“It’s like Erenthrall all over again,” Marc muttered.
“What’s happening?” Armone demanded. He was too short to see over the rest of the people.
“The Wielders are using the ley, forming some kind of pool of it over the chasm.”
For the first time in the past three days of dealing with Armone and the others, he saw a thread of uncertainty pass over the Kormanley’s face. They hadn’t known about the pools of ley, even with Dierdre’s connection to Marcus. What else did they not know? What else had they not anticipated?
Armone’s uncertainty didn’t last. “It must be something they need for the healing,” he said. “It doesn’t affect our plans. Come on.”
They headed back toward the center of the tier, fighting against the crowd now as everyone tried to push toward a better view of the chasm behind them. Mothers were hoisting their children up onto hips, fathers positioning them on shoulders so they could see. Everyone’s eyes were wide with awe, all of them babbling about the Wielders, Erenthrall, and distortions. The air vibrated with hope.
Marc’s gaze dropped from their faces toward the satchel Armone carried against his hip.
Reaching down, he drew his knife. He was out of time.
“How are the reservoirs holding?” Hernande shouted over the tumult in the pit. Wielders were scattered around the node, most of them channeling the ley out through the ley line that had been severed by the chasm and up into the reservoirs Jerrain and Sovaan were holding in place outside. Each mentor had one or two of the students with them for support. Marcus, Okata, Artras, Dylan, Jenner, and two others were holding the crystals in place. Kara paced back and forth between them all, listening to their comments as they manipulated the ley, pulling it from Erenthrall and storing it here at the Needle. Hernande watched her, noted the sweat that had plastered her hair to her forehead and the way her hands twitched.
When she passed by, he touched her arm to catch her attention. She flinched away from him. “What?”
“How are the reservoirs holding?” he repeated.
She closed her eyes and he could almost feel her reaching out toward the chasm through the ley. “They’re fine,” she said, opening her eyes again. “But we’re going to need more power.”
“Cory is ready. He can create a third reservoir if you think you’ll need it.”
“Do it.”
He turned to pass the order on to one of their runners, but Kara halted him.
“Even with a third reservoir, I don’t think we’ll have enough power, Hernande.”
“Then what do you suggest?”
Kara ground the heels of her hands into her eyes, then scrubbed at her face, glancing toward the crystals before she met his gaze. “We need to use a different configuration for the crystals.”
“I assume it’s one that’s not naturally stable.”
“No, it’s not. We won’t be able to hold it for as long as I’ll need to heal Tumbor on our own.”
“And we haven’t figured out how to tie off our manipulations of the Tapestry to make them permanent, at least not for something of this magnitude.” Hernande stared toward where the Wielders were keeping the crystals in position. He chewed on his lower lip before turning back to Kara. “I’d intended to help Cory and the others with the reservoirs, but I can stay here and hold the crystals in position with the Tapestry.”
“Are you certain? What if you can’t maintain their position for as long as I need it? I don’t know how long this will take.”
“I’ll hold it as long as necessary.”
“Then we’d better inform Marcus and the others. It will take a few moments to shift the crystals into their new position. But we’ll wait until the reservoirs are full. I don’t want to interrupt their preparations.”
“I’ll begin my own preparations. And send someone to warn the other mentors that I will not be joining them.”
He turned to the runner, passing the messages along, then found a position near the edge of the ley pit, but far enough away that he’d be out of the Wielders’ path. Sitting cross-legged, he began drawing in deep breaths, letting them out slow and steady, his eyes focused on the crystals where they hung suspended above the ley, refracting and refining its power, although with each breath he drew himself deeper inside himself, his body growing still. He hadn’t performed the meditations of his training as an oransai since he’d fled Barakaldo and the Demesnes, at least not at such depths. But to control the crystals for such a length of time, he’d need to be completely centered, completely at peace. Nothing could disturb him.
The shouts and tension of the Wielders surrounding him faded and vanished, not even there as background noise. The sound of his heartbeat intervened and he consciously slowed it, synching it up with his breathing. Breathe in, breathe out, slow and steady, until even this faded, subsumed by silence. As his heart slowed, so did the world, the motions of Kara and the others becoming languid and fluid.
Without realizing it, he closed his eyes, although he could still sense the Wielders as they shifted position. Kara oversaw it all, her presence somehow more solid in this mental state, more vibrant. Through what the oransai called the Third Eye, he saw her approach, heard her say, “We’re ready,” even though the words were flattened and distant.
“Then begin.”
She spun away. Through the Third Eye, he saw the ley surge upward as the crystals pivoted on multiple axes, settling into new positions. The tension between them vibrated through the foundations of Hernande’s calmed state, but he reached out and plied the Tapestry, setting them against those tensions. Unlike the relatively simple folds used to obscure the cave entrances of the Hollower’s retreat during the raid, however, when he attempted to tie the folds into place, that tension tugged at the knots, loosened, and undid them.
Resigned, he sank deeper into his meditation. “Do what you need to do now, Kara. I cannot hold the crystals indefinitely.”
He didn’t hear Kara’s response—it was lost, like the noise of the Wielders and the thrum of his own heart—but he did sense the sudden release of the ley as she began to channel it toward Tumbor.
In a room that overlooked the Needle and the stellae that surrounded it, Irmona felt the surge in the ley as she knelt next to Iscivius’ bed. She glanced out the opening that served as a window, to where the thin black spire of the Needle now pulsed with veins of blazing white ley light. It had never done that before, not on its exterior.
“They must be using one of their new configurations,” she said to the empty air, before turning back to her brother’s comatose body. “A configuration which wouldn’t have been possible without your sacrifice.”
She reached forward and laid her hand against her brother’s cheek. Stubble pricked her skin—he hadn’t been shaved in three days—but she gripped his chin, pinching tight.
“Are you in there, brother? Wake up, you bastard. Wake up!” She shook him, then released and struck his face, the sound of the slap sharp in the small space. Iscivius remained immobile, chest rising and falling with a slow, steady rhythm, as if he were in a trance.
Irmona jerked upright and swore. “You’re going to leave this all up to me, aren’t you?” Her hands closed into fists and she shot another glance toward the black tower. “Bastard.”
Outside, someone cried out in surprise and a body thudded hard into the door. It rattled as something slid down it, a thread of blood snaking from beneath it and into the room. The lock clicked and it jerked open, the body of an enforcer with a slit throat tumbling to the floor.
Irmona glanced up at the black-haired woman who stood in the entrance with a small curved, bloodied blade. “Dierdre.”
“Is he awake?” She flicked the blade toward Iscivius.
“Of course not.”
“Then we’ll have to do this on our own.”
Irmona moved toward the door. “
Is it just you?”
“Darius didn’t have the men to spare.”
Irmona stepped over the body into the hall, where another enforcer lay sprawled. “Only two guards?”
“They didn’t consider you or Iscivius much of a threat. And the enforcers—those they can trust—are spread a little thin with practically the entire city on the walls or the sides of the temple.”
“What about Father?”
“Darius is going to free Father himself, as soon as he takes care of Ty. But that won’t start until Kara and the Wielders begin healing Tumbor.”
They burst through a door onto the second tier of the temple, a roar from the hundreds of people gathered there and the tier below bringing them up short. Irmona shaded her eyes from the bright sunlight with one hand, her vision clearing to reveal the tier packed with enforcers, merchants, and citizens, all with their eyes locked on the distortion of Tumbor or the chasm behind. Huge vats of ley hovered over the chasm, three in all, the light pulsing so brightly it appeared to have a blue tinge to it. The fountains of ley that had filled the vats were beginning to fall away, the cheer from those gathered dying down, turning into a cacophony of babble.
Dierdre snagged Irmona’s forearm and hauled her to the stairs, weaving through the crowd with slightly hunched shoulders, keeping them clear of any of the enforcers. Irmona spotted Ty, standing near the ex-Dog Allan and a small entourage of Temerites. She halted, had taken a step toward the betrayer, but Dierdre jerked her off balance and down another few steps, until the commander slipped from view.
“We don’t have time!” Dierdre shouted.
“But—”
“Darius will deal with him.”
Everyone’s attention was shifting exclusively toward Tumbor now, or the pulsing of the Needle above them. They stumbled past two enforcers, necks craned back to see where the tip of the spire glowed a feral pinpoint white, like a second sun. As they reached the first tier, an altercation broke out near the center of those gathered, an enforcer roaring in pain and grappling with another, both snatching at a satchel, but Dierdre didn’t pay any attention to them, dragging Irmona down the second set of steps, where the number of people thinned, the vantage not as good as up above. They flew down the last few steps and dodged into a set of doors at ground level.
“Hey! You can’t be in here!” one of the guards inside the entrance yelled, stepping forward, his sword already drawn and streaked with blood. Four others rose from where they were shifting a body to one side.
Dierdre flashed a hand signal. “Like hells we can’t. We’ve got our own business in the temple.” She waved toward the stack of dead enforcers against one wall. “Is this entrance secure?”
The guard stood up straighter, dropping the tip of his blade to the floor. “Ty’s men here have been taken care of. I’ve sent a few of our own men to check on the other entrances.”
“Good. Make certain no one gets past you at this level.”
The men pressed their backs to the corridor wall as Dierdre and Irmona passed them, then continued moving the bodies. There were two others farther down the hall, cut down from behind. Then they were jogging through mostly deserted hallways, all the enforcers and servants who lived in this section up on the walls or at the temple. Even those in the kitchen were sparse, too busy preparing for the feast after the healing to notice the two as they ran by. Irmona’s chest began to hurt as they broke through the door into the stellae garden.
As soon as her feet touched the sand outside, she gasped. “Kara’s already started. The ley’s flowing toward Tumbor.”
“Then we’d better get down to the pit.” Dierdre started forward, her blade hidden behind her back as she stepped toward the Needle’s entrance across the sand. A figure shifted out of the shadow of the Needle’s doorway, an enforcer, one of Ty’s.
“What are you doing here?” the woman asked.
“Kara asked me to bring all of the Wielders to the Needle immediately,” Dierdre said. “She’s going to need all the help she can get. I went to fetch Irmona.”
Irmona caught the smile plastered onto Dierdre’s face and the uncertainty on the woman enforcer’s a moment before Dierdre stabbed her blade into the enforcer’s throat.
At the same time, something exploded, the sound muffled by the temple.
Sweat slicked the handle of Marc’s knife as he slid up behind Armone and pressed it into the Kormanley’s side. Armone stiffened and halted. They were crammed in between a group of shepherds, a family of five, and a man that smelled like a butcher near the center of the tier’s mosaic. No one noticed them, most stepping around them in annoyance, straining to see either the pools of ley over the chasm or the distortion over Tumbor.
“What are you doing?” Armone’s tone was light and calm.
“I’m going to take the satchel now,” Marc said.
“I told you, I can place it.”
“Hand it over.” Marc pressed the knife harder into Armone’s side, felt it slit through cloth and nick flesh. Armone hissed and twisted to face him.
“You want the satchel? Then here, take it.” He lifted the strap of the satchel over his head and thrust it toward Marc, shoving him back into the shepherds behind him.
“Watch it!” one of the shepherds snapped.
Marc ignored him and clutched the weight of the satchel—heavier than he’d expected—to his chest. He didn’t see Armone draw his own knife, but he felt it as it sank into his side.
He roared at the pain, slashed toward Armone as the Kormanley follower snatched at the satchel. Marc yanked it back toward him, the two circling each other as those around them began shouting and backing off.
“So Darius was right about you,” Armone said as he jerked at the satchel. “He sent me here to make certain you followed through. I guess his instincts were right.”
Marc didn’t respond, his eyes locked on Armone’s as he edged them both away from the center of the tier. Armone lunged, but Marc twisted the satchel between them, blocking his blade. Both men had a firm grip. He heard shouts from the other enforcers, but none of them were close. Someone was fighting their way there, but the crowd had become a crush of bodies pressing away from them.
“Not going to talk?” Armone asked. “Then I guess we’ll have to start this early.”
Reaching forward with his knife hand, he grabbed a loose strap that threaded into the satchel and yanked it free. Then he thrust the entire package at Marc and ran.
Marc stumbled backward, falling to one knee, a chill washing down his body from head to toe, tingling in his hands and toes. He lurched back to his feet, noted Armone surging away through the throng, fellow enforcers still struggling toward him, all of them too far away. The satchel felt hot in his grip, but he pulled it in tight and spun, bellowing, “Out of my way!” as he charged toward the edge of the tier. People screamed or gasped, but most of them attempted to clear a path. At the last moment, he tripped over someone’s foot and fell against the stone edge of the tier between two of the animal statues that lined the open space. Pain flared up from the stab wound, but he flung the satchel over the side of the tier and collapsed against the nearest statue, a fox. Sweat flushed his body and blood coated his side. He pressed his free hand against the wound and shoved himself away from the statue, headed back toward the stairs. He didn’t see Armone anywhere, so he cut toward the enforcers.
Three of them broke through the crowd, the one in the lead halting Marc with a grip on his shoulder that sent a dagger of pain into his arm.
“What in hells is happening here?” the lieutenant asked.
“It’s the Kormanley.” He couldn’t seem to catch his breath. “They’re planning an attack on the temple. It’s probably already started. They’ve got bombs planted everywhere.”
“Kormanley? Bombs?”
An explosion rocked the temple, felt through the stone at Marc’s fe
et, the sound deafening. Everyone on the tier staggered, a plume of stone dust and debris jetting out from the side of the temple into the square below. Screams erupted from the tier, with men, women, and families staring around in confusion and clutching each other or cowering low to the ground. Marc stumbled toward the side of the tier, ears ringing, side aching, the hand holding his wound now coated in blood. The enforcers joined him. Those who were situated on the outer walls for the healing were pointing toward the side of the temple.
Marc leaned over the side, between an urn and a statue, the lieutenant beside him. Halfway down the slope of the temple, a hole gaped in the stone wall, debris still rolling down its side, the cloud of dust drifting off in the breeze.
“Bombs,” Marc said, his voice sounding hollow. “Like that one.”
The lieutenant reared back from the wall. “How many—”
And then the point of a sword emerged from his chest. He arched back, mouth agape, as the enforcer behind him said, “Sorry, Karl. You should have sided with Darius.”
He withdrew the blade, shoving the lieutenant’s body aside, as the other enforcer stepped around toward Marc. Behind them, fresh screams broke out, and Marc swore.
Dodging the enforcer’s thrust, not even attempting to strike back, Marc threw himself into the surrounding crowd, heading toward the doorway into the temple at first, until he saw movement inside. Without pause, he veered right, toward the stairs again, the enforcers behind shouting toward those that emerged from the doorway. Sounds were still muted, but his hearing was returning.
When he reached the stairs, the world swayed as a wave of light-headedness washed through him. He glanced back to see the enforcers converging on his position, and far beyond them, across the plains, the distortion over Tumbor suddenly lit up in a brilliant coruscation of white ley light, like the burning sun. He tore his gaze away and scrambled up the steps toward the second tier, shoving people aside. Someone shouted farther below him—more enforcers—but he didn’t pause. He could see others looking down from the second tier, picked out Ty and Allan Garrett. Ty pulled back, yelling orders Marc couldn’t make out. Allan stared down at him a moment longer, then retreated.
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