Collision: The Alliance Series Book Three (29 page)

“Uhh…”

“I thought it would be wise to have a reliable way to contact you. Your brother generously donated this earpiece.”

“Um.” I had no idea of the time on Earth, but Ms Weston probably slept at Central. Unless she really was a cyborg.

“What happened?”

“Ah…” Dammit. She knew what I could do, she’d known all along. “I think,” I said, hesitantly, “I might have accidentally channelled one of the deities. That’s what the Vey-Xanethans seemed to believe, anyway.”

A pause. “And do
you
believe this is true?”

“I’m sure those deities of theirs are like… magic with consciousness,” I said. “Three of them, for some reason. I only channelled one of them, but it was like when magic was out of control, when the Campbells tried to…”

When I’d used third level magic, amplified to the max. Because I was no normal magic-wielder. Pure magic was in my blood. Was it the same here? Could I interact with the deity because the magic inside me matched the summoners of Veyak? Could the summoners have magic in their blood, too?

From what I’d learned, it couldn’t be the same as mine—adamantine had been artificially put inside me, after all. The summoners were born with an affinity for magic. But magic lived in their blood. Maybe they didn’t know that. Only a handful of Alliance worlds knew, and Vey-Xanetha had been cut off from that knowledge. Vey-Xanetha didn’t have technology like the Alliance, or bloodrock, or any knowledge of the different types of sources. They could only use what they had. But that meant they were part of the source…

“Magic gained consciousness? An interesting theory.”

“Is it more believable than living deities?” I countered. “I don’t know what to think, but it was
dangerous.
Really dangerous. And I don’t know if it’s going to affect me again. Magic doesn’t come with a rulebook,” I added, echoing something else Kay had said to me once.

“No,” she said, “I suppose it doesn’t. You are certainly an unusual case, Ada. I would advise you to refrain from using magic again until you know where the problem lies.”

“Right.” Except I had the sinking feeling
we
were part of the problem. The way magic had reacted to me… it was like it consciously wanted me to kill those summoners. The anger wasn’t all mine, and I wasn’t sure I could fight it again.

Maybe it wasn’t Kay she needed to worry about.

Maybe it was me.

***

KAY

I couldn’t settle. Nor could I discuss my theories with the others. I paced the downstairs corridor, turning over the pendant I’d taken from the summoner in my hand. I didn’t think Ada had noticed I’d picked it up. She’d disappeared upstairs wearing an expression that clearly said she wanted to be left alone. Not that I knew what to say.

Maybe she hadn’t even noticed the summoners had been wearing the pendants, but I sure had, and when I’d picked one up, I’d seen the symbol for Veyak carved into it. So I’d brought it with me. Why, I didn’t know, but Veyak’s symbol kept appearing. The ground where those other summoners had died had been marked with the same symbol. And those were worshippers of Aktha. Was one deity killing off people who served the others, or did it just seem that way?

Or was Veyak
taking power
from the others, in the same way those magic-creatures fed on magic? If the deities were forces, powerful magical forces, it was a possibility. Of course. And I’d be a fool to ignore it.

So the balance had tipped. Aktha moved the continents, at least, I guessed it did, as the earth deity. Aktha had lost power first. Xanet… sustained life. And still functioned, but not enough for the police of that village to be able to stand up to the summoners.

Veyak was the deity of storms, weather… and power. Its symbol meant power, and magic itself
was
power. Somehow, on this world, people could channel it in other forms, through the other two deities.

But Veyak was unrestrained magic. Who knew, maybe it
had
been restrained, once, before whatever went wrong here.

Third level magic. I was almost certain it had to do with third level magic. Ada had used it, and a shadow had fallen over her. A familiar shadow. I knew where I’d seen it before–when Ada had used third level magic to take out the Campbells. When she’d drawn all that power into herself, and unleashed it. Even considering the state I’d been in at the time, it wasn’t an image I’d forget in a hurry. But that cloud… hadn’t looked like pure magic. Even though I’d been half-blinded by the glare when she’d unleashed that energy at the summoners, I’d been almost positive the shadow had looked familiar for another reason, too.

Like Veyak itself hovered over her.

Was Veyak… third level magic, but locked into a living form? Or had I jumped to the wrong conclusion entirely? I knew what I’d seen, but you could never entirely trust your own judgment as far as magic went.

One thing I
did
have to go by was the crater I’d seen through that doorway the summoners had opened. Everything had started with the chasm, according to the legends. A massive crater in the earth had to be a part of the reason everything had gone wrong here. But checking that out meant leaving the others, and going out into the storm.

I turned invisible, climbed out the window and dropped to the ground in front of the entrance, dodging another fork of lightning. Damn storm.

Running to the cliff wall, I used the world-key to open a doorway. Once in the Passages, I activated the tracker and concentrated on the magic trace I’d picked up from the summoner along with the pendant. I could amplify the tracker and use it to trace where the summoner had last been—right next to the chasm.

Using the signal as a pointer, I opened a doorway in the blank Passage wall. I’d expected it to take me to the place we’d killed the summoners, in the middle of the lifeless canyon.

Instead, the doorway opened into… nothingness. White fog obscured the view, and when I looked down, it was pretty clear no ground lay underneath it.

The edge of the chasm I’d seen through that doorway didn’t lead to a gaping hole in the centre of the earth. There was just… nothing there. I thought I saw shapes moving on the other side, but it was too far away to see.

“Seriously, universe?” I muttered. Maybe I was hallucinating. Doorways couldn’t lead
nowhere.
I might not know all the laws around creating doors, but I did know there had to be an anchor on the other side, which empty space just didn’t have. I was no expert, but it must be to do with magic, and even on a world like Vey-Xanetha, magic couldn’t anchor itself to a gaping hole in the universe.

There was clearly
something
on the other side, but from here, everything blurred, and I wasn’t idiot enough to walk into the chasm. I hovered on the edge of the blue-lit corridor, leaning as far as I dared over the edge, and jerked back, heart beating fast. Even from here I knew there was no oxygen in there. The chasm definitely wasn’t survivable. If I stepped over the edge, I’d have no way back.

“The hell?” I muttered. Was this the world-key’s default setting? If it didn’t anchor to one world, did it open into empty space? I couldn’t even begin to figure it out. Unless…

I turned the world-key over in my hand. You needed a symbol to open a doorway to a certain world. So did that mean the signal wasn’t coming from Vey-Xanetha, but somewhere else? A world I didn’t know the symbol for?

How
many people knew, anyway? The Conners had torn open a doorway directly between Valeria and Aglaia. But they’d also torn open doors to the Passages, too, to let the kimaros out.

Was
that
what caused this insanity? It hadn’t been long since the attacks, and if the Conners had ripped the Multiverse itself apart, what if they’d done permanent damage? It didn’t seem likely the council would have let that slide, even if they were pushing this whole situation onto Earth. If the whole Balance was concerned, they’d all have to get involved sooner or later.

I turned it over in my mind as I closed the doorway and went back to the base, climbing in the first-floor window again. I touched down on the landing, world-key still in my hand.

“Kay!” Ada jumped back. She must have been walking around the corridor. “What in the world were you doing?”

“Following traces.”

“You went outside.” She took a couple of uncertain steps towards me, her hand dropping from her ear. Had she been talking to her brother through the earpiece?

“Only for a second,” I said. “I went in the Passages. I picked up a magic trace from those summoners when the magic was amplified, and I figured it’d take me to where they were hiding.”

“Seriously?” Ada’s eyes rounded. “You weren’t planning to take them on alone!”

“No, I just wanted to check on that chasm. I didn’t get a good look at it from the forest, but I figured they were somewhere nearby. But when I opened the door, there was nothing there. It was like empty space.”

“Empty space?” Ada gaped at me.

“The trace from the summoner should have led back to Vey-Xanetha, but it didn’t.”

“Uh… you opened a door into a bottomless pit.” Ada shook her head. “I don’t think the storm’s going to stop. If we wait, it might be too late. And if I channelled the deity once, maybe I can do it again. Maybe there’s a way for me to talk to it, somehow.”

That’s what I’m afraid of.

“Yeah,” I said. “The deity controls the storms, and he’s seriously pissed off.”

“The sky-god,” said Ada. “The weather-god. That symbol keeps appearing. He’s like a gigantic kimaros, like a living…”

“Source.” I pulled a chain from my pocket, engraved with the same symbol. “I took this from one of the summoners. They were all wearing them, I think, and I can feel… some kind of magic. It’s not friendly. I wouldn’t try amplifying it.”

“Good!” said Ada. “You can’t go using your power on any unknown object you come across.”

“Well, if I’m right, Veyak is pure magic, the magic in the atmosphere itself. You noticed how only the people who serve Xanet and Aktha have a physical difference in their appearance?”

She hesitated, then nodded. “The summoners of Veyak… I thought about it, and I think they must have internal sources, if they can interact with magic itself.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I thought the others wouldn’t be so quick to jump on board with that theory. On the surface, it looks like all magic is the same.”

“But it isn’t,” said Ada. “What about the deities themselves, though? I’ve thought, and I can’t tell what’s supposed to be wrong with Veyak. If anything, he, it, whatever, seems
more
powerful, not less. Judging by what I felt.” She shivered. “Did you feel it?”

“Yeah.” I’d felt it, all right—felt anger that wasn’t mine stir when she’d channelled the magic. “We need to figure this out. Maybe my amplifier can help.”

“Just don’t take unnecessary risks,” she said.

I’d heard
that
one before. “You talked to the dragon.”

“And managed not to get burned,” she said, with a rather forced smile.

“Don’t worry. I’m not planning on amplifying an already-pissed-off lightning deity.”

“You think it’s conscious, then? For sure?”

“Veyak’s mark keeps appearing, of its own accord,” I said. “Either there’s an angry god out there murdering people, or someone’s killing in Veyak’s name. Either way, I’m intending to stop them.”

This whole situation became odder and odder the more I thought about it. Why was Mathran the only person on Vey-Xanetha who seemed to have the slightest inclination to stop whatever was happening? The population was small, true, but they appeared intelligent. At least, Kevar and the others in the city were. They believed their deities were real because all the evidence was there, and they’d experienced it themselves. Only those summoners had seemed out of it, and the way they’d acted had been unusual, even for this world.

Had the deity been
possessing
them? I’d thought I might find some of the summoners when I’d followed the trace. Instead, it had led me to the abyss. A literal dead end. Still, when I thought of those gleaming red eyes, red like magic… the way magic acted like a living force in the Passages…

“Then I’m in,” said Ada. “What’s the plan?”

“Those spheres,” I said. “If I can pick up a trace from the summoner’s pendant, I reckon I can follow the trace from the spheres Mathran has. They were here when the Vey-Xanethans first came to this world. That’s got to be a clue, right?”

“If you say so.” Ada’s forehead creased in doubt. “You said you won’t amplify those sources.”

“The tracker doesn’t count.”

She raised her eyebrows.

“It’s true,” I said. “I don’t need to actually be touching a source to pick up the trace, just nearby. I can sense
your
magic right now. And the others’.”

“You can?” Her hand twitched, like she wanted to see if it would transfer over to her.

“Yeah. This place amps up our magic-senses. I guess.” I glanced downstairs, to check no one listened below. “All right. I’m gonna take those spheres. Can you divert their attention while I turn invisible and sneak in there?”