She looked across at the Adversary.
“What,” she said, raising her voice, “do you look like? What doyouactually look like?”
The High Lord’s face smiled. It was the smile of incipient death. But he lowered his upheld arms, and said, “Does it matter?”
“Actually, yes. I think it does.”
“What do you wish to see? What do you fear to see?”
Kaylin shook her head. “My fears and desires are mine, not yours. I know most of them. Some ambush me by surprise, but they’re not yours. I want to know what you look like. I want to know what you want.” As she spoke, Terrano snorted, and she began to walk again. This time, however, she moved. She thought if she ran, she could close the distance quickly, but wasn’t certain.
She lowered the sword, but had no way to sheathe it.
“It is not my desires that are tantamount here,Chosen.” He spit the word out, and others came with it—True Words, all.
“Do you have none?” It was a thought that hadn’t occurred to Kaylin until this moment. About the Adversary. About the fieflords. About anything that had terrified her. She had been terrified. The assumption, the natural assumption, was that fear was theintent. “When you came here the first time, when you attacked the High Halls, when you attacked the High Lord—what didyouwant?”
Silence. Even the flow of golden words around his person froze.
Terrano nodded, as if this were somehow the right question. He was transparent now. She thought he was fading, and reached instinctively to grab him, to hold him here. If he left now, she thought he’d be lost forever.
“What if I want to be lost?” His voice was soft.
Her hand tightened, anyway. It would crush the cohort. It might crush Teela. And there would be alotof things attempting to crush them. He could wait in line.
“Would you trap me as the Adversary has been trapped?”
“No!”
“Would you trap me as my friends are trapped?”
“They aren’t trapped anymore!”
“They’re caged,” Terrano said quietly.
“They’re not—they’rehome.”
“You don’t think of home as a cage? Mine was. My first home, in Allasarre. My second home, in Alsanis.”
“Fine. You lived in cages. Butplease. Just...live in this one a little while longer? Wait to see how many of your cohort we have to bury. Wait to tell them in person whatever it is you’ve decided.”
“And if that’s not what I want?”
“It’s notallyou want. But youwereworried about them. Worried enough to listen. Worried enough to come back. I’m not saying you have to live your entire existence for them—but make that one thing more important, just for now.”
But she turned to the Adversary, her hand on Terrano’s arm, the great sword trailing across what passed for ground. “What did you want, then?”
“Freedom.”
“You weren’t caged.”
“I was not caged by the Tower, Chosen. Your companion is not caged, either. And yet, you hold him, regardless; you plead, you insinuate.” It took her a moment to realize that he was referring to Terrano.
“I don’t hold Terrano.”
“Oh? Is he not, even now, beside you? You might not hold knowledge of his name; you might not hold absolute power over his actions. You are not master of his fate—but you are, nonetheless, the trap, the cage into which he has walked.”
Kaylin glanced at Terrano. “You don’t understand. Hechoseto be here.”
