Reaping the Aurora

by Joshua Palmatier

  Cory shook his hand. “Thank you. All of you.”

  Hernande leaned forward and stage whispered, “It was all Sovaan’s idea.”

  Sovaan waved a hand in dismissal. “It was a natural conclusion after the . . . events at the temple.”

  Overwhelmed, Cory stood with mouth open for a long, awkward moment, both mentors grinning, then decided to ignore the unexpected news and faced Hernande. “You aren’t hurt? When did you wake up?”

  “Last night, apparently shortly after you and the others brought me here. I tried to rouse you, but you were out cold. I went to find the others instead. Sovaan told me what happened to you and the others once you were captured. Lienta explained about what happened with the Wielder’s plan to take the Nexus and hold it after I went into my trance state, except he didn’t know what transpired in the Needle after Marcus and the others broke away from him. We were waiting for Artras to fill in that gap. She’s still asleep.”

  “Except now we’ve been summoned by the Matriarch,” Sovaan said. “We must wake her and the rest.”

  Before the argument he’d heard earlier could be repeated for Artras, Cory said, “She wanted to know the moment you regained consciousness.”

  Artras was thrilled to see Hernande, although more restrained than Cory. Like all of them, she appeared haggard and worn. Sovaan stood back, agitated, as they laughed and cried over their recent experiences, but finally broke in to remind them of the Matriarch’s summons.

  When they entered the main hall of the Temerite embassy, the Matriarch was ensconced behind a large oak desk, Janote to her right and a step behind her. The desktop was littered with papers, an inkwell, a quill, and various personal effects. Behind her, the marble wall of the mercantile was crazed with cracks. Lienta stood in front of the desk, having just handed over a sheaf of papers. Dylan and Cutter were off to one side. The room bustled with activity, watchmen seated at desks on either side of the long hall between the pillars, runners scuttling to and fro. Late afternoon sunlight slanted through the windows. A low murmur of mixed conversation and rustling bodies filled the chamber.

  “Ah, you’ve arrived,” the Matriarch said when she saw them, setting the papers she held aside. Lienta faced them. “You slept well, I hope?”

  “Well enough, Matriarch,” Sovaan said for them all.

  “I wish I could have given you more time to recuperate, but events are progressing at the Needle. I’ve received full reports from Lienta and his men, as well as more basic reports from some of the University students and mentors, as well as huntsman Cutter and Wielder Dylan, but I would like to hear your own accounts, if I may. It is obvious that there are certain key details missing.”

  Hernande stepped forward. “Forgive me, Matriarch, but before that, may I ask what you intend to do with all of us? And what you intend to do here, at the Needle?”

  The Matriarch remained silent, her gaze fixed on Hernande, then she leaned forward, addressing them all. “At this moment, the Needle is in chaos. From what we can gather on this side of the chasm, Devin’s men and the Gorrani continue to fight in the streets and in the temple. There is no clear victor, and no one appears to have seized control of a significant sector of the city, certainly not the temple or the Needle itself. In our estimation, neither force is now strong enough to lay claim to the city. Most of those who resided there before the attack have already fled. We have seen no sign of the Kormanley presence at all; the enforcer presence that held the city before appears to have been crushed completely. There are reports that Father Dalton is dead. There are reports that he has fled. In either case, they no longer appear to be a factor.

  “So we will wait. We will give those who wish to flee a chance to escape, and we will allow Devin’s men and the Gorrani the chance to kill each other off. Then, when the time is right, we will seize control of the Needle. We have been displaced from our home in Temer, with no assurances that any part of our nation even survives. It is obvious that Erenthrall is dangerous, no matter what Kara Tremain has managed to do there with the ley and the Nexus. It is also obvious that we cannot trust anyone else, only ourselves. We need a new home. I see no reason why it cannot be made here.”

  Her gaze landed on Artras. “But I need to know the state of the node here before that decision can be made final.”

  “You still have not answered my main question,” Hernande interrupted. “What do you intend to do with all of us?”

  “For the moment, I offer you sanctuary here, until you have recovered. It is the least I can do.”

  “And after we have recovered?”

  “We shall decide at that time.”

  “I see.” Hernande bowed his head and stepped back. Sovaan appeared agitated, Lienta discomfited, but neither spoke up.

  “Now, tell us what happened within the node, Wielder Artras. And then we shall hear from you, Cory.”

  Artras hesitated, her eyes taut with the same unfocused anger Cory felt, but she recounted what had happened within the Needle, starting where she, Marcus, and the others had broken away from Lienta’s watchmen and ending with the desperate hope that Hernande’s bridge over the chasm still existed. It took longer than expected, with interruptions for clarification from the Matriarch, Lienta, and even Janote. Cory began his own story of the University students’ capture, imprisonment, and escape with the sunlight fading from the windows, finishing well after night had fallen. The embassy chamber was now lit with torches and a few lanterns, one of which rested on a corner of the Matriarch’s desk, its light spilling over her papers.

  The room remained silent long after Cory and Artras finished, until the Matriarch stirred.

  “We have much to discuss. Thank you for being so frank with us. Let us hope that your supposition that the ceiling of the Nexus at the Needle has buried it completely is correct. We will call on you again.”

  As everyone who remained began preparing to leave at the obvious dismissal, Cory stepped forward. “Matriarch. Kara and Allan, Morrell and Boskell, all of them—if they survived, they will return here. We should be here to greet them.”

  A pained yet compassionate expression flickered across the Matriarch’s stern face. “I will take that into account when I make my decision.”

  Then they were ushered out by Lienta and the watchmen. Lienta muttered a few words of reassurance before closing the embassy’s doors behind them.

  “Well, that was . . . troubling,” Sovaan said. “I would have thought they’d be more appreciative of what we’ve all done.”

  “We did nothing for the Temerites except offer them sanctuary here at the Needle, which ended up putting them directly into the path of the Kormanley, Gorrani, and Devin’s dogs.”

  “We allowed them to take over a third of the city!” Sovaan protested, but Cory had stopped listening. Mention of the dogs had reminded him of Dalton’s vision. He broke away from the others, pace picking up as he reached the stairs.

  “Where are you going?” Artras called out after him.

  “The roof!”

  When he stumbled through the door onto the roof, he was panting. He immediately faced north and sought out the Three Sisters, two of the distortions still pulsing dully among the stars.

  The third flashed.

  The others followed more slowly, coming up behind him. No one said anything for a long moment, somber as they watched the distortion flicker. To the east, flames still roiled in a few buildings around the temple, but the fighting had died down. Watchmen lined the walls surrounding the Temerites, their torches lighting the battlements and the edge of the chasm below.

  Artras finally muttered, “Is it going to quicken? Will it be another Erenthrall? Or Tumbor?”

  “Dalton said it would destroy us all,” Dylan said.

  Hernande was chewing on the end of his beard. “What do you think, Cory?”

  “I came up here after we escaped from the t
emple and watched it. I can’t be certain, but I think . . . I think it isn’t flashing as often as before.”

  “Then if it hasn’t quickened already, perhaps Kara repaired the ley in time to stop it.”

  “There’s little we can do about it from here, regardless,” Artras said. “And it will quicken long before we manage to get there to stop it.”

  They all stood staring at the light in silence. Then they began drifting away, until only Artras, Hernande, and Cory were left.

  Artras touched Cory’s arm. “We’ll wait for her, however long it takes. Here or at the Hollow.”

  Cory said nothing. She patted his arm, then shifted toward the door.

  “Will you come down with us?” Hernande asked.

  Cory drew in a steadying breath. “No. I think I’ll stay here. The darkness, the quiet . . .”

  “I’ll be downstairs.”

  As soon as they were gone, Cory sat down on the hard stone of the roof and stared off into the night.

  In the direction of Erenthrall.

  In the end, the Matriarch agreed to let them stay. Within days, the Gorrani gathered their scattered forces and departed, headed northeast. Cory and Hernande watched from the walls as Lienta gathered the Temerite army in the courtyard below. They remained on the walls as the watchmen marched to the Needle’s main gates and invaded the city. There was little resistance. Within half a day, Lienta had secured the temple and the watchmen were scouring the surrounding city, looking for remnants of the Kormanley and Devin’s men. Patrols were set up on the walls, the main gates closed—someone had obviously opened them from the inside—and a heavy guard set upon the breach blasted into the southeastern wall by Cory himself. Temerite engineers were already working on patching that hole in their defenses.

  Artras and Dylan occupied themselves by investigating the collapse of the ceiling at the node. As expected, the pit was inaccessible. More alarming was the fact that the black spire of the Needle itself had taken on a slight tilt, its southern edge sunk into the sands of the stellae garden by half a foot. Cory could make out that it was off true if he squinted. No one knew what it would mean for the node or the temple, but Artras and Dylan reported that the ley itself was functioning normally, unaided by any Wielders.

  Once the students from the University had recovered—Jerrain’s recovery would take another few weeks—Hernande, Sovaan, and Cory began their lessons again, using the half-collapsed manse where Hernande had created the bridge using the Tapestry. Mirra, Tara, Jasom, and the rest shrugged their imprisonment off much quicker than their mentors, although Cory did catch Jasom, the oldest, staring off into thin air with a troubled look once or twice. Within days, they were teasing each other and laughing, as students do. For the most part, they kept to the section of the city west of the chasm, none of them wishing to return to the temple, even though the Matriarch, Lienta, and most of the Temerites had shifted their activities to the central part of the city.

  In the evenings, Cory would ascend to the rooftop of the mercantile and watch the horizon as the sun set, then stay long after dark. To the east, the auroral storms that had plagued the area around Tumbor dissipated. Hernande theorized they had arisen because of the slackness in the Tapestry, caused by the disruption of key ley lines. Now that the ley lines were restored—and the Tapestry with it; they could feel its tautness when working with the students—reality had been restored. He, Sovaan, and Jerrain spent long hours arguing exactly what the auroral lights were—a different kind of distortion? fluctuations in reality?—without reaching any firm conclusions.

  To the north, the pulsing of the Three Sisters continued. Cory swore that the flickering had slowed, but it wasn’t until the weakest of the three—the distortion over Dunmara, he thought—vanished that he felt certain. At that point, everyone began to relax, the tension draining from the Needle in an almost audible sigh.

  Cory kept an eye on the remaining two distortions, regardless.

  Cory was working with Mirra and Jasom on creating illusions—both attempting to conceal a stone from sight by folding the Tapestry—when a scuffling sound caught Cory’s attention. He glanced up to find Lienta standing in the doorway to the rubble-strewn room, the captain smiling.

  “I’ve brought you some guests,” he said, then stepped aside.

  Kara emerged from the manse’s inner shadows. She looked road-weary and worn, her face smudged, clothes stained and dusty, but she grinned as she said, “I made it back.”

  Cory didn’t remember moving, but suddenly he was holding her tight, so tight she gasped that she couldn’t breathe, and then he was kissing her and tears washed his face and he couldn’t breathe, his chest constricted, his throat locked. Kara burst out in laughter, and then Allan and Morrell and Grant appeared behind her, Drayden and Okata hovering around in the shadows farther back. Everyone hugged or slapped hands to shoulders and talked all at once. Lienta must have sent someone to find Hernande and Artras and the rest, for they arrived as well, the room full of exclamations of surprise and sobs and chuckles and groans. A few watchmen arrived with wine and cups and cheese and fruit.

  It may have continued indefinitely, except Kara asked during a lull in the noise, “Where’s Marcus?”

  The group ground down into sniffles and coughs and then silence.

  “Marcus died protecting the node from the Gorrani.” Artras glanced around at the rest of them, cleared her throat self-consciously. “He saved me, Dylan, Cutter, and Hernande. He sacrificed himself for us.”

  “Marc, Jenner, and many of the other Wielders died fighting the Gorrani as well,” Dylan added.

  In the awkward, grieving silence that followed, Morrell said, “Boskell, Sesali, and Hanter died for us in Tumbor.”

  For the first time, Cory took a close look at Allan’s daughter. She looked older, more confident, more certain of herself. A young woman now, not the shy child they’d begun teaching earlier in the year.

  Allan hugged her and kissed the top of her head. “Many people died helping us, poppet. But they died so that we’d have a chance to repair the ley. And you did it. You and Kara.”

  “And Marcus,” Artras added.

  “Is it truly fixed?” Hernande asked.

  Everyone turned to face Kara, who refused to let go of Cory’s hand. Or perhaps he refused to let go of hers.

  “Yes, I believe so. I monitored it as we fled Erenthrall, and it appears stable.”

  “There haven’t been any quakes for the last month,” Hernande added, “and the auroral lights have faded away. The last such storm was spotted almost two weeks ago. We haven’t seen anything since. With all of that, and the slowing of the pulses of the distortions we can see, I’d agree with you.”

  “You’re assuming no one will disturb the nodes,” Lienta said. “There must be other Wielders out there who survived the Shattering, perhaps even Primes.”

  “I don’t think they’ll be accessing the ley through the Nexus in Erenthrall.”

  “Why not?”

  Allan stirred. “The Gorrani there who were transformed by the auroral lights into snake-like creatures have seized the city. We only escaped because the ley had flooded the districts around Grass. They were already infiltrating those areas when we left. I didn’t see anyone else, except the Tunnelers. They were headed north, out of the city.”

  “No one can access the ley here,” Artras said. “Not directly. The ceiling over our own Nexus collapsed and sealed it off.”

  “And the Matriarch has no intention of allowing anyone to dig it back up again.”

  “Not in Tumbor either.” Everyone turned toward Morrell, who straightened. “I used the auroral lights to repair the nodes, then created tunnels for the ley lines between the nodes. As many as I could. The aurora was wild, untamed. The power was immense and”—she swallowed—“exhilarating. Almost alive. I’ve never felt so much raw energy before. I thought, f
or a few hours, that I could do anything.” Her voice caught and she glanced around at them all in mild embarrassment. But for a moment Cory caught a flicker of the raw, wild energy she described in her eyes. “It’s gone now, though. I meant to repair the lands destroyed by the distortion in Tumbor, but I ran out of strength at the end. The earth there is still shattered. And I don’t think, without the wildness of the aurora, that I’ll be able to fix it.”

  “No one expects you to, poppet.”

  “But I want to. The land still hurts. It’s still screaming. I can still hear it.” She shuddered.

  Hernande stroked his beard. “I can help, if it doesn’t fade on its own. There are certain meditations I know of that may help.”

  “But that doesn’t heal the land. I don’t want to ignore it. I want to fix it.”

  Artras touched her arm. “Perhaps you can, in time. Right now, you’ve done enough. You need to rest. We all need to rest.”

  Lienta cleared his throat and stiffened. “Speaking of rest, I’ve been authorized by the Matriarch to offer you all refuge here at the Needle. She felt it necessary after all you’ve done to bring stability back to the plains.”

  “That’s certainly a change from what we went through immediately after the attack on the Needle.”

  Lienta sighed, shoulders slumping as he met Artras’ accusing glare. “Yes, it is. Certain advisers argued against harboring you, considering all of you potential threats. I’ve spent a good part of the last month convincing her otherwise.”

  “Better to keep us close, so you can keep an eye on us?”

  Lienta stilled, then looked at each of them in turn. “You must admit that you are all dangerous, for various reasons. Having you here would be in our best interests, not just for our safety, but for yours.”

  Kara’s grip tightened painfully on Cory’s fingers. “Are you going to force us to stay?”

  “No. If you want to leave, you can leave. And you can return any time you wish. The Matriarch does not wish to make you prisoners.”