by Laini Taylor
A bold young queen in that distant world was even now training a legion of angels and chimaera to battle the darkness and hopefully destroy it. But that’s another story.
As for the other Six, led by Thakra—who knows? Perhaps they died long ago, or perhaps they’re still going, far, far out in the infinity of the great All. That’s another story, too.
This is the story of the portals between Zeru and Mesaret, and how they were used after the angels had moved on, and by whom, and at what cost.
Mesaret was the world with the extraordinary blue metal that made its people like gods. Through the cuts in the sky their empire spread. With their skyships and soldier-wizards, they were invincible. For a time.
All empires fail. They overreach, spread too thin, collect one enemy too many. They’re gnawed at from within by corruption, greed, betrayal. The Mesaret Empire was no exception. There was fighting on all fronts when a young smith called Skathis looked into the swirl of chaos and saw… opportunity.
He slew the emperor, but he did not take his place. He had other aspirations. He wished be a god. So he took the emperor’s godsmetal, and then he left the world with his ship and a small, handpicked crew that included his spy, Korako, whether she wanted to go or not.
Nova reached Aqa just too late. She missed them by a week. And she might as well have wished to fly to the moon as follow them through the portal. It simply wasn’t possible. Nevertheless, she did it. Not that year or the next, but she did it. Skathis had a mesarthium skyship to navigate portals and realms. She had nothing but her wits and her diadem, and still she found ways to follow. Sometimes it took her years to get from one world to the next. The trail grew old and faint, but always she kept on going.
There comes a certain point with a hope or a dream, when you either give it up or give up everything else. And if you choose the dream, if you keep on going, then you can never quit, because it’s all you are. Nova had made that choice a long time ago. She was so far down this path that to turn around would be to face a howling, dark tunnel with nothing at its end, not even ice or uuls. There was no going back. There was nothing else. There was only Kora, and the words that haunted Nova:
Find me. I am not free.
It had taken her more than two hundred years to track Skathis’s skyship to the edge of the shattered empire. She had lived many lives in that time, finding her way—making her way—through world after war-ravaged world. It was something, to have survived so much and come so far. The sea, she thought, would not know her now. She scarcely knew herself. No one still lived—in any world—who remembered Koraandnova, save Kora herself, her other half, so long ago severed from her.
She had been just Nova for centuries now, but the broken edges of that sundered name had not grown smooth with time. If anything they had gotten sharper. Touch them and you’d bleed. Through it all, whatever life she was living, whatever way she was surviving, she never stopped searching for her sister.
There was a treacherous whisper that lived inside her—the sea’s voice, which she couldn’t leave behind. Thakra knows she’d tried. Whenever she felt it stirring, its words starting to form in her mind, she’d bite the inside of her cheek or lip, hard enough to draw blood. The blood was a tithe she paid to keep it silent, or else it was a prayer that she would prove the whisper wrong.
Too late.
Those were the words she couldn’t kill. That was the fear she quelled with her blood—that she would always and forever be too late.
But now, at long last, she had found the white bird—or it had found her, as it had once before. And as she followed it through the portal, she knew: It could only be leading her to Kora.
40
ONSLAUGHT
Sarai was numb with the shock of the red-sea vista as Wraith burst through the portal. The warp stretched to disgorge the eagle, its massive wings spread wide, and snapped back into place only to open again as figures poured in behind it: one… two… four black-clad marauders, one in the lead, three fanning out behind.
Wraith’s shriek was twinned with a scream, and even muted by the chamber, it was bloodcurdling. It was no natural scream. Sarai, Lazlo, and the others were racked by it. It invaded them, body and mind. It came from a woman, the one in the lead. She was fair-haired and slight. She was blue, clad in tight black garb that made her seem dipped in oil. At her brow, like a crown, she wore a circlet of mesarthium. Her eyes were mad, and her mouth was open to pour forth this soul-scouring scream.
Sarai had never heard a wilder sound. There were wolves in it, and war cries, carrion birds and storm winds, and she’d never have believed it came from a person if she weren’t seeing it with her own eyes. It struck terror in her, in all of them, rendering them stunned and helpless.
It was magic. It was an assault. It drilled into their minds and cut them off from their instincts, muting their natural reactions.
Lazlo faltered, stricken. He was in the act of pulling back the walkway and closing the orb, but everything halted. Where he might have sent forth a surge of mesarthium to engulf the intruders, he did not. Even the defensive instincts of Eril-Fane and Azareen, razor-honed by years of training, were overpowered. They didn’t draw their hreshteks, which should have been second nature, but shrank from the sound, hands flying up to flatten against their ears.
Nova breached the portal screaming Werran’s scream. He was one of her cohort, and this was his gift: a scream to sow panic in the minds of all who heard it. There was no better way to stun one’s foe in the opening assault. Nova liked to lead with it, and buy herself a moment to assess her opponent at leisure. Usually, she let Werran use his gift himself, but she had a mighty need to scream as she followed Kora’s bird into this unknown world, so she took it over and let it loose, and relished the way it ravaged her throat.
At last she had come to the moment she’d been chasing for more than two centuries, since the night she unwrapped the diadem and vowed to free her sister.
She’d lost count of the number of worlds there were between this one and her own. And she hadn’t kept track of the men she’d killed since Zyak and Shergesh. But she knew the years, and the months, and the days since the white bird came to Rieva. It had been so long, but now she was here. She was going to save her sister, and she was so much more than ready.
She scanned the room, still pouring out the scream, her heart pounding fit to burst. Five Servants and three humans, she counted. Her eyes flicked over them fast, then over them again even faster. Kora’s bird flew in circles, its cry twining with her scream. Nova’s heart beat harder. She bit off the scream. She’d thought the bird would lead her to her sister. The need to see her was a violent fire within her.
But Kora wasn’t here.
Too late, came the treacherous whisper. She bit her cheek, and her mouth filled with the metal tang of blood.
Humans and godspawn cowered, paralyzed by the scream, and when it cut off—when the woman bit it off and bared her teeth at them in an animal snarl—they were left reeling in silence, each of them feeling stranded, as though the scream were a wave that had hurled them onto a beach and left them alone and gasping, the bits and pieces of who they were strewn all around them.
The invaders fanned out before them in the air. They were flying, or floating, impervious to gravity. Besides the leader, there were two men and a woman, all blue, and all clad in the same oily black—a uniform that fit like skin, with boots that looked built to crush bones underfoot and somehow stood on air. Sheathed short swords hung at their sides, and they were grim-faced with menace, all wielding rods of some gray metal with two short prongs at the end. Lightning leapt between the prongs, emitting an ominous crackle.
The sight brought Lazlo back to himself. In the wake of the scream, instinct returned—not in a surge but slowly, as though scattered bits of his mind were trying to reassemble themselves. His first thought was to put Sarai behind him. For her part, she could only stare. She felt as though she were back in Minya’s nightmare, because thi
s woman with her fair hair and pale brows… she knew her. She’d seen her in the nursery doorway.
Korako, she thought.
So did Eril-Fane, though he knew it was impossible. He remembered his knife plunging into her heart, the life leaving her eyes. But her eyes glittered now, alive with brutal intensity. He drew his hreshtek. Azareen did, too.
Lazlo, hearing the twin sounds of blades unsheathing, gave his sluggish head a shake and reached for his power. It was too late to close the orb and keep the intruders out. They were in, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t stop them. Already, he had learned: Nothing could stop mesarthium. He opened himself to the energies that were alive all around him. Gritting his teeth, he willed his metal to strike, and up from the floor of the chamber, a geyser of mesarthium erupted. It was a shining blue jet of liquid metal, propelled with volcanic force. It surged up at the woman. It would annihilate her on impact. But Lazlo didn’t have annihilation in him. He willed the geyser to hollow and open, making a molten tube that would, instead, surround and contain her.
Or, it should have. But just as it reached her, it froze. Gaping open like a mouth around her feet and ready to swallow her, the whole explosive jet of metal… stopped.
With a sickening helplessness, Lazlo felt his mesarthium awareness peel away from him. The sensation of claiming—the metal claiming him, and he it—evaporated, and the energies, too, as though the air had emptied of its staves of silent music. It was akin to sudden blindness or deafness, the loss of this new sense. He sought his power, desperate, and… nothing.
The others looked to him and back at the intruder, their eyes wide, confused. Why had he stopped? “Lazlo…?” asked Sarai, a quaver in her voice.
“My power,” he gasped. “It’s gone.”
“What?”
The walkway had come to rest hanging out into the chamber like a half-finished bridge. Sarai and Lazlo and the others were all clustered together at its end. They had shrunk back at the first screech of onslaught, only to be paralyzed by the unnatural scream. Now they all snapped out of stillness.
Ruby kindled into Bonfire. Her eyes filled up with flame. Her hair writhed and glowed like rivulets of lava, and sparks hissed in her closed fists. She’d never attacked anybody before. Minya had told her she was a weapon, but she’d never felt like one until now. But before she could do anything, she felt it snatched away. It: her fire, her spark.
It was taken, and no sooner did she register its loss than the attacker’s eyes turned red and leapt alight. Her flaxen hair smoked, aglow like a bed of coals. Ruby saw. She felt gutted and guttered, as though the woman had reached inside her and stolen what made her her. “You,” she choked, outraged. “That’s mine. Give it back!”
At the same time, Feral, with a gulp, closed his eyes and ripped a thunderhead from a sky half a world away. The air above the attackers darkened. The rain was instantaneous—a gyre of stinging, half-frozen pellets, each one a tiny ice blade. The dense cloud strobed and crackled, lit from within by unborn lightning. The roar of the thunder flattened out under the chamber’s muting properties, but it still reverberated in their bones. For years, Minya had tried to make Feral do this very thing: summon storms as weapons, aim and strike with lightning—but he’d always been afraid, so he’d always failed. Now he felt his power as though it were boiling in him and pouring out like steam, as though he were a conduit for the sky’s full might, the untamable power of nature itself. For the first time in his life, Feral felt like a god.
And then the feeling vanished like vapor.
The invader, wet-sleek, with icy rain rolling down her face and her fair hair slick to her skull, lifted her arms from her sides and made a show of her stolen powers.
In her open hands, fireballs flared, hissing and dancing under the pelting rain. And they weren’t just balls. They were blooms. They were flowers sculpted of fire. They began as buds and opened, unfurling petals of living orange flame, blue at the center and paling to white at the ruffled fringes of their petals.
Ruby’s breath caught. She’d never made anything half so beautiful, and envy infused her outrage.
Sparrow made no move with her gift. Minya had always scorned her for her uselessness in a fight, and she had never minded, but now she did. She felt small and helpless as the thunderhead roiled and crackled overhead, glowing with its bounty of lightning. Then it split open and three bolts shot out, white and fast, right at the walkway. They had to hurl themselves down, and only the railing Lazlo had made kept them from falling off. The smell of ozone settled around them, clean and sharp, and they huddled there, all watching, awestruck and afraid, as the frozen mesarthium geyser turned molten once more. It didn’t erupt or engulf the woman—at least, not as Lazlo had intended. Instead, it flowed with slow grace up her legs, over her torso, and out along her arms, shaping itself into plates of armor. They were nothing like the heavy bronze plates the Tizerkane wore, held in place with buckles and thick leather straps. These were as smooth as poured water, and so fine they were virtually weightless. They added no bulk, and they moved with her body, and still they were stronger than anything in this world. They wove themselves into the black fabric of her costume, and shone mirror-bright: on her shins, up her thighs, in an elegant fanfold over her knees. A breastplate formed, worked in a pattern of an eagle with its wings spread. She still held the fire flowers in her open palms, even as the metal flowed out and wrapped her arms in pauldrons and vambraces more elegant than any ever wrought with anvil and hammer.
She floated in the air before them, eyes glowing red, flames blooming in her hands, wearing mesarthium armor and wielding lightning like spears, and the godspawn and humans were humbled and appalled.
“Who are you?” asked Feral, his voice shaking.
“What do you want?” Sarai demanded, afraid of the answer.
“How is she doing that?” asked Ruby, overwrought. “I want my fire back!”
With a sudden motion, the woman dashed the fire flowers toward the floor far below, where they sizzled into sparks and died. An impatient jerk of her arm, and the thunderhead vanished, too, taking the rain and the lightning with it. There was still a muted patter of drips sluicing off the invaders’ soaked forms, but the air cleared, and the thunder faded. Ruby and Feral both groped for their gifts, hoping they had them back, but they didn’t. The invader still held their powers, and Lazlo’s, too—as he was reminded when she raised her arm, fingers flexed, and summoned a ball of mesarthium down from the ceiling. It flew to her hand faster than falling, meeting her palm with a smack. She clasped it and spun it around her fingers, weightless as a magic trick. The flames died out of her eyes. They were brown and livid and fixed on Lazlo. She spoke to him in a language they couldn’t understand. It was harsh to their ears as rusted hinges and crows.
“Do you remember me?” was what Nova asked.
She perceived her foe through the haze of her hatred, and if he didn’t look quite as she remembered, it had been more than two hundred years. Who else could he be? Those were his gray eyes, and this was his ship, and the world he had chosen.
Skathis, after all this time. She felt his power surge through her, as it had long ago. She said, “You feared me once, but not enough to kill me, and I have crushed your throat in a godsmetal collar in a thousand glad murderous dreams. You called me a pirate when I was no such thing. Now, though. You have no idea.”
She threw the ball, just as he had thrown one to her, and to Kora. She whispered, “Catch.”
Lazlo did. It was reflex. But as soon as it touched his hand, there was nothing left to catch. It splashed over his arm and rolled up it, blue metal shining in motion. As he recoiled, arm outheld, the metal sluiced up his shoulder, coalescing as it moved into a sinuous streak. It elongated and shaped itself into a serpent, and wound itself around his neck. This was all inside a second, and before he quite knew what was happening, it opened its mouth and gulped down its own tail.
Lazlo grabbed it. It writhed under his hands, and he
felt it alive in the same way that Rasalas was alive, or the songbird he’d detached from the wall—no longer dumb metal but a creature, animated by a will.
But it was not his will, and as he grasped the writhing-alive metal snake in his hands, it cinched tight, devouring itself, and his neck was caught in its noose.
Sarai seized it and tried to pry its jaws off its tail, but she couldn’t shift it. It constricted, and her fingers were captured between the collar and Lazlo’s throat. She had to turn them incorporeal—make her ghostflesh like air—to pull free. But she couldn’t do the same for Lazlo. She couldn’t turn him incorporeal, and she saw the panic in his eyes as the snake tightened, cutting off his air. His mouth opened in a ragged gasp, and Sarai whirled to face his attacker. “Let him go!” she cried.
What she saw in the eyes of the Korako apparition was a mania veering between victory and rage. It was a killing mania, make no mistake. She had stormed in here to do harm, and she was savage.
Everything had happened so fast. Just a moment ago they’d been staring through the slit in the air at the impossible landscape. Now they were invaded, their magic stolen. Eril-Fane and Azareen stood helpless at the edge of the bridge, the enemies out of reach of their blades. Ruby and Feral were stripped of their magic, and Minya wasn’t even here. The absurdity struck Sarai like a blow. Minya, their protector—always their protector, since before they could even remember, Minya who had saved them and spent her life building an army to keep on saving them—was lying on her floor in a gray, drugged slumber, defenseless and also useless, and it was all their fault.