Divided: The Alliance Series Book Four (3 page)

Breathe, Ada.
Panic threatened to crush me from the inside out. I concentrated on my anger at the Stoneskins instead. I shot a blistering glare at the three stone-skinned warriors stalking the edges of camp. For all their catlike movements, they weren’t stealthy at all. They were slow-moving rocks. But they weren’t stupid, and they’d see an attack coming a mile off. Could
anyone
fight invincible monsters who were immune to magic as well as all weapons? Even the Alliance?

“This place isn’t high-magic,” said Gervene. “Quiet as death. I think it’s a defunct world.”

“I thought so, too,” I whispered. “I can’t feel anything.”

“Oh, God, you’re one of those,” said someone else—the bloodstained man from before, and he was lying not far from my feet. I edged away from him, slightly unnerved by the way he just lay there covered in blood, making no attempt to clean it off even with a river ten metres away. Maybe he wanted to scare people into leaving him alone. It seemed to be working.

“One of what?”

“The freaks.”

“Ignore him,” said Gervene. “He’s sore because one of those enhanced magic-wielders kicked the crap out of him the other day.”

I walked over to her. She’d sat up, rubbing the back of her neck.

“Is that where the blood came from?” I asked, in a whisper.

She shook her head. “He was like that when we found him on Cethrax. I think something jumped him and the people he was with, and he was the only survivor.”

I ran my hands over the goosebumps on my arms. “What did you mean about enhanced magic-wielders? Not the Stoneskins?”

“I thought that’s what
you
were,” said Gervene. “Magic-wielders who weren’t born that way. There are a few … I’m not one of them,” she added. “They can feel magic changes in level when we move between worlds. There’s not much to feel anyway.”

I nodded. I wasn’t about to tell her I was no normal magic-wielder, with the adamantine in my blood giving me the ability to absorb any nearby magic, even take a deadly level three hit and walk away with no damage. But it didn’t matter when faced with an enemy literally made out of stone. I wasn’t unbreakable. I broke as easily as anyone else.

“Yeah,” I said. “How many are there?”

“Three. The two Klathicans are a little strange. And that guy over there’s not friendly. No one talks to him.”

I turned to see where she pointed. A large, blond man sat on the rocks across the camp, wearing… Alliance guard gear.

Aric Conner.

CHAPTER TWO

KAY

I was dying. And it was the Multiverse’s final laugh that I’d be able to feel every second of it. Every stab of dull pain as the wounds from the stone-skinned warriors’ attacks shut my body down. Every failing breath, punctured with more agony.

The one consolation I had was that my life didn’t flash before my eyes. I couldn’t see anything at all. Not even Ada. The faded image of her face was slipping away by the second.

I can’t die here.

Whoever said the pain faded before you died was a lying bastard.

“Fuck you, Multiverse,” I whispered.

A nagging voice in my head told me I shouldn’t even be able to speak. I should by rights be dead already. I was pretty sure those Stoneskins had broken every bone in my body. I was no stranger to pain, and this wasn’t the first time I’d hung on the edge, wondering when I was finally going to die. But there was no way I could have survived. I knew a thousand ways to break a person, and getting beaten halfway to hell by concrete monsters outclassed all of them. Nobody could lose so much blood and live.

But if I really was dying, I shouldn’t be able to think so clearly. The all-encompassing pain had dulled, and was fading by the second. My eyes flickered open and I blinked, my vision clearing to show a web of branches above my head.

What?

No, there were vines, and they were moving
.
Sensation twitched back into my limbs, and creeping tendrils moved over my skin. I gasped for breath, and almost doubled over from the pain. But something held me pinned down.
Vines
held me pinned down.

The pain was fading. I could breathe. It hurt like a mother-fucker, but I could breathe.

Breathe, Kay. Keep breathing…

The tendrils withdrew, cold against my bare skin. My clothes were soaked with my own blood. But I wasn’t dead. I drew in a ragged breath, a sharp voice awakening in the back of my head.
Get up. Get up.

I sat up, regretting the movement instantly as dizziness washed over my vision. I could move. I wasn’t trapped. But how had I not bled to death? Whatever the reason, I was alive.

Which meant Ada was really gone.

The thought hit me with a force a thousand times stronger than a steel fist.

A face came into focus, a few feet away, and I started, my body shifting before I was even aware I’d got to my feet. The room swam again.
Focus. She’s just a kid.
A girl, no older than ten.

I recognised her—from the Vey-Xanethan forest, after she’d escaped being sacrificed. The invoker of Xanet. She’d healed Ada.

My heart pounded. She’d done the same to me. Why? Because we’d saved her? I couldn’t think clearly. But she’d saved my life, healed me with the power of her god.

“
Vakath,”
I whispered. Thank you.

I could say no more. I was alive. As long as I was still breathing, I could find Ada.

And the door. I’d been lying on a bed in a house—on the inside of a tree, judging by the bark-like lines on the walls.

The girl backed away from me, wary now. I must be in
the city where the summoners had almost sacrificed those kids, deep inside the Vey-Xanethan jungle.

How did I even get here?

I lurched to my feet, even as pain shot through my entire body. Nobody stopped me leaving. The city appeared to be deserted, but frightened faces peered from the windows. I had to think. I didn’t have a world-key, but the doorway must be close by. Another doorway had been opened in the jungle before, so it was logical that the same spot might be used again.

The door closed.

No. I wouldn’t accept it until I saw it with my own eyes.

It wasn’t hard to pick up the trail of my own blood, spattered over the tangled tree roots which covered the town. The girl had dragged me—no, someone else must have helped. I’d come
that
close to dying. Hell, I
should
be dead. Part of me thought it was a trick, because magic was a force of destruction. Now it had saved my life. I was here, on Vey-Xanetha, and Ada was… gone.

My steps were unsteady, my breaths shallow.
Get it together, Kay.
The city merged with the jungle so successfully I couldn’t tell where one ended and the other began. The houses were more like hollowed-out trees, and the branches formed a canopy so thick it was like being closed in a dome. My breath quickened. I needed to get
back to Earth, but how was that even possible now?

I hauled myself over thick tree roots, out into the jungle proper. The blood staining the ground became thicker, and if not for the pain of the exertion, I’d have triple-checked I was actually alive. But magic couldn’t bring back the dead.

I scanned the undergrowth-choked paths, willing my head to stop spinning. I’d been here before. Not two days before. I could find my way.

There. A clearing. Blood spattered the ground and the nearby trees, and the undergrowth was flattened. But no doorway.

“No way,” I muttered. I dropped to a crouch, searching under tree roots—for a clue, anything. It was impossible to open
a doorway without a world-key. They needed a source, or a sacrifice. So they’d either killed a summoner or left evidence behind.

My hand closed around a small, ice-cold object.
Got it.
It was a piece of metal, all right, but the colour was dulled, like the power had drained from it. If it had been used to open a doorway…

Quit it.
I was a freaking amplifier. I didn’t know whether I could amplify sources that were already dead, but there was a metric crap-ton of magic here on Vey-Xanetha. No time to debate or question. I’d nearly died once already. I reached for the magic inside the cold piece of metal.

Blackness filled my vision, like all light had been extinguished. Like the opening sequence of a simulation, stuck on pause. I couldn’t even see my own outstretched hand. It was like empty space. I tried to move forward, but couldn’t. Hell.

I concentrated on the only sensation I could grasp—magic. The maddening buzz of static. Not a physical sense, but like when I amplified a tracker to pick up the trace of a specific magic-wielder. Like when I tuned into the signal to make myself invisible when holding a Chameleon.

This
signal seemed to be coming from all around me, not that it was easy to tell in pitch-darkness. It had to come from the world-key. And all world-keys were tied into the same place.

The Passages. Get to the Passages.

I staggered forward, almost tripping over a tree root. Still in the jungle. But the piece of the Passages remained in my hand.

I didn’t have a clue about the specifics of how world-keys worked, but standing here like an idiot didn’t have any effect. When I used the key in the Passages, I had to sketch out symbols for a specific world. And it
did
work in reverse, I remembered. The Passages themselves had a symbol for instant access. They were the one point which could be reached from any world.

I reached into my jacket and pulled out my communicator. Or, what was left of it. It was all but in pieces, the case shattered thanks to the Stoneskins. And I’d handed the Chameleon in at Central again, seeing as the battery had drained out of it.

But I had the tracker. My own, actually, since they’d never asked for it back. And I could use it to pick up a magic signal.

Ada’s magic signal slammed into me with a shock of pain, right through my bones. Her signal was mixed in with my own, like two radio signals, indistinct. And… that was it. There were faint traces of others, people who’d passed this way to the city, but none were linked to the Stoneskins. They had no traces of magic at all.

With Ada’s signal, I could find her. If I opened a door.

I looked up, at the nearest tree. Symbols had been carved into the trunk. A mark like a trident turned on its side, and three smaller symbols intertwined with each of the three points. Those were the symbols the Alliance used to open doorways. I’d used them myself.

Following instinct, I traced the lines of the symbols carved with the edge of the piece of Passage, keeping the amplifier on, building the charge higher, and above all, concentrating on the trace of Ada’s magic. I gripped it like a safety rope.
Take me to her,
I thought fiercely, like it would make a difference. I blinked, and the outline of a Passage door seemed to impress itself over the symbols. I blinked again and it was gone.

I finished tracing the last symbol, a circle with an indentation in the centre. The world-key, whatever it was, fitted exactly. But when I let go, the magic faded, and the little colour remaining in the piece of metal faded. I’d amplified the little magic left in it, but the Stoneskins had already burned most of it out.

But it was enough. Power surged around me, and a doorway opened right over the symbols, through the centre of the tree. A familiar corridor.

The lower Passages.

I stepped over the threshold, and the door vanished, a blast of magic carrying me over the edge. I struck the ground hard, rolling over through… mud and water. Cethrax’s area.

But Ada wasn’t here. Nobody was in the corridor, which, unlike the upper Passages, was stone-walled, poorly maintained. Murky water swirled around me.

Pushing myself to my feet, I became aware in one instant I was covered in blood, alone and weaponless, in the middle of the most dangerous area of the Passages. Not only that, Cethrax was working against the Alliance, with those Stoneskins who’d taken Ada.

A slithering movement sounded nearby, and a shadow detached itself from the wall.

Of all the timing.

I swore. The creature had already seen me, and was taking its time. Piece by piece, the shadows pulled back, revealing a very solid and very ugly opponent. Curved tusks hung from its overlarge mouth, and wild red eyes fixated on me, deep-set in its boulder-like head. This creature had four short arms, and three thick, tree-trunk-like legs. Stooping under the low ceiling, it dared me to challenge it. Just what I needed right now—a chalder vox.

Dealing damage to one of these bastards only made them stronger. I’d faced them countless times before, but never unarmed. The goddamn Stoneskins had shattered my dagger. I had nothing more than a tracker, and that was no use here. I had to do something I’d never done in a fight before—run away.