“The beacon was Hernande’s idea,” one of the undergraduate students near Sovaan added.
Sovaan grimaced, as if Hernande’s name pained him. “Yes, Hernande.”
Kara caught her breath, then blurted, “Hernande’s alive? What about Cory? He was a graduate student here.”
“Yes, yes, they survived. They were in one of the practice rooms when the explosion occurred.” Sovaan dismissed Kara with a wave, but then his attention jerked back to her, his eyes narrowing in recognition. “You were the one the Dogs came for, right before this happened.” His gaze flicked over Bryce and the others, then returned. “What did they want? What did you have to do with this?”
Kara scowled. “I had nothing to do with this. The Dogs captured numerous Wielders, not just me, and took us to the tower. I don’t know why. But that’s why we survived. We were in the cells beneath the Amber Tower.”
Artras, Nathen, and Dylan nodded, but not the woman, who had begun mumbling to herself under her breath, the same phrase over and over. Kara couldn’t tell what it was she said and didn’t care.
Instead she winced in memory, then sighed. “But I think I know who may have caused it. Or at least played a part in it.”
Everyone’s attention was on her, but it was Sovaan who straightened and asked, “Who?”
“Another Wielder. A . . . friend of mine. His name was Marcus.”
Kara felt something in the room shift, an uncertain and tremulous fear solidifying as it latched onto someone to blame. She could feel it transforming into anger, knew that it could escalate if she didn’t stop it somehow now. Blaming Marcus was fine, but they couldn’t let thoughts of revenge or justice or retribution distract them from the real problem: the distortion that hovered over Grass. Marcus was more than likely dead, but the distortion continued to feed. They had to find a way to stop it.
“How it happened isn’t the issue right now,” Kara said, setting her cup aside and standing. “The distortion is.”
Sovaan snorted. “We have no hope of stopping the distortion. The ley field is in chaos. Nothing is working as it should. That’s why we are leaving. Preparations have already begun. Wagons are being loaded with whatever supplies we can take with us even now.”
Kara traded a look with Artras. The older Wielder shrugged.
Kara turned back to Sovaan. “Where is Hernande?”
The mentor huffed. “In the training room, where else? He’s spent nearly all of his free time there since this happened.”
Kara stilled, her heart pounding harder. The only reason she could think of for Hernande to remain in the training room was because of the sands.
“I need to see him,” she said sharply, hope burgeoning in her chest. “I need someone to take me there now.”
Sovaan didn’t have time for her, but the undergraduate student who’d told her that Hernande had suggested the beacon led Kara and Artras through the labyrinthine corridors and halls of the ancient manse to the training rooms. She chattered nonstop as soon as they were out of Sovaan’s hearing, but Kara wasn’t paying attention.
She wanted to see Hernande, needed to see Cory. She needed to verify for herself that they were alive, needed to touch them, hug them.
Artras followed silently behind.
As soon as Kara recognized the stone of the corridor and the long hall with the doors to the training rooms opening off one side, she shoved past the student and charged down to the room they’d used before the disaster. When she flung the door open, both Hernande and Cory started, the mentor pacing on the far side of the sand pit, Cory kneeling at its edge on one side. The dog she’d rescued from the distortion leaped to its feet with a low growl and yip in the corner.
Cory stood, confusion crossing the weariness that lined his face, but that was all Kara allowed him to do before she ran across the room and embraced him, clutching him to her. Tears coursed down her face, even though she wasn’t sobbing, but she didn’t care. She breathed in his sweat and the stench of an unwashed body, felt his arms wrap tentatively around her. The dog began barking excitedly and she could feel his paws against her legs as he yelped and bounced around them.
Then she drew back and looked up into Cory’s face. “You stink,” she said. Her voice cracked.
He smiled, his expression haggard and drained, but filled with an indescribable happiness. “And you’re dirty.”
She laughed and without thought leaned forward and kissed him, long and hard, emotions she hadn’t allowed herself to feel since the collapse of the Nexus—no, since long before that—giving the kiss urgency. Cory returned it hesitantly at first, then his grip tightened. Kara’s body hummed and she tasted the salt of her tears and Cory’s lips and for a moment the terror of what the world had become vanished. All of the strange tension between them since that night on the roof before the horror of the Kormanley attack in the park that had killed her parents died, swept aside, burned aside.
It lasted until the need to breathe drove them apart. She pulled back, but not far, looking up into Cory’s slightly startled eyes. Muddy brown with striations of a deep gold she’d never noticed before.
She smiled. “I’ve owed you that since that night on the roof, when you first kissed me.”
“I didn’t think you wanted anything more than friendship,” he said roughly, his voice ragged.
“I’ve changed my mind.”
Someone cleared his throat and both of them turned toward Hernande, the mentor as beaten and bruised as Cory looked, his smile as radiant. “It’s good to see you alive,” he said. “We had feared to hope.”
“So had I,” Kara said, fresh tears starting as she pulled back from Cory reluctantly. Emotions surged through her, so intense she felt light-headed, off balance, yet strangely alive. She leaned over and scratched the fur of the little dog’s head as he slobbered all over her hand. His tail wagged so hard his rear end wouldn’t stay still.
Then the soft sound of shifting sand penetrated through the pounding of her heart and the thrumming of her body. She glanced down to see the sand pit moving, channels of sand sifting back and forth, as they’d done before the Dogs had come for Kara.
Except everything was wrong, the patterns unrecognizable.
“Is this Erenthrall?” Kara asked. She couldn’t keep the shock and disbelief from her voice.
Both Hernande and Cory shifted toward the sands with her.
“This is what is left,” Hernande said. “You can see the structures that once formed the ley network here in the city—the Stone node, Eld, Candle, even a few of the ley station junctions—but most of the network is no longer intact.”
Artras and the student had moved forward as well, the older Wielder staring down at the sands in consternation, brow knit. “What are you talking about? What is this?”
At Kara’s nod, Cory drew breath and said, “The flows of the sands here represent the ley lines in Erenthrall. Before the disruption, we could trace the entire network throughout the city, every junction, every node, every branch to the Baronies and beyond. It was a map of the entire system.”
Artras hissed out a breath, eyes narrowed. “But the Primes—”
“We know,” Hernande answered. “Kara made it clear how the Primes would react. But at the moment, the Primes are the least of my worries.”
Artras pursed her lips, then barked a harsh laugh. “Yes, I suppose they are. If any of them are still alive.” She turned her attention back to the sands, her eyes tracking ley lines, picking out features, as Kara was doing. “So this is Erenthrall now? This is how the ley lines have rearranged themselves?”
“Yes. We’ve been studying them since the disruption. After regrouping with those that survived, of course. And we’ve discovered something troubling.”
“The distortion,” Kara said.
Hernande nodded, his lips pressed into a grim line. He pointed toward a chao
tic section of the map, where the sands were roiling more than anywhere else, a vague whirlpool swirling around what Kara assumed had once been the Nexus. Except this whirlpool swirled upward, grains of sand lifting from the pit to form an inverted tornado. “It’s drawing energy from the remains of the Nexus.”
“No,” Cory contradicted. “It’s drawing power from something deeper.” Hernande gave him an irritated look. “It has to be,” Cory countered. “There isn’t enough ley remaining in that area to create such an anomaly. You said it yourself: the main lines that fed the Nexus before the explosion have been interrupted!”
It sounded like an argument the two had had before, so Kara cut in. “Cory’s right. It’s feeding off of something deeper.”
Both Hernande and Artras stared at her. “How do you know?” Hernande asked.
“Because when I was younger, before I became a Wielder, one of the wardens of Halliel’s Park tested me using the stones in the central grotto there. I sensed that there was something hidden deeper beneath the city, something that the Nexus had tapped into.” She motioned toward where the spike rose from the sand. “The distortion must be tapping into that lake of ley as well.”
Artras nodded grudgingly. “If this is an accurate representation of the system at the moment—”
“It is,” Cory said.
“—then I agree.” She tilted her head at the sands, then knelt down near the pit’s edge. “In fact, now that you’ve mentioned Halliel’s Park, I’d say that the ley is trying to revert back into its original flows. See there? That’s the park, one of the more stable sections of the map. And this here is Oberian’s Finger, another park with a plinth of stone rising from the hill at its center. Both were considered sacred in ancient times, long before Erenthrall became the city it is—was—today.”
“That would make sense,” Hernande muttered. “Now that the strictures we imposed on it have collapsed, it’s settling back into its old patterns.”
“But not quite,” Kara countered. “The distortion that’s forming is disrupting that. Look.” She circled to the far side of the pit, the dog on her heels. “It’s warping the new lines, drawing them toward it.” She stared at the entire system a long moment, then glanced up at Cory and Hernande. “The entire system is unstable. It’s going to remain unstable as long as the distortion continues drawing energy from it.”
“And the longer it draws energy, the more it will consume when it finally quickens,” Artras added.
Silence held in the room, interrupted only by the susurrus of the sand and the panting breaths of the still excited dog.
Finally, Cory stirred and asked, “Can you stop it?”
Kara clenched her jaw. “Someone has to try.”
“You’re insane,” Sovaan announced. He glanced toward Hernande, Cory, and Artras, the rest of those in the room staring at the entire group as the tension rose. The student who’d escorted Kara and Artras to the training room bristled to one side. “You’re all insane. The distortion is too large, it can’t be fixed, can’t be repaired. We have to flee.”
“No one said we shouldn’t flee,” Hernande said. “Merely that an attempt should be made to halt the distortion before it quickens.”
“Wielders have done it before,” Kara added. “If we arrived in time, we could sometimes repair the distortion before it quickened.”
“This isn’t like any of the distortions you dealt with before,” Sovaan snapped. “It is a hundred times larger, a hundred times more powerful—”
“And at the rate at which it is feeding, it will be a thousand times more deadly,” Hernande interrupted, his voice taking on a dangerous tone. “If you left now, you would still not have time to escape its radius when it quickens. You cannot outpace it, even with horses, certainly not with wagons and carts and a group of refugees.”
Low murmurs of fear threaded through the room and Sovaan frowned as the tension in the room escalated. “How can you possibly know this?” the rival mentor asked.
“They have a map of the ley system in the sands of the training room,” the undergraduate student blurted out, awe in her voice.
Cory and Kara glared at the young woman. Sovaan’s eyebrows shot up. “A map of the ley?” He turned on Hernande. “And you did not see fit to reveal this to your fellow mentors?”
“It was only just discovered,” Hernande said, his voice calm and unconcerned. “I would have revealed my findings to the University council eventually. At the moment, we have more pressing concerns, such as evacuating those in the University as quickly as possible.”
“What about food? And water?” someone murmured.
“And where are we to go? I’ve never lived outside Erenthrall!”
“What about those wolves?” Devitt shouted above the growing tumult in the room.
The group got quiet, all eyes turning toward Sovaan, Hernande, Bryce, and the Dogs. Nathen and Dylan even looked at Allan. The anxiety and uncertainty in the room was overwhelming, the beginnings of a headache starting behind Kara’s temples. She raised a hand and rubbed her eyes, felt the grit of exhaustion there, the result of the sleepless night and the escape to the University. A tremor pulsed through the ground, a few of those crying out, but the jolt was minor compared to what they’d experienced before.
But it was a reminder that they had little time. The longer the distortion was allowed to feed, the worse it would be when it quickened. And the longer it fed, the more unstable the area around Erenthrall would grow.
She looked up, met Cory’s eyes with a silent question. He frowned, but nodded agreement. Then she turned to Allan. “I’m a Wielder. I’m going back to the Nexus to repair the distortion, wolves or no wolves. I could use someone to protect me on the way.” She shifted her gaze to Artras. “And someone to help me when I get there. I don’t think I can do it alone.”
Artras pursed her lips, then nodded. “I’ll go.”
“So will we.”
Kara turned toward Dylan and Nathen, who looked toward the other Wielder they’d found in the cells.
She shook her head as she continued rocking, fresh tears coursing down her face. “I can’t,” she whispered. “I can’t.”
“You’ll never make it,” Bryce interjected. “We barely made it here.”
“We’ll need protection,” Artras said. “Someone to watch our backs. What about you Dogs?”
Bryce grinned, the expression sending a shudder down Kara’s spine. “It won’t work. Not even if all of us Dogs go with you. The wolves know we’re here now. They’ll be waiting. They’ll attack as soon as we leave the protection of the walls.”
“He’s right,” Allan muttered. “Especially if they’re being led by Hagger.”
Kara began pacing in frustration. “We can’t cower in here until the distortion quickens. We’ll all be trapped then. We need to do something!” She grasped at the empty air as she paced. “We need . . .”
“A distraction,” Hernande said. He was chewing on the end of his beard, brow creased in thought. He considered, head bent forward, and then he looked up. “We’ll have to be the distraction, the few hundred we’ve gathered here at the University. We’ll leave—with the carts and what provisions we have—and we’ll make for the grassland, to the south.”
Allan hesitated, glanced toward his daughter with a strange look on his face, then he shook his head. “No. West. There’s a place in the western hills called the Hollow. I’ve lived there for the past twelve years. It’s isolated and can be defended, if necessary. Not many know of it, but I have a feeling that we’re going to have to band together if we’re going to survive the aftermath of the ley’s destruction.”
“Then west,” Hernande said.
“You are all insane,” Sovaan spluttered. “Why should we be a distraction for them? Why shouldn’t they be a distraction for us?”
For the first time, Hernande’s eyes narr
owed in anger. “Because they are risking themselves to save us. And because if they fail, it will not matter how fast we run, we will be caught in the distortion.”
Another tremor shook the building, crumbling mortar drifting down from between the wooden beams of the ceiling overhead.
“The tremors are getting worse,” someone nearby muttered. Those in the room shifted restlessly, looking toward the ceiling.
When no one said anything more, Sovaan’s expression angry and grim, Hernande pointed toward Cory. “Go down to where the carts are being loaded and tell them to get as much ready as they can by tomorrow morning. You,” he switched to Bryce, “go with him and see what can be done about protecting the people and the supplies from those wolves and anything else we might encounter. We’ve already attempted to plot a course out of the city based on what we can see from our walls, but we’ll have to modify that if we’re going to head west instead. Emil, Brant, and Hera, get up to the rooftop and see about that. The rest of you, gather what you need and get it down to the carts. And search the rest of the University for any essentials we’ll need once we’re away from here. Spread the word. We’ll be leaving at sunrise.”
The room began to stir, people rising and leaving. Emil grabbed Brant and Hera, the students rushing from the room as others began fretting and bundling up their things. Fear was the dominant emotion, but now it was fear with a purpose.
Hernande watched in silence for a long moment, then rounded on Kara. “You need to convince the Dogs to accompany you and the other Wielders. We can distract them while you leave by a secondary gate, but I don’t know how much time we can give you. You’ll need to move fast. But for now, you and the other Wielders should rest.”
He moved away before Kara could respond.
Allan knocked on the door before he opened it and stepped into the training room beyond. For a moment, the scent of sand brought back bitter memories of the pit in the center of the Dogs’ den at the base of the Amber Tower—he’d lost and spilled blood in those sands during his time as a Dog—but it was only a flicker, a tightening of the gut, nothing more.
Shattering the Ley Page 53