“They are the foundation of my garden,” he replied. “They are...tent pegs, driven into the fundamental layer of reality in which we live. They are not cages,” he added, “but containers; the words at their base are words given willingly, and written by the elements. Water as you drink it, water in your wells, water when it is not summoned, exists. It exists as part of the world, and it is not sentient. The glass of water you drink doesn’t think. The water with which you bathe doesn’t think.
“The fire over which you cook, the earth over which you walk—they are part of the elements. They are like—like fingernail cuttings, or the dead skin you scrub off. Within my Garden, the elements are sentient. They are also contained—but understand, Kaylin, that they are ancient, ancient forces. They do not exist in one simple fashion; there is water here. There is water where the familiar guides you to look. There is water in the past and water in the present and there will be water in the future; it persists.
“We persist in a similar way until our deaths—but only on the narrow path of ‘world.’ Pretend the world is like a very fine, many-layered cake. We cannot exist on any layer but the top. Or the bottom. The limitations on our perceptions, the limitations of our physical forms, demand it. There are stories—old stories that perhaps even your Arkon has forgotten. During the time of creation, many creatures were made.
“But many of them could not survive. Just as fish need water, men—and in this, I count all the races that have ever lived in Elantra or beyond its borders—need solidity. They need a fixed place, a living world.
“Worlds were made. They were made like the cages small rodents live in. They were made larger, of course, and the bars were meant to be invisible.
“But the elements you see and touch and summon can live in any layer of existence, and do. What they are in the other layers is—should be—irrelevant to us, here.” He hesitated.
She marked it. In general, Evanton’s hesitations were a sign of growing temper—but this was different.
“Mandoran does not live the way Teela lives, although he is trying. He can walk, speak, think, in dimensions to which he was not born. It is why the water reacted so poorly when he visited the Garden the first time.”
“It’s not doing that now.”
“No. It cannot see him now.”
“I don’t know what you’ve done to the Garden, but we need to know how it works.”
Evanton, in shadow, could still somehow stare a hole through her. “Do you think this is something I do regularly? Perhaps you are unaware of the term emergency? Perhaps—”
Grethan caught his master’s arm.
“Your Garden isn’t the only place in the city that’s functionally disappeared. A space like this—very like this—exists in the center of the Winding Path. And it’s growing. We need to stop it.” She hesitated. “The water told you what happens in the future. The city is destroyed—or at least the Tha’alani quarter is. Gilbert is here—no, Kattea is here, from the future after that destruction.
“I have no idea where here is,” she continued. “But...I can hear Nightshade. He’s alive.”
“You could not hear him until you entered this space?”
“No.” She hesitated. “Does this mean we’re somehow outside of...time?”
*
Kaylin.
The voice was stronger. It dispelled doubt. It was Nightshade.
What...is happening? Where are you?
Look, she told him.
I am. I see darkness. I see...shadow. My brother?
He’s somewhere safe. Well, safer. Do you know the date?
Silence. She filled the silence with a furious rush of information. Nightshade didn’t interrupt her; he had no need. What her words couldn’t convey, her thoughts did. But she felt his growing uneasiness.
Kaylin, who is Gilbert?
She froze. Gilbert. You met him in Ravellon.
I am not foolhardy enough to enter Ravellon unless at great need.
Silence then. It took Kaylin a moment to reorient herself. Or Nightshade. Where are you?
I am in my Castle. It is...difficult to maneuver here.
Andellen?
I...do not...know. Nor, at the moment, did he appear to care. Who is Gilbert? he asked again.
She told him. Or tried to tell him. His frustration grew. Whatever she was telling him, he couldn’t understand. She tried again. She tried to visualize Gilbert as she’d seen him when she’d healed him. She knew she was speaking, knew she was thinking, could visualize it herself. But Nightshade couldn’t hear her when she did.
Nightshade was no longer uneasy; she thought he was afraid.
“Evanton, are we outside of time?”
Gilbert, however, answered. “You cannot be outside of time,” he replied. “Were you, you would be very like your fish out of water. You would die.” As he spoke, darkness condensed until it resembled a silhouette of Gilbert. He looked much like Evanton did, to the unmasked eye.
“Would it be instant?”
“Very close. Perhaps the fish analogy is incorrect.” He approached Kaylin, Kattea in his arms. Kattea, unlike Gilbert or Evanton, looked like her normal self. She was pale but silent, and her fingers, where they gripped Gilbert, were white-knuckled. She looked through Kaylin, her eyes blinking rapidly.
“Kattea?”