There was only one thing that could do that. She held it in her hand: life, in the paradigm of the Ancients. It had to go to a body she couldn’t see or touch herself.
Think, damn it. Just...think.
The name in her hand had been created for the Barrani, but it was the only name she had to offer Gilbert.
She had never asked the Consort how names were transferred to the babies that straddled the boundary between life and death, as all Barrani newborns did. The Barrani were understandably protective about the Lake of Life. Any mention of it caused Barrani eyes to darken by several shades, and the resultant blue was uncomfortable. Or worse.
She had a suspicion, though. It involved being able to touch the body. She had no idea how to do that here; she couldn’t even see it.
She needed to be where Severn was. She closed her eyes and returned her awareness to him; to his vision. He was looking at the body that was not a corpse, but not quite a statue; his hands remained gently spread across its chest.
She could feel ice and stone. She could feel them as strongly as she could feel the True Name in her own hands. She could see his hands clearly, but she couldn’t see her own. She didn’t try. Instead, she apologized to her partner and tried to move his.
She lifted his right hand. She flexed his fingers. Curved them into a fist. Opened the hand again and examined the scars across his right palm. Cupped that palm and held it steady until it felt like her own hand to her.
“Corporal?” Tain’s voice.
Severn didn’t answer.
Severn? Severn!
I’m here. It’s bloody cold.
Severn was where Kaylin was. She felt a moment of pure panic; both of his hands clenched in involuntary fists.
Come back. Come back to you.
Silence.
Severn—come back right now. She was terrified; the fear was sudden and sharp and too visceral to be cold.
He didn’t reply.
She looked up at Teela, at her familiar blue eyes, at the subtle shift of her brows. “Severn’s not here,” she said.
Teela’s eyes narrowed into perfect edges. “Kitling, what are you doing?”
“I’m here—Severn’s where I was. He won’t—he won’t come back. How do I make him come back?”
“Ask and hope he agrees.”
“Tried that.”
“If I understand what’s happening, you’re not the person who gets to make that decision—you can fight, but it will cause you both immense pain at a time when you cannot afford it.” Teela exhaled. “You’re here for a reason. Please tell me you’re here for a reason.”
Teela’s irritation was so familiar, so normal, it steadied the younger Hawk. “Yes.”
“Then do whatever it was you came here for. Do it quickly.”
For one heartbeat, she couldn’t remember. Severn’s hands unclenched; Severn’s lungs took in air, held it for a beat and exhaled it. She lifted her right hand, cupped it; lowered her left. She meant to place it squarely in the center of the figure’s chest, but it drifted up, toward its closed eyes instead.
“I think I need three hands.”
“You’ve only got two. Make do.”
She lowered the right hand. Severn’s hand, unlike her own, did not cup or carry a name. She brought his right hand to the center of the figure’s chest. With the left, she tried to pry the middle eye—which was set slightly higher in the figure’s face than the other two—open. She was surprised when it worked.
*
At first glimpse, the eye socket was missing an eye. That would probably have been for the best, because a second, steadier look made it clear that the eye itself was a dark, round obsidian that did not reflect light at all. There were no flickers in its depths to suggest that it was chaos or Shadow, but it seemed to move, very slowly, beneath the fingers that held the eyelid open.
Kaylin.
She exhaled. “I need my body back.”
I’m not sure how to leave it.
You’re lying.
He wasn’t.
Kaylin had had nightmares that made more sense than this. She snarled a long Leontine phrase that made Tain’s ears twitch.
Can you see the word in your—in my—hand?
Yes. It’s the only light in the room.
Kaylin had had nightmares that were less upsetting. There are words right in front of you.
They’re not words that I can see.
“Hope—can you still see them?”
“Yes.”
“Why in the hells can’t he see them? He’s behind my eyes!”
“I do not know, Kaylin.”
“Kitling, what are you trying to do?”
“Heal Gilbert.” She had come in search of Gilbert’s name. She was almost certain she’d found it. She’d hoped that somehow, the Chosen could finish a story, or at least make what she could see of it complete.
But the words were in a place that no one else could reach except her familiar. She’d made the faint, almost ethereal figures solid. Golden. They were words now, not the ghost or the memory of words. But that didn’t finish the story. The isolation and the cold hadn’t come to an end.