Shattering the Ley

by Joshua Palmatier

  He shifted uncomfortably in his seat as guilt spasmed through him, and answered Dierdre sharply. “It’s Kara.”

  Dierdre sank back into her seat. “I see.” Her words were as curt as Marcus’ and they sat in mutual tension until Dierdre finally sighed. “Perhaps it’s for the best.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you and I and the Kormanley have important work to do. You can’t be distracted—by her or anything else. If she’s gone, you can focus on what matters.”

  When Marcus didn’t immediately respond, she added with a sneer and narrowed eyes, “Unless you don’t think the restoration of the natural ley matters anymore. Perhaps you think that Augustus and his Primes are right, that the ley should be abused and manipulated at the sole whim of our esteemed Baron.”

  “You know I don’t believe that, especially after the Purge,” he spat, loud enough a few of those seated near them glanced in their direction. He lowered his voice and leaned in toward Dierdre. “The Baron, Augustus, and the Primes need to learn that they can’t control us, not with the Dogs and not with the ley. But—” His vehemence faltered.

  “But what?”

  Swallowing back the lump constricting his throat, he said, “I just wish it hadn’t cost me Kara. Perhaps I should have told her about you, about the Kormanley.”

  Dierdre grabbed his upper arm hard, her frown severe. “You said yourself we couldn’t tell her. The Kormanley would love to have one of the Primes sympathetic to our cause, but if we can’t trust her. . . .”

  “The Kormanley killed her parents. And the Dogs killed her friend and mentor, Ischua, during the Purge, in the Kormanley’s name. She’d never get past that. Even if I could convince her that we aren’t violent anymore.”

  “Then you have to let her go. You can’t risk what we’ve started for her sake. Sacrifices have to be made. Think of all of those who died during the Purge. Think of all of those the Dogs slaughtered, Kormanley and innocent alike, because of their fear. We’re doing this for them, to avenge them, to make their sacrifice meaningful. We can’t do this without you.”

  Marcus stared into her eyes, drew strength from the conviction he saw there, used it to quash the guilt and heartache over Kara beneath his own resolve. He knew what the Kormanley were attempting was right. The Baron and the Primes were out of control, were overreaching themselves in their greed and lust for power. The distortions had been the first sign, but they’d chosen to ignore it. It was time to force them to face their creation, to see how little they really controlled.

  He reached out and covered Dierdre’s hand with his own. “What do you need me to do next?”

  Eighteen

  KARA WALKED INTO the Stone node and halted, glancing around the front room. It was surprisingly similar to Eld, the interior nearly identical, although it had been built of a reddish stone like the rock of the outcroppings to the west. Both Hedge and Tallow had been significantly different, although both still had the central pit that allowed direct interaction with the ley lines.

  A group of three Wielders were standing over a worktable in the room beyond the small foyer, pointing and arguing over a couple of maps. Kara halted in the doorway and watched until one of the Wielders—a woman with short-cropped brown hair and intense dark eyes—saw her. The dark-eyed woman made a motion with her hands and the other two, an older man with gray-streaked brown hair and another woman about the same age, cut off and turned toward Kara.

  “Can we help you?” the dark-eyed woman asked, her voice irritated.

  The older man straightened. “Illiana, behave. You know we have a new Wielder arriving today. Are you Kara Tremain?”

  “Yes, I’ve been transferred here from the Tallow node.”

  “So we’ve been told.”

  “What did you do? Piss off your senior Wielder?” Illiana crossed her arms over her chest, one eyebrow raised. “Sleep with him, perhaps?”

  The other woman quirked a smile, but the older man rolled his eyes and stepped forward to shake her hand. “Ignore her. Although you’ll probably get numerous questions about why you were transferred early, and why you’ve been transferred so often. I’d suggest you come clean as soon as possible, or the speculation will run rampant. I’m Steven, the senior Wielder here. This is Illiana and Savion, the senior Wielder in Eastend.”

  Savion nodded with a quick greeting, but Illiana’s eyes narrowed. “You still haven’t answered my question.”

  Kara bristled. “I asked for an early transfer for personal reasons.”

  “So you did sleep with him!”

  “I did not sleep with Karl.”

  Illiana pouted, still eyeing her. “Maybe not with Karl, but you slept with someone. That’s always what ‘personal reasons’ means.”

  Steven glared at her. “Are you finished, Illiana?”

  She hesitated, then growled, “For now.”

  Savion motioned Kara to the table. “We were discussing the recent blackouts that have been occurring throughout Erenthrall.”

  When Kara drew close enough to see the map, she realized it was highly detailed, streets marked off with black lines of varying width, the thickest representing the major thoroughfares, the thinnest alleys and narrows. The Urate and Tiana were shaded in blue, different districts outlined in red. The ley lines connecting the stations were yellow, nodes and some of the smaller loci in orange. She had never seen a map with so many of the nodes and loci represented throughout the city, but she realized that all of those on the map were above ground and easily visible. Anyone, Wielder or general citizen, could have produced this map. The nodes and loci that were not easy to see—those known only to the Wielders who had worked in those districts and the Primes—were not drawn. Steven, Illiana, and Savion probably knew the ley system in Stone as intimately as Kara knew Eld, Hedge, Tallow, and the other districts she’d worked in, but none of them wanted to invite the Primes’ wrath by displaying it on a map.

  What caught Kara’s attention, though, were the shadings that appeared at random around the city. She recognized the one that covered part of Eld.

  “You’ve shaded all of the areas that have experienced a blackout?”

  “And dated them,” Steven said. “We’ve been trying to determine if there’s a pattern to them, but so far we haven’t noticed anything. What do you see?”

  Kara leaned forward, wondering briefly if this was some sort of test. The blackouts had only begun a few years ago, with a street or small section of a district suddenly and inexplicably losing its connection to the ley, everything—ley globes, carts, barges—going dark and falling silent. The blackouts were sporadic—less of a nuisance than the appearances of the distortions, which had been a constant and growing threat since they first appeared—but the blackouts were relatively new, and were growing worse. Kara could pick out the few streets where the first blackouts had appeared on the map easily—Lavendar Street in Hedge and Murk Street in Eastend—because every Wielder had talked about them when they occurred. But the rest of the blackouts. . . .

  Her eyes flickered across the map, her mouth pinched, as she realized their extent. She hadn’t been paying that close attention to them, too caught up in those that were affecting her own districts . . . and her own personal problems. But now, seeing it laid out so completely, she realized that nearly every district had been affected at some point, a few sections more than once. She traced the progress using the dates scribbled near each shading, then leaned back.

  “I don’t see any pattern except that the blackouts appear to be worsening over time. The first few affected only a few streets, but the most recent have plunged entire sections of a district into darkness. The most recent in East Forks covered a third of its area.”

  “That’s all that we’ve come up with as well,” Steven said with a sigh. “Did those in your other districts have any theories as to what was causing them?”

 
Kara shook her head. “Nothing except the usual overuse of the ley system, which we’ve been complaining about since the distortions began nearly fifteen years ago.”

  She thought of Marcus, the most adamant Wielder in Eld regarding the misuse of the ley. He’d fought the Primes on the issue repeatedly. His protests had died down during the Purge, when the entire city had been held siege by the Dogs, everyone afraid that one of the Hounds would be sicced upon them, or that the Dogs would appear and drag them off to the Tower. But Marcus’ protests had begun again with the first few blackouts.

  Steven grimaced. “The Primes have denied that theory as soundly and flatly as they can. Trust me, it’s been brought up by the senior Wielders at the Nexus more than once.”

  “So either they’re lying—” Savion began.

  “Or they don’t know what in hells is going on,” Illiana finished. “This is useless. Leave it to the Primes. We have work to do.”

  “Very well. Why don’t you take Kara out on your patrol, help her get to know the Stone District a little better.”

  Illiana shot Steven a betrayed look, then huffed and glared at Kara. “Follow me.”

  Illiana was shorter than Kara and moved fast. She led her around the node, showing her the pit and the Wielders’ rooms, for those who chose to stay at the node instead of finding their own rooms elsewhere. The layout was the same as at Eld, except the Wielders’ rooms were on the opposite side of the node.

  As soon as they stepped back onto the streets outside, Illiana’s mood changed. She smiled up into the sunlight, breathed in the fresh air, and then caught Kara’s startled look and smiled. “Steven knows that I prefer working patrol rather than being stuck down in that gods-forsaken pit for hours on end. But I wouldn’t want him thinking I appreciated it, now would I?”

  Laughing, she led Kara into Stone.

  They worked the main streets first, Kara laying out the main thoroughfares and branches in her head. Some she knew from traversing the city on her time off, with Marcus or Cory or the other Wielders, but she suddenly realized she hadn’t roamed away from Eld much. As soon as Illiana turned off of the main streets, she grew lost. A bell tolled, marking midday, the sound jarring and unfamiliar. She’d spent so much time in Eld that she no longer really heard the various sounds that marked out the length of the day there. Illiana saw her jump and frown and halted at the next intersection.

  “Give it a moment,” she said when she caught Kara’s confused look. “The mason’s belfry is always a few minutes late.”

  Before she’d finished speaking, another bell rang out, this one closer, but with a deeper intonation. As it faded, Illiana turned down the next street and motioned Kara to follow.

  “You’ll get used to the bells,” Illiana said. “As you’ve probably noticed, the streets are different here than in Tallow as well.”

  “They’re curved more, and wider. Tallow doesn’t really have streets, more a complex network of alleys and one-lane streets that barely allow horsecarts through. Before that I was in Hedge, which is like Eld. Both of their layouts are gridlike, the streets straight for the most part.”

  Illiana grinned. “That’s because Stone wasn’t quarried and laid out like Eld or Hedge or any of the other districts. It was created by the Primes, when they were first experimenting with the ley, before the Nexus, when the ley was channeled naturally. There used to be streets like Eld here and buildings mostly made of wood. But then there was a great fire and the entire district burned down. No one knows how many lives were lost. When the Baron ordered the district rebuilt, no one wanted to use wood and so he made the Primes come up with another option. They figured out how to mold stone, how to make it flow, and so the streets and buildings are more naturally curved. They could have forced the stone into more linear forms, I suppose, but I like how sinuous it is. Like currents in water, but frozen in place.”

  Illiana gestured with her hands, but it was the passion in her voice that caught Kara’s attention. She watched her as she moved, realized Illiana was probably only a few years older than her, somewhere in her early thirties, although she looked younger with her lithe frame and shorter stature.

  Then the Wielder halted, body going rigid with tension, the cool grin gone in the space of a heartbeat. Kara halted as well and without thought wrapped the Tapestry around her.

  She felt the dissonance a heartbeat before Illiana said, “Distortion.”

  Illiana broke away, moving before Kara had pinpointed the location in the Tapestry. But she didn’t wait, sprinting after the Wielder’s thin form as she insinuated herself past the people on the street. They dodged carts and sidestepped wagons and traders with wares spilling out onto the sidewalk. Most of those who saw them coming stepped out of their way hastily, glancing toward the air in apprehension, but there was nothing to see yet.

  But when they rounded a corner, Kara on Illiana’s heels, they could suddenly hear the high-pitched intonation of a distortion beginning to form. Illiana cursed and motioned across the street to where it opened up into a small square. A large pool stood in its center, water spilling down the jagged ledges of rock from a fountain to one side. Children splashed at the pool’s edge, parents nearby. Hawkers had set up makeshift tents around the square’s perimeter. The entire plaza was filled with people.

  “It’s forming in the square,” Illiana growled. “We’ll never get everyone out in time.”

  “You warn them, I’ll handle the distortion.”

  Illiana frowned at her, the high-pitched tone increasing in volume as she hesitated. Then she nodded. “Go!”

  They split, Kara heading toward the sound and the dissonance on the Tapestry that grew even as she ran. It trembled all around her, and she noticed others not as attuned to the world beginning to glance up and look around. To one side, Illiana shouted a warning and Kara saw her climbing up onto the edge of the pool, motioning frantically. But the people were reacting too slowly. The distortion was going to form before they were ready. She could feel it in the vibrations in her skin.

  She halted near the northern edge of the square, a black stone building rising before her, its sides glittering with quartz in the sunlight. Behind, people were beginning to panic, the high-pitched squeal of the distortion now audible to everyone. Illiana roared for them to move. Before her, the hawkers halted selling their wares, stared at Kara as she focused her attention on a point in the air above their heads, and then they and their customers scattered, leaving everything behind.

  Kara drew in a steadying breath, another, and murmured under her breath, “Not a big one. About the size of a wagon.”

  She tested the dissonance, tasted the air around her, smelled a sudden acrid scent, like lightning, then took two careful steps backward.

  And the high-pitched squeal ended.

  Before she could suck in a breath in anticipation, the distortion opened. White light flared and then blossomed outward, whirling wide and wider, the arms spiraling out like a reverse vortex. Its colors were stunning, golds and oranges and reds with a hint of intense green at the edges. Its center formed about ten feet above the tents, and it expanded enough that it caught part of the obsidian building and the tops of the tents in its grasp.

  And then it halted, the spiraling arms freezing in place. Kara felt reality within the distortion shatter, felt the world fracture, like ice cracking at the end of spring before a thaw. It set her teeth on edge.

  But then it was over.

  She let her pent-up breath out in a heavy sigh. No one had been caught in the distortion. Her heart began pounding again, hard in her chest. With every distortion she encountered, she relived the incident at the ley station with the seamstress and the bloody loss of the woman’s hand. She’d saved countless lives since then—and lost a few as well—but it was that woman’s face that haunted her, her shriek as she realized she’d been maimed.

  She shoved the image aside with
long practice and focused on the distortion, beginning to hum, the sound rumbling in her chest. The sound was unnecessary—none of the other Wielders used it—but it grounded her, the vibrations in her chest soothing. Behind her, she heard Illiana fighting her way through the crowd, demanding they step back and let her get close. But Kara didn’t wait for her. She reached out with her senses and surrounded the distortion, began piecing reality back together again starting at the edges, even though part of it was locked inside the stone of the building and couldn’t be seen. She didn’t need to see it visibly; she used the Tapestry to sense its jagged edges. Like that first distortion she’d begun to heal, the fractures were intricate, interconnected, and deadly. But she’d had practice since then, knew what she was doing. The shards of reality inside the distortion began piecing themselves together under her guidance, merging back into the correct shape.

  She had healed a third of the distortion by the time Illiana made it to her side, had nearly freed it from the building. A moment later, she felt the Wielder enfolding her, lending her strength without interfering, as Marcus had done so long ago. Her concentration wavered only a moment as she thought about him, the rhythm of her hum breaking, but she knew Illiana sensed the hesitation. She redoubled her efforts, Illiana watching her, judging her. For a brief moment, she felt like she was back at the college, testing before one of the Masters.

  She let the anger this thought sparked drive her. Behind, those in the square gasped as the distortion shrank, slowly at first, then faster, its edges rippling as if with heat. It pulled free of the building and Kara relaxed, certain now there would be no damage if it did collapse before she was done. But by the time it had shrunk to the size of her fist, Kara knew they would seal it before then. None of the signs of an imminent collapse were evident—the trembling of the spiraling arms, the resumption of motion, however small.

  A few harsh breaths later, the distortion vanished, sealed away completely, reality restored. She staggered back, gasping, felt Illiana’s hand at the small of her back, supporting her. She drew her sleeve across her face, surprised at the amount of sweat that stained the cloth. Her arms trembled with exhaustion, but it was a good sensation, like that after a long run, body weak but euphoric.