McCann rejoined them. “It’s done. I fused the intermix valve. The device will be inert until someone replaces it. Hopefully, no one will get the chance.”
“What happened?” Shann said in a strangled voice.
A faint smile played about Lyall’s lips. “I used Annata’s device... transformed the iron shot... into lodestone.”
Shann shook her head in confusion. “I don’t understand.”
“Recall... your first lesson at the farmhouse, Shann. When you push lodestone, it... pushes back. And if you strike it with a... sufficiently powerful force...”
“Like a detonation in the cannon’s firing chamber,” McCann mused. “Negative matter—lodestone—possesses negative inertia. Instead of being propelled forward, the shot would be rammed back into the breech. The cannon would effectively become a bomb. Ingenious.”
“The... the slag.”
Shann brushed the hair from his face and forced a smile. “It’s all right. I figured it out. The keep is set to fall. The Keltar’s power will be broken once and for all.”
“We must leave,” Keris urged.
“Aune... ”
“What about her?” Shann soothed.
“Stairs... to the roof... one floor up... ”
Shann’s eyes widened. “She’s here?”
“Tell her... ” His breath rattled, fled, and was no more.
“Lyall.” The girl held him close, as if trying to impart her life to him.
“He’s gone,” Keris said. Her words sounded like a knife dropped on stone. She moved a hand towards Shann’s shoulder, then withdrew it. She had nothing to offer, no way to assuage the girl’s agony. She did the only thing she could.
“Wait here. I will find Aune.”
She turned her back on inconsolable grief and headed for the stairs.
~
She located Aune on the next level in a private suite behind a locked door, a bird in a gilded cage. Following the faint but unmistakeable sound of weeping, she smashed her way in. A fair-haired girl in a blue dress screamed and ran for cover.
“I’m here to get you out. Follow me. Quickly.”
Aune emerged from behind a dresser. With her crystal-clear eyes and delicate chin, she looked as if she would break if someone handled her too roughly. Yet here she was, a prisoner of eleven years, ever since the revolt at Persillan—the revolt that had been led by her brother Lyall. Maybe she was tougher than she looked.
Walls shivered. Furniture shook. Things clattered to the floor. It had begun.
Keris beckoned impatiently. “Come on. We don’t have much time.”
The girl swallowed and followed.
Keris led the way out into the hall and back down the stairs. The ancient stone shook a little harder and grumbled a little louder. Pausing to regain her balance, she stepped back into the audience chamber. She pulled up short. Shann and McCann stood still with their backs to her. Facing them was a black-cloaked figure—dark-olive skin stretched taut over razor-sharp bones, piercing eyes beneath an ancient scar, straight white hair flowing over his shoulders. Glaisne.
The blood in her veins turned to ice. She stepped forward.
“Lyall?” Aune rushed over to her brother’s prostrate body and fell forward onto her knees.
Keris fixed her gaze on the Keltar. “Shann, I want you to take Aune and McCann and get to the gate as quickly as possible.” The girl opened her mouth. Keris answered her unspoken question. “Don’t worry. Glaisne here will not attempt to stop you. He is only interested in me.”
A threnody was written over Shann’s face, etched in grime and tears. She had lost the nearest thing to a father she had ever known, yet her voice was steady, held together by a single thread of courage. “We can’t just leave you here.”
Keris kept her voice glacial. “I will be fine. Go now. Quickly.”
Shann approached, placing one hand on the other woman’s arm, while discreetly palming something with the other. Keris felt a cool metallic smoothness. The last lodestone grenade. She slipped it into the pouch at her belt.
Shann kept her expression carefully neutral. “Farewell.”
She and McCann crossed to where Aune still wept softly over her brother’s prostrate form. They lifted her gently to her feet. The fair-haired woman teetered on the brink of collapse. McCann swept her into his arms as if she were a sack of feathers and hurried towards the blasted doors, Shann following in his train. At the doorway, she hesitated, casting a lingering look over her shoulder. Keris broke eye contact with the Keltar. Go on. The girl nodded gravely and was gone.
Keris felt calm—centred. The eye of the storm. She turned her attention back to Glaisne. “The Prophet is dead by his own hand. The keep is about to fall. This conflict is pointless.”
“Keris,” Glaisne shook his head. “You trained as Keltar. Worked as Keltar. It was even whispered that in time you would become part of the keep’s Ruling Council. Yet in all that time, you never grasped what it means to be Keltar.”
“‘The Keltar watch over and preserve the people’,” she quoted from the initiation ritual.
“You are an idealist, Keris. That is your undoing. The Keltar must maintain order. The Prophet granted us the ability to do that in a way we never could before, through the power of lodestone.”
“He would have used that power to destroy us all.”
“That’s absurd. A ruler does not destroy his subjects. Only those who oppose him.”
“Wang was interested in rulership only as a means to an end. He wanted the lodestone to help his people travel to other worlds.”
Glaisne’s laugh sounded hollow in the midst of the great hall. “What fanciful nonsense is this? Kelanni lies beneath the three suns, Ail-Gan, Ail-Kar, and Ail-Mazzoth. There is no world other than ours.”
“There is,” Keris maintained. “I have crossed the Great Barrier of Storms and seen the darkness that lies above the clouds and the worlds therein.”
“Lies,” Glaisne spat. “Heresy. I will not allow you to leave this place and spread your false tales. You ran from me at Lind, but here in the confines of the keep, there is no winged beast to come to your rescue. Prepare to accept the judgment of the Keltar!”
His bony hands gripped his staff and he advanced on her. Keris gave ground as she tried to plan her next move.
She had the advantage of greater youth, as well as the enhanced red cloak. That would probably give her the edge in speed, height, and power, but would it be enough to combat a Keltar as experienced as Glaisne?
She blipped her neck control and tried to map out the configuration of lodestone in the chamber. The picture was confused, the floor strewn with broken furnishings and scattered artefacts of transformed lodestone, some of which still floated in the air.
She flexed her legs, extended lower lodestone, and pushed against an upturned table to her left, tweaking her boost control experimentally. As she rose into the air, Glaisne shot up to meet her, diamond-bladed staff pointed straight at her like an accusation. She brought her own staff to bear, knocking aside his opening thrust. He offered no resistance, but shifted his grip so that the other end of his staff whipped around, aiming straight for her throat. It was as if he had anticipated her defence and used it against her.
She raised her staff in front of her face. The diamond blade impacted, gouging a notch in the darkwood. If he breaks my staff I’m as good as dead.
She twisted in the air and pushed off a floating lump of masonry that responded by promptly crashing to the floor. As she backed off, Glaisne flared his ebony cloak once more, pursuing her, ploughing into her with a flurry of blows.
The clash of darkwood rang like hollow applause in the immensity of the great hall. His teeth gritted and his muscles knotted as he battered her towards the rubble-strewn floor. He was incredibly strong—her arms ached from the sheer effort of fending him off. Strength isn’t everything, an unconvincing voice in her head reminded her.
Her boots struck stone and she stumbled backward
s, tripping over a broken pole and landing on her back. Glaisne swept down, cloak billowing out behind him, eyes aflame.
Desperately, she scrabbled for her pouch, grabbing the lodestone grenade and twisting the two hemispheres against one another. A thin whine grew rapidly in pitch and volume. She tossed it at the descending Keltar, shielding her eyes. The space in front of him erupted in blinding light and sound. Blown backwards, he crashed to the floor, losing his grip on his staff, which clattered away.
The floor trembled again and more objects toppled and crashed. The grenade had set a fallen tapestry alight, and the flames licked at it greedily. The keep was entering its death throes. Truth and falsehood. Honour and treachery. Right and wrong. Soon, none of it would matter. Soon, victor and vanquished would lie entombed together beneath a mountain of broken stone. This battle was all that either of them had left.
Lithely, she sprang to her feet, looking to press her advantage by cutting him off from his staff, but he ignored it, reaching into his pouch instead. She flexed her neck control, readying herself to leap away, but the item he extracted was not a grenade. It was something else entirely.
He held it in the flat of his hand as if presenting it to her as a puzzle to solve. It was an open box with four sides, each a flattened white disc. Within the box were a variety of multicoloured parts. Her natural instinct was to rush forward and smash it from his hand, but curiosity got the better of her and she stared in wonder.
Something strange was happening. At first, she thought her eyes were playing tricks. The box appeared to shimmer. Then she saw that it was not the box itself, but the space in front of it that was warping— changing into something else. Too late she realised what the sides of the box were. The four components of Annata’s device.
The rippling effect shot across the chamber towards her. She tried to turn away, but a pressure wave from the newly converted lodestone gas sought out the lodestone layers concealed in her cloak.
She was flung backwards, the sudden force wrenching her shoulders. Instinctively, she flared lower lodestone and hit her boost control, using the refined lodestone in the wrecked cannon behind her as a brake. She was only partially successful and smashed into a fractured stone pillar. She heard a sickening snap and felt a searing flash of pain and knew that her arm was broken.
The game had suddenly shifted. The stakes were now far higher than the mere settling of a personal score between two old combatants. Somehow, Glaisne had come to possess the reconstructed device. Did he have a personal agenda of his own? Did he have another way off the flying keep? She knew only one thing for certain—she could not risk him escaping with that kind of power.
He leaped towards her, landing on top of the pillar. The capital turned from grey to pitch-black as he transformed it into lodestone, deepening the crack. He wrapped his arms around it and hauled with gritted teeth. The stone creaked, then split, pulling away from him, with what McCann called ‘negative inertia’. As he jumped clear, the lodestone block toppled and fell towards her.
She ducked to a roll just in time to avoid being crushed. A jolt of agony shot through her arm and she was showered with shards of masonry. I have to get that device away from him.
Rising painfully, she turned the boost control on full, flared lower lodestone, and pushed off the transformed capital. She streaked towards the vaulted ceiling. She needed space to move. Time to think.
Dialling back boost and then extending upper lodestone and bronze together, she slowed her trajectory. The devastated hall shuddered and creaked once more. The fire was taking hold, consuming cloth, wood, and stone. Glaisne had reclaimed his staff and stood with his back to the flames, calmly watching her.
She hung suspended in the air, broken arm crooked uselessly against her chest. She could not hope to combat him with the staff one-handed. As she cast about desperately for a solution, a wild idea came to her—a technique she had learned from Shann during their brief clash at the hu-man weapon facility on Helice. If she could just use it to throw him off...
“Come on,” she challenged him. “Let’s finish this.”
There was enormous satisfaction in his voice. “As you wish, Keris.”
He bent his knees and made a high arcing jump. She held her staff out before her one-handed, in a feeble defensive posture. Come get me. I’m here for the taking.
He rushed up to meet her, staff gripped firmly, elbows bent, ready to strike. At the final instant, she withdrew upper lodestone, extended lower lodestone, and hit boost. She felt an instant pressure on her shoulder harness as she was propelled towards the ceiling.
His staff sliced at nothing and he overbalanced, twisting in the air. She angled towards him, pushing off the lodestone in his cloak. She heard the breath being knocked out of his lungs as if he had been punched by a giant fist. She hurtled upward once again, banging her head against a ceiling buttress. The stars in her head faded in time for her to see Glaisne make a crumpled landing on the audience hall floor.
Suddenly, she too began to drop, as if a rope holding her had been cut. She fiddled with the boost control but it was dead. Rael had warned them that that particular feature of the red cloak’s design possessed a limited life. Hers had just run out—and with it, her only real advantage.
Her heart sank with her to the floor. Glaisne was lying motionless, a black heap against the gathering fire. The keep lurched beneath her as she stumbled forward. He stirred, pushing himself up slowly. His eyes burned with anger and there was a deep gash in his forehead. She froze as she saw the box in his palm.
His voice was different. Grainier and with a dangerous edge.
“You’re finished.”
The air quivered in front of the device and then rippled towards her. This time she was ready. Diving forward, she threw herself flat to the floor. The wave passed over her and a crushing weight pinned her to the unyielding stone. Then it was gone. She sprang to her feet and rushed him, swinging her staff with her good arm. It struck the device, sending it tumbling through the air and into the fire.
Glaisne let forth a bestial roar and lunged after it, only to be driven back by searing heat. In the heart of the conflagration, the four components melted, fused together, and blackened. He made to stand. It was then that she noticed for the first time that his leg was at an odd angle.
“You will not leave this place alive,” he bellowed.
He began hobbling rapidly towards the stairs leading to the roof. She watched his retreating back. It was over. She had neither the will nor the strength to pursue him.
She turned and headed out through the ruined doors. Behind her, the unchecked flames burned higher, purging the last vestiges of tyranny.
~
The bare walls echoed to the sound of her boots as Keris dashed down deserted stairways and along empty passages. The keep shivered at its impending destruction, but she forged on, finally bursting out into the open air. The former mustering yard was deserted and the iron gates creaked open on their hinges. Beyond them lay nothing but yawning empty sky, streaked cinder-red and smoke-black.
Behind her, she heard a terrible rending of the ancient stone. The ground canted beneath her, forcing her to her knees. She got up and staggered to the precipice.
A sudden wind ruffled the fringes of her flying cloak, whipping loose strands of hair across her face. She combed them back with slender fingers and thought of her companions. Of Shann, the girl who hated her at first but had come to trust her like her own right arm. Of Alondo, who loved to torment her with his humour. Of Rael, the boy-genius from beyond the Great Barrier. Of Patris, the sailor-thief who infuriated and impressed her by turns. Of Lyall, who had kept them all together and then given his life to save Kelanni. Of McCann, the human engineer who had discovered a conscience. Of Susan Gilmer, who had sacrificed her life for a people not her own.
And she thought of her family. Of her mother and father, who had tried to give her the life that they could not. Of her brothers and sister, and other siblings that
she would never see. She hoped that they would understand what she had tried to do.
The ground tipped forward and the sky shifted. The stone walls began to crack. The keep was falling.
A shrill cry from above. She glanced up and saw a familiar shape framed against the sky. Boxx. Her heartbeat quickened as the Chandara descended, swooping past her with great white wings.
Calmly, she took a step back, ran forward, and vaulted off the edge and into nothingness.
A gale buffeted her, billowing her crimson cloak and blowing her long dark tresses behind her like a banner. She plummeted, arm in arm with fear and exhilaration. Suddenly, Boxx rose up to meet her. She landed on the Chandara’s back and was plucked out of the sky.
Keris clung to the downy white neck as the great wings powered away, lifting them both high above the destruction. She gazed at the massive keep as its crown of towers was ripped away, its robes of dark grey stone were torn asunder, and it toppled from its throne in the clouds and fell towards the heart of Chalimar, disappearing finally in a storm of sepulchral dust.
They flew out over the city. Soon word would spread. From city to town. From village to croft. From the labourer toiling in the fields of Dagmar to the smith hammering at his forge in Lind. From the moba vendor on the streets of Sakima to the merchantman dropping anchor in Kalath-Kar. Across the Great Barrier of Storms, to Kieroth and Vandral and Lechem, and the lodestone hunters, scouring the far-off peaks of the Vannath Mountains.
The word that Kelanni was free at last.
Far out on the fringes of the western sky, Ail-Gan, the yellow sun, erupted in the blinding light of a brand new dawn.
<><><><><>
Epilogue
Keris brushed her fingertips against the tiny streak of grey at her temple.
What are you?
Shann had hurled the question at her retreating back on the deck of Annata’s Reach as they sailed for the Great Barrier of Storms and the unknown dangers that lay beyond. The face that stared back at her from the polished silver mirror still had no answer.
The Lodestone Trilogy (Limited Edition) (The Lodestone Series) Page 112
