Atlas Never Shrugged
Page 7
behind it.
Save Keshnu. Dora put as much thought into the force as possible. From somewhere, she dredged up a tired, strained smile. I’m leaving you with Rel. When you get back, and I’ve fixed the Abyss, we can argue over who had the harder job.
Taslin’s affirmation came laden with the hot-eye sense of impending tears, an undercurrent of trembling shame. Dora understood; she had to treat Keshnu without risking moving him any further, but she didn’t want to be aware of Dora’s sacrifice. Inwardly, trying to keep it from Taslin’s notice, Dora found herself irritated. It wasn’t a sacrifice. It was her duty to protect the First Realm. Not like there was much else she was good for.
On the ledge, Taslin bent over Keshnu, her awareness narrowing, focussing on the battered Gift-Giver. The sense of nearness that had stripped Dora’s emotions so bare began to fade, and she turned her attention back to the Abyss.
Water still poured through the fissures above her head. Would the flow shut off if she lifted high enough? The fold was still sharp, and there was still a long way to go. Perhaps by the time Dora was finished, Keshnu would be well. He still had to take her to the crèche, show her their child in its natural home.
If Dora held up that long. If she really didn’t need to breathe. Or eat.
Well, the sooner she fixed the Abyss, the sooner she’d be able to eat again. She drove her mind, with its gales of Wild Power still flowing, up into the rock, prying loose the tendrils of attention that had gotten stuck to Rel and Keshnu. Her world narrowed and darkened, until there was just the roar of the water and the slow, grinding upward creep of the Realm.
Epilogue: Ashes from the Blaze of Glory
The trembling stopped, and for a long time Rel couldn’t tell whether it was the end of the quake or just his Realmlessness-induced paroxysms fading. Taslin’s will held him flat against the concrete like an iron bar lying along his spine. He could still smell his own bile.
He couldn’t twist his head far enough to see what the Gift-Giver was up to, but he knew she couldn’t be far away. Keshnu had to be somewhere nearby too, whatever was left of him. Rel might have a solid bruise on his left flank from his shoulder to his ankle, where Taslin had smashed him off the ledge, but he knew he’d left Keshnu far worse.
Dora. The thought intruded like a hammer through the dough of Rel’s recovering mind. He’d seen glimpses of her during the fight, lingering in the background, and later taking up Keshnu’s work. With his eyes open to Clearsight, Rel had been unable to miss the moment when her power had bloomed, day-bright and cataclysmic.
And yet, but for a handful of bad shakes, the quake had quieted, not continued. Rel hadn’t been able to watch what Dora was doing – even he wasn’t that good – but she’d unleashed strength beyond anything he’d ever seen. If she had been trying to finish what Keshnu started, why was there still a world at all? But Keshnu wouldn’t let her go against his will unchallenged.
She’d been sat by the tunnel leading away from the Abyss when last Rel saw her, but the tunnel was about all he could see clearly, and Dora wasn’t there. His eyes were still uncomfortable from his brush with the Realmlessness, in a way he couldn’t quite characterise. His vision split everywhere he could see a hard line, and it reminded him of nothing so much as a tangle of loose hair floating on water. He squinted and looked around as best he could, but there was no sign of Dora.
Automatically, he tried to push to his feet and get a better look around. Taslin’s power kept him pinned, but his elbow wobbled so much with the strain that he wondered if he actually could make it upright even if he were free. He steered himself away from the question of why the Gift-Giver hadn’t just let him fall into the Realmlessness. Better not to think of the fall. His skin still crawled with the remnants of the sensation of being pulled apart, one cell at a time, from the inside out.
The pressure across Rel’s back tightened, spreading out to pin his arm painfully across his ribs. He grunted, but Taslin didn’t relent. Her power scooped him up, twisted him upright sharply enough that his gorge rose, and turned him round to face her. She stood close to the lip of the ledge, and even without Clearsight, Rel could see the violet haze around her that betrayed her exhaustion.
At her feet, Keshnu lay in funereal pose, arms crossed on his chest. His outline was secure, but within it his features were blank, crudely formed in contrast to the Gift-Giver’s normal flawless performance of humanity. Still, he was much better than Rel had left him. Grimly, Rel met Taslin’s glare.
Taslin didn’t speak. She just lifted a finger and pointed at the Abyss, her arm spear-straight. Rel looked. The Gift-Giver looked like she’d just point his head in that direction by force if he didn’t. There was a cloud of something , diffuse and only vaguely human-shaped, hanging up there in front of the worst of the waterfall. Rel squinted, trying to work out if the fall had slowed. If the damage was fixed, the fall should have stopped.
“Use your Gift.” Taslin’s voice, flat as a blade, cut through the noise of the water.
Rel blinked a few times. Trying to use Clearsight with his eyes in this state was going to be unpleasant, but even exhausted, Taslin could probably snap him like a twig. His feet tingled, and he wriggled them in his boots, wishing he could stamp them on the ground. It was hard not to swallow or clench his fists. The Gift-Giver’s eyes, hard and narrow, never wavered from Rel’s.
He blinked a few times in a futile attempt to clear the worst of the moisture from his eyes, then pushed through his reluctance and opened himself to his Gift. His tears seemed to freeze on his cheeks even as worms of pain and fatigue burrowed through the back of his eyeballs and headed for his throat. Taslin and Keshnu vanished, both of them so exhausted that they no longer made clear distortions in the air.
The Abyss split apart, Rel’s image of it coming in separate layers. Hard ridges, a network of fine lines and dark planes, shaped the rock that the waterfalls hid. There was less water pouring in, though the fissures in the sea-bed above were still too wide for Rel’s liking. The world was in a better state than it had been before he attacked Keshnu.
Only one thing offered explanation. Dora hung in the middle of the Abyss, the aura of her Gift shining bright enough that Rel had to squint to look straight at her. Her body had blurred like a dying Wilder’s, but Rel could follow the shape she was clearly thinking of as her own. One of her fingers, stretching up into the darkness like a gnarled tree-branch, bent at an angle that couldn’t be natural.
“What have you done to her?” Even with his breathing restricted by Taslin’s grip on his chest, Rel managed to put some heat into the words.
Taslin kept her voice cold. “She did that herself. To fix problems you created.”
Rel opened his mouth to protest, but every detail he could make out cut him off. He couldn’t see Dora’s face, per se, but she was broadcasting assurance and focus. However alien she appeared, she looked more like herself than she had since receiving her second Gift. Where her arms stretched up to the straining Realm, they were not being pulled apart. They were anchors and cables to make the builders of the pre-crash cities weep.
He could see the shape of her Sherim, too, coiled up and looped through her arms. Dora had made herself the knot that tied the Realm together. She didn’t seem vulnerable, either, though Rel was in no doubt Taslin could have killed her if she’d wanted to. So why hadn’t she?
Rel swallowed again, his tongue seeming suddenly to fill his mouth, cutting off his windpipe. His jaw and gut tightened, but he couldn’t curl himself to ease the tension on them. Fire blossomed just under his heart, driving tears out onto his cheeks. That at least made him blink, freed him from having to stare at the truth any longer.
“Look at her!” Taslin shouted, and it didn’t matter if she was just performing or she really felt the anger written in the merciless lines of her face. “Look at what you’ve done!”
The roar of falling water swallowed the echoes of Taslin’s outburst, but her words hung in Rel’s mind all the same. He gasped
a breath and tried to speak. For a moment it felt like Taslin was just going to crush him, but if anything her grip had slackened. His breath caught again, his nose tickling as a drip ran down it.
Finally, he managed, “Will she be alright?” The words silvered into the air, curling back on themselves and stroking Rel’s face with lines of paper-cut pain.
“I have no idea.” Taslin hadn’t moved, one finger still stabbing out toward Dora, every joint of her pose as unyielding as the bedrock surrounding them. “She’s tied herself to that Sherim you opened. I don’t know what it’s done to her, but she’s not moving through time normally. She may be able to keep lifting the Realm indefinitely, but she is out of our reach.”
“Out of our reach?” This time, Rel’s voice barely managed to scatter a handful of silver flakes into the air in front of him. Forever?
“I intend to see her free again.” The Gift-Giver lowered her arm, her voice picking up a strident edge. “And you are going to make amends by helping me.”
Rel let his head hang, wishing he could turn, escape Taslin’s eyes. His stomach twinged, and a shudder ran through him, taking a long time to die away. The pressure of Taslin’s grip warmed him, supported him, as his feet and his heart began to go cold. Finally, in a voice