“From theinside?”
“He couldn’t understand me, otherwise.” Terrano shrugged. “It also took me out of the combat. The rest of the cohort have some built-in stability. I lack it. Spike understood that it would be a little bit too easy for me to be swept up in the summoning.” He held up a hand as she opened her mouth. He placed the flat of his palm against Spike. “There’s only one way to confront the Adversary.”
She lifted her sword.
“Pretty much. But to approach him at all, there has to be a gap in the wall that serves as his cage. He’s not like us,” Terrano added with just a hint of pride. “Or he’s not what we were. There’s no gap, for him.” Terrano glanced and then said, “There’s no gap for the Tower, either. What the Adversary is, the Tower can’t destroy. If it could, it would have.”
“Could Helen?” she asked, because Spike had still not moved.
“I don’t know. Maybe? I don’t understand all of the Tower, or all of Helen. I understand more of Alsanis—but only the defensive bits, and even those...” He shrugged.
“You should probably stand clear.”
“Me? No. I’m not like them,” he said, glancing at the cohort, who were still fighting for their lives. “I’m not like you.” He lifted the hand he’d placed on Spike’s side, and came to stand beside her, his arms folded, his gaze fixed on the man on the throne.
She realized then that Spike had spit him out for a reason. Terrano drew no weapons, but they didn’t matter; he intended to come with her.
Yes, Spike said.
She wanted to argue. She almost did. But Spike was not the only person who would follow her into the breach. Hope touched her shoulder. “You could not have come here alone,” he told her quietly. “Your cohort, the Consort, Lord Nightshade, Evarrim, Ynpharion and Spike—especially Spike—were, and are, necessary. Had they come without you, they could stop the Barrani from opening a gate through which the Adversary might, at last, be free of his prison.
“They could not do what you can do. The Tower alone could not achieve it, either. Look at the Adversary, Chosen. Understand what it is that you see.”
This wasn’t the first time she’d looked at the Adversary. It wasn’t the first time she’d faced a threat that could not consume her the way it could consume the others.
“I don’t understand one thing.”
Terrano, even given the gravity of the situation, snorted.
She ignored this. “If there’s a cage, if the Tower can’t breach its own barriers to destroy an intruder, how could the intruder reach out to gather the names?”
“The Adversary didn’t reach out,” Terrano said, his tone in keeping with the snort. “They reachedin.”
“How? You were captive in Alsanis for a long damn time—andno onewas allowed to ‘reach in,’ as you put it.”
“Alsanis is not this Tower,” Terrano said softly. “They were created in different eras, for different purposes.”
“And you know this how?” She didn’t argue; she agreed with the facts. Spike was still in the way.
“Spike told me. The Tower is allowed to offer choice. It is not allowed to enforce it on any of those who now reside here. It...never has been. Alsanis could. Helen could—and can. But the Tower was created in part for the preservation—and study—of a new generation of...species. The Ancestors,” he said. “And those that followed. It’s why Sedarias’s stupid brother can do what he’s doing at all.”
“But if that’s the case, why is the Adversary trapped here?”
“He’s not of the new generation. He’s one of the things the Ancients wanted to protect us from. Helen and Alsanis were created after the Ancients realized that the thing we’d need the most protection from in our daily lives was...each other. But the Ancients hoped to create a species, if that’s the right word, that wasn’t in a constant state of war. The species—according to Spike—was fragile. New. It was too easy to destroy them or change them irrevocably.
“The heart of this Tower isn’t Barrani or human or Ancestor. It’s older. As old,” he added, “as Spike. It can stop the Adversary. It can...prohibit interactions with the Barrani within this confined space—as long as the Barrani themselves don’t seek to interact. But they do. Some of them. They have to approach. But the approach affects them, and only them.
“Spike says that your approach will be different. Because of that thing you’re wielding.”
“And I shouldn’t wield it?”
“Oh, no, he thinks you should. But you can approach because you’re mortal. The Tower cannot.” Before she could argue, he said, “It’s the nature of choice.”
“This is the stupidest thingever!”
“Clearly you’ve never listened to Mandoran when he really gets going.”
“I’ve been there when he’s gotten himself thoroughly stuck in a wall.” She exhaled.
