“Is this it?” Maralah asked, clearly disappointed.
“Raise the light higher,” Lilia said.
Maralah released the ball of flame, and it floated above her, three, four, six more paces, then doubled in size, tripled, until its light finally reached the shadowy walls that enclosed them, if not the great bones of the ceiling.
Lilia gaped. It was not like the other temples. This chamber was at least four times the size, and each of the compass points had a circle on the floor like the one they stood within. Massive ribbed columns stretched from the circumference of the walls all the way to the center of the room, where they dipped beneath a massive pool of water and twisted up again, winding around a giant dais that glistened with damp and something more substantive, alive? The floor was off-kilter, and liquid pooled on the other side of the room; the drip of water sounded all around them. The air tasted stale.
She stared at the floor. It pulsed beneath her, moist and blue-black, pebbled with tiny bumps like the papillae on a tongue. Lilia walked out of the circle, following the downward tilt of the floor toward one of the columns that looked more like a fibrous band of muscle in this light. As she left the circle, the whole room began to glow. She gasped and froze.
“Don’t move!” Roh said.
A blue band of light appeared at the edges of the floor and the ceiling. The muscular colonnades gave off a faint green glow, and the floor sprang to life, a roiling field of deep crimson so dark it was almost black. Above them, the ceiling seemed to move. The great eye of Oma appeared there, illuminating what had been hidden: the ceiling here mirrored the ceiling in the Assembly Chamber, only on a much grander scale. The blinking eye of Oma shed light onto a glistening raised platform. The rest of the ceiling came alive: blue Para, over another dais; green Tira; and purple Sina, its light bleeding across another pedestal. Twinkling stars speckled the ceiling, glowing faint blue and red and white. As Lilia watched, they began to move, orbiting around the top of the chamber.
“It’s like it’s… like we woke it up,” Lilia said.
Roh slowly came after her, stepping gingerly on the spongy floor. “It matches the drawings,” Roh said.
“You have any idea where to start?” she asked. “We don’t have much time. I… Everyone, get into the places with the right symbols!”
Luna trailed after Lilia, quiet as a ghost. The others fanned out across the squelching floor, examining the strange architecture.
Roh snatched at Lilia’s sleeve. “Li,” he blurted. “Oma’s Temple said something to me, when we came through the floor.”
“It talks to you?”
“It said you were going to destroy them, the temples. That you were here to ruin everything. Is that true?”
“No. I’m here to turn back the Tai Mora and close the ways between the worlds. That’s all. That’s our plan. Whatever you’re hearing… I don’t know what gave it that idea.” But what he said made her doubt herself. Was she going to do something wrong? Maybe it was best he didn’t give her the other options.
Roh said, “Maybe… maybe we should have Luna operate the mechanism instead. You said the Worldbreaker could be either of you, anyone who could learn.”
“It’s been decided, Roh, and planned. I’m not changing it. The temple was wrong. I know what I’m doing.”
Roh met her look for a breath, then turned away. “There should be marks for the jistas,” he said, limping over to one of the knobby pedestals. “Here they are. Sinajista here. Maralah?”
Kadaan said, “I want to make sure we have defenses up. If they come down through the floor like we did–”
“I don’t think they can,” Roh said, “not without a Kai or a Guide. But there are certainly other ways they could get in, too. It’s entirely possible we’re underwater now, and they’ll pierce the dome here and swamp us. It’s likely they came to Fasia’s Point because it’s the closest land mass to the temple mark on the map.”
Lilia stood at the edge of the pool of water surrounding the central dais. Luna came up beside her.
“That’s not easy to get up on,” Luna said.
“Let alone stay on,” Lilia said. The dais was easily as high as her shoulder. Had people been taller in the past?
“Maybe it was meant for giants, or Saiduan,” Luna said.
“Well, they have us.”
Maralah went to the dais marked with the sinajista sign and wrinkled her nose. The dais bloomed, opening like a flower and revealing great red petals. She sniffed at it. “Smells like apples. What kind of device is this, really?”
“I don’t know,” Lilia said. “I don’t need to. I just need it to work.”
Kadaan said, “There’s something wrong.”
“What?” Lilia asked.
He still stood in the circle, one hand raised. “I can feel something… here. There’s a good deal of power.”
“Let’s bring more,” Lilia said. “Salifa, you’re there. The one with Tira’s mark.”
Salifa tentatively approached another pedestal, which glowed brilliant green and unfurled long, slithering green tentacles that wrapped the base of it. “Is this… safe?” Salifa ventured.
“We’ll find out,” Lilia said. She was still eying the large pedestal over the water. “Roh, can you just… use Para to get me up there?”
“Yes,” he said. “Ready?”
She nodded. An invisible twist of air circled Lilia’s waist and propelled her to the top of the dais. Roh set her down carefully, but she still stumbled, and went to one knee. The pedestal was warm beneath her hand, and had the same smooth texture as the skin of the temples. But it did nothing when she touched it.
“Everyone get in place!” Lilia called.
Maralah said, “You had best be ready. Once we are locked into this, there’s no going back.”
“I’ve been ready my whole life,” Lilia said.
Maralah stepped up into the center of the petaled dais, and raised her hand. The air thickened.
A searing jet of purple mist enveloped her. Her body went rigid, back arched, mouth agape, as the mist suspended her six paces above the dais.
The others recoiled, and Lilia had to direct them. “Salifa, Kadaan, Anavha! It’s time!”
Kadaan exchanged one last look with Roh. “Hold the defensive wall?”
“I have it,” Roh said.
Kadaan stepped onto Para’s dais as it purled open, revealing slick blue leaves that trembled as he stepped onto them. Blue mist engulfed him, and he, too, became caught in the whirlwind of power, rising from his place.
Salifa closed her eyes and stepped up onto her pedestal. Pulled on Tira. Lilia held her breath, fascinated to see the multicolored breath of all the satellites herself for the first time.
Zezili shouted at the fighters, instructing them to take up defensive positions around the outer circle of pillars.
“Anavha!” Roh said. “We need you to step in, Anavha.”
Anavha trembled as he approached Oma’s dais, a great black knobby thing that began oozing red fluid, thick as mud, as he came forward.
“I can’t!” Anavha said.
Roh called to Saradyn. “Help him!”
Saradyn took Anavha by the waist and hauled him up onto the dais. Anavha shrieked, but settled onto it, exchanging another look with Roh.
“You can do this,” Roh said.
Anavha closed his eyes. Raised his hand. Oma’s crimson breath swirled up from the bottom of the pedestal and blanketed him.
Lilia waited, expecting something to happen to her dais, but nothing did. “What are we doing wrong?” she called to Luna.
“We need the Key,” Luna said. “Taigan? Do you see it?”
Taigan stood just outside the ring of columns, frowning. “I see what looks like a very uncomfortable cage,” he said.
The position for the Key was a twisted white structure that bisected the room, floor to ceiling, just behind where Lilia stood. It looked like a great tendon with a body-sized gap at the center.
“Taigan,” Lilia said, “you’re the last one. You want to burn them all up? This is how to do it.”
“Who’s to say I couldn’t just go back and–”
“Taigan! Please!”
He shrugged and sauntered over to the great quivering mass of the web.
The air trembled. Lilia felt a deep groaning beneath her, as if the whole room were shifting.
“What is that?” Zezili yelled.
The circle on the floor they had come through glowed a brilliant green.
“Oh no,” Roh said, “someone’s coming through.”
“Hold the line!” Zezili called.
Lilia screamed, “Taigan!”
Taigan heaved a great sigh, and climbed up into the great gory cage. The moment he stepped inside, a burst of brilliance emanated from the other pedestals, blinding Lilia.
The dais beneath her heaved like a ship at sea. Her stomach churned. And then something in her – she could not say what it was, or where it had been – something within her opened, some vital connection that had long been burned closed.
She gasped.
Taigan’s clothes and hair were instantly incinerated. His body – the flesh, the tendon, muscle, bone – burst into a fine red mist that spun around in the chamber, coagulating together into a fiery red eye of blood.
Lilia’s stomach heaved. The blood rippled, became flesh, great gobs of it roiling and flexing like sticky cheese. His body was trying to remake itself.
The gobs of flesh burst again, imploded back into the red eye, the gory mist. A blinding white light pierced through the organic cloud of ephemera that had once been Taigan as the form began to flush with new skin again, roiling and bubbling with half-formed, inhuman shapes before breaking again under the incredible power being drawn from all five temples.
The light shuddered through the great tendon and through the water all around Lilia, crawling up her dais as she began to rise from it, as if caught up by the hand of a god.
She spread her arms, and light burst from her fingertips, flooding the room. All around her, a massive shifting orrery bloomed, bursting into being as if it had been there all along, and she had simply not been equipped to see it. She found herself floating inside a multicolored sphere of power, and struggled to stay upright.
The game, the game, how to start the game?
She raised her left hand and concentrated on the nearest sphere, a great red orb. It hummed through the air and floated just above her palm. When she gripped it, her fingers found purchase. It was solid. She thought she would see her reflection in its shimmering surface, but no – instead she saw great armies, all marching toward the center of the world. She recoiled. Released the sphere. It floated back into the whirling orrery.
“I don’t think I need the piece!” Lilia called down at Zezili. “It’s responding without that symbol! I can do this myself!”
Her attention was so fixed on the spheres that she heard Zezili’s voice only dimly.
“They’re here! They’re sending more! Defenses up?”
Lilia felt a little smile creep across her face. “Let them come,” she whispered, and called on more power.
Her shadow fell across Luna, below, who trembled.
42
Kirana brought them all together in the Assembly Chamber – Gian and her jistas, Yivsa and twenty of her best soldiers. She had one of the stargazers, Talahina, there as well. She wanted a scholar with them, just in case. She had two of her own omajistas, Mysa and Shova, standing side by side. The smell of smoke still permeated the air. Much of the temple’s interior still burned, but had been contained by four very exhausted parajistas. She had called them all from the coast, winking them here quickly from their failed attempts to smother the People’s Temple.
Yivsa poured a large jar of Kirana’s brother’s mud-thick blood onto the ring in the floor. The ring of flesh glowed softly blue, just as it had done when the boy, Roh, had stepped into it and disappeared through the floor as he held the book.
“Let’s see what we can do,” Kirana said. “Yivsa, take Mysa and Shova with you and ready your weapons. Gian, we’ll wait until they are in place and open a wink to us from… wherever this goes. I don’t want to risk this entrance for all of us. You said they had twenty people?”
Gian nodded. “I had time to count them. They joined hands and stepped onto that circle. They will no doubt have defenses in place.”
“Then let’s prepare to break their defenses,” Kirana said. “Remember, we don’t care about who they have in the niches, those four jistas. They will be locked in until this ends. We want to control the center.”
“Who will operate it?” Gian asked.
“I will,” Kirana said. “We know enough to do the minimum. Close the ways between the worlds. The rest, we can do in time. In thirty hours, this will be over, one way or another.”
Yivsa raised her hand. “You heard her. Mysa, Shova, to me, one on either side of the circle.” She gave orders to the others, and then they stretched out their hands and clasped them.
Yivsa stepped onto the glowing blue ring. The others followed.
Kirana took a breath. Nothing happened.
“Maybe it doesn’t respond to him?” Gian said.
“He’s yours, temple,” Kirana muttered. “Fucking take him.”
And Yivsa and the others sank through the floor.
Kirana smiled. Those remaining in the chamber shifted uncomfortably. One of Gian’s little parajistas gasped.
“Now what?” Gian asked.
“We wait,” Kirana said.
The air shuddered a moment later. A wink opened just above the Assembly Chamber table, and brilliant white light poured into the room.
Kirana recoiled.
On the other side, Yivsa yelled at her to come through. “They’re already in place! We need to overwhelm them!”
Gian strode through first, much to Kirana’s annoyance. Kirana didn’t want her to take some fatal blow so early in the day.
A hot wind emanated from the wink. Kirana waited for Gian’s parajistas to put up defenses, then stepped through with her tirajistas beside her.
Mysa and Shova had both opened winks. The second wink looked out onto the sandy peninsula where Monshara’s soldiers waited to reinforce them.
Kirana stumbled on the sloping floor. Yivsa held out a hand, but Kirana ignored it, transfixed by the flaming figure at the center of the room. She knew exactly who it was, the ghost of a girl who had come to her before Kuallina, and sat her down later over a poisoned meal, the little rebel girl all the Dhai proclaimed the next Faith Ahya, their prophet-god.
“Can you hold…” Kirana shouted at Yivsa as a great rumbling shook the chamber. The floor tilted and heaved. The temple itself moaned. Water began to bubble up from the floor’s lowest side. Were they… sinking? Had the temple shifted off the sand bar?
A great ball of light rolled off Lilia, hurtling itself toward Kirana.
“Fuck,” Kirana said.
Zezili kept low; there were too many jistas in the room and too much power. What she needed were more projectile weapons to distract the jistas. The tangled defenses and offenses were mostly parajista and sinajista, air and fire, and the best defense against both was to wait for a gap in their casts. She saw Kirana immediately, and barked, “Her! That’s the one! Kill the head and the beast dies!”
A blast of heat crackled, burning up three fighters and one of the jistas.
Zezili came up quickly, hunched over, yelling at her people to close the line.
Something thudded into her shoulder. She went down.
Shocked, winded, Zezili looked around, sword raised. People were coming through the second wink, the one that opened onto the plateau. She recognized the man with the bow immediately. Natanial. That fucking fuck.
Behind him, waving through more jistas, was Monshara. Oh, Monshara, how long ago that acquaintance had been. And here Monshara was, still fighting for these awful people.
Zezil
i pushed herself up. Fuck them. Fuck Natanial. She heaved herself toward him, breaking the line.
Kirana surged into the air, brought aloft by a spinning rainbow of powerful light. She whirled toward the central pedestal and the burning figure of the girl there.
The girl’s face was a bitter rictus. “I want to murder you!”
“Do it then!” Kirana shouted. “You’ll murder yourself, too. Did you forget that? Forget you’re one of us? Kill me, and you kill yourself, and you kill your little friend Gian too. Did you see her? Fallen from the sky, far tougher than that little nymph you brought to the table. Send us all back to our dead world, and you’ll be there with us, hacking your guts out.”
Invisible bands of power constricted Kirana’s body. She gasped.
“Not the Tai Mora,” Lilia said. “Not all of us. Just you, Kirana. Just. You.”
“Gian and I are… bound…” Kirana gasped. “Kill me… you kill her too… How many… more times… will you… kill her?”
“I want to murder you!”
“Do it. Do it, you coward!”
“I want you to suffer as my mother suffered.”
“No one can suffer that much.”
Lilia screamed.
Natanial let loose another arrow; it slammed just below the first into Zezili’s left shoulder. She kept coming, like an angry bear. He backed up; she was too close now. He shouldered his bow and pulled his sword.
Zezili tackled him. They both went over. Behind her, her lines of fighters broke, one after another, in the face of overwhelming offenses. Monshara and Natanial had brought a fucking army with them. Far more than Lilia or her Saiduan had ever anticipated.
Natanial’s hands found her throat. Her grip found his as well. They lay locked like that, grunting and gasping, splashing around on the cold floor.
A knife of cold fire went through Zezili’s body. She gaped. Natanial punched her, and she went over.
Zezili gazed up to see Monshara standing over her with a great infused weapon, eyes blazing.
The Worldbreaker Saga Omnibus Page 140