Cast in Wisdom (Chronicles of Elantra #15) - Michelle Sagara Page 0,99

students when you were teaching here.”

“How are you so certain?”

“Lots of humans.”

“You think there were no mortals here? I would find your ignorance appalling in other circumstances.” His eyes began to glow, which was arresting because they were such a dark color. “But those circumstances are not these. Take my message to Killianas, Chosen.”

The marks across Kaylin’s arms—and probably the rest of the skin she couldn’t easily see—began to glow.

* * *

Did you catch most of that?

Yes. I’m coming back down the stairs.

Good, because Larrantin is going up. I’m still not convinced that he can stave off encroachment by people he can’t see—but he can see me and is likely to reduce me to ash if I bring it up a second time.

He could see the marks.

Yes. I’m not sure how. I’m not asking, either—if he has an “undress person” spell I do not want to know.

Severn’s chuckle was felt, not heard.

I mean, obviously he can see them now—they’re glowing. But they didn’t start until he gave me my orders.

Severn didn’t ask the obvious question, but Kaylin’s mind was beginning to chew on it. Why? Why had the marks responded to him?

He rounded the bend in the stairs and came to stand beside her. Kaylin then turned to the Arkon.

“Larrantin feels that it is essential—utterly essential—that we deliver his message to Killianas. He could see the bodies that Sedarias and Annarion left in their wake.” She spoke Barrani. “I think they would have seen him. But I also think they would see us. Larrantin can’t be seen by the rest of you.

“I think Sedarias should strangle Terrano,” she continued, “but not before she steps off a cliff herself. This might be something Terrano taught—but I’d bet any money that he taught it at her command. Let’s go find them.”

“You think they’re trapped the way Mandoran and Terrano are?”

“And Nightshade, yes. Which implies that Candallar can somehow trap people within the school. Or someone who is with Candallar.” She glanced once at Bellusdeo. “Ready?”

The gold Dragon nodded.

* * *

Candallar was not floating above the front doors when they exited the building. There was no fiery death, no purple tentacles or streams of fire-like color, waiting for them. Kaylin tried only one experiment as she headed down the walk; she asked Hope to lift his wing.

The wing was dutifully lifted, and the bodies that Kaylin could see vanished. She could—and did—step through them. They weren’t merely invisible; they weren’t there at all. Hope slid the wing back into place across her eyes. The bodies were there, and her feet—the single time she tried—didn’t pass through them.

So...this was some kind of shift in plane.

She wanted to pause and study the corpses. She wanted to match them to what she remembered of the wall in that first building they’d encountered in Candallar’s border zone. Mindful of Larrantin, of Candallar’s presence, and of the four missing members of the cohort, she didn’t take that time.

They walked—or marched—across the grass, cutting between two large trees to do so. Candallar had headed out of Killian’s building, closing the doors behind him. He hadn’t, that she’d seen, returned—but he might have beaten a retreat after his trick with the purple fire failed. The doors had been closed, if briefly.

She doubted it, though.

Her fear, at this point, was that he intended to kill them; if not kill, then imprison them. And that he had some method to do so that didn’t depend on a building in the border zone. What she didn’t understand was why. If he’d stumbled across this building, this academy, what did he want from it?

How was it useful?

He was fieflord. He had a Tower at his disposal. Then again, so did Nightshade—and Castle Nightshade would probably happily murder his visitors in their sleep, or starve them to death by getting them lost in a maze of twisting passages that had no exit.

Which was not, come to think of it, that different from the odd basement space they’d encountered when they’d been transported into the wall room.

She shook herself and realigned her thoughts. She didn’t know enough about sentient buildings, and would probably never know enough about them; they were people, at heart, with a lot of very complicated power that worked in a contained space. She’d learned what little she knew of each building by spending time with, or in, the building.

And Killian was damaged. This whole place was off-kilter.

Helen had damaged herself in order to be able to make choices of her own. Killian