Fractures (Facets of Reality Book 2)

by Jeremy Bullard

  No, not gold, he thought as it flashed again. Red. Must be Aplos or one of his...

  He caught another glimmer, this time green, slightly lower and to one side of the red. And another red, this one different from the first. And a blue, brilliant against the darker blue background.

  "Eshira," Menkal said, elbowing his massive bride in growing concern. "Did Aplos or Athnae, or any of the dragonriders, mention anything to you about practicing formations this morning?"

  "Mmmmm?" she rumbled inquisitively, opening one draconian eye. "Formations?"

  "Look. Look there," he insisted, jabbing a grizzled finger northward.

  Lazily, the caducean twisted her head around, almost as if to preen... and she froze.

  * * *

  Sal sighed as they neared the campfire at Delana's tent. "You ready for this?"

  "Whatever do you mean?" Marissa asked innocently.

  "Gimme a break. All the grief they gave us yesterday, the cat calls..."

  "Oh, come now, Sal," she chided playfully. "That's how you know that you're loved."

  Very few Heads of Order and Guild were in attendance this morning -- Jaren, Senosh, a handful of others. As Sal and Marissa entered the flickering circle cast off by the fire, Jaren came to his feet. "Whoa. Only two days of bonding?"

  "Huh?" asked Sal.

  "What you call 'honeymooning'," Marissa replied.

  "'Honey mooning'?" Jaren frowned. "What a strange... Never mind. Consider the source. But I must say that you look better rested than I expected. Marissa, I'm a little disappointed."

  "Don't be. He's more exhausted than he looks."

  "No doubt. Me and Emerald are just waiting on sunup," Sal snickered. "So where is everybody?"

  "It's just going to be us this morning. Everybody else is engaged. Gaelen and Japheth are with the amethysts, making sure they are proficient with the inverted null field. What your man Cedric did to that granite... that could be an invaluable tool when the Earthen Rank arrive. Also, I have Patrys with the sapphires. Such a remarkable girl, to have developed the skills that she has in such a short time. And all because of..." The emerald tapped his throat.

  Sal shrugged. "Well, necessity is the mother of invention."

  "'Necessity is the mother of invention'," Jaren repeated, savoring the words. "I like that. I like that a lot!"

  "I can't take cred---" Sal started, then dismissed himself. "Ya know what? Nevermind. Yeah, that's all me. What about Retzu?"

  "He decided that he'd stay with the shol'tuk," the emerald explained. "He wanted to train with other assassins, to keep his skills sharp for when he Rank get here. Sharp..." he chortled absently. "Did you see what I did there?"

  Sal chuckled and shook his head. "You're a regular comic genius there, Chuckles---"

  They're here! Menkal shouted through Sapphire. And they've got dragons!

  * * *

  The feeling of weightlessness pitched Menkal's stomach up into his throat as Eshira dove for the ruined fort, trying to beat the Earthen Rank to their draconian cavalry. The mage held the caducean's spiky mane in a death grip, the wind of their passage threatening to rip him from the saddle that he was tied to on her back.

  He could sense Eshira calling ahead to the dragons on the ground. She didn't Whisper through Sapphire as he did, but he could feel the sheer strength of her thoughts. Even from this distance, he saw the dragons and their human riders coming together and taking to the sky. But slowly. Far too slowly.

  Menkal and Eshira reached the fort about the same time as the Earthen Rank dragons. Eshira cast her head back and forth, then, finding a likely candidate in a nearby fire wyrm, she engaged.

  She and the Rank dragon collided, the clash of their scales resounding in Menkal's ears like a thousand porcelain plates breaking at once. Reaching out to Sapphire, he wielded, driving an icy spike into the wyrm's exposed side. It shrieked in pain and reached around with its head to pluck the spike out, all the while clawing at Eshira and beating its wings to stay aloft.

  Menkal saw that the dragon didn't have any rider to throw. Scanning the battlefield, he noted that very few did. Excellent, he thought, gauging their advantage. No riders meant no teams, no way for the Rank to divide the attentions of the Cause dragons that they were fighting. Sal, he Whispered. They d---

  Just then, Eshira bucked wildly. Blessed Crafter! she exclaimed, her thoughts dripping with horror. She beat back with her massive legs, attempting to disengage the weakening dragon, but it held her in a vice. The wyrm slashed with one of its talons, and Menkal felt his legs release. Weightlessness took him again as he slipped from the saddle and away from Eshira.

  Stars filled his vision as he struck earth. He lay without moving for a moment, half stunned, half shocked to have survived at all. He took a shaky, halting breath, and his side ignited in flame. A broken rib, maybe two, with some bruised muscles and jammed joints. He was alive, but he was going to feel this for a while.

  Eshira and her adversary crashed to earth a few yards from where Menkal landed. Seeing the wyrm chomping wildly, rabidly at his bride, Menkal reached out with Sapphire and wielded.

  The wyrm whipped its head around, taking in Menkal squarely. He'd hoped to put the dragon to sleep, or at least relax its guard long enough for Eshira to snap its neck, but he failed miserably. Maybe it was the differences between the human body and dragon biology. Maybe it was the wyrm's instinct for battle. Whatever the case, Menkal's spell did not have the desired effect. If anything, it only seemed to enrage the berserking dragon further.

  The wyrm clawed violently away from Eshira and skittered across the rocky ground, loosing a feral shriek as it closed on the mage. Its eyes were alight with a vacant, mindless rage, as if it saw Menkal less as an enemy and more like breakfast. The dragon's drool dripped in burning globs from its maw, its incendiary saliva igniting as it touched the open air. The wyrm took a deep breath, readying a gout that was sure to cook Menkal to a crisp---

  And Eshira pounced, her fangs ripping deep into the wyrm's neck from behind. The dragon screamed its hurt and outrage, flailing with its entire body, trying vainly to shake Eshira loose. But with each toss of its head, Eshira cinched her jaws down harder. The wyrm's shrill cry thinned as the caducean tightened her grip until, finally, the wyrm fell silent. Its great scaly body writhed and twitched around Eshira's bloody fangs as the light faded from the wyrm's feral eyes.

  "Crafter be praised," Menkal breathed, coming unsteadily to his feet. "Eshira, are you---"

  "Messac'el have mercy," she sobbed, her tear-filled eyes running back and forth over her handiwork. "I had no choice."

  * * *

  Sal and Company ran at breakneck speed through the southern gate of Bastion, he and his brothers in arms, trying to provide reinforcement to their dragon cavalry north of the city. The Mainway stretched out before them, eerily clear, evidence of a city whose population already knew about the attack and had made themselves accordingly scarce.

  "What do you mean, they're not fighting?" he demanded through his sapphire earring, preferring to leave his diamond eye available for all eventualities.

  I mean, they're not fighting! said Menkal. One minute, the cavalry is engaging the Rank. The next, our dragons are panicking, running, flying out from under their riders, doing everything they can to get away from the Rank.

  "What? Why?"

  I don't know, Menkal replied, exasperated. I can't get Eshira to tell me anything. She just keeps begging the Crafter's mercy, over and over, as if she'd murdered the dragon that was attacking me. Sal, we're starting to take some heavy losses here.

  "We're on our way to you now. Just try and buy us some time," Sal said, huffing as he and the front runners closed on the Stone of Ysre, marking the city's center just a few blocks to the north. "Fall back to the north wall. We'll meet you there. If you can't get the dragons to fight, try and get them to hold the Rank off. Distractions, maybe. Eshira's acid breath. Maybe a wall of flame from Aplos. Anything. Just make sure they're at th
e north wall when we get there."

  I'll do what I can, Menkal sighed.

  Sal reached up to thumb his earring, hoping to get hold of Retzu, when he caught the assassin out of the corner of his eye, leading a mob of lethal looking men and women, each decked in black leathers, bearing katanas, bows, sai, bo staves, and myriad other weapons that Sal had never seen before. One woman in particular carried no weapons at all -- not like she could carry one anyway, her hands conspicuously lacking their opposable thumbs. As the two mobs came together, the shol'tuk inserted themselves effortlessly into the forces of Caravan.

  "I was just about to call you," Sal shouted breathlessly over his shoulder.

  "No need," Retzu said, the running barely registering in his voice. "If there's a fight to be had, I'll know about it before a blade clears its sheath."

  Sal barked a rough laugh between pants, and thumbed his earring. "Marissa, how are you guys doing?"

  A moment later, he heard his wife's sweet alto laying solidly over the thunder of booted feet galloping to battle. First ship just docked, and we started loading as soon as the ramp was lowered. You know, Sal, I'd really---

  "I'm not going to argue with you," he said firmly. "I need you to get our people to safety."

  You mean, you want them to get me to safety, she countered, her crossed arms and quirked eyebrow evident in her voice. He didn't have to see them to know that they were there.

  "Potato, potahto," he said. "Just get our people out of here. Meet us at the rendezvous on the north shore."

  Marissa was silent for a moment, before offering a soft Be careful. I love you.

  "I love you more," he panted as his party passed the Stone.

  * * *

  Nestor peeled down the splotchy yellow skin of the hookfruit, exposing the speckled white meat beneath. He'd only picked this bunch yesterday, but it was already starting to brown. Shrugging, he bit off a chunk of the hookfruit and turned his attention back to the dais, and his never-ending search for the granite army that seemingly wasn't there.

  "You're up early," Jaeda said, padding into the map room barefooted, sipping on a steaming mug of blackbrew.

  "No, I'm up late," he corrected around a mouthful of fruity mush. "You're the one that's up early."

  "Dream woke me up," she shrugged. "I couldn't go back to sleep, so I talked to Gaelen for a few minutes. Odd thing is, he was telling me the latest gossip in Caravan -- people getting married and whatnot -- when he cut off abruptly. 'I gotta go.' That was it. So I came down here. I wanted to see if you'd found anything."

  Nestor shook his head. "I don't really know. Maybe. I got tired of not finding the granite detachment where I expected to find them, so I stopped looking in obvious places. Seems to me that Heramis, or Glyn, or whoever the Highest has commanding the detachment will move during the day and camp at night. But they haven't been surfacing like I thought they would. So rather than look for the army itself, I started looking for the supply chain. Look here..."

  Nestor shifted the map and spread it wide, drawing the image of the world much closer. As he did, tiny specks of color appeared in the "sky" over the map.

  Jaeda studied the map silently for a moment. "Prideful Spawn?"

  "Possibly. Look at these last two," he said, indicating two flecks, blue and violet, spaced widely along the River Rhu'sai. "This one started from here last night, and that one started from the dry side of the marshlands, just a few hours ago."

  "Could be couriers," she said, nodding and frowning. "If so, where would that put the granites right now?"

  "That's just it," he said, panning the map back to where he'd had it before Jaeda made her entrance. "They should be right about here, just off the island of Ysre, but I've seen noth..."

  As he spoke, the "water" to the west of Ysre started to glow a hazy brown.

  * * *

  Glyn Farhaven willed himself upward, and the sea water that he was one with complied. He rose as a man-shaped pillar, not parting the water's surface so much as bulging outward from it.

  He was loathe to expose himself like this, to expose the Granite Guard and possibly forfeit the element of surprise, but he felt it was worth the risk. High Commander Veis had given him authority to kill every last mage in Bastion, if needs be, to guarantee the final death of du'Nograh's rebellion, but Glyn thought that tactic to be too broad. For one, the Cause was not merely an arcane uprising, but one made up of both mages and mundanes. To kill off only the arcane element of the rebellion would cripple it, surely, but it would also create a pantheon of martyrs for the surviving rebels to live up to, and embolden them moving forward. And besides that, once the rebellion is quashed -- and he would certainly quash it -- the people of Bastion would be looking for reassurances, and killing off half a city's worth of innocents in order to root out the guilty wouldn't make his job any easier. After all, it was the Granite Guard's job to quell insurgencies. Nobody was ever remembered for merely fulfilling their expected roles. But returning a sense of normalcy to the city? Giving the Highest back a city that revered Him as the Vicar of the Crafter? Well, Glyn had plans, and being in the Highest's good graces could only further them.

  A wave sloshed up his leg and across his chest, reminding him that though he was one with the water, he was not formless. He could remain Merged with the water for as long as he needed, but that was not to say that the city wouldn't eventually notice.

  That was another of his gambles -- revealing to the Granite Guard the effect of being Merged with water. So few had ever considered the value of Merging with water that fewer still had tried it. That was why Clarity was so rarely discovered, short of intentional instruction. Why would someone ever need to Merge with water? Water was liquid -- it just parted for them. Merging with it seemed redundant.

  Once Glyn had revealed this secret to them, it had taken a while to recapture their focus. Even now, some were so captivated by Clarity that they couldn't follow the simplest order.

  It was beyond frustrating for him, but the revelation had been necessary. Glyn had heard of the Rank defeat in the forests northeast of Schel Veylin. He'd heard of Chief General Veis' defeat in the Aedenlee Foothills. Glyn Farhaven would not underestimate these rebels as his predecessors had, regardless of High Commander Veis' confidence in him. Merging with water was a bold move, and Clarity a bold revelation, but he would need every tool at his disposal. A versatile army was a strong army, and a beloved commander -- a commander that would flaunt convention and give natural sight back to the sightless granites -- was unstoppable. Singling out the rebels, mage and mundane alike, would be a challenge, but Clarity could be the difference between meeting that challenge or falling short.

  With a sigh, he released the Merging from his eyes and intentionally engaged his magical sight. Instantly, his natural sight dimmed and the wavering, shadowed city solidified, taking on a strength and order and structure that was obvious even from this distance.

  He peered down parallel thoroughfares running west to east, from the warehouse district all the way to the Academy at the base of Mount Ysre. Between the two, Glyn found a surprisingly thick line of bodies, both arcane and mundane, moving as one and pushing north.

  Following their path, he spied the Prideful Spawn, just north of the city walls. The Spawn had swept in and ravaged the dragons and their rebel riders. As expected, the dragons had been reluctant to fight them off. Even from this distance, he could tell that their reluctance had cost them. Of the remaining, a few rebel dragons held the Spawn at bay, forming walls of dragonbreath and giving the larger portion of their number room to fall back to the city walls.

  He then followed the line southward out of the city, and noted movement of a different kind. A fleet of smallish ships had dropped anchor in the shallows west of the Camp of the Unmarked. The waters around them were dotted with even smaller longboats, running to and from the shoreline, ferrying both men and materials.

  Excellent.

  He sent out three pulses of raw granite magic into th
e water around him -- short, long, short, and just barely strong enough to reach beyond his own aura. It was a basic pulse, but he dared no communication more complex, more noticeable, than that. As one, the granite army willed itself forward.

  Chapter 23

  The rebel army scattered like ants as they hit the north wall, with bodies mounting stairs and taking positions by the score. The battlements were elbow to elbow by the time that Sal got there. He wondered absently if he had been near the rear of the pack -- that is, until he looked back down the Mainway and saw it bursting at the seams with rebels, looking to get their rebellion on.

  Sal took the westernmost stairs two at a time, his footfalls drowned out by dragon shrieks and the shouts of rebel commanders calling orders. Retzu had only been a few steps ahead of him, but when Sal caught up to him, the assassin already had his bow cleared and nocked, and was panning for his first target. Sal scanned right and left along the battlement, looking for anybody who could give him a status update. He spied Aten'rih near the gate's turret, barking orders and sending pages running in all directions.

  "...have to start bringing those dragons down," the massive emerald was saying as Sal trotted up.

  "But our dragons won't---" one soldier started, but Aten'rih cut him off.

  "I don't care! We've never had dragons on our side before, Subcaptain. Pretend that we don't have them now. How do you handle the situation?"

  "Well, we'd---"

  "Don't talk to me about it, man! Go do it!"

  The subcaptain snapped off a crisp salute, and hurried to make himself scarce, barking orders of his own as he went.

  "Aten'rih, what do we got?" Sal asked.

  The emerald cast a sideways glance at Sal, then sighed and shook his head. "Insanity, Sal. We lost a good third of our dragons in the initial attack. Aplos' Flight won't engage the Rank's dragons, and anytime we take a shot at them ourselves, our dragons snap at us like we're the enemy. We haven't had a chance to ask why," he added, sweeping with his hand and taking in the chaos on the battlements. As Sal watched, Cause dragons waffled back and forth between ducking back from Rank attack and defending against it, but none of them actually attacked the Rank dragons. "Pure insanity!" Aten'rih repeated.