Page 182 of Cast in Conflict

To Mandoran, the Wevaran said, “Did you understand what you heard?”

“No. I’m sorry. It’s not a language that my people are now taught.”

“It was never a language that was taught,” the Wevaran replied. “You are—both of you—younger races.”

“You always understood it?”

“How could we not? It is the heart of all language. It is what lies beneath the skein of the language we speak now; it is the drive to communicate without prevarication. There was always risk in that; we hide. We seek the shadows—there is safety in being unseen.

“But unseen, we cannot speak truth. And to speak this tongue at all is to refuse to hide. Perhaps you cannot understand that.”

It was Mandoran who answered. “We understand the need to be unseen.”

“Yes. When I was young, I learned to hide. I hid my strength. I hid my weakness. I made a web of both; I was hungry. We were hungry. I did not speak these words. None of us dared to speak them; they could be heard. They could be felt. They could be seen.

“We are many at birth and few when we leave the birthing ground; it is our nature. Those who die, die; those who are strong, live. I see, from your expression, that you do not approve.”

Kaylin shrugged. She didn’t—but human birth wasn’t Wevaran birth.

Mandoran seemed to have no difficulties, however. “The strong live. The weak die. We don’t...consume each other the way you do, and we have far fewer young.”

“Don’t you ever think about what those others might have become if they survived?” Kaylin demanded.

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because they did not survive.” The last word tailed up, as if the Wevaran didn’t understand the question. “Regardless, when we heard the words, we understood them.”

“Wait, if you didn’t speak them, where did you hear them? Did your mother speak them?”

“Our parent? Yes. Our parent spoke the words. They would have to be spoken or we would not emerge.”

“Do you have True Names?”

Silence stretched around the question, as if the Wevaran were examining it carefully. Or as if he didn’t understand it. Maybe both. Kaylin was reminded, again, that language arose from cultural experience, something she had never considered as a child in the fiefs. Words were words, then.

Even learning Barrani hadn’t changed that feeling; the learning had been entirely in service to translating one set of words—those she naturally spoke—to another.

But True Words had meanings, and those meanings did not shift with the speaking or with the experience of the speaker. She’d been told this, and she believed it. True Names were True Words—but words that were owned, words that were lived.

To reveal a True Name was the ultimate risk, the ultimate vulnerability.

“I do not understand your question,” Bakkon finally said.

“The Barrani—Mandoran is Barrani—have a word at their core. They do not wake without the word itself. The Dragons have words in a similar fashion—”

“It’s not similar at all,” Mandoran interjected.

“—and in both cases, if one knows the word, which we call the True Name, of the Barrani or the Dragon, we can communicate with them without speech. And we can—if we are strong enough—force the Barrani or the Dragon to do what we command them to do.”

“I see. And you wish to know if I have such a word?”

“I wish to know if your people have such words, yes.”

“Your people do not?”

“No. My people do not. It is why the Barrani sometimes consider the mortal races to be little better than animals.”

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