Page 106 of Cast in Atonement

“We could speak them, Corporal. We gained words as we gained knowledge. Esoteric words were learned the way any language is learned by those who speak it. How do you contain language? How do you make, of speech, a hallowed ground?”

“Did Azoria study True Language?”

“She did. Most of the Immortal students—and some very few mortals—did. I believe the chancellor is capable of speaking in that language, although I am given to understand it is taxing for all who do.”

Kaylin then turned to Starrante, frowning. “Your people are hatched in a clutch of a lot of little Wevaran.”

“You may use the term spiders,” Starrante told her. “When we speak of our young, we refer to those who emerge. Of our hatched siblings, we can say very little except that they died, and in death, imbued us with fragments of a word, a name. All of our existences culminate in a single name, and that name is what allows us to leave the nest. I cannot tell you how those partial words come to be; I cannot tell you whether or not they are, in their parts, fully words at all. If my memory is the memory of the Immortal, it is a memory that fully begins upon emergence. We did not perceive our siblings as siblings and we could not or did not see the animating force at their core.

“But the atmosphere within the hatching ground has a particular feel—a taste, a texture, a quality of air—that we viscerally remember. Perhaps we must, to give birth; perhaps it is an instinctive drive.

“Azoria was much interested in the circumstances of our birth. As she was interested in the circumstances of all Immortal births, this did not seem unusual to me. She was not the first of our many students to ask.”

“Did you answer the others?”

“Yes. To me it is a simple statement of fact.”

Kaylin frowned. “Bakkon didn’t seem to think so.”

“He believes I have been too long in the library, but also understands that I cannot leave it. There is no retirement for Arbiters that does not imply death.”

That was new information to Kaylin. “Bakkon felt that there was something in Azoria’s manse that reminded him of the hatching grounds. Not by look—by look it is, or was, pure Barrani architecture—but by feel, by essence. It’s the reason he wanted to return to examine the rooms in the absence of Azoria.”

Serralyn nodded.

“Bakkon believes that his initial feeling was correct. In some fashion, Azoria created a similar environment, something that could mimic the hatching ground. He is anxious to return to her research rooms; he suspects that there is a reason she could perform such mimicry.”

Kaylin frowned. “Reason?”

“Not all birth produces live children.” Starrante’s voice was grave.

“Some eggs, such as they are, never hatch. We do not have a geographic location in which we congregate to give birth.”

“How do you choose where to give birth?”

“We choose a place that feels right. I am almost embarrassed to say I have no better information; Bakkon might.”

“He does,” Serralyn said, her voice uncharacteristically grim.

“Our race has reached its end,” Starrante continued. “Our people are gone—all but a handful. There will be no more.”

“Why?”

Starrante did not answer the question. When no words filled his silence, he said, “That is beyond the scope of your current duties. It is not a question Azoria ever asked of me. Had she, I would not have answered.”

“Wait. You said you hatch, you crawl out of the birthing ground, when there’s only one of you left.”

“Yes.”

“Hatch from what? Like, is there a giant egg, and all the little spiders are inside it?”

“That is the analogy, yes. It is very simple, it is easy to understand, and it is incorrect in any technical way.”

“There’s no physical egg.”

“As you surmise. There is no physical egg. We are not breaking an eggshell the way your avians do; we are breaking the barrier that prevents us from entering the world itself. The eggs of which we speak are not visible eggs; they are not physical objects. But the laying of an egg requires the ability to create a pocket space, a dimensional reality. It is into that unseen space that the proto-children are injected. I cannot tell you how many of these spiders there are, and my guess is that the number differs depending on the complexity of the name they, combined, create.

“Nor can I tell you if the name itself is some component of our own names, broken and fragmented but nonetheless true shards.”

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