She dared one backward glance at the Consort and froze. “Lady! It’s enough. Stop. The Tower has heard you, and the Tower has responded.”
The Consort, however, did not stop singing. She was, even at this distance, sweating—and in the strange light created by magical attacks, magical defenses and the natural, ugly darkness of a living cavern, that sweat looked like blood. Her eyes were closed, her hands clenched in shaking fists. But her head was lifted, as if she could see the Tower’s words, and looked only at them.
Kaylin was terrified for the Consort. No magic touched her; Ynpharion had not moved and Edelonne had joined him in his defense of the Consort. Evarrim stood between them, a blur of something red and white forming a circle beneath his feet. The three stood, however, behind Nightshade, because if Annarion was the only member of the cohort he valued, the Consort was important in an entirely different way. It was the difference between love and duty.
The Consort’s song was a blend of both. And Kaylin understood then that she would not stop until she collapsed, or until the conflict ended. The conflict didn’t look to be ending anytime soon, but the time limit that Kaylin could see was contained in the Consort.
“She cannot stop,” Hope said quietly. “If she stops, she will perish. If she stops,” he added softly, “you will all perish.”
“Butwhy?”
“Because she lends power to the Tower, Lord Kaylin, and the Tower requires it now.”
“But—”
“Look.”
Kaylin turned, as if Hope had placed both hands on her shoulders and repositioned her forcefully, toward what she had considered the back of the cavern. The Adversary appeared to be perched on the equivalent of a throne, and he wore a crown of Shadow, and the face of the High Lord.
Chapter 29
Around the throne stood the subjects of this dark kingdom. They stood in the hundreds, perhaps the thousands, their presence faint but liminal. To Kaylin’s eyes, they looked very much like the cohort had looked when seen through Nightshade’s. Seen through her own, there was one distinct difference: their ghostly, translucent bodies had, at their heart, a golden glow. She was almost certain that if she approached them, she would see the words that had woken them from the slumber of Barrani infancy.
Even thinking it, she saw the appearances of those who had been trapped melt away from that glow, until only words remained. Unlike the Tower’s, they were small, discrete; they looked like artistic renditions of...fireflies. She could not hear the keening or the wailing of the damned, and realized that she hadn’t heard them since she’d entered—or touched—the Tower’s heart.
She wondered what her companions heard, above the crashing din of magical conflict and steel. She knew what the Consort heard, what the High Lord heard—what they had lived with since they had come into their power.
The Consort was called the Mother of her race. Kaylin had no desire to have children of her own—she was certain she was too broken to ever become a good parent—but she could imagine what it would do toanyparent to hear the screams of their children. The Consort had no easy, acceptable out: she was Immortal. Until and unless she was replaced, those sounds were one of the backbones of her existence.
And in front of her, surrounded now by the names that should have returned to the Lake, was the creature that had tortured the long line of Consorts for centuries, wearing the face of the High Lord.
Kaylin’s arms were warm with fire, hot with the burning sensation of the marks of the Chosen. In her hands, she carried a sword that she had not been trained to use. But the sword was lighter by far than even the crude metal clubs that had served as training weapons, and it moved easily, as if responding to her will.
“Spike,” she said.
The bulk of the giant Shadow that had served as stopgap barrier in this heavily compromised Tower did not move—but tentacles did, shuffling over the height of shoulders or haunches in the direction of Kaylin’s voice. She didn’t even find the opalescent eyes they sprouted disturbing.
Chosen.
The eyes on the ends of those tentacles seemed to widen—or to lose their lids.Your cohort has interrupted the completion of the summoning. You yourself have destroyed half of the anchors that held the power in place and provided the sustenance of the words themselves. But it is not safe here.
It had never been safe here.
“I need you to move,” she told him, looking ahead as the creature on the black throne rose.
It is not safe, Chosen. Not yet.
“It’s never going to be completely safe,” Kaylin replied. The hilt and the hand guard of the great sword was becoming warmer as she held it; she wasn’t certain if this was an artifact of the fire that served as a living shield.
Spike didn’t move.
“He’s right, you know,” a familiar voice said. Terrano materialized. He didn’t come from nowhere, though. He appeared to exit the side of Spike that was closest to Kaylin. Spike’s body disgorged him, coated with something that looked like black mucus. It wasn’t the most disturbing thing she’d seen today—but it was close.
He grinned as the mucus dried and dissolved, shaking bits of detritus from his sleeves. “Took you long enough.”
“What are you doing?”
“Offering Spike a different perspective. A slightly different perspective.”
