“If it were necessary, Hallionne, I would not offer. Do not,” he added, his voice warmer than his words, “argue against it. You know you will not win; it will merely waste time.”
“You need to conserve your power,” Orbaranne replied, clearly ignoring what Kaylin felt was probably accurate, if not good, advice. “It is not the first time—”
“My brother was not High Lord the last time an assassination attempt was made.”
“If you intend to support your sister—”
“My brother is High Lord, and it is clear what his decision would be.”
“He did not command you.”
“No. He is my brother; he knows me well. Come,” he said. He removed a dagger from a sheath that had been invisible to Kaylin’s eye, and ran it across the mount of his left palm. Kaylin sucked in air.
I am not the Consort, he said, his interior voice inflected with an odd, wry humor.She sings.
It’s better than bleeding.
She felt a wave of amusement, then.Is that what you think? Tell me, Lord Kaylin, when she sang to the Hallionne, did it appear effortless to your eye? No. This? This is nothing.
Orbaranne doesn’t like it.
I am her guest; of course she disapproves. Asking one’s guests to shed blood for you is not considered hospitality in any home of worth in any culture that I am aware of.
It’s her choice, isn’t it? I mean—this is essentially her body.
Yes, Lord Kaylin, it is. Do you think she is endless? You were here when things were at their most dire for her. Were it not for your intervention, there would be no Hallionne Orbaranne. We ask, we demand, we accept. But she is not a simple object, nor even a complex one; she is alive. Alive and encased, forever, in a small world of her own. I will not deprive her of purpose—but I will not demand more than I must.
Why is blood needed?
Ask the Ancients, Chosen. You have a far better chance of receiving an answer.
She thought, listening to him, that if he could free the Hallionne—if he could take her outside of herself without destroying her—he would do it.
“Yes,” Orbaranne said, voice soft. “He has always heard my voice, and he has listened no matter what it contained. It is for that reason that I hate to see him bleed.”
“I’d offer my blood—”
“Neither your blood nor the Dragon’s would serve.”
“And even would it,” the Lord of the West March said, rising, “it would never be accepted.”
“Oh?”
“The pathways you might open, in the end, are not the paths that were designed for our kin. I have often thought,” he added, “that Dragons, at their core, would make excellent Hallionne; they do not seem to suffer loneliness or isolation the way that others do.”
“Oh, we suffer it,” Bellusdeo replied. “But it is often a choice: isolation or war.”
“Ah. Then perhaps your kin and mine are not so different.”
* * *
Kaylin wanted to know why blood was required, or if not required, useful. She didn’t ask. Instead, she waited while the hairs on the back of her neck and arms began a slow, painful rise. As the discomfort grew, the rock in front of the Lord of the West March sprouted what looked like tentacles, which was very, very disturbing. It also appeared to be expected; neither Orbaranne nor Lirienne so much as blinked.
Those tentacles reached up, and up again, and when they were eight feet, ten feet, off the ground, they suddenly bunched and gathered, coiling as if they were springs. They leapt toward each other, stone fusing with stone, until, in the end, an arch stood in front of the three visitors.
Kaylin started toward the arch, moving slowly because she could still see the shapes of tentacles, when Orbaranne shouted a sudden warning. “Lirienne!”
He did not look in the direction of her voice, because there was no direction. It surrounded them all. Bellusdeo lifted both of her hands in a deliberate sweep of motion; she spoke three words, all harsh, resounding draconian. Or at least that’s what they sounded like, they were so damn loud.
