Page 203 of Cast in Conflict

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.

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