Uncertain Allies

38

The spear lurched in Vize’s hand as it responded to my command. Our minds pressed against each other, the spear a white streak of essence between us. I focused all my thought on the spear, willing it toward me. Vize fought back, trying to teleport away. The vision clarified as the tunnel locked on its destination. I pressed harder, my will against Vize’s. The spear slipped his grasp and launched across the expanse. I grabbed it, and the world fell out below me, twisting and blurring as I hurtled into the tunnel.

I landed hard on my feet, my ears popping in the sudden shift from the wind-torn Guildhouse to a dim, quiet room. I didn’t know where I was. It was Vize’s destination, not mine. The room appeared to be an office with a bed tucked in the corner. I sensed several elven body signatures, including Vize’s, but no one had been there recently.

I hesitated. As much as I wanted to know where Vize had hoped to escape to, I didn’t have time to investigate.

I focused my inner vision on the entrance to the Guildhouse. The swirl of the tunnel formed again, and I spun across the darkness to a spot of daylight in the distance. I tripped onto the sidewalk under the Guildhouse portico. A brownie guard shoved me to the side. “Get down! Get down!”

Essence-fire slammed into the roof above. Chunks of granite cascaded into the street, and I ducked behind a column. Shouts drew my attention across the square. A block away, people filled the street—fey folk, yelling and shooting essence at the brownie security guards and police. In the air above them, Dananns and other fairies tangled with Guild agents.

I stood before the shattered front doors under the dragon’s head. “What the hell is going on?” I asked.

“The Unseelie are attacking. They have breached the dome,” the brownie said. He was fighting his boggart side; but from the length of his claws, he was going to lose it soon. He growled, his jaw lengthening with exposed teeth, and sprinted across Park Square toward the fighting. While I didn’t delude myself into thinking Eorla would take me into her confidence, outright battle wasn’t her style. She was a diplomat. The attackers weren’t her people. They had to be Donor’s in disguise.

Where are you? Briallen sent. The sending was followed by another, then another, each more frantic than the last, like a flurry of mental voice mails. I didn’t have the ability to respond. I debated using the spear to join her, but the tower she was in was now disconnected from the rest of the Guildhouse. Donor and Vize were somewhere in the main section. My strength was fading against the power of the spear. I hated ignoring her, but I had no choice.

I stepped over broken glass into the lobby. A Guild agent by the elevators raised his hand at me. “You may not enter.”

“I already have,” I said.

The agent’s hand glowed white as it welled with essence. I didn’t engage him, but opened my mind to find Meryl’s essence. My body essence danced along the spear, searching for her as I had done once before, in TirNaNog. This time I knew what I was doing. As the agent’s hand released its fire, I let the spear run free, and it pulled me into its twisting tunnel of darkness and light. I landed on the threshold of Meryl’s office, taking a step to keep my balance. I was getting better at teleporting.

Meryl shoved her computer mouse away. “Dammit, Grey. I was going to beat my best time.”

“No, really, I’m fine. Stop asking,” I said.

She grinned. “I knew that. As soon as Briallen told me what happened, I figured out what you did.”

“She’s okay?” I asked.

“Making her way down what’s left of the tower as we speak,” she said.

“What’s this about an Unseelie attack?” I asked.

She typed on a blank keyboard wired to the black-box system behind her. “Can’t tell. Cameras are down on that side. Security channels are saying it’s Eorla’s people on the attack.”

“Can you reach her?” I asked.

She tilted her head at me. “Not with the lockdown.”

“I got through,” I said.

She pursed her lips and cocked her head at the spear. “Something tells me that thing goes any damned place it pleases.”

I pulled out my cell phone. “I’ll try Rand.”

“Uh . . .” she said.

I closed the phone. “No signal. Vize and Donor are loose in the building,” I said.

She tapped at her keyboard with idle fingers. “Yeah, I’ve been tracking security movements. They’re going up instead of down. I’m betting on the roof. Nice vantage point for an aerial pickup.”

I leaned over to see the building schematic on her screen. “That’s a pretty strange path.”

“But smart. They’re sticking to the older parts of the building. The surveillance cameras suck there. When they pass from one section to another, they trip a ward alarm,” she said.

“That takes intimate knowledge of the Guildhouse. Someone’s helping them,” I said.

“Well, it wouldn’t be the first time the Guild had a traitor,” she said.

“What’s the fastest way to the roof from here?” I asked.

“Security’s locked the elevators in the lobby. That’s manual, so I can’t do anything from here. Unless someone flies you up, it’s the stairs,” she said.

“Not thirtysomething flights,” I said.

She pointed at the spear. “What about that thing?”

I knew Donor’s and Vize’s body signatures. In my mind, I focused on the spear, and the tunnel funneled opened. “Wish me luck,” I said.

Meryl jumped from her chair. “Wait! What are you . . .”

She was too late. I was gone, clinging to the spear as it sliced through the darkness. Essence-fire greeted me as I landed in a corridor. I ducked into an office. My head rang with noise, a constant thump against static hiss.

“You’re not getting out of here,” I shouted.

The spear flared and pulled at my left hand. The damned spear was still bonded to Vize, and he was trying to call it. I tightened my grip, using both hands to hold tight. A sudden release of pressure tossed me against the wall. He wasn’t getting it back.

Soft flutterings wafted through the air. They were close if I could feel their sendings. The floor vibrated. I moved away from the door as the vibrations increased and the wall cracked. The building groaned around me. Something was about to give way. I didn’t think it smart to stick around and watch. I focused the spear toward Meryl’s essence as the floor began to crumble. I gripped the spear and soared through the dark tunnel again.

I fell outside Meryl’s office. The spear flew from my hand and rattled across the stone pavers. I grabbed it, afraid Vize would try to call it. Meryl was at my side, helping me up.

“What the hell happened?” Meryl said.

“Donor tried to kill me,” I said.

“Imagine that. He took out an entire floor,” she said.

I leaned on the spear. “Not him. The building stone was ripped apart. That was dwarf work.”

She brushed at my hair. Her hand came away tinged with blood. “Your skin is speckled with blood. Your body can’t take the stress of the spear without a shield.”

I kissed her on the top of her head. “It’ll have to.”

I jumped again, seeking out Donor’s essence, and this time found myself on a stone spiral stair. Three body signatures trailed upward. I paused. Two, I recognized. I opened my sensing ability. The dark mass in my head sliced down my right arm, keen on the chance to seek out essence. The third essence was dwarven, with a tantalizing familiarity.

The dark mass pressed hard for release, shadow welling out around my hand. It touched the body signatures with a sense of disappointment. They were vapor, residual essence from a person passing through, not enough to sate the desire of the darkness, but enough for me to tag it—Thekk Veinseeker.

I jumped and made an awkward landing on the winding stairs higher up in the towers. I ducked as Thekk swung a fist at me. He missed, punching a hole into the stone wall. As he pulled his hand free, deep orange essence spidered from his fingers, and the wall fell across the stairs.

I scrambled back, holding the spear out to ward off anything thrown at me. “I thought you retired, Veinseeker.”

“One never retires from defending one’s king,” he said. He slapped his palm against the ground, and the steps between us collapsed. I leaned back as pavers slid toward me in a wave. Between his brute strength and raw ability, I wouldn’t last against him in a physical fight.

“Don’t make me kill you, Thekk. Donor has no escape. Step aside,” I said. He answered me with a shower of stone. I wasn’t going to kill him. As much as I wanted to, I refused to gut him with the spear. The stone against my back grew hot as his essence poured into it. I had to make a move. Bracing myself for the pain of the darkness, I tapped my body essence and raced toward him as the walls slumped to either side.

I was on him before he realized what I was doing. I grabbed his arm and jumped. We landed beside Eorla on the sidewalk in front of the Rowes Wharf Hotel. Above us, golden essence shimmered in the air. From across the street, elven archers with Donor’s insignia threw elf-shot at the shield barrier that Eorla had raised over the hotel. Rand spun toward me, his sword out and bloodied. He relaxed when our eyes met.

“Have you brought help?” Eorla asked.

“No, sorry. Just more trouble for you. Donor’s getting away. Can you keep this guy under guard for me?” I said.

Without argument, fine filaments of essence spun from her fingers and wrapped themselves around Thekk. “Of course. What’s happening at the Guildhouse? We’re hearing reports it’s under siege,” said Eorla.

“They’re saying you’re doing it,” I said.

She gestured across the street. “I’m otherwise occupied at the moment.”

“Donor’s got people wearing your colors. He’s setting you up to take a fall, Eorla. Whatever you do, stay here. I think Donor’s crazy enough to kill you,” I said.

She turned away. “I will take that under consideration, Connor. Pray, be safe.”

I jumped back to Meryl. She hugged me as I swayed on my feet. “You can’t keep doing this,” she said.

I held her close, burying my nose in her hair. “One more time, I think. They had Thekk Veinseeker with them.”

She spun to the keyboard. “Now the path makes sense. He designed the original building specs.” She skimmed through the schematics. “They have a pretty clear path to the roof, but you can make it faster from the tower across from the conference tower. Can you picture it?”

I peered at the screen. “Yep. Got it. It’s where Ceridwen held her hearings.”

I jumped and landed in the empty hall outside the conference rooms. A broad expanse of windows faced the Guildhouse. Danann fairies filled the sky like angry hornets, their black uniforms darting in and out of clusters of winged solitaries. Down on the street, the elves disguised in Eorla’s livery drew the brownie security away from the building. From this vantage point, I realized Donor’s strategy: keep Eorla pinned and prevent her from coming to the Guildhouse’s defense while making it appear she was actually attacking it. It didn’t matter. It was all a distraction for his escape.

Thekk’s knowledge of the Guildhouse went stale a century ago. The executive offices were fifty or so years old but still new compared to the rest of the building. He wouldn’t know that. I cut across the short bridge to the main part of the building and ran into the stairwell. I jogged up the stairs, taking them two at a time. Shudders ran through the stone, and the lights flickered.

I shouldered through the roof door without stopping, stumbling into bright sun and roaring wind. A jumble of parapets and support buttresses, odd turrets, deep roof valleys, and steep gables spread out before me. The shield dome had parted at the top of the building, and essence-fire was reaching the roof. Guild agents wheeled overhead, trying to contain the damage. I clambered over a low wall and made my way toward the original section of high-peaked slate and verdigris copper.

The conference-room tower was toward the middle of the Guildhouse, rising above older setbacks. Smoke and fire billowed from lower areas near Park Square. The roof vibrated with stress as the essence supporting the more whimsical additions weakened.

The original main tower was about fifty feet away, a broad expanse of pavers surrounded by decorative turrets. I climbed a low parapet. Jumping with the spear such a short distance probably wouldn’t hurt too much, but it would hurt. Below me, a series of buttresses like splayed fingers joined the next roof. Heights didn’t bother me—even a threehundred-foot drop. The age of the buttresses without essence support was another matter.

I set my foot on the top of the nearest one, seamed stones barely a foot wide. It felt firm. I kept the spear ready for an emergency jump, took a deep breath, and stepped from the parapet. Wind tugged at me as I struggled to keep my balance. Someone fired at me, and I lost my footing. I slammed on my back and grabbed the edge as I rolled. The spear flew free, disappearing into the fires below. I swung my leg up and pulled myself back. Elf-shot arced from a nearby tower. I hugged the stone and shinnied down the rest of the way, taking cover under the cornice of the main building. The buttresses swayed and cracked. The conference tower leaned away from me, glass shattering from its windows. Without the help of the faith stone, the Guildhouse was held together with little more than spit and glue.

I climbed the cornice, worrying my fingers in the gaps in the bare strips of stone, and pulled myself over onto the flat expanse of pavers. As I caught my breath, I reached my hand up and said the command for the spear. “Ithbar.”

With a jolt, the spear appeared in my hand. I leaned on it to get to my feet. Teleporting was tearing my body apart. My joints ached, and muscles burned with exhaustion. Small blood vessels beneath my skin had ruptured, leaving deep red traceries of veins on my arms, probably my face, too.

“Took you long enough,” a voice said.

I spun. In the static of essence swirling about, I hadn’t sensed Joe at all. He perched next to an ornate chimney pot that belched black smoke. I relaxed and leaned on the spear. “I got sidetracked. Where’ve you been?”

“Well, last night I was at a party. Can you believe they ran out of seaweed?”

“How’d you know where to find me?” I asked.

“Banjo said it’s a day for roofs and that he saw me with some naked guy,” he said.

“I hope it wasn’t me, ’cause I’m kinda in the mood to keep my clothes on,” I said.

“Well, when everything started falling apart, I figured this roof might be the one he was talking about and at least would have an interesting view. Then I found this guy.” He fluttered up from the chimney pot. Behind him sat a gargoyle, a chubby naked figure of a man, overly endowed. With a single eye beneath a short spiral horn, he stared with disinterest at the sky. I had named him Virgil long ago when he first appeared outside my Guildhouse office window.

“You can’t stay here, Joe. Vize is on his way,” I said.

“The last time I left you alone with Vize, he almost killed you.”

“Well, this time I’m returning the favor, only I intend to accomplish the goal,” I said.

Joe tilted his head with a wry smile. “It’s going to be one of those days, isn’t it?”

Touch the sky.

The words formed in my mind with a dry rasp, like the opening of an ancient vault. Gargoyles didn’t talk much, and when they did, the conversation was cryptic. I hadn’t figured out what Virgil meant in any of the times he had spoken to me in the past. The common thread in all our interactions was trouble. Something about catastrophe brought him to my side to murmur dire warnings I never understood. Like now, with every gargoyle long gone from the Guildhouse, he alone remained on the roof, the very roof I stood on, the one that Vize and Donor were heading for. How Virgil could predict such a thing had to have an explanation, but one was never forthcoming. Instead, I tried my own gibberish, treating his words like riddles.

“The roof touches the sky,” I said.

“Poetic-y,” said Joe.

Hearts like stone. We shall stand and turn the tide in the hour of need.

The faith stone was shaped like a heart, and the current hour had a lot of need going on. If he was talking about the other gargoyles, they were all hanging out elsewhere. That wasn’t going to help me. “Who’s standing, Virgil?”

The circle meets and brings release. The light burns through the dark.

Joe fluttered up and coughed as a downdraft of smoke hit him. “What the hell are you talking about?”

I gestured at the gargoyle. “Virgil. He’s being ominous again.”

Joe pulled a long face at Virgil, then turned to me with one eye closed. “You never told me these guys talked to you.”

“Virgil does. He’s had some good advice,” I said.

Joe’s eyes went wide. “No wonder you’re so screwed up, Connor. The ’goyles are crazy. They’ve been repeating themselves for a hunnerd years, all stones and hearts and circles.”

“You hear them?”

“ ’ Course. We flits all can. Flits ignore them like sane people. They have no brains”—he glanced down—“or clothes.”

The words “flits” and “sane” are not often used in the same sentence. Regardless, hearing Joe say that saddened me. I never understood Virgil, and now had an inkling why. If the gargoyles were repeating themselves over and over for years, they were likely nothing more than old recording wards, fanciful ones, but still recording stones. I thought they were sentient. It took the fun out of being one of the few people that heard them.

The tattered shield dome dimmed more around us, the essence prickling off my skin. Guild agents continued their defense above, unaware that the real enemy was trying to escape, not enter the building. Essence-fire was getting through, damaging the towers and supports. More turrets went down in a roar of wood and stone.

A door at the opposite end of the flat roof slammed open. Vize stepped out, intent on the chaos above. I didn’t wait for him to talk or make a move. The time for conversation was over, the moment I had always known was coming had arrived. I aimed and threw the spear at him. I aimed to kill. It blazed across the roof, a sliver of white that dimmed the air around it.

Vize sensed it. I expected that. We sensed the same things the same way. I understood that now, but why was a question for another time. Vize shifted his attention to the spear and held out his hand. I expected that, too. He had seen the move work for me. Before he reacted, I let the darkness shoot out from my chest, intent on the essence trail left by the spear. A heartbeat later, I yanked the spear back and watched as the darkness slammed into Vize. It splintered into sinuous lines as it struck an essence barrier.

Donor staggered next to Vize, his body shield hardened, a thick wall of green essence that pushed back against the darkness. He thrust his hand down, a bolt of emerald elf-shot spiking into the roof. Essence spiraled from the point of contact, rippling the pavers. The wave knocked me off my feet, blasting apart the parapet behind me. I clung to the crumbled opening, the darkness snapping back with a painful recoil.

Joe hid behind the chimney. “Good plan, except for the not-killing-him part.”

He plunged feetfirst down on my hands. On reflex from the pain, I let go and landed several feet below on the roof of a wide bay window. A stream of elf-shot destroyed the rest of the parapet, showering stone dust down on me. Joe dodged over a valley between two gables. “Hmph. He’s not a bad shot for an elf.”

“Thanks for the save,” I said.

Joe rotated in the air, sniffing. “The barrier’s completely down. I say let the big guns up there take the Elven King out, and we go get beers.”

“I don’t care about the Elven King,” I said.

The last of the Guildhouse barrier shield collapsed. A roof slumped on the neighboring gable. The building was shedding years’ worth of additions like dead barnacles off a boat. The window bay lurched under my feet as if it had risen a few inches, then resettled itself.

I grabbed the edge of the wall and swung myself over. Donor faced away from me, holding the faith stone above his head. Green light revolved around him in ribbons, wrapping him and Vize in a sphere of bright light. On a gust of essence, they lifted into the air, white light flashing around the sphere, swirling the green ribbons faster. They hovered in place, below the main aerial fighting, essence building around him.

“What the hell is he doing?” I said.

“Oh, that looks bad,” Joe said from behind me.

A volley of essence burst from the sphere, streaking like ball lightning across the sky. The streaks homed in on Guild agents, hit with concussive force, and threw them out of the sky. They weren’t stun shots. Appalled, I staggered back as bodies fell limply into the flames below. The remaining agents wheeled away, struggling to regroup.

The air crackled with a sound like thunder. Donor tapped essence as only the most powerful fey can, pulling directly from the air and anything around him. A sustained burst of energy from the bottom of his sphere struck the Guildhouse. The roof exploded, slate and stone flying into the air. I ducked as more debris hurtled toward me. Another tower fell, smashing into the one next to it, and both collapsed into the floors below. Donor’s sphere grew, solidified into a mass of burning white heat. It expanded, incinerating the building wherever it touched.

Elf-shot came at me and snagged on the tip of the spear. The streamer of essence lashed like a whip slicing through the air. The spear jerked in my hands, and I grappled with it. The streamer flared brighter and spun around me. Joe screamed, and I whirled. The elf-shot wrapped around his legs and flung him about. He struggled against it, his essence flashing as he tried to teleport away. The spear convulsed in my hand, sucking in the streamer of elf-shot. Still bound to it, Joe’s body twisted and elongated, then vanished into the spear. Dumbfounded, I stared at the weapon in my hand.

“Joe?” I shouted. I shook the spear, feeling like a fool. It undulated in my hand. Intermittent touches of Joe’s body signature danced along its length, then faded into the spear’s burning brightness.

Fury raced through me. The darkness leaped within, feeding off my anger. I let it. I let the darkness rise, let it break through my body essence. Streams of black shadow shot from my face and chest, lunging across the fractured roof as they sought the most powerful source of essence nearby. They burrowed into Donor’s sphere with ravenous greed. They sucked at the essence, funneling back into me, back into the source of the darkness. I gasped as it coursed through me, through my chest, my face, draining inside me to the nameless dark place. I was a conduit, meaningless in the transaction, as the darkness pulsed and sucked. My feet lifted off the ground as the roof crumbled away beneath them.

The sphere paled, its essence leeching away. Donor realized what was happening and dropped Vize, concerned now for his own safety. Vize plummeted and hit a pitched roof. He flailed as he went over the edge. He fell hard against the remains of a turret and didn’t move.

Donor reinforced his body shield, shrugging off the smaller tributaries of my darkness feeding on him. He wasn’t strong enough. One of the most powerful fey in the world wasn’t strong enough to fight off the darkness. It broke through—I broke through. I fed the darkness with all my anger and fury. Shadows coiled around Donor’s chest. He fought me as I hauled him toward me. We revolved around each other in a halo of green light and dark shadow. Donor grinned, his teeth framed red with blood. “You think I’ve never fought this darkness before, Grey? Give in to its desire, let it draw you in close, then strike its vulnerability.”

With his fist clutched around the faith stone, he swung at me. I blocked him with the spear in a shower of white sparks. Sensing another source of essence, the darkness coiled around the spear. I was losing control—no—I never had it. The darkness did what it wanted. Donor seemed to sense it and laughed. I didn’t have control of the darkness, but I had the spear. I spun my wrist, brought the sharp tip of the spear forward, and shoved it through Donor’s shield.

A jumbled kaleidoscope of essence flared as the spear fought against the Elven King’s power. Donor swung his fist again. I brought the spear down on his arm, and essence exploded around us. He tumbled away as the darkness snapped free. I fell onto the remains of the roof. Donor landed on his feet, crouching to absorb the shock of the fall. He came up screaming, emerald light bursting from his face in a searing blast.

I threw the spear. It struck the Elven King, the concussive force from the blow flinging me into the air, on a shock wave of essence. I flipped end over end as I rose higher and higher, nothing below but thirty stories of empty air. I rolled in the sky, the explosion expanding into a cloud of wild essence over the Guildhouse. Out of the fireball, a fierce blue light rocketed toward me and slammed into my forehead and

everything

went

white