Cast in Wisdom (Chronicles of Elantra #15) - Michelle Sagara Page 0,147
enough that she could feel its surfaces against her skin.
She wasn’t expecting the rune to pull away. She wasn’t expecting the book to fly off her lap. She opened her eyes without thought, her voice dying into stillness as she met the midnight-blue eyes of Candallar.
* * *
She moved, throwing herself out of the range of the spell that her skin told her was coming. But she moved in the direction of the book. Candallar had, she thought, kicked it or sent it flying in some purely physical way. She didn’t reach the book first; the Arkon did.
The Arkon had not moved.
Purple fire scorched the floor where Kaylin had been seated. The Arkon snapped a single Draconic word that reverberated down Kaylin’s spine. The specific meaning was lost, but the tone made clear that he intended Kaylin to get behind him.
Fire followed her steps; purple lapped at her legs. It didn’t burn; it numbed. She stumbled into the Arkon’s left arm, and he caught her before she could hit the ground. All around him, she could see a luminous, faint sphere.
So could Candallar.
“Leave them!” he shouted, although he didn’t take his eyes off the Arkon—and Kaylin. “What we want is here!”
The Arkon exhaled a narrow plume of fire; it blossomed across Candallar’s chest without apparently burning anything. Candallar, however, shouted no further instructions to his distant companions.
No, he focused on the two people in front of him, and on the three books one of them now carried.
“You do not have permission to be here,” he said, his voice a curious blend of ice and fire. His eyes widened slightly as his words died into a silence battered by distant roars and combat. Those eyes narrowed as he spoke the words again: you do not have permission to be here. The words echoed and repeated as if Kaylin were hearing them spoken by more than one voice.
“Neither do you!” Kaylin shouted back.
This time, his eyes narrowed until they were almost closed. He lifted a hand, and in it, Kaylin could see something that looked like a rod—small, compact, not terribly useful for fighting. It seemed ceremonial.
He pointed the rod at Kaylin. “Leave.”
“I’d suggest you consider it,” a familiar voice said. Terrano stepped out of the shadows.
* * *
Terrano was unarmed. Sedarias, however, was not. She joined Terrano, her hair a flyaway mess, something seldom seen on a Barrani when they weren’t in motion.
“Lord Candallar,” Sedarias said, her eyes a shade of blue that made clear her displeasure.
“Do not interfere here,” Candallar said, struggling to keep his voice as smooth—and cold—as Sedarias’s had been. “You are intruders, and as intruders, you have no hope of survival. This is not Mellarionne, An’Mellarionne. You will find that you have no power here, except the power I choose to grant.”
The Arkon roared.
Candallar appeared unmoved.
“You are in the library,” the Arkon said. “And your people are intent on causing damage to it.”
“The library is part of the Academia, and I am its Lord.”
The floor shook beneath Kaylin’s feet.
The Arkon looked singularly unimpressed. Sedarias and Terrano joined Kaylin; Sedarias did not put up her sword. But it was Sedarias who spoke.
“What claim have you over the Academia?”
“I told you—”
“And what use is it to you?”
“Do you not understand what is gathered here in the detritus of ancient history?” Candallar’s voice was soft.
“You have intrigued with the Lords of the High Court who are discontent with things as they now stand,” Sedarias continued, as if she had not been interrupted. “None of us do so without goals. You will not and cannot claim the High Seat, and given your role in the recent difficulties, your reinstatement to that Court is nigh impossible.”
He said nothing.
“I have offered alliance, and you have failed to respond to that offer.”
“And you will offer it again?” There was no trace of sneer in his voice or his words, but it was clear that he didn’t believe it.
“There are things that I can, and cannot, accept,” Sedarias said. “I am An’Mellarionne, as you have clearly ascertained. I speak with the voice of Mellarionne.”
“You yourself were not obedient to your brother when he ruled your family.”
“We are never obedient when the goal is our destruction, no. But your destruction was both ordained and escaped; you are fieflord, and your Tower is Candallar. Do you wish to be relieved of the burden that preserved your life?”
Silence.
“I cannot see what you hope to gain in your intrigues at Court. You cannot be both fieflord and a Lord