Shattering the Ley (43 page)

The Hound drew in a deep breath, absorbing the scents of the square—the sweat of a thousand or more bodies, the perfume of a passing Gorrani, the spice of a haunch of meat cooking over ley-heated stones at a nearby hawker’s tent, the bittersweet incense from a Korani acolyte’s brazier. All surface scents, the strongest and most powerful.

Eyes watching those passing by—noting weapons, subtle movements, expressions and hand gestures, looking for signs of danger—the Hound drew in another, deeper breath.

The amalgam of smells separated into layers, into individual threads. No longer a miasma of mingled scents, the Hound began picking through them all, searching for a hint of the one he’d been sent to track. A woman passed, her perfume—henna, myrrh, cinnamon, and juniper—overpowering everything else for a brief moment. The Hound wrinkled his nose and suppressed a sneeze. He followed her without moving as she rounded a corner, continued down that street out of sight, turned left, and entered a building, then shook his head to free himself of her scent before concentrating again on the layers around him. The deep, rich musk of horses, tallow from a candlemaker, piss where someone had urinated in a corner, rose water, camphor from a Gorrani’s bound wound, smoke from a pipe, layer upon layer upon layer of scents, reaching deeper and deeper into the past as he filtered out the strongest, the most recent, digging toward the older scents, those that lingered beneath, searching for the one scent that mattered, the one person that mattered.

There.

He exhaled harshly, drew in another deep breath to verify the scent—sweat, salty and acrid, like pine sap—then turned toward where it led. Faint. Lost among the myriad other smells. But there.

Baron Leethe had been at the ley station in Tumbor about two days before.

The Hound’s blood quickened and he headed across the square, brushing past the citizens of Tumbor without thought. Most stepped out of his way without even realizing he was there. A few shuddered as he passed. He blunted their awareness of him automatically now.

He’d reached the far side of the fountain, the hawk’s wings spread overhead, when a pungent spike of fear distracted him from the Baron’s scent.

The Hound spun, a knife in hand even as he stepped back into the shadow of the hawk and focused on the direction of the fear. His muscles tensed as four of the Baron’s enforcers converged on his location, moving fast, silent and fluid, eyes hard as granite, dressed formally in armor like the Dogs, not like the enforcers he’d seen inside the station. People dodged out of their way, stumbled in their haste, the scent of their terror heightening as the gray-uniformed enforcers closed in on their prey.

The Hound relaxed, shifted so that his knife was no longer visible.

The enforcers weren’t after him.

Their target was a youth, dressed in a plain white shirt and tan breeches, who slid through the crowd seamlessly, his eyes darting toward satchels and purses and the wares displayed openly by the hawkers. He smelled of opium and myrrh.

Behind him, the enforcers split, two breaking away to flank the prey.

The boy sensed their approach at the last moment, turned, eyes widening in shock. For a brief moment he froze, like the rabbit at the hawk’s shriek.

Then he bolted, directly into the path of one of the four enforcers.

Someone in the crowd screamed as the enforcer, without a word, slammed a fist into the boy’s stomach, and then the crowd broke. The remaining three enforcers pounced, people scattering, terror and fury and adrenaline flooding the Hound’s senses. He breathed it in deep, felt it coursing through his blood, seething, hot and fervent—

And then the boy began shouting.

“Kidnapping!” he cried out, voice choked from the punch to the stomach. “Rape! What have I done? What have I—”

The enforcer grabbed his arm and hauled him upright, cutting him off. He thrashed and writhed, trying to break free. A second enforcer snatched at his free arm, and the boy heaved, strained forward, back arched as they viciously kicked his legs out from under him, driving him to his knees, knocking over the brazier of the Korani priest. Briquettes spilled from the container, sharp incense slamming into the Hound’s nose like a fist, even as a third enforcer backhanded the boy, blood flying from his mouth. He staggered, the air flooded with the metallic tang of his blood, would have fallen except for the two enforcers holding him upright, his arms twisted behind him. The crowd had drawn back in a tight circle.

The boy hung for a moment, spit and blood drooling from his mouth, then recovered enough to lift his head. His eyes blazed with hatred. “I’ve done nothing,” he spat, voice low, all of his hatred directed at the enforcer before him, the one who’d backhanded him.

The enforcer backhanded him again. His head snapped back, then lolled forward. The soldier took a step closer, hand balled into a fist, ready to strike him again, but the fourth enforcer grabbed his shoulder with a deep-throated, “Enough!” He glared around at the crowd, then growled, “Show’s over. Disperse.”

The crowd hesitated, but when the man’s hand settled onto the hilt of the sword at his waist, they moved, breaking apart and returning to their business as if nothing had happened. The leader of the enforcers scanned them all as they departed, and then his eyes fell on the Hound.

They stared at each other, the enforcer’s brow creasing with irritation and a slight confusion. No one held an enforcer’s gaze; everyone lowered their eyes, or turned away.

The Hound didn’t.

The enforcer finally shook himself and looked away. The crowd had returned to its steady flow, breaking around the tableau, the boy at the center.

Turning, the Hound hesitated, pushed the thick scents of the scene—the blood, the fear, the incense and terror—aside, and recaptured the sweat of the Baron.

Then he stepped out of the hawk’s shadow and headed deeper into Tumbor.

The hunt had begun.

K
ARA RACED DOWN
the street, dodging carts and wagons and horses, slipping through the throng of people who milled about on their daily business in Stone, oblivious to the ripples Kara could sense in the Tapestry around them. Or mostly oblivious. A few people had stopped in the middle of the street and were looking up at the sky, eyes shaded, trying to figure out what had just sent a prickle down their backs. But they were on the outskirts of the fluctuation.

Those closer in would be feeling much more than a prickle.

Reaching a corner, she ground to a halt, bumping into an older man with a sword belted at his waist who shot her a dark look and nearly spat until he noticed her purple jacket. Eyes widening, he drew breath to apologize, but Kara didn’t wait, darting across the street between two passing carts, a horse snorting and shying away from her. She could hear the formation of the distortion now, the high-pitched keen making her wince. People were moving away from the distortion’s center, their fear heightened the closer she got.

When she rounded the next curve in the street, she saw people running, heard the first screams, cutting through the shriek of the distortion itself. It was louder than any distortion she’d heard before, sharper, like knives digging into her ears.

“Out of my way!” she yelled, lurching forward in desperation. “Wielder coming through!” She shoved at those blocking her path, their faces twisted with fear, sent a few sprawling to the smooth stone street—

Then she reached the next intersection and saw it.

At the same moment, before she even had a chance to draw a breath to shout a warning, the high-pitched keening stopped and the Tapestry wrenched.

Kara gasped as pain shot through her head, a tearing lance that dug in deep, then retreated. On the street ahead, the distortion flared, close to the buildings on the left. Those on the street below who hadn’t fled fast enough, or had run in the wrong direction, jerked back from the light, brought hands up to shade their eyes from the glare . . . and then panicked.

Screams ripped through the air as everyone bolted. The panic spread like a ripple of water after a stone had been thrown into a pool, hitting Kara’s position in seconds. She braced herself, but the crush of the crowd still shoved her back twenty paces. She bellowed for them to let her pass, began elbowing people in the ribs, the stomach, but only managed to gain a foothold by punching someone hard in the face. She felt the man’s nose break beneath her fist, felt a spatter of blood. Using the break in the crush of bodies, she slid past the man as he crumpled, angling toward the edge of the street, still fighting the flow of bodies even then. The screaming continued, escalating as people were trampled.

Kara swore.

She broke free of the heaviest press of the crowd, stumbled to the edge of a building, one hand pressed to its unnaturally smooth surface. Someone had struck her in the back of the thigh, but she straightened and turned toward the distortion.

It had broken through in the smooth curve of the street, over two hundred paces distant. The glare of light had increased, pulsing, the size of her fist now, but it hadn’t expanded yet, which was unusual. She could see it tearing at the Tapestry, the area around it distorted and shuddering. The stone of the nearest building rippled beneath the fluctuations, and below it people were still trying to escape its reach. Some had been thrust to the ground in the initial panic and were only now beginning to scramble to their feet, but others were trying to flee, faces strained with the effort.

They simply weren’t moving. Or were moving sluggishly, as if they were fighting through mud.

Pushing away from the wall, Kara stepped forward, began humming low in her throat. She didn’t have much time, not if she wanted to stop the distortion before it expanded.

Reaching out, she let the Tapestry envelop her, let it settle over her shoulders, seep into her, until she felt the throb of the distortion in her skin. It thrummed through her, the fine hairs on her arms and neck standing on end. Its vibration dug deeper still, shuddering painfully through her bones. She shrugged the ugly sensation aside and focused on the thrum, tried to match the tenor of her hum to it. The two began to meld, the Tapestry sinking into her as they joined, as she began to get a feel for the distortion itself, for the flaw that was at its heart. If she could wrap herself around the rent in the fabric, if she could absorb all of its edges, she could halt it.

She had nearly matched her humming to the shape of the rent when she felt it twist.

“No,” she whispered, and unconsciously reached forward.

Before she could withdraw herself from the rent, it shuddered—

And tore wide open.

On the street, the white light collapsed in on itself for a single breath . . . and then it exploded in a vivid burst of color. Arms of distortion arced outward in swirls, vortices spinning away like mad tops, sending out their own arcs. The entire display expanded for a breath, two, flaring impossibly wide, capturing those in the street beneath it in its grip. It arced out in Kara’s direction, one of its arms snaking toward her in a coruscating flare of blue—

And then its rotation slowed and halted.

Everything within its reach halted as well. A woman struggling to her feet, one arm supporting her weight as she thrust herself upward, now still as a statue. A man helping a younger man to rise. A dog on its hind legs who’d been barking fiercely at the distortion, its master trying to draw it away, the boy no more than ten. Another man hunched over a young girl protectively, as if to shield her from the distortion itself. All of them frozen, trapped, unmoving.

Kara let her held breath out in a hiss of anger and frustration, found it hard to take another. A surge of fear coursed through her. When she tried to step backward, her legs felt as if they’d been embedded in stone, so she stopped trying, focused on the distortion instead, on the arm that had halted before her, close enough she could reach out and touch it if she wanted to put the effort into making her arms move. She’d been too close to the distortion when it expanded, had been caught in its outer edge. But it was so large! Certainly the largest she’d ever witnessed, encompassing nearly the entire width of the street and the buildings to one side.

She needed to escape and repair it, before it collapsed. Or everything within its grasp, including her, would be lost.

Like the seamstress’ hand.

Her heart leaped in her chest and she swallowed reflexively against the memory. Forcing herself to draw in deep, even breaths, she quieted her racing heart and swallowed down the taste of fear, of remembered failure.

Slowly, her tensed muscles loosened and the bitterness on her tongue retreated. The distortion’s grip on her loosened as well.

Calmed, she began to hum again and reached out on the Tapestry as she had before, encompassing it, searching out its edges. Not only was the distortion larger than any she had seen before, it was also more complex. She seeped into its fractures, wrapped around the shards, reality shattered like a mirror, only in three dimensions. Some of those fractures coursed through the people trapped below and she grimaced, but pushed the thought of what that meant aside.

Outside the effects of the distortion, she saw people moving, nothing more than vague shapes, oddly warped, as if she were watching them through flawed glass. She caught a flash of deep purple, the hue of a Wielder’s jacket, and wondered who had arrived.

A moment later, she knew: Marcus.

She sensed him as he reached out on the Tapestry, as he began enfolding it as she had done already, his essence mingling with hers. She shuddered beneath the touch, jaw clenched. She didn’t know why he was here, in Stone, but his presence on the Tapestry, brushing against her, caressing her, felt like steel scraping down glass.

Suddenly angry, she thrust him away, felt his initial confusion surge into anger, then blocked him as she focused on the distortion again. She could do this herself. He stalked her, his purple cloak flashing around the outside of the distortion as his essence lashed against her barrier. Sweat broke out on her forehead under the onslaught. She knew she should welcome his help, his strength—

“Kara! Remember the seamstress!”

She flinched, his words distorted and muddled, but still clear.

Jaw clenched, she released her block on the Tapestry.

Marcus’ presence surged forward, offering her support while focusing on the opposite side of the distortion, where the two men were caught. “It’s about bloody time,” he spat.

Kara didn’t respond; she didn’t waste the time.

Then she noticed movement. Not from outside the distortion. From inside.

She stiffened in panic. Her hum faltered, the barrier wavering but holding, afraid that she’d taken too long, that the distortion had begun to collapse again, that it would take her with it—

But then she realized that it wasn’t the distortion at all. It was the man shielding the young girl.

He’d shifted. Not far. Only his head had moved, tilting so that he could see the effects of the distortion around him. He murmured something, his frown tightening as he scanned the others trapped in the fluctuation, but Kara was too far away to hear what was said. The girl he sheltered squirmed, but he drew her in tighter, quieting her.

And then his gaze fell on Kara. He stilled as their eyes met, as he recognized her jacket. Fear flashed across his face, tainted with hatred, followed immediately by determination and resolve. It hardened his face, drew it in sharp lines, highlighting the scars from burns across his cheeks.

He shouldn’t be able to move, not trapped in a distortion.

Kara resumed humming, more intently now, aware that the distortion hung poised around her. She spread herself toward the man and girl, but found that the fluctuation had formed itself around the two. None of the fractures penetrated them, halting abruptly, close to the man’s body.

Before she could investigate further, the vibration in the distortion changed. A subtle note, not in sympathy with her hum. Pushing the strange man and girl aside, she focused in on the heart of the fractures, on the original tear. She began to draw her outstretched senses inward toward that tear, pulling on the Tapestry, drawing it over the fractures, healing them as she worked. The blue arc of light before her flickered, then began to fade. The closeness pressing against her chest eased. Vortices whirled backward and closed. The edge of the distortion pulled away from her, the crowd and the dark purple of Marcus’ jacket coming into focus, his face twisted with concentration as he worked. She stepped forward, her hum increasing, the distortion trembling as she freed the woman already halfway to her feet. She lurched upright, stumbled, then scrambled away from the distortion and into the waiting arms of the crowd, gasping.

Kara’s hum tightened in pitch. The boy and his dog were next. The vibration in the distortion increased. Sweat burned in Kara’s eyes, trickled down her neck, tickled as it seeped between her breasts beneath her clothes. She raked her arm across her forehead, blinked as her vision blurred. The distortion was too big; even with Marcus’ help, they weren’t going to be able to close it completely.

The dog came free easily—it shook itself savagely, barked, then pressed as close to its master as it could with a whine—but one of the largest fractures ran straight through the boy.

The vibration intensified.

Behind her, Marcus stepped forward, muttered, “Kara,” in warning. She felt him working furiously. He’d freed one of the men. But the other . . . and the boy. . . .

“Kara!”

With a shudder, the distortion began to move.

Kara wrenched herself free of the Tapestry with a harsh cry, felt Marcus’ hand fall on her shoulder to steady her even as he did the same. She jerked away from him with a bitter, “Don’t,” ended up in a crouch, one hand against the stone cobbles of the street.

Those gathered a safe distance away gasped as the distortion flared and collapsed back into itself, the whorls and arms withdrawing with a shivering hiss, like ice cracking—

Or a blade slicing the air.

A few women screamed as the scent of fresh blood struck Kara hard.

“No!” Kara barked in denial, shoving herself upright, Marcus suddenly holding her, trying to comfort her, his scent close, so familiar, twisting in her chest like a knife.

“You don’t want to go over there,” he muttered.

His voice reawakened her rage and she began to struggle. With a visceral growl, she broke free, staggered forward, collapsed to the stone of the street next to where the boy had fallen. She reached out a hand toward his slack face, the dog snuffling his blond hair, nudging him, licking his cheek as it whimpered. Its paws left bloody tracks on the stone as it circled around to Kara’s side and pushed against her outstretched hand. The pool of blood from the slice across the boy’s chest—from right hip to left torso, where the fracture had been—grew sluggishly, black-red and viscous.

Kara let her hand drop to her thigh. The dog—a mangy thing, standing no higher than her knee—pushed its head into her lap beneath her arm and whined.

Marcus’ heavy footsteps sounded near her, moving to check the other man, but she couldn’t tear her gaze away from the boy’s dead brown eyes. Not even when Marcus returned and settled into a crouch beside her. “The other man is dead as well. Neither of them had much of a chance. They were too close to the source. The fractures had pierced them in multiple places.”

There was no accusation in his voice, but she felt a nauseous wave of shame anyway, of guilt. If she’d let Marcus help her earlier, as soon as he arrived, they may have been able to save them all, may have been able to heal the distortion before its collapse.

“What about the man and girl?” Her voice sounded foreign to her, rough as gravel, dry. She coughed.

“The other two? They ran into the crowd as soon as you freed them.”

That brought her gaze up. She stared into Marcus’ face, into his blue eyes, the skin beneath bruised with lack of sleep. His thick hair stirred in a small gust.