Divided: The Alliance Series Book Four (17 page)

“Neo Greyle, like ninety per cent of the population,” she said, rather sharply. “Does it matter now we’re out here?”

Whoa. “Just curious. Valeria’s more offworld-savvy than Earth, so I thought you might know…”

“I don’t know where we are.” Her expression darkened. “We aren’t anywhere on the Alliance’s radar. I think these worlds are either cut off or abandoned. There are hundreds of locked doors in the Passages.”

“But Cethrax can reach them,” I said. “I don’t get it.”

“It’s Cethrax, does it matter?”

“They’ve never directly invaded another world, have they?” I said. “Why can they get into these worlds?”

“Because no one’s here to close these doorways,” said Gervene. “I honestly have no idea. I know someone who used to work with a physicist on Neo Greyle, looking into doorway-theory, but that tends to be classified. I’m not Alliance. But…” Her gaze found the communicator in my hand. “You are.”

I’d pulled it out to check, not expecting to see anything. When the icon appeared telling me I had a signal, I nearly dropped it. “What—no way.” I opened the settings. No joke. “Holy hell.”

“What?” said Gervene, with a glance over her shoulder. The Stoneskins were way off, but if any of them saw…

“There’s a signal,” I whispered. It wasn’t any network I recognised, but there was
something
there. Something that shouldn’t exist out here in a desolate world. An incoming message alert flashed across the screen, and I almost dropped it.

“Is that an Alliance
communicator?”

I nodded frantically, hiding it inside my jacket again in case the Stoneskins looked in my direction. “I had it turned off, it still has battery. Someone—someone’s messaging me. I don’t know who it is…”

Kay. Or my family.
Maybe it’s the Alliance,
whispered a voice in my head. No—I couldn’t afford to get my hopes up.

But I lifted the communicator with shaking hands, switching onto the flash-free camera. I snapped a couple of pictures of our surroundings and attached them to a message draft. “I’m alive, offworld. We came through Cethrax.” I typed feverishly, all the while keeping one eye out for movement, expecting a hand to knock the communicator out of my grasp, to hear raised voices. I noted all my suspicions about the Stoneskins’ plans, the threat they posed to the Alliance.

I clicked the Alliance’s general list and hit “send to all”. Every member of the Alliance was logged in, including Jeth and Kay. I put the communicator away as Gervene looked on, curiously.

“What are you doing? There’s no signal out here.”

“My brother’s a genius with tech,” I said in an undertone. “If anyone can reach us, he can.”

Gervene shook her head. “I’ll believe it when I see it.”

“What’s that?” Aric had sidled over to me, not very subtly. “You texting someone? There’s nothing. My communicator died weeks ago.”

Huh. I was surprised he was talking to me after what I’d said.

“I picked up a signal,” I muttered. “Don’t tell anyone, or say it in front of them.”

“Like I would.” Aric’s expression shifted to his usual glare. “I’ve had enough lip from you. Those Stoneskin bastards were talking about you. Mentioned a source.”

“Saying what? Tell me.” A shiver went through me at the word
source.
It never meant good news.

“They said you’re important. What’s so special about you?”

“No clue,” I said. I checked the communicator again. No response. I’d been a fool to expect one, even for a second.

“If they catch you with that, you’re dead.”

“I know,” I said.
But it’s the only chance we have.

A yell made me jump. I spun around, and my mouth fell open. Tendrils of inky plant lifted Long-Toothed Guy above the ground. He screamed, fighting frantically against the thick vines. Everyone turned that way, even the Stoneskins, and those too close to the edge scrambled back onto the roadside away from the plant—a bit tricky seeing as it covered almost every inch of the ground and walls.

“Hell,” said Aric. “Thought it was dead.”

The plant snaked around Long-Toothed Guy’s throat, and squeezed.

“Someone help me!” I said, shoving through the unmoving pack of blank-faced people. “It’s killing him.”

“Wouldn’t be the first,” said the dirty-faced teenage boy I recognised from earlier.

“You’re despicable,” I shot at him, and reached for the magic.

The resistance nearly knocked me off my feet. A
presence
pushed me back, and I staggered into the nearest person.

I’d felt it once before. But it was impossible. Magic was
dead
here.

There was a final
crack,
and Long-Toothed Guy went limp. The plant dragged him down, through the gaps in the road, leaving us staring after him.

“Holy shit,” said Aric. “Holy fucking shit. Did that just happen?”

“Apparently,” said Gervene, looking faintly nauseated. “
Stars.
What was that? Did he touch it?”

A general murmur confirmed he had.

“He touched the plant… and it did that?” I stared. The creeping black mass was barely moving now. But it had devoured him.

And it was
alive.
Not in a human way but like… like the gods on Vey-Xanetha. The same way that I’d felt the malevolent presence of Veyak working through people… but it was Xanet I was reminded of now. The god whose power could control plants and even heal people. The inky plants lurking in gaps in the road were like a corrupted version of that.

A sick feeling rising in my throat, I looked away. The other humans edged away from the gap in the road, but the Stoneskins blocked every side of the path. No way out. We were trapped like animals marked for slaughter.

“That’s it.” Aric shoved through the crowd. “I’m through. Killer plants are the last straw.”

“Wait!” I said, barring the way before he walked right into the Stoneskin at the nearest street exit. “Are you mad? If you run, they’ll kill you for sure.”

“Get out of my way, offworlder,” he snapped.

I burst out laughing. More hysterical than anything. “You’re deluded,” I said, trying in vain to hold in the giggles. “Offworlder? Aric, we
are
offworld. A million miles from Earth. Or more. I’ll bet you’re the only person from Earth here. So what does that make you?”

“Shut the hell up,” he snarled. “At least I’m not a walking bomb.”

Now he’d drawn everyone’s attention. If they weren’t looking already.

“Are you off your head?” I whispered. “I thought we had an understanding neither of us wanted to
die.”

Aric started to say something, then stopped. It had gone deadly quiet, and my skin prickled all over.

The humans parted to either side, making way for three Stoneskins. Heading right for me.

“Adamantine,” said the Stoneskin who’d first guarded me, loud enough for everyone to hear. “You are to come with me to the StoneKing.”

Crap.

My heart thudded.
He won’t kill you. He needs you.
But as Aric had oh-so-kindly reminded everyone, I was a walking bomb. He might be an asshat, but I didn’t want to
kill
him, nor any of the other humans even if they hadn’t tried to defend me. I wasn’t a murderer—not a cold-blooded one, anyway. Though the memory of all the crimes I’d committed did absolutely nothing to reassure me.

The main group of Stoneskins had gathered around one building in particular. It was as deserted as the others, steel-framed walls and windows covered in swathes of creeping plant. The Stoneskins didn’t seem to mind it.

The group parted, allowing the three Stoneskins to lead me through. I hadn’t spoken to any of them before, not that I could tell them apart easily. But the central point of the group was a pair of tall and brutal-looking Stoneskins, at least seven feet high with bulging muscles under their rock-hard skin. As the three guiding me stopped before them, the two of them moved apart—slowly, boulder-like feet dragging on the ground—revealing…

I didn’t know what I’d expected to see. A particularly big and ugly monster wearing a crown, maybe. But the Stoneskin at the centre of the group wasn’t remarkably different in appearance to the others. Marbled black and grey skin beneath ragged grey clothes. Six feet tall, maybe. His green eyes—the one part of him with any colour other than grey—fixed on me.

I didn’t say anything. But I hoped he couldn’t read minds, because something had just hit me—something I should have seen from the start. The Stoneskins
did
have a weakness.

“You should know we have been searching for you for some time, Adamantine.” He spoke with a faint trace of an accent. Not any from Earth, at least I didn’t think so.

“Right.” I should be terrified, and yet, after being confronted by that plant… thing, speaking to my captors didn’t seem so frightening. “Are you going to tell me why you need me so badly?”

The StoneKing blinked, eyes momentarily disappearing into stone in an unsettlingly creepy way. “You are bold, Adamantine. I did not know what to expect of you, given how you spent your life on a low-magic, sedentary world.”

The hairs stood up on my arms.
How does he know?
“Uh, firstly, you don’t get to insult my homeworld. Secondly, have you been spying on me?”

“If I were able to spy on you, I’d have taken you with me long ago, Adamantine.”

“Oh…kay.” I looked him dead in the eyes. No way was I showing weakness in front of this deluded guy who, for all his posturing, was hardly the most intimidating-looking of the Stoneskins. So why was he their leader? “So you know all about me. How?”

“I know almost nothing about you, I confess, Adamantine. That is in part why I wish to speak with you.”

Huh?
“Any particular reason you picked now? In the middle of a nest of killer plants?”

“The xethec? It will not harm you unless you provoke it.”

“Yeah, ’cause that’s not creepy.” A voice in my head warned me to tread carefully, but the whiplash of finding proof someone was out there trying to contact me coupled with the near-miss in the swamp and watching that plant devour Long-Toothed Guy made me shaky, uncertain. “So why are we here?”

“This is an outlying world,” said the StoneKing. “Not a particularly useful one, but it does provide a shortcut through the Janx territory on Cethrax. My assistants are searching the ruins for anything we might use to our advantage. I confess it has been a pointless exercise for the most part, but it keeps them from complaining that we have yet to reach our goal.”

“What, you actually
wanted
to go to Cethrax? Are you completely crazy?” Stupid question, really. “Wait, don’t answer that. Where even are we, anyway?”

“It was once a high-magic world, not unlike your own.”

I had to suppress a shudder at his tone. He knew
way
too much about me. And how?

“Look, StoneKing, or whatever the hell your real name is, as much as I’m curious to know how a high-magic world got itself strangled by plants, I’m more concerned with why you decided to come here.”

“Traces,” said the StoneKing. “Did you know it was once much easier to pass between worlds than it is now? Before the Alliance popularised the concept of the
Balance,
as a ploy to make every world in the Multiverse play by their rules. Considering the alternative was to be excluded from the Passages and shoved onto the wrong side of Cethrax to rot, I cannot say I’m surprised so many chose to give up their power. But I’m sure you know there were some who used the situation to their advantage.”

“I don’t have a clue what you’re talking about. Except it sounds like you’re pissed with the Alliance. Why not take it up with them?”

“I have absolutely no interest in the Alliance, Adamantine,” said the StoneKing. “Let them play their games. The real power lies this side of Cethrax, amongst worlds not shackled to a lie.”

Holy shit.
We were in the non-allied worlds, the ones with no link to the Passages… and my knowledge ended there. I’d heard the phrase
this side of Cethrax
when Alliance staff talked about the allied worlds and the Passages, but I’d never really considered what else might lie on the other side, unclassified.

“Dead plants. Real powerful,” I said, affecting indifference. Because something had occurred to me, a suspicion I wouldn’t face just yet. “What’s your goal? Why drag us through the back end of nowhere if you don’t know where you’re going?”

“We
have a destination,” said the StoneKing. “Now we have you.”

“You still haven’t told me what you need me for,” I said. “Nor how you even know—if you didn’t know I was on Earth, then how…”

The answer came together in a horrifying rush a split second before he spoke the word—the word I’d dreaded to hear—“Enzar.”