“Abelane.” Xhea’s voice was low, despairing. “Abelane, please. You have to come back, you can’t—”
You can’t leave me. She couldn’t say the words. Not like this. Not again.
Worse, she didn’t understand. Had Lissel done something more—something that Xhea had not seen? Abelane’s heartbeat was slowing, her breaths growing shallower; and deep within her body, the candlelight glow of her magic dimmed.
What did I take from her? That’s all she could think of as she watched Abelane’s magic die—that she or Lissel had stolen some part of Abelane’s spirit. She would give it back, if she could, whatever she had taken. She’d give some part of herself or her magic if only she knew how. As it was, she could only watch and try not to weep as she struggled to find something, anything that she had missed.
It was growing colder, the chill night wind making her shiver as it stole the sweat from her face and neck. Or perhaps it was only shock that made the summer air feel so cold. The air—and Abelane below her. It seemed almost as if being near to her body, touching her, drew the heat and life from Xhea’s hands.
No, Xhea realized suddenly. Not her body—her collar.
That ring had been bright to Xhea’s eyes, lit by the spells woven through the metal. It was dead now, inert but for a single line of dark power. It was not a powerful spell, not a complex one; Xhea might have woven its dark strands, little though she’d want to. For all that she’d been called callous and uncaring—for all her myriad faults—she never would have made something like this.
The dark spell in the collar was dug deep into Abelane’s spirit and drew now on her power, draining it. The bright spells had protected her, Xhea realized; and in leaving the Spire they had been destroyed, whether through design or contact with Lissel’s magic, she did not know. Now there was only that dark working tied to her spirit, and it pulled and pulled and gave nothing back.
Desperate, Xhea reached with her weak, strangled magic and snapped the binding thread.
Abelane shuddered, her breath heaving in with a huge, spasming gasp. Her magic, too, surged, flaring brighter as it flowed through her body once more. Abelane’s cheeks darkened; flushing, Xhea thought, as her heart and circulation suddenly remembered their jobs and got busy with the work of not dying.
Xhea ran her shaking hands through her hair and sat back heavily. Too close. She only wished she had the strength to remove the collar entirely.
Abelane opened her eyes. She blinked in confusion, struggling to see in the dark. She saw Xhea and made to pull away, mouth opening—
And stopped, staring. Her hand flew to her neck and clutched the collar. No magic there, now; only inert metal. Slowly she looked up at the Towers spread across the darkened sky and the magic that moved between them. She turned until she could see the Central Spire, that great pillar of light so far distant.
“Am I dead?” Her hand moved from her neck to her head, then her chest above her heart—places where a tether might be bound. “Is this what it’s like? Did you—?”
Xhea shook her head. She couldn’t suppress the grin that curled the edges of her lips.
“I’m afraid not.” She nodded toward Abelane’s hand, resting above her heart. “Your heart’s still beating. Lungs still breathing. Just flesh and blood like the rest of us.”
Praise absent gods for that.
Xhea wasn’t ready for Abelane’s reaction: she reached out, grabbed Xhea by the shoulders, and pulled her to her chest in a tight, desperate hug.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” Xhea protested, trying to pull away. No more than I already have. “I don’t want—”
“Shut up, Xhea,” Abelane muttered, and though Xhea knew her touch had to hurt, Abelane only held her tighter.
Xhea bowed her head to Abelane’s shoulder, and Abelane rested her forehead against Xhea’s collarbone, and for all the discomfort in that touch, all the strangeness, all the pain, Xhea never wanted to let go. At last she drew back, and rubbed her hands and face to help return the feeling to her numbed skin. Laughing softly, unsteadily, Abelane did the same.
“Don’t you ever do that to me again,” Xhea said. “No more dying.” She’d mourned Abelane too many times already.
“No more trying to kill me.”
“Fair enough,” Xhea conceded.
“Six years.” Abelane shook her head. “I can’t believe you actually did it. That you got us out.”
“I can’t either.” The very idea was so preposterous that she couldn’t help but laugh—and then she couldn’t stop laughing.
She laughed at the idea that they’d escaped from the Spire; she laughed at her own giddiness, and the preposterous realization that she was safe on the ground with Abelane beside her. Abelane who she’d given up for dead a thousand times over; Abelane who she’d believed abandoned her. Xhea laughed and laughed until she sagged helpless on the ground, arms thrown out to either side, staring through tears at the sky.
And, laughing, it all made sense, the pieces clicking together as if they’d always been whole.
The Lower City and its magic, its size and its threat.
The Central Spire’s ultimatum—and the Spire itself, not a living creature but a channel for magic.
All the dark magic of the City above, spinning around and around as it was channeled into the ground.
And the gray light from Farrow’s struggling heart—bright magic tarnished from its proximity to the ground and the living Lower City, though the newborn Tower still lived.
Xhea laughed and laughed until tears streamed down her cheeks and the ruins around them echoed with the sound. Finally she managed to get control, wiping away her tears, and grabbed her cane so she could make her awkward way to her feet.
“I know how to stop them,” she said when at last she could speak. “I know how to save us all.”
In the ruins around them, it began to rain.
The Lower City had seemed far away. Walking, that distance felt a thousand times farther. As the rain continued, the ground underfoot became treacherous, slick with mud. Their footsteps did not crunch anymore so much as squish, the rain’s steady patter punctuated by the miserable clank of the charms in Xhea’s hair.
“You’re veering again,” Abelane told her. Xhea looked up.
It was true. She thought she’d been walking directly toward the Lower City, and yet as she blinked the rain out of her eyes, Xhea realized that the distant shapes of the skyscrapers were no longer in front of her but somewhere to her right. Xhea glared at those small buildings, as if she could make them be closer through sheer force of irritation.
She sighed and corrected her steps.
They’d been walking for a little over an hour, yet it felt like a day, a year, an age. She felt weary and sore and entirely out of sorts, the drenching rain making her clothes hang off her like weights. Even her cane felt too heavy, its slick metal top somehow rubbing a blister onto the inside of her palm.
Abelane had found the broken elevator port and carried it with her, turning it over in her hands every time she paused to let Xhea catch up. Abelane swore the elevator could be fixed. At this point, Xhea didn’t care; she wanted to throw the blighted thing into the ruins just so she wouldn’t have to look at it anymore.
Xhea bowed her head in an attempt to keep the wind from blowing the rain into her eyes and trudged onward. The world narrowed to the patch of ground before her, rocks and chunks of concrete, weeds bowed by the downpour. Water ran nearby like a small river, rushing alongside what had once been a curb; and if she listened, she could just hear the sound of that river falling and splashing into a deeper pool. A basement, most likely.
Even staring downward, she could feel the Lower City before her, urging her forward, drawing her on. Again she glanced up, correcting her steps, and tried to see her home through the rain.
Something was happening, that much was clear. The skyscrapers were lit, yet so were many of the other buildings in the core, their windows shining in defiance of the
night. As she watched, aircars flew over and around the skyscrapers, spell exhaust shimmering behind them like silvery threads.
It reminded her of nothing so much as a dead animal, flies swirling about the bloated body.
Stop that. Whatever had happened, it was not too late. If they could stop the Central Spire’s attack, then surely they could find a way to stop the poorer Towers. And if they could not find a way to undo what they had done? We’ll find a way to make them pay.
The thought kept her marching resolutely forward, heedless of her braced knee’s unhappy ache, the chafing of her wet clothes, the squish of her sodden boots.
Marching resolutely forward, Xhea realized, in the wrong direction. Again.
“Sweetness,” she muttered. “What’s the matter with me?” Because she could feel that pull, could feel where she was supposed to be going, and yet…
Xhea hesitated. Stopped. Touched the spelled tether bound to the center of her chest.
Shai?
It was hard to call on her magic; her power felt bruised by its long confinement, and even the new cracks in the binding weren’t enough to ease that hurt. Even so, she conjured a whisper of dark, wrapped it around the thought, and sent it down that link.
She felt a surge of something in reply: images, thoughts, feelings, Xhea knew not which. They were all tangled in a way that made no sense to her tired brain. Yet one thing was clear: Shai was closer than she’d thought. Much closer.
Xhea wiped the rain from her eyes and held her wet hand before her, as if Shai’s presence were heat that she might feel on her upraised palm. She moved her arm until she felt the stretched-thin length of the tether at the farthest extent of her reach; it pointed not toward the Lower City itself but somewhere to her left. The direction that her steps kept veering.
She sent a sudden wave of welcome and happiness down their link—or tried. Like Shai’s sending, it was probably more like a muddled mix of happiness and weariness, mud and fatigue and that faint, desperate hope. I’m over here, she tried to say in that wordless way; or maybe, We might not all die tomorrow!
It probably just felt like rain.
Even so, Xhea grinned and turned in the direction the tether led. “This way,” she said and went tromping forward, leaving Abelane scrambling to catch up. For once.
“What is it?” Abelane asked. “What are you doing?”
“I can feel her,” Xhea explained. “My friend. She’s this way.” At Abelane’s blank look, she said, “My bondling.”
She didn’t like the word, but supposed it was true—or at least a description that Abelane would understand. Abelane just shook her head, her expression darkening. She walked reluctantly in Xhea’s wake, the broken elevator port clutched in her white-knuckled hand.
Eyes now on the ruins instead of the brightly lit Lower City, Xhea noticed more. The ruins, too, were lit—but in flashes and flickers, patches dimly glowing as if illuminated by a dying fire’s embers. From a distance, she’d thought those lights were only reflections of Towerlight—magic glinting off rain-slicked walls, shimmering in swampy pools. Closer, she could see that they weren’t reflections but people—encampments, big and small, lit with a thousand small spells.
Closer, there was a light. It seemed at first glance like a single point, but grew as Xhea came nearer. She could feel the tug of that light, as if part of her very self were out there in the ruins; and as the glow brightened and became the shape of a young woman walking some ten feet off the ground, Xhea could not help but smile.
Behind Xhea, Abelane said, “Someone’s coming.”
“I know.” Surely Shai was glowing into the visible spectrum—surely that light was true light, brighter than anything but the lightning that now flickered along the far horizon.
And yet as she said the words, Xhea realized that there was something else. She could hear footsteps—many footsteps—splashing through puddles, squishing through mud. Footsteps grinding against the rocks and rubble, footsteps swishing through the high grasses and weeds.
Slow footsteps, steady footsteps. The step of numerous people walking to the same unwavering beat.
No. Not people.
Xhea stopped. Still Shai came toward her, arms outstretched, walking across the air and shining like magic incarnate. Xhea saw the moment that Shai recognized her, sodden with rain and mud, weeds reaching her waist. She saw Shai’s eyes flicker to Abelane, who stood beside Xhea with the elevator port held like a weapon.
Shai saw them both and did not smile, did not wave, only walked. All those footsteps followed.
“I don’t…” Abelane rubbed her eyes with her free hand. Looked again. “I don’t understand what I’m seeing.” Xhea could hear her fear.
“Xhea. Are those… are they…?”
Even after six years, Abelane knew enough to fear the night walkers—or perhaps her fear had only grown. Again Abelane rubbed her eyes and squinted; confusion creased her brow.
Her eyes, Xhea thought, remembering Torrence’s near-blindness after Ieren’s attack. Remembering that his eyes had become sensitized to magic.
“What do you see?” she asked quietly.
“I see a woman made of pure light,” Abelane said, “and on the ground, people made of shadow.”
Xhea blinked, turning. She had always been able to see in the dark, even in places where no light fell; seeing by magic, she now knew. She could see the walkers behind Shai—their gaunt bodies, their ragged and dirty clothes, their hollow-cheeked faces staring upward. Four of them—no, five.
“Shadow?” Xhea asked.
But even as she spoke she shifted her eyes’ focus—and understood. Viewed only in magic, she didn’t see people following Shai, only shapes of purest black. Absence, pure and absolute, walking toward her in the shape of a woman, the shape of a man. A cluster of human-shaped nothing.
“They’ve been hollowed out,” Abelane said. “I’d seen it, I always knew, but this…” She shook her head as if words had left her entirely.
Shai led them closer, until at last Xhea called out: “Is it safe? Will they come after us?”
Unspoken beneath that: Will they hurt us? For there was nothing that the walkers could do to Shai; but Xhea and Abelane were flesh and blood. There was no way that Xhea could run—and Abelane? Exhausted as the girl was—sore and disoriented from Lissel’s attack, bruised and battered from their unceremonious fall to the ground—Xhea doubted she would get far before a walker caught her.
Only then did Shai pause, then stop altogether. She stood for a moment as if roused from a trance, then lowered her hands to her sides. She was, Xhea saw, weeping.
As one, the five walkers trailing her stopped. They stared at the shining ghost above them, their blank faces rapt.
Even so, Xhea held still, not wanting to move—never mind walk, never mind run—lest she draw their unblinking attention. Beside her, Abelane had frozen—all but her hands, which trembled. Her breathing was fast and shallow.
“Shai?” Xhea said. Though she pitched her voice to carry, the walkers did not turn at the sound, did not sniff the air to catch her scent; they only stared unerringly at Shai.
“I couldn’t save them,” Shai said softly. Too softly; the words were almost lost under the sound of the rain.
“Who?” Xhea’s heart was suddenly in her throat. She did not see blood on the walkers’ hands or clothing—or, at least, no new blood. But it was raining; even fresh blood might be washed away by this steady downpour.
She glanced again at the Lower City—and those glints and glimmers that lit the ruins. She was asking the wrong question, she realized. Not, “Who did the walkers catch and kill?” but, “How many?”
“There were more.” Tears ran unchecked down Shai’s cheeks. “Twenty at one point, maybe more. I drew them out, drew them away, but the defenders followed. They shot them, one by one, and what was I supposed to do?”
She means the walkers, Xhea realized, eyes rounding. She looked again to the five gathered behind Shai,
light and rain falling across their upturned faces.
“The people cheered for me, Xhea. I screamed and I wept and I watched them fall, and the defenders cheered for me. Because I saved them from the walkers. Just like I’d wanted to.”
Xhea understood.
Shai knew what had been done to create the walkers—knew, too, what had happened to her father, though she rarely wished to speak of it. I know he’s dead, Shai had told her once. Truly dead.
But to let them fall? It was an end, not only to their lives, but to that small, secret hope that Shai had held buried in the ghostly chambers of her heart.
That she might save them.
That she might help them, all of them. That she might let them rest.
“Your father?” Xhea asked quietly.
Shai shook her head. “I didn’t see him,” she whispered, as if that made it worse.
Beside Xhea, Abelane had begun to shiver. Her arms were pulled tight to her stomach, white-knuckled hands clasped to the elevator port. Not just fear, Xhea realized. Shock.
“Is it safe?” Xhea asked again.
Shai glanced behind her; she looked at the walkers for a long, slow moment, seeming to see them for the first time. “They’re drawn to magic,” she said at last. Her words came slowly, as if Shai was returning to herself from a very long way away. “As long as I’m brighter and closer, you should be okay.”
Xhea let out the breath she didn’t remember holding. “See? It’s okay.” Only when Abelane looked at her blankly did Xhea remember that seeing Shai’s magic did not mean that she could see Shai, or hear her.
Of course. Oh, she was tired. Xhea felt like she could curl up somewhere in the dirt and ruin and sleep, rain and mud and all. She tried to ignore the feeling.
“She says that if we stay back, they won’t hurt us.”
Towers Fall Page 27
