“Do you know where it goes?”
“I believe so. It is not immediately in front of us,” he added. “Larrantin was a scourge upon the librarians and the student body. This book is not—was never—meant to be in circulation at all. He must have had permission to take it, but not even the librarians would have been able to grant that permission.”
“Killian?”
“Killianas, yes.”
“What is it about? I couldn’t see much on the pages.”
“It is about interdimensional travel.”
“Really?”
“No. I am simplifying to a ridiculous degree. But to read it at all, one must be current with languages that are considered long dead.”
“Meaning, not me.”
“Indeed. One must be current in those languages, which is a scholarly feat in itself, and mustalsobe adept at small shifts in personal placement. The words written in this particular book are on a page that is slightly displaced. I could not read it as a student. It must have been germane to Larrantin’s specialization.”
“What was his specialization?” Bellusdeo asked.
The Arkon laughed. It was a bold, rolling sound, one of genuine amusement. “I do not know,” he said. “It was the question most asked by the newer students, who considered him a walking legend, a mystery, something almost as impossible as the Ancients themselves.”
Kaylin froze.
“He was considered Barrani,” the Arkon said, correctly guessing why. “He was not of the Ancestors that preceded the Barrani; there is a single word at his core, a single, complex rune. Or so we were told. But at the time, the Ancestors were still present, if few. The earliest of the wars I remember involved their presence. They were not our wars,” he added. “They were not wars that required the mobilization of the flights.”
“One of the Ancestors is at the heart of Castle Nightshade,” Kaylin said.
“Yes. But that Ancestor’s duties are not the duties of those who woke in the depths of that castle. They are gone.”
“Gone?”
“Gone toRavellon. Gone to death. The words that were the source of their life and thought are lost to us now.” He began to walk. Bellusdeo and Kaylin joined him, and even Bellusdeo—who never seemed impressed by the Imperial Library—had a hush about her that spoke of wonder or awe.
“So... Larrantin wanted to return this.”
“I doubt that. I doubt it highly. But Larrantin probably saw some necessary purpose for it.”
“Do you think Killian has a core? I mean, a place where the words that govern his duties and abilities exists? He’d have to, right?”
“We oft wondered. And we did look.”
“Pardon?”
“We were students here. We were away from the Aerie, some for the first time. We were surrounded, for the first time, by people who were not kin, not Dragons. The world in which we had lived until this point had cracked open, like the shell of our birth eggs, and we looked at the endless sky. In a manner of speaking.
“Of course we searched.”
Kaylin’s silence extended a beat as she thought. “How old was Killian when you came here?”
“Pardon?”
“Killian was here—Killian was created—before the Towers rose. He couldn’t have been all that new at the time they did. I mean, you were young when you first encountered him, but...do you have any idea of how long he’d been here?”
“This might surprise you, but no. We have no historical dates for the creation of the Academia. We have no historical dates for the creation ofRavellon, either; I believe they were linked in some fashion.”
Kaylin stared at him. “You don’t know?”