“And you can’t kill it.”
No, Lord Kaylin. Nor can the Barrani nor the Dragons.
She had come to the heart of the Tower. She’d been asked to do what only she could do. But...there was nothing for hertodo. The words were whole. What the Tower was, she couldn’t change. And if she couldn’t change anything, she had no reason to even be here—not when her friends were fighting for their lives.
Hope had said she could do something. She’d assumed she understood what that something was. But when she turned to look at Hope for guidance, she could no longer see him. All that existed were the words. The words and Kaylin herself.
Those words continued their rhythmic beat; they felt alive in a way that even people didn’t, which was a disturbing thought. But as she listened, for want of a better word, she finally realized that not all of the humming itself was comingfromthe words that she was touching.
Some of it was coming from Spike. She couldn’t see him when she turned to look over her shoulder, but it was almost irrelevant. Spike—or some part of Spike—was here. She hesitated, and then looked for Ynpharion.
Ynpharion’s vision was much like Severn’s—choppy, frenetic, constantly in motion. She could see the sword he carried, but it moved, as the landscape moved. She didn’t ask him questions; she could see that he was busy. The Consort was behind him, and to the side; Kaylin caught a glimpse of her pale, platinum hair. It was moving in a way that implied magic.
Ynpharion wasn’t looking for the cohort, and given the Consort’s position by his side, Kaylin didn’t ask. She almost moved to Nightshade, but froze as she heard a very familiar sound.
The Consort was singing. She couldn’t understand the words, but didn’t need to; she had heard the Consort sing this song before, in the journey to the West March over which her brother ruled. She had called the Hallionne with it, waking them from slumber. She had comforted and strengthened the embattled Bertolle.
They heard her. They heard her, and inasmuch as a building could, they loved her.
The Tower was not a Hallionne, but she had chosen to sing the same song. And Kaylin knew that it was costly, that it took power, strength, will. And she was singing it on a battlefield.
Tell her to stop!
Ynpharion said nothing. Kaylin could see that he was fighting... Ferals. Ynpharion was bleeding.
Nightshade!
He did not reply, not with words. But lightning arced from the center of his vision. It burned what it struck, and the light lingered, as if it were a different kind of flame.
Ynpharion—tell her to stop. The Tower—the Tower of Test—hasalwaysheard her voice. It can hear her now. It’s awake but it has no way of responding. It has no way of communicating. There’s no Avatar!
There was no Avatar.
Everything the Tower had built was a cage. A prison. What had it said? All of its power, all of its focus, all of its will, was turned toward the creature trapped beneath the High Halls.
In fear, in love, in rage, the Barrani who had been tested had approached the Adversary. Those who had not been tempted by despair or desire simply walked away. Kaylin understood all of the impulses that led, in the end, to death at the base of the Tower. Had she not had Severn, had she not had—ugh—Evarrim, she might have died the same way: attempting to save the lost.
But here, at the Tower’s heart, surrounded by words, she thought: words are meant to communicate. These words could not, and did not; the building created in an era when the Ancients had the powers of gods was caged by them, hemmed by them,ofthem. All of the power that resided within it was from these words.
And that power could not be used in a different fashion now. Because of the Adversary. Because of the testing.
She understood then, or thought she did. She lifted her arms, and as she did, she saw the marks that had risen—as they often did—off her skin, shining through the fabric of her dress, as if the dress itself were just a different variant of that skin. Even the marks she had taken from the Barrani who had served as Feral pillars rose.
She listened, face lifted as if to see every single word that comprised the heart of the Tower. She heard the Consort’s song. Not as she had the first time, through Ynpharion; it pierced whatever it was that kept Kaylin’s consciousness separate from the battle.
She couldn’t hear the cohort, couldn’t hear the Hawks.
I take that back, she told Ynpharion.
He didn’t reply. He was, however, annoyed at her ignorance, and again, that was a comfort.
“Hallionne. Tower. Whatever it is that you call yourself, let me tell you a story.”
Fire moved up and down her arms. The patina of flame reddened the gold she could see almost everywhere. The fire had always wanted stories. Stories of life and the necessity of fire, not stories of its destruction. She couldn’t—and didn’t—tell the fire who, or what, it was. She couldn’t. She could barely answer that question about herself on the best of days, which this wasn’t.
Her stories, told to fire, were about the overlaps in their lives—if fire could be called alive. They were parts of Kaylin’s story. They were her experiences, cut into small, digestible bits. So telling stories to the fire was also telling stories about herself and her experiences. She could own, did own, the latter.
What the Tower needed was not those stories. She could tell it stories about people, although those stories were hers in part. She started, stopped. Started, stopped.
