He lifted his face toward what remained of the ceiling, and when he exhaled, a stream of sticky white took root; he caught it with his front legs—four of them—and began to tease it into threads. While he did, Bellusdeo once again took aim at the chancellor’s party, and this time, Emmerian did the same; the former aimed directly at the floor beneath their feet, and the latter, at the ceiling above their heads.
The flames obscured normal vision—in both directions. Starrante, however, didn’t appear to notice. He was, as his form suggested he might, building a web. This web was like a spider’s web to begin with—but the strands and their configuration seemed somehow more mathematical, more precise. Robin, in Kaylin’s shadow, drew his fascinated gaze from the fire to the web itself, as if compelled.
His eyes narrowed as his chin rose; the whole of his neck was revealed as Starrante’s web began to spread.
“I’ve—I’ve seen this,” Robin whispered.
“You’ve seen this web?”
He shook his head as if the web itself were irrelevant. “That.” He pointed at one section of the web—the section almost directly in front of Starrante, rather than overhead. “That pattern. That one there. I’ve seen it before. Look—it’s repeating.”
“What is he doing?” Kaylin asked, bending as the fire cleared and the fire resumed. “What are the patterns meant to do?”
But Robin barely heard her. His gaze drifted from the webbing being constructed, up the limbs that were constructing it, and to the eyes of Starrante himself, because Starrante was looking at Robin, not the pattern he was creating. “What do you see?”
“You’re walking a pattern,” Robin replied with vastly less fear than he had shown moments before. “You’re walking a pattern with your limbs. Are youWevaren?”
“Yes. That is not what we call ourselves, but yes, that is what I am.”
The Dragon fire was answered by purple flame—but this flame glistened, and it moved like a wave, not a cone. It was darker in color than the purple fire Kaylin had seen used before, and something about it set her teeth on edge.
“Don’t let it touch you!” Kaylin shouted, mostly at Bellusdeo, who stood at the outer rim of Starrante’s protections.
“You think?” the Dragon replied in annoyed Elantran.
Robin’s gaze moved, briefly, to this new wall of ugly flame, this new wave. Kaylin could see that the opalescence was stronger here. She had always considered this type of glittering, ugly color to be a thing of Shadow, a property of the Shadows—but she knew that was wrong; Hope’s eyes sometimes glittered in the same way.
“No,” Robin said, looking at what now approached them like a wall of death, all sight of the three behind it obscured. “I think—I don’t think that’s the pattern you want.”
Starrante’s eyes didn’t seem possessed of lids, but they widened at the effrontery of Robin.
“Master Larrantin said that that was the way it was done a long time ago—but he said there were other, more efficient patterns that had been developed since.” His Barrani was astonishingly good, given his age and the area he’d called home before his disappearance.
“Larrantin?” Starrante did not spit but might have had he a normal mouth and the usual saliva. “And what, exactly, would you suggest?”
“Can I touch it?”
“Boy—”
“No!” The two words collided.
Robin nodded. He was frustrated; there was no way to draw what he wanted to draw, and he clearly did, because his hands were moving almost as if he held a quill. Those hands, she now saw, were ink-stained, the nails chipped. “That line,” he said, shouting to be heard over the roar of two Dragons. Their breath could keep the purple fire at bay, but it was a losing battle; they slowed its advance but did not destroy it.
“This one.”
“It’s—you’ve created five diamonds, repeating—but you don’t need five.”
“You have no idea what path is being traced.”
“Ido. I know what path you’re tracing—Larrantin said it’s an important pathway.”
“Larrantin thinks hishairis important on a bad day.”
“Move that line and that one. Shorten them. In the center, the shape should be different.”
“Different?”
Robin nodded. He could speak High Barrani, but communicating what he could see on the inside of his head was almost beyond him. Starrante, however, studied the pattern for a long beat while fire approached. He did not call a retreat; he didn’t appear to notice the fire itself.
