“I still can’t really see or feel it when the others work with the Tapestry,” Morrell said to distract herself from their stares. “It’s like someone has waved a fan in front of my face and then I see the sands move, or I feel a pressure against my skin, as if I’m pressing up against a wall, only there’s nothing there.”
“Have the sensations grown stronger the more you focus on them?”
“Not really.”
“And what about the ley?”
“I think I can sense it better now, especially after Kara took the time to work with me a few days ago. She helped me distinguish between some of the ley lines that are concentrated here at the Needle. I knew of the major ones, of course, but now I can pick out some of the medium ones as well.”
“Good. Perhaps we’ll be able to figure out how your own talents coincide with those of the Wielders and the mentors eventually.”
Morrell didn’t comment. She didn’t know how much she was learning about herself, but she knew she enjoyed the company of the other students, even if it and her work at the hospital exhausted her.
They passed beyond the large square and mingled with the rest of the residents of the Needle. The crowds were thick, bodies pressed close together as they worked their way down the streets and between the buildings, heading toward the outer tent city. At one point Morrell lost sight of Hernande, her heart beginning to thud hard in her chest as she realized she didn’t know where they were headed, but then his distinctive Demesne pointed beard and the yellowish-gold shirt trimmed with red caught her eye as he glanced back toward her.
They’d nearly reached the city when someone lurched into Morrell and bumped her into another man standing close to the corner of a building at the mouth of an alley, back hunched and turned toward the street. The man growled in frustration and spun on her, his dun-colored clothes speckled with white dust that puffed up as he stood up straight.
“You’ve ruined it, you little bitch,” he snarled, hand snapping around to slap her.
Morrell recoiled, but suddenly Hernande was at her back, the mentor’s own hand lashing out and snatching the other by the wrist, halting the slap mid-swing. On her other side, Drayden bristled, a low growl rumbling in his chest.
The other man tried to jerk free, but Hernande’s grip didn’t loosen. In fact, it tightened. Morrell heard bones grinding together in the other’s wrist.
“Not a wise decision,” Hernande said, his voice with a dark edge that Morrell had never heard there before. Drayden’s growl deepened.
The man—he had brown hair and a thin face that didn’t match the bedraggled appearance of his clothing—wrenched his hand again, breaking free. Morrell got the impression Hernande had let him go. He rubbed at his wrist and, without thought, Morrell reached out and touched him. He lurched back, coming up hard against the alley wall.
“It’s only bruised,” Morrell said. “Try not to use it much over the next few days, and it’ll be fine.”
The man stared at her, bewildered.
Then someone behind them shouted, “What’s going on here?” The speaker was headed in their direction.
Hernande nodded toward something scrawled on the wall beside the man—a strange symbol with a snake curled around a circle, what looked like a half-drawn dog beneath. “You’d better leave before the enforcer gets here.”
The man’s gaze snapped toward the street. Then he spat to one side and scrambled into the depths of the alley. Drayden moved to follow, but Hernande held him back.
“What’s the meaning of th—” the enforcer began as he pushed through the last of the crowd behind them, but he drew up short at the symbol chalked onto the wall. “Who drew this?” he shouted, pointing with one hand as he spun toward the crowd. “Did anyone see who drew this symbol? I know at least one of you did! Come forward! Stop defending that damn Kormanley priest! He’s filled your head with nonsense since before the Shattering!”
“We saw the man,” Hernande said. “In fact, I think we interrupted him.”
The enforcer—an elderly man, older than Morrell’s father, but broader, with graying hair—turned on them and eyed them suspiciously. He glanced down the alley where the other man had run, but Morrell couldn’t even hear the man’s footsteps any longer.
“I could find him,” Drayden offered, nostrils flaring as he sniffed the air. He looked to Morrell, who shook her head slightly. He huffed in annoyance, but backed down.
“You saw the man?” the enforcer asked. He crossed his arms over his wide chest. “You’d be the first. What did he look like?”
“Brown hair, thin face, and green eyes.”
“That describes a quarter of the people here in the Needle. Anything else? Scar? Tattoo? Missing finger?”
Hernande frowned uncertainly. “I’d swear I’ve seen him before.”
The enforcer tensed. “Where?”
“I . . . don’t remember.”
“Ah, I see. Well, if you do remember, report it to the enforcers, would you?”
He turned to go, but Hernande cleared his throat and he turned back, eyebrow raised.
“What is your name?” Hernande asked. “In case I remember.”
The man’s eyes narrowed. “Trenton.” Then he left, melding into the crowd on the street.
Hernande’s hand fell onto Morrell’s shoulder protectively. Drayden was still eyeing the alley.
“He didn’t want to tell us his name,” Morrell said.
“No, he didn’t.” Hernande steered Morrell back out onto the main street, hustling her along toward the tent city, Drayden on their heels.
“The man chalking the icon wasn’t quite right either.”
“How so?”
“His clothing didn’t match his face.”
“You noticed that, did you? You certainly are your father’s daughter. We need to speak to Commander Ty about that incident, but later.”
They emerged into the edge of the tent city, the density of the people increasing, along with the smells. Roasting meat, sizzling cooking oils, fried onions and peppers, and burnt bread assaulted them within the first few steps, along with a pungent mustard spice and offal as someone passed them with a slop bucket. The rank smell of sweat permeated the tents, along with grease and the faint putridness of sickness. Morrell had noticed the increase in the patients with disease recently, along with infections and even a few cases of gangrene. Now she understood why. The tent city was overcrowded.
“There are so many more people,” she muttered as they dodged a small family of goats being herded by two young men, both with long staves and an angry, threatening look in their eyes.
“Yes. Since Kara and Ty took over, they’ve been allowing anyone who comes to the city entrance to stay. The people need a refuge, and those that can find the Needle are mostly content that there’s a place to shelter here, even if it is crowded. Even the city around the temple has become inundated. The Needle won’t be able to hold many others. It doesn’t help that we lost part of the city to the chasm.”
Hernande waved to the left, where the tents had begun to thin out as they neared the huge crevasse that cut through the city to the west. Morrell perked up and angled in that direction. She’d never seen the chasm, had never ventured this far to the west. Drayden followed her instantly. Hernande hesitated, glancing toward the city wall not far distant, then rejoined them.
The tents dropped away over a hundred feet from the wall, the stragglers at the edge eyeing Morrell as she stepped out into the space before the drop-off. Except that there wasn’t the edge she expected, or had been led to believe existed from Cerrin’s reports at the hospital anyway. Instead, men in the white shirts of the temple workers—like those who distributed food and cooked and cleaned for those housed in the temple itself—were busy building a short wall, blocking the view of the chasm below. Engineers were organizing blocks of stone obviou
sly scavenged from the buildings that had collapsed during the quakes into different piles. Masons were fitting them onto the wall, building it higher and higher, slapping wet mortar in between and filling in crevices. A hundred feet distant, stairs were being built. The wall was rough—not as finely crafted as the outer wall—but it wasn’t shoddy. Even Morrell could tell it was solid.
Glancing down its length, she could see that it ran all the way from the outer wall and into the buildings surrounding the temple. Some of the buildings themselves had been incorporated into its construction. She could see the tops of other buildings across the gap, over the wall’s lip. It had only been built up to a height of six or seven feet, even lower in some locations.
“Can we go up on top?” Morrell asked, already trotting toward the stairs.
“I don’t think—” Hernande began, then sighed in resignation.
When they neared the stairs, the closest engineer headed toward them, but Hernande waved him off and Morrell grinned, racing up the steps to the top.
“Careful!” Hernande shouted from behind.
Morrell gasped, halting at the wall’s edge, her stomach rolling with an odd sensation that made her feel both heavy and light-headed at the same time. There was no edge on the far side of the wall—or not much. It simply dropped down into the chasm, a rent that spanned a hundred feet here. The jagged wall cut away almost vertically, striated stone visible in the sunlight, water seeping from the layers, glistening along the multicolored cliff. In one spot, it gushed from the stone, possibly an outlet for an underground stream. Or perhaps it had once been part of the city’s sewer system.
The city above on the opposite side hadn’t fared well from the quake. Many of the buildings had collapsed, although Morrell could see a few intact farther from the edge. Most of the section of the city that had been cut away was an open area where the tent city had once been, except now it was empty, abandoned as almost everyone who’d lived there had moved to the main temple’s side. Yet she could see a few signs of smoke, so some people remained there.
Swallowing back the lump lodged in her throat, Morrell sank down to her knees and placed her hands on the edge of the stone wall. She leaned out and peered down into the gaping chasm below. She heard Drayden scrambling up the steps behind her, then Hernande’s more sedate footsteps crunching in the dust and grit. Drayden settled in beside her, straining to sniff the air.
“How deep is it?” she asked.
“Deep enough. Come back from the edge. Your father would kill me if you fell in. Not to mention Kara.”
Morrell pulled back slightly, a faint sheen of sweat on her skin, her heart thudding hard in her chest. She shuddered with a perverse thrill. “People are still living over there.”
“Yes. They’re taking a risk, though. It isn’t protected anymore. The wall’s compromised, and all of the enforcers have been pulled back here, to the temple. Even this side is compromised. That’s why they’re building this wall, to provide at least some protection from an approach along the chasm. It’s also why I brought you out here.”
Morrell looked over her shoulder at him. “What do you mean?”
“When your father and I came here to rescue Kara and the others, we created our own breach.” He pointed toward the outer wall, where a jagged vertical shaft of obviously newer stone stood out in contrast to the old wall. It was wider at the top than the bottom and looked significantly rougher and less stable. “The engineers sealed up the breach as best they could, given the fear that the Gorrani would return, but it’s a weakness in the wall, a weakness we can’t afford.”
He faced Morrell. “I thought you might be able to repair it.”
Morrell gaped at him. Her stomach rolled again, only this time she felt nauseous.
She climbed unsteadily to her feet. “You want me to . . . fix it?”
“You’ve repaired cracked stones before.”
“But those were stones that fit into my hand! I could hold them! This . . . this . . .” She flapped a hand toward the battered wall, a hot flush coursing through her body from head to toe.
“This is no different than repairing those stones.” It was his professorial voice and brooked no argument. “I’m not expecting you to fix the entire wall all at once, but I think you can do it. I know you can do it. Jerrain and Sovaan . . . have their doubts. I need you to prove them wrong. Besides, you’d be helping Kara and Ty and every other person residing here at the Needle.” He paused, as if considering whether he should say anything more, then added in a softer voice, “The Gorrani will come eventually, Morrell. We can’t afford to have them breach the wall because of something your father and I did.”
Morrell crossed her arms over her chest, jaw set. She refused to look at Hernande, simply stood fuming, her gaze on the wall, on the section that had been repaired too fast and haphazardly. The longer she looked at it, the more pronounced the discoloration between it and the old wall grew. It had been filled in all the way to the top again, enforcers walking along the parapet without concern, while beneath it a group of men haggled, surrounded by a herd of swine. But Morrell could see how flawed it was. Anyone approaching from outside the walls would be able to see it as well.
She sighed heavily. “I suppose I could try.”
Hernande gripped her shoulder. “You’ll do fine.”
They walked along the new, low wall over the chasm until they neared its end, where it butted up against the outer wall. They had to climb down before they reached it, however, since there was a group of twenty workers busy constructing what appeared to be a new stairwell that would connect the new wall to the upper parapet. Hernande skirted the herd of swine, wrinkling his nose at the smell. Morrell found it somewhat pleasant; it reminded her of the Hollow. For a breath, she felt a pang of homesickness.
They followed the wall, in its shadow here, the air cooler, until they reached the section that had been repaired. Morrell trailed her fingers along the stone as they neared, the change from time-worn smoothness to rough new stone jolting. Almost like seeing an egregious wound for the first time, before her emotions shut down and her clinical detachment took over as she prepared to heal.
That familiarity of emotion steadied her. She took another few steps—the breach here at the base had been about ten feet across—and then halted, tilting her head back so she could stare up the height. The blue sky overhead glowed in contrast to the shadowed gray of the stone. Vertigo tilted the world, even though she still had one hand firmly against the wall for support. She dropped her gaze and searched for Hernande.
He stood behind her, ten paces back, with Drayden, removed but watching her. He gave her a silent nod of encouragement.
She turned back to the wall and placed both hands against the gritty rock. It was a cold, light gray granite, not like the softer stone that had been used to build the temple. That stone had been quarried elsewhere—no one knew where—and carted to this location ages past. This stone came from nearby.
She lowered her head and closed her eyes, leaning slightly forward. Her hands pressed into the granite as she called forth the auroral lights.
She sank into the stone before her, felt its age, its weight. It was easier than she’d expected; her practice with Cory and then the rest of the students had helped. For a moment, the sensations of grinding, scraping rock nearly overwhelmed her, but then she pulled back, distanced herself, and the world settled so that she could pick out individual stones, could feel the gaps in the center where the workers had simply tossed in stone as filler, and the more solidly constructed outer edges to hold those stones in place.
She drew in a breath—noticed the scents around her were stronger: the swine, the sweat of the workers, smoke, and the greasiness of rendered fat—and then extended herself outward, reaching toward the parapet above, where the extent of the damage was wider, then to either side. Even the old wall was flawed. A crack in the wall’s cor
e running from the ground to the parapet a hundred feet to their right could be widened and cause a collapse with a steady bombardment from outside. Minor damage through the decades had caused less significant cracks nearly everywhere. Water from rains had hollowed out the core in one location, and here and there animals had found niches and crevices to roost or den in.
But the most significant threat still came from the portion of the wall immediately before Morrell. She pulled back to the stone her hands touched, reached from there deeper into the wall directly before her, until she’d found the outside wall. Drawing on the tingling aurora in her hands, she willed the stones to fuse together, not simply to themselves, but to the old stone of the wall to either side.
She thought she’d have to fight the stone, that there would be resistance. But there wasn’t. Almost as soon as she called on the auroral light, it spilled out from her hands, faster and smoother than ever before. She gasped as it flowed from her, draining from deep in her chest, coursing through her arms, her hands burning. Distantly, she heard others cry out in confusion.
In a matter of seconds, she exhausted herself. The flow cut off and she sagged forward into the wall, her forehead pressed against the stone. She couldn’t breathe, and her heart skittered erratically in her chest. Heat suffused her, and she turned her head so that her cheek touched the cold wall.
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