Chapter 90
90
N YX AND THE others gathered around the chrysalis. Emerald fire raged across the inside of the dome. Nyx hummed under her breath and cast forth a few glowing strands, testing the energy, searching for a way through the flames to reach Shiya.
Overhead, the raash’ke screamed and battered the air with their wings, terrified, skimming away from the coruscations and waves of the emerald fire that had enslaved them. Daal swept among them, doing his best to calm and reassure them. He was slowly having some success, relying on his own innate ability to commune with others, to sympathize and soothe.
Nyx had her own challenge before her.
She waited for one of the waves of fire to pass, then darted her thread to the cocoon’s glass. She managed to touch it for less than a heartbeat. A glimpse of Shiya reached her. Not an image seen with the eye. Shiya was a golden corona of bridle-song, whipped and lashed by malignant fire. It was like with Bashaliia back at the Mouth. The spider fought to break her, to bridle her with his false, corrupted song. Nyx could sense not only the enemy’s fury, but also its terror of Shiya.
Nyx urged the bronze woman to hold out. While Shiya was far stronger than Bashaliia, the spider was wielding the full power of this entire dome against her.
Shiya will break.
Then a snap of fire cracked into Nyx’s strand. The recoil struck her hard enough to knock her back a few steps. The strength was unnerving, formidable. She rubbed the fiery sting in the middle of her chest.
“What do we do?” Rhaif pleaded. “We can’t leave her in there.”
“She’s strong,” Graylin said.
Nyx shook her head, firm about what she had sensed. “Not strong enough.”
“What about Daal?” Rhaif pleaded. “Maybe with his added power you could break through.”
Nyx stared up. Daal continued to sweep arcs through the raash’ke. She also noted her mount, Metyl, who remained on the floor. He was at the edge of panic, too, ducking his head low whenever a tide of green fire swept overhead, keening his distress.
“No,” she answered Rhaif. “The raash’ke need Daal. If we lose those wings, we’ll never leave here. And even with Daal’s strength added to mine, I don’t think it would help, not against the full power of this dome.”
“What about brute force, then?” Jace asked, hefting his Guld’guhlian ax.
Darant and his men nodded at the wisdom of such a course.
Vikas looked skeptical, and rightly so.
Nyx stared at the chrysalis, catching glimpses of Shiya convulsing within. “Not yet. That cocoon is the lock, and Shiya the key to whatever it is we’re supposed to do here. Damage either and we’ve lost already.”
Krysh spoke off to the side, where he had been studying the giant crystal sphere hanging over the bottomless hole. “Something’s happening here.”
They all turned.
Up until now, the sphere had seemed unaffected by the fiery storm around the dome. It remained latched and suspended in bronze, resting silently in its cradle, a crystal eye staring back at them with a pupil of pulsing gold.
But now the crystal shook. It was just a small vibration, but in an object that massive, it was disconcerting enough. The golden sea inside sloshed, lashed by an unseen tempest. The bronze cradle groaned. The rigged archways that suspended it creaked with the strain of holding that trembling sphere.
“What’s causing it?” Jace asked.
Nyx looked back at the chrysalis. She pictured the bronze woman quaking in her prison. “It’s Shiya. The sphere is responding to her assault.”
“Then we must break her loose,” Jace warned. “Take the chance.”
All eyes turned to Nyx—but the answer came from elsewhere.
“It is too late,” a voice called over in a sibilant, grating voice, as if it were the speaker’s first attempt to communicate aloud. There was no amusement, no satisfaction, just a cold statement of fact. “It is done and cannot be reversed.”
They all swung to a curve of the dome a short way off. A bronze figure stepped out from the depths of one of the massive sinuous extensions. It was the spider, come out of hiding.
He rounded past the giant cable that dove under the floor and continued toward the sphere. As with the quality of his speech, there was no hostility or threat in the spider’s approach, more a vague indifference, maybe a touch of curiosity.
She had glimpsed his monstrous form back in the Mouth, but that view had been for less than a breath. Revealed now, his form churned the stomach. His bronze had melted into slag and had only the barest resemblance to a man. He walked on two legs, had two arms, and a head. But that was the only similarity. His mouth was a straight slit and looked newly formed. The metal lips appeared smoother and newer, as if freshly smelted and only formed to speak to these trespassers.
His eyes, though—a glassy blue—matched Shiya’s.
It was in those eyes that the creature showed any reaction to their trespass. Fire shone behind the glass, but it was the burn of frost. The glow was cold and cunning, nearly as inimical as his form. It was as if the spider sought to strip away any residual humanity—both in form and spirit.
As the creature drew nearer, the others backed warily with weapons raised. They all knew Shiya’s strength and speed.
Nyx stood her ground.
As the spider noted her stance, his animosity flared brighter, showing enough humanity to hate. Even his bronze warmed with the restrained fury. “ You are the one who broke my hold over the raash’ke, who carried an Axis to my territory.”
Nyx absorbed his words, hearing again that strange term. “Axis? What is that? What did I bring?”
He glanced to Shiya. “As a Root, I held out little hope to capture and imprison a ta’wyn as powerful as her.” A trickle of emotion seeped into him, one of cold satisfaction. “It is a worthy reward for ending the world.”
Nyx stiffened. “What do you mean?”
He motioned to the sphere. Its cradle quaked more violently now, shaking the ground underfoot. His next words were terrifyingly matter-of-fact, spoken with unshakable certainty. “The turubya will tear the world in half.”
The spider tried to smile with its slit of a mouth, as if a rock had discovered amusement. “The irony is that an Axis will do it. I don’t even have to break her to my will. I just needed her. ”
Nyx stared over to Shiya in the chrysalis. “You needed a key. ”
He considered her words, then nodded. “I could never have accomplished it on my own. Not as a Root. I needed an Axis. And you brought her to me.”
Nyx resisted the guilt that tried to rise, refusing to let it numb her.
“It must be done,” he intoned gravely. “The turubya is anathema to anyone but the Rab’almat. No one else can wield it. Not you, not your Axis. It is done.”
A measure of exhalation had entered his voice, a glorious terror.
Nyx watched his bronze flow and churn across his body. His mouth dissolved and re-formed, only to fade again. Nostrils drilled into a skull and swept away. She backed from the horror of it all.
“Can this sphere truly break the world?” Graylin whispered to her.
Krysh answered, “We came here to seek a way to set the world to turning. If such power exists in the Wastes and is now corrupted, I would believe him.”
“Then how do we stop him?” Jace said. “Back at the Crèche, Shiya mentioned that her form could be melted in the molten seas. Could we get one of the raash’ke to carry this monster out the dome and drop him into one of those fiery canyons outside? Maybe if he’s destroyed, it’ll release Shiya.”
Krysh nodded. “It’s worth trying.”
Unfortunately, the plan was heard, and a mouth re-formed. “Such a destruction would result in the immediate and catastrophic failure of the turubya. ”
Again, this statement was spoken with an icy certitude, with no sense of dissemblance or lie.
Rhaif grimaced. “We probably don’t want that to happen.”
Nyx turned to the spider—or the Root, as he called himself. “When?” she pressed him. “Without interference, when will the turubya trigger this cataclysm?”
The Root melted his bronze enough to turn his face toward the rise of the sphere. His gaze ticked to the arc of the trembling crystal, to the vibration of the bronze suspensions, to the rocking of the thick cradle. His legs absorbed the floor’s tremoring, which rippled up through his bronze. He turned his eyes on her, cold with certainty.
“In less than a quarter day,” he said.
Nyx went cold.
We don’t have even until morning.
She moved closer to him, seeking words to dissuade him.
“It is done,” the Root declared with finality. “No force can alter this course. Only an Axis has the knowledge to deactivate me and stop the inevitable, but that threat has been eliminated.”
Nyx glanced to Shiya.
And we let her walk straight into that trap.
Despairing, Nyx turned again to the Root. His eyes remained fixed on the crystal orb of the turubya, no longer evaluating, simply waiting. This sense was firmed as the ends of his legs spread tendrils of bronze across the copper, as if becoming his namesake, rooting himself in place until the world’s end.
She backed away, and Jace drew alongside her.
“If the end is inevitable, ” Jace said, “then maybe you should wield your bridle-song against him. You thwarted him before, back in the Mouth. Maybe you’ll discover… I don’t know, something. ”
All eyes turned to her.
She glanced at the shaking sphere, felt the trembling underfoot.
Jace is right.
She swallowed down her trepidation and nodded. She backed from the group and signaled for Daal to come down. By now, he had somewhat calmed the raash’ke—though they kept a wary distance from the molten spider, circling near the edge of the dome.
Daal acknowledged her signal and swept in a low arc. She followed his trajectory. He was going to land Nyfka near Metyl. He likely wanted to keep the two raash’ke close, to support each other during this storm.
She crossed to meet him.
As she did, she glanced back to the molten bronze of the Root. She was nagged by one detail. The creature could have stayed hidden. He did not have to reveal himself. His actions made no sense.
Did he come out to gloat? To exact revenge? To watch us struggle at the end?
She frowned, knowing she had sensed no such pettiness.
She glanced over to Shiya, who—while often cold and distant—had shown moments of tenderness, compassion, even humor.
If this Root was of the same ilk, then somewhere down deep, no matter how much he tried to melt it, a core of humanity must still exist. She had witnessed inklings of it when they spoke—not that those traces were enough to sway him away from his exalted plan.
He’s too far gone for that.
Still, this insight might explain why he had come out of hiding. She looked across at their group, bonded to a cause, supportive of one another. She stared at the sweep of wings overhead. She remembered what she had shared with the horde-mind. She had shown them what they had lost, that nearly indescribable, wordless sense of connection, of a wholeness that could only be found in another heart, that commonality that went beyond love to something even deeper and more meaningful.
We all seek that, she thought. From those around us, from the bonds we form, from the lives we share. It’s the core of our humanity.
She returned to looking at the Root.
You can’t melt that away completely.
Perhaps it was this need that drove the Root—alone for millennia—to maintain his stubborn enslavement of the raash’ke. It wasn’t just for the protection of his lair. Deep down, he must have desired some measure of connection to another, corrupted though it may be.
She stared back at him with narrowed eyes. After she had severed his connection to the raash’ke, he had been left isolated again. And now, knowing the finality of death was coming, maybe he didn’t want to be alone, not at the end.
She felt a flare of sorrow for this lonely sentinel, abandoned for ages to guard this spot. Still, such pity would not stop her from seeking a way to stop him.
Ahead, Daal landed with a sweep of wings. She hurried to him, knowing she would need his font of power. The two of them dared not hold back.
For any chance of success, it was all or nothing.
D AAL CROSSED ALONGSIDE Nyx toward the melted figure of a bronze man. The glassy eyes remained eerily open, unblinking, yet shining with awareness. Nyx had briefly told him what had happened and the doom that threatened.
“This Root, ” he whispered as they reached the bronze figure, fearful it was listening even though it had no ears. “He says only Shiya can stop him. Even with bridle-song, how will we get him to obey us ? He’s surely too strong to bend to your bridling, even with my power.”
“I don’t know. But the Root must have expended considerable energy in preparing and executing this trap. It had to tax him.”
Daal glanced to the others, who all gathered behind them, their faces tense. Ahead, the Root was a statue fastened to the copper. Beyond the creature’s shoulder, Shiya remained locked in a cocoon of crystal and fire. She quaked inside, somehow transferring that violence to the turubya ’s orb in the dome’s center.
Nyx stepped next to him.
“What do you want me to do?” he whispered.
She held out her hand. “What you’ve always done. You be my flashburn, I’ll be your forge.”
He closed his eyes and clasped her hand. As their palms touched, fire ignited with a furious heat. He melted into her. It no longer felt unnatural, but welcoming. His flames flowed out of him, pumped by his own heart, flaring hotter with each breath.
He felt his skin chill, but he held firm.
He was rewarded as Nyx sang softly next to him, a wordless melody, fed by his flames. He felt the vibrations of her throat as if it were his own. Her song grew, washing between them. She drew more and more, eventually drawing gasps out of him.
The song now flooded, filling both, until there was no more space. He remembered drowning in the Dreamers’ sea, alive but with his lungs weighed down by water, a heaviness without panic.
This was like that.
And still the song grew.
As Nyx drew more fire, the cold in him deepened to numbness. He felt the surrounding world fade. Still, as before, her desire was his. He felt her ache, her longing for more. She was the black abyss that could never be satiated.
Still, he gave himself fully to her.
Why hold back if it was the end of the world?
If I must die, let me die within you.
She heard him. Melded together, they could keep no secrets. She spoke in threads of light and song.
Stay with me…
He wanted to refuse, to give her all of him, but those strands of song wrapped to him, holding him closer. He threw her words back from a moment ago, words that still resounded inside her and he could read.
All or nothing.
They dared not hold back.
But she refused to accept those extremes, offering an alternative.
All yet nothing.
He didn’t understand.
Stay with me…
She bridled him to her, using his own energy to hold him. He read the reasons. A mix of fear, loneliness, need, even desire.
He stopped fighting and released himself to her.
W ITH D AAL’S C ONSENT, along with his trust, Nyx let her song burst from her heart and throat. A golden torrent flooded out of her, fueled by Daal’s flashburn and shaped by her forge—but she aimed her power where no one expected.
One chance…
She emptied her tide down, into the copper floor. She followed that rush, bound with Daal. She was too terrified to try this alone, to risk the impossible by herself. She needed his anchor.
I need you.
She felt his gaze sharing hers, his hand in hers, his memories with hers.
As with the dome’s door, she struck the copper—and dove into its emptiness.
Daal gasped in her ear, maybe using her chest. They were both too confounded together to tell one from the other.
She flooded through those empty spaces, around those hardened motes spinning with energy. She showed him the duality that still defied her understanding.
The all of solid copper, yet the nothing within.
All yet nothing.
She swept along the floor until she sensed the shadow entrenched above. The darkness of bronze. She dove deeper into the copper, ducking under the Root’s position.
She shared with Daal the memory of the copper floor vibrating and rippling up the Root’s legs. She showed him the tendrils of bronze draping across the copper, spreading his base thinner.
Once under that shadow, she gathered her light and Daal’s fire. She took both and forged a golden spear and shot upward, traveling with it. She pierced through the thin bronze at the Root’s base—and burst into his core.
The emptiness of bronze exploded into liquid fire and impossible energies. Suns were born and died around her. Or so it seemed, so it felt. She clung to Daal, torn and ripped by forces and dynamisms she had no words for. She became both fleeting storm and ageless rock. Madness threatened in a breath.
Then she spotted it—or willed into being because she knew it must be here.
Above her hung a perfect cube of crystal, pulsing with golden fire.
Like the sphere.
Like in Shiya.
She drove toward it, then hovered. She dared not crush it or it might end the world. She hung there in the wildstorm at the Root’s core, struggling how to smother the cube’s fire, to deactivate without destroying.
She cast a few questing tendrils.
Can I pick this lock like I did the dome’s door?
She touched the cube, and in a heartbeat, she knew the truth.
I can do this.
But that single beat took too long.
The world burst around her with an explosive boom.
She was thrown far, out of the storm, out of bronze, and into her own body. She slammed hard, toppling backward to the copper floor. A wave of emerald fire blasted over her and away.
She struggled to breathe, to remember how. She finally gasped once, coughed, and breathed again. She sat up into chaos. Her vision swam; her ears rang hollowly and muffled. Sights became snatches of confusion.
Another thunderous boom made her flinch.
Before her, the Root had reared up, hardening all of his surfaces. He fled to the dome wall, a blur of metal. He shoved a hand into the labyrinth of crystal and pipes, melting his fingers deeper. Jagged bolts of green fire spat and chained over the arc of the dome and blazed down to his arm, sweeping over his body, turning his bronze into a lightning rod for those infernal energies.
Nyx despaired, knowing the Root was impenetrable now.
Next to her, Daal struggled to rise to an elbow, drained and shivering, pale nearly unto death.
Then Krysh and Graylin crashed upon them and struggled to drag them up. The world spun worse. The alchymist shouted something to Graylin, but the ringing in her ears deafened his words. Still, he pointed to the side.
Her head swung in that direction, responding to Krysh’s terror.
Across the way, the turubya ’s orb rattled hard in its bronze cradle. Metal twisted and screeched loud enough to pierce her ears. The golden sea inside the crystal roiled and thrashed. Underfoot, the copper floor violently quaked.
She realized what was going on.
Her trespass had not only failed—but it had brought doom to their threshold. They no longer had a quarter day. Likely only moments now.
Another boom shook the room, ringing the walls.
Crystal cracked across the dome’s inner surfaces, raining down in a glittering cascade.
Nyx gaped all around.
What is happening?
G RAYL IN PULLED N YX under his arm. He felt the panic trembling through her, the terror and confusion strangling her breath. He hugged her closer, trying to squeeze his strength into her. To the side, Krysh struggled with Daal, who hung in the alchymist’s arms.
Glass showered over all of them. Graylin drew them to the far wall, avoiding the green torch of the Root’s imbedded form. He aimed away from the rattling orb as it threatened to tear loose from its cradle. He sought the only shelter—one of the yawning tunnels that led down the coppery limbs of the complex.
Another boom deafened and drove him protectively low over Nyx. Krysh dropped Daal, as the alchymist focused back over his shoulder, craning up at the source of the blasts.
Moments ago, the first explosion seemed to wake the Root. Emerald fire had flashed across his bronze—then Nyx and Daal had been thrown back into their bodies. Still, some damage was done in the process, jolting the massive crystal turubya, rocking it to the brink of destruction.
But at the moment, none of that was important.
Graylin helped Krysh get Daal up and moving again.
He stared as another blast of cannon fire punched a hole through the Sparrowhawk ’s hull. Fiery boards rained through the warm mists over the dome’s doorway. The ship could take no more damage. Glace had bought them as much time as she could, guarding the entrance with the bulk of the Hawk —but there was too little of the brave ship left.
Its powerful forges ignited as the Hawk slipped sideways, skating its keel along the dome’s exterior, then blasting off into the icy night. Smaller ships gave chase with tails of flames. In the Sparrowhawk ’s place, a ship three times its size drew its shadow across the doorway.
A Hálendiian battle barge.
Before the massive craft sealed them in, six sailrafts dove under its bulk and shot into the dome, circling wide. They were followed by a bevy of one-manned slipfoils. Past them all, the battle barge fired its cannons overhead, shooting off into the night, discouraging the Sparrowhawk from returning, loudly claiming this space for king and kingdom.
Below, Darant had collected his men. Vikas had grabbed Jace by the scruff. They hurried toward the same towering tunnel into the coppery extension. They were all too out in the open, too exposed. Not that their small party had any hope of challenging the invading Hálendiian raiders.
But Graylin wasn’t counting on their group alone.
They had allies—in the sky.
The raash’ke roiled throughout the dome. A storm of black wings. When the Sparrowhawk had been attacked, the remaining few raash’ke aboard the ship had flooded through the doorway, seeking shelter within.
Angry and fearful, the raash’ke descended upon the entering ships. Claws ripped into balloons. Wings dove and smashed into slipfoils, cracking hulls and sending the tiny vessels cartwheeling away.
“Run!” Graylin shouted to the others as ships fell out of the air.
Splintering crashes struck all around. Fireballs burst as forges exploded on impact. Smoke blasted high. A slipfoil rolled wildly past them with flames spiraling behind it. It struck the dome wall and blasted a crown of shattered crystal around it.
Unfortunately, the Hálendiian forces had dealt with the raash’ke before and had readied themselves. The pilots seemed immune to the beasts’ insidious keening, which in the dome already frazzled Graylin’s senses. That bastard Commander Ghryss must have returned to the battle barge with knowledge of the protective property of lodestones.
Worse, from the open sterns of the sailrafts, jets of flames waved out, burning wings. Hand-bombs were tossed. One struck a raash’ke and blasted a hole in its chest with a rain of bone and blood.
“No!” Daal moaned, as if sensing the flock’s pain and terror. His anguish drove him out of Krysh’s arms.
Before the alchymist could stop him, Daal fled away, heading toward the pair of raash’ke huddled on the floor, burrowed tight to one another. He refused to abandon the two mounts. As he ran, Daal glared up. It looked like he intended to take the fight himself to the air, to rally the raash’ke into a more deliberate offense instead of the panicked chaos.
And not just him.
Nyx broke away from Graylin and chased after Daal. Graylin bolted after her, but she shouted over her shoulder, reminding him that the Hálendiians were the least of their problems, “Guard Shiya! Help Rhaif!”
Graylin skidded and turned, realizing in his haste he had forgotten about the pair. He turned and saw Rhaif crouched near Shiya’s chrysalis, refusing to forsake the bronze woman. Graylin knew Nyx was right.
Nothing mattered if they lost Shiya. She remained the key to everything.
Still, he called in desperation to Nyx, “What are you—?”
She shouted without turning, “Going for help!”