Towers Fall

by Karina Sumner-Smith

  Because Xhea could not turn away. She could not stop, could not flee. She would rather die attempting to save what little was left than know she had stopped trying.

  Was that weakness? She could not pretend it was strength or bravery. But it was the only way she knew how to be.

  Shai wept then, those tears spilling over and cascading down her cheeks, bright, glittering—because she knew. Oh, she knew. She clung to Xhea’s shoulders, or tried to; she bowed her head, sobbing, as if she might rest her forehead against Xhea’s own.

  At last she straightened and met Xhea’s eyes.

  “Okay,” she whispered. “I’m with you.”

  Shai’s acceptance should have been a relief—and it was. Yet it was a weight, too, that settled on Xhea’s shoulders and bowed her neck, and when her hands shook it was not from fear or anger, but something she could name only dread.

  Xhea did not long for death; did not court it, for all that her behavior drew her time and again to death’s door. If she could, she would grab for a life like she’d always dreamed: a life of leisure and luxury, of long sleep and plentiful food. A life like the ones people lived in the Towers.

  Xhea looked at the people tearing apart the buildings around her—she thought of the walkers, blank-faced, falling—and she thought, No. Not like the Towers.

  It wasn’t just that she did not know what she would do with herself if she had nothing to do but nap and eat and lounge, for all that she ached for such rest now. It was that she had seen more of those lives than she had thought possible—had understood, truly, the payment tendered for their comfort—and deemed the cost too high. Little though City citizens seemed to agree. Or perhaps it was just easier to reject something she’d never had than to give up everything she’d ever known.

  But if not a life of luxury like the Towers then… something. Xhea found herself thinking of the far horizon and what might lie beyond. She’d never strayed far from the Lower City, never thought to wonder about the world as it existed beyond this small place; not until now.

  Perhaps once that was the choice she would have made, to take what she might carry and walk away, Shai at her side. Some part of her yearned for that unknown—the mystery of it, the challenge—even though that path, too, would likely lead to her death. But oh, the things they might have seen, the things they might have done. Even the idea was enough to make her smile.

  Doesn’t matter. Not now, not anymore. Xhea put such thoughts carefully aside, each like a delicate artifact that she did not wish to break. There was so little left, but at least she might have this: the thought that once, if things were different, she might have been happy.

  Xhea clung now to Shai, trying to hold the ghost’s incorporeal shoulders as Shai clung to hers, and if their fingers slipped and slid and fell through—if holding tight was impossible—then at least they had something that felt almost like touch. Xhea took a long breath, and another, trying to steady herself.

  I don’t want to die. It was the simple truth. She did not want to die and yet there was no other choice; not unless she was willing to stand back and let the Spire win, let the City and its Towers crush them all.

  She was not.

  And so she drew in a deep breath and straightened. I can do this, she thought, but what she said was, “We can do this.”

  Shai nodded.

  Together they stepped into that small, dark space, and let the living Lower City pull them down.

  Xhea stepped from the Lower City’s embrace, emerging from the wall in the food court beneath the market. That wall was black, now—black like Farrow’s wrapped vines; in moving her, the Lower City had claimed that space as its own. She was not far from its heart.

  The tunnels were cool and dark, as they always were, but they were not silent. The ground rumbled and shook and shuddered, and the halls took those sounds and amplified them. It sounded worse than thunder, worse than any storm; the impacts felt like they were going to shake the walls to pieces. Decades of accumulated dust rained from the ceiling, dislodged from exposed pipes and ceiling tiles, to cover the tile below.

  Xhea knew that parts of the underground had already collapsed. She did not know what or where—did not know which of her familiar halls and passageways were gone forever. Only knew the truth of it. These structures were old, ancient, failing; they could not withstand such force.

  The Towers were taking her home piece by piece, and she could not stop them.

  But the Lower City could. It had to.

  Xhea walked, letting her cane take most of her weight, the chime and clatter of her hair lost beneath the sounds of buildings falling, crumbling, smashing. Louder even than those sounds was the Lower City’s song: its living heart wailed, echoing down into her flesh until her bones shivered.

  No, there was no silence here. Not anymore.

  Xhea tried to stop at the end of the long corridor that led to the Lower City’s heart, staring at the darkness at its end. But the draw of the Lower City’s heart was no longer a subtle call that could slip past her defenses and urge her onward. It felt like a physical force, as if the entity wrapped an invisible hand around her and pulled, dragging her nearer step by staggering step.

  She clung to the wall, fingers grasping, trying to find purchase to fight that pull. Trying to fight the part of herself that wanted let the darkness sweep her away.

  “Here,” Xhea managed. “This is far enough.”

  The Lower City’s dark magic was thick in the air; it was in the walls and the sagging ceiling and the tiled floor beneath their feet. Even now its power sank into her as if her flesh was parched ground; surely it would hear her from so near.

  “It’s in pain,” Shai said, looking toward the heart. Xhea could see only dark magic incarnate—yet Shai saw something more. The ghost stared, brow furrowed, seemingly torn between her own discomfort and the Lower City’s distress.

  “Yes.”

  It was in pain, and so was Xhea; part of her cried out in perfect time to the song’s rhythms, slipping into its quickening cadence of hurt and despair.

  Instead of pushing the sensation away, Xhea embraced it. She drew her magic up through the cracked binding in countless thin rivulets of power, and sagged against the wall as she yielded to the Lower City’s call. She did not allow herself to move forward, and yet her breathing shifted, becoming slower and deeper. Her heart, too, slowed, its beat falling into time with the song.

  She pressed her hand harder against the wall and let her power flow. But this was no simple ribbon of magic like she had attempted before. Instead, she sang in time, her voice and magic rising in wordless harmony to the Lower City’s song.

  She did not say, I’m here. Instead she said, I know. It was no simple confirmation, not sympathy, but empathy, true and strong and bonedeep.

  Xhea’s magic sank into the Lower City’s, all those wisps of black vanishing into the wall before her, the floor beneath her; into the very air.

  I know, she said, for she heard in its song the agony of Rown falling, only dust and ruin where once had stood a skyscraper. It spoke, too, of structures for which she had no names: buildings too small to be so defined.

  I know, Xhea said, for the Lower City cried out for its lost people. It had felt as they were killed in the streets and in their homes; felt their deaths as they tried to fight back. It felt their absence as they moved beyond its limits and into the inanimate ruins beyond.

  Its people, leaving, dying. Its body crumbling, torn up, fallen, destroyed.

  Oh, such betrayal. Such hurt and loss and pain.

  I know, Xhea said. I know, I understand; I hurt, too.

  And it heard her; she felt that glimmer of recognition as it turned and saw her—truly saw her, if only for a moment. She felt as the Lower City drew her magic into itself and sent some thin streamer of power back in reply. But there were no words there, no thoughts or images or knowledge—and when she tried to send more than that brief connection of empathy, it did not reply.

  It
was not enough. Even here, even so close, it was not enough.

  Xhea opened her eyes, suddenly seeing the shopping corridor before her once more: its dirty, flooded floor, its glass-fronted stores, its sagging ceiling. And the darkness, living, roiling, at its end.

  “I need to go closer,” Xhea whispered.

  Because she didn’t have enough magic to speak as she needed to—didn’t have enough power to tell it what it needed to know. Against its rising chorus of song, she could only whisper; and if it acknowledged her presence, it could not hear her. Not truly.

  She needed to touch the Lower City’s heart.

  “Xhea—” Shai started, but Xhea did not need those words. Did not need to hear the truths they would contain.

  She knew what that touch would mean; they both did. For all that Xhea was a creature of dark magic, her body was only flesh, only blood and bone. Dark magic—so much of it, so strong—would kill her, and if it was not the slow death of years that the dark magic children experienced, neither would it be quick.

  A death of minutes, perhaps. A death of hours.

  She and Shai had stood here before, in this place, teetering on this edge—only now there was every reason to step forward and so few reasons to step back.

  Xhea shook her head. I know how to save us all, she had said. That sharp and glorious hope.

  It was not true; not anymore. She had been too slow, too late, too weak—did it really matter which? Her failures compounded, piling one atop the other as if she wished to rival the Spire’s height.

  She could not save anyone but herself.

  Walk away, she told herself in silence. Step back and get out. Perhaps there was time enough for her to get clear of the Spire’s marked zone of impact, that circle drawn on the Messenger’s map. Perhaps she could escape the poorer Towers’ notice—her and Shai both; perhaps she could find a way out through the broken streets to the ruins.

  But she did not think so.

  “I know,” Xhea said to Shai—the same words she’d said to the Lower City, with the same weight.

  “If you have to do this,” Shai said softly, “I will not stop you.”

  Xhea looked at the ghost, her pale eyes and paler hair, her glorious light.

  “No,” Shai said then, and drew a deep breath. “If this is what you have to do, you have my support. My everything.”

  We cannot be anything other than what we are.

  Except that once she had not been this person. Once she had thought only of herself—only of that day, that moment, that meal, that moment of warmth. Xhea would not have run from the idea of sacrificing herself for others; she would not have had the idea to run from. Or was it that she’d only ever believed herself to be as others had seen her: small and helpless, powerless, useless.

  Yet here she was, still standing as everything fell to pieces around her. So maybe this was the truth of her, her whole self laid bare. Not her selfishness and sharp words, not her hurt or loneliness or the countless mistakes of her life. Only this.

  “You saved me,” Shai said, as if in answer to a question that Xhea had not asked. Or perhaps she’d asked not in words, but magic; for power flowed between them now, strong and steady.

  “No,” Xhea said. “You saved me.” For whoever she was, whoever she had become, none of it would have been possible without Shai.

  “Try, then. For all those who had no one to save them.”

  Xhea thought of them: Edren and Orren and Senn, fallen Rown and black-bound Farrow. She thought of the Lower City market in the height of summer, the vendors and their stalls, the roar of their upraised voices. She thought of the children playing in the street while their parents washed clothes in a nearby fountain. She thought of the hunters and the thieves, the would-be business people and the leaders, the guards and the grandmothers and the gangs. She thought of the kids like her, the kids who had no one and nothing, and fought to live nonetheless.

  She heard buildings falling, shaking the ground beneath her.

  Somewhere overhead, dawn was breaking.

  Xhea looked again at the Lower City’s heart and the corridor’s far end, all that roiling black. She shrugged then, and smiled. There was no point in stopping.

  Shai took her hand and they walked together, step by careful step, toward that darkness.

  Xhea could feel Shai’s strain as she tried to stay by her side. Shai’s steps had grown smaller, came slower, as she forced her way forward; and every step she made was claimed with the force of her Radiant magic.

  The dark power of the Lower City’s heart pushed Shai back as if it were a storm wind: her hair flew wild about her face, and her clothes fluttered and pressed against her body. She clung to Xhea, or tried to, as if the pressure of the magic forcing her back was nothing. Shai’s expression was intense, fearful, determined. There were no tears there, not anymore.

  At last, Shai could go no further.

  “Shai,” Xhea started, and did not know what to say.

  Shai only smiled. “If you can, wait for me. We’ll go together.”

  She reached out and touched Xhea’s cheek with the backs of her curled fingers, gently, so gently. Xhea closed her eyes, because it was suddenly that or weep. She swallowed and took a deep breath, and when she’d found the strength to open her eyes once more, Shai had already stepped back.

  Shai moved away as if it was the only thing she could do; as if, without Xhea to cling to, the darkness swept her back, caught in its tide. Xhea was drawn the other way, away from Shai and toward the darkness that waited at the hall’s end.

  There should have been something to say, some words that would express—

  But no. Magic flowed between them, and her heart could say all the things her lips could not.

  Xhea turned.

  Perhaps it should have been easy; all her choices had been made, each decision weighted with finality. She knew what she was doing.

  Perhaps it should have been easy, but it was not.

  She looked down at her hands, one empty and shaking, one clenched tight, white-knuckled on the metal top of the cane that Daye had given her. Slowly she loosened her grip on her cane, then bent and laid the twisted length of wood on the ground. Straightening was hard; she hurt, and her body fought her, failing in a thousand small ways.

  She stepped forward, not bothering to hide her limp. Not trying to hide what time had done to her, or magic; not fighting the power that tried to rise within her, or the pain that it engendered.

  She only walked.

  One step. Another.

  That dark shape grew before her. So rarely had Xhea seen color, and so often had she mourned its absence; yet now she was grateful for the lack. There was no color here, no light or shadow. Only power, black and absolute.

  Yet in that black, she could see details. The magic swirled and twisted into countless fractal shapes, and they were so beautiful some part of her wanted to shy away. They were the entity’s thoughts writ large, the truth of her home written before her in black so dark it hurt.

  “Hello,” she said, in voice and magic both, but even here it was not enough. Not compared to so much power; not compared to so much pain.

  So Xhea took a long, deep breath, and walked into the Lower City’s living heart.

  Dark magic.

  It was, Xhea thought—strangely, foolishly—the wrong word, dark. For darkness spoke of the lack of light, as if it might only be shaped by that absence.

  This black had a presence, stronger and brighter than any light she had ever known. It was not light’s absence but its equal, its opposing force; and it burned.

  She felt as if she had stepped not into darkness, but fire. Her flesh singed and burned away, and that fire poured into her, deeper and deeper with every breath. No air anymore, only magic, devouring her. She could not scream, could not think—

  Her magic unfurled, its bonds burned away, and suddenly the pain eased. Magic flowed and Xhea let her consciousness go with it, leaving the agony of mortal flesh behind. F
ace and hands, blood and breath; she struggled to remember what they were, how they felt. Struggled to remember why they mattered.

  Because there was so very much magic. There was no peace there, no calm—and yet she gloried in the feeling nonetheless, letting herself expand to her very limits. She felt the earth beneath her as if it, now, was her flesh; she felt the foundations and the tunnels that wove through that earth, and the cold weight of their age. She felt the streets and the buildings, so many buildings, all reaching for the sky.

  Magic ripped through her, sharp and bright, and she shuddered with the shock of it. Magic tore into her, glittering like daylight, and she could not shy away, could not escape. She screamed as parts of herself were lifted and ripped apart—

  No, Xhea realized, pulling herself back. That was not her pain—those were not her wounds—but the Lower City’s.

  As if that thought were a call, the entity’s awareness turned toward her like a great, black eye. She’d felt her power to be vast, expanding; this creature dwarfed her unthinkingly. She was no more than a speck, a mote of dust tumbling through the darkened air.

  But, it seemed, a beloved speck. For all the Lower City’s hurt and grief, it embraced her, held her.

  I know, she told it again. She shared what she had seen, what it had felt and already knew: Rown, fallen. The streets taken. The people scattered, hurting, dying.

  Pain and sorrow echoed between them, amplified, shared. Oh, all the things they had lost.

  It was only then that Xhea realized she could feel something else: power rushing into her, a strength not her own. That power seemed almost foreign; it spoke of light and spirit.

  A name rose then, blooming in her mind like a bright flower.

  Shai.

  She remembered. She was not the Lower City, not these buildings and homes, not this magic. She was not even a speck.

  She was just a girl, small and broken, and she had come with a message.

  Xhea thought of the Spire and the dark magic that flowed to the Lower City, night after night; she conjured the memory of that magic twisted, changed, in an attempt to poison the living Lower City.