“Should we be worried?” Bellusdeo asked; she retained draconic shape and size.
“You’re not?” Kaylin replied, the words drifting over her shoulder as she ran. The familiar on her shoulder was sitting upright, and his squawk was shrill. He lifted a wing and smacked it across Kaylin’s face, but didn’t withdraw it. The wing did not reveal anything that her own eyes didn’t see.
He bit her ear as she slowed. She could hear voices.
“Do you intend to follow?” Bellusdeo could move. Although the size of the form made her movements feel slower, they weren’t.
“I don’t know where he went. What do you see?”
“Haze.”
Kaylin nodded. “Terrano!”
No answer.
“He really does remind me of Mandoran,” the Dragon said, in a far more natural voice. “I want to strangle him.”
“Stand in line.” And then, casting a backward glance at her companion, Kaylin added, “You sure you want to lose the size advantage?”
“The ground is still here. Terrano, in some fashion, is still present. And I think he may need help.”
“Will he need any help that we can give him?”
“True. Move over.”
Kaylin rolled her eyes, but before she could respond, the eye that was covered by translucent wing caught movement in the haze. Something that looked like fog, but grayer, darker. It had no distinct shape, not immediately; it looked more like a body bag. She could not see it through her right eye. “I take it back,” she told the Dragon.
“What’s changed?”
“I think there is something in there.”
“Terrano?”
“He didn’t answer.”
“Maybe,” the Dragon said, glancing at Kaylin, “he couldn’t hear you.” It was just enough warning that Kaylin could bring both her hands to cover her ears. Or one hand; Spike was in the other and she didn’t think attempting to jam half of him into her ears was going to help her hearing much.
Bellusdeo roared. Kaylin was vaguely impressed that the roar encompassed syllables. Something in the fog, however, was not; it froze. The Dragon’s voice appeared to echo; the ground started to shift beneath their feet.
A head poked out of the haze. It didn’t appear to be attached to anything else, but Kaylin recognized it immediately. She also recognized the expression. “Will you stop that right now? You’re panicking everyone!”
Bellusdeo folded her arms, but fell silent.
“Step back,” Kaylin suggested.
“No.”
“I don’t think he’s bringing anything through that can kill us.”
“Not us, no.”
“Fine. I don’t think he’s bringing anything that can kill me.”
“That is inaccurate,” Spike said.
Her familiar hissed. The laughing hiss. “Nothing that will kill me, then.”
“That is conjecture,” Spike replied.
“Are you capturing this?”
“Yes. I am uncertain that you will be able to view it. Your vision is extremely limited, as is your ability to interact with the world.”
Kaylin sometimes felt like companions were just a form of portable criticism, like portable mirrors, but less helpful.
“I believe Terrano is attempting to engage the layer that you occupy now. He is having some difficulty.”
The small dragon withdrew his wing with a noisy, rattling sigh. He looked pointedly at his theoretical master, and she nodded. “Go.”
He lifted himself off her shoulder as Bellusdeo said, “He should stay in contact with you.” But there was a slight rise at the end of that statement, as if the sensible warning was uttered with some doubt.
If the familiar heard, he failed to reply; instead, he floated toward the visible haze. He didn’t disappear into it, which was good, but inhaled as if he intended to breathe on it, which was less good. Maybe.
He exhaled a cloud of silver mist while she was still considering.
Where the mist hit the haze, the two combined. She had half expected the haze to freeze, but it didn’t. It seemed to become more solid—and more silver—where the familiar’s breath touched it, but no distinct shape emerged from the combination. He inhaled and breathed again. The mass became harder, reflecting a light that didn’t have any obvious source.
As it did, Kaylin thought it looked like a cave, or a silvery, slightly melted version of a cave. And standing in its mouth, she could see Terrano. He had his left arm beneath the arms of another person, or at least something vaguely person-shaped, and as he approached the mouth of the cave, that person began to...cohere. She was a Barrani female, or rather, the ghost of one; she was transparent, but not in the way Kaylin’s familiar was. Terrano’s arm should have passed through her. It didn’t. But Kaylin was certain he would be the only person present who could touch her.
The stranger lifted her head; her hair was ghostly, all color leached from it by lack of solidity. She lifted her chin, straightened her shoulders, but did not pull away from Terrano. Possibly because she couldn’t. His grip was tight, his eyes the darkness of chaos or shadow. His form, however, did not waver.
He pulled her out of the cave.
She lost solidity, and he cursed; his grip appeared to tighten, but it tightened on smoke. Before he could shift it, she melted away again. Terrano sagged. “They never listened to me,” he told Kaylin. “Mandoran did sometimes, but the others, not so much.”
“Who was that?”
“Is,” was his defensive reply. He looked exhausted as he turned, once again, to the cave mouth. To the familiar, he said, “Can you hold this space?”
Squawk.
“Good. I have to leave it in your hands. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to get them out of there if I don’t.”
* * *
It took Terrano three tries to free one of the cohort. But the third time she began to lose cohesion, she frowned, her eyes narrowing. Kaylin could practically see the blue in their ghostly appearance; she could certainly see the narrowing of lips and the determined tightening of jaw.
“Sedarias?” Kaylin asked.
The woman looked up at the sound of Kaylin’s voice, her eyes changing shape. She caught Terrano’s arm in her insubstantial hands, and as she wavered, Kaylin called her name again. The dissipation stopped; the ghost almost appeared to be sweating with effort. She began to walk, to take steps—all silent—as Terrano supported her.
Kaylin came face-to-face with Sedarias. Sedarias did not take on color, she didn’t become solid. But she was, in as much as Kaylin thought she could be, here. She opened her mouth, but no words left her moving lips. And then her lips stopped moving as she caught sight of the Dragon.
* * *
To Kaylin’s surprise, Sedarias bowed. She had expected a reaction similar to Terrano’s, but remembered that Sedarias, unlike Terrano, was linked—or had been linked—to Mandoran, Annarion and Teela. What they saw, or at least what the first two saw, she also saw. She therefore knew Bellusdeo at least as well as the boys did.
Given what they said about Sedarias, probably better.
Bellusdeo returned the bow. Her eyes were a shade of orange that was probably about as close to gold as they could be, given her location.
Terrano exhaled and frowned. After a moment, he called Sedarias by name, and she turned to him, her own expression rippling. She spoke silently again, but he could apparently read her lips; he nodded and headed back to the cave.
One by one, he pulled the cohort out of it. Allaron was next; he was as large as Kaylin remembered, towering over the rest of his cohort by half a head. It was almost comical to see Terrano supporting him, but he didn’t disperse as Sedarias had done. Sedarias, in turn, had come to stand slightly in front of Kaylin and Bellusdeo, and Kaylin was certain she was giving directions—to Allaron, at least. They were bound by True Name. Whatever she had done to breach the invisible threshold, she had clearly communicated to the rest of her friends. Whatever cut Kaylin off from the small host of people to whom she was likewise connected did not appear to affect the cohort. Then again, they were in this space together.
Valliant came next; his name in other circumstances still made Kaylin snicker. Fallessian, Serralyn, Torrisant, Karian and finally Eddorian, joined them. They were, to a person, as ghostly as Sedarias; none of them, however, looked as annoyed. No, Kaylin thought, she wasn’t annoyed, she was angry. If her eyes had had color, they’d be midnight blue.
Terrano turned to Kaylin once the last of the cohort were as present as they were going to get. He glanced at the familiar, his natural suspicion and caution immediately obvious. The familiar generally glared at the former member of the cohort, but he wasn’t doing that now; instead, he was surveying them all from Kaylin’s shoulder—which, given the difference in height, should have looked ridiculous, but didn’t.
The cohort couldn’t speak in any way that Kaylin could hear.
They suddenly turned toward her, all eyes moving as one, which was kind of creepy until she realized they were looking at the familiar. He was squawking, but quietly.
“This is going to get complicated,” the Hawk told the Dragon. “Spike?”
“I am here.”
“Can you hear them?”
There was a very long pause as the spiked silver ball digested the question. “You cannot hear them?” he finally asked, with far more hesitance than he generally displayed.
“No. Neither the Dragon nor I can hear them.”
“Terrano can?”
“Terrano,” Terrano said, “can. But not clearly, and not well.” He hesitated himself, and then added, “they can clearly hear each other.” Again, Kaylin thought there was something wistful in his comment, but he spoiled it by adding, “Listening to Sedarias in her current mood, on the other hand, anyone sane could do without.”
“She looks angry.”
“She’s beyond angry.”
“What happened to them?”
“They encountered a trap.”
“That thing we saw? The Shadow?”
He nodded. “It’s not a complicated Shadow.” Glancing at Kaylin’s left hand, he added, “Spike is complicated. This one wasn’t. But we spent centuries figuring out ways around Alsanis and his various walls and cages. Sedarias realized what was happening just before it did happen, and they all managed to avoid it.”
“So...their state is voluntary?”
He winced. “None of them were as good at it as I was. And Sedarias isn’t—wasn’t—notably flexible. She and Annarion weren’t the best.”
Kaylin had seen Annarion alter his shape—without intent—before. She disagreed with Terrano, but kept it to herself.
He glanced at Kaylin again, exhaled, and said, “But she heard you when you called her name. They all heard you.”
“Did they hear me because Sedarias heard me?”
He shook his head.
“You’re certain?”
“They are.”
“If it’s possible,” the Dragon interjected, “could we have the rest of this discussion somewhere else? I’m not entirely certain we’re safe here.”
Unfortunately for the Dragon, who was practicing common sense, Spike said, “If you desire it, I can translate for you. I did not realize your hearing was so inadequate.”
* * *
Bellusdeo had had enough experience with Gilbert that she barely flinched when Spike spoke. And she had had enough experience with being a captive pawn to Shadow, or the Shadow in Ravellon, that she was willing—with effort—to see Spike as someone who was, when free, no threat to all of the rest of the living. But it was hard, and her eyes remained a steady, burning orange.
“If you’d like,” Spike continued, “I can attempt to alter the range of your hearing; you would not require—”
“No, thank you,” Bellusdeo said, her voice falling into draconic rumbling.
“Kaylin?”
“Could you do it safely?”
The question caused Spike to whir a bit as he considered it. Terrano clearly found this more amusing than pulling almost insubstantial people out of a cave.
“I do not understand the question.”
“Oh?” the Dragon asked.
“I do not understand how you are using the term ‘safely.’ I cannot do so without making some changes in the actual mechanism, no.”
“No,” Bellusdeo repeated, making less effort to be polite since it was clearly wasted. “If Sedarias and her friends now exist on a plane with which we would never otherwise interact, the hearing—for our kind—is not required.”
“But Kaylin desires communication.”
Bellusdeo snorted. Small tufts of smoke were twined around the exhaled breath. The familiar also snorted, but then proceeded to squawk at Spike. Several times.
“I don’t know about you,” the Dragon added, “but I consider the possibility that there are unseen things living in the exact same space as I am extremely disturbing.”
Kaylin shrugged. “If we can’t normally see, hear, speak with, touch or otherwise be affected by them, I don’t see why.”
“You mean that?”
“For all intents and purposes, it’s like they’re not there.” She shrugged again, uncomfortably aware of the Dragon’s stare. “Look, you grew up in an Aerie, and you even remember a lot of it. I grew up in the fiefs. I had no fixed home; we had places where we squatted. Some were too exposed. I used to daydream of being able to live in a safe place—a single safe place—that we could call home.
“It’s like—like there’s a space, and more people can live in it. And they don’t get in each other’s way. They don’t hurt each other at all.” She exhaled. “That part’s the important one. We’re all minding our own business. We don’t have to be aware of everyone else’s.”
“I am never going to understand mortals.” The Dragon exhaled, and some of the tension left the stiff line of her shoulders. “Regardless, we need to get them out of wherever it is they are. I don’t want Spike to play around with our ears.”
“They’re not quite anywhere,” Terrano told them both. “They’re in between states.” When this clearly failed to enlighten either Kaylin or Bellusdeo, he added, “It’s like they’re stuck in a door between two rooms. They’re not in one and they’re not in the other.”
“Was that the point of the trap?”
“No. The trap was probably meant to devour them.”
“Was it Shadow?”
He hesitated, and then glanced at Spike.
Spike, on the other hand, said, “Yes. I do not believe you should remain here.”
“And you’re safe?”
“I am safe,” he replied, without a hint of smugness.
This, on the other hand, caught Bellusdeo’s attention. “There is Shadow here, or near here?”
“Yes.”
“But it will not affect you.”
“No.”
“I think she wants a bit more of an explanation, Spike.”
“It is not diverse enough to affect me. It was meant for you. Or for them,” he added.
“Can you see it?”
The ball had no face, and therefore made no facial expressions, but Kaylin could almost feel frustration radiating from its core.
“I can sense it,” Terrano broke in. He glanced at Spike and shrugged. “It’s gathering over there.” He lifted an arm and pointed into the distance to the left of where Kaylin was standing.
“And you’re not in danger either?” the Dragon demanded.
“Not from this, no.”
“Why?”
“I no longer have a name. Shadow doesn’t seek to learn True Names; it seeks to change their essential structure. Where there are no names, it has more freedom to alter the base material.”
“But if you—”
“My friends have more freedom than the rest of the Barrani have; more freedom, certainly, than Teela will now ever have. You encountered the Barrani who had reformed their bodies—they also had more freedom than Teela. And no,” he added, “I’m not going to go into the boring details. If you’re careful, the name isn’t a cage.”
“I do not understand why Barrani are so obsessed with their names,” Bellusdeo said. “Dragons have them and we accept them. Attempting to somehow remove the dependence on True Names seems akin to suicide.”
“It is by the use of that name that we can be enslaved, should a greater power discover it.”
“But it’s by the use of that name,” Kaylin countered, “that you could speak with your cohort, even when you were nowhere near them. The name is a bridge between all of you. All of them,” she corrected herself.
“It’s not doing them any good here,” he pointed out. She’d annoyed him. But he was right. None of the people who knew Kaylin’s name could talk to her now. And she imagined that at least one of them would be panicking.
“We needed that bridge,” Terrano finally said, “because we were trapped. We were prisoners. We needed it because we were weak. It’s the reason mortals—and Barrani—congregate in a way that adult Dragons don’t.” It was the first time he had said anything positive about Dragons.
Bellusdeo, however, shook her head. “Dragons congregate. That’s what the Aeries are. The only time a Dragon breaks away from his people is when he finds his hoard. It is considered the mark of true adulthood, among my kin. Or it was.
“And Terrano? Some Dragons find their hoard, and it drives them insane. They cannot exist among their own kind because they are terrified, possessive, obsessive; they no longer see their kin as anything but predators and encroachers. Barrani youth are, to my eye, very similar to mortals.”
His brows rose into his hairline in outrage, but Bellusdeo held up one hand as he opened his mouth.
“It is not an insult. You exchanged names with your cohort. There were twelve of you. The cost to mortals of such an entanglement—were they able to make it—would be decades of their lives, at best. The cost to you—the cost to us—would be eternity, should even one of that number go rogue, go insane. You might, because of that one decision, exist as a slave to the will of another. You could make that decision as a gesture of trust—no, that’s the wrong word. There is no word that describes it. You were not blood kin; you made that oath, and it brought you far, far closer than even ties of blood could.
“You say you did it because you were powerless, you were alone, you were being sent to a ceremony that might harm or even kill you in the worst case. You promised, if I had to guess, that you would put the cohort before any others, and the name was the way of proving that.
“It is entirely possible Dragons would have done the same, but we do not come into our names in the same way. Regardless, the desire for company, for companionship, is not merely the detritus of lack of power. I think everyone who lives as we do experiences isolation and loneliness.” She had slowed down, and now seemed to hesitate. “I understand the fear of weakness. I understand what weakness means. Love is always a risk.”
Kaylin had turned to stare at the gold Dragon.
“If we love, we open ourselves up to hurt, to pain. When we love, we allow people beneath the necessary armor of social interaction. I include war in that, by the way. And when we love, we hand those who would harm us their most potent weapon—because the loss of that love is profound and terrible, and we never fully recover from its absence. To us, then, love is a weakness.”
Kaylin wasn’t the only one who was staring.
“I was one of nine girls born to my clutch. We were sisters. We did not trade names as you have done, but we didn’t require names, we knew each other that well. I am the only one who remains. The rest did not survive. I see the echo of their loss everywhere. In the end, in the life we lead, Shadow was the enemy, not you.
“I am here because of Kaylin. I am here because she brought Mandoran and Annarion back from the West March. I am here because I know what the cohort means to each other. It is an echo of what my sisters and I meant to each other, while they lived. I frequently have to stop myself from breathing on Mandoran. Or strangling him. But in some fashion, he and Annarion remind me of my own youth—and my own losses. And I do not want them to suffer that loss.
“Because they are Immortal, they probably will. This is probably pointless. Love is a weakness. But...it is a weakness, in the end, that I value. Life without it is safer, yes. For us, it is safer.” Silence again, weighted, heavy. This time Terrano didn’t try to break it. “But I am not certain that survival without love or affection means all that much to me, anymore.”
Standing in her plate armor, looking like the warrior queen she had once been, she did not evoke either love or affection. Terrano stared at her as if she’d grown an extra head. Kaylin tried hard not to do the same. But her familiar lifted his head and crooned.
“I am no longer queen. I am no longer ruler. In the beginning, it made me feel useless. But...because I am no longer either, I do not have to doubt. I don’t have to be suspicious of Kaylin, or her friendship—which would, I think, have been impossible when I ruled. I don’t have to doubt either Annarion, who I almost admire, or Mandoran. I don’t have to sleep behind guarded doors. Yes, there are people who want me dead—there always were. But I have no reason to believe that the people who live with me are among them.”
“And that makes up for the lack of power?”
The Dragon was honest. “I don’t know. Perhaps, because I lack power, I huddle as the weak have always huddled. But I am not certain, now, that I would trade this life for the life I left behind.” She exhaled a small stream of smoke. “We need to leave,” she said, and turned away.
* * *
“Is she always like that?” Terrano whispered.
Kaylin blinked. “No.”
“Do you remind her of her sisters, or something?”
“Her sisters, from what little I’ve heard, were...more bratty.”
“She’s...not what I expected of a Dragon.”
Fair enough. “You’re probably not what she expected from a Barrani. I know Mandoran isn’t.” She hesitated herself, partly because Dragon hearing was so acute. “But I think she’d go to war herself to protect Annarion and Mandoran from anything in the world except herself.”
“She hardly knows them!”
“She has to live with them, and on some days, that’s harder than others. She’s fond of Teela, as well.” Kaylin shook herself. “Right. Sorry. How do we get them out of here, again?”
Spike began to vibrate, which caused her entire body to tremble. “Kaylin.”
“Is the Shadow moving?”
“It is moving.”
“Toward us?”
“Yes. No.”
“Which is it?”
“Bellusdeo!”
The gold Dragon nodded. Her body began to shift from the human to the Dragon form, flowing as if molten gold.
“I believe there is—or are—others of your kind here. The Shadow is moving toward them.” Spike’s words were interspersed with a type of clacking sound that made Kaylin think of chitin.
“My kind?”
“He means living people like you. Either of you,” Terrano helpfully explained.
“Are they going to need rescuing?”
Both Terrano and Bellusdeo snorted in disgust, which Kaylin took as no.
“Can the Shadows sense you?”
“No.”
“Can the Shadows sense us?”
“I do not think so. The ground here has been established across a spectrum.” He whirred and clicked, and the spikes that were responsible for Kaylin’s impulsive name choice began to extend, changing the space he occupied.
“Spike, do you recognize the person or people the Shadow is moving toward?”
A whirring, clicking noise was his only response.
The air in the immediate vicinity began to shimmer. Sedarias moved closer as an image coalesced from that sparkling air at Spike’s unspoken command. Kaylin glanced at Terrano, who was fidgeting. She didn’t expect to recognize whatever it was Spike chose to show them. The only person here who might was Terrano, whose left foot was now doing the equivalent of a nervous dance all on its own.
The man in the image was Barrani. The woman beside him was also Barrani. Nothing unexpected there. But the third person in the still tableau was human.
“There’s a human here?” Kaylin all but demanded.
Spike whirred and the human faded from view, but not before Kaylin had gotten a pretty good look at his face. It was an older man’s face, lines worn into the forehead and the corners of his mouth; he was clean-shaven, his nose was slanted slightly to the left of his face, as if it had once been broken. He was not otherwise well dressed, but something about his expression implied power. Very little of Kaylin’s experience of power made that a positive.
“So, he’s not here. Are both of the Barrani?”
Whir, click. Squawk.
“That’s a yes,” Bellusdeo said, in the quietest of her draconic voices. She tensed to leap and Terrano shrieked.
“You need to stay on the ground! The familiar can fly because he’s not like the rest of you, but we’ll lose you if you take to the air. You won’t find the Barrani you’re looking for, and you probably won’t be able to find us again. Whatever was done to the portal paths has completely sundered them from the influence of the Hallionne at either end. Sometimes there are storms or environmental effects that will damage the path, but the path itself begins—and ends—at the terminal points.”
“Which is not what happened here.”
“Obviously. I think the path does exist as created, but neither my friends nor our group ever stepped foot on it.”
“Did we even see it?”
“I don’t see the way you see; I don’t know.”
“You were there, too.”
A brief shift in expression that might have indicated guilt or humiliation chased across his face. “I was preoccupied.”
“We all were. So...whatever we stepped on wasn’t what the Hallionne created; it was something created by someone else.”
“I...think so.” He frowned. Like Mandoran, Terrano’s expression moved the map of his face; not for Terrano the almost neutral subtlety of adult Barrani. “I think if things had worked out as intended, my friends would be lost, but the path itself wouldn’t have been. It’s like someone put a rug across the road, waited until someone stepped on it, and then rolled it shut and carried it off.”
“Except for the Shadow devouring the people who stepped on it?”
“Except for that, yes.”
Kaylin glanced at the Dragon. “Can we find that path if we clear away the Shadow garbage?”
Squawk.
“It’s not that simple,” Terrano began.
“Yes or no are pretty simple answers.”
“And if you want to get devoured by Shadow, flip a coin and pick a random one,” he snapped. He started to pace in a tight little circle; judging by the expression on Sedarias’s face, she found this as frustrating as Kaylin did.
“What I want to know is why Mandoran and Annarion lost contact with the cohort. It’s not the outlands path—they were in contact until the moment the cohort encountered the trap.”
Terrano nodded.
“Well, we didn’t encounter the same trap, but I’ve been cut off in the same way.”
Silence. It was, judging by the contortions of Terrano’s expression, a thinking silence. He closed his eyes. “We need to move,” he finally said.
“Do you even know which way back is?”
“Yes.” The word was resolute. “...But you’re not going to like it.”
“I don’t like any of this. Which part in particular is going to bother me?”
“You’re right.”
“That doesn’t bother me.”
“You lost contact with your own people—”
“They’re technically mostly your people, for what it’s worth.”
“—the minute we hit this path. We didn’t enter it quite the normal way,” he added. “So I could be wrong.”
Sedarias appeared to be shouting in frustration, but her voice was inaudible. She was, however, mouthing something at Terrano, the movement of her lips slow and exaggerated. Kaylin caught some of it, but Barrani wasn’t her mother tongue. She turned to Kaylin and made a second attempt at communication; Kaylin missed the first few words because Sedarias had switched languages.
Of course she had. Mandoran spoke Elantran like a native, and Sedarias knew what Mandoran knew—probably including the bits she wished he’d keep to himself.
“Sedarias doesn’t think the Hallionne paths are safe—at all—for the cohort. If Terrano’s right,” she added, almost apologetically.
“Why?” the Dragon demanded.
“She thinks it’s possible that Alsanis was instructed to create the path in a very specific way.”
“Pardon?”
“She thinks Alsanis is partly responsible for what happened.”
“What do you think?” Bellusdeo asked.
Kaylin had no immediate answer. When it did come, it seemed, for a moment, almost unrelated. “The Consort can speak directly to the Hallionne; she can clearly speak to the Hallionne from a distance. When we arrived—in Orbaranne—Orbaranne had been given specific instructions to house and protect my companion.”
“But you didn’t think the Consort knew that the companion would be me.”
“I don’t think it mattered. The Lady knew that we were gone—that we were somehow heading to the Hallionne. The water sent us, in a panic. I don’t think the water was trying to save the cohort—I don’t think the water was even aware of it. Something was done that upset the water—and I think it’s bigger than kidnapping. Or murder. Sorry,” she added, remembering that the intended victims were standing, in as much as ghosts could, around her.
“What could be big enough to upset the elemental water?”
“I don’t know. I’m not an integral part of the existence of the world. But I’m afraid we’re very likely to find out.”