Uncertain Allies cg-5

by Mark Del Franco

  The tattered shield dome dimmed more around us, the essence prickling off my skin. Guild agents continued their defense above, unaware that the real enemy was trying to escape, not enter the building. Essence-fire was getting through, damaging the towers and supports. More turrets went down in a roar of wood and stone.

  A door at the opposite end of the flat roof slammed open. Vize stepped out, intent on the chaos above. I didn’t wait for him to talk or make a move. The time for conversation was over, the moment I had always known was coming had arrived. I aimed and threw the spear at him. I aimed to kill. It blazed across the roof, a sliver of white that dimmed the air around it.

  Vize sensed it. I expected that. We sensed the same things the same way. I understood that now, but why was a question for another time. Vize shifted his attention to the spear and held out his hand. I expected that, too. He had seen the move work for me. Before he reacted, I let the darkness shoot out from my chest, intent on the essence trail left by the spear. A heartbeat later, I yanked the spear back and watched as the darkness slammed into Vize. It splintered into sinuous lines as it struck an essence barrier.

  Donor staggered next to Vize, his body shield hardened, a thick wall of green essence that pushed back against the darkness. He thrust his hand down, a bolt of emerald elf-shot spiking into the roof. Essence spiraled from the point of contact, rippling the pavers. The wave knocked me off my feet, blasting apart the parapet behind me. I clung to the crumbled opening, the darkness snapping back with a painful recoil.

  Joe hid behind the chimney. “Good plan, except for the not-killing-him part.”

  He plunged feetfirst down on my hands. On reflex from the pain, I let go and landed several feet below on the roof of a wide bay window. A stream of elf-shot destroyed the rest of the parapet, showering stone dust down on me. Joe dodged over a valley between two gables. “Hmph. He’s not a bad shot for an elf.”

  “Thanks for the save,” I said.

  Joe rotated in the air, sniffing. “The barrier’s completely down. I say let the big guns up there take the Elven King out, and we go get beers.”

  “I don’t care about the Elven King,” I said.

  The last of the Guildhouse barrier shield collapsed. A roof slumped on the neighboring gable. The building was shedding years’ worth of additions like dead barnacles off a boat. The window bay lurched under my feet as if it had risen a few inches, then resettled itself.

  I grabbed the edge of the wall and swung myself over. Donor faced away from me, holding the faith stone above his head. Green light revolved around him in ribbons, wrapping him and Vize in a sphere of bright light. On a gust of essence, they lifted into the air, white light flashing around the sphere, swirling the green ribbons faster. They hovered in place, below the main aerial fighting, essence building around him.

  “What the hell is he doing?” I said.

  “Oh, that looks bad,” Joe said from behind me.

  A volley of essence burst from the sphere, streaking like ball lightning across the sky. The streaks homed in on Guild agents, hit with concussive force, and threw them out of the sky. They weren’t stun shots. Appalled, I staggered back as bodies fell limply into the flames below. The remaining agents wheeled away, struggling to regroup.

  The air crackled with a sound like thunder. Donor tapped essence as only the most powerful fey can, pulling directly from the air and anything around him. A sustained burst of energy from the bottom of his sphere struck the Guildhouse. The roof exploded, slate and stone flying into the air. I ducked as more debris hurtled toward me. Another tower fell, smashing into the one next to it, and both collapsed into the floors below. Donor’s sphere grew, solidified into a mass of burning white heat. It expanded, incinerating the building wherever it touched.

  Elf-shot came at me and snagged on the tip of the spear. The streamer of essence lashed like a whip slicing through the air. The spear jerked in my hands, and I grappled with it. The streamer flared brighter and spun around me. Joe screamed, and I whirled. The elf-shot wrapped around his legs and flung him about. He struggled against it, his essence flashing as he tried to teleport away. The spear convulsed in my hand, sucking in the streamer of elf-shot. Still bound to it, Joe’s body twisted and elongated, then vanished into the spear. Dumbfounded, I stared at the weapon in my hand.

  “Joe?” I shouted. I shook the spear, feeling like a fool. It undulated in my hand. Intermittent touches of Joe’s body signature danced along its length, then faded into the spear’s burning brightness.

  Fury raced through me. The darkness leaped within, feeding off my anger. I let it. I let the darkness rise, let it break through my body essence. Streams of black shadow shot from my face and chest, lunging across the fractured roof as they sought the most powerful source of essence nearby. They burrowed into Donor’s sphere with ravenous greed. They sucked at the essence, funneling back into me, back into the source of the darkness. I gasped as it coursed through me, through my chest, my face, draining inside me to the nameless dark place. I was a conduit, meaningless in the transaction, as the darkness pulsed and sucked. My feet lifted off the ground as the roof crumbled away beneath them.

  The sphere paled, its essence leeching away. Donor realized what was happening and dropped Vize, concerned now for his own safety. Vize plummeted and hit a pitched roof. He flailed as he went over the edge. He fell hard against the remains of a turret and didn’t move.

  Donor reinforced his body shield, shrugging off the smaller tributaries of my darkness feeding on him. He wasn’t strong enough. One of the most powerful fey in the world wasn’t strong enough to fight off the darkness. It broke through—I broke through. I fed the darkness with all my anger and fury. Shadows coiled around Donor’s chest. He fought me as I hauled him toward me. We revolved around each other in a halo of green light and dark shadow. Donor grinned, his teeth framed red with blood. “You think I’ve never fought this darkness before, Grey? Give in to its desire, let it draw you in close, then strike its vulnerability.”

  With his fist clutched around the faith stone, he swung at me. I blocked him with the spear in a shower of white sparks. Sensing another source of essence, the darkness coiled around the spear. I was losing control—no—I never had it. The darkness did what it wanted. Donor seemed to sense it and laughed. I didn’t have control of the darkness, but I had the spear. I spun my wrist, brought the sharp tip of the spear forward, and shoved it through Donor’s shield.

  A jumbled kaleidoscope of essence flared as the spear fought against the Elven King’s power. Donor swung his fist again. I brought the spear down on his arm, and essence exploded around us. He tumbled away as the darkness snapped free. I fell onto the remains of the roof. Donor landed on his feet, crouching to absorb the shock of the fall. He came up screaming, emerald light bursting from his face in a searing blast.

  I threw the spear. It struck the Elven King, the concussive force from the blow flinging me into the air, on a shock wave of essence. I flipped end over end as I rose higher and higher, nothing below but thirty stories of empty air. I rolled in the sky, the explosion expanding into a cloud of wild essence over the Guildhouse. Out of the fireball, a fierce blue light rocketed toward me and slammed into my forehead and

  everything

  went

  white

  39

  White.

  Whiteness filled my vision with nothing to break the relentlessness of it. Above me, the white simply was, as if the air itself was color. Or no color. As if nothing else existed except the white. I hung limp in the air, as if there were no air, no gravity. My head burned, like a cold fire in my mind, blazing against a blanket of night.

  Everything is white. I have been here before. This is where it started. Or ended. I don’t remember which. Everything around me is white. I stared into a nothingness of white. I am here again. Around me, I see shadows of light flickering in the depths of the white. They spin and whirl, roll and stop, taunting me with patterns that disintegrate as they take sh
ape.

  Bursts of color flare in my vision, fireworks against the white, fading to darkness. More, then more, the darkness closing on me, like the slow closing of my eyes. My mind, like my eyes, closing, like my eyes blinking. Like my mind blinking.

  My mind blinked.

  I jerked my head up, feeling like I had passed out. People surrounded me, staring at me. Some I recognized, and some I didn’t. Their faces held a multitude of expressions—fear and horror and sadness. Then the screams began.

  My mind blinked.

  Rand stands defiant before me, his clothes in tatters, his face a mix of hurt and hope. “You have to trust me,” he says.

  “Why? You didn’t trust me,” I answer.

  My mind blinked.

  Silhouettes in lavender surround me like shadows in the mist. They do not move. I cannot see their faces, but I know they are waiting, waiting for answers that I do not have, waiting for the inevitable, waiting for . . .

  My mind blinked.

  Eorla looks at me in surprise and rushes toward me as I lean over the body.

  “Tell me what to do,” I hear her. I hear her, and I hear fury.

  My mind blinked.

  I stand on a plain, white grass waving against a white sky. It’s not winter, pray, what is this new madness? Where have I come? I turn in place, searching, searching across the plain, searching about the standing stones, but Maeve is not there. Was she? What is this place?

  My mind blinked.

  The golden-cloaked king shudders into view. “The Wheel of the World turns as It will. It is not mine to lead even a sliver of it.”

  My mind blinked.

  Vize is running. Everything is white. I am running. Everything is white. He looks over his shoulder at me. He looks determined . . . or crazed . . . I can’t tell. Everything is white. One minute we were facing each other, and now everything is white. He stops. He looks surprised. There is someone lying on the ground. Something about him is familiar. Everything is white, and there is no ground. There is someone lying in the white. Everything . . .

  My mind blinked.

  “You can’t do this,” I shout.

  Something is not right. Or different. She doesn’t look right. The woman reaches out.

  “I must. It’s the only way,” she says.

  I close my eyes against pain, and something black blossoms in my mind. Black like a seed in the white. The woman sings; and then she screams; and then I know what to do.

  My mind blinked.

  My mind blinked.

  . . . the inevitable. A man steps forth, faint spirals of woad pitting the skin above his wide brow, a sudden wind tugging at the dirty drape of cloth over his shoulder. “We shall be as bones, bones of the earth, steadfast and eternal,” he says.

  “I promise I will try,” I say.

  “We hear and hope,” he says.

  My mind blinked.

  The wild man returns. “The wielder wheels and is wheeled but chooses his own path. We are the Wheel and Its instrument.”

  My mind blinks.

  He cocks his head as he looks at me, the colors in his eyes shifting like the sea in a storm. “Have you ever met someone and felt like you’ve known him forever?” he asks.

  “No,” I say.

  He laughs, with a deep rumble in his wide chest.

  “Liar,” he says. “Liar.”

  My mind blinked.

  Vize looks feverish. “It must happen this way. You must let it happen.”

  “I won’t let you,” I say.

  He looks frightened yet determined as I reach toward him. “I thought it was me. But it’s you. You have to destroy it.”

  My mind blinks.

  The robed man towers up. “The Ways seal and unseal. A needle binds as it pierces.”

  My mind blinks.

  Essence pours out of the sword.

  My mind blinks.

  Essence pours out of the spear.

  My mind blinks.

  Essence pours out of the bowl.

  My mind blinks.

  Essence pours out . . .

  My mind blinks.

  A blue light burns the sky, a blue so pure it burns white. It hits me in the head like a fist of flame and burns its way in. My head explodes with light and darkness, then everything goes silent. I scream and

  everything

  goes

  white

  40

  Wind roared as I fell through the sky. Smoke and fire blurred around me in a dirty smear of orange and black. I was going to die. No rush of images cascaded through my mind, no marching panorama of my life’s highlights. I thought how strangely beautiful the Guildhouse looked as it crumbled in smoke and flame. I closed my eyes, feeling the rush of gravity pull me to the street below. It wasn’t going to be pretty. I hoped I didn’t hit anyone. At least I was going out in a blaze.

  A blue haze of essence around me, the essence of the Dead coming to call me home. My eyes flew open as a turbulent air knocked against me, batting me from side to side. The fractured street pavement grew closer, larger, before wind shear blurred tears into my eyes. Something pressed against my back, like I wasn’t falling fast enough and needed a push. The blue essence blossomed around me as I rushed into the embrace of the Dead. The ground moved below, a nauseating shift toward my feet, then flashed by as I skimmed over the street and surged into the air.

  Remain calm, Ceridwen sent.

  I laughed. Remaining calm was so obviously the right course. I had fallen off a burning building and plunged toward my death. I laughed with a sound tinged with madness and disbelief as rough hands gripped my back.

  Ceridwen banked away from the smoking building and set down at the opposite end of the square. Chaos filled the streets, people fighting with essence or scattering in fear. Police officers tried to enforce order, only to stare in stark awe when they caught sight of the Guildhouse.

  The Guildhouse burned. The upper stories were gone, lost in smoldering stone heaped on the street and sidewalk. Gaping holes belched smoke from where towers used to be. Guild agents swarmed and hovered, darting in to retrieve anyone that appeared in a window or broken opening. The ground trembled, a deep rumble that intensified. The Guildhouse contracted about the middle, a slow, inward shift of wall and tower. With the sound of a raging storm, the Guildhouse shed the remains of its outer walls, pulling the rest of the building with it.

  A towering pall of angry gray smoke shot from the implosion. I thrust my hands out, an instinctive warding off of the heat and debris, as a boiling mountain of ash and smoke rolled toward me. My body shield triggered—my full body shield—bursting around me in a crystalline barrier of deep gold. The smoke spilled over me like a wave hitting a cliff, then raced up the street and swallowed the remaining fighters. It passed, becoming less dense, but not dispersing.

  My head burned with a cold fire. I trembled with power, but a power I didn’t understand. Something had changed. I not only had my body shield back, I could control it. I didn’t have time to question it but was glad of it. The dark mass felt different, like it was generating energy instead of absorbing it. My skin danced with an electric sheen.

  Ceridwen lay on the ground not far off, no spark of essence in her body. I leaned over and felt for a pulse. She was dead again. I stared for a moment, then left her there. She was Dead. She would wake up in the morning as if nothing had happened.

  I stalked toward what was left of the Guildhouse. Firefighters wandered through the smoke, empty-handed and helpless, their trucks and gear buried under rubble. Shattered walls rose ghostlike around me. I circled around burning stone to the front entrance. It was gone, nothing left but the fractured remains of the dragon head. The lobby was gone, too, a crater of fire burning where bored receptionists once sat.

  Shocked, I fell to my knees. I stared, trying to make sense of what I was seeing—what I was not seeing. Endless piles of stone and fire rose around me. Smoke bled through the filter of my body shield and irritated my eyes. The only sounds were
the crackle of fire and the high-pitched beeping of rescue-worker alarms. I don’t know how long I sat there before someone touched my shoulder.

  “Connor? Are you all right, buddy?”

  I lifted my head, the world asserting itself around me like I was waking from a deep sleep. Murdock stared at me, his face filthy and scratched.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Are you sure? You were screaming,” he said.

  “She was in the basement,” I said.

  Horror etched across his face as he stared into the fire. I got to my feet. “I have to get to the subway,” I said.

  “It’s collapsed,” he said, his voice rough.

  “I have to get to the subway,” I said.

  I wandered out into the square. Haze filled the air. I didn’t remember anything about the walk from Park Square to the Boylston Street T station except stumbling through debris, Murdock beside me like a shadow. Transit workers stood at the entrance, directing people several blocks away to where buses waited. A man stood in front of me as I tried to enter.

  “Move,” I said. I didn’t raise my voice, but it sounded odd in my ears. His face went blank, almost ashen, and he stepped aside. Murdock caught my arm as I walked down the stairs where a gate was open to the platform. I didn’t bother using the gap in the fence, but walked onto the tracks and into the tunnel. Smoke trailed along the ceiling. I kept my body shield on until I reached the concrete niche, and we stepped through the glamour.

  It was a long, dark walk down the stairs to the tunnel passage. Dim light marked the end, a dull glow of emergency lights. Murdock and I entered the empty office. We stared at dust hanging in air, the computer monitor flickering blue. I went into the outside corridor and froze.

  Meryl ran down the hall and into my arms. I hugged her in shocked relief like I had never hugged anyone before. She tilted her face toward mine, surprise coming over her features.

  “Holy shit, what happened to your eyes?” she asked.