Shattering the Ley

by Joshua Palmatier

  Ahead, the base of the Amber Tower loomed, but Kara ignored it, intent on the street and the park beyond. All traces of their passage through here two days before were gone. The wind had blown their footprints from the dust, had scoured the flat surfaces clean and deposited the dirt in drifts along the stone. They reached the low wall surrounding the depression that held the Nexus, the group silent except for harsh breaths and wheezing coughs as they followed it toward the open gates. They halted at the height of the stairs leading down to the Nexus below.

  Kara took in the shattered building in the hollow beneath them and her stomach clenched. Someone moaned. The crystal dome had caved inward, only jagged edges remaining, reflecting the sun now almost directly overhead, eclipsed only by the distortion. Kara’s throat tightened as she realized that the center of the building looked empty, when it should be suffused with ley. Doubt set in—perhaps the Nexus wasn’t the best location for attempting to repair the distortion above after all—but she couldn’t think of another place that would be better. According to the shifting sands at the University, this was where the ley was the most active.

  It didn’t help that she saw the same doubt and dismay in the other Wielders’ eyes.

  “Let’s go,” she said, sounding more confident than she felt even though her voice cracked on the words.

  They descended the steps, leaping over massive cracks, noting those that lined the sides of the building as they approached. The earth shook yet again as they neared the main entrance, not as intense as the one earlier in Green, everyone crouching down low for stability. As soon as they entered the main building, Kara began looking for Primes, for anyone who would be able to help them, even though she knew it was hopeless. The rooms were scoured bare. Her stomach roiled as she realized that scattered jewelry, belt buckles, knives, and other metallic objects were the last remains of the Primes who had been in the building. Nothing else remained—no clothing, no plants, not even the wooden doors separating the rooms. They’d been too close to the center. Whatever had happened in the Nexus, the destruction had wiped everything living away. Not even ash remained.

  “Where do we go?” Allan asked as he motioned his fellow guardsmen ahead to scout the rooms.

  “I don’t know,” Kara said. “Wielders were never allowed into the Nexus.”

  “The center,” Artras cut in succinctly. “The Nexus would have been in the center of the building, beneath the crystal dome.”

  Allan nodded. They advanced, the men checking each room before they proceeded, and reached the center of the building in short order. The stone doors to the central chamber had blown open, one cracked across the middle. Tiers like wide steps descended toward a central pit. Alcoves lined the room on all sides, broken by other entrances. Huge slabs of crystal from the collapsed dome littered the floor, surrounded by thousands of smaller shards. When the guards roamed out into the room, moving carefully, their feet ground smaller crystals into the stone floor. Kara grimaced as she crunched forward, letting Allan and the guards keep an eye on the other entrances as she, Artras, and the two other Wielders moved toward the pit. Allan halted halfway across the room, where he could see the entire chamber, all of the entrances and niches. Artras sank to her knees near the pit’s edge, staring down into the darkness. A faint white light bloomed far beneath them, the shaft deep. Rounded tunnels were cut into the sides of the walls, leading out to the other nodes, Kara guessed, the channels that fed the network that had once run Erenthrall. Smaller apertures were cut higher up, but she couldn’t tell what they were for. She couldn’t see the much deeper, wider channels that led to the Nexi in the other cities.

  “There are rooms beneath us,” Artras said.

  “What for?” Nathen asked with a frown. “The nodes only have a pit, nothing like this.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Kara said sharply. “What matters is if we can reach the ley here, enough to stop the distortion.”

  All of the Wielders glanced up to where the white light pulsed high above, framed now by clouds. It appeared to be directly overhead, and Kara would have sworn that it had grown in size. The high-pitched whine had certainly changed since she’d first heard it beneath the ruins of the Amber Tower, sharper somehow, with a faint throb that hinted that whatever stability the light had at the moment was fading.

  They were running out of time.

  “How do you want to do this?” Artras said, standing. She caught Kara’s eye. “You and I are the only ones who appear to be dealing with this with any sense of calm.” Dylan barked a scoffing laugh. Before Kara could reply, Artras added, “I think you should be the one to repair it. You’re stronger than I am, younger, more resilient. I can sense that without even trying. The rest of us will support you as best we can.”

  Kara glanced around at the others, saw Nathen and Dylan nod, the guards not reacting at all, focusing on the doorways into the chamber. She thought about the distortion that had killed the boy, about the seamstress who’d ended up with a mangled hand. But Artras was right: all of the others looked shaken, and none of them had been on track to become a Prime.

  “Fine,” she said, swallowing against the sudden dryness in her throat. She wished they’d brought water with them, but it hadn’t crossed her mind. She glanced around, stepped away from the edge of the pit and seated herself on a nearby crystal, brushing smaller shards aside to make room. They chimed against each other as they fell to the floor, the notes strangely musical, but dissonant, with an edge. She grimaced as she sat, Artras positioning the others around her. Kara didn’t watch the others settle in, barely noted that the guards had drawn in closer to them. Instead, she reached out to feel the surrounding Tapestry, to test it and find the ley.

  She gasped as soon as she sensed the Tapestry. It was in turmoil, shuddering and twisting violently, still reacting to whatever had caused this catastrophe even two days later. It threatened to sweep her away, like the currents in the river when the storms drenched the plains and steppes to the north and flooded the city. Swollen, full of riptides, the Tapestry tugged and pulled at her, until she sucked in a sharp breath and centered herself. She heard the others react as they joined her, felt their presences appear, then recoil around her. Nathen cried out and withdrew, Artras coaxing him back a moment later.

  But Kara shoved Artras’ soothing thoughts away and focused her attention upward, hissing as she caught sight of the beginnings of the distortion.

  It was larger than it seemed, larger than the throbbing white light hanging over the city. It stretched much farther outward on the Tapestry, a knot of tension that was drawing tighter and tighter, straining the fabric of reality around it. It was already taut, threatening to tear.

  They had even less time than she’d thought. But she’d need the ley’s energy to feed the repair. She’d never have the strength to do this without it.

  Wrenching her attention away, she reached down, centering on the pit and allowing her essence to fall, searching for a connection to the ley as she went. The conduits that led to the various nodes throughout the city were dry, only a faint trickle of ley remaining. The system that had fueled the city for decades had been completely disrupted. As she traveled the paths, she could sense ruptures throughout the city, ley pooled in odd locations, spewing forth in geysers in others, the entire network in chaos. But the network had never been natural, the Primes and mentors forcing the ley into new channels, into new configurations. With those restraints loosed, the ley was seeking out its natural flows, some of them blocked, others altered, the ley finding new courses, like a river carving out new channels after a major flood. It was the chaos she had seen in the sands, only brought to life, with depth, with dimension, and a horrifying sense of reality. And as she dove deeper, searching for a solid source for what she needed to do, she felt the stresses of the earth around her as the ley attempted to stabilize. The ground heaved in all directions, shuddering and shaking, like a body in seizure. T
he trembling sickened her, even as she realized that the destruction of the network wasn’t just local. The earth groaned in all directions—north, south, east, and west. Whatever had occurred had not happened only in Erenthrall. It had happened everywhere, the damage extensive, so pervasive that it threatened to overwhelm Kara’s search, stretching her too thin as she felt frantically for stability anywhere. But the lines to Tumbor, to Farrade, to the Steppe—they were all ruptured, all fluctuating.

  So she withdrew, returned to Erenthrall, pulling herself back and centering herself again even as she choked back despair. The formation of the distortion above her pulsed against her senses, weighed down on her shoulders, somehow black and insidious even though it writhed in white light. She sucked in ragged breaths, felt Artras’ questioning hand touch her arm in concern, but she shrugged the sensation aside.

  “The entire system is down,” she reported. “Not just Erenthrall. Tumbor, Farrade, the Steppe, the Reaches . . . all of it. Whatever hit us here struck everywhere. The conduits have been disrupted, the pathways of the ley broken. We’re on our own.”

  The guards gasped and broke into frantic babble, until Allan snapped, “Quiet!” Kara sensed him turning toward her, sensed his fear, calmly reined in and controlled, but there nonetheless. “Can you fix it on your own?”

  “We should have brought some of the mentors at the University with us. They could have helped. I know the Primes used them for anything they built of scale, like the Flyers’ Tower, but I don’t know how, exactly.” Kara straightened where she sat. “But it’s too late for that. We’ll have to try on our own.”

  And she dove back into the pit, ignoring the channels to either side, ignoring the larger conduits leading away from the city, heading straight down beneath the city. She hit the first significant levels of ley, the energy churning around her. She plunged into it in relief, instantly dragged in its currents to one side, barely keeping herself from being swept away. Clawing her way back, she used the Tapestry to form a link to the ley, siphoning some of it off and drawing it up through the pit toward the remnants of the Nexus. This was one of the ways the mentors helped in the Primes’ constructions, she realized. They helped build channels, helped control the ley, because they were more talented at manipulating the Tapestry. But she’d have to do it herself now. Once she reached the destroyed chamber, the link trailing behind her, she opened her eyes and caught Artras’ attention.

  “I’ve forged a link to the ley. I’m going to try repairing the distortion now.”

  Artras nodded, her expression grim, motioning toward the others as Kara took a deep, steadying breath and closed her eyes again. She felt the Wielders’ presences around her as she lifted herself upward, reaching for the distortion above. Its weight pressed down upon her, worse than moments before. The tension was escalating, faster than she thought possible. But she had nothing to compare this to, nothing to judge it against. The largest distortion she had dealt with had begun with a light the size of her fist, the one that had killed the boy, the same one that had caught but not harmed Allan and his daughter. This one was a thousand times larger.

  Drawing on the others’ strength and the link she’d forged with the ley, she stretched out and attempted to encircle the distortion, reaching, and reaching further. Even though she worked far above the shattered Nexus, she felt her body pulsing with the beat of her heart. The rhythm of her own life’s blood felt amplified as she stretched herself thinner and thinner. It roared in her ears, filled her senses, bolstered by the other Wielders. She sank herself into the sensation, drew her own strength from it—

  And then she began to work at the outer edges of the distortion.

  It began as usual, her mind sinking into the intricacies of the distortion. But unlike those that had already quickened, this formation wasn’t stable. The stresses it placed on the fabric of reality, on the Tapestry that held everything together, shifted as she worked, so that once she smoothed out and relieved the tension in one area and moved on to the next, the distortion would ripple, the waves rumpling what she’d already worked on. It was like attempting to fix one of her father’s clocks—with all the meshing of gears and the precise movement of interlocking pieces—while the clock was still working. In smaller form, Wielders had been able to close the rifts, glossing over the ripples in one surge of power. This one was too large.

  Kara felt sweat break out against her skin, knew that it sheened her face, dripped from her chin. Her breathing altered, heightening with frustration, even as she clamped her jaw tight in determination. The distortion hitched beneath her touch and she gasped, but it didn’t quicken. The high-pitched whine escalated. Kara gave up trying to repair the damage with fine-tuned finesse. Reaching for the ley, reaching for her fellow Wielders, drawing up their strength, she attacked the distortion in broad waves, sweeping across its outer edges and pushing inward. Dylan grunted. Nathen began to pant, breaths hissing between his teeth. Kara felt Artras’ hand grip her arm, tightening as she murmured a warning, but Kara didn’t relent.

  “It’s shrinking,” she announced, her voice strained with effort. “I need more power.”

  At the same moment, Nathen cried out and collapsed. Kara felt Artras shove away from her, even as she sensed the loss of support up above. Her attack wavered, the distortion pushing outward again, but she dug in, pulled hard on her link to the ley, on Dylan and Artras. Distantly, she heard Artras exclaim, “He’s dead!” An ache shot through her core, but then Dylan faltered and pulled back. The foundation for her work began to crumble as the pressure from the distortion increased. She needed more strength, needed more power, or the distortion would quicken.

  Dylan collapsed, the sudden cessation of support wrenching at Kara’s control. Desperate, she reached for the ley, reached for the seething power of the lines hidden deep within the earth. As she drew on their power, the ley rushing toward her, she sensed the reservoir of ley hidden deeper still. She had touched the ley lines of the Nexus and those constructed by the Primes during her testing then . . . but she’d known there was something deeper, something fundamentally stronger. The source of the power in Halliel’s Park, the source that the Primes and the Nexus drew upon.

  With the Nexus destroyed, with the artificial lines obliterated, the ley had reverted to this primal source.

  And now, her grasp on the distortion slipping, Kara lunged for it.

  Power flooded through her, exploding across the link she’d forged with the remains of Erenthrall’s system deep beneath the earth. She heard Artras cry out, “It’s not working!” and realized the high-pitched whine they’d initially heard was now a full-fledged shriek, the sound raw. The ground began to shake—not the grumbles of a shifting earth, but a violent quaking that tossed Kara from her seat on the crystal slab. She couldn’t catch herself, felt her shoulder wrench, felt shards of glass cutting into her face, but she pushed all of it aside and focused on the surge of ley as it reached her.

  She screamed as the ley roared from the pit to one side, using all of her strength to funnel it up toward the distortion. Tears squeezed from her eyes as she arched her back against the searing pain. The ley shot skyward, hitting the distortion and encircling it. Cords standing out in the sides of her neck, Kara poured the raw energy from the earth into repairing the damage, felt the distortion shrinking, its edges collapsing inward. Her control began to slip as Artras dropped out of the Tapestry, pulling away from the sheer intensity of the ley’s flow. Through the roaring of power in her ears, she heard Allan shouting questions, heard Artras answering, felt the earth jolting beneath her—

  Then she could hold the ley no longer. She cried out as her grasp slid free, the ley fountaining upward a moment longer before it began to fall back, retreating into the depths of the pit. Kara sagged to the ground, unable to move, her entire body trembling with exhaustion. She swallowed, coughed, gasped in air, but her body was hollow, empty. There was nothing left.

 
And the distortion still remained. Lying flat against the floor of the Nexus, she could see it still pulsing above, the sky lit with its fire, harsher than the sun. It burned her eyes, but she could not look away. She’d failed. The ley had shrunk it down to a third of its former size, but the distortion remained.

  She choked on a sob.

  But then Artras shouted, “It’s going to quicken! Allan, grab Kara. Hoist her over your shoulder, or carry her in your arms, I don’t care. Ryant, grab Dylan. We have to get out of here.”

  Kara heard people scrambling in the rubble, cursing as the earth kicked beneath them. Then someone snatched at her arm, picked her up. Her arms flailed, her body limp, even though she tried to help. She recognized Allan as he hefted her up into his arms with a grunt, holding her tight against his chest, and then he barked, “Stay close.”

  He bolted toward the entrance to the chamber. Kara caught a glimpse of the others—Artras, Ryant with Dylan thrown over his shoulder, the other guards. Nathen had sacrificed himself, and still she’d failed. The pain engulfed her, but she did not have the strength for tears. Her body was numb, burnt out.

  Allan ducked through the doorway, paused to catch his balance and shift her weight, and then they were sprinting, Kara jouncing in his grip. She could smell his sweat. His muscles strained, his skin laced with scars, old and new. His heartbeat raced, pounding in the crook of his arms, and his breath heaved in ragged gasps as they tore through the shadows of the inner rooms. Then they were outside, the sun beginning to lower. But everything was thrown in stark relief, blazing in the strange, harsh, white light of the distortion above. Kara caught sight of it as Allan raced up the stairs along the side of the depression. They would never make it. It would quicken long before they reached the edge of the city.