I didn’t have time to think about it. Potency crackled, and Amkir gave an angry cry. My eyes snapped to him, and I blinked in surprise to see that Vahl had lassoed Amkir’s wrist with a strand of potency. Amkir, holding a partially prepared strike, turned fully on Vahl.
Vahl spoke in demon to Amkir, but with the grove power running through me, I got the meaning. No, she is not to be killed.
Amkir ripped the lasso away. “You dare to interfere with me?” he growled, calling more power to hand. I didn’t stick around to see how this would play out. I got my ass out of there and sprinted for the diagram. I couldn’t complete the last ring without support, but I could damn well channel everything to Mzatal from there.
In my peripheral vision I saw Idris rapidly completing his defense diagram, and found myself hoping it would be enough to save his ass. A moment later I felt his patterns flare. I did a stutter step in shocked realization and glanced over to him. You gutsy son of a bitch. He’d danced the first seven rings of the fucking shikvihr as a foundation—not for defense but for new support. Well, he’s certainly learning how to deal with distraction, I thought. Doing it on the column would be a walk in the park after this.
With the attention of the various lords diverted, I managed to make it back to the diagram and slide through the sigils. Already I sensed Idris rebuilding support. But will it be enough and in time? Mzatal was damn close to getting his ass kicked. Amkir had abandoned his retaliation against Vahl and had joined Rhyzkahl and Jesral in their attack.
I traced a pygah first and took a precious second to breathe it in, then quickly began to trace the final ring. So close. The ritual spiraled up into a perfect harmony of power. Vsuhl. The name resonated from and with my very essence. Mzatal, with his back against a column at the perimeter of the ritual, took a devastating triple strike that sent him to his knees. I lifted my right hand up above my head as I finished tracing the final sigil with my left. The three lords advanced upon the downed Mzatal.
“Vsuhl!” The name leapt from my throat with startling potency. I felt the glorious heat of the blade coalesce in my hand. White-hot fire surged down my arm and through my core, filling me with intimately familiar power. Gripping the hilt tightly, I lowered the blade. My whole body vibrated from the inside out with the promise of potential, like a swarm of angry bees confined in a sack. I smiled, then sent out a burst of power that knocked the three lords back on their asses.
I breathed deeply. That was more like it. With the combined power of the grove, the culminating ritual, and Vsuhl, I was a motherfucking badass.
Like ripples in a pond, the ritual flared in rings around me. When the perimeter ignited, a sound like a massive gong reverberated, and the carvings on the surrounding columns blazed with prismatic light. Clear tones rang out one after the other around me, unique for each column. The flowering vines encasing three of them vanished in instant incineration. The tones united in a continuous low thrum that fueled me like gas on a fire. The swarm of bees in me doubled in number and furor. I didn’t know how my skin held together with the intensity of the vibration, but I wouldn’t have traded it for anything.
Mzatal was on his hands and knees just beyond a column. He tried to speak but coughed up blood instead. The lords got to their feet but I simply knocked them down again, laughing. I didn’t feel at all helpless now. Fuckers. You’re mine now.
Rhyzkahl and Jesral dragged Amkir up and then retreated a good distance away. I took the time to make sure that Idris and Mzatal were all right, though I kept an eye on the three lords. Mzatal struggled up to a standing position, keeping his feet in a wide stance for stability. He turned toward me, breathing heavily, bleeding from mouth and nose, with a deeply troubled expression on his face.
“Kara,” he said, holding a hand up toward me. “Ease your grip.”
I looked down at the blade in my hand and then back up to him. “Why would I do that?” I asked. “It’s okay. It’s perfect.” And it was. Why wouldn’t it be?
Mzatal took a staggering step toward me. I felt him extending and touching me on a level beyond the physical. “Because it is too much too soon,” he said. His voice was ragged, lacking its usual strength. “Remember what happened in the grove conflict. Just ease your grip. Trust me.”
I looked over at the three. They clustered together at least twenty yards away, but I couldn’t tell what they were doing. I frowned, hesitating. But I trusted Mzatal. That much I knew. The power of the grove leapt within me. It wanted to fully join with the blade energy again, wanted to meld into something perfect and huge. Again? The eagerness of the grove lit my cells, a glorious overlay on the supercharged blade energy. More. More! There was an ancient taste to it, but I remembered how easily I’d succumbed to the lure of the power during the previous battle with Rhyzkahl.
I eased my grip on the blade, shuddering at the decrease in power. Vsuhl touched me with whisper-traces of assent. The thrum of the columns eased to barely audible, and the bees settled into a milling mass. Mzatal let out a breath as if he’d just watched a pin put back in a grenade, then began to work his way through the ritual sigils to me. “Good. Keep hold, and balance,” he said. He glanced back at the three, brow furrowing. I followed his gaze and saw that all had their hands on the hilt of Rhyzkahl’s blade. What the hell were they doing?
My cop-sense lit up, that vibe that had served me so well in the past of “something’s wrong.” Those three were up to something. They hadn’t retreated. But we had the blade now. If we could get through the passage and get the hell out of here, then everything would be okay. But they’re not gonna let us just walk out.
“My Lord!” Idris suddenly called out, alarm coloring his voice. “Kara! The perimeter. Something’s happening to it!”
Even as the words left his mouth my bad vibe feeling increased about a hundredfold, and my upper chest, abdomen and right side ignited in a burning itch. Shit! Three of the sigils carved into my torso flared. I shot Mzatal an anxious look. He continued to work his way through the diagram to me, moving with utmost caution through the pattern so as to not leave behind any weaknesses or breaches in the protections. The ritual was over and the blade in my hand, but now we had to keep what we’d fought so hard to gain.
“Mzatal,” I said as the burning itch increased. “The sigil scars—”
I didn’t get a chance to finish my sentence. The three lords lifted Rhyzkahl’s blade and sent a seething mass of shadowy red rakkuhr arcing my way, far too familiar from my time in Rhyzkahl’s ritual. Still gripping Vsuhl, I threw up my hands in pure instinct to shield. The rakkuhr struck the blade, sending a shudder of remembered torment through me. Scintillating strands of ruby lightning strung between the blade in my hand and the one in Rhyzkahl’s, and I steeled myself for the pain that I’d been so well conditioned to expect to follow. Vsuhl leapt in my hand, dragging my arm upward, and with a single surge I felt it expand and consume the ugly potency, sucking the strands into itself with an ear-splitting whine that culminated in an ominous crack.
The three lords staggered back from each other. I jerked as the power slashed through the blade and into me. In the span between one heartbeat and the next every sigil on my body ignited in a sheath of pure agony. My hand spasmed tight on the hilt of the blade, and I instinctively called more grove power. I didn’t even think, simply reacted to fight off the attack, to stop the agony, pushing out and away as hard as I could. I was barely aware of the wall of power I struck out with, only dimly seeing that I knocked everyone in the courtyard flat, human, demon, and lord alike.
I sucked in a burning breath. The three different potencies coiled in a fierce maelstrom within me, like a volatile chemical reaction. These were not meant to exist within one person. It never should’ve happened. The natural perfection of the grove could not exist with the anathema of the rakkuhr. Had blade energy not immersed me, had it not entwined with the grove, the grove and the dark potencies would have simply existed together but separate, like oil and water. But that third
power was the catalyst, the trigger, igniting a wrenching cascade of dissonance, like the swarm of bees madly dashing themselves into one another. The unified thrum from the columns shattered into a discordant wall of sound. The prismatic light of the sigils on the columns shifted to inky blackness
Shaking, I dropped to a crouch as I tried to pull it all back in. This was bad. This was really fucking bad. Eyes wide, I breathed in shallow gasps as I carefully pulled the power back, shoved it down. Each heartbeat seemed to last minutes, pounding through me like the tolling of a bell. As I felt the power settle within me, I slowly stood. I could do this. I could fix this. All I needed to do was let go of the grove. That would stop it.
But I wasn’t holding the grove power anymore, not the way I always had before. Now it rushed like a river through me, impacting the lava of the rakkuhr. I couldn’t let go of the river, couldn’t hold it back, and the lava refused to be cooled.
My skin burned, and I looked down, shocked and at the same time not surprised to see that the sigils glowed with a fierce red-orange light. I felt as if my body could barely contain me. I trembled, hot and cold at the same, but a heartbeat later realized that it wasn’t all me, that the entire courtyard shook with a deep tremor. A wind rose from nowhere, whipping my hair about my face.
Mzatal struggled up to a crouch. “Kara!” he shouted above the rising wind, shock and horror on his face. “Drop…the…blade!”
I panted for breath as if somehow that could cool the raging furnace within me. I struggled to ease my grip and drop the blade, but it was as if he’d asked me to drop my hand. “I can’t!” It was a part of me—not physically, but it might as well have been.
The worry in his face deepened to distress. “Idris!” he called. “Take it down! Take it all down!”
Rhyzkahl staggered to his feet, shock written across his features, and still clutching his blade. He started to move toward me, but I flicked the fingers of my left hand and sent him sprawling again. I didn’t want him anywhere near me.
“Kara!” Mzatal took a step closer to me, extending to me on all levels. He held his blade in front of him as if to shield himself from my power. “Kara, you must stop.”
I was trying. Couldn’t he feel that? Another tremor shook us, accompanied by the sharp crack of splitting stone. The demons had all gone to ground, huddling with wings folded close against the fierce gusts of wind. With unnatural speed, dark clouds shot through with purple lightning filled the sky. Rhyzkahl pushed himself back to his feet, teeth bared as he took a step toward me, posture bowed as if leaning into a heavy wind. The sigils burned and throbbed with the triple potency, and I knocked him back again, grinning ferally as he went tumbling.
My vision grew weird, as if everything was far too bright, but with no way to squint or shield my eyes. I felt Idris working frantically behind me, dispelling his circle and then peeling away the layers of my own diagram.
My breath hissed through my teeth. I felt and saw the power coming off me in misty tendrils. It probably looked cool as all hell, but I also knew it was seriously fucked up.
Kara!
“Here,” I whispered, clinging to Mzatal’s essence-touch. It felt as if the echo of our merged energies was the only thing holding me together at all. He took a step back as Idris dispelled the diagrams. Rhyzkahl stood again, blade held in front of him. As he took a step forward, the sigils on my torso flared, sending searing razors of pain through me. I felt the bindings, the wrenching of my shoulders, those ten heartbeats when he brought the pain.
Crying out, I lifted my hand. I only wanted to hold him back, but the power came from me in a heavy wave, knocking everyone flat again. Behind me, Idris let out a choked scream as he lost hold of the pattern. The diagram fractured with a whine that felt and sounded wrong. Light flashed over Idris in a discordant wave, and he crumpled in the grass and was still.
Gasping shallowly, I shook my head to clear it. Idris. I hurt Idris. Panic and terror clawed at me. I couldn’t even think with the cacophony of the columns threatening to vibrate me apart.
Kara!
“Here!” I cried out. My eyes found Mzatal’s. “Mzatal, help me. I can’t stop it!”
Mzatal struggled to his feet again, nose streaming fresh blood. “We will stop it, Kara,” he said in a calm voice that I both felt and heard. He took another step back, toward Rhyzkahl.
Amkir and Vahl both sprawled on the ground as though injured, while Jesral clawed up to his hands and knees. The black and violet clouds boiled overhead. Tremors rolled ceaselessly. The sharp bite of the air increased a hundred fold, setting hair standing on end.
Mzatal turned to face Rhyzkahl as the pale-haired lord moved up beside him. Their eyes met, antipathy and intensity literally sparking in the potency between them. The wind continued to rise to near hurricane strength. The ground heaved, and I staggered to stay upright. A massive crack of stone sounded above the clangor of the columns. Glancing left, I sought its origin, then stared in horror as the western tower lost much of its foundation to a wide crevice. The tower sheered vertically, half of its mass crumbling in a low rumble of stone on stone into the depths of the rift. Flashes of color marked furnishings, paintings, and statuary lost in the tumult. Szerain’s studio. His personal chamber with its hundreds of memories captured in sculptures. All gone. Even amidst all the tumult, my heart clenched at the loss.
The two lords continued to stare at each other for a half dozen heartbeats, and then turned in unison to face me as if they’d come to a truce. Mzatal approached me with Rhyzkahl a step behind. I focused on him, vision shifting strangely. The power burned within me, completely beyond my control, but with it came an awareness of everything. I knew every blade of grass, every stone, every lord. Amkir struggled to stand. Jesral staggered toward the downed Vahl on the other side of the courtyard. I felt every demon, felt Idris behind me—still alive, thankfully, though who knew how long that would last if Mzatal couldn’t help me stop this.
Mzatal reached and grabbed my right wrist, calling deeply to me, touching me through our shared connection.
I sucked in a breath as my blade responded to his. Vsuhl emanated a tone that soared through me, lifting, potent. Not audible, but felt in my essence. Mzatal’s Khatur answered in a harmony that unified the energies, wound them together, and I heard them, knew them, expanded into the new joining. Everything vibrantly translucent.
Mzatal called to me, and I answered: “Here. Here. Here.” I turned my head to look at him, looked into him. A pinpoint of blinding light in vast darkness. “Mzatal,” I breathed. “So lonely.”
He froze, hand on my wrist, eyes locked on mine, acknowledging. Rhyzkahl stepped forward with a scowl. My gaze shifted to him. I saw him. All of him. Crystalline leaves adrift on swirling water, far from the tree. Pushed by inexorable winds into foul depths. “Dear one,” I whispered. “So lost.”
He straightened, face going liquid for a brief flash before returning to the mask of determination. Vsuhl extended to Rhyzkahl’s blade, to Xhan, and then recoiled violently sending a crashing wave of discord through the entwined melody of Vsuhl and Khatur. I trembled with the discordance, grateful that Vsuhl withdrew. The blade song wrapped around me, wrapped around us. Vsuhl, Khatur, Mzatal, me. I expanded. Xhan sought to join, but the rakkuhr dominated it, smothered it.
“All of you, so lost,” I whispered. The wind ripped my words away, yet I knew they carried to all corners of the courtyard. “Foolish dear one.”
A syraza appeared behind Mzatal, laid a hand on his shoulder. Ilana. Not the one I wanted. Needed. Not my syraza. “Eilahn!” My voice carried through the universe, unstoppable.
Mzatal shifted his grip so that it covered my hand over the hilt of the blade. I returned my burning gaze to him. “Take it from me.”
Mzatal’s mouth pressed into a hard line as he gripped Vsuhl’s hilt and tried to wrest it away, backing it with potency when he found it immovable. “Ah, zharkat,” he murmured such that it touched my very essence with its sorrow
. Ilana stepped back, vanished.
My expanded awareness flared an instant too late as Jesral threw his dagger at my exposed back. I jerked hard as the steel buried deep, piercing my heart. Rhyzkahl gave a cry of rage and cast a powerful strike at Jesral, sending him into a tumbled heap. Pain seared through me even as deep memory stirred. Time swirled and slowed. I slid between the moments.
The gate, so perfect, has become a wild maelstrom. How? What did I do wrong? Now the ritual tears at me, tears at the world. I cannot stop it! Lord Szerain’s face is cast in alternate mottled patterns of light and dark as the patterns flicker and fail. Help me. My lord, help me! He will stop this. He will save me. He steps close and wraps his arm around my waist from behind, murmurs something in demon against my ear. I don’t understand what he means, but I trust him. He has me now. He will save me. Pain blossoms in my chest.
My entire body convulsed as the memory collapsed into darkness, the Elinor aspect recoiling. “No!” I screamed at everything, needing to see beyond this moment, recognizing in Elinor of then an echo of what raged within me now. Vsuhl vibrated against my palm, whispering just beyond my understanding, its tone shifting and winding through the grove energy. Whispering. Rakkuhr churned within me and over my skin. Molten metal dripped to the stone as the seething potencies in my body expelled Jesral’s knife, healed the tissue in its wake. For all Jesral’s many and terrible faults, he’d known the way to stop the breaking of the world, but had not the means.
I knew who had the answer. Knew who’d stood at the center of the destruction of the world. Knew who wouldn’t look at what came with the pain. Burning, I felt Mzatal and Khatur calling to me, through me, Mzatal’s hand wrapped around mine, around Vsuhl, around us. I willed time to slow. Slid between. Called up the pain, called to Elinor.
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