The Skyfall Era Trilogy: Books 1-3

by Matt Larkin

  “Perhaps not, but you wish you were.” He spoke to the others then, in his own language.

  Clockworks dragged her up the stairs, then out onto a balcony. Outside, in the smoky air, she could still make out the fires burning throughout the city. A building to the north exploded, pieces falling into the sky.

  A woman sneered at her, locking a chain to her restraints. Then she pushed Chandi off the balcony.

  Chandi drew her Potency Blessing just as the restraints jerked taught. It was probably all that kept her shoulders from being yanked out of their sockets. Her hands were behind her, so she could do nothing but hang from the chain, suspended ten feet off the ground.

  Pain was already building in her arms and shoulders. She was bait, but Chandra alone knew how long it would be before Kala learned of her situation. If he did. If he cared.

  CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED EIGHTY-EIGHT

  Naresh’s feet almost fell out from under him when he stood. Someone had patched his wounds, and even his ribs seemed to have healed—mostly. But he felt so weak. The room was dark, so it took a moment before he noticed the man sitting in the corner.

  He knew those crystal blue eyes.

  “Semar? How are you here?”

  The Igni stepped into the light, but he’d changed. His hair was a bit longer, his clothes like the locals, and even his skin tone had shifted a little. But it had to be Semar. It was still the same eyes, still the same face.

  “Naresh. There are many things you do not yet understand. And here I go by Nairyosangha.”

  The door drifted open. Kala stood there, though he didn’t come in the room. “Your wife has been taken by Rahu.”

  “Where are we? How did I get here?”

  Semar folded his arms. “This is Vidyunmali, one of the Tripura cities. I’m told your wife brought you here after you were injured.”

  Naresh took a step forward, then felt nauseous. It faded as Kala backed away.

  “Where is she?” Naresh said.

  “On the Hall of the Triumvir,” Kala said. “You go and save her, while I keep Rahu’s forces occupied.”

  Rahu was here? Naresh shook his head. He didn’t have time to worry about that now. If Chandi was in danger, that was all that mattered. Kala disappeared out the front door, and Naresh followed a moment later. He glanced back at Semar.

  And now she was in danger. Naresh couldn’t afford to waste time. Nothing would harm Chandi. Nothing.

  “Are you coming?”

  The man nodded, once, then followed.

  Outside, Semar pointed down the street, and Naresh trod down it. He needed to save his sunlight, if he could. Not enough made it through the thick smoke blanketing the sky, and he’d rather not pay the price of using his Blessings to refill the Sun Brand.

  “You followed us here?” Naresh said.

  “No, Naresh. I was already here.”

  So Semar had come through the Astral Temple before he arrived. But that didn’t make sense. The Tianxians had guarded it, and he had seen Semar just before he came to join them.

  “You’ve traveled to another era of the world,” Semar said, as if in answer to his unspoken question. “I never met you before today, before … Kala … came to tell me you needed my help.”

  Naresh blew out a breath. Another thing he had no time to consider.

  The sounds of fighting echoed ahead. Not just fighting, but a full-blown war. Kala had torn through the ranks of the Clockwork Soldiers like a force of nature. His every attack carried him out of the way of another’s blow. It was like he knew everywhere his enemies would strike. And his strength was like nothing Naresh had ever seen. Not even his own new powers made him that strong.

  Keris in hand, Naresh waded into the remains of Rahu’s army. He cut down five men before he saw Chandi hanging from the building by her hands. In an instant he Strode to the balcony.

  “Chandi!”

  “Naresh,” she said weakly, straining to look up at him.

  He pulled her up by the chain, then unhooked it. Some kind of manacles bound her wrist. He drew his Blessings and jerked her arms apart, snapping the chains. Chandi fell into his arms, and he held her tight, ignoring the shouts of advancing soldiers for a moment. He ought to kill them all. Let them all burn, let this place be finished. Kala was right to tear this corruption from the sky.

  But he’d risk Chandi if he remained. Instead he Strode with her back to the city, back to where Semar waited.

  Chandi shut her eyes, leaning against his chest. “I knew you’d come for me.”

  “Always.”

  “Rahu is still alive here,” she said. “If we kill him here, he’ll never come to the Isles. We’re in the past—a long time in the past, I think.”

  He held her at arm’s length to look into her gaze. “Semar said the same thing.”

  “Semar?” She looked up then, finally noticing the Igni in the shadows. She shoved Naresh away and advanced on the man. “You! Haven’t you caused enough harm? What in Rangda’s frozen underworld are you even doing here, priest?” She moved to slap him, but he stepped back quickly, hands up.

  “You seem to blame me for things I have not yet done. I understand, it’s hard not to. But you have to accept the reality of the situation you find yourself in, child.”

  “I am not a child, Semar!”

  “Then don’t act like one.” The Igni started back down the path away from the Hall.

  “Wait,” Naresh called. Surya, if this was all real, if they were really in the past, then maybe they could change things. If Rahu and Kala never came to the Skyfall Isles … There would be no Fourth War. Then he would never have met Chandi. He looked at his wife. Could he give her up to save the world?

  But it was more than that. Kala chased Rahu to the Isles, where Rahu arranged Ketu’s marriage with Simhika. Chandi would never be born. If he disrupted the timeline further, there was no telling what would happen to his world.

  “Kala!” Naresh shouted.

  The man ripped the head off a Clockwork Bear and flung it at a soldier, bowling him over. He glanced back at Naresh’s call, and returned to the edge of the battlefield.

  “I have her now,” Naresh said.

  Kala glanced at him. “Then go! Rahu’s madness must be ended. His life is forfeit.”

  If Kala killed Rahu here then neither of them would ever come to the Isles. If Rahu died here, Chandi wouldn’t be born. And Kala didn’t kill him here, because he chased him to the Isles. He killed him in Kasusthali. Kala had come here trying to do the very thing Chandi had wanted to do.

  “Help us fight Rangda,” Chandi said. “She walks the world, but you could help us stop her.”

  Kala might be able to face her … To spare Naresh the burden. But if he came now, he wouldn’t chase Rahu into the future. And Chandi would be gone. Naresh grabbed his wife’s arm. “He can’t.”

  “Naresh is right, I must stop Rahu. The future depends on it.” Kala took off running then, tearing through the soldiers.

  “Why, Naresh?” Chandi asked. “He could have been a huge boon to us. Maybe even told us how to use the Temple against Rangda.”

  Naresh pulled her behind him, trying to catch his breath. This had taken too much out of him. He’d lost so much blood. “If he doesn’t chase Rahu through the gateway to our time then you’d never be born.”

  “You—wait, what?”

  “Think about it,” he said, continuing to pull her along. Dizziness threatened to consume him, and he had to steady himself along the bridge rail.

  Semar stood ahead, waving them on.

  “Rahu has to come to the Isles, and for that to happen, Kala has to push him to the brink here. But why did it take twenty-five years for Kala to follow?”

  Semar ushered them forward. “What makes you think it did? Time is funny that way. For him, maybe only a few moments had passed between now and when you encounter him again.”

  In the Academy, his philosophy teachers had theorized that in changing a single a moment in time, you
’d change everything that followed. Because all of history must have been built upon itself. They had to get out of this time before they risked unmaking the world they knew. No matter how bad it had gotten, Naresh could not imagine a world without Chandi in it.

  “We need to get back to the Astral Temple.”

  “The way to the Time Chamber is guarded,” Semar said. “We’ll need to take another route.”

  CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED EIGHTY-NINE

  “There,” Semar said, indicating the airship docks. “You need to board one and take it back to the Tripura Device and the Time Chamber. Rahu’s forces have retaken control of it, so you’ll need to move quickly.”

  The entire city rocked in the wake of another explosion. Naresh frowned and looked to his wife. This place was falling apart around them.

  “We can’t fly one of those,” Chandi said.

  Semar looked over his shoulder, as if watching for something else in the city. Kala, perhaps. The man shook his head, then turned back to Chandi. “I’ll do it for you. Just hurry.”

  The dock was swarming with Clockworks, and Naresh didn’t have the strength to fight them all. He was still weak from blood loss, and until he’d rested … but they didn’t have time for that.

  “Chandi, I don’t know if we can take a ship anyway,” he said.

  She patted him on the shoulder. “We can.”

  She ran down the bridge and leapt at one of the Clockwork Soldiers. She caught its head between her legs and twisted, flinging it off the bridge. She rammed a foreign knife through the head of another, causing it to spin around randomly, flailing its limbs in the air.

  Naresh Strode beside her and shoved another Clockwork backward. He moved to grab Chandi, but noticed she was staring at the ground. It was stone, unlike most of the rest of the city, and someone had carved a pair of deep, concentric circles into it. On the inner ring of the circles were smaller circles, each bearing a Glyph, much like the rings inside the lowest level of the Astral Temple.

  Clockworks advanced on them. Naresh grabbed his wife and Strode to the base of a ship. A rope secured it to the dock, and a gangway ran up to a door leading inside the ship. Chandi nodded at him, then rushed up the gangway. Thuds echoed inside, then Naresh Strode back to Semar.

  “Let’s go,” he said, grabbing the priest, then Strode back to the ship.

  Semar ran up the gangway, and Naresh cut the rope holding the airship in place before following. Semar helped him raise the gangplank, then led him toward the bridge. The hold was littered with unconscious bodies. Chandi had done her work well.

  The bridge featured large glass windows and a wheel much like a traditional ship. Naresh didn’t understand the meaning of any of the other gears or dials on the thing, but Semar seemed to. After the man adjusted a few, the ship lurched forward.

  “This is Jonggrang Temple,” Chandi said at last.

  “What are you talking about it?” Naresh had never seen the place, but he knew it was on Suladvipa, not in some floating city in the sky.

  Chandi swallowed and turned to him, though she didn’t seem to see him. “The gods … the gods of the stars and sun and moon cast a rock from the heavens into the endless ocean of the Earth. Sea algae covered it and the rock became the Skyfall archipelago.” Her fingers slipped into his hand, though she still seemed to be looking past him. “The rock fell from the sky. The sky fell. The Skyfall Isles.”

  “If cities fell from the sky it would …”

  “It would be the end of an era,” Semar said from the wheel. “The last, desperate breaking of corruption. The arresting of decay by excising it, even if some healthy tissue was lost with it.”

  Naresh had seen the city. It stretched for miles and miles. He couldn’t even imagine the level of catastrophe if this place fell.

  A sudden dryness filled his throat, and he had to support himself on a console. Not if. When. Chandi was right. The Tripura cities would become the Skyfall Isles.

  The end of this era of the world would lay the foundations so that one day, people would come to the Isles. They’d build temples to the gods, staring in wonder at the works of Tripura and call them divine. They would build the Astral Temple on the ruins of the Time Chamber.

  “It’s what keeps the city aloft,” he said. “The same thing that Ketu used to create the eclipse and the cyclones. This Tripura Device you spoke of. What would happen if it were disrupted or destroyed?”

  “It would release the harnessed energy, probably enough to destroy the complex,” Semar said.

  It wasn’t a weapon at all. These people had used it to defy the laws of nature and lift cities among the clouds, from which they could rule the world.

  “We’re nearly there,” Semar said. “Can you teleport us through the glass?”

  Teleport. The man must mean the Sun Stride. He nodded. He could go anywhere he could see. With one hand on Chandi and the other on Semar, he Strode to the top level of the Astral Temple—or the place that would become the Astral Temple.

  Chandi flung that foreign knife, catching a man in the chest. The soldier dropped his hand Fire-Lance and collapsed to the ground. Naresh Strode to another and cut him down. Chandi rushed past him and disabled three more, then threw open the hatch and leapt down it.

  “The Time Chamber needs to be calibrated,” Semar said.

  “Just do it.” Naresh grabbed the priest and Strode them both down to join Chandi.

  She swept the legs out from under one soldier and caught another with a joint lock on his wrist. Her sudden twist snapped the man’s bones and sent him screaming to his knees.

  Semar paused only for a heartbeat before hurrying off to the Time Chamber.

  “So is this what you expected to find through the gateway?” Chandi said.

  “Uh, no.”

  It answered so many questions, though. At last he had begun to understand Rahu, and even Semar and Kala. A foreign king, driven from the distant past. They had all come from here and brought wonders and horrors in their wake. If not for them, Chandi wouldn’t exist, so he couldn’t hate any of them. Not really.

  But Rangda was still there, ravaging his world. And no one here could help them, not now. It was in his hands. Maybe it had always been in his hands. He’d turned from the responsibility every chance he’d been given. Every day since the fall of Kasusthali, he’d refused to be the leader Semar had asked him to be. What had the man known? Semar’s past self had witnessed the power Naresh had now, so he must have known all along he would take the Amrita. He would become what he had become.

  And the priest had tried for so long to shape a leader. A warrior.

  The man returned from the Time Chamber and nodded. “Go quickly. Others will be here soon. Your own era needs you, does it not?”

  Chandi glared at the priest as she passed him. Naresh shrugged. All of this had become too complicated for him to place the blame on any one person’s shoulders.

  He followed his wife back into the Time Chamber. She’d already jumped onto the pedestal by the astrolabe. Naresh shut the door and joined her.

  “I love you,” he said, wrapping his arms around her.

  She kissed him, then turned on the machine again.

  PART FIVE

  1197 AP

  CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED NINETY

  The Astral Temple shook almost as soon as the waters receded. Naresh grabbed Chandi and Strode back to the door.

  “It didn’t work?” she said. “Are will still in Tripura?”

  Naresh threw open the sliding panel. The pillars had returned, but no one was down there.

  “Where are they?” Chandi asked.

  The hair on the back of his neck stood up, and Naresh ran to the ladder. Even as he reached it, a scream echoed from above. A heartbeat later the shriek of a leyak tore at his mind. He grit his teeth.

  He scrambled up the ladder, past the second level, and into the bowl at the heart of the temple. A moment ago he’d stood in this same place, flying through the sky. A moment ago, and Sury
a knew how many hundreds or thousands of years had passed in between.

  Night had fallen. Blood splatters covered the pillars and streamed down into the bowls. Leyaks fed on the Tianxian soldiers, though some of the demon heads lay fallen with crossbow bolts in them, as well. Where were Landi and Ben? And Pohaci, or Tua Pek Kong? Naresh Strode to a leyak and cut it down. He drew his Blessings to refill the Sun Brand. He had no choice now.

  “Sweet Chandra,” Chandi said as she came up behind him. “We’re too late. This place has already fallen.”

  Only a handful of the Tianxian soldiers remained alive. Naresh Strode to one and killed the demon attacking him, running his blade through its skull. Another and another he killed, but the demons were everywhere.

  Naresh’s breath came in ragged gasps. He wasn’t strong enough for this right now. He stumbled to his knees. “Landi, the others …”

  A moment later, Chandi was at his side, pulling him up. “They’re not here. We can’t fight all these demons. Not now.”

  “We cannot lose this place, Chandi. You know what it is.” But his sword trembled in his grasp.

  A leyak dove at Chandi and she punched it square in the nose. The crunching sound was sickening, but the way the demon flopped on the ground almost made Naresh laugh. Almost.

  “Your Tianxian allies are dead,” she said. “The Temple is already lost. We have to go, we have to find the others.”

  “No, we have to finish these leyaks ourselves.” His tightened his grip on the sword and drew his Blessings harder. They gave him strength, let him block out pain, but they didn’t stop the dizziness that threatened to topple him over.

  Still he fought as the demons dove at them. He cut the entrails from one, Strode and cut another out of the air, and Strode back to the ground as Chandi stomped on a demon head.

  “If Rahu or Rangda are here,” he said. He tried to rise, but his knees gave out. He’d pushed himself too hard since his injury.