Reaping the Aurora

by Joshua Palmatier

  Marc dragged himself up the last few steps to the second tier, his energy flagging. He didn’t know if it was because of the steepness of the stairs or blood loss. A group of enforcers pulled him up onto the tier but didn’t let go, their handholds tight. Marc sagged into the support. Ty approached with Allan at his back, the commander’s face lined with anger.

  But before they reached him, Cutter shoved his way through those that held him.

  “Marc, you’re bleeding. What’s going on?”

  Marc snatched at Cutter’s shirt, drew him in closer, the enforcers protesting. “It’s the Kormanley. They’re going to try to take over the Needle today, while the Wielders heal the distortion. They’ve got bombs everywhere. You have to get everyone off the tiers!”

  “Is what he’s saying true?” Ty had arrived, with Allan. “Can we trust him?”

  Cutter hesitated, but only for a breath. “He was part of my patrol near Tumbor. We can trust him.”

  Ty waved the enforcers holding Marc off and he sagged into Cutter, unable to suppress a moan. Ty noticed the blood. “You’re wounded. Who did this? What was that explosion?”

  “One of them stabbed me when I tried to take the bomb from him. He armed the bomb before he fled, so I threw it over the side of the temple. Otherwise it would have exploded in the middle of the first tier.” Allan shouted something, gesturing for someone to come closer. “They’ve got more bombs spread out on the temple and the walls.”

  “They who?”

  “The Kormanley.”

  “I need names.”

  “Darius is behind it all, with Dierdre. They have multiple people in the enforcers—Trenton, Cerena, Armone.”

  Ty cut him off. He glanced around at the enforcers closest to them. “We need to get the Matriarch off the tier. She’ll be a target.”

  “So will Kara and the rest of the Wielders who weren’t originally White Cloaks, and the mentors from the University,” Allan said. His hands rested on his daughter’s shoulders. The young girl—young woman—dropped to her knees at Marc’s side the moment she saw the blood, one hand reaching to clasp his own, the one pressing hard onto his wound. Marc gasped, but she glanced up and met his gaze.

  “Don’t struggle. Everything will be fine.”

  And then his skin prickled and a strange, calming warmth flooded through his side and abdomen. Vibrant blue-gold-purple light shimmered around the girl’s hands, fading a few heartbeats later. The warmth in his gut seeped away, taking with it most of the pain but leaving behind a heavy lethargy.

  “You’re . . . the Healer,” he managed.

  She stood. “The wound was deep, and you’ve lost a lot of blood. You should rest.”

  “I don’t think that’s an option right now.”

  “No, it’s not.” Marc glanced up at the newcomer, one of the Temerites, a captain, standing to one side of Ty, Allan on the other. “We need to remove the Matriarch from the tier.”

  “Who can we trust?” Allan asked.

  “Most of the enforcers on the first tier were with Darius,” Marc said. “They killed the few I saw loyal to Ty.”

  All three looked down toward the first tier. “They aren’t charging up here yet.”

  “They’re waiting for the signal.”

  “What signal?”

  “The explosives.”

  All three shared a look. “We’ll have to take the Matriarch through the temple,” the Temerite captain said. “We can’t navigate the stairs here with her chair easily.”

  “I’ll assume Darius has already begun securing the temple itself,” Ty said. “Which means we’ll get no support from the few men I left inside. And I’ll need all of my enforcers here on the second tier to guard your retreat.” He turned to Allan. “Who else can we trust?”

  “Grant and the Wolves. They’re still inside the temple, in the section they chose as their den. None of them were interested in the healing, and they don’t like crowds.”

  “Good. Take the Matriarch and the Temerites and find the Wolves. Then get the hells out of the temple before Darius secures it completely. See if you can get Kara, the Wielders, and the mentors out as well.”

  The Temerite captain was already moving, the entire second tier suddenly in turmoil. The Healer hauled Marc’s bloody arm over her shoulder and with Cutter’s help, dragged him toward the entrance to the temple, another man who’d obviously once been a Wolf leading the way. The enforcers there were herding the Temerite guards through, Allan in the lead. The Temerite captain and the Matriarch were next, followed by her aide and more Temerite guards.

  Cutter stepped forward with Marc and the Healer, but Ty halted them, squeezing Marc’s shoulder. “Thank you for the warning.” Then he motioned them after the ex-Wolf.

  As they entered the doorway, the atonal bell at the main gates began to clang, the sound echoing oddly in the corridor behind them. Cutter and the Healer paused, looking back.

  “That must be the signal,” Marc said.

  A few seconds later, a series of explosions shook the entire temple.

  Kara gathered all the flows of ley—from Erenthrall, Farrade, and the Northern Reaches—through the crystals in their new configuration, amplifying its power and then channeling it down the tunnel leading to Tumbor. She traveled with it, vaguely aware as she passed out through the pit that something had happened at the Needle. It had sounded like a muffled explosion. Marcus said something she didn’t catch, but she shrugged it aside as she focused on the ley. Hernande had warned her there was limited time. She needed to be as efficient as possible, and with the added crystal and the new configuration, the ley surged on the edges of her control. One small slip and it would break free.

  And she hadn’t even tapped into the reservoirs held by the mentors yet.

  She felt the distortion of Tumbor long before she reached it, its presence more of a gaping absence of ley, where she should be able to sense some. A wound on the world, on reality, it loomed before her as she rode toward it.

  Then the ley hit it, its shards slicing down through the ley’s tunnel like a blade, severing the link between the Needle and Tumbor’s center. The entire structure vibrated and for a moment Kara thought it would collapse with that slight disturbance. But the distortion held, the ley splashing out around the resistance, most of it funneling down into earth, a spume of it flaring up the distortion’s side in a fan of white light. If someone had been standing near the distortion where the underground ley tunnel intersected the distortion, they would have seen a sudden fountain of ley emerging from the ground, churning upward like white rapids against a rock.

  Kara steadied herself with a few deep breaths, then reached out into the turmoil and began guiding the ley around the distortion. Her first instinct was to surround the sphere with the ley and begin healing it as the Wielders in Erenthrall had healed distortions before the Shattering. But her experience with the distortion over Erenthrall told her that the technique wouldn’t work here. Tumbor was too large, and even the smaller distortion over Erenthrall had begun to destabilize before she’d finished. The cracks in reality were too intricate, too complex to be smoothed and repaired from the outside in. Like Erenthrall, she’d need to heal Tumbor from the inside out.

  But first she’d need an entry point, somewhere to focus her attack. In Erenthrall, she’d used the pit at the Nexus, which had extended all the way to the lake reservoir and provided a path of least resistance. She needed something similar here. All she had to do was find it.

  Scouring over the distortion’s surface on a wave of ley, she tested the exposed facets of the shards, pried her fingers into the cracks between, felt along their razored edges. The larger arms that formed the base structure of the distortion were easier to follow, the intricate layers and finer cracks between more difficult.

  She’d covered only a quarter of the distortion’s surface when she said, “I
t’s too large. I can’t piece together its overall structure, not like I did in Erenthrall. I’m not finding any sections that are significantly weaker than any other.”

  Back at the Needle, standing a few feet from her body, yet hundreds of miles distant, Marcus answered, “If you don’t find a weaker point for entrance, then you’ll have to use the ley tunnel from the Needle.” His words sounded oddly dampened, as if muffled by layers of cloth.

  “It doesn’t lead to the distortion’s heart,” Kara protested. She’d hoped to find something like the pit in Erenthrall, but she’d already finished checking the section beneath the distortion in Tumbor. The node in Tumbor hadn’t been fed by a hidden lake far beneath the surface of the earth; it had been fed by the Nexus in Erenthrall.

  She shifted her attention toward the northeastern section of the distortion, searching for that ley line, knowing it would be dead.

  Back at the Needle, Marcus said, “Try the ley line to Erenthrall.”

  “I’m already looking. But it will have the same problem as the one from the Needle. All the ley lines will. None of them will feed directly into the distortion’s center.”

  “Then use the ley line from the Needle to reach the node in Tumbor and redirect the ley from there to the heart.”

  “You make it sound so simple.” She pulled back to the ley line from the Needle, began retracing her route. Searching for a weaker entry point was a waste of time. “I’m going to need you to direct the ley from the reservoirs into the line. I’ll reshape it as the surge travels to Tumbor. Hopefully, it will be strong enough to pierce all the way to Tumbor’s node.”

  “I’ll inform Okata, Artras, and Jenner—” Marcus cut off, then swore. A hand wrapped around her upper arm and squeezed, the pain a sharp ache.

  “What is it?”

  “It’s Dierdre. And Irmona. They’re here, in the pit.”

  “What are they doing here?” As her attention shifted from the ley line toward the Needle, the ache in her arm escalated. Marcus must be digging his fingers into the muscle. “Get rid of them!”

  Marcus suddenly released her. “I’ll deal with them. Stay focused on the distortion.”

  Then he was gone. He shouted something toward Okata and Artras and then he was too distant for her to hear. She hesitated, wavering in the ley line between the Needle and Tumbor; she almost returned to the pit to help him.

  But then she felt the surge from the redirected reservoirs heading toward her, and there was no time. If she was going to heal the distortion over Tumbor, it would have to happen now.

  Marcus was on his own.

  “What are you doing here?” Marcus shouted, letting his anger seep into his voice as he moved toward the bottom of the steps that encircled the pit. Dierdre and Irmona were already descending, Irmona’s gaze locked on Kara, the crystals, and the Wielders that surrounded them all. Her look was hungry. “How did you even get in here? There were guards—”

  Then he noticed the curved knife in Dierdre’s hand, already covered in blood.

  He halted in shock, then leaped forward, up the steps, blocking their descent. “What have you done?”

  “What we should have done over a month ago, when Kara and Ty locked Father away inside his rooms. We’re taking back the Needle.”

  “You can’t. Not now. If you disturb us now—”

  Dierdre grabbed him by the throat and slammed his back against the stone side of the pit, pinning him against the wall with the weight of her body. “Irmona, go.”

  Irmona didn’t respond, merely slid behind the two and continued down the steps at a trot.

  In the pit, the ley surged suddenly brighter, Okata, Artras, Dylan, and Jenner now focused so intently on controlling the addition of the reservoirs that they didn’t notice Irmona approaching. The rest of the Wielders were also distracted, guiding the ley from Erenthrall and the other ley lines toward Kara’s position or poised to seize control of the crystals if Hernande’s precarious hold should waver.

  Marcus snatched at the arm that clutched his throat and began to struggle. Dierdre held him, but she hadn’t cut off his breath yet. “Stop this, Dierdre. If Irmona interferes, Kara could lose control. You could destroy us all!”

  Dierdre’s hand squeezed and he began to choke. “Is that all you care about? Kara? What happened to your concern for the Kormanley? What happened to us, Marcus?”

  “What do you mean?” The words were wheezed out, her hold so tight he could barely speak. “I’ve spent all of my free time with you.”

  “Ha! What free time? You’ve spent nearly every waking moment here at the node for the past few months, here with her. It’s time you make a real choice, Marcus. Me or her, the Kormanley or this pathetic attempt to recreate Erenthrall here at the Needle. Do you even see what’s happening out in the city? She’s letting everyone inside the gates! The city beyond the temple is overcrowded, the tent city even worse. People are living with the swine and the sheep in nothing but hovels. And now she’s let in the Temerites! Who’s next? The Gorrani?” Dierdre spat to one side. “She’s going to destroy what Father built here. She’s already halfway finished.”

  Irmona had reached the pit’s floor, halted at the base of the stairs. She glared up at the crystals, at their new configuration, then toward Okata, Artras, Jenner, and the others. Marcus watched over Dierdre’s shoulder as she considered each one, what they were doing, her attention falling finally on Kara.

  Her look of naked hatred sent a shock through Marcus’ entire body.

  She drew a thin knife from the depths of one sleeve, stepped forward. But then she noticed Hernande, the mentor sitting off to one side, body perfectly still, eyes closed, expression serene except for a slight pinch of concentration between his eyes.

  Irmona’s arm twitched. Then she headed toward the mentor.

  Marcus began to struggle harder, but Dierdre leaned her weight into his chest.

  “Look at me!” she shouted into his face, and he stopped struggling, stared hard into her eyes. His nostrils flared and he drew in her scent, so familiar, so close. It reminded him of Erenthrall, before the Shattering, of the rooms that they’d claimed as their own here at the Needle. Through the anger, he could see how badly Dierdre hurt—damage caused by him, by his reaction when he’d found Kara, by his betrayal of Dalton and the Kormanley when he’d killed Lecrucius and helped Kara claim the Nexus here and, with Ty, the Needle. He could redeem himself in Dierdre’s eyes, right here, right now. All he’d have to do was let Irmona and the Kormanley retake the node. “Choose, Marcus. Her or me?”

  “Oh, Dierdre.”

  Her grip on his throat relaxed. The hard edges in her face softened and her shoulders sagged. A smile touched the corners of her mouth. In that moment, she was beautiful.

  With a strangled grunt, Marcus shoved her hard, using the stone at his back as support. She tried to tighten her hand on his throat, but only managed to scratch him with her fingernails as she stumbled at the edge of the stair and then fell without a sound.

  Irmona had reached Hernande. She raised her blade, the mentor completely unaware of her, lost in his trance.

  Marcus reached for the ley in the Nexus, seized a small portion of the massive energy surging through the crystals from the ley lines and the reservoirs, and sent it arching toward Irmona. It hit her dead center, knocked her back from Hernande. She screamed as it engulfed her, in pain and rage and frustration, and then the metal blade of her knife clattered to the floor and there were only echoes.

  Marcus sagged against the stone wall of the pit at his back, trembling, a belated flush of sweat breaking out over his entire body. He shoved forward again, halted at the edge of the steps, and stared down toward Dierdre’s body.

  The fall had been less than twenty feet, but she lay sprawled, arms and legs akimbo, neck at an unnatural angle. Her black hair fanned about her.

  Marcus exhale
d harshly, a wave of remorse forcing him to his knees. His gaze wandered over the pit, toward Hernande, still deep in trance, Okata, Artras, the others—all of them focused on the energy coursing through the Nexus. A raw energy. A wild energy, barely bridled. Not as intense as what Marcus had dealt with while altering the crystals of the original Nexus in Erenthrall, but it was somehow fiercer, more elemental.

  And at its heart stood Kara.

  Marcus stared at her, illuminated by the white force of the ley, then back down toward Dierdre. He pulled back from the ledge with a shudder and looked upward, toward the black base of the Needle streaked with pulsing light. His eyes were glazed with tears.

  But then something struck him. “How did you get down here, Dierdre?”

  Rising, he ascended the stairs, picking up momentum with each step. The first body was sprawling across the floor of the corridor outside, two more beyond that. The lieutenant who’d been set to guard them lay half in sunlight at the Needle’s main entrance, the sand of the outer stellae garden soaking up her blood.

  He gripped the slick obsidian of the Needle’s doorway and stared up at the temple, the hollow sounds of the bell at the main gate muted here. “What are you up to, Darius?”

  Except he already knew: it had to be about Father.

  A sudden series of explosions rocked the temple, their concussions echoing down into the garden, the stone beneath Marcus’ feet shuddering. Nothing like the quakes they’d experienced when the ley lines were unstable, but somehow more ominous.