wished me to join the Arcanum; he wished to train the talent that existed as potential.”
“What talent?” Ybelline asked, something strange in her tone.
“Can you not guess, future castelord?”
She closed her eyes. “You are an elementalist.”
“Yes. I am a summoner. I am a summoner with a very strong affinity.”
“For water,” she whispered.
“For water. In the West March, if I touched the water meant as defense and shield, I could hear its voice. If I asked it to become my playmate, it would. It did not ever seek to harm me; it was more home to me than the home into which I was born. As a child, I did not understand that this took power; it took effort, at times, to make myself heard, but I did not consider such effort magic. It took as much effort to make myself clear to the adults that surrounded us. Possibly more.
“But it did take power. And when that power was discovered, I was severed from the West March and brought to court. To this court, with its stone and its poisons and its lack of any familial structures that I could understand. It was an honor, you understand. My success here would lend my family prominence.”
Ybelline was pale. “You found a way to speak to the water in Elantra.”
“There was so much of it, in comparison. The Ablayne. The harbor. There was no living water in the High Halls—not to begin with; there was one fountain that would have worked perfectly, but to approach it without invitation was, and is, death. I reverted to my early childhood ways; I felt trapped and the horror of the test grew and grew until there was no way out from beneath it.” His hands were shaking as he spoke, although they lay flat in his lap. “I am sorry,” he said, lifting his head. “I am a terrible host when the servants are sent away. Are you hungry at all? Would you drink if drinks were offered?”
“I am not hungry,” Ybelline said. She glanced at Severn; he shook his head.
An’Sennarin nodded, as if he expected no less. His hands stilled. Blue-eyed now, he held Ybelline’s gaze. “You are castelord, now? Or you will be.”
“Yes.”
“You understand what happened?”
She shook her head. “I have made what the Halls of Law would call educated guesses. They have shifted with this meeting, but no—they are still guesses.”
“Then guess, for me—share that vulnerability with me. I will not think less of you if you are wrong.”
Severn stood and moved away from the chair he had occupied.
“No,” An’Sennarin said, voice soft. “This concerns you. I believe it must. I have held this sketch since my only visit to the Oracular Halls, and I have waited.”
“For what?”
“You. You and Ybelline.”
“Why?”
“I know why she is here, Severn Handred. I do not yet know why you are. Perhaps I will never know; an oracle, once given, is only truly understood after all events that concern it are out of reach.” He turned, again, to Ybelline.
Her eyes were green now. Almost the exact shade An’Sennarin’s had been when they had entered his presence.
“I will guess, as you have asked,” Ybelline said. She lowered her chin, as if in thought. “But answer a question before I do.”
“Any question I can answer, I will truthfully answer.”
“This request—this game of guessing—did not originate from you.”
He laughed then, his eyes clearing until they had become almost as green as hers. “No. It wasn’t my idea. If I’m to tell you—and I will—all that occurred from my perspective, I can’t see that having you guess has any use to us.”
“It was Adellos who asked you to ask me.”
“Yes.”
* * *
The silence was thick. Severn wished he had been allowed to leave the table, to join Elluvian and An’Tellarus, although the latter guaranteed that the meeting would be dangerous in ways he couldn’t yet predict.
“He still wants to know what your guess is,” An’Sennarin said, when Ybelline did not speak.
She exhaled. “You sought the water when the burden of fear proved too great.”
He nodded.
“You went to the harbor?”
He nodded again.
“And what you touched, when you reached—what your shouts raised—was not the small elementals of your past.”
“No. It was—” he shook his head. “It was wild, loud—the difference between summer showers and bitter storm. I heard the voice of the water, and it heard me. And it rose from the ocean like a wall of death.”
“That death was not your death.”
“No—I think, if I had not somehow caught the whole of its