Page 25 of Cast in Atonement

“Then what is death?” Mrs. Erickson asked.

A second word, more carefully spoken than the first, emanated from no known source. This one, Mrs. Erickson didn’t repeat.

“Hope?”

This is beyond us, Hope replied.

“Us?”

Helen and me. I think it’s beyond Terrano.

“Not me?”

You are Chosen.

“I don’t even know what that’s supposed to mean!”

No. His voice contained a glimmer of amusement. No more did any other being who was granted the marks of the Chosen in their time. Words have meaning. True Words have immutable meaning. But I have come to believe that the granting of those marks was the Ancients’ sole attempt to give flexibility to a language that had none.

“What do you mean?”

To my knowledge, no two people who were Chosen made use of the marks in the same way. The marks were the same; the uses were fundamentally different. Their meaning relied on the individual who bore them.

Kaylin’s frown was the thinking frown. “Wouldn’t that make them like True Names?”

Why?

“The Barrani Lake of Life contains a finite number of names. Those names are used to breathe life into Barrani infants. But when the Barrani to whom they were given dies, the name returns to the Lake. The name might be chosen by the Lady for another infant, but the child retains no memories of the past life. The lives might be markedly different. If the names are True Words, would that make sense?”

True Names are not malleable; if they are altered, they lose meaning. And the bearer of them loses their life.

“Yes, but the life itself is different. You can’t just give a child a name and expect them to be the exact same person as the prior bearer. So...the words at the heart of Immortal people are flexible; they’d have to be.”

They are not.

“Their meaning isn’t clear in the way True Words are. I mean—the lives wrapped around them are different, right? So they can’t somehow mean the same thing.”

Hope was silent.

“So maybe the marks of the Chosen are like that? That’s the type of flexibility the Ancients sought?”

Perhaps. It is something to consider, but I fail to see the relevance.

“When I saw Mrs. Erickson’s ghosts, I didn’t see what she saw—but I did see something. They looked like words to me. Like the words on my skin. I could see her ghosts—the ones she lived with—and they looked like the children they’d once been. Amaldi and Darreno weren’t actually dead—I could see them with your help, but not on my own.

“But I’m not certain the Ancients had a concept of death that is anything at all like ours. And by ours, I mean Dragons, Barrani, Aerians, Leontines, humans—any of us. Dead is dead. It’s absence. It’s empty space. But the corpse of the Ancient we found still had power, and Azoria was using it. And when we freed him, he wasn’t dead. He wasn’t dead by any measure I understand. To the Hawks, to the law, he’d be considered alive; he could speak, he could interact.”

Her frown deepened. “The ghosts that are in the hall now possessed Sanabalis.”

You should really call him the Arkon. You are going to have to get used to it.

“He’s not here and you know who I mean. I mean, how can it be disrespectful when he can’t hear it?”

I will leave this discussion in Helen’s capable hands.

“Fine. The thing that’s worrying me right now—I mean, besides the fact there’s a miniature moon in my hallway—is the possession of Sanabalis. If what I saw were the ghosts of words—and how does that even happen?—does that mean they could possess Sanabalis because they are words? Were they somehow displacing his True Name? Interfering with it somehow?

“What if they somehow just replaced those words? What would happen to him?” Her hands tightened as she considered the possibilities she really hadn’t had time to consider, she’d been so distracted with ghosts and Azoria. “Tell Terrano to leave. Right now.”

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