The Tainted City (49 page)

Pello rounded the alley’s far corner, no longer at a dead run, but at the steady, mile-eating lope that runner boys used when they had to cross the city. No sign of the Alathians beyond the Zhivonis Street gate. I’d have to slow Pello down and pray he wasn’t carrying anything too nasty. I slid my boneshatter charm free of my belt, measuring distance as he loped closer. When he crossed under me, I dropped.

Some instinct made him glance up. He dodged aside so I didn’t land straight on him, only caught him a glancing blow. We both fell sprawling. I lashed out with my charm, connected with his left arm and heard a muffled snap like a branch under snow. He cursed and twisted as fast as an adder. The sharp-edged gold crescent of a dragonclaw charm glittered in his right hand. I threw myself backward just in time to avoid a killing touch to the chest; instead, the charm passed over my left forearm, opening a gash from wrist to elbow.

Pello was already running back into the alley. Beyond the gate, Talm skidded into sight. I yelled for him to follow and took off after Pello, blood dripping from my arm to leave a trail on the stone.

* * *

(Kiran)

Wind tore at Kiran’s hair, the air sharp with the scent of lightning. From his stance on a balcony at the summit of Reytani’s tallest tower, the black clouds looked low enough to touch. Shifting veils of wind-borne sand masked the terraced roofs of the lower city far below. Chaotic energies seethed in the aether, shocks of wild power rippling outward with each lightning strike.

Throughout the city, the fiery sea of the confluence surged and heaved, in turmoil far different from its usual flow. The tower’s wards were already flaring and sparking, bare moments away from triggering fully.

Be ready,
Ruslan said in Kiran’s mind, the words terse and strained from the effort he exerted in raising power. Kiran sent wordless assent, and caught the echo of Mikail’s from the tower’s eastern side. They had decided to split their vigil; when Ruslan commanded it, Kiran would seek the sign of their enemy in the western half of the confluence, Mikail the eastern.

Kiran’s grip tightened on the balcony’s edge. Let it be Mikail who sighted their enemy! Then when Ruslan struck, it would not be Kiran who consigned scores of
nathahlen
to their deaths. Ruslan had said he would strike regardless of their enemy’s location, even if it were the Aiyalen Spire—or the tower upon which Kiran and Mikail stood.
I warned Sechaveh to take shelter, and you and Mikail are
akheli
—you can survive even a strike of this magnitude.

The
nathahlen
deaths were necessary. Kiran knew it, and yet his fingers were icy on the balcony’s stone, his chest so tight he could barely breathe.

Sibilant whispers raked along his barriers. Kiran reached for Ruslan through the mark-bond.
Ruslan! He comes.

Ruslan pressed through the link, his mind flooding into Kiran’s. Kiran felt the flare of channels, sensed the deliriously sweet, seductive pull of power straining against its confinement.

The confluence convulsed as if some great beast thrashed in its depths. Kiran focused on the shuddering swell of currents. Deep in the heart of the lower city, the dark pinprick of the vortex appeared—

Strike!
he thought as one with Ruslan, and magefire exploded free. Yet the moment it did, the vortex vanished. Horror sent Kiran to his knees.

“Call the power back!” he screamed. But he knew it was too late.

* * *

(Dev)

I pounded down the alley after Pello. He ran as fast as a roundtail released from a snare, vaulting over stacks of adobe and scrap metal without pause.

The ground jerked sideways beneath my feet. I sprawled forward and cracked my chin on stone. Pello fell too, in a knot of limbs. Quake wards blazed to life above us, even as lightning stabbed down from the black bank of cloud above.

A concussion of sound slammed my ears, far louder than any thunder should be, and the entire sky glared crimson. A tornado of scarlet fire slashed past overhead.

Shock stopped me mid-scramble. Khalmet’s bloodsoaked hand, what was that?

A second deafening concussion, and a vast, hot wind blasted down the alley, catapulting me backward into a pile of adobe bricks. I gasped and sucked in air that felt thick as heated oil. Cracks ripped open in the alley’s stone. I twisted to look up, and my blood froze. The wall was crumbling, a cascade of rubble pouring off the rooftop ten stories above.

A good fifty feet separated me and Pello. Could Talm stop enough rubble to save us both? If not, it wouldn’t be me he chose to save. Pello was our only lead. I sprang forward through a hail of stone fragments, desperate to close the distance.

Pello was on his knees, his injured arm dangling limp. He shouted and dug at something in his belt. I lost my footing on juddering ground, hit the alley floor and rolled. Stone blocks large as wagons ricocheted down toward us. Talm stood at the Zhivonis Street gate, his face impassive and his hands loose at his sides.

Why wasn’t he casting? Oh shit, if he was the traitor—

An impact crushed me into darkness.

* * *

(Kiran)

Kiran stared down at the lower city in sick, stunned horror. Fat plumes of smoke rose from a charred crater a half-mile wide, scattered fires burning red amid fragmented, jumbled stone. Kiran had felt Ruslan fight to contain the magefire as tightly as possible in the final instants, yet the strike left much of Julisi district a blackened ruin. Now Kiran’s mark-bond was still and silent; after a final burst of disbelieving fury, Ruslan had abruptly withdrawn from Kiran’s mind.

Lightning still lanced between clouds. Beneath crashes of thunder, an eerie chorus of screams and wails echoed from the lower city. How many
nathahlen
lay dead or dying beneath the shattered remains of buildings? Above the rubble, a mist of dark energies swirled, born of pain and death. Men, women, children, all crushed into bloodied pulp…

Kiran’s stomach heaved. He bent and vomited; once, twice, until all that came up was sour strings of bile. He swiped a shaking hand across his mouth, and winced away from another glaring bolt of lightning. The flashes were too bright, the slowly settling currents of the confluence abrading his inner senses raw. He threw an arm over his eyes and struggled to reinforce his barriers.

“Kiran?” Hurried footsteps, and then Mikail’s hands were on him, holding him upright.

“The power in Ruslan’s strike…I think my
ikilhia
isn’t yet recovered, from…from when he freed me of the Alathians’ spellwork.” Though that didn’t explain the cold horror Kiran felt looking at the smoking ruin of Julisi. Before the strike, he’d assumed his dismay a remnant of Alathian alteration that he could overcome. But this ran so deep it felt rooted in his very soul.

Mikail put a hand to Kiran’s forehead. His breath hissed through his teeth. “Your
ikilhia
’s a mess. We should have thought to give you damping charms. Here, let me…” A cool wash of green layered itself over Kiran’s barriers, and the grating rasp of the confluence faded.

Yet the sickness within didn’t ease. He could have accepted the deaths if they’d happened for good reason. But this…Kiran clutched at Mikail’s arm. “We failed. So much destruction, and for nothing! How do you bear it?”

“You’re right, it’s maddening.” Mikail scowled out at the storm. “I saw it all through Ruslan’s eyes. I thought we had our enemy! How did he know to dodge the strike?”

Kiran stared at Mikail. Did his mage-brother share none of his horror?

“Are you still feeling ill?” Mikail’s scowl faded into concern. “Here, come out of the wind.” He tugged Kiran off the balcony, back into the spare stone antechamber at the top of the tower stairs.

Kiran fumbled for the stair rail. “We should go to the lower city. We could seek traces there, and…do what we can, to help.” Ruslan had taught them nothing of healing magic. But they could seek survivors, extinguish fires, clear rubble…

Mikail checked. He gripped Kiran’s shoulders, his gray eyes boring into Kiran’s. “You’re upset over the dead
nathahlen.
”

“How can you not be?” Kiran slumped in Mikail’s hold. “They’re not mere animals, Mikail. They may lack mage talent, but they love and suffer just as we do.”

“Perhaps,” Mikail said. “But they murder, betray, and enslave each other, too. Don’t think them innocents, Kiran. In helping Ruslan cast, you fight not only for your own survival, but mine, and his, and Lizaveta’s. Do you imagine any
nathahlen
would hesitate in your place, if the choice were between saving the family he loves or sparing the lives of strangers?”

Put that way, the weight on Kiran’s heart eased a little. “I suppose not. Yet every time I look at the rubble, I feel so…so sick, inside.”

“No wonder, with your
ikilhia
so disordered,” Mikail said. “You shouldn’t drop your barriers, but if you allow me within them, I can help you further.” He touched his belt knife, his head cocked in inquiry.

Shelter from the roil of guilt and horror, a chance at enough peace he could think again? Kiran wanted it, badly—and yet, he hesitated
.
Taking Mikail’s offer of solace felt wrong, like a betrayal of the massacred
nathahlen
…but surely that was foolishness.

Kiran drew his own belt knife and cut a swift line down his palm, even as Mikail did the same. He clasped Mikail’s bloodied hand. Mikail’s mind flowed into his, a cool, green river of strength. Mikail reached for Kiran’s
ikilhia
—and paused, at Kiran’s instinctive, violent recoil.

Easy, easy, brother. Don’t fight me…

Dimly, Kiran was aware of his breath coming in harsh gasps, his heart racing. Slowly, reluctantly, he released his innermost defenses, like relaxing a clenched fist.

Mikail slipped through. Tendrils of power wound through Kiran’s
ikilhia
, bolstering it into a far smoother, steadier flame.
Now. Focus as you do when we cast together…

Kiran shut his eyes and slowed his breath, counting each inhalation, striving to block out all emotion. Mikail helped him, his quiet strength allowing Kiran to bury remorse and horror deep, leaving only calm, clear focus.

There, you see?
Mikail withdrew and said aloud, “Better?”

“Yes.” The relief of it was enough to weaken Kiran’s legs. He sank onto a step. Though his mind was calm, the pulse of his
ikilhia
remained dismayingly erratic despite Mikail’s infusion of strength. Why was it taking so long to heal from the damage Ruslan had been forced to inflict? Ruslan had implied his recovery would go far faster.

Mikail said, “You spoke of seeking traces, but even if we found the exact spot where our enemy had appeared, I’m not sure it would profit us. We’ve had no success reading traces anywhere else.”

It was so much easier to think, now the storm of emotion had subsided. How
had
their enemy so readily avoided the strike? Kiran summoned the memory.

Again he felt Ruslan release the magefire, saw the vortex vanish. Just as their enemy had vanished before Kiran’s second strike in the dead mage’s workroom…Kiran straightened.

“Mikail. What if our enemy can somehow detect channeled magic before it’s cast? When I first struck and injured him after his attack on you, I cast with power pulled straight from a charm. But when I struck again, with channeled power funneled to me by Ruslan, our attacker vanished before the strike reached him. I thought he decided to retreat after my first strike, and I simply didn’t cast the second one fast enough. But now…I think he felt Ruslan release the containment.”

“How?” Mikail asked. “Today, he was half the city away, and Ruslan used shielding wards.”

“I don’t know,” Kiran said. “But I think we need to find a way to strike at him without the use of the confluence. Either that, or distract him so thoroughly he doesn’t feel a channeled strike coming.” Thanks to Mikail’s help, he could speak of a second magefire strike and feel only a faint twitch of unease.

Mikail grimaced. “I can’t believe it’s so hard to kill one
nathahlen
.”

Kiran said, “If he can sense channeled spellwork better than even an
akheli
could manage, Ruslan must be wrong about him being untalented.”

As if summoned by the mention of his name, Ruslan spoke in terse command through the mark-bond.
Sechaveh has summoned us. Join me at Kelante Tower.

Mikail muttered, “This should be interesting.”

Kiran suspected “interesting” was far too optimistic a word. Sechaveh would be furious, and Ruslan in no mood to tolerate chastisement by any
nathahlen
, even one with Sechaveh’s ability to forbid him the confluence. They’d be lucky if they made it through the meeting with the tower still standing.

* * *

(Dev)

Somewhere, something was dripping. Plink, plink, plink, like icemelt in a crevasse. I felt chilled, my limbs numb and heavy—except my left arm, which burned with sullen fire. I opened my eyes to absolute blackness. Grit coated my tongue, my mouth so dry I couldn’t swallow, and my head ached something fierce. I coughed and immediately regretted it as my ribs screamed.

“Well. It would seem outriders truly are favored of Khalmet.”

Pello. He sounded terrible, his voice cracked and hoarse. I tried to roll, and managed only a scuffling twitch. Stone pressed down on my torso, tight enough to make breathing difficult. I wanted to thrash, to fight, get it
off—
instead, I slowed my panicked breathing, forced myself to lie still and take stock. My injured left arm was pinned, immobile, but my right arm could move. I wriggled it up and shoved against the weight on my chest. I succeeded only in showering grit into my eyes.

“Can you move at all?” My voice didn’t sound much better than Pello’s.

He laughed thickly. “No.”

Remembering that cascade of rubble, I felt cold all over again. “How are we not crushed?”

“I sparked a barrier charm. Wasn’t strong enough to hold off the falling stone entirely, but it left a little space. Of course, things have been…settling, since.” He fell silent, his breathing strained.