Divided: The Alliance Series Book Four (31 page)

“No!” I screamed, torn in two.

The world shook, and tilted sideways. For a heartbeat, I thought I’d been knocked down, but it couldn’t be right because my feet were on the ground. The view through the doorway was dark swampland, but not the same scene surrounding us. Another, tilted at an angle.

He’d opened a doorway
within
Cethrax.

“Perfect,” said the StoneKing. “I have had quite enough of you interfering Alliance people. I will tear reality itself apart if I must, but I
will
take Adamantine to her homeworld.”

“No,” said Nell, struggling, “you won’t. I’ll kill you first.”

“Sadly for you, I don’t think that will be the case.” The StoneKing stepped forward, and the doorway
moved,
along with him. He held the world-key in his hand. “Come, Adamantine, and I might spare your friends.”

“Like hell,” said Kay, struggling, but even with the sciras, he couldn’t break the giant’s grip.

The StoneKing stood a metre away, the world-key glowing, illuminating the insane smile on his face. And he reached for my arm.

If I ran, I might get away. But I’d lose Nell and Kay.

Damn him.

He grabbed my arm.

“No!” Nell screamed, fighting hard. But she was outmatched.

“I’ll kill him,” I said, dragging up the last shreds of conviction I had. “I’ll kill him, I promise I will.”

“You won’t be able to find us,” said the StoneKing, to Nell and Kay. “Cethrax is bigger than Earth. We leave no trace because we have antimagic in our skin. Good luck with your little trackers, Alliance scum.”

I opened my mouth to say something else—what, I didn’t know—but he’d already dragged me through the doorway, into empty swampland.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

KAY

I’d lost her again. And I had only myself to blame. From the dagger-looks Nell was giving me, she felt the same.

I should have had a better plan from the start. I should have tried to fight my way through the Stoneskins no matter how many there were, because anything in the Multiverse was better than losing her again.

But the doorway was closed, and that bastard was on the other side. Wherever they were, I couldn’t track Ada as long as the StoneKing had his filthy hands on her.

And a giant Stoneskin had his hands on
me.
The sciras was useless with his rocklike arms crushing me. Nell had the other sciras-chameleon, but the effects wouldn’t last forever, and unless Ada got that world-key away from the StoneKing, there was no way back.

But no one was around to give these guys orders. They’d hold onto us unless we struggled, then they’d crush us. I thought hard, scrambling to think of something. I had nothing but the Chameleon and tracker, and I could only use one thing at a time.

Which meant this was really going to hurt.

The doorway was closed. The other Stoneskins’ blank expressions proved they were at a loss without anyone to give them orders. And they weren’t particularly bright.

Bracing myself, I switched off the sciras, and went invisible.

Pain shot up both arms where the Stoneskin gripped me—for a moment. Then his arms went slack, and his eyes widened, seeing his prey had disappeared. I slipped free and, in a second, switched back to the sciras and knocked him out with one blow. I spun around, turning invisible again, but the other Stoneskin had already shifted, jaw hanging open, and Nell broke free and hit him so hard in the mouth he actually staggered back.

I switched off the camouflage. Neither of us spoke, but ran as fast as possible in the direction of the doorway she’d left open. None of the other humans we passed were alive. The bastards had killed them. Kicking up speed, I kept my eyes on the Passages ahead, a square cut into the world, and pelted through the doorway.

I spun around, disoriented. Nell had opened the door just down from the main corridor, where guards were gathered, but now there were at least twice as many of them. Some were by Valeria’s door, others were crouched down, carving symbols into the walls. World-keys. They must be searching the Multiverse for those monsters. But they had no signal to follow, and now, neither did I.

“Nell!” said Jeth, breaking away from talking to some of the guards. “You made it—where’s Ada?”

“They took her again,” I said. “Bastard StoneKing—their leader—took the world-key and jumped to somewhere else in Cethrax.”

“We need another world-key,” Nell said, loudly. “They’re taking my daughter back to Enzar. That’s against your policies!”

“We can’t use it indiscriminately!” shouted an official. “There’s a procedure, and Enzar is a war-zone. Is it worth provoking war on the Alliance?”

I didn’t have a fucking clue. My mind was clouded, because Ada was gone, and so was any chance of going behind the Alliance’s back.

And I couldn’t think about it. No matter how painful it was, getting the Alliance to take out these bastards was paramount. It had been their standpoint not to interfere in suicidal magical warfare. I’d even agreed with it. They wouldn’t drop the rules for one person. No matter how powerful a magic-wielder she was.

Even if Nell killed them, which was becoming more likely by the second.

“If you don’t give me that damned world-key, I’ll rip out your eyes!” she yelled. “My daughter is out there, and if they find out what she can do, there won’t
be
an Alliance. We’ll
all
die!”

“Even the whole Alliance can’t take on magebloods, let alone the weapons the Royals were using,” shouted the official.

Maybe not. Maybe it was worth dying for a shot at rescuing her, because anything was better than doing nothing at all. If war was coming no matter what, if the Stoneskins insisted on stirring up conflict across the Multiverse…

“Wait,” I said, another possibility striking me. “The Stoneskins are using a magic-tracker to find the nearest world where magic’s been used. That’s how they’re navigating. They don’t even know which world they’re going to end up in when they open a doorway. If we created a mass-use of magic in a certain place, we can draw their attention.”

“Out of the question,” said one of the men from Klathica’s council. “That would cause a disruption to the Balance no matter which world we picked—not to mention the potential casualties.”

“Zanthar,” said Iriel suddenly—I hadn’t even realised she was close by. “The world’s mostly evacuated, and it’s high magic so it won’t take much to cause a disruption.
And
it’s mostly sunk under the ocean. I’ll bet those Stoneskins don’t float.”

I looked to the council. “That sounds reasonable,” I said. “It won’t harm anyone, and isn’t it the better alternative than the Stoneskins getting to Enzar?”

A pause. The council members lapsed into discussions while Nell shouted impatiently.

I’d almost forgotten the door to Cethrax was open, but everyone went silent when a roar erupted from behind it.

“Damn,” I said.

Before anyone could so much as move, a group of drevyerns scrambled out into the Passages, goblin-like faces twisted in terror. “The Vox!” they shouted. “You humans invaded our territory!”

It looked like Cethrax had finally picked up on the trespassers. Which meant…

A shadow curled out of the doorway, and there was the collective noise of weapons being drawn as it extended, floor to ceiling, and partly solidified to show the cliff-face of the Vox. Horns curled down either side of its face, its tusks were taller than the goblins, and its eyes were like fathomless pits.

“You have got to be shitting me,” I muttered, dagger in hand already. He was the same Vox I’d freed from chains. I stepped forward before anyone attacked, placing myself between the Alliance and Cethrax’s king.

“You,” said the Vox. “I should have guessed you were responsible for using magic in my territory.”

“Because of the Stoneskins,” I said. “You owe me a favour, and they’re still out there, on your world. I can stop them.”

“Nobody can stop them,” said the Vox. “They are invincible. They slaughtered hundreds of Cethraxians, and would crush the Alliance in their palms.”

It was deadly quiet in the Passages. I didn’t blame the higher-up Alliance members for their expressions of sheer terror. I doubted a Vox had ever set foot in here—relatively speaking, anyway, seeing as it was half-shadowed. They never needed to leave their territory, nor did they want to—and any attempts to reason with them about letting their underlings wander into the Passages and kill anyone they came across were generally met with indifference.

But Ada and I
had
freed this Vox from captivity.

“I have something that can beat them,” I said, with as much conviction as I could muster while facing a beast whose head alone was bigger than me, and could crush me even with the sciras activated.

“He isn’t the only one,” said Jeth, to my surprise. I’d expected him to be cowering like most of the other guards. Only the senior guards and council members hadn’t edged as far away as possible. At least someone was setting an example.

“No,” spoke up a council member from Valeria. “We have devices that will enable us to fight those monstrosities. They’ve trespassed into our territory, too.”

Whispers broke out, along the lines of suspicions about what he meant. Did he mean implants, like Klathica? They were illegal on Valeria, the last I’d heard. And Jeth wouldn’t have had time to make any more of those updated Chameleons.

The Vox blinked his plate-sized eyes. “You humans have always thought you can outwit those far superior to you. You’ve committed too many crimes against my people for me to allow you free passage into my territory. It is irrelevant, besides. You cannot win this fight. My people have migrated to another territory, where we will remain.”

“You’re giving up?” said another, familiar voice. What was Aric doing here? He must have fled when the Stoneskins started killing the others.

“What would you do, if it was your world, human?” asked the Vox. “Wait to die? Evacuate? We have nowhere to run, and thousands have died at the hands of the Stoneskins.”

“I told you,” I said. “We can fight them. Nobody is invincible,” I added, with a sideways glance at Nell. “We can track them down and kill them—but we don’t have much time left before they unleash their weapon. They have a source powerful enough to wipe out the Multiverse, not just your world.” Not that it was worth the effort to explain to any Cethraxian why other worlds than their own mattered. “If you let us do this, we’ll be happy to negotiate over anything else. Even the doorways into the Passages.”

There were a few discontented mutters from behind, swiftly silenced by the higher-up Alliance members with the sense to see telling the Vox what he wanted to hear was the only way to win the argument. We didn’t have the luxury of negotiation.

“They’re in your territory because they intend to open a doorway, into a war zone,” I said. “I don’t need to tell you what that would do to the Balance in your world. But there’s time to stop them, if you give us access to the doorway.”

The Vox glared down at me. “One hour, human. If you die, I get to feed you to my kin.”

Nice.

“Seems fair,” I said. “Right—I need a world-key. I can go after them if they’ve already opened a door. They’re travelling at random, following magic-signals.”

“They interrupted several of my kind, who barely escaped with their lives,” said the Vox. “They tell me their location is… two miles west of the doorway. You will never make it, human. Your doorways are not exact, are they?”

“Yes,” I said, “but I have on-the-ground transport.”

“He does,” said a voice, and Mr Helm of all people pushed through the crowd. “I’ve given him permission to test a certain prototype of mine.”

Well, damn. “Exactly,” I said. “I’ll catch them. Someone else will have to lead the way to Zanthar.” I glanced over my shoulder at Iriel, who hadn’t fled like some of the others. “That sound fair?”

“If it’s all we have…”

“There’s no time for debates,” I said. “I’ll get a doorway open. That much, I can do.” Even if I couldn’t fight them all head-on, I could slow them down. If I caught up to them on Cethrax, invisible… it was leaving a lot to chance, but as long as they didn’t see me, they wouldn’t be able to stop me using magic.

No time to consider the odds. If we didn’t get to them
fast,
there’d be no Multiverse to defend. Ada could fight them, yes, but even the Alliance was far outnumbered.

Good job I’d had enough practise facing odds highly stacked against me. “Someone have a world-key?”

“The one to Cethrax is that door already open,” said Valeria’s council member. “It’d take too long to recharge it.”

Should have seen that coming. “Right,” I said. “How about auros? Any going spare?”

“We can’t go around handing them out.”

“Here,” said Mr Helm, interrupting and handing me a piece of the metal. “I took it out of the machine in the lab—I think you need it more than I do. But try not to lose it—
or
break any of my equipment.”