Tarramic snapped out of his awe, although Quotl could still feel its brittle edge as the Riders watched him out of the corners of their eyes. “Prepare to defend the ditches. And call in the archers.”
Half of the Riders dismounted and scrambled over the earthworks, the other half herding the gaezels a short distance away before converging on the open area between where the ditches ended and the cliffs of the Break rose to the south. Painted Sands had already begun digging in to the north. From behind, the small group of archers from both clans who had waited in reserve trotted forward and arrayed themselves behind the lines.
“Is it the Archon?” Tarramic asked. “Is he channeling Ilacqua’s power through you?”
Quotl’s skin prickled at the gruff awe in Tarramic’s voice, but he paused, took a moment to test this newfound strength. He could sense no connection between the power flowing through him and his sense of the Archon to the south. “No, it is not coming from the Archon. It’s coming from the Lands.”
Tarramic merely frowned. In the distance, the Alvritshai and the rest of the Wraith army had broken off their attack on the retreating dwarren and reassembled, the reinforcements that waited behind moving forward. As the new forces merged with the rest, close enough to see now, Quotl realized why they had appeared so strange.
“Orannian,” Tarramic spat.
Quotl grunted in agreement. The dwarren histories spoke of those with the skins of lizards. They had once been like the dwarren, but they had been changed by the cataclysmic Shattering that had destroyed the world and reshaped it. How the Shattering had come about, and how it had changed the world, was unclear, those oldest of oral histories fragmentary and obscure, but the mentions of the orannian were not.
And yet, Quotl could not sense them as he could the rest of the creatures of the Turning.
He frowned, but tore his attention away from the gathering forces. Wounded were dragged from their gaezels and led away, although there were few. Most of those grievously hurt had been left behind on the broken rock now beyond their reach, and those who’d managed to escape to the ditches weren’t wounded enough to be pulled from the ranks. Some of the shamans were passing among the Riders with vials from the Sacred Waters, the pink-tinged liquid healing the least of the wounds so they could continue fighting; others were passing out food.
Quotl felt sick at heart over those left behind, but there was nothing that could be done.
Azuka appeared with water and dry flatbread, handing it out among Tarramic’s entourage. The clan chief drank, handing the skin to Quotl. “It will be a small reprieve,” Tarramic said, voice somber. “The Wraith army already gathers.”
Warning drums sounded. The dwarren shifted where they stood, restless, eyes on the enemy. Quotl raised his head to the sky, the midday sun high overhead and shimmering down with a relentless heat he could feel against his skin. The power that suffused him had abated, but he could still feel it, thrumming in his blood.
Alvritshai horns cut across the desert. Tarramic tensed. The Wraith army marched forward, but this time the dwarren did not rush out to meet them. Drums sounded again, dwarren readying in their trenches, those to north and south scrambling to mount.
Tarramic glanced toward Quotl. “Can you do what you did before again?”
“I don’t even know how I did it the first time.”
“The Archon is going to be furious.”
Something seized in Quotl’s chest. He suddenly regretted his announcement earlier that the gods were working through him. But what other explanation was there? He had never done anything like that before, had only felt the gods’ presence during spirit walks and meditations in the keevas. This had been different. This time, that presence had filled him, and he had used it to kill the gruen, to shatter the earth.
He shuddered at the ramifications, both for the Archon and for himself, then calmed himself. The Archon hadn’t retained his position this long without knowing how to manipulate the clan chiefs and the head shamans. He would undoubtedly claim the power had been channeled through him. Only Quotl could gainsay him, and Quotl had no aspirations for the Archon’s position. He could let the Archon claim responsibility.
Yet even as he relaxed, a pang of uneasiness threaded through him, of doubt. This power should have manifested itself through the Archon, not through Quotl. What did it mean that it hadn’t?
On the desert, the Wraith army suddenly broke into a run, the orannian outpacing the rest. As they approached, they spread out, the Alvritshai and other creatures coming up behind.
“They’re going to hit on all fronts,” Tarramic said.
To their right and slightly behind, a drum suddenly thrummed and two hundred archers snapped their bows to the sky, arrows already placed. The drum thudded again and bows creaked as they were drawn. The whirring release sounded like a thousand birds taking sudden flight. Quotl watched the arrows arc over the ditches, some of the winged dreun banking out of the way with harsh shrieks. They fell in a deadly hail, another swath of arrows already launched, but it didn’t slow the Wraith army down at all. They struck on all three fronts almost simultaneously.
Deep within, Quotl felt the power he held swell as his heart quickened.
Siobhaen cursed and Colin spun to find her stumbling down the last of the massive ridge of shattered stone that encircled the center of the city. It was like a wave caused by a rock cast into a pool of water had petrified in place. Debris avalanched down with her, disturbed by her feet. Eraeth took a step toward her as she neared the bottom, but she caught herself against a boulder twice Colin’s height, what had once been part of a building based on the detailed carving etched across one face.
She straightened and muttered, “I’m fine,” annoyance making her voice taut. She wiped sweat from her face with one hand.
Colin glanced toward the midday sun, felt the grit of dust mingling with the sweat on his own face, then focused on the broken towers ahead.
They’d found shelter in one of the half-collapsed buildings in the outskirts of the city when darkness fell, using the walls to conceal their fire. The night had turned chill. During his watch, Colin had ascended to the precarious height of the wall-the roof had caved in uncountable years past-and searched the wide valley that cupped the ancient city for signs of life, for evidence of the Haessari and the Wraiths and their armies. Most of the city had been lost in the darkness, the ruined buildings not even shapes in the scant moonlight. But the center of the city had glowed with a pale, bluish light, the shattered towers silhouetted in the distance. Colin had felt the power of the Source from his perch, had felt himself drawn to it. It had throbbed in the ground beneath him, and he knew he sensed the lake far beneath the surface, the reservoir that gave the Source its power.
And it was still awakening, its power growing. He shuddered at its strength.
That power had held his attention for at least an hour. He’d studied it, tested it, tasted it, trying to determine how he would manipulate it when the time came. Part of its power was already in use. He could sense the flow that attacked the Seasonal Trees. He would have to block that, but it would not be enough. The Source needed to be balanced with the other Wells. It needed equilibrium.
And it needed protection from interference by the Wraiths.
When he’d finally learned what he could from a distance, he’d turned his attention back to the city. It had been still, dark, lifeless. But to the north, fire dotted the landscape. An entire array of light, flickering against the black backdrop of the night. It had taken him ten minutes to realize that the fires weren’t spread out flat over a wide plain, as he’d first assumed, but were vertical.
Like the dwarren in the subterranean warrens, the Snake People lived in the cliffs surrounding the city. He’d wondered briefly why they hadn’t taken over the ruins themselves. Some of the buildings were still mostly intact, especially near the outer edges of what he’d come to think of as the city proper. The destruction where they had camped had not been as p
revalent as what they’d passed through at the city’s edge. But as the city emerged into dawn’s light, he’d suddenly realized that he wouldn’t want to live in the city either. Even now, what had to be thousands of years after its fall, he could feel ghosts in the streets, in the buildings, as if an energy had been absorbed by the stone and was still seeping out. An energy that had nothing and everything to do with the Source.
He’d been concerned that he’d react to that energy as he had within the caverns of Gaurraenan’s halls, but he hadn’t felt time tugging at him as it had in those frigid chambers. He wasn’t certain why. Except that the energy here felt… dry, used up, and old. The stone within the mountains to the north had been vital, thick with a visceral sense of blood.
They’d headed toward the Source at first light, Colin pointing out the direction of the Haessari’s city. They’d kept as many of the intact buildings between them and the cliff faces where the Haessari lived as possible, even though they hadn’t encountered any of the Snake People in the city at all.
As soon as they descended from the strange ridge of stone debris, the nature of the destruction changed. The buildings they’d passed through before had collapsed, ceilings and walls buckling inward as time clawed and ate its way through the structures.
Not so here, Colin thought as Siobhaen dusted herself off and joined him and Eraeth at the edge of the inner city.
“It’s as if all of the stone here simply… fractured,” Eraeth said, waving a hand toward the debris field that spread out before them. “As if it splintered and the pieces were thrown aside.”
Siobhaen knelt and picked up a shard of rock at her feet. She hissed as she touched an edge, blood welling against her fingertip. “It’s sharp as a blade.”
“The entire central city is fractured,” Colin said, motioning toward the stumps of the towers. “Unlike the outer city, the towers were sheared off, their tops blown off by some central source.”
“The Well?”
Colin shook his head. “I don’t know. Perhaps. Whatever it was, it destroyed the city completely. And the Source appears to be at the center of the destruction.”
Neither Alvritshai said anything, both scanning the distance with shaded eyes. Then Eraeth strode forward, down the debris-covered street that appeared to head toward the confluence of the two rivers and the tallest of the truncated towers.
A moment later, Colin and Siobhaen followed.
They wound through the streets, the construction of the buildings changing as they passed from section to section. A dark red stone was used in one area, replaced in another by basalt, then a dirty white with flecks of quartz that glinted in the sunlight. Even shattered, they could discern different styles. In one district, the sandstone had been carved into blocks, in another, mudbricks. As they neared the dry riverbed, the buildings appeared to have been formed from living rock itself, sculpted like clay, what remained smooth and seamless.
They reached the riverbank, rock walls hemming the ancient water in and thick stone supports for docks and bridges jutting up from the cracked and brittle riverbed beneath. Eraeth pointed to where one of the bridges remained mostly intact and they skirted the dry river’s edge to reach it.
“We’ll be exposed,” Siobhaen said as they stared across its length. Portions of it had been sliced away in the fracturing of the inner city, chunks of thick stone lying in the riverbed below, but a path still existed all the way across to the city. The width of the bridge was immense, at least eight wagon-lengths from side to side.
Eraeth shrugged. “As exposed as we’d be crawling across the bottom of the river below. I don’t see any way to approach that isn’t exposed.”
Siobhaen frowned. “We haven’t even looked-”
“We have no choice,” Colin interrupted. “We need to cross. It may as well be here. I’ll go first, in case the bridge isn’t stable.” He knew he’d survive the fall; the Alvritshai wouldn’t.
But the stone of the bridge held.
On the far side, they slid from the end of the bridge into what Colin guessed had once been parks, the open areas littered with the bases of statues and what might have been standing pools of water or fountains. Everything was dry, and nothing grew in the patches of dirt and sand. They passed beneath massive arches, into the shade of the towers, taller than even Colin had imagined. Awe claimed him as they walked through the curved and winding streets, staring up. The towers must have stood higher than those at Terra’nor, higher than even the Alvritshai ruins in the northern wastelands. He approached the base of one, brushed his hand along the strangely textured surface, frowning until he recognized the patterns. It appeared to be petrified bark, and as he stepped back and stared up the length of the building, picking out the gaping shadows of windows along its side, he realized that the entire building was shaped like the bole of a tree.
Turning, he scanned the nearest buildings, Eraeth and Siobhaen standing to one side, confused.
“The buildings weren’t built,” Colin said abruptly. “They were grown.”
When the two Alvritshai’s frowns deepened, he motioned toward the building behind him, then the others. “Look at it! This one is like the trunk of a tree, the wood solidified into stone now. And that one there is made of thousands and thousands of vines, entwined to form walls, ceilings, windows, and doors. Even the balconies are formed from leaves.”
“And that one is like a stalk of grass,” Siobhaen murmured.
All three of them spun, searching the towers with new eyes, but eventually Colin felt the pull of the Source again, now so close he could feel the tug of its current drawing him closer and closer to its center. Not strong enough yet that he couldn’t resist it, but insistent. A sense of urgency pulled at him as well, and he wondered how the dwarren fared with the Wraith army in the west, how the Seasonal Trees fared against the onslaught of the Wraiths and the Source. He tried to shrug the concerns aside, as he’d done since they’d reached the Confluence and he’d found that the Trees were under attack, but he couldn’t. He suddenly wished he had a way to communicate with the dwarren and the humans in the southern Provinces, even with the Alvritshai and Aeren. But he couldn’t. He was isolated, alone, and he had no way of knowing whether the Trees had already fallen or there was still hope.
In the end it didn’t matter.
He turned from his scrutiny of the towers and focused on a break in their soaringing heights. He could feel the emptiness that lay there, an emptiness that was slowly being filled.
He needed to stop it, at whatever cost.
Shrugging the awe of the city to one side, he descended the wide circular steps that led to the entrance of the tower and headed toward that emptiness, toward the pull of the Source, letting it draw him to its center. Behind, he sensed Eraeth and Siobhaen following. They drew their cattans, the bows gifted them by the forest slung across their backs. Colin gripped his staff tighter, but he saw nothing moving, nothing waiting in the gaping windows above or the mouths of the doors below.
They reached the center of the towers and halted. They stood on the lip of an oval depression, the ground sunken, wide stairs leading down to a low, roofless building of the same shape. The inside of the building was swallowed in darkness and the slanted shadows of the towers. Its white stone sides were cracked like an egg. Chunks of shattered crystal lay across the entire depression. A faint bluish glow emanated from the top.
“The Source is inside,” Colin murmured.
“How do you know?”
“Because I can feel it.” He could hear it in the edge of his voice as well. It sounded heavier, huskier, the pull of the Lifeblood strong. He hadn’t felt so close to losing control since he’d first left the Well nearly two hundred years before. Like then, his body trembled-with power, with urgency, with need. He could taste the Source, the mixture of loam and snow thick on his tongue. His hand tightened and flexed against the wood of his staff and he tried not to shudder.
Beside him, Siobhaen said, “It’s strong. E
ven I can feel it. I sensed the Well in the northern wastes. But this… this I can feel, throbbing in my gut.”
Eraeth frowned.
Below, Colin thought he caught a flicker of movement in one of the shadows. He stepped forward, taking the first step down toward one of the entrances, but Eraeth’s hand on his shoulder halted him.
The Protector shook his head. “I’ll go first, Siobhaen behind, you in the middle. We don’t know what we’ll find down there.”
Colin shot a glance toward Siobhaen, her expression hard and unforgiving, angry that Eraeth had taken the lead, but in total agreement. Both of them had set aside the awe and immensity of the city as he had earlier. They were House Phalanx members now, guarding their lord.
Colin nodded grudgingly. “Very well.”
They moved swiftly down the stairs, noted other entrances at regular intervals around the building as they did so. Eraeth kept ten paces ahead of Colin, motioning him back if he came too close. Within moments they were at the edge of the building. If there had been doors, they were nothing more than dust now. The entrance yawned open, darkness lay beyond. Eraeth signaled to Siobhaen, who nodded, sweeping their surroundings as Eraeth ducked into the building. Colin held his breath, listening intently, breathing in the dusty rock scent of the dead city, tasting the Source. He pushed down his sense of unease and urgency. His heart thudded. Sweat dripped down his face.
He gasped when Eraeth reappeared. The Protector motioned them inside.
Colin slid into the shadows, the air within much cooler. They passed through an empty corridor, small chunks of rock littering the ground where it had fallen from the cracks riddling the ceiling. They passed through dimly lit rooms, Eraeth moving silently ahead before waving them forward. The walls were mostly blank, the rooms empty, except for an occasional vivid flash of color from painted murals or the remnants of a shattered pedestal or column. Doorways were rectangular, walls smooth, ceilings arched and high.
Leaves of Flame ch-2 Page 45