The Light of All That Falls, page 65
Asha didn’t notice him, didn’t realize anyone else was in the room. She shut the door again and flopped down on her bed with a heavy sigh.
“Asha,” said Davian, a little uncomfortably. He didn’t want to scare her, but he knew that his time here was short. He could already feel the little Essence he had managed to gather draining away.
Asha leaped up as if shot, scrambling nervously for the lamp beside her bed and lighting it with a shaking hand. Davian made a face and then forced himself forward again, his chains clanking obnoxiously as he moved into the dim light.
“It’s good to see you, Asha,” Davian said with a tired grin, though his pulse was racing. He needed to deliver this message and then deal with Rethgar.
“Is this a dream? You… you’re not real. They said you died. At Caladel.” Her voice was trembling.
“They lied.” Davian shuffled back as Asha made to get out of bed. “Please, don’t come any closer. It’s dangerous,” he insisted.
Pain immediately shot through his head, so sharp that it was barely manageable despite the Vessel he was using to dull it.
No, Davian. That was a mistake, but there is still time to correct it. Now ask her about the Shadraehin.
“Why?” asked Asha, looking confused.
“I don’t have time to explain. I’m… restricted in what I can say,” Davian admitted heavily. As he spoke he focused again on the black chain, searching for the mechanism that was allowing Rethgar to see these events. Stop that—even for a few moments—and he could relay his true message and leave. “Who is the Shadraehin?” He knew that Asha didn’t know at this point, so it was safe to ask.
“A man called Scyner. Why?”
She is lying.
“She’s telling the truth. She doesn’t know,” Davian responded aloud. He gasped in discomfort as the black chains tightened around him in response. If he could feel that much through his pain-dampening Vessel, then the intended pain must have been near unbearable. “You have my word, Rethgar,” he added with a snarl.
“Dav? What’s going on?”
Very well. Repeat the following, and this only. “We know you have met with the Shadraehin. You helped her.”
Davian did as he was told, still desperately examining the chains. There had to be a weakness that he could exploit.
“Her?” Asha looked confused. “Scyner is a man.”
Davian took a deep, shaky breath. He thought he saw something.
Time to try it.
“Scyner is just the Shadraehin’s lieutenant. A prewar, though. Don’t trust him.”
The chains flexed and pain ripped through him once again, a sure indication that Rethgar had heard. You have been warned, Davian. Repeat again. “Ashalia Chaedris, for your part in assisting the Shadows, you have been found guilty. The sentence is death.”
“Dav—” Asha had clearly seen that he was in pain, soft concern in her eyes.
“Stay back.” Davian put as much command as he could into the words, even as another wave of agony washed over him. Rethgar either didn’t understand just how much this should be hurting, or had to be wondering how Davian was still withstanding it. Reluctantly, he repeated Rethgar’s words. This was evidently the Venerate’s attempt at justifying their trying to kill Asha—making it ‘legal’ in their eyes—and yet one that still avoided revealing to her anything about her future.
“I’m a Shadow, Dav,” said Asha, and the pain in her voice was worse than anything Rethgar had done to him so far. She raised her lantern slightly, as if concerned that he somehow hadn’t noticed the black marks streaked across her face.
Davian took another slow, shaking breath, then forced a smile.
“You won’t always be, though,” he assured her gently.
Pain again, this time almost too much, even with the dampening Vessel. Davian moaned. “She doesn’t know anything. And this is the furthest we can go before Tal’kamar—”
Another wave of agony, but this time Davian saw it. The pulsing of the endpoint being activated, the stretching of kan along several different lines in unison.
He reached out and brutally squeezed the connection. Like closing a fist around a puppet’s strings, making the puppet master’s efforts futile.
The writhing black chains went gray. Froze.
The pain vanished.
Davian kept his eyes closed, his focus entirely on grasping the connection tightly enough that no matter how hard Rethgar tugged on the other end, it wouldn’t affect him. While he did this, Rethgar was cut off. Completely blind.
“They can’t hear us now, but I can’t do this for long, either.” He wished that he could see her face, just watch her as he talked to her. He missed her. Still—being in the same room, alone… it was enough, for now. “I know this must be confusing, but there’s no time to explain so you are going to have to trust me. You’ll be making a deal with the Shadraehin soon—the real one. When you do, I need you to tell her that Tal’kamar is taking Licanius to the Wells, and that the information is a gift from me. Can you do that?”
It felt… wrong, to give Nethgalla this information, valuable though he knew it was to the Ath. She was searching desperately for Tal while he was at his weakest, and it could well result in the death of Tal’s friend Asar.
And yet, even if he was responsible, it had all already happened. It was a decision already made.
He listened as Asha repeated the message verbatim, then gave a satisfied nod.
“Good. Thank you, Ash. Now, this is equally important. When you find out that I’m at Ilshan Gathdel Teth, don’t come after me. I’m fine. The Venerate can’t kill me, but they will kill you—you are the one they want. I’m just the bait. Remember that.” Gassandrid and Diara clearly knew about their relationship, would inevitably try to use his presence to draw her out. Asha was strong, and he didn’t believe that she would allow that to happen, but telling her this would hopefully strengthen her resolve—and, maybe, relieve any feelings of guilt the Venerate tried to foist upon her.
He opened his eyes again, his grasp on the kan connection starting to slip as Rethgar’s jerking on the other end became more and more frantic. Black began to bleed back into the chains, and he suddenly felt terribly, terribly tired.
With a start, he realized that the Essence he’d drawn earlier was all but gone.
“Don’t tell anyone else that you saw me. Especially not me. They’ve Read… they’ve Read so many of us, now. There’s no telling whose mind is safe, these days,” he admitted, thinking back to what Gassandrid had told him. He shook his head, seeing her confusion. “I’m so sorry. You’ll understand when the time comes.”
His grip on kan finally slipped, and the chains flooded to black. He met Asha’s gaze, for a split second able to just drink in the sight of her, fixing her face in his memory once again.
Then he was lurching backward into the steel-encased chamber, Asha vanishing into the gray of the void that still cut the room in half.
He groaned as he collapsed to the ground, limbs too heavy to lift, barely conscious even as he reactivated his pain Vessel once again.
It had worked, though. He had passed on the message.
To think, Asha had been living with that. Living with what must have seemed like cryptic statements since before the invasion of the Blind, unable to tell anyone. She had passed on his message to Nethgalla, too, though she had to have wondered about its purpose.
Not for the first time, he wondered how he had been so lucky as to have her in his life.
His ribs cracked as a heavy boot slammed into his chest.
“You fool,” hissed Rethgar, drawing back his leg and delivering another deliberate, vicious kick as Davian tried weakly to roll away. The black chains clinked, restricting his feeble movement. “You utter fool. I warned you. I pleaded with you.”
“Gassandrid will want me alive,” gasped Davian hazily.
“He will get you alive. We already know that,” said Rethgar disdainfully. “I can try to kill you all day long, and you will survive.” He leaned in, breathing hard, his eyes black and cold. “But El knows I am going to enjoy the trying.”
His next kick caught Davian full in the face, warm pain exploding across his cheek as it caved in, even with his suppressing Vessel still active. He tried to drag himself away and vomited, head spinning as more blows began to rain down on his back, his side, his legs. If he was hurting this much through the suppression, then his body was in bad shape. He needed Essence.
He desperately slipped his hand to his chest again, activating the Vessel that drew from his surroundings; Essence immediately began funneling from the steel plate touching his body, the readily available energy making the flow quick and steady.
And then, abruptly, it was cut off.
He summoned just enough strength to turn his head and see Rethgar, a manic rictus of a smile on his face, sliding the kan shield between him and Essence.
“I do not know how you are circumventing the chains,” said the escherii, “but that is enough. No healing. No escaping the pain, Davian. If memories are not enough to break you, then perhaps we have been going about this all wrong. Perhaps all you need is some physical encouragement.”
The chains tightened painfully around his body; his bones creaked and muscles groaned until he finally could take it no more, screaming as the bone in his arm snapped, followed by his leg bending at an unnatural angle. Rethgar watched it all with a satisfied snarl, and Davian knew that he would not stop—not even if Davian offered to tell him everything.
He rolled onto his side. The gray void still hung there; Rethgar either was unable to shut it off or was too angry to have bothered yet. Davian closed his eyes, then forced every ounce of energy into his limbs and made for it. If he could just get away…
He was almost there when the chains forced him to a halt.
“No.” Rethgar gave the chains a vicious tug, sending a blaze of pain coursing through Davian’s body. “No, it’s not that easy.” More pain. “Do you know how Lord Gassandrid punished me, after Tel’Tarthen? Do you have any idea how protected you have been, this past year?” Another shiver of agony.
Davian resisted the urge to haul against the chains, to try and make it that last few feet into the time stream. He knew that it wouldn’t work. The last vestiges of the Essence he’d managed to gather were draining away.
Desperately, he used it to activate his focus Vessel.
Kan immediately became easier to grasp; he pushed through and examined the chains again, trying to make sense of the complex mess of mechanisms. Distantly, he could sense his body failing.
There.
He snaked out a line of kan, too thin for Rethgar to see.
The blows continued, but in his fury, Rethgar hadn’t noticed.
Davian had gained control of the chains.
He tightened his mental grip over them, and pulled.
The black chains were suddenly winding around Rethgar’s body, faster than the other man could react. He cried out in shock, clearly losing his ability to grip kan; the shield around Davian vanished and he gasped as Essence flooded back into him, flowing immediately to the damaged areas of his body. Which were everywhere.
Rethgar howled as he struggled against the chains, trying to wrest back control, but Davian had him now. Slowly, inch by inch, he dragged the chains toward him. Loosening them around his own body. Forcing Rethgar another step closer.
Finally they stood together at the edge of the gray river, Rethgar’s eyes bulging with rage and disbelief.
Davian leaned forward, gritting his teeth. He gripped the escherii with his Essence-enhanced right arm, lifting him up and swiveling so that he was halfway into the gray void.
Escherii or not, Rethgar had a source. He could no more withstand the rift than anyone else.
“For Caladel,” he whispered hoarsely in Rethgar’s ear.
He let go.
Rethgar screamed; for a moment he locked eyes with Davian, pure panic in his expression as the gray current dragged him in.
Then he was gone.
The chains vanished, melting back into the steel floor, and Davian sucked in Essence hungrily as the void to the side finally faded away. His panic subsided as bones began to knit together again, his breath coming easier, his head clearer.
Finally he shakily stood, examining the spot where Rethgar had disappeared. A feeling of emptiness washed over him now that it was done.
He made for the door, still stumbling a little as he did so. He had taken careful note of the route, knew his way back to the safe room Nethgalla had shown him.
It took twenty minutes, all told—twenty minutes of creeping, using his invisibility Vessel to avoid notice, stumbling along and doing everything he could to stay focused. But he made it first to the darkstone passageway, and then to the hole in the wall Nethgalla had told him about. It was less than a foot high and perhaps three wide; he had to lie flat on his stomach and worm his way inside, praying that the tiny tunnel didn’t get any smaller. After a minute of fumbling his way along, he risked sending a sliver of Essence ahead of him to light the way. It was hard to do with all the darkstone around, but eventually he managed a steady light.
A few minutes later, he was emerging into the windowless, doorless, featureless cave.
He collapsed against the wall and let his light go out again, just breathing as the darkness enveloped him, the emotions of everything that had happened finally hitting home.
He stayed that way, head in his hands, for a long time.
Chapter 41
Caeden slammed his elbow hard into the Desrielite soldier’s shoulder and then issued a more careful strike to the back of the head, ignoring the frozen rictus on the man’s face as he moved smoothly forward and on to the next enemy.
The forest surrounding the small clearing—and Caeden’s opposition—barely moved as he worked, scything through the small detachment of soldiers, breaking bones and knocking men unconscious with each clinical motion. Shadows inched along the ground as what was presumably a stiff breeze shook the branches above, and the clean noonday sun dappled through leaves, glistening where it hit red spurting in slow motion from smashed noses and mouths vomiting teeth.
He took a moment to glance back at the bright, frozen tableau of pain he was creating. This took so much more focus than simply killing. He had to be paying attention to the strength of each hit, always assessing just how hard he could strike from within the time bubble, measuring blows against the speed of motion outside. Sweat beaded on his brow and trickled into his eyes, as much from concentration as from physical exertion.
But it felt… good. Not good that he was hurting people, but good that he was choosing not to do worse. He hadn’t fought like this in… how long? Death had been such a constant companion that for centuries he had just accepted its inevitable presence, turned off the piece of his mind that was sickened by his bringing it.
Refusing to kill now—now, when it would be easier, when it would be considered by many to be justified—was freeing. As if he was in some small way breaking the shackles of his past self, reaffirming that life did matter. All life, not just the lives of the people he liked or needed.
The last man in his immediate area fell and Caeden let his time bubble drop, gasping, grateful for the mental respite. The sounds of the clearing flooded in on him: birds and animals had abandoned the area, only the soft breeze sighing through the trees and the distant rumble of battles elsewhere. He glanced behind him, assessing each of the dozen forms on the ground. Injured, some of them badly. But all still breathing.
He put his hands on his knees, catching his breath. Fire and wind roared somewhere down the hill, where he had left the Shadows to take care of the Desrielites without Traps. A short way off to his left there were shining lights among the trees, men and women shouting in alarm; he winced as he saw one man appear briefly in midair, hurtling through branches with a thick tendril of Essence wrapped around him before slamming hard into the trunk of a tree. His shouting, along with the others’, quickly went silent.
A second later Asha soared through the air and into the clearing, landing a few feet in front of him and skidding smoothly to a stop, her Essence armor pulsing blindingly bright. She examined the area before turning to him.
“They’re dealt with,” she said, sounding as dazed as Caeden felt. She glanced down the hill, where the Shadows were trudging up toward them, apparently having won their battle, too. “That went well.”
Caeden nodded, once again eyeing Asha’s armor with more than a hint of respect. Making that required not just a large amount of Essence, but significant skill. The girl truly had put her time in the dok’en to good use. “There will be more,” he said soberly.
The message Wirr had sent him via Asha had given them some warning, but he had still dared to hope that things might not have progressed this far. They had been set upon almost immediately after passing through the Gate into the forest, though, stumbling across a large contingent of enemy soldiers almost before they’d had the chance to organize themselves.
And Gil’shar on this side of the Devliss meant that Wirr and his people hadn’t been enough.
He straightened as Shana and another dozen Shadows jogged up, each one holding a Vessel. The woman’s face was hard as she scanned the clearing behind Caeden.
“You’re leaving them alive?” she asked abruptly.
“They’re not going anywhere. They don’t need to die,” replied Caeden.
Shana was silent for a few seconds. “So you’re leaving them to fight again later,” she finally said flatly. “Despite us being at war.”
“They won’t be able to fight. They’re all quite thoroughly injured. They will be nothing but a strain on the Gil’shar’s resources,” said Caeden firmly.
