Page 201 of Cast in Conflict

“Bakkon.”

This time, when she attempted to slide off his back, he allowed it—possibly because he could see both of her hands. She was right beside the wall. Mandoran, standing just behind her—uncomfortably close—put his hands very firmly across either of her shoulders.

Kaylin placed both hands against the wall.

The wall appeared to part as she touched it—at least on one side. Where the new mark shone, the fiber of the wall retreated. Where the shadow-laced glove shimmered above her skin, the wall moved toward her; the shape of it therefore changed.

“What are you doing?” Mandoran asked.

Sarcasm died as Bakkon asked the same question. “Never mind what I’m doing,” she told them both. “Concentrate on what you should be doing.”

“What I should be doing, if I’m listening to everyone else screaming—”

“I am not screaming,” Terrano’s distant voice proclaimed.

“—is to pull you away from the wall and get you up to Emmerian. So...what are you doing?”

“Does it look like I know what I’m doing?”

“About as much as usual.”

“Young man,” Bakkon said, his voice hissing and crackling, “I’d advise you to step back.”

Mandoran’s hands tightened slightly on her shoulders. “I know I’m standing in possibly the worst place I could be for general safety or sanity purposes, but I am forced to ignore your request. And actually, it does look like you know what you’re doing. To at least four of us.”

She wanted to know which four, but decided now was not the time to ask; if she remembered, she should ask later. “Is Sedarias one of them?”

“No.”

She tried to empty her thoughts, to concentrate on what was now happening with the wall. The move to—and away—from her hands caused the type of undulations she associated with jelly, but bigger. “What can you see?” she asked the only available member of the cohort.

“Do you see a wall?”

She frowned. “Before I touched it, yes. It looked like a wall.”

“Now?”

“Now I have no idea. It looks like...a barely cohesive jelly mold.”

“That’s definitely not what it looks like to me. I think there are strands of Shadow woven throughout this mass—but it’s not like Spike was in the outlands; it’s more like something grabbed whatever was in reach and dumped them into a mold. I don’t think it will hold for long.

“Some of what I see is attempting to wrap itself around your hand, the way the strands of Shadow did in the Aerie. Almost as if they’re trying to merge with it or join it.”

“And the rest?”

“The rest are pushing the boundaries that define the physical shape of the whole they’ve been pressed into. I can almost see distinct forms—none of them large—emerge in the crush to get away from your hand. If you could figure out a way to ditch the Shadows that are trying to cling to you, you’d have a chance of clearing the wall on your own.”

“Bakkon?”

“I can see what you see; I can see what your companion sees. Your base nature does not merge easily with Shadow; the Shadow can infiltrate and alter you—but it requires the right, hmmm, platform. You are fundamentally different. I am less fundamentally different; I believe I could withstand some form of attack, but if it were not brief, I could not deny the merging.”

He began to speak loudly, and in what she assumed was his native tongue. On the other side of this wall, on the other side of this barrier, something replied.

Bakkon hissed. He spoke again, this time with less bells and more clicking.

Kaylin’s arms and legs were glowing. She was certain the marks on her back were glowing as well.

She took a larger step forward. To her right, there was space. To her left, the thick, almost gelatinous wall seemed to harden. Gritting her teeth, she pulled at it, closing the gloved hand around the area in direct reach.

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