Page 173 of Cast in Conflict

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?”

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