Page 62 of Cast in Conflict

“It is a different word for lord. I understand that she made attempts to change her core so that she might have choice of the lord who gave her commands?”

Kaylin nodded again.

“This flexibility was built into the Towers. Helen’s creation was not the same, and her role, intentionally different. She was not meant to house tenants or guests, and her name was known; it was the key to enforcing her obedience.

“Arbiters are not obedient,” Kavallac added, in case this wasn’t obvious. “That was never required of us. I don’t recall what was.”

Living in the library for the rest of their immortal existence, Kaylin thought. But she also thought that more than three had queued up for the privilege of doing so.

“Helen has chosen you. She can, however, function without a tenant. The Towers will function for some time without a captain. In the case of your Tara, this was suboptimal. I do not think Karriamis will have that difficulty. He was never entirely comfortable in the presence of too many people and disliked noise and fuss.

“If your concern is the state of the defense of the area over which he presides, worry will be unlikely to be essential for the entirety of your life. Possibly for a century beyond that. If we had to lose a captain, Karriamis’s would be the least inconvenient.

“But that is not what you’re really asking, is it?”

“I don’t understand how a Dragon could or would choose a Barrani as its captain.”

“In my opinion, it is likely that Candallar was both desperate and strong enough to unseat—that’s kill, in any reasonable tongue—the previous captain. I don’t know that for a fact. Candallar himself was outcaste.” She glanced at Androsse.

“We did not make our kin outcaste,” he replied. “Not in our time.”

“Which has passed,” Starrante added. “Durandel became the Tower you call Nightshade; he and Androsse were distant kin.”

Durandel was an Ancestor. Durandel’s brothers, sleeping in the basement of the Tower Durandel became, had attempted to destroy the Barrani High Halls. They had almost succeeded.

“None of your kin became Towers?”

She couldn’t tell if Arbiter Starrante was frowning or not.

“That is untrue,” he replied. “Aggarok did.”

She made a mental note of the name. “You wouldn’t happen to know—”

“Liatt is his current captain.”

“And Durant’s Tower?”

“Endoralle. She was of the next generation—what you now refer to as Barrani. Farlonne’s Tower was Beyanne; it was not their original name.”

“And their race?”

“Morphosys.”

Kaylin hadn’t heard of them. Then again, she’d never heard of Starrante’s people before now, either. She frowned. “What characterized the Morphosys’ original race?”

“Physical flexibility. They could choose their appearances and alter every element of them; they could see multiple planes at once.”

Her frown shifting into one of frustration and concentration, she said, “I...think I might have met some of them when we went to the West March.”

“Very likely. They were never numerous, but they were considered an excellent choice as a building’s core. I believe some of the buildings in the Western reach may have been constructed with Morphosys at their core.”

She was certain this was true, but less certain it was relevant.

“But I confess I fail to understand why any of this information is of relevance to you,” Androsse continued. “Understand that the act of becoming—as it was called—changed those who became. They are not, and could not remain, what they were.”

Kaylin understood this, but partially disagreed. “They couldn’t be entirely changed or the choice of the Tower core wouldn’t matter; the Ancients could have chosen six random people—it would certainly have saved them time, and a lot of conflict.

“Some essential part of their former identity remains. Nightshade’s Tower even had brothers of Durandel sleeping in its basement—I assume they decided to do it when the Towers rose.” Nor were they the only kin to do so. “If we’re dealing with fieflords we don’t know, we’re dealing indirectly with Towers we don’t know. We can infer the imperatives at the core of all Towers, but there’s clearly a lot of leeway in things not related to their...job.

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