Cast in Sorrow

wasn’t enough to make him give up.

“Serian,” she said, when they had scraped their way through a gap that would have made a small child squeamish. “No one talks about the lost children. Do you know their names?”

Silence.

“Serian?”

“Yes. Only one is spoken.”

“Teela.”

Serian nodded. She slowed as Gaedin stopped; the tunnel had once again branched.

“If there’s only one way out, why does the tunnel branch? This isn’t the first time.”

“There is only one way out,” Gaedin replied. “There is no guarantee that we will reach it. The tunnels are a test.”

“Like the test of name.”

“Entirely unlike the test of name,” was his curt reply. “We are the people of the green. It is expected that we will be able to find our way to its heart.”

“And if we can’t?”

“We will die here.”

“Does every citizen of the green have to take this test?”

Silence.

“Is there any Barrani culture that doesn’t involve tests where failure is death?”

“It would hardly be a test,” Serian replied, “if failure had no consequences.”

Barrani. “Is there anyone, anywhere, who would tell me the names of the other eleven children?”

Gaedin and Serian exchanged a glance. “There is almost no one you would not offend were you to ask,” Serian finally replied. “Do not ask Lord Avonelle. Do not ask Lord Evarrim. Do not—”

“A list of people I could ask would be more useful.”

“You could, in my opinion, ask An’Teela.”

“She won’t answer.”

“Yes. But she will also refrain from plotting your death.”

“She trusts me to get myself killed,” Kaylin replied.

“I begin to understand why. The lost children are not mentioned because even mention draws attention. They have no names, Lord Kaylin. Your kind is accustomed to this. You have no names. Your life—and your death—your freedom and the coercion you face from the more powerful, are not a matter of name. Even if you believe in souls, as so many humans do, your souls are not controlled and contested in the same way; at the heart of all your stories is choice, and the folly of choice.”

“Serian.” Gaedin’s voice was weary.

“You are not certain?”

“No.” He stepped back.

“Not certain about what?” Kaylin asked, as Serian set her down. The small dragon squawked. “The direction to take?”

They exchanged another glance, which was distinctly more familiar to Kaylin, she’d seen it in the Halls so often.

“You are wearing the blood of the green,” Gaedin finally said. “I believe the choice of path must be yours.”

“How did you choose so far?”

He didn’t answer.

She turned to Serian. “You’ve done this before. You’ve both done this before.”

“Yes. But the path alters, Lord Kaylin. It is not—it is never—the same. It is taken when the alternatives are more immediately dire.”

“And have people been lost here? I mean, people you actually knew?”

Gaedin said nothing. Serian, however, said, “Three. One does not seek the protection of the green for trivialities.”

“So—we could just take a wrong turn and never find our way out?”

“Indeed.”

“So we could have already taken a wrong turn?”

“Yes.” Gaedin exhaled and added, “We have not, yet.”

“How do you know?”

“I know. This juncture, however, is not clear to me. It is not, before you ask, clear to Serian, either.”

And it was supposed to be clear to Kaylin? There wasn’t much in the way of signs. There were no distinguishing marks on the floor or walls that gave any clues.

Lord Kaylin, kyuthe, where are you?

Apparently? In a maze of tunnels. You’re safe?

She felt amusement, anger, and the sharp tang of grief. No. We are not yet done. You were correct; your rooms were not safe.

Where are the eagles?

The dreams of Alsanis are with the Consort.

Kaylin froze. She isn’t with you?

No. She felt his fear, and the deepening of his fury, and she fell silent. She was safe. Days would turn safety into a slow death by starvation if they made the wrong choice here, but safety was like that, in the end. There was no certain safety. Kaylin, of all people, should know that.

She couldn’t touch the Consort the way she could her brother. She couldn’t know—because he didn’t— whether or not the Consort was safe.

She did know that Terrano had been willing to allow the Barrani to pass if they left the Consort to him. Did he want to destroy his former people? Did he want something else from the Consort?

And if he did—

“Right,” she said. She pushed past Gaedin, her ankle throbbing, her visceral fear greater than pain. The ankle wasn’t broken. “Go right.”

* * *

Give the Barrani this, they didn’t question her. Having dumped the responsibility squarely in her lap, they followed. She couldn’t tell them what she now feared, in part because she was afraid to name it herself, and in part because she’d have to explain how she knew.

But it was fear in the driver’s seat. Fear, and a sense of helplessness. She couldn’t find the Consort, she couldn’t help her, if she was trapped beneath the ground in a series of stupid and unpredictable tunnels. She didn’t doubt what Gaedin and Serian had told her: there was only one right way, only one true path.

Standing and staring in the near dark while waiting, while knowing—and she touched Nightshade, she touched Lirienne, she even borrowed Ynpharion’s viewpoint—that there might still be time, that there might be something she could do was impossible. She couldn’t do anything from these tunnels. The possibility of being trapped here with no way out became vastly less terrifying, because by the time they were certain they couldn’t leave, it would be way too late.

Speed was of the essence.

Waiting, trying to make the right choice just guaranteed that making the right choice would also be pointless. It would be too late.

She cursed her ankle, and stopped. She couldn’t hobble like this, and she couldn’t depend on Serian’s strength to see her through—not when she had other options. The small dragon squawked.

“I know, I know—I’m going as fast as I can.” But she wasn’t. She inhaled, exhaled, and then looked at her foot—from the inside. From the same mental space she occupied when she healed anyone else. Her body hadn’t been born with a bad ankle; in a few weeks, it would be as good as new. Probably.

But she didn’t have to wait a few weeks. She almost never healed herself. Why? Why was that?

It didn’t matter. Barrani didn’t like to be healed because too much was revealed in the process, but Kaylin