Sara hurried Grace toward the door the fallen had indicated. “Atorva, in your house are the sorcerers and the small guard that came with us. They will be your greatest chance,” Sara called over her shoulder.
“We have city guards and sorcerers here as well. They are already springing to action, they know that sound.” But Laphrael was pushing Atorva out the door, cutting conversation short.
The building shuddered menacingly, and Sara wondered if hiding deeper within the basilica was a smart choice after all.
“Certainly it won’t take all of us,” Rowan said, latching the door behind them as Azra and Pyang wyrded lights into being. There were no windows in the room, and Sara wondered what the function of it was.
“Do you ever stop bitching?” Azra asked.
“Ladies, that’s enough,” Aladestra said. “We need to protect Grace.” Though precisely what they were going to do to keep Grace safe in a shelter without windows and only one door, which was only accessible once the attacker had gone through the entire basilica, Sara wasn’t sure.
The building shuddered menacingly again. At once the Guardians began working, and Sara could feel as well as see the opalescent protective orb that was springing up all around them. Once the shield was in place, Sara took a spot on the floor.
But the building shuddered again, and a loud pop sounded overhead.
“What was that?” Rowan asked, jumping to her feet, and gazing up.
“Shh,” Annbell said. They all fell silent, and then they could hear it: the sound of pebbles tumbling and dust falling on the ceiling above them.
“I don’t like the sound of—” Pyang started, but just then there was a deafening crack, and the ceiling fell apart, showering down on those within the room.
“I worry about them,” Flora said, taking a sip of tea. Like Dalah, the other lady wasn’t able to sleep. It was a rough night, and there was tension in the air. Despite the reassuring hum of energy around them that eased everyone throughout Lytoria into peaceful slumber, Dalah and Flora weren’t soothed.
“I’m sure they’ll be fine,” Dalah reassured her. “You trained them as best you could. They’ll make the right decisions.”
“But it’s not the right decisions I’m concerned with,” Flora said. “I’m sure they’ll make the right decisions. But Dalah, you lived through the Splitting of the World, just like me, you understand that it’s the hard decisions that make or break a person. They’re all so young.”
Dalah nodded, and sent out a lick or wyrd to stoke the fire higher. “True enough,” she agreed.
“At any rate, when do you think an attack will come?” Flora asked.
Flora was worried that her pupils wouldn’t survive this coming battle, and it was true they might not. Flora had been shaken since the alarist attack days before, and she’d started confiding in Dalah not long after that.
“It’s anyone’s guess, I’m sure,” Dalah told her. But the vibration of the energy changed just then, and Dalah was filled with worry.
Flora leapt to her feet, casting glances around the room. “What’s that?”
A warning tingled across Dalah’s skin, just as she was sure it hummed over Flora’s flesh. Before she could speak, a deafening pop reverberated through the air nearby, and the sound of hundreds of pounds of stone falling to meet the earth came to her ears.
“Outside!” Dalah said, worry prickling her flesh. She pushed past Dalah and dashed down the hall, pulling her yellow silken robe tighter around her body. She pushed the door to the Votary House open in time to see the dust and debris rising out of the basilica. Dark shapes glided through the air above the basilica, hooting and hollering into the near-dawn twilight.
Dalah stepped back, her hand fluttering to her mouth as the peaceful vibration through the city ground to a halt, and panic settled in.
A dark shape plummeted out of the sky directly in front of her, folding its black wings behind it with a flutter. The figure stood to reveal a raven-haired man in black leather armor. A shout of surprise was yanked out of Dalah and she released a pulse of wyrd, blasting the creature back. The fallen angel flipped backwards, slammed into a wall, and crumpled limply to the ground. Dalah knew she hadn’t killed it, but it was stunned at least.
“What is it?” Flora asked, coming to her side, and then gasped at the sight of the basilica falling around its foundations.
“Get back,” a voice said. Nerves already frayed from the destruction outside and the fallen attack, Dalah barely had time to control another pulse of wyrd when she realized it was High Votary Atorva. He ushered the women back inside and slammed the doors behind him. Flora jumped at the noise. Already a group was gathering in the entrance hall, rubbing sleepy eyes and looking harried.
“Quickly,” Atorva said, flicking his hands this way and that, as if trying to scatter dogs out from under foot. “Shutter the windows tight. Dalah,” Atorva said, pulling her closer. She was surprised he remembered her name. “Flora, come. Laphrael is outside right now, fighting against the legion in the sky. I’m sure it isn’t their full force, but we need to make a stand here. We’ll figure out more when reinforcements come. I need your wyrd to spread my prayers.”
The two women nodded, and he led them over to a couch. He sat down and lit three silver candles on the table before it. Dalah bowed her head to the candles, which represented the three aspects of the triple Goddess. She made the holy star over her chest, praying that the Goddess would protect them all. Sinking to his knees, Atorva gripped their hands and began to pray. Dalah had been privy to prayers before led by votaries and bishops, but none of them held the absolute power that Atorva’s did.
Dalah grabbed onto the ripples of his power and amplified them, weaving her wyrd through them, forcing the power of his prayers into an orb which she pulled and expanded with her will. She could feel Flora’s mind enter the weaving as well, and she pushed outward with her wyrd, inflating the prayer circle to include the house they sat in.
As long as they were inside, they would be safe.
“What are you doing?” Pi asked, pulling Devenstar back away from the window.
“I can’t stay in here,” Deven said. “I can’t cower behind these walls and not fight what’s outside!”
“And what’s outside, Devenstar?” Clara said. She only used his full name when she was angry with him.
“The legion of fallen angels,” he said simply, strapping his sword to his back.
“And you’re going to take the entire legion on by yourself?” Clara asked.
“Unless you’re coming with, yes,” Devenstar said, slipping a leg out through his window.
Pi sighed, ran her hands through her hair, and looked to Clara for a solution.
“Go get our weapons,” Clara said.
“You’re serious?” Pi asked.
Clara only nodded.
Mag could feel the coming of the legion like a soothing ointment on sunburned skin. She sat on her cot with her head cradled in her hands. She’d been unable to sleep since they entered Lytoria. Whereas the calming vibration of the city would work its charm on any Goddess-loving individual, the alarist wyrd recently reawakened in her wouldn’t let her rest. Her head throbbed.
There was a part of her that rejoiced in the coming of the fallen, though she knew that was wrong. At least it put an end to the incessant humming of the walls around her. When the thrum of power drew to a halt, Mag sighed. The pressure of the alarist wyrd in her head abated, affording her some peace.
But that peace was quickly set aside with the realization of what was happening outside. Her peace of mind was being bought with the blood of people she’d come to know as friends.
A knock came to the door, and a guard stepped inside.
“He’s as safe in here as he is out there,” the guard said, ushering Astanel inside and closing the door behind him.
Astanel rushed to Mag, placing his hands around the shackles that held her.
“No,” Mag whispered, jerking away fr
om him. “Not yet.”
“But you said you’d help,” the boy pleaded. There was fear in his eyes, and Mag felt for him. It was the first time he’d known this kind of danger. She wasn’t sure what he had been through before, but she did know that he was led there through the lie of love.
“Not yet; there will be another attack,” she said.
“Another?” Astanel quivered, his eyes darting back to the door as if fallen would burst through at any moment. Mag’s heart went out to the boy. It was a powerful fallen who had enslaved him before. She vowed not to let it happen again.
“Yes, another, and when that comes, you will come to me, and you will release me.” She placed a reassuring hand on his arm. The shackles clanged, reminding her just how powerless she was to protect him until they were off.
“There,” Atorva said, and Dalah could feel the thread of his prayer slip from her mind. But the orb she and Flora had made of it held true.
“Will that keep them out?” Flora asked.
“I can’t be sure,” Atorva said. “It’s not as though they can’t cross into Goddess energy, but I think it severely weakens them.”
“Well,” Dalah said, smoothing the front of her yellow robe. “At least now we’ll have a fighting chance.”
Atorva nodded, giving a tight, humorless smile. “Now, if you ladies would help me to the rooftop, I need to cast my blessing out to my people.”
Dalah didn’t like the idea of that. It was too risky, being on the roof, near the fallen, in plain sight. But it made the most sense. They needed some kind of visual for their wyrd to work, and she was certain they would be helping him spread his energy around. The memory of Rosalee, crushed beneath her under the bridge, strengthened her resolve. She nodded once.
“We should get Grace,” Dalah said to Flora.
“Grace isn’t here,” Atorva said, refusing to meet Dalah’s gaze.
“Where is she?” Dalah asked confused.
“She couldn’t sleep, and had gone to the basilica,” Atorva began, but before he could finish a dark feeling settled over Dalah. She moaned and shook her head, knowing that her friend had been smothered in the ruins of the basilica.
“Dear Goddess,” Flora whispered.
“What’s more, the Guardians were protecting her. They are all lost to us,” Atorva said. “Until we can get a team in there to clean up, we won’t recover them.”
“But they’re sorcerers,” Flora said. “They’ll survive.”
“Even so, we need to unearth them,” Atorva said. “I wouldn’t count on their being useful in this fight.”
Dalah’s hands were shaking when she stood. It was as if a cloud had settled over her emotions, and cotton had been wedged into her ears. If people were speaking, she couldn’t hear it. She was only dimly aware of helping Atorva stand, and taking him down the hall toward a staircase up to the roof.
Above, Dalah could see the destruction of the basilica all the clearer, but she turned her back to it. There was enough sorrow in her heart; she didn’t need the visual reminder as well. From somewhere near the basilica came sporadic flashes of white light, and a reverberation to the earth that would have panicked her if she hadn’t been lost in her own sorrow.
Grace wasn’t a sorceress, so she wasn’t immortal, despite her unnaturally long life. Her being crushed under all of that weight would be the same as Rosalee being crushed in the Ivory City. Memories of the past swam to the forefront of her mind in a dizzying array of images. Dalah could see the fallen at the other end of the bazaar, her wings unfolding, casting shadows across the ground and plaguing the mind with perverse power.
She shook her head and closed her eyes. When she opened them, the rest of her group was already a short distance from her.
Atorva indicated a spot near the center of the flat roof of the High Votary House, and he kneeled. Overhead, Dalah was aware of black wings carrying fallen bodies over the city. Darklight and purple fire abounded, cascading to the streets, vanishing houses and people, and setting monuments afire in an unnatural way. Those that burned didn’t give way to smoke, but melted in their place, the inferno caving the ground beneath them.
The stench was horrendous, and with the peaceful vibration gone, fear leaked in.
Atorva began his prayer in an ancient language Dalah didn’t have the mind to place. She slipped one hand into Atorva’s and the other into Flora’s grasp, and together they sent his prayer slipping over the city, finding refuge where it might, strengthening those that they could, giving aid to those wyrders fighting against the fallen.
When next Dalah opened her eyes, there was a definite change in the tide of battle.
“Deven, where are we going?” Pi whispered to the man’s broad back. She followed him, hanging as close to the wall as the low shrubs beside the building would allow.
He only shook his head. It was dark; despite being near dawn, the air was clouded with smoke and with screaming. The confusion of battle swarmed around Pi until she nearly lost all sense of where she was and which direction she was headed. But she followed Deven, ducking out of sight when several fallen wheeled about overhead, throwing purple fire, lighting trees and people with their wrath where they would burn and melt on the spot, leaving behind holes where they once stood.
Pi closed her eyes and would have taken Clara’s hand, but she needed both hands free. She just hoped Devenstar knew where he was going.
“And where are you going?” a voice cooed from behind them.
Pi turned, her blade raised. Behind them stood a red-headed fallen angel, with black eyes and wings arching wide above her slender body. The woman wore a green dress that left her arms bare. She stepped closer to them, her bare feet crunching on the snow.
Golden lightning exploded over Pi’s shoulder, deafening her and striking the fallen in the chest. The woman stumbled back, but flicked her wings to regain her footing. A hand on Pi’s shoulder dragged her around the corner of the house, where she could just see bursts of white light coming from around another corner near the ruined basilica.
“That hurt!” the fallen angel shrieked. Pi grabbed hold of Clara, pulling her along behind Deven, who was now sprinting to be away from the fallen. “Where are you going?” the red-headed angel asked again, blasting out at them with a bolt of darklight. Clara pulled Pi to the side, who in turn jerked Deven to the side with her hand still clasped in his. The ground where they had been standing churned and blackened, and a hole appeared.
“That’s where we’re going,” Deven said when another flash lit the air.
Pi stumbled to her feet, jerking Clara up as she did so. Clara stood with a huff and dashed along behind Pi. She cast a look behind her, watching the red-haired fallen angel ready another attack, but just then a peaceful, serene sensation oozed out of the house to their left, filling Pi with power and determination.
The fallen must have felt it too, because she cut short her attack, hissed at the building, and made to pull away. Quickly Pi yanked her hands free and blasted the fallen with the largest bolt of green lightning she could muster. This time the angel didn’t stumble back, but was instead blasted, her dress burning where the lightning struck.
When the angel fell, she didn’t get back up.
“The house—it strengthens our wyrd,” Pi said.
“Yeah, that’s good,” Deven said, pulling her along. “Not enough though, she’s getting back up.”
Pi looked, and sure enough, the angel was standing back up. Her dress gaped open, and underneath Pi could see that the angel’s alabaster skin was charred and black.
“How did that not kill her?” Pi asked, rounding the next corner behind Deven and seeing the source of the flashes of light.
Another angel stood under a lamp post near the corner of the basilica, a blue flaming sword in one hand, and great white wings folded behind his back. He attacked the approaching legion with the sword, but as they watched he was swarmed by them. Moments later a pulse of pure white light flared from the convergence
, and the score of legion on top of him were vaporized. As their dust fell to the ground, something more remained: a pinpoint of light, pure and radiant like a star, which spiraled up and vanished into the sky.
“Get to him,” Devenstar said, turning back to the red-haired angel. “Let him instruct you.”
Pi dragged Clara behind her, down the knoll away from the basilica and to the street corner where the angel stood, slashing with his blade and bursting with light. In between bursts, Pi dove at the angel, pulling Clara behind her and into the embrace of his light. The dust of fallen angels cascaded around them like sand raining down on the cobbles, and the essence that was left of those that fell spiraled up into the sky.
“What are you doing?” the angel barked.
“Helping,” Pi said.
“As if you could,” he muttered. “Stay out of my way, and if you die, don’t trip me up.”
Pi nodded, drew her blade, and waited for the next attack. When it came it was in force, fallen swarming around them again in a flurry of black wings, darklight, and bodies.
The angel behind them cast out another pulse of light, vanquishing both the fallen and their darklight. Again, when the light pulsed through her, Pi felt the same holy energy infuse her being that she’d felt next to the house.
Pi didn’t waste any time. She struck out with her lightning, infused now with the holy power of the angel. This time when her wyrd struck, it struck true, knocking a fallen out of the sky, crumbling him to the pavement, from which he didn’t rise again. For good measure she sent a lick of wyrded flame his way, igniting his body. In moments the form dissolved, and like those that fell from the white winged angel’s pulse of light, a pinpoint of starlight spiraled up to the heavens.
Clara seemed to catch the drift; she must have felt the same sensation from the angel that they had been infused with back at the Votary House. She blasted out at those angels spiraling high in the night with a cold fire that froze them mid-flight, dashing them to hundreds of pieces against the pavement they fell upon. As with the fire, their bodies dissolved, only allowing one glimmering part of them to rise into the sky.
The Turquoise Tower (Revenant Wyrd Book 6) Page 18