The New World

Chapter Fifty-six

4th day, Month of the Bat, Year of the Rat

First Year of the Restoration of the Imperial Court

163rd Year of the Komyr Dynasty

737th Year since the Cataclysm

North Moriande

Free Nalenyr

A burst of magic exploded out from Anturasikun. It blasted Keles flat, washing him in invisible fire. The flames condensed, locking him in a transparent shell. He lay there, immobile, mocked by the smooth motion of the moons.

For a moment he considered giving up. It would have been so easy. Down, paralyzed, facing magical manifestations of Qiro’s fury, it seemed a fight he couldn’t win.

It seemed every bit as hopeless as the defense of Tsatol Pelyn.

Keles’ hands tightened into fists, dispelling the paralysis. It felt as if his flesh was cracking. He flexed muscles and worked joints, letting the shell fall away in bits. Rolling to his side, he came up on one knee and, for the first time, took heart.

Whatever had knocked him down had likewise staggered Qiro. His grandfather’s image had shrunk again to match his own. The brush had vanished, though two bridges stood complete and a third was rebuilding itself. Qiro clutched his head and muttered in his beard.

“Oh, dear, oh, dear. It’s all wrong.”

The land shuddered. The river’s narrowing stopped and began to reverse itself quickly. Shock waves rocked the city. The change came in fits and starts; a bit would move here, a bit there. The earth tore. Roads collapsed. Towers wavered.

“Stop, Grandfather!” Keles rose and vaulted the city’s north wall. “You’re destroying everything.”

Qiro looked up, horror on his face. “Oh no, Keles. I must make it all right. This is wrong. Is this what you’ve gotten up to?”

The ground shook again. Towers cracked. Keles reached out, steadying them with magic. In an eyeblink he read the structures and the forces working on them, reinforcing their strengths.

Yet even as he blunted his grandfather’s work there, Qiro set about other tasks. More of the bridges started to reconstruct themselves. Nelesquin’s troops were already pouring north. Tens of thousands still packed the streets, waiting to cross.

Keru fought at the Bear Bridge and Rekarafi with them. Nelesquin’s hordes came on, mindless and unmindful of the havoc the Viruk wrought. He fought using a spear and had scribed a circle around him in blood and flesh. Warriors clawed slippery bodies aside to engage him.

To the east, the Voraxani fought. Archers on rooftops volleyed arrows into the wildmen. Naleni troops and Desei conscripts manned hastily erected breastworks, stemming the spread of the wildmen, but columns threaded deeper through alleys and side streets. Other squads hunted them down, sparing no sector from combat.

Qiro had focused on the Gold River’s flooding. He raised a new bank, cutting off the outlet Cyron had opened. Keles magically forced the water back into the narrow river channel. A wall of water twelve feet high poured through Moriande, passing beneath the Dragon Bridge. It did not, however, spare the resurrected bridges. Caught in its fury, the Bear Bridge vanished instantly. Grey water splashed, gushing up onto the River Road, scattering troops and washing away Rekarafi’s gruesome monument. The wave swept wildmen and stones down, blasting through the Tiger Bridge. It likewise evaporated, then the whole boiling mass of stone and corpses melted the Wolf Bridge as if it were a construct of rotten wood and children’s dreams.

“Oh, no, Keles, look what you’ve done!” Qiro’s voice reflected the horror on his face. “I have to fix it all.”

Here and there, with no order or reason, Qiro made adjustments. A bridge started to rise. The riverbank retreated, then thrust forward again. Land folded in on itself, becoming pocket worlds from which odd creatures began to emerge. The land erupted in boils, and blood seeped to the surface. Qiro would see that and react to it, compounding the problems, warping the land well beyond even the time of wild magic.

Keles fought against panic. Everything his grandfather was doing was wrong. Keles constantly referred back to the land as it had been when he traveled with Ryn and that knowledge made it easier to repair the damage. But still he was just reacting to his grandfather’s increasingly bizarre efforts. Qiro had lost all pretense of sanity. However he was seeing the world, it wasn’t in a manner that allowed him to make things right again.

He’s forcing me to react. He’s controlling what I do. Keles recalled his conversation with Tyressa. If all he did was react, he could never gain control. He had to link the present to the past, reasserting what was right and true about the world. That would make it harder for Qiro to alter things and easier for Keles to fix them.

But what? What can I do? He reached out, flattening a volcano before it could explode and crack the continent. I need to anchor the world.

Then he looked up and smiled.

Summoning all the magic he could, Keles Anturasi reached out and caught the black moon. He ripped it from its celestial path. Heedless of what Qiro was doing, he pulled it down. The stone warmed and Keles sealed it in a mold he shaped from his memory of Virukadeen.

He guided the luminous rock back toward the Dark Sea. Beyond it, from Ixyll, wild azure magic arced out, striking the vast mountain like lightning. And below, the islands flew into the air. They floated around the mountain, not yet restored to their former glory.

The transformed moon settled into the Dark Sea basin. Water should have flooded all the land, except the mountains accepted that part of themselves that had been ripped away so long ago. The earth sealed itself, and springs and rivers flowed again through Virukadeen.

With the black moon returned to the earth, exhaustion seized Keles. He went to a knee. Magic still played around him but he could not muster the strength to work with it.

Qiro stood over him, a palsied hand trembling on his shoulder. The old man looked west, wonder on his face.

“It’s so beautiful, Keles. That is the way it should be.”

Then Qiro fell over and his grandson’s world went black.