The Light of All That Falls, page 54
A booming, resounding clang echoed from the entrance, making everyone flinch. Another followed, and then another, and then another.
“The Resolute Door,” murmured Nashrel, his eyes wide.
The entrance was already lit again by Essence, this time generated by a group of perhaps twenty Gifted, who were watching with panicked expressions as the thick iron in front of them was slowly, impossibly bent inward a little more with each blow. They flinched at every thundering strike from outside.
Caeden drew a deep breath. “Go,” he said, addressing Ishelle as well as Nashrel. “Take everyone you can and get to the Sanctuary. The Cyrariel—the Conduit—won’t drain you now.” He hesitated. “Stay in there. Don’t try the catacombs unless you have no choice.” Ishelle would be able to find her way, but if she succumbed to the eletai halfway through…
Nashrel opened his mouth to protest, but something in Caeden’s expression must have convinced him, because he snapped it shut again. He hurried over to the group by the door, giving them swift instructions.
Ishelle looked at him. “Are you sure? I thought…”
“I have an idea, but anyone else here will just get in the way.” Caeden didn’t have time to be tactful. “And if I fail, I don’t want everyone else dying because I made a mistake.” He vacillated, then dug into his pocket and pressed the white Travel Stone into her hand. “This will take you to Erran and the others. If what I’m about to try doesn’t work, get as many people through as you can before the Essence in it runs out—and even if it does work, they could still use your help against Desriel. I doubt any more Gifted will be willing to go, but there’s not much point in your staying here now.”
Ishelle frowned as she accepted the Vessel. She looked as if she wanted to ask questions, but instead just touched him encouragingly on the shoulder before hurrying away back down the tunnel after the rest of the retreating Gifted.
Eventually Caeden stood alone in the fifty-foot-high main tunnel of Tol Athian, lit only by the small globe of Essence in front of him, the crashes of the door being bashed down echoing away behind him into the darkness. He’d been here before, against the Blind. He could do this.
He didn’t have Licanius this time, but he had something better.
His memories.
He extended his senses, using kan to crack open the dormant line that would normally have lit the tunnel and seeking back along it, probing deeper and deeper into Tol Athian’s machinery. Down the Cyrariel, deep into its bowels.
He hit the Cyrarium.
He almost lost focus at the size of the thing; even remembering the size of the Cyrarium they’d built to power the ilshara, this one seemed especially large. It wasn’t full—Caeden wondered if it would even be possible to fill such a Vessel—but there was still almost more Essence here than he could comprehend.
Just like the one he’d made in the Menaath Mountains, the Cyrarium was all but impregnable—which was why Gassandrid had targeted the machinery drawing Essence up into the Tol. Usually that would have been impregnable, too, but the attack had come from deep within, behind almost all the protections. It was the smallest gap in the defenses, one added by design so that corrections and alterations could potentially be made to the Tol. Gassandrid had exploited it perfectly.
He wiped a bead of sweat from his brow. He couldn’t simply tap the Essence with kan, here. A Cyrarium was always built with specific purposes in mind, and it allowed Essence to be withdrawn from it only in a certain way. Even for Caeden, with thousands of years of experience behind him, it was difficult.
He sucked the Essence along the line, breathing out as it finally reached the tunnel and he saw the golden light creeping along, gradually illuminating the depths of Tol Athian once again.
Another boom sounded behind him, followed by a screeching of torn metal.
The light finally reached him, and he carefully sliced through the retaining kan, letting the raw Essence spill out and be drawn into him.
Another boom, this one ominously followed by a cracking sound. Screeches and shrieks and the low, buzzing thrum of the eletai were audible now through the cracks in the door.
He gritted his teeth. Drew more Essence, as much as he could and then kept drawing, carefully connecting the line he had created to his own Reserve. It was loose, temporary, with decay already affecting the energy. But he thought it would be enough.
The door was halfway off its hinges now, and a black, dripping spear poked through, straining against the iron. Then another.
Caeden assessed the door. One more hit and it was about to collapse anyway.
He threw Essence at it.
The Resolute Door ripped off its last hinges and exploded outward, two twenty-foot-high walls of metal careening away faster than the eye could follow, smashing into the eletai gathered beyond in a shrieking shower of viscera and flying limbs. The monsters not hit by the doors hovered as if in shock; there was an odd second of everything being perfectly motionless, Caeden alone in the entrance to the mountainside against the roiling black cloud that confronted him.
Then the cloud descended, and Caeden unleashed the Essence that he’d been drawing from the Cyrarium.
He twisted it with kan as it left him, forcing it hotter and hotter until the flames were a pale, ethereal blue and he could see the stone on either side of the entrance beginning to turn red and melt away. Grimly he stalked forward, placing himself in the very entrance, and began to expand the range of his blaze.
Eletai were hurling themselves against him; just as with Tol Athian’s entrance, they knew that their bodies would absorb the Essence, gradually drain it, make it more and more difficult for Caeden to use. But he wasn’t going to let it go.
Slowly the creatures began to thin out, and Caeden pushed even farther. Red-white fire scorched the air for fifty feet in a semicircle away from the Tol’s entrance. Then a hundred. Then two hundred.
Finally the last of the furious shrieks were gone, the sound of buzzing had vanished. Only silence remained.
Caeden trembled at the effort of sustaining what he was doing, but he still didn’t let the power go. There would be no one left alive in the city, but the eletai had wreaked havoc among its citizens. If he didn’t do this—and do it now—then they would have thousands more of the creatures to contend with by this time tomorrow.
Swallowing, he drew more from the Cyrarium. More. Pooled it outside himself when his body could take no more.
Unleashed it.
Ilin Illan exploded.
Waves of rippling, rolling fire raced along its streets, consuming everything in its path. First the Upper District vanished beneath the burning blue and white, then the Middle, and finally the Lower District and the docks. Buildings caught fire and collapsed; those carved of the pure white stone began to glow an unsettling red and then reluctantly melted into the ground.
Finally, gasping and dizzy, Caeden released the flow of Essence.
He stood there, panting for several seconds, lit by fire.
Then he turned back to the entrance to the Tol, still trembling. His work here was done. There was no point in staying, navigating the petty politics of the Council, having to explain himself at every turn.
It was time to see if Asha was still alive.
But there was someone he needed to fetch, first.
Chapter 33
Asha watched Diara’s sleeping form from the other side of the room, arms crossed pensively.
The beauty visible out the bedroom window was lost on her this morning. It had been almost an entire day since Garadis had rendered Diara helpless, now. The Venerate’s inability to access Essence or kan at all was typified by her misshapen form under the covers, the stump of her severed arm sealed but not healing any faster than a normal person’s injury would.
She had stirred briefly only a few times since their battle, as far as Asha had been able to tell. She was securely bound; uncomfortably so, but Asha didn’t particularly care at this point. She had kept watch as often as she could, Garadis briefly taking over when she needed to sleep.
Asha had acceded that that was necessary, even if she still didn’t trust the Lyth around Diara. Her options were few. Elli had offered to stand guard, but Asha didn’t want to take the chance if she could avoid it. She liked Elli, but ultimately, the woman was part of the dok’en. She couldn’t help but feel a mild concern that Diara would be able to turn her, to Control her somehow.
She stared out the window for a while, so lost in thought that she almost didn’t register when the form on the bed shifted.
When she did, Asha flinched and went to her feet with alacrity, heart pounding as Diara gave a soft groan. The woman stirred further, then—realizing that she was restrained—thrashed against her bonds before quickly calming again, struggling into a position in which she could raise her head and look around. She spotted Asha, blinking.
Her eyes cleared as she remembered. There was a long silence.
“So,” Diara said, bitterness in her tone. “Here we are.” She tried to shift again, pain flashing across her face. She waggled her stump of a shoulder at Asha. “I assume that you think this was justified?”
“No,” Asha responded evenly. “But don’t expect sympathy, either. You came in here and tried to kill me.”
“Because you are serving the side of evil.” Diara slumped back. Suddenly she looked tired, scared, and alone, nothing like the demonic force who had invaded the dok’en. Her voice was reedy. “Do you think I wanted to kill you, Ashalia? Or anyone? No matter what you have been told, I am not a monster. I was just doing what had to be done.” She swallowed, her injury clearly painful. “So what now? Why am I still alive? Do you think that you can get information from me before you kill me? Or do you mistakenly believe that you can keep me here like this indefinitely?” She grimaced. “Garadis will not abide that, I promise you.”
Asha said nothing, still wondering at the wisdom of engaging Diara any further. She’d thought about it a lot over the past day, though, and it didn’t seem particularly risky, so long as she didn’t let anything Diara said get to her.
On the other hand, the chances of one of the Venerate letting slip important information seemed slim at best. It might well be better to simply ignore her, leave her bound in this bed and wait for Caeden to return.
Diara’s eyes suddenly narrowed.
“It’s Tal’kamar, isn’t it,” she said quietly. “You have been communicating with him.” She paled as Asha continued to say nothing, the silence evidently confirmation enough. “Ashalia, you must listen to me. He is not your friend. He is filling your head with one-sided arguments and half truths, twisting your perspective so that you believe that he is on the side of right. But if you just listen, really listen, to what I have to say—”
Asha shook her head. “You’re trying to unleash the Darklands.”
“With all respect to Tal, he is wrong about that. His is a theory based on speculation alone, mysticism and vague warnings from books whose origins are unknown—all while denying the word of the one who made this entire world. I am not talking of some distant authority figure looking down from on high, Ashalia,” Diara continued earnestly, “but an actual being. Someone with power beyond anything we could imagine. The only one capable of fighting this prison.”
“You mean Shammaeloth.”
“I mean El.” Diara’s voice was filled with quiet confidence. “Tal’kamar has far too great an opinion of himself, and far too poor a one of us. Do you think that we would not know if we were dealing with Shammaeloth? Do you think that we could deceive ourselves about such an important thing, the central tenet of our lives, for thousands of years?” She shook her head. “I understand that you tell yourself what you must, Ashalia. That your drive is to survive above all else. But that does not make you right.”
“So instead I should just listen to you and give up. Just… die,” said Asha with a snort.
Diara sighed. “This version of you would end, Ashalia—but this version of you isn’t you. All beings are made up of a series of choices; if those choices are not our own, then who are we? Why fight to keep a version of yourself that is nothing more than a character in a play, reciting lines written by someone else?” She shook her head. “Even if I am wrong. If we are working for Shammaeloth and El is truly in charge. Think back on the mistakes you’ve made, Ashalia. Think back on the worst decision you have ever made. Now—imagine that I revealed to you that I had manipulated you into it. Not Controlled you, but Read you so thoroughly that I knew exactly how you would react to things, and then tailored everything to lead you into that choice—which, if I had that much power, is the equivalent of Controlling you.” Diara locked eyes with Asha. “What would you do to get away from that? To try and free yourself, and others, from such terrible tyranny?”
Asha remained silent; Diara was just trying to get inside her head. The woman knew that she had no other way out of her present situation.
She pulled in a breath. She’d never been good at this sort of debate. Give her time to think it through, privately—perhaps put down her rebuttals on paper—and she could do so quite cogently. But in conversation, her mind simply didn’t work that way. Not to mention that the Venerate no doubt had centuries of experience debating this exact issue.
Still—Diara seemed happy to talk, and there was a chance, however slim, that the woman would let something slip.
Asha settled back, trying to look relaxed.
“Tell me about the Venerate, then,” she said. “If you truly believe that you’ve been working with El, I would be interested to hear about your history. The things you have done.”
Diara paused, cocking her head to the side before giving a small, acknowledging smile. “Very well.”
Diara began to speak—about small things, mostly, from her past. She talked of the terrible things she had done, how they haunted her but she lived with them in the knowledge that they were for a greater good. She talked of the good the Venerate had done, too. How they had saved people. Saved nations.
It was both the confession and the desperate grasping of a woman who knew her end was rapidly approaching, Asha realized after a while.
Asha didn’t need to talk much herself. Diara seemed content to wander in her stories, jumping from tales of history that Asha knew to accounts of things that had happened thousands of years ago. Despite her wariness, Asha found it all fascinating; though Diara deftly steered clear of revealing strategic information, she otherwise seemed perfectly happy just to talk. Often her stories would revolve around El, or inevitability—her perspective on which, Asha had no doubt the Venerate was trying to push. To her mild discomfort, she found it hard not to listen.
It was hours later that the ground beneath Asha’s feet shuddered slightly, and she tensed, suddenly afraid that another Shift was about to start. But the tremor quickly subsided, and she breathed a sigh of relief.
She glanced at Diara, who had cut off midsentence, clearly having felt it too. The look of fear in the other woman’s eyes was unmistakable.
“He will tell you that I am a liar,” said Diara quickly. “He will claim that I use truth to mask my lies, that I am manipulating you. That you must ignore everything I say.” She held Asha’s gaze. “And I would say the same about him. Make your own decisions as best you can, Ashalia. That is all I wish for you.”
Asha frowned, not acknowledging the comment. Diara plainly knew what the tremor meant just as well as Asha did.
Caeden had returned.
“I know, I know. I’m late,” said Caeden as he walked up the palace stairs, warm air ruffling his red hair as he gave Asha a wry nod.
Asha glared at him, torn between relief and anger, the tension of the past few days finally releasing into a vaguely happy irritation. “That’s the best you can do?”
“I’m glad you’re still alive?” Caeden held up both hands in half-amused defensiveness as Asha’s glare deepened. “Sorry. I am sorry. Truly,” he said, sincerity in his tone this time. He rubbed the back of his neck as he came to stand in front of Asha, looking embarrassed. “Believe it or not, there was a good reason.”
“I assumed,” said Asha drily.
Caeden gave a chuckle. “I just spoke to Garadis. He gave me the very briefest of explanations before demanding that I set him free of the dok’en again.” A note of admiration crept into his tone. “That was smart, bringing him back like that. Quick thinking. But I’d be interested to hear—”
“Diara’s secure. You first,” interrupted Asha.
Caeden hesitated, then gave a rueful, apologetic nod.
It took only a few minutes for him to clinically run through what had happened since he’d left—his discovery of the Venerate’s plan, his return to Ilin Illan, the attack and the destruction of the Tol’s defenses.
Asha listened mutely as he recounted the scouring of the city in fire. She had spent an entire year there, knew the city as well as anywhere. Even after the Blind, the thought of the entire place being gone was just… incomprehensible.
“That’s… a fairly good reason to be late,” she said eventually, motioning for Caeden to follow her inside. “You’re sure that Wirr and the others got away?”
“As sure as I can be. I’m hoping we can join up with him again once we’re both out of here.”
Asha balked. “But Davian—”
“I know when he gets out,” said Caeden suddenly, not looking at her. “We have time.”
Asha looked at him in bewilderment. “What?”
“Davian.” Caeden shifted. “He’ll escape from his prison in about a week. There’s little point in going to Talan Gol before that, because we won’t be able to get to him where he is right now.”
Asha stared at him, anger swirling in her chest. “How do you know?” She shook her head disbelievingly. “And why are you just telling me this now?”
Caeden exhaled heavily.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t want to mention it, in case the Lyth took too long to get us the Vessel. It would only have distracted you,” he said quietly. “The prison he is in is a place called Zvaelar. Everyone who goes there is sent to the past. I was there with him, for a time, many years ago. It’s complicated,” he assured her, seeing her expression. “I’ll tell you more about it if we have time. The point being, he is all right. He and Licanius will just have to wait a little longer.”
