“I’m involved.” Tain’s voice was curt. He was angry.
Helen rushed in to prevent silence from once again shrouding the table. “I will, of course, have rooms for you. You are allowed across my threshold without Kaylin’s express, explicit permission. She considers you—”
“Family. Yes. I know.”
“In the mortal sense, not the immortal one.” Kaylin knew mortal families that would have fit right in with the Barrani families of Teela’s acquaintance, but failed to point this out.
“In the Kaylin sense,” Teela said.
“That is the only one with which I am concerned,” Helen replied. “You are welcome here.”
Bellusdeo took a seat at the table on the other side of Mandoran. The smile she gave him was almost feline. “How many other guests will I be sharing a roof with?”
Teela’s answering grin was humorless. “Ten new guests, unless I can convince Annarion to change his bloody mind.”
“You are not going to convince me to change my mind,” Annarion said, finally joining a conversation that both he and Mandoran had managed to steer clear of.
Teela turned to stare at him, and to Kaylin’s surprise, it was Annarion who looked away. Teela had clearly chosen to reply to the statement in the privacy of their name bond.
It was, strangely enough, Mandoran who broke the silence. “Annarion was the youngest,” he said, looking at the table. “Nightshade was the eldest. Not the firstborn, but the eldest survivor of the war. He went to the Tower, and he returned.” He flinched. “I’m telling her. It’s not like she can’t find out.”
“Find out what?”
“Annarion had a sister. She was the middle surviving child. When it came her time, she went to the Tower to take the Test of Name.” He inhaled. Paused. Kaylin thought he was done.
He was. Teela, however, took up the slack his silence left. “She was the daughter of an ambitious family. Those who fail the Test, with one possible exception, have never returned. Annarion assumed—as we all did at the time—that she had died. He grieved privately; it is not the way of my people to otherwise discuss the failure of their own kin. I therefore know very little about her. If the rest of my cohort has become something other, something larger, than Barrani, they are nonetheless Barrani in thought. Had she died, nothing would change.”
This time, Annarion bowed his head. And Kaylin understood, in that moment, that Annarion knew. He knew the fate of those who failed that test.
Teela, seeing her expression, said, “Yes. Now he knows. Those who fail do not simply die; they remain where they fell. They will remain there until the creature at the base of the High Halls is destroyed.”
Her words almost a whisper, Kaylin said, “He intends to free the trapped.”
“The damned, yes. He intends to destroy the Shadow at the base of the Tower. He intends to free the dead. To be fair, he intends to free his sister.”
“...So, the reason—the real reason—he was so angry at Nightshade...” Kaylin lapsed into uncomfortable silence.
“No. You are not Barrani. The reason he is angry with his brother has been stated truthfully, and often. His brother chose to reject duty and honor by abandoning his bloodline.”
“He was made outcaste, Teela. He didn’t choose it.”
Teela just shook her head and made that you’ll understand when you’re older face that Kaylin hated. “Annarion does like you, and I understand why.” She held up a hand. “I never had any qualms about leaving him in your hands. Or rather, I never worried about what you might do to, or with, him. All of my worry went in the other direction. Annarion is not a fool. Or rather, he understands why the Test exists. He understands that were the Shadow beneath the High Halls to escape, it would be a disaster that would make the previous attack on the High Halls pale to insignificance.”
“But?”
“But, yes. My cohort was sent to the green. It was sent to be transformed. The experiment was not successful in the eyes of the High Court of the time—but it is being argued now that it was a success.”
“By your cohort?”
“Yes. No one likes to feel that they are a failure,” Teela added, with a rueful smile. “Shadow does not hold the same terror for Annarion or Mandoran that it does for you or the rest of my kin.”
“They think they can destroy that Shadow.”
“They think they have a chance.”
“And if they don’t succeed? If, somehow, that Shadow can subvert them?” She turned to Annarion who was still studying his plate as if it fascinated him. “If the Shadow takes your name, you can do things—you can all do things—that no other Barrani can. The Shadow’s released at least one person we know of into the High Court.” She did not mention who, and no one asked. “But if it has you and your cohort as its agents...”
Teela nodded, grim now. “Exactly.”
*
Kaylin was technically a Lord of the High Court because she’d inadvertently taken the Test of Name—a test that she couldn’t really fail, except by dying, as she hadn’t had a name at the time. She’d seen what lay at the base of the Tower. It was a Shadow, and in its folds, it held the names of those who had failed. It held the substance of who they had been in life. Kaylin didn’t exactly believe in ghosts, but didn’t have a better word to describe it.
It had shaken her.
It had enraged her.
It had, as so many, many things did, brought her face-to-face with her own insignificance, and her helplessness. There was nothing she could do to disperse that particular Shadow, and nothing she could do to free the trapped.
The creature at the base of the High Halls was the reason the High Halls had been erected in the middle of what was otherwise a Dragon-ruled empire. But death wasn’t the worst of it, for the Barrani. He could also control those he chose to allow to leave the Tower, because he had their names. He knew them.
For years, for centuries, probably for millennia, the Barrani had been feeding their children—or themselves—to that Shadow. And Kaylin even understood why. What the Shadow could not take, what the Shadow could not mislead or distract, it could not alter. Those Barrani had a base immunity to the effects of Shadow.
That base immunity was necessary. She knew what would happen to the city, her city, if the creature was no longer imprisoned. The Dragons might be safe. No one else.
After a long pause, in which Kaylin’s drink practically congealed in her hands, she said, “So...they’re all coming here.”
“Yes. Sedarias now feels that some exploratory testing is required.” Teela’s eyes were marginally less blue; Bellusdeo’s presence had shifted some of the tension out of the lines of her face.
More silence.
“We are aware of the danger—to others—if one of the cohort is subverted or controlled. Annarion was calling out to the Shadows without ever being aware that he was doing so. If he could be made to do so deliberately, the Shadow beneath the High Halls wouldn’t need to be unleashed.