“What? What is waking?”
Winston ignored this. “We believe that Spike should remain here.”
“I think we need to have him at the Halls of Law when I report in.”
Squawk. Squawk.
“If you want to risk it,” Winston replied.
*
When Kaylin stepped through the arch, every mark on her body felt as if it had been slapped. Her eyes watered. But she took three steps and the pain faded, just as the pain of an actual slap did. She stared out into a vast expanse of nothing. No, not quite nothing; everything ahead of their group was a sprawl of gray. There were no trees, no sky, nothing that really resembled horizon. Beneath her feet, the gray was soft; there was a give to it that implied sand. Or flesh.
She went with sand.
She began to trudge across it; Winston was in the lead. In deference to Kaylin and the rest of the cohort, he chose to remain in his Barrani state. His brother, however, did not. Kaylin wouldn’t have found the transformation so uncomfortable if, at the end of it, he actually looked like an animal. She’d seen Bellusdeo go Dragon enough times that the sight of shifting—and expanding—flesh seemed almost natural. In the case of Winston and his brothers, however, things like fur or obvious animal musculature were missing. He simply changed the shape and orientation of his limbs to better move ahead.
He ran off, and Winston turned to the group. “He will scout. I will lead.”
“There’s no path?”
“There is. You are walking on it. But it is almost in its base state. It will be far more difficult to shift or upset its construction.”
“But not impossible.”
“Nothing is impossible.” Winston’s eyes narrowed. “We can see the path. I believe that one or two of your friends are also sensitive enough to follow it without the visual cues that usually accompany it. What is important now is that you follow me. If you are falling behind, make certain that we know.”
Walking on soft sand was far more taxing than walking on actual dirt or cobbled stone. Winston and his brother didn’t tire at all; neither did Bellusdeo. But the cohort, with the exception of Terrano, appeared to find it as difficult as Kaylin did after the first hour.
If it had even been an hour. Without sun or light, it was much harder to mark the passage of time. There was little to break the monotony of the trek.
“Do you want to ride?” Bellusdeo asked.
“No. It’s not hard, it’s just...” Kaylin shrugged. “There’s something about this place I don’t like.”
“I can’t imagine what.”
Kaylin continued, in spite of the obvious sarcasm. “It reminds me of the stuff between worlds.”
“Between worlds?”
Kaylin nodded. “I think this is what exists when there are no words.” She frowned.
Spike said, “Yes.”
“Did you mean words or worlds?” the Dragon asked.
“Words. At their heart, even worlds have words. Big, complicated, messy words. I don’t think you could know the True Name of a world—I don’t think you could see it all at one time. Even the Barrani, with perfect memory, would probably be stuck just staring for centuries in an attempt to grasp it all.”
“And in the absence of words, this is what remains?”
Kaylin shrugged. “You can ask the Arkon. He has old records. And opinions. Lots of opinions.”
“Kitling, you are really going to have to do something about that memory of yours.”
“It comes with the race.”
“No, it does not. It comes with ‘what Kaylin thinks is practical to know’ or ‘what Kaylin finds immediately useful.’” She eyed Spike. “Are you saying that this is similar to the space one would travel to arrive in a different world?”
“Yes.”
“But the Hallionne can affect the space.”
“Yes.”
“Can you?”
“I do not understand the question.”
“Can you affect the paths the same way the Hallionne can? No, forget that question. Winston looks as if he’s about to turn green.”
He really did. Kaylin would have asked, but his brother came racing back to the group before she could frame a question, and his expression drove all other thoughts away.
“We’re in trouble,” Kaylin said.
The cohort now bunched together as Winston’s brother raced toward them. He came to an immediate and abrupt halt, as if momentum was irrelevant to him. He then spoke to Winston in a language that none of the cohort could understand. Kaylin glanced at Bellusdeo, who shook her head, her own brow furrowing. The brother was clearly agitated.
The familiar squawked loudly. He then lifted his wing and draped it across Kaylin’s eyes.
*
The view behind the small dragon’s wing was very different, and Kaylin almost pushed it away; what was gray and formless in her own vision was formless when seen through the familiar’s wing—but that was the only thing the two had in common. Instead of gray, the landscape was an almost lurid splash of color, some harmonizing and some clashing badly. She had never seen blues so bright, reds so vivid, and had they not been moving, it might not have been so bad. But they were shifting constantly, as if seeking either position or dominance, and although there were no obvious objects—or people—in the mix, it made the landscape seem as if it was alive, and not entirely happy to be so.
A vortex appeared in that swirl of color; she could see it by the ways the colors began to move. As if they were liquid, they swirled in toward a point, elongating as they blended and vanished. What remained was Winston’s brother.
No, Kaylin thought. Winston’s brother had been invisible until that moment. Whatever had drained the colors of this land was not Winston’s brother. She remembered, then, that he had been certain he would not be seen, and wondered if this was why. Behind Winston’s brother was something defined by the lack of color that occurred as it walked.
“The good news is,” Kaylin told her companions, “it’s not yet another member of the Barrani High Court.”
“Give us the bad news. Good news isn’t likely to be a problem,” Sedarias replied, in Elantran.
“I was afraid you’d say that. Something is following Winston’s brother.”
“Something?”
“Sorry. I can’t see it clearly, so I have no idea what it is. Spike—do you recognize the thing that’s following Winston’s brother?”
Spike had already begun to spin, but he’d done so silently. Only when he began to emit a series of clicks that really did sound insectoid did Kaylin turn toward him, the familiar’s wings fitted to her face like a second skin. He no longer looked like a spiky, floating ball. But she understood, looking at him, why Winston had been worried. Where Spike spun, colors were attenuated, stretched, absorbed; the landscape beneath the feet of the cohort was almost gray. It was a much larger patch of gray than the patch being created by whatever was chasing Winston’s brother.
“Lord Kaylin,” Winston said. “I believe we will be in danger if we do not move.”