But the orb in her hand began to crack as well, small fissures spreading from a point at its height and traveling down the whole of the sphere as if the cracks were liquid.
31
The most disturbing thing about the cracks that spread across the opalescent surface of the orb was their color. They were red and glistening in the light as if they were blood.
She tried to put the orb down but wasn’t surprised when it wouldn’t leave her hand. She’d been carrying it ever since she’d healed Terrano. It wasn’t the only Shadow she’d carried; it wasn’t the only Shadow bound—as Marks were—to her skin. It wasn’t even Shadow as she understood it, now.
She’d never healed two different things at the same time. She didn’t even feel like she was healing the orb, because to heal something, it had to be alive. By feel alone,bothof her hands were touching Helen, and only Helen, even if reality disagreed.
Hope squawked. She didn’t recognize the tone: it wasn’t angry. It wasn’t irritated. It wasn’t the near croon the familiar sometimes offered when Kaylin was at her lowest. Hope lifted his wing from her eyes. Nothing changed. Kaylin could see the orb; it was now the color of blood as the red that peered out between cracks expanded. She could see the stone floors etched with True Words she couldn’t read. She could see her Marks, far dimmer now, as if the enormity of the healing was draining them of their very essence.
“Helen?”
“I am here, Kaylin. I will be here until the end.” Helen’s voice was stronger, more resonant. “Yes. You are healing me.”
“And the orb?”
Squawk.
“The orb is trying to heal itself; it is reaching for whatever power it can consume. Some of that will be yours. But some will be the Shadow the Barrani invaders rely on. The path upon which they stand is becoming thinner and more attenuated,” Helen said. “I... am better able to defend myself, now. In the healing, I have seen how the invasion was accomplished, perhaps because of the orb you carry. I can see its tenuous connection to... everything. I can cut off the almost unseen anchors that are binding their pathway to me.
“Let go of me, Kaylin. There is danger to you should you continue.”
What she will not say, Hope squawked—and she could hear the squawks as a kind of punctuation—is that there is danger to her. Mortal bodies are not beings such as Helen. When she chose to damage her own core for the chance of freedom of choice, she broke things. If you continue, you will remake what was broken at such risk.
Hope had risen from her shoulder and fluttered in front of her face as he spoke.
“Helen—is Hope right?”
“The Marks of the Chosen are the will of the Ancients,” Helen replied. “I cannot say for certain that he is—but I can say it is a fear. There was a chance—there was always a chance—that even with my knowledge of myself, I would die. The harmonies between the many words at my core are interlinked in ways I could not discern precisely. I chose, but a wrong choice, a wrong word, might have shattered the core.
“If you heal me, if you bring my body back to its initial state, I will have far more power—but less freedom, in the end, than I have had. I trust you,” she added. “As tenant. As lord.But you are mortal, and I cannot be certain to trust those who come after. Cannot be certain to trust visitors from long ago who knew the words of command.”
Kaylin stilled. Helen was speaking of An’Tellarus.
“Yes.” Helen’s confirmation was chilly as she glanced at the Barrani Lord.
Kaylin changed the subject. “But the attackers aren’t gone.”
“No. But I am not alone. My tenants are fighting alongside me, and you are here, protecting my heart. Let go, Kaylin.”
She could still see tiny cracks in the stone.
“They will always be there,” Helen told her.
Kaylin took a deep breath and lifted her palm from stone that didn’t feel at all like stone when she touched it. She stumbled immediately; she’d been on bent knees for the duration of the healing.
It was more than that. Helen had provided an anchor against the growing weight of the orb.
Hope continued to flutter around it, tilting his small head from side to side. When he opened his transparent jaws, the only part of him that had color was revealed: the interior of his small, but effective, mouth. His teeth glittered with light that had no obvious source as he bared his fangs.
She wasn’t expecting the genuinely draconic roar that emerged from his throat.
She wasn’t expecting the orb in her hand, reddened as if with blood, to vibrate at the sound. She’d half expected Hope toeatthe orb. He’d eaten words before.
But no. He continued his roaring, which would have made her laugh out loud at any other time. It was as if a tiny lizard was trying its earnest best to prove it was a dragon.
“Hope—I don’t think it’s gotears. I don’t think it’s listening. And the rest of us would like to be able to hear in the near future.”