Page 191 of Cast in Conflict

The tint of golden light changed the color of Bakkon’s webbing—both the slender strands he had built into a dome, and the glob that remained, ready to use, between his forelimbs. It also changed the color of the Shadow attacking Bakkon. It changed the shape of the creature as well.

“I don’t think it was trying to kill Bakkon,” Mandoran said.

She shook her head, concentrating on the spoken word as she repeated it, her voice stronger and more certain. The word grew larger and brighter as she spoke; had she not been physically attached to Bakkon with her free hand and Mandoran by one of his, she would have been able to walk around it, and walk beneath its tallest stroke, which formed an arch, like a keystone, above them all.

Bakkon was shivering; she could feel the tremors beneath her palm; could see the shaking of his raised limbs. Beyond him, she could see the quivering, giant blob; it lost height as it listened, the protrusions from which Shadow exploded sinking back into the trunk of its form. It reflected the light of the True Word, becoming a thing of gold, on the surface.

And it finally opened its eyes—or pushed its eyes to the surface of what passed for skin—as it looked past webbing and Wevaran to where Kaylin stood. The marks on her arms were glowing the same gold that the True Word did. It opened a mouth. No, two, or three that she could easily see.

It spoke.

It spoke the same word that Kaylin herself was speaking; she almost lost the syllables in surprise. The voice was deep and resonant. It was almost singing, and when she continued to speak, she did so quietly, because she couldn’t sing, couldn’t bring anything to its voice but a dissonant harmony.

Bakkon’s legs lowered, the webbing he’d ejected unused. He began to back away from the Shadow; the Shadow did not follow. Kaylin saw that the word that would never again fit on her skin was moving—but it moved through her, through Bakkon, and toward the Shadow that was singing its syllables, combat, for the moment, forgotten.

This time, when Mandoran tugged on her shoulder, she backed up. The Shadow continued to sing. Kaylin stopped speaking the word. “You’re sure you can’t save him?”

“Not safely. I don’t know what you’ve done, but I think we should take advantage of it.”

“It’s a word,” she said quietly. “It’s a word that the Shadow can see—and speak.”

Bakkon seemed to lose height and size, although he never reached the diminutive shape of Spike as he’d been when they first encountered him. “I will try, Chosen,” he said, his voice wobbly. “I cannot promise anything but that.”

“We’ll take it.”

There was one door that could be easily seen from where they were standing. Kaylin, when she was certain Bakkon was following, turned toward it. It was an internal door, although it was wider and taller than the doors in either the Hawks’ office or her home.

“I will ask you both,” the Wevaran said as they approached it, “to climb on my back.”

Mandoran said, “It’s not necessary. I can travel without touching the ground.” He looked pointedly at Kaylin. “You should ride.”

She’d seen Liatt and her daughter ride Wevaran, but had had zero desire to ever try it herself. Grimacing, she nodded. It was very, very hard to override the visceral impulse to get as far away from the Wevaran’s mouth as possible. But one of the things she’d learned with the Hawks was how to override visceral impulse.

She’d also learned when to trust it. Ugh. Bakkon bent his limbs until his body was almost flush with the stone beneath their feet. She closed her eyes as she clambered up his back. She settled the bag—made of webbing—with the books he had intended Kaylin to preserve in her lap, where it...stuck.

The Wevaran helped, readjusting her seat as she tried to make herself at least partly comfortable.

“Stand away from the door,” Bakkon told Mandoran. Mandoran moved instantly, casting a backward glance at the Shadow, whose voice could still be heard. It seemed to be growing louder; the ground shook in time with the syllables.

Bakkon had eyes everywhere and didn’t need to reorient his body to look back; Kaylin didn’t. She turned her head. It seemed to her, as the doors flew off their hinges, that the Shadow was weeping.

Kaylin understood why the Wevaran had asked them both to mount the moment he started through the empty space left by doors that had been blown off their hinges; he moved. She tensed her legs and knees, and placed both hands flat in front of her, against his body. From there, she began to reach out as a healer. He had said he couldn’t leave the library safely, and she believed him—or believed that he believed it; he hadn’t lied.

But she didn’t know what or how he might be enslaved—that was Spike’s word—or corrupted; she assumed that it would be similar to what had happened to Mandoran. Mandoran, however, was mostly himself; she cursed and wished she’d insisted that he join her. If he were here, she could physically reach out to touch him, to keep the strands of Shadow separate from the rest of him.

He wasn’t in reach now—but he proved that he could easily pace the Wevaran. The door didn’t open onto the same street that she and Mandoran had walked—and that was a pity, because the street it did open onto wasn’t empty. The buildings were similar—they looked in places like normal buildings but melted or tilted into shapes she found instantly wrong.

It wasn’t the buildings that were a problem—it was the Shadows in the street; the streets were beginning to fill. Kaylin had some experience with crowds, and some experience with the way crowd could become mob with very little warning. This felt like the latter.

Bakkon scuttled up the side of a building, above the heads of the shorter or smaller Shadows. He spit webbing, tossed it behind them—Kaylin had to duck—and sped up.

“Mandoran!”

Mandoran, however, had seen the wisdom of Bakkon’s suggestion; he pushed himself off the ground in a trajectory that ended roughly on top of Kaylin, who reached up with her right arm—her stronger arm—and pulled him down in front of her. She then wrapped one arm around his waist and leaned to place a hand against Bakkon, keeping her mouth shut so that she didn’t bite her tongue when the Wevaran’s trajectory changed. He wasn’t flying, but he was spitting out webbing as he slowed, and that webbing seemed to be strong enough to bear both his weight and theirs.

The air was heavy with fog. She missed Hope badly; she wanted to examine that fog beneath the veil of wing. “What does the fog look like to you?” she shouted, in Mandoran’s ear.

“Fog?” Bakkon shouted back, spitting web between the start of the syllable, and repeating the uncomfortable action at the end. All of his eyes were open; the lids seemed to have retracted fully into his body. They moved, darting in all directions; Kaylin wanted to move her legs—or jump off his back—because she found it disturbing.

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