Towers Fall

by Karina Sumner-Smith

  Then: surprise. Hope. Longing.

  A word, her name softly spoken: Xhea.

  More power, purer power, flowed into her without asking—a gift, freely given. Some of Xhea’s power, too, flowed from her in return, and it swept away Lissel’s magic and the small, unraveling pieces of the binding spell.

  Suddenly, the pressure was gone. Xhea opened her eyes, blinking, and stared at the blank ceiling above her. Her ears echoed with a sound half-heard: Lissel’s cry of frustration.

  Then there was another sound, another cry: Abelane. No frustration in that sound, only fear.

  “Abelane!” Xhea rolled, trying to see what was happening. She struggled awkwardly to push herself up on her good leg; she could not see her cane.

  Lissel now had eyes only for Abelane, who twisted and struggled within the bindings that held her. Those bonds had burned dark lines across Abelane’s uniform, like scorch marks; where they touched Abelane’s skin, she’d gone a bloodless pale shade that reminded Xhea of a corpse’s waxen flesh.

  Lissel was small, and Abelane was not; even on the tips of her toes, Lissel’s outstretched hand barely made it to Abelane’s chin. Not as high as her eyes. It did not matter.

  Lissel’s magic closed the gap that her arm could not. Power, dark and sinuous, flowed from Lissel’s outstretched palm and into Abelane’s eyes. Abelane’s mouth was open, caught in an unvoiced scream; her expression spoke only of pain.

  This was not an offering; not a ghost to trade for Shai. Only vengeance.

  If Lissel had heard Xhea speak of Shai, then how much else had she heard? Enough to use Abelane against her.

  “No!” Xhea cried, pushing herself to her feet—but neither of them moved, neither of them noticed Xhea’s existence anymore. Already Lissel’s magic was deep inside Abelane’s body, flowing through her and digging hooks into her spirit.

  Xhea could not find her cane, had no weapon—but she thought of Daye crashing that aircar into Ieren, breaking the boy’s hold, and with a scream she threw herself on Lissel and bore the girl to the ground. Lissel’s head bounced off the carpeted floor and she gave a small, high sound of pain, then blinked, dazed.

  Xhea’s magic was still bound, no matter how many cracks she’d put in the binding; even so, she drew power into her hand and slapped Lissel full across the face with all her strength, flesh and magic both.

  And again. And again.

  At last Lissel’s eyes closed and stayed closed. Not dead, not anywhere close, though she’d have some good bruises come morning. No reaction to that thought—neither guilt nor triumph.

  Xhea rolled off the girl’s limp body. Ah, there’s my cane, Xhea thought as her leg hit the twisted length of wood. She grabbed it and pushed herself to her feet.

  Abelane leaned against the coffin’s open edge, shaking and shuddering and bent almost in half, her hand clutching desperately at her face.

  “Abelane,” Xhea said, and she flinched, afraid. Again Xhea said her name, “Abelane,” softer this time.

  “Is she dead?” Her voice was thin and terrified, shaking as much as her hands.

  “No,” Xhea said. “Only unconscious.” She glanced back at Lissel, sprawled on the floor. Her nightgown was twisted around her, and her long dark hair spread like a tree’s broken branches. She was so small.

  Abelane looked up. She tried to pull her hand from her face—then covered her eyes again, cringing. But it had been enough; Xhea had seen the faint glimmer of light about her eyes. The glimmer of her spirit dislodged.

  She was not as bad off as Torrence had been; she was conscious and speaking. Even so, it was not an injury that would heal on its own.

  Xhea lifted her hand, thinking to help her—but there had been screams, she realized. Lissel’s, Abelane’s, even her own. Perhaps this room was totally soundproofed, but the door was open a crack—and if anyone had heard? They had but moments before others arrived.

  Abelane clutched her face. “I’ll be fine,” she managed, panting. “Just… go!”

  Xhea couldn’t leave her. Even if she were healthy and whole, Abelane would not be allowed to live until morning—not when one of her charges lay hurt on the floor and another was escaping. One of the children would finish what Lissel had started—perhaps even Lissel herself.

  Looking at her, Xhea knew that Abelane understood. Still she said, “You have to go.” She gestured, half-blind, at the coffin. “Get in.”

  A sacrifice, Xhea thought. A willing sacrifice—her life for mine.

  The same as six years ago.

  Except Xhea was not a child anymore, not that little girl asleep in her blankets who could be left behind unknowing.

  “You’re coming with me.” Xhea pushed Abelane toward the open coffin. It was testament to Abelane’s pain that she didn’t flinch from that touch, didn’t seem to feel Xhea’s hands on her at all. Even so, she struggled as Xhea tried to force her inside.

  “No,” she said. “You can’t—I can’t go, no—”

  Xhea ignored her, toppling her into the coffin’s bare interior. No pillow there to rest one’s head, no soft lining, only a surface as hard and smooth as the black exterior.

  Only then did she remember what Abelane had said about the spells on the door: they responded to magic. Lissel said she’d removed the protections against dark magic—but though Abelane’s bright magic sputtered and flickered inside her, damaged by Lissel’s attack, it would surely be enough to trigger a detection spell.

  The sound of running footsteps came from the hall.

  She was out of time.

  Xhea looked back to Abelane, who struggled even now to push herself out of the coffin. She had no choice.

  “I’m sorry,” Xhea whispered, and reached for Abelane’s eyes.

  Xhea pulled hard on her power, fighting the binding. A thin stream of magic flowed down her arm, through her hand, and into Abelane. She could feel Abelane’s spirit there—she could see it, her ghost just slightly out of synch with her body. It would be so easy, Xhea realized, to push it back, align her ghost with her body and make her whole again.

  Instead, Xhea dug hooks into Abelane’s spirit and pulled.

  Abelane gasped, trying to cry out—and then collapsed into the coffin.

  Xhea peered down. She had not yanked Abelane’s ghost free of her body, only disconnected it. There was no light flowing anymore, no flickers; only her limp body and her spirit dislodged, struggling desperately inside her flesh.

  Quickly, Xhea pushed the coffin toward the small door, grateful for the spell that made it float just above the carpet. There was no handle on the door, no touchpad, nothing she could try. She prayed to absent gods that there was a sensor in the coffin.

  Behind her, the door to the hall swung open.

  “What are you—?” A man’s voice. Xhea ignored it—ignored his cry of protest a second later—only jumped into the coffin and pulled the lid shut behind her.

  Felt as it shuddered and kept rolling; heard the grinding sound that could only be the door opening.

  Please, Xhea thought, staring at nothing. Please, please, please.

  Spells flared to life around her, dormant lines suddenly activating. Bright lines, dozens of them, hundreds, wrapped around them like ribbons. Xhea had been trying to keep from lying too heavily on Abelane, but now she threw herself flat against the other girl’s body and wrapped her arms around her. She drew her magic to her, coiling it inside the binding spell, tighter and tighter, and fought to breathe.

  Because the coffin was not the transporter; it was only the casing for the spells. A show, perhaps, to demonstrate the concern that the Spire had for the prisoners’ bodies. As Xhea stared, aghast, the coffin broke apart into large pieces—lid and sides and bottom—that fell away entirely, leaving them wrapped only in the bright ribbons of an elevator spell.

  “Sweetness, no—” Xhea whispered. They were cast into the open air beyond.

  Xhea blinked at the spell around her. Unlike the other elevators she’d seen, th
is one created an opaque bubble, shielding her from the view outside—though it was surely meant to shield City traffic from the sight of a lifeless body being transported to the ground.

  They were moving. Xhea felt their momentum build as the elevator swooped to enter the traffic lanes, and she tried not to think of the empty space below her. Tried not to think, either, of the last time she’d attempted to use an elevator: all those bright ribbons burning as they touched her, then sizzling away to nothing. Instead she clung to Abelane’s body and told herself that it was only to protect her friend that she held her magic so tightly within the ache of the breaking binding.

  Her breath sounded loud in that closed space, Abelane’s shallow breathing like a reverberating echo. Xhea felt the warmth of that breath as it puffed over her cheek, and could not help but think of the many nights she had curled close to Lane’s warmth as a child. Lane’s presence had meant safety and security. Protection.

  In the darkness, Xhea looked at Abelane’s soft, slack features, and thought, Let me protect you now.

  Around them, the spell shuddered as it swooped; already it seemed to be dropping toward the ground. Refocusing her eyes, Xhea peered beyond the spell’s opaque barrier, trying to gauge their direction. She saw Towers first, the massive shapes nearly close enough to touch, shining like moons above her. Towerlight undulated around them, huge sheets and waves of power that moved like fabric on the wind.

  It was the Towers that first drew her eye, but the Spire that held it.

  Earlier, she had seen the Spire cast in light—all that bright magic channeled through the Spire’s length, and the countless spells, countless people, in its untold hundreds of levels. Now, while Xhea saw glimmers of bright magic along the Spire’s length, the brilliant light of that pure, raw power had been replaced.

  Night had fallen, and now the Spire channeled not bright magic, but dark.

  First from Farrow’s peak, then Edren’s rooftop, Xhea had watched the Spire gather wisps of dark magic from the City—from all the Towers, spread across the sky—to pour them on the ground below. She’d thought she understood—but she’d been wrong.

  The Towers spun, slow and graceful, around the Central Spire. Xhea had never questioned that motion, no more than she had questioned the rise and fall of the Towers’ political dance as they fought for position and altitude. Only now did she see the reason for it.

  It created a vortex.

  The Central Spire was like a magnet that drew dark power from the whole of the City above—and as that power gathered, the Towers’ motion sent it swirling. Faster it flowed, until it formed a tight, rushing spiral of power around the Spire, and poured toward the ground.

  A tornado of dark magic; black water circling a drain.

  All the bright magic that she’d seen—so much wealth that Xhea could not begin to comprehend it—had been to reinforce the Spire: its walls and floors, its homes and gardens and people. To strengthen and protect it against the rush of dark magic that the Spire called once night fell.

  She could see those bright spells along the Spire’s length, straining beneath the onslaught.

  Once she had wondered why the Spire had no defensive spell generators like the Towers bore. It did not need them; the whole thing was a defensive spire—a structure designed only to channel magic.

  And its heart?

  That evening Xhea had stared, struggling to see the Spire’s living heart in the midst of so much bright magic. She’d thought that its glow must have been lost in the light from its channeled power. Now, with only dark magic flowing, she could see the truth: it had none.

  Ahrent Altaigh had once explained that enough magic changed a thing—made even inanimate objects come alive. Made them wake.

  She’d seen how much power the Spire channeled, in daytime and at night; there was nothing in the City, proper or Lower alike, that had touched so much magic as the Central Spire. Yet it did not live, not truly. Because for all the force of that bright magic, dark magic equal in power replaced it each night, undoing all that the light had wrought.

  Born at dawn, Xhea thought. Alive in the sunlight… and dying each night as darkness falls.

  Or did it live again before dawn, a dark magic creature like the Lower City? She did not know.

  Yet she could see and hear the truth of it—it had no heart, neither light nor dark. It had no song. Despite the strength of that power as it flowed, there was not enough time for awareness to grow.

  In all the City above, the Central Spire was the only thing as inert as she had once believed the Lower City. It was a vessel for power, a channel for magic, nothing more.

  Xhea’s breath caught. A channel for magic…

  Something in that thought, or the sudden images that the words made bloom within her mind, made her magic push against the boundaries of the binding spell and struggle against her control. Beside her, Abelane flinched, unconscious though she was. Xhea opened her eyes, seeing only the elevator spell once more, and made herself breathe careful and slow.

  Still she held to the thought—repeated it—as she and Abelane fell in darkness the long, long way to the ground.

  It was only as they were nearing the earth that Xhea realized where the elevator was taking them: not to the Lower City or the ruins beyond, but the badlands.

  It was possible to make it from the Lower City to the badlands and back again in one day—if barely—but one had to run near-constantly over uneven ground to do it. She’d been told that in the badlands, there was little sign left of the city that had come before; far enough out, there were only trees. She wanted to see it one day—but not now. She’d never make it back to the Lower City before the Spire’s attack.

  She reached up, and tried to pull a thin thread of dark power past the bindings. It fought and writhed. Too upset, Xhea thought. She was angry and overwhelmed, relieved and exhilarated and hurting; even the magic’s calming effect did little against the adrenaline surging through her.

  She meant to target just one of the elevator’s lines of intent at the nexus of all those bright ribbons. Instead, her targeted strike unraveled near half the propulsion spells entirely. The elevator shuddered and dropped; suddenly they were no longer swooping toward a distant landing but spinning in an uneven circle.

  “Down,” she told the elevator, as if it might hear and understand. Xhea glanced toward the ground, looking past the shielding magic, and swallowed her sudden fear at the sight of that drop. Forty feet? Thirty? Too far to fall.

  The elevator’s ribbons flickered. Without changing her vision, Xhea could see beyond the spell’s bubble to the shapes of the ruins around them. Broken buildings jutted like black teeth, and waist-high grasses and stunted trees clogged the spaces between, leaves shivering in the wind.

  The elevator spell dropped and dropped again, its propulsion spells chirping and flickering as they failed.

  It’s dying, Xhea realized. She only had time to grab hold of Abelane’s limp body before the elevator broke. They fell, tumbling.

  Xhea screamed—she was falling, falling—and then suddenly they hit the ground. She rolled—not on hard stone but soft earth and moss. She tried to cling to Abelane, her arms wrapped around the unconscious girl’s head, but Abelane was torn from her grasp. Xhea reached out, trying to slow her tumbling descent, praying to absent gods that the brace would keep her knee from twisting.

  At last, she came to a stop and lay panting. Somewhere nearby, there was a faint sound as the dead elevator port fell to the ground and bounced once, twice, before rolling away into the darkness.

  “Ow,” Xhea whispered.

  Everything ached. She would be black and blue, she judged; yet when she moved, shifting her arms, her legs, the pain did not worsen. Nothing seemed broken.

  Slowly, Xhea pushed herself up and looked for Abelane. The young woman was sprawled on the ground nearby; Xhea pulled herself across the ground to her side. Careful to keep layers of cloth between them, Xhea rolled Abelane over. She was still uncons
cious, her spirit out of synch with her flesh. Her ghost glimmered about her eyes, her lips, her hands. Abelane’s face and clothing were scuffed with dirt, and a shallow cut marked the span of one cheek—but she, like Xhea, was mostly unscathed.

  “Sometimes you have to leave someone behind, right Abelane?” Awkwardly, Xhea tried to push the hair from Abelane’s eyes. “Sometimes you’re the one that gets left. But not today. Not ever again.”

  Xhea spread her hand across Abelane’s face, not touching, but letting a thin stream of magic flow through the space that separated them. She took hold of Abelane’s spirit and pushed, feeling as her spirit connected to her body with the ease of rain soaking into soft ground.

  Xhea sat back, checking her work carefully; there was not so much as a flicker of spirit beyond Abelane’s body.

  But Abelane did not move.

  “Lane?” Xhea said softly. “Come on, wake up.”

  Nothing.

  Again she checked those connections, spirit to body, wondering what she’d done wrong. It had felt the same as when she’d put Torrence back into his body—and then, Ieren had almost ripped his soul entirely free. It had felt the same as when she’d brought Marna back to consciousness, despite the drugs running through the woman’s veins—that same sense of a connection made. That same sense of rightness.

  There was nothing right here. Abelane lay unmoving beneath her hands, and her skin, when Xhea touched her cheek with tentative fingers, felt almost cool. No reaction to that touch, either; no flinch or sound of pain.

  Even with the evidence plain before her, it took a long moment to understand: Abelane was dying.

  “Don’t you dare,” Xhea told her. “Sweetness save us, don’t you dare. Sometimes everyone lives, Abelane. You, me—everyone. Sometimes we fight back and we win. Do you hear me? We win.”

  Abelane’s chest rose and fell, but the rhythm of her breath was slowing, faltering, and Xhea’s sense of Lane’s ghost, still bound to her body, weakened.

  What have I done? She’d been so certain, so sure—and yet, despite her confidence, it seemed that Abelane had been right all along. Right to fear Xhea’s talent and her instinctive reach for Abelane’s eyes; right to fear the consequences that Xhea had only just begun to grasp. What was the point of freeing her from the Spire if she was just going to die now?