The shock of the cold caused her to inhale harshly and her heart stuttered back into its normal rhythm. At the same time, her legs collapsed beneath her weight. She began to slide down the wall, the skin on her face scraping off, until someone snatched her from behind and pulled her away.
Her eyes fluttered open, the sunlight too bright, blinding. “Hernande,” she ground out, her voice cracked and ragged.
“I’ve got you,” the mentor said, clutching at her as he dragged her back a few paces from the wall and settled her down on the ground. Drayden hovered a few feet away.
“Did it work?” she asked. “It felt like it worked.”
“Yes, it worked.” Hernande’s voice was threaded with concern and a thick pride. “You did better than I expected. Look for yourself.”
He propped Morrell up from behind. She blinked, trying to clear away the white flashes from the sun, her eyes tearing up.
When her sight cleared, she could see that the entire base of the wall, stretching to a height of at least thirty feet, had been smoothed over, the stone melded so that it appeared to be one solid structure. There were no crevices, no cracks. It looked like some of the buildings she’d seen in Erenthrall before the Shattering, buildings her father had told her were molded from the earth by the Wielders using the ley, before they’d learned how to sow towers instead.
Except she hadn’t used the ley.
“I did it,” she said, her voice filled with disbelief. A sudden pressure built up inside her chest—an unexpected pride in herself—and she sucked in a deep breath as that pressure threatened to close off her throat. “I really did it!”
Then she broke out in laughter and, inexplicably, tears.
Hernande helped Morrell to the hospital, half carrying her, Drayden keeping the crowds a safe distance away from them. Hernande would have been more concerned for her, except she kept smiling to herself and muttering, “I did it,” in a soft, awed voice.
Freesia exclaimed when they staggered into the small receiving room, rushing forward to take Morrell’s weight on the other side to help her into the main ward. “What happened? How did she get like this? It’s as if she has no muscle strength at all.”
Hernande told her what Morrell had done, the hospital warden’s eyes widening in surprise even as her mouth tightened in disapproval, her ire squarely centered on Hernande. They settled her on one of the cots. As they spoke, Cerrin cried out and leaped to the bed where Morrell lay. After a quick perusal, he rounded on Hernande in anger.
“Is she all right? What did you do to her?” His hands were balled up into fists.
Hernande’s eyebrows rose.
“He didn’t do anything to me,” Morrell muttered. She struggled up onto her elbows to glare at the young man. “And what do you care? You don’t even want me here anyway.”
Cerrin swung back to her, mouth opening and closing, a panicked look about his eyes. Then his mouth snapped shut and he stalked away. But Hernande saw the hurt look in his eyes before his back was turned.
Morrell looked stricken, as if she regretted what she’d said, almost calling out to bring him back. But she stopped herself, slumping back onto the cot in confusion.
He shared a glance with Freesia, who rolled her eyes.
Freesia knelt over her and did a quick but thorough check for bruises, breaks, and a fever. “She doesn’t appear to be ill, merely exhausted.”
“And thirsty,” Morrell said.
Freesia stood, touched Hernande’s arm. “I’ll go fetch some water. Stay with her until I’m back. Don’t let her fall asleep.”
He stared at Morrell a moment before crouching down at her side; Drayden had settled in at the foot of her cot. Her eyes were closed. “You aren’t sleeping, are you?”
“No. Not yet. I heard what Freesia said. Besides, I can’t stop thinking about what I did. My hands still feel like they’re tingling with the aurora, even though I know they aren’t.” Her eyes popped open, and she wriggled her fingers before her face, grinning.
“You’ve done spectacular things before, Morrell. You healed Cory’s leg after it was crushed by the boulder. You stitched Harper’s bones back together. Then there are all the people you’ve helped here at the hospital.”
Morrell let her arms drop to her sides. “I know, but that’s different.”
“How is it different?”
Morrell waved her hands. “Those are small things. I’m only helping one person at a time. This was big, and helped everyone, like when Kara kept the distortion in Erenthrall from swallowing the entire city, or like when my father rescued Kara and those other people trapped inside the shards after it quickened.”
Hernande shifted forward, into her line of sight. “I seriously doubt that Cory or Harper or any of the others whom you’ve healed feel what you did was a ‘small’ thing.”
“You brought me back from losing myself to the Wolf,” Drayden said from the end of her cot, startling them both. “That was not a small thing. Not for any of the Wolves.”
Morrell’s brow creased in thought, but before she could come up with a response, Freesia returned with a pitcher of water and a glass. Hernande drew back as she poured and set the pitcher on the stone floor beneath Morrell’s bed. Cerrin attended patients, but kept himself within earshot, glancing over every few moments, mouth pinched tight with concern.
“It’s as cold as I could get it,” Freesia said. “From the spring fountain on Collier Street.”
“We’ve started naming the streets?” Hernande asked as Morrell drank.
“Of course, we have. People like to make wherever they are feel like home, yes? It doesn’t look like we’ll be returning to Erenthrall any time soon. Not until after we clear out the savages that have taken it over.”
Hernande hadn’t even considered returning to Erenthrall, not with a perfectly viable community here at the Needle. But he supposed many of the refugees who’d fled here had lived in Erenthrall or Tumbor. They’d want to return to what was familiar, if they could. But he’d also heard the reports from Allan, Bryce, and the others who’d ventured there after the Shattering. He doubted rooting out the enclaves of Temerites and other groups who’d established themselves there would be easy.
Freesia dug some jerked beef from a pocket and handed it over to Morrell, who wrinkled her nose. “Eat it. The salt will do you good.”
Hernande stood. “I’d better return to the temple and report what happened to Kara and the other mentors.”
“Go,” Freesia said. “There’s nothing more you can do here for her. I’ll let her rest up and keep an eye on her.” She sighed without looking as a bowl clattered to the floor a few cots distant. “And I’m certain Cerrin will keep watch as well.”
Smiling slightly, Hernande returned to the street, blinking up at the sun that had somehow shifted past midday. A gust of wind tugged at his shirt, smelling of rain, but he headed away from the temple toward the wall.
When he reached the section that Morrell had healed, he found it had already attracted attention. Over thirty people were gathered, staring and pointing, gossiping to each other in low, awed voices. And the crowd was growing. He pushed his way to the front, where the swineherd gestured as he told everyone what had happened—how the young girl had approached the wall, placed her hands on it—
“. . . and then shimmering lights appeared, all blues and greens and purples, and they rippled up the wall like water, only running backward, and beneath the lights I could see the stones. They were all melted and runny, like candle wax when it’s hot, and then the girl gasped and the lights faded and she collapsed forward.”
Hernande ignored the grizzled man, stepping right up into the space between the crowd and the wall, inspecting it up close. It was still granite—it hadn’t changed composition—but it was like no granite he’d ever seen before. It wasn’t coarse or chipped. He ran his hand over the
surface, the texture like smoothed river stone.
Or like the slick black surface of the Needle.
“What happened to her?” a woman asked.
The swineherd latched on to Hernande’s arm. “He took her! He caught her and carried her off!”
Those in front surged forward, spouting questions. The swineherd’s fingers dug into Hernande’s upper arm and with a wince of annoyance, he reached up and pinched the man’s wrist in a specific location. The grizzled man yelped and released him, jerking back, shaking numb fingers, but it was too late. The crowd had already shoved Hernande up against the wall.
“Quiet!” he roared, with the volume and sharp command he reserved for his students. They instantly fell silent, those nearest retreating a few paces. He brushed himself off and glared around at them all. “She’s fine. I took her to the healers. She was simply exhausted.”
“But what about—”
“Will she be back?”
“Can she do something about the chasm?”
“Who is she?”
The questions were overwhelming, rising in volume as everyone tried to yell over one another. Hernande didn’t even try to answer the questions, searching for a way out of the crush of bodies as they began to press forward again. A sharp whistle pierced the noise, and he heard Commander Ty bellow, “What in hells is going on here? Clear the way! Let the guard through.”
He breathed a sigh of relief as Ty stepped forward. Ty had a group of five other enforcers with him, who began to methodically push everyone back a respectable distance, including the swineherd, who still massaged his hand.
Ty glanced at the eerily smooth wall with a frown, then focused on Hernande. “Did you do this?”
“No, I did not. It was Morrell.”
Ty’s eyebrows shot upward. “Allan’s daughter? I thought she healed people.”
“This appears to be an extension of her power. I brought her down here to test it out. I didn’t expect it to be so . . . productive.”
“Well, it caught the attention of the people.” He reached forward and ran a flat palm over the stone, as Hernande had done. “My enforcers report that it’s like this on the other side of the wall as well.”
“The same size area has been repaired there?”
Ty shrugged. “I haven’t seen it myself, and the report wasn’t that specific.”
“I’d like to take a look.”
“Is it safe to let them approach the wall?”
“I don’t see why not.”
Ty ordered the enforcers to let the people go, then headed out toward the main gates. As soon as they departed, the crowd closed in on the smoothed section of the wall again, touching it reverently. The number of people had nearly tripled in the time Hernande had been there, and he noticed the swineherd front and center again, already spouting out his story.
The closer they came to the gates, the more the tent city that had once been yards from the wall crowded in, until there was only a twenty-foot clearance between the nearest makeshift homes and the stone. As they passed by, the enforcers shoved encroaching baggage and crates and people back from the buffer zone they’d created, a few people lurching up from whatever they were doing with a sharp outcry of disgust or curses, shaking their fists at the guards as they passed on. The smell increased as well, the sweat and rankness of too many bodies pressed too close together for too long, compounded by the grease and stench of hundreds of different types of food being cooked.
“We’re not going to be able to continue allowing everyone in,” Ty muttered, the gates now within sight. “It’s already too crowded.”
He kicked a basket of tubers aside, a woman leaping from a nearby tent and snatching it up along with the few that spilled out to the ground. She spat to one side, then shouted, “We have a right to our space, enforcer!” when they were a safe distance away.
“Where do we send them?” Hernande asked.
Ty shook his head. “I’m not saying we need to send them away. But we can’t continue to shelter them behind the walls. There isn’t enough room. We should send them over to the other part of the city across the chasm or have them set up outside the walls.”
“Then they wouldn’t have the protection of the walls.”
“No, but we don’t have an army sitting outside our gates either. They’d be fine.”
“Until an army appears.”
Ty gave him a sideways look. “The Gorrani are still over the horizon. And if they did appear suddenly, we could bring everyone inside before they got here.”
“Kara won’t like it.”
“Even Kara has to cave to the pressure of reality.”
“I’m not certain she’d agree.”
At the gates, the flow changed, with handcarts and wagons and people weaving in and out through the entrance, clogged up in the passageway between the thick walls. Even with the enforcers shouting for people to move out of the way, they only edged forward slightly. Most of the people were funneling into the city, returning from scavenging for food or other resources for trade, or simply coming back after an escape from the city itself. This late in the afternoon, few were attempting to leave. There were more mundane dangers on the plains outside after nightfall. Not everyone sought the protection of the enforcers and the walls, preying on whoever attempted to come to the Needle for help. Ty and the enforcers tried to patrol the area and keep such bandits away, but the land was rumpled with many depressions and vales to hide in once you passed beyond the lip of the crater where the Needle resided.
They had finally passed beneath the stone wall with its murder holes and iron portcullis into the sunlight beyond, storm clouds rolling in from the west, when someone on top of the wall cried out.
Hernande and Ty both looked upward, Ty shading his eyes with one hand. Someone was leaning out from the wall, pointing toward the horizon—northeast—gesturing frantically with the other hand. A moment later, a horn sounded, wavering at first before settling into a strident call.
Ty swore, spinning toward the northeast, but there was nothing to see. Not above the crater’s lip.
“What is it?” Hernande asked. Those surrounding them glanced around in confusion, but the enforcers were already moving.
“Someone’s approaching.” He grabbed Hernande by the upper arm and shoved him toward the gates. “A sizable force, possibly an army. Get back inside the walls. Now!”
The tension of the enforcers was spreading, those waiting to be let back in fidgeting, then scrambling toward the gates. Ty kept behind Hernande, urging him forward through the press of people. With a gust of wind from behind, they plowed through the gateway again, Ty cutting to the right as soon as they reached the far side, headed toward the stairs that led up to the wall’s height. Hernande hesitated, dragged forward by the momentum of the shouting crowd from behind, then fought his way back toward the stairs and followed Ty to the parapet.
He was gasping by the time he reached the top, forced to halt and lean against the short crenellations. The wall was a flurry of activity, men rushing back and forth carrying sheaves of arrows, spreading them out along the walk. Ty spat out orders, listening to reports, while his second, Darius, stood off to one side. A black look of hatred suffused Darius’ face as Ty took over and Hernande jerked upright in surprise. Darius glanced toward him, his expression instantly vanishing into a cold equanimity. He turned away, shifting forward so that Ty and the guards and runners surrounding him blocked Hernande’s view.
Heart pounding—in shock now, rather than exertion—Hernande faced northeast, in the direction the enforcers along the wall were pointing. Wind slapped him immediately, chilling his skin with the promise of rain he’d noticed earlier. The storm clouds were rolling in fast. He guessed there would be rain within the hour. But to the northeast he could see a different shadow converging on the Needle. It shifted along the plains, a column of men a
nd horses and carts trundling along the stone road that led from one of the crossroads to the Needle. A large plume of dust angled off to the east, kicked up by the tread of their feet and the wagon wheels. They were too distant to pick out individuals—or even one cart from the next—but the line was too long to contain fewer than a hundred people.
Hernande’s concern about Darius and what he’d seen in the second’s face in that momentary lapse was superseded by the threat of the approaching army. Hernande leaned out over the wall. Below, the enforcers were frantically attempting to get everyone outside in through the gates, but they were jammed up. Shouts and curses echoed up the wall. At least three carts had been abandoned, causing a blockage. Farther distant, another cart was tearing down the same road the army used, a scattering of people on foot also headed toward the wall. Someone sounded the horn again, Hernande’s ears ringing from the noise.
He pulled back from the wall’s edge and sought out Ty, who motioned him in closer as soon as he noticed him. The commander sent runners along both sides of the wall, another two to the barracks near the temple to call for reinforcements and to spread more enforcers among the population to keep everyone calm. Then he searched those nearest and swore.
“Where in hells is Darius?”
“He was here a moment ago,” Hernande said.
Ty gestured toward the approaching army. “Any idea who they are? Can you see that far?”
“Not well enough to pick out any colors or individuals.”
“So no one knows who they are. My scouts haven’t reported in from the northeast. I wonder if this is the reason why. Not that we had many scouts posted there. We’ve been more focused on the south recently.”
Hernande caught Ty’s eye. “Do you see any dogs with them?”
Ty snorted, then sobered. “You think this is the army Dalton spoke of? The one approaching from the north?”
“It could be.”
“If that bastard’s vision turns out to be true, I’ll have to reconsider my religious beliefs.” He suddenly straightened. “I bet Darius is headed to speak to Dalton right now, tell him what’s coming, even though he isn’t supposed to have access.” He stared back at the temple, then snagged a passing runner. “Pass on whatever you were doing to someone else and run to the temple. See if Second Darius is attempting to talk to Father Dalton.”
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