Radiant: Towers Trilogy Book One

by Karina Sumner-Smith

  “No,” Xhea tried to say, “let me down,” but what came from her mouth was a weak groan. The medic turned, then all Xhea could see were her eyes: eyes so green that they rivaled leaves; eyes so transfixing that she could spend hours just studying their shift from emerald to jade, their faint accents of amber.

  Xhea realized that the medic was speaking. She blinked and tried to pull her scattered thoughts together, while the world spun and glowed, everything beautiful and unsteady.

  “Come on, stay with me. Do you feel any pain?”

  “Dizzy,” Xhea managed.

  “Nothing hurts?”

  She shook her head and shut her eyes, lost in euphoria and nausea.

  “Vitals are strong,” the medic said. “But she’s barely absorbing the energy. Still no signature.” Xhea was jostled as they guided the spell holding her into the elevator shaft. Even with her eyes closed, the light beyond the garden was blinding.

  “Someone’s drained the kid half-dry,” a man’s voice replied. “The paperwork on this one’s going to be something.” He sighed. “Give her another shot.”

  Once more Xhea felt something cold press against her neck, and that was all she remembered.

  Xhea drifted, lost in vertigo’s slow rock and turn. She floated bodiless in the clouds, the world drifting around her in a gentle wind, grays slipping lullaby-soft through the open hallways of her mind. Empty, she was content.

  Forever later, she felt an edge of fear just sharp enough to pierce the haze: she didn’t know where she was. It smelled wrong here, strange—too sweet with a sharpness beneath like cleaning solution. All she could hear was the slow hiss of air. Still the world held her gently and rocked her back and forth, back and forth.

  No, she thought. Focus. Focus. As if mere repetition of the word could bring her scattered faculties into play or tame the bright magic that ran riot through her system. In silence she cursed magic, fountains, and the fools who thought it was pretty to combine the two.

  Luck. As if.

  She lay prone with her arms at her sides—that much she could tell. Something covered her—a sheet, she guessed, and blankets across her legs—though it wasn’t only her disorientation that made the clean, soft fabric difficult to identify. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d slept in a bed. Though she listened, she heard no scuff of feet or rustle of clothing, no breath but her own; and so slowly, cautiously, Xhea opened her eyes.

  She recoiled from a blast of light and color. Blinking back tears, she tried again, glimpsing the room in snatches: the bed on which she lay, a door on the wall to her left, equipment beside and behind her. The walls were white—but, magic-dazzled, even the plainest stretch of wall was tinted: shadows edged with blue, touched with green; reflections casting shapes in pale cream and yellow and peach.

  Hospital, she thought, or something like it. She’d never been in a medic’s ward that smelled so little of illness or old blood. It was frightening to think what a place like this must cost; more frightening still to think what they might do when they learned that she could never, ever pay.

  It was only when she could see without pain that Xhea noticed the man standing against the far wall. His unkempt hair was more gray than blond, and his green, hospital-issued pajamas hung from his gaunt frame. He watched her, the shadows beneath his eyes deep enough to fall into.

  “You’re in my bed,” he said in a voice like old paper.

  Xhea let her eyes flutter closed.

  “Girl, don’t pretend, I saw you’re awake. You’re not fooling anyone, hey?”

  After a moment of strained silence, Xhea opened her eyes and attempted to shrug. Of everything in the room, she could look at the man without squinting. It didn’t hurt to let her gaze rest on his wrinkled face, or study his jutting collarbones, his skin too thin over the bones.

  “Sorry,” she managed, the word slurred by her clumsy tongue. “I’d give it back, but I can’t move.”

  “Heh. Figures.” He dropped into the chair in the corner, studying her irritably. “Least you’re talking to me,” he said. “You know how many people just ignore me?”

  Oh, sweetness save me, Xhea thought. But sure enough, she could just see it: an almost-invisible tether joining her visitor to the bed on which she lay.

  “Figures,” she muttered, echoing the man’s sentiments.

  More carefully now, Xhea looked around. To the right of her bed was a blank pane of glass, standing like a window to nowhere. It lit as she turned her head, graphs and diagrams springing to life across its surface. On a small table at the bedside rested a lamp, a touch panel that she guessed was a call button, and a glass of ice water. This last caught her attention, and she was suddenly aware of her raging thirst. She forced numb fingers to reach out, close around the glass, and pull it toward her. Her mouth quested for the straw.

  Climbing into a fountain, Xhea decided, was a faster way to get drenched, but dumping glasses of water on her chest also worked nicely. She was grateful for the few mouthfuls she was able to swallow.

  Okay, she thought, sagging back into her now-sodden sheets. Escape. That shouldn’t cause any problems.

  She turned to the medical equipment behind her. There was a small control panel from which a canopy of slender metal tines arced over her like the ribs of an antique umbrella. She watched as spells traveled along their lengths and the thin wires that ran between them, magic dancing over the strands. Most of the connecting wires led to a socket on the wall, yet one length curled down toward her. She followed the thin, plastic-wrapped strand, her numb fingers fumbling along its length until she found its end attached to her neck.

  Her stomach roiled as she clutched the thin thing, tugging desperately to free it; but whatever held it to her skin—oh please, she thought, let it just be on her skin rather than in it—held fast.

  “It’s just for the monitor,” Xhea whispered. Heartbeat and brain waves, blood pressure and the like—that was all. Or maybe it was an IV line like Lower City medics used—saline solution, pain meds, something. The thought of that line snaking through her veins was enough to make her pull at the wire until the skin on her neck burned.

  Oh, how she hated feeling helpless.

  “Say,” she said to the old man, trying to sound calm. “You’ve been here a bit, right? Did you see where they put my clothes? Maybe my jacket?” A jacket that she sincerely hoped still held a knife in one of its many pockets.

  “Sure,” he said, gesturing to a boxlike storage compartment beneath the bedside table. She had to twist to see its front, the tiny latch and small touch panel. “Standard lock. If it’s your stuff it’ll open, hey?”

  “Right,” Xhea said. “Of course.”

  It was only a matter of reaching the panel. She glanced at her sodden pajama shirt and bedding, then down to her barely responsive hands. Tough, she told herself, and tried awkwardly to shift toward the edge of the bed.

  A slight beep from above was the only warning. There was a flash as pure magical energy ran down the wire to her neck and into her body.

  Ah, she thought as the world exploded in color and light. This again.

  Dazzled and euphoric, Xhea slipped back into darkness.

  “You’re in my bed.”

  Xhea groaned. “I was unconscious,” she protested—or tried to, the words slurred into incomprehensibility.

  “Ah, I see you’re awake.” Another voice—a woman’s voice—made Xhea force her eyes open, then wince at the assault of color. Her stomach churned—again. Still. If this were a payment, she thought, I’d be loving this. It wasn’t much consolation.

  The woman stood near the end of the bed, wearing neat scrubs and a look of professional concern. From the way the light seemed to glitter and dance around her, Xhea was fairly certain that this visitor was alive, though she checked for a tether just in case. The old man’s ghost sat in his chair in the corner, sulking at the interruption.

  “Are you feeling well enough to answer some questions?” the doctor asked. �
��The police would like to talk to you about what happened.”

  I can think of nothing I’d enjoy more, Xhea thought. But what she said was a slow, poorly enunciated, “Yes, okay.”

  When the police were brought in, Xhea kept her eyes closed to mere slits and allowed her tongue to be heavy and slow, so that she garbled even simple one-word answers. Even so, Xhea responded carefully to their patient questions, relying on vagueness, supposed memory loss, and outright lies to keep her anonymous.

  No, she didn’t remember anything. No, she couldn’t tell them who had stripped her of life force and left her to die half-naked in a fountain. No, she didn’t know who they could contact, nor the name of her Tower; she felt so strange—couldn’t she sleep for a while longer, please? Oh, please. Surely she’d feel better soon.

  Except that she didn’t.

  She received dose after dose of magic, and with each shot she seemed to wake less—to remember less—in the times between. She spoke to doctors, to nurses, to security—she didn’t know quite who; their faces blended, one into the other, until she could not remember who’d she’d seen last or which of her visitors were still alive.

  Places where people died were often thick with ghosts, and Celleran’s hospital was no exception. The old man’s ghost was waiting every time she opened her eyes, his greeting utterly predictable: “You’re in my bed.” Other ghosts visited as their tethers allowed, drawn to her presence. She tried to ignore them, but still they came: young ghosts and old, those that bore signs of their wounds or illnesses, and those that seemed whole and healthy and were nonetheless dead. Some of them spoke to her; some of them wept or cried or showed her the hurts that had killed them. After a while, she simply kept her eyes closed.

  Still the magic pumped into her, beat after beat, breath after breath, until she felt she should glow with it, like Shai, radiant against the bed sheets. Until she felt like a ghost herself, bodiless yet tethered to this spot, this bed, this room.

  I’m dying, she thought. The realization brought no fear.

  Fight, she told herself. She could pull the wire from her neck, or try to reach the storage cupboard that held her knife . . .

  If only the magic ebbed enough to let her care.

  Perhaps it was better this way, she thought. At least she felt no hunger. At least there was no pain.

  Shai came to her then. She stood at the end of Xhea’s bed and shouted until Xhea forced her eyes open.

  “Xhea,” Shai said. “You have to wake up. You have to fight it.”

  Xhea looked at her, that long blonde hair, those so-blue eyes, and struggled to think what was wrong. Her hand lifted from her side—so heavy, so strangely light—its movements jerky as it came to rest on her chest.

  “Gone,” Xhea murmured. “Broken.” She had done that. Done . . . something. Hadn’t she? Why did she wish to apologize? The answer was slow in coming.

  “Oh,” she said, her voice a faint murmur. “You’re dead.”

  Shai spoke slowly, shaping each word with care, and yet Xhea struggled to follow. “. . . get up. You have to get out—you can’t let them find you.” She made as if to grab Xhea’s arm. “Understand? They’re tracking . . .”

  Something else bothered her. Xhea squinted at Shai, watching the fall of her pale hair against her shoulders, the way her skin looked almost transparent in this light. She watched Shai’s lashes rise and fall over her perfect blue eyes as she blinked, the soft movements of pink lips as she spoke. Wasn’t something missing, she wondered. Something . . . purple?

  Her dress, she realized. Shai’s plum dress with the full hem, the one that fluttered and flowed at her movements—gone. Instead Shai wore a plain eggplant shirt with embroidered vines at the neck and wrists, fitted pants, and a tailored vest arrayed with small pockets. Clothes that Xhea might have worn had she been able to afford them.

  That’s when Xhea understood. “Ah,” she said slowly, interrupting Shai’s increasingly frantic explanations. “I’m hallucinating.”

  “No, listen, Xhea—please! You have to—”

  “I used to wonder, sometimes, what would happen if I got too much.” Her voice was dreamlike and slow. “All the money in the world. Biggest job ever—a thousand renai, a million, all mine. All that light . . . color . . . power. Maybe I’d be normal.” She laughed then, the sound slipping from her lips like dark liquid.

  “Now I know. I’m just . . . nothing.”

  When the next dose of magic came, she did not fight it, only sighed and watched the world glimmer as it stole her away.

  Clarity felt like the sun rising. Xhea blinked as she woke—truly woke, rather than struggling out of a magic-induced stupor. The world was still alight with color, but it no longer dazzled her, and her body, numb and clumsy, nevertheless moved as she willed.

  A nurse stood at her bedside, adjusting the equipment above her head. Noticing Xhea’s attention, he smiled broadly.

  “How are you feeling?” he asked, all professional cheer.

  “Okay. Tired.” She tried to speak clearly. “What are you doing?”

  “Just adjusting the drip. You’re going to have a visitor, and we can’t have your treatment interfering with his tests. Seems like it’s been making you a little drowsy.”

  That was one way of putting it.

  “So I won’t be getting as much energy?”

  “Don’t worry,” he said. “Once the specialist has completed his examination, we’ll increase the dose again—or whatever he says will help you best recover.” Again he smiled; the expression was not nearly as comforting as he seemed to think. He advised Xhea to rest—as if she could do much else—and said that they’d let her know when the specialist arrived.

  But a cold knot had settled in her stomach. She wasn’t certain what kind of specialist would be called for a case of suspected magical sapping, only knew that she never wanted to be examined by such a person. It wouldn’t take long for a specialist to realize that her condition wasn’t the result of an attack, but her version of normal. While she couldn’t be certain of the reaction, her imagination provided her with any number of possibilities, ranging from unpleasant to deadly. If nothing else, there was the medical bill.

  Then there was her dream of Shai. She remembered the intensity of the warning, if not the exact words. Fight it, Shai had said. Get out of here. You can’t let them find you.

  If only she could remember why.

  It all brought her right back to the question of escape. Only now, she thought as she tried to curl her numbed fingers into a fist, she had perhaps an hour to make good her attempt.

  “You’re in my bed.”

  “Hello to you too,” she muttered without looking up from her fingers. Make a fist, relax. Make a fist, relax. After a few dozen repetitions, the movement was no easier.

  “Can’t you see I’m an old man?” the ghost said. “I need rest, girl. Rest. Give a little precedence to your elders, hey?”

  She shook out her hands and then tried to rub some feeling back into her arms. “I praise the wisdom your supreme age has surely granted you,” she replied absently.

  “Heh. Don’t get snippy with me. I’m just asking to lie down in my own bed, that too much to ask?”

  “Still can’t move my legs, thanks.”

  Maybe recovering from a magical overdose was like a bad case of pins and needles—she just needed to convince the blood to return. No, not blood, she realized, and her head felt clear for the first time in days. Not blood, but magic—her magic, that energy dark and slow. When it filled her, she’d had the power to destroy the spells that kept Shai’s body alive. Even when it had worked beyond her control, it had leeched the bright energy from living things, killed plants, unmade renai.

  Yet this—to have her body and blood rage with bright magic—was the cure she’d stumbled on all unknowing, dosing herself with renai to keep the darkness down. She knew how to fight her magic, or at least subdue it; but calling it? That was beyond her. The one time she’d used it inten
tionally, the magic had already been drawn to Shai and the imbalance she represented—a living ghost, a dead girl filled with magic. She had felt the pull of Shai’s presence, that ache like a bruise in midair.

  Xhea looked at the old man sitting in the corner chair. He had no magic, nor its echo. And yet, as she stared, she felt . . . something. A trembling on the edge of her senses.

  She frowned, concentrating. It was only with eyes closed that she truly felt it: a faint disturbance in the room’s far corner—a chill like a cloud’s passing, a hitch like breath held. The presence of a ghost. Perhaps, she thought. Perhaps . . .

  “I’m sorry,” she said. She tried to sound like she imagined a young City girl would: naïve and overconfident, perhaps a little embarrassed. “I didn’t mean to be rude. I’ve just been feeling bad.”

  The ghost looked at her from under his eyebrows, forehead creasing as he considered her words. “It’s all right,” he said at last. “I get like that some days too.”

  “It’s hard being in the hospital,” she offered.

  “Heh. You can say that again. Some days I can’t remember my home, you know?”

  Xhea had the feeling that if she were to ask him, he wouldn’t be able to remember his home at all, the memories having vanished with his body. But she smiled, hoped she looked sympathetic, and asked, “Have you been here long?”

  He nodded. “Good while, now, yeah. A good while.”

  “And you still don’t have your own bed—I mean, your bed back? That’s such a shame.”

  “Spoke to the nurses about it, but they don’t even listen. Just act like they’re too busy for the likes of me.”

  “Well, you do look pretty tired,” she began, as if sounding out an idea, “and I’d move for you if I could, but I’m in pretty bad shape right now. But maybe . . . maybe I could let you rest here with me, just for a while.” She tried not to shudder; tried to seem as if the thought of a strange, dead old man lying beside her was something she’d welcome.