“Bring her back, Da.”
“I will.” A motion near the caves caught his attention and he picked Drayden out of the shadows, the Wolf skulking near one entrance, watching.
He turned to Bryce. “Let’s go meet Aurek.”
When they pulled into the burned-out Hollow, it was empty, even the bodies that had littered the ground gone. They’d been hauled off and buried or burned. They gathered near the meeting hall, the wagons behind them. Cutter appeared briefly and waved the all clear; this wasn’t an ambush. They waited, long enough for the fighters to start getting restless, before Aurek suddenly appeared.
He came out first, alone, striding forward confidently. His men emerged a breath later, filtering through the trees and the cottages behind him in a wide arc, twenty bodies across. Allan’s own men shifted restlessly as Aurek’s forces grew, first three deep, then five, finally dying out nine or ten deep. All of them were in ragged armor and carried weapons along with their own kits. Most of them looked hardened and grizzled, eyeing those from the Hollow with scowls of contempt. A few snickered or grinned.
Aurek stepped forward, one of his men a step behind him. Allan motioned to Bryce and the two moved to meet them halfway.
“Aurek.”
“Allan. Allan Garrett, I believe. Formerly of the Dogs of Erenthrall.”
Allan didn’t remember informing Aurek of his full name. But then his gaze swept Aurek’s men. He couldn’t pick out anyone he recognized, not immediately, but it was possible some had known him from before, when he was a Dog.
He tried to relax. He didn’t want Aurek to get beneath his skin, not this early. “I see you’ve brought more men.”
“A few, from our original base camp. The others are tearing that camp down and will join us as soon as I tell them where we’re going.”
“South.”
“That’s not very specific.”
“That’s all you’re going to get.”
“Very well. South it is.” He raised a hand and one of his men—leaner than the others, carrying a bow—took off into the trees, heading to the remains of their base camp, Allan presumed.
He focused on Aurek again. “It’s probably best to keep our two groups separate. We wouldn’t want any accidents or deaths brought on by misunderstandings.”
“No. We wouldn’t want that.” Aurek looked their group over. Allan knew he was trying to pick out the Wielders and mages, but Allan had ordered them to blend in with the others. They were the Hollowers’ only advantage, since Aurek’s forces outnumbered them. Fear might keep his raiders in check; they’d already experienced what the Wielders and mages could do once before.
Aurek returned his attention to Allan. “Since you know where we’re going, you can take the lead.”
Bryce placed his fingers in his mouth and whistled, the sound sharp. Gaven shouted orders, and the wagons began to move, turning southward. Allan and Bryce melded into the group, walking alongside them, catching Cutter’s eye. The tracker nodded and broke away, vanishing into the woods. He’d keep an eye on Aurek and his men. Another scout was already checking the route ahead, searching for a potential ambush.
“He’ll stab us all in the back the moment he sees it’s to his advantage.”
“I know. It’s a long road ahead of us. But we have the Wielders and the mages. They’ll be wary. And we know where they want to go.”
“Knowing our destination is only an advantage for so long.”
“By the time we near the Needle, I’m hoping Aurek’s attention will have shifted from us to them.”
Twenty-Two
THE QUAKE RUMBLED THROUGH THE NEEDLE, shaking the stone floor beneath Kara’s feet. She caught herself against the wall, then snatched up the pitcher of water with a curse before it could fall to the floor and shatter. She’d seen the White Cloaks entering the black tower an hour earlier and had braced herself for the tremors that she’d realized would follow. This one wasn’t as bad as that first one days before. That one had thrown her to the floor hard enough that her shoulder still ached, although the bruising had faded. There’d been a moment when she thought the entire temple was going to collapse around her. Based on the screams she’d heard from the corridor outside, some of the others had thought the same. She was fairly certain something had collapsed in the outer city; she’d seen the plume of dust from her window.
The tremors died and she pushed away from the wall, replacing the pitcher. Someone ran past her door and she crossed the room, pressing up against it to listen. An urgent conversation, then more running as orders were given. She couldn’t identify the speakers, but the voices were hard, the tread of the feet heavy. Enforcers.
She stepped back, arms crossed over her chest.
She’d been kept in the room for four days. No one had visited except a middle-aged woman from the Demesnes who brought her food and refreshed her water. She never spoke, not in response to Kara’s increasingly tense questions about Marcus or the White Cloaks, nor when she asked what had happened to Dylan, Adder, and Aaron. Expression stern, her darker-colored skin dotted with paint around her forehead and eyes, she merely deposited the trays of food and the new pitcher on the table then turned and left, her multicolored wrapped dress swishing around her ankles, the enforcer stationed outside Kara’s door stepping aside to let her pass.
Kara had considered the open window that looked down on the node, but it was too far to jump and she had nothing she could use to form a rope. The blankets covering her cot weren’t enough.
Kara stalked to the window and looked down on the stellae of the node, watching the entrance to the black tower. A short time later, another quake rumbled through the temple, less intense, merely an aftershock.
“What are you doing down there?”
The knock at her door surprised her. The woman who brought the food never knocked.
“What do you want?”
“It’s me. Marcus.” The latch clicked and the door swung open. Marcus stood in the hall outside, an escort of at least three enforcers surrounding him. He carried a bundle of white cloth in his arms, the enforcers entering behind him, although only he crossed to Kara. “I brought you some clean clothes.”
“I want to see Dylan, Adder, and Aaron.”
Marcus set the clothes on Kara’s cot. “They’re fine.”
“I want to see for myself.”
“If I take you to see them, will you cooperate?”
Kara hesitated. But she needed to see the others, and the confines of the room were beginning to grate on her. Her shoulders itched, and she’d spent most of yesterday pacing relentlessly across the small chamber. “It depends on what you ask me to do.”
“I don’t intend for you to do anything, just look and listen.” He motioned toward the clothes.
Kara moved and picked up the shirt, body going rigid. “These are White Cloak clothes. I won’t wear them. I’m not a White Cloak.”
“You’d rather keep your own shirt and breeches? They’re beginning to stink.”
“That’s because I haven’t been given the opportunity to wash them. Or myself.”
“I’ll have Marta take care of them. And bring you a wash basin with warm water.”
Kara searched his face, but all she saw was edged impatience. “Stand outside.”
He shook his head and motioned everyone out.
As soon as the door closed, Kara undressed, tossed her old clothes to one side, and threw on the shirt and breeches Marcus had provided. The fabric was surprisingly soft. The shirt was similar to what she’d seen Iscivius and the others wearing, but there was no cloak or Kormanley symbol, and the breeches were more like those worn by the enforcers. He’d even brought her new shoes. The freshness of the clothes made her skin feel rough and gritty. She definitely needed a bath.
Dressed again, she knocked on the door, which opened immediately.
Marcus loo
ked her up and down in approval. “This way.”
He must have arranged the detour to the rooms where they were keeping Dylan, Adder, and Aaron while she changed, for the guards at each of the two rooms were ready for them. Dylan was lying on his cot in a room similar to Kara’s, but without a window; it was on the opposite side of the corridor. His knee had been splinted.
He caught her hand as she knelt by his side, his grip strong. “Thank Bastion you’re all right. They haven’t told me anything.”
“Me either. This is the first I’ve been let out of my room.” She looked him over, checking the splint. “How have they been treating you?”
“Well. They started working on the knee almost immediately. The healer comes twice a day. The food has been good.” He tweaked the cuff of her shirt and raised an eyebrow in silent question.
“I had to agree to wear it in order to see you.”
Marcus cleared his throat.
Kara gripped Dylan’s hand again, held it tight, leaning in close. “I’ll get us out of here.”
Marcus stepped into the room. “You’ve seen him. Let’s move.”
Adder and Aaron were being kept in one room half the size of Kara’s, containing only two cots and not kept as clean. It was in a section on the lowest tier of the temple, reached by a set of narrow stairs. A cracked pitcher of water rested on the floor and a dim ley globe flickered erratically in one corner.
Kara glared at Marcus as she reached up to steady the ley globe, strengthening it as well. Adder and Aaron shifted into seated positions on the edge of their cots. Adder sported a black eye and a fresh bruise along his jaw.
“What happened to you?”
Adder caught her arm before she could touch him. “A little roughing up by the enforcers. Are you one of them now?” His gaze flicked to her shirt.
“Of course not. He’s forcing me to wear it. I don’t know what they want from me. I’ve been kept in a room until today.”
Adder released her. “What are they doing? Why are there so many quakes?”
“It has something to do with the node. Other than that, I don’t know. Are they feeding you?”
Aaron answered. “Some. Mostly bread and cheese. Some meat.”
“The only reason we’re still alive is because of you. They don’t trust us, but they need you enough that they can’t risk killing us. You need to find out what they want. It’s the only chance we’ve got.”
Outside, a White Cloak appeared and muttered something to Marcus, whose mouth tightened into a thin line. “Enough. Time to go.”
“Go where?” Adder asked her.
“I don’t know.”
“Be careful.”
Kara retreated to the door, halting before Marcus while the enforcers closed and locked it. “Where to now, Marcus?”
“The node. I want you to see what we’ve been doing here.”
He led her away, refusing to answer any of her questions. After a while, she fell silent, trying to take in as much of the temple as she could. But the strange corridors branched too often, and she hadn’t paid enough attention when they’d descended to the lower level.
It was a shock when the lead enforcers opened up a set of double doors and brilliant sunlight spilled into the hallway. She raised one hand to shield her eyes, blinking back tears.
Then, following Marcus, she stepped out onto the stone of the node.
As soon as her feet hit the tan rock that formed the circular design centered on the black tower, power surged up through her feet. She gasped and recognized the temple for what it truly was—a pit, like the nodes in Erenthrall, but on a larger scale. The entire temple had been built to contain the node’s power, the Needle itself a focal point. The ley coursed beneath the structure all around her and she reached for it without thinking, submerging herself in it as she’d done before in Erenthrall. But unlike the ley network in the city before the Shattering, this ley was chaotic—confined but wild. She allowed herself to flow through it, down its channels, noting the lines that stretched off toward the northeast, instinctively knowing that they connected with what remained of Erenthrall’s ley structure. Another powerful line shot to the east, toward what she first assumed was Tumbor. But then she remembered that it couldn’t be Tumbor, not with the recently quickened distortion; it was anchored too solidly. It must be reaching for Farrade. Another angled northward, which made no sense—there were no nodes in that direction, all of the cities in the Steppe were farther east—and two other weaker lines were directed to the west.
“I knew you’d connect to the ley as soon as we entered the node. You always understood it on a more instinctual level than anyone else.”
His words were muted, as if coming from a distance, and Kara forced herself to focus, to draw herself up out of the feral ley trapped around her.
She centered herself and realized she hadn’t moved from her first few steps onto the node. The enforcers had surrounded her, but they looked uncertain. Marcus stood a few paces away, watching her closely.
“What have you done?”
“As I told you before, we’ve tried to stabilize the network by building another Nexus. None of the strongest Primes survived the Shattering—at least, none that we’ve found—so we’ve done the best that we can with what we have.”
He turned, heading toward the entrance to the Needle, crossing through the stellae that Kara could feel vibrating with the forces coursing through them. Kara hesitated, but even if she hadn’t agreed to cooperate, she needed to see what Marcus and the rest of the Wielders here had done.
“After the Shattering—”
“How did you survive? I saw you change the Nexus from the node in Eld. You were there before the Nexus exploded.”
“I was in the pit. If I’d been there when the pulse from the explosion spread throughout the network, I’d be dead, burned to nothing, like those closest to Grass when it happened. But when the pulse hit Eld, I’d climbed from the pit and slammed the doors behind me. The nodes in Erenthrall were built to withstand surges. That’s why they have few, if any, windows, why the pits are protected by steel doors.”
“So you had enough time to flee after you triggered the Shattering.”
“It was Leethe!” They’d reached the entrance to the Needle and his voice echoed off of the surrounding walls of the tower. He spun toward her, grabbed her by the upper arms. He would have shaken her, but he controlled himself. “It was Baron Leethe. I told you before, the pulse that destroyed the Nexus in Erenthrall came from Tumbor. I felt it before it hit.”
“But you were helping him, through the Kormanley. You were a part of it.”
“I didn’t know. I thought—”
But he didn’t finish, releasing his grip and turning his back to her.
She massaged her bruised muscles. Her hatred of Marcus since the Shattering had become ingrained. Now, looking into his eyes, seeing the pain he harbored, she realized she believed him. He hadn’t caused the Shattering, not intentionally. And he firmly believed that the pulse had come from Tumbor.
“So after the Shattering, after you survived, what did you do?”
Marcus didn’t answer at first, simply stood, staring into the depths of the Needle. But then: “I fled the city, like many. I escaped before the quickening. I survived.” He faced her. “Eventually I heard that the Kormanley had survived, that they had taken over the node here. Dalton was surprised to see me. He already had a few Wielders, mostly survivors from Tumbor. After a while, we realized that the ley wasn’t correcting itself. It was trying to return to its natural order, but it couldn’t, not with the nodes in Erenthrall blocked by the distortion. We needed to heal the distortion in Erenthrall. By then we’d found maybe twenty Wielders. We went to the city, but it wasn’t enough. None of us were Primes, and the ley was too chaotic. And the city wasn’t safe. Violent factions were forming—the Rats, the Gorrani
to the south. We did what we could.”
“The healed shards we found. That was you.”
“We thought we could heal it a shard at a time. But the distortion is too large. It would take decades to accomplish, and we risked triggering the distortion’s closure and losing everything inside.”
“We came to the same conclusion.”
“When we returned to the Needle, Dalton had found a Prime, Lecrucius. He suggested we create our own Nexus to try to stabilize the ley, here at the Needle. If we can’t free up the nodes in Erenthrall, we need to bypass them. We’ve been working on that for the past three months, both here and in Erenthrall. We had a relatively stable system, until the distortion in Tumbor quickened. Now we need to bypass Tumbor, and I’m not certain we can do that. Not without more help.”
Kara didn’t want to trust him. But she’d seen what had been done in Erenthrall already—the healed shards, the shunted ley lines. All of it fit. And she was forced to admit that what he said made sense. He’d come to the same conclusions she had about repairing Erenthrall, only quicker, and had come up with an alternative.
But creating a new Nexus . . .
“The quakes—” she began.
“I know. Every time we shift a ley line, there’s an aftershock. And they’re growing worse. But the ley lines are shifting on their own, even without us tampering with them.”
“There has to be another way. Even if we stabilize everything using the Needle as a new Nexus, what happens when the distortion over Farrade quickens? Or Ikanth? Each one will disrupt what you’ve done here. Each one will cause damage. One of them could set off another pulse, another Shattering.”
“I know that! But what else are we supposed to do? Sit around and wait for the ley to destroy us on its own? I can’t do that! I have to do something. But I can’t do it alone. Even with Lecrucius and the Wielders we’ve gathered here, it isn’t enough. We need help.”
And Kara suddenly realized that beneath his anger and frustration lay guilt. For what he’d done in Erenthrall before the Shattering, for whatever part he’d played in the destruction of the Nexus. He wanted to atone for that mistake, had attempted to heal the distortion in Erenthrall shard by shard as penance, and now worked on the Needle for redemption.
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