Pare nodded. “Then let’s get to Samuel before we run out of time.”
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
* * *
Returning to the Grotto was more intimidating than their exit. When they were leaving, at least there was an open place to run. Delving into it now, every alleyway reeked of danger.
Eriane’s eyes darted around the street as they passed by locked doorways and guarded alleys. Something was different this time…something about the demeanor of the men and women they passed. What was once just appraising interest had taken a more sinister tone, as though value was no longer a concern. The deeper they traveled, the more cut off Eriane felt.
As Eriane watched, two men at the mouth of an alley blinked several times and shook their heads as though to clear them. When their attention returned to their quarry, both men’s faces had taken on the look of blank and barely concealed anger.
Eriane moved closer to Pare. “Pare… something’s wrong here.”
“Yeah, I noticed,” Pare replied, quickening his pace. “I’m not sure what’s going on.”
Eriane heard a shuffling noise behind them. Everything in her screamed not to look, but she did anyway. The inhabitants of the Grotto—every one who was in the street as they passed—was moving out of their alleyways and shadows and following Pare and Eriane. A throng of people formed in their wake, their attention riveted to Pare and Eriane. The further they walked, the more insistent their pursuers became. The Grotto became a claustrophobic nightmare with nowhere for either of them to turn.
“Pare,” Eriane said, taking a shallow breath. “What do we do?”
Pare reached down and took Eriane’s hand. “Eri…we have to run,” he said. “Now!”
Pare bolted. Eriane stumbled, but caught herself and fell in stride, sprinting down the main street, looking for the turn into the square where they had met Acthemenius’s guards. The shuffling pack turned into a raging mob the moment they ran.
Instead of just being followed, now they were being chased. As they fled, Pare threw his free hand out in front of them and a dull flash of blue light knocked would-be assailants to the side, sometimes back into the sides of buildings. Their path stayed clear, but the mob was still nipping at their heels every step of the way.
“Pare!” Eriane said. “What is this?”
Pare blasted another small group of people out of the way. “I have no idea, but someone doesn’t want us to make it to Samuel.”
A hand grabbed at Eriane’s arm and wrenched her out of Pare’s grasp. She spun and found herself looking into the angry eyes of an old vagrant woman in ragged clothing. Despite Eriane’s attempts to free herself, the woman would not release her grip.
“What do you want?” Eriane screamed. “Why are you doing this?”
Her question was met with incoherent raving. Without a thought, Eriane generated a concentrated bump field in front of herself, thrusting it outward and knocking the woman away into the crowd. Even as she fell, the woman’s eyes never left Eriane’s face, and never shook the frenzied wrath that had overtaken her expression. Eriane knocked another man down and kept the bump field in place as Pare beckoned her to him.
“There,” he said, pointing to the street that would lead them to the square. The entry to the street was choked with more angry Grotto denizens.
“How are we going to get through that?” Eriane said.
“Stay with me,” Pare replied.
Pare and Eriane moved in unison. The mob advanced but, for some reason wary now, did not move in close. The new group made no indication they would part or let them through. The hairs on Eriane’s neck stood on end as small, bright ball of light formed between Pare’s hands, gathering khet as it increased in intensity. With a sharp movement, Pare released the ball, which exploded amidst the mob with a blinding, soundless flash. Bodies flew in all directions as they were struck by an expanding shockwave that washed around Eriane’s bump field.
A clear path formed ahead of them, framed on both sides by unconscious and dazed people. Eriane glanced at Pare, and they bolted for the opening.
• • • • •
You KNEW! Samuel had pulled his consciousness above the chaos, enough to confront Acthemenius’s presence in his mind. This whole time, you knew. Ever since her murder, you knew it wasn’t a construct that killed the Queen Consort, and you did nothing. Samuel fumed, unable to comprehend the level of apathy required for Acthemenius’s inaction. And my pursuers? You’ve just let them be? Let them go on destroying Chroniclers?
Samuel felt a push, Acthemenius’s renewed attempt to snow him under the waves of memories. This time, Samuel pushed back. They know us. What we are, what we’re capable of, what we were built for. And they can find us. How many Chroniclers have they tracked and destroyed? How many more would it take before they drive you to do something?
Acthemenius’s reply came softer this time. More than I can count. What would I have done, Aesamaelus? Lead some sort of rebellion into another war? Expose the existence of Chroniclers so that rather than two hunters, there would be hundreds? I’m not an idealistic revolutionary. I’m nothing more than an exhausted old man.
Samuel failed to find any empathy, instead finding only disgust. Well I’m not. Whatever I was before that fire in Winston is gone, and the burden of apathy gone with it.
You’re going to get yourself destroy—
For a moment the stream of memories froze, overlapping images of unnamed people and places forming an indistinct collage. A flash of brilliant white-blue washed the chaos away and left only a murky darkness. Once again, a smell—the smell of stale ale and tree nuts—brought him back to his senses.
Acthemenius’s head was thrown backward, matching the unnatural arch of his back. His arms hovered out to his sides, frozen in a gesture of surprise and shock. Over his shoulder, a face glared at Samuel with unhinged enmity. From behind a stringy curtain of dark hair, a damaged face housed familiar eyes. The eyes of a killer.
“How do you do it, canner?” The voice was unmistakable. From the moment Samuel awoke, the venomous tone of this man’s voice had haunted his thoughts and marred his dreams. The memories of other Chroniclers had borne the voice to him on wings of death, and now that voice assaulted his senses in the real world. The voice, matched with those malevolent eyes, stirred a rising fear in Samuel as the connection between his acquired knowledge and the face of his predator made itself blatant.
Samuel skidded backward on the floor as the man screamed at him. “How do you do it?” Acthemenius twitched in the madman’s grip, still locked in the gruesome pose that marked his paralysis. “How do you hide from me?” The man said. “I can sense your kind from a hundred miles away. I can track you across any barrier, and break anything and anyone designed to protect you. But I can’t see either of you. WHY?”
There was madness now, a desperate fury played across a face already twisted in anger. Samuel rose on unsteady legs, shifting toward the door of the shop, which now stood open and unguarded. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I don’t believe you,” the murderer said. “You don’t hide from me without knowing how. You’ll tell me, or the destruction of this rust pile will be on your hands.”
Samuel steeled himself into defiance, remembering every moment of destruction he’d seen at the hands of this snake and his partner. He made the only desperate play he had. “Nothing I tell you is going to prevent that, but something tells me you’ll need your silver-eyed friend’s help to pull it off, and I don’t see him here,” he said, inching his way closer to the door.
The killer gave a derisive snort. “Clever, clever, little canner.” There was a jolt that caused Acthemenius to convulse before he went limp, falling with a hard crash onto his side. “There’s no place for you to go now, Samuel. Nowhere for you to run anymore.”
Samuel stumbled for the door. Sickly laughter followed him into the alley. He tripped over something, catching himself on the alley wall. It was Talecronelum, l
aid flat, his eyes dim but still alight. He tried to shake free of the fugue Acthemenius had left him in. Would there be help to meet him in the Grotto? More worrisome was the fact the killer did not give chase.
Cormanthul lay collapsed at the end of the alley. The square was clogged by a throng of enraged people, some of whom trampled over his prone form. When the mob took notice of Samuel they turned on him, rushing into the narrow space with little concern for their own well-being.
Samuel had nowhere to retreat. The first of them rushed up the alley, leaping onto Samuel and pounding at his head and shoulders. The sound of cracking bones punctuated each punch. One of them was little danger, but if the mob were to get to him en masse they could keep him pinned. Behind him lay destruction, ahead a mass of people who would throw themselves against his might until he was forced to harm them to make his way through.
“I’m sorry,” Samuel whispered, grabbing his attacker at the crotch and shoulder and flinging him backward onto the cobblestones. The man landed hard and stayed down. Before Samuel could even process remorse another was on him. One half-step at a time he made his way forward. With each movement he downed another attacker with a shove or swing, piling incapacitated bodies to either side as he moved.
A new wave of fear pierced Samuel’s thoughts, driving him forward into the mass harder and faster. His escape was only feet away, the statue in the square framed by the alley’s opening. The crush seemed endless, the fight growing harder with each step. Amidst the battle a thumping noise caught his attention. A body lifted above the rear of the crowd, landing atop the group then vanishing between. There was a moment of silence and stillness as a bright blue light zipped into the alley mouth from the square. Samuel was knocked clear off his feet by a soundless explosion that flung the crowd in all directions, flying overhead and smashing into walls to fall in unconscious heaps.
“Samuel, get up!” Eriane’s voice pierced the brief quiet. She and Pare stood ready at the opening, beckoning him to join them. Samuel scrambled to his feet and rushed to meet them.
“We have to go. Now,” Pare said.
• • • • •
The noise in the Grotto picked up, and the mob that had been at Pare and Eriane’s backs had caught up and was spilling into the square. Flashes of blue and white sparked through the air, Pare pulling constructions of khet from the ether to help clear their path. Eriane wielded a bump field like a battering ram. Samuel used the attackers’ own momentum against them, flinging running men into others and knocking them aside. Their progress stalled near the statue as more and more people flooded into the square, spilling out of every alley and doorway in sight.
“We need to do something!” Eriane said. “We can’t keep this up forever.”
Pare’s hands blurred and flashed as another small group was punted away from them. “I need time!” he yelled. “I can’t think… I can’t make anything as long as they keep coming like this!”
“What can we do?” Eriane asked.
Eriane saw fear and sorrow cross Pare’s face. “I…I don’t know.”
She had to think. Pare’s abilities were keeping them alive for the moment, but he wouldn’t be able to keep up the pace forever. Her guns weren’t an option; two shots would be meaningless against the horde, and none of them wanted to kill people who weren’t acting of their own volition. Her pack was filled with provisions and gear for the trek, but nothing that could help them escape. She only had one other possession: the guilestone.
In all her time with the guilestone she’d never been able to use it for anything other than dampening sound. She’d pulled together minor constructions of light and air through it before, but nothing she’d tried in the past had held. Eriane pulled the polished stone from her belt pouch and held it out to Pare.
“What about this?” she said.
“A guilestone?” Pare was taken aback, but was forced to turn and defend himself. “That might work, but if it’s attuned to you I won’t be able to use it. You’ll have to do it, Eri. But whatever you’re going to do, do it fast!”
“I…I can’t!” Eriane said, her confidence waning. “It’s never worked like that for me.”
“You have to!” Pare yelled. He was beginning to sweat, his voice giving out.
“Come on, Eri,” Samuel said.
Eriane took a deep breath and pressed her thumb into the spiral engraved on the face of the guilestone. The only construction she was consistently good at was a bump field. It might not provide them a good offense, but if she could amplify one through the stone long enough to push back their attackers, it might give them a moment to think, give Pare time to formulate an escape.
She closed her eyes and tried to shut out the sounds of the combat around her. Khet flowed into her and coursed down the length of her arms, tingling in her fingers around the guilestone. The power crackled through the stone itself and she felt it grow. When she’d drawn enough khet for the field, she released it.
The shimmering blue-white glow sprung up around them, knocking some of the crowd down or pinning them under its edge. Mindless attackers threw themselves against its perimeter as it came to life, sparking and flashing like lightning. The onslaught was too much for Eriane to withstand, and the construction crashed down around them. Eriane sank to her knees, dazed by the breaking of the field.
“Eriane!” Pare yelled. “Get back on your feet!”
Eriane shook the fugue away and climbed back to her feet between Samuel and Pare. “I…I’m sorry. I’m not strong enough.”
“Sure you are,” Samuel said. “You just need some space.”
Pare turned to Samuel and nodded. “We need to time this just right. Samuel, can you hold them off for a few seconds?”
Samuel nodded. “Only a few,” he said.
“Eriane,” Pare said. “Do you understand?”
She nodded. Eriane began gathering khet for another try, the tendrils of light materializing through the air all around her and converging on her hands, wrapped tightly once again around the guilestone. The power built inside her, focused on the stone, and she felt it coursing through her like the blood in her veins, even stronger than before.
“Are you ready?” Pare said. She could barely hear him through the pounding in her ears.
She shook her head. “Almost. Not yet.” Her own voice sounded muffled.
“Samuel?” Pare said. Samuel nodded. Pare broke off his defense and turned to stand close to Eriane, drawing his own khet into his waiting hands. The sphere of light gained brilliance as the construction formed, becoming almost solid as it floated in his grasp. Samuel fended off the enraged around him, his movements just registering at the edges of Eriane’s vision. She could feel him getting closer, the perimeter he was able to maintain shrinking by the second.
The power built to a crescendo. Eriane nodded to Pare.
“Samuel, down!” Pare yelled. Samuel dropped to his knees facing the two of them, spreading his arms around their shoulders. Pare’s ball of light shot upward, only a couple of feet, and erupted. The shockwave almost knocked the three of them flat, but Samuel held strong above them, protecting Pare and Eriane from the brunt of the force.
Eriane released her hold, firing a torrent of gathered khet outward from the guilestone. A dome of blue-white light erected itself from the ground up around the three of them out to the edge of Pare’s blast zone. As the dome rose it intersected one of the extended arms on the bronze statue, which fell to the cobblestones with a clatter. In only a few seconds the dome was complete, a shimmering circle of protection that bent light like imperfect glass.
The space outside the dome erupted into a riot. Citizens of the Grotto flung themselves against the field, desperate in their frenzy to get to those protected inside. The field held strong as the waves of the enraged smashed and broke against it with no regard for their own well-being.
“I did it!” Eriane exclaimed, momentarily pulled from her terror at the sight of her success.
Samuel put a
hand on her shoulder and nodded. “You did it.”
Pare slumped back on the cobblestones, drawing ragged breaths, his face glistening with sweat.
“Now what?” Samuel asked him.
“I just…I just need a minute,” Pare said. “Let me think of a way out of here.”
Samuel turned back to Eriane. “Can this field move with us?”
She shook her head. “I don’t think so.” She thumbed at the guilestone on the ground and it didn’t move, locked between two cobblestones. “Even the stone is rooted in place as long as the field is up. The amount of power it would take to make this thing move is…beyond me.”
“We need to get out of here,” Samuel said. “We may have bought ourselves a few seconds, but it does us no good to be stuck here.”
Pare sat up, flinging an arm over one of his knees. “I might be able to use the field to… create some sort of ampli—” He paused, tilting and turning his head, scrunching his brow. “Do you hear that?”
The three of them stopped moving and listened. The noise outside the dome died down. People were no longer throwing themselves into the barrier. Instead, they stood motionless, staring into the center of the circle with unbridled hatred in their eyes. That’s when she heard it: someone was clapping.
It was a slow, methodical clap, echoing from the walls in the chambered town square. Behind Pare, people stepped aside to create a lane up to the edge of the bump field. Jacob sprinted up the lane to the edge of the circle, a look of relief on his face that almost seemed genuine.
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
* * *
“You son of a bitch,” Samuel said.
“You don’t know the half of it,” Jacob replied.
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