“Great. If you get mortally wounded or infected, I’ll keep that in mind. Annarion wouldn’t let me touch him.”
“That is possibly for your own safety,” Gilbert told her.
*
Healing went one way, in theory. Power flowed from Kaylin to the injured. Information—scattered and diffuse—also traveled, and that was a two-way communication.
What surged through Kaylin now was not information. Not as she understood it. It was not—quite—Shadow, but it was of Shadow. She pulled her hands away from Gilbert’s; she no longer had to be in contact with him to be aware of what he was.
She could, with her eyes closed, see Gilbert’s eyes. He had two of them, in the expected place. Not all Shadows did; many had multiple eyes, of different sizes, different shapes. Those eyes often occupied body parts that eyes normally didn’t, at least not in any race or species with which Kaylin was familiar.
But...he didn’t have two eyes now. The quality of the eyes, the harsh clarity, the solid physicality, remained. They were Gilbert’s eyes. They just weren’t attached to his face anymore, and there were a lot more of them. She stepped back—or felt as if she was trying to—but it didn’t help; the eyes ringed her, surrounded her, cocooned her. There was no way out.
She opened her eyes, her physical eyes.
Gilbert’s eyes remained, but the rest of the room returned. With it, she caught a glimpse of Mandoran, Annarion and her familiar.
Her familiar.
He was not in his small dragon state. He was not in his large, rideable state, either; he was somewhere in between. He had wings, yes, and he was slender, but he had lost the reptilian look that had defined his relationship with Kaylin. If what stood before her now bit her ear or stole her accessories, she’d probably try to stab him before she could override her instincts.
And yet, she knew him. The fact that she could now see Annarion, Mandoran and her erstwhile familiar was far less disturbing than it would have been at any other time. What was disturbing was the lack of Gilbert.
“What are you doing?” Mandoran asked her.
“I am trying to heal Gilbert.”
“Possibly not your brightest idea. Teela says you take betting to unacceptable extremes. She’s worried,” he added.
“This is not about a bet,” Kaylin said, through clenched teeth.
“Teela offers a wager.”
“Tell Teela to shut up. I need to concentrate.”
“On what?”
On Gilbert.
“Yes,” the familiar said. He stepped toward Kaylin. She recognized his voice, although she heard it seldom.
“I understand you.”
“It is a function of your state. You cannot maintain it for long; you will be absorbed. You are too thin an existence to avoid it.”
Kaylin shook her head. “Kattea has avoided it.”
“Gilbert has avoided absorbing Kattea—or anything else he has touched in this city. His efforts mirror those of Annarion and Mandoran, but he is not entirely as they are.”
Kaylin lifted a hand. Holding her breath, she placed her palm as gently as she could against the nearest eye. The eye closed. Until she’d touched it, it hadn’t appeared to even have an eyelid.
“What are you doing?” Mandoran asked.
“Thinking of strangling you,” Kaylin snapped at him. Even as she spoke, she reached for the next eye, the movement both deliberate and hesitant. This eye also closed. It made her feel vaguely better, but there were a lot of eyes. This was not at all like healing.
“Your feet, Kaylin.”
Kaylin looked down. She was practically standing on a bed of eyes. She could no longer see the stone floor. What she saw in its place was chaos. Opalescent Shadow; hints of broiling color that glittered and moved as if being disgorged. The eyes rested above it.
“This is not healing,” Kaylin almost shouted.
“Then stop,” Mandoran told her.
She would have if she’d any idea how. But the eyes formed a layer between her feet and the Shadow that would transform them, and that Shadow seemed like a very, very large pool. She left those eyes alone, for the sake of self-preservation.
The rest, she continued to close. After half a dozen such closures, she no longer hesitated. After a dozen she finally noticed that the marks on her arms, which were still glowing brightly, had begun to develop dimension. They were still attached to her skin, but they were attached to her skin the way Gilbert’s human appearance was attached to his body: they were part of Kaylin, and yet at the same time separate from her.
“How did you get here?” she asked Gilbert as she worked. “You said you crossed the bridge.” She closed an eye.
“That was not entirely accurate.”
“No kidding. Did you come underground?” Another eye. And another.
“As you have surmised, yes.”
“You didn’t find Kattea underground.” She reached for the eyes that hovered above her head, as if closing them would give her more space.