was, as advertised, very busy. And as an older woman, being busy and having a wealth of patience were at odds. One of the men-the one who'd drawn the short straw by his expression-approached the three tents that had been erected at the end of the street; he came back with Mejrah and two of the bearded older men that Kaylin vaguely recognized in tow.

Mejrah had wrinkles in the corners of both mouth and eyes that looked chiseled there as she turned toward the rest of the patrol; the poor unfortunate who'd been sent to retrieve her joined them. These men were uniformly taller than she was, but tall men were capable of cowering on command, even when they were also much better armed.

"She's not happy to be interrupted," Tara said.

Even though Kaylin couldn't catch a word of the rapid-fire exchange, she could tell. "You can understand her?"

"I understand much of what she-or any of the Norannir-now say. My memory is augmented by my ability to sense people and events that occur within the boundaries of my fief. It is not perfect, and if the conversation is specialized, I will not understand the exact words. Mejrah is often annoyed, so these words are very familiar to me now." After a brief pause that was mostly filled with Mejrah's voice, Tara added, "She's angry that they didn't recognize you."

"Me?"

"You're the Chosen," Tara said serenely. "You should be recognized."

"I'm not wearing a sign," Kaylin began. She then looked down at her arms-her sleeve-covered arms-and winced. She was, in fact, wearing a sign; it just happened to be hidden.

Tara nodded, as if Kaylin had spoken. Her ability to read thoughts didn't extend past the Tower itself, but she was acutely observant. Her interpretations of what she observed were often unusual, on the other hand. "It would be good if you could leave at least your arms exposed."

This was a definition of good that had always been extremely bad in Kaylin's experience.

"Mejrah-and the Norannir-feel that the Chosen is worthy of respect. Lack of respect is dishonorable. Dishonor is death, or should be. There are mitigating circ.u.mstances; I don't think she'll demand that these people kill themselves."

"So...I'm exposing my arms to prevent them from having to commit suicide?"

"Something like that," Tara replied. "Would you like help with the sleeves?"

"No."

"The reason I wear these clothes," Tara continued, indicating the smock, the kerchief, and the somewhat dirt-covered gardening gloves, "is because it makes me easy to spot."

There were so many better ways to be spotted Kaylin didn't even know where to begin. But before she could start, she considered Tara with more care. Yes, there were better ways to make herself known-she could sprout wings, for G.o.ds' sake-but were there really any better ways to make herself accessible? As the Avatar, she could have been a truly terrifying figure with very little effort.

But she didn't want that. Maybe this was the best she could do, after all. Kaylin grimaced and unb.u.t.toned the cuffs of her sleeves. Severn stepped in to help her roll them up. "I'll try," she told Tara.

"I know. You always do."

"I'd like to succeed more often."

"According to my Lord, that only comes with time. He's explained the advantages of being feared. But...he's feared already. Even the people of the fief, who know that he fights for their safety, hide if they see him coming. I don't need to be feared because he's feared. But maybe it's different across the river."

Kaylin, her sleeves now rolled up and resting around her elbows, turned to Mejrah, who had fallen to one knee. She reached out and took Mejrah's hand in hers and lifted her off that knee; she couldn't exactly lift her to her feet, given the differences in their size. Mejrah then led Kaylin toward the tents that stood on the very edge of the border. There, she shouted Effaron out of a tent. He was never going to be terribly intimidating, even given his height, but he smiled broadly-and with a bit of relief-when he saw the reason Mejrah had demanded his immediate presence.

This relief didn't stop him from falling to one knee, but his watchful eye was on the Elder, not Kaylin. Mejrah finally said something curt and he rose. He then tendered a deep and respectful bow to Tara, who returned a nod-and a very encouraging and sympathetic smile. No, Kaylin thought, Tara was not terrifying-not like this. Even though the Norannir had seen her in her full defensive glory, the image of her winged, implacable form faded from memory in the presence of much more common gardening clothes.

Effaron offered Kaylin a hand; she took it gratefully. Direct contact between Kaylin and this one Norannir allowed them to speak to each other; Kaylin had no idea why. But understand it or no, she heard his words in Elantran, except for the odd word that had no Elantran a.n.a.log; Effaron heard Kaylin in his own tongue, with the same exception.

"Your Lord Sanabalis has made progress," Effaron said. "And the children do learn your words more easily than the Elders. It's not always wise to learn things more easily than the Elders," he added with a grimace. "But we've not seen Lord Sanabalis teaching for the past two days. Is he well?"

Thinking about the last expression she'd seen on Sanabalis's face, Kaylin shrugged. "He's in good health."

"And you?"

"I'm in good health for the moment. There's a task or two that Lord Sanabalis wants done pretty much yesterday; I'm indirectly here because of that."

"We are to help the Dragon Lord?"

"Well, no. Not directly. I need Mejrah to tell me about the origins of the Ascendants. I need to know how they became Ascendants. And, um, how they got these swords." She touched the one that hung in the scabbard it so detested on her belt. Effaron's brows disappeared into his s.h.a.ggy hairline. Clearly, Maggaron was not the only person who considered a sheath for this particular sword sacrilegious.

"Perhaps it would be better to ask the Ascendant himself?"

"I tried that first. Apparently, since I'm not Ascendant, there are things he can't tell me. He suggested Mejrah would be the best source for the things that can be told."

"I think she will find it annoying to tell children's stories so close to the stronghold of the enemy."

"We can move."

Effaron winced. "Never mind, Chosen. I'll ask her."

Mejrah was, as Effaron expected, ill pleased, but Kaylin didn't think it was simple anger. It wasn't.

"She expects you to understand these things," he explained, "and she finds the lack of understanding unsettling. She's willing to accept that the Chosen in this world merely has mystical understanding of events in this world." He raised a brow.

"Try not to disillusion her too badly if you think it'll get me killed."

He laughed. "The attempt would likely cause me more harm than it would cause you." Holding her hand, he bowed to Mejrah; Mejrah then stalked into her tent and came out holding a small rug. She unrolled this and sat, cross-legged, on one of its edges, inviting Kaylin, Tara, Effaron, and Severn to do the same. Tara chose to sit on the edge of the rug Kaylin also occupied; her gaze wandered past the tents and the Norannir to the border that was, in the end, the reason for her existence.

The Elder spoke to Effaron, and Effaron translated, which in this case merely meant he repeated what she said. Kaylin, in turn, repeated what she'd heard so that Severn could understand it.

"Mejrah wants you to understand that this is a story that is told to children; it's not special, it has no innate power, and it requires no guarantee or oath to receive. Although a variant of the story is used in more formal circ.u.mstances, it's not that different." He cleared his throat. One of the Elders, who was lingering at the edge of the carpet, disappeared and returned with a jug of water and some heavy, clay mugs. He handed these to Effaron, who was clearly expected to serve himself.

"Once, when the world was new, there were no Shadows, and the Norannir traversed all the lands in freedom. There, they hunted and gathered without fear. They built cities, in time, and they grew learned, and they spoke with the Ancients."

Kaylin lifted one hand. "Wait. You said Ancients?"

Effaron nodded; Mejrah was less quick to halt her speech. "The Ancients created the world," he explained. "Did they not create yours?"

"They did. Or we're told they did. I just wonder if it was the same Ancients. Sorry. I'll try not to interrupt."

"Among the Ancients were those who were called Shapers. It was the Shapers who came to us with the promise of knowledge."

"And power?"

"Of course. They offered this knowledge to the Norannir, and the Norannir accepted. But not all the races were pleased, and there was conflict. The Immortal ones felt that the knowledge was too dangerous or too costly."

So much for not interrupting. "Which Immortal ones?"

"You have seen them. Here, in your lands, they walk among us."

"Dragons?"

"Dragons," he whispered. The word itself was reverent. "They were not many, and they were fierce; in their displeasure, they were deadly. But they were the wisest of the Peoples. They were proven wiser, in the end, than even the Ancients, for the Shadows came when the doors were opened."

"Wait, which doors?"

"The doors that lead to enlightenment and knowledge; the doors that lead to languages and lands beyond our ken. The Norannir as they exist now have only words to describe it; there are no images, no paintings, no ruins. To hear of it, it was a marvel, but it was also an impossibility: a place that existed in all places, at once. We do not know how, or why, but that place began to twist and unravel, and if the knowledge was there, the People could not reach it without also becoming twisted and changed, and those people emerged into our world and began the spread of Shadow.

"We did not recognize it at first; it was new to us. But the Dragons understood what it presaged, and they fought-and fell-while around them the world was unmade.

"In the end, the Dragons were all but destroyed, and the Shadows held sway over much of our world, in endless night; our people were infected as if Shadow were a disease that did not kill, but defiled. The Dragons taught us what they could, not of the nature of Shadow, for that they did not entirely understand-perhaps deliberately-but rather how to recognize it, how to fight it, where that was possible.

"Among Dragonkind there was one who was considered the Queen of her race; she was ancient, but when she chose to speak to us, she was beautiful and graceful. We called her Bellusdeo. Her breath was not fire, not ice; it was the storm itself, and where it struck Shadow, Shadow withered for a time. But she could not be everywhere, and she could not see everything, and to her sorrow, those whom she had taught aged and died in her absence, becoming weak, infirm.

"As the numbers of the Dragons dwindled even further, it was the Dragon Queen who came to the Norannir, and she offered the Norannir this one blessing.

"*Choose among your kin the young and the most promising, and send them to me. I will teach them, and I will train them, and I will shape them in such a way that they might know life that is as long as a Dragon's. Understand that they will not, and cannot, return to you as the children they once were; they will become mine. But they will return to you as shields and swords, and there will be no more effective way of combating the Shadows; they will remember where they were born, and how they were raised, and they will love you as kin. Until they fall, you will not fall.'

"The People did as she asked; she traveled the lands that had not yet fallen and spoke these words to all the Elders. In villages and in the remaining two cities, the Elders began to test children when they came of age."

"But didn't she ask for children?"

Effaron frowned. "Indeed."

"Then why would you wait to test them until they'd come of age? Wouldn't that be too old?"

His brows furrowed and then rose. "When you say *of age,' what do you mean?"

"When they become adult-or as close to adult as the Laws demand."

"Ah! Then we have three *ages' that we mark. The first is the age at which the children are deemed healthy enough that they are unlikely to die unexpectedly. They would have been five years of age."

That, to Kaylin's mind, was too d.a.m.n young.

"We did not understand what Bellusdeo was searching for, but we trusted her with our children, and our children were gathered in the fortress at the foot of her Aerie. There, they were trained. They were taught. They learned to speak the languages of man, and to understand some of the language of the Dragons. They learned to wield weapons, and to forge them; they learned many, many things.

"All the while, the Dragons flew at her command, and they fought, and they fell. The years pa.s.sed, and when the children reached the age of the sword, one of two things happened: they were sent back to their people-if their people and their villages still survived-as warriors and teachers, or they vanished. They were taken by Bellusdeo and they were transformed and they became the Ascendants; the men and women among us who could transcend our mortality and our limitations."

It was pointless to ask how, but Kaylin asked anyway.

Effaron frowned. "It is not part of our tales, Chosen. We do not know. No more do we know, in truth, how we ourselves were created. We know that the Dragons were born from the bones of the world, or the many worlds, and that they were granted a mortal form so that they might, when they so chose, live among mortals without crushing them in their carelessness."

"So...Maggaron was one of those children."

"Yes. But he was not one of the first. He was one of the last, perhaps the last. The first ascended when the Dragons still lived; the last did not."