“It’s Sedarias. If you die—or worse—it’ll break her.”
“Funny, that’s what Emmerian said, too. Except not about Sedarias. He doesn’t think Bellusdeo can handle your death. You ready?”
She blinked, exhaled, and accepted that she was, in fact, ready. She lifted both hands from the Wevaran’s back; the palm of one was glowing white, the other, glowing black.
“Bakkon.”
This time, when she attempted to slide off his back, he allowed it—possibly because he could see both of her hands. She was right beside the wall. Mandoran, standing just behind her—uncomfortably close—put his hands very firmly across either of her shoulders.
Kaylin placed both hands against the wall.
* * *
The wall appeared to part as she touched it—at least on one side. Where the new mark shone, the fiber of the wall retreated. Where the shadow-laced glove shimmered above her skin, the wall moved toward her; the shape of it therefore changed.
“What are you doing?” Mandoran asked.
Sarcasm died as Bakkon asked the same question. “Never mind what I’m doing,” she told them both. “Concentrate on what you should be doing.”
“What I should be doing, if I’m listening to everyone else screaming—”
“I am not screaming,” Terrano’s distant voice proclaimed.
“—is to pull you away from the wall and get you up to Emmerian. So...what are you doing?”
“Does it look like I know what I’m doing?”
“About as much as usual.”
“Young man,” Bakkon said, his voice hissing and crackling, “I’d advise you to step back.”
Mandoran’s hands tightened slightly on her shoulders. “I know I’m standing in possibly the worst place I could be for general safety or sanity purposes, but I am forced to ignore your request. And actually, it does look like you know what you’re doing. To at least four of us.”
She wanted to know which four, but decided now was not the time to ask; if she remembered, she should ask later. “Is Sedarias one of them?”
“No.”
She tried to empty her thoughts, to concentrate on what was now happening with the wall. The move to—and away—from her hands caused the type of undulations she associated with jelly, but bigger. “What can you see?” she asked the only available member of the cohort.
“Do you see a wall?”
She frowned. “Before I touched it, yes. It looked like a wall.”
“Now?”
“Now I have no idea. It looks like...a barely cohesive jelly mold.”
“That’s definitely not what it looks like to me. I think there are strands of Shadow woven throughout this mass—but it’s not like Spike was in the outlands; it’s more like something grabbed whatever was in reach and dumped them into a mold. I don’t think it will hold for long.
“Some of what I see is attempting to wrap itself around your hand, the way the strands of Shadow did in the Aerie. Almost as if they’re trying to merge with it or join it.”
“And the rest?”
“The rest are pushing the boundaries that define the physical shape of the whole they’ve been pressed into. I can almost see distinct forms—none of them large—emerge in the crush to get away from your hand. If you could figure out a way to ditch the Shadows that are trying to cling to you, you’d have a chance of clearing the wall on your own.”
“Bakkon?”
“I can see what you see; I can see what your companion sees. Your base nature does not merge easily with Shadow; the Shadow can infiltrate and alter you—but it requires the right, hmmm, platform. You are fundamentally different. I am less fundamentally different; I believe I could withstand some form of attack, but if it were not brief, I could not deny the merging.”
He began to speak loudly, and in what she assumed was his native tongue. On the other side of this wall, on the other side of this barrier, something replied.
Bakkon hissed. He spoke again, this time with less bells and more clicking.
Kaylin’s arms and legs were glowing. She was certain the marks on her back were glowing as well.
She took a larger step forward. To her right, there was space. To her left, the thick, almost gelatinous wall seemed to harden. Gritting her teeth, she pulled at it, closing the gloved hand around the area in direct reach.
She could almost hear squeaking, as if she’d caught a very surprised mouse. “Is the miasma closing behind me?”
“It seems to be listening to you. Or to Bakkon; there’s a definite loss of cohesion. But I think the parts that seem to be shying away are listening; they can’t approach.”
“Or they don’t want to?”
“Or they don’t want to.”
Bakkon chittered.
“Can you see them as separate, Bakkon?” she said, over her shoulder. “Because this wall seems to go on forever.”
“If you are not careful, it will. It is not unlike a portal in consistency, and I believe it is not unlike a portal in its eventual goal.”
“Meaning whoever tries to breach the wall ends up somewhere else?”
“It is suspicion only. What can be done to me—to us—cannot as easily be done to you, if it can be done at all.”
“And if you try to cross?”
“I have my own defenses, but they will not be enough. I believe you can make your way through.”
Without him. If she were going to leave him here, she could just meet up with Emmerian and fly; the barrier was unlikely to prevent her departure.
She waved the arm with the new mark in front of her, creating eddies of movement. Fine. The hand in which she’d grabbed Shadow, the hand in which it almost seemed to be solidifying, couldn’t move as freely. She brought the mark to the hand that was gripping Shadow.
The Shadow melted; she could almost feel it screaming. No, she thought, frowning, not screaming—weeping. Weeping and crying out in agony. She recognized the sound of pain. Of loss.
When she unclenched the fist with which she’d grabbed the smallest part of this conglomeration of Shadow, the Shadow fled. It made no attempt to return as she moved the hand on which the mark now burned.
And burn was the right word; it grew hotter as she held her arm out; her palm, callused over the years, started to tingle. She knew that pain would follow, as it often did—but there seemed to be no peak to it, no end. She could almost smell flesh burning, but her eyes couldn’t see corresponding damage.
Not to herself.
Not to the Shadows in front. None of the rest of the marks on her body moved from their flattened place, but they shifted color until they were one with the exposed mark on her hand, as if her skin had windows in the exact shape of the marks themselves, and everything on the inside was a white, burning light.
“Bakkon!”
“Yes, yes, there’s a window.” He started to click and whir and, yes, peel. Before he had received an answer of any kind, he paused to spit out webbing. This was a pale pink; whatever recovery time he needed, this small period of stillness hadn’t given him. If he was concerned, it didn’t show; he lifted his front legs and began to work with the webbing, to move strands so slender she could barely see them.
“I am not certain this will work,” he told her, sounding almost cheerful in his stilted Barrani.
“If it doesn’t work, what happens to you?”
“I will be unable to leave. Nothing will change.”
But she thought of the library and of the books—and what had Mandoran done with the damn books?—that he had preserved since the fall of Ravellon, and realized this wasn’t true. Grimacing in pain, she held her palm out in front of herself, directly ahead, not to the side.
The light brightened. She could hear herself grunt, but could hear, as well, the edges of something that sounded like familiar speech. It
was the word. The word was speaking. At its edges, as if pushing back against it, or denying it, the Shadow undulated and hissed and whispered.
And burned.
“Mandoran?”
“Be careful; the bulk of what was here has withdrawn, and some of it is overhead.”
“Warn Bakkon?”
“I think he knows. Some of what he’s building looks like an umbrella. With a lot of holes in it.”
She walked forward more quickly; only once was she forced to reach out with the gloved hand to touch the Shadows, to catch them. The weapon she now carried, etched on her skin, was a word.
But the words on the rest of her body, words that had forced her to abandon childhood and all the dreams it had contained for too long, were also beginning to burn. The Shadow did not touch them. Even the tendrils that attempted to grab—or join, which was worse—her hair hissed and melted away.
She began to move more quickly. Experience whispered the truth: the pain was going to get worse if she couldn’t clear this miasma and jelly that had once been a wall. She wanted to look back to see if Bakkon was somehow following, but couldn’t, because her neck was on fire, and the touch of the collar of her shirt seemed to be peeling her skin off.
Mandoran’s hands, however, didn’t have the same effect. He began to offer single-syllable directions she could follow as she lost the ability to think through complicated strategies. She could put one foot in front of the other. She could hold her arm out. More than that, no—and had Mandoran not been there, she wasn’t entirely certain where “forward” would have led her. But what he saw, she couldn’t see as clearly.
Bakkon chittered loudly. That sound was echoed from somewhere in front of Kaylin, beyond the darkness. All she had to do was continue to walk through it, surrounded by weeping and wailing, the aural sounds of severe distress. Some of it might have been her own.
Mandoran’s hands didn’t burn. She couldn’t feel them—the touch was far too light at this point—but she took comfort from the steady voice, the monosyllabic directions. It was less steady when he shouted back to Bakkon, and Bakkon’s reply had an edge of screech to it that made her skin crawl. She didn’t look back. She looked forward into darkness punctuated by captive, squirming color, and realized she was on the edge of nausea. The wrong edge. Her legs folded, but she didn’t touch the ground; there was no ground here.
No, that wasn’t right. Mandoran’s hands were no longer on her shoulders; they were under her armpits.
“Someone needs to lose weight,” he muttered.
She replied in very weak Leontine. The sound of laughter traveled the length of her spine; she bent with it, or would have if he hadn’t prevented it. She missed Severn.
I’m here.
I meant—I miss having a partner by my side. Mandoran’s fine, but he’s not you. All of this was threaded with pauses as she moved. But she didn’t lose Severn’s voice or words.
Terrano says you’re almost through. The wall can’t be built across the actual border; there’s a small amount of space between wall and border. It’s not wide enough to stand in.
She nodded, wordless.
Riaknon has built...something. He’s talking to your Wevaran. When you manage to get clear of the Shadow, Bakkon will have to move, and move quickly. Whatever it is they’re trying to build or do, they can’t do if there’s no gap in the wall. Terrano is talking to Mandoran. Ah, no, sorry, he says he’s talking at Mandoran.
She was in pain, and she was exhausted; she felt like she’d crawled twenty solid miles without sleep, food, or water. None of this was true. I don’t want to collapse again.
He said nothing; he didn’t even offer her odds, which meant he was worried.
Not worried, he said, his internal voice soft.
Liar.
I can’t, remember? It’s a bond built from your name. I can’t lie to you here.
Nightshade can.
Successfully?
She couldn’t answer. One step. One more step. Just—step and step and step. She closed her eyes to prevent the spinning whirls of color from causing more nausea than they already had.
“No,” Mandoran shouted, above her head. “It doesn’t burn me.”
What didn’t? Who was he talking to? Who was she talking to?
Severn? No. Nightshade? No. Ynpharion? He’d been mercifully silent for days. But she felt her lips moving, the steady hum of syllables broken by small grunts of wordless pain. Her arm trembled; it was heavy, possibly because she had to keep it lifted, had to keep it in motion. When the Shadows ahead got too dark, too bright, she grabbed at them for long enough she could bring the marked hand to bear; the Shadows instantly dispersed.
There seemed to be more of them, as if they understood that their sole purpose was to prevent Kaylin from leaving their home. Home? No, she thought. Their cage. As Spike had been, they were trapped here, their will suborned to some greater entity—one she could neither see nor hear.
The thought made her move faster—or try. She had to touch her feet several times, to prevent the Shadows from pooling around her boots, her ankles. Throughout this, Mandoran remained behind her, hauling her back to standing when she faltered or stopped, curling in on the pain and her grasp of the whispering, the almost-language. There was blood in her mouth; her lip hurt. Had she bitten it?
No.
She wanted to ask Mandoran if the wall behind her was closed. Couldn’t manage the words, although she tried twice. Shook her head to clear it and focused, once again, on the almost inaudible voices of the Shadows who had momentarily lost their forms in an attempt to build this wall. She could hear despair. She could almost taste it. The pain felt like a bridge between creatures she did not know and herself.
Once, she might have stayed where she was. Seven, almost eight, years ago, when death had been the only thing she desired because it was the only thing she felt she deserved. She could feel the edges of that certainty press in on her, and she pushed it back as a new wave of pain hit her arms and legs.
She was never going to complain about magic again. Ever.
Almost here, Severn said. You’re almost through.
She didn’t ask him how he knew. She stumbled forward—walk would be too kind a word for the motion—until she felt actual breeze across her cheeks; they were cool with it. Ah. She’d been crying.
Yes.
She turned slowly, with Mandoran as a brace, and looked back at the tunnel she had carved with a hand and a word; she could see Bakkon as if through an arrow slit, the space too narrow to contain the bulk of his form. She could see the webbing that stood in front of him, a translucent door.
Could see the moment he exhaled, chittering and screeching, and stepped through that door.
Severn had stepped across the border. He looked past her to Mandoran; she had no idea what form the member of the cohort had adopted. But his hands, at least, were solid and real, and he was anchored to her, more for her sake than his.
For both, Severn said. He stepped forward as the wall shuddered, shouting in a cacophony of raised, desperate voices.
She was unprepared for Severn’s desperate lunge; he pulled her—and possibly Mandoran—across the border, shouting Mandoran’s name as the wall suddenly and completely collapsed, becoming, in an instant, a mob of smaller Shadows.
She was through the barrier; the mob crashed against it but could not follow. The pain dimmed; her skin was extremely sore, but no longer felt as if it were being flayed and burned off at the same time. “Mandoran?” Her voice was a croak.
“Here,” Mandoran said, behind her. “And possibly regretting it.”
Terrano laughed. His feet, Kaylin noted, were not touching the ground and he seemed to cast no shadow. But neither did Mandoran. “Sedarias is seriously pissed off.”
“I didn’t want to take the risk of talking to any of you. I didn�
�t want any of you pulled in.”
“Tell Sedarias, not me.” He turned to Kaylin. “I think Riaknon might need your help.”
She immediately reoriented herself toward the Wevaran and understood what Terrano meant without need for further words; all of the Wevaran’s eyes were bulging, although none had leaped out of their sockets yet.
She placed a hand across his body—between his open eyes—and, as she’d done for Bakkon, assessed the damage Riaknon had done to himself. The two bodies were surprisingly dissimilar, which she hadn’t been expecting. But the webbing he was spitting out and cursing as he did was also pink; a darker pink than Bakkon’s had been.
There were no obvious spinnerets, not that she’d really attempted to heal spiders before; it was harder to find the area of damage that was causing the bleeding.
We are not arachnids, Riaknon snapped. Do you think we’re spiders? Bakkon has clearly managed to retain some good humor if you are still standing. We are not spiders. Spiders are the echoes of us, diminished and lacking in sentience. Our webs are not simple physical extrusions; they are magical and they require speed and will.
They obviously had very different personalities. But if their bodies were far less uniform than human bodies, they were still of living flesh, and she could heal the damage done by the use of this webbing, this magic, in the same fashion she could heal Bakkon. She did that now.
I do not mean to sound ungrateful, Riaknon then said. But patience is often wasted on the young.
Bakkon was not here.
She could see the shadows cast by large, flying Dragons; Emmerian had left the airspace above Ravellon. She could hear his bellow, similar to and different from Bellusdeo’s; above them both, she could hear the fuller, richer sound of the outcaste Dragon.
This part is exceptionally difficult. I wish Starrante were here instead; he was the master of portals. I lack his confidence.
What are you trying to do?
I am trying to allow Bakkon to leave. I cannot create the portal from the other side of the barrier—only he can do that. But he is struggling as well.
What happens if it doesn’t work? Is he just trapped there?
Cast in Conflict Page 46
