Page 121 of Cast in Atonement

Kaylin hadn’t spoken, but knew he was listening through the name bond that two mortals shouldn’t have. Listening to her, listening through her, probably even watching through her eyes. She could feel the sudden weight of his presence. The weight of his hand was almost trivial in comparison.

She exhaled. “I’m here. I’m listening.”

Come. We have been waiting for your return.

“We?”

Your companions disturbed my rest. I would not have noticed them had you not awakened me. I notice them now. I notice too many things; hear too many voices. Some are almost familiar.

Severn’s hand tightened.

“What do you want of me?” Kaylin switched into High Barrani as she spoke. Her voice sounded normal to her ears, but the voice of the dead Ancient did not; it was almost more of a physical sensation than it was a sound; her body reverberated with the spoken syllables.

Come, Chosen. I am waiting, and he is waiting. I do not think he can hold on for much longer.

There was no threat in the words; Kaylin’s fear made them louder and far darker. She wanted to ask him who might not be able to hold on for much longer. She didn’t. She knew.

“Can you let him go?”

I do not detain him. I sense something about him that is like, and unlike, you—you are Chosen, he is not. But he serves an ancient purpose; I can almost sense the imperative. It was not mine. Come.

Kaylin swallowed. “Another friend followed the one of whom you speak. Is he also with you?”

The Ancient didn’t answer.

“I cannot come alone,” she finally said, lifting a hand to briefly cover Severn’s. “The path is difficult for me to traverse.”

It is not. You sought the wrong path. You did not respond.

“I cannot come alone, but I will not try to reach you if you will not accept my companion.”

Hope squawked up a storm; Kaylin had to lift a hand to the ear beside his tiny working jaws. She didn’t know if the Ancient could hear Hope the way he could hear her. “Two companions,” she said. “One is my familiar—I don’t know if you know what a familiar is.”

No response. The black crackling mass that had outlined tree branches grew larger, darker, and much louder.

I think we have to trust him, Kaylin said.

I don’t. But we don’t need to trust him to do as he requests.

I don’t think trust matters. It would be like trusting a hurricane or an earthquake. Trust wouldn’t make a damn bit of difference if we were caught up in either.

“We will follow the path you’ve created,” she said aloud. She pulled Severn’s hand from her shoulder and adjusted her grip, holding on to him as if he—or she—were a foundling.

He raised a brow.

Mandoran once told me that I perceive different planes of existence when my marks are active. It all seems solid and real to me—but when things become strange, I’m actually traversing layers; I just don’t see it that way, or feel it that way. He could follow me—but he sees things the way Terrano sees them, not the way I do.

Severn nodded.

So I just want to hold on to you to make sure you actually come with me.

I know.

She turned to look over her shoulder. She could see the trees they’d passed, but they seemed to extend for as far as the eye could see; she couldn’t see the companions she’d left behind. She was almost certain Larrantin would follow if he suddenly lost sight of them; they hadn’t walked far.

But the landscape was the Ancient’s. What had begun in the halls that had swallowed Evanton and Terrano had continued after everyone else had fled. What she saw without Hope’s wing was the Ancient’s landscape.

Before Kaylin had freed the Ancient, he’d been trapped in the small section of the outlands Azoria’s painting transcribed.

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