Her power did now.
His legs stretched and stretched again, becoming oddly diffuse as they did. Robin’s head followed the movement of those legs, his eyes darting between the strands that were now laid out. Even between the cracked pieces that contained or entrapped Kavallac, Kaylin could see the minutiae of pattern, of small geometries, the things he had identified as paths.
They shuddered in place as smoke and fire crept up from behind them.
Severn glanced once at the ceiling above his head and then unwound his chain. He’d shortened it by changing the center point he gripped—but Starrante had already said it was risky.
It wasn’t likely to kill Severn; it could quite possibly destroy the weapon. But the chain, when spun, served as a magic-breaker. None of their enemies had condescended to draw actual swords. All of their attacks would be spells, and at least so far, those spells involved range. Starrante had proved very competent at shielding himself—and those in his immediate vicinity—from arcane attacks, but he was facing in the wrong direction.
They needed Kavallac. Kaylin focused on that. Severn was her partner; he’d heard everything she’d heard and if he had his own spin on it, he also understood what needed to be done.
Mostly, survive.
“Where’s Annarion?” she shouted, as Sedarias readied herself, bending slightly at the knees.
“He’s behind us and in front of the portal. They’ve breeched it, but they can’t cross it yet. Androsse is doing something—” Sedarias broke off. Wordless, she leaped toward the portal, landing on a floor that, lit, was easily distinguished from places that weren’t guaranteed to be safe.
She didn’t disperse.
Bellusdeo moved, as well; Emmerian lifted a hand to touch her, and lowered it before he made contact.
“Warrior Queen,” he said, his voice soft but audible.
Bellusdeo did not hear him, or if she did, didn’t acknowledge the simple words.
Her hands shot forward, as if in a blindingly fast prayer; when her palms touched, she spread her hands wide and lightning flashed, with the Dragon as its center point. The lightning spread to the floor, surrounding Bellusdeo as she crackled.
Emmerian’s hand was on Kaylin’s shoulder before she could move. “You have your duties,” he said. “And the lightning was Bellusdeo’s. It was not an enemy’s attack.”
“I’ve never seen—”
“No—nor have I. The Arkon would have recognized it. Help the Arbiter. If it becomes necessary, I will stand beside Bellusdeo.”
“But she—”
“She is precious to our kind, yes. But on fields of Shadow and imminent loss, she has no equal. There is a reason she was queen.”
Lightning-robed, Bellusdeo then walked toward Sedarias, and toward the portal that was no longer a flat pane of something glass-like. It was bulging now; from cracks that had not yet widened enough to allow passage, fog and smoke poured, the former falling to the ground, the latter rising to the ceiling.
Kaylin understood why Starrante had forbidden flight or shifts in shape when she saw that smoke—glittering smoke, of course—hit the first of the odd breaks that characterized every part of the library; half of it was lost in an instant. It did not leak across a crack to fill the ceiling in other pieces of the heights—it simply vanished.
She returned her attention to Kavallac, to Starrante; Kavallac’s wings existed in two separate slices of library. They had not vanished into the ether—or the primal ether which was where Kaylin now suspected bits and pieces of people would go if they moved carelessly. She thought again of the attack from which Starrante had built his escape, his return to the library.
What she didn’t understand was what Candallar hadintendedfor the library. She wasn’t like the Arkon; she wanted to bedoinginstead of learning about what long-dead peoplehad done. She didn’t want to be surrounded by dusty, silent books for whom her entire existence was irrelevant. But... She would never, ever have tried to break or destroy the library—even without the Arkon standing behind her like enraged death waiting to happen.
“He was not trying to break it,” Starrante said, a reminder that she was connected to him through a bridge of healing. “He was trying to breakourpower over it. He did not understand that the two are utterly entwined. I believe he stopped his destruction when he did. He is young and foolish.”
He wasn’t young. Kaylin had no desire to argue with the “foolish,” though.
“Were he to know our names, he would control this library completely. It is the only way such control would be possible. Robin?”
The boy hesitated. But Dragons—even silver and slightly translucent—were clearly nowhere near as terrifying as giant hairy spiders, and as he was now comfortable with the latter, he stared at Kavallac. Starrante bopped the back of his head—but gently. “You may speak with her when we are done, but we must be done soon—this is far too taxing.”
Robin then looked at the strands that led to the space that most of Kavallac occupied. He frowned. “I think,” he finally said, “that it has to be done all at once. This part,” he added, pointing to something that was invisible to Kaylin’s eyes from this distance, “and this part—there has to be a third repetition.”
“I will cheerfully strangle Larrantin the next time he dares to set foot in my library,” Starrante then said. “The third is echo or reflection.”
“I think so—I think that’s what Larrantin meant—but she’s not trapped in an echo, right? I think you’ll hurt her if all of the parts don’t come together at the same time.”
