Elluvian offered Severn no warning as they reached the talland forbidding doors—doors meant to imply lack of height and therefore lack of significance of the visitors who approached them. Or so it had always seemed to Elluvian.
Severn did not seem to feel the implied condescension.
Even his interest in the adornments An’Tellarus had chosen, admittedly unique in Elluvian’s experience, had been absent the taint of any apprehension; he was curious enough to ask questions, but he did so without fascinated dread. He was willing to own that curiosity openly—something even the youthful Barrani of Elluvian’s acquaintance would not have done, for fear of exposing their ignorance. But he understood that the time for questions had passed.
Elluvian waited. The doors did not begin their outward roll. Grimacing, he said, “Do you have any experience with door wards?”
Severn shook his head. No, Elluvian thought, ignorance for Severn was a simple fact. The denial did not seem to cause him discomfort.
“They are common in the city. They are common within portions of the High Halls.”
“They’re locks?”
“Of a kind, yes. But locks can easily be picked or broken if they are purely mechanical in nature.” Elluvian lifted a hand. Lowered it. “The central element of the pattern carved in the wood of the right door is a ward. If one desires entry, one places one’s palm against it, and waits.”
“It’s a magic that’s designed to be touched?”
“Yes.” Letting his hand fall to his side, he gestured to Severn.
“Does it matter which hand? It’s on the right-hand door, not the left.”
“No.”
Severn stared intently at the pattern—a spiraling relief of vines and leaves—and then lifted his left hand and placed his palm firmly against the ward.
“Is it that time already?” a disembodied voice asked. “Do step back. I would not want the doors to hit you when they open.”
Severn stepped back, as if such voices had been an everyday occurrence in his life. He returned to his position at Elluvian’s side and one step behind; the opening doors framed them both. No one was waiting behind the doors that opened into a wide, airy gallery, as if they were a simple barrier in the public halls, and not in private quarters.
No guards, but An’Tellarus did not require them. Lack of guards was its own statement, but context was required to decipher meaning.
Severn waited on Elluvian’s lead, as well he should. Elluvian allowed himself no more than a brief hesitation. This visit had nothing to do with the current investigation for which Severn’s services had been considered necessary. Had it been possible, Elluvian would have declined the invitation and returned alone. He had considered it, but was now old enough to accept a fate that could not be changed without outward struggle.
Inward struggle was a simple fact of life.
He had instructed Severn about the High Halls, its relevant factions, and the people with whom they had made their appointment; he had not mentioned An’Tellarus at all. No hurried warnings, no information supplied within the Halls themselves were likely to serve Severn well, and even had they, they would have done Elluvian no good. He was almost certain she would hear of the words, their tone, their implications.
But Severn had not once asked, either.
The flowers were a simple matter of curiosity. Their creator was not; he clearly understood the difference.
Stepping into these halls was like stepping into the past; the centuries fell away. Mortals oft envied the days of youth that had passed them by. Barrani seldom did. Age implied wisdom, the ability to survive, the knowledge one accrued if one did. Survival was implied, and the ability to survive considered a sign of strength.
Elluvian had survived. He would survive. It was not his death An’Tellarus sought. Death would have been a form of escape, after all.
Severn’s gaze was far less focused here than it had been in Corvallan’s apartments. He noted the arches, the open spaces carved into halls that invited inspection. He did not stop; nothing that drew his eye caused him to linger, and if he had questions, he now kept them to himself.
Within the lion’s den, Elluvian did not speak of what they passed, although he could have; he was almost certain that Severn’s questions mirrored his own in the youth he had no desire to relive. He did not hurry past it; as no doubt intended, he fell into introspection instead. The weapons on the walls in this hall were encased in glass or suspended in the air above them, with no obvious anchors to support their weight. An’Tellarus had always had an eye for symmetry; she found it more pleasing than what she deemed visual chaos.
Some of the weapons displayed were illusory—the equivalent of paintings. These had been lost to war and death and the literal fracture of earth in bygone years. They were remembered down to the small nicks and obvious wear in leather; they would be remembered thus by any who had seen them in life. The ability to romanticize the past was one the Barrani did not possess; where they desired it, they remembered everything. Where they did not, they oft remembered everything as well. The trick to survival of a different sort was not to desire it, not to be trapped by those memories.
But while all of the weapons were significant to the line, there was a gap at the end. Severn appeared to note this but did not ask. He had not spoken a word since they had entered the hall. Elluvian hoped he would not be required to break that silence before they left it.
It was always hope that stung.
They came at last to a set of doors as tall and forbidding as those they had first entered, if not taller. Severn, in silence, studied the double doors; they were smooth, the wood gleaming but otherwise unmarked. No section of door implied door ward, and indeed it would have been unusual to ward one’s inner sanctum—but An’Tellarus was not known for her traditional tastes or behaviors.
Elluvian simply waited. The voice that had invited them in, in a manner of speaking, did not emerge from the stillness or silence of that wait. One could infer that she was not pleased with Elluvian as the minutes passed, but again, that would have been the traditional snub.