She tilted her head back, her eyes closed, and let the pain slough off her, shunting it to one side as she dove deeper beneath the surface, down beneath where Tumbor had once thrived. The ancient node that had once been a part of the ley network before Prime Augustus had created the Nexus had been underground. Deep. Beneath even the barge system. Augustus had supplanted the original node with his own on the surface, had shifted the natural ley lines slightly to accommodate the Wielders. But even the original node had been caught in the distortion over Tumbor.
When she reached where it had originally rested, she discovered it had been sundered into a thousand pieces. But those pieces were easy to identify. They didn’t match the density, texture, or color of the stone that surrounded them. As she allowed herself to meld with them, a sense of incredible age settled over her, along with a burning cold. Her skin pulsed with an innate magnetic force, one that pulled her in a thousand directions at once, toward all the other nodes throughout the plains and beyond. Each of them called to the others, each of them drawn to the others, like metal to a lodestone. And all of them were foreign.
As she merged deeper into the fragments, she realized the cold seeping into her bones came from outside the earth, from the heavens. Like the comet above, the node stones had once traveled the stars, and at some point in the far past had plummeted down to the earth. In her mind’s eye, Morrell suddenly saw the Needle with its protective ridge of earth for what it was—an impact crater. Erenthrall and Tumbor—all the major cities with a node—must have all once been craters, all signs of the long-forgotten impacts lost as the cities grew, the contours of the land plowed under and reshaped.
But the force that connected Tumbor’s node to the others had been weakened when it was first cut off by the distortion, then shattered. The individual shards weren’t strong enough alone. And the ley traveled the invisible lines of force between the stones. That’s what created the ley lines between the cities, lines that spanned the entire continent and beyond.
The node here in Tumbor had been one of the largest. Morrell could feel it in the shape of the rock. Its loss had disrupted the entire network. There were other, smaller nodes scattered throughout what remained of Tumbor—fragments that had broken off from this one as it crashed into the earth, or simply other stones that had fallen from the skies—but this one dwarfed them all. This one was what she needed to heal for Kara to restore the ley lines and stability to the ley. She could sense how all of the fragments would fuse together to make it whole again, just as she could sense how bones and tissue should be knit back together. It was all the same process.
The tingling sensation she associated with the auroral lights prickled her fingers and hands where they pressed hard into the surface of the crystal beneath her. The auroral storms surrounding them responded as well. Their energies shifted, drawn toward her. She gathered that power—power that had been set free and ran wild on all sides—to her, pulled it in tight. The prickling sensation traveled up her arms and into her shoulders, her hair beginning to stir with its energy, as if caught in a wind. It dove down into her chest, her breath catching, her heart speeding up, then down into her gut, through her legs, and into her feet. Her entire body vibrated with it, and still she drew in more. The node was huge, as large as one of the ley barge stations in Erenthrall. It would require all her strength to heal.
When she felt she had enough gathered, she focused on the node stone below and tensed.
Then a snarl ripped through her concentration and someone shouted, “Morrell!”
Her eyes flared open to find a Gorrani warrior charging straight toward her across the crystal wall, strangely curved blade drawn, an intense purpose blazing in the woman’s eyes. Morrell screamed and scrambled back, her connection to the node below crumbling as the Gorrani warrior raised her sword to strike. Morrell brought her hands up to ward off the blow, noted the coruscating auroral lights that still surrounded her, then shoved that energy outward without thought.
The Gorrani woman shrieked as the threads of light enveloped her and flung her back. Bones cracked and flesh tore as the aurora transformed her, as it had transformed the Wolves in Erenthrall. But Morrell had released the aurora wildly. It had no shape, no direction, no purpose.
In the space of a breath, it stretched one of the woman’s arms to twice its normal length, the skin rippling and smeared, while the other arm compacted down closer to the woman’s body, melded with her torso. The skin on the right side of her head split open and fell away, revealing scales like that of a snake, the eye bulging and turning yellow, the iris a slit of black in the center. The scream stretched and broke into a serpentine hiss. Then the transformations became too intense and the woman’s heart spasmed and stopped. Morrell felt it, still connected partially with the aurora, and felt the smothering black of death encroaching on her as it had with Hanter. She pulled herself free as the aurora dissipated and the woman’s body fell onto the crystal shard, twitching once.
Morrell heaved in a lungful of air, choked on it, nearly gagged, but a vicious growl broke through her panic. Near the arched shards, Drayden leaped at another Gorrani warrior with wicked speed, batting away the man’s sword arm with one hand while using the other to catch him behind the head. He yanked hard and Morrell heard the crack of the man’s neck from a hundred feet away, the body crumpling. A second Gorrani appeared from the right, blade slicing down Drayden’s back before he could turn. He howled and arched, blood already appearing through the cut on his shirt, but even as Morrell lurched forward, he twisted and lunged. The two fell to the ground, the second Gorrani screaming before his outcry was cut short with a ragged gurgle, Drayden stumbling back and away from the limp form. His hands and neck were sheathed in blood.
He caught sight of her, panting heavily, then stumbled toward her. He made it three steps before falling face-first to the ground. Even then, he lifted his head and one arm and growled, attempting to drag himself forward.
Morrell spun to find two more Gorrani approaching from behind her. Another emerged from the shards to her left, then two more back at the arch near Drayden. There were too many of them, coming from too many sides. Wind lashed her hair about her as one hand balled into a fist near her chest in indecision. The auroral storms that had been drawn to her use of her power were bearing down on them all, their pressure building. The air felt heavy and thick as she heaved in breath after breath.
Drayden dragged himself another body’s length closer, then growled, “Run,” before collapsing. He didn’t move again.
Morrell sucked in a deep breath, but this time held it. Her hand dropped from her chest.
“No,” she whispered to herself. “Not this time.”
She reached for the storms, pulled the auroral energies toward her, gathering them as she had before. Sheets of auroral light sprang up around her, the wind picking up to a gale force. Dust and dirt exploded away from her, the lights expanding outward, twisting and weaving, as she drew more and more of their energy to her.
On all sides, the remaining Gorrani of the yavun hesitated. Those that didn’t have their blades already drawn drew them now.
Morrell swallowed, her mouth dry. “Don’t come any closer!”
The closest Gorrani grinned, his teeth shockingly white beneath the darkness of the storm overhead. “We are yavun and you are the target. You will have to kill us, as you did our sister.”
Morrell’s gaze dropped to the tortured body of the woman warrior and tasted bile at the back of her throat. She hadn’t meant for the woman to die like that. She hadn’t meant for the woman to die at all.
She lifted her head. “That was a mistake. I didn’t intend to kill her. I’m a healer.”
The Gorrani warrior chuckled and began to advance again, the others following suit. “Then you will die here, healer.”
“I don’t think so.”
She reached down into the stone beneath her as the Gor
rani broke into a run. Before they’d gone three steps, the earth heaved, a column rising out of the ground, shoving Morrell and Drayden up into the air, splinters of rock shattering outward. The Gorrani cried out, hands raised to protect their faces, a few of them knocked to the ground. When the column had risen thirty feet into the air, Morrell released the auroral energy with a gasp. She fell to one knee, holding herself steady with one hand, then scrambled toward Drayden. She rolled him onto his back, already reaching into his body to determine the damage. Auroral lights leaped from her hands, sheathing him in waves of color and she laughed out loud in relief when she realized he still lived. Without thought—the power coming swift and easy because of the storms—she healed the grievous wound across his back, his cuts and bruises. A ragged howl rose from his chest as he arched his back at the pain, but Morrell held him down.
“I’m sorry!” she shouted, the wind still surging around them. “There’s too much energy here! I should have gone slower, but it’s hard to control!”
Drayden fell back to the stone and lay there, his breath coming in harsh, short pants. “Where . . . are the . . . Gorrani?”
“I took care of them.”
Drayden’s breath caught. Then he tried to get up.
“Don’t!” Morrell shoved him back down, but he snarled at her, snapping with his teeth. She leaned back and let him rise with a disgusted shake of her head. “I healed you too fast. You’re still recovering.”
He ignored her, although he hesitated as soon as he looked around. Auroral storms were still approaching, easier to see at the height of the column of stone, and lightning continued to fork in the distance all around them. He limped toward the edge of the column and stared down.
“They’re trying to scale the rock,” he said.
Morrell stood and ran to his side, grabbed his arm for support when the wind threatened to shove her over the side.
Below, the Gorrani had regrouped. There were seven of them now, four on the ground staring upward, three of them attempting to climb the column. One of them had already made it a third of the way up, the sides of the column ragged, with numerous places for a handhold or ledge for a foot.
Morrell stepped away from the edge. “I couldn’t kill them. I couldn’t! Not like the Gorrani woman. That was an accident. I didn’t know the aurora would do that to her. I just threw it at her! She was going to kill me. I—I couldn’t do that to them, too. I’m a healer! I’m supposed to heal people!”
Drayden caught her shoulder and the ragged flow of words cut off. He met her gaze. “Have you rebuilt the node?”
She opened her mouth to protest, then shook her head. “No. Not yet.”
“Then do it. Now. I’ll take care of the Gorrani.”
“There are too many of them!”
Drayden grinned. “But they have to come at me from below.”
A sudden shout echoed up toward them, followed by the clash of swords. Both of them stepped back to the edge to find the four Gorrani on the ground fighting a fifth, swords flaring in the darkness, the motions of all five of them a hypnotic dance from this height. The four men of the yavun spun around the fifth, none of them able to get in a significant blow. The three men scaling the wall had halted to watch the action below, but now they turned back and continued to climb.
“Who—?”
“Okata,” Drayden answered, then gently pushed her back from the edge. “Go. Repair the node. Prepare it for Kara, no matter what happens to me or Okata.”
Morrell backed away, toward the center of the column where the crystal wall lay, the Gorrani warrior’s twisted body a black shadow to one side. She paused when she caught sight of it, but then shoved the gruesome death out of her mind and reached for the aurora.
The storms were close. Their energy leaped through her body, tingling through every pore, her hair writhing around her face. She pulled it in with ease, even more than she had gathered before, and the center of the column erupted in ethereal sheets of blue, gold, and green lights, with hints of purple threaded throughout. She closed her eyes and lifted her arms to the sky, diving deep into the earth again, toward the fractured stone. Drayden snarled and she flinched, but forced the sudden desperate sounds of fighting away, merged herself with the strange metallic nature of the shattered node below. It wanted to be whole. She could feel how its pieces fit together, could sense its oblong, rough, imperfect shape that had somehow, with the other nodes that had fallen from the sky, reacted with the ley and created a natural network across the plains. She drew on the energy of the wild aurora and began fusing the rock back together.
The first few pieces merged slowly, almost reluctantly, but the next few went faster, then faster still, until a cascade effect began, the thousands of shards suddenly pulling together as Morrell poured the changeling energy of the aurora down from the skies, through her body, and deep into the earth. It sizzled through her, every nerve on fire. Vaguely, she heard someone screaming, realized it was her own voice, but the raw power dampened her hearing.
Then it was over, the node whole again. She cut off the flow of the aurora, even as the invisible force that the node exuded reached out toward the other stones and reconnected. She opened her eyes, the auroral lights still swirling around her. Waves of weakness washed through her and she wavered where she stood, her arms dropping. A figure walked toward her, three bodies sprawled across the column’s top behind him. But she wasn’t finished. The large node below had been restored, but like Erenthrall, Tumbor had contained more than one. The others were smaller, but she had enough residual auroral energy captured within her she could heal the others as well.
Reaching out, she sought out the strange metals she’d tasted in the stone in the surrounding area, fusing the shards together as she found them. The figure continued to approach as the auroral lights that wove around her faded. She tensed as he drew closer, knowing that she wouldn’t be able to defend herself once she finished with the smaller nodes. She could barely stand even now, her strength drained. And she couldn’t use the aurora as she’d done before. Not on another human. The result was too horrifying.
So she used the last of the gathered aurora and her strength to piece together one more minor node at the edge of what had once been Tumbor and then faced the figure, now only a few paces away.
“It’s done,” she said, her voice cracked and gravelly. “The nodes have been repaired.”
“Good.”
She sobbed at hearing Drayden’s voice, then fell forward. The Wolf caught her and held her, even though she could sense he had been wounded again. His blood saturated his shirt, rubbed against her face as he shifted her and laid her down on the etched crystal beneath them.
“I can’t heal you,” she said, tears mixing with his blood. “I’m too drained.”
“It’s all right. None of my wounds are mortal.”
But she couldn’t stop crying, or clutching at him with one hand. He hurt—the pain deep—but didn’t protest.
“Where’s Okata?” she asked between hitching breaths.
“Here.”
Both of them turned to see Okata dragging himself up over the edge of the column. Drayden leaped to help him, supporting the Gorrani Wielder as they both returned to Morrell’s side. Okata limped, his left leg almost useless. Morrell didn’t understand how he’d made it up the face of the column.
Drayden set Okata down beside Morrell, who reached out to touch his blood-coated hand. She closed her eyes and surveyed his wounds as well, even though she could do nothing to help him right now. His left leg had been broken and she lost count of his cuts and bruises, but like Drayden, he’d survive until she’d recovered.
She let her hand drop from his. “Boskell? Sesali?”
Okata shrugged. “I do not know. I did not see them when I followed you here.”
“I’ll watch for them,” Drayden said.
“There are
still members of the yavun missing. I killed two before coming here, but there were likely fifteen, which means three are unaccounted for.”
“Perhaps Boskell and Sesali took care of them.”
“Or the Gorrani took care of them.”
Morrell wanted to protest, but she knew it was likely. The tears that had begun to calm started up again. She couldn’t stop them. Her chest ached and a tremendous lassitude began to settle over her body.
“Did she repair the nodes?” Okata asked. He sounded as if he sat a thousand feet away.
“Yes.”
“Then why haven’t the auroral storms abated?”
Morrell roused herself enough to answer. “Because Kara hasn’t restored the ley lines yet. The nodes only created the channels.”
“Then we should leave these shattered lands before the rest of the Gorrani’s yavun find us. If they still live.”
Morrell’s eyes popped open and she managed to roll onto one side to face Okata and Drayden. “We can’t leave. Not yet. There’s something more I need to do here before we go, and I’ll need the auroral storms to do it.”
Twenty-One
THE DARKNESS BEGAN TO RECEDE, and Cory struggled up into the burning ache left behind by the gas being used to subdue him and the rest of the University students. He struck the glass wall and cursed, peering out from behind it at the blurry, distorted image beyond. He was still too deep. He could pick out a brighter patch of white, marked with a few smears of color and dabs of shadow, nothing more. Some of those shadows moved, so he knew there were people in the chamber with him and the others. Probably enforcers, maybe the servants that fed and bathed them. He didn’t know how long he’d been under this time, but based on his protesting muscles, even without attempting to move, and the hollow pit of his stomach, he assumed it had been days.
The passage of time hadn’t blunted his anger. It seethed with him behind the wall, hotter than the raw burn of the gas left in his lungs and throat.
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