Cast in Conflict

by Michelle Sagara

  As were the words that she had heard.

  Free me.

  Kill me.

  She had completely sympathy with the former, and a bitter kind of empathy for the latter.

  “Kaylin.”

  But Mandoran didn’t feel like Shadow to her, and she wondered if that were, in part, because the hand attached to him was the hand that she had gloved in strands of Shadow—inert Shadow, as her hand had never tried to speak with her or control her.

  The idea of inert Shadow didn’t exist for Bellusdeo. But Kaylin had come to understand that Shadow was a single word that was meant to cover a plethora of living, sentient beings. It meant—had meant—death. Until Gilbert. Until Spike.

  She didn’t know what normal for Mandoran was. She knew, however, that he wasn’t being transformed into a thing of Shadow. “You’re not in pain?”

  “No. I really, really think we should leave.”

  “No problem. You lead.”

  “How did you even get here? I’m only here because you dragged me in!”

  “I got here through you.”

  Kaylin—not the time for this.

  Right. Right. She exhaled. She missed Hope. She missed someone who had some sense of what was happening. Even Terrano would be better than Mandoran.

  “Can we reverse it?” she asked, when she was certain she wasn’t going to be pointing figurative fingers. “Because I think you were already almost here when I grabbed you. Terrano meant for me to pull you out and drop you on Bellusdeo’s back.”

  “I was almost cut in half,” Mandoran replied, more edge in his tone, but less blame.

  “Healer here,” she replied.

  “No one is going to care if I’m almost cut in half on the way out. Everyone’s going to be pissed off at me if you are.”

  “Look—if you’ve got better ideas—”

  The rest of Kaylin’s words were lost to a roar; the ground beneath their feet buckled. Kaylin fell because Mandoran lost his footing. She was afraid to let go of him—the last thing she wanted at this very moment was to lose him to...this place.

  She banged her knee; Mandoran landed on his free elbow. Pushing themselves to their feet was an act of coordination that the ground only barely allowed. The buildings were now entirely retracted, as if they were hunkering defensively beneath thick shells. Kaylin tightened her grip on Mandoran’s hand.

  “Where are we—” The words were lost, again, to thunderous roaring; the whole of the road buckled, as if attempting to shake the sound off. Kaylin was better prepared for this, and managed to retain her footing; Mandoran, however, had ceased to rely on the solidity of the ground beneath his feet. His arm remained solid, and he remained visible, but the roar of the Dragon—and it was draconic—no longer caused him to stumble.

  Kaylin’s weight, when she did, didn’t pull him down.

  Mandoran didn’t bother to ask her another question; mixed in with the roaring that caused the ground to buckle was other roaring: Bellusdeo, she thought. Emmerian. The fiefs weren’t Elantra—but they were close enough that Dragons in aerial combat would be seen across the city the Emperor did rule.

  The first roar, the roar that caused the breaking of this Shadowed ground, was no doubt the outcaste’s.

  She kept running, stumbling, righting herself, and running, because she could see one building that had not withdrawn, like a turtle or snail, into its shell. That building, unlike the streets, wasn’t cracking and fissuring as the cadence of the outcaste’s voice grew louder and louder, and it appeared to have a door.

  Well no, it appeared to have something that might have been a door. It might have been a mouth. Mandoran’s grip tightened and he yanked Kaylin off her feet as the stone beneath her soles cracked; the crack spread, like dark lightning in a sky of stone, and the rock surrounding the crack began to tumble and fall.

  Door.

  Mouth.

  Kaylin cursed in Leontine and followed Mandoran’s lead as he dragged her toward the only solid stretch of ground: inside.

  * * *

  In between one step—outside and inside—the roaring died. She couldn’t hear it, couldn’t feel the aftershocks beneath her feet. She checked her hand—the one attached to Mandoran—and exhaled. This was a door, not a mouth; no Shadow saliva or breath greeted their entrance. Mandoran came to stand upon something shiny and hard that nonetheless carried both of their weights.

  “I really hope you know what you’re doing,” he said.

  She failed to kick him.

  It was dark. Thinking this, Kaylin raised her arm—the free arm—and opened her hand; the hall lit up. She hadn’t summoned light, hadn’t dragged a mark off her skin, suspending its considerable weight in order to be able to see. She’d lifted her arm in order to do just that.

  But light had appeared. It was purple-white, a color that wasn’t nearly as uncomfortable as green to the eyes. It was uncomfortable in other ways; it appeared to match—exactly—the colors of her marks. The color of her new mark. She wondered if there was a place to leave this word here; she really didn’t want to carry it back with her.

  If back was even a possibility.

  “Was that your stomach?”

  “Shut up.”

  * * *

  This hall—and it seemed to be hall, of a kind—continued, but seemed to end in a wall. All of the walls were oddly shaped; they weren’t completely flat, but seemed to bulge outward, as if something was straining to get through them to the two people within. Not a comforting thought.

  “See any doors?”

  Kaylin shook her head. “Do the walls feel solid to you?”

  “They look solid.”

  “Not what I asked.”

  “Why don’t you touch one and find out?”

  “Because I’d either have to let go of your hand—and that’s not happening unless someone cuts my hand off—or I touch it with this.” She lifted her palm and waved it in front of his face.

  He looked at the mark. “Your skin looks burned.”

  Which is what it felt like as well.

  “Did any of the other marks cause that?”

  “No. Not even the ones I picked up later.” She hesitated, and then said, “But...it’s the same color as the rest of the marks, currently. I think we need to get out of here.”

  Mandoran exhaled, lifted his free—and unmarked—hand and pushed against one of the walls.

  Kaylin was not terribly comforted when he practically fell through it; her grip tightened to numbness as she tried to yank him back.

  “Sorry—something’s attached itself to my hand.”

  “What—again?” She grimaced and pulled. She wanted Hope, here; the sense that he could instantly protect her from malevolent magic had become so much part of the way she walked in the world she felt almost naked without him.

  But she’d spent almost all of her life without him. What she had right now were the marks of the Chosen—in a livid white and purple—and the hand that gripped Mandoran tightly. She added her free hand to gain more leverage—and found that here, at least, the grip was solid in a way it hadn’t been when they’d been suspended in mid-sky in an aerial battlefield.

  “Mandoran?” He was stiff, tense, rigid. Kaylin went from worried to terrified in the time it took to see his profile clearly. “Are you still in there?”

  “Yes—but I think things are going to get difficult.” His voice was strained.

  Kaylin was holding on with both hands. She reached out for him as if he were injured—and she found what she’d feared to find in the open streets. Shadow. She remembered that the right hand bore an entirely new mark. She could hear a voice she recognized—a voice she was now certain wasn’t Mandoran’s.

  Kill me.

  Free me.

  Killing was not what she wanted, now. What she wanted was to pull Ma
ndoran out of the wall and find some way of leaving this place as soon as humanly possible. The strongest voice she could now hear wasn’t Mandoran’s. It was the other. And her own fear. She could lose him here. He was in her hands—and it wouldn’t matter.

  Kaylin!

  Don’t talk to me—don’t listen. I don’t think it’s safe. Mandoran is alive, tell the cohort—but he’s trying not to communicate with them until we’re out of here. So—don’t talk and don’t listen.

  Silence. Severn withdrew, and only when he did did she realize he’d been in the background all along, so much a part of the way she viewed the universe that only in absence was she aware of it. But Mandoran was afraid for the cohort, and he wasn’t an idiot. Well, no, he was an idiot some of the time—but so was she. And he had a better sense of the risks. What he wasn’t willing to risk, she shouldn’t be.

  She wanted to ask Severn where Hope was or what he was doing. She didn’t.

  She had found Mandoran.

  * * *

  Given that she was physically attached to him, this shouldn’t have made sense, even to Kaylin. But she could now feel the strands of Mandoran as distinct and separate from strands of Shadow. The Shadow felt more solid than it had the first time she touched him, and she began to pull at it, to attempt to rip it out.

  Mandoran snarled, his fingers tightening around hers as he uttered a string of Leontine. She stopped, and he uttered a different string.

  “You’re not cutting out anything important,” he snapped. “Just keep going.”

  “You’re stuck in a wall—”

  “I’m almost unstuck. Whatever you’re doing—keep doing it.”

  She—like most sane people—didn’t like causing pain. She could do it, was doing it now, but her hands and teeth were clenched, almost locked, with the effort. Even if she felt it was necessary, she hated it.

  “We don’t always get to do the things we like. Unless we’re Terrano.” More cursing.

  The Shadow entwined with Mandoran was not inert. It fought her, and the battleground was Mandoran himself. But she’d done something like this before, in the Aerie that seemed farther away at the moment than the West March. She couldn’t physically mime the motion of wrapping, of spooling; her hands were locked in place.

  No, she thought. One hand was locked in place. She had always given preference to her left hand when it came to door wards or Shadow—the consequences of which were unpredictable. But she had a suspicion that the clarity of Shadow came from the new mark she’d gained.

  Her right hand was dominant; she didn’t want to risk it. Didn’t see that she had a choice. She pulled on Mandoran with both hands; he didn’t budge. But he didn’t seem to be moving forward, either. She could risk weakening the brace her weight provided.

  She lifted the right hand, pulling it slowly back; she could see it rise, a nimbus of dark light enfolding it. Shadow? It looked wrong for that, but the light here wasn’t normal light.

  “Keep going,” Mandoran said.

  “Can you even—” she grunted, her feet moving against what she hoped and assumed was stone “—see where you are?”

  “I can, now.”

  “Good. Can you leave it?”

  “I...don’t think that’s what we want.”

  She used perfectly functional Elantran cursing. He laughed. The sound was weak and shaky, but the amusement in it was genuine. “What are you looking at?”

  “A library.” Mandoran’s tone implied he’d seen enough libraries for this lifetime.

  “You’re going to make me hate books.”

  “What can you see?”

  “Shadow. A hall of sorts—the one we were walking down before you touched the wall.”

  “No doors?”

  “No doors.”

  “There’s a door here, farther in. I can see it.” His words were interrupted by grunts and the occasional single-syllable curse.

  “You are really, really making me hate libraries.” She bit her lip. “Fine. You’re sure?”

  “Here? I can’t be sure of anything. But...I don’t think it’s an illusion.”

  “Could you see it before?”

  “Before you started torturing me, you mean?” Before she could answer, he said, “No.”

  She exhaled. “Let me finish what I’m doing.”

  “Is there any end in sight?”

  She nodded, and then said, “Yes.”

  * * *

  The Shadow didn’t leave Mandoran in threads, as it had the last time. She could feel and see it as strands, layered between the more physical elements that she could identify as Barrani, but as she detached them, those strands seemed to coalesce into the fog that now shrouded her right hand, her right forearm. It seemed to hover above her skin, but didn’t sink beneath it to do whatever it had been trying to do with Mandoran.

  “Can you see your feet?”

  “Yes.”

  “Can you see my hand?”

  “Yes—it looks disembodied, which is disturbing.”

  She shifted position, then. “Step forward. I’ll follow.” She made it most of the way through what she saw as wall. She was only a little surprised when her right hand got stuck. There was no wall on Mandoran’s side; no hint of rounded tunnel, no hint of darkness.

  Her arm appeared to be stuck or caught on nothing. But that nothing was better than Shadow. Mandoran, however, felt like Mandoran. And when she looked at him, he no longer looked like a nightmare configuration of himself.

  “Are you just going to stand there?”

  “Having a bit of difficulty extricating my hand from the stuff I pulled out of you, yes.”

  “I’ll wait. Quietly.”

  She snorted. Working her hand free wasn’t painful, but it reminded Kaylin of watching Caitlin remove an old ring—the ring itself too small to easily fit over a knuckle, but small enough that it fit the finger beneath that knuckle. The analogy helped. What had Caitlin done in the end?

  Oh, right. Soap. Water.

  “Your language is really foul.”

  “Quietly, remember?” She cursed again. This time, Mandoran lent her his weight as she pulled.

  She landed on him when her arm finally came free. The hand was no longer ringed with a cloud of Shadow. She then exhaled and turned to look at the room.

  Mandoran had been right: they were in a library. It reminded Kaylin very much of the library space within the Academia: the height of the shelves, the ceiling, and the intimidating number of books it contained. If she could read them all—and her guess was she couldn’t—she wouldn’t finish before she’d perished of old age.

  She began walking, dragging Mandoran with her. Even if he looked normal, she didn’t want to let go of his hand. Not yet. She was willing to hand him over to the cohort, but none of the cohort were here. At eye level, she could see a third of the shelves; she could crane her neck up, could reach maybe the half point if she stood on her toes.

  “I wouldn’t touch anything here if I were you,” Mandoran helpfully said.

  “I just want to see if they’re actually books.”

  “I really wouldn’t touch anything.”

  “We’re already touching the floor. We’re going to have to touch the door. I just want to see if this is actually what it looks like it is.”

  “I am so glad I’m not in contact with everyone else.”

  “Terrano would check.”

  “Terrano knows what he can survive.”

  “And I don’t?”

  “Just don’t, all right?”

  She turned a glare on him, and then reached out and grabbed a book—fingers on the top of the spine, not the edge of the binding. It felt like a book, albeit ragged at the top of the pages, and she pulled it off the shelf.

  Mandoran looked unimpressed, not worried or concerned. He stopped breathi
ng when she tried to open it—which was difficult to do with one free hand; he wasn’t offering help.

  “The Arkon—the chancellor,” he corrected himself, “would reduce you to ash for the way you’re handling that book. You do not open a book by holding on to one of its covers and letting the rest dangle.”

  “Yeah, well he’s not here. You’re going to report me?”

  “It is entirely unnecessary,” a new voice said.

  She fumbled to close the book—without dropping it—as she turned in the direction of the voice.

  Mandoran, being as mature as ever, said, “I told you.”

  * * *

  In the bright light of this library was a spider. It was a giant spider, eyes evenly spaced across the large, central—and hairy—body from which legs or arms extended. The librarian was one of the Wevaran.

  “Starrante?” she said, without much hope. All of the Wevaran she had met—and she had met very few—looked the same, to her.

  The spider clicked. A lot. Kaylin tensed, readying herself to leap out of the way of the webbing that the Wevaran used as both weapon and escape.

  The clicking, however, stopped. “Did you say Starrante?” the Wevaran said—in Barrani.

  Kaylin, book now closed and carefully clutched to her chest—because librarians were unlikely to kill someone if their attack would also damage the books—nodded.

  “Do I look like Starrante?”

  She decided honesty was not the best policy. “There are similarities,” she finally said, “and I haven’t met many of your people.”

  “I have met very few of yours—especially not here. In fact, now that I look at you both, I do not believe you have permission to be here.”

  “Who would we get permission from?”

  “That is the question,” the unnamed Wevaran replied.

  “I’m Kaylin, and this is Mandoran. We didn’t mean to come here, but my friend kind of fell through the wall.”

  “Wall?”

  “Wall,” she replied firmly.