LITMIR.BIZ

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are you afraid of?

      He did not intend to do what I believe has begun. He is waking the Tower.

      You mean he’s talking to—to the equivalent of Tara?

      Not deliberately. But something hears him, and I think it is struggling to respond.

      Where is Andellen?

      Within the Castle.

      * * *

      Getting permission to enter the doors was perfunctory. The guards took one look at Kaylin’s face, and stood back from them. They weren’t thrilled about Teela’s presence, but said nothing; they were Barrani. These weren’t negotiations. There was no partial obedience.

      Severn unwound his weapon chain. The run through the streets hadn’t merited full-on armaments. The unknown might.

      In all, things worked about as smoothly as they ever did until it came time to enter the Castle. The doors didn’t budge. Turning to the Barrani on the right, Kaylin said, “Are these doors a portal, like the portcullis used to be?”

      “They do not function in the same fashion,” the man replied, his eyes dark in the dim light. “Some can enter; some cannot.”

      “Has anyone who entered returned?”

      “Their purpose is to reach the side of our Lord; they have no reason to return.”

      “That’s a lot of syllables for No.”

      “Is there another entrance?” Teela asked.

      It was Kaylin who answered. “Yes. But given the disaster of tea in the Keeper’s Garden that’s an absolute last resort. Safe arrival is dependent on a concentrated amount of elemental water, and I’m not taking chances on enraged water unless the alternative is something worse than enraged Dragon.” She walked up to the closed doors and lifted a hand; her palm hovered an inch from its surface. Nothing made her skin ache.

      “You were right,” Teela said—in Leontine.

      “About what?”

      “They are far, far more trouble than you were when you wormed your way into the Hawks.”

      “It’s not supposed to be a competition, Teela.”

      “At the moment it isn’t—you’re so far behind you couldn’t catch up if you tried.”

      “Can Annarion open the door?”

      “Annarion doesn’t know the Castle,” Teela replied, grinding her teeth. “He can’t mesh the geography of what I see—and show him—with what he currently sees.”

      Which is pretty much what anyone sane expected from a Tower, although Kaylin had had hopes. She exhaled. “All right, small and scrappy. Can you open this?”

      The small dragon squawked and launched himself off her shoulders. The Barrani guards didn’t even blink as he hovered just above Kaylin’s head.

      I am not certain that is a wise idea, Nightshade said, with vastly diminished amusement.

      It can’t be any worse than whatever it is Annarion’s doing.

      You are devoid of an active imagination, which is disappointing considering the experience you have now amassed.

      The small dragon chirped. He landed on Kaylin’s shoulders in the alert position that involved more claw than usual, and extended his neck toward the door. Kaylin took the hint. She didn’t touch the door itself, but approached it as if it were a portal—with a certain amount of dread.

      “Corporal?” Teela said.

      Severn nodded. He shifted his grip on the business ends of the unbound chain, passing a loop of links around Kaylin’s waist. Teela grimaced but allowed him to do the same, while she murmured something about “foundlings” under her breath.

      Only when Severn, attached to the chain by the blades, gave the sign did Kaylin suck in air and take a step forward.

      * * *

      “Charming,” Teela said, voice dry.

      Kaylin had always assumed that the passage through the portal was a misery—for her—because of the sensitivity to magic that had come to her with the runic marks that covered so much of her skin. No one else seemed to be hit as hard by the transition between the outside world and the interior of the Castle.

      She revised this opinion now, because crossing through the obsidian doors didn’t immediately slap her in the face with overwhelming nausea. To be fair to Nightshade, she’d never entered his castle with her small and squawky companion before. He was making quiet, snuffling noises. It sounded almost like he was snoring.

      She glanced at him; he was alert and watchful, although his wings were folded. Whatever he saw, he expected her to see on her own. Severn was on Kaylin’s right, and Teela, on the other side of him. Teela was pale.

      “Can you hear Annarion any better?” Kaylin asked.

      “Yes.” The word was so sharp it forbid any further questions.

      The portcullis had led, when used, to the grand, harshly lit foyer of Castle Nightshade.

      The door did not.

      It led, instead, to a room Kaylin had seen only once in the past: the statuary. She recognized it because some of the statues were still in the place she’d last seen them; the room was otherwise hollow. It felt strangely empty. The first time she had seen it, music had played, like the background discussion of a large crowd. The statues themselves had come to life, shaking off immobility with joy and excitement.

      This room had been proof—if it were needed—that Nightshade was not mortal. He owned the statues, yes—but they hadn’t started out as base stone. They had started out the way Severn or Kaylin had: messy biology. He therefore wasn’t imbuing statues with life so much as allowing life to return to them.

      There were humans here. A Leontine. They were beautiful in their frozen, stone encasement; they were far more beautiful when life returned to them. She could imagine that, had they continued to live in the world outside this Castle, they would have been loved or adored or followed.

      She couldn’t tell when they’d left the outside world, although she was certain historians would have had some guesses, given the style of the clothing they wore. Or, in the case of the Leontine, didn’t.

      But wherever they’d come from, they had ended up here, in a room that looked like a storybook throne room, with majestic pillars fronting the walls to either side. Between those pillars, a handful of statues remained. Kaylin didn’t have Barrani memory; she couldn’t recall whether or not they occupied the same positions they once had.

      But she knew there were fewer of them, because she could see moving, half-dazed people wandering the interior of the room. It wasn’t clear to Kaylin whether or not any of these people could see each other; they weren’t talking if they could, but they weren’t fighting either.

      “Nightshade said that the Castle allowed him to transform his visitors,” Kaylin told Teela. “...Was he lying?”

      “Not necessarily,” was the cool reply. “There are a handful of Barrani that might attempt—and succeed at—a similar transformation. Corporal?”

      Severn let Teela out of the chain’s loop. He didn’t, however, release Kaylin. She didn’t insist, either. She’d seen halls warp and elongate when she was standing on solid ground; she wasn’t willing to bet that they were guaranteed to remain together.

      The small dragon squawked. He caught Teela’s attention, but the occupants of the room seemed unaware of his presence, or at least unconcerned by it. They seemed similarly unconcerned with Teela as she approached them. Her steps were sharp and heavy.

      If it came to that, so was her sword; she’d unsheathed it. Barrani Hawks didn’t—as a rule—carry swords. But the fiefs weren’t home to the Hawks

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