Threading the Needle (51 page)

“I know that! But what else are we supposed to do? Sit around and wait for the ley to destroy us on its own? I can't do that! I have to do something. But I can't do it alone. Even with Lecrucius and the Wielders we've gathered here, it isn't enough. We need help.”

And Kara suddenly realized that beneath his anger and frustration lay guilt. For what he'd done in Erenthrall before the Shattering, for whatever part he'd played in the destruction of the Nexus. He wanted to atone for that mistake, had attempted to heal the distortion in Erenthrall shard by shard as penance, and now worked on the Needle for redemption.

She thought about all that Marcus had said, all that they'd seen in Erenthrall, all that had happened before.

Then, with resignation, she said, “Show me what you've done.”

Marcus led her down into the Needle. The interior was as black as its exterior, but the walls were threaded with veins of ley light. No ley globes were necessary inside, all of the passages lit by the walls themselves. Kara ran her hands across the surface, fingers tingling with energy, but it was smooth as glass and cold to the touch.

The stairs spiraled down the outside of the tower, like at the node in
Eld. As they descended, passing beneath the floor of the first level, it opened up into a large pit, the obsidian of the tower giving way to more ancient sandstone, what Kara assumed had been used when this node was nothing more than a sacred religious marker. The room was deeper than the nodes she'd worked in Erenthrall, lit from below by prisms of scintillant light and from above by the glow of the ley-veined ceiling of the black tower. Kara had never seen light like what lay in the pit below. She reached out toward it, sinking herself in the flows as they drew closer. Ley fountained up from below, and as she reached down with her senses she realized that, like the pit beneath the Nexus in Erenthrall, it descended far deeper than it appeared. Tunnels branched off of it in erratic directions—ley lines that had once connected to nodes in the major cities of the plains and those to the south and west. Some of those lines were still active, mostly to the south and west, toward the Gorrani Flats, the Demesnes, and the Archipelago. The largest of the tunnels were both dead. Kara felt their presence through the ley, since they were too deep to be seen. But new ley lines had been formed, the ley passing through the rock walls near where the old holes stood empty. Kara assumed they had held the original lines connecting to Erenthrall and Tumbor, and the new lines, slightly off-kilter, were those that Marcus and the White Cloaks had established to bypass the nodes in those cities. Prime Wielder Augustus must have carved out the tunnels when he built the augmented ley system around the Nexus, since even though ley could pass through stone, rock inhibited it. Augustus would have wanted the ley to be as strong as possible.

The stairs ended, leveling out on a wide ledge that circled the pit, the White Cloaks Kara had seen entering the black tower earlier that day scattered around its rim. Kara immediately moved up to the edge, kneeling and placing her hands on the lip so that she could lean out and stare down at the interplay of ley below. It took her a moment to realize panes of crystal hovered in the center of the pit, at least six of them, positioned precisely to capture and refract the ley. Their orientations augmented the power of the ley, while at the same time anchoring it more solidly here at the Needle. Most of the ley coursed through the node below the crystals, but from that pool, the ley arched up in thick tendrils, drawn up by the crystals.

“Is this what the Nexus looked like, before the Shattering?”

“No, the Nexus in Erenthrall was ten times this size. There were
dozens of crystals, positioned to produce a hundred times this much power. And the building there had been built for that purpose. This node is ancient, altered by Prime Wielder Augustus to act as a junction, nothing more. Of the Wielders here, only Lecrucius had ever seen the crystals. And he and I were the only ones who'd ever worked with them. He and Iscivius figured out how to reproduce them. But because the ley isn't stable, we have to constantly align them ourselves.”

Kara glanced up at the other White Cloaks, reaching out as she did so. She could feel them on the ley, watching, waiting, occasionally reaching out and adjusting one of the crystals into a slightly new position. “This is how you're creating the new ley lines.”

“Adjusting the crystals strengthens certain lines while weakening others. It augments power in particular directions. Even with only six panes, it's immensely complicated. And we're learning this from scratch, with only what Lecrucius had learned as a Prime to guide us. The Nexus in Erenthrall was . . . I never saw it, only felt it through the ley, but it was beautiful. Almost alive. I don't know how Augustus and the other Primes managed to contain it, to control it.”

“And yet you still meddled with it.” The words were harsh, but she understood what Marcus was saying. Even here, with only six crystals, she was enthralled.

“Yes. Baron Arent needed to be stopped. He was a tyrant. What happened during the Purge proved that. To me at least.”

Kara stood, dragging her gaze away from the mesmerizing ley below to face Marcus. “You seem to have done quite a bit here on your own. Why do you need me?”

Marcus didn't answer at first, shifting to stand beside her but staring down into the pit. “We weren't looking for you specifically. We were searching for more Wielders, to help control the ley lines. We've reached the extent of what we can do with those we have here already. We were hoping to find a few more Primes. But we found you instead.” He turned toward her. “You were on the path to become a Prime. Everyone said so, even Ischua. In another few years, you would have been taken off the node work and trained to be a Master. And I wasn't lying earlier when I said that you have an affinity for the ley. You were the one that realized we could heal the distortions. No one before you had tried; no one had even considered it. The moment I saw you, I knew
you'd been sent to help us. You can stabilize the Nexus here, and then the ley.”

“I've never worked with these crystals.”

“We'll teach you what we know. And I think your instincts will take over from there.”

Kara couldn't argue about her instincts. Practically everything she'd done involving the ley had been instinct—healing that first distortion that had enclosed the seamstress' hand, raising the flying barge using the ley-saturated sails during the blackout, even attempting to heal the distortion over Erenthrall before it quickened.

Someone cleared their throat loudly from the direction of the stairs and they turned to find Dierdre waiting.

“Marcus, Dalton wants you. There's a situation.”

Marcus motioned toward the enforcers. “Take her back to her room.”

The enforcers closed in on her as he strode to the steps, then began to ascend with Dierdre at his side.

She cast one last glance back down into the pit, yearning to reach out and touch the crystals, to manipulate the ley. But she pulled the urge back under control. She wasn't certain she trusted Marcus yet, wasn't certain she believed his story.

She needed time to think.

“What's happened?” Marcus asked Dierdre as he reached the stairs. “Is it Iscivius? Lecrucius?”

“No, nothing to do with the White Cloaks.”

“Then what? I was making headway with Kara. She was considering helping us, I could tell. Interrupting that right now might set us back by days, if not longer.”

“She didn't help us before the Shattering. What makes you think she'll support us now?”

“Because circumstances have changed.”

They'd reached the top of the steps, had emerged into the first floor of the obsidian tower. Dierdre halted, arms crossed protectively in front of her. “Do I need to be worried about you and
Kara
?”

“Of course not.” He stepped close to her, placing his hands on her shoulders. They were almost nose-to-nose, Dierdre's arms a barrier
between them. “Kara and I ended our relationship years ago. You know that. You were there.”

“She left you because of your association with me, with the Kormanley.”

“Yes. And I could have abandoned the Kormanley for her. But I didn't. I chose you.”

Dierdre wouldn't look at him, staring over his shoulder, but he could feel the rigidity in her shoulders loosening.

He leaned in to kiss her and she relaxed completely, her arms dropping and drawing him in closer.

He could hear the enforcers on the stairs with Kara. He broke off the kiss; he didn't want Kara to see them. With a faint nudge, he directed Dierdre toward the door out into the node's outer garden, the sunlight bright. “Now, what's the problem if it's not the other White Cloaks?”

Dierdre hesitated, as if realizing he was attempting to distract her. “It's the Gorrani who were camped out south of Tumbor.”

“What about them?”

“Darius reports that they've broken camp and are on the move.”

They were inside the temple now, climbing up to the second level, heading toward the orrery, Dalton's meeting room. “What does that have to do with us?”

Dierdre paused outside the door to the orrery and met his gaze. “Because they're coming here.”

She yanked the door open and stepped inside. He followed her a moment later.

Inside, Father, Ty, Darius, Lecrucius, and Iscivius were already gathered, an escort of enforcers on guard a discreet distance from the large table. Ty and Darius were arguing, Lecrucius standing a pace away, attentive but not participating. Lecrucius had been worming his way closer and closer to Dalton. He'd been shocked to find him at the meeting when he'd returned with Kara and the others. Then to see him here now, already part of the council even before Marcus had arrived . . .

He
was the Son, the leader of the White Cloaks, not Lecrucius.

“—approaching from the southeast,” Ty was saying to Iscivius as they entered. “They're marching straight for the Needle. I don't think there's any doubt they intend to attack us.”

“What brought this on?”

Ty didn't answer at first, eyes still roaming the makeshift map they'd created on the table. Large stones marked the major nodes in the immediate area—black for the Needle, near the center, sandstone for Tumbor, Erenthrall, and Farrade. Smaller chunks of quartz were used to approximate the nodes in the Demesnes and the Gorrani Flats that they knew of, while various pebbles indicated nodes that weren't associated to specific cities.

Mixed in with the stones were wooden blocks, representing different groups that had established themselves since the Shattering. Six blocks were scattered around Erenthrall, three to the north, two south, and one to the east. Farther north, another block marked Haven and the self-declared Baron who'd started his own Barony there, although they'd had little contact with his group, mostly violent encounters on the plains around Erenthrall.

There were more around Tumbor, the largest a grainy block to the southwest of the city that represented the Gorrani enclave that had established itself outside of the city's limits, between Tumbor and the southern land routes to the Gorrani Flats. But as Marcus and Dierdre approached the edge of the table, Marcus noted that the block had been moved.

“I'd say the distortion that's swallowed Tumbor forced them to move. They were looting the city for food and resources, like every other group that established itself in or around Tumbor. Many of those groups were caught in the distortion when it quickened, but the Gorrani enclave was much farther out, set up along the Ganges river. The distortion has cut the river off and it hasn't established a new bed yet. There's massive flooding all around Tumbor. Their water source may have dried up.”

“Their food source definitely has.”

“They were relying on Tumbor, shipping some of their food south to their homeland. They need a new supply.”

“But why here? Why not raid the other groups that survived the quickening.”