Shattering of the Nocturnai Box Set

by Carrie Summers

  As I glanced back again, my toe caught on a rock. I stumbled and went down on my knee. My legs were exhausted, too. The trek from our anchorage to Mieshk’s fortress had worn me out. But I made myself get back up. I’d tried to refuse Mieshk’s forced march when the bodyguard had first set me down. In response, Mieshk had dragged the point of her knife down Paono’s arm, cutting deep. Like me, he healed quickly. But that didn’t stop it from hurting.

  We’d climbed around a third of the total elevation of the mountain’s peak so far, ascending jumbled scree and boulder fields. Weeks ago, I’d come this way. Poisonous gasses had made me giddy, and I’d fallen into a crack in the earth. And another time I’d used my new knowledge of the danger to eliminate a pair of hunters chasing me. Unfortunately, Mieshk seemed to be aware of the hazard, and she often stopped to scent the air, giving any fumes a wide berth.

  Soon enough, we came to the base of an escarpment that sealed off further progress. I didn’t understand Mieshk’s logic—I’d even hoped her madness had led her to a dead end that we could use to our advantage—until she stepped up close to the cliff band.

  Lips pulled back from those awful teeth, she raised her hands and closed crack-riddled eyelids over the black orbs in her sockets. Flame burst from her hands, and the rock ahead of her melted. She took a step forward, etching a tunnel through the cliff as she did. Guided by her gestures, molten rock oozed out the opening, trickling down the hill and hardening. Soon, she quickened the pace by softening the rock to putty and throwing gobs out the opening.

  While we waited, the crowd of followers bunched up behind us, milling. I glanced at their faces and saw both anguish and blankness. While we waited, Paono closed his eyes and furrowed his brow as if concentrating. After a moment, he shook his head.

  “It’s no use,” he said quietly.

  What are you trying to do? I asked over our link.

  I thought maybe I could break her hold over their sparks. I might be able to free one or two, but the others would just turn on them.

  I nodded. Paono why didn’t you stay with the others? You could be safe right now rather than a prisoner.

  I didn’t know what else to do. I felt the panic in your spark… I know I was supposed to be focusing on everyone, but I couldn’t help it. Lilik, you matter more than the rest of them put together.

  The ridge was just a narrow fin of rock separating the eastern flanks of the island from the southern extents. Soon enough, Mieshk finished her remolding, and we were passing through the glass-smooth passage and out onto the southern expanse of Ioene.

  I thought about Paono’s declaration as I walked. A few weeks ago, I would’ve felt the same about Paono. He’d mattered more than anyone except my da and brother. But now I cared for Raav, too. And the others who’d come here were my responsibility. No, more than that—they were my friends.

  It would be a lie to tell Paono he mattered more to me than everyone else, and in a way, that hurt. Over the past weeks, I’d forged many bonds. Maybe I wasn’t as close to them as I’d been to Paono when it was just the two of us gutterborn kids struggling to get by. But they were important to me all the same. I’d changed in ways that Paono hadn’t. To me, it seemed like just another step in our eventual parting. Not that it mattered much, given our situation.

  “I don’t regret this, Lilik,” Paono said aloud. “I’d rather be with you than let you face this alone.”

  “Will you two clap shut?” Mieshk said. “It’s just so pathetic. I hate weakness.”

  “So caring for other people makes you weak?” I asked. “I suppose it could feel that way for someone who’s never been loved. “

  Mieshk just laughed. “Love doesn’t matter. It never lasts. But power… Power feeds on itself. And thanks to my dear father’s sacrifice, I have the souls I need. I’m one step closer to gaining the power I deserve, finishing the quest my mother started.”

  I caught Paono’s eyes as Trader Ulstat’s story sprang into my mind. Mieshk had found the research papers her parents had collected. But her mother hadn’t wanted to open the rift. She’d been trying to understand how to fight her affliction. Even in her cruelty and her madness, she’d tried to understand the voices in her head. She’d fought against the Hunger’s attempts to control her. Could we possibly convince Mieshk that she had misinterpreted the scrolls?

  No, I doubted we could. As Trader Ulstat had said, Mieshk had shown the signs of madness when she was only five—decades before the usual onset. We had no hope of reasoning with her.

  “First, I’ll imbue the final runes with the nightstrands that call the power forth, and then I’ll bind the force to me with a final sacrifice.”

  As she said the last words, Mieshk turned her revolting grin on me. My feet slowed. Tyrak’s point dug into my neck.

  The closer we got to Ashkalan, the more impatient Mieshk became. Much of the time, we’d followed the flagstone paths laid down by the Vanished, but once the high cliffs surrounding the city came into view, she paid no more heed to finding an easy path. Instead, she forged our trail, melting down stone and burning brush. The breeze smelled of brimstone, and the air around her shimmered with heat.

  Our guards forced us to march about twenty paces behind her. Every time my hand or foot fell on the recently-melted stone, I expected to be burned. But the rocks, fused into shiny black glass, were merely warm and smooth to the touch. Whatever magic allowed Mieshk to heat stone to melting dissipated quickly.

  As we rounded the southern point of the island, the group of followers had started to straggle, forming loose clusters that trailed across the mountainside behind us. I didn’t know whether to feel relieved or more desperate. They couldn’t help us, but the nearness of other humans had been comforting in a strange way.

  Ahead, the narrow corridor that granted access to Ashkalan loomed. When we were close enough to make out details in the surrounding cliffs, I felt the Hunger. Here, it was nothing but an oily presence, a sense of impending doom held back by a silken curtain. But soon, we would be within a hair’s breadth of its inexorable pull.

  I balked. We had to do something. Frozen in my tracks, I threw myself wide to the aether and reached for Paono’s captive strands. Again, I felt the bond he kept with me, and on the other side, the crystalline prison holding the Vanished spirits.

  It’s no use, Lilik, Paono said into my mind.

  At once, my frustration boiled over. It’s no use because you won’t even try! I said. You’re afraid of hurting someone—maybe killing them—but by doing nothing, you’re letting her win. People will die anyway.

  Paono closed his eyes as he shuffled forward. He maintained the silvery link that bound us, and abruptly I felt a tugging across that bond.

  It hurt, feeling as if my lungs and heart were being pulled from my chest. I clamped my lips over the cry of shock. He was trying, and the last thing I wanted was to sabotage his attempt.

  Our guards had no such motivation. With a grunt, the man holding Tyrak at my back fell to his knees.

  “What is this?” Mieshk shrieked, whirling.

  Despite the growing agony in my bones and the sudden weakness in my limbs as Paono pulled energy from my spirit, I spun and kicked at my guard’s weapon hand. Tyrak flew free, and I dove. My elbows cracked against fused obsidian, and I slid after the dagger. My fingers brushed the hilt then closed around the gold threadwork.

  I came to my feet with a growl and slashed at the stricken guard.

  Abruptly, the pain in my body vanished.

  Paono fell to his knees, clutching his head in his hands. “I can’t hold it,” he cried. “I can’t Want to keep hurting people.”

  Mieshk’s thugs jumped at me. With a grunt, the first led with his shoulder, a charge I dodged by whirling just in time. Tyrak’s spirit joined mine, and he urged me to convert the spin into a roundhouse kick that landed on the man’s spine, sending him sprawling.

  The other guard’s fishing knife sliced across my left shoulder, cutting through my sleeve,
through skin and muscle. My arm fell useless to my side.

  Breath hissing through clenched teeth, I dropped into a low crouch and spun to defend against the next attack. With Tyrak clenched in my good hand, I flicked my gaze back and forth between the two guards. The man I’d kicked climbed to his feet. Together, the pair advanced. I met the closer guard’s eyes. His face showed no expression, or if anything, distaste at what he was compelled to do.

  “Fight her!” I yelled. “Resist her commands!”

  A flicker of pain crossed the man’s face, but he couldn’t stop his feet from advancing. Yelling, Paono threw himself at Mieshk, but she raised an arm and summoned a wall of fire before him, halting his charge.

  Moments later, fire erupted in a circle around me. I screamed as scorching heat dried the tears in my eyes, and the ends of my hair curled. I pulled my arms in, made myself small. I could see nothing but flame.

  Mieshk’s voice pierced the roar of the inferno. “I only need one of you for the sacrifice. Keep fighting, and the other dies right here.”

  The stone around me boiled in a ring. Agonizing heat sank into me from all sides, yet I didn’t burn. She had that much control.

  In a blink, the fire vanished. The sudden darkness made it impossible to see. When my eyes finally adjusted, I saw Paono on his knees, hands raised.

  A guard’s rough hands clamped my arms. With a sneer, Mieshk advanced, stone softened to putty clutched in her hands. She formed a pair of shackles from the stone and slapped them on my wrists. My skin sizzled, but an instant later, the rock cooled, leaving me with cuffs of obsidian. Lifting me with ease, the guard threw me over his shoulder and started marching for the entrance to Ashkalan.

  Chapter Nineteen

  “LILIK,” PAONO WHISPERED.

  We huddled on one of Ashkalan’s terraces about halfway between the harbor and the top of the city. The evil presence of the Hunger pressed close, filling shadows and spilling from open doorways and windows. Every breath felt like a shudder. Every heartbeat was a boom from a funeral drum.

  During my first visit to the city, I’d seen it through both Zyri’s memories and my own eyes. Despite the ruin and the emptiness, Ashkalan had been full of promise. I’d imagined we could return the city to the place of beauty and wonder it had been during Vanished times, make it better, even.

  But now, nothing good dwelt here. Ashkalan’s future was darkness. A black void from which the end of the world would unfurl. Within the hollows of my bones I felt the approach of that nothingness. I despaired, knowing that the Hunger would swallow us all. Even the dead.

  “Lilik,” he whispered again.

  I planted my hands against the grit that littered the terrace, tiny crumbs of pumice that had rained down upon Ashkalan’s perfect stone over the centuries. With great effort, I dragged my eyes to my friend. I lacked the energy to speak, and instead raised an eyebrow in question.

  “I’ve been trying to contact the others. It frightens them when I speak into their thoughts… if they can hear me at all. But I finally got through to Tkira and your friend Daonok.”

  I shrugged. What good would it do?

  At the edge of the terrace where a low wall guarded the walkway from the drop to the next level, our guards stood at rigid attention. Surely, the evil here sank into their heads and sapped their wills as severely as it did mine. But still, Mieshk’s compulsion held sway, forcing them to continue standing watch. Down on the bottom tier, where a curved wharf was studded with a dozen stone docks, Mieshk’s other followers stood facing the center of the harbor. They lined the waterfront in a ragged line. Whenever a new person staggered from the corridor at the city entrance, Mieshk commanded them to join the group below.

  At the far end of our terrace, Mieshk Ulstat blazed against the darkness of the night, low flames dancing over her molten flesh. Fire burst from her hands as she charred another rune into the seamless stone wall before her. After she had finished sketching the outline, she reached for the wooden bucket filled with a mix of seawater, mud, and ash. She dipped her hand into the slurry and slapped her dark paint onto the wall to begin filling in the outline of the rune.

  “Lilik, they don’t know how to help. What should I say?”

  I returned my gaze to Paono. Despite the oppressive nearness of the Hunger, he sat in relative tranquility. How could he resist the darkness? After the fight outside the city, the guards had forgotten to take Tyrak away from me again. Now, the impulse to pull him from his sheath and sink his blade into my chest was overcome only by the unconquerable malaise that blanketed my heart. That and the glassy shackles binding my wrists.

  I shrugged.

  “Raav asked Daonok to deliver a message,” Paono said. “He says he believes in you. You’ll find a way free.”

  But I wouldn’t. Not from this. The sadness filling my body trenched deeper, sorrow so profound it might swallow me before the Hunger did. My gaze tracked across the horizon and back to the city, landing on Mieshk. As she finished painting the rune, she stiffened, shoulders back and melted face turned to the heavens. As if gathering energy from the air around her, she brought her hands forward and laid her palms on the rune.

  From a vast distance, I heard the screams of the nightstrands she’d captured and imprisoned in her private domain of hate. It wasn’t like Paono’s prison, an aurora-armored shell, but rather a portion of a divided aether. Kindness against anger. Oil and water. The strands were hers, and I had no way to reach them.

  Not that I could summon the energy to try.

  Soon enough, the distant shrieks quieted as Mieshk forced the souls into the rune, imbuing it with the power needed to aid in opening the gate. When we’d entered the city, I could feel the trapped vitality in each rune as we’d passed. Painted symbols shed their menace over seven of the city’s terraces. On each level with the runes, there were five completed figures. On each level but ours, that is. When we’d arrived, there’d been just two on this tier. Now, Mieshk had finished the fourth. Most likely, just one rune remained.

  “Lilik, I don’t want us to die today.” Paono stretched out a hand and took my fingers in his.

  His words penetrated my mind, pressing through the despair. As he clutched my hand tighter, cool tingles spread up my arm. My skin began to glow as motes from his shimmering cloud spread up toward my chest.

  I gasped. Chased away by Paono’s energy like mist evaporating before the heat of a furnace, my malaise fled. Why was I just sitting here watching Mieshk doom the world? No matter how oppressive the Hunger’s presence, I would not give in. I would get Paono free, fight my way back to Raav. But first, I would end Mieshk’s tyranny.

  Or maybe I’d die trying. But I certainly wouldn’t wait for that fate like a terrified mouse.

  I snapped my attention to our guards. Both continued to stand at the edge of the wall. Vulnerable. I swallowed. First, they’d neglected to take my dagger away. Now, they’d chosen to stand where a single shove could send them plummeting to the terrace below. Was it on purpose? I couldn’t accept that they wanted Mieshk to succeed. Yet her compulsion forced them to stand watch and fight back if we attacked.

  Paono, I said across our link as I shifted to get my feet beneath me. My back scraped against the wall as I managed to get into a crouch, but the sounds were quiet enough the guards didn’t turn.

  Yes?

  Help me push them.

  His brow knit in momentary confusion. Over the wall?

  I nodded.

  Paono’s lower lip sucked between his teeth. He glanced up at the building behind us and the terrace wall that towered above its roof, judging the distance the men would fall.

  Yes, they will probably die. But they are giving us this chance. You see? They don’t want Mieshk to succeed any more than we do. But unlike us, they can’t resist her commands.

  I don’t know, Lilik. I—He left his thought unfinished, and instead, simply pressed his lips together and nodded. Maybe it was easier to hurt or kill when there was no magic to see i
nto his heart and know its true nature. In any case, he wormed into a crouch, got one foot forward and ready to run.

  I sprang from the wall and sprinted forward. As the men spun, alerted by the crunch of my feet against gravel, I lowered my shoulder. There was just enough time to notice the absence of Paono’s footfalls before I slammed into the closer man, my shoulder thudding against his ribs. His hazel eyes locked with mine. A relieved smile twitched on his face as the low wall took him in the backs of his knees. He fell back, spine cracking against the wall, before his legs whirled over his body, momentum carrying him up and over the wall. He spun once more in the air and spread his arms wide before landing on the terrace below.

  Only then did Paono move. He’d hesitated.

  I had just a moment to glimpse the unnatural angle of the fallen man’s neck before the other guard barreled into me, his muscled arm wrapping my waist and throwing me toward the back of the terrace. My hip smacked the stone floor, my head snapping sideways. Paono charged and crashed into the man. Late, but maybe we still had a chance.

  I slid to a stop an instant before a hollow crack echoed off the building behind me. I squirmed around to lay eyes on my friend. Paono was sitting, straddle-legged, on the terrace floor. Before him, the second guard slumped in a heap, a lump rising where his forehead had cracked the edge of the low wall.

  I blinked. Swallowed. Now to get out of here. I looked up, judging the distance to the city entrance. My legs were exhausted, but we’d still be faster than the horde gathered at the harbor’s edge.

  As I started to run, a line of fire burned its way across the terrace, blocking the way to the stairs. Grimacing as the heat slammed me, I slid to stop. Through the shimmering air, Mieshk approached, a shadow in the blaze.

  She stepped from the curtain of flame and stared down at us.

  “I warned you,” she said. “Now one of you dies.”

  “Run, Paono!” I yelled as I struggled to my feet, staggering and fighting for balance with my hands cuffed. Behind us, another staircase granted passage to the terrace above.