There was no clear path from this street to the house in which the theoretical murders had taken place, and Gilbert made it clear that he intended to climb over them.
Kaylin had seen corpses before. She had never seen a battlefield.
“Mandoran?”
“Here.” She turned, or tried to turn; the familiar bit her.
“Oh for hells’ sake, you stupid—” She bit back the words, because she could, once again, see Gilbert—and she decided that she did not need to see Mandoran and Annarion. Gilbert, in the great, carved halls beneath the city, had looked like the epitome of a one-off Shadow: tentacled, walking death. In the streets of Elantra, now, it was worse.
He didn’t climb over the bodies that littered the streets in uncountable numbers.
He ate his way through them. She could hear every bite, every swallow. Her hands were on her daggers; her arms glowed. So did Gilbert’s many eyes, because the damn things were still attached to her.
*
She looked at the eyes while Gilbert’s very disturbing meal continued. One part of her brain told her to calm the hell down: the people were dead. They couldn’t feel pain, and they didn’t care what happened to their bodies. It wasn’t as if they could use them for anything, anymore.
The other part of her brain was actually working.
“Gilbert,” she said while she looked at one of the many eyes. “I need you to find my friends.”
“Your friends?” he said. He swallowed. She really, really wanted to be sick.
“Bellusdeo. Sanabalis. Maggaron. I think Mandoran has Teela. And I think Teela has Tain.”
“And the rest?”
She said nothing for one long breath. “And the rest. But I don’t know them. I can’t tell you who to look for.”
“No, Chosen.” The eye to which she’d been directing most of this conversation began to blink rapidly. “But it is not necessary. I am not what I was when you first encountered me.”
He certainly wasn’t. The creature that he had become couldn’t fit in his house, for one. “What you did for me, as Chosen, was necessary, and I thank you.” The eye rose from her shirt. So did the rest of the eyes. “But what I must do cannot be done while I am so confined.”
As he spoke, he rose, and rose again, until the skies were all of Shadow, and eyes. He descended upon the house in which the murders—the non-murders—had taken place. And he froze part of the way there, in midmotion.
“This...is not good,” Mandoran said, from behind her.
The Arkon roared. There were words in it. Kaylin turned, and this time, the familiar did not attempt to prevent it.
A golden Dragon reared its very large body in a street with a lot fewer corpses, and roared again.
And another Dragon answered.
*
“Bellusdeo!” Kaylin shouted. The bodies that had been a mountain and a nightmare were sparser now. Kaylin could see the house in which the three men had first been discovered. The front of the house was irrelevant; the Arkon breathed, and fire turned it to ash and melted stone almost instantly.
“Arkon—stop—”
He roared again. Kaylin said, to the familiar, “Stop him from destroying the house—”
Stop him from attempting to enter it, Kaylin.
Her brows rose in outrage. The Arkon was full-on Dragon; she was full-on Kaylin. She couldn’t stop him from walking across a street when he was in human form; she had no chance—at all—of stopping him if he decided to go on a rampage.
Stop him; it is not safe.
“For him or for me?”
For any of us.
Bellusdeo is there—
Yes.
Kaylin nodded. “Arkon! Bellusdeo is in the house; if you destroy it, we’ll lose her!” She wasn’t actually certain that this was true. But she was certain it was the only way to catch his attention. And it worked. Of course, this meant she had the full attention of a red-eyed, raging Dragon.
“Gilbert?”
Silence.
She looked at her hand. It was wet, but the water was now absent. All that remained of what had been a pillar was...two eyes. She could no longer hear the water’s voice. She could no longer hear the voices of anyone who wasn’t actually standing in the street beside her. Well, plus Severn and Nightshade.
The two eyes the water had taken had not returned to Gilbert. They floated at roughly eye level, as if they were still part of the nonexistent element. As she repeated Gilbert’s name, they swiveled to look at her.
“Were you trying to destroy the house? Or preserve it?”
“One question at a time,” Mandoran suggested. He walked to where Kaylin was standing. Teela was by his side—literally. It looked as if her leg was broken or badly sprained, which was almost enough of a shock that she forgot to think. Annarion was carrying Tain. He was in worse shape.
But he was certainly well enough to open an eye and growl at Kaylin—in mewling Leontine.
“Fine. Suffer. It’s not like we actually need backup that’s useful and mobile.”
Teela snickered. Tain growled again.