Page 181 of Cast in Conflict

“But...I could hear the Shadow. No—not exactly that, but I could hear something that wasn’t my friend, and it was speaking. It wasn’t loud, but it was steady. I focused on that.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know—I thought that maybe if I could separate the two voices, I could more easily separate the invasive Shadow from the healthy body. I could separate the voices, but...we ended up here, and not where we were. We ended up in the streets of...wherever this place is.”

Bakkon hissed.

She lifted her hand. “And I picked this up, there.” Her palm was open. She could see the purple-white light reflected in all of the eyes that were turned toward her. Or visible.

The eyes widened. “You picked this up how?”

“I stopped to examine what I thought was a weed.”

To Mandoran, he said, “What is this weed?”

Clearly the Wevaran was not much of a gardener. Which was fair; neither was Kaylin.

“It’s a term that refers to plants in a garden or road that grow where they’re not meant to grow.”

“Are you a weed?” he asked of Kaylin.

Mandoran coughed back obvious laughter.

“I’ve been called worse. I don’t have roots in the ground, but I don’t always fit comfortably in most places.”

“And you are Chosen.”

“And I’m Chosen. Most of my kind ignore that.”

She could sense that Bakkon was appalled. “And you allow this?”

“I can’t force people to pay attention to me if they don’t want to.”

“You are Chosen; I am certain you have means of gaining their attention.”

“I don’t want their attention. And we’re kind of losing track of what we were talking about.”

“I have not lost track of any of it,” Bakkon replied. “I am not as easily distracted as the younger races often are, and can see multiple possibilities from each slender line; it is how we weave, after all. But that mark was not given to you by the Ancients.”

Kaylin’s brows rose. “You can read it?”

The Wevaran missed a beat. His response was decidedly chillier. “You cannot?”

“No.” She still hated it when people thought she was stupid. And she knew there was no way to avoid it here, other than lie. She almost did.

“How is that even possible?”

“No one asked before putting marks all over my body, maybe?” Having confessed ignorance, if resentfully, Kaylin said, “What does it mean?”

He appeared to be staring at her. A chittering sound escaped a very large mouth before he shuddered in place. When he spoke, he spoke a word Kaylin didn’t recognize, in a language she didn’t know. But she knew that it was a single word, broken into syllables with pause for breath.

A True Word.

The Wevaran repeated the word as she closed her eyes. Eyes closed, she could see the marks—even the new one—glowing brightly; purple gave way to gold, the light she was most familiar with. Even the new mark on her hand adopted that color, its edges burning.

He said the word a third time; she could feel every spoken syllable as a beat against the palm that currently contained the mark, as if the mark itself were alive, its heart exposed. This wasn’t a particularly comforting metaphor.

“You know I don’t understand that, right?” When Bakkon failed to respond, she spoke in High Barrani, the words far more formal.

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