The Hulgliev themselves are wearing powered armor like Tel Kharan, only this armor looks much sleeker than anything I’ve seen—there are none of the clunky steam joints, and parts of it are clear, like glass. Their helms are pushed back, and their faces are painted in sliver and red. One of them is bleeding pretty badly from a head wound, and as I watch the bird leans forward and plucks him up in its beak. It shakes him back and forth like a dog with a rat in its mouth. The other Hulgliev crouches and throws a blast at the bird, but it doesn’t seem to have much effect.
The bird doesn’t see me.
I climb out of the well, keep behind it, and then I crouch and leap with Semper’s knife in my hands. I catch it in the back, between where it’s wings come together, and I drive the small blade as deep as I can. I put as much aether as I can behind the thrust, and I smell something awful burning in there. The bird lights up from within, but then it drops the other Hulgliev and tries to turn on me. It howls like a wolf and slashes at me with its wings while making this tremendous thunder from its cranial ridge that shakes the entire floor, throws me off balance.
It opens its beak and lunges at me.
But then it staggers and falls backwards against the wall, smoke curling from its chest.
The standing Hulgliev nods to me, and then rushes over to the fallen one, who is crumpled in a heap on the ground. He kneels down next to him and rolls him over, but it’s clear the one on the ground is dead—his chest is all caved in and bloody, and his head lolls back on his neck.
“
Help me get my brother to the ship,”
he says in the High Tongue, getting his hands under the other Hulgliev’s shoulders. And then he looks at me more closely. He opens his mouth to say something else, but suddenly there’s a massive explosion outside of the room. I can feel it coming from far below us, up through the floor. The walls shake and the floor cracks open, and the whole building tilts off to the side.
“Farsoth’s done it,”
says the Hulgliev, and he looks strangely relieved.
“Tilhtinora is coming down. Lasser and his birds will not succeed.”
He looks at me, and I’m not sure what to say. I’m still trying to catch up. And then I do. The rumbles grow louder, and the building slumps even more. He looks over my shoulder to where the well is, and then back at me again. I’m guessing that the well wasn’t there two minutes ago.
“
How are you called,”
he asks. He’s much taller and wider than I am at the shoulders. He has a broad, open face and something in the way he cocks his head to the right reminds me of my secondfather, though he’s probably no more than my own age.
“Blackwell.”
“
What the fuck kind of a name is that
?” It sounds fancier when he says it in the High Tongue.
“It’s not important. Oberhoi. I’m Oberhoi.”
I say.
“
You’re awfully short, Oberhoi. I am Krieste.”
He calls the other creature over and she holds out the long, narrow box. “
This is what you’re here for, isn’t it?”
“
I think so."
I say.
"Yes.”
“
Farsoth said you might come, if we succeeded. Take it
,” he says. I accept the box from the snouted woman, as something gives way beneath us and we all fall ten feet or so before the building jerks to a stop. I hear the sounds of metal, straining almost to the breaking point, and outside there’s another explosion.
We pick ourselves up on the slanting floor, and the Hulgliev gestures me over. He bows his head forward toward me, and I do the same until we touch foreheads together. “
I wish you the power of your conviction, and the wisdom of our mother’s breaths
,” he says.
“
And you the fortitude of your fathers and the fathers of your fathers,”
I say, really touched.
I’d never recited this with anyone other than my secondfather before.
Then he stands and steps back.
“Are we really that short where you come from, Oberhoi?”
I shrug. “
Do you need help getting his body in the ship
?” I ask.
He shakes his head. “
Tilhtinora will be a fine grave for all of our bodies
,” he says.
“But make sure the rest of Hriglo gets to the right place, will you?”
“If I see him, I will,” I say.
There’s another rumble, and we’re falling for sure this time. Krieste, the snouted woman, and I lift into the air, and the podship starts to slide. I see Krieste grab the woman and swing them into the hatch of the podship, and I push off of a wall with the box in my hands and leap toward the well. I grab the rim of it with my claws and pull myself inside. I climb down as fast as I can, and above me I hear the massive explosions of a great city, falling out of the sky.
There’s nothing I can say that would adequately describe that for you.
About halfway down the ladder, I have to turn again. There’s another Hulgliev there on the ladder, looking confused.
“
Hriglo?”
I say. It's the dead Hulgliev with the caved-in chest. He nods, and seems relieved to see me. “
Follow me.”
I squeeze myself around him and we climb up to the darkness at the top of the well. I pull myself up over the side, and give Hriglo a hand up. Hriglo stands up and looks around in the darkness. I see his shoulders slump as recognition sinks in. He takes a step into the darkness, and then another one. His eyes soften, unfocus. “
Krieste
?” he calls. “
Krieste, are you here
?”
I’m guessing he can’t see me any longer, and he wanders off still calling.
“You haven’t opened the box,” says the shadowy Hulgliev on the other side of the well. I recognize the voice now all too well.
“I’m aware of that.” I don’t look at him. Some dust from Tilhtinora billows up from the well.
“Why?”
“I’m afraid of it, Sha.”
“Afraid of what’s in the box? Or what it will ask of you?”
“What’s the difference?”
“Open the box.”
“Surely there’s someone better to…”
“Open the fucking box.”
I open the fucking box.
Inside is a bright, glowing rose about three feet long. The bloom on the top is a vivid glowing red stone, translucent and bright. It’s on a long, silver stem that has three leaves branching off it, each of which glows with a light of its own. There are no thorns. With the rest of my senses, the rose looks much like a Sister does—it burns with energy in my mind’s eye, teeming with activity just underneath the smooth surface.
I take it out of the box and hold it up above my head, and the light grows brighter. I turn away from the Hulgliev on the other side of the well and hold it up over my head, and it shines out across the dirt ahead of me, pointing the way.
“Will I see you again,” I say, without turning around.
“Of course you will.”
“Soon?”
“Soon enough,” he says. “But not too soon.”
I swallow hard. “How did you die, Sha?”
“It’s a long story,” my secondfather says. “You don’t have time for that now.”
“But I want…”
“We can’t always get what we want, Blackwell. Surely you’ve learned that by now?”
My chest feels tight, and I’m having a hard time breathing. “I meant to come back sooner,” I say. "To the village. I wanted..."
“I know, Blackwell. I know you did. Sometimes worlds get in the way."
I nod. I take a deep breath, then, and start walking, and I can feel him following just behind me. As I go, the light from Te’loria gets brighter, and I can hear the voices in the distance reacting. They’re calling out in the High Tongue as I get closer and soon I can see them, hundreds of Hulgliev old and young. Some of them are dressed in nothing more than old rags. Some of them are in full traditional armor, or even elegant robes of silver and red. Several of them are even wearing crowns. Many of them are carrying the marks of how they died, too. Some have gaping cuts in their sides or at their necks. Some have scorch marks in their fur, or missing limbs.
They each stand up when the light touches them, though, and begin to walk toward it, and then they start to look around them and begin notice each other, too. I see them greeting each other, some formally, some more casually. They’re introducing themselves, starting conversations. As I pass with Te’loria, they don’t seem to see me exactly, but they follow behind the light of the rose, banding together with still more Hulgliev until I come to a set of silver stairs that stretch up into the darkness overhead.
I turn around, then, and look at my secondfather.
He looks just like he did when I was seven, tall and grizzled.
Except there’s a long spear sticking out of his chest, a huge, red spear that’s covered in elaborate runes.
“When I leave, what will happen to all of you?” I ask him. “Will you all go back into the dark?”
“We might,” my secondfather says, looking around at all of the others. “But the dark might be easier to bear knowing we’re not alone in it now.”
Many of the others in the crowd nod. “Go on, Blackwell. Do what you need to do now.”
I take one last, long look at him, and then nod.
I turn away and climb the Sister’s silver tongue.
39: Semper
S
emper struggles momentarily against the black Stona’s grip, and the Tel Kharan snaps his beak at him. He reaches across Semper with his stunted talon and takes the knife from the sheath on his chest.
Well, that’s two of them gone,
a part of him thinks. He’s surprised at how calm he is.
Four Stona with knives in hand have surrounded Nadrune with a set of overlapping wards that isolate her from any outside energy, much like Blackwell’s collar. Others have disarmed and bound her guards. Without the constant flow of energy her people provided her, Semper knows it’ll be hard for Nadrune to hold her shape—freed from containment, the ravages of the flame-bonding will eat away at her.
Even now he can see her limbs starting to swell, just slightly. The swelling will accelerate fast. If unchecked it could soon be irreversible.
Bakron knows that, too, Semper sees. He’s looking on with a smirk.
Nadrune stares at Bakron with disbelief and rage on her face. “You will die for this, Lieutenant-Marshall.” Flames spit from her mouth as she speaks and black carbon streaks her lips.
Bakron studies Nadrune closely and grins. “Not too long, Nadrune, eh? I think I will enjoy this more than I expected.”
He turns then and yells to the other marines to set up a matrix in the center of the chamber, the peak of it pointing toward the third Sister. “The Beast will be back,” he tells his First, a white-feathered Stona with a slightly crooked beak. “Be ready. We
will
avenge your worldmates.” The Stona turns her head to one side and clicks her beak. They bring up a matrix and the hissing and crackling spreads around the chamber.
“You promised a fair fight,” Mircada calls. “A
fair
one, Bakron. Not all of this! You swore it!”
Semper whips his head around to where another Stona holds the Kerul woman’s arms behind her back.
He sees the realization that she’s been betrayed by this betrayer spread across Nadrune’s face, then. Flames spark with emerald and crimson in Nadrune’s eyes, and her lips are coal black.
Bakron swaggers over to the Kerul woman. “I swear many things to many people,” he says, and presses his mouth against hers in a long kiss. She struggles against him, but the Stona holds her firm. “I will swear more of them to you later, personally.”
He steps back, and the woman spits in his face. Bakron laughs, lowers his visor, and steps to the head of the matrix.
They don’t have long to wait.
Without preamble, the Sister’s mouth opens, and Blackwell steps through it with a flower in his hand, one that is unmistakably Te’loria. Semper finds it hard to breathe.
Blackwell looks around, takes in the situation fast and draws Semper’s knife in one hand.
The flower glitters in the other.
He crouches, ready to leap.
But Bakron wastes no time—he pulls aether from the matrix and throws it at the Beast. The blue fire crackles across the room, but when it reaches Te’loria, rather than crawling down the length of the flower or the knife and straight toward Blackwell’s heart, it gathers into the air above the bloom of the flower, in a fast moving cloud, circling in on itself again and again and growing brighter.
Blackwell seems as surprised and Bakron is, and looks from the cloud to Bakron and back.
Bakron throws another large blast and another at Blackwell, but each of them is drawn up into the cloud at the top of the flower.
The cloud grows brighter and denser, fast moving bolts of fire whipping the blossom until it’s too bright to look at, a miniature sun in Blackwell’s hand.
Semper has seen many duels in his time with the Akarii First Family.
He’s seen teams of marines arrayed against each other in elaborate matrix platforms, strange new matrices set up as part of complex engagements between Akarii and tiAkarii and even the rustic k’Akar, a seeming infinite series of cousins that sought notoriety or death.
He’s saw a bloody assassination once, and even witnessed a bizarre Bakarh Contest of Symmetry, something very few men (outside of the Bakarh) had ever lived to tell of.
He’s never seen anything like this.
He’s read of Te’loria, of course, but it was a symbol, not a weapon.
Semper sees Bakron hesitate as the cloud grows hotter. Sweat beads up beneath his faceplate, which starts to fog over.
Tall mosaic figures and thin, mysterious statues from the city’s history stare down at him from the great dome, assessing and judging.
Bakron throws back his helm and yells to the other Stona. The ones holding Semper and Mircada release them and jump into the matrix to expand it. They draw up more power, and Semper can feel it moving through walls and the floor of the Alabaster Tower even without his knife.