“You should know this,” he rasped. “We owe you the truth. But I— I do not want to see.”
Then he blinked—they blinked—and the world filled with smoke.
He coughed harshly, aware that he could breathe only because of the cloud-serpent Kuthra had summoned. Its anxiety tremored in his throat; it wanted to flee as much as he did. But while it could fly, he was trapped here at the summit of the Pillar, forced to watch as their work tore the world apart.
The Seal at the center of the tower had become a vermilion column too bright to look at directly; from the corner of his eye he saw its base eating at the floor, its tip piercing the sky. Under the pressure it produced, the mountains shuddered, and the tower as well—as if the earth had awakened and was shifting its shoulders, stretching its legs beneath this blanket of limestone and karst, soil and trees.
Above the bloody clouds, arcane sigils throbbed with such strength that they blotted out the sun. A wind had kicked up, raking hard fingers across the tower and shredding mindlessly at the thunderheads. Natural lightning pulsed down to lance the ground. In the valley to the north, the locust hordes and human dead rattled around like bones in a dice-bowl; to the south, the sea foamed as if sick.
“How long until the spell sets?” he called to Kuthra over the thunder.
The wraith raised his head reluctantly. He lay against a crenelation, sides heaving, his white robe stained with soot and blood and his wide eyes lightless. Threads of energy continued to unspool from the nubs of the Ravager's wings, pouring into the coruscating Seal as if the great working was trying to consume him.
“I do not know,” he whispered. “This is...beyond my sight. Your world is so dark, Guardian. It has always thwarted me.”
Gritting his teeth, Jeronek unlocked his hands from the crenel he'd been clutching and shuffled toward the wraith. The tremors tried to kick his feet out from under him but he was attuned to the minerals of the tower—not quite stone, but close enough—and stayed steady, closing the distance until he could reach down and grip Kuthra's arm. The wraith came up easily, feather-light, and clutched at his armor with claw-like fingers.
They'd never been so close. He looked away from that pale face and said, “But it's done? It's working?”
“Yes. I could not have pulled down the beam if it was not.”
“Then we can leave. Your magic—“
“All gone.”
“Wings, then. Glide away.”
“I could not carry you. The Guardian would be a stone around my neck.”
Jeronek swallowed thickly and felt the spirit clench inside him, aware of his thoughts. “Then go. Flee,” he murmured. “I'll stay.”
A scoffing sound from the vicinity of his gorget. Hot electric breath. “Don't be a martyr. I dare not manifest. The Seal would take me.”
“It was your design. Surely you can—“
“It is beyond me now. A part of the world, empowered by it. I could not withstand it even were I at full strength. Not as the Ravager, nor as I was before.” No bitterness in his voice now, just a wry acceptance, as if it had been eons rather than months since he was brought down under the Ravager's control.
Jeronek clamped a stony hand to the crenels again and looked out to the mountains. There were few options. Pull a sphere of earth around them, drop into the valley, then break out and flee toward—where? The nearest locust-free area was three hundred miles away.
Perhaps they could flee toward the sea, or climb down to where the Pillar connected to the extensive underwater caves. Or perhaps they could just wait. The tower had some give to it; despite the shaking, it had not yet fractured, and its roots were deep.
Yes. They would stay, and they would be—
Whiteout. Impact.
Silence—raging, deafening silence. His hand on the crenelation stayed fixed but his shoulder nearly snapped as the tower whiplashed beneath him. Pain drew his skeleton on the inside of his eyelids. Nails like shards of glass bit into the back of his neck, the floor rose to meet his knee and hip, and in a panicked reflex he threw himself into his earth-blood birthright. As his skin hardened and his bones petrified, his senses flared with knowledge of the land beneath. The land that pitched—
—yawed—
—buckled.
It was like a punch in the belly, a sick sinking sensation of impact and rupture. The mountains shattered along old seams, sloughing away great sheets of limestone and ice; karst pillars snapped like trees, cave-networks collapsing into sinkholes like punctured cysts. Along the shore, the cliffs split—flaked—fractured, dropping village-sized chunks into the roiling brine.
Fissures formed around the Pillar. The green and black skin of the world disintegrated in foam.
Further, the continent—his backbone—twisted and splintered as the hammers of the sky struck down. One for Fire, two for Air, three for Wood, four for—
The armor on his back went molten as the Seal of Water ignited, and the skin beneath it flash-cooked: an instant of agony and then numbness, nothing. The cloud-serpent at his mouth vaporized, searing his lips. Teeth clenched, he fought to hold his breath against a heat that would burn his lungs black. Smoke rose from his scorched scalp.
Only the spots beneath Kuthra's hands remained whole, cool. Radiance flowed up the wraith's arms and filled his fluid hair with light. Through baking eyes, Jeronek saw him look up—saw the Seal's overwhelming glow being siphoned into his pure white blaze.
The wraith said something but he could not hear it, only the baseline whine of his shattered eardrums. Glass-cool fingers pried at him, and he thought he understood—Kuthra could escape now!—but he could not release his grip. His armor was fused solid, the Guardian too shocked to aid him.
And still he felt the hammers fall. Five for Earth, six for Metal.
Seven.
Something in him shattered—or was it the world? It felt like a door being slammed, and for a moment he saw a huge bright force in flight—dwindling—gone. But at the abandoned epicenter, the land split down to the bedrock, the Seals' horrid energy racing along every fault-line in a spreading circle of destruction. Water displaced; air roiled; wood flattened as if beneath a scythe. Fire leapt its bounds; metal strained and snapped.
Earth separated, and the tower plunged like a spear.
Lost in the call of his blood, Jeronek could barely make sense of what he saw. Shattered cliff-sides rushed past as the Pillar was driven down, exposing layer upon layer of tunnels, caverns and underground rivers compressed now like honeycomb beneath a boot. A part of him screamed as he felt the sea-caves rupture below, felt the base of the Pillar punch through into water, into heaving coral and debris.
White wings burst into existence around him, and he was wrenched up. His shoulder shrieked again, suddenly holding the whole weight of the Pillar against the pull of the sky. He looked up into the terrified face of the wraith, hanging upside-down in midair, six wings grasping for purchase amid smoke and dust and fire, hair wild as seaweed in a current, eyes like lamps. Hands locked on him.
That tenuous grip could not hold for long. He could break it, and fall with the Pillar.
The wraith's mouth formed words: Don't you dare.
What other choice was there? The Ravager could not carry the Guardian; they were opposites. They canceled each other out. Falling, he might survive; flying, Kuthra would escape.
Then he saw it through the veils of debris: the wave, greenish-black against the blood-red sky. Taller than mountains, its crest a white razor that cut the clouds as it followed the pull of the Seals—the demand to wash away the foulness that had infested this land.
As it loomed toward Kuthra's back.
Let him go, said the Guardian.
It was nearly upon them. It ate up all the world. Kuthra would never out-fly it; only the Guardian's power could protect him—
Let him go.
Jeronek gritted his teeth and said, “No.”
His fingers unlocked from the crenelation and the Pillar fel
l away. Kuthra's face flashed relief, then he hooked hands and clawed feet into the ridges of the armor and turned upright, wings straining, eyes on the violent sky. The wave was still behind him, curving ever up and over until Jeronek could see it past the planes of his face, past the white peak of his chin. Until he knew that Kuthra saw it too.
I'll save you, he tried to say. The Guardian controls water.
But the darkness slithered from him like sand, the black grip in his chest easing. He didn't have the strength to prevent it. Kuthra's wings beat harder as the weight on Jeronek's soul decreased, and they rose up, up...
Not fast enough.
“No!” he screamed.
Then the Guardian was gone.
Cob jerked back to reality, panting and dazed. Before him, Jeronek smiled wanly, without pleasure. “Now you know,” he said.
For a moment, Cob could only shake his head. Was it his imagination, or had the mist thickened while he walked in visions? The ground beneath his soles felt slick, his skin damp. The taste of brine lingered in his throat. Finally he managed, “Why?”
“Prey philosophy,” came Haurah's growling answer. “One does not need to be the swiftest—only swifter than the slowest. And when it is not possible to make your vessel abandon their goal, you simply abandon your vessel.”
He looked over his shoulder to the Guardians behind them, Haurah's face fixed in anger, Erosei's coldly bitter, Dernyel subdued. Even Vina looked uncomfortable. “It left you all?”
“I was already dying,” said Jeronek. “The burns were too thorough. Perhaps it was selfish of me to cling; perhaps I was wrong, and Kuthra could have escaped.”
Shaking his head, Cob said, “Y'had a solid plan—“
An image intruded: the Hungry Dark at his heels, the black water pouring around him, and Enkhaelen's wings spread above to claw at the sky. That same moment revisited, a desperate hope.
It nearly choked him. He clenched his fists and stared fixedly at Jeronek's face, afraid to look down. Afraid to see the water around his feet. “You said he died there. The Guardian ran away and both the vessels died. How?”
A moment's silence, then with reticence Jeronek said, “I...did not witness it, but I know that the wave took us both. I died on impact; he was dashed into the sea. And there was no light. The disasters had darkened the sky. He floated for...days, weeks. We did not rescue him, and he could not escape the water. Eventually he simply...ceased to fight.”
“Drowned?”
“No. Exposure.”
Cob winced. Anything would be angry after a fate like that, let alone a spirit of air and fire. “But there was time between Kuthra and Enkhaelen. A thousand years. You never tried to patch things up?”
Jeronek smiled ruefully. “Kuthra was a force unto himself. He dominated the Ravager vessels that came after, so that no matter which one we encountered, it was Kuthra's eyes that stared out at us. But the Guardian had moved on. I had as much influence over it as I have over you, and it had always hated him. While I'd come to know him as a...friend, it saw him as an inevitable traitor.
“And so we stayed apart. Only when we felt the Seals being opened did we seek him out, and then...” Jeronek sighed. “There was no Kuthra left in his eyes. Only Enkhaelen.”
Uncomfortable, Cob turned away. The others were watching him as if expecting an outburst, but he had no energy for that. He almost wished he hadn't asked.
“Jus'...let's get out of here, all right?” he told them, and one by one, they nodded. Haurah ranged into the lead to seek the haelhene spire, and he fell in at her heels and tried not to think.
The whispers followed.
*****
Ahead, the mist dissipated into a long, low stone corridor lit faintly from beyond. Fiora blinked at the change, then again when her eyes watered, and covered her nose and mouth would gloved hands but could not keep her lungs from pulling air.
It stung, burned—
Then the Silver One made a gesture with the hand not holding the red crystal, and a tingling blanket of energy enfolded her, sliding its arcane fingers up her nose and across her eyes as well as over her skin. She shuddered and choked, but the inhale was clean—the air thin and chemical but tolerable.
She coughed harshly, chest spasming, then managed to get a hold of herself. A moment later came the first hiccup. Blushing, she looked to the Silver One again. “I—hp!—thought elementals and such couldn't—hp!—do magic...”
The Silver One turned tarnished eyes on her but did not dignify the implied question with a response. Instead it started forward, metallic robes stirring liquidly around its legs—or at least where legs should be. Does it have normal body parts? Is it just doing this for my benefit, like Ilshenrir? she wondered as she hurried after.
The red crystal cast a sullen glow along the corridor, catching glints from thick layers of crusted salt. More hung as stalactites from the ceiling, short and fine as if removed regularly. The path beneath her feet was crunchy with mineral debris; looking back, she saw the passageway dead-end in a wall of salt, a faint ruby glow trapped within.
“Where is this? Where are—hp!—we going?” she asked her guide, but it was silent. Even at this easy pace, her body ached and her throat burned with thirst. She tried to tell herself that since her rescuer knew she needed air, it must know she needed water and food, so everything would be fine. She wasn't sure she believed it.
The ruddy light at the end of the corridor deepened as they approached. It made her guide look weirdly fleshy, hair and robe included, and sent a nervous tingle up her spine. Trying to swallow down her hiccups, she pursued the Silver One doggedly until it came to a halt.
Too curious to heel, she peeked past it into the cavern beyond. Her jaw dropped.
“Welcome to Hlacaasteia,” said the Silver One. “Our home away from home.”
Chapter 13 – Hlacaasteia
Straining to catch a whisper, Cob almost ran into Haurah, who had halted just ahead. She gave him an odd look, then tapped her nose and said, “I scent your lover.”
He stared at her. It felt like they had been walking for days, and in the silence that followed Jeronek's story had come the voice. Faint, distant, indistinct, yet somehow familiar, speaking words he couldn't quite discern. Even now, it continued at the threshold of perception, prying at his attention.
“Cob?” said Haurah, concerned.
He shook himself, and mustered a wan smile. “Jus' tired.” That they couldn't hear it was obvious, which made him doubt his sanity. They'd been able to detect Enkhaelen and Darilan's splinters, so why not this Dark intrusion?
Unless they were ignoring it, maybe hoping it would go away. He'd tried that. It hadn't.
“'M fine,” he managed. “Fiora...y'can track Fiora? Thought y'needed a spirit connection.”
Haurah's half-shifted face twitched, her furry ears canting back like she had made a mistake. She opened her mouth, closed it, then looked past him to the others.
A big hand clasped his shoulder, reassuringly real despite being imaginary. Leaning down, Vina said in a low, soothing voice, “It is not Fiora she tracks, but the child. Your child.”
Cob's throat locked.
“I thought we agreed not to tell him,” said Haurah petulantly. “Now it'll distract him. And it's not a sure thing with our current plan. If it dies—“
“Well, too late,” said Erosei.
Cob could not focus. All he saw was Fiora's face: grinning, laughing, blushing, smiling sleepily in satisfaction. He tried to move his mouth in the shape of a question, but none came out. His legs felt wooden; his hands trembled. His chest was being squeezed by iron bands. It felt like fear—like panic—but it wasn't.
My kid, he thought. Mine.
“How d'we get to her?” he managed finally. “Can we jus' step across?”
“No,” said Vina. “First we move to the spirit realm, which will let us see better and bypass most obstructions. Once we reach her vicinity, we step down to the physical realm.”
/> “Then go. Go.”
The ogress shook her head. “Ko Vrin, you wield our power now. You must learn to do it yourself.”
Annoyance stirred him from his daze. He glared up at her. “Y'can't jus drop somethin' like this on me and then say, 'Do magic'.”
“The world does not wait for you to be ready,” said the ogress. “Instead of snapping, focus your energy upon this need. Feel our presence within you, find the tether that connects you upward, then follow it.”
Lacking the will to argue, and more than ready to be free of the Grey, he closed his eyes.
As always, the Guardian's presence was heaviest near the scar on his belly, where it had first entered him. Usually he felt it descending into the earth—that great solid darkness—but there was no earth here, just the textureless neutrality of the Grey. Instead, the pull canted slightly upward. “Why?” he mumbled, brows creased.
Vina said, “The Ravager. When he tore the realms apart to thwart the wraiths, he disjointed the spirit realm away from the earth.”
“Not very far.”
“No. But it was enough to create fractures. Once, it was a mirror-image of the physical realm, but now some of the spirits hide in their own free-floating shards, and there are many gaps where things can slip through.”
“Things,” Cob echoed, but Vina did not clarify, and he balked at mentioning the black water or the whispers. No matter what was in the spirit realm, it had to be better than here.
Concentrating on the Guardian's tether, he tried wrapping fingers around it, but its shivery sensation slipped away when he tightened his grip.
“Do not grab it. Move with it,” said Vina.
How? Cob thought, baffled. Do I follow it, or jump up, or what?
He tried both, but nothing happened, and he could swear he heard Erosei and Haurah snickering. Irritation a dull throb in his chest, he took a moment to stop and breathe. It reminded him of when Jeronek and Erosei had taught him to manipulate the elements by jeering and throwing stones at him. He supposed he should be proud not to be so wroth this time.
The Living Throne (The War of Memory Cycle Book 3) Page 41
