Brian Staveley - The Last Mortal Bond

“More movement,” the Flea called out. He and Sigrid had taken up a position just behind them. “Il Tornja’s friends can climb stairs the same as we can.”

The warning was hardly necessary. Valyn could hear the heavy clomp of boots. Ten floors down, maybe twelve, but coming. He turned back to Kaden.

“Where?” he demanded.

Kaden raised a single finger. “Up,” he said again. “We need to reach the top.”

Valyn nodded. “Get to the prison level. Sigrid, the Flea, and I can hold them there. How long does this ceremony take?”

Kaden shook his head slowly. “I don’t know.” He seemed, suddenly, to be struggling with something, some unexpected pain welling up inside him. His face twitched, then went still. “Just get us up there.”

He held Valyn’s gaze a moment, then turned back to Triste. She was crying, tears standing in her violet eyes, obviously exhausted. Despite it all, she nodded. Then they were moving once again.

The fierce, vicious bliss that had buoyed Valyn up during the whole race through Annur had faded the moment the violence lapsed. His legs were a leaden blaze as he labored up the stairs. Breath burned his chest. From the sound of it, the others were struggling, too, and yet it was working. Once they reached the prison level they could throw shut the steel doors. The soldiers below wouldn’t be able to touch them.

He glanced over at Kaden.

“We’re going to make it,” he said.

Then he smelled the smoke. There was just a hint of it at first, faint and acrid, then stronger and stronger. He paused, holding the railing to keep from falling over, closed his eyes, and listened. His stomach twisted when he realized what he was hearing: below the rumble of boots on the stairs, below the desperate breathing of the people around him, below his own blood pounding in his ears, a quieter, more dangerous sound: the hiss and roar of fire, fire inside the Spear itself, gnawing through the floors below, quiet, but getting louder.

* * *

Quick Jak was going over Allar’ra’s tail feathers when Gwenna returned to the Wing. Annick and Talal were talking quietly a few paces from the flier-Gwenna couldn’t quite make out the words. She hesitated at the edge of the large square, stayed in the wall’s cool shadow for a moment. It was easier than facing them all again, easier than seeing her failure reflected in their eyes. She started to lean against the stones, then shoved herself upright.

“Knock it off, you bitch,” she muttered to herself.

She straightened her shoulders, checked her blades, then strode from the shadows into the open space.

“We failed,” she said. The three turned to watch her approach. Talal looked concerned; Quick Jak, wary, then scared. Gwenna shoved down her own fury. “We failed,” she said again, “but we are not done fighting. Right now, I need to hear it, all your best ideas on how we can get at Balendin before he blows the doors right off this ’Kent-kissing city.”

“Go in on foot,” Annick said after a pause. “He’s seen the birds. He knows we escaped, so he’ll be prepared for another air attack. If we can infiltrate that group of prisoners, get close to him…”

“We’ll just be easier to kill,” Talal said quietly. He shook his head. “He’s too strong. He has the awe of the whole Urghul nation to draw on, and the growing terror of every citizen in Annur. Right now, he might be the most powerful leach since the Atmani, and that power’s not going away unless a million people suddenly forget all about him.” He shook his head again. “I’ll go with you. I’ll try it the way Annick says. I just don’t see how we can win.”

Jak hadn’t spoken, hadn’t met Gwenna’s eyes since she returned.

“What about you?” she asked, more harshly than she’d intended.

For a long time, he didn’t reply. Then, instead of turning to her, he leveled an unsteady finger over her shoulder, southeast, toward Intarra’s Spear. “What,” he asked quietly, “is happening?”

Gwenna knew what was coming, and still she couldn’t help but stare. The base of the huge tower had begun to glow. It might have been a trick of reflected light, the sun’s low rays glancing off the unbreakable glass. That light moved, however, writhed inside the column, growing brighter and brighter until the whole tower seemed ablaze with it.

“The Emperor,” Gwenna replied grimly. “She heard il Tornja went inside, so she lit the fucking thing on fire.”

It had seemed like an insane plan, reckless and desperate, but then, Gwenna’s own plans hadn’t worked out so well, and so she’d kept her mouth shut when Adare sent the orders. She was the Emperor, after all. She could set fire to her own tower if she wanted to.

The blaze, however, was like no ordinary fire. The glass walls soaked in the light, and though the glow had started in the lower floors, the whole Spear was red-gold with it now, like a lance of flame stabbed into the cloud. Quick Jak’s jaw had dropped wide open, and even Annick looked impressed. Adare had wanted a miracle, and she had one, a raging, golden column high as the sky. Gwenna could hear the amazement up on the walls, soldiers gasping, turning, pointing at the pillar of fire in the center of their city, forgetting, if only for a moment, the army to their north.

And then she saw it.

“The bird,” Gwenna growled. The urgency was so sharp it hurt. She shoved Jak with one hand, dragged Talal with the other. “Get on the fucking bird, this is our chance .”

The Kettral stared at her as though she’d gone mad.

“They’re all looking at the Spear!” she shouted. “The Urghul, the Annurians, everyone .”

No one moved for moment, then Talal nodded. “Holy Hull,” he whispered. “No one’s thinking about Balendin.”

It was the ugliest liftoff since Gwenna’s first year as a cadet-all tangled straps and shouting, unbuckled harnesses slapping in the wind-but Jak got them in the air less than twenty heartbeats after they started running.

It has to be enough, Gwenna thought as they soared clear of Annur’s wall. Please, Hull, let it be fast enough .

Behind them, the Spear was still burning; not the glass walls, of course, but the wooden floors built into the tower’s base, illuminating the entire shaft. For a moment, Gwenna could only stare. It was as though Intarra herself had come down at last to plant her pennon in the center of Annur, to claim the ancient structure for her own. The streets were filled with people, every house, temple, tavern emptied out, the princes and paupers of Annur speechless, staring, rapt.

Gwenna wrenched her gaze away, north, toward the Urghul. She could see the low hill clearly enough, the burned-out temple, and Balendin surrounded by his victims at the center. They, too, were staring south, at the impossible pillar of flame. Jak banked the bird, fixing on the target, coming in low and fast.

“Is this going to work?” Gwenna bellowed to Talal.

The leach had his eyes trained on the ground below. “I don’t know. The Spear will be stealing a lot of his power, but not all of it. Those poor people dying in the mud around him might not even notice the light. Even if they do, it won’t wipe out their terror. He’s weaker, far, far weaker than he was, but weaker doesn’t mean weak.”

“Sweet ’Shael on a stick, Talal, can you just tell me it’s going to work?”

The leach smiled at her, a grim, quick smile. “It’s going to work.”

It seemed like she should say something else, something more, but then, suddenly, she was wrenched sideways, almost yanked down off the bird’s talons as Jak pulled Allar’ra into a vicious climb. Gwenna regained her footing, then stared in horror as the ground fell away below; the ground, and Balendin with it. She seized the hastily mended leather strap, hauled on it furiously, the same simple code over and over: Attack. Attack. Attack.