Kaylin, four voices said at once.
Give me a second. I just need to make sure Terrano doesn’t get dissolved by whatever spell it was. She closed her eyes. Hand to hand, she could feel Terrano’s physical form. To the eye, it resembled the Barrani, with a few notable exceptions. She had expected the appearance to be entirely superficial, and was surprised.
“What are you doing?” he demanded.
“Finding the fire,” she snapped. “If you could shut up for a bit, I might even be able to make certain it doesn’t dissolve you.”
Sedarias repeated the sentence in much more precise—and elegant—Barrani. “Apologies,” she said, dropping into Elantran. “He’s not familiar with your tongue. Teela’s concerned,” she added.
“The entirety of the Elantran Barrani population should bloody well be concerned. I was hoping the Consort was speaking through a mirror or something similar. She can talk to the Hallionne from Elantra, and I assumed it was via mirrors.”
“The mirror connections beyond your borders are nowhere near as complete as they are within your city. The Hallionne of old are very like your Helen; they distrust the networks required to maintain the connections.”
“They’re easier to maintain than a portal that passes from the High Halls to—here.” She grimaced and closed her eyes. “Ummm, I need to concentrate on something other than fear or terror. Just—what in the hells is that purple garbage?”
“Teela says you’ve been taking lessons in applied and practical magic.”
“Not in the last month or two.” Ugh.
“She says it is, in her opinion, very like the fires that mages can master and use as weapons.”
“Elemental?”
“Now she’s annoyed. No, she says, like the fire itself.”
“The fire I summon is elemental.”
“She says, ‘Fine, it’s nothing like the fire that you summon, and more like the fire anyone else would.’ But this fire does not, in her opinion as a former Arcanist, draw just from fire, but also from Shadow. She adds that you are now examining the possible fallout of such a summoning more completely than most of the Imperial Mages could, at least with regard to the effect on a living body.” In the distance, one of the cohort burst out laughing. Kaylin grimaced; she could imagine exactly why.
“It’s not you,” Sedarias said, correctly divining the reason for the grimace. “She just made an observation about Terrano. And Mandoran. Mandoran did not approve.”
“Terrano probably wouldn’t, either.” Terrano sounded waspish. “If you’re all just going to talk about me behind my back, I’m leaving.”
Sedarias frowned. “You are not leaving while you are injured.” And to Kaylin, in more concerned Elantran, she said, “Teela’s afraid that this will harm you in some fashion.” There was a question in the statement.
Kaylin snorted. “Tell Teela that what’s good for the goose is good for the gander.”
“I’m uncertain that she understands.”
“If I’m not allowed to worry about her, she’s not allowed to worry about me.”
“If it’s acceptable to you, I will refrain from repeating her response.”
Terrano snickered.
“It’s fine. Annarion doesn’t repeat much, either. Now—let me try to fix this. I’d personally rather not have Terrano become a mindless minion of Shadow.”
“We are not mindless,” Spike offered.
Kaylin shrieked in frustration, and Bellusdeo came over. She, like Terrano, looked like she’d been in a battle, and not necessarily on the winning side, especially her hair, which was decidedly ragged and singed. Normal fires, even elemental ones, were seldom much of a danger to Dragons.
“I’m fine,” the gold Dragon said, in a tone that implied that it would be in Kaylin’s best interests to accept the words at face value. Since she was standing beside Kaylin, and the Emperor—who would not be happy accepting those words at face value—was hundreds of miles away, Kaylin decided to be smart.
“What are you doing?” Terrano shouted.
Since Kaylin hadn’t been doing anything other than examining the very unusual injuries, she said nothing.
“I mean it!”
“There’s something in the wounds you took. It’s not like whatever it was the Ferals did to the Barrani—but I think it would be, if you were actually physically completely Barrani. I am trying to remove it before it does whatever it’s trying to do.” But...she hadn’t. She hadn’t started. The last time she’d done this, she’d had to cut out the bad parts to stop the taint from spreading. And cutting out the bad parts meant cutting out the good parts they were attached to.
On the other hand, Terrano didn’t seem to hate the idea of healers on principle the way the rest of the Barrani did, which was good because as Kaylin continued the contact with an increasingly reluctant Terrano, two things happened. First, behind the lids of her closed eyes, she could see the marks on her arm begin to shift color. Gray was more subtle than the gold they became.
And second: the infection began to retreat. She realized then that it, like whatever it was that had seeped into Alsanis, poisoning him, was being pulled out. It was being wound around her own palm, her left palm, even if she wasn’t moving that hand at all. Terrano didn’t suffer pain gladly, and the withdrawal obviously hurt. She wondered, gritting her teeth, if Alsanis had felt a similar pain.
“No, Lord Kaylin.” It was Alsanis. Or his voice. Kaylin was surprised at the sting of relief she felt, but kept her thoughts focused on Terrano.
“I believe he feels that it alleviates some of the pain when he curses,” the Hallionne added.
“Not my pain,” Kaylin muttered.
*
What felt subjectively like hours later, she finished. Since Terrano’s injuries were not severe enough to be life-threatening in the immediate future, she should have been fine—but she felt exhausted, and stumbled slightly when she rose. Terrano fell silent; he was glaring at her when she managed to open her eyes.
“Alsanis,” she said, as Bellusdeo held out a discreet but steadying arm, “I thought I heard the Consort’s voice toward the end.”
“Ah, yes.”
“Yes, I heard it or yes, I thought I heard it?”
The question seemed to confuse Alsanis. “Both? She is not physically present, if that is your concern.”
“But I heard—”
“She is within Hallionne Kariastos’s domain. She spoke to me from within Kariastos.”
“I thought the Hallionne weren’t connected?”
“We are not connected. We are capable of communication, should we be awake. And as of your first passage through the West March, the Hallionne are all awake. She intended to walk the portal paths directly to me.”
Kaylin stopped breathing for one long beat.
“But she was convinced to wait.”
“By who?”
“Kariastos, initially, although I believe it was Bertolle’s word that carried the most weight. They could not reach me at all, and they were concerned about her eventual fate.”