“And me,” Artras interrupted.
“—that all of the Wielders needed are at the Nexus when necessary.” She tapped the table with her knuckles in contemplation. “Which brings up an interesting issue. The Wielders here will need to know when to send the ley to Erenthrall for your use, Kara. Yet we may not be able to seize control of the Needle completely. Our hold may only be temporary. We should time this so that you are already in Erenthrall when we attack. How can we do this?”
No one spoke until Hernande said, “You will all have to be in place and ready on an agreed upon day, at the same time. Morrell, you must have constructed the node before then. Marcus, Lienta, you must seize control of the Nexus here and hold it for as long as Kara needs. And Kara, you’ll have to be ready and prepared in Erenthrall.”
“How long will it take Kara to travel to Erenthrall, and Morrell to Tumbor?”
“The parties will be small,” Allan said, “and I assume they’ll have horses?”
The Matriarch nodded. “Whatever we have is yours.”
“Then two weeks.”
Boskell snorted. “You’d better factor in some time for delays.”
“And I don’t know how long it will take me to create the node in Tumbor.” Morrell had drifted back to the table. Her father enfolded her in one arm. “It may require more than one attempt.”
“Let’s say three weeks,” the Matriarch said, with the tone of finality. She pointed to Kara, Artras, and Marcus. “You three need to get some rest. Actual sleep this time. Leave the preparations to Lienta. Now go.”
Kara rose, but staggered. Now that decisions had been made, her exhaustion settled into her muscles like stone. Marcus caught her arm, but he was as weary as she was. Allan came forward and led her back toward their room deeper inside the embassy. She couldn’t even dredge up the words to thank him. Artras and Marcus trailed behind them.
The ex-Dog left them in their rooms, each crawling into separate beds. Kara pulled the thin blanket up over her legs, then let it drop. She stared up at the stone overhead, heard Marcus shifting into a new position, knew that Artras had already fallen asleep by her snores. Concern over Cory caught at her attention, brought her back from the brink of unconsciousness for an anguished moment, but even that wasn’t enough to keep her eyes open.
As she fell into darkness, she muttered to herself, “Three weeks.”
The darkness surrounding Cory appeared complete, until he heard a murmur of sound. It was muddy, softened and distorted, but it was a voice. He concentrated, the ethereal feel of being submerged in water receding, but not far. A dim light appeared, blurred and muddied like the sound, as if it were above the surface of the water.
He pushed toward it, and the closer he came, the more sensation coursed through him. The darkness resolved into the shape of his body—arms, legs, torso—but it remained disconnected from him, distant. His mouth, sinuses, and throat burned. His lungs were hollows of liquid fire. A roaring sound pulsed in the background and it took him a long moment to realize it was his heartbeat, slowed down tenfold, barely sustaining his life.
Movement above the water reclaimed his attention and he pushed closer, running up against a wall, a slick surface, like glass. But he was close enough now that he could discern figures beyond the glass, could hear words and phrases. And the longer he listened, the clearer it became.
“. . . take his . . . get arms. Drag him . . .”
Two men, close to him. One leaned down and hoisted up his legs, close enough Cory could see his face, but he didn’t recognize him. An enforcer, though. Someone else leaned down and pulled up Cory’s arms. Or at least, he assumed they were his arms and legs, since when the two enforcers began to drag the body, his perspective shifted. He felt nothing, no tingling in his extremities at all.
They dropped him near the wall and his head rolled to one side. Jerrain and Sovaan were stacked next to him, some of the other students beyond. Bryce sat upright against the wall, head forward, Ty beside him. They were still in their prison cell beneath the temple then.
“. . . others with them . . .”
“. . . freaky that their eyes are still open.”
“Get over it. Let’s move the . . . Darius wants at least five for . . .”
“What about . . . damned mages?”
Cory beat against the glass wall, screamed Bryce’s name, bellowed at Ty, but his body didn’t even twitch.
The guards dropped another body near Cory, one of Ty’s supporters.
“Dalton wants them for something . . .”
“I don’t see why we just don’t kill them all. They’ve been nothing but . . .”
Another body, then two more, mostly out of Cory’s sight, although he could see at least one of the guards most of the time.
“There. That’s all of them.”
“Except these seven.”
The two guards shifted back into Cory’s view, both standing over Bryce and Ty. Except Cory noticed they were blurrier than before, mere black smears against the torchlight. He couldn’t pick out Ty’s features anymore either. Bryce had faded into the background of stone.
One of the guards kicked Bryce’s wounded thigh, then laughed. “Whatever that gas was, it knocked them out good. He didn’t even flinch.”
Cory slammed against the glass again, strained against it, but his vision kept fading, as if he were sinking. Yet his hearing continued to improve.
“Are you ready?” a new voice asked.
The two bleary guards shifted. “We’ve got Ty, Bryce, and five others picked out, as Darius ordered. What do we do with them?”
“Find some others to help you haul them up to the first tier. Commander Darius and Father have plans for them, some kind of sermon.”
“What about the rest?”
“As soon as you’ve removed these seven, give them another dose of that gas. Darius doesn’t want the mages to awaken until Father’s ready for them. They can do too much damage on their own.”
The dark swatches moved, the light almost gone. Belatedly, Cory reached out for the Tapestry, cursed when he easily passed beyond the glass wall. He focused on the guards, but his grip on the Tapestry was tenuous. Like silk, it slid from his mental fingers and with a final outraged cry, complete darkness enveloped him again.
Ty woke when someone slapped him hard across the face. He sucked in a breath, then immediately leaned over and vomited, his throat, lungs, and mouth burning as if coated with oil and lit on fire. The bile made it worse. He heaved a second time, then spat, not surprised to see blood in the vomit. His hands were tied behind his back, his legs bound at the ankles and knees, straight out in front of him. His body leaned back against a wall, one of the temple corridors, since it tilted forward.
Drawing in shallow breaths, he looked around without raising his head. Five—no, six—others were bound and seated like himself down the corridor, Bryce to his left. No one sat to his right, where he’d puked. But Darius squatted before him, a slew of enforcers behind him.
“How do you feel?” Darius asked.
Ty swirled the bitter taste around in his mouth and spat again before raising his head. “Like shit.” It hurt to talk, his voice a croaking growl, nearly unrecognizable. Something leaked from his nose. Blood.
Darius chuckled. “Glad to hear it.”
From the far end of the corridor, where the sun blazed in the ruddy colors of dusk, the roar of a thousand voices rose in a shout. From the other direction, someone moaned as they began to come around.
Darius gestured toward the enforcers behind him and they shifted farther down the corridor, standing over the rest of those tied up with Ty.
“What’s going on?” Ty asked. “Father giving one of his sermons? Trying to appease the people?”
“Not appease. Trying to allay their fears.”
“They should be afraid, with you i
n power.”
Darius reached out and grabbed hold of Ty’s chin with one hand, pinching his cheeks tight as he searched Ty’s eyes. Ty struggled, but his entire body ached, his muscles weak. He couldn’t break Darius’ grip, defiantly refused to look away.
Next to him, Bryce moaned.
Teeth grinding together, he funneled all his hatred for Darius and Father Dalton and the Kormanley into his gaze, breath heaving out through his nostrils.
Darius finally grunted and thrust Ty’s head back as he stood. “Father was right. You’ll never tell us where your men are keeping Jonnas and the others you captured. We’ll have to find them ourselves.” He stalked away, toward the sunlight and the tier.
“They haven’t found them yet?” Bryce asked, keeping his voice low.
“You sound like hell.”
“I feel like it.”
“At least you didn’t puke.” Farther down the hall, the other guards with them were waking up. “How’s your leg?”
“Is it still there? I can’t tell.”
Ty grunted at the gallows humor. If it was gallows humor. “I don’t see any of the mages.”
“Maybe they escaped.”
“Somehow I doubt it. My last memory before waking here was Cory on his hands and knees, reaching for something.”
“Shut it!” one of the enforcers ordered, stepping in front of both Ty and Bryce. Both guardsmen looked up at him as another roar reverberated down the corridor.
“I don’t see the point in listening to you,” Bryce said. “I’m already three-quarters dead as it is, and it sounds like your cursed Father Dalton is getting ready to hand me the other quarter.”
The guard didn’t answer, merely stalked off toward the sunlight, vanishing in the glare.
“He didn’t take that well,” Bryce said.
“He never took well to honesty.”
Someone emerged from the light, resolving into Darius. “Get them all up and out onto the tier. Father’s ready.”
The men moved forward, Darius coming for Ty himself. Ty’s erstwhile second jerked him up by the arm, slashing the ties at his knees and ankles so he could walk, even though Ty’s legs gave out almost instantly, numbed from the gas and immobility.
“Time to face Korma for your betrayals,” Darius said as he hauled Ty forward.
They emerged onto the first tier, passing through ranks of enforcers, headed toward the stone platform that jutted out over the massive square below. Kormanley banners flapped in the brisk breeze on all sides, ley globes blazing on the edge of the tier and along the length of the walls. Ty’s eyes teared up at the brilliant sunset, the orange-red-gold of the light on the horizon and burning in the clouds intense. He blinked as Darius dragged him to a halt at the start of the platform, Father twenty strides ahead in a blazing white robe, hands raised to the sky.
Below, what appeared to be every soul who resided in the Needle stood in the square, most with hands raised toward Dalton.
“These are the men who led you astray!” Dalton bellowed, his voice somehow echoing through the surrounding buildings to those below. “These are those who would control the ley, instead of letting it return to its natural order! You’ve witnessed how destructive they can be. Tumbor has been destroyed! Erenthrall is consumed by white fire!” Ty shot a glance toward the northeast, where the white glow above Erenthrall was clearly visible. “And far to the north, the Three Sisters tremble, on the verge of quickening, as I foresaw in my vision! All that I have said will come true, unless we seize control and stop it ourselves! And the first step in our quest of purification, of renewal, of a return to the natural order as Korma demands, is the judgment of those who sought to destroy us.”
Dalton turned to face Ty with his clouded eyes, his arms dropping. In a much softer voice, he said, “Welcome, Commander. I’m glad you could join us.”
The door to Kara’s room slammed open, startling all of them, and Lieutenant Boskell stepped in, surveying everyone present with one swift glance.
“Kara, Allan, Marcus,” he said, “you need to follow me now.”
Allan stood. “Why? What’s happening?”
“Father Dalton is in the middle of a sermon and he’s brought prisoners forth as part of the show.”
Kara immediately thought of Cory and the other mages. “Who?”
“I didn’t stay to find out. The Matriarch ordered me to find you and bring you to the embassy roof.”
“Then let’s go.”
Boskell led all three of them out the door, cutting left and taking them into corridors and stairs they hadn’t been privy to yet. They ascended swiftly, emerging on the roof in a matter of minutes. Kara’s hands were clenched into fists as she looked toward the temple, but it was too distant and the light too odd to make out faces. She could see a figure she assumed to be Dalton in a white robe at the end of the stone walk jutting from the first tier, assorted figures arrayed around him. A smaller group stood out up front, near Father.
Kara twisted and found the Matriarch, Janote, and Lienta at one edge of the roof, the captain with a spyglass raised to his eye.
“Who’s being held prisoner?” Kara demanded as she moved toward them. “Is it Cory?”
“No,” Lienta answered, lowering the glass and handing it over before Kara could ask for it. “It appears to be Commander Ty, Bryce, and a few other enforcers.”
“They only just emerged,” the Matriarch said. “Our men have only caught snatches of Dalton’s sermon, but it appears to be a trial.”
“Not a trial,” Allan said at Kara’s side. “An execution.”
But Kara wasn’t listening. As soon as Lienta gave her the glass, she raised it to her eye. She searched wildly for a breath, then forced herself to calm down, focus. Even though Lienta had said Cory wasn’t present, her heartblood still roared in her ears. She found the temple, centered herself on the first tier, the ledge, the front ranks.
Dalton blazed in his robes, lit by the ley and the lurid colors of the sunset. Ty stood with Darius at the edge of the jutting stone walk, but as she watched, the two traded places with Dalton. The others were each led up to the edge of the tier on either side, Bryce practically carried by two guardsmen because one of his legs was a bloody mess. She didn’t recognize any of the other men, except as a vague recollection of seeing them around the temple.
No Cory. None of the University mentors or their students.
A surge of relief shuddered through her, followed by shame.
“What’s happening?” Allan asked.
Kara started, her attention returning to the temple. “Darius has taken Ty out onto the end of the jut over the square. He’s got a wicked dagger with him. Bryce and the others have been positioned at the edge of the tier.”
“Where’s Dalton?”
“He’s still near the front, but not out over the crowd.” She drew in a ragged breath. “We have to do something.”
“What?” Marcus asked, his frustration clear. “What can we do?”
The Matriarch placed a hand on Kara’s arm. “There’s nothing that can be done. There’s no need for you to watch.”
Kara shrugged her off, suddenly angry. “I have to watch. I owe Bryce and Ty and all of them that.” Her voice had become choked. “He stayed behind so that you could reach me, so that you could escape and save the Wielders.”
“That does not mean you are required to watch. Only that you grieve.”
“I’ll watch.”
The Matriarch’s soothing grip dropped away.
Through the glass, Kara shifted between Ty’s stoic face, Dalton’s exultant one, and Bryce’s, more a rictus of pain.
As Dalton raised his arms once again, head lifted, words Kara could not hear spilling from his mouth, she trembled with energy she couldn’t expend to save them and tears burned her eyes.
Ty stood at the en
d of the jut, a sea of people beneath him, Darius at his side, holding him in check. Wind gusted into his face, but he held himself stiff, back rigid, formal. Behind, Dalton spouted words about justice, about faith, about a coming battle to be fought here at the Needle, to be fought by all of them, but the words were meaningless. Ty stared out at the horizon, sunset to the west, out of sight, but its colors caught in the clouds above and highlighting the mountains to the northwest. Those colors faded into dusk in the east, pinpricks of stars barely visible, Erenthrall burning off to the side, the Three Sisters pulsing straight ahead. The pulses were clear; a flash of brighter light from each one, all three at different intervals, but all still spaced far apart. They’d been unbalanced, had begun to quicken. That, at least, of what Dalton had said, was true.
Dalton’s voice rose to a crescendo and Darius shifted beside him, his eagerness radiating off his skin like heat. He spun Ty toward him, dagger ready. To one side, he could see Bryce and a few of the other guards lined up on the side of the tier, an enforcer with a dagger standing behind each one.
“You realize that the god Korma doesn’t preach about returning everything to its natural order.” Ty was surprised at how calm his voice sounded, how serene.
Darius hesitated. “What do you mean?”
“Korma is all about balance.”
Ty threw himself backward off the stone jut, Darius realizing his intent a few seconds too late. The Kormanley usurper swung his dagger at Ty’s gut, the blade scoring a thin line across Ty’s stomach, but not cutting deep enough to disembowel him. Darius’ hand tightened on Ty’s arm, but then released. Still, it was enough to make Darius stumble to his knees at the edge of the jut to keep himself from following Ty, his face a rigid mask of hatred. He screamed something Ty couldn’t hear past the rush of air in his ears.
On the edges of the tier, the enforcers slit the throats of their prisoners and shoved them down onto the steps of the temple. Bryce’s body struck the stairs and crumpled, rolling and twisting like a rag doll before coming to a sprawled halt.
Then Ty hit the flagstones of the square.
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