It was Hope who broke the silence, because Spike still hadn’t moved. She barely prevented herself from kicking him, not that her foot would have had much of an effect, given the current difference in their size. “Chosen, choice is the defining factor of independent life. For better or worse. If the parents restrict choice, reserve it, forbid it, their children will remain children for the entirety of their existence.
“Perhaps, as a person who serves the Halls of Law, this is not obvious to you. To you, the laws are perhaps a way of circumscribing choice, a way of infantilizing people.”
“They’re not.”
“You’re grinding your teeth,” Terrano helpfully observed.
“In order to be adult—that is not the correct word, but it is the analogous word, I believe—choices must have consequences, for good or ill. This Tower was not created to shepherd children.”
“And the Hallionne were?”
“The Hallionne were later creations. The complications of choice and consequences were...better understood, by that point. The permanence of consequence, better understood, as well. I believe that the Hallionne were created to prevent people from making—or acting on—extreme impulses that would otherwise pass. The moment of action should not always define the entirety of the rest of a life.” There was a small hesitation, and then he added, “Helen is more maternal than perhaps a building might otherwise be.
“She considers her centuries of experience to be relevant in comparison to your decades. But she will also abide by your decisions; it is part of how she was created. She can make choices, and does, but that was costly, as you know. She could not now do what this Tower is doing. I’m not sure she could ever do what this Tower is doing.”
“Spike, Ineed you to move.”
“And you as well are given choice by the Tower. It has stretched itself to its utmost limits to give you that choice, to support it. Were it not for your nature as Chosen, even this would be denied the Tower. Spike,” he added. “I believe they are ready.”
To Kaylin’s extreme irritation, Spike moved. Terrano was trying not to laugh, which didn’t really help.
But the minute Spike moved—the second he began—she almost froze. She carried a sword, and she faced something that appeared to be the High Lord, surrounded by his people. The sword was not her own; it was part of the Tower. The heart of the Tower.
Why is this creature so dangerous?
You are here to free the names of the dead—the damned—and you can ask that question?It was Ynpharion, frustration and condescension a constant in the timbre of his internal voice.
I know whyIthink he’s dangerous. I don’t understand whySpikethinks he is.
Ynpharion didn’t understand, either—but it didn’t bother him. The things trying to kill him did. Kaylin did. Spike’s opinion was irrelevant.
Terrano nudged her, or tried. His hand passed through her shoulder. It was disturbing. She could feel his palm connect, and the passage through what she assumed was solid flesh was slow. It was also unnecessary. She could see a path form in front of her feet, bridging the chasm that separated the Adversary and his captives from the rest of the room.
“I cannot cross that bridge,” Hope said, his voice both soft and distant. “And Spike cannot cross it, either.” Before she could speak, he added, “We will be here, when you return.” It sounded a lot likeif.
“Can you keep Terrano here?”
“No, Chosen. Not unless Terrano wishes to stay.”
“I can’t,” Terrano said. “I don’t think she can walk that bridge without me.”
At any other time, Kaylin would have been offended. But the sword in her hand trembled as she took a step across what she had thought to be stone. If it was, it was incomplete, a structure built by a Tower that hadn’t the will or strength to finish what it had started. It was gray, and—yes—opalescent. It looked like pale Shadow, to Kaylin. But she had come to terms with the fact that Shadow was not a single thing.
No, she thought as she began to walk, it was a manifestation of potential. Helen, stripped bare, probably looked like this. Alsanis. The Tower itself. Everything that they created—whole rooms and everything those rooms contained—probably started from here. Everything they no longer required probably returned to it.
She wondered what Terrano saw; he followed her. No, he walked beside her.
His feet, however, didn’t touch the bridge. They hovered above whatever it was that lay beneath it. Terrano didn’t look down. Kaylin was not afraid of heights, and did. She could see darkness. There was no light, and nothing that looked like bottom. But there was no Shadow, either; no glints of moving, squirming color.
She was certain that if she stepped off this bridge, she’d fall. Terrano didn’t appear to be bothered by gravity. No, she thought, it was more than that; he appeared to be avoiding the bridge. He looked across it. Straight across it.
The man on the throne rose. As he left that throne, it dissolved, losing shape and cohesion. What was left did not become unformed Shadow, or even half-formed Shadow. No, she thought, clenching fists. It becamewords.
Flecks of color rose from beneath Kaylin’s feet, as if they were mutant moths, fluttering and passing each other in their awkward flight. She was surprised when they attached themselves to the sword’s blade—surprised and afraid.
But fear was not as strong as anger, and the sight of the words, dissolved and returning to the mass of the gathered, and the trapped, did anger her. She didn’t know—couldn’t know for certain—if the words were the ghosts she had seen the first time, or if their cries and pleas were an artifact of the Adversary’s power. Certainly the name she had salvaged in the West March had not spoken to her at all.
Yet it was the appearance of the dead that drove the living who had ventured here. Sometimes it drove them to their own deaths, and their names, the words upon which their lives depended, had joined the trapped, because guilt and the pain of loss had allowed them no other option.
