Betting?Severn asked. Kaylin was surprised by his voice. He was reaching out to her when it wasn’t a matter of someone’s life or death. The subject was not an emergency or an investigation.
Depends. Are you betting that Sedarias wins?
Yes.
Not touching it.
Coward.
* * *
Breath held, they finally reached what Bellusdeo called signal fires. In the distance, it seemed a reasonable thing to call them; up close it was in no way accurate. They were a far more livid red, in a landscape that was otherwise so muted in color it could be safely called gray. Even Ravellon itself was faded and pale. The fires were not.
Nor were they hot; they weren’t even warm.
“I would not touch those if I were you,” the Dragon told Kaylin. “And I woulddefinitelyavoid them if I were any of the cohort.”
Sedarias said, “Why?”
“You are not what we are.”
“We’re Barrani.”
“I am willing to entertain that polite fiction. But at the heart of this debacle is the truth. You may, of course, choose to risk it.”
“What do you fear it will do to us?”
“In the worst case? Destroy you. In the best case, injure you gravely. The fires were created as weapons against taint, against Shadow. And at the time, we did not know that there were Shadows trapped against their will in Ravellon, just as I was once trapped. You are not,” she added, “Shadow, or of those Shadows. But there is, to you, a taint that would immediately render you outcaste among my own kin.” She paused, and then added, “Taintis not perhaps the correct word.
“In our long history, we did not attempt to divest ourselves of the names that gave us life and form. But in Barrani history, there have been many such attempts. I would consider—pragmatically—that yours, as a whole, has been the most successful.”
“We have our names.”
“Yes. But whatever it was that the names gave you, you learned to exist without. Terrano does not have his name. He did not teach the others to do what he did.”
“No. Just to change their form. I don’t think the rest of our people could do what we did for centuries, unless they devoted almost all of their time to it. But even then, I am doubtful. What theregaliadid, in the heart of the green, changed us.” Sedarias glanced at Terrano and exhaled. “We did not exist entirely without our names. Our names were within the Hallionne. He considered them to be abandoned, but they were present; they had not returned to the Lake of Life, as names do when the lives they sustain are extinguished. I do not know if knowledge of those names that were only barely ours would have allowed others to control us.”
“Your circumstances were admittedly unusual.”
“They were. And they will not occur again; it is now against Barrani law to expose children to theregalia, as we were once exposed.” Sedarias looked at the raw, red splash of livid color, arms folded. It did not look like fire to Kaylin, and clearly Sedarias had her doubts as well. She held out her left arm just as Terrano began to move forward, and caught him. “I will strangle you myself,” she told him, lips compressed.
“What? I’m trying to stand closertothe fire because there won’t be Shadows near it!”
Judging by the expressions on half of the cohorts’s faces, Sedarias wasn’t the only one who didn’t believe him.
* * *
“Kaewenn, I bid you welcome,” a familiar voice said.
Kaylin turned. In the ether that existed in the boundary beyond Ravellon stood a familiar figure. “Tara!”
The Avatar of the Tower of Tiamaris stood in full armor, a sword in one hand, her helm in the other. Her eyes were a pale silver from which sparks seemed to fly when she blinked. At a distance, Kaylin thought she might not have recognized her.
Tara, however, was not addressing Kaylin, and when she bowed, she bowed to Bellusdeo. “My lord asked me to greet you, and to offer you and your companions the hospitality of Tiamaris.” The words were stilted and formal.
The Dragon said, “A moment, Tara.” Her voice lost some of its rumble as she finally slid back into her human form, losing the wings, the neck, the tail and the very impressive teeth. The scales reformed around her in the natural armor of her kin. Draconic faces didn’t show a lot of expression that was easily recognizable to Kaylin. Human faces, like the one Bellusdeo now wore, did. “Who taught you that word?”
“The Norannir did. It is how they sometimes refer to you, even now.”
