An Echo of Things to Come

by James Islington

  She drew a knife from her belt and before Kevran or I could stop her, she had slit all three Gifted’s throats, apparently immune to their muffled, fearful whimpering.

  That image still haunts me, as I know it does Kevran. I have seen executions before, but not like this—and especially not the deaths of Gifted. So be aware that while your cause is just, this is very much what you have in store for the future. It was disturbing, and brought home the reality of what we were talking about in a way that had never truly hit me before.

  It was also, I realize now, the tipping point. From that moment, neither Kevran nor I could turn back. We were complicit in the murders of—

  Wirr flinched as a massive crash echoed from somewhere outside his room.

  He sat up straight, wide-eyed, staring around as small puffs of dust drifted down from the roof. Then he pushed back his chair and made to stand, only to grip the side of his desk as another thunderous roar split the air.

  It hadn’t been his imagination. The entire building was shaking.

  Hurriedly stuffing the notebook into a drawer and slipping the Oathstone into his pocket, he dashed for the door as faint screams began to reach his ears. In the hallway outside, various servants and members of the nobility were staring around in confusion, flinching at each new tremor, evidently with as little idea of what was happening as Wirr.

  “Sire!” Andyn’s expression was tense as he spotted Wirr, breaking away from his urgent questioning of a passer-by.

  “What’s going on?”

  “I don’t know.” Andyn flinched at another crash. “But may I suggest that we don’t find out?”

  More screams sounded, these ones clearly from toward the front of the palace. There was a woman’s voice shouting something at intermittent intervals, too—louder than any of the other cries that Wirr could hear, amplified somehow—but the words were muffled, disjointed.

  Wirr hesitated, then shook his head. “Sorry, Andyn.”

  With a gesture for the other man to follow, he set off at a dead run toward the disturbance.

  The hallways were filled with people now, some just milling about anxiously, others sprinting in the opposite direction of Wirr and covered in a layer of what appeared to be white grime. Wirr yelled at those running to stop, to tell him what was going on, but they barely seemed to even register his presence. To a person, they slipped straight past him and did not look back.

  There were fewer and fewer people as he neared the palace entrance, until finally the last few hallways were completely deserted. Heart pounding, Wirr slowed to an uncertain jog, Andyn keeping pace and focusing warily on the way ahead. The shrieks of pain and fear were much louder now, and there was a veritable chorus of them.

  Wirr rounded the corner to where the entrance to the Green Hall sat just past the main foyer of the palace, at first not registering the unusual amount of light in the passageway.

  Then he skidded to a halt, a chill running down his spine.

  The Green Hall—and the foyer beyond—were … gone. In their place now was just a swirling, angry cloud of white dust, flickering beams of sunlight filtering through it and into the gaping passageways beyond. Pieces of masonry still crumbled and scattered as they fell from the upper floor of the palace, hinting at the possibility of complete collapse.

  Away from the thickest of the haze, Wirr could see that the entire front of the palace had been torn outward, chunks of shattered stone lying as far as a hundred feet away. To his horror, he could see splayed limbs and splashes of deep red where some of the larger pieces had fallen on people.

  Dazed, he focused again on the white cloud.

  In its midst, silhouetted and features impossible to make out, stalked a lone woman.

  The panicked cries continuing to cut through the air, seemingly coming from everywhere at once, finally dragged Wirr’s vision upward. His breath caught as he realized what was causing the beams of light that penetrated the dust to shift and flicker so violently.

  The flailing, frantically shouting figures were dangling in midair above the dust cloud. To a person, they were suspended as high as the palace roof. Perhaps even higher.

  And there had to have been at least a hundred of them.

  “I know you are hiding here. I know. Better, easier, quicker if you face me, but I will tear this building apart to find you if I must!” The furious shout emanating from the figure within the white cloud resounded in Wirr’s ears painfully, clearly amplified somehow. The words were breathless, edged with mania. “I will tear your friends apart if I must!”

  She gestured and a high-pitched shriek was quickly cut off as one of the silhouettes in the air was ripped in two, blood and viscera spattering to the ground amid a renewed desperation in the cries above. “Do you see the consequences for your actions, Tal’kamar? Do you yet regret them?” She gestured and another silhouette separated and fell in several places with a series of wet thuds. The woman didn’t turn to look, didn’t even appear to notice it had happened. “Are you such a coward as to let those who hide you suffer in fear and humiliation and agony? Where are you?”

  The last was delivered in a frustrated scream; another motion from the woman resulted in a new section of the palace’s facade ripping away with a shuddering roar, flying upward and outward, scattering massive chunks of stone across the gardens beyond. Some of those boulders smashed into the people suspended in the air; the chorus of panicked, despairing screams grew wilder as more blood began raining lightly to the ground.

  Wirr made himself ignore the terror coursing through his veins at the sight, crouching with Andyn behind what was left of the passageway wall and trying to assess the situation. Tal’kamar. The name was coming up over and over again. Was it actually Caeden whom she was after? The woman was powerful—more so than anyone Wirr had ever seen, except for perhaps Caeden himself. There was no way that he could beat her head-on, but there was also no way he could stay hidden and just let this continue.

  He and Andyn both flinched at a noise behind them, twisting to see a dozen Administrators led by Pria rush around the corner, only to come to a horrified halt as they took in the wreckage of the palace and the squirming, hovering shapes that blocked out the sun.

  Wirr motioned for them to stay where they were and hurried over to his second-in-command. Pria gave him a dazed nod, for once displaying none of her usual displeasure at his presence.

  “What …?” She gestured at where the Green Hall had once been.

  “I think it’s just one person. A woman.” Wirr swallowed, looking at the weapons that the group was carrying. “You have a Trap?”

  Pria nodded. “Already activated.”

  Wirr grimaced as he glanced behind him at the floating figures, still suspended high in the air. “Apparently that doesn’t work against her, then.”

  “We also have Shackles. And blades,” added Pria quickly.

  A severed limb ricocheted off the nearby passageway wall with a wet thud, and Wirr took a deep breath. They had surprise on their side but other than that, there was no way to improve their odds.

  “Shut off your Traps again. I’ll distract her, attack her with Essence. I should be able to. This counts as the defense of Andarra to me,” he added grimly. “You circle around, wait for your opportunity. Just … do what you can. We can’t let this go on.”

  “No.” Andyn shook his head firmly. “I’ll distract her. You—”

  “Rushing her wouldn’t be enough.” Wirr cut him off bluntly, indicating the struggling bodies high above. “You’d be up there in a moment, Andyn, and then she’d forget that you even existed. If we want to get her attention, someone needs to land at least a couple of blows.” He shook his head, even as his stomach churned. “You want to protect me? Go with the Administrators. Get to her before she gets to me.”

  Andyn gritted his teeth. “Someone really needs to explain the meaning of ‘bodyguard’ to you, Sire,” he said in frustration. He didn’t argue, though, much to Wirr’s relief. He saw what the s
ituation called for, too.

  Pria stared at Wirr for a long moment, then inclined her head in what was close to a respectful nod. She murmured something to her companions, and then they and Andyn hurried away.

  Wirr crept back to his original vantage point. The woman stalked back and forth within the cloud, occasionally screaming more challenges toward the shattered palace. Wirr focused, then gathered everything he could into a single, sharply compressed ball of Essence and blasted it at the pacing silhouette.

  The white dust burst from the path of his attack, exploding upward and outward, clearing the air between himself and the woman.

  A good three feet before it hit her, the Essence simply vanished.

  The stranger turned and for one long, helpless moment he locked eyes with her. She had red hair still visible beneath an outer coat of white, and her red-tinged emerald eyes bore into his.

  Then he was being hoisted into the air as well, his stomach dropping away as he rocketed upward. The back of his head glanced off a jutting piece of the shattered roof and he flailed dazedly, spinning, for several nauseating seconds unable to get his bearings.

  When his vision finally cleared, he was hovering only a few feet in front of the woman’s wild-eyed gaze.

  “Do you know where he is?” she asked softly.

  Wirr groaned, then coughed as fine dust crept into his lungs. “Who?”

  The woman squinted at him. “Your Shielding is better than most. Better and sharper and cleaner and …” She shook her head with a thoughtful frown. “But not enough to lie. Not to me. You recognize the name.”

  There was movement behind the woman, and he spotted Andyn, Pria, and the other Administrators sprinting silently toward them, weapons at the ready. “You’re right,” he said weakly. “I know where he might—”

  It didn’t work. The woman gestured behind her without even looking, and Andyn and the Administrators’ charge came to a gentle, confused halt as they began looking around blankly.

  “Release your Shielding, then. Let me see for myself,” she said over the continuing terrified cries of those above.

  Wirr stared at her in horror for a few long moments.

  Then, slowly, he shook his head, doing his best not to flounder as he rotated slightly in midair. Perhaps she would only look through his mind for information on Tal’kamar … or perhaps she would Read more. He knew the details of every plan Andarra had in place to protect the Boundary. He’d been practicing his Shielding for exactly this reason.

  The woman’s expression grew dangerous, and she cocked her head to one side as she gazed up at him and then back at the group behind her, evidently noting the matching cloaks.

  She gestured lazily at Andyn, the only one in the group who stood out. The bodyguard’s eyes snapped up, suddenly, painfully aware again. He locked gazes with Wirr, expression more confused than anything else.

  His head crumpled inward in an explosion of red viscera.

  “No!” screamed Wirr helplessly, thrashing against his invisible restraints as the remainder of Andyn’s body slumped to the ground. Around him, the Administrators didn’t react at all to the grisly sight.

  “So. Perhaps I should tell these to kill one another, now?” the woman asked softly, seemingly unaffected by Wirr’s shock and fury. “Or just command them to tear out an eyeball each? They will, you know, should I ask.”

  Wirr bared his teeth, breathing heavily as he tried to comprehend what had just happened, but said nothing. The woman watched him for a long moment, then shrugged.

  Behind her, each of the Administrators began reaching for their own eye.

  “STOP!” screamed Wirr desperately.

  The Administrators paused, frowning.

  They slowly lowered their hands again.

  For the first time, Wirr’s captor looked surprised. She turned to gaze at the Administrators, brow furrowing as if she were now concentrating.

  The Administrators stared at her blankly. Nothing happened.

  She twisted back to Wirr, her attention fully on him this time. “How?” Her voice hardened. “How?” She shook her head and then, without turning away, made an almost dismissive gesture.

  Behind her, Pria and the other Administrators gasped and crumpled to the ground.

  Wirr gazed at them, numb. He didn’t need to see the sallow, wrinkled skin or glassy eyes to know that they were dead. Isiliar had drained the Essence from them, just as Davian had to Ionis. Just as Caeden had to the Blind.

  “Isiliar!”

  The deep voice cut through the simmering cacophony of pleading calls, moans, and shouts drifting down from above. Wirr turned his head to see a powerfully built man striding toward them through the dust, his gaze fixed on the woman.

  “Do not, do not try to stop me this time, Alaris,” snarled the woman called Isiliar. “I have been thwarted enough. I have suffered enough. I have waited enough.” There was fury in the words, but also something more—a thread of despair.

  Faint hope blossomed in Wirr’s chest.

  “Is,” said the man gently as he came closer, slowing in his movement forward and holding out his hand as if approaching an easily startled animal. “He’s not here.”

  “I followed him this far,” snarled the woman. “He must be—”

  “Is, look at me. Look at me.” The man’s deep voice was quiet but commanding. “I am better at this than you, and I am not lying. He was here, but he found a way to hide his Trace. He is long gone.”

  “No. No, no, no.” There was desperation now. “We need to end him. We need to finish this. It’s not just for me. If we give him a chance, just a chance, he will—”

  “You’re killing people, Is. Innocent people. Look around. They don’t know what they’re doing,” the man called Alaris said quietly. “That is not you. That has never been you.”

  “Perhaps it is, now,” muttered Isiliar, shaking her head violently as if to wrestle Alaris’s words from her ears. “Perhaps this is what he has made me. A monster just like him.”

  “You are gentle, and kind,” said Alaris, so softly that Wirr could barely hear him. “You are just and strong. Perhaps he has made you forget that, Is. But he has not remade you.” He took another step forward, tentatively laying a hand on the redheaded woman’s arm. “We are not supposed to be here. You want to stop him? We need to do the right thing. We need to go home.”

  The woman stared at him for a long few moments, then looked around. For the first time, she seemed to take in the devastation of her surroundings.

  Her face crumpled, and tears quickly began carving rivulets in the dust on her face.

  “Oh, El. El, I’m so sorry.”

  The man held her as she wept, cradling her head against his chest.

  “It’s all right, Is,” he said gently. “It’s not your fault.”

  Then he carefully, almost lovingly, slid the darkly pulsing dagger he’d been concealing into her back. Through her heart.

  Wirr barely had time to realize what had happened before he plummeted to the ground; behind him he vaguely heard a chorus of shrieks as everyone else who had been hovering—much higher than he had been—dropped as well. Even Wirr’s impact with the white stone paving left him bruised and dazed; he groaned as he slowly caught the breath that had been knocked from him, rolling and carefully rotating the arm that he’d fallen on. It was painful, bruised—but nothing was broken.

  When he looked up, both Alaris and Isiliar had vanished.

  He just lay there for a long moment, then forced himself to his feet as he registered the moans and weeping behind him. He squinted through the gradually clearing dust, staggering a little as he took in the scene.

  Bodies were everywhere. Some lay still—unconscious or dead, he wasn’t sure—but others writhed in evident agony from where they had opened gashes or snapped bones from the fall. He resisted the urge to use his Essence on his own pains, instead forcing himself forward into the thick haze of white.

  He wasn’t sure how much time passe
d next. Wherever there was an injury that looked life-threatening, he did his best to heal it. He didn’t have much Essence left after his attack on Isiliar, though, and before long, he could barely stand.

  It was only then that he caught sight of the familiar form, lying motionless at the base of a shattered staircase.

  His heart dropped and he stumbled over, dropping to his knees and rolling Deldri gently onto her back, almost weeping at the extent of his sister’s injuries. She was alive, but her breaths came in shallow gasps. Her left arm was bent at an unnatural angle, and her clothing was shredded and bloody down her entire left side where she’d fallen hard against a jagged piece of rubble.

  Wirr closed his eyes and healed as much as he could, but he knew that it wasn’t enough.

  “Help!” His voice was only one in a chorus of similar cries, but he was desperate, didn’t know what else to do. He stood, only to fall again. He’d given too much Essence, and his own injuries were taking a toll. He grasped his sister’s hand in his own, holding it tightly. “I need help here!” he called again weakly.

  A dozen other voices echoed his plea into the ruins of the palace.

  But nobody came.

  Chapter 30

  Davian stretched, then flicked a card atop the discard pile.

  Ishelle and Erran scowled at him. Fessi didn’t move for a moment, then leaned down so that she was looking into his eyes.

  “You’re cheating,” she announced.

  Davian shook his head firmly. “I’m just better at this than you three.”

  He yelped in surprise at a sudden stinging pain in his earlobe. He raised his hand and rubbed at the spot. “Not funny,” he said, his slight smile betraying the words. He addressed the comment to Fessi. It didn’t look like she’d moved, but she was the only one who could have done it so smoothly.

  “What?” Fessi asked with an innocent look, while the other two grinned at him.

  Davian snorted, then grinned back. Erran had picked up the cards at the last town they’d passed through; the purpose of playing was, ostensibly, to practice both their Reading and Shielding. It was difficult to concentrate on the game, masking the cards in his head even as he looked at them. Lockboxes were all but useless, as information was near impossible to shut away while you were taking it in. It was an interesting but difficult exercise.