“She has to live with them, and on some days, that’s harder than others. She’s fond of Teela, as well.” Kaylin shook herself. “Right. Sorry. How do we get them out of here, again?”
Spike began to vibrate, which caused her entire body to tremble. “Kaylin.”
“Is the Shadow moving?”
“It is moving.”
“Toward us?”
“Yes. No.”
“Which is it?”
“Bellusdeo!”
The gold Dragon nodded. Her body began to shift from the human to the Dragon form, flowing as if molten gold.
“I believe there is—or are—others of your kind here. The Shadow is moving toward them.” Spike’s words were interspersed with a type of clacking sound that made Kaylin think of chitin.
“My kind?”
“He means living people like you. Either of you,” Terrano helpfully explained.
“Are they going to need rescuing?”
Both Terrano and Bellusdeo snorted in disgust, which Kaylin took as no.
“Can the Shadows sense you?”
“No.”
“Can the Shadows sense us?”
“I do not think so. The ground here has been established across a spectrum.” He whirred and clicked, and the spikes that were responsible for Kaylin’s impulsive name choice began to extend, changing the space he occupied.
“Spike, do you recognize the person or people the Shadow is moving toward?”
A whirring, clicking noise was his only response.
The air in the immediate vicinity began to shimmer. Sedarias moved closer as an image coalesced from that sparkling air at Spike’s unspoken command. Kaylin glanced at Terrano, who was fidgeting. She didn’t expect to recognize whatever it was Spike chose to show them. The only person here who might was Terrano, whose left foot was now doing the equivalent of a nervous dance all on its own.
The man in the image was Barrani. The woman beside him was also Barrani. Nothing unexpected there. But the third person in the still tableau was human.
“There’s a human here?” Kaylin all but demanded.
Spike whirred and the human faded from view, but not before Kaylin had gotten a pretty good look at his face. It was an older man’s face, lines worn into the forehead and the corners of his mouth; he was clean-shaven, his nose was slanted slightly to the left of his face, as if it had once been broken. He was not otherwise well dressed, but something about his expression implied power. Very little of Kaylin’s experience of power made that a positive.
“So, he’s not here. Are both of the Barrani?”
Whir, click. Squawk.
“That’s a yes,” Bellusdeo said, in the quietest of her draconic voices. She tensed to leap and Terrano shrieked.
“You need to stay on the ground! The familiar can fly because he’s not like the rest of you, but we’ll lose you if you take to the air. You won’t find the Barrani you’re looking for, and you probably won’t be able to find us again. Whatever was done to the portal paths has completely sundered them from the influence of the Hallionne at either end. Sometimes there are storms or environmental effects that will damage the path, but the path itself begins—and ends—at the terminal points.”
“Which is not what happened here.”
“Obviously. I think the path does exist as created, but neither my friends nor our group ever stepped foot on it.”
“Did we even see it?”
“I don’t see the way you see; I don’t know.”
“You were there, too.”
A brief shift in expression that might have indicated guilt or humiliation chased across his face. “I was preoccupied.”
“We all were. So...whatever we stepped on wasn’t what the Hallionne created; it was something created by someone else.”
“I...think so.” He frowned. Like Mandoran, Terrano’s expression moved the map of his face; not for Terrano the almost neutral subtlety of adult Barrani. “I think if things had worked out as intended, my friends would be lost, but the path itself wouldn’t have been. It’s like someone put a rug across the road, waited until someone stepped on it, and then rolled it shut and carried it off.”
“Except for the Shadow devouring the people who stepped on it?”
“Except for that, yes.”
Kaylin glanced at the Dragon. “Can we find that path if we clear away the Shadow garbage?”
Squawk.
“It’s not that simple,” Terrano began.
“Yes or no are pretty simple answers.”
“And if you want to get devoured by Shadow, flip a coin and pick a random one,” he snapped. He started to pace in a tight little circle; judging by the expression on Sedarias’s face, she found this as frustrating as Kaylin did.
“What I want to know is why Mandoran and Annarion lost contact with the cohort. It’s not the outlands path—they were in contact until the moment the cohort encountered the trap.”
Terrano nodded.
“Well, we didn’t encounter the same trap, but I’ve been cut off in the same way.”
Silence. It was, judging by the contortions of Terrano’s expression, a thinking silence. He closed his eyes. “We need to move,” he finally said.
“Do you even know which way back is?”
“Yes.” The word was resolute. “...But you’re not going to like it.”
“I don’t like any of this. Which part in particular is going to bother me?”
“You’re right.”
“That doesn’t bother me.”
“You lost contact with your own people—”
“They’re technically mostly your people, for what it’s worth.”
“—the minute we hit this path. We didn’t enter it quite the normal way,” he added. “So I could be wrong.”
Sedarias appeared to be shouting in frustration, but her voice was inaudible. She was, however, mouthing something at Terrano, the movement of her lips slow and exaggerated. Kaylin caught some of it, but Barrani wasn’t her mother tongue. She turned to Kaylin and made a second attempt at communication; Kaylin missed the first few words because Sedarias had switched languages.
Of course she had. Mandoran spoke Elantran like a native, and Sedarias knew what Mandoran knew—probably including the bits she wished he’d keep to himself.
“Sedarias doesn’t think the Hallionne paths are safe—at all—for the cohort. If Terrano’s right,” she added, almost apologetically.
“Why?” the Dragon demanded.
“She thinks it’s possible that Alsanis was instructed to create the path in a very specific way.”
“Pardon?”
“She thinks Alsanis is partly responsible for what happened.”
“What do you think?” Bellusdeo asked.
Kaylin had no immediate answer. When it did come, it seemed, for a moment, almost unrelated. “The Consort can speak directly to the Hallionne; she can clearly speak to the Hallionne from a distance. When we arrived—in Orbaranne—Orbaranne had been given specific instructions to house and protect my companion.”
“But you didn’t think the Consort knew that the companion would be me.”
“I don’t think it mattered. The Lady knew that we were gone—that we were somehow heading to the Hallionne. The water sent us, in a panic. I don’t think the water was trying to save the cohort—I don’t think the water was even aware of it. Something was done that upset the water—and I think it’s bigger than kidnapping. Or murder. Sorry,” she added, remembering that the intended victims were standing, in as much as ghosts could, around her.