“She cannot hear you,” Gilbert said gently. “I do not have the gifts that your familiar does. She is...safe, with me. But she perceives only darkness. She does not speak, and she doesn’t see or hear.”
Kaylin could see nothing in this darkness as clearly as Gilbert’s eyes. There were the three he’d been left with when she’d healed him.
And there were the dozens that she had gently closed. They surrounded him like a swarm of moths might surround the fire that would kill them.
She’d thought that this darkness, this shadow, this swirl of gloom and fog, were familiar. She now knew why. They reminded her of Gilbert’s rooms. Of Gilbert’s endless rooms. They reminded her of the darkness in which she’d found—and closed—his eyes.
She had called it healing. But when she’d finished, she had no better idea of what Gilbert actually was. She didn’t have that now, either. But she watched as Gilbert’s eyes—the ones not immediately attached to his face—began to open.
“Gilbert—don’t—”
He smiled. The light from his embedded eyes revealed his familiar face, although the rest of his body remained in darkness. The unattached eyes did not stop opening; lids curled up and vanished. This was not comforting.
“I believe I understand some part of what has occurred here. Keeper, we have disturbed you in your very necessary work.”
“But—”
“No, Kaylin. This choice is not the choice your Keeper would have made had it not been for the recursion of the water. It is a choice he must make if your city is to have any chance of survival. But you—and I—have other tasks. I understand now.”
Kaylin wasn’t certain if it was Nightshade’s fear or her own that made thinking difficult. She hated fear. What good was it? If Evanton’s Garden was—tenuously—in Evanton’s hands, the rest of the city wasn’t. While Evanton tended to the Garden, in whatever form it currently existed, the Winding Path waited.
And time. Time had passed. Breathe, idiot. Time had passed, but if Gilbert was right, what Evanton was doing now bought them more of it. The regular, garden-variety version that Kaylin actually lived in.
“Evanton, how do we get to your basement?”
“My what?”
“Your basement. The hall is gone. I guess it’s here, wherever this is. But beneath the hall I could see the basement—and it’s not much of a basement.”
Silence.
“There are halls—there are stone halls. They’re a hell of a lot wider than your actual hall, and you could probably ride an army through them without threatening the stability of the floor.”
More silence.
“Grethan, tell him.”
Grethan, however, was silent, as well. His silence, on the other hand, didn’t last. “There—there were no halls. I mean, I didn’t see them.”
Figures. Kaylin poked the familiar. The familiar pretended she didn’t exist. “We’re leaving—if we can. But if you’ve got some sort of mirror access here, don’t use it.”
“Is there difficulty with the mirrors?”
“Severe difficulty, actually. And no, before you ask, we have no idea what it is. But in their future memories, Ybelline and the Tha’alanari made a last stand in the long house. They cast a barrier spell of some sort—one meant to repel elements—and it worked. It was the use of the mirror that killed them. Something came through the mirror, which was on the inside of their defenses.”
“Noted.”
“We’re leaving Grethan with you.”
*
Gilbert’s eyes continued to open, but they opened slowly. “Are you sure you should be doing that?” Kaylin demanded, in as much of a whisper as she could.
“I am not certain to what you refer.”
“You’re opening all your eyes.”
Squawk. Squawk.
Gilbert smiled. It was the wrong kind of smile. “It is necessary, Kaylin. We must find our way back to the store.”
The ground still felt like mud beneath her feet. “I can reach Nightshade here.”
“Yes. That is not necessarily a good sign.”
“Gilbert...”
“Yes?”
“...I don’t think he knows who you are.”
“Yes. Come, Kaylin.”
“I’m following, but I don’t understand—he thinks he’s in his Castle.”
“Yes.”
Understanding, when it came, was fractured. “You think—I’m speaking to him before whatever emergency occurred that caused the Castle to expel him.”
“Yes.”
“But—”
“He was not meant to live in Ravellon; not as it is currently constituted. There was a time—” He shook his head. “But no.”
“But you said you were trying to find a way to bring him back.”
“Even so.”
“Gilbert—you wanted to help him because he became your friend.”
“Yes.”
“I don’t understand.”
“No, you do not. What confuses you now?”
“If we can reach Nightshade now, he’ll never go to Ravellon. He’ll never meet you. You’ll never—”
“Yes. Yes, Kaylin. The only way back, for your Nightshade, is now. If we resolve the difficulty before it engulfs your city, the Castle will release him. He will be, as he once was, Lord of Nightshade.”
“And you?”