Radiant: Towers Trilogy Book One (44 page)

The darkness
, she thought, and didn’t know how to continue. There was no darkness here, only the light of the magic rising from Eridian’s heart to meet Allenai, like two hands reaching out, touching. The magic rose between the two of them, a great turning pillar that grew with every moment, the force of the power like heat on her face, and they were singing, singing.

“Oh,” she said, and stopped struggling. She could not stand, would not stand, and the world was breaking all around her. She was breaking. Broken.

“Xhea,” Shai said, tugging sharply on the tether to get her attention. “Xhea, come on—we have to get out.”

But there were rainbows, Xhea realized, shining up through the broken floor. Not just spots of brightness, but shards of rainbows that shimmered along the melting walls. She’d never seen a rainbow as anything but gradated shades of gray. There were so many colors, she thought, each the perfect version of itself. Now she knew why people stood on Lower City street corners and pointed them out to their children; why they watched them through the downpour and smiled.

Again Shai tugged, and Xhea tried to remember what she’d said. “Where?” she asked at last. “There is no out. No down. Only falling . . .” Oh, she wanted to sleep.

She looked up at Shai, the Radiant ghost, lit all around by rising power and rainbows, and that power seemed to fill her as if she were a vessel designed to hold only light. She was radiant in truth, and Xhea stared, unable to believe the depths of Shai’s blue eyes.

The walls fell down around them. Absorbed, collapsed, she did not know, did not see them go—only saw their sudden absence. Felt the shock of a wind strong enough to steal her breath and whip her hair around her face; saw a light so bright it could only be the sun. There was no crystal room anymore, only the fractured ground on which they stood.

Where was the rest of Eridian, she wondered. She saw no green, no platform surface—where had it all gone? Or was it only that they were too high to see all of the Tower-that-was, the floating structure she’d known as Eridian and soon would be no more?

She looked up, letting the morning light fall full across her face as the cold wind bit her skin and tore at her clothes. All of Allenai stretched above her, an undulating pillar too vast to comprehend, its shadow enough to eclipse the world. So close she had but to reach out her hand . . .

She was dizzy, eyes too heavy . . .

“Xhea,” Shai said, her voice clear over the wind’s howl, the Towers’ riotous song. “Take my hand.”

“I . . . I can’t . . .”

“Listen to me, okay? I’m getting you out of here.”

“I can’t stand,” Xhea said.
Oh, to sleep
, she thought: to sleep, to dream, to drift away on those passing clouds, all breath and feathers and light. “I can’t crawl.”

“You can,” Shai said. “Just take my hand.”

Something in the ghost’s desperation reached her. It was but one thing, Xhea thought at last. The one thing that Shai had asked. She hadn’t asked to be saved or protected; she hadn’t asked to die. Only this thing, this one small thing.

Xhea lifted her hand. She looked at the golden glow of her skin in the sunlight, dirty and smeared with blood—a perfect red, a rose’s dark kiss—but golden still. Her windborne hair was black, and her eyes, as if she were both the sun and the shadows it cast.

A soft touch, a shiver like ice across her palm, and Shai’s hand closed around hers. Did it hurt, that touch? The touch of the dead, of ghosts and memories; it should hurt, Xhea thought. Yet she felt only safe, that hand around hers, and the heartbeat echoing in her ears was steady and slow.

“Raise your foot, that’s it,” Shai said. “Now stand—I’ll help you.” Xhea felt Shai’s hands guiding her, holding her strong, and struggled to be worthy of that help. Somewhere she felt something hurting, something in her knee tearing and raw, and some part of her was afraid. Yet it was a distant part, and though it screamed and cried warnings, it was too far from her to hear, too far to heed. Holding Shai’s hand, she stood.

She glanced upward. The dark shape above them, Allenai-that-was—did it grow larger, or was it falling? She could not see its tapered tip, only the swell of its massive side, smooth like polished marble. Both, she thought. It descended slowly, steadily, impaling Eridian. The bottom swell of its lowest living platform eclipsed the sun like an unfathomably huge umbrella.

“Just these few steps. Walk with me now. I can do it, see? That’s it, that’s right.” Murmured words, more comfort in their sound than content; a voice holding her strong against the wind and the terrible pain in her knee.

A step, another, never looking down, only up at the clear arc of the sky, the descending darkness of the Tower falling upon them in slow motion, the sun reflecting from Shai’s pale hair. Another step, another.

“Shai,” Xhea said. Her voice seemed to echo forever. “I’m going to die here, aren’t I?”

“You’re not.”

“It’s going to crush me. Allenai. Your Allenai.” Up, she looked, up and up, but there was no need to peer or crane: the rounded platform of the landing bay was all but upon them, mere body lengths above and approaching without slowing. Perhaps it wouldn’t be bad, dying.

Of all the questions she’d asked all the ghosts she’d ever known, she’d never asked what it tasted like to die. Whether their last breaths were sweet, like fresh blueberries stolen from the market, the juice of each so perfect it could only be experienced with eyes closed. Whether death smelled like the first violets blooming in spring, those thin stalks struggling to rise above asphalt and stone. Whether there had been joy in their last moments, not in death or dying, but knowing, merely knowing, that they had lived.

“Look where we are.”

Xhea looked down and saw the edge at her feet. No Towers hovered close but ringed them, providing distance between the merging structures and the magic that flared up and around them like fire. The Central Spire was a distant golden light, a thin pillar stretching from near-ground to sky, glowing like a second sun. Down, she looked, down and down, and saw all the way to the ground, an impossible distance below.

“Falling . . .” she said,
is just another death
; but she could not speak the words. Lips gone numb—from cold, from magic, she did not know.

“I know,” Shai whispered. “But I need you to trust me. Can you do that?”

No words; no need for words. As the wind stole her breath, as Allenai came plunging toward them, Xhea wrapped her arms around Shai’s ghostly body and clung, burying her face in that pale hair.

It was a very long way down.

There was only the wind as they fell. It was not wind as she knew it, not a sound, not a touch, but a physical force that seemed to encompass all that she was. Her ears roared with it, her body ached with the fierce fluttering of her clothing, her hair pulled back from her face so hard and fast that it seemed she’d leave it behind. It burned, the wind, as if its cold stripped the skin from her face layer by layer, though she kept it tucked against Shai’s shoulder.

Ghostly shoulder. No protection at all. And she was falling.

A surge of sound as they passed a Tower: a sound like blown breath, the memory of a highway. And another, another. She could feel the City rushing past, even if she couldn’t see it, the tears in her eyes obscuring all but the blur of passing aircars, the glow of road buoys, the intense colors that could only be Towers.

She was falling and then light spread around her, not worked energy, woven spells and controlled intent, but pure magic, radiant and true. They didn’t glow but shone as if each were a line of distilled sunlight. Shai shouted words Xhea could neither hear nor understand, fierce in their volume and fear and joy.

The light unfurled.

Wings
, Xhea thought, staring through dazzled, windblown tears. She was falling, and great bright wings spread around her, far wider than her arms could ever stretch, as wide as the sky. They surged and stretched as they cupped the air, fanning it in great strokes. The ground was coming up below her, a rising darkness of rooftops and roadways, and the wings beat, their pounding strong enough to replace the beat of her heart.

She was falling, flying, falling.

Impact.

Xhea lay still for a very long time. She breathed, that much she knew, but little else made sense. Was she warm, cold? She could not tell. How badly was she broken? Did she bleed? Questions flared and faded unanswered.

Easier to just lie as she had fallen, her arms spread wide and face hidden in the tangled veil of her hair, her cheek resting against a pillow of stone and broken concrete. She smelled soil and road dust, grass growing, a hint of garbage burning somewhere far distant.

Breathe
, she thought.
Just breathe
. Let that be enough.

Unconsciousness drew near and pulled away, awareness sweeping in and out like the tide. Sometime, she knew not when, someone spoke her name.

“Xhea.”

The sun was hot against the dark fabric of her jacket and her pants. The wind was cool and yet it seemed to drift over and around her, never more than stroking the back of one hand, whispering against a bit of exposed neck.

“Xhea? Are you okay?”

Sensation returned slowly, and she rather wished it wouldn’t. It was easier to feel the small things: the sharp pebble on the ground beneath one hip, the stiffness in her arms, the swollen feeling of her lip and face and eye.

“Xhea, talk to me. Please talk to me. Oh, please be okay.” The voice—Shai’s voice.
Time to wake up now
, Xhea thought, and groaned.

As if the sound were a signal, feeling flooded back. Every part of her hurt, her knee screaming—and yet relief was there too, a cushion that, for but a brief moment, spared her the full awareness of pain.
Broken
, she thought,
and beaten, but not quite dead
. If it was as close as she could get to triumphant, she’d take it.

It was an effort beyond words to raise one hand and pull the hair away from her face. The sun was blinding, the knotted coins her fingers touched almost hot enough to burn. A moment—a breath, another breath. Then with a grunt and long whimper, she managed to roll onto her back.

Blinking back tears she stared upward, for a long time able to see only sky. It was blue—that perfect, heartbreaking blue—but color faded as she watched, leeching from the sky like pale clouds blooming. She was glad, almost, when it was gone.

Slowly, Xhea looked around, trying not to jar her throbbing head and neck. She lay just beyond the boundaries of the Lower City core, where untenanted buildings crumbled in sight of the skyscrapers, roofs sagging and collapsing inward, brick façades crumbling and falling like snow. Nearby, a section of broken overpass arched like a rainbow’s concrete stump, the graffiti patterns on its sides almost dizzying in their layered complexity.
Xhea was here
, she thought; she’d write it only as a bloody handprint pressed against the wall. Statement enough.

Above, she could only now make out the shapes of Allenai and Eridian—though it was just Allenai now, she supposed. It looked like a strange monstrosity of a structure, the slender grace of Allenai-that-was meeting the pattern of Eridian’s ever-widening platforms in a mess of shifting, living metal. It would take time for its shape to change and smooth, growing to once more become something beautiful. Something new. But whether her actions today would make her a hesitant ally of the new Allenai or an enemy, still hunted and feared, was as uncertain as the Tower’s future.

At her side knelt Shai, ghostly hands clasped tightly in her lap, her face a study in hope and fear. She glowed silver and black and gray, a thousand shades of gray, every one of them radiant.

“That looked like it hurt,” Shai whispered.

Weakly, all but soundlessly, Xhea began to laugh, the wet wheeze of her breath almost painful to hear. It hurt to laugh—a rib was surely broken, perhaps two—but it felt good too. It felt like being alive.

“A good observation,” she managed at last, still laughing. She reached out and took Shai’s hand in hers, the tingle of ghostly flesh against skin almost like warmth.

She still believed what she had always said: sometimes you have to leave someone behind; sometimes you’re the one that gets left.
But not today
, Xhea thought, holding tight to Shai’s hand, and her smile was faint and hesitant and true.

Not today.

Time passed.

Moving, Xhea decided, took entirely too much effort. It hurt to move—it hurt to even shift on the hard ground—and she was so very tired. Besides, the sun was warm for spring, warm and bright, and there were many long hours before night fell. Time enough to drag herself home, Xhea thought; time enough to just let herself rest. And so she lay against the ground, eyes closed, and shivered.

Reality seemed to draw close and pull away, sound rising and falling like waves, and Xhea drifted with it. Shai spoke to her, she knew that much, but the words themselves slipped from memory soon after they were spoken. Like the wind, she thought, shifting and changing; like water dripping from between outstretched fingers. Her own fingers twitched at the image, and it was only then that she realized she was still holding Shai’s hand.