Blood of the Emperor (36 page)

“I’m surprised you have that much faith in Braun,” Ethis admitted. “I’d have thought you would have demanded to be at the Well with him.”

“With him?” Jugar scoffed. “He doesn’t even know where the Well is! Besides, the job’s already done.”

“That cannot be. Braun’s at the Well now,” Ethis said. “I just saw Urulani land him there not three minutes ago. Hey, where are you going?”

Jugar had pulled Pyrash around, making a hard turn back in toward the city.

“He’s done it again!” Ethis groused, turning his own dragon back in pursuit.

The garden was hot.

Braun wiped the sweat from his forehead as he moved across the floor of what had been a subatria garden. The plants were charred, some of them still burning and the ground was warm under the soles of his boots. The inverted dome that formed the bottom of the Farlight Palace hung over his head but the surface of it was charred and blistered. The walls surrounding the remains of the garden were most curious as there
were a number of places along the wall where the soot outlined the shapes of humans or, perhaps, elves. They were like inverted shadows: patches where shapes had somehow shielded the wall from heat and flame. There was debris beneath each of these strange shapes outlined on the wall but Braun was not keen on investigating too closely.

Besides, he told himself, he could ask his questions later. There was important work to be done.

He turned toward the Aether Well and gasped.

The Aether Well was not a single monolith of crystal but three spaced around a central altar. More than that, Braun had never seen Aether Well crystals of such size before. Each was nearly thirty feet tall, extending upward from the garden into a hole in the center of the avatria overhead.

Something is wrong
, Braun realized.

The color of the Aether Well crystals was a strange green that pulsed upward from the ground, forming brilliant green trails along jagged fracture lines. Aether spilled out from these lines, radiating in irregular flashes from the fissures. Between the three crystals, the Aether collided, twisting and writhing. As Braun watched, more fissures began to appear in the Well crystals, each spilling more of its power over the ruined garden.

They’re cracked. Broken.
Braun thought.
I’ve got to fix them.

Braun hurried to the center of the garden, moving his feet quickly over the heated ground.

Perhaps that is what happened to the elves here,
the mage thought as he rushed toward the altar between the crystals.
All I need to do is mend the cracks, make the crystals stable again. Then I can maintain the Devotions at the same time I flip the Well from the altar.

Braun reached his hands out for the altar. He could feel more Aether running through it than he had ever before believed possible.

Braun smiled as he touched the altar.

All I have to do is…

The Tjarlas Governor’s Well vanished in a flash of heat, power, and madness.

Braun simply ceased to exist, entirely consumed by the power he had unwittingly released.

The avatria of the Farlight Palace with its beautiful black-and-white marble exterior and its intricate silver trim vanished too, pulverized by the upward blast and flashing into a ball of purple flame as its structure and contents were instantly consumed by the supernatural heat and power. All this fueled the conflagration as its disintegrated mass was added to the explosion. Fingers of smoke and fire drove into the sky even as a dome of light and compressed air rushed outward.

The surrounding avatria were engulfed in the resulting ball of flame, shattered and instantly ignited as well, adding to the fire climbing above the city.

Then, the Aether died.

The burning towers fell. Bereft of their Aether, the avatria of the High Estates dropped from the sky. Already pushed from their foundations by the force of the Well’s explosion, the burning towers crashed downward onto the city below. Some simply collapsed, crushing those who were in the streets beneath them. Others fell over on their sides, their flaming structures cutting a swath of destruction in their path.

The once glorious skyline of Tjarlas had, in a matter of minutes, vanished forever beneath a pall of fire, smoke, and ash.

With it vanished the Aether Well that gathered Aether from and supplied Aether to the Northmarch Provinces, the outposts in Chaenandria and the vast Wells in southern Ephindria.

Consequences

D
RAKIS AND URULANI BOTH TURNED toward the sound of the blast. Smoke and flame burst upward from the ground, engulfing the avatria above the center of the detonation and igniting the falling avatria around it. Pieces of debris, trailing flame and smoke, soared upward, far above the tops of the tallest avatria in the center of the city, arching over in every direction.

Urulani instinctively clenched her arms tightly around Drakis.

“Marush!” Drakis shouted. “There’s a…”

The air was suddenly pressed out of Drakis’ lungs. The expanding wave of the blast slammed into them with frightening speed. It caught the extended wings of the dragon, vaulting him and his passengers suddenly forward and upward. Marush tumbled once, managed to steady himself for a moment but then was caught by an updraft of tremendous heat and spun, tumbling again.

The smoke engulfed them. Drakis choked and gagged on the smoke and dust, his face stinging with bits of miniscule debris. He could not see in the sudden darkness. He lost all sense of direction as they continued to tumble, blind and gasping.

Suddenly they burst into brilliant sunlight once again. Marush was laboring to keep them in the air. Drakis could hear the wheezing sounds coming from the dragon. They were still among the avatria of the city.

A city that was falling.

The floating avatria everywhere around them were crashing down hard onto the foundation subatria beneath them. Few of them settled straight down but began tipping sideways, their slender, exquisite shapes collapsing into each other, shattering and raining down on the crowded streets below.

The mad, insane streets below. He could hear the screams, the wails and the roar rising up from beneath the destruction—a howl that called him to join them.

“It wasn’t supposed to happen this way!” Drakis shouted to the streets below, to himself, and to the sky. “I didn’t want this!”

“Get us clear of the city,” Urulani urged Marush from behind Drakis, reaching forward and pressing her hand against the dragon’s neck. “Fly us back to the Rills. Quickly, Marush, before a building falls on us.”

The dragon worked his wings with a will, slipping between the collapsing avatria and bursting over the city wall, turning toward the east.

Tears streamed down Drakis’ cheeks, blown back by the wind. “It was not supposed to happen this way! What have I done? What have I done?”

Five hundred and fifteen leagues to the north of Tjarlas, Legate Xhu’chan stood on the field of victory known on the map only as the Flat’s Gap. It was a wide, featureless place with little to commend it. Those few who had tried to settle here soon moved on to lands that were more forgiving and bountiful. The goblin raiders occupied the better, more elevated lands to the west. The Mournful Mountains could barely be made out on the eastern horizon.

All that remained was the carnage of battle that disturbed the landscape, the most peculiar part of which now rested in a colossal heap on the ground before him situated atop what appeared to be the only mound within a hundred miles on the plains.

A dragon. An actual dragon.

It lay where it had crashed to the ground. The shattered form—charred in several places—no longer retained the grace of its flight that the Legate had marveled at when first he saw it rushing through the sky over the scattering, panicked ranks of his Legions and yet he
still had to admire the power the beast represented even as it lay broken here on the plains. The dragon had engaged his foremost Legion—over eight thousand warriors—with a ground force of barely more than seven hundred ill-equipped rebels. Yet this single creature and its seven hundred had held his Legions at a standstill for three days. It had cost Xhu’chan nearly a full Cohort of warriors and nearly half a Centurai of Proxis before his army managed to bring it down.

Xhu’chan shook his head slowly in wonder.

Magnificent as the dragon was, it was the small figure of a human woman cradled in the crook of the dragon’s foreleg that held his wonder and attention. Her wispy, almost white hair shifted in the wind. She was a slight girl as humans go. She wore a patchwork of armor over a long coat of padded leather.

“Tsaj, you are sure this human girl is Drakis?” Xhu’chan asked.

“Yes, Legate,” Tsaj replied with a sharp bow of his head. “As you requested, we captured several of the rebels during the battle. All of them were kept apart from one another. Each one was brought here in turn to identify the body before their execution.”

“They all named this youth as Drakis?”

“Each of them swore to it,” Tsaj reported crisply. “Several of them shed tears at the sight of her.”

Xhu’chan considered the young woman more closely. The wounds to her body were evident—the blistering of her right leg from the Aether magic cast against the dragon as well as the four arrows piercing her left side and back.

The Legate stepped back quickly.

“My lord?” Tsaj asked with obviously feigned concern.

“Her face,” the Legate said. “It bothers me somehow.”

Tsaj leaned forward for a closer look. “I don’t see anything unusual, my lord. Just the face of a human—perhaps more comely than some by human standards but…”

“No, Tsaj,” the Legate frowned. “There is something about it that—that haunts me. She is smiling. She is smiling in death as though she had greeted an old friend. As though she is the fortunate one and I am left here to deal with…”

“Legate Xhu’chan!”

The Legate closed his black, featureless eyes for a moment. He
reached back and scratched the point of his elongated head before he acknowledged the war-mage. “Have you found the main force yet, Kleidon?”

“No, Legate, but a far more urgent matter has come to our attention.” The aging war-mage wheezed slightly from his exertions in coming. “The Aether—it has vanished!”