Page 158 of Cast in Atonement

She could see the words more clearly than she had before, even when they’d been attached to her skin. They looked, to her eyes, like her own marks sometimes did when they lifted themselves from her skin, but these words were trailing slender vines.

Kaylin took the vines that remained in one hand, and approached the dead Ancient, and the dead Ancient’s complicated words. She had, in the past, intuited meaning from the marks of the Chosen—but it had taken hours, and it had started with her need to find words that resonated with words she both understood and used. She’d found the right marks, but she had never been able to speak the words they represented; she’d chosen them entirely by instinct, by feel.

In just that fashion, she now stood in front of the Ancient, who was a quivering pile of words, a structure that seemed unstable and likely to fall apart without intervention.

When Tiamaris had attempted to teach her some of what he knew about True Words, he’d spoken of harmony, of cohesion of form and shape; he could see the way Shadow could twist or break the forms of True Words, attempting to change their meaning, their dictate. Kaylin had wondered at the time how he had been so certain, but he had more knowledge of Shadow, more knowledge of the fiefs, than most of the Dragon Court. At the time, she hadn’t questioned it. He had stood beside her, he had encouraged her to actually read and pronounce the words at the heart of a Tower: the Tower he now captained.

She missed that, because she couldn’t even form the syllables that were necessary—and she felt the necessity keenly.

In the absence of Tiamaris, she stood, vines in hand. She began to attach them to the words she could see shining faintly beneath what she assumed was skin; it felt like stone to the touch; the tips of her fingers were cold. Still, the cold was far less intense than it had been before Mrs. Erickson had called the ghosts—commanded the ghosts—back to her hands.

The vines that had grown from the wreath had wrapped themselves around the ghosts Mrs. Erickson once again carried; the vines in Kaylin’s hands couldn’t find purchase in the words of the Ancient. But she could see those words waver and push toward either her hands or the vines—it wasn’t clear which, to Kaylin.

Something was in the way. She couldn’t push through it to reach the words. She could see them; she just couldn’t touch them. Not yet.

But the green’s power wasn’t the only power she had access to. She reached for the Ancient; she’d done it once before. The Ancient was dead. Healing shouldn’t work. But she’d never fully understood the power of the marks of the Chosen, and she’d never actually tried to heal a dead person before, because death rendered healing irrelevant. Healing, for Kaylin, was as instinctive as any use of the marks of the Chosen; the body knew its correct shape, and she poured power into the body to allow it to heal itself.

She’d poured power into the words Azoria had attempted to transform, as if Azoria herself were just another aspect of Shadow.

She twined the roots of the green’s flowers around her fingers, and then spread the palms of her hands against the stone; it was much colder than she’d anticipated. As cold as the ghostly words had been. But the dress she wore radiated heat and warmth; her hands remained steady.

She inhaled.

When she exhaled, she exhaled words. Unintentional words. Words in a language that felt familiar to the ear but were in no way familiar to the tongue—or at least not hers.

Oh. The green. She was here in part as a representative of the green’s will; that was what the dress meant.

The green was here, she was wearing the dress, and she was beginning to tell the story the green wanted told. The regalia, or perhaps something similar. She couldn’t ask the green, or perhaps she could—but she wouldn’t understand the answer, if she could even hear it.

The marks of the Chosen resonated with the voiced words. Maybe Kaylin’s role here was to serve as both Teller and harmoniste. That was what she hoped.

And she hoped it until she heard Mrs. Erickson’s voice: it was strong and clear—certainly stronger than it was during their various day-to-day encounters.

The wreath of flowers was the crown of the Teller, possibly in its purist sense.

Kaylin hadn’t understood the role of the harmoniste in the green, not fully, until now. She’d understood what her role was; she’d understood that in the moment Nightshade began his long and complicated story, he could smooth out the flow of the narrative strands, weaving them together. She couldn’t come up with the story herself—she didn’t have his history, didn’t have Barrani memory. But in the memory, in the narrative, she found her role. She had brought Hope fully into himself, had named him, had finally fulfilled the role of midwife. And she had healed the injured, almost insubstantial names of the cohort, lending them the power to become what they once had been: the source of life and self to the eleven friends Teela had left behind almost a millennium ago.

She understood that controlling the narrative, presenting it properly, required both intent and power. The power to hear the various strands of story Mrs. Erickson now offered the dead Ancient. The dead Ancient was the target of this regalia, this offering of the green.

It was to the Ancient she therefore looked. To the Ancient, and to the ghosts that rested now in Mrs. Erickson’s hands. What she had done for the cohort in the green, she now attempted to do for these two: Ancient and ghosts.

She understood that the Ancients weren’t alive in any sense of the word she understood. They couldn’t be healed in the same way living beings could. The Barrani were alive; they had bodies, they bled, and they died; their words did not die with them. Instead, they returned to the Lake of Life—created by the Ancients—to await another chance at rebirth.

These words were not words meant for that Lake, but they were like, very like, the names of the cohort had been—thin, transparent, far too extended. She had infused the names of Teela’s friends with the power, with the shape, True Words required to support life, to be alive, and she’d offered them, name by name, to the cohort who had every reason to despise their kin—living or dead—and possibly the world into which they’d been born.

She had seen and held those names, had rekindled their purpose, but still didn’t know them, couldn’t speak them, couldn’t see them as she had when she last wore this dress, guided by the unknown, unknowable will of the green.

Teela had been chosen as harmoniste once; Teela had worn this dress. But whatever Teela made of her role in the green had not managed to liberate her trapped friends; she hadn’t even managed to reach them, to hear them, although she knew their True Names.

Kaylin listened to Mrs. Erickson. She listened to Mrs. Erickson speak to the Ancient about his future—him, not they or it—and the finding of precious purpose; she listened as Mrs. Erickson offered advice, comfort, and understanding. Mrs. Erickson was mortal, had been born mortal, would die as a mortal. The Ancient was not. But Mrs. Erickson’s signal strength was her ability to find small, genuine bridges—and to walk across them, eyes open.

She did that now.

Kaylin continued to speak in a language not her own, even if the words were literally attached to her skin, because it was Kaylin who was the translator here. Kaylin who chose which strands of Mrs. Erickson’s advice would resonate and which were too mortal, too personal, to do so.

She began to sweat. The ice of the ghosts had left her, and she almost regretted it; she was hot now, and her arms were trembling not from the weight of the ghosts, but from the flow of power. The marks on her skin had risen, brilliant green, edged in gold; they started to spin slowly in place. Slowly became quickly as she began to choose the story itself; to knit disparate parts into a whole that the Ancient could understand. She didn’t choose the words that conveyed the story the Teller was offering, but she did choose the commonalities between a lonely old woman whose purpose had vanished when Jamal, Katie, Esme, and Callis had finally been free to pass on and a godlike being whose purpose had likewise ended.

Only Jamal had insisted on remaining until he knew Mrs. Erickson would be safe, and safety, in the eyes of the perpetual child Jamal had been since his death, meant that someone else would look after her. Someone else would go the distance to protect her. Kaylin was better than Jamal in Jamal’s view because Kaylin wasn’t trapped in a building; Kaylin wouldn’t scream in an agony of helplessness if Mrs. Erickson fell and broke a leg. Kaylin cared about the old woman. Not, of course, as much as Jamal, in Jamal’s opinion—but it was as close as he could get.

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