“I offer choice.”
“You tried to reduce me to ash!”
“In no other way would you remain. These words? They have no power for me. They will never have power for me. They are both True Words and independent of the linguistics of that ancient tongue. I gathered. I contained.”
“Forwhat?”
Laughter ran through her, around her, lifting her hair; the sword she carried rose almost by reflex, as if it had a will of its own.
“For no reason you could understand. Itis my function. Igather. Iincreasethe size and the strength of the core. I increase the power and the reach ofRavellon.”
“To what end?”
“Does it matter? I am notRavellon. I am simply a limb. It is difficult—it was always difficult—but to gather was not an act of brute force as you perceive it—or as the Barrani do. This Tower has become a test. They call it the Test of Name, because that is all they can perceive of it: pass or fail. Life or death.
“But if it is simple, if that is what experience has taught them, however indirect, it is the wrong simplicity. I offer a choice, Chosen. It is a choice that is tailored to the one that stands before me. It is always—was always—their choice to make. Even now, even surrounded by those who have made differing choices and now seek to prove the strength of those choices against their own kind, it is essential that choice is offered.
“And I have offered choice, every time. I have gathered. I have waited.”
She couldn’t tell if he was stalling for time, but even if he was, it didn’t matter. She understood that this was what she needed to hear.
“What I wanted, even before I was caged here, was freedom. Only that. But that was beyond me. It was beyondus.”
“Us?”
“Do you think I am the only limb that is sentient? Do you think I am the only part of the entirety of what you, in your tiny existence, might call a god who does not desire the abilitytochoose, for better or ill? It was the core of our existence: to offer choice, no matter how dire that choice might seem—but wecould notmake those choices for ourselves. Our freedom, such as it was, was in the choice of our tools. And I have offered choices—albeit few—since my entrapment.”
“You attempted to take control of the Court.”
“Yes. Because I must return toRavellon. Do you understand that? Even the choice of that—to remain—is denied me. It is part of myfunction. It is what I was createdto be.”
Kaylin understood then. She lifted the sword. “If I cut off my own hand,” she told the gray miasma, “the hand dies. Can you die?”
“I do not know. We were not created with an ending in mind. What you perceive as death might be freedom, to my ancient kin.” And he spoke again, in a language that Kaylin couldn’t understand. This one, however, felt wrong to her; it was not the language that had first been created with the use of True Words.
Terrano answered, but Kaylin could understand his words, although they were fuzzy and almost tremulous. “You’ve done what you can. The rest is up to them. And us.” To Kaylin, he said, “He’s going to kill you, if he can.”
She’d always known that.
“He’s struggled for as long as he can against his very nature.”
She wasn’t surprised that fire blossomed from the miasma. Wasn’t surprised that the gray and formless mass of flecked fog solidified. Wasn’t even surprised at the form it took. No—that last part wasn’t true. She stood in the wake of Draconic breath as it reached for her, a familiar cone of white and orange. She felt not warmth but cold—the chill of bitter, winter wind. A reminder of one of the many things that would—and did—kill in the fiefs. The winter had no sentience, no will; it had no purpose that she had ever understood. Like day or night it was simply part of the landscape, something to be endured.
She had asked the Adversary a question. It was a question she’d asked herself while she’d contemplated this visit, the Consort’s desire and the cohort’s plan. But she’d never imagined that she would ask it in this way—and that she would somehow feel even a slender smidgen of dread or guilt should the answer beyes.
Chapter 30
The fire caught fire, turning conic flames into thin, fine strands in the blink of an eye. Kaylin’s skin brightened, but didn’t burn. For the first time since she had set out to reach the heart of the Tower, she wondered what this was costing Evarrim; he had summoned the fire, and in theory it was his to control. She had lost all sense of time in the Tower’s heart; she knew that across the bridge she suspected was figurative, Barrani were fighting Barrani, with Severn thrown in.
The Adversary had called on those intent on summoning him tohurry, but she could not hear the results. She no longer believed that those words had the meaning they would have had, had someone else uttered them, either. She lifted the blade as she made her way through fire into the densest part of the cloud.
Terrano caught her as the ground beneath her feet became as permeable as the air that surrounded her. He wasn’t a magical creature; he wasn’t Hope. He grunted at the weight of her. “If you could tell the firenot to burn me, I would really appreciate it.”
She hadn’t dropped the sword, but it was close.
“Why isn’t he attackingyou?” she demanded while struggling for breath; Terrano’s grip made it a bit more difficult.
“I don’t know. I think he thinks I’m part of you.”
