Radiant: Towers Trilogy Book One

by Karina Sumner-Smith

  Dark magic rose at that touch, and Xhea let it come. It moved like a dark tide, easing through Xhea’s body and down through her arms, pulled toward Shai’s bright fire. There, Xhea told it, guiding it toward the healing spells; there and there. The magic turned at her command. One by one the spells began to fail, flicker and go dark, drowned beneath a tide of shadow; one by one they uncoiled, lines of magic releasing their hold on Shai’s dying body, their power unraveling and spinning into nothing.

  It should be harder, Xhea thought. There was no pain, no hesitation; only the flow of magic, slow and gentle as breath.

  Time had no meaning. Deeper, she went, layer after layer of spells darkening to nothing as she worked. Soon only the wirework lace remained—and these spells, old and canny, resisted her magic. They had been designed to resist the bright surge of Shai’s power, she realized; what was a little more magic against that constant onslaught?

  But she did not need to destroy them; only weaken them. She guided her magic as if it were her silver blade, and attacked only the lacework’s anchoring strands.

  Xhea struggled with a single strand for what seemed like forever before it bent, blackened, and broke. The next snapped a little quicker, the next quicker still, as if the strength of the whole was compromised with the loss of each binding strand. One by one they parted beneath her onslaught, and as each broke she shuddered at the impact, feeling the spells’ snapping recoil deep within her. Sweat beaded her forehead and her hands trembled with fatigue, but the sensations were distant things, ignored as easily as the rhythm of her heart.

  At last she finished, and drew her hands away.

  As Xhea watched, the great spring of magic at Shai’s heart slowed. Shai took one long, shuddering breath, and another, and became still. Xhea waited, her own breath held, for an inhalation that never came.

  The room slowly grew dark. It was silent now, peaceful as the depths of a deep lake and as dark. Shai was no longer bright with magic run rampant, nor dark from emptiness, but gray. Merely gray. Xhea touched the center of her own chest where the tether had joined them and felt only air.

  “It’s over,” Shai’s father whispered, faint and hollow and disbelieving. “I can’t believe it’s finally over.” He pressed one hand to his mouth as if to hold back a sob.

  He released Shai’s unresisting fingers and slowly brushed her hair from her face, smoothing the sweaty tangles. He bowed his head to rest on the mattress beside Shai, eyes closed, fingers still caught in her hair.

  “I’m so sorry, baby,” he whispered. Tears ran down his face unchecked. “I’m so, so sorry.”

  He did not turn as Xhea stood. Her magic was gone now; she felt empty and shaky, struggling to rise on wooden legs. She wished she could reach for him; wished he would take her hand. More: she wished for Shai again, that presence at her side. But there was no ghost, no one from whom she could beg forgiveness.

  Shai was gone.

  Xhea stood at the Tower’s peak and watched the sun set in tones of ash and rainwater. Spires stood in a circle around her, a bubble of spelled calm protecting her from the cold and wind of the open sky.

  All that day she had wandered the nameless Tower, finding food, resting in corners, trying to sleep. Struggling to find the words to explain what she had done, or define how she felt, and failing at each.

  For a long time, she had only eyes for the horizon. It was so straight. So vast. Below, the Lower City seemed but an aberration, the buildings and walls that defined her world so small as to be inconsequential. Xhea watched their shadows lengthen and stretch. So quickly it all fell away to nothing, emptiness and unfilled spaces, gentle hills where the ruins were worn to dust and rounded stone. But in the Towers spread across the sky around her, she could see the glow of life, the minutiae of lives being lived: all nature of magic, bright in her eyes.

  In the darkness above the City, stars began to come out.

  Four days later, Xhea woke in the garden at the center of Tower Celleran and lifted her head from the pillow of her arms. She could hear no voices, see no people walking the curving paths so late at night; there was only the wind’s soft rustle as it eased through the trees.

  Trees, she thought, sleep and the wariness that came hard on the heels of waking doing little to dampen her wonder. Trees—actual trees—not the thin and stunted things she knew from the Lower City, with leaves like crumpled buds and twisted, brittle branches that littered the ground after a storm. Trees growing and vibrant and alive.

  She looked up through the flowering bush beneath which she’d hidden for the night, attempting to see the wide branches of the nearest tree—and paused. The leaves just above her were curled and crisping, the pale flowers wilted. She glanced down. Darkness spread around her like a stain. Not magic, as she’d feared the first time it had happened, but ash, fine and light as dust.

  “Sweetness.” She ran her fingers through the ash. “Not again.”

  It was all that was left of the soft moss that seemed to cover most Tower floors like an ever-present carpet. Shai was gone; there was no ghost lit with magic to call to Xhea’s strange power. Yet still it flowed. Awake, she could restrain it with concentration and mental commands oft-repeated—though it lingered, a weight in her stomach, a presence calm and steady and strange. In sleep, her control vanished entirely, and she woke each day to ash and crumbling leaves, the ground blackened in the shape of her body.

  At least she’d only killed leaves, she thought. This time.

  She had wandered the City for four days, lost and alone—running, always running, from the memory of what had happened in that nondescript bedroom, the feel of that dark flood of power and the light fading from Shai’s eyes. The night of Shai’s death she’d hidden onboard a shipping transport to escape the unknown Tower, hugging herself against the chill of the altitude, invisible to the transport’s onboard security sensors. Her destination hadn’t mattered, so long as it was away. She shouldn’t have left—not so quickly, without another word. At the least, she might have asked Shai’s father for passage home. Yet once she’d gone, there had been no way back and no tether to lead her.

  In the days that followed, she’d moved again and again, finding passage in luggage compartments and atop bulk transport containers, begging the indulgence of taxi passengers, and once even clinging—cold and terrified beyond words, eyes streaming in the fierce wind—to the outside rail of a bus. She’d found no way home, though life in the City was easier than it was below, if unfamiliar. Here, food was discarded as often as it was eaten. Bathrooms and shelter for the night were more challenging to find, if not prohibitively so. Only the thought of detection made her flee.

  The City, even closer to the Central Spire, wasn’t what she’d expected: it was larger and more chaotic, busier and louder and infinitely more beautiful. Trees, she thought again, and shook her head; trees and flowers and streams, markets and parks, restaurants and homes, a thousand homes, all just beyond her reach. Though it wasn’t the homes she wanted now, so much as their baths. It had been too long since she’d bathed, she knew, and wrinkled her nose in distaste. Longer still since she’d done any laundry.

  Now, the Tower seemed to sleep, a hush falling over the garden around her. Most of the space in the massive Towers was restricted to citizens and their guests, yet each had a public space where anyone might visit—including, it seemed, scraggly Lower City girls with a penchant for rummaging through the trash. Though Celleran wasn’t a central Tower, it was rich enough, and displayed that wealth openly in the massive garden beneath its living heart—and the fountain at the garden’s center.

  She hadn’t managed to steal any soap; water would have to do.

  Xhea crawled from beneath the bush, curled leaves and limp petals raining in her wake, and began down a garden path, peering upward as she walked. Above her stretched the boughs of a massive tree, heavy with leaves, swaying softly in the garden’s artificial wind. She took a deep breath and tasted fresh air; smelled only leaves and earth
and flowers. No concrete to be seen, no broken asphalt, no fraying wire. No underlying scent of refuse or decay.

  Soft light shone down from higher still—the source of so much vibrancy. Far overhead was the Tower’s heart, the gathered magic of its citizens, their wealth and life force made into a physical shape that danced at Celleran’s very core. Damped now, as if to mimic the moon’s light. How considerate, Xhea thought.

  The Towers’ hearts fascinated her, and she’d spent whole evenings, curled and out of sight, staring upward. Each Tower’s heart was unique, tones and patterns and the speed with which they moved varying greatly—a magical signature writ large. Celleran’s heart moved slowly, its grays like shadow and stormcloud, its motion slow and calming. Mesmerizing. Yet even this was not enough to distract her from the notice displayed on the public information pillar at the side of the path.

  A notice she’d seen countless times in every Tower, no matter how far she fled.

  Missing. The word seemed to hover in midair, shining down on the surrounding flower beds, before being replaced by images: a girl staring outward, long hair tumbling over her shoulders. The same girl seen at a distance, walking forward, talking soundlessly to the camera. A young girl, healthy and whole. Smiling.

  Shai.

  Xhea had read the accompanying text so often that she had it memorized. MISSING: SHAI NALANI, FEMALE, AGED 17. LAST SEEN AT HER HOME IN ALLENAI TWO WEEKS BEFORE.

  Allenai. Not some anonymous run-down Tower cast to the City’s far edges, but a Tower so large and influential that even Xhea knew its name. Its proximity to the Central Spire marked Allenai’s significance; its altitude established it as a force to be reckoned with in years to come. Upper class indeed.

  She shook her head, coins chiming: there was no mention of Shai’s father. Xhea could feel the layers of secrets and lies that surrounded Shai and her father both, and could only glimpse their edges.

  Xhea watched the notice play again. She’d never known that person—someone smiling and happy and alive. That girl would never have talked to her, would never have had reason to. Something in her ached at the thought. Head bowed, she turned away.

  The fountain stood in the center of a clearing, a multi-tiered cascade of water and light edged with glittering glass mosaics. The light of Celleran’s heart played across the water’s surface; yet it was not this that made the water glow, but the sparks of magic, pinpoint fractions of renai, that floated in the current. No mere rainwater for City folks, Xhea thought as she stepped to the fountain’s edge. Here, even the water had more money than her.

  She dropped her ashy jacket to the ground and peeled off her sweat-stiffened shirt in distaste. After kicking off her boots, she stepped into the fountain. The water was refreshing without feeling cold, and it swirled around her legs as if urging her deeper. She waded toward the center then sank to her knees and ducked her head beneath the cascading falls. Xhea ran her hands over her face and through her hair, trying to rinse away days of grime and sweat, before beginning to wash her shirt.

  As she scrubbed, she fought against a growing pressure in her chest, an emptiness where a tether had once been, a strange heaviness in her heart and hands. What’s the matter with me, she thought. Again she saw Shai’s face, happy and smiling; again she watched that face transform, becoming gaunt and wasted by illness. Remembering that face, life slipping away. That strange, bright light of Shai’s magic going dim; that bare room falling into shadow.

  Xhea realized she was staring blankly at her shirt as it undulated on the water’s surface. Flecks of magic glittered against the fabric like stars.

  Stop it, she told herself. She didn’t have time for weakness; not here, even in the dark and quiet—not when any moment some City citizen could walk into this clearing. Yet still she sat, staring.

  As she watched, sparks of magic swirled through the water toward her. Just like pennies, she thought, feeling the weight of the ancient coins in her hair. Just as pretty. Just as useless. But these pennies, glittering sparks of renai, flowed against the current.

  Xhea blinked and pulled back—but she was already too late. Instead of flowing over her with the water, a spark adhered itself to her forearm, and burned. She yelped and shook her hand, brushing madly at the spark. It didn’t move, only flickered and died against her skin.

  Then a second stuck to her hand, and a third to her cheek, each like a sharp pinprick. Xhea stood, water flowing from her in a wave—yet she was soaked, hair and pants and undershirt all glittering with bright magic. Magic that burned, each spark more painful than the last.

  All through the water they flowed toward her, drawn like metal to a magnet. Drawn not to her, but the magic that hid beneath her skin, as constant and inexorable as a shadow. The sparks didn’t last long, dying at her touch, but long enough. Even as Xhea struggled back toward the fountain’s far edge and the dry ground beyond, she realized she was going numb. Her feet felt heavy as she sloshed through the water, and she slipped on the fountain’s tiles, falling beneath the water’s surface. Though she rolled to keep from choking, she couldn’t keep the water—or its magic—out of her eyes. Her vision shimmered, and she saw glimpses of blue and gold amidst the gray: the fountain’s swirling waters, aqua and pale cerulean, the sparks shining golden like pinpoints of sunlight.

  She tried to struggle to her feet; slipped and stumbled and splashed back into the water.

  “No,” she whispered, lightheaded and suddenly afraid. Against the onslaught, her magic faded, receding to the depths of her self where it had lived for so long. Where she had forced it with magic such as this. The world around her was reborn in color and shadow.

  Xhea sank into the water, curling in upon herself until the level reached her chin. Water washed over her, perfect blue and glittering in the dark. Her face was so wet that she never felt the tears as they began to flow, only noticed their warmth against her cheeks.

  At last she voiced the thought that had followed her since she had released her magic—since she had, with conscious intent, asked it to strip the life from the only person she dared think a friend.

  “Oh gods, what am I?”

  A killer. A murderer. A monster. A freak.

  A lost and frightened girl with no way home.

  Her chest ached, grief constricting her breathing, and she clung to the empty fabric of her shirt as if it could ease the ache in her chest where a tether had once joined. Voice tight, she asked the empty air, “What have I done?”

  In darkness, she looked up at the heart of the great Tower around her—a single Tower, when she was used to seeing them all, a landscape of moving structures of power and grace—and never before had she felt so small. So inconsequential.

  So wrong.

  Lost in her tears, Xhea thought herself alone until strong hands grabbed her by the arms. Hands that did not recoil, but tightened. She screamed and tried to pull away, but the hands held her fast and hauled her aloft, dripping and insensible, her toes barely touching the bottom of the fountain.

  Fight back, instinct screamed. Escape. She kicked and twisted in her assailant’s grip—or tried to. The attempt only made the dizziness and nausea from the bright magic to crest and crash over her, while she fought with numb fists. She was easily restrained.

  Hard-earned lessons kicked in fast: if she could not fight, act sick. Not that she needed to pretend, Xhea thought, gagging.

  “Come on, kid, stop messing around,” a man’s voice said. “Stand up.” He shook her as if to punctuate the words, the movement making her head spin. Her foot slipped and she sunk back into the water until the man hauled her up once more.

  Angrier now, he asked her questions: who was she, what was she doing here, why was she swimming half-naked in the fountain? Xhea whimpered. She stole a glance at his dark clothing, noting his muscled build, his gloved hands, and the unlikelihood of an escape from his grip. Security—but how?

  Then she saw herself, covered with flaring, dying sparks of gold, and thought only: oh. A me
ntal sigh. The Tower’s security sweeps would never miss renai in the shape of a person, regardless of whether the magic bore a clear signature.

  Xhea stayed limp as the security guard hauled her from the fountain, and it didn’t take much to keep her earlier tears flowing. When he released her, muttering about the water soaking his shoes, she fell to her hands and knees, then let herself collapse between him and his partner.

  “Come on.” The guard nudged her with the toe of his waterlogged shoe. “Get up.”

  The partner swore, consulting a handheld device. “I’m not getting a signature. She’s nearly too weak to register.”

  With those words, their attitude changed. The guard who had grabbed her now knelt at her side, supporting her head as he rolled her onto her back. Fingers felt her neck for a pulse and forehead for fever, the touch hot to her water-cooled skin.

  “Hang in there, all right?” the guard murmured. “Help’s coming.”

  Xhea lay with her eyes unfocused, staring upward as the Tower’s heart shone like aurora, green and red and blue. Her mind raced: she didn’t want to know what a medical team would do to her. But she couldn’t escape while the guard held her; her only chance was to run while being transferred to the medics’ care.

  Yet even this vague plan derailed upon the medics’ arrival. “Don’t move,” a woman said, and pressed something to Xhea’s neck. Suddenly, Xhea did not have to feign difficulty responding; the blast of energy knocked her all but senseless.

  It was a long moment before she regained true consciousness.

  That wasn’t renai, Xhea realized, her mind swimming. Not money, raw or otherwise, but magic—pure bright magic, life force untainted and unshaped.

  Sweetness and blight, she’d never be able to pay for that.

  She felt as if she were floating, her body so strangely light she could barely feel it. She tried to wiggle her fingers and toes, and it was only when she forced her eyes open to see if they’d responded that she realized she was no longer by the fountain. She was floating, cushioned on a spell that followed the lead medic like a pet. They had already left the clearing, moving toward one of the elevator shafts that led up into the main part of the Tower.