The Obsidian Tower

by Melissa Caruso

  “I’m ready to do the inner circle around the obelisk now.” Foxglove pulled a small artifice device from one of his pouches: a ring of carefully twisted golden wire circling a rune-graved disk the size of a large coin. A thread of silver-white hair gleamed in the weave of gold. “I’ve got six of these done, which should be enough. Ryx, I’ll need you to suppress the warding circle so I can alter it without its protections frying me. Bastian, I’ll need some alchemical etching fluid and a stylus so I can carve some extra runes into the floor and mount these in the right places.”

  “What’s the current status of the gate?” I asked Odan.

  “The door to the Black Tower remains sealed,” he said. “I couldn’t venture a guess what it’s like inside, Warden. I’ve kept the extra guards posted on the tower and the keep.”

  A chill struck me. “The demon I banished from Kessa could still be in there, waiting.”

  Odan’s bristly gray brows contracted. “In that case, I’m especially glad that I denied Ensign Aurelio’s request for a closer look at the Black Tower.”

  I stopped, stricken. “Aurelio? He’s still here?”

  “Yes, Exalted Warden. As the Raverran delegation’s magical and military adviser, he stayed to observe for the Empire to make sure the gate was destroyed. I’ll confess that I thought it was suspicious when he asked to see the Black Tower. I told him to wait for your return and pose that question to you, naturally.”

  Foxglove let out a hiss. “More than suspicious. I wish I’d called in some favors to have him locked up.”

  “Should have let me stab him,” Ashe said.

  Foreboding crested in me like a great wave. “If he was trying to get access to the gate, he must be planning some kind of move.”

  Foxglove cursed. “You’re right.”

  And whatever that plan was, he’d probably realize he was running out of chances to put it into action when he heard the Rookery had returned.

  “I think we need to get to the Black Tower right now,” I said.

  Foxglove met my eyes. His expression went grim, and he nodded. “Let’s go.”

  As soon as we entered the old keep corridor that led to the Black Tower, I knew something was wrong. Reflected scarlet light washed the walls and floor of the dim hallway, and the gate’s power pushed at my senses in a shuddering wave.

  The door to the Black Tower was open.

  “I thought you said the tower was sealed,” I whispered to Odan as we all paused at the top of the stairs. Even the pulses of raw power rising from below couldn’t drown out the rapid pounding of my heart.

  “I did, Warden.” His face fell into grim lines. “There should be guards here, too, but they’re gone.”

  That couldn’t be good. Graces preserve us, there was no possible reason for any of this that boded well at all.

  “Odan,” I said quietly, “I want you to evacuate the castle at once. Get everyone out—every last soul—as quickly as possible. Leave everything behind and just get the people out of here.”

  His jaw flexed, but he nodded. “Yes, Warden.”

  “Take them down to the town for now. You evacuate, too. We need at least one person free and clear from here who knows what’s happening.”

  “If you command it, Warden.”

  “I do. Hurry, Odan. I’m counting on you.”

  “Of course, Warden. Good luck.”

  “We’re going to need it,” Kessa muttered as Odan’s swift, purposeful footfalls receded down the dusty halls.

  Ashe slid Answer from its sheath, her eyes fixed on the glow coming from the alcove. “Luck is overrated. I’d rather have good timing any day.”

  “I think our timing is terrible, actually,” Kessa said, eyeing the corridor ahead with trepidation.

  “Yup. So I guess we have to hope for luck. Let’s do this.” Ashe started forward on silent feet.

  The rest of us followed. But I knew what we would see, even before we came to the alcove. Red light and dry heat poured through the open door, and two guards lay dead before it.

  And within, there he stood at the gate—framed with scarlet light, his arms raised in invocation: Aurelio. That rotten stingroach.

  “Oh no you don’t,” Ashe growled, and bounded into the Black Tower. The rest of us swarmed after her. The anger rising in me at his treachery was almost strong enough to match the oppressive weight of power that hit me as I entered the obsidian chamber.

  Aurelio whirled to face us, dropping his arms, a strange smile on his face that didn’t extend to his eyes. “Ah, there you are. I was worried you might be late.”

  “Wait,” I called to Ashe, who was heading for him with murder in her stride. I’d noticed something that made ice crystallize inside my lungs, in painful opposition to the heat scorching my skin.

  Aurelio stood inside the glowing circle of runes that surrounded the obelisk. The one that no one could pass but my family.

  “Who let you through?” I asked him hoarsely.

  Aurelio’s grin spread wider, a cruel light coming into his eyes. “An old friend.”

  “‘Friend’ might be an exaggeration,” said a far-too-familiar voice.

  With the casual grace of a stretching cat, my grandmother slipped around from the back of the obelisk.

  My grandmother rested one lean shoulder against the obsidian slab, an amused smile quirking her mouth. Drinking up our shock like it was honey wine.

  But it was Aurelio’s face I couldn’t stop staring at. I knew that cruel smile.

  The second demon.

  “You.” I clenched my fists and stepped toward him. “When I threw you out of Kessa, you went and got Aurelio. Didn’t you?”

  “Not quite.” Aurelio’s expression flickered and changed, softening to something human, something desperate. “The demon didn’t take me by force, Ryx. I invited it in.”

  Kessa backed away from him, her arms wrapped around herself.

  Ashe stepped between them. “Only the Zenith Society would be that stupid.”

  “You willingly gave yourself to a demon?” I couldn’t hide my disgust. “How could you possibly want—” An awful thought struck me. “Your mentor ordered you to do this, didn’t he?”

  Aurelio winced. “I had to, Ryx. I’ve gone too far to back down now.” His eyes were strained, haunted. I couldn’t help a certain horrified pity, even after all he’d done.

  “You’re right about one thing.” I shook my head, furious at him for making such terrible choices. “You’ve gone too far.”

  “I may come to regret it.” Aurelio gave a lopsided, strained shrug. “For now, we have an understanding. I give Hunger a body, and in return it gives me the power to protect the Serene Empire.” His expression shifted again, stretching with inhuman glee. “And we want the same thing, after all: to throw the gate wide and drink in all the limitless strength it can give us.”

  Foxglove averted his face in seeming despair, but his amber eyes shone with a fierce light. He slipped a slim wire-wrapped device halfway out of one of his pouches, and a soft hum resonated in my skull—a noise muffling device, to thwart my grandmother’s unnaturally good hearing. “Exalted Severin, run and tell Odan about the second demon,” he whispered. “Make sure the knowledge gets out.” Severin, who stood at the rear of our group and was barely inside the tower, nodded with tense agreement. “Everyone else, draw the demons away from the stone and keep them busy so Ryx and I can alter the ward. Remember that we’re also buying time for Odan to evacuate the castle.”

  Severin faded back out through the door as if he’d never been here. Foxglove slipped the device back into his pouch and started drifting casually out to the side, poised to get into position as soon as the demons were distracted. The others fanned out and moved forward to take up more space and cover for him.

  I couldn’t try anything so sneaky; my grandmother had turned her full attention to me.

  “I see you managed to escape after all, Ryx,” she said. “Did you learn anything from the process?”

/>   There was a certain edge to the question; her eyes narrowed analytically. I want you shattered and broken, she’d said in the forest. I thought of the luminaries flickering out in the Shrike Lord’s throne hall and the guards dropping dead, and a rumble deep in the earth, and shivered.

  “I learned that I can count on my friends more than I can rely on my power.”

  My grandmother made a face. “Ugh. We’ll have to work on that. Come here, Ryx.”

  A retort died on my lips. My legs started moving on their own, with the sort of irresistible instinct that might yank my hand back from a fire. Pox.

  “She’s controlling me,” I warned the others, tension singing through my nerves as my legs carried me inexorably forward. It was an awful sensation.

  But I could work with this. I just had to get my grandmother out of the circle somehow, then contrive to casually step on it and keep her focus away from Foxglove. I might not have experience with this brand of subtlety, but a lifetime as a curiosity on the fringes of Vaskandran royal society had taught me a lot about redirecting attention.

  None of which helped me stay calm as my feet kept drawing me nearer to the burning intensity of my grandmother’s orange-ringed eyes.

  Bastian fell back a step or two, tucking his notebook protectively to his chest. “I don’t understand how you think you can open the gate,” he said to Aurelio, “given the way the layered protections work. Even if the Lady of Owls can operate the enchantment as one of the guardian bloodline, won’t the limiters intervene?”

  Aurelio frowned. “Limiters?”

  “Don’t tell him,” Kessa said sharply. “Let him try it.” Both of them kept their focus entirely on Aurelio and my grandmother, nothing in their posture so much as acknowledging that Foxglove was in the room—or Ashe either, as she fanned out to the other side, ready to make a move. If I didn’t know them well, I’d think the edge in their voices was fear. Each acted their part with full confidence the others would do theirs, like fingers on the same hand.

  And now they were counting on me to do mine. Resolve ran through my nerves like steel.

  “You’re bluffing,” Aurelio said suspiciously. But he stepped forward, away from the gate and toward Bastian, as if he couldn’t help himself.

  “Right,” Bastian agreed hastily, tucking his book behind his back. “You caught me. There are no limiters, of course.”

  Kessa put a hand on Bastian’s shoulder. “You’d better get out of here with that notebook,” she murmured, her voice carrying across the room despite its soft tones. She was an actress, after all. “If he figures out how to open another gate…”

  I was fairly sure there was nothing in that notebook about opening new gates, and didn’t remember anything about limiters, either, but Aurelio couldn’t know that. As Bastian backed another step, the picture of growing alarm, a yearning ignited in Aurelio’s eyes, and he strode quickly across the room. Reeled in neatly as a fish.

  “Give me that book,” he demanded.

  Hunger, he’d said the demon was. Clever Bastian and Kessa, luring him out by making him want something.

  I’d arrived in front of my grandmother. It was easy enough to stand with one foot on the protective circle; the runes flickered and dimmed.

  “What do you want from me?” I asked, holding her eyes. Anything to keep her looking at my face and not toward where Foxglove slipped quietly around the room to the other side of the obelisk.

  “It’s not what I want from you.” My grandmother stepped closer to touch my cheek with a gentle hand. “It’s what I want for you.”

  “A bright future and a happy life?” I asked sarcastically. “Some cake and tea, and maybe a puppy?”

  “You’ve been wasting yourself, Ryx. Skulking and hiding in the shadows, staying out of everyone’s way.” There was genuine affection in her voice, in her fingers as they brushed hair back from my face, and that made it all the more disturbing. “I only want you to stop holding back, stop burying your light for the sake of others.”

  Foxglove had crouched down behind the obelisk. I made certain to keep my eyes fixed on my grandmother’s face, but I knew he must be working on the warding circle. I wished I had any idea how much time he needed for each of the six anchors. Every word of this conversation hurt like a splinter under my skin, but I had to draw it out for as long as I could.

  “You’re the one who taught me that everything I do should be for the sake of Morgrain,” I said quietly.

  Her eyes narrowed. “So I did.”

  Shouting and commotion broke out behind me, toward the door. I couldn’t help myself; I turned to look.

  Ashe had crept up behind Aurelio and driven her sword all the way through his chest. It protruded straight through his sternum, the blue crystals on the wire-wrapped pommel glowing with the power to punch through bone. Aurelio’s back arched in apparent agony, and blood bubbled on his lips. Ashe’s eyes held a cat’s intense, lethal focus.

  My heart lurched despite myself—he had been my friend once, even if he betrayed me. Whatever happened to Rule Three?!

  Aurelio let out a contemptuous laugh, wet and terrible. Livid white sparks sprayed from the wound, crackling up Ashe’s blade like lightning; she pulled it from his back with an oath of pain and surprise. He whirled to face her, the hole in his chest swarming with opalescent light.

  “Do you really think demons are so easy to kill?” he demanded.

  My grandmother’s hand fell on my shoulder. She’d stepped up beside me—so close to being outside the circle. “Oh, this is fun,” she said. “I think the Rookery will give him more trouble than he expects, but of course they can’t win. Shall we watch?”

  Bastian’s hand moved so quickly it almost seemed to flicker, dipping in and out of his jacket with inhuman speed. Suddenly there was a flintlock pistol in his hand. A sharp crack hit my eardrums, and the scent of gunsmoke filled the air. I flinched at the sound.

  Aurelio staggered. For one breath-catching moment, I hoped he might go down.

  But he straightened, a smile straight from the Hells twisting his face, and reached toward Bastian. The air before his fingertips rippled with a pulse of power. Sweet Grace of Mercy.

  Bastian’s pistol clattered to the floor. He dropped to his knees, clutching the arm that had held it, and let out a strangled cry of pain.

  “What did he do to him?” I demanded, my insides twisting at the look of agonized horror on Bastian’s face.

  “Ah, yes, making his own body consume itself.” My grandmother nodded. “One of Hunger’s oldest tricks.”

  I tried to run toward him, unthinking, but my legs locked in place. I would have fallen if not for my grandmother’s gentle hand on my shoulder, holding me up. “I’ve got to help him,” I protested, trying to hide my inward stab of alarm as I realized how close I’d come to stepping off the barrier circle.

  “You can,” my grandmother assured me. “If you let your power loose.”

  “I said help, not kill,” I retorted angrily.

  Ashe had lunged at Aurelio again, flicking lightning-fast cuts at his arms and legs; but the air in front of Aurelio shimmered, and her sword rebounded each time as if it had struck a steel shield. Kessa took advantage of his distraction to draw her dagger and stab down at the back of his neck, something close to hatred darkening her eyes. Her blade bounced off of his invisible shield, too.

  It tore a deep wound in my chest to see the fear and bitter memory in Kessa’s face, and the desperate determination in Ashe’s, and the agony in Bastian’s—and to have to stand here and do nothing but watch.

  But I had my own job, as the tingle of magic running up my leg from my carefully positioned foot reminded me. The others were accomplishing exactly what they wanted: buying Foxglove time.

  Then Aurelio lifted his hand again, the air around it shimmering like black stone on a hot day.

  “Ashe!” I cried. “Look out!”

  She dropped back to a guard position, graceful and wary. Suddenly she stumbled. Bloo
d began flowing all at once in alarming rivers down her arms and legs.

  “Ashe!” Kessa shrieked, reaching toward her.

  There was nothing she could do. The blood streamed not from any clear wounds, but straight through Ashe’s skin, as if the demon called it out of her.

  Ashe wavered on her feet, drenched in blood, and fell to her knees.

  “Leave them alone,” I shouted, every instinct straining to leave the circle and run to help them.

  Or to do something more. The fury boiling like volcanic fire within me yearned to unfurl my power as I had in the Shrike Lord’s castle. To unleash it on Aurelio and the demon he hosted, and Hells take the consequences.

  My grandmother watched my face intently, her eyes gleaming.

  Aurelio lifted his hand again. I tensed as if it were my own pain coming—but Severin burst through the door, a knife in his hand, and threw himself protectively in front of Bastian and Kessa.

  There were no plants or animals here for him to work with. His magic was completely useless, and he knew it. His face was drawn with desperation, and his temples beaded with sweat. He’d run back here after warning the others, fully aware he couldn’t do much more than slow the demons down with his death. Oh, Severin.

  Aurelio barely seemed to notice him. He looked at his own shaking hands as Bastian groaned in agony on the floor and Ashe fell to one knee.

  “This wasn’t what I wanted,” Aurelio moaned.

  Suddenly a laugh came from his own throat, deep and wicked. “But it’s exactly what you asked for.”

  “I thought they’d put up more of a fight than this,” my grandmother sighed, surveying the battered remnants of the Rookery. The faint crease of a frown appeared between her brows. Before she could start counting people and perhaps begin wondering where Foxglove might be, I grabbed her arm, seizing her attention.

  “You’ve got to stop Aurelio,” I urged her. “Surely you don’t want him to win here.”

  She cocked her head. “Why not?”

  I was on the verge of blurting out that he’d killed her daughter, but realized just in time what a terrible mistake that would be. I needed to draw this out as long as possible, for Foxglove and Odan to do their work; unleashing my grandmother’s full fury on Aurelio would likely bring things to a quick and violent end.