Cast in Wisdom (Chronicles of Elantra #15) - Michelle Sagara Page 0,161

now, that you be preserved, even if they cannot be.”

Robin glanced over his shoulder at the Dragons, at the Barrani, and at the Hawks. He was both worried for them and pleased for himself; in such company as this, he’d probably never thought to considered valuable at all.

“My apologies, Chosen. Unless Robin interrupts you, you may tell me what it is, exactly, you do not understand.”

“I was in the library before the chancellor tossed us out. He threw us into the halls in which we first met you.”

“Yes?”

“Before he did, I saw the Arbiters in action.”

“I imagine so, given everything done here. What is it that you fail to understand?”

“They were using skills and weapons that...we would use. Dragon breath, claws, teeth; magic.” Before Starrante could tell her to get to the point, she said, “There was nothing about their power that seemed to come from the outside. Kavallac was no match for Bellusdeo, in my assessment.”

“Your assessment is in error.” He spit out more white goo. Robin tensed, but didn’t move. Starrante then began to weave with it—but the weave was not a web that crossed the space in front of him, at least not yet; it was web that he stretched along the obvious cracks in the floor. “Forgive the incomplete reply. Your assessment, were you all to be situated outside of the library itself, might be factually correct.

“The power of the Arbiters in this space, however, is twofold. The Arbiters may use the full force of their powers and abilities without causing harm to anything that belongs within the library, and the Arbiters are capable of closing the space to all, save the chancellor.”

“The interim chancellor counts?”

“Apparently so, although I would have argued against it. Understand that none of the three of us have seen the Academia in its riven state; what we know—and know well—is the Academia when it is fully functional. Things have broken; they are woefully chaotic. I am almost surprised that an interim chancellor could even be acknowledged.”

“Killian said—when we first met him—that the building had no master, no lord.”

“He was inexact, in my opinion.”

Robin lifted a hand. “I think you missed a bit.”

Starrante broke off, extended his neck in the direction to which Robin now pointed out. “My eyes,” he said to the young man, “are not what they used to be. You are correct.”

“It’s only a small bit,” Robin offered, almost apologetic.

“And a single eye is only a small bit as well, when measured against the rest. Is there anything else you have noticed?”

“Larrantin said that dimensional spaces have weight and gravity—but not like our classroom did.”

Starrante’s nod was impatient.

“But he said that in our school, that weight and gravity were far more important, because, hmmm, we lack the regular kind. So maybe you can fix this, but it’s not...” He trailed off.

“It is not anchored, as it once was, in the reality of the Academia—because the Academia is, itself, unanchored now.”

“That’s not quite what he said,” Robin replied. “I—Larrantin was a bit weird. I mean, all of the teachers were a bit weird, but Larrantin was the worst.”

“How so? Not that I disagree with you; he could be remarkably lazy and irresponsible on the best of days.”

“He sometimes faded. I mean, in the middle of a lecture or the middle of a sentence, he’d turn into a ghost. But...it was the ghost bits that seemed to make the most sense. When he was ghostly, his lessons were different. When he wasn’t, they were the same. Things don’t change a lot from day to day in the classes—it’s only today that we got an entirely new one. And I missed some of it,” he added with what sounded to Kaylin like genuine regret.

“But Larrantin taught different things, some of the time. I listened to the new stuff because...it was new.”

How long had he been here now? Bellusdeo had recognized him from a missing persons report in Records, but Kaylin couldn’t recall the length of time for which he’d been missing. And even if she had, she wasn’t at all certain that the days here matched the days outside, in the world from which Robin had come.

“I think we might progress,” Starrante said. In the distance, reverberating, he could hear the roar of a Dragon; he lifted his head, opened his mouth and responded in kind.

The silence that followed was full of echoes and rumbles.

Robin nodded.

“I hate to interrupt a necessary discussion,” Sedarias then said, “but could you possibly close the portal