Cast in Wisdom (Chronicles of Elantra #15) - Michelle Sagara Page 0,158

he doing?” Kaylin asked, bending as the fire cleared and the fire resumed. “What are the patterns meant to do?”

But Robin barely heard her. His gaze drifted from the webbing being constructed, up the limbs that were constructing it, and to the eyes of Starrante himself, because Starrante was looking at Robin, not the pattern he was creating. “What do you see?”

“You’re walking a pattern,” Robin replied with vastly less fear than he had shown moments before. “You’re walking a pattern with your limbs. Are you Wevaren?”

“Yes. That is not what we call ourselves, but yes, that is what I am.”

The Dragon fire was answered by purple flame—but this flame glistened, and it moved like a wave, not a cone. It was darker in color than the purple fire Kaylin had seen used before, and something about it set her teeth on edge.

“Don’t let it touch you!” Kaylin shouted, mostly at Bellusdeo, who stood at the outer rim of Starrante’s protections.

“You think?” the Dragon replied in annoyed Elantran.

Robin’s gaze moved, briefly, to this new wall of ugly flame, this new wave. Kaylin could see that the opalescence was stronger here. She had always considered this type of glittering, ugly color to be a thing of Shadow, a property of the Shadows—but she knew that was wrong; Hope’s eyes sometimes glittered in the same way.

“No,” Robin said, looking at what now approached them like a wall of death, all sight of the three behind it obscured. “I think—I don’t think that’s the pattern you want.”

Starrante’s eyes didn’t seem possessed of lids, but they widened at the effrontery of Robin.

“Master Larrantin said that that was the way it was done a long time ago—but he said there were other, more efficient patterns that had been developed since.” His Barrani was astonishingly good, given his age and the area he’d called home before his disappearance.

“Larrantin?” Starrante did not spit but might have had he a normal mouth and the usual saliva. “And what, exactly, would you suggest?”

“Can I touch it?”

“Boy—”

“No!” The two words collided.

Robin nodded. He was frustrated; there was no way to draw what he wanted to draw, and he clearly did, because his hands were moving almost as if he held a quill. Those hands, she now saw, were ink-stained, the nails chipped. “That line,” he said, shouting to be heard over the roar of two Dragons. Their breath could keep the purple fire at bay, but it was a losing battle; they slowed its advance but did not destroy it.

“This one.”

“It’s—you’ve created five diamonds, repeating—but you don’t need five.”

“You have no idea what path is being traced.”

“I do. I know what path you’re tracing—Larrantin said it’s an important pathway.”

“Larrantin thinks his hair is important on a bad day.”

“Move that line and that one. Shorten them. In the center, the shape should be different.”

“Different?”

Robin nodded. He could speak High Barrani, but communicating what he could see on the inside of his head was almost beyond him. Starrante, however, studied the pattern for a long beat while fire approached. He did not call a retreat; he didn’t appear to notice the fire itself.

“I understand,” he finally said, “why Killian considered you promising. Very well. Let us walk a different pattern. You wish the center to be more curved, then—the diamonds less exact?”

“Not less exact, just less diamond-shaped. Master Larrantin said if the structure is looser it flows as one would expect.”

“I will have a word with Larrantin later. You seem young to be so advanced in your studies.” His limbs moved as his mouth did.

Robin said, “The shiny bits in the purple stuff match the patterns better. You’re trying to collect them, right?”

Kaylin was almost dumbfounded.

“I am. Now hush; this takes concentration.”

And spinning the complicated web didn’t. Kaylin had never heard of Starrante’s race, but clearly Robin had—and he had done so in the Academia. For one moment, while Starrante’s entire body tensed, she wondered what else she might learn if she were a student here. Whatever it was, it seemed vastly more valuable than etiquette.

The fire hit the web directly in front of Starrante—and everyone else, for that matter. Both of the Dragons took a measured, deliberate step back, retreating into the space between two of Starrante’s legs.

As the wall of flame hit the web, it stuck there, struggling to push forward. Kaylin flinched, half expecting the fire to break through the holes circumscribed by strands of web. It didn’t. It seemed to travel along those strands, lighting the web, and