“Only Fallessian, Teela, and Severn,” Helen replied. “Everyone else is outside its perimeter. There is a danger to standing in that space for any length of time; we’ve tried to get Fallessian to withdraw.”
Tried implied both attempt and failure.
“Why is it safer for Teela and Severn?”
“They’re older.”
Severn was certainly not older than Fallessian.
“They are more fixed in themselves. They have made choices, and those choices have helped them define who they are and who they must be. They are not immune to change—but they are less easily altered.”
The same could be said of Nightshade, and that hadn’t saved him.
“He was not fighting on that path.”
“If Severn can get Teela and Fallessian to leave, can we collapse the space?”
“Terrano believes it can be done.”
“But he thinks it’s a bad idea.”
“None of us understand how that space came into being,” Helen replied. “We exist as one plane, one facet, of the creations of the Ancients when they walked both this plane and all the others. Those planes overlapped, and some of their creations lived in a way that bridged them. In the deep planes of the world, sentiences that you will never encounter made their homes and built their civilizations. Terrano is, of the cohort, the most unanchored. He knows what he can navigate and what he can’t; he can alter his physical form to obey the laws of the planes into which he steps.
“This, he says, is entirely unlike that. It’s like an artificial tree, not a natural one. Those unfamiliar with trees might consider them identical. The path can accommodate Barrani who can’t do what Terrano or the cohort can do. They haven’t shifted in place at all; they are physically as present as Nightshade or An’Tellarus. He believes they will perish; he is, he says, fine with that.
“But he feels there’s a danger. It’s the danger that flows in the wake of destroying a very large glass window. It’s very difficult to crack a window and remove pieces of that glass safely. He can’t think of a way to subtly collapse the space, and that means detritus. He can’t say for certain that detritus won’t be harmful.”
“If we can collapse the space and kill them all,” Kaylin said, “they’ll think twice about ever trying this particular method of invasion again.”
“They are likely to be dead.”
“The people in charge almost never risk their own lives.” She thought of the attack on the Academia. “Can Terrano collapse it, though?”
“He says no.”
Meaning he’d tried. She doubted he was fighting alongside the cohort members who could really handle a weapon.
“He thinks you might be able to do it.”
“Did he happen to give you any clues as to how?” Kaylin didn’t try to keep irritation out of her voice; it was better than panic.
“No, dear. He saidyou figure it out.” That sounded more like Terrano.
But she had managed to reach Nightshade. The magic in his body, the magic that had attempted to destroy his insides, was part of this other space, this other plane. It was part of the Shadow that had attempted to do the same thing—she was certain of that now—to Terrano.
But Terrano hadn’t been where Nightshade was; he’d been on that narrow constructed path—and he hadn’t moved off it until Kaylin had reached him. That meantwithinthe path, the Shadow that divided Nightshade and Kaylin—or the Consort and the Lake—didn’t have that effect. No, she was sure it was more complicated. Terrano could talk to the cohort on that path; he could talk to Serralyn from it.
She stopped. That wasn’t important right now.
Something she had done had allowed Nightshade to return to what passed for normal for a centuries-old fieflord who also wielded one of The Three. Something.
The Yvonnes had followed Kaylin into the very large, cavernous room, with its rough stone walls and its uneven floor. She couldn’t see their feet at all—if ghosts of this nature evenhadfeet. But she was afraid that they did; she could see ankles. The feet rested below the surface of the stone. This was where Helen was both her strongest and her most vulnerable. This was the seat of her power.
If the Yvonnes noticed, it didn’t show. But they stopped at the edge of the circular formation that contained True Words, and as Kaylin watched, they spread out around that circle and then lifted their arms. They locked hands.
Kaylin was on the inside. The Yvonnes were positioned to look inward, not out.
“I don’t think I can do this from here,” Kaylin said. “I’m not in contact with anything.”