Page 202 of Cast in Conflict

She could almost hear squeaking, as if she’d caught a very surprised mouse. “Is the miasma closing behind me?”

“It seems to be listening to you. Or to Bakkon; there’s a definite loss of cohesion. But I think the parts that seem to be shying away are listening; they can’t approach.”

“Or they don’t want to?”

“Or they don’t want to.”

Bakkon chittered.

“Can you see them as separate, Bakkon?” she said, over her shoulder. “Because this wall seems to go on forever.”

“If you are not careful, it will. It is not unlike a portal in consistency, and I believe it is not unlike a portal in its eventual goal.”

“Meaning whoever tries to breach the wall ends up somewhere else?”

“It is suspicion only. What can be done to me—to us—cannot as easily be done to you, if it can be done at all.”

“And if you try to cross?”

“I have my own defenses, but they will not be enough. I believe you can make your way through.”

Without him. If she were going to leave him here, she could just meet up with Emmerian and fly; the barrier was unlikely to prevent her departure.

She waved the arm with the new mark in front of her, creating eddies of movement. Fine. The hand in which she’d grabbed Shadow, the hand in which it almost seemed to be solidifying, couldn’t move as freely. She brought the mark to the hand that was gripping Shadow.

The Shadow melted; she could almost feel it screaming. No, she thought, frowning, not screaming—weeping. Weeping and crying out in agony. She recognized the sound of pain. Of loss.

When she unclenched the fist with which she’d grabbed the smallest part of this conglomeration of Shadow, the Shadow fled. It made no attempt to return as she moved the hand on which the mark now burned.

And burn was the right word; it grew hotter as she held her arm out; her palm, callused over the years, started to tingle. She knew that pain would follow, as it often did—but there seemed to be no peak to it, no end. She could almost smell flesh burning, but her eyes couldn’t see corresponding damage.

Not to herself.

Not to the Shadows in front. None of the rest of the marks on her body moved from their flattened place, but they shifted color until they were one with the exposed mark on her hand, as if her skin had windows in the exact shape of the marks themselves, and everything on the inside was a white, burning light.

“Bakkon!”

“Yes, yes, there’s a window.” He started to click and whir and, yes, peel. Before he had received an answer of any kind, he paused to spit out webbing. This was a pale pink; whatever recovery time he needed, this small period of stillness hadn’t given him. If he was concerned, it didn’t show; he lifted his front legs and began to work with the webbing, to move strands so slender she could barely see them.

“I am not certain this will work,” he told her, sounding almost cheerful in his stilted Barrani.

“If it doesn’t work, what happens to you?”

“I will be unable to leave. Nothing will change.”

But she thought of the library and of the books—and what had Mandoran done with the damn books?—that he had preserved since the fall of Ravellon, and realized this wasn’t true. Grimacing in pain, she held her palm out in front of herself, directly ahead, not to the side.

The light brightened. She could hear herself grunt, but could hear, as well, the edges of something that sounded like familiar speech. It was the word. The word was speaking. At its edges, as if pushing back against it, or denying it, the Shadow undulated and hissed and whispered.

And burned.

“Mandoran?”

“Be careful; the bulk of what was here has withdrawn, and some of it is overhead.”

“Warn Bakkon?”

“I think he knows. Some of what he’s building looks like an umbrella. With a lot of holes in it.”

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