The Adversary lifted an arm. To his hand came a blade—and that blade was of Shadow; the flat was ebon, but beneath its surface, color squirmed.
“Don’t listen to him,” Terrano said sharply.
Kaylin started to point out that he hadn’t said anything when he opened his mouth.
Words flew from between his lips. Golden words, more seen than heard. He gestured as he continued this odd variation of speech. On the far side of the bridge, something rose at his back; it looked like the bottom of a cliff, sculpted in a dark, silvery gray; colors gathered in the crevices. But she saw, as she approached on a bridge that seemed, somehow, to be extending even as she walked, that that cliff flowed from his cape, or what appeared to be his cape, extending out and up toward a nonexistent sky.
She did hear the thunder of his spoken words, so different in texture from True Words. She even understood them; they were in High Barrani.
“Stop what you’re doing andfinishthe summoning!”
She wondered what the words would do or be if the Barrani lords had not been stopped. She wondered how much power the Adversary now had, because the Ferals had only partly been uprooted, the mooring they provided destroyed.
But she didn’t wonder what would happen to the words that he had trapped and contained for as long as he had been prisoner here. She understood, as she struggled to reach the end of the bridge, and the Adversary who was waiting, what the fate of those words would be.
Kaylin—youmusthurry.Nightshade, his voice sharper and louder than it had ever been.
She started to run. She didn’t ask why—given the Adversary’s command, she could guess. Running, however, didn’t make the damn bridge anyshorter. It didn’t make her legs any longer.
Terrano kept easy pace with her. He didn’t seem to be working at all. She stopped moving. Terrano stopped, as well, but again, without effort, as if he was anchored to Kaylin in a fashion she couldn’t discern. “Are you done?” he asked, barely masking his frustration.
Nightshade fell silent, but the urgency, the necessity, of motion remained as a resonant echo. Regardless, running here did no good. Walking in the heart of the Tower had done no good, either, not immediately. And she was still in the heart of the Tower. She looked up. Looked at the peak of the edifice behind the Adversary, and followed it down to the Adversary himself.
Kaylin had grown up in the shadows of power; she knew to fear it, to avoid it. Everything in the fiefs had had more power than she’d had, as a child. Everything. Her mother. Severn. Any adult she met. The Ferals. The thugs that served the fieflord. She had been utterly powerless.
She had thought—she remembered this as she stood on the bridge—that when she became an adult she wouldn’t be powerless. She would be like the other adults she could see. She’d be stronger. She wouldn’t be afraid of everything. As a child, she had evenbelievedthat.
She was an adult now—all Teela’s worries aside. She’d become the woman that she’d dreamed of being as a child. But the lack of fear hadn’t followed. The world she could see as a child was not, had never been, the whole world. The world she could see now was bigger, and the power in it, greater. The thugs—at least the mortal ones—that had peripherally served Nightshade were irrelevant, yes. She could handle them herself without blinking.
But the things that terrified her now were vaster, stronger, deadlier than those thugs had been. Was therenevera time in life when she wouldn’t have to be afraid? She swallowed. She had the marks of the Chosen. She had the ability tosave a lifethat no other doctor could save. She had saved mothers in difficult childbirth; she had saved infants in the same situation. She had saved foundlings injured by their reckless, childish courage. She had done more. She had brought the cohort back.
All but one.
“You ready?” Terrano asked softly, as if he could hear the whole of her thoughts.
Kaylin shook her head.
“Be ready soon, hmm?”
She looked at the Adversary, who wore the face of the High Lord. He could wear other faces, other forms; he could look like the worst of the unique Shadows that lined the interior border ofRavellon. But the form he took when he confronted those who wished to take the Test of Name was not his own.
What did he actually look like when appearances were stripped away? Monstrous? Terrible? Was that how she had to see him in order to carry—and use—this sword?
Or did the sword take the shape it had taken because she saw this as a literal battle? Given what was happening on the other side of the bridge, she didn’t feel that that was wrong, either. Itwasa battle. Hewasthe enemy.
“You’ve never been in a war,” Terrano said, confirming that her thoughts were somehow visible, audible, to him. He spoke Elantran.
“Neither have you.”
“I have. I’ve seen the wars between familial lines. I’ve lost siblings and cousins to them. On the ground, they were all fighting to survive. They killed because the alternative was dying. Their enemies weren’t Shadows—but it doesn’t matter to the dead. Shadow, Barrani, Dragon—it’s all just death. They didn’t have to make monsters or be monsters. They wanted to survive.
“He’s an enemy. Either you will walk away from this, or he will. That’s all you need to know.”
But it wasn’t. If that had been all the knowledge she needed, she’d already be there, on the other side of the bridge. The Tower didn’t speak to her. She had taken—had been given—some part of the words that comprised its heart and its purpose, and they armored her, armed her; they were the weapons the Tower intended for her to use.
And yet. She wondered if they had taken those forms—ifshehad somehow dictated the forms—because that was the paradigm she was familiar with. War. Violence. Death.
The fire whispered to her, its voice a wordless crackle. She felt its heat, but it didn’t burn; it warmed. Without thought, she told the fire a story about the necessity of warmth in winter, without which there was ice and death. It was short, but the crackle quieted.
