“I’d like us not to kill him, if that’s okay. Because he’s implied that he won’t be the only one joining us—and he’s likely to be on our side.”
To no one’s surprise, Teela headed into the portal. But she did glance back, once, at Severn, who nodded. They were both fully armed.
“I will not be able to mask your presence,” Spike told them all. “These rooms are not the lands you now traverse.”
“Did the spiders come from this portal?”
“No, Lord Kaylin.”
“Are more of them coming?”
“No. The webbing that they have spun is slender and tentative, and it has been utterly destroyed by your Teela. They can rebuild it; it will not be immediate.” Before she could ask for a definition of immediate, he said, “I believe it would be the work of decades, if not centuries.”
“Did they come from below? I mean, from wherever the Adversary is?”
“Yes. But, Kaylin, I do not believe they originated from there.”
Teela and Severn were gone. Kaylin wanted the Consort to wait, but she understood that the paths were now hostile terrain—not that they’d ever been anything but, to Kaylin. She didn’t give much for her own chances, because fighting waves of nausea was difficult enough; fighting Shadow-driven opponents at the same time didn’t even seem possible.
“I am here,” Hope said quietly. “You will not feel the dislocation in the same way. Even were I not, the Consort in theory controls this path, and she is with you.”
The Consort entered the portal, Ynpharion at her side and just one step behind.
Kaylin grimaced and followed, her hand on a dagger. Hope draped an arm across her shoulder, and the weight of that arm felt familiar. Spike, floating by her side, entered the meniscus—there was no other word for it—as she did.
The portal path wascold. Kaylin felt the chill as she inhaled and her nostrils closed. She blinked; the air was dry, but it felt like air. This was not a given in the small tunnel that usually existed between portals; sometimes it felt like she was trying to breathe water. She looked immediately to the Consort; the Lady’s breath rose in a desultory cloud. It wasn’t just Kaylin who felt the cold.
To the immediate left and right she could see the boundaries that defined the space they were now traversing; they looked like badly blown, opaque glass. Spike, floating above her shoulder, began to spin around an axis that was attached to his follow-Kaylin position. It was not a slow spin; he was an instant blur of motion.
Kaylin took a step back—which didn’t change his position with regard to either her shoulder or her face—as Spike became a miniature windstorm. “Spike, what are youdoing?”
Spike could move in a blur of motion while speaking. “Apologies,” he said. “I cannot absorb and speak intelligently simultaneously.”
In other circumstances, she would have laughed. “What are you absorbing?”
“Structural filaments,” he replied in a sharper, higher pitch.
“CanIkeep walking?”
“Yes. Running is not advised.”
The walls of the tunnel began to shift, the texture changing. To Kaylin’s eyes, it looked like they were melting.
“I think Spike thinks that the path you’ve opened goes to the wrong place,” she said to the Consort.
“Spike is concerned,” Hope agreed. “He does not believe this is where you wish to go.”
“And you?”
“I am less certain. This is an old pathway, but inasmuch as such paths are, a fixed one. I believe its destination is very close to the exit the Consort expects. A larger shift would be noticed.”
“Lady?” It was Teela.
“Does Spike believe he can realign the path?”
“I’m not sure,” Kaylin replied. “He’s spinning so fast all I can hear when he tries to communicate is a very high-pitched whine.”
“What, exactly, is he doing?”
