Cast in Wisdom (Chronicles of Elantra #15) - Michelle Sagara Page 0,132

he’s called now, yes. He was a student—”

“I am aware of that. Even Androsse must remember him. Continue.”

Since it was Kavallac who had interrupted, her irritation struck Kaylin as unfair. Then again, so did life on some days. “The Arkon said that there was an emergency chancellor, a fill-in, when the chancellor of the time was drawn into the Draco-Barrani wars.”

“And it was under Terramonte’s stewardship that Ravellon fell?”

“I...think so?” Kaylin forced herself not to wilt, but her tone implied a wealth of ignorance, which was fair: she was ignorant. Her sense of history was so compressed and so vague that she had no clear idea of how that war had even started. She’d seen some of the cost of it in Teela and the cohort; she’d seen the fall of the High Halls.

But she had also seen their rise, their renewal. She had seen the cohort home.

If given time, she would sit down beside the Arkon—or at his feet—and try to separate the strands of that ancient history into something more closely resembling an actual timeline. She had known that the Arkon was old; she had never imagined that his distant youth would have encompassed the fall of Ravellon.

Her ignorance didn’t change facts. The facts remained, hidden and out of reach. It was her job to find facts, to sift through them to find those that were relevant or meaningful.

She lifted her chin, met Kavallac’s gaze, and said, “The Arkon is here. I told you that two Dragons accompanied me into the library. He was one of them.”

* * *

“Did he come prepared for combat?”

“I’m not sure what that means,” Kaylin replied. “He’s a Dragon. In the city as it exists outside of the Academia, being a Dragon is all that’s required for combat. Most combat.”

“Very well. That is not a promising reply, but it is acceptable.” She began to walk.

“Wait, where are you going?”

“I am going to speak with the Arkon,” Kavallac replied.

“To speak with the Arkon, we have to pass through the other three intruders.”

“No,” the Dragon replied. “We do not. Androsse?”

Arbiter Androsse grimaced. “I had forgotten how much I enjoy solitude.”

Kavallac began to transform.

Chapter 23

This transformation was unlike the transformation most Dragons underwent, to Kaylin’s eye. The uncomfortable transitional moments where skin became scale and limbs both elongated and bent in directions that would have caused severe injuries in any other race were missing in their entirety. One moment, Kavallac was a woman about seven or eight inches taller than Kaylin, and the next, she was an amorphous cloud. The spread of cloud or fog continued—at speed—until the entire area in immediate view was covered in it.

The fog then solidified, all of it drawn into the hardening lines of a ghostly Dragon.

“Climb,” the Dragon said.

“I will walk,” Arbiter Androsse replied. “Chosen?”

Kaylin looked up—pointedly—at a ceiling she couldn’t quite see.

“It is best that you accept Kavallac’s kind offer. Hold the books, Chosen. And if it is possible, while you are airborne, read the words.”

“The runes?”

“The runes that adorn the covers of these books.”

“It’s not possible while I’m in flight. If you want me to try, I’ll need to stand here for a bit.”

“I will not drop you if your attention is momentarily elsewhere.”

It wouldn’t be momentary. Kaylin, books clutched in one arm, attempted to climb the Dragon’s back. To her surprise, the ghostly and translucent body was also rock-solid. Kavallac’s Draconic form was as real as Bellusdeo’s would have been.

Kaylin doubted that Bellusdeo would attempt to fly in this room, though. The ceilings that she had seen in the glow of the Arkon’s summoned light were high—but not, in Kaylin’s opinion, high enough. She wasn’t about to argue with Kavallac’s certainty that they were, though.

The thing I don’t understand, Kaylin said to Nightshade as she seated herself, is Killian. We’re in the outlands, or the primal ether—whatever it’s called. You—and a couple of other Barrani—are here, and you still have your names.

The names are anchored to us; we are inseparable.

She nodded. But... Killian is here. There are words here. The... Arbiters are here. Larrantin, in some form, is here. Let’s ignore the question of True Names. If Killian is, like Helen, composed of and driven by the words at his core, those words shouldn’t lose their power. Killian is alive.

Yes.

So the prohibition—or the inability—is based on the speaking of words, or the speaking of words that grant life, in the outlands.

I believe that is what has been said. I also believe that the roots that you speak