Page 29 of Cast in Conflict

“If he forbade anyone else the Academia?”

“If he forbids anyone the Academia in a serious fashion, yes, I am capable of that, just as your Helen is; I am perhaps more capable of it than your Helen currently is. He finds you frustrating, but you are less frustrating at the moment than much of the work he must do, and he understands that your unique properties often provide an early warning that might otherwise be lacking.”

“Unique properties?”

“You are Chosen. But come. The library is not generally open to random visitors; I believe Starrante will be pleased to see you.”

“Did Bellusdeo visit him?”

“Yes.”

Starrante was, as Killian had suggested, pleased to speak with Kaylin and Severn. What she hadn’t expected, upon entering a library that looked very much like the library she had first entered, was that Kavallac and Androsse would also be present. Kavallac was, or had been, a Dragon before she became a librarian; Androsse had been a Barrani Ancestor.

If the three weren’t sentient buildings in the way Killian was, they were confined in a similar fashion. Within the confines of the library, they were more powerful than they had probably been when they had walked the city streets—or the forests that preceded them—but they were bound here. They couldn’t leave.

If they could, Kavallac would have been a second living female Dragon. It would have taken the heat off Bellusdeo, although Kavallac seemed no more likely to want to become the mother of her race than Bellusdeo.

Kavallac, however, couldn’t make the choice to do so, even if she desired the continuation of the race.

“Corporal,” Starrante said, his forelegs weaving a complicated web directly between them. She understood that this was meant as an honor or an acknowledgment, but still found it unsettling. She wondered if Starrante found her as unsettling, but doubted it. He’d been the librarian for a long damn time, and he’d no doubt encountered the many student races who didn’t possess the legs, body, and web-spitting abilities his own race considered normal.

“Arbiter.” She offered him a bow that Diarmat wouldn’t have held in contempt had he been present. She then bowed to both Kavallac and Androsse in turn, as did Severn.

“Corporal Handred wished to speak with you.”

Severn nodded.

“What do you wish to speak about?”

“The Towers,” he replied.

The three arbiters glanced at each other. “The creation of the Towers almost doomed the Academia.” It was Kavallac who replied.

Severn nodded. “Did you know Karriamis, or know of him?”

Silence again, as if the air had been sucked out of the room.

It was Kavallac who replied. “Yes.”

05

“You knew him before he agreed to become the heart of a Tower?”

Kavallac nodded. “Why do you ask?” Her voice was cool, her eyes orange—but it was a silver-orange; all of the eyes of the Arbiters had a silver cast to their base color.

“Candallar attempted to revive the Academia.”

This time, when Starrante spit, he did not make a web of the results.

Kavallac nodded, the nod controlled.

“Killian implied heavily that he was aware of Karriamis—the Tower we call Candallar—and that Karriamis’s instructions were instrumental in the revival of the Academia.”

“I do not concur,” Androsse said. As he was not a Dragon and had not yet made claims of familiarity, this was surprising. One brow rose as he glanced at Kaylin. “You are very expressive, Corporal. What Candallar desired was not the Academia; I am not certain that he understood it at all. He understood the trappings. He understood that there was knowledge here for the taking if it could be found.

“He understood that knowledge is power. It is a phrase that has retained its use over the ages. But the desire for knowledge was predicated on the desire for power, and at that, a narrow definition of power.

“What Karriamis wanted was not what Candallar wanted.”

---