At the edge of the spire, where the rock rib gave passage to Ioene’s slopes, the people Mieshk had enthralled gagged and coughed and fell to their knees as her commands drained away.
Caffari shoved aside those in front of her and stamped toward Mieshk, pulling a dagger from her belt.
“Caffari. She can’t hurt us anymore,” Paono said softly. “She was born to madness. Isn’t that suffering enough?”
In response, Mieshk laughed. “Mercy, he claims. Gentleness. He believes these acts make him better. Different. But what mercy is it to leave me powerless? The Hollow Ones seek strength. They will only follow someone who commands the fire. Like this, I’m nothing but a wretch. Food for their master.”
“The Hunger cares nothing for who or what you are,” Paono said. “You’ve opened the way for the end of civilization. Yet still, I choose to forgive you.”
He stepped forward and offered a hand to help her up, but Mieshk turned hate-filled eyes on him. She spat, narrowly missing his hand.
With a shrug, Caffari grabbed Mieshk under the armpit. She dragged the girl to her feet and laid her blade against Mieshk’s scrawny throat.
Mieshk sneered. “Do it. Please.”
In disgust, Caffari clucked her tongue and shoved Mieshk backward. Following the motion, the bandit queen doubled over, still feeling the pain of the dawnweaving.
The rift, I said into Paono’s thoughts. None of this matters if it remains open. You need to seal it while you have the power.
Swallowing, he nodded. I felt him focus his inner awareness on Ashkalan and the harbor. As he did, the Hunger surged forward, drawn by his interest. The Hollow One was still there, devouring souls. A dark stain on the world. Paono’s perception of the aether was far weaker than mine had been. But still, through his awareness, I felt a spirit scream as it first entered the aether, then began to be flayed, bit by bit.
I didn’t understand why Mieshk’s former followers hadn’t fled. We’d long since moved more than a thousand paces from Ashkalan, and now her power was neutralized. Maybe terror bound them. Or maybe the Hunger held them close.
Another scream, echoing across the aether. Another death and dismemberment of the spirit that had filled the body.
Inhaling deeply, Paono formed his desire. He Wanted nothing more than to close the awful rift between our realm and the Hunger beneath. Every speck of his beginning pleaded for it.
I felt the weave, perceived it clearly for the first time. Two hundred sparks, everyone on the island. All joined together in Paono’s desire.
His Want pushed against the void, enveloping it. But rather than shying away, the Hollow One snarled and opened itself wide. It began to suck.
I was falling. Beside me, other lights tumbled toward the pit.
No! someone screamed. Maybe it had been me.
An instant later, Paono released the weave. He’d felt it. His magic was nothing compared to the pull of the Hunger. By attempting to seal the rift, he’d nearly fed it our spirits.
Suddenly, I was vanishing. Before, Paono’s weave had held me close, giving me substance. But it was gone. My light waned, fading from the world. But at the last instant, Paono leaped for me, grabbing hold. The silvery thread that bound us stretched. Thinned. And finally, he began to pull me back. As my awareness retreated up the hill, dragged by Paono’s link, I caught a last glimpse of the harbor. The last sparks were gone from the wharf. Devoured.
The Hollow One stirred. It’s inky, oily presence rose from the harbor and began to move. Horror struck me as another monster began to crawl from the gaping hole in the world.
Panic flooded my spirit; I knew where the beast and its brethren would go next.
Not far from Ashkalan, ships were anchored off Ioene’s coast. No one aboard knew what was coming.
Paono held me close, cradling me with his mind. Though the other people atop the spire moved around us, peering over the crater’s rim and murmuring in low tones about the Hunger, he noticed no one but me. Tears slipped down his cheeks.
You’re really dead, he said.
Yes, I think so.
He pressed his lips together to contain a sob. I can’t let you go, then. I’ll keep your spark here. With me.
Under other circumstances, I might have considered it. I could live within him. We’d always been close, and I wouldn’t have to give up my connection to life. But my time was over. Right now, Paono needed to get to the ships and warn them. Maybe with help, he could still find a way to stop this.
Plus, deep inside, I had a notion that fate had another plan for me. There was no certainty when he released me. But I could hope I’d move on to the next realm. At least there, I might be able to make a difference. Here, I was nothing but a passenger in Paono’s mind.
I can’t stay, Paono. I need to enter the aether.
He clamped down on my spirit, holding me closer. But after a moment, cold acceptance flooded him.
The runes, he said. Maybe I can erase them.
Maybe. But they’re nightforged.
I know. But I don’t know what else to do.
He started stumbling for the rock rib and the rest of the descent. Slowly, he began to release his grip on me.
Wait, Paono. Send the others to the ships, then. Someone needs to warn them.
As if shocked that the rest of the group still remained, he turned. He couldn’t meet anyone’s eyes; his grief over my loss was too private. As he drew breath to speak, a sudden movement by Mieshk stopped him short. She’d been slumped at the edge of the group. No longer important. Defeated.
With a growl, she stood, face livid.
“You’ll never defeat what comes,” she said, snarling. “At least I’ve done that much. There’s no earthly power that can overcome it. I said I would control it, but those were just the whispers. Seductive. They knew what I wanted. But now I see the lies. The moment you ruined me, the Hunger turned away. Its shards will feed on everyone here. The gate will open wider and wider until all life is gone from our world.”
Paono drew himself up, momentarily armoring his soul against the grief that tore at it. “I don’t accept that, Mieshk. I will always keep trying, just like Lilik would have. There is always hope.”
As if hurt by his words, Mieshk flinched. And maybe she was. Maybe she’d always hated me because I represented something she could never have. I believed in myself. I accepted no limitations. But her reaction quickly faded. After a moment, her lips peeled back from teeth that were once again white.
“You’re wrong. Just like you were wrong about your friend Lilik. She wasn’t strong enough to face me, and she chose death instead.”
Paono began to tremble. The anger in his core burned white-hot. His fists clenched as if he were imagining pummeling her then shoving her off the drop and into the lava below. But with a slow inhalation, he turned and started down the slope, leaving her behind.
I need to go, too, Paono, I said quietly.
I guess I’ll never feel ready to lose you.
Probably not. But I’m not meant to be here. In between. No one is. As I said the words, I felt the rightness of them. Just like I’d sensed the nature of the fire and aurora. Everything has a balance. All souls go to the aether. These were the rules.
And if breaking the rules and shattering the balance had opened the rift, perhaps my choice to follow the rules could close it.
Chapter Twenty-Four
UNTIL I ENTERED the aether, I hadn’t really, truly believed I was dead. But I knew it when the vast landscape of souls opened all around me. I knew my body was gone because I had no sense of confusion like I’d experienced on Araok Island. Then, a fragment of my spirit had remained in my dying body, preventing me from being whole within the aether. But not now. Now all of me had passed beyond the veil. All of me that remained, anyway.
I took a moment to collect myself. I could grieve for my life later—if we managed to close the rift. Right now I had my duty.
After putting back the pieces of my scatter
ed resolve, I focused on my surroundings. Ioene’s aether opened in all directions, unbounded. I felt the celestial humming of the aurora and the compelling vitality of the fire, two forces calling to my soul. I understood now why so many strands struggled against the pull of the fire. It promised excitement, the rush of riding a horse at full gallop. I felt as if I could dive in and reclaim the heart-pounding sensation of the first time Raav pressed his lips to mine.
Raav. Oh, tides. For all my talk of coming back to him, I’d left him alone. A broken promise.
I swiped away the thought. The time for regrets would come later.
In the sky above me, the rift was a black gash, ragged at the edges and growing by the minute. A fissure in both the physicality and the aether. Nothing mattered unless someone—Paono? Me?—could seal that gate.
Paono’s dawnweaving hadn’t been strong enough to resist the Hunger’s pull. But within the aether, thousands of souls would respond to my Need. It might be enough.
I opened my awareness wider, reaching for the nightstrands of the Vanished. As if surfacing through shimmering water, they appeared before me, a sea of strangers. Many had no faces and were nothing but vague suggestions of human forms. The most distant ancestors, maybe. The images projected in the aether were manifestations of a soul’s inner identity. Those who’d died many thousands of years ago had likely lost much of their connection to the people they’d been in life.
I didn’t want to look down at my body. I didn’t want to know whether I still saw myself as a ragged gutterborn waif from Istanik.
Instead, I ran my gaze over the crowd. Closest to me, the faces were still sharp, the clothing detailed. A man stepped forward, middle-aged but still handsome. He wore a tunic with embroidered thread that shifted colors as he moved. His eyes were a bright hazel, almost gold. I recognized him immediately through the aura he projected.
“Hello, Peldin.” When I’d first learned to channel the thoughts and emotions of the nightstrands, the clamor in my head had been too loud. Too much to handle. Peldin had been nominated as the single spokesman for their civilization. We’d had our disagreements, but it seemed right that he be the first to greet me.
“I can’t say I’m glad to see you here,” he said. His gaze flicked to the rent in the sky. Tendrils of oily smoke were pouring through. The second Hollow One had nearly emerged.
I scanned the horizon, and panic struck me. But I saw the sparks aboard the ships, a twinkling constellation of living souls. A shifting black horror flowed across the aether, speeding toward them. The Hollow One would devour them.
“We don’t have time to talk,” I said. “Give me your hand.”
As I had on Araok Island, I reached for the nearest strands, imagining that I clasped hands with each spirit then bound them to my heart. One after the other, I gathered the Vanished. As I did, snippets of their lives and emotions flashed through my mind. There were so many. Thousands more than had inhabited Leesa Ulstat’s domain.
“A duskweaving! Where did you learn it?” Peldin asked. “And here I thought you were helpless without me.”
I paused long enough to roll my eyes. I’d forgotten how insufferable he could be.
When I reached again into the crowd, taking another hand in mine, I gasped. I knew the person almost as well as I knew myself.
As Zyri stepped forward, I stood frozen. She was about my height, but with lighter hair that fell nearly to her waist. When she smiled, two small dimples dented her cheeks. I never had a sister. But looking into her eyes, I felt as if she were the twin I’d never known.
“I found Tyrak,” I whispered. Of course, I’d recently thrown him away somewhere near Ioene’s jagged summit. For all I knew, he was lost forever.
Zyri pressed her lips together, and her eyes glistened as tears welled. She nodded.
“I promised him I’d try to find a way for you to be together. If we survive—I mean, if we still exist after this, I’ll make the same promise to you.”
There was so much I wanted to tell her. I felt like we’d lived our whole lives together—and we had, even if only in our memories. Instead, I latched her to my heart and reached into the aether again.
Soul after soul joined my duskweaving. Power shimmered around me, a bright star to rival the dark gash in the sky.
But when I next looked, the Hollow One had nearly closed the distance with the sparks.
A small group of sparks stood between the shadow and the main group on the ships. Abruptly, the cluster flared an intense red haloed in black. I remembered that color. Panic. Rot.
I scooped as many souls as I could into my arms. No time for gentleness. Squeezing them to me, I fell deeper into the thrumming, sizzling power that surrounded me.
I’d worked magic before. Now, I was magic.
Every drop and speck and fiber of my soul blazed with potential. Before, I’d been a mote of dust floating on the ocean of power. Now I was that ocean.
My futures were countless.
My Need was boundless.
Fortune was a tornado around me, every possibility a whirlwind inside the massive, wheeling gyre. I dipped my hand in and felt each of my paths rush through my flesh. Not only the futures but the pasts, too. Flashes of lives I might have lived. Glimpses where I inhabited the aether. Visions of restoring Ashkalan with Raav at my side. Things that could have been. Futures I would never know.
Somehow, I sensed that if I could capture one of those whirling alternatives, I could sidestep this life, make myself anew. I wouldn’t need to have died. But by leaving, I’d be abandoning this incarnation of my world to the Hunger. Everyone and everything would be annihilated, subsumed by the ravenous ache beyond that gash.
For an instant, I still considered it. In my new existence, I wouldn’t remember where I’d come from. Who I’d sacrificed to remake my life. But I couldn’t do it.
Only my Need could choose the right path now.
Closing my eyes, I gave myself to fate.
Light flashed behind my eyes.
I smelled kivi blossoms.
Not far away, waves crashed on gravel, hissing as they rolled back to the sea.
When I opened my eyes, the sky was an upside down bowl lined with stars, filled with billowing ash and shimmering aurora. A sharp stone jabbed my shoulder blade. Gravel pressed into the backs of my arms. The ground beneath me was warmer than the damp air above. Each of my senses felt many times stronger than I remembered. Or rather, each smell on the air and tick of cooling stone and shimmer of heavenly aurora felt more vivid than ever before. More alive.
I shifted, wincing as the sharp rock under my shoulder blade scratched the thin flesh covering my bone. Grunting, I struggled to a seated position. I pulled my feet closer, then blinked. Why was I wearing ratty sandals?
My eyes traveled up my body. Ill-fitting trousers. A tunic with mismatched buttons. Patches were sewn over holes on the knees and elbows of my ragged attire.
I was wearing the clothes my mind stubbornly supplied for my astral projection within the aether. My duskweaving… had it… Was I back in the physical world?
I lifted my hand in front of my face and examined both sides. My scars were gone. Curling all my fingers but one, so that only my index finger remained extended, I pressed it against my thigh.
My finger sank through flesh as if my leg weren’t there at all.
I sprang to my feet, stomping to reassure myself that the ground beneath me was solid.
“Ow!” I cried when a dagger of hardened lava sliced my instep. Blood flowed from the wound, black in the night. But when I tried to wrap my hand around my foot, my fingers just passed straight through it.
I raised my foot and stepped forward, and the ground beneath me sped by. Brush scraped my legs as I traveled a hundred paces in a single step. The scratches stung. Threads pulled free from my trousers, leaving them even more tattered than before.
Abruptly, I felt an irresistible desire to run. I couldn’t have remained still if the air before me were f
illed with crystal knives. Which wasn’t far from the truth with brush and boulders standing in my way. As my strides sped over the landscape and gashes and cuts multiplied on my legs, all I could do was veer for the beach where fewer obstacles blocked my way.
I didn’t know my destination until I arrived. By the time I reached the ships, each of my shins was a shredded mess.
I forgot the pain as the first screams reached my ears.
Another step brought me to the arc of gravel cradling the shallow anchorage. The Hollow One stood upon the surface of the sea, an aching, screeching pit filled with nothing but greed and evil. The crew of both our ships—and the Ulstat vessels, too—were desperately trying to raise their sails and extend their oars.
As I arrived, the monster tore one of Caffari’s smugglers from the crow’s nest. Midair, the thief’s body frayed and disappeared. My scream pealed across the water as I threw down my mental walls. I grabbed for her nightstrand, seizing hold just as the Hollow One dug raking claws into her spirit.
We fought for control of her soul.
I wasn’t going to win. It would only tear her apart.
The aurora, I screamed at her. It’s your only hope.
I felt her assent an instant before a flash lit the water and sent rippling waves of phosphorescence across the small bay. She’d managed to choose dissolution before the beast consumed her. Deprived of its prize, the Hollow One shrieked and turned on me.
Immediately, I felt it sucking at me. Tentacles whipped out from the mass of darkness and tried to catch hold. I smelled rot and oil and fear as they passed through my body. The inside of my mouth tasted like rust. Bone-deep dread ached where each of the beast’s arms crossed my flesh.
But it couldn’t take hold. My perception of gravel beneath my feet and air on my skin was an illusion supplied by my duskweaving. I wasn’t a creature of this world. Physical but ethereal, alive but dead, I was something Other.
Shattering of the Nocturnai Box Set Page 89