Turning back to Xhea, she asked, “Can you remove the other ghost? Stop her from damaging the spells?”
“She’s trying to get back to her body,” Xhea protested. “You can’t do this—you can’t just kill her and take her body—” In her anger, she could feel the darkness rising, a surge of raging black. Her hands tingled with it, and the ever-present pressure of the bright magic against her skin, like airborne pins and needles, receded. Dark magic pushed against the boundaries of her flesh, begging for release—slipping into the air with her breath and her sweat, pushing for freedom.
Control it, she thought. Then: Why?
This wasn’t a game. These people had taken advantage of the opportunity presented by a girl’s terminal illness, consolidating Allenai’s loans until the Tower was their financial dependent and all but crippled by magical debt. They had lied, fought for, and abducted Shai’s ghost, and hurt Xhea in the process. They had murdered a girl for use of her body. And that was only the little Xhea knew.
Through the shifting light of the Tower’s heart, Xhea could just see the crowd gathered in the garden far below, distant spots like freckles on an outstretched hand. Normal life in Eridian had ceased: every citizen was all but incapacitated; every bit of magic not necessary to keep their blood flowing, their lungs breathing, was being absorbed by the Tower to fuel this transfer.
All for power. All for altitude. Eridian’s future—its status and economy, influence and trade potential, the future of each citizen’s children—was being formed around her. It was future bathed in light and magic, yes, but one birthed in screams of terror, in torture and death. Yet here she stood, arguing semantics and morality, wasting what little time Shai had. Truly, she asked herself, was there anything at all she could say that would change their minds?
“Blight it,” Xhea muttered. She tightened her grip on the iron pipe and swung, turning just far enough to hit Derren across his shoulder. He fell to his knees with a choked cry, his left hand clutching at his upper arm, while his right arm hung limply, twitching.
Her knee burned, but she pushed the pain away, hopping to keep her balance. She fought to keep hold of the vibrating pipe, her palms tingling from the force of that impact. The Councilman gaped, backing away with his hands raised defensively, while the exhausted Anya called for assistance. An aide scrambled toward them, some sort of spell half-woven through his fingers. He was careful to stay just outside the swinging range of Xhea’s iron pipe—but it wasn’t the iron that he should have worried about.
Magic responded to her call, boiling up the moment she relaxed her will to cascade from her like a dark waterfall. The sudden feel of it—the rush—the power—made Xhea laugh, giddy and furious, caught in a cresting wave of dark magic and anger and adrenaline. She was a thousand feet tall. She was all powerful, untouchable. Spirals of smoking black lifted from her hands, coiled up and out of her hair, wreathing her face with every breath. She felt like power incarnate, burning and glorious, and she was going to show them.
Xhea reached out a single hand, fingers spread. No spells for her, no complicated patterns of thought and command: only raw energy, the core of herself let free. Thick and black and angry.
“Hang on, Shai,” she yelled over the sudden clamor. “I’m coming!”
Light flashed as some sort of defensive dome appeared around the Councilman, and a whip-like lash of energy uncoiled from Anya’s hand, slicing the tide of darkness to tattered ribbons as it approached. The aide was slower. His spell caught on his fingers, tangled in his panic, and dark magic washed over him like a cresting fog. He fell without a sound.
There was no time to check if he was breathing.
Xhea cried out at a sudden pain in her bad leg: Derren’s hand clamped around her calf and even the pipe wasn’t enough to keep her from falling. She hit the ground and tried to roll, but Derren’s grip was too tight, pinning her, a glow surrounding each finger. She felt the burn of his magic, searing through muscle to bone, and she screamed. Xhea’s reach was instinctive, the rush of energy borne now by fear more than anger, but no less powerful. Black washed over Derren’s head and he gasped, eyes rolling back in his head as he sagged limply to the floor.
Should have hit him in the face the first time, she thought, and dragged herself across the floor toward the platform.
The casters who had struggled to maintain the spells holding Shai were ready for her. Walls of shimmering light leapt up to enclose the platform with the girl’s body and the two ghosts, the power’s weave changing as she watched—preparing to repair itself from whatever assault she might attempt. Behind the walls, she could see one caster maintaining its strength, another preparing a more active assault, while one alone still worked on the spells binding Shai to the body.
But the platform wasn’t her destination. Xhea stopped many body lengths from their defenses, lying on the glass floor above the edge of Eridian’s living heart. Beneath her, magic pulsed and shifted, the light so close that she blinked back tears. Bad timing, she thought, watching as the heart flared: an arc of magic rose through the floor, up and over her like a sizzling-white rainbow. She braced as the arc reached its peak and collapsed, falling through her like a guillotine blade. Her scream was choked, and her back arched of its own volition as the power surged through her, burning, freezing, as she was suddenly, violently sick. But there was little in her stomach: only a thin spatter of water and bile slid across the floor while the world spun and twirled around her, darkness that had nothing to do with magic flickering before her eyes.
Don’t pass out, she thought, panting. There was nothing to grab on to, nothing but cold glass and flickers of bright magic, and so she held tight to the cobweb-thin tether that joined her to Shai.
When the worst of the vertigo had passed Xhea looked up, craning her head as if she could somehow see through the room’s crystalline structure, through Eridian’s point and beyond to the space of sky where another Tower floated far above.
I told you I’d try to send a signal, Xhea thought, as if Councilwoman Nalani—and all of Allenai—might somehow hear her. Here it is.
Magic coiled in the pit of her stomach, that lake of stillness and black that she’d spent so many years trying to ignore and suppress, and attempted only recently—and futilely—to control. Since learning what her power could do, she had released her magic in thin wisps and fogs, in torrents as one might release floodwaters from a bursting dam. She’d let it escape and rush free—but never before had she called it.
Xhea placed her hands on the floor, the glass warm to the touch, and stared through to the glowing heart beyond. No breathing exercises now, no rhythm of thought—only need.
“Now,” she whispered to herself, to her magic. She closed her eyes and pulled.
It felt as if her spirit were being forced through her hands, skin tearing, gushing blood and heat and freezing cold, as if her heart had been opened and she poured her life out on the glass. She felt something deep inside her breaking: a crack in the bedrock beneath that imagined lake. It hurt in ways that she had no way to name—yet she knew that she would live in this moment forever if she could, for in that pain and the surge of energy flowing from her, there was joy. Wholeness, the likes of which she’d never known.
A second passed . . . an eternity, and another.
Yet she did not die. She struggled to inhale and realized she was screaming, forcing the sound from her agonized throat with the same intensity that she willed forth her magic. She drew a shaking breath and heard the echo of her voice reverberate.
Xhea managed to open her eyes, blinking back tears and the veil of power that darkened her vision. Something in the depth of her had cracked, but so had the crystalline floor beneath her. A deep fissure now ran the length of her body, cracks spreading from the points where her hands touched. Yet even through the cracks’ haze of white, she could still see her power flowing from her and into the Tower’s heart below.
If her energy was like smoke, this was the smoke of
the world burning: thick black and choking, a roiling cloud of darkness that enveloped all that lay before it—until it reached Eridian’s heart. Where the cloud met the shifting magic that lit the Tower’s core there was only turmoil. The black met the light and damped it, made the great rising arcs of magic sputter and fade into nothing. Yet so too did the brightness burn, shining all the brighter for the shadow cast against it, and beneath its light her magic was shredded to wispy tatters—nothing, less than nothing, and gone.
Xhea stared, one part of her shocked at what she had wrought. More: this was the deepest part of her set free, and it was this dark chaos, destroying everything bright and beautiful that lay in its path. She could feel it, as if that great boiling cloud were but her outstretched hand, her wind-blown hair. The more she concentrated, the more she felt she could slip from her body as one might remove a nightshirt upon waking, casting herself aside to live fully in the power, magic incarnate.
Within seconds it was clear that she could empty her whole self into Eridian’s heart until she collapsed and died, nothing left to run the ruin of her body, and still the Tower would float, its lights on, its people warm and fed. Yet Eridian did not stand unscathed beneath her onslaught. No arcs of light rose through the cracking glass floor, and the light’s intensity in the vast crystal room was manageable, even dim, compared to its past brilliance. She shook, but not just from exhaustion; the Tower itself trembled, an earthquake in a structure that knew no ground.
Had Eridian slipped, she wondered. Lost an inch or two of sky? Had its shimmering halo of spell exhaust thinned for but a moment, its displays of light and power grown faint? Something, she thought. Anything. And let it be enough.
It had to be; there was no second chance.
As her magic faded, oil-black darkness thinning to gray and shadow, a hand closed around her wrist and another grabbed her hair to haul her up. Then a cry—a man’s voice made sharp with sudden pain—and the Councilman stumbled back from her, hands cradled to his chest. Anya was smarter: a swift kick, and Xhea rolled, gasping from the impact to her ribs. She clutched her side, her magic no more than a pale wisp of gray.
Slowly, the Councilman crouched on the cracked floor by her side, his hands palm-up, red and blistered. “We ask for your help,” he said, voice heavy with recrimination. It was clear in his expression: he expected criminals to weep when he used such a tone, mothers to bow their heads and wail at the shame. “And this—” a gesture to the room around them, “this is what you do?”
Xhea coughed, hands still pressed to her throbbing side as she struggled to regain her breath. “Oh, spare me,” she said scornfully.
But she followed his gesture, scanning the vast space around them. Cracks radiated from the place where she had lain, running riot through the floor and crazing the glass milk-white—and though the destruction’s progress had slowed, it had not stopped. She watched as cracks ran up the walls toward the domed ceiling and further fractured the floor, the sounds in the sudden quiet like melting spring ice.
The protective walls around the pedestal had fallen, and the casters had scattered in three directions: one to the side of the young woman’s body, still fighting with the spells, while the other two had hurried to the room’s far edges where, unnoticed until now, two more platforms sat, hidden in shadow. Yet these, unlike the one atop which Shai struggled, were not clear sculptures of carved glass, but coffins: a body lay in each one, features hidden by the faceted sides; each was bright with magic that flowed from them into the walls of the Tower beyond.
No, not just bright: Radiant.
Xhea looked back the way she’d come. The opening to the lift tube gaped wide, an invitation to flee that she wished she could accept. Between her and the lift entry, Derren was slowly regaining his feet. Nearby, the Councilman’s aide still lay on the floor, sprawled just as he’d fallen. Xhea looked quickly aside.
Whatever else the Councilman had been about to say was forgotten as the lights of message spells appeared, whirling about his head for his attention. He turned away, touching one after another, his eyes flickering closed as he absorbed the spells’ energy and messages alike.
He glanced back. “Get rid of her,” he said with a slight wave of his hand, his attention already elsewhere. To Derren, he added, “Come on. We have imbalances all across the Tower, sections middle through base. Light only knows how many cases of energy shock we’re dealing with. Of all the stupid . . .”
“What do you—” Anya began.
“I don’t want to know. Just get her out of the way while we take care of this.”
Anya reached for Xhea then hesitated, glancing at the fading blisters on the Councilman’s hands. Her hesitation gave Xhea a chance to choke out, “Wait.”
The Councilman made a disgusted face and turned away, ordering the enactment of a disaster plan whose name was composed more of numbers than words.
“Please wait.” Xhea tried to sound desperate. “You don’t understand. I wasn’t trying to damage Eridian.”
Anya’s mouth twisted. She shook her head and pulled the long scarf from her hair. “You succeeded admirably, regardless.” She wrapped the scarf’s silken length around one hand in a makeshift glove. “Tell me,” she said. “Who paid you for this attack?”
“This wasn’t an attack. It wasn’t the attack.”
Anya gave Xhea an incredulous look and bent to grab her by the hair.
“Don’t you get it yet?” Xhea wanted to laugh, shivering from the after-effects of magic and adrenaline, weak and numbed. “I’m not here to stop you. As if I could. I’m only the distraction.”
At this, the Councilman paused and looked back. Xhea watched his brows draw down as his thoughts cascaded—watched him put the pieces together, one by one. By then it was far too late.
There was a sharp chime, and a woman’s uninflected tones echoed throughout the great room. “Proximity alert,” the voice announced. “Proximity alert. All citizens, please brace for impact. This is not a drill.”
The Councilman did not brace but ran headlong toward the lift, spells flying from lips and hands. The spellcasters abandoned the pedestals and ran for the crystalline walls, placing their entire bodies against the glass as if the Tower might absorb them if only they pressed hard enough. Light flashed and flared around them, swirling into the Tower faster and brighter than Xhea could read. Defenses, Xhea supposed, and wondered what spells now flared around Eridian in a brief and desperate effort to maintain the Tower’s independence.
Anya cursed, tore the scarf from her hands and rolled Xhea onto her side with her shoe. Xhea was too slow: before she could squirm away, Anya grabbed her arms and bound Xhea’s hands with a few wrenching twists of the scarf. “Don’t move,” she commanded, then spun and sprinted to the lift tube.
Even tied, even exhausted, Xhea couldn’t help but grin as she sagged to the floor.
“Battle stations,” she whispered, and counted the seconds until Allenai’s arrival.
Ten—did they have ten seconds? Xhea rolled onto her back, pinning her tied hands beneath her. On the platform, Shai had managed to free most of her right arm, the spellcasters’ distraction allowing her to make some progress against her bindings.
Nine. Eridian’s proximity chime continued to sound, the voice repeating its calm warning. “All citizens, please brace—”
Eight. Seven.
How many hostile takeovers had she watched from the ground? She couldn’t begin to count. The fast, brutal battles lasted just long enough for vendors’ stands to sprout on every street corner and public roof with a clear view of the action, selling snacks and magnification lenses in quantity. High entertainment, this. She had never wondered how a takeover looked—or felt—from the inside.
Six—
Xhea was thrown into the air in an explosion of light and noise. No time to think, no time to scream before the floor reclaimed her, impacting hard against her face and shoulder and injured leg. The world shook and spun, an unending assault of sc
reaming metal, shattering glass, and an awful grinding noise that Xhea couldn’t name. Shards of faceted glass rained down in a sharp, chiming hail.
Allenai hadn’t just attacked but impacted, and if her flight path was any indication, they’d struck from directly above. Eridian’s stabilizing spells had been totally overwhelmed by the force of an entire Tower falling upon them, aided by magic and gravity. If Allenai had already drilled through Eridian’s layered defenses so that the two Towers now touched, then somewhere above the structures’ flesh was beginning to meld, each battling for control of their combined shape. Each seeking to claim the other’s heart.
Xhea lay limply, caught between the conflicting desires to whimper and to laugh hysterically. Oh, she thought. It feels like that.
“Xhea?” Shai’s voice was halting, its raw sound testament to her screams. “Are you okay?”
It took a few attempts to respond: “Still breathing.”
“Speak for yourself,” Shai muttered, and then yelped. There was a snapping noise and a flash, and Xhea managed to turn just in time to see one line of the binding spell break away, the magic shimmering as it vanished. “I need help.”
“Can you see the casters?”
“Emergency merger protocol,” Shai managed.
“What?”
“They have to protect the Tower. Defend it.”
Xhea tried to understand what that meant. Above, Shai continued to struggle, then made an exasperated sound. “They’re being absorbed into the wall.”
Xhea twisted, craning until she just caught sight of a human shape vanishing inside the crystalline structure. The aide’s limp body had similarly been absorbed, and now was no more than a shadow inside the cracked floor.
“Huh,” she said. “Good enough.”
Unable to free her hands, Xhea wormed across the floor, doing her best to push aside the largest glass splinters before she lay on them. With her face but inches from the floor, she could see all too well what was happening below. Eridian’s heart stuttered wildly, streamers of raw magic pulsing in every direction. Through the magic, she could just see the vast garden, and it looked a paler gray, as if the very life was being pulled from the trees and flowers and moss. Of the crowd, she could only see the dark spots of their bodies, all quiet and perfectly still. She hoped the Tower would absorb and protect them too.
Radiant: Towers Trilogy Book One Page 31
