Page 117 of Cast in Conflict

Kaylin found stone beneath her feet; the stone that didn’t seem to be supporting this iteration of Mandoran. Of the cohort, with the exception of Terrano, he seemed most comfortable off the ground—but not here.

She said, quietly, “Can you go away?”

Mandoran didn’t answer as Kaylin came to stand in front of him, facing Sedarias. Sedarias didn’t seem to see her.

“Not sure how this is going to go,” Kaylin said quietly.

“What are you going to do?”

“So just be prepared if Sedarias loses it.”

He laughed, the laughter wild. “You are insane. That’s the right word?”

“It’s the word you wanted, but I’d quibble right. Later.” She lifted her left hand, as if Sedarias were a very dangerous door ward and she didn’t want to risk the loss of the dominant one.

“I really think that’s a bad idea. Teela is now screaming her lungs out, metaphorically speaking.”

“Probably literally, too. Sorry.” She touched Sedarias’s shoulder.

The attention she wanted, she got. The stone beneath her feet shuddered; Kaylin thought it might break, and reminded herself that this space remained within Helen, and Helen was unlikely to let her die here.

She had Sedarias’s attention.

“What in the hells are you doing?” she demanded.

Sedarias stared at her, her eyes black opal, growing larger and wider in her face. She opened her mouth. No words came out. She tried again, as if she had forgotten how to speak, but understood the theory of it. The third time, she said, “Why are you here?”

“You’re hurting Helen. I want you to stop.”

“I am not hurting Helen. I am having a private discussion with my friends.”

“All eleven of them, yes. If this is your idea of discussion, I’m here to suggest that you try a different method.” Light pulsed around Kaylin’s lifted arm; the marks were glowing. No, Kaylin thought, they were speaking. She couldn’t understand what she heard as words. She wasn’t certain, but thought Sedarias could. At least some of it.

The ground cracked. The stone broke. But it broke beneath both of their feet.

Kaylin fell. So did Sedarias.

What lay beneath the crust of lifeless stone was not the darkness Kaylin had imagined—if she had truly imagined anything. There was light here—sunlight—and trees; there was birdsong and insect rustle and the movement of small feet, the lifted voices of...children.

Mandoran was no longer present. Or if he was, he was, like Terrano, invisible.

“Be careful,” Terrano said quietly. “Be very careful, here.”

Sedarias was staring at Kaylin. “Come,” she said, in a voice that almost defined the word hostile. Terrano sucked in a sharp breath, but said no more as Sedarias turned her back on Kaylin and started to walk away.

If this had been the world into which the door had led, Kaylin wouldn’t have had to be here at all; here, with a table, two chairs, and a large umbrella protecting the people who might occupy those chairs from an excess of sunlight in a clear sky. The only shadows here were cast by the branches of trees.

Sedarias sat.

Kaylin took the empty chair opposite her.

“Why are you here?”

“You destroyed the rock I was standing on?”

Sedarias’s eyes—still opal, but occupying the normal fraction of her face—narrowed. “I have not yet strangled Mandoran for his sense of ‘humor,’ and it is not entirely for lack of trying.”

Right. “Helen was worried.”

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