Cast in Conflict

by Michelle Sagara

  Is the space weaker because we’re in it?

  Yes. Bakkon was lying. She could feel and hear a clamor beneath the surface of the words, a disharmony, even if there was only one voice speaking. It is a wonder to me that you have survived.

  Survived what?

  Anything.

  Why—look out!

  I understand the nature of the attacks I may face here. I am capable of defending myself. I have given you anything of value left here. I trust you will take it, in the end, to Starrante. Starrante will understand.

  She didn’t want to leave him to die.

  “Kaylin,” Mandoran said, lips almost attached to her ear. “The Shadow is eating away at the stability of this place. It won’t hold for long.”

  “He’ll die,” she replied.

  “Kaylin—”

  “No, you don’t understand,” she snapped, one hand becoming a fist around the neck of the bag she’d been handed. “He’s staying because he wants to die.”

  “He’s an adult. He’s allowed to make choices. But we shouldn’t be staying because we don’t want to die.” His grip tightened. “Look, Teela will kill me if I lose you here.”

  “Then leave. Take the books.”

  He is right.

  I don’t care. You don’t have to die here.

  Did you not understand? I cannot leave. Here—here is the only place I do not hear Ravellon’s voice. That voice has driven all who can hear it to madness. It is here I must stand if I wish to die as myself.

  She should have accepted that. She knew it. But she could hear what lay beneath perfectly reasonable words, none of which were lies. Bakkon did not want to leave. He fought now because survival was so instinctive it had governed the entirety of his life, from birth.

  No, he wanted to die.

  Just as she had wanted to die when she had first entered the Hawklord’s Tower. Not for the same reasons—his reasons were murky and he didn’t put them into thoughts she could touch and hear—but the emotion, the despair, were almost identical.

  Mandoran was right; Bakkon was not the child she had been. But that child had lost the life that had given her any meaning, any hope. Absent that life, she had struggled to survive in the fief of Barren, and she had done things in the name of survival that she would never do again while she lived.

  But she was grateful that the Hawklord hadn’t killed her. Hadn’t even tried. She was grateful for the life she now led, and she tried—in all the ways available—to balance the harm she had done with help. She couldn’t erase the damage to other people. She could stop herself from doing that damage to anyone else.

  She was certain that the Wevaran who had survived the fall of Ravellon and the rise of the Towers would be beyond grateful that Bakkon had survived—but only if he did.

  Your friend is correct. I do not want to escape. More web rose; Bakkon began to build a translucent dome in front of and above himself. The Shadow attacking them could be seen through it.

  Did you know that Shadow? Did you know what it used to be?

  Yes.

  You don’t want to kill it.

  No. What they do now they would not have done had they not become prey to the madness of the fallen.

  Can you wrap them in your web?

  If I have no other choice. You must leave.

  Wait—what madness?

  Bakkon didn’t answer. Maybe Bakkon couldn’t answer. But Spike probably could. He had been captive to Shadow, and had been freed from it.

  She felt an eddy of confusion, and realized the Wevaran had caught that thought drift, or had been caught by it. She could feel the sudden turn of his thought, the dangerous edge of hope. Can you—can you free them?

  “Mandoran—do you understand what Terrano did when he freed Spike?”

  Mandoran said nothing.

  “This—whatever it is, the moving blob over there—is caught the same way Spike was. It was Terrano who freed Spike, mostly. Can you do what he did?”

  “You freed the thing in the basement of the High Halls.”

  She wasn’t certain she had. “Spike did that.”

  “What did Spike do?”

  “I don’t know. It’s why I’m asking you. What did Terrano do?”

  “I don’t, you might recall, want to ask them right now. Whatever you did to drag us both here, Shadow was involved. I don’t want to take the risk of opening them up to the same thing.”

  “Don’t try that with me. You were watching us at the time. You know what Terrano saw.”

  “Fine.” The hand on her shoulder tightened. “I’ll look—but I can’t guarantee anything. Whatever Bakkon is fighting, it’s not like Spike.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Does it look like Spike to you?”

  “Spike was a historian—this would be the right place for him.” But no, he looked nothing like Spike did, at least not in the normal world. “What does he look like to you?”

  “I’m trying to see him,” was the snappish reply.

  Bakkon was holding his breath, and not for the same reason Kaylin was. The High Halls—the creature at its center—what happened to them?

  They’re more or less what they were before Ravellon fell. I think.

  The Shadow we face is not like your Spike, if I understand your thoughts. But they were once a friend.

  “No,” Mandoran said, his voice much softer. “What Terrano did, I can’t do. Not here. Not with that.” He hesitated.

  “What would you need, to be able to do it?”

  “I’d need to be able to catch it in my hands. I’d need to be able to cut it off entirely from the source. While not dying and not being absorbed by it.”

  Or not being transformed by it. Kaylin bit her lip and made a decision. Yes, if it were in her power she wanted to save everyone; that was her job. But Mandoran was a friend; the blob was a stranger who would probably kill Mandoran if Mandoran made the attempt. “Bakkon—come with us,” she said again.

  She could feel his hesitation. Could feel something that was almost hope—and she knew this one well. Hope was bitter. Having hope—and she had had none when she had finally crossed the bridge over the Ablayne the first time—led to nothing but pain. Because hope was for fools. Hope was for the naive. Hope didn’t change reality, didn’t alter truth.

  She swallowed. She had been afraid, in the early days, of hope. Of speaking of a future that was different from the past. She’d been afraid to crawl out of the darkness of herself, and into something that might have been light.

  And maybe, for Bakkon, there would be no light. She didn’t know. She only knew that she didn’t want to leave him to die. She was certain that the bag she carried contained the books that were unique. Copies of the others were probably contained in the library Starrante served.

  I am tired, Chosen, Bakkon said. I am tired. Do you understand why I have remained here? My kin do not feel isolation as keenly as the other races. There is safety in isolation. But I did not remain here merely to be safe. Nor did I remain here to preserve what I built. I have been waiting. I have been waiting. And you have brought me word that all waiting is in vain.

  He spit out webbing, and it remained in the air, as if it had a will or a life of its own. This was my life. This was the life I built. The life I wanted. But it is here and not elsewhere because this was the heart of Ravellon. There is nothing for me if that heart is ash.

  I’m not leaving without you.

  Then you will die.

  So will the books.

  She felt a glimmer of something that might be annoyance; it was different from grief, from despair.

  Black fire launched itself from the core of the blob on the other side of Bakkon’s defense.

  You don’t have to kill them.

  They are difficult to kill or they would not have survive
d our first encounter. And here, a glimmer of amusement, if dark. I was not lying. I cannot leave this space. I will fall into the same madness, and I will become a mindless part of it. I will kill you.

  Kaylin shook her head. She drew a long, steadying breath, and began to speak.

  * * *

  The light in the library slowly changed as she did. She started to lower the hand that was pressed into the Wevaran’s side, but changed her mind; it was her last deliberate thought as she gave herself over to the very slight sound she could hear. It was different from the voice she had followed in her desperate attempt to separate Mandoran from the contagion of Shadow; clearer, for one. Clear enough that it was entirely foreign to her.

  But it was the sound of the word itself—the sound Bakkon could hear when the word had fully separated itself from her skin. A word, a True Word. It had grown larger at her back, but as she turned toward it, she could see that it was drifting to where she stood.

  She repeated, slowly, what she could hear, syllables merging to form one long, complicated word.

  The tint of golden light changed the color of Bakkon’s webbing—both the slender strands he had built into a dome, and the glob that remained, ready to use, between his forelimbs. It also changed the color of the Shadow attacking Bakkon. It changed the shape of the creature as well.

  “I don’t think it was trying to kill Bakkon,” Mandoran said.

  She shook her head, concentrating on the spoken word as she repeated it, her voice stronger and more certain. The word grew larger and brighter as she spoke; had she not been physically attached to Bakkon with her free hand and Mandoran by one of his, she would have been able to walk around it, and walk beneath its tallest stroke, which formed an arch, like a keystone, above them all.

  Bakkon was shivering; she could feel the tremors beneath her palm; could see the shaking of his raised limbs. Beyond him, she could see the quivering, giant blob; it lost height as it listened, the protrusions from which Shadow exploded sinking back into the trunk of its form. It reflected the light of the True Word, becoming a thing of gold, on the surface.

  And it finally opened its eyes—or pushed its eyes to the surface of what passed for skin—as it looked past webbing and Wevaran to where Kaylin stood. The marks on her arms were glowing the same gold that the True Word did. It opened a mouth. No, two, or three that she could easily see.

  It spoke.

  It spoke the same word that Kaylin herself was speaking; she almost lost the syllables in surprise. The voice was deep and resonant. It was almost singing, and when she continued to speak, she did so quietly, because she couldn’t sing, couldn’t bring anything to its voice but a dissonant harmony.

  Bakkon’s legs lowered, the webbing he’d ejected unused. He began to back away from the Shadow; the Shadow did not follow. Kaylin saw that the word that would never again fit on her skin was moving—but it moved through her, through Bakkon, and toward the Shadow that was singing its syllables, combat, for the moment, forgotten.

  This time, when Mandoran tugged on her shoulder, she backed up. The Shadow continued to sing. Kaylin stopped speaking the word. “You’re sure you can’t save him?”

  “Not safely. I don’t know what you’ve done, but I think we should take advantage of it.”

  “It’s a word,” she said quietly. “It’s a word that the Shadow can see—and speak.”

  Bakkon seemed to lose height and size, although he never reached the diminutive shape of Spike as he’d been when they first encountered him. “I will try, Chosen,” he said, his voice wobbly. “I cannot promise anything but that.”

  “We’ll take it.”

  * * *

  There was one door that could be easily seen from where they were standing. Kaylin, when she was certain Bakkon was following, turned toward it. It was an internal door, although it was wider and taller than the doors in either the Hawks’ office or her home.

  “I will ask you both,” the Wevaran said as they approached it, “to climb on my back.”

  Mandoran said, “It’s not necessary. I can travel without touching the ground.” He looked pointedly at Kaylin. “You should ride.”

  She’d seen Liatt and her daughter ride Wevaran, but had had zero desire to ever try it herself. Grimacing, she nodded. It was very, very hard to override the visceral impulse to get as far away from the Wevaran’s mouth as possible. But one of the things she’d learned with the Hawks was how to override visceral impulse.

  She’d also learned when to trust it. Ugh. Bakkon bent his limbs until his body was almost flush with the stone beneath their feet. She closed her eyes as she clambered up his back. She settled the bag—made of webbing—with the books he had intended Kaylin to preserve in her lap, where it...stuck.

  The Wevaran helped, readjusting her seat as she tried to make herself at least partly comfortable.

  “Stand away from the door,” Bakkon told Mandoran. Mandoran moved instantly, casting a backward glance at the Shadow, whose voice could still be heard. It seemed to be growing louder; the ground shook in time with the syllables.

  Bakkon had eyes everywhere and didn’t need to reorient his body to look back; Kaylin didn’t. She turned her head. It seemed to her, as the doors flew off their hinges, that the Shadow was weeping.

  * * *

  Kaylin understood why the Wevaran had asked them both to mount the moment he started through the empty space left by doors that had been blown off their hinges; he moved. She tensed her legs and knees, and placed both hands flat in front of her, against his body. From there, she began to reach out as a healer. He had said he couldn’t leave the library safely, and she believed him—or believed that he believed it; he hadn’t lied.

  But she didn’t know what or how he might be enslaved—that was Spike’s word—or corrupted; she assumed that it would be similar to what had happened to Mandoran. Mandoran, however, was mostly himself; she cursed and wished she’d insisted that he join her. If he were here, she could physically reach out to touch him, to keep the strands of Shadow separate from the rest of him.

  He wasn’t in reach now—but he proved that he could easily pace the Wevaran. The door didn’t open onto the same street that she and Mandoran had walked—and that was a pity, because the street it did open onto wasn’t empty. The buildings were similar—they looked in places like normal buildings but melted or tilted into shapes she found instantly wrong.

  It wasn’t the buildings that were a problem—it was the Shadows in the street; the streets were beginning to fill. Kaylin had some experience with crowds, and some experience with the way crowd could become mob with very little warning. This felt like the latter.

  Bakkon scuttled up the side of a building, above the heads of the shorter or smaller Shadows. He spit webbing, tossed it behind them—Kaylin had to duck—and sped up.

  “Mandoran!”

  Mandoran, however, had seen the wisdom of Bakkon’s suggestion; he pushed himself off the ground in a trajectory that ended roughly on top of Kaylin, who reached up with her right arm—her stronger arm—and pulled him down in front of her. She then wrapped one arm around his waist and leaned to place a hand against Bakkon, keeping her mouth shut so that she didn’t bite her tongue when the Wevaran’s trajectory changed. He wasn’t flying, but he was spitting out webbing as he slowed, and that webbing seemed to be strong enough to bear both his weight and theirs.

  The air was heavy with fog. She missed Hope badly; she wanted to examine that fog beneath the veil of wing. “What does the fog look like to you?” she shouted, in Mandoran’s ear.

  “Fog?” Bakkon shouted back, spitting web between the start of the syllable, and repeating the uncomfortable action at the end. All of his eyes were open; the lids seemed to have retracted fully into his body. They moved, darting in all directions; Kaylin wanted to move her legs—or jump off his back—because she found it disturbing.

  She had n
ever liked spiders. The part of her that screamed he’s not a spider was almost too quiet. But spiders didn’t have eyes all over their bodies either. She spun sideways as Bakkon leaped above the fog, too preoccupied with staying seated to look down. The marks on her arms were glowing, the gold giving way to the brilliance of white.

  Bakkon grunted as he leaped again, as if the marks had a weight that he could feel, even if Kaylin couldn’t. Mandoran let loose a volley of Leontine, and that pulled Kaylin back to reality.

  Shadow tendrils burst out of the fog, thin and dark and faintly opalescent; they caught the web Bakkon was barely spinning, and began to burn. Mouthless, they screamed. The web ignited; Kaylin could see purple fire race up the strands the tendrils had grasped. She focused on staying on the Wevaran’s back and keeping one hand on each of her two companions.

  “Chosen!” Bakkon shouted. “Speak!”

  Words—not that there were many available—would have failed her completely. “Speak about what?”

  Bakkon growled; the growl extended into a roar.

  Chosen. She looked at her arms; the marks were glowing. Speak. The marks remained flat against her skin; there was only one mark that had fully risen, and she had left it in the library, if any of the library remained.

  But it had done something to the blob-Shadow, which had bought them just enough time to get through the doors and out. She looked over her shoulder as Bakkon leaped; cursed in Leontine because it was better than screaming, and tried to think. Hard, when her stomach was trying to find an entirely different place in her body to sit.

  “Mandoran—can you fly? Can you carry us?”

  “I could carry you,” he shouted back. “I don’t think I could carry the spider!” He spoke in Elantran.

  Praying that Mandoran wouldn’t get hit with another Shadow spear, Kaylin lifted a hand; it was the hand gloved in Shadow. In the light of these particular streets, she could see the strands as a dense web of lines. Those lines were moving, crawling in place as if struggling to escape. It was not a comforting thought.