“I can’t fight from here.”
Kaylin shrugged. “Neither can I. But he clearly considers the possibility that you’ll be lost—to us—more of a danger.” Before he could reply, she added, “Without you, we’ll lose the rest of them. You’re what’s keeping them here.”
This mollified him, but only enough that he looked sulky and not as determined. “They’renot staying put.”
They weren’t. Sedarias walked directly into the line of Bellusdeo’s open jaw. She reached out to touch the underside of the Dragon’s jaw; her hand passed through it, which seemed to satisfy some unspoken curiosity.
“The things that are likely to kill us—”
“Killyou.”
“—kill the rest of us aren’t likely to hurt them.” But even saying it, Kaylin wasn’t certain. “And I think we’ve found our two Shadow controllers.” She did not, however, see the Shadow itself. “Do you know where we are?”
He said nothing, and not just because he was sulking; his eyes had shifted to opalescent black, which was possibly her least favorite eye color, ever.
“Can you hear your namebound?” he asked.
Kaylin shook her head.
“That’s unfortunate.”
“We’re at the Alsanis end of the portal path?”
“No. This is Alsanis.”
* * *
Kaylin believed Terrano, but wanted to argue with him anyway, because she could not sense Alsanis at all. She expected the wild chaos of the portal paths by this point, but did not expect to find them within the Hallionne himself. Lifting her left arm, she rolled back her sleeve, almost weeping as she did; she felt as if she were peeling off the skin itself.
The marks across her arms were now an odd shade of gray blue. They were glowing, but the glow was faint and muted. On some occasions the symbols lifted themselves from her skin, as if they had life and will of their own; this time, they remained flat. She rolled the second sleeve up to join the first as Bellusdeo followed in Sedarias’s wake.
“Is Allaron carrying a sword?”
“He is,” the Dragon rumbled.
“So are the other two,” Terrano added.
“What does he expect a sword to do, in his state?”
No one answered. Bellusdeo, however, spoke three sharp words, and Kaylin clenched her jaws to keep a small scream from escaping.
“Apologies,” the Dragon said.
Kaylin barely heard her. Something had shifted in the wake of Bellusdeo’s spell, and she could see both the ground and what lay across it far more clearly. Her heart, such as it was, sank, and if her stomach had finally rejoined the rest of her, she almost wished it hadn’t. They were standing on stones; the stones were large, smooth and perfectly interlocked.
And there were words written across their surfaces.
As Bellusdeo continued her forward movement, those words began to rise, the flat inscription gaining volume as the lines, squiggles, and dots that comprised them asserted their existence in three dimensions. Kaylin sucked in air. Terrano was right, but in the worst possible way. Yes, this was Alsanis—but this was theheartof Alsanis. These were the words that defined him; the words that gave him absolute power within his own boundaries. The words that gave him life.
They were dark, not golden, and the edges of their various lines gleamed in a way that implied they were sharp enough to cut.
“I don’t think this is a good idea,” Kaylin told the gold Dragon.
“I’m willing to entertain better suggestions.”
“I think we need to walk very, very carefully here.”
“Implying that I can’t.”
