Shattering the Ley

by Joshua Palmatier

  He frowned and shook his head. Why hadn’t they used the stone walkway?

  Then a child screamed and his attention was diverted, the mother’s harsh voice calling the girl back to her side. Allan began scanning faces, looking for pickpockets, for anyone acting suspicious, for signs of the white robes of the Kormanley or their newly adopted symbol. Instead, he saw elders being guided along by their sons and daughters, couples with hands clasped, and families, all drawn toward the south end of the park, most intent on getting as close as they could to the Hub before the festivities began. Performers roamed the crowd—magicians doing tricks for the children, jesters and players capering and cavorting. One enterprising man had set up a folding table and sold chunks of seared meat on sticks, claiming it was chicken.

  As the excitement grew, infecting everyone in the park, Allan became more and more anxious. His hand fell to the handle of his sword and he edged backward, until he stood against the base of the statue. From this vantage, he could see most of the park. If he only had more height—

  He turned to look up at the pedestal, then caught Hagger’s eye and gestured his intent. The elder Dog nodded permission.

  He heaved himself up onto the edge of the pedestal, kept his balance by grasping the raised arm of the soldier, then situated himself so he could see the grove of trees at the southern end of the park. Three more statues stood at the other corners, their bases nearly lost in the crush of people. At least five carts had made it to the front, where even now he could see men and women in Wielders’ robes handing out some kind of sparkling sticks to those gathered. The cart that had wallowed in the grass remained behind, to Allan’s right.

  At least five thousand people had gathered, perhaps more. And when Allan glanced back over his shoulder, he could see thousands more packing the streets behind.

  A sudden hush fell and Allan spun back, frowning as those beneath the statue touched their arms or hissed sharply to their neighbors. As at the sowing, Allan realized that nearly everyone could feel what was about to happen except for him. The anticipation doubled, all eyes turning toward the Hub, breaths held.

  Then, abruptly, light fountained skyward near the base of the Hub and everyone gasped, drawing back. Allan saw a ripple in the crush of people nearest to the Hub as everyone there retreated. Those with the sticks the Wielders had handed out raised them to the sky. But the gouts of light didn’t explode upward as they had at the sowing.

  Instead, white light flared in the base of the tower itself, as had happened in the subtowers upon their activation . . . except this was a hundred times more powerful, the tower larger, the light more immense. The light streaked upward, threading through the veins of the leaves and bringing their lifeless forms into sharp and searing relief. The crowd cried out, half in awe, half in fear, as the light roared up the length of the tower, bleeding out of the windows and balconies before reaching its apex and exploding outward in a conflagration so bright that Allan was forced to shield his eyes. His heart thudded in his chest, pounded throughout his entire body, and all around him those gathered reacted to the unexpected brilliance. Children screamed. A few women shrieked. Men bellowed in surprise, a few cursing.

  Allan’s hand squeezed the hilt of his sword, but he blinked rapidly, tears forming as his vision cleared. He lowered his hand—

  And found the intense white light still burning at the center of the tower’s bulbous top, flaring out of the gaping holes in the tower’s sides like a beacon, like a second sun. It had dimmed enough that he could look at it directly, but it still hurt his eyes. The shaft of the tower had dimmed as well, the light fading from the windows and balconies completely. Only the walls of the tower remained traced with power, the veins of the leaves throbbing with a soft yet still visible green, as if the leaves had been held up to the sun. The previously lifeless tower now beat with a pulse like that of his own heart, steady and potent.

  He glanced toward Hagger uncertainly, the crowd around him turning to each other as well, looks of disappointment on their faces. A few murmured, “Is that it? Is it over?”

  Allan mouthed the question to Hagger, who shrugged.

  It was strangely anticlimactic. And the Dogs had been told to expect more. Had the Wielders’ experiment failed? He had already seen something similar to this display at the subtowers, knew that many of the citizens of Erenthrall had seen the same over the past two weeks. The crowds had grown as each one was activated. Even though the Hub was a hundred times taller and grander, the power behind it infinitely greater, he still felt somehow . . . cheated.

  He thought suddenly of his conversation with Moira about the trout and wondered if the awe and wonder of the city had already worn off for him.

  And then one of the men close to Allan’s position swore and pointed. “What in bloody hells is that?”

  Everyone turned, necks craning, some stepping forward, hands on the shoulders of the person before them. Allan followed the direction of the man’s arm, low on the horizon—

  And nearly stumbled backward and off the pedestal, even though he’d been told what to expect by the Wielders. He caught himself on the soldier’s arm as shock drove the breath from his lungs. In the crowd before him, men shouted in alarm, while women clutched at their husbands’ arms. Children buried their faces in their parents’ legs, and a few of the adults actually gasped and fainted dead away. No one moved to catch them, everyone frozen in confusion, in fear and awe.

  Above the copse of trees at the southern end of the park, beneath the blazing light of the Hub, the barges built in Seeley Park were rising into the sky. Bases like the barges that plied the river and the ley lines, but with sails rigged flat across the tops instead of vertically on masts, they drifted upward and out from the tower, the sails belled like true sails, but with no wind that Allan could feel or sense. In fact, the cloth of the sails appeared to glimmer, as if suffused with ley light.

  The flying boats—Allan counted seven of them—reached the copse of trees at the end of the park, the top branches scraping across the hulls. Once they cleared the branches, the people closest to the trees panicked, even though the ships continued to ascend, all seven shooting away from the Hub in a straight line, separating as they moved, like the spokes of a wheel. The crowd broke, screams rising from the distance, people turning and charging away, trying to stay clear of the ground beneath the ships. But the park was too packed, the ships moving too fast.

  The excitement of a moment before peaked . . . and then twisted into raw fear.

  “What’s happening?” Hagger demanded, and Allan glanced down to find the Dog had moved to the base of the pedestal.

  “The people are panicking. They’re trying to flee from the . . .” he swallowed, “. . . from the flying barges.”

  The panic spread. Allan could see it ripple through those gathered, felt it when the wave hit their location. The unease of the people that surrounded them escalated, people shifting, glancing at each other in uncertainty. Most began to edge away as one of the ships headed straight toward their position. The city guard along the walk grew tense. Signal whistles pierced the air from the direction of the worst of the panic, their sound skittering down Allan’s back, but nothing changed. The barge was close enough now that Allan could see people at its edge, hanging over the side and pointing down at those below.

  The lords and ladies Baron Arent had invited to Seeley Park.

  “We have to do something,” Allan said.

  “What?” Hagger demanded.

  Allan shrugged. Before he could answer, someone bellowed in a deep, dark, authoritative voice, “Abominations! Look what abominations the Baron has created now! Look at how he twists nature to his own whims!”

  Allan’s gaze ripped from the rising ships toward the voice, toward the man who now pointed toward the skies, toward the oncoming ship, and screamed, “Sacrilege! He has perverted the very sanctity of the heavens! He has defied
the gods!”

  The crowd—on the verge of panic a moment before—paused in confusion, even as Allan narrowed his eyes and muttered under his breath, “Kormanley.”

  Before anyone could react, the man—face twisted in frenzied rage—threw his arms back and roared, “We shall pay for our hubris! We shall be punished!”

  And on his last words, the cart that had wallowed in the trampled grass exploded in a ball of seething flame.

  Allan ducked, the park instantly torn with screams of terror and pain, interrupted within a heartbeat by the crump of another explosion, this one distant, coming from the front of the park nearer the Hub. Two more followed, flames enveloping the entire southern side, reaching toward the sky and the ship that passed overhead. The fire caressed the bottom of one of them, the craft rocking in its wake, the wood scorched, but it didn’t catch. The sails thrashed in the backwash, but held, the ship faltering only a moment. Most of the ships had already passed beyond the range of the carts.

  On the field beneath, fire raged, catching in the trees to the south. Allan cursed and jumped down from the pedestal to Hagger’s side. The elder Dog was yelling for the crowd to remain calm, but no one could hear him above the shouting. The city guards’ whistles shrieked on all sides.

  “The Kormanley have set part of the park on fire!” Allan screamed into Hagger’s ear as the tumult increased. “There are bodies on the field!”

  “Leave that to the city guard! What about the Kormanley?”

  “I lost sight of him in the chaos! He was swallowed up by the crowd when it began to panic!”

  Hagger’s jaw tightened, teeth clenched. The panicked people pressed up against them, shoving them back into the pedestal. Overhead, the ship passed by, its shadow falling across them both. Hagger looked up, then focused on the pillar of smoke that billowed up from the first cart.

  “Gods-damned lords and their parties,” he muttered, then grabbed Allan’s shoulder and shoved him away from the pedestal. “Make for the cart! We’ll help whoever we can and try to bring this gods-cursed mob under control from there. Snag any of the Dogs and city patrol you see along the way. If you see any of the Kormanley, take them! I don’t care what you have to do!”

  Allan nodded and thrust himself into the press of people, elbowing men, women, and children out of his way as he roared for them to make room. Hagger did the same a few steps away. But he already knew that what the Kormanley had intended to do here had been accomplished. There would be no men in white robes to hunt down. Not today.

  The Kormanley had changed. They were no longer content with words alone, no longer content with harming only themselves.

  They’d declared war on Baron Arent and all of Erenthrall.

  Kara moaned and blinked up into blurred sunlight and sky marred by black billowing streaks. Smoke. Its scent burned her nose, harsh and acidic. She raised a hand to her face, rubbed at her foggy eyes to get them clear. Her head pounded and her ears hurt. Her entire body hurt. Aches riddled her arms and legs as she shifted. Whistles pierced the air and people shouted, but the sound came from a long distance, muted, as if her ears had been stuffed with cloth.

  “What happened?” she croaked. She could barely hear her own words.

  Acrid smoke skated across her face and she choked and coughed and rolled to one side, tears squeezed through her eyelids. She levered herself onto her hip, grass prickling her hands, and suddenly she remembered.

  The new tower, the park, the rising of the boats, Cory’s excitement, her parents’ unease, and then—

  She twisted in the grass. She could see the gleaming tower, suffused with light, the beacon pulsing at its top in a slow, steady rhythm that matched her own heartbeat. As soon as the activation had begun, she’d felt it through the grass of the park, the working so powerful that it had thrummed in her chest. But unlike the sowing of the tower earlier, when she felt the energy pulling at her, drawing upon her strength through her feet, she’d unconsciously blocked it off. She hadn’t felt faint or dizzy.

  But when the boats had risen, a sense of awe had filled her. She’d met Cory’s gaze, seen the same excitement there, and then the two of them had surged forward, away from the wagon where they’d halted to watch the tower. Her father had called out to her, his voice harsh, threaded with fear. Her mother had barked, “Kara!” The same panic that tinged her voice wove through the crowd around her and Cory, but they’d simply wanted to get a better view. She’d heard Ischua, the Tender, attempting to calm them.

  Then a man nearby had bellowed something about abominations, about paying a price—

  And something had exploded. The wash of heat had thrust Kara forward, as if she’d been shoved hard from behind. The air had been sucked from her lungs as she was flung to the ground. For a moment, the world had blacked out.

  Now clouds of smoke streamed into the sky from the base of the tower. The ships floated a short distance away, now out over the city, but her attention wasn’t held by the awe-inspiring spectacle anymore. It was fixed on the park.

  People lay everywhere, bloody and torn, some screaming as they staggered to their feet clutching arms or legs, or holding hands to gashes on their faces. A wagon lay in splinters at their center, burning with a fierce heat, those closest not moving at all. Kara’s breath choked off and she leaped to her feet.

  “Da!” she shrieked, the word tearing in her throat. She coughed and lurched toward the wagon, sound solidifying even as she moved. The city guard and a few Dogs barked orders, but Kara ignored them. Someone reached for her, but she thrust the blood-streaked woman aside, crawled over a man who was missing an arm, the stump blackened, still smoldering. Her eyes latched onto a body wearing a blue shirt—her father’s shirt—and she scrambled toward his side.

  “Da,” she gasped, then rolled her father onto his back.

  Half of his face had been charred, cooked to gristly meat and bone. His remaining good eye stared sightlessly up at the sky.

  Kara screamed, the sound emerging from deep in her chest. It filled her head, drowned out the chaos around her. It tore at her lungs and throat.

  She heaved backward, away from her father, away from the remains of his face, even though she couldn’t look away from it. She collided with someone behind her and arms enveloped her, held her tight. A soothing voice—Ischua’s voice—muttered into her ear, words she didn’t comprehend. Her voice broke and she heaved in another breath, screamed again as she tore her gaze away from her father only to see her mother lying two paces farther on, body also twisted and blackened. Ischua picked her up and hauled her away from the heat of the burning wagon, away from the destruction. She was vaguely aware that guardsmen were swarming the area, hustling the wounded away, that one of them carried Cory’s limp body in his arms beside them.

  Her second scream cracked and rattled down into heaving sobs. Tears scoured her face. Her chest ached, tight and hot and fluid. She couldn’t seem to catch her breath, her mind scattered, her gaze darting everywhere.

  Ischua glanced down at her, his face streaked with soot, twisted in a rictus of pain and grief. His hair had been burned away on one side, the exposed skin raw and angry.

  “You’re safe,” he said. “We’ll get you out of here.”

  Kara didn’t react. Numbness began to enfold her, starting in the center of her chest and flowing outward. The world retreated—the sounds, the smells; Ischua’s harsh breath and the jarring of her body as he carried her.

  All that remained was her father’s face, eaten by fire, and an empty hollow in the pit of her stomach.

  PART II

  Eight

  KARA SPRINTED TO the Wielders’ Hall the moment she was summoned, arriving out of breath and flushed. The seven Master Wielders in their black robes waited for her at the end of the empty hall, seated at a long, heavy oaken table, their hands clasped and resting on its surface. Despair washed over her when she didn’t se
e a purple jacket folded neatly before her adviser. Had she failed the examination? She tried to read the Wielders’ faces, but they were all studiously blank or stern and creased with wrinkles.

  She halted at the end of the hall, then swallowed and forced herself to walk the length of the rich purple-and-green carpet that ran down the center to the table. As she approached, the head of the Wielders’ college stood, but he did not speak until she’d reached the end of the carpet and halted.

  “Kara Tremain,” he intoned, his deep voice filling the expanse of the hall, “it is the opinion of this gathering that you have mastered the skills required of an apprentice. We now present you with the purple jacket of a true Wielder. We expect that you will fulfill your duties at the Eld District’s node with the attention and respect that you have shown during your studies here, and that you continue in your efforts to master the ley. The robes of a Master Wielder await you.”

  Her heart stuttered in her chest at the words—not all Wielders were invited to wear the robes of a master, some were simply given duties within one of the nodes—but before she could recover, her adviser stood, rounded the table, and presented her with her purple jacket. He did so with the rigid solemnity that all of the masters possessed, although she thought she caught a quick smile when he pulled the jacket from where he’d hidden it from sight beneath the table.

  She reached out to touch it, her hand trembling, and then her adviser said softly, “Allow me.”

  He held it open before her as she slipped it on, then tugged it into place. He looked into her eyes, and for the first time she saw the man behind the robes. He’d guided her studies for the last two years, but she suddenly realized she barely knew him. She’d seen him only at the college, in his office, or in the classroom, spoken to him only about the ley, about her courses. She’d hated him for the last six months as he drove her harder and harder in preparation for the exam.