Reaping the Aurora

by Joshua Palmatier

  Sesali spoke up for the first time. “Three days.”

  “You’re certain?”

  “Yes. Three days.”

  “Is that enough time, Morrell?”

  She straightened. “It has to be.”

  Boskell eyed her solemnly, then glanced at both Okata and Sesali. Both of them nodded in agreement, and with that Boskell began to move. “Then we’re going to send you and Drayden on ahead. No arguments!” He shot that toward Drayden. “You keep her alive, Wolf, you hear me? The three of us will take care of this yavun. If we can’t kill them all, we’ll slow them down. We’ll try to catch up to you if we can.”

  Okata and Sesali were also moving, both checking weapons, rooting through their knapsacks, handing off supplies to Boskell. Drayden hopped down from the stone he’d been standing on to scent the air, heading toward Morrell. Boskell was stuffing whatever Okata and Sesali gave him into his own satchel. All of a sudden, events were beginning to move too fast, and Morrell realized that Boskell and the others had already discussed what they were going to do, without her or Drayden’s knowledge.

  “Wait—”

  Boskell thrust his satchel into Morrell’s hands, then grabbed her shoulders and looked her square in the eyes. “You have to get to the center of Tumbor and do whatever it is you need to do as fast as you can. We’ll hold them off, hopefully kill them, but you have to get that node built within three days. Don’t wait for us. Don’t even think about us. Get that node built, understand?”

  Morrell drew in a breath, her chest hot and achy. “I understand.”

  Boskell looked over her shoulder at Drayden. “Get her out of here.”

  Drayden gave a short growl, then caught Morrell’s arm and tugged her toward the east. Morrell resisted, watching as Boskell conversed briefly with Okata and Sesali, motioning to the north and south, the three of them breaking apart, Boskell heading west. They clambered over the shattered remains of Tumbor and vanished in the shadows and crevices within moments.

  Morrell’s throat closed up and for a few moments she couldn’t breathe. She turned and stared off into the distance, toward the center of Tumbor, auroral storms surging across the broken landscape, lightning walking jaggedly across the horizon. She was suddenly glad she’d been able to heal Sesali’s arm a few days before.

  “We must go,” Drayden said in his guttural voice, not without a thread of sympathy.

  “Yes.” Morrell coughed, the word coming out as a dry, weak croak. She steeled herself. “Yes, let’s go.”

  Hernande startled awake to the strident sounds of horns. He sat bolt upright in his bed, blankets tangled in his legs, and stared bleary-eyed at the wall as he tried to sort out the sounds.

  “Two different calls. The Kormanley . . . and the Gorrani.”

  He lurched out of bed and snatched at clean clothes. What sounded like the footsteps of a hundred men pounded past his closed door, shouts muffled by the wood. He dragged a shirt over his head and stuffed its tail into his breeches as he flung the door open and stalked down the hall, heading toward the main hall. Three doors down from his own, Marcus’ door flew open, the Wielder stepping out in front of him.

  “What’s happening?” he demanded.

  “I don’t know. The horns woke me.”

  Marcus had already turned away, jogging toward the main hall. Hernande followed.

  The Matriarch’s embassy was abuzz with activity, most of the Temerite watchmen sprinting toward the doors. Lienta stood in the center of the hall, issuing orders, the only center of calm in the area. Hernande didn’t see the Matriarch anywhere.

  Marcus bulled his way through to Lienta.

  “What’s happening?” he demanded again.

  Lienta spared him an irritated glance, then finished his orders and held up a hand for the rest as he turned to Marcus. “Baron Devin and his army have arrived. Father’s forces are scrambling for the walls, even though Devin’s men have only been sighted on the horizon. The Gorrani are reacting as well.”

  “Are the Gorrani readying to attack?” Hernande asked.

  “It’s hard to tell. I’ve ordered my own forces to the walls, although the ley barrier is still in place. If the Kormanley drop it, we may have to defend ourselves.” More watchmen had arrived, were demanding Lienta’s attention. “You two should get our teams together and prepare for an attack on the temple.”

  “It’s not time yet,” Marcus said instantly. “It’s too early. The comet isn’t overhead.”

  “We may not have a choice,” Lienta snapped. “If the Baron and Gorrani attack the Needle, it presents our best chance of taking the Nexus and holding it, while the Kormanley are focused on the others. Get your teams ready. Right now.”

  He turned back to his men, pointing to one of the lieutenants, who began a report on the walls.

  Marcus spun on Hernande. “It’s too early!” He began pushing back out through the watchmen.

  “But Lienta is right. If the Kormanley are distracted by the Baron and the Gorrani, we’ll have a better chance of taking control of the Nexus.”

  “We’ll never be able to hold it long enough to use it, though!”

  “Do you have a better idea?” Marcus didn’t answer, continuing toward the corridor that contained their bedrooms. Hernande snagged his arm to halt him. “Go find Cutter, Marc, and the rest of our own men. I’ll get Artras and everything else we’ll need. Meet at the edge of the chasm.”

  Marcus tensed in indecision, then muttered, “We’ll never hold it for three days,” before sprinting away toward where the others were housed.

  Hernande turned to find Artras standing behind him. She held up a couple of satchels.

  “I heard the horns and grabbed what we’d need, just in case.”

  Hernande pulled two of the satchels over his head, adjusting them on his shoulders.

  “Marcus is right, you know. If we’re forced to take the Nexus—”

  “I learned in my youth that sometimes the gods and the universe are playing with a different set of rules than you are. That sometimes you must simply let the game play you.”

  Artras snorted. “And sometimes you need to break the rules.”

  Hernande stared at her a moment, then smiled. “Perhaps.”

  They made their way through the mostly empty outer hall—Lienta presumably having moved to the walls—and out a side door into the reclaimed streets of the Temerite section. Hernande was surprised to find it still night, at least a few hours left until dawn. But the buildings were lit by the towering white wall of ley that still encircled the Needle, its ambient light obscuring nearly all the stars overhead. Only the moon, the brightest stars, and the smudge of the comet could be seen from the streets. Those outside were either headed toward the outer walls or scrambling to their assigned stations inside the city. Hernande and Artras ran in the opposite direction, toward one of the half-ruined buildings overlooking the chasm.

  When they arrived, they found it empty except for the weapons cached here earlier. Hernande motioned to the stairs leading to the roof.

  They ascended, coming back out into the night air with a vantage on the depths of the chasm and the Kormanley controlled Needle on the far side. The light from the ley was lessened here, but they shifted into a patch of shadow nonetheless, hoping that none of the Kormanley enforcers stationed on the far side of the chasm would notice them.

  They needn’t have bothered. All of those they saw on the short walls overlooking the chasm were focused on what was happening closer to the temple.

  “Like Lienta, Darius isn’t taking any chances,” Hernande said. “He’s sending everyone to the walls.”

  “How long do you think Iscivius can keep the wall of ley going?” Artras asked.

  “You could answer that better than I.”

  Artras considered for a long moment, both of them watching the activity at
the temple and in the streets below, then said, “He’s been holding it up for days now, probably with the support of the Wielders that stayed behind. But he can’t keep it up indefinitely. And I don’t think any of the others are strong enough to hold it for him. It’s going to fall. It’s only a matter of time.”

  “And then the Gorrani and Devin’s men will attack. The serpents and the dogs, just as Dalton predicted.”

  Both of them looked to the north, although they couldn’t see the piercing white lights of the Three Sisters on the horizon because of the wall of ley. Neither of them said anything about the rest of Dalton’s prophecy.

  Marcus and Cutter emerged from the rooftop door and spotted them.

  “Have you heard anything?” Artras asked as they joined them. “We can’t see beyond the ley wall.”

  “Lienta says the Gorrani are shifting their men to face northward. He thinks they intend to attack. We’ll know for certain when their drums start up.” He scanned the temple and the Kormanley’s men. “Right now, he’s waiting to see what happens.”

  “Neither Devin nor the Gorrani can do anything to us or the Kormanley until the ley wall comes down,” Cutter said.

  “Lienta’s thinking that perhaps we should force the ley wall to come down.”

  Hernande’s eyebrows rose. “He wants us to go across now and take out Iscivius?”

  “It’s a possibility. But, for now, we wait.” Marcus shifted restlessly before settling down near Hernande. “How long will it take you to get ready once we know we’re going?”

  Hernande shrugged. “I’ve been practicing entering the meditative state since we devised the plan. I can be ready within minutes. Someone will have to carry me across, though. I won’t be able to walk and remain focused at the same time. If my concentration is interrupted—”

  “It would be disastrous.” Marcus stared down into the chasm, then sighed and stood. “Unless Lienta orders otherwise, we’ll go as soon as the ley wall falls. Be ready.”

  He and Cutter returned below.

  Artras watched their retreat, then said, “That could be minutes, or hours, or days from now.”

  “Somehow, I don’t think it’s the latter.”

  “The Gorrani are already here,” the Butcher complained. “And the Needle looks like it’s already been consumed by ley.”

  Devin trudged up the last of the slope of the crater surrounding the Needle, coming to a halt opposite the Butcher’s giant ax. It hung listlessly from his hand. The alpha Hound watched them both from six paces back. He already knew the situation at the Needle. His beta had reported in nearly a day ago, but he’d decided that the “Baron” didn’t need to be informed.

  What the alpha really wanted to know was what Devin would do now.

  “The Needle hasn’t been consumed by ley,” Devin said with a hint of derision. “It’s a wall. They used it the last time the Gorrani attacked.”

  “So what do we do?”

  Devin considered in silence, the Butcher’s shoulders twitching with impatience. The alpha could smell the bulkier man’s frustration. He’d come here to fight, to butcher, to feed.

  Behind them, the combined forces from Erenthrall—the Rats, the Butcher’s men, and those from Haven—approached, the noise of their march growing.

  “We won’t be able to attack the Needle, not with the ley wall in place,” Devin finally said.

  “What about the Gorrani? We can attack them.”

  “They’re already encamped. They’ll be rested, ready for us.”

  The Butcher reached out and casually grabbed Devin by the throat with his free hand. The alpha tensed, nearly rushed forward to protect his master, the instincts drilled into him in the den at the Amber Tower, but he fought them back, nearly choking with the effort.

  “You promised us blood,” the Butcher said. His grip tightened and Devin’s hands shot up and snatched ineffectively at the larger man’s wrist.

  “We’ll attack . . . at dawn,” Devin choked out. “Our men . . . need to rest . . . at least a few hours.”

  The Butcher’s eyes narrowed and then he released him. “Dawn.” He turned and loped down the slope toward the approaching army, casting the alpha a dismissive look.

  The alpha bristled—he’d killed men for less—but Devin snapped, “Why didn’t you do anything? He could have killed me!”

  The alpha didn’t answer. His fingers itched for the hilt of his dagger.

  Massaging his throat, Devin bent over and coughed, then spat into the grass. When he recovered, he straightened and shot a glance toward the Gorrani. “We’ll never be able to take the Gorrani, not exhausted from the march and without some preparation. Unless . . .” He turned back to the Hound, then grinned. “Unless they’re distracted by something else.”

  Stepping down from the ridge, he halted directly before the Hound. “I order you to infiltrate the Gorrani camp and kill all of their sects’ leaders. Then move on to their warriors. Kill as many of them as you can, quietly, before dawn.”

  The alpha stared into Devin’s eyes, his hackles raised in hatred, but he didn’t think Devin noticed. He was so weak, he couldn’t even scent the enmity from his own Hounds.

  Without a word, he stalked off into the night, heading toward the darkness where he knew his beta waited, leaving Devin behind. When his beta emerged from the night shadows, he asked, “You saw? You heard?”

  His beta nodded. “Are we going to follow his orders?”

  “No.” The simple word sent a frisson of ingrained fear through the alpha’s body and he flinched, but when the expected blow in reprimand did not come, he felt elated. Freed. As far as he knew, no Hound had ever refused an order. No Hound had ever defied his master and survived. But the world had changed, had been reshaped, and with it, the Hounds had been unleashed. “No,” he said again, the word hard and harsh. “The Hounds will follow no master. We will follow no orders but our own. Let the Baron”—he twisted the title—“fight the Gorrani on his own.”

  He could smell his beta’s pleasure as they angled away from the army, away from the crater and its Needle surrounded in harsh white ley light.

  “What about our third?”

  The alpha’s steps faltered. He glanced back toward the Needle, even though they were below the ridge and could only see the glow of the ley wall over its edge. “We cannot reach him. Let him carry out his orders. We will find him after.”

  He turned back to the darkness. “And then we will find our own way in this new world.”

  A ragged, tortured scream cut through the crunch of Morrell’s footsteps on the shale of Tumbor and she ground to a halt, head lifted. Behind her, Drayden mimicked her, one of his ears twitching. The scream trailed down into silence.

  “It was a woman,” he said. “Not Boskell or Okata.”

  “But it could have been Sesali.”

  “It could have been one of the Gorrani as well.”

  Heartsick, Morrell turned away and took up a careful trot. Moving too fast with the strange earth would cause her to trip—she had the sliced hands to prove it—but she didn’t dare walk. She didn’t know how long it would be before the Gorrani yavun caught up to her.

  But the location of the old node was close. She could feel it.

  They struggled onward through the broken shards of the city, climbing up splinters of stone, then down the far sides. Blade-sharp edges slit open clothes and skin at odd moments, to the point where Morrell no longer felt the individual cuts. She didn’t dare heal herself or Drayden, because she didn’t know how much strength she’d need to create the node. Lightning surrounded them, thunder rolling in from all directions. The wind picked up, whistling in the strange crevices created by the shards, until an auroral storm danced overhead like sheets of clouds, then died back down to gusts. At one point, they were forced to cower beneath an overhang as another auroral storm abruptly blo
ssomed in front of them, going from nothing to flaring waves of blue and gold within a few heartbeats, completely blocking their path, all in an eerie silence. When it touched land, the earth seethed and shattered like glass.

  Hours later, Morrell stumbled beneath an arch of shards onto the flat face of what appeared to be actual crystal. Details were etched into the face. Words. It had once been the wall of a building, the words some kind of quotation, outlined in scrollwork and pictures. She fell to her hands and knees, grit grinding into the cuts on her palms. Her mouth was dry—they’d drunk sparingly—and her stomach was a hollow pit. She hung her head down between her arms.

  Drayden rushed forward and knelt beside her. “We can’t stop. You need to keep moving. The Gorrani are close. I can smell them.”

  “We’re here,” Morrell said, raising her head. “The node used to be right here, beneath the earth.”

  Drayden glanced around at the heap of shards, no different than any of the landscape they’d already traversed, but he didn’t question her. “Do what you need to do. I’ll protect you.”

  He rose and moved away, his feet crunching in the earth as soon as he left the crystal’s smoother, harder surface. But the sound faded as Morrell closed her eyes and reached down into the stone beneath her, as she’d reached into the wall surrounding the Needle to repair it.

  She immediately recoiled, jerking her hands free of the crystal with an anguished cry.

  “What is it?” Drayden called from the archway.

  “The stone,” she said. “It’s screaming.”

  She dashed away the tears, then reached and placed her hands against the crystal again, ready for the earth’s agony this time. It shuddered through her body as she joined with it, her instinct to reach out and heal it. But this damage was too extensive, too deep, and she didn’t have the time or the strength to deal with it now. The Gorrani were too close, and Kara and Marcus and the others were counting on her. Boskell, Okata, and Sesali were counting on her.