Brian Staveley - The Providence of Fire

The palace guards managed three or four steps before the first of the Ishien charged through the kenta . Unlike Kaden, they hadn’t seen the ground, and they paused for a second just inside the gate. The guards, too, hesitated, then plunged ahead with a roar. The next moments were madness. Without the kenta shielding them from the worst of the violence, Kaden, Kiel, and Triste would have been cut to pieces almost immediately. Most of the Ishien met the palace attack, although two or three turned, searching for their quarry. Kiel stabbed one through the neck, and another through the hamstring, dropping him to the floor. Kaden thrust his torch into the fallen man’s face, blocking out his scream, ignoring the stench of burning flesh.

“Fall back,” Adiv was shouting, his voice somehow carrying above the chaos. “Drop back!”

Some of the guards retreated, while others, turning at the command, fell to the Ishien. There was a rumbling, Kaden realized, a low, implacable grinding of stone on stone, a sound he’d heard hundreds of times in the high mountains as the granite shifted against itself with the spring thaw, as great blocks sheared off from the cliffs, sliding down the crags, the terrible, thundering weight shattering trees and smashing boulders, crushing everything beneath. He glanced up to see the stone ceiling shifting, the carefully mortared blocks grinding against one another, fine powder sifting down into his eyes, filling his lungs.

“Back!” Adiv called again. Kaden could hear the voice clearly enough, but he could no longer make out the leach, hidden as he was by the rising dust and the darkness of the corridor. As he strained to see what was happening on the far side of the gate, an enormous stone, ten times the size of a man, tore free from the ceiling, smashing down into the Ishien, crushing two and trapping a third, blocking off the kenta .

Kaden turned to Kiel. “What’s happening?”

The Csestriim’s eyes were hard, intent. “The leach,” he said. “He’s trying to crush us.”

Kaden stared. Several of the torches had guttered out, and the tops of the walls were trembling. There was no telling how much weight hung suspended above them, but the stone of the vaulted arch was dropping away seemingly everywhere, everywhere but right above them.

“Go,” Triste growled, her voice thick with strain. Kaden turned. Her eyes were wide, lips parted, and her chest heaved as though she’d just sprinted the Circuit of Ravens. Sweat sheened her forehead and face. Matol’s blood dripped. “Go.”

Kaden glanced up. “I’m going, come on. This whole place is falling apart.”

“I know, you fool.” She groaned. “I’m holding it up.”

There was no time to stare, no time to ask questions. Kaden seized her by the arm, thrust his torch before him into the half-lit darkness of choking stone dust, and dragged her forward. By the time they reached the door, the entire chamber was shaking, stones the size of his chest raining down like hail, shattering on the floor.

“Faster,” Kiel said, sliding in front of them, naczal held at the ready.

The corridor, too, was collapsing, the grinding and shattering blotting out all other sound. Of Adiv and his men, there was no sign, just a hundred paces of straight stone hallway ending in a staircase. No guards. There was no need, when Adiv could pull the entire structure down on their heads, burying them in the rubble. As though in a trance, Triste stumbled forward behind Kiel. Kaden began to follow, when a fragment of stone caught him across the back, slamming his body to the floor and blasting apart the vaniate . Pain and fear flooded in, the hot red reek of his own mortality. Powerless to shout, he watched as Triste and Kiel reached the stairs, then started up, not realizing he’d fallen.

He took a breath, almost choked on the dust, then dragged in another. Each movement of his lungs sent a stabbing pain through his back. Something was broken-maybe a rib-but there was no time to dwell on it. Without Triste to support the ceiling, the corridor was coming apart. Grimly, Kaden thrust back the wash of feeling, dragging himself to his feet.

The forty-six steps were the longest of his life, but by the time he reached the upper landing, the tunnel had stopped shaking. He could hear the last stones smashing against the floor below, but the sound was muted, partly by distance, partly by a louder, more strident noise shoving it aside, drowning it out. Men were screaming in the hallway ahead, shouting and sobbing, voices bright with desperation. Kaden took a step forward, slipped, caught himself, then looked down. The stone was awash in blood. A few paces off, a soldier lay crumpled against the wall. Beyond him another, then another.

Dread mounting, Kaden limped ahead, forcing down the pain in his chest, trying to still the battering of his heart, trying to think . They were in the Dawn Palace, or beneath it. Adiv had marshaled his men, but someone was killing those men. Kiel had proven himself capable with the naczal, but it wasn’t Kiel. Kaden stared at another corpse as he passed. The face had been utterly smashed, features caved into the back of the skull. No weapon could do that.

Triste. It had to be. When Adiv tried to tear down the tunnel, she had held it up. Like her father, she was a leach, a powerful leach, and something inside her had snapped.

He redoubled his pace, following the corridor around one corner, then another, pushing past dozens of bodies until the dank, cold scent of the stone began to give way to fresh air. He rounded a final bend and pulled up short. Thirty paces away, silhouetted by the bright blaze of the noonday sun, arms outstretched as though eager for some terrible embrace, Triste stood in an arch leading outside. Beyond her, Kaden could make out fire and smoke, could hear screams, but Triste herself remained motionless as stone. As Kaden stared, Adiv stepped from an alcove halfway down the corridor. He didn’t spare a glance for Kaden. All his attention was focused on his daughter, and as he moved, the bare knife in his hand glinted with reflected sunlight.

Kaden threw himself into a lurching run. There was no point shouting a warning any more than there was trying to cover the sound of his approach-the violence beyond the doorway was deafening even inside the hall. It was a race, pure and simple, with Triste’s life as the prize, and though Kaden knew nothing about fighting, nothing about war or politics, nothing about leaches or their powers, he knew how to run. He’d been running his whole life, running hungry, running in the dark, running hurt, and so, gritting his teeth, he ran.

He hit Adiv a few paces from the entrance, a few paces from Triste, slamming him to the floor. Agony scoured his back, but he ignored the agony. He had only moments, less than moments, before the leach turned on him and tore him apart. Kaden found the knife, tried to pull it to Adiv’s throat. He was stronger than the councillor, but the other man had an animal’s desperate tenacity, and Kaden could get no purchase on the handle.

He grimaced; then, steeling himself against the pain, he wrapped his fingers around the blade itself, feeling the keen edge bite into his flesh, tendon, bone. He ignored the blood and sudden stupid uselessness of the fingers, forcing the knife closer to Adiv, wrapping his legs around the leach’s torso, dragging it closer, and closer.

The councillor cursed, snarled something, and suddenly Kaden felt himself losing the fight, as though a great invisible hand had lent its strength to Adiv’s struggle. He was losing. He had no idea how to fight back against a kenning. Then, abruptly, the man went limp. Kaden stared, then shoved the leach aside to find Kiel standing over them, naczal buried in the councillor’s back. A momentary surge of exultation flared up in him, but Kiel’s expression doused it.