“No, Chosen. Helen can stop others from contacting you. She is not at all certain she can untangle the bindings of your guests. I believe she has said as much; we have discussed it at length. The binding upon me,” he continued, “was stronger and more heavily layered. There are ways in which layers can be prohibited or cut off, but I do not believe even the Towers can completely isolate those who are bound toRavellon. It is why their defenses are built to prevent us frombreachingtheir boundaries.”
Kaylin thought of Tara.
“And,” Spike continued, “to destroying us if we have.” He was silent and still for a long moment, but that was, apparently, a thinking silence. “It is much more difficult if those such as you attempt to contain some part of that Shadow.”
“You were part of that Shadow, though.”
“I was bound to it; I was notofit. It is a distinction that, for the purposes of understanding the Towers, must be preserved. Helen would notice Terrano if he attempted to enter your home, with or without your presence. Terrano is not like you. He is not quite like the cohort, although the resemblance is closer. But he is not like I was; he is not bound. Nor is he like I am. My form, my shape, exists in places that Terrano cannot go. But it exists in those places in the same fashion that you exist in yours.
“Those shapes overlap. In a place you cannot see without great effort, I am moving a limb. I am breathing a different quality of air. I am terrifying the tiny creatures that exist only in that plane, that place. I do this while I am speaking to you, but I am cohesive.”
“Was the connection—the binding—to Shadow active on all of those planes?”
“No. Not all.”
Terrano said, “It doesn’t matter.” He met, and held, Sedarias’s gaze; it was Sedarias who looked away. “The Hallionne were meant to house you,” he said to the Consort. “Or people like we used to be. Even after the disaster of theregalia, we started out the way you did, just...frayed at the edges.”
“According to our records, that is not the case.”
“Your records are wrong. But we learned how to begin to speak across the layers that the Hallionne didn’t occupy. Or at least to try tofindthem. Some of us learned more quickly than others.”
“You used that knowledge to escape Alsanis.”
“Yes.”
The garden grew chillier as Kaylin listened. “You think the Adversary is trying to do the same thing.”
“From the other direction, yes.”
“Spike,” Kaylin said in the same tone she used to invoke Records recall in the Halls of Law, “is the Adversary bound the way you were?”
Click, click, whirrrrrrr, click. “Not the way I was, no. The Adversary is part ofRavellon, the way your arm is part of you. It does not have specific functions; it was not created in the same fashion. If you mean to ask if you can set it free, the answer is no. You cannot set your arm free by severing it.”
Fine. “The Adversary has kept the names—or the people that contain them—in its cage.” She looked to Terrano. “The people that attacked the heart of Orbaranne were trying to reach her name to invoke its power. Is that the point of the Adversary’s attacks? Can it somehow use those names?”
“Names,” the Consort said with a touch of impatience, “are True Words. But they are words given us for life. They are meant for the living.”
“In this plane,” Spike helpfully added. “If the Adversary desired power in this plane, it is theoretically possible that those names could provide that power. But they would not provide power in other planes, not in the necessary manner; they would be too slight. It is the difference between a painting and the object that one is painting. The former is flattened; it exists on a single plane.
“You and your people exist on this plane, and the power you accrue here has a subtlety of use that is not best understood by those who do not live here. Helen has explained much of it to me—but again, it is the equivalent of studying the painting, rather than the object. Much of that subtlety is lost to me; I can understand the analogies she employs. My vision can now resolve theintentof the painting. I am able to understand what that painting represents. But you and your kind interact with the object itself; I am left to attempt similar interactions with something that is essentially flat.
“When you carry me,” Spike continued after a brief pause in which no one spoke, “I can more easily see the world as you see it. Observation is not difficult. It is, in some fashion, my core function; it was a function I could serve in multiple fashions. Interaction, however, was not. It is extremely difficult to do more than observe.”
“Here?”
“Here.”
“Is that why you could be so large in the outlands?”
“Yes. But these High Halls are not that space. It is possible that the cavern in which the Adversary is trapped will allow for more flexibility.”
“But you doubt it.”
“Highly. Were it to allow that flexibility, the Adversary would not remain trapped.”
“Can you speak to him?”
Silence.
