“So she said, as well. We believe An’Teela can navigate the edge of the barrier. We are less certain you can do the same.”
This caused Terrano to stick his head out. “I can absolutely do the same!”
She glanced down at Terrano, her lips thinning. “You? You are a child, no?”
Kaylin caught Terrano by the arm as he stepped forward. “I’m thesame ageas An’Teela!”
The woman’s face fell into a network of wrinkles, none of which implied amusement. Before she could speak, Kaylin caught her elbow, which was what she could safely reach. “He isn’t lying,” she said, speaking slowly, voice low. “If anyone could safely navigate this close to the boundary, it’s Terrano.” She would have said more, but her words were swamped with the very loud, very angry roar of a Dragon.
Bellusdeo.
The drumming didn’t stop, but the drums weren’t fixed on stands; they were portable—or portable if you had the mass of an adult Norranir behind them. The Norranir could run while carrying the drums, and did, as they sped up to reach Bellusdeo.
Kaylin whipped around to Terrano. “What happened?”
“Teela told Bellusdeo that she thought Barrani had been making use of the border zone—and had fled intoRavellon.”
“You said the Dragons were arguing!”
“They were.”
“We didn’t hear them. We could definitely hear Bellusdeo.”
“She is our lord. She is our queen. She is calling for us, and we will obey.” The woman exhaled. “We have permission to take the risk of allowing you to accompany us.”
Terrano blinked. “Wait, you could understand that?”
The older woman muttered something in her native language. Kaylin didn’t know the Norranir tongue, but the woman’s expression made the meaning of the words clear:kids these days.
The border zone that existed between fiefs wasn’t the same as the borders aroundRavellon. Kaylin had seen Shadows emerge from the cracks in a crumbling Tower barrier; they’d passed fromRavellonto the fief she’d been in—Tiamaris, before he claimed it—without apparent pause.
But she knew that barrier was a creation of the Ancients, and the border in Nightshade had more closely resembled the border between fiefs. The view from the barrier implied something almost normal but deserted—remnants of a city. The view from the interior did not.
“What is Shadow?” she asked the Norranir elder, as the men with drums positioned themselves at intervals in the forming line. They never stopped drumming.
The woman offered a word, but Kaylin’s expression made her lack of understanding clear. “It is not a question we are asked often. In our language, it is another word for death. But in other tongues, it had different meanings. Those languages are lost to all among us who did not study dead languages.
“Our lord was concerned with survival, with the battles upon which our survival depended. But some were allowed to study, in the hope that information would aid in those battles.” She exhaled. “It did not help our lord.”
Kaylin filed that away for possible future use.
The Norranir moved quickly, their speed hampered by the smaller stride of those who followed. Terrano cursed Kaylin’s familiar with genuine heat; clearly his ability to solve the problem in his usual way hadn’t yet returned.
“Hope, if you can do something about it, do something.”
Squawk.The familiar shook his head, shrugging his delicate wings.
“Be a little clearer.”
Squawk. Squawk.Squawk.
The Norranir elder squinted down at him. “I believe he is telling your friend it will be fine soon.”
One of the men—not a drummer—spoke impatiently. The elder frowned, but nodded. “You are slowing us down. Accept our aid.” It was a command.
Kaylin had suspicions about what that aid would be, and she was right: she was lifted off her feet and deposited on the shoulders of one of the Norranir as if she were a young child and he the adult.
“Sorry,” she said, although she wasn’t certain the man spoke Elantran.