Radiant: Towers Trilogy Book One

by Karina Sumner-Smith

  Then the elevator collapsed all around her, the strands sliding across the backs of her hands, her upturned face, their brilliant light turned harsh and cold. She heard its noises, the protests of a machine struggling against its destruction, the whirr of its engines as it tried to pull away. Xhea tried to speak, tried to scream, but the world was spinning, or she was spinning against the hard ground, and she was going to be sick, and nothing came out of her mouth at all.

  Then: black.

  Blind, she thought. No room left for panic or shock.

  She lay on the ground, the pavement cold beneath her cheek. Slowly the light crept back to her eyes, bringing with it dimension and shape, the perfect arc of a stone-gray sky and only Towers’ shadowed bellies above her. It took a long time to focus; the world swam before her, smeared and uncertain, until any hint of color faded. The elevator was gone, destroyed, she knew not which. With a quivering hand, Xhea wiped away her tears.

  “That,” Xhea whispered, “didn’t go so well.” She pushed herself to sitting, palms against the ground as if to keep the world still. She looked at one arm, then the other—at both hands, pressed hard to the crumbling road. She wished no showy display of power, and yet a shadow-gray mist surrounded her, clinging like scent or sorrow. She tried to push it down, to pull it back, to smother it with will and anger and fear, and it did nothing but move gently, drifting as if in a slow current.

  She had called the magic to her, allowed it to flow, and now it would not stop. Xhea looked at the growing darkness around her, felt a seeping chill, and could only think: I’m bleeding. She wished she could sink into the ground, or walk away; wished she could fly to her destination and be done with it. Wished, too, that the shadowy people she could just see through Edren’s upper windows would stop gaping. Show’s over, she thought. Move along.

  Time for Plan B. Oops, she thought fuzzily. Forgot to make a Plan B.

  “Hey, kid,” Lorn said, loudly. Slow footsteps and he was beside her. Then in a softer voice, unguarded: “Looks like you could use a bit more help.”

  Xhea licked her lower lip, tasting blood. “Looks that way, yeah.”

  Lorn held out his hand, and she took it without thinking. He jerked at the shock of her touch and pulled away, shaking his hand as if in pain—and stopped when he saw her expression. He steeled himself, and offered his hand again. Carefully, he pulled her to her feet and held on until she could steady herself with the pipe; and if both of their hands went numb, neither deigned to mention it.

  “You still need to get to the City?” he asked.

  Xhea stared upward, thinking desperately. She felt for the hair-fine tether that still pulled her and nodded mutely.

  “Wait here—I’ll have someone bring a car around.” At her expression, Lorn added, “But don’t get any ideas. I’m driving.”

  Xhea fit in the trunk. Barely. It was the farthest they could get her from the aircar’s engine and the storage coil that fueled it without towing her off the back with a rope—an idea that Lorn had rejected out of hand. He dropped the passenger seat to allow her braced leg to protrude forward, makeshift cane at her side, and with a little contortion she could just see out the windshield.

  Lorn had chosen the oldest, most mechanical of the aircars in his collection. Even so, it was small and sleek, with glossy paint and an engine so quiet she could barely detect its soft whir. Xhea tried to touch as little of the car as she could as she curled into its trunk, running through every exercise she could remember to stay calm and keep her energy in check. She’d never been particularly good with nerves.

  “Speed might be good,” she said as Lorn flared the engine to life.

  Knowing this favor pushed the limits of even Lorn’s sense of fairness, Xhea had paid him in her only trustworthy coin: information. She’d told him what she could of Allenai and Eridian’s struggle while a guard brought the car down from the garage on Edren’s roof. She cared little for politics but knew that there was an advantage to be gained by major shifts in Towers’ positions—even for a skyscraper like Edren. From the spark in Lorn’s eyes as he’d listened, he agreed.

  Xhea’s stomach twisted as the aircar rose—magic or motion or nerves, she didn’t know. Didn’t matter. A detached voice provided Lorn with instructions from somewhere within the dashboard: “Entrance to ascension lane accepted. Course correction for sector 7-B-Rising accepted. Please maintain your current speed.”

  “Hang on, Shai,” she whispered. The tether flickered.

  They climbed steadily through the gap between the ground and the lowest Towers. Xhea strained and twisted but could see little but empty sky. This is going to work, she told herself. The thought did nothing to ease her curdled stomach.

  It wasn’t until they were entering the City proper, the lowest Towers’ defensive spires filling the windshield, that the car began to shudder. There were only small movements at first, like a nervous hand’s quiver; yet the shaking grew more violent with each passing moment. The engine whined, and their upward progress slowed. A warning light flashed on, and another.

  “Please maintain recommended speed,” said the dashboard.

  Lorn corrected, calming their flight path—only to swear as the car shuddered and swerved as if hit. The engine’s steady whir sputtered, then rose in volume as if the car were growling. Xhea grabbed for the sides of the trunk, then pulled her hands away just as quickly.

  “What happened?” she called over the rising sound of the engine.

  “Just a few shorts in the spell.” Lorn’s hands flew across the controls. “Nothing that we can’t—”

  This time the aircar didn’t just shudder but dropped, falling like a stone before catching itself and climbing again. Xhea swallowed, feeling as if her stomach had become lodged in her throat. The sputtering grew louder. Lorn swore and fought with the wheel.

  “Please maintain recommended speed.”

  “Now?”

  “We’ve got a partial drive failure,” he said shortly, “and the left rear braking thruster’s offline.” There was a sharp pop from somewhere near Xhea’s head. Lorn glanced at the displays and added, “That was the taillights.”

  “Oh.” Xhea pressed her lips shut and focused on her breathing.

  The ride grew progressively rougher as they entered the City’s proper traffic lanes, the car rattling and sputtering as Lorn forced it upward. It seemed a small eternity before Lorn announced that they were on approach to Eridian’s main landing bay, the relief in his voice audible even over the growing clamor. Peering forward, Xhea could just see the wide shape of the bay’s closed doors in the side of Eridian’s middle tier, a cone of hovering lights blinking to direct traffic safely inward.

  “Approach denied,” the dash said in its polite, pseudo-female voice. “Please re-enter main traffic lanes, and resume minimum accepted speed.”

  “Approach denied?” Xhea said incredulously. “They can do that?”

  “Coming around,” Lorn said, and directed the car in a tight, wobbling—and, from the screeching alarms, highly illegal—circle, and made the approach again, only to be rejected with the same message. He swore. “They’ve got the Tower in lockdown—no traffic in or out.”

  Xhea shifted to peer out at the closed landing bay doors. “So how do we get in?”

  “We don’t.” The car shuddered violently, their speed slowing further, eliciting yet more protests from the dashboard. “I’m sorry,” Lorn said, his voice tense, “but the car can’t take much more of this. I have to take it back down.”

  “No!” Xhea cried. Not now—not when she was so close. Eridian gleamed, seeming to fill every window in turn as Lorn struggled to bring the aircar around to re-enter the main traffic lane.

  Lorn glanced over his shoulder at her, face creased in frustration and, she realized, no little fear. “There’s nothing I can do,” he said. “We can’t get in without a passkey, and this car is crashing.” The car shuddered and jerked until its very panels rattled, while the engine’s unsteady w
hine rose to a scream.

  Crashing? Xhea thought. Sweetness save us.

  The second thought followed hard on its heels: a passkey. She fumbled desperately in her jacket’s top pocket.

  “Lorn!” Xhea had to yell to be heard over the engine and the racket of the car’s slow self-destruction. “What about this?” She held out the token she’d stolen from the warehouse. Eridian’s etched symbol gleamed in the early morning sunlight.

  “Where did you . . . ?” Lorn released the controls just long enough to reach back and grab the token from her hand, then jam it into a thin slot in the dash. “Never mind. Just pray it works.”

  He brought the car around a final time, and Xhea saw that even if the landing bay doors opened they’d barely clear the lower lip. “Come on,” she whispered. “Come on.”

  “Approach—approach denied,” the dashboard stuttered. “Please—main traffic—Please re-enter main traffic lanes—”

  “No.” Xhea couldn’t hear the sound of her own voice over the engine. She’d been so sure . . . Eridian vanished behind her as Lorn turned the car, struggling to guide it toward the ground in what seemed to be a wide, uneven spiral.

  “And resume accepted—resume—resume—Please re-enter—”

  Xhea shook her head as if to free her thoughts from the noise. It didn’t make sense that Brend would have a broken passkey to his own Tower. He spent as little time in the Lower City as he could, coming to the ground only to accept new items or to prepare shipments . . . She gasped.

  “Lorn!” she shouted, but the engine drowned out the sound. They were descending, their hard-won altitude escaping like sand through open fingers. She tried again, screaming over the engine and the sound of rattling, breaking metal. “Lorn—the key, it’s for the shipping bay.”

  “What?” he called.

  “The shipping bay!” She pointed desperately at Eridian as they came around again. She couldn’t hear Lorn’s reply, only a snatch of something that sounded like “bad idea,” and then they banked hard to the left. The aircar seemed to slip sideways as they turned, their flight turned into a barely controlled fall. A moment later, Xhea caught sight of another, smaller entrance near the bottom of Eridian’s lowest tier, all but hidden by the downward spike of a defensive spire. As Lorn tried to direct them toward the closed doors, the car began to shake so violently that Xhea’s teeth rattled.

  “Approach—” The speakers were failing, the voice rising and falling in an ear-splitting warble. “Approach—please maintain—approach accepted—decrease speed—”

  “It’s opening,” Lorn called, and Xhea could just see it over his shoulder, a widening gap in the shipping bay door rushing toward them like an oncoming fist. “Brace for impact!”

  Xhea curled into a ball, struggling against her knee brace and the iron bar. She wrapped her hands around her head, felt her magic flare around her like living shadow—and the aircar’s remaining spells died. The screaming engine went silent, and they fell.

  For an instant, her ears ringing, there was nothing but that terrible silence. Then the car hit something hard with a crunch, ricocheted upward, and they rolled. End over end the aircar tumbled, Xhea thrown around inside like a rag in a storm. She might have screamed—but everything was screaming, everything was light and noise and the impact of too-soft flesh against wall and door and window—

  They slid to a stop.

  Xhea lay in an aching, tumbled heap, with her arms still wrapped tightly around her head. She tasted blood. Around her, the ruins of the car gave a slow tick-tick-tick as the overstressed metal cooled.

  Dazed, she reached out and fumbled at the trunk latch. It gave with a weak pop, and the trunk lifted a bare inch to admit a beam of light. Slowly, she pushed the trunk open and dragged herself onto the smooth floor of Eridian’s shipping bay. Her pipe clattered to the ground behind her.

  “Lorn?” she attempted, and coughed. The air stank of spell exhaust, too-hot metal, and burned plastic. The aircar was a ruin, its smooth lines and perfect paint replaced by a tangled wreck that only hinted at its original shape. Fractured glass fell from its windows like stars.

  “Lorn,” she said again, licking blood from her split lip, and the driver’s side door creaked open. Carefully, Lorn pulled himself from the wreckage. Seeing him there, Xhea laughed. The sound was horrible and unsteady, punctuated by chattering teeth, and she had no idea what could possibly be funny. Lorn was untouched but for a slight cut on his temple from which ran a single rivulet of blood. He had restraints, she thought, and laughed helplessly.

  Lorn knelt at her side. “Are you okay?” he asked. “Can you stand?”

  Xhea grabbed the pipe, squeezing her trembling fingers until her knuckles went bloodless. Slowly, carefully, she stood, using the pipe and the ruined aircar to help support her weight. Her good leg trembled. Her bad knee throbbed with every beat of her heart, while countless small hurts patterned her arms and legs and back, some seeping blood. No, not okay, she thought. But she was in Eridian, and standing, and it would take more than just pain to keep her from Shai.

  She felt for the tether; it pulled sharply upward, near vertical, and she tilted her head to follow its rise. Above, she could see no ceiling, no equipment, no movement—only the shipping bay’s walls vanishing into shadow. Arrayed around them were boxes and stacked crates, the hulking lumps of wrapped shipments ringing the walls. All still and silent. No workers in sight, no sound but their breathing and metallic ticks as the aircar’s wreckage settled.

  “No stairs,” she murmured. Of course not: this was the City proper, after all. Whatever spells the workers used to access this bay—whatever spells they used to transport goods to various parts of the Tower—were useless to her.

  Lorn frowned at the weariness in her voice. “No, but there’s always a backup system.” He began a slow sweep of the shipping bay. “You don’t imagine that they do everything by magic, right?”

  Xhea blinked, and kept her mouth shut.

  “Ah, here we are.” He pushed aside a stack of crates that floated on a cushion of air, revealing a rickety lift attached to a mess of pulleys and wires. Lorn dusted off the controls. “In you get. Come on, the faster you can get wherever you need to go, the faster I can get out of here.”

  Xhea stepped onto the platform and clung to the narrow rail, trying to ignore the way the whole contraption twisted and groaned under even her slight weight. She turned back to Lorn. “But you . . . Your car . . . I mean, I didn’t . . .”

  “We’ll worry about that later,” he said. “For now, go find your friend.” He pressed his fingers to his chest where she’d seen the tattoo of his brother’s name. Then he flicked a switch and the lift’s mechanical motor roared to life. She rose.

  The lift ground to a halt at the entrance to a hall that was better lit than the shipping bay, but just as empty. Xhea stepped carefully from the metal platform to solid ground, then peered up and down the hall: even Towers, it seemed, had service corridors. She didn’t know why the revelation was surprising.

  The tether pointed and she attempted to follow, limping forward to the pipe’s loud accompaniment. She expected to find someone at every turn, yet there was only silence, as if all of Eridian waited with breath held. The tether led her forward, forward and up, and she wound her way through the maze of back halls shaking with the after-effects of adrenaline. Yet it seemed she had to backtrack as often as she moved forward, peeking out into what could only be shopping areas and restaurants and sculpture gardens, all empty, before turning and trying again.

  Her mind whirled as she calculated the time since the message had left her hands and risen for delivery: how long, how long?

  She wanted to run to Shai as fast as feet could carry her, turn all her fear and fury to speed while there was still some hope of saving the ghost. Yet she also wanted to curl away, small and unnoticed—for who was she to stand against a Tower? Caught between the two instincts she quivered, breathing through opened lips and a mouth gone dry as sun
-baked bone. The Tower’s silence echoed.

  There would be no running, she knew. There was nowhere to hide. Her hand shook as she raised it to the center of her chest, feeling for the thread that connected her to Shai. So thin, she thought, holding to that taunt line. So fine, and fraying. Her pain and fear did not matter—not her knee, not the scrapes and bruises from the crash, not any of it. For she remembered the sound of Shai’s voiceless scream, and in that memory she found the strength to keep moving.

  “I’m coming,” she whispered and walked on, leaving ash-black footprints in her wake. Thinking: Hang on, Shai. Hang on.

  At last the corridor split and she followed the widest pathway, climbing a ramp up and in toward what felt like the Tower’s center. She rounded a darkened corner, hearing a sound like rustling, or soft wind . . .

  Breath.

  People.

  The sound of hundreds of people breathing at once.

  It took mere seconds for her eyes to become accustomed to the dark. Here was the garden she had expected, the huge space at the Tower’s core filled with trees and flowers and wandering pathways. Above, the energy of Eridian’s living heart pulsed like a miniature flaring sun—though even that great power, like the rest of the Tower, seemed somehow muted, its glow dimmed, its movements slow.

  In its light she could clearly see the crowd spread before her—and crowd it was. They sat on the ground and ringed the trees so that all Xhea could see were countless bowed heads in every direction, men and women, young and old—still, silent, breathing. The people of Eridian all had their eyes closed and their hands pressed to the floor or walls or decorative pillars, planted against the sides of fountains or the wide curves of the abstract sculptures which dotted the garden. Yet it was their expressions that caught her: each wore a look of focus so intense it seemed akin to pain. Every face she could see had creased brows and tight lips, foreheads bright with sweat, as if they felt the same hurt, the same urgency, the same need.