“I find the Hallionne impressive,” Bellusdeo said, after a pause in which Kaylin heroically managed to say nothing. “Structures such as these were not home to many of our kin.”
“Tiamaris.”
“Yes, but he is young and his situation is unusal.” She glanced, once again, at the Lord of the West March. “These were built for your kin by the Ancients.”
He nodded. “The first of the Hallionne predate me, but not our kind.”
Since Helen and the Hallionne were entirely unlike the buildings that most mortals called home, Kaylin said nothing. But she thought, as she walked, that if mortals lived in the Hallionne, or in Helen, things would be better. She could imagine an entire city built under the great roof of a similar building; there would be little conflict, no starvation, and no reason for laws.
Which would put her out of a job. Having a job was the silver lining, but privately she wondered if not needing the Halls of Law would be a far better alternative. If she were an Ancient, if she were a genuine god, wouldn’t a city of that nature be desirable? A place where anyone, ever, could feel at home and safe?
“That is not, in the end, what the Ancients wanted,” Orbaranne surprised her by saying. “And buildings such as I, or Helen, require the occupants to submit to the governing will of the Ancient’s intentions and architecture. You think that we can create paradise.”
“You can,” Kaylin replied.
“No, Kaylin. We cannot. The Ancients themselves could not become the buildings they created, even had they desired to do so. Do you understand why?”
“No?”
Orbaranne chuckled. Her Avatar had remained in the dining hall, but Kaylin was used to conversing with essentially invisible Avatars. “Think carefully. What you desire in this moment is to open your figurative doors and encompass the homeless—people who are what you once were. And this desire is at the heart of the Hallionne. But itisthe desire of a moment. When you arrived, you were confused and hungry. The hunger was the desire ofthatmoment. When you are dressed down by your sergeant, you are frustrated and angry with yourself. You return to your home, but you do not shed that frustration or anger.
“All of these things are part of who you are. The anger. The hunger. The desire to help and protect. But they are very individual. There is some part of you that understands that there must be limits to their expression. Do you imagine that you could live for eternity with those limits? That your desires, your angers, your fears, would never exceed the boundaries that you choose to live within?” She waited for Kaylin’s reply, but Kaylin found she had nothing to say.
“Imagine, then, that those desires, those angers, those hungers, those hopes, move worlds. Imagine that they create worlds—and destroy them. Imagine that the boundaries which you set—boundaries which are mortal and confined to a handful of decades if you are lucky—are so small that they are all but invisible. An Ancient could not become a building such as the Hallionne, because there are no boundaries for the Ancients. No boundaries that cannot be crossed, no boundaries that can be enforced.
“If, in your momentary anger, you could destroy the entirety of your city between one breath and the next, what home, what protection, could you offer? The Ancients could not destroy each other so easily—that took effort, will, planning. Even luck. But their creations perished in their attempts to harm each other. Do not wish to be a god. It is not an existence that will bring you anything but misery, in the end.”
The Lord of the West March looked...surprised. And troubled. “Orbaranne,” he began.
“No,” she replied, before he could finish whatever he clearly meant to say. “I am fine. I chose this existence, and I understood what it entailed; in no other way could I have been recreated. Lord Kaylin does not. But I think it necessary that she understand as much of it as I can convey. Come, the stairs to the left.”
“Stairs?” The Lord of the West March asked.
“Given the difficulty Lord Kaylin had with a simple portal to the great hall, we are taking a modified approach to the interior.”
Kaylin was really, really grateful for it. Walking wasn’t a problem in comparison.
* * *
She was not surprised to see that the stairs led down. Although she understood that the portal paths existed in an alternate dimension, she thought of them as strictly basement entities. A cavern, even a well-lit one, seemed appropriate. Her arms, however, continued their dull glow, and given the muted lighting in the cavern, they seemed to have brightened.
Bellusdeo noticed, of course. Her eyes were orange, but hinted at gold. She did not feel threatened by either the Lord of the West March or the Hallionne. Or perhaps she’d become accustomed enough to living with Helen that she could almost relax.
She did smile when the stairs reached the floor. “This,” she said, “would make a magnificent aerie.”
“It might,” Orbaranne conceded. “But it is not open to sky.”
“A pity. Could that be changed?”
“Yes—but the sky it would open to here would not be conducive to the flight of the very young.”
Kaylin had been expecting forest, but said nothing. “When Alsanis counseled against the portal paths, did he—”
“He allowed them to leave. They are guests, now, not prisoners. He is fond of them; in the opinion of some of the Hallionne, too fond. Here,” the voice of Orbaranne added. The Lord of the West March understood that “here” was a specific location; to Kaylin, it all looked like slightly uneven rock. To her surprise, he knelt.
Sensing that surprise, he said, “I am not my sister, but it makes the opening of the pathways less onerous if one of our kin aids the Hallionne.”
“It is not necessary,” Orbaranne said, in a different tone of voice.
