Spike practically exploded with urgent distress. It took Kaylin a moment to understand that he was asking her permission for...something.
“Shadow,” Hope said, “has a name.”
Evarrim, however, was staring at Spike. “It appears,” he said, his voice the wrong kind of soft, “that if Shadow does have a name, your companion is aware of it.”
“I think,” Kaylin replied, “that Spike must know. He can’t really communicate clearlywithme when he’s in this form.” A form that was, she had to admit, getting less portable by the second. “He does try, though.”
Whatever permission he required to do what he obviously felt was necessary, she gave.
He unfolded.
As he did, the shape of the hall—the opening of it—shifted, as if aware of his transformation, and desirous of it. The hall in which everyone else was now standing widened, although the texture of the floor and walls didn’t change. The ceiling stretched up, slanting gradually, as Spike became other.
No, he’d always been other. But he was now almost draconic in size. The spikes that characterized his portable appearance still existed—but they were flexible, and thin; fine tendrils of shadow waved in what appeared to be a wind. A strong wind.
The eyes that he didn’t normally possess, he possessed now in uncomfortable abundance. His body was no longer round, but it was very difficult to look at for any length of time, because it seemed to shift in place. He had legs one second, and had none the next; he had limbs that might have ended in hands, before they flattened and extended, as if they meant to be wings and couldn’t quite contain the shape.
Or be contained by it.
But...in this form, he had a different voice. She’d heard it before, in the outlands; she heard it now.
You will die, he said.You will all die if this is not stopped. What you call Shadow is contained here—here and in perhaps a handful of other worlds that have not fallen in their entirety. It is a cage, Chosen. It is a necessary cage.
“I don’t understand. An’Mellarionne and his crew have summoned Shadow before—why is this worse?”
They have summoned just enough of the Shadow to catch its attention, as was no doubt intended by their teacher. But what they summon here will be unlike the fire or the water or the earth—it will be a force unto itself, a thing that they cannot control.
“That’s not different.”
It will be. The Shadow isnotlike the elements. Its will and intent are more subtle. In that, in its desire, it is far more like your Barrani than the elements that are housed by your world’s Keeper. It is...He made the whirring sounds he often made; Kaylin associated it with thinking.It is not like summoning fire. It is like summoning a god.
Kaylin didn’t even ask which god. “Did any of you hear that?” she asked without taking her eyes off Spike’s unfolding form.
“We heard,” the Consort replied, “what you said. We did not hear what Spike said—if that is indeed Spike.”
“It’s Spike. It’s not... He looked different in the outlands, but...it’s Spike. Spike thinks the Barrani lords—whoever the hells they are—believe they’re summoning Shadow-as-elemental. Shadow, to them, is like fire or water, earth or air.”
“It is a much more flexible power,” Edelonne said. “It can be used in a more subtle fashion.”
Kaylin thought of crests on doors, of invisibility. “It’s not, according to Spike, being used. It’s the one doing the using.”
It was Teela who snapped the next question, which was all of a single word.“Ravellon?”
“I think that’s what Spike’s afraid of.”
“Terrano?”
“I don’t know.” It surprised Kaylin that that was Teela’s next question, and it shouldn’t have. It would have been hers, had the situation been reversed. “But it seems like he’s in the direction we’re going, anyway.”
She could feel Spike straining against her as if she were a physical jess; she stumbled forward two steps, crossing the threshold that defined the hall from whatever was just beyond it. It was not a comfortable transition—at all.
There was no floor beneath her feet, although her feet were definitely present. Instead, there was a gray-pink mass that seemed to extend as far as the eye could see, darkening in the distance. It reminded Kaylin of dead flesh, which was not a comforting thought.
The jumble of voices—Ynpharion’s, Nightshade’s, Severn’s—even Severn’s—made clear why: she hadn’t taken steps the normal way. Whatever Spike had done had skewed her vision of reality. No, it had skewed reality, somehow. She was no longer walking in the same hall—or cavern, or whatever the hall led to—as the rest of her companions.
“Wait.”
She turned at the sound of the familiar voice.
