The Lodestone Trilogy (Limited Edition) (The Lodestone Series) (164 page)

Her boots hit the dirt and she advanced towards him, ignoring the dull ache in her side.

He arose, swaying slightly.

“Tell your soldiers to stand down, and I will let you leave peacefully.”

He bared his teeth. “I don’t know how you managed to pull a stunt like that, but you’ll pay.”

Flaring the tattered remnants of his cloak, he vaulted into the air once more. In spite of the damage, the cloak’s operation seemed unimpaired.

She shot a glance in Rael’s direction. The boy wielded his staff like a crazed field hand. Fortunately, the Keltar facing him was scarcely older than he was and did not seem to be able to figure out how to get inside his superior reach. She spotted Patris’s lithe form moving in on them, fast and low. If Rael could just keep him occupied for a few moments more...

No time to wait to see the outcome. She extended bronze, then lower lodestone and hit the boost control. Springing upward, she angled away from Pinch-face, seeking greater height. Immediately, he altered his trajectory to cut off her ascent. Clearly, he was not about to be fooled by the same trick twice.

They clashed high above the field of battle, darkwood cracking like claps of thunder.

She parried a blow aimed at her head, twisting his staff aside, and countered with a lunge at his midriff. He dodged the thrust, pirouetting and making a low sweeping pass. She brought her knees up and extended upper lodestone, intending to hover on the resulting balance of forces. To her great surprise, she continued turning under her own momentum and somersaulted in mid-air. When she righted herself she saw that he was starting to fall back under the effects of gravity.

On impulse, she shifted her grip to one end of her staff and sliced at the sinking figure. The diamond blade raked across his back once more, tearing cloth, scoring metal, and shattering stone. The cloak mechanism folded, and he plummeted like a black star hurled from its orbit.

Gradually she dialled back upper and lower lodestone and sank to the ground. Pinch-face was lying face down. The boy called Cavan was also motionless on the floor. Patris leant over him, no sign of a weapon in his hand. Rael’s hands rested on his knees and he was breathing heavily. He looked exhausted.

Her side still hurt, but she had no time to seek the Chandara’s ministrations. Something nagged at the back of her mind—something important. At first she thought it was the heightened state of her adrenaline-fuelled brain. Then it flashed in the corner of her eye, like a deadly tap on the shoulder.
The third Keltar.

She spun around, too late, as the dark shape blotted out her vision, then shot away at right angles as if knocked aside by a giant hand. The cloaked figure cartwheeled through the open gates and disappeared over the ledge.

She turned back to see Alondo standing firmly with the vortex arm at the ready. “See, I told you my skills would come in handy.”

“Couldn’t you have used that thing a little earlier?” she complained.

“I have to make sure it’s tuned right,” he said, affronted.

She couldn’t decide whether he was joking or not. In any case, right now there were more pressing concerns. Several of Grackas’s men were down, and the line was fracturing. The soldiers from the keep looked as if they might break through at any moment. She had to get their attention. A wild idea came to her.

She bent her knees once more and leaped up and over the heart of the melee. A small but insistent voice sounded in her head.
What if this doesn’t work—what then?
She had no answers.

Reaching the apex, she extended upper lodestone and tweaked the controls until she was floating some distance over the heads of the soldiers. She had no idea how long she would be able to hold this configuration.

“Hear me.” The noise of battle continued unabated. She spread her arms.
“Hear me.”
Weapons disengaged and upturned faces gazed at her. Eyes widened. Jaws dropped. Hands scratched heads. “Your Keltar are gone. Defeated. As we speak, the forces holding up this keep are being undermined. Soon it will fall. The platform has already been destroyed. Your only means of escape is the Chandara. You may stay here and perish along with your Prophet, the Unan-Chinneroth. Or you can relinquish your weapons now and we will transport you safely to the ground.” Feet shuffled in the silence. She began sinking lower and did her best to correct the drift. “What is it to be?”

The keep’s soldiers glanced about nervously, as if expecting their Keltar to appear and begin railing against them. Then resignedly, one by one, they began to lay down their arms. A loose cheer went up from Grackas’s men. He quickly silenced them and began to supervise gathering the discarded pikes and swords.

Shann allowed herself to settle to the ground. Soldiers parted to make way for her. She could smell their fear. She wanted to grab each of them by the shoulders and shake them.
I am not Keltar. Am not...

No time for such indulgences. She singled out Grackas. The commander’s handsome face smiled down at her with newfound approval. “Well played, my Lady.” His sudden use of the title only added to her feeling of discomfort.

She pressed on. “Those who are willing may join your men and help guard the gate. The rest should be transported to the city along with the injured. Any Kelanni who appear at the entrance should be offered the same opportunity. Try to evacuate as many as possible. However, when the signal goes up, you and your men must withdraw immediately. Do not wait for me. Is that clear?”

“Why? Where are you going?”

“Is that clear?” she repeated.

“Yes, it’s clear.”

She saw his confusion and felt a pang of guilt.
No time for regrets. No time for goodbyes.
She turned abruptly and headed for the entrance. A desperate cry from behind pulled her up short. Over her shoulder, she saw Rael, arm outstretched, eyes filled with anguish. Alondo was restraining him bodily.

Her heart broke and her tears flowed.
I’m so sorry.

She ripped the sight from her eyes and forged ahead, down the keep’s dark throat.

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Chapter 50

Doing her best to ignore the ache in her side, Shann quickened her pace, driving towards the heart of the ancient keep.

She rubbed dried tears from her eyes.
Rael will be safe,
she told herself.
Alondo and Patris will see to that.

Leaving them behind was the hardest thing she had ever done. But Lyall was the closest thing she had to a father. She could not just abandon him. She hoped that Rael would understand. And that he would forgive her.

Sconces holding oil-filled lamps lined the walls, pouring forth weak pools of illumination. She kept to the shadows as much as possible, wary of any resistance she might meet, but the bare corridors seemed strangely deserted, like the veins of a gigantic beast emptied of its life’s blood and turned to stone. Perhaps news of the attack had spread and people were in hiding. If she could find them, perhaps she could urge them to get to the gates before it was too late.

She wound her way through the keep’s labyrinthine structure, encountering more dead ends than she could count. Time was running out, and her frustration was growing. She found a set of stairs, climbed up a level, turned a corner, and almost tripped over something lying on the floor.

It was a soldier, face down and unmoving. Bending down, she touched her fingers to the man’s neck, but there were no signs of life. She frowned as possible explanations besieged her, each more unthinkable than the last. Murder? Revolt? Had Keris decided to lead a direct assault on the keep? Had Grackas’s men moved in on their own?

She fought down a wave of nausea and reached out to turn the body for a closer examination.
A thin humming sound.
She raised her eyes. Before her floated a ball—copper-coloured and set with a glass iris.
A watcher.
She had seen the hu-man machines twice before—once at the top of the tower of Akalon and again on the island of Helice— and knew what its presence meant. She had been discovered.

She gazed into its crystal depths. There could be no doubt that the one observing her was foe, not friend.
I must destroy it.

She rose slowly, trying not to give any clue as to her intention. Before she could react, another contraption drifted around the corner. The watcher moved higher, like a deferential courtier stepping aside for its sovereign.

The second machine was larger, silver in colour and shaped like a flattened cylinder with odd protuberances topped by a tiny, intense red light. It looked like an inverted washtub. Without warning, one of the protuberances erupted in orange fire.

She dived to one side. The beam struck the stone floor behind her, throwing up shards of stone. Scrabbling to get her feet under her, she dashed back around the bend and retreated down the stone steps. Her injury complained bitterly at the renewed exertion. Near the bottom, she slowed and gathered up the courage to check over her shoulder. The machines were not following.

Cautiously, she re-mounted the stairs and approached the bend. She peeked around the corner. The two machines hung in the air, moving slowly up and down as if mocking her with silent laughter. A pencil-thin shaft of cherry-coloured light swept the passageway. She started forward. Another bright orange shaft raked the space in front of her, causing her to pull back.

She crouched down and tried to think. The machines did not seem interested in chasing her down, but neither would they allow her to advance. If Lyall was somewhere beyond this point, there did not seem to be any way to reach him.

“Need a hand?”

The gruff voice made her jump out of her skin. She spun around and was greeted by the repulsive features of the hu-man, McCann. The broad-shouldered creature was bending over her, a half-smile half-hidden beneath his facial bush. Close behind him, she saw the raven-haired, red-cloaked figure of Keris.

Shann’s heart backflipped with joy and confusion. She hissed. “What are you two doing here?”

“I might ask you the same question,” Keris said with a tinge of rebuke. She continued in a more conciliatory tone. “We formed up at the south gate, unchallenged. Then a handful of people began to arrive in ones and twos. They told a disturbing tale. The Prophet is holed up in the audience chamber with the lodestone device, which was bound for Sakara. He is threatening to detonate it and destroy Chalimar if we do not withdraw.”

Shann struggled to digest this latest revelation. “If he sets it off up here, wouldn’t that simply bring down the keep, which is what we are trying to achieve anyway?”

McCann shook his head. “You don’t understand the destructive power of this thing. An explosion this high up will actually increase the blast radius. The entire city and everything in it would almost certainly be obliterated.”

“Are you saying we should retreat?” Shann asked.

Keris stepped between them. “We can’t do that. If we back off now, we lose our only chance to stop him.”

“So, all we have to do,” McCann summarized, “is to make it past any HKs without dying, reach the audience room, shut off the lodestone device before it blows, and then get to one of the gates before the keep falls out of the sky. The Queen of Hearts could do six impossible things before breakfast. Me, I’m just a humble engineer.”

As usual, Shann found herself lost in the maze of his stray thought paths. “HKs?”

“Hunter-Killers. Machines designed for protection from predators and such. My people used them during the war with your people, sixteen years ago. They are programmed to exterminate all life forms that stray into a given area. From the state of that poor fellow, it looks as if they aren’t bothering to differentiate between friend and foe. Wang isn’t taking any chances.”

“He’s killing his own people?” Shann exclaimed.

“The soldiers and Keltar are not his people,” Keris reminded her. “He is Unan-Chinneroth. Hu-man.”

Shann hazarded a glimpse around the corner. The machines hovered greedily. “So how do we get through them?”

Keris straightened her back. “I will draw the machine’s fire while you strike it down.”

McCann shook his head. “I don’t think so. It has multi-targeting capability.”