Cast in Conflict

by Michelle Sagara

  No, she was surprised, because the “allergy to magic” problem rarely occurred when Shadow was involved. This tingle became pain, as it usually did—but pain implied magic in the here and now, magic cast with intent, by people nearby.

  “Hope!”

  I have you.

  “Someone’s casting something—”

  An’Teela. And Sedarias. It will not hit you.

  “No—it’s different!” she shouted.

  Hope did not reply. No one did.

  * * *

  She opened her eyes. Hope wasn’t with her. Neither was Terrano; she could no longer feel his arms around her. But she didn’t need them to prevent a very messy fall; she was standing on firm ground. The ground itself was stone, not dirt; there was no grass here, although she could see the hint of weeds that implied dirt beneath the stone.

  The weeds, however, were purple.

  To the side were buildings—or what might have been buildings; there seemed to be an organized structure to them but they certainly didn’t look like the streets of Elantra, high or low. She was certain magic must have been involved in the building—and the maintenance, if any was still being done—because normal buildings would have collapsed in all kinds of disastrous ways otherwise.

  But the weeds were strange, too. Almost everything was; it was like reality but slightly off. And as she gazed down the street, it was much more than slightly off.

  She clenched her fist, and felt—although she couldn’t see him—Mandoran’s hand. She couldn’t feel Terrano’s arms, couldn’t hear Bellusdeo or Emmerian’s roars. Wherever she was now was not the same place that she had been. But Mandoran was here.

  Mandoran was almost here.

  She shifted her stance, bent into her knees, and pulled. There was no resistance: Mandoran immediately fell into the street. So did Kaylin. She didn’t let go of his hand.

  “I don’t think we should be here,” Mandoran said as he looked at his surroundings.

  “Tell me what you see and don’t let go of my hand.”

  “Why not?”

  “Just tell me what you see.”

  “We’re standing in a...street. There’s something like stone beneath our feet and most of the buildings look like they’re about to collapse on our heads.”

  She nodded. “Okay, so we’re mostly seeing the same thing.”

  “Weren’t you supposed to get me out?”

  “Shut up. Can you hear the cohort?”

  He nodded, but hesitantly.

  “Is that a yes or a no?”

  “It’s a yes but...their voices are less distinct.”

  “Blurry? Fuzzy?”

  “Not clear. Or not as clear as they normally are. Why exactly are we here? Where is this?”

  Kaylin had a guess. She didn’t want to say it out loud because she wanted it to be wrong in every conceivable way.

  Mandoran grimaced. “How are we going to get out?”

  That was the question, wasn’t it?

  “How did you get here in the first place?” the Barrani cohort member demanded.

  “I don’t know—I was trying to listen to your voice.”

  Both brows rose in the center.

  Kaylin tried again. “I could hear you—but you were fuzzy. It’s like...like your words were caught in some kind of tiny space and the echoes made it hard to distinguish individual syllables.”

  “And now?”

  “Now I can hear you easily.”

  “Which...doesn’t tell me how you wound up here.”

  “Because some of the blurry words I heard, some of the echoes, weren’t actually from you. They weren’t your words. You weren’t speaking them. I needed to hear them more clearly than I could hear you.”

  “And?”

  “So I closed my eyes and listened. And when I opened my eyes, I was here.”

  “Fine. What exactly did you hear?”

  She hesitated again, and then she said, “Free me. Kill me.”

  “What?”

  “You didn’t understand that?”

  “No. What language is it?”

  “Mine.”

  “I think I understand yours pretty well, I hear so much of it.” He frowned. “I’m saying the wrong thing, aren’t I?”

  “It’s fine. I’m used to it. Can you hear anything?”

  He listened. Barrani ears were better than mortal ears in the city streets; she had no idea whether actual ears were involved in this, because she had no idea where their physical bodies were. Admittedly, hitting the ground had probably bruised her left shoulder—but she’d have to check that when they got out of here.

  If they ever did.

  “Yes.”

  “Good, because I can’t.” She lifted their joined hands. “Lead on.”

  “Where’s Hope?”

  “Not here. I notice Terrano didn’t come through, either. Is he still holding on to me?”

  “He says no. Bellusdeo is not happy. But to be fair, Teela is really unhappy.”

  “It’s not Terrano’s fault.”

  “Like that’s going to make any difference.”

  “Tell her it’s your fault.”

  “Uhhh, I’ll give it a pass.” He began to walk down the street, avoiding the overhanging buildings, inasmuch as that was possible. Kaylin noticed they cast no shadows; if there was light here—and there must have been, as she could see—it wasn’t the type of light that cast shadow.

  But there were shadows here, against the ground; they didn’t follow the formation of the buildings or the weeds, but she could see them. She looked at her arms; tingle had become pain. Her attempt to roll up a sleeve with one hand attached to Mandoran took time; it was clumsy enough that he chose to help. In this case, two hands were better than one—but not, honestly, by much.

  However, sleeve rolled up, she could see the marks; they were, and remained, flat against her skin, but they were glowing.

  The glow was a livid purple, very similar to the color of the weeds. Similar, she thought, to the purple fire that some of the Mellarionne-aligned arcanists had cast.

  Kaylin. Two voices. Nightshade’s. Severn’s.

  It was Severn she answered. Still here. I have Mandoran, but we seem to be stuck someplace else. Does Terrano still have my body?

  No. Not that I can see. Annarion says—

  Annarion’s with you?

  He is. He says that Terrano is holding on to something. He’s not entirely sure it’s you. Hope is here, he added.

  Well, he’s not with me. Where is he?

  Beside Bellusdeo. He’s not small.

  What’s Bellusdeo doing?

  Fighting. Sorry; I can’t look up for any length of time, because some of the Aerians chose to land.

  Why?

  Because they’re trying to kill the fieflings who are close to the Tower.

  Got it. Shutting up now.

  She did shut up. She turned to Nightshade, metaphorically speaking. He could, and did, look up; the view on the ground was blurred by the light of Meliannos. He was aware of the mortals who had entered the street in a panic, but they were not his concern.

  What she wanted to see was not what he wanted to see. He spoke Severn’s name, and leaped, sword in hand, to the Aerians.

  Be careful of the spears—they’re Shadow.

  I know. The reply was terse; he was irritated. Kaylin understood this was not the time to tell him something he already knew. But it wasn’t clear that he did know; certainly Mandoran hadn’t. She glanced at Mandoran.

  “I’m not speaking to the cohort,” he surprised her by saying.

  “Why not?”

  He shook his head. “Are you talking to Nightshade or Severn?”

  “Both.”

  “Normally?”

  She
nodded.

  “There’s...interference when I try. And I’m not sure that the interference isn’t somehow attached to the attempt. I don’t think it’s safe for them to talk to me the normal way.”

  Since the normal way had an entirely different meaning for Kaylin, she nodded, but she was now disturbed, and as the street didn’t seem to be ending anytime soon and there were no obvious enemies lying in wait, she said, “Why do you feel it’s unsafe?”

  Mandoran hesitated for one long beat, and Kaylin tightened her grip on his hand, as if hesitation might cause him to vanish. “I don’t know. It just... You heard something else. You heard a different voice, different words, when I used my own voice.”

  Kaylin nodded.

  “I could almost hear it as well. I don’t want to share it. I don’t know what it means.”

  “This,” she said quietly, raising her free arm. “This is what it means.”

  “Do you know where we are?”

  She’d been avoiding it. Avoiding saying it. Avoiding thinking it. She hesitated, and then punted. “Do you?”

  “I wouldn’t ask if I knew, but...”

  She nodded. “Don’t say it. I don’t think it’s safe to say the word.”

  “So you’re thinking what I’m thinking.”

  “I’m trying hard not to.”

  “Is it working?” He hesitated again. “I think something injured me and entered me—and if I were Severn or Nightshade, I would have become like the weird Aerians. But...it’s not physical.”

  “It is physical.”

  “It’s not.”

  She started to argue and stopped. Mandoran was here. She could grip his hand tightly. She reached out and punched his shoulder with her free hand, and this time, it didn’t pass through him.

  “Does that mean you can let go of my hand now?”

  “Absolutely not.”

  He didn’t seem to resent this but reached out to pat her on the head. His free hand was also solid. “So...where are we going?”

  “How should I know? I wouldn’t be here if I hadn’t tried to reach you!”

  But was that even true? She wouldn’t be here if she hadn’t tried very hard to hear the secondary voice that had caused Mandoran to fall silent with his cohort. She was right; something was attached to him—in the best case, because attachment implied removal—and it was that something she had followed.

  Because she had understood the words.

  Because they were True Words.

  * * *

  The marks on the one arm she exposed continued to lie dormant across her skin, but the pale, livid purple was distracting. “Do these look purple to you?”

  “Yes. I’ve never seen them that color.”

  “Great. Me neither. Are the weeds here the same color?”

  “Weeds?”

  “Those things that are growing up from the ground?”

  “I don’t see weeds there.”

  “What do you see?”

  “I don’t know. I’d almost call them rips or tears in the air. You want to investigate?”

  She nodded. Hope wasn’t here. There was no wing to look through, no way of seeing things that were otherwise hidden or, as Mandoran had once said, out of phase. Whatever she could see here would have to do. Mandoran said the weeds looked like holes—but in what, exactly?

  She knelt awkwardly; having a hand as an anchor made normal movement surprisingly difficult. If she’d had a better way of tying their hands together, she’d have taken it—but she didn’t trust the cuffs that came as part of her kit to do the same job.

  As she knelt to examine what she’d seen as weeds—in a landscape that made no sense, although it looked almost familiar enough everything was disturbing—she saw what Mandoran meant. What she’d assumed were stems or stalks were tendrils of Shadow that seemed to surround the tear.

  She readied herself to leap back, to leap away, as she inched closer to it.

  The marks on her arms—which had been painful—seemed to rear up; the purple of the marks and the purple of the what she had assumed were awkward blossoms were the exact same color.

  Severn, in the distance, was worried. Nightshade was worried, but as he was in combat, he had less thought to spare for it.

  Mandoran shouted; Kaylin was yanked back from the weed. Whatever he saw, she couldn’t see. But the light from this rip intensified and the shadow that framed it shuddered, darkening as well.

  Light erupted—purple light—as if in attempt to escape the confinement of Shadow. Kaylin, pulled to her feet, didn’t avoid all of it; it hit her stomach, her legs, and her free hand.

  It was the hand that was going to be a problem. Although she was accustomed to the pain that random magic seemed to cause, this was different, and she knew it; her palms weren’t marked in the same way her forearms were, but it was her exposed palm that felt the blast of light as searing heat, as if she’d shoved her palm into the center of a white fire.

  The pain of burning remained as the light vanished.

  24

  She held her arm away from the rest of her body; the light that had hit clothing didn’t seem to penetrate it. Mandoran said nothing while she waved her hand around as if it were on fire and movement would put the fire out.

  But she stopped waving and put more of her reactive energy into Leontine. As far as she could tell, her hand was fine, but she was squinting as she examined it.

  “Does it look normal to you?”

  “About as normal as you ever do.”

  “It felt like fire.”

  He nodded. “It’s gone, though.”

  “What’s gone?”

  “The tear.”

  He was right. The non-weed she had been examining was gone; what was left was a small tendril of upright Shadow. She had an answer, of a sort: it was a tear in the fabric of Shadow. But she had no idea what the collapse of that tear meant, and given it was her own hand—her right hand—she had to struggle not to panic.

  Panic was useless here. Caution was good. But being here at all defied every possible definition of cautious she could think of.

  Heal, Severn said. Panic later.

  She nodded. This was her own body. These were the marks of the Chosen. She could—and did—use the power to heal; she could use it to see if there were any changes in her body, any attempts to change it.

  She remembered healing injured Barrani, near the West March. She remembered that the Shadow or chaos that had been left in the wake of injuries done by forest Ferals had not felt foreign, although it was. The injury or the damage done by that Shadow was transforming the body into which it had been injected, attempting to establish a new “normal” that didn’t match Barrani normal.

  She really didn’t want to have to cut off her own hand.

  But her hand seemed...normal. In pain, yes, but normal. The muscles, the tendons, the bones, even the skin—normal. Except for the pain. She cursed more viscerally as she opened her eyes and examined the palm of her hand.

  A new mark now resided across the mound of her palm. A new word.

  “I don’t understand,” she whispered.

  “Don’t look at me. I’ve never met a Chosen who wasn’t you, and I know even less than you do.”

  The mark was complicated; it reminded her, in some ways, of the outcaste Dragon’s name—a name she could see because he’d exposed it to her, probably hoping she’d be stupid enough to try to say it, try to use it to control him. She could barely manage simpler runes; she knew she couldn’t manage his.

  And if she couldn’t, the attempt would mean that the person enslaved would be Kaylin, not the outcaste. The mark on her palm—her right palm—was purple; its delicate edges resembled glass or glass shards. It did hurt—but all of her skin did.

  “Maybe we don’t try to examine the tears,” Mandoran said. He lo
oked up, and then added, “On account of there being none left.”

  She rose, very carefully not making a fist of her right hand, and looked down the street. Mandoran was right. There were no more non-weeds. They had, she thought uneasily, served their purpose. The buildings that overhung the street began to retract, as if their odd shapes were overlapping carapaces.

  “This is...not good,” Mandoran said.

  “You think?” She tightened her grip on his hand, and turned back; the street continued for as far as the eye—or her eyes—could see. But it widened; what passed for light here both brightened and darkened as the hue of that light changed.

  Kaylin decided she really didn’t like the color green—not when it was blended with a livid purple. It hurt to look at. Especially when it was captured perfectly in Mandoran’s eyes; they didn’t look like Barrani eyes in any way, except the base shape—and even that was too large, as if the light was emanating from Mandoran himself and it was struggling to fully escape.

  No.

  She drew on the power of the marks of the Chosen to reach into Mandoran a second time. She knew what he should feel like.

  No, that wasn’t true. Barrani normal, she knew—because Barrani normal, Barrani bodies knew. It was the same with mortal bodies, Aerian bodies and Leontine bodies. She was certain she could heal the Tha’alani as well, if it came to that. But the cohort were not Barrani. They could mimic it convincingly—and did—but when they lost control of their emotions, they lost control of the mimicry. There were things the cohort could do that most of their kin couldn’t.

  She didn’t know what normal, for Mandoran, was.

  And to be fair, she didn’t know if normal for Mandoran was normal for any of the rest of his cohort. She couldn’t tell if what she was now touching was Mandoran as he was supposed to be, or Mandoran, contaminated.

  But she was certain that whatever it was he’d been hit with had somehow led them here, and here was not where either of them wanted to be.

  She’d come here because she had listened to the voices that appeared to overlap Mandoran’s; she’d come because the words spoken were not the words that Mandoran was simultaneously speaking. If those words were Shadow’s words, things made no sense—because she now carried a new mark on her palm, and it was, to her eye, a True Word.