He was, unfortunately, not the Terrano of very recent memory; he was oddly, darkly beautiful, his limbs literally shining, as if they were composed of polished steel. Or silver. His eyes were completely black, and his clothing drifted off his shoulders and toward the ground in a moving swirl of color. A continually moving swirl.
His hands were cupped, as if around a sphere. “We’re going to have to move inside,” he said, entirely unaware of the way everyone was now staring at him. “I don’t think I can hold it for long.”
*
“What is she so angry about?” Terrano asked. He had drifted—and that was the right word for a movement that did not resemble walking at all—toward Kaylin, but stayed on the side of her that the familiar didn’t occupy.
“She’s not angry,” Kaylin replied. She kept her voice low, but knew that Bellusdeo and the Barrani would catch every single word. “She’s worried.”
“Well, yeah. I’m not sure how this thing got in—”
“About you.”
“I’m fine.”
“Not about your health. About what you might do.”
He stopped. “I’m not going to do anything. To any of you. I have no reason to try to hurt you.”
“You did, once.”
“And I explained that.”
Kaylin believed him. Lirienne, however, was far more suspicious and remote. “You know you look like a silver statue with moving skirts for legs, right?”
His expression literally rippled with his confusion. “Do I?”
Bellusdeo snorted smoke. But her eyes retreated from the dangerous red into a more neutral orange. Not a pale orange, though. “Yes.”
“Ugh. Look—I’m sorry. I can’t really try to mess with my form while I’m containing this Shadow bit; I think I might lose it. It’s...not really happy, and it’s been trying to sting me continuously. And no, it only looks like a butterfly. It’s got teeth.”
“You realize that you look very, very similar to one of the more impressive Shadows?” the Dragon asked, her tone casual. Her eye color remained a steady orange.
“Not to me, I don’t.” He didn’t particularly like Dragons, but could force himself to speak to one—or so his impression implied. “What exactly about me looks like Shadow?”
Both of the Dragon’s brows rose. “Would you like to field this question?” she asked of Kaylin.
“...Not really.”
Squawk.
Fine. “It’s your form.”
“The silver statue bit?”
“Silver isn’t the word I’d use—unless silver is mostly black, but shiny anyway. No, it’s the fact that you don’t really have a fixed form as far as the rest of us can tell. You could probably just sprout a dozen arms—or heads, or whatever—if you felt like it.”
“Yes? And?”
“Shadow does that, in case you hadn’t noticed.”
He continued to walk, as if concentrating, and as he did, his skin tone shifted from shiny, polished metal to something that looked far more natural. His arms, however, remained as they were: silver, reflective, hard. “That’s how you tell the difference?”
“Yes. Normally.” But she thought of Gilbert. And she thought, as well, of the Hallionne Bertolle’s brothers, who thought of physical form the way rich people thought of clothing. Maybe he was now like those ancient brothers.
“It’s not Shadow.” Terrano was clearly annoyed. “We’re tied to the forms of our birth by other things. But we mostly can’t access our inherent power. Or we couldn’t, before.”
“And you can now.” It wasn’t a question.
“Yes.”
“This is what you did to Ynpharion.”
“I didn’t do anything to Ynpharion that he didn’t want done. Surely you must see the advantage in being able to control one’s shape?” The doors that Terrano approached led directly into the Hallionne, and they were open, as if Alsanis was holding out his arms for the return of the prodigal. It was an odd thought, but Kaylin didn’t think she was wrong.
“How do you see Shadow, then?” she asked.
“It’s part of a web,” he replied. “If you look hard, you can see it as it lies across the landscape. This?” he added, lifting his cupped hands, “is attached by a strand. It doesn’t exactly have a will of its own. No, that’s wrong. It has some initiative, some ability to adapt to its setting. But it doesn’t have its own personality.”
“I would think some of you have far more personality than is good for anyone,” Bellusdeo said.
“Annarion doesn’t.”
“No. He’s responsible. Mandoran, however, more than makes up for it.”
Terrano chuckled. “Just wait until you meet everyone else.” The amusement faded almost as quickly as it had appeared.
“We’ll find them,” Kaylin said.
“How can you, if I can’t?”
“We wouldn’t be here if the water hadn’t thought we could do something.”
“Meaning you have no idea.”
*
The moment they cleared the threshold, the doors which had opened so invitingly rolled shut. They didn’t slam, though.
“No,” Alsanis said. His Avatar was waiting patiently. “I am Hallionne now, not prison, and my guests are free to leave should they so choose. That, however,” he added, staring at Terrano’s cupped hands, “is not a guest.”
“Can I let it go now?” Terrano asked, as Kaylin said, “Is it safe?”
“It is safe.”
“But—”
“It is too small and too insignificant to alter my structure in any meaningful fashion. Terrano and his kin were far more likely to cause difficulties—”
“And it took us centuries.”
“Indeed. You were guests,” he added quietly. “Available options to deal with you were not the same as the options open to me in regard to your captive. The thing you carry is causing you pain,” he added, his expression one of concern. “Release it.”
Terrano practically threw it from his hands.
It careened in the air as if it were drunk, wobbling in what might have been an arc of flight. But the wings that had seemed, in shape and size, butterfly wings were something different now. They were silvered, hard, dense; they seemed to make flight itself very difficult.
Terrano had said that the butterfly bit him. Kaylin wondered, idly, if it were vampiric in nature.
“No,” Alsanis replied. “It did not absorb. It attempted to infect, to alter.”
Bellusdeo turned the color of old cheese, which didn’t suit the red of her eyes.
“It cannot effect Terrano in that way,” the Hallionne continued. Very quickly. “But Terrano reversed the flow of that infection; the Shadow is now infested with...him.” He turned, just as quickly, to the Lord of the West March. “No, he is not like the Shadow. Perhaps, were he the Lady, he might have some hope of becoming such a force—but it would be the work of millennia, and I do not think, in the end, he could achieve it.”
“Who wants it?” Terrano demanded. “I hate being told what to do. I hate having to tell other people what to do. It’s boring and frustrating. They don’t understand half of what I say. Or more. There is so much to see. So much to try. So much to be.”
“But you are here.”
He exhaled. “They’re here. No, they were here. I heard Sedarias.” He grimaced. “You’d think, after a lifetime of hearing Sedarias, I’d be happier with the silence. Ask Mandoran,” he added, not bothering to look in Kaylin’s direction.
“She called you?”
“I think...she tried.”
“And you came.” The Hallionne’s voice was warm.