All had not been undone, Xhea saw. The ends of Shai’s fingertips seemed hazy, as were the ends of her bare toes. But she was there, and if she was not whole and untouched—well, neither was Xhea.
Xhea laughed then, a faint chuckle that was nonetheless filled with wonder. At the sound Shai opened her eyes and looked at her. Slowly, slowly, she smiled.
I’m so sorry, Xhea thought, for she could not move, could not speak. Sorry for the pain she must have felt, the betrayal—
No, Shai said in silence. It’s okay. The thought was gentle, understanding; it did not stop the pained, guilt-ridden tangle of Xhea’s thoughts—but it eased them. Shai reached for Xhea’s cheek as if she might brush away the tracks of her fallen tears.
Don’t go yet, Xhea thought, and the words flowed between them, one to the other. Wait for me. We’ll go together.
But what she said was, “That looked like it hurt.”
The first words that Shai had ever spoken to her.
Shai laughed, the sound echoing around them in the dim, dusty underground, and said the only thing that she possibly could: “A good observation.”
Dawn was long past. Already, the sun was rising high; a span of hours had passed while Xhea and Shai were underground. But it was not the light that made Xhea stagger to a stop and stare—not the light that made Shai gasp and cover her mouth with her hands—but everything else.
Before, though the streets had been undeniably changed—if, captured, they had become a nightmare version of her home—they had at least been recognizable. The world that she saw upon rising from the underground was not.
It was not like the ruins, for all that what surrounded her was ruined. The ruins had been worn by time, by age, by rain and wind and snow; their edges had been blunted, the memory of what they had once been grown over by vines and weeds. Here, there was no such softening. There was no forgetting.
There was only destruction.
Logic told her where she stood, upon which street her feet rested. Memory told her what she should see—only memory. Because, staring, there was nothing of the buildings she knew in the rubble that remained.
Brick and stone lay in great piles, uneven, crumbled; concrete and plaster dust covered everything like a layer of fine, gray snow. She recognized little: the rounded arch of a doorway, the twisted metal of a balcony’s rail. The glitter of glass, glinting like lost diamonds in the midst of so much dirt and dust.
Xhea turned, looking around her. She could see farther than seemed proper for any vantage on the Lower City streets. There was little left to obscure her view.
Orren had fallen. She remembered the feel of it falling, and suddenly had to close her eyes, disoriented by the Lower City’s memory and the contrast to her own flesh, so small and warm and fragile. She pushed the memory away.
Orren had fallen, yet Edren remained, the ancient hotel standing defiant against the wreck and ruin around it. Defiant against the whole of the City above. But its facade glittered with Tower Lozan’s spell, a net of bright magic waiting to tear it down.
It’s all that’s left, she thought—but it was not true. Farther, there were other, smaller buildings still standing. There was less worth in the materials that might be claimed from those walls than the magic needed to tear them down. Xhea had felt them when she had, however briefly, been the whole of the Lower City; she heard their presence, even now, in the living Lower City’s echoing song.
But as she turned and turned again, that was all she could see: Edren and black-wrapped Farrow standing like sentinels, guarding their broken domain.
Gone, so much of it’s gone. The thought echoed as if it had been spoken, reverberating across the landscape. But for all her despair, Xhea felt hope, too—she felt, strangely, like laughing. Because across the Lower City, smoke had begun to rise.
No, not smoke—magic. Dark magic curled and spiraled as it lifted into the air, like summer rain turned to mist above sun-hot pavement.
“It’s working,” Shai said, looking around. “The Lower City is fighting back.”
Xhea nodded—though the growing fog of dark power had little to do with the plan she had attempted to communicate with the entity. No matter; whatever its intent, it was having an effect.
Despite the destruction, it was clear that the poorer Towers had not finished ransacking the rubble. But as that magic rose from the streets and the buildings and the earth beneath them all, they abandoned that work—they had to. If even weak Lower City dwellers shied away from the touch of the magic in the underground, Xhea could only imagine how that power felt to City citizens.
Voices cried out. From nearby, Xhea heard the sound of running footsteps, cursing, a door slamming—then an aircar shot skyward, spell exhaust shimmering in its wake.
Farther away, another aircar rose, and another. Xhea laughed then, watching as they lifted into the sky, one by one, fleeing the ground. Fleeing the power that flowed into the air, faster and darker with every passing moment.
“That’s right,” she called after them. “Run!”
Higher, in the safety of the remaining buildings that were two stories, or three, others lingered. Xhea saw shields pop into being, like bright glints in the morning sunshine. People protecting themselves so that they could continue their work.
Anger surged at the sight.
Xhea did not need to speak; she reached for Shai’s hand and found her fingers already there, waiting. Magic leapt between them as if their joined hands were a second tether; magic flowed through them, bright and dark, in an endless loop that built and built as it moved from one to the other and back again.
Shai’s light flared beside her, while Xhea’s power, dark and heavy and slow, rose from her body in a great roiling pillar. A figure of light; a figure of shadow. Hand in hand they walked down the broken street, and people cried out as they drew near.
No words passed between them; words were not needed anymore. As one they reached out, and their coiling magics twined together into something that was almost a spell. It gleamed like tarnished silver.
That magic grabbed hold of the spell wrapped around Edren, distant though the skyscraper was. As one, they lifted their hands and ripped the spell away, leaving its spell lines to unravel in midair. It had been no small working, and yet they unmade it in an instant.
A sentry on a nearby rooftop leveled a weapon at them. Xhea felt no fear, no hesitation; only reached toward him and clenched her hand into a fist. Shai mirrored the action, and the man’s weapon fell from limp fingers to smash on the ground below. Another gesture, and his protective shield popped like a bubble.
“Run,” Xhea said to him, and he did.
They did not kill. They did not want more blood and death, only for the scavengers of the poorer Towers to run and hide—to run like they’d made the Lower City dwellers run.
Around them, the Lower City’s magic grew and grew. It rose in huge black columns toward the sky, like Xhea’s power writ large. The living Lower City reached toward the Towers, reached toward the Spire with great, black arms made only of dark magic, as if it wanted to pull them, one by one, to the ground.
And it sang. Xhea heard herself reflected in that song—some hint of her anger, perhaps, or her determination. In its rise and fall it seemed that she could hear her voice, her laughter, the edge of her sharpened tongue.
Of all the teachers that the Lower City might have had, she wished now that there might have been someone other than her. Someone not quite so bruised and battered by life; someone without so much unspent anger hiding beneath their skin.
Or maybe hers was the truth it had needed.
She did not know, only laughed as its power rose, twining, and reached the Central Spire’s lowermost point. The Spire was a channel for magic; as Xhea watched, the Lower City’s power entered that channel and surged upward.
Higher on the Spire, there was a flash of magic.
Later Xhea would think, There was no warning.
But it was not true. The
Spire’s warning had come three days before, announced by a light-clad Messenger. It had reverberated through the whole of the Lower City and the ruins beyond; its echoes were felt, even now, in the buildings’ collapse.
What Xhea saw? It was only a flash, like sunlight glinting from a gladiator’s descending blade.
As they stared upward, bright and dark, feeling as if the City itself should fall at their feet and beg forgiveness, magic rushed across the sky, from Tower to Tower and into the Spire itself.
The Central Spire attacked.
The Lower City was its buildings, and its buildings had fallen. The Lower City was its people, and its people had fled. The Lower City was its streets and its tunnels and the earth beneath them—the Lower City was its singing, flaring heart of dark power—and the Central Spire attacked them all.
How would you kill a Tower? Lorn had asked, trying to understand what the Spire might do. He might well have asked, How would you kill a person?
A spell, a shot, a blade: these were, in the end, only tools; only methods of achieving that deadly end. To kill, one had to strike at an exposed weakness. To kill quickly, instantly, one aimed for the head or neck or heart.
The heart, Xhea thought—it was all she had time for.
A blade of bright magic stabbed down.
She was not the target, but instinct made Xhea cringe, raising her hands. Magic flared around her, bright and dark; magic clashed, warring, until it suddenly merged, layer after layer of protections springing into being.
“Shai,” Xhea said, but she could not hear her own voice or pull her scattered thoughts together. There was only the sound of that impact—a great, terrible clash like blades meeting, and the shock of an explosion as debris flew skyward.
The concussive wave sent Xhea tumbling into the rubble, dragging Shai in her wake. Xhea’s instinctive attempts at a shield failed as she rolled across the broken ground, but Shai’s held, protecting her as rocks and shards of asphalt fell like hail. Yet even those shields shuddered beneath the force of the wave of magic that followed, bright and burning like a wash of noonday sun.
Xhea blinked, blinded, staring at after-images. The Spire had attacked with a spell, one larger than anything she’d imagined possible. Its lines of intent had been huge, each woven by one of the channels along the Spire’s sides; airborne, each line was larger around than a person with their arms stretched wide. Together they created the blade that she’d seen, a massive beam of power that had formed beneath the Spire’s lowermost point and stabbed toward the ground fast as thought.
Yet something had deflected the blade, or dispersed its power; for even as she struggled to regain her feet, dazed, within the embrace of Shai’s shielding magic, Xhea could hear the Lower City’s song.
“Are you okay?”
Xhea didn’t hear Shai’s words so much as feel them, like a thought spoken with the ghost’s voice. Xhea’s ears were ringing, and she staggered, disoriented—but she nodded. She was not harmed; no more than before.
But the Lower City?
Smoke rose—real smoke, thick and choking, twin to the dark magic that even now covered the Lower City in a haze. That power was no longer shaped into columns, nor into hands that reached skyward, but aimless coils of magic that scattered in the wind.
Like blood, seeping from wounds.
“We have to get to safety,” Shai said. Xhea nodded, because the ghost was right, for all that her words seemed impossible to implement. They were blocks from the Lower City’s living heart—blocks from the point where the Central Spire’s lowermost tip hovered poised above that heart, bright magic gathering for another strike.
Blocks, at such a time, felt like no distance at all.
Xhea’s hand tightened on her cane and she stumbled forward, trying to put as much space between her and the Lower City’s living heart—as much space between her and the Spire—as possible.
“Edren,” Xhea managed. The word was almost a cough, tasting of concrete and ash—but Shai understood.
Before them the skyscraper stabbed skyward. Its surface was pitted and scarred, the flourishes and details of its ancient façade scrubbed away by spell and impact. Most of its precious glass windows had been blown out, leaving only dark holes that gaped like mouths filled with glittering, ragged-edged teeth.
But Edren had been her home when all else had been taken from her; and if she could not name it hers, hope rose in her nonetheless at the sight.
Safety, Xhea thought, in spite of everything. Shelter.
The road to Edren was not clear. Debris covered it: huge chunks of fallen walls, bricks and breeze-blocks, scattered pieces of what had once been chairs, beds, clothing, dishes. Navigating those pieces turned the street into a maze, while scrambling over them was an impossibility. Even if she’d been whole and undamaged, Xhea knew the danger of such piles. They were as likely to fall and crush her, trap her, bury her, as they were to allow her safe passage.
Behind her, Xhea felt the Lower City’s defenses rising. Like her, it had no complex spells, no allies that might grant it power; like her, it had no great knowledge of the workings of dark magic. The Lower City had only its own power, ancient and raw; countless decades of magic poured from the City above, pooling deep into the ground.
It should have died. Oh, she knew it; she had seen that blade of power. Blinking, she could still see it: a harsh white line bisected her vision.
The living Lower City should have died, and yet she had warned it. Xhea had given all of herself to tell it of the Spire’s intent; she had given, unknowingly, all of Shai. And as she’d held what was left of the ghost of her friend, she had thought it a mistake—the effort useless, the sacrifice wasted.
Now she glanced back and watched as the Spire’s spelled blade stabbed once more into the ground—and was repelled.
Shai could not stand against that spell, nor could Xhea; they did not have to. It was not the two small, fleeing girls that the Spire targeted, though they were so close to its line of fire. Xhea stumbled and fell, crying out, and Shai followed her down, her protections flaring bright as Xhea curled and cringed and covered her face with her hands.
Again there came that terrible sound, and a concussive gust of wind and dust and magic passed over them. Beneath it was the Lower City’s song. But it seemed not like a song anymore so much as a scream, a cry that echoed out as if from a thousand inhuman voices. A scream of pain, yes; but also a scream of defiance.
It understood death as Xhea understood it—death as she had seen and known it.
And it did not want to die.
There was so much magic. Even with her eyes closed, Xhea was blinded; even with Shai’s shields, it scoured her tender skin as if it wished to scrape flesh away to bone. But this time, Shai stood strong, not bowed beneath that onslaught as Xhea was—and as magic and thoughts passed between them without barrier, Xhea saw through Shai’s eyes.
Color. The overcast sky was white and palest gray, the sun’s glow but a brightening of that haze—but beyond? The Towers shone like jewels, blue and red, purple and green, each lit from the inside. Each sent magic to the Spire, and that power shone in pale echo of those tones, turning the sky into a rainbow wash of color.
The Spire absorbed the Towers’ power, channeled it; and through Shai’s eyes the blade of power that the Spire stabbed downward was not the harsh, blinding white that Xhea saw, but purest gold, edged and glittering.
A thought rose that felt like Shai’s, appalled: They’re loaning power from so many Towers. The expenditure—the debt—
Xhea cared little for the long-term political and financial ramifications of the power she saw—that Shai saw—cast across the heavens. She cared only that so much of the City was arrayed against them. Arrayed, in truth, against the heart of the Lower City.
The ground shook and Xhea’s view abruptly shifted; she saw only from her own magic-dazzled eyes the gray patterns of the rock-strewn street.
From the point of impact came the smell of bur
ning—but not smoke and ash, like the market fire, but something darker, hotter, its scent sharply metallic. Not burning, she realized. Melting.
Again the ground shuddered, and Xhea looked up to see chunks of glowing rock and molten metal arc overhead to smash and splatter across the rubble some span distant. Magic, too, sailed over her in a great rope-like stream: one of the spelllines that formed the Spire’s blade had been deflected, and unraveled as it flew.
Xhea watched as the spell smashed into Edren’s side.
The ancient hotel’s peak exploded, the top ten stories turned to fragments that spewed out like a firework of stone. The rest of the skyscraper shuddered, swaying beneath the force of that impact. Cracks appeared, deep and fast, and a whole section of Edren’s façade suddenly fell away, unmoored from its walls.
For a moment, the broken skyscraper stood, its top stories missing, its front stripped bare and its inner workings exposed. Then, like a weary person sagging to their knees, it fell.
Compared to the battle between the Lower City and the Spire, the crash of Edren’s collapse was a small sound, for all that its impact shook the ground. Even so, for a moment it was all that Xhea could hear, all that she could see. She watched as a great cloud of dust billowed up and out, and could only stare in blank-faced shock.
Everything had fallen, everything—yet somehow she had thought, somehow she had believed—
But no. There was no safety here, no shelter. For she stood within the ring drawn on the Spire’s map—and the territories that the Lower City claimed by right of magic—and she should have known better than to believe there was any other ending. She should have known better than to hope.
Xhea turned away from the rubble that had been Edren and looked back toward the Lower City core. Darkness rose, thick and dark, pushing back the shining remnants of the Spire’s latest attack. Yet the Lower City was weakening. Xhea heard fatigue in its song, while in the City above, more magic flowed into the Spire from the Towers, and more magic, and more.
Already the Spire glowed as it readied its next strike, light building along its length like mirrors reflecting the sun.
Towers Fall Page 34