Reaping the Aurora

by Joshua Palmatier

  Allan resumed his trek toward Lienta. He waited until Lienta noticed him and paused in the report he had been giving the Matriarch. After leaning forward for a quick word with her, he motioned Allan forward.

  “We’d like to accept your offer of sanctuary at the Needle,” the Matriarch said, her tone formal, “presuming the offer still stands once we reach it.”

  “It will, unless Kara and Commander Ty are no longer in control.”

  The Matriarch smiled grimly. “One thing I have learned since the Shattering is how to adjust to new and changing situations.” Allan didn’t comment; she appeared to be taking the loss of their enclave and embassy rather well, unperturbed by the fact that she currently sat in the driver’s seat of a cart in the middle of a cracked and crumbling ley station. “We cannot stay here,” she said, shifting her attention partially toward Lienta. “This Baron will soon discover the ley tunnel’s destination and he’s certain to come here to find us.”

  “Agreed,” Lienta said. Allan noted that none of them presumed that Baron Devin had died in the ley tunnel. “What do you propose?”

  She gave her captain a droll look. “From what you’ve told me, we have little choice. The Baron is to the north, the Gorrani to the south, and this auroral storm presses in from the east. We must head southwest, cross the Urate River, and find passage up to the upper plains.”

  “We know of a way up to the plains,” Allan offered. “It can accommodate the carts as well.”

  “Good. Lienta?”

  The captain nodded toward Allan. “It appears you are to have that alliance after all, although not precisely as you expected. If your men could lead the way?”

  Allan bowed tightly toward the Matriarch. “Of course.”

  As he turned away, Dylan trailing him as he made his way toward Gaven and the others, Lienta began passing on orders to Boskell and his other lieutenants.

  “Are you going to be able to find the same chasm we came down to get here?” Dylan asked.

  “Let’s hope so.”

  A half hour later, he, Bryce, Dylan, and Gaven led the Temerite caravan, such as it was, from the steps of the Eld ley station and through the streets of Eld toward the bridge over the Urate. They crossed into what had once been East Forks as darkness fell, the ley globes on the walls of the University shining on the waters of the river beneath them. Allan caught the silhouettes of a few watchers on the walls and wondered what Cason, Sorelle, and her band of Tunnelers thought of the activities of the last few days. She must have seen what had happened at the Temerite enclave, even if she didn’t know the details. He wondered if she still felt secure at the ancient University, behind what had once been defensive walls for Erenthrall’s founding Baron. Perhaps she did.

  But she didn’t know that Devin now controlled Hounds.

  They trekked another two hours through the city, winding through the streets in the darkness, using as few torches as possible, halting only when exhaustion finally forced the issue. The Temerites—both commoners and guardsmen—camped out in the middle of the street, most simply collapsing where they’d halted.

  As food was passed around—overseen by the Matriarch and Janote—Allan, Lienta, and Bryce found the nearest tall building and ascended to the rooftop, Lienta with a spyglass.

  They scanned the northeastern sections of the city in silence. Fire still raged inside a section of the Temerite enclave. The auroral storm bore down on the city, rippling along a line east of the enclave with sheets of vibrant green, yellow, and deep purple. Allan shivered at the sight. Directly in its path, the streets were lined with torches: the Gorrani closing in on Devin’s men. More torches surrounded the Eld station. And on all sides, sporadic ley lights and firelight glowed or flickered—the University, the broken towers of Grass, and various other minor camps strewn through the streets.

  “The Gorrani are going to run right into it,” Lienta said, his spyglass focused on the auroral storm.

  “What will it do to them?” Bryce asked.

  “Who knows.” Allan leaned forward onto the wall, a deep-seated weariness settling into his bones. “What about Devin? Is he following us?”

  Lienta shifted the spyglass toward the Eld station and the activity there. “No. Not yet. I’ll have watchers posted.”

  Shouts suddenly rose from the street below. All three of them shifted their attention downward, Lienta lowering his spyglass.

  Temerite guards were scrambling to form a line across the street, facing southward. None of them could see what had roused them, though, until a figure stepped into the edge of their camp’s torchlight, followed by at least ten loping Wolves.

  They halted twenty paces away from the edge of the guards.

  “Grant,” Bryce muttered. “And it looks like he’s found a few new recruits.”

  “But not his wife.”

  Below, a few of the Wolves lifted their snouts to the sky and howled.

  They’d find the passage out of the sunken city now for certain.

  “How much longer until they finish repairing the wall?” Kara asked.

  Commander Ty gestured toward where the breach that Hernande and Jerrain had created to get into the Needle marred the uniformity of the outer wall below them. “Still weeks away. And it will never be as sound as it was before. Your mentors managed significant damage during their little rescue.”

  Scaffolding had been erected both inside and out, workers busy shoring up and rebuilding the outer sections. The University mentors hadn’t been subtle, blowing a gap in the wall that they could use for an entrance, then collapsing the wall above to fill it in. Kara and Ty stood at the edge of the indentation in the walkway at the top. Rather than remove all the broken stone from the mentor’s handiwork, the engineers had elected to simply wall in the collapse. They were within ten feet of the walkway now.

  But the damage done here was nothing compared to that of the quake.

  “What about that?” Kara asked, turning from her perusal of the wall to jut her chin out at the massive chasm that cut through the wall and the city beyond. “Have we come up with any way to repair that damage?”

  “Repair it? No. I don’t think we can. Is it a breach? Yes. But it’s not as significant a flaw in our defenses as what was left by your mentors . . . or even the main gates, for that matter. The chasm itself is deep enough that we don’t need to worry about men approaching from that direction, although we’ve obviously kept up a watch. An army would have to scale the rather unstable walls of the chasm, and we’d notice any army of decent size doing so before they arrived. What we do have to worry about there is a smaller force intent on sneaking in. But again, I’ve placed watchers along both walls.”

  “What about extending our walls along both sides of the chasm?”

  “It’s possible. But erecting a wall of that size and length would be a significant endeavor, requiring massive manpower and hours of labor, not to mention a ton of stone.”

  Kara eyed the dark mouth of the fissure, like a scar from the battle against nature that had played out here, a scar caused by the ley. Baron Arent and Prime Wielder Augustus had sought to enslave the ley, and the earth had fought back. This was only one such manifestation of that battle. According to their scouts, sent out in all directions in an ever-widening circle, there were fissures and chasms of various sizes like this everywhere.

  But the earth had settled . . . for the moment. She knew the calm was only temporary. As Father Dalton claimed, they still hadn’t repaired the ley. In that respect, the Kormanley priest was correct, which was one reason Kara despised him so much.

  “We have plenty of stone,” she said, pointing toward the buildings near the chasm that had collapsed during the quake. “We need to clear that stone away anyway. Why not use it for a wall?”

  Ty planted his hands on his hips as he contemplated the ruins of the streets. “I suppose we could take those
not dealing with what little farming Father Dalton had the residents doing and have them start work on that. The engineers will be ecstatic with a new project. And it may keep some of the followers of Father Dalton occupied as well. They’re becoming more agitated the longer we keep Dalton isolated in his rooms.”

  “Are they causing problems?”

  “Not yet, but it’s only a matter of time. We haven’t allowed him to talk to them in five days.”

  “He’s gone longer than that without speaking to them before.”

  “But he hadn’t revealed a new vision then. They’re anxious about what it means and unhappy that Dalton isn’t there to calm their fears.”

  Kara lowered her gaze to the wall’s parapet, kicking a loose rock over the edge. “Let them stew in their fears for a while longer. Maybe some of them will realize that his prophecies are nothing but words.”

  “Perhaps.”

  “Do you think we should let him talk to them?” she demanded sharply. “You didn’t think so at that first meeting.”

  Ty didn’t flinch at her tone. “He might quell their fears.”

  “And he might goad them into doing something more drastic than simply gathering in the square to hear him preach. No.” She shook her head vehemently. “We already allow him too much leeway. He can speak when we’re ready to let him speak, not before. Let them wait.”

  “We won’t be able to wait too much longer. A few days at most.” Then, as if he were broaching a new topic, even though Kara knew he wasn’t: “How goes the work with the new Nexus?”

  “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “That well, huh?”

  She waved a dismissive hand toward the thin spire of the Needle and turned toward the nearest stairwell down off the wall, Ty following. “What are the latest reports from our scouts?”

  Ty let her change the subject. “We’re still running across random groups of people to the northwest and west, survivors who hunkered down in the hills and mountains that separate us from the Demesnes. Some have returned with our scouts here to the Needle, others choose to remain where they are. Those we’ve questioned who recently come from across the mountains claim that the Demesne Houses have sunk into tribal warfare. Our best guess is that the Shattering destabilized their already precarious political structure. Hernande agrees. Before the Shattering, the Houses vied with each other constantly, but the politics were always handled covertly, with spies and assassinations. Now, they have armies marching on each other. Entire Houses have been wiped out.”

  “What about to the south?”

  “The Gorrani.” They’d reached the base of the wall and headed toward the temple, winding their way through the crowded tents between the wall and the ring of stone buildings near the temple. The mingled scents of roasted meat and corn, spices, and the stench of too many people living too close together assaulted them. “They appear to have withdrawn from their original encampment to the south, since the river dried up. They may have returned to their homeland in the Flats.”

  “Let’s hope so.” Kara worried about the Gorrani, even though she worked with Okata, a Gorrani Wielder, on a daily basis. They could be reasonable, even if they were easy to anger and violent in their reactions. But Okata knew what had happened in the pit of the node during the Gorrani attack; those outside the walls—those who had survived the fiery white surge of ley that Lecrucius had released—didn’t. “And to the north and east?”

  “We’ve heard nothing from Allan’s group, and our scouts have seen nothing of the raiders from Haven between Erenthrall and the Hollow. No significant activity east either. Still no contact with anyone from Temer. There were few people living on the plains between Erenthrall and Temer to begin with, except along the ley barge lines, and most of them appear to have withdrawn either east or west, leaving the plains in that direction empty.”

  “Then I’d better return to the node and find Hernande and the other mentors. I agreed to meet with them days ago.” She scrubbed her face with her hands. “There’s just not enough time for everything. I never realized how much was involved in leading a city. I wasn’t cut out for this.”

  Ty halted. “That’s why you aren’t doing it alone. I’ll return to the barracks, check up on Darius and the rest of the enforcers. After your meeting with Hernande, you should get some rest.”

  Kara waved him off, then proceeded to trudge toward the temple, her shoulders already tensed in frustration. She knew Cory and Hernande felt the ley and the Tapestry were connected somehow, but she still didn’t see how that was going to help her heal the distortion over Tumbor. It wasn’t a matter of control, but of size. The distortion was huge, ten times the size of the one that had engulfed Erenthrall, maybe more. The Nexus Father Dalton and Lecrucius had created here at the Needle had barely managed to repair the one in Erenthrall; she didn’t think it was powerful enough to heal Tumbor.

  But she owed it to Cory and Hernande to at least listen.

  She found them on one of the tiers of the temple, the students standing in a circle around Jerrain, Hernande, and Cory. She didn’t see Sovaan anywhere, but that didn’t surprise her. The pompous administrator felt working with the students was beneath him.

  As she approached, Jerrain said in a professorial tone, “See how the folds of the Tapestry are woven together? Not broken—you should never tear the fabric of reality—but if they are twisted and layered one atop the other, over and over again, and then pulled taut, you can create substance from thin air. This is what the mentors who worked with the Prime Wielders did to create the conduits for whatever construct the Primes needed in their work. Some of the conduits were permanent, like those that direct the ley lines through the junctions in the city, creating channels in midair so that the ley would run along the appropriate path. We’ll show you how to tie this weave off to make it permanent once we figure that out ourselves. Most of the constructs were only temporary, channeling the ley to a specific location so that the Wielders could use it to sow the great towers of Grass or imbue the cloth used in the sails of the flying ley barges with ley, something like that. This block I’ve created before you, with the help of Hernande, will dissolve the moment we shift our focus elsewhere. But for now, it should be solid enough to hold a person’s weight. Cory?”

  Jerrain waved toward the air before him, in the center of the circle of students. Kara noted that they’d placed themselves in the middle of the sun emblem of the stone mosaic on this tier. As Cory stepped forward, she reached out with her senses, the ley in the node pulsing intensely behind her, but could feel nothing in the area where the mentors and students were concentrating. However, Cory set one foot on what appeared to be empty space, then pushed off with his other foot, until he stood hovering a foot above the stone sun. The students gasped in surprise, edging forward for a closer look. Cory settled his weight onto both feet, while sweat began to bead on Hernande’s and Jerrain’s foreheads.

  A moment later, Jerrain said through clenched teeth, “Get . . . down.”

  Cory immediately stepped back, but Hernande and Jerrain obviously lost their hold on the Tapestry because he stumbled, the foot still on whatever they’d created giving way suddenly. Hernande caught him, noticing Kara standing behind the students at the same time.

  “As you can see,” he said, voice cracking, “it’s difficult to hold something as solid as a person for any length of time. We assume that it’s much easier to channel the ley, although we have yet to try.”

  Kara winced at the mild reprimand as Hernande caught Jerrain’s attention and pointed toward Kara. The elder mentor looked relieved to see her and immediately began shooing the students away.

  “That’s enough for today,” he said, “we have a visitor. Go harass the kitchen staff or whatever it is you students do in your spare time.”

  The seven students, of varied age, turned toward Kara before heading off toward the tier’s main door.
Kara approached Cory and the two mentors, aware of a few of the students staring at her back and whispering amongst themselves as they departed.

  “Was that for my benefit?” she asked. Cory wrapped the fingers of one hand through hers in greeting.

  “We didn’t know you were coming,” Jerrain said curtly.

  “We’ve shifted our lectures and studies toward whatever we think might help you and the Wielders and what might shed some light on the connection between the ley and the Tapestry,” Hernande explained. “Have you come to talk about that, or is it something else?”

  “Mentor—” Cory began defensively, but Kara him off.

  “No, I deserved that. I meant to come a few days ago. I didn’t. I apologize. But I’m here now.”

  Jerrain huffed, still disgruntled, but relented, motioning toward a stone bench abutting the wall of the next tier. “I need to sit. That demonstration was exhausting.”

  Jerrain and Hernande settled onto the bench, while Cory and Kara stood.

  “You wanted to talk about working together, the Wielders and the mages?” Kara prompted.

  “Yes, I think we can help.”

  “How?”

  “We know the Primes worked with the mentors in Erenthrall,” Hernande began.

  “Unfortunately,” Cory interjected, “we don’t know exactly what they did. Neither Hernande, Jerrain, nor Sovaan took part in that. None of those at the University did.”

  “We were not always aware of what happened beyond the University walls. Only now do I realize how isolated we really were. But we do know the principles behind what those mentors did for the Primes. They used the Tapestry to create the support systems for their workings. If they needed the ley directed toward a particular location, the mentors would provide the channel. The Primes would manipulate the ley itself. We think we can do the same for you and the Wielders here at the Needle. In particular, we think we can help keep the ley in check when you attempt to heal the distortion over Tumbor, so that the other Wielders will be free to help in other ways.”