The Light of All That Falls, page 53
Caeden levered himself up, letting Essence flow into his aching muscles. With the kan cloud gone, his Reserve would refill now, but he was still weak. “Vessels. They were Vessels. Made to attack the Tol’s defenses,” he said softly, horror flowing through his veins as he assessed what had just happened. “No way to do that except from the inside. Close to the machinery itself, to the flow of Essence from the Cyrarium.” The Venerate must have been concerned about Andarra’s ability to stop the Desrielites—or perhaps they had planted the sha’teth here early on as a fail-safe, and had simply decided that now was a good time to make use of them. They’d known that the Tol was one of the few secure buildings in Andarra, one that even they would have enormous trouble breaching if necessary.
“Did we stop it?” asked Ishelle.
“No.” Caeden’s mind raced as shock and fear warred for control. “You shut the Gate before they got anyone else inside, but the damage to the Tol is done. We have… I don’t know. Minutes. Maybe a half hour.” He gritted his teeth. “I should have seen this coming. I’ve seen it before. Aelrith had Gate mechanisms built into his body. Davian would be able to do it, too.” He rubbed his face. “These ones must have had a trigger that the Venerate could activate from elsewhere.”
He tried to stand, but his body hadn’t fully recovered from the impact against the wall and he stumbled, falling back to his knees.
“We need to get Erran and the others, then,” said Ishelle, not moving to assist him, her expression still cautious.
“They’re gone—or going, anyway. Through a Gate,” said Caeden. “And even if they could come back, I hope that they are smart enough not to. This is all to stop Wirr, Erran, and everyone with them from doing exactly what they are doing. The Venerate only care about ensuring the success of Desriel’s attack. This is a distraction.” He paused, feeling the Travel Stone Scyner had given him in his pocket. It would let some of them escape, but the portal would shut too soon once the Essence in the Vessel ran out. Not enough time to get everyone through. “There’s no time to build another Gate to get everyone out of here, either. It’s just us now. At least there’s no way they could have anticipated that I would be here when this happened. I can make a difference,” he finished, hoping rather than confident that it was true.
Ishelle seemed distracted, frowning into the distance before acknowledging Caeden’s statement. “Then we should get to the entrance.”
Caeden staggered to his feet, successfully this time. He nodded tightly and started toward the door.
Ishelle took one step to follow him, and collapsed.
Caeden dashed over to her, confused. He hadn’t seen her take any injuries.
Ishelle looked up at Caeden, pain in her expression, and he recoiled. The whites of her eyes had darkened. Turned a murky, disturbing gray.
“Go,” said Ishelle. “They need you up there.”
Caeden closed his eyes in frustration, understanding. Her connection to the eletai.
He made to go for the door.
His feet wouldn’t move.
He pressed against the imaginary barrier briefly before turning back, dropping to his knees beside Ishelle. “Not without helping you first.”
“You have to—”
“I’m bound not to do anything that would harm an Augur.” He said the words through gritted teeth. “And you are dying, now that the defenses are down. We both know it, so shut up and let me save you.”
Ishelle wavered, then used him to haul herself determinedly back to her feet and staggered toward the door, gesturing weakly for him to follow. “Then you can help me on the way back,” she said hazily.
Caeden shook his head and pressed her gently down into a seated position again. “It’s a good thought,” he admitted, “but this is delicate work. It will go quicker if you’re holding still and I’m not trying to walk at the same time.”
“You’d think after a few thousand years or so, you’d be able to multitask,” grumbled Ishelle, but she slumped back to the floor without further argument. She was silent for a long moment, then shivered.
“I can already feel them,” she whispered. She sounded terrified, as if the act of speaking might draw the attention of the eletai in her head. “They haven’t noticed me yet. But the barrier that was keeping them out is gone.”
“Let me know if anything changes,” said Caeden calmly. He glanced back at the door. “I will do everything I can for you, understand?”
Ishelle nodded, eyes wide. Caeden could see a tear trickling down her cheek, though she quickly brushed it away.
“They talk about you. All the time.” Her voice was little more than a whisper.
Caeden leaned forward, looking at her queryingly. Ishelle ignored him, her eyes roving, as if suddenly unable to focus on him.
“They say you are a monster,” she said eventually. “They showed me things. The things you’ve done. The things you’ve said.” She refocused on him. “They say you aim to kill all of us. All of the Augurs.”
Caeden hesitated.
“Yes,” he said. “To stop the evil that lies beyond the Boundary, we have to close the rift. To close the rift, every person able to draw kan through it must die. Myself included.” He held up a hand. “But I’ve also been bound not to kill any Augurs. Right now, I just want to help you.”
“Do you think that’s even possible?” She squinted at him hazily. “No lies, please. I’m not in the mood.”
Caeden said nothing for a second.
“Extended connection to the Hive has always killed,” he finally admitted. “Some people hold on for years of exposure, others only days—I don’t know whether it’s down to mental strength, the severity of the infection, or something else entirely. But inevitably, they just… fade. Our belief was that their minds joined the Hive, somehow, without their physical bodies changing.” He gave her an apologetic look. “Of all the Banes, the eletai are the ones we’ve always comprehended the least. When I left Talan Gol, the Venerate still had people studying them, observing them, trying to understand them more.”
“Why?”
Caeden shrugged. “To better control them. They do our bidding, for the most part, and do not attack if we tell them not to. But they are far less reliable than the other Banes. The most independent of them, I think. The strongest willed.” The information came to him almost as he spoke, dredged from some back corner of his mind, as so much had been recently.
“Scyner already tried to help me,” said Ishelle, a touch uneasily. “It… did not go well.”
Caeden grimaced. “From what I heard, he used you to get information about the attack. Whether he actually tried to help you is another question entirely.” He held her gaze. “Even if he did make a genuine attempt to weaken the connection, I don’t believe that he has the knowledge or ability to do so. I might.”
Ishelle exhaled heavily. “You are asking for a lot of trust, for a man who wants me dead.”
A flicker in the lines of Essence above caught Caeden’s eye. “Strange times,” he agreed bleakly. “If you can give it, then I can start right now, but I will need to Read you.”
Ishelle wavered, then indicated her agreement. “I’ve been keeping everything personal in a Lockbox, anyway.”
“Good. One of the prevailing theories is that absorption into the Hive is dependent on personal memories, as those seem to survive the integration process best. Your Lockbox may well be helping.”
“I’ll try to keep that in mind,” said Ishelle with a weak grin.
Caeden gave a gentle snort of amusement and then walked forward, at Ishelle’s nod placing two fingers against her forehead.
He pushed through kan, into Ishelle’s mind.
“El,” he whispered, recoiling immediately, barely holding the connection. He’d seen inside plenty of people’s minds—people with mental illnesses, people with little but darkness inside them. But this…
There were just waves of voices, thoughts crashing in a dizzying maelstrom around him, images and memories swirling in crazed, unpredictable ways everywhere he looked. It was as if he were in the midst of a hurricane, and only the eye of the storm—in this case, Ishelle’s Lockbox—stood still, protected by what looked like a Disruption shield. Everything else was ablaze with dizzying color and light and motion, making him nauseous.
He kept to the edge of her mind, small and quiet, doing his best to avoid notice. Making adjustments here and there, adding tiny pieces of hardened kan to deflect or mute signals, slowly but surely dampening the effect that the connection would be having on Ishelle. It was a slow process, though—too slow. The time it would take to fully seal her off was time that he didn’t have.
He could see it now: the link, thin and odd looking though it was, connecting Ishelle’s mind to the eletai Hive. Letting these things in uninhibited. No wonder Scyner hadn’t been able to spot it. He could restrict it easily enough now that he knew what to look for, he thought, maybe even sever it if there was a way to get around that hard kan layer…
He froze, lifting his vision back to Ishelle’s mind.
Everything had stopped. The maelstrom had frozen in place, and yet it was… intense.
Watching him.
He acted on instinct, jamming hardened kan around the breach just as everything began screaming toward him. It all happened in moments; suddenly it was as though his mind were being hit by a falling mountain, less pushed and more smashed backward, painfully forced away from the connection. He groaned, dizzy, as the chamber gradually came back into focus.
“Are… you all right?” murmured Ishelle, seeing his expression.
Caeden assessed and then nodded, exhaling. “That was…” He gazed at the young woman, trying not to show his concern. How did she manage it? Her mind was all but wreckage, and yet she stared back, determined. Scared, but fighting. “They realized that I was there. Broke the connection between us. I restricted the flow between you and the Hive, but…” He held up a hand. “May I try again?”
Ishelle dipped her head, and Caeden placed two fingers against her forehead again, closing his eyes.
Nothing happened.
It was as if a wall of hardened kan sat in his path now. Complete, impenetrable.
Ishelle’s mind, somehow, was completely sealed off.
He shook his head, dazed. “I can’t get back in.”
“They are wary now,” said Ishelle, sounding absent. “I think… I think they’ve only just realized that others could access my mind, too. They considered it a breach into the Hive itself, and they’ve… shored it up.”
Caeden nodded slowly. They’d never been able to Read eletai; the creatures’ natural construction seemed to block any kan connection to their minds. This was a little different, but just as effective.
“How do you feel?” he asked pensively.
“Better.” Ishelle, to his relief, sounded sharper. More aware. “Can we go now?”
“Let’s,” said Caeden, relieved not to feel any compulsion to do otherwise. He had helped Ishelle as well as he could, for now.
The young woman scrambled to her feet and they began moving. Ishelle walked to the side and a step behind; he knew without looking that she was still staring at him, every muscle tense.
“Tell me about the Hive,” she said abruptly, tentatively.
Caeden glanced at the young woman as they moved swiftly through the Tol’s deserted corridors. “It’s what we call their… collective consciousness, I suppose,” he explained gently. He chewed his lip. “I’ve been told about the attack that you survived. That’s rare, but I have heard of it happening before. The mental connection occurs, but the physical changes are prevented.” He rubbed his chin. “Not with an Augur, though. That is… interesting.”
“Interesting?” repeated Ishelle, arching an eyebrow at him.
Caeden flushed slightly. “Sorry.” For just a moment, he had forgotten that she was a person. Had been looking at her from an almost academic standpoint.
Was that something the old him would have done? He gritted his teeth. He had to be wary of attitude changes like this, to be aware of when he started thinking about people without thinking of them. It had happened a few times over this past year as his memories had returned, and every time he realized what he was doing, it made him deeply uncomfortable.
He clung to that feeling.
“I suppose that there are worse things to be,” sighed Ishelle, finally relaxing slightly, thankfully appearing to take no offense. She had deep, dark circles beneath her eyes, but she seemed calm. That was good.
She held out a hand as they walked. “Let’s start again. Ishelle.”
Caeden clasped it warmly. “Caeden. It is good to meet you, Ishelle.”
Another fading flicker ran along the lines of Essence illuminating the hallway, and Ishelle chuckled drily. “If not under the best circumstances. I am… sorry, for that introduction. I should know not to trust what they show me.”
“Don’t be. I don’t believe that the Hive is especially manipulative,” said Caeden grimly. There was no point in trying to hide anything anymore. “I have done many, many things in my past of which I am deeply ashamed. But I am here to help now.”
There was silence for a while.
“Was it true, what the sha’teth said? That you let Davian’s school get attacked?” Ishelle asked quietly.
Caeden winced. That day had been at the forefront of his mind as he’d made his way here. His meeting with Ilseth was hard to forget, even alongside his true purpose at the Tol that day.
It had seemed so logical, at the time. He’d already known that the school at Caladel would be destroyed—Davian himself had told him, in Deilannis all those years ago—and he’d also known, of course, that Davian and Wirr would both escape. Even if he had called off the attack entirely, it would have happened at some point regardless—but more importantly, would have let the Venerate know that there was something important to him there. Allowing the attack to go ahead had by far been the most sensible option.
Would he make the same decision again, though? He wasn’t so sure.
“Yes,” he said, not attempting to mask the sorrow in his tone.
Ishelle watched him, then just nodded. She’d probably been shown worse by the eletai, anyway, Caeden realized morosely.
“And… have you really been to the lowest level?” she eventually pressed, curiosity threaded through her voice now.
Caeden considered not answering.
“I have,” he said after a few more steps. “Twenty-four levels beneath this one. The journey there is…” He trailed off, shaking his head. “I do not recommend it.”
“Noted,” said Ishelle. “And did you find the ‘Mirrors’?”
Caeden gave her a mild glare to indicate what he thought of the flow of questions, but Ishelle just stared brazenly back. He sighed.
“I did.” He paused hopefully, but Ishelle’s expression indicated that she was going to keep pressing. “The Shalis—a people I once knew—called them the Mirrors of Truth. My friend once told me that they were the Builders’ greatest creation. And also what destroyed them.” He walked without talking for a few seconds, mind wandering. He hadn’t discussed this, hadn’t even thought about this, in a long time.
“They’re Vessels,” he finally continued. “A grand white hallway of hundreds of the things, lining it. You have to look into each one before moving on, but at the end, you are allowed to remember only one of them. One truth that they show you, personal to you. Your life. And once through, you can never go back. Ever,” he finished softly.
He still remembered the cathedral-like archways flooded with what looked exactly like sunlight, though there was no way it could have been, that far underground. The enormous mirrors flanking him for what felt like miles and years. He remembered passing them but whenever he focused, all he could see in them was his own reflection.
In all but the second-to-last one.
“Still. That sounds like it might be useful,” observed Ishelle.
“I thought the same. I thought that I could finally… be sure. That there of all places, I would be able to find the certainty I had been looking for.” He laughed hollowly. “And I did, in a roundabout way. Just not in the manner I was hoping.”
Ishelle hesitated.
“So what truth did they reveal to you?” she asked, quietly this time. “What did you choose to remember?”
Caeden glanced across at her, smiling sadly as voices began filtering down to them from up ahead.
“Perhaps another time,” he said gently.
They finally reached the main tunnel, throngs of concerned Gifted milling everywhere between clusters of sapped-looking refugees. They hadn’t been among the crowd for more than a couple of minutes when someone recognized them.
“You!”
Caeden tensed as a figure raced toward them, waving frantically. He recognized him after a moment, though he didn’t relax. Elder Eilinar, head of Tol Athian.
“The Tol is no longer getting Essence,” said the Elder abruptly as he came to a stop in front of Caeden. His tone indicated that while he wasn’t necessarily pleased to see Caeden, he would be more than willing to accept his help.
“I know,” said Caeden.
The Elder gestured, the crowd parting more readily for him than it had for Caeden and Ishelle. They jogged toward the entrance as fast as they could.
“She should stay back,” said Elder Eilinar suddenly, nodding to Ishelle.
Caeden shook his head. “We may need her. I’ve restricted her connection to the eletai.”
“But not severed?” Nashrel shook his head. “We cannot take the chance.”
Caeden was about to argue further when the Essence lines on the wall flickered again. Violently, this time.
“We still have time,” murmured Nashrel, the pleading prayer in his tone evident.
As if to mock his words, the tunnel plunged into blackness.
Sharp fear cut through the air as voices started chattering all at once. Caeden quickly supplied a ball of light, which illuminated faces twisted in sudden terror.
“What do we do?” Nashrel and Ishelle were both looking at Caeden now. In the tunnel behind them, the voices of the refugees were getting increasingly loud and frantic.
