Aurora's Rift, page 22
part #1 of Celestial Arcanists Series
It also means we’ll be easier targets.
The good thing is that Mithrathan is a big city, and the Knolls, while having something like borders, is still a fluid thing.
People will know people they can go to in other quarters of the city. Like in Viathan, humans are not the majority of the population; they only hold the majority of the power.
Handing the parchment to Ink, I hold their gaze for a long moment.
“Try not to die,” the changeling says, pointing above our heads at the rift. “That thing’s just getting started.”
“Same to you.” I don’t like the sad smile Ink gives me in return. Looking around at the others, I let out the breath I was holding. “We can either split up now or we can all follow Eldan into the city.”
“We split up now,” Teinath says quietly. “It isn’t that I’m not willing to trust you, Eldan, but there is a better chance of at least someone making it into the Knolls if we’re not all in one spot to get captured together.”
“Evade and regroup,” I remind them. “Don’t engage if you can avoid it.”
Aigen nods, and with a glance over her shoulder, she hefts her labrys into its sling on her back and starts walking. Ink follows quickly, but Teinath hangs back.
“Be seeing you,” he says to me.
“You better.” I want to hug him, but it’s too much to ask for me to hold it together thinking of what we might find in the city.
It’s too much to ask of Teinath, knowing that if we’re too late, he’ll be given real life memories to relive the deaths of his parents.
So I let my friends walk away, leaving me with one relative stranger who could lead me to my death and one grumpy elemental who I think would rather thump me than do what I ask.
I manage a wobbly smile. “Shall we?”
We haven’t gone half a mile into the city before I start to think that Eldan’s sense of timing and direction is uncanny.
Every time I think a patrol might see us, he finds us a way around. Every time the road is blocked, he takes us through a building and out the other side.
Dar gets more and more agitated every time it happens.
When we’ve made it past the third Purifier patrol in an hour, she finally explodes.
“Okay, either you are trying to make it look like you’ve got an extra sense of direction to lure us into trusting you and from there into a trap or you are the luckiest rift-cursed man to ever exist in Sirethan,” she says, and I’m actually thankful she said it so I didn’t have to.
Eldan stops at the corner of a building, peering around it for a moment until he’s satisfied we’re not in danger.
“I’m a seeker,” he says after a beat.
“A what?” I ask.
Dar’s shaking her head. “No way. Not possible.”
“What’s not possible?” I have no idea what they’re talking about, but Dar’s clearly heard of it. “You’ve been watching him for two hours. Something’s possible.”
She looks at me with an angry retort perched on the tip of her tongue. The elemental closes her mouth with an audible click of teeth, then opens it again.
“Seekers are—oh, I don’t even know how to explain it. My people have stories of humans who never got lost. They could find their way out of a labyrinth after someone closed up all the exits. They could lead an entire people out of total darkness without seeing where they were going. Stuff like that.” Dar shakes her whole body like the entire idea is so absurd she needs it off her right now.
Eldan isn’t saying anything.
“Or,” I say, thinking about each word before I say it, “like avoiding the armies of the One God for five years after turning apostate and deserting?”
The human actually blinks at that like it never occurred to him. Maybe it didn’t. If you’re just used to your own normal it’s easy to miss that it’s weird as hell for other people.
“Yeah. Like that,” Dar says. Her eyes go to the sky, to the rift. “Fine. I’ll just blame the giant tear in the sky.”
“Blame whatever you have to,” Eldan says. “But we need to get moving again.”
Walking through the city feels almost normal after that exchange. And even though Dar said it flippantly, she could be right. All the stories about Aurora’s Rift say its coming heralds things waking up from the slumber of history or springing into being in the first place.
Anything is possible. Even victory.
I hold to that as we walk.
After Viathan, Mithrathan feels flat and dull. The buildings are blocky and squat, and it feels loud and far too controlled.
Trees hardly exist in Mithrathan. Its long, gridline streets are regimented, unlike the streets of Viathan that curve with the land. While there are colorful buildings here and there, most people don’t dare. Art is only permitted in service of the One God, usually in depicting the scrivenings. Occasionally artists try and bend the rules with their interpretation of the tales, but also occasionally, those artists disappear and aren’t seen again.
Coming back feels like trying to squeeze into shoes I outgrew. I’ve only been gone a matter of weeks. How could such a thing happen so quickly?
The closer we get to the Knolls, the more antsy I feel and the more soldiers we see on the street. Not just the usual Purifiers who patrol the city, but actual military. Still, Eldan guides us around them where he thinks it necessary, and sometimes we walk right in front of them when he deems it safe.
“They are not all the same,” he says. “But if I am not with you, it’s best and safest to assume none of them are safe.”
Dar only chuckles at that.
The quarantine zone is impossible to miss.
We hear it before we see it.
There are people screaming and pleading to be let out.
Eldan’s face goes flat and angry when his ears catch it, and Dar, usually sturdy and unyielding, looks as dangerous as a massive tree about to fall on a house.
“Stay close,” Eldan says.
I know this street. I used to walk it all the time. The few trees that once lined it have been chopped down. Enormous barricades have been erected with interlocking pieces of metal that I realize the army must keep ready for occasions such as this.
There are so many soldiers. Some of them point and laugh at the begging people. I can’t look at them. The hum of the rift grows too strong when I do, too ready to explode out of me, and if it does, everyone dies.
I have no idea how even a fabled seeker could lead us through walls of solid metal, but Eldan simply walks to a building that butts up against the quarantine, opens the door, and we follow.
Inside the house is nearly silent but for the yelling outside. It looks like someone left in a hurry. I don’t think a single soul would blame them; avoiding the quarantine by one wall is something most people would call too close for comfort.
Eldan leads us up the stairs and into a room with three beds in it. There is a window overlooking the inside of the Knolls, and Dar moves to it without waiting for Eldan to tell her to.
“Wait,” he says. “If we go through there, we’ll be in view of the soldiers outside.”
“Wouldn’t they have seen us coming in?” I ask.
“They could have,” he says simply. “They didn’t.”
I’m shocked this man didn’t get burned at the stake. If we live through this, I’m going to have to ask when he discovered he had this power.
The ceiling above us is low, made of simple slats. Eldan climbs up on a bed. He’s tall enough to simply push one of the slats out of the way, despite it being nailed down. With one squeal of nails being pulled out of the wood, he moves the board.
“Who’s first?” he asks.
I go first because Dar looks like she’d rather learn to fly than be boosted through a ceiling by this man, and he makes a sling for my foot and then lifts me like I weigh about as much as a feather. The space above the ceiling isn’t huge—Eldan will have to duck when he comes up—but I can stand in the middle of it, if barely.
Dar follows a moment later, clambering up with a grumble and dusting herself off.
I’m about to lean over to offer Eldan a hand up, but his calloused hands grasp the edge of the rafter a moment later, and he pulls himself up without any help.
“This way,” is all he says.
The air in the Knolls feels like Viathan did, but worse.
In Viathan, people only thought there was a possibility of danger. Here in the Knolls, not a single face looks at us without showing us clearly they’re only seeing their own death mask.
It twists my insides to see my home like this.
The sound of screaming is louder.
“Why do they bother?” Dar bursts out as we turn down the street that leads to the market. “It’s pointless.”
“Would you prefer they just lie down and die?” I ask her.
“Instead of yelling, they could fight. There are thousands of people here. All of them at once could break out in no time.”
She is so angry. I can’t blame her. My own rage is dampened only by my fear. We are in time, whatever that means, but this feels wrong. Too easy, in spite of me being certain it’s still a trap.
“You try convincing everyone to do it,” I tell her. “Or even a critical mass to fight back. We’ll wait.”
“Sometimes people are more afraid to die sooner than die later,” Eldan says, almost too softly for me to hear. “Dying later with certainty sometimes loses its sting when the alternative may be to lose the few precious remaining moments you have.”
We hurry through the streets, and my stomach lurches with every familiar sight twisted into a parody of itself. The market is silent, the stalls empty. That is almost a surprise.
When we reach my building, I take the stairs three at a time until we get to my door. I pound on it. “Apathan!”
There is no answer, which drains the remaining moisture from my mouth.
I throw open the door. The smell of mint tea lingers in the air, and I have to grab hold of the door jamb to keep the memories from bowling me over.
“Apathan!”
He’s not here. I already know he’s not here. I go in anyway, hearing the others’ footsteps behind me. His bed is made, tidy. His house shoes are by the door, but his foot wraps are hanging from their hook by the fire, which is wrong.
I go to the table. There is no note, nothing to give any hint of where he’s gone.
“Your apathan—he isn’t here?” Dar asks.
For the first time since I’ve met her, there’s something like sympathy in her voice.
I shake my head. I don’t trust myself to speak.
“Apathan?” I call it out one last time. “Shenan?”
My heart leaps at a voice in the corridor calling my name. “Lithrial? Is that you?”
But it is not Apathan. It’s Voreth, who sells home goods in the marketplace. Voreth, whose partner baked us a loaf of bread each day.
“Voreth?” I call his name as he steps into the apartment.
He looks weary, frightened. He is at least as old as Apathan. Older, probably, because his face has creases like thin leather pushed all together.
“Ah, as’lin. You should not have come back,” he says, and the way he says as’lin tears at my heart.
“Where is Apathan?” I ask. “Please. You must tell me where he is. I have to find him before it’s too late. We are trying to evacuate the Knolls. Viathan is safe. If we can get you out—”
“Ish, as’lin,” he hushes me. “I have lived long enough. Save your fire for those it will warm to live another year. Your apathan has the heart of a child still. He is at Barm’s with many of the others, trying to organize an escape.”
My chest is suddenly full of space. Pride, swelling to fill every corner of my heart and lungs and ribcage. My Apathan. Of course that is what he is doing.
I give Voreth an anguished look. It has to be anguish. I cannot bear the thought of leaving him here.
“Do not worry, as’lin,” he says, patting my cheek with a soft hand. “I have led a long life full of love. I am pleased that you have been part of it.”
Wordlessly, I kiss the old man on each cheek, pulling his forehead against mine.
“Thank you,” I tell him.
“I hope you live,” he says.
That is the last I will ever see of Voreth. Of this I am certain.
Eldan lets me lead as we rush out of the building. Barm’s store is not far, and in my mind I can see all the routes Ink and I plotted out, discarding several possibilities in light of where we are going and hoping that Apathan will still be there when we arrive.
“Easy,” Eldan says when we’ve barely left the building. “Patrol!”
It’s too late to move without being seen. There are six of them to our three, Purifiers with batons at the ready, and they are already aiming in our direction with grim faces.
One of them wears a braid of rank on his shoulder. Dar is out of sight already, stealthed, and I cast Aura of Deigith at the Purifiers as they advance. It slows and chills four of the six, and my next attack is Icicle to make the most of the chill bonus. The spike of ice impales one of the frost-covered Purifiers, shattering her and stabbing into her comrade. One of the others bellows his rage, and Eldan’s sword meets his with a clang of metal.
Every moment that passes in this fight makes my stomach sink farther. They’re delaying me getting to Apathan. They’re keeping me from him, from our people. We’re running out of time.
Orbit lands in the midst of the Purifiers, and another falls with Dar’s daggers in his back even as I throw Starfire at another. Eldan has his first opponent down and is moving on to the final three, who are calling for backup I don’t think they’ll get.
“Glory to the Most Holy,” a female Purifier croaks, blood dribbling from her lips. “He will cleanse this place, and you will not stop him. He has brought the rift to punish the heretics.”
Dar’s dagger catches her across the throat, and she dies with a gurgle.
I hit the remaining two with Aura of Deigith again. I can’t bring myself to use fire here, can’t convince myself to do it when the entire neighborhood is about to go up in flames.
By the time the last Purifier is dead, it feels like we’ve lost half a day, even if I know it’s only been fifteen minutes or so.
“Hurry,” I say as Eldan cleans his sword.
I don’t have to say it twice. We pick up our pace, warier now. I don’t think any of us were expecting that the temple would have sent in patrols. What were they looking for? Us?
The streets change as we walk, first from deserted to sparse, then from sparse to thronging as we near where Voreth directed us. I can tell that someone is in charge here. There is no mindless panic, just grim faces set to tasks.
I can taste bile as we push through the crowd. Across the street is a park I used to play in as a child. Some children are there now, but children are not immune to the smell of fear in the air, and while some of them play, others pause often, looking around with frightened eyes and lifting their noses to the wind as if expecting the scent of smoke.
The crowd gets denser and denser. I am not sure how I will ever find Apathan in the teeming masses of the Knolls, and getting into Barm’s shop seems just as unlikely as getting close to it. More.
I do the only thing I can think of. I raise my voice. “I am Lithrial Abellan! I am looking for my apathan!”
Heads turn to stare at me, and someone calls out, “Someone fetch the guide!”
The guide.
It takes me a moment to register the voice as familiar. Peering over the heads of the crowd, I see the face that goes with it.
“Ara?”
“Just so,” the merchant calls.
The crowd parts just enough for her to work through it to me, and she clasps my hand like an old friend and pulls my forehead to hers.
“You should not have come back,” she says. Her voice is thick. “You should have stayed away, celestine.”
A shock pulses through me at her words. “How do you know—”
“Word spreads faster than fire,” Ara says. “We got the news the day before the quarantine.”
“This is my fault,” I say without thinking. “This is all because of me.”
The people around me hear, and they turn to face me. At first, I think they will kill me, and I will not stop them if they try.
“I’ll have none of that nonsense,” says a voice that straightens my spine from the bottom up. “Not from my as’lin.”
“Apathan,” I gasp, and then his arms are around me, and in spite of his age and his bad knee, the old fool has lifted me off my feet.
“Lithrial, my child. Let me look at you.” His face is perfection, his eyes so warm and wise and kind. “I did not expect to see you again so soon, and I did not expect you to have grown so much in so little time.”
“We have to get these people out,” I say.
I want to do nothing but stay here, go home to our apartment, sit and have that tea of his that always makes me fall asleep. I want to wake up tomorrow morning to the scent of mint and smoke and practice with my staff with Apathan.
He seems to sense it. He holds my hands tight in his.
“The rift brings change, as’lin,” he says. “As do you.”
And then he looks over my shoulder, over my head and over Eldan’s and Dar’s, into the distance.
I turn to see what he sees.
Smoke. A pillar of black smoke rising from the direction of the marketplace.
It’s started.
Twenty-Six
“Apathan, what is your plan?” I look away from the smoke because I have to. If I stare at it, I will panic.
I cannot panic.
Apathan’s gaze snaps back to mine. It is to his credit and his credit alone, I think, that the entire crowd does not simply dissolve into hysterics and trample one another.
“There are two places where their barriers are weak,” he says. “And there are two others where they have no barriers, because the people of the Knolls remembered the last time this happened, and over the years, some of us have been tasked with maintaining the routes of escape.”
