Colin clenched his teeth and heaved himself up and out of the Well.
Siobhaen drew and fired as she ran, the bowstring a consistent twang in her ears, setting the wood in her hand humming. The sukrael streaked down from the sides of the chamber, like black cloth blowing on a wind. Her first three arrows took out four of the Shadows, snagging in their silky folds and carrying them to the surrounding walls where they were pinned to the stone, the third hitting two of them as they converged on her. A shiver of surprise ran through her that the arrows didn’t shatter against the stone, but punched through it as if it were wood. She smiled in cold satisfaction when the sukrael began to writhe and tatter beneath the shafts as if being torn to shreds by a tempest.
To one side, she caught Shaeveran and the other Wraith blurring in and out of focus as they fought, their figures jumping from step to step, vanishing and appearing again twenty paces distant, sword and staff thrusting and lunging back and forth, until the disjointed fight began to make her head ache. Sounds of the fight intruded as well, oddly distorted as a grunt or shout began before fading or cutting off sharply as they disappeared.
She shoved their battle aside and focused on the Shadows with grim determination. She reached, pulled, and fired one last arrow, the creatures getting too close, then swung the bow in a sweep across her body. She felt the wood catch in their forms, the bow jerking in her hands as those closest were caught, but she solidified her stance and flung them out over the emptiness of the Well at her back. They fell into the pit, a high-pitched keening piercing through Siobhaen’s head, but she didn’t watch to see if they died. She dodged left and sprinted around the Well, trying to put some distance between her and the others.
As she ran, she felt a surge of power from the Source, the light throbbing like a heartbeat, the power within pushing against her skin. Beneath that massive force, she felt another power, recognized it as Aielan’s Light, the white fire burning deep within the earth here. She reached for it unconsciously as she ran, drew it into her body as she had done at the Well in the White Wastes. But there the pool of white fire hadn’t been as strong. She had been forced to dig deep, to root herself in ritual learned as an acolyte at the Sanctuary in Caercaern. It hadn’t come easily, and she’d only been able to draw upon it enough to create the wall of fire that had protected them from the Wraith and the sukrael that had attacked them.
Here, the white fire came willingly. It filled her, burning beneath her skin. She exulted in its power, the emotions of her first immersion in Aielan’s Light deep within the mountains beneath Caercaern smothering her. She cried out at their intensity, laughed as they seared her inside and out. She halted and spun, arrow placed and fired before any of the sukrael behind her could react. On the far side of the Well, she saw Eraeth doing the same, his face twisted into a snarl. But the sukrael were too fast, coming in from too many sides. They couldn’t cover their own backs, and there was nothing in the chamber they could use—
Except themselves.
She grimaced in distaste, but shouted, “We need to cover each other!” even as she pulled and fired again and again, spinning on her heels.
Across the Well, Eraeth grunted. “Agreed.”
He broke off his attack and ran, leaping up onto chunks of the crystal and jumping to the stone steps, weaving a path toward the opposite side of where they’d begun, where Shaeveran and the Wraith were still fighting. Siobhaen risked a glance in that direction, saw the Wraith appear long enough to snatch his blade out of the air as it fell, then blur away. She shot three arrows in succession and then bolted toward Eraeth.
They met in the middle of the steps, the sukrael streaking after both of them, perhaps forty remaining. Positioning themselves back to back, but with enough space between them to make drawing arrows easy, they began picking off as many of the sukrael as they could. Siobhaen listened to Eraeth’s breathing as she focused her attention outward, adjusting her stance left or right as Eraeth shifted. They were keeping the sukrael at bay, and distracted from Shaeveran, but it wouldn’t last long. Desperation crawled up from Siobhaen’s gut as she fired, her mind frantically searching for a solution.
As if reading her thoughts, Eraeth said, “We can’t keep this up much longer. I’m running out of arrows.”
“So am I.”
“What’s our strategy?”
Before Siobhaen could answer, light pulsed up and out of the Source, so intense she saw flashes of darkness on her vision even though she hadn’t been looking at the Well. She swore and blinked rapidly, catching one of the Shadows as it reared up before her. At the same time, the power of Aielan’s Light flared up inside of her, as if reacting to the pulse from the Source. Her heart surged at the sight of the Shadow so close, adrenaline sizzling through her skin, tingling in her arms. Without thought she released the arrow already nocked.
The arrow and the flare of the fire in her gut coincided. As the bow’s string hummed, the arrow burst into white flame and streaked toward the Shadow. It shrieked as it was caught, then burst into a fiery white conflagration, the arrow carrying it away like a shooting star. Where its flames touched the other sukrael, they also burst into white fire, flailing as their shrieks joined the others.
Siobhaen sucked in a breath in shock. She had never called Aielan’s Light without the use of a ritual before, but she had never felt so saturated in the Light before either. Whatever lay beneath the ground in this wasted, ruined city, it was more than simply a source for the Lifeblood of the Wells. Aielan’s Light resided here as well, a more powerful conflagration than what lay beneath Caercaern.
“What happened?” Eraeth shouted from behind her.
“I called on Aielan’s Light.”
“I meant what happened to the Source?”
She felt her shoulders prickle at the derision in his tone, but turned her focus on the Well, keeping one eye on the Shadows. The sukrael had halted their attack on her, hovering a short distance away as those caught by the white fire writhed in their death throes on the stone steps. Eraeth continued to fire arrows on his side.
The Source’s light pulsed from within the Well, brighter and faster than before. She could see the Lifeblood within now. It had risen nearly to the surface.
Her chest tightened in horror. “I think the Well is almost awake.”
Eraeth grunted. The twang of his bowstring halted. She turned.
“I’m out of arrows,” he said.
She reached and grabbed all of hers that remained, handing them over. “Take them,” she spat when he resisted. “I’ll use Aielan’s Light instead.”
He nodded once, then grabbed the arrows and shoved them into the quiver on his back. There weren’t many left.
She spun, reaching deep down inside herself, reaching deep inside the earth as well, down toward the source of Aielan’s Light beneath the city.
Then she called it forth.
Colin jabbed his staff into Walter’s stomach and unleashed a burning pulse of power as it connected, even as Walter brought his sword down across Colin’s chest and threw a wave of power from his other hand. The sword nicked Colin’s chin as he jerked his head away, cut into his arm on the downswing, and then the power hit him full force and flung him backward. Walter screamed as Colin’s blast burst from the end of the staff before disengaging. Both of them hit the floor and scrambled to their feet, breathing hard. Walter was covered in scorch marks—on his chest, stomach, arms, and back—his clothing seared and smoking. Colin’s entire body ached with bruises from the energy punches Walter had flung at him. Scores of nicks and cuts riddled his body. They glared at each other across the debris of the crystal dome, night sky above, the chamber lit only by the heartbeat of the Source at its center.
That heartbeat pulsed through Colin’s blood, seethed through his skin with its urgency. The Well was filling; it was nearly awake.
Walter leaped across the distance separating them and dove at Colin with an overhead swing. Colin barely caught it with his staff, t
he force of the blow driving Colin and Walter to the ground. Colin’s back slammed into the debris, stones and shards of crystal biting into his back, but he heaved upward with the staff and flung Walter up and over his body using all of his strength. As soon as Walter’s weight lifted off of him, he rolled into a crouch. He heard Walter grunt as he hit the ground, turned in time to see the Wraith slam into the side of one of the chunks of crystal, and then he pushed forward with his feet, bringing his staff up and around.
It cracked into Walter’s wrist. Bones crunched, and Walter screamed as he lost his grip on the blade again. But Colin didn’t back off. Before the sword had halted in mid-fall, his staff pounded into Walter’s chest, into his side, his legs, his shoulder. He pummeled his age-old nemesis, primeval pressure building in his chest, escaping in a wordless cry of pent-up frustration riddled with childhood fears, with the rage of youth, with grief and nearly two hundred years of hatred. Through the tears coursing down his flushed face, he beat at Walter’s head, pounded the staff into the bully’s body, seeing the youthful Walter who’d kicked the shit out of him in Portstown. He saw the blurred image of an older Walter, face swirling with blackness and speckled with blood, after he’d slaughtered the Tamaell of the Alvritshai in the parley tent at the Escarpment. He vented all of the stress of searching for him in the years since, following in the Wraiths’ footsteps as they awakened the Wells, trying to catch them, to destroy them, only to have them slip away, as insubstantial as the Shadows that had tainted them.
And then he heard Walter laughing through his own strained and shortened breath.
Colin jerked back, breaking off his attack, his breath coming so fast and so short that he felt light-headed. Weakness shook his arms, his body, and he coughed harshly, trying to seize control of his hyperventilation. His skin was flushed and he felt hot and nauseous, his whole body trembling. The sensation was familiar, and he suddenly realized that this was how he’d felt after attacking Walter and his cronies with the sling back in Portstown, when he’d been only twelve years old.
And still Walter laughed. Face bloody and bruised, bones cracked, he still sucked in breath after breath and laughed. From his crumpled position against the slab of crystal, the Source’s light pulsing blue against his black-swirling, blood-spattered skin, he watched Colin, his grin cutting into Colin like a knife.
Colin straightened as Walter’s laughter faded into chuckles. When Walter tried to shift and grimaced in pain, Colin could see his teeth were stained red with blood. But still he chuckled.
Colin frowned in confusion. He stepped forward, stood over Walter, the Wraith staring up at him from where he’d collapsed.
“Why are you laughing?” he asked, although the question wasn’t for Walter. He didn’t expect the Wraith to answer, was surprised when Walter did.
“Because you’re too late,” Walter said, choking on blood as he spoke. He swallowed, face twisting in pain, and yet he grinned his bloody grin, saying more forcefully, “You’re too late.”
The Source suddenly flared with light, Colin turning as it pulsed upward and out, surging up through the floor and through Colin’s body. The heartbeat that had been escalating reached its height. Partially blinded, Colin could still make out the Lifeblood that had nearly reached the lip of the Well. At some point, while fighting with Walter, or attempting to beat him senseless, he’d let his hold on time go. They were in real time now, and as they fought, the process that Walter and the Wraiths had started had neared completion.
The Source stirred from its slumber.
With a sickening twist of rage, Colin realized it had all been a ruse. The entire fight between them had been nothing but a distraction. Walter had simply been keeping Colin occupied while the Well continued to fill.
Colin snapped his attention back to Walter to find the Wraith watching him.
“You can’t kill me,” Walter said. “We can’t die.”
“No,” Colin said, shifting his grip on his staff. He felt something deep inside him harden. “Not yet. But I can hurt you.”
Fear flickered for a brief moment across Walter’s face as Colin lifted his staff and then drove its end into Walter’s chest two-handed, releasing the power of the Lifeblood that coursed through him through the living wood in a flood. He held nothing back, the shame that had caused him to halt his attack with the sling in Portstown and had sent him staggering from Walter here in this ruined city a moment ago burned away. Walter screamed, louder than anything Colin had heard before, the pain in the sound reverberating in Colin’s head, in his bones, and yet he ground the staff harder into Walter’s chest. Walter writhed beneath the onslaught, arms juddering against the floor and crystal slab, legs kicking, heels drumming a staccato rhythm against the stone.
When the scream died, Colin jerked his staff away, Walter’s body arcing on its side as residual energy coursed through it, then collapsing back to the floor, the Wraith unconscious. Beneath the blackened and charred circle where his staff had connected to his body, Walter’s chest still moved. He still breathed.
Colin nearly drove the staff into him again, but wrenched himself away from the body and stalked toward the edge of the Well. The Lifeblood lapped within a few inches of the edge of the stone, but it had not fully awakened. There might still be time.
He raised his arms, staff in one hand—
And then sank into the power that coursed around him, into the eddies and flows of the Lifeblood, down and down into the Well, diving deep into the reservoir and the Source beneath. He let the Lifeblood fill him. Through its power, he felt a sudden flare, although it was distant and removed. He tasted it, recognized it as Aielan’s Light, and relaxed. Siobhaen must have called it. She was the only one he knew of in the chamber besides himself who could control it.
He wondered briefly why she’d needed it, but then shoved that concern aside. He didn’t have time. The Well was almost full, almost awake. Its power had escalated and was reaching its crest. It would peak within moments. He needed to halt it, or he would never be able to stop the attacks on the Seasonal Trees. If the Wraiths managed to solidify this power, they would be able to use it for years against the three races, decades perhaps. It might take him that long or longer to bring the rest of the Wells into balance enough that he could protect its power from the Wraiths.
He searched the Source for a way to halt the awakening. Lifeblood surged from the reservoir below into the Well, the currents of the underground lake and the surrounding streams that fed and stemmed from it forcing the water higher. He knew from his attempts to balance the Wells to the west that cutting off the flow along one branch or widening it along another would affect the entire system. It had taken him years of experimentation to figure out how it had worked. The introduction of the reservoir had complicated that system immeasurably. Yet he had only a few minutes to figure out how to stop it now.
He paused his frantic search of the currents and focused on the Well in the ruined city. Trying to calm his thundering heart, heightened by the pulse of the awakening, he let himself sink into the flows beneath the city. The Lifeblood coursed through a maze of tunnels and chambers, like those the dwarren used beneath the plains. Those corridors lay everywhere, connected to the lake far beneath. All he needed to do was find which currents would ease the pressure on the one filling the Well and then divert them.
He tried to calm his breathing, tried to relax.
There.
Excitement cut through him, but he forced it back, focused on the one channel he’d chosen and then began pouring power through himself into the flows there. He pushed them to one side, tried to divert them into a new passage, as if he’d taken his hand and plunged it into the edge of a stream to affect the currents.
The Lifeblood reacted, swirling around him as if he were merely a stone, creating new eddies, but not blocking the main channel feeding the Well. The stream was too large. He needed more power.
Opening himself up further, he let more of the power of
the Wells course through him, felt his presence expand in the stream, but it still wasn’t enough. He needed more. Shaking with the effort, he opened himself wider, and wider still, felt his control of the power trembling in his grasp. He had never extended himself this far, had never absorbed and held this much within himself, had never allowed so much of the Lifeblood to flow through him. He shuddered in ecstasy, on the verge of allowing it to carry him away, tasted its coldness to his core, the scent of ice and loam and earth overwhelming him.
And it wasn’t enough.
“I can’t,” he murmured, trying to push himself further, to block the flow of Lifeblood. “It’s too far along. I’m not strong enough. I can’t stop it.”
His voice drew his awareness back to his body, drew him back to the edge of the Well, the Lifeblood a finger’s breadth away from the top now. He felt Aielan’s Light burning around him, felt Siobhaen and Eraeth’s presence on the far side of the Well, heard Siobhaen shouting something, her voice thick with warning.
“I can’t,” he whispered, trying to answer her, despair beginning to wash through him.
The Wraiths were going to succeed. Walter was going to win. They’d planned everything too well, Colin and Aeren and the dwarren reacting too late.
Then pain punched through the despair, a white-hot, ragged pain that began in his back and erupted from his chest, searing through his body as it arched, someone grabbing hold of his shoulder to keep him steady as the pain widened, gripping his entire chest, sending sheets of fire into his arms and legs. He glanced down as blood gurgled up in the back of his throat, coating his mouth, and saw the end of Walter’s blade jutting out of his chest.
Walter’s breath blew hot against his neck as the Wraith whispered, “You never did open yourself completely to the Lifeblood and all it offered as I did, did you?”
Leaves of Flame Page 49