The Fall of Neskaya (61 page)

The walls pressed closer with each passing heartbeat, squeezing the air from Coryn’s lungs. Panic drove him like a whip, but he could not move his arms or legs. His vision went dark, streaked with red. Pain lanced through his lungs. His muscles turned to water as his strength flowed out of him. Unable to resist any longer, he sank down into the gray floor. It covered him in its muffling blanket. Silence and numbness bathed him. He could fight no longer.

That voice, that hated voice!

For the first time in his life, Coryn prayed to Avarra, Dark Lady of night and death.
Take me!
he begged. His only answer was a resurgence of despair.

His physical body righted itself, stood, continued down the stairs. He seemed to be watching its movement across a great distance.

Like a white bird piercing the darkest stormcloud, a thought came to him, the image of his mother’s handkerchief. He remembered holding it in his hands the morning after Rumail had examined him, remembered the softness of the worn fabric between his fingers, the relief soaring in his heart.

Remembered giving it to Taniquel.

In his darkened mind, her eyes glimmered, her chin lifted proudly. Blue flames surged up to surround her, and yet she walked on, untouched. Free.

And yet, the body moved, more surely now with every passing step. It hurried across the adjoining corridor and up the flight leading to the second laboratory.

Glow-globes placed at either end filled the room with a soft illumination. One of the novices, a boy from the Alton border who had not got his full growth yet, bent over the battery ranges, making notations on a pad. He looked up at Coryn’s approach, his broken complexion flushing. Normally, checking the charges of the batteries would fall to a more experienced worker, a mechanic, but everyone else was either aloft with Bernardo or resting, drained from the night’s work.

“I require isolation for this task.” Coryn picked up a tray of tools set with starstone chips and went to the shrouded device. Setting down his pad, the child darted from the room.

Coryn approached the great matrix screens which formed the device itself. He pulled away the triple layers of insulating silk and felt the familiar buzzing between his temples. Blue light shimmered through the room in every hue from palest bird’s-egg to deep azure. Each layer of the device gave off its own unique color and, because of the way the artificial crystals were linked, they interpenetrated one another. When he and Mac worked on the device, they used the signature tone of that particular element as a focus point.

The trigger lay in the first layer, the lightest shade of blue. As he had practiced so many hours while working on the screens, Coryn let his eyesight soften and then blur. He envisioned himself floating down a river. In some places, sunlight glared off the water’s surface, in others lay pools of shadow.

His hands moved over the tray of instruments, fingertips skimming their shapes.

WHAT ARE YOU DOING?
The words whispered through his mind in a voice that was his and yet not his.

What am I doing? he wondered, momentarily puzzled. His vision cleared enough for him to look down at the tool in his hand, poised over the great glittering screen.

The motes of sunlight flashed hot and white, blinding him. He flung up one hand to shield his eyes. The movement sent sprays of brilliance in all direction. They encircled him so that he stood in the center of a glowing ring. The ring hummed with its own energy, sending reverberations through his body.

Dimly, he felt the clash of thunder and the rattling of steel. Sparks flew as shields raised against a volley of psychic arrows. Coryn tensed, then relaxed as the deadly barrage fell away.

Before his sightless eyes, his hands took up a different tool. He circled the screens, moving through their scintillating colors like a fish in that river he had imagined.

Dark blue . . . dark and darkest . . . that was what he sought. Yes, there it was! The third layer, keyed to redirect incoming
laran
energy, rose into clear view. The tool interrupted the energon link connections. Strand after severed strand fell away.

At last it was done.

Coryn stood looking down at the great matrix screens, momentarily unsure how he had gotten here. In one hand, he held a slender metal tool which he could not remember having picked up. A fine trembling vibrated along his jaw and forearms. He rubbed the muscles, feeling the whipcord tension there.

But there was no time to rest. Tramontana might resume the attack at any moment. Bernardo needed him back in the circle. He had accomplished his mission here. He paused only long enough to replace the tool on its tray.

Coryn sensed the disturbance in the Overworld even as he climbed the stairs back to the laboratory where the others waited. He had just set foot on the landing between the two stages of stairs, beside the tall narrow windows, when the sky above flashed into brilliance. Ozone and the unmistakable reek of
clingfire
filled the air. The sudden percussion almost knocked him from his feet.

Grasping his starstone where it hung on a chain about his neck, he set his mind aloft to the laboratory chamber. He found the circle there, intact but locked against him. They had formed an impenetrable link, an unbroken sphere of power. To allow him to join them, they would have to relax their concentration and reconfigure the pattern. It would be like cracking a window open, and Rumail might seize upon the moment of weakness. Coryn would have to wait until another lull in the battle, if there was one. He watched while lightnings of pure mental energy rained down upon them.

Across the flat gray Overworld sky, patterns of brightness shimmering with rainbow edges exploded and then blurred into darkness. The stones of the mental projection of Neskaya Tower quivered under the onslaught. Dimly Coryn felt the real Tower shudder under the energy lash as if it were a living thing.

Hold!
He sent the thought to his own circle. There was not much chance it would get through, that his Keeper might be able to draw upon his strength, even for an instant. Coryn dropped back into the physical world, strode over to the windows on the stair landing, and stared out.

The fight raging above him had very much the feel of a stalemate, and a stalemate meant success for the Hastur army. Already, they had interrupted the barrage of fear-spells from Tramontana. Taniquel’s forces would win or lose on their own, steel against steel, unhampered by any interference.

Perhaps all that was needed now was to remain firm until Rumail had expended his anger.

It would not end here, Coryn thought. Not as long as Damian Deslucido ruled with Rumail as his right hand. Taniquel had been right. The Deslucidos must be stopped by whatever means—sword or
laran
spell—necessary.

More of that bizarre silent lightning jagged across the sky outside the windows. He winced. It reminded him of the storm which had swept across the mountains during his journey to Tramontana. Only luck and Rafe’s skill had kept him alive. Rafe had mentioned the Aldaran ability to work weather-magic, and there had been real fear in his voice. This flashing turbulence lacked the pattern of normal weather. When he opened his
laran
senses to it, he felt other differences. The Aldaran storm had been an attempt to replicate natural processes for human purposes. Perhaps those who shaped it desired rain in one place and not another, and directed air and wind and cloud to that end.

The lightning now overhead felt
focused
, aimed like a spear point. With a shiver, Coryn realized that what he saw was no accidental bleed-through, no overflow of energy from the Overworld. It was a deliberate attempt to bring the battle to the physical plane, to use the elastic space of the Overworld to span the miles between the two Towers. It carried a sense of determination bordering on obsession. He wondered what drove Rumail. Did he hate the Tower which had rejected him so very much, that he would now seek its destruction? It was fortunate he’d disarmed the
laran
shield to protect his friends at Tramontana from the devastating backlash. Neskaya would stand, if a little singed, and Rafael Hastur would triumph on the battlefield.

As Coryn watched, the diffuse brilliance overhead condensed into a single line, not branched like ordinary lightning, but straight as an arrow. It hung for an awful instant, entire, filling the sky with its whitened glare, spanning from near the horizon to somewhere directly above him.

A
crack!
resounded through the Tower. Beneath Coryn’s feet, the building shuddered like a stricken living thing. He fell to his knees. Pain lanced through his temples. He clapped his hands over both ears to ease the pain and drew them away covered with blood. The next sound also came from higher in the Tower, piercing the cloud of deafness, a sound like nothing he had ever heard. Coryn felt it through all his
laran
senses. It was as if the stones themselves cried out, as if each tiny particle were suddenly wrenched from its place.

Screams now echoed through the corridors. With his ears still deadened and his head spinning, Coryn could not make out their direction. For a terrifying moment, he feared they came from aloft. He must be sure, he thought as he clambered to his feet.

He had not climbed more than a step or two when the Tower shuddered again, rocked by an explosion so massive, the air burst from his lungs. Balance lost, he tumbled down to the landing. One elbow smacked hard against a step. Nerve pain and then numbness seized his entire arm. His eyes watered, blurring his sight. Before him, the pale blue stone rippled, as if seen through currents of rising heat. He blinked, struggling to focus. The wavering shapes elongated to take on the form of flame.

Coryn’s mind raced ahead, up the stairs.

The circle’s concentration shattered, the interwoven strands of mental energy unraveling like badly ripped silk. The anchor which was Mac’s place was nothing more than a pit of darkness. Demiana’s mind twisted like a fistful of storm-blown streamers, shrieking in agony.

Coryn touched Bernardo, felt the searing shock, the desperation as the Keeper struggled to gather the circle together again. Like two hands clasping, Coryn linked with the older man. Pain racked Bernardo’s body. Coryn scanned the astral image of Bernardo’s physical form and saw the great laboring wound of his heart.

Demiana!
Coryn called.

In an instant, the monitor scanned Bernardo’s astral form, analyzing the energy flows and their correlations in his physical body.

At the same time, Coryn drew together what was left of the circle. There was no sign of Mac except the pit of oozing darkness. Coryn feared he was dead, but there was no time to make sure, or to grieve. That would come later . . . if any of them survived.

Here, as in the corridor, flames of blue so pale as to be colorless, leaped higher with every passing moment. Eagerly they seized on any fuel—the stones themselves.

Gerell was the next to recover, to answer Coryn’s call. He dropped into the linkage and his strength flowed out to Demiana and the others.

Moments later, Demiana’s clear mental voice spoke.
Bernardo cannot take more strain. One of the vessels which carries blood to the heart muscle is blocked. I have eased it, but it will take time to repair the damage. If he is to live, he must rest.

We cannot break the circle!
Gerell said.
Rumail will not let up the attack just because we have wounded.

A circle without a Keeper—
Coryn began in protest.

You
are our Keeper now,
Amalie replied.
What have you trained with Bernardo for, if not this?

Another explosion rocked both realms, physical and psychic. This time it did not come from overhead. All around them, beneath and above them, raged a far greater storm. Blue flames, fiercer than any ordinary fire, raced along the bare walls and flooring. Stone cracked under its unearthly heat and splintered away.

Even as Coryn tensed, he realized that they were no longer under outside attack. Not from Tramontana. Rumail’s circle had taken no action since the fatal lightning bolt. This assault arose from within Neskaya itself.

Break the circle! Get everyone out!
he roared.
NOW!

Forcibly, he thrust the others out of the Overworld. They glanced with dazed eyes from their own pale faces to the burgeoning flames. Gerell moved to lift Bernardo’s limp body.

Coryn dropped back into his own body, huddled against the stairwell wall. His ears still rang and his muscles trembled, but he forced himself to stand, to turn back down and across the corridor. He hauled himself up the far steps, shaking now with anger. Rumail’s face shone behind his eyes, Rumail who had done this foul, obscene thing to him.