“Fight!” Prodominus shouted.
Maya flung out her free hand before the Kyriliarch’s voice had faded, and a burst of fire slammed across the space between them. It hit Tanax hard enough to knock him off his feet, sending him sliding across the sand, and she saw the sparking blue aura of his panoply flare.
But her opponent recovered impressively quickly. He rolled onto his knees, throwing up a shield of warped space around himself that deflected the flames like a breakwater. Maya closed her hand, and the stream of fire vanished. Tanax got to his feet behind his aura of paradoxical geometry, breathing hard.
“Feel free to yield,” Maya said. “I don’t want to hurt you.”
He growled a curse, and the real battle began.
Tendrils of deiat reached out, slicing through the space all around her like a blooming flower with Tanax at the center. She could see them as shimmers in the air, bits of twisted space like the ripples rising from a hot stone, but it was easier to feel them resonating with her connection to deiat. She channeled power through her haken and slammed her own energy against them. Fire bloomed all around her, motes of energy devouring one another and being devoured in turn.
Bit by bit, Maya’s grin faded. He’s plaguing good. Not as good as Jaedia, who made the whole affair look effortless, but he wove deiat with speed and efficiency, sending little dust devils of twisted space spinning across the floor, then sweeping a broad wave of distortion that forced her to block in a wide arc. When she struck back, he withdrew, leaving her wasting her energy against emptiness while he attacked elsewhere. Within a few moments, she was focused entirely on defense, and she could tell it wasn’t going to work for long. Waves of ripping, twisting space came closer and closer.
The next time he lashed out, Maya dodged instead of blocking, letting the energy slash past. That bought her a second to launch an assault of her own, throwing curving lines of flame in his direction. He deflected them, but she sprinted forward as he moved, coming at him with haken swinging.
He parried, and flame spat and crackled against the weird buzzing of his twisted blade. Maya disengaged, slipping around his guard and pressing in, and Tanax had to give ground. His power curved in against her from all sides, but Maya wove a nimble shield of flame to block. He was slower, off-balance, splitting his attention between trying to slip past her defenses and keeping her blazing haken away. She hammered him relentlessly, and he backed up another step, then another.
Stay close. Her swordwork was better than his; she could feel it, feel the desperation behind his parries. Let him get clear and he can wear me down. Keep it close and I can win.
Tanax apparently had come to the same conclusion. He hopped backward, momentarily out of range, and reached out with his free hand. Maya readied a block, but his wave of energy slashed out sideways, into one of the stone pillars. A chunk of granite broke free, falling toward her, and Tanax’s power lashed out and shattered it into a hundred razor shards plummeting toward her.
Stopping them with deiat would only mean spattering herself with molten rock, so Maya bulled forward, trusting to her panoply. Blue energy flared around her, and she felt a wave of cold, but it passed in moments. She caught sight of Tanax slipping around the pillar and hurried after him, incinerating a distortion wave he left in his wake. Her own power lashed out, touching the ground behind him and raising a wall of flame. He danced away from it and pressed his attack against her, blade swinging. Maya parried and took a step back, their crossed haken crackling and sparking.
Tanax’s eyes went suddenly wide. He stepped back from the clinch, mouthing something Maya couldn’t hear. His free hand went to his face, and Maya automatically followed suit, feeling something hot and wet on her skin.
Blood. There was a long cut running along her cheek. One of the rocks must have gotten me. It wasn’t deep, and she’d barely felt a sting, but—
The panoply. It had flared, she was certain. She ran her mind along the stream of deiat she was feeding it. But if it was working, it wouldn’t have let anything cut me—
Which meant that it wasn’t working.
Which meant that if he caught her with that haken, it wouldn’t be a rush of cold and a brief spell of unconsciousness. She would end up like Yora and the other rebels, carved into fragments by a blade of twisted space, bleeding from wounds still ragged with distorted echoes.
Fuck. Maya was suddenly aware of her heart racing, the sweat pouring down her cheeks, soaking her shirt, trickling past the Thing between her breasts. Fuck fuck plaguing fuck.
Tanax’s voice was still inaudible over the roar of her own flames, but she caught the word he mouthed at her. “Yield.”
If my panoply isn’t working, it’s not an accident. Call off the duel now, and there was no guarantee she’d get another chance. Not when they’re willing to go this far. If she’d been less careful stopping Tanax’s attacks, she could easily have died already.
She fixed Tanax’s gaze and shook her head. Then, as his eyes widened, she charged.
He met her with a flurry of parries, blocking every strike, backing away.
“Maya, please,” he said over the crackle and buzz of their weapons. “You’ll get yourself killed. Yield.”
“You yield,” Maya snarled, slamming her haken down. Tanax retreated another step, found his back to a pillar, and hastily parried. Maya pressed down with all her weight, forcing the paired weapons toward his face.
“I can’t,” Tanax gasped. “Master Nicomidi… he told me…”
“I can guess.” Maya thrust her free hand toward his stomach, fire gathering around it to form a blazing gauntlet. Tanax spun a shield of twisting force just in time, and her blow slammed against it. They stayed there for a long moment, locked together, two streams of deiat thrashing against each other like roaring beasts.
“I can’t… go easy,” Tanax gasped. “If you don’t… yield… I have to…”
“Do what you fucking like,” Maya grunted.
Tanax swallowed. He reached out to the ground below them, and sand exploded upward in a gritty geyser that drove Maya back, letting him spin away. Half-blind, she wiped at her eyes even as she charged after him, relying on her sense of deiat to feel his assault. Tanax ran, darting between the pillars, launching attacks over his shoulder as she pounded doggedly after him.
Stay close. She forced herself to move, though all she wanted to do was turn away and find somewhere to hide. Keep on him. She’d never been so aware of her body, in all its horrible fragility, soft skin and brittle bones, a bag of guts and muscles that stood about as much chance against the raw power of creation as—
As that girl. Behind her eyes, the rebel charred once again into a lifeless skeleton, and Yora fell in two pieces. Plague plague plaguing fuck what in the name of the Chosen am I doing—
She missed a block and threw herself to the ground just in time. A wave of rippling space slashed over her head, impacting a pillar behind her, blasting a crater in solid rock. Tanax skidded to a halt in a spray of sand.
“Maya, please—” His voice was hoarse.
Maya bounced back to her feet, breathing hard, bolts of flame lashing toward him. Tanax blocked and kept running, and Maya pounded after. Space boiled in his wake, ripples and twists of impossible geometry floating around her like dandelion seeds, then falling inward. Intercepting them took more and more of her attention, and Tanax got farther and farther ahead, darting through the maze of pillars.
He knows I can take him blade to blade. She wanted to scream with frustration. This isn’t going to work. Her legs already felt leaden, and she wasn’t going to be able to run him down, not with his power lashing at her from every direction. Sooner or later, he’ll get through, and—
She cut off that thought, abruptly, and came to a halt in the shadow of a pillar. Tanax paused as well, keeping a safe distance and concentrating on the threads of deiat that boiled all around him. Maya’s defenses retreated closer and closer, a shell of flame that contracted by the moment.
She raised her free hand and drew hard on her connection to deiat. Diverting power meant her defense weakened even faster, but she persisted, gathering energy for a single, colossal blow. She saw Tanax frown, and his attack slowed as he gathered power to counter. She imagined his confusion—an attack like this was wasteful, easy to see coming, trivial to deflect. She raised her hand, and a shield already shimmered in front of him.
Grinning savagely, Maya turned, shifting her aim. The energy she’d gathered lanced out as a single coherent beam of light, the backwash strong enough to kick the sand at her feet into a raging cyclone. It blasted across the arena, missed Tanax by a meter, and impacted on the stone pillar behind him. As the light faded, a thunderclap rolled out in its wake.
Tanax raised his haken, hesitated. Looked up.
The lance of pure energy had blown a hole in the stone pillar the size of a wagon wheel, sending the rock in molten spatters across the sand. Maya had judged her aim carefully, shearing away the stone on the side closer to Tanax. It started to tip, stone cracking with a sound like a blaster bolt, slowly at first but with unstoppable momentum.
It was falling behind him, blocking off his retreat, unless he wanted to test his panoply against a thousand tons of granite. Tanax turned back to Maya to find her charging straight at him, haken leveled like a spear.
Get close. A hundred wisps of twisted space raced toward her, threads of deiat blooming all around him. Maya focused her power in front of her, a wave of fire that cleared her path, and ignored the rest. Tanax adjusted, flinging waves and ripping tendrils of energy, too many and too fast, desperate to make her back off and resume the long-range battle he was sure to win.
Maya refused. She kept coming, twisting aside to avoid his attacks as Jaedia would have done, not meeting him force for force but letting his power flow past her. Behind him, the huge stone pillar hit the ground with a crunch, and a wave of dust and sand engulfed them both. Maya closed her eyes against it, navigating by deiat alone, feeling the energy flowing through Tanax and the concentrated power of his haken.
A line of power touched her hip, space warping to snag and tear, ripping away a chunk of flesh. Another caressed her left arm, shredding her skin like a wood saw. Pain hammered at the edge of her consciousness, but she kept moving. Almost there. Tanax was right in front of her, haken raised, blinded by flying grit. At that moment, it was the easiest thing in the world to duck, letting his blade swing over her head, and pivot on one foot with all the momentum of her charge. Her flaming sword caught him high in the chest, drawing a titanic burst of power from his panoply belt as the blow picked him up and tossed him against the broken pillar.
He vanished from her sight, his connection to deiat snuffed out. Maya opened her eyes in time to see him slump forward, falling on his face to lie motionless on the sand. She stood in the center of a whirlwind of dust, bleeding freely from arm and hip, her skin slick with sweat. At the center of her chest, she could feel the Thing humming to itself, resonating with her power. The flames of her haken roiled and crackled.
As the roar of her own pulse in her ears faded, she could hear the cheering of the crowd.
Slowly, Maya focused on the seats high above the arena. The Order was on its collective feet, the arcanists and the servants and the quartermasters, all shouting their approval. The centarchs were more reserved, as befitted their station, but their applause added to the storm of noise.
Pain rose around Maya, threatening to engulf her. Blood pattered to the sand beside her at a frightening rate. Her legs threatened to give way, but she forced herself to stay on her feet. She let her haken’s blade vanish and tossed it to one side. From the arena entrance she could see Evinda approaching with a gang of servants. I hope they brought a healer.
Above the arena, two things caught her eye. One was Beq, pushing forward to the very front, marked out by her golden spectacles. Maya gave her a weak wave, and her heart flopped as Beq waved back.
The other was the Council. Prodominus was on his feet, applauding and whistling through his teeth, and after a moment Baselanthus joined him. The rest had their heads bent together, in urgent discussion. Except for Nicomidi. Nicomidi was—
Gone.
Chapter 19
Gyre opened his eye and found himself in complete darkness. When he tried to move, his right arm didn’t respond, as though it was bound tightly against him, and something restrained his legs. His left hand flailed weakly across his body, and he felt his breath quicken in panic.
Focus. Calm. He gritted his teeth. He remembered—falling, and pain—
“Oh, you’re awake.” A pleasant voice, familiar. Gyre tried to clear his throat and coughed.
“E… Elariel?”
“Nice to meet you again,” the ghoul said politely. He heard her moving around, felt something brush against him. “You were in better shape last time.”
“Why can’t I see?” Gyre said.
“Ah, yes. Hold still.”
It took considerable effort for Gyre to keep himself calm enough to obey. He felt the ghoul bending over him, the warmth of her breath on his face, and then her fingers touched the skin around his good eye. He suppressed the urge to jerk away, clenching his jaw so hard his teeth ached. Something cool and wet dripped into his eye, and he blinked involuntarily. Elariel let go and moved away.
“This is similar to what you humans call ‘nighteye,’” she said. “But considerably more effective. Don’t light any fires before it wears off, or you may blind yourself.”
Whatever the stuff was, it worked quickly. Gyre blinked again and found the room fading into view in spite of the lack of any light.
He lay on a table in a small chamber. The only other furnishing was a tall stool on which Elariel sat, legs primly crossed, hands on her knee. Her long, expressive ears were raised, and her huge eyes, nearly all pupil, regarded him calmly.
“Where am I?” Gyre said, though he could think of only one possible answer. His breath caught.
“The city you humans call the Tomb,” Elariel said. “We call it”—she made a rolling, whistling sound he couldn’t hope to replicate, and went on—“which in your language translates to something like Refuge.”
The Tomb. Gyre looked around the windowless chamber. Refuge. The last city of the ghouls.
I made it.
“What happened to me?” He tried to sit up but couldn’t manage it, his right arm still restrained. “Where’s Kit?”
“Kitsraea is being tended to,” Elariel said. “As to what happened, the two of you jumped into a rock ingestor.”
“A… what?”
“A construct designed to reduce solid granite to rock slurry and deliver it to the city for use in construction.” There was a slight smile on her face, and her ears twitched. “Needless to say, you were injured in the attempt. It was a most unexpected move.”
“We were running low on options at the time,” Gyre said. “At least it worked.”
“We were forced to extract you before you reached the liquefaction pool,” Elariel said.
“Thanks,” Gyre muttered.
“No thanks are necessary,” she said. “Your digested remains would have ruined a perfectly good batch of building material.”
Now there was definitely a smile on the ghoul’s face. Gyre leaned back on the table, which was pleasantly spongy in texture.
“What’s wrong with my arm?” he said.
“It was broken in three places,” Elariel said, getting off her stool. “I fixed it in place to keep you from injuring yourself further. Do you feel any pain?”
“Not really,” Gyre said, propping himself up again on his other hand. He noticed for the first time that he was nearly naked, with no shirt and only a pair of short, loose trousers. Elariel, of course, wore no clothing at all, and Gyre wondered if that was normal for ghouls. “It just won’t move.”
He tried again and peered a little closer. His right arm was pressed tight against his side, and there was something strange—<
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His gorge suddenly rose. His arm wasn’t pressed against his side; it was fused to it, skin stretching unbroken from limb to torso. Plaguing fuck!
“Give me a moment.”
Elariel stood at his side, and her hands touched him, fingers running along the join. As Gyre watched, his skin split, painlessly, separating his arm from his body again. Bands of fresh pink were wound around his biceps and wrist, presumably where he’d been… repaired.
Dhaka. The life-magic of which the ghouls had been the foremost masters. For all that he’d come to the Tomb looking for their power, actually seeing it—feeling it used on his own flesh—roiled his stomach. There was no visible sign of the power, just Elariel running her fine-furred hands up and down Gyre’s body, pressing and testing. When she found a stray flap of skin, she touched it, and it retreated obediently. Gyre flexed his arm, and she nodded approval.
“How long have I been down here?”
“Three days now,” Elariel said. “Your legs were damaged, too, so you may feel some aches for another day, I think.”
Three days. Quickheal and bone-break potion—though they were dhak by Order standards—had never worked that fast.
“And Kit?” Gyre said.
“She should be awake before tomorrow.”
Okay. He sat up and met the ghoul’s gaze. She retreated a step, her smile fading, and her long ears drooped. Time for the real question.
“So why are we still alive?”
Elariel looked at him for a moment, saying nothing.
“You must kill anyone who stumbles into your Refuge, or it wouldn’t remain secret,” Gyre pressed.
“No one ‘stumbles in.’ We have had four hundred years to conceal ourselves.” Elariel sighed, her fur rippling. “But you are correct. If the Geraia knew you were here, they would have you killed at once.”
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