Cast in Sorrow

was the point, wasn’t it? Teela couldn’t hear her. God, Tain was going to kill her. Tain would be so upset.

They’d all be upset. This wasn’t supposed to happen—if anyone was in danger, it was supposed to be Kaylin. Kaylin, who was going to die sometime anyway. She was crying, now. She was crying, and she had to stop because tears were useless. They’d get them nowhere, and they had to move.

But she hadn’t lied to the fire: Teela was heavy. She was wearing too much armor. The armor could be mostly removed—and Kaylin did remove it. The sword, she kept; she attached it to her own waist, where it dragged across the ground. She would have tried to sling it across her back—half the Barrani war band did that— but if she had any hope of moving Teela at all, it was going to be by taking the brunt of her unconscious weight across that back.

Kaylin caught Teela by the arms, inserting her back between them; she bent at the knees and used momentum to propel herself to her feet. Teela came with her—but only barely, and her feet dragged across the ground. It was, short of just dragging her by the arms, the best Kaylin could manage—and she couldn’t manage it for long.

No, she thought, clenching her jaws. She could. She could manage for as long as it took because she wasn’t going to leave Teela behind. The path that led from the terrace was wide enough, flat enough, and solid enough. Kaylin followed it, letting it lead.

Chapter 20

The sun was high, even if it didn’t exist; the day grew hotter as she followed the path. The grass that bounded the path on either side gave way to trees with silver bark; they provided no shade—only the disappointed hope of it. Kaylin had to stop several times, partly because her legs were shaking, and partly because she needed to check Teela’s pulse. She couldn’t hear Teela’s breathing, even though Teela’s head was more or less tucked beside her left ear.

She could hear water. It sounded too loud to be a fountain, but it didn’t matter. The dreams of Alsanis had told them to find water. If she found water, she might find a way back. If she found a way back, if she was in the actual world, and not the dreams of perverse pocket realities, she might—just might—be able to help Teela.

She had woken the Consort, after all.

But she couldn’t do that for Teela, not here. She’d tried. Kaylin frowned. The words on her arms were bright and golden, but they lay still. They didn’t prompt her, and they didn’t offer assistance on their own.

The sound of water grew closer, but Kaylin was practically crawling. She couldn’t move quickly; desperation gave her enough strength to carry both of their weights, no more. Not until she heard the roaring.

She was immobile for one minute, glancing wildly at the trees she’d barely registered. She wasn’t Teela. She couldn’t fight Ferals on her own. But the roaring didn’t disturb Teela at all, and Kaylin lowered her, roughly, to the ground. She drew the sword because it had the greater reach—and then set it down. Greater reach, or no, she wasn’t competent enough to wield it against a truly dangerous opponent. She drew daggers instead.

But the roaring, when it came again, made her look up. Squinting against a daylight shed by no sun, she thought she could see a familiar winged shape. It was small—it was slight; translucence made it hard to be certain she wasn’t mistaken. She stood in front of Teela as the winged creature flapped closer. Even when she was certain that it was the small dragon, she didn’t move. She felt relief at the sight of him, but the hair on the back of her neck started to stand on end, and her skin—where the marks weren’t—began to goose bump.

She had never been afraid of the small dragon. He had saved her life at least twice. Yes, he criticized her, and yes, he smacked her face—but so did the Hawks, or at least Teela on an annoying day. He had also killed Ferals, simply by breathing into their faces. She knew he was deadly, or could be deadly. The Barrani treated him with healthy respect.

Until this moment, she hadn’t.

Then again, until this moment, his voice had never been a Dragon’s voice. It was, now. As he approached, it shook the earth she was standing on. Yet when he did descend, hovering, he was still tiny. His neck was delicate, his wings wider and broader than they had been in any place but the dream of Alsanis. She could see, briefly, through their membranes—and the sky was violet and black.

He roared. It was like listening to Bellusdeo and Diarmat; Kaylin had two hands full of daggers or she would have covered her ears.

He snorted smoke. It looked like steam, not the usual clouds. He then landed—on the ground a yard away from Kaylin’s feet. He looked up at her face, his eyes dark, the colors that skirted their surface bolder.

“I don’t even know what you are,” Kaylin told him, as he lifted his face and opened his small jaws. “I don’t know where we are. But the whole dive into the stone basin, nose first? Don’t do that again.”

The small dragon cocked his head. He squawked. Except, of course, it was a roar of sound.

When Kaylin failed to answer, he snorted again; she knew, if he were on her shoulder, he would either smack her face or bite her ear. Instead, he stalked—which, given his feet, looked funny—toward Teela. Kaylin stiffened, shifting both position and daggers; the small dragon looked at the knives and hissed.

It was the hissing she associated with amusement.

She didn’t sheathe her weapons. She watched him as he headed toward Teela, and she stiffened again. “Don’t breathe on her. Don’t even think it.”

His eyes widened, and then he shook his head, looking for all the world like a child’s version of a dragon baby. He did, however, nudge Teela’s hand with the tip of his nose. He even bit her fingers, but gently, as if she were a dead bird and he were her mother.

Then he turned to Kaylin again.

And she understood what he was offering. He was tiny, yes—but his voice implied that size wasn’t necessarily an issue. He could, if she asked it, carry Teela. He could, if she agreed, carry her.

And if he did, she thought, as her throat went dry, he wouldn’t be a small dragon anymore. He would be a large dragon, as much hers as Tiamaris was when he went Dragon. She couldn’t own Tiamaris—or any member of the Dragon Court. She relied on their sense of humor, their indulgence, and her own relative insignificance in order to survive her mistakes and the many, many social gaffes she was learning to obliterate.

Except that he wasn’t a Dragon. His eyes—his eyes were like Terrano’s, like the fire’s. They always had been. They were shadow eyes. Did she trust him?

She wasn’t certain. Trust hadn’t really been an issue before. He was like a cat. You could love them, and you could trust them to be cats. But you couldn’t trust them not to wreck your furniture or your carpets, and you couldn’t trust them to stay out of your food; you couldn’t trust them not to kill helpless mice and leave parts of their corpses scattered around your home. It just didn’t matter because cats couldn’t kill you. They couldn’t kill your neighbors or your friends.

Why was life like this? Why was she asked, so often, to choose between two different fears?

Because, she thought, that was mostly what life was: choosing between two different fears.

“Yes,” she told him, before doubt and uncertainty made her change her mind. “Please. Carry her. Carry us.”

* * *

He stepped back. Actually, that was the wrong word—he launched himself into the air, and flew ahead down the path. Kaylin returned her daggers to their sheaths as she knelt beside Teela. Teela was still breathing, or at least, she still had a pulse. She didn’t wake.

Kaylin watched the small dragon.

His wings expanded first. She’d seen that, before; they’d become the size of Aerian wings in the dreaming world of Alsanis. They weren’t Aerian wings. They were more membrane, less feather; they seemed less substantial only because they were translucent. They spread. They spread, and as they did, Kaylin could see a purple sky unfold in the azure that could be seen at any spot his wings didn’t touch.

She vastly preferred the azure.

His neck elongated, thickening; it was still much longer than normal Dragon neck, and seemed flexible in the fluid way snakes were. His jaws grew, his face thickening and stretching; his legs developed a heft and