The Light of All That Falls, page 39
Alaris was quickly after him, but a second or two of hesitation had cost him; Caeden was already away down the tunnels, colorful lines streaking past as he drew the white stone from his pocket, Nethgalla’s symbol engraved on its surface. He fed Essence into it, not stopping, then glanced over his shoulder as a bolt of energy streaked past him. Alaris was within sight, but he was too far back.
Caeden could see the desperation on his friend’s face and, despite everything, couldn’t help but feel a twinge of guilt.
The portal opened in front of him, and the moment he dove through—the stone still in his hand—it winked out again behind him, cutting short Alaris’s frantic, frustrated shout.
He rolled as he let go of time, skidding along the white sand of the beach. It was just past noon, and the sun beat down with a pleasant intensity. Waves lapped gently on the shore, with the constant crashing of larger ones audible on the reef a little farther out.
He lay there, panting. This island had once been a Darecian outpost, tiny and strategically unimportant though it was. It had been a very long time indeed before the Venerate had uncovered its true value: a massive source of Essence, deep within the earth. The Darecians had used the Wells to draw that Essence to the surface, giving them fuel for everything from their Ironsails to their Light Cannons.
Caeden glanced around. There were enough trees that he couldn’t see the other side of the island, but it was a near thing, only a thousand feet separating the farthest points. The entire place was little more than a gentle hump in the ocean. The remains of a Darecian fortress sat crumbling at its center, abandoned for millennia and yet still largely intact. They’d never achieved the Builders’ level of skill in engineering—no one had—but their structures had certainly stood the test of time.
He groaned, staggering to his feet and picking up the black counterpart to the white Travel Stone, taking a minute to charge them again. It was a precaution he’d remembered learning to take every time they were used; the same Essence signature was needed in each stone for them to work, meaning that if they got separated prematurely, they became useless. He’d found that out the hard way, many centuries ago. That had been a long month of walking.
When he was done he slipped the stones back in his pocket, stretching and contemplating the crystal-blue ocean. He could Gate back to where he needed to go, now.
His face grew grim as he considered where that was.
Ilin Illan. He would simply have to hope that he was not further delayed once there. And if he was… then Asha would just have to handle Diara by herself. He felt a stab of guilt at risking her like this when he had promised to return, but more than anything right now, Wirr needed to be warned of what was coming. The Darecians would not be attacking from Talmiel, as the Andarrans would expect. And the Gil’shar had Banes. All of the dar’gaithin and eletai that had breached the ilshara a year ago.
If Wirr and the Assembly were not forewarned, they would be wiped out—and the Boundary along with them.
He did his best to ignore the growing apprehension worming its way into his gut, and settled down to work on the Gate.
Chapter 24
Asha winced and brushed a light sheen of sweat from her forehead, allowing Elli to help her to her feet.
She funneled Essence to the torn muscle in her leg, the searing pain—which once would have had her curled up in a ball on the ground in tears—now something she knew to simply grit her teeth against until it was healed. She kept her breathing even as she tried not to focus on the uncomfortable sensation of flesh knitting together, gazing instead at the dead al’goriat lying a few feet away, its eyeless face smashed in, slivers of teeth broken where she had punched it repeatedly.
“You can do better than that,” observed Elli as Asha released her grip on the woman’s shoulder, able to stand on her own two feet again. “You are distracted.”
Asha walked over to the nearest fountain, cupping her hand and drinking from the crisp, clear water, then splashing more on her face.
“Hard not to be,” she muttered eventually, stomach twisted into knots as she cast a worried eye toward the forest.
It had been a week since Diara’s threat. Over two days since Caeden’s promise to return in time to help Asha with the inevitable confrontation. Had something happened to him? Had he ever been intending to return? As little as she trusted him, she saw no real advantage to him in lying to her: he wanted the Boundary stable just as much as she did. But he had spoken of his task in terms of hours, a day at most, confident that he would be back in time. Which surely meant that something had to have delayed him.
“He isn’t someone to make promises lightly,” Elli assured her, evidently having no difficulty discerning her thoughts. “If he can make it, he will.”
Asha squinted at her. “You’re sure you don’t know what’s going on?” Elli was supposed to be at least partly constructed from Caeden’s mind. On some level, she had a direct connection to him.
The woman shrugged and shook her head.
“I am part of the dok’en far more than part of him,” she said, again as if reading Asha’s thoughts. “He designed this place—me—to be an illusion. That illusion would too easily have been broken if I had been able to simply know what he was thinking.”
Asha acceded the point without argument, turning her face toward the clear sun and drinking in its warmth. “Do I have any chance against Diara, if he isn’t here?”
“Your training gives you a chance, but your paths to victory are still… significantly fewer, without him. Your window of opportunity will be small.” Elli’s voice was calm. “Diara will initially assume that her ability to manipulate time is more than enough to deal with you—as it was last time—and attack at close quarters. That gives you one, possibly two opportunities to land a hit that will end the fight.” She shrugged. “Once she realizes that you’re a threat, she will switch tactics. Keep her distance. The amount of Essence you have at your disposal means that it will be harder for her to simply cut through your defenses with kan, and it is still possible that she will make a mistake. But the likelihood is that she would win, if it came to that.”
Asha snorted. “I am filled with confidence.”
“Some people need to be told what they want to hear to make them perform better, but others need the truth. You are the latter,” said Elli confidently.
“I’ll take that as a compliment, I suppose.” Asha glanced at the sun, the butterflies in her stomach only intensifying. She still desperately hoped that Caeden would appear at the last moment, but deep down she knew—had known since she’d woken this morning to an empty palace—that he wasn’t coming. There was no way that he would leave his arrival until this close to the deadline.
As if in response to her thoughts, a boom shivered the Crystalline Palace behind her and a fiery bloom of energy exploded from the treetops below, followed by several smaller bursts in quick succession. Asha pulled in a few steadying breaths, forcing herself to calm and reigniting her Essence armor as Elli placed a reassuring hand on her shoulder.
Diara had returned.
It was ten minutes later that the Venerate finally strode into view.
Asha’s heart sank at the sight, though at least Diara’s clothing was tattered and scorched, an indication—along with her dark expression—that she had not dealt with the wards as easily as had Caeden. That was good; far better if she was distracted, irritated as well as weakened.
Asha stood patiently at the top of the hill, watching tensely, allowing Essence to heighten her senses in case Diara simply decided to attack. Elli had long since made herself scarce, concerned that the Venerate would turn her ability to manipulate the dok’en against Asha. A concern that Asha shared, if she was being honest.
The dark-haired woman glared up at Asha, coming to a slow stop by one of the fountains, perhaps fifty feet away.
“So you have made the foolish choice,” she called, a statement rather than a question. “Yet I understand. You are young. You are reckless. I will still give you this last chance to change your mind.”
Asha kept her breathing steady, despite every nerve being taut. “No.”
Diara sighed, looking almost bored. “You could save the man you love, and continue protecting your country. What more could you ask for? Why won’t you accept this offer?”
“Because I don’t trust you,” Asha replied simply. “Perhaps you’re telling the truth, perhaps you’re not. But I know who you are, and I know the things you’ve done.”
Diara’s expression darkened further. “I see,” she said. “Then it seems that we have nothing more to say to one another.”
She vanished.
Asha breathed in the cool, sharp air; she had been watching, waiting for this moment. She had seen the way Diara’s muscles had tensed. Saw, in a fraction of a second, the terrifyingly fast footsteps as they bent blades of grass. Spotted the hazy blur against the horizon off to her left.
Her instincts—honed over the past week of constant punishment for failure—kicked in. Her body was already flooded to bursting with Essence, allowing her to move with a grace and speed impossible for any other human.
She flickered forward, toward the blur. Drew the steel that was hanging at her side and thrust hard, as fast as she had ever done before.
Asha’s arm shivered as the blade struck home.
She gasped, feeling almost as stunned as Diara looked as the Venerate appeared abruptly at the end of her blade, scarlet blood already beginning to seep from the deep wound. Asha snarled and thrust again, forcing herself closer, pushing it deeper as the other woman batted feebly at the steel, clearly in shock. The sword had caught Diara in the stomach—not a killing blow, but a serious one.
Asha reached out. There was no time for hesitation or sportsmanship here. She needed to incinerate the Venerate, and the only way to do that without being blocked was through physical contact.
Diara recovered.
It happened so fast that Asha didn’t comprehend it for a second. One moment her hand was almost to Diara’s forehead; the next the woman was lurching away, ripping herself off the blade by sheer force of will, screaming in fury and pain as bright droplets of crimson sprayed the air. Asha took a half step after her and unleashed a molten torrent of energy at the Venerate, but it dissipated against an invisible wall almost a foot from Diara’s face.
Diara vanished again; Asha tensed but the telltale signs this time said that the woman was retreating, moving back almost to where she had started. Asha directed another scything beam of energy at the point at which she anticipated Diara was going to stop, but even as she did so she could feel her stomach twisting into a knot of fear.
“El take it,” snarled Diara, stumbling as she appeared, hands covered in blood as she clutched at where the sword had struck home. She was standing slightly to the left of where Asha had aimed her Essence; to Asha’s horror her opponent straightened, the stomach wound already almost fully healed. The Venerate’s eyes blazed as they focused on Asha.
“You will pay for that,” she promised.
Asha took a deep breath, and attacked with everything she had.
The world became a whirlwind of fire and chaos, Asha running and leaping, constantly moving and surrounding herself in swathes of deadly fire, which not only forced Diara to focus on protecting herself, but better revealed exactly where the other woman was as she scythed through it with her kan shield. Several times more Diara attempted to attack, only for Asha to anticipate correctly—or correctly enough—and either dodge or, in some cases, actually try a counterstrike. None were anywhere near as successful as her first effort, though, and Diara’s relatively cautious attacks came closer and closer to landing, a few even scoring hits and causing Asha to stagger, barely recovering in time to deflect the next.
The palace grounds were in cinders, with shattered or melted stone and ground scorched clear of foliage all that remained. Still Diara worried at her, blinking in and out of sight every few seconds. Sometimes it would be to attack; other times it would simply be to force Asha to react, to focus on where she might be. Diara started sending out curling swathes of kan as distractions, creating disturbances in the swirling, fiery Essence that looked similar to the ones made by her Disruption shield, more than once forcing Asha to hesitate longer than she could afford.
In the midst of it all—in a surreal, out-of-body way—Asha found herself surprised. She was resisting one of the Venerate. One of the most powerful people to ever have lived, and Asha was holding her own.
It couldn’t last, though, of course.
Asha lashed out in rhythm at what she could have sworn was Diara launching another attack, only to discover that she was thrusting at empty air. She turned too late, reacted too slowly to the sudden shadow at her shoulder. The dark dagger plunged into her back, forcing its way through the Essence armor, kan rapidly infecting her body and sealing away all that power beyond her grasp. She lashed out with what Essence she had left, but it wasn’t enough.
She went to her knees, pain shooting through her spine as her eyes rolled toward her attacker.
Diara was a ghastly sight, even though she was already healing. She was naked, every inch of her flesh—including her face—burned away, scorched, black and red. Her bared teeth were too visible through missing lips that were gradually filling out again, blistered skin easing and then covered over.
Diara had fooled her, Asha realized vaguely. She almost laughed. She had been tracking movements through the fiery Essence first, and then verifying them by looking for imprints on the ground and the telltale blur of motion. Diara had realized that. Had faked moving with a kan shield again, but this time allowed herself to be burned nearly to death in order to conceal her true whereabouts.
Asha wished that she could take comfort in moral victories right now.
“I’ll tell Davian you’ll be waiting for him,” hissed the monstrosity that was the Venerate as her outer layer of skin began to reform, the last of the Essence-fire dying around her as she extinguished it with kan.
She stabbed again, ferocious, eyes wild. Asha barely felt the steel slip into her chest.
Her breathing grew sharp, panicked. Her vision became hazy.
She focused, using every remaining scrap of her concentration. She could still see the connected Reserves, inaccessible though they now were.
She’d considered this, though she knew it was ill-advised. Incredibly risky. Stupid, even.
Except that there were no other options, now.
She forced her eyes open again to find Diara—her face restored—peering down at her, expression coldly triumphant.
“You put up quite a fight, but there’s nothing left for you to do now, girl,” she said in smug satisfaction. “You were never going to be able to beat me.”
Asha tried to respond, but her breath caught; blood was filling her lungs. She coughed instead, swallowing her words.
Diara smiled. “Slow down. Try again,” she said, relaxed now that her victory was assured. Her Disruption shield seemed to have dropped, too.
Asha leaned forward so that her mouth was close to Diara’s ear.
“I said, ‘I know,’” she rasped weakly.
The thin sliver of Essence was snaking into Diara’s ear before the Venerate knew what was happening.
Diara didn’t even register it at first; she had been entirely focused on Asha, not anticipating anything from behind. Then something plainly warned her—a moment of sensation, a feeling—and her eyes went wide.
She screamed.
She fell back, agonized shrieks only growing in intensity as the kan barrier separating Asha from Essence vanished. Asha gasped as energy flooded to her wounds; she scrambled backward away from the Venerate and the glowing figure now standing behind her.
Garadis stared grimly down, another thread of Essence sliding out from his hand and lodging itself in Diara’s other ear. Her entire head began to glow.
“You drew me here, and risked my life in the process,” he said to Asha, ignoring the shrieks. “Had she caught even a hint of my presence, I would be dead.”
“Didn’t have much choice,” choked Asha, still recovering, her gaze fixed in horror on the writhing woman. “What are you doing to her?”
“Hurting her mind. Making her unfocused, unable to manipulate kan.” Garadis’s words were calm but something in his eyes was feral, more so than Asha had ever seen before. He walked around in front of the Venerate, so that she could see who it was that was hurting her. “She is reaping her own harvest, Ashalia. Do not feel pity for her.”
A blade of Essence lashed out, and suddenly Diara’s arm was dropping to the ground and rolling away, cleanly severed. There was no blood.
Diara’s screams somehow increased in pitch and intensity again.
“Stop.” Asha stumbled weakly to her feet. “Surely you can just knock her out.”
“And where would the justice be in that?” asked Garadis, his tone controlled. There was something underneath it, though. A hardness that made Asha shiver. “There is no point in hesitating here, Ashalia.”
“Stop.” Asha said the word with more authority this time, stepping forward and raising her hands threateningly. “Caeden said that if she dies in here, Gassandrid will be able to tell. He will just kill her in reality and let her come back in a different body. This would be for nothing.”
Garadis ignored her.
Asha let white energy ignite around both her hands. Already her Essence was nearly finished its restoration of her body. “I will stop you by force if I have to,” she said harshly, still slightly out of breath.
There was nothing for a few seconds, and then finally Garadis scowled. He gestured sharply and Diara’s screams cut short, the naked woman slumping to the ground. She was, Asha was relieved to see, unconscious but alive.
“Where is Tal’kamar?” asked Garadis, breathing heavily.
“I don’t know,” admitted Asha, head still spinning. “He was supposed to be here.”
