by A. R. Knight
Nara glanced at me. “You have the sword with you.”
“I cannot be everywhere at once,” I said. “Here, come with me.”
I felt Nara let me make the statement. Let me guide her to the top of the Mountain, through Piotr’s passage to the slope high above the forest. Selena followed.
From up there, we could see all across the wood into the border of the city. The breaches popped, yellow and blue and green lights glowing throughout the forest and beyond. So many it looked like the stars in the sky on that night I’d gone with Inman to his camp along the river.
“Even with a dozen of me,” I said. “We would never be able to close them all. We would never be able to keep Riven alive.”
“Then we shall make a hundred of your swords,” Nara said. “A thousand. Enough for every spirit to wield.”
“How?” Selena asked. “Can you do it without Dolan?”
Shock, followed by frustration poured through the bond as Nara remembered Dolan was gone. The only spirit that had ever mastered the art of creating the burning weapons had vanished. And while the guides taken the original tools, had restructured them into an new swords and axes and bows over the centuries, without Dolan, there wasn’t a way to make more.
“Dolan was a spirit,” Nara said. “Anything he did can be done by another. All we have to do is find the right one.”
Neither Selena nor I were given permission to reply. Instead, we followed Nara down, back into the Mountain, to the edge of the Cycle. She positioned us near the ledge, and we watched her step up to a passing spirit, an older woman, and touch her on the shoulder. Bind her to Nara’s will. Then, Nara pointed towards the Cycle.
Dolan had said that he’d captured the flame by accident. By touching the Cycle and corralling its burning energy. Nara sent the spirit to do the same.
The woman reached down over the edge and touched the blue. Fire raced up her arm, over her body until we could see none of it. Nothing except the blinding light. The spirit toppled over the edge and vanished.
“Only the first try,” Nara muttered.
But the next one had the same result. And the third. The fifth. Into the hundreds. I couldn’t track how much time Nara spent tossing spirits to their doom, only that it must have been many hours before Nara backed away, her face a mask of barely controlled rage.
“It will not work,” I said. Nara wasn’t paying attention to my will, her focus on other things. For once, I had the freedom to move my own lips. “We might stand here for an eternity waiting for the another spirit like Dolan. If that doesn’t happen soon, then Riven might well be gone by the time you find one.”
“Be gone?” Nara said, looking at me with a question in her eyes. “Before, when you first came to me in the field. You mentioned that you wanted to save Riven. To save it from what?”
“It is being overrun,” I said. I felt Nara pushing, questing after a deeper answer. “Guide history says that if there are enough spirits in Riven, a hole back to Earth might open. A way back to the other side. Where they could hurt our families. Our friends. Destroy everything we know.”
Nara nodded. “That is what I needed to remember. Come, let us return to the slope.”
Back at the overlook, we again stared out at the breaches.
“You asked me to save your world, Carver,” Nara said. “But it seems that Riven cannot be so saved. There is no other choice than to let this calamity befall us. To ride the wave into the unknown. If these spirits will create a gateway, then we will walk through it.”
Even with the connection, even with Nara suppressing my feeling, I turned over in anger. Betrayal. For a moment, that urge overwhelmed our bond.
“You lied,” I spat. “You were the one that let Dolan go. That stopped our only chance. It’s not that Riven can’t be saved, it’s that you destroyed any hope to save it.”
“We are all human, are we not?” Nara said. “Flawed, pushed by our ambitions to something beyond our ability to obtain? Only rather than focus on our failures, I choose to take advantage of the future, and our future lies with those.”
Nara’s arms swept out across the view, taking in the breaches peppering the countryside. As she did so, one, a glow coming from inside the far-off city wall, winked out of existence. Nara stopped her gesture, blinked at the space.
“The guides,” I said, answering her unspoken question. “They are still sealing what breaches they can inside the city.”
“Delaying our victory,” Nara said. “It seems, Carver, I may have a use for you yet. My champion still has a cause against which to wield his sword.”
“How might I serve?” I said, hating the words as they came out of my mouth, loving them and the way they pleased Nara through the bond. I was her puppet, and adored it when she pulled the strings.
“You will take some my legion,” Nara said. “You will march along the spirit’s path and enter the city from the south. Drive the guides before you. Slaughter those that stay. Chase away those that run. Cleanse Riven of them and their souls. Open the door to our new home.”
Chapter 49
Nara lined the souls up for me in row upon row before the Mountain’s entrance. Bathed in the Cycle’s glow, I stood before hundreds of spirits bound to follow Nara’s, and through her, my command.
The spirits came from anywhere and everywhere. Young and old, rich and poor, dressed in rags and the finest suits. Through and around them wandered souls Nara hadn’t yet bound, like a river breaking around a dam of the dead.
Every few seconds another spirit went around me and took its place in the ranks. Another binding, another soul that would stop at nothing to tear every guide apart. I only needed to tell them when.
“March!” I shouted into the swirling ash. Into those dark trees. Nara heard my words and sent the command to those in thrall to her. Including me.
Without conscious effort, my legs moved forward. Long strides that took me through and past my army until I walked at its head. I held the great sword in my hands, ready to fend off any attackers.
And there were plenty of those. Angry spirits from nearby breaches bit at the sides of my force. Crashed out from the trees in snarling waves only for my spirits to beat them back. Descended on my forces in gnashing piles until, with our superior numbers, we tore the attackers apart.
Of course, without the wrangling fires, the spirits would heal with time. Would return to their rampages. Would continue pushing Riven until it collapsed.
“Why the Shambles?” I said to Nara through our bond. “Most of the guides should be concentrated at the West gate?”
I could feel her back there, near the Cycle, gathering more spirits and adding them to her force. Yet, the strength of that bond dimmed as the distance between us grew. It would take two days march to get to the Shambles, and in that time her ties would slip. By the time we reached the city, I might be able to resist her entirely.
“Because I want to crush their resolve,” Nara replied through the bond, her voice crashing into my mind. “Because when you threaten to cut them off from their home, they will not fight. They will flee. Scatter and break.”
“You’re underestimating them. The guides are better than that.”
“Are they?” I could hear Nara’s laughter. “You forget, Carver. I once had to choose between dying for my beliefs or living, trapped for centuries. They will choose as I did. They will run for their chance to survive.”
Around me streamed the blank-eyed dead. Wrangled or, less likely with every hour, a spirit naturally seduced by the Cycle. I caught their eyes as they missed mine. How many of them would Nara turn to her side?
“We should make for the clock tower.” My mind turned towards the attack, trying to find the angles for Nara’s victory. “That is the center of the guides’ forces.”
“Then take it,” Nara said. “Wield my force like a hammer and smash the guides to dust.”
Had we been in person, I might have bowed. Or said how much I loved the opportunity to carry ou
t her order. However, as I crunched along the path, Nara felt my pleasure through our bond. Knew that I would not hesitate to tear apart the city at her word.
The hundreds of souls behind me would do the same.
Chapter 50
The south gate stood a menagerie. A focal point for all the city’s spirits coming together before pounding down the path to the Cycle. I’d not stood on the outside of it, looking in, before.
At least, not as an invader.
On either side of the gate stood turreted towers. Staring out over the right one leaned a guide, locking eyes with my army. As my forces formed up, the guide held up a sparker and launched a bright bolt into the air.
I pointed my sword at the guide as the spark burst high in the clouds, scattering a series of azure points high and low. They dimmed and fizzled as my souls ran around me, towards the gate.
Which slammed shut, its large oaken doors sliding closed before the first of my forces could make it through. Apparently, I was wrong. The guides were not entirely invested in the West gate.
Perhaps Bryce had learned from the others what Selena and I had become. Perhaps he had prepared for the worst.
It wouldn’t be enough.
I jammed the sword in the ground before me. Took the crossbow off of my back and slotted in an orange bolt. Poor fortune that Nicholas had replenished my supply after Dolan’s ill-fated charge to the woods.
I raised the crossbow, aimed, and pulled the trigger. The orange bolt streaked towards the gate, hit the thick doors, and burst into a blinding nova. The searing rays crept along the outlines of the doors, like spilled paint spreading across a canvas.
After a minute, the rays drained away, leaving nothing more than some blackened bits hanging from the sides. A trio of guides stood behind the ruins, stunned.
“You should run!” I called as I went towards the gate. The crossbow over my back, the great sword yanked up from the ground as I walked and sheathed behind my back. “There is no need for you to die here.”
The guide in the middle, a woman with axes, whom I recognized dimly as one of Bryce’s wardens after his arrest, stiffened but stayed. The two guides next to her, each one with the sword and knife combo of greener recruits, matched her resolve.
“You are no longer welcome in the city, Carver Reed!” replied the woman, her voice thick with the knowledge of impossible odds.
“If anyone has the power to decide who comes and goes from here, I do not think it’s you.” I raised my left hand and the first spirits of Nara’s force shuffled up beside me. Matched my stride step for step. “I say again. Depart, cross back over, and await your fate with your families.”
These three guides would die if they stayed. Would be washed away by the force at my back. Their sacrifice would not buy time. Would not prove a point or change the outcome of this certain war.
So when the woman crossed her axes in front of her chest, ready to meet the charge, I held my spirits back. Nara, through our bond, urged an all-out attack. Told me to drive forth into the city and break them. But where before her voice had smashed through my mind, now it was closer to a conversation. Words that could be ignored.
I went ahead of my army. Met the woman and the other guides just on the inside of the arch. The Shambles, the scattered apartments, slums, and warped streets sat in front of me. Somewhere in there were my mother’s journals, still sitting, as they would forever, in an empty house.
“There is no need for you to die here,” I repeated to the three of them as I closed. “I cannot hold back Nara’s spirits, or my own sword, much longer.”
“And I will say what I said before. It is our privilege to die for our city and our order.” The woman looked for a second like she was going to attack then and there, but a last glance at the younger guides next to her stilled her hands.
“Then do so when it will matter,” I said. “Go, run and warn your fellows of what is coming.”
Nara couldn’t control what I said, not at this distance. Even so, my skin began to crawl. My head began to hurt. I wasn’t quite defying her command, not yet, but the pressure to strike these three down, to send in the spirits, grew.
“Why are you giving us advice?” the woman asked. “Why should we trust you when you’re bound to the enemy?”
“Because who else is there?” I said. “Also, this.”
I drew the sword from over my back and the guides stepped back. The spirits behind me edged forward. This was the moment.
“Five seconds,” I began. “Four.”
The woman looked again at the guides. At the spirits behind me.
“Three.”
At impossible odds. I saw her eyes shift.
“Two.”
They ran. Turned their backs and sprinted down the road. Past hapless spirits marching towards us.
“One.”
I pointed the great sword forward and Nara’s spirits surged past me into the city. I walked with them, one foot falling after another.
On my left, Nara’s spirits wound their way up an apartment building. Breaking through windows and doors, searching every room for hiding guides. To my right, the spirits found where the three guides had kept spare weapons. Took them and armed themselves.
Everywhere I looked, Nara’s army spread. A wave crashing through the city, and bringing terror with it.
Chapter 51
The three guides must have made it back. Must have warned the others. I encountered no resistance moving through the Shambles. None at all in the Warrens. Even Anna’s apartment building had been abandoned.
A dangerous gamble - without access to its basement, Anna wouldn’t be able to cross back. At least, not if she’d continued using the building as her entrance into Riven.
I doubted she was the only guide taking such a risk.
The guides had set themselves up in the clock tower square. My home in Riven for years, the clock tower itself loomed as a burned out ruin on the north end of the square. A fountain, now surrounded by shanty shelters, served as the nexus for guide operations.
I formed the spirits back into a line as we moved into view of the square. A block away. In front of us, looking out from building windows and standing in a line across the avenue, stood the guides that I had called friends. Brothers and sisters that I planned to drive away or grind into dust.
Front and center stood my mentor, his twin-edged voulge standing taller than he did. Bryce glared at me with a mixture of anger and disappointment, a look that had as much directed at himself as it did me.
Beside him stood Anna and Alec. I suppose in some sort of attempt to twist my emotions with my friends. An attempt that worked, that made me lurch, that nonetheless did nothing to stop me from ordering the charge.
Nara’s army would lose many spirits, but we could afford to. The guides, on the other hand, would be decimated by every casualty.
From the buildings around us, rising two and three and four stories, guides shot their sparkers. Anna, Bryce and the others as well. The bright light and heat saturated the air, caused me to pull up, shield my eyes with my hands. Warmth brushed my face, and when I pulled my hands away, the buildings around us burned.
The guides that had been on them were nowhere to be seen. The fires spewed smoke into the street, the sky, the alleys. Weakened walls collapsed, spreading debris and sending charred rubble into the way of my spirits. While not deadly, the hot ruins hampered our progress. Set spirits aflame or shattered their legs. Trapped them under falling balconies.
Our advance floundered.
Nara could feel the anger and agony through her bindings, and she pushed those feelings to me, and I used them. Charged forward through the blaze to the other side. Where instead of dozens of guides, I saw a scattered few. Bryce had disappeared. Retreated.
“Carver, it’s good to see your tactics haven’t improved.” Alec struck fast, his gauntlets flying towards me from my side.
I rolled with the blows, turning as his fists hit my shoulder to bring the g
reat sword between us.
“With Nara’s spirits, I don’t need them.” I countered. Stabbed the sword forward. Alec grabbed the blade with his hands, tried to turn it away. Only I pushed forward, forced him back.
He’d been stronger than me as a man. With human limitations. As a spirit; no longer.
Alec pushed the sword to the side as he felt a building’s burning pyre draw close. Accepted a cut on his right shoulder as he twisted from under the blade. Danced into me, and then rolled out again as I reversed the stroke and forced him back.
“You can fight the binding, Carver!” Alec fell back as some of Nara’s spirits pushed through the smoke behind me. I nodded, and they rushed my friend.
“You can run, Alec,” I replied. The guide took a step into the first spirit, delivering a gauntlet-armored right uppercut to the soul’s chin. Striking and setting it aflame.
The second jumped into the air, arms outstretched, towards Alec’s left shoulder. Rather than turn, Alec stuck out his left hand and let the spirit impale itself on the gauntlet’s spikes.
The third, however, caught my friend out of position. Striking him low, with Alec’s right hand still pushing off the first spirit. Knocked Alec’s legs out from under him and sent the guide to the stones.
In a flash I stood over him, Nara’s remaining spirit holding down Alec’s arms. I pinned Alec to the ground with the point of my blade.
“You’re better than you were,” Alec said to me.
“I always let you win,” I replied. Raised the sword. Nara’s voice screamed in my head to end him. To stab Alec and burn away the guide’s tie to Earth. To life.
Difficult to ignore a direct command through a bond, even from one so distant. But I could hesitate. Could try.
Only for a second.
“That, I will never believe.” Alec pulled Nara’s spirit, clinging to his arms, over his head and in between my sword and his chest. I stabbed down, felt the sword bite, and twisted the hilt. Burned the spirit away.
