“What do you see now?” she demanded.
“You. Clearly. I mean it. You look exactly the same as you always look: dirty, cranky and clumsy. Emphasis on cranky.”
“Where is Annarion?”
“He’s on the other end of the rope, theoretically. It’s not a long rope.”
“Fine. Can you see Evanton?”
“No.”
“More looking, less talking.”
He snapped a pretty sharp salute, and Kaylin didn’t bother to tell him all the ways in which the gesture itself was incorrect.
*
She didn’t understand time. She didn’t understand space, not as it applied to layers. But it was clear to her, as she followed Mandoran, that the space she was now in was layered in some way; that she could see layers of it, depending on how she looked. No one else could see them without the help of the familiar. But the world itself still existed. Somehow.
Kaylin?
She missed a step. Since she couldn’t even see her feet, this shouldn’t have been surprising.
Nightshade? Nightshade, is that you?
She felt faint disapproval—blending with condescension—which was answer enough. Turning to Mandoran, she said, “I can hear Nightshade!”
Mandoran did not react with excitement.
“Tell Annarion?”
“I did. Gilbert is on his way.”
“Pardon?”
“Gilbert thinks he understands what the difficulty might be. He’s on his way.”
“He can’t bring Kattea with him. Tell him.”
“You’re going to have to tell him yourself,” Mandoran said, turning. Kaylin’s grip on Grethan’s arm tightened as the entirety of the landscape went dark. Gilbert, apparently, had arrived.
*
Kaylin said, “What do you see?” to the Barrani beside her.
Mandoran frowned. “I see Gilbert. You?”
“Shadow.” And it was. The faint iridescence of moving chaos had become embedded in a growing darkness. Kaylin had seen this before. She had never seen it from the inside, but she had seen what it had done to people who had.
Every instinct in her screamed to run—or fight. The small dragon smacked her, hard, with his wing. It was purely to get her attention; he didn’t leave the wing over her eye. And to be fair to him, it worked: he got her attention.
Mandoran’s eyes, she realized, were like the rest of the surroundings. They looked like...liquid Shadow. She couldn’t tell if this was just a reflection of the environment, but she doubted it. Strongly. She knew he could be an impulsive, feckless, condescending idiot—but she wasn’t afraid of him. She wasn’t certain that she could be.
Severn—I don’t think Grethan can hear me.
He can’t.
Can he hear you?
Yes. He is shouting for Evanton. I suggest—
Got it.
“EVANTON! EVANTON!” She stopped. “It just occurs to me—if he’s actually alive and he’s not trapped and he’s doing something finicky, that’s going to piss him off.”
“Too late.”
*
Angry, cranky Evanton was the definition of No Fun Whatsoever—but the relief Kaylin felt at the pinched irritation of his voice made the risk of actually encountering him up close and personal seem tiny.
“Evanton?”
“I heard you the first time.”
“Can you—can you see me?”
“I can see something moving, yes.”
“Great, keep talking. We’re kind of walking around in darkness here.”
“She’s walking around in darkness,” Mandoran said, correcting her.
“Mandoran. Kaylin thought it was a good idea to bring you here?”
“Actually, technically, Gilbert wanted us to tag along, and the Arkon brought us here because Kaylin insisted on visiting you before we went to the actual disaster.”
It was hard to forget the visceral fear that had driven her here when her friends were in unknown trouble. She pushed them out of the way—barely—and said, “The water shouldn’t have been able to rain—or flood—your store.” As she walked in the direction of his voice, the dark outline of the Keeper finally resolved itself, as if he were simply part of the Shadow that had chosen to solidify.
“Yes.”
“I think the water—the water that brought Kattea and Gilbert here because it could—exists in a place where there is no Garden. In the future that Gilbert and Kattea come from, the water wasn’t confined.”
“You have spoken to the elemental water outside of this garden before.”
She nodded. “One of those places was beneath Castle Nightshade—which is where Kattea and Gilbert met the water. But...the water brought something of itself from Kattea’s time, and I think that something is the reason containment of water has become...difficult?”
“Difficult is too mild a word. The water is attempting to communicate something to me, and I am clearly unable to translate.”
“Did the water do this?”
“No.”
“Then what—”
“I did it,” Evanton replied. “If you refer to the phasing here, it’s a choice I had to make. There is something that is attempting to attack the foundational stability of the Garden in ways you cannot perceive.”