Page 152 of Cast in Atonement

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Kaylin!

She couldn’t lift her arms. She couldn’t lift her feet. If the skirts now flew with the wind, her feet had sunk into the loam—just as Evanton’s had been encased when they’d finally found him the last time they’d come to Azoria’s.

But the wind was cold only where it struck the guest words on her arms; she found it warm, otherwise. It lifted her hair, lifted the trailing length of her sleeves.

I’m all right.

Severn’s worry was palpable. He separated himself from Teela, Tain, and Bellusdeo, and moved toward Kaylin; she turned her head to look back and could see glints of light from his hands, and from the weapon’s chain. Mist rose—solid mist. Severn snarled and leaped over what was a growing wall, a divide between the three who had been invited, and the four who had not.

His blade clipped the mist; her impression of wall solidified because she heard it strike something like stone. But he made it, landing beside Kaylin, weapons out. As if he could stop a dead god or the green itself—anything that might harm her. His weapons reflected the green light of her marks, of her dress. She looked at him in alarm, and then looked away because of his expression.

Focus on Mrs. Erickson, she told him.

He didn’t reply. Kaylin would have said more, but the wind swept words away. Words that didn’t have to be spoken; words that were part of the exchange of True Names.

Her sleeves seemed to move with the wind—and then to move against it, reaching up to the arm the wind had exposed. To the travelers she’d brought with her. They resisted that pull, clinging to her arms; she felt small claws dig in, as if the illusory settings that contained the glowing centers of the individual parts had been set directly into her skin.

It didn’t hurt much because her arms were numb.

That was probably the reason she didn’t realize that the biting sting of little claws was actually deeper than it first appeared; it felt like sharp pricks of pain, no more.

Severn shouted.

Kaylin couldn’t lift her arms; she could barely see them. But she could see what concerned Severn so much: her arms were bleeding. She flexed her hands to make sure they were still attached, and watched, almost bemused, as her blood ran in thin, distinct streams down her arms. Down her arms and toward the loam that was touched by both death and the green. Hope was squawking up a storm in her ear; he pushed himself off her shoulder in rage, his squawks growing in volume and depth as he grew in size.

The wind that moved a sleeve could not move Hope. Nor, it seemed, could it move Severn.

But Mrs. Erickson, it did not touch at all. The hem of Evanton’s robes—for he was once again attired as in the Keeper’s garden—rippled slightly, but he was accustomed to quieting the elements; it could not disturb more than that.

Kaylin’s hair flew. Hope’s roar was a full-throated draconic roar; it seemed to blend with the wind the green had summoned—Kaylin had no doubt at all it was the green’s will.

The green’s will, the will of a dead Ancient, the anger of a Sorcerer’s ancient familiar. Even her marks were now clamoring in a storm of syllables, rising in volume as if to drown out the answer. As if to protect her, to protect Mrs. Erickson, or to protect the dead Ancient.

And all of it infuriated her because she wanted to hear the Ancient’s answer, and she knew she never would. What Mrs. Erickson could hear, no one else could hear. The best Kaylin could do was infer. She could have inferred part of the conversation because of what she heard Mrs. Erickson reply.

So of course the sound of the Hawk’s most common visitor could not be heard; it was the first thing that was lost. And to top it all off, Kaylin was bleeding into the strange and foreign ground, and not even she was naive enough to believe that living blood and dead ground would meet without incident. She couldn’t stop her blood from falling.

What she hadn’t expected was Hope: He breathed an enormous silver cloud, sparkling with tiny hints of color; it collided with the ground beneath Kaylin’s feet. Every Barrani who had ever seen the tiny version of that exhaled cloud had paled, panicked, retreated. Some managed to keep dignity intact; some did not.

Kaylin had seen Hope’s breath melt metal before. The breath wasn’t hot—Dragon breath, true Dragon breath, could melt metal and stone.

It couldn’t melt metal and re-form it, giving rise to a new, solid shape that could be touched and handled without difficulty. Had Kaylin been standing on stone, she would have felt no fear about a little blood at all. She wasn’t. Her feet were anchored in land that wasn’t like any land she knew that supported normal life.

Hope’s breath hit the land that surrounded her feet; it shifted in color, from the opalescent gray to a silver gray with hints of gold spread throughout; the basic consistency didn’t change. Nor did the grasp on her feet.

But her blood was absorbed, not by the ground on which she’d been standing, but the ground that Hope had momentarily transformed.

He roared, and this time, she understood his words.

THIS IS NOT FOR YOU!

They passed through her, and she felt the cold of her guests lessen as they did.

Be careful, Severn said; she could hear his voice clearly once again.

The dress, however, didn’t change. Probably for the best. Given her luck, she’d be standing stark naked in the middle of wherever this was.

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