“There’s no time to explain.”
“There is always time,” she argued.
But there wasn’t. We reached the yard, and it was exactly as I’d feared. The gods had run out of patience. Fate had made his move. The reign of the Shinree Empire was at an end.
Death ruled here now.
EIGHTEEN
Blood ran like too much rain over the cobblestone streets. It seeped out from beneath the rubble in long, finger-like streams. It pooled thick in the hollows, creating dark trembling mirrors that reflected the lapping towers of flame—for just a moment, before running boots dispersed the image in a splash of red. The droplets splattering me were heavy with ash. The flakes fell from the darkening sky, big and wet, like a mid-winter snow. The remains of an entire civilization; they smelled like defeat. The swollen clouds of low-hanging smoke were no better. The hot, dense billows were laced with scorched timber, burning flesh, and the screams of the dying.
The havoc was overloading Raan’s senses, pulling at my concentration as furiously as the quake wrenched and tossed the city. Nothing was visible beyond two feet in front of me. Walking without tripping on the divided, tilting ground was impossible. It was a ceaseless string of chaos, an indistinguishable tumult of overlapping voices, thunderous crashes, and the underlying, endless rumble as buildings broke in half, one after the other. Columns toppled. Debris clogged the streets. And then it didn’t, as the streets tore open wide, becoming hungry, gaping maws capable of swallowing anything within reach.
There was no respite. No safe place to escape the great stone pieces tumbling down from above. Some shattered. Others jumped and rolled as the road buckled; crushing bodies to a fine pulp with their immense weight.
And this was the aftershock.
The violence gave credence to what that Langorian, Danyon, said years ago at The Wounded Owl in Kael. The man was a nasty brute, full of ale and insults. Possibly the smartest thing Danyon uttered in his entire life was to liken this moment to the gods reaching down and grabbing the land, opening the mountains and pulling the Shinree domain beneath the ground. It was an eerily accurate assessment. Well over half the city was just gone.
Raan’s home was among the rubble. So was the body of his mother. We’d gone back into the house together. Knowing I was the reason the box was out of its hiding place, I’d insisted on returning it. Otherwise it might not be there for Jillyan to find so many years later. But once inside, Lady Brielle’atroy refused to leave. I didn’t argue. I had no idea where she was meant to be. And my interference was likely why she’d been outside in the first place.
I left her and watched from the street as the house collapsed.
Nearby homes and shops had followed in rapid succession. In moments, the air had become too thick and painful to breathe. I’d been afraid to dive into Raan’s memories to navigate the streets. Once he emerged, his emotions would be high. His panic could throw me out of the spell. And I wasn’t leaving without Sienn.
Yet staying, watching the fabled tragedy that consumed my people unfold, was torturous. I didn’t know who to save or who to let die. Over a thousand years of culture and history were disappearing in front of my eyes, and I couldn’t do a damn thing to stop it.
The land went quiet again. I didn’t trust it. Too much was still above ground. Yet none of it could be stable. The city had one or two more aftershocks left in it at best. Anyone who was going to make it out alive had to leave now. Including us.
I wanted to believe Sienn had fled at the first tremble. With her sympathy for Karis, and the grief she’d displayed for the girl’s dismal future, I knew better. I also knew if Karis was injured or dead, it would mess with the focus Sienn needed to return. It certainly had mine. If not for Jarryd pulling me back when Varos died, I could have been lost in the spell for a lot longer than I was.
I came to a staggering stop. Just ahead, an entire row of buildings had been lifted up on one side. Their great slabs, tipped over and wedged together on a slant, formed an arch over the street. Beneath it, in smoldering piles, were the pieces that broke off on impact. Beneath them: bodies. Motionless legs and hands protruded from the wreckage.
Struggling for breath, I wiped my eyes and tried to make out the faces.
Karis wasn’t among them.
Survivors stirred on the outskirts. Those able to stand scrambled up and ran. Many of the trapped were beyond help. Others were pinned, but not so badly that I couldn’t free them. After reading Tam’s journal, I wasn’t sure I believed what Jem and Lady Brielle’atroy said about Fate not allowing the past to be drastically changed. But whether they were right or not, in this moment, the pull was too great. I had to lend a hand.
A few feet up the street, the back half of a wagon was buried under a collapsed store front. The driver was slumped over in his seat. A length of pipe impaled his chest. Another man lay across the exposed portion of wagon with his neck twisted. A young, frantic horse was harnessed to the front. Avoiding the animal’s desperate bites at my hand, I took hold of the bridle. After a few whispered words to calm him, I unhooked him from the hitch. I was about to send the animal on his way when a skinny Shinree boy crawled out from under the wagon. His skin was layered in filth, but other than a gash on one leg, he appeared unharmed.
He flinched as I reached for him. “It’s okay.” The boy’s slight protest of kicking legs ended as I plopped him onto the horse’s back. I shoved the reins in his hands. “Ride as fast as you can.”
His voice was small. “Where?”
“Head east out of the city. Don’t stop for anything.” I ripped the stone-laden belt off the dead driver and wrapped it around the boy. “Don’t let go of this. You feel sick, you cast. Do you understand?” He gave me a vague nod and I slapped the animal on the rump. I had my doubts the boy would make it to the next street.
I continued on, blindly making my way, helping those I could as I shouted for Sienn. Blood-streaked mobs wandered past me. Their limbs moved in a kind of stumbling, aimless daze. I’d seen the same trauma in the villages during the war. Their minds, entering a state of shock, refused to allow in any more pain. They’d become numb to the mangled bodies at their feet; deaf to the endless wails assaulting their ears. In contrast, the animals were in a heightened state of alert. Blowing past, trampling those unable to get clear; panicked livestock, lost pets, and beasts of labor ran wild through the fractured streets. I jumped aside as a group of eldring scampered by on all fours. Either unaccustomed to hunting, or simply not feeling the urge, the creatures paid no mind to the bleating sheep running alongside them. Their goal was to survive.
I stopped to help a Langorian slave trapped beneath a hefty wooden sign. Bending to lift it from his chest, I thought I heard someone called my name—not Raan’s.
I shot up. Peering into the smoky haze, I hunted for the source.
My shout for her was pure hope. “Sienn!”
The slave batted my leg. “Please…”
Abandoning my search, I got low and wedged my shoulder under the corner of the sign. Gritting my teeth, mustering all my strength, I put my back into it and pushed up. The sign moved, but nowhere near enough.
I eased the heavy weight back onto his chest, cringing as he moaned.
Noticing a Shinree man about Raan’s age maneuvering his mount through the bedlam, I ran up and grabbed the slack in his reins. He jerked the leather straps away.
Turning his horse aside, the man barked at me. “Leave off!”
“I need your help.” I glanced back at the trapped slave. “I think we can lift it together.”
His laugh was biting. “He’s a fucking slave, Brielle’atroy. Have you lost your mind?” Giving me a solid kick to the chest to clear his path, the man rode on.
I went back and stood over the sign. Countless stones lay beneath the debris, scattered among the rubble, buried on the bodies. The air was crisp with their vibrati
ons. I took them all, and a feast of auras filled Raan’s senses.
Deciding on caution, I held onto one stream and tossed the rest.
Channeling lapis, with its heavy presence, was like filling my veins with stone. It was only fitting, since healers used lapis for mending bone. Soldiers used it for breaking them. Tweaking the spell would make it work for wood, but this wasn’t the time or place to take chances. Instead, I slackened my hold on Raan and let a portion of him come to the surface. Assuming he’d been well-trained, as I searched his knowledge of elemental spells, I tapped into his ability to direct the magic-price and fixed the spell’s interest on the whimpering dog behind me. Most of the animal’s back was wedged beneath the statue of a naked woman. With the amount of blood wetting his fur, feeding the dog to my spell was an act of mercy.
I whispered a few words. The deep blue tendrils sailed out. They covered the sign and sunk into the wood. A few breaths later, the sign split in half and Raan’s nerves sung with pleasure. Magic-blind, suspended in the ocean of bliss flooding his body, I no longer saw the devastation the quake had left behind. Raan’s satisfaction was that complete.
The lady was right, I thought, as my sight returned. If my ancestors were able to feel this good with a mere drop of magic, our want of it must have worsened with each generation.
Wobbly, I knelt hard beside the Langorian. Exhaustion was stealing Raan’s adrenaline, making my muscles burn as I dragged the two cumbersome pieces of sign off the man’s body. As I tossed the last one side, I realized he was already dead.
Anger blazed in my gut. Had I made the wrong choice? Was he meant to die? Or could I have saved him if I’d been quicker? And what was I saving them for? The years of slavery and abuse that was to come?
Straining to keep it all inside, my hand trembled with the effort as I reached over and closed the slave’s empty eyes. The need to find Sienn was suddenly suffocating.
Standing, refusing to be distracted again, I spun around—and Karis was there. Her slight form was darkened by a background of flames. Shadows hid a good portion of her pretty face. Ash hid the rest. Grime and blood coated her green dress and streaked her skin. A heavy trail of blood flattened the coils on one side of her head. Tucked in her arms was a little girl. Her short legs were wrapped around Karis’ waist. A tangle of muddy hair draped the girl’s sharp-boned face. She couldn’t have been more than four.
I waited for Karis to speak, to know if Sienn had already gone back. I wanted her safe. But as Karis’ lips parted, I realized what I wanted more, was for Sienn to still be here. It was selfish, but I needed something familiar and good to combat the horror.
Air shuddered through Karis’ lungs. “Gods, Ian…”
Rushing up, it was all I could do not to embrace her. I didn’t want to scare the little girl, and the gash cutting through the mess of curls atop Karis’ head looked painful. “Are you okay?”
Sienn nodded, biting Karis’ lip as she wrestled with her own tears. “I have no idea what to do, where to start. I found her wandering and…” The girl started squirming. Sienn loosened her grip and let the girl’s dirty feet slide to the ground. “There are so many wounded, Ian. So many in pain. How can I heal them all?”
“You can’t. You’re not supposed to.” I put a hand on her face. “We don’t belong here.”
The rumble resumed. It was quiet at first, distant. Then rapidly, it worsened. A noticeable tremble rippled beneath my feet. Its deep vibration climbed, escalating in seconds from a manageable quiver to a massive sustained jolt that threw us all off our feet and ripped a fissure right down the middle of the road. The gap expanded swiftly. Like being carved by some invisible hand, it divided, forking into two, splitting into three, then four. The branches of destruction ran beneath buildings, wresting them from their foundations, tossing and snapping the structures into fragments. Some plunged in whole to feed the broadening crevice.
It was still hungry.
It grew wider, stretched out farther.
Shrieking in terror, the little girl ran off into the chaos.
Sienn clamored up from the ravaged street. “Come back!” Space was between us. I couldn’t stop her. Sienn took off after the girl, and the dancing ground chose that exact moment to ripple like a cracked whip. Rising up, the swell undulated, carrying Sienn farther and farther away. She cried out as the billowing ground buckled beneath her, wrinkling and heaving, climbing and falling; cresting forty feet in the air like some mammoth, storm-driven wave.
The wave broke. A gorge a mile wide opened at its feet. And all that had been there before—streets, buildings, people, Sienn—plummeted.
The fleeing mob pushed past me, running from the mountain of dust.
I ran toward it.
Jumping over chasms, skirting around the still falling wreckage; I called to her. I pumped my legs as fast they would go over the restless ground, dodging the ever-widening holes with reckless leaps. Vents of fire burst from the splayed open bowels of newly opened fissures. Blinding flames illuminated the ash-darkened sky. Smoke and dust burned their way into my lungs as the city sunk around me at a furious rate.
The shaking subsided as I reached the abyss where Sienn went down. Its edges were veiled in smoke. Even lying prone, there was no visible bottom. Moans and cries filtered up from the darkened depths. The tops of unidentifiable wreckage and rubble poked through the haze. Half a house rested on a ledge thirty feet down. Stone columns, amazingly intact, jutted from the middle. Beside them were entire trees, still erect, with their leaves coated gray-brown. Closer, rocky shelves were covered in motionless bodies and haphazard piles of debris.
I cupped my hands. “SIENN! SIENN!”
I hollered until Raan’s voice was gone. I considered going down, but the jump wasn’t possible, and nothing looked stable. I was close to leaving, to returning to the present, hoping Sienn had fled Karis’ body, when something moved atop one of the higher piles.
Her voice was a panting whimper. “I…I…Ian…”
“Keep talking!” She repeated my name. I tracked the sound through the thinning miasma until I spotted her body. It was barely an outline. I strained to see more, and the edge cracked under my weight. “Are you hurt?” I asked, inching back.
“I…she…she’s bleeding,” Sienn cried. “Karis is bleeding.”
“How bad?” I waited, listening to her cough and sob. Sienn shifted position, dislodging debris. Bits rained down. The sound faded.
She still didn’t answer.
Damn it. “Karis is going to die, Sienn. You have to leave.”
Her anger climbed up from the darkness. “Why…? Why today? Her wedding, Ian…”
“I know. It’s not fair. But if Karis dies, it’ll be harder for you to get back.”
“All she wanted was to marry, to…wake up beside him each day. She loves him. She…”
“Sienn, you need to leave.”
Her faint weeping trailed off into a round of wet, racking coughs.
“Please,” I said. “Listen to me. You have to focus. Malaq is hurt. He needs you. Jarryd and the others, they need you to come back.” Her labored tears were loud. I wasn’t sure she could hear me. I said it anyway. “I need you, Sienn. Do you understand? I need you.”
“Karis will be scared if I leave. She won’t understand…where she is…what happened.”
“You go first. I’ll stay with her a little longer.”
“Will you tell her then? She needs to hear it…that he loves her…before she’s gone. Before it’s all gone. You have to tell her.”
“Okay. I’ll tell her. ” There was more coughing and movement and a groan of a pain amid her sobs. I thought I glimpsed her white eyes. Maybe I just wanted to. “He’ll tell her. I promise. But you have to leave or she can’t hear it. Concentrate on your body back home and—”
The ledge gave way. Sienn screamed my name. The pierci
ng sound seemed to stand out above all the others, rupturing the chaos, and penetrating my chest like the cold steel of a blade as she fell.
NINETEEN
It had been thirty minutes since I woke and Sienn didn’t. My Shinree cellmates had no idea what we’d been doing. From my reaction, they knew whatever it was hadn’t gone well and were walking the line of showing concern without getting too close. They were wise to stay away, with how her scream kept replaying in my head.
I sat down on the empty cot next to hers. Running both hands over my face, I tried for the tenth time to decide what to do. In my vision, Malaq said Sienn died after lapsing into unconsciousness. The head wound she’d suffered in that time hadn’t occurred. But what if this killed her instead? What if the spell went wrong and she never woke up?
I shoved my morbid thoughts aside and tried to think rationally.
Best case, Sienn might wander for days or weeks. Even that was unacceptable. “I have to cast on her. I don’t have a choice. I can’t leave her like this.”
I got blank stares all around.
It didn’t matter. I hadn’t expected an answer. Between Jillyan’s scrolls and my recent training with Sienn, I knew only one way to reach her. If Karis was alive and Sienn was miraculously still in the past (or if she’d traveled into the future), if I cast a new oracle spell, I could override the one she was in now. Pulling Sienn into a vision I created, meant I could tag along to guide her home. The catch: I’d never cast an oracle spell on anyone but myself.
I got up from the cot. Like it was an invitation, a Shinree boy of about eighteen approached me. He met my eyes with hesitation, as if he wanted something but was afraid to ask. He wasn’t alone. Others were hovering nearby; pretending they weren’t interested.
Trying not to make eye contact with the skittish ones too long, I addressed them. “I need to do another spell. If the guards get curious, tell them I passed out after she sewed me up. Tell them she’s sleeping. Tell them anything. Just act normal and don’t let them know I’m casting.”
The Crown of Stones: Magic-Borne Page 17
