He pulled her out of the cave.
She lost solidity, and he cursed; his grip appeared to tighten, but it tightened on smoke. Before he could shift it, she melted away again. Terrano sagged. “They never listened to me,” he told Kaylin. “Mandoran did sometimes, but the others, not so much.”
“Who was that?”
“Is,” was his defensive reply. He looked exhausted as he turned, once again, to the cave mouth. To the familiar, he said, “Can you hold this space?”
Squawk.
“Good. I have to leave it in your hands. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to get them out of there if I don’t.”
* * *
It took Terrano three tries to free one of the cohort. But the third time she began to lose cohesion, she frowned, her eyes narrowing. Kaylin could practically see the blue in their ghostly appearance; she could certainly see the narrowing of lips and the determined tightening of jaw.
“Sedarias?” Kaylin asked.
The woman looked up at the sound of Kaylin’s voice, her eyes changing shape. She caught Terrano’s arm in her insubstantial hands, and as she wavered, Kaylin called her name again. The dissipation stopped; the ghost almost appeared to be sweating with effort. She began to walk, to take steps—all silent—as Terrano supported her.
Kaylin came face-to-face with Sedarias. Sedarias did not take on color, she didn’t become solid. But she was, in as much as Kaylin thought she could be, here. She opened her mouth, but no words left her moving lips. And then her lips stopped moving as she caught sight of the Dragon.
* * *
To Kaylin’s surprise, Sedarias bowed. She had expected a reaction similar to Terrano’s, but remembered that Sedarias, unlike Terrano, was linked—or had been linked—to Mandoran, Annarion and Teela. What they saw, or at least what the first two saw, she also saw. She therefore knew Bellusdeo at least as well as the boys did.
Given what they said about Sedarias, probably better.
Bellusdeo returned the bow. Her eyes were a shade of orange that was probably about as close to gold as they could be, given her location.
Terrano exhaled and frowned. After a moment, he called Sedarias by name, and she turned to him, her own expression rippling. She spoke silently again, but he could apparently read her lips; he nodded and headed back to the cave.
One by one, he pulled the cohort out of it. Allaron was next; he was as large as Kaylin remembered, towering over the rest of his cohort by half a head. It was almost comical to see Terrano supporting him, but he didn’t disperse as Sedarias had done. Sedarias, in turn, had come to stand slightly in front of Kaylin and Bellusdeo, and Kaylin was certain she was giving directions—to Allaron, at least. They were bound by True Name. Whatever she had done to breach the invisible threshold, she had clearly communicated to the rest of her friends. Whatever cut Kaylin off from the small host of people to whom she was likewise connected did not appear to affect the cohort. Then again, they were in this space together.
Valliant came next; his name in other circumstances still made Kaylin snicker. Fallessian, Serralyn, Torrisant, Karian and finally Eddorian, joined them. They were, to a person, as ghostly as Sedarias; none of them, however, looked as annoyed. No, Kaylin thought, she wasn’t annoyed, she was angry. If her eyes had had color, they’d be midnight blue.
Terrano turned to Kaylin once the last of the cohort were as present as they were going to get. He glanced at the familiar, his natural suspicion and caution immediately obvious. The familiar generally glared at the former member of the cohort, but he wasn’t doing that now; instead, he was surveying them all from Kaylin’s shoulder—which, given the difference in height, should have looked ridiculous, but didn’t.
The cohort couldn’t speak in any way that Kaylin could hear.
They suddenly turned toward her, all eyes moving as one, which was kind of creepy until she realized they were looking at the familiar. He was squawking, but quietly.
“This is going to get complicated,” the Hawk told the Dragon. “Spike?”
“I am here.”
“Can you hear them?”
There was a very long pause as the spiked silver ball digested the question. “You cannot hear them?” he finally asked, with far more hesitance than he generally displayed.
“No. Neither the Dragon nor I can hear them.”
“Terrano can?”
“Terrano,” Terrano said, “can. But not clearly, and not well.” He hesitated himself, and then added, “they can clearly hear each other.” Again, Kaylin thought there was something wistful in his comment, but he spoiled it by adding, “Listening to Sedarias in her current mood, on the other hand, anyone sane could do without.”
“She looks angry.”
“She’s beyond angry.”