Shattering the Ley (41 page)

“Through one of the nodes within the city,” Augustus growled, still shaken, although none of that fear bled into his voice.

Temerius took a step back from him, his own eyes going wide as the implications sank in, as the ramifications shattered what he thought he knew of the Nexus. Augustus was already ahead of him, his own thoughts leaping forward. “But that means . . .” Temerius began. He caught Augustus’ gaze, his mouth open, working to produce words.

Augustus nodded, jaw clenched. “That means we were wrong, that
I
was wrong. It might not be one of the Primes who is the traitor. It could be one of the Wielders.”

They stared at each other a long moment, both numbed, and then one of the other Primes shouted, “Augustus! The pane has stopped moving!”

Augustus turned back to the crystal, saw two other crystals now moving into new positions, saw the undulating colored light shifting its pattern, flares of backlash and bleed-off scattering through the Nexus above and into the chamber below.

And when the last pane settled into its new position, Augustus felt his heart shudder in his chest.

“Holy Mother of Korma,” Temerius breathed.

Augustus turned toward him and, in much too calm a tone, said, “Say nothing of this. To anyone. I will warn the Baron.”

Above them, the Nexus flared with new light and ley surged out through the apertures and into the lines.

Through his connection to the Nexus, Augustus felt the city come back to life.

A
LLAN STOOD ON
a hilltop far to the west of Erenthrall and stared out over the darkened plains toward the city. Stars gleamed overhead, and the leaves of trees shushed in a faint breeze to either side. The thin edge of dawn sliced across the horizon to the east, but the plains themselves were a black puddle, like spilled ink. He could barely pick out the nearest hills in the moonlight, even after his sight adjusted from moving away from the campfire where his daughter slept in the copse of trees at his back.

Which was wrong, he thought with a disturbed frown. He should be able to see the city if nothing else. He should be able to see its ethereal white glow even through any mist or fog that might obscure the rest of the towns and villages on the plains. He should be able to see the glow that had become the heart of the Baronies, the glow that connected the entire continent—that connected the entire known world and beyond—in a web of ley.

The fact that he couldn’t sent a prickling shiver of worry down his back.

He grunted at himself in annoyance, ran his fingers through the beginnings of his scratchy beard—he hadn’t done a proper shave in the last two days of traveling—and turned his gaze southward, toward Baron Leethe’s domain, where the city of Tumbor would be. He caught the faintest glow of white from that direction, strained to see another patch of pale white farther out to the southeast, one he could see better by looking at from one side rather than directly on, where Farrade lay, then back to the darkness of Erenthrall. He didn’t bother looking north toward Severen, Dunmara, and Ikanth on the Steppe. The glow of their ley would be blocked by the mountainous Reaches.

“Tumbor and Farrade seem fine,” he murmured to himself, “so what’s happening in Erenthrall?”

War? He knew the Barons were at odds, but he hadn’t heard any murmurs of outright war. Most of the fighting was political. That kind of warfare never ended. That kind of warfare killed innocents like his wife, Moira.

And that kind of warfare would not leave a city dark.

He tugged at his short beard again, trying to decide what the darkness of Erenthrall meant—whether he should turn back and return to the Hollow or continue on—when he heard the snap of a twig behind him.

He didn’t reach for the sword at his side, didn’t even shift position, merely turned his head slightly and said, “You can come forward, Poppett.”

“Dad, I’m not a poppet! A poppet is a doll. I’m not little anymore.”

Allan grimaced. When had it changed from Da to Dad? Would it change to Father soon?

“I know, Popp—Morrell. I’m sorry. I was just—” Thinking of your mother, he almost said, but caught himself. Morrell had been too young to remember her mother when they fled and he knew it upset her when he spoke about the woman she’d never know.

He turned slightly, shook his head, then sat on a nearby stone thrust up out of the earth. “Are you coming out? The dawn’s beautiful.”

He heard Morrell sigh, then tromp forward, pushing the branches aside.

“I woke up and you weren’t there. I got worried.” She settled down on the dew-damp ground beside him, gangly twelve-year-old legs crossed beneath her, still dressed in her night shift. Her long, straight hair was pale in the darkness, nothing like the soft gold it appeared during the day. She immediately picked up a stick and began stripping the bark from it in thin strands. “What are you looking at?”

“Erenthrall.”

“Really? Where is it? Can we see it from here? Are we that close?” All of the grumpy sleepiness and veiled worry vanished. She’d never seen Erenthrall, didn’t remember any of it from when she was little, before they’d left. He hadn’t allowed her to travel with him on any of his excursions to trade for the supplies the Hollow couldn’t produce for itself until now, and with Erenthrall dark, he was reconsidering taking her any farther. She’d be disappointed, and the Hollow would have a rough winter without those supplies, especially the medicine, but still . . .

“Actually—”

Even as he spoke, he caught a pulse of light from the plains. The sun had risen enough the entire eastern skyline was bathed in soft gray-gold. The faintest contours—hills and valleys, rocky crags and mounds—had appeared, the black snakes of rivers and puddles of lakes cutting through them.

The pulse came from the south, from the direction of Tumbor, a blinding white-purple. Ley. Allan repressed a shudder of distaste. It streaked across the plains, hit a junction, altered course, and flared arrow-straight to Erenthrall, a secondary pulse shooting out toward Farrade, other minor branches spreading outward from smaller junctions along the way. Allan followed the main pulse with his eyes to Erenthrall, where it connected with a brilliant flare, brighter than the sun. For a moment, the entire city lay silhouetted in the backwash of white, the towers of Grass visible, soaring high over the farthest reaches of the outer districts. Something hard filled Allan’s chest at the sight, prickling and hot, aching, the city beautiful. And large. Sprawling northward in the vee of the confluence of the Tiana and Urate Rivers, spilling over their edges into the surrounding plains to the north and south; to the east and west as well. The ley filtered through its conduits and spread, outlined all of the districts of the main city, then splintered farther into the outlying towns, and farther still, the entire breadth of the plains lighting up as far as he could see. For a moment, as the city lay bathed in whiteness, he heard an echo of the raucous streets, drank in the sounds of the tens of thousands of people that lived there. He breathed in the stench of so many bodies pressed so close together, totally different from the clean smells of the Hollow, where he and Morrell, Janis, and a few hundred other souls lived without the presence of the ley.

And then the flare of light faded back down to its normal level, Erenthrall now easily visible, like a pulsing of dense moonlight at the center of a lacework from the surrounding smaller towns that supported it.

Morrell gasped at the display and Allan let out the breath he hadn’t realized he’d drawn, then tousled his daughter’s hair. She ducked away and he smiled, the faintest hint of pain in the expression, then rose with a sigh. He couldn’t disappoint his daughter. And the Hollow needed those supplies. When he, Janis, and Morrell had first arrived, those gathered there had been on the edge of failing as a community, their local resources nearly exhausted. No one had been willing to venture into the city; they valued their privacy and didn’t trust those in Erenthrall, for various reasons. Reasons like his own. They’d hidden from society and didn’t want to be found. Besides, no one in the Hollow besides Janis knew where to find what they needed in Erenthrall anyway.

But Allan did, and he knew how to stay hidden in its streets, as long as the Baron hadn’t sicced the Hounds on him. It was the only reason those in the Hollow had accepted him and Morrell into their community. So each year, sometimes more than once, he traveled to Erenthrall and gathered whatever the Hollow needed to survive while making certain the Dogs didn’t find him. He knew what would happen if they did. As Hagger had said, no one left the Dogs.

But this was the first time he’d allowed Morrell to accompany him.

He thrust his worry over Morrell’s safety aside. He had survived his own excursions to Erenthrall without incident for eleven years; he would survive another. He’d simply be more careful than usual with Morrell at his side.

“Come on. We need to cook some breakfast and get the horses saddled. We’re still a long way from the city.”

“What happened, Illiana?”

Kara tossed her Wielder’s jacket into a chair in the outer chamber of the Stone District’s node. Illiana glanced up from her prone position on the nearest table, one arm draped over her eyes. She looked exhausted, her usually pert face drawn, bruises under her eyes, her short-cropped brown hair sticking up in a thousand different cowlicks.

“I don’t know,” Illiana groaned, head falling back onto the table, arm back over her eyes, “but it’s been hellish. Steven nearly burst a vein when the node went dark, thinking it was something we’d done. Or not done. We scrambled for about fifteen minutes before he went up to the roof and realized it wasn’t just our district, that the entire city had gone dark.”

“So where is he?”

Illiana snorted, jerking herself upright into a sitting position on the edge of the table, legs dangling, before wincing and bowing her head forward, one hand massaging her forehead. “Gods,” she whispered to herself, then continued. “As soon as he saw the city was out, he left me in charge and headed off toward the Nexus to meet with the Primes, or as close to them as he could get, hoping to find out what’s going on. We’ve had a few too many flickers in the ley lately, if you ask me, and this wasn’t a damn flicker. I tried to get the node back up after he left, actually went down into the pit, but it came back on itself shortly after.”

“You went into the pit? After what happened to Tanek?”

Illiana raised her head enough to stare at Kara through her fingers. “I knew what I was doing. I felt the pulse coming and disengaged. I had enough time to get out and close the shielding door before it struck. Besides, the other Wielders had begun to report in by then, so it’s not like I was alone. What about you? Why did it take you so long to get here?”

Kara pressed her lips together. “I saw the city go dark from my flat in Eld. I headed here, but it’s chaos out there. All of the sky barges in flight crashed to the ground, and I’ve heard there’s been looting in some of the less patrolled districts. The Dogs have been called out to supplement the city guard.” The Dogs had descended on the crashed barge she’d helped almost immediately after she’d rescued the man from beneath the mast.

Illiana’s eyes widened. “And you came all the way here? What about the Eld node? Why didn’t you go there instead?”

Kara shot her an irritated glance—she’d worked here long enough that Illiana knew why Kara wouldn’t go to the Eld node—and didn’t answer, began pacing the small chamber, taking in the desks, the worktable in the center of the room scattered with papers and reports and the large map beneath tacked to the surface with all of the ley lines in the Stone District. Pins were stuck into the map in random locations where problems or fluctuations in the ley had been reported and Wielders sent to repair them. Kara halted at the table, shoved a few of the papers aside and stared down at the map, at the array of streets, at the tacks and their positions.

“You look like shit,” Kara said as she leaned forward over the map.

Illiana eased off the table. “Thanks. As if the headache wasn’t enough.” Kara didn’t react to the snide tone.

Illiana sighed. “Seriously, there was some kind of dissonance in the ley. I could feel it even standing here in the outer rooms. Steven felt it, too. So when he left, I went down to the pit to see if I could smooth it out.”

Kara nodded, thinking about how she’d smoothed the Tapestry back in her own rooms. “It didn’t work.”

“No. And the dissonance was worse in the pit, amplified somehow. I had a headache before I went in, and inside . . . it felt as if my head was going to split open. The flare when the ley returned at full force didn’t help either. I couldn’t see, even though I’d withdrawn from the ley. Nothing but a wash of yellow and an afterimage of the pit. I stumbled up here, with help from the others, and lay down, hoping it would fade.” She motioned toward the map. “What are you looking for?”

Kara glanced at Illiana, saw the fear that edged her eyes and the shakiness that hid beneath her words. The experience in the pit must have been more frightening than Illiana was letting on. “Something’s happening to the ley system, something more serious than a few ‘random fluctuations,’ as the Baron and the Primes have said.”

Illiana’s eyes darkened in agreement, so Kara continued.

“The Primes don’t know what’s going on. That’s why they’re constantly at the Nexus, or meeting with the Baron and his entourage. In fact, they’re probably meeting with him right now.”

“They are,” Steven spat as he burst into the room, fuming. “I couldn’t even get past the damn wardens at the Nexus, let alone the Baron’s men at the Amber Tower. And I wasn’t the only one trying. Lerrick and Hammond from Forks were there, and Savion from Eastend.” He paused in his tirade, brought up short at the sight of Illiana. “What in hells happened to you?”

Illiana rolled her eyes and turned back to the map with Kara. “So you’re thinking that if the Primes can’t figure out what’s going on, you can?” she asked, derision in her voice. “What do you think you’ll find?”

“I don’t know, but there has to be some reason the blackouts are happening, some cause.”

“They aren’t really blackouts,” Steven said, joining them at the table. “You know what Tanek said. The ley is being diverted. It’s being shunted for use somewhere else.”

“How? And if it’s being diverted, is it natural or is someone behind it? Who would want to disrupt the ley?”

Neither Steven nor Illiana responded, Illiana staring studiously at the ground, Steven frowning. Kara shifted uncomfortably, wary of the dark tension in the air, then suddenly realized what they were thinking and why it had forced them into silence, why the awkwardness felt so deadly and familiar.