gestured. The tree just beyond the tip of her fingers withered, twisting toward the ground almost as if it were begging. She stopped herself from crying out. It was just a plant.
She didn’t ask again, however. And she kept her wonder contained; she looked; she touched nothing else. He had offered her a warning, in subtle Barrani fashion. She took it.
“Where are we going?”
“To the heart of this forest,” he replied. “Be honored. Not even my own have seen it.”
“Your children?”
His brows drew in. “Are you truly so ignorant, Kaylin?”
“Apparently.”
His hand tightened. It was not comfortable. Another warning. But he chose to do no more than that, and after a pause, he surprised her. He answered. “I have no children. I am outcaste.”
Outcaste was a word that had meaning for Kaylin, but in truth, not much. Although one human lord served as Caste-lord for her kind, the complicated laws of the caste did not apply to the rank and file. It certainly didn’t apply to the paupers and the beggars who made a living—or didn’t—in the fiefs. The Leontines, the Aerians and the humans—mortal races all—were not defined in the same way by caste; they were more numerous, and their lives reached from the lowest of gutters to the highest of towers. Not so, the Barrani.
“I spoke simply of my kin, those who chose to follow me. The forest speaks to them, but it speaks in a language that is … not pleasant to their ears. They will not hear it, and remain. And I am unwilling to release them.
“I release nothing that is mine.”
She said nothing for a while. For long enough that she found the silence uncomfortable. Not awkward; awkward was too petty a word. “Did you build this?”
“The forest?”
“The … Long Halls.”
“No.”
“The castle?”
“No. I have altered it over the years, but in truth, very little. It was here, for the taking.” His smile was thin. “I was not, however, the first to try. I was the first to succeed.”
“It had other occupants?”
“It had defenses,” he replied. “And I forget myself. You ask too many questions.”
“Questions are encouraged, in the Hawks. When they’re not stupid.”
“Indeed. Here, they are not. The answers can be fatal.” He stopped in front of a dense ring of trees; their branches seemed to interlock at all levels, as if they had deliberately grown together. She didn’t like the look of them. But then again, at the moment she didn’t like the look of herself, either. What she could see, that is; the dress, the funny shoes, the bold, black design on her arms. She drew her arms down.
His hand came with one. “You do not understand the marks you bear,” he said, his voice a little too close to her ear.
“And you do?”
“No, not completely. But I understand some of their significance. In truth, I’m surprised that you still survive.”
“Why?”
He smiled, but he didn’t answer. Instead, he lifted his hand and touched the trees that barred their way. They shuddered. There was something terrible about that shudder, something that looked so wrong she had to turn away. It was as if the trees were silently screaming.
But they parted. Like curtains, like great rolling doors, their limbs untwining, their trunks shifting. Roots moved beneath her feet—or something did. She really wanted to pay less attention.
“Come,” he said, when there was room enough for passage.
Her hand fell to her hips, and came up empty. Daggers, of course, were someplace else. But the desire for them, the reflex, was still a part of her. And it was growing stronger.
“Nothing will harm you here,” he told her, the smile gone. “You bear my mark. You are in my domain.”
I’ve lived in your fief for more than half my life, and it wasn’t ever safe. But she said nothing. And it was hard.
The trees were not as thick as they appeared; the darkness of their branches curved above like a roof or a canopy, but it lasted a scant ten feet, and then it was gone.
They stood in a great, stone room, beneath the outer edge of a domed ceiling that gave off a bright, green light. And as they walked toward the center of the room, that light grew brighter, changing in hue. She looked up; she couldn’t help it.
Above her, carved in runnels in the smooth, hard stone, were swirling patterns that were both familiar and foreign. She lifted a hand. An arm.
“Yes,” the fieflord said quietly. “They are written in the same tongue as the mark you bear. It is known as the language of the Old Ones.”
“I—I don’t understand.”
“No one does. There is not a creature alive that can read the whole of what is written there. But I have never seen the writing glow in such a fashion. I believe that the room is aware of your presence.”
“But who—or what—are the Old Ones?”
His frown was momentary, but sharp. But he surprised her. “Once,” he said softly, “you might have considered them gods.”
“But the gods—”
The derision was there in the cold expression the word evoked. “Mortal gods?” He shrugged. “Mortal gods are mortal. They exist at the whim of your attention, and your attention passes quickly.”
She didn’t like the room. He continued to walk; she stopped. But although he was slender, he pulled her along, her feet scudding stone. Dignity forced her to follow, given how little of it she had.
She forgot the ceiling, then.
The floor itself was alive. Where she stepped, light seemed to squelch like soft mud, and it flared in lines, in swirling circles, in patterns.
“Here,” he said softly, and stopped. “Go no farther, Kaylin. And touch nothing if you value your life.”
If she’d valued her life, she’d have stayed out of the fiefs. She nodded.
In the center of the room, laid against the floor in sapphire light, was a large circle. It didn’t surprise her much to see writing across it. She couldn’t read it, of course; it was almost the same as the writing that was carved high above her head. But it was different. It seemed to move.
“This is the seal of the Old Ones,” he said quietly, “and from it emanates the power that defended the castle against intruders.” Against, she thought, the fieflord.
She stared at the seal. The writing seemed to sharpen, somehow. Light flared, like blue fire, and it grew in height along
