“It’s not the same.”
“How’s it different?”
“When Alsanis creates the path, he does so deliberately. It’s a narrow path—more like a tunnel through noise and chaos than an actual road—and it’s sustained, in theory, by the Hallionne.”
“How? It’s not part of the Hallionne.”
“It’s—ugh. Everything in the outlines is supposed to be inert. It’s supposed to be like the rest of his body, just outside of his absolute control. He does have some influence on the shape it takes. Inside the Hallionne, he can create anything he wants. The portal roads are not on the inside. He can influence the shape of the road, but it’s as if he’s made an object, say, a glass, that he’s given visitors to take with them. He can’t do anything about the glass if the visitor drops it and it shatters.”
“So, he creates the path, and we walk it.”
“Yes. But the path that he creates has layers. It’s like—it’s affected by weight. Sometimes some of those who walk the paths have different weights. It’s like they sink to different levels. They all reach the portal’s exit, eventually. In theory. He must have told you, last time, that portal paths were tricky if you needed to arrive at the Hallionne at the same time as your companions.” He gave the gold Dragon—who was definitely draconic now—the side-eye.
“The last time we took these paths,” Kaylin told her companions, “they disintegrated into shadow around our feet. By the end, we were walking on one of the siblings of Hallionne Bertolle. While he talked. He lay down, stretched out and made himself a road that the rest of us could more or less follow. And the stuff underneath that road didn’t particularly want us there. Long story short, it sure didn’t seem inert to the rest of us.”
“It was. The Hallionne wasn’t the only person trying to influence its shape or form. Or direction.”
“That was you?”
“No, not directly. I was busy elsewhere.” But he looked distinctly uncomfortable. “I may have taught some people a bit about how to manipulate it.”
“May have.”
He shrugged.
“May have.”
“I didn’t think it would matter!”
The Dragon breathed fire; it melted the ground a few inches to the left of Terrano. Kaylin hoped that his physical form currently represented the entirety of the space he chose to occupy, but even if it didn’t, he didn’t seem unduly bothered by the fire. He did, however, avoid the lake and its water.
“Spike,” Kaylin said, to the floating, spiked ball to her left, “take a note of this. I am never coming back to the West March again.” She looked at her familiar who, to her surprise, seemed to have slumped into his bored posture. “Well, we wanted to investigate the portal paths anyway.”
Terrano snorted.
“And at least this way, my head won’t be filled with people who are giving me constant advice.”
Terrano stared at her. Something in the shape of his eyes, the brief tightening of his lips, made Kaylin think of...envy.
*
“What we need to know,” Bellusdeo said, “is what you taught the people who might just be using that knowledge against us now.”
“Could we learn it?” Kaylin added. The small dragon bit her ear. Spike was largely nonverbal, and he tended to move along at a steady pace. A slow pace. Even Hawks on patrol weren’t this sluggish, and Hawks paid attention to everything. Ah, no. If she thought about it that way, Hawks didn’t; not like Spike did. He was like an ambulatory recorder, like an external portable mirror.
“Spike.”
“I am here.” That had become his response to most uses of his name.
“You said that you were ordered to the edge of the fief—”
“I do not believe that is what I said. I can replay—”
“No, please.” Spike’s replay took a lot longer than the average Records response. “I don’t need the exact phrase, only the gist of it. You met a man at the edge of Ravellon. You were supposed to stay with him. He was to carry you somewhere.”
A long pause, which generally meant Spike was thinking. Or reviewing his own Records without sharing. “Yes.”
“Fine. Could you ride with me the same way?”
Both Bellusdeo and Terrano said, “No.”
Without the help of the familiar’s wing, Kaylin couldn’t see the Shadow’s facial expression, but the sound of confusion was relayed quite clearly in its voice. “Yes?”
To her much less sluggishly moving companions, Kaylin said, “I have Hope. I can carry Spike. Hope doesn’t even look worried. If we wait for Spike, we’ll never get anywhere.”
“Where, exactly, are we trying to go?” the Dragon asked, folding her arms.
Kaylin shunted the question to Terrano.
“I’m trying to follow the echoes of the path Alsanis created for my friends. It was,” he added, “destroyed. It no longer exists as a functional path.” Eyes narrowing, he glared at the Dragon. “I am also attempting to build a path that the rest of you can walk. I don’t need it. If I weren’t trying to do it without overwhelming the possible traces of what existed before, it wouldn’t require so much concentration.”
Bellusdeo shrugged, but fell silent. Watching her, Kaylin was grateful that the Dragon lived with Helen in the same house as Mandoran. Yes, they squabbled and took digs at each other across a dining table that never quite reached the level of battlefield, but she’d grown accustomed to the Barrani’s attitude, his general nonchalance. An echo of that relationship formed the basis for her response to Terrano.
“Spike.” While the Dragon and the Barrani were glaring at each other, the ball of silver floated toward Kaylin’s outstretched left hand. “I’d really like it if you didn’t actually make me bleed.”
The Dragon pushed Kaylin’s hand away.
“If a Barrani lord could carry it, I can carry it. Neither of us are Terrano.”
“Even Terrano couldn’t carry it for long, if you recall. He was bleeding.”
“Was not.”
“It was bleeding or disincorporating, which we happen to find more disturbing.”
“Did I mention concentration?” To Kaylin he added, “Of all the companions you could have chosen, why a Dragon?”
“Among other things, she’s never tried to kill me.”
“I wasn’t trying to kill you.”
“The forest Ferals?”
“They were trying to kill you. It’s not like I’m Shadow—I wasn’t controlling their bodies or their minds.”
“No, just conveniently leading them to us. Oh, and doing something to help them shift the shape of their bodies.”
“I’m telling you—”
“Don’t bother.” Kaylin was torn between the strong desire to strangle Terrano and the desire to let Bellusdeo breathe on him. Terrano was unlikely to die, but if he got singed just a little...
He won’t.
She blinked. This was a different voice.
Yes. It’s mine.
She looked down at her hand. Spike had, apparently, passed through the less intimidating human draconic form to settle on Kaylin’s left palm. She looked up at Bellusdeo, who was staring grimly at the ball, her eyes very orange. “Please don’t breathe on it. Spike will survive. Probably. I’ll lose my hand.”