“Your cheek is bleeding.”
She glanced at her palm and nodded.
“But I can’t see the mark on your cheek. The blood is clearly coming from where the Erenne mark was—but the mark didn’t make the transition.”
“What does Terrano see from where he’s standing?”
“No easy escape from Helen? He’s been trying to duck out. She’s not having it.”
“The person she should be grilling is probably Sedarias.”
“He tried to tell her that. Helen wasn’t impressed.”
“So... the Marks of the Chosen are here. Do you think I could step to a plane the Marks couldn’t follow?”
“Serralyn says no—but in that kind of horrified way that means it wasn’t a question she’d asked herself. Until now. Just in case it’s not obvious she doesn’t think you shouldevertry to find a place to stand that the Marks can’t follow. They’re part of you, probably until you die, and she’d like that to be at a ripe old age.”
She frowned. “Do you think anything we could do to Nightshade would make him bleed here?”
“Annarion doesn’t like the question.”
“Of course he doesn’t. I’m not trying to kill his brother. I’m trying to assess something.”
“What?”
“Howherehe is. I’m here, and I’m bleeding here. I guess I could try to stab you as a test, but that won’t necessarily apply to Nightshade.”
“Can you hear him through the namebond?”
Kaylin shook her head. “But I couldn’t before, either. If it weren’t for the Erenne mark—” She stopped. The Erenne mark was enchantment, magic; it wasn’t a True Word. It maintained a tenuous connection that was inferior in every way to the namebond—but a connectionhadbeen there. It was how she could find him at all.
The Consort was losing all ability to interact with the Lake of Life—with the True Words that it contained, meant to wake Barrani from birth.
Kaylin’s Marks of the Chosen didn’t have the same function as the True Names in the Lake—but both were True Words. It was the Marks that couldn’t reach Nightshade.
But why? She could understand that the subtle attack on the Consort practically demanded that the Consort lose that ability over time. She’d thought it clever. But maybe it wasn’t meant to be over time. Maybe it was meant to affect the Consort the way Nightshade had been affected. If Kaylin hadn’t known his True Name, would she have been aware that something was wrong early enough to intervene?
Regardless, the power of the Marks of the Chosen didn’t reach him.
But he hadn’t lost the power of the name that had wakened him. He hadn’t, had he?
“What are you thinking?”
“I’m thinking a small cut won’t kill him—but it possibly wouldn’t change anything right now, anyway. I’m Chosen, right? The only useful thing that came out of these Marks wasthe ability to heal. But... it’s never depended on the injuredhavingTrue Names. Mostly, I’ve healed mortals, and we don’t have them. I don’t have a lot of experience healing people who require True Names just to breathe and exist.”
“But you do have some.”
She did. She understood why Barrani and Dragons wanted nothing to do with healing. She couldn’t heal a person without stepping into their thoughts and emotions—and they couldn’t be healed without stepping into some part of hers.
But... if healers were rare—and they wereincrediblyrare—they existed, and not all of them were bearers of these stupid Marks. She’d never personally met one, but her healing ability wasn’t viewed as entirely unique. And if that was true, she needed more information. She assumed that the Marks were the reason she could heal at all. But... healers did exist, or had existed, without those Marks—and they had to be able to heal somehow.
Talent. Gift. Magery. Was it even a skill that could be taught? As far as she or the Halls of Law were aware, none of the Imperial mages could heal.
“Can you ask Serralyn to look something up in the library for me? Or ask the Arbiters to search?”
“What do you want her to look for?”
“Information about mages who heal. Or healers. I don’t want to know about healing done by the Chosen in any iteration—just... all the other healers, if there are records.” She rose. “I can’t reach him here, and my cheek is bleeding, and I’ll defer the attempt to cause avery minorinjury from here. I mean, clearly major injuriescanbe caused, or Terrano wouldn’t have been in so much trouble.