The Skylighter (The Keepers' Chronicles Book 2) (25 page)

“What do we do?” Didsbury asked, looking from face to face for guidance, then turning back to the lurching horde. He reached for the bow on his back.

“No.” Elma knocked it aside and it clattered to stones at their feet. “Your family, your
mother
, might be down there.”

Johanna picked up the weapon, her face twisted with anguish. “That must be part of the plan. They know we won’t hurt our own.”

The Performers, driven by an unseen Keeper, moved at a tremendous pace, passing the tents Didsbury had left standing in the valley. They’d been certain they would return to sleep in them after they’d finished at the wall.

They would be lucky to leave this mountain at all.

“Move!” Jacaré yelled. “We need to move faster.”

Too late. A crackling blue film stretched across the horizon. Elma’s arms were flung wide, as if physically holding in place the magical barricade she’d created. A bolt of electricity smashed into her shield, and the impact knocked Didsbury from his feet.

Rafi’s arms were tight around Johanna’s waist, trying to guide her uphill, while she struggled to take the quiver of arrows from Didsbury’s shoulder.

“Johanna, now!” Cold sweat dampened Jacaré’s shirt. That lightning bolt had been much too close, and there was no guarantee that the next wouldn’t punch through the shield.

“I’ll slow them down,” Elma promised, and the first line of attackers collapsed.

He couldn’t see what the old woman had done to knock down so many people, but it didn’t affect the ones behind. They rushed past, stepping on their fallen compatriots.

“Jacaré, I trust you to do the right thing,” Elma shouted as her white hair whipped around her face, her arms trembling in the gusts. “Don’t let the power sway you.”

Jacaré had a twisting moment of insecurity that maybe, by himself, he was too weak to accomplish his task. He’d never intended to repair the barrier without his crew, but if he didn’t succeed, the deaths of his friends would be in vain.

A blast of power hit Elma’s shield directly, the boom forcing Jacaré into motion.

“Defend Elma!” he yelled to Didsbury. The Firesword hesitated for only a moment, then nodded, drew his weapon, and turned bravely to face their attackers.

The air around them crackled with the bitter scent of ozone. The barrier above Donovan’s Wall hummed against Jacaré’s mind, though the buzz was interspersed with an occasional snap. It was so close to falling. A day, perhaps two, and there would be nothing for Jacaré to fix and his
essência
would simply return to him. He could only guess at what might happen if it collapsed completely. If the drought and the snakes were a result of the power leaking away, the full release of power into Santarem would be devastating.

You could let it fall. The elements have a way of righting themselves over time. No one would blame you for taking back what is rightfully yours.
The thoughts were a plague, filling his mind with their infection and spreading to contaminate other parts of his body. His heart, which had always been true to the Keepers and Olinda, thrashed in his chest. His lungs heaved and his muscles trembled—all a physical reminder that he was not as strong as he’d once been.

“How close do we have to be?” Johanna yelled, clambering over the rocks with all the agility of an acrobat.

“You have to touch it.”

“The wall?” she asked, breaking into a shambling jog where the path smoothed out.

“Ye—” The ground flew upward, knocking all three of them off their feet. Jacaré heard the clatter as Rafi hit, the gear in his bag flying free, scattering across the landscape. A flash to his left as Johanna rolled over a rock and disappeared.

A disembodied voice rumbled above them with the volume of a vengeful god. “Give me the girl and I’ll let all of you go.”

“Release my people.” Elma sounded like a whisper in comparison. With a pop, she raised her shield again, though Jacaré could see it fraying at the edges. She wouldn’t be able to protect them for long.

Jacaré hefted Johanna to her feet by the quiver’s strap. Rafi rose unsteadily, clutching a hand to his jaw, where blood streamed between his fingers.

“Run!” Jacaré commanded.

The wall stretched as far as his eye could see in either direction, the barrier a glowing net of blue electricity following its sinuous path.

From below shouts rose. Didsbury’s voice pleaded for his friends to stop. Thumps of ground-rocking explosions were muffled by Elma’s shield.

They climbed one last behemoth rock, and the wall was there. The square blocks were too even, too perfect, to have been quarried from the surrounding stone. Jacaré guessed that Donovan, whoever he was, had built the wall with some magical ability, just as the barrier stretching high above it had been. The wall had been at least a thousand years old when Jacaré was born, if the tales he’d heard about it were true.

A curve in the landscape offered them shelter, the wall cupping around them, partially obscuring the view from below.

“Quickly, Rafi, Johanna, each of you put one hand against the stones.”

Johanna did as she was told, her hand covering a crisscrossing net of lines that she couldn’t see. She snatched her hand back as if stung. “I can feel it.”

Rafi hesitated, studying the rough surface next to Johanna’s hand. “Why do I need to touch the wall? Johanna is the heir.”

“Do what I say.”

“What are you doing, Jacaré?” Johanna’s eyes narrowed in suspicion.

“We don’t have time—” His words cut off as a blast of flame landed a few paces short of them. “I’m going to split the bond. In case anything ever happens to you or your line . . .”

“Rafi’s will carry it on.” Johanna’s expression shifted to angry betrayal. “You manipulative
monster
. You’ve been planning this from the beginning! You’ve been trying to divide us because you want to be sure the barrier will always be strong.”

“You make that sound like it’s a bad thing,” Jacaré said, ignoring the guilt that sat heavily on his spine. “In my travels I’ve found no one who is as devoted to the safety of Santarem as Lord Rafael. Take it as a compliment. He is the only other person I can trust with the task of protecting both of our peoples.”

Hope gave its death shudder. Heartbreak slipped into its place, a cold and static substitute for the warmth of courage and pulse of anticipation.

Rafi turned to Johanna, her gray eyes reflecting his emotions. He’d let her walk away the night before, but he hadn’t let her go. Not really. Once things were settled, once Jacaré had returned to his people, Rafi thought he and Johanna would work out their differences, find some way to be together.

But with thunder rolling in their ears and stone grinding under their feet, the time for figuring had passed. This was Rafi’s future whether he liked it or not.

“For the good of Santarem,” Johanna said, with a tremulous smile.

“For the good of Santarem,” he echoed, placing his palm on the wall. The stone was cold and lifeless, and certainly as heavy as his heart. He mourned silently for the loss of something that could never be.

Jacaré didn’t wait for them to change their minds, but clapped a hand on each of their shoulders. His eyes drifted shut, his face lined with concentration.

And Rafi stood, feeling useless, watching as sweat beaded Jacaré’s head. Johanna leaned against the wall, relaxing her grip on Didsbury’s bow till it rested on the ground beside her.

Yet he felt nothing. Not a tingle, not an ache, but the other two were certainly feeling the effects.

Jacaré began to sway. Johanna’s face contorted with pain, and Rafi almost broke away, but a faint blue glow seemed to emanate from Johanna’s fingers. As he watched, it spread, tracing the line of her arm, widening as it crossed her chest, blotting out Jacaré’s hand where it rested on her shoulder. The light grew more brilliant, more intense, as it tracked across the Keeper’s body, moving through his outstretched arm.

Mouth dry with fear, Rafi watched as the glow spread from Jacaré’s wrist, into his hand, into his fingers, then . . .

Voices. Hundreds of voices, all layered on top of one another, filled Rafi’s head. They sang and laughed and whispered and shouted. All of them saying different things, in a hundred different tones. High and low, ringing like wind chimes, scratching like rocks, grinding into his mind.

The pressure. The weight inside his head. The pain.

It all came with an encompassing sense of heat as power rushed in through one arm and out the other. He wanted to raise his hand, to cover his ears, to blot out the noise, but somewhere deep in the recesses of his mind he knew that he couldn’t stop now.

Somehow this had to happen. This was the right choice, and no matter how much it hurt or how easy it would have been to quit, he held on, waiting for the moment when it would all stop.

A cacophony of sound filled Johanna’s head, making her sick and dizzy with its noise. It was too much, too many, too overwhelming, and she wondered how her first ancestor—the king or queen who’d first agreed to protect the barrier—had managed to stand the flood of words and voices without going insane.

It hurt, and yet the pain was welcome. It was the burn of a stretched muscle, agony and relief all at the same time.

Her
essência
, the power she’d inherited from her mother, was knotted into this flood, tied by the strands of her father’s lineage. A part of her she never even knew existed snapped into place. She smelled the moss growing along the base of the rock, heard the weeds shivering with the breeze, and tasted Rafi’s uneasiness as if it were a flavor to be sampled.

Johanna looked beyond the precipice to the trail below. The blue light around Elma winked out and the old woman collapsed. Didsbury raised his sword, only to have a man wearing a Firesword’s sash impale himself on the blade. Then her friend disappeared, rats climbing up his legs and torso, and onto his face, then he, too, crumpled. A dozen other Performers, their expressions oddly bereft of emotion, pressed past, closing on her location.

“Jacaré! Rafi!” Neither responded, both caught in the swirling thrall of voices and power. Rafi sank to the ground, hand flush against the wall. Jacaré followed, kneeling to maintain the connection, oblivious to the flood of death that rushed toward them.

Above their heads, perhaps twice the height of a man, hung a lacy confection of blue lines spanning the sky. The barrier stood solid, and Johanna hoped that whatever Jacaré was doing was almost done.

Their attackers were upon them.

With her free hand Johanna reached for the bow. It was longer then she was accustomed to and built for a stronger pull, but with both Jacaré and Rafi incapacitated, she had to stand in their defense.

She waited until the first face appeared at the edge of the alcove, hoping that Jacaré would suddenly release her and turn to fight, but his eyes stayed closed as he rocked from side to side.

A blond head peeked over the precipice. Yara—an acrobat Johanna had known since childhood—heaved herself up onto the level ground, and Johanna had no other option.

She broke the connection, nocked an arrow, and shot.

It hit the acrobat in the shoulder. Yara tumbled backward and was instantly replaced by a Skylighter from another troupe. Johanna aimed a flank shot and watched the man drop.

They came, one after another, teachers, mentors, friends, sometimes climbing over one another in the frantic push to reach the level spot where Johanna waited.

And she shot them all, hoping to stop them without killing, but they wouldn’t stay down unless incapacitated. Blood spattered, painting the rock’s edge and making it slick, but the attacking Performers didn’t notice what they were slogging through.

More than a dozen down and Johanna’s arm was exhausted, and her quiver was nearly empty. She’d always been good with a bow, better than her brothers and even her father. Despite the new power purring under her skin, she didn’t have the strength to keep it up for much longer.

“Johanna.” The voice was grim, unfamiliar, and she spun around, assuming that someone had managed to get behind her. It was Jacaré. He’d collapsed at some point, falling next to Rafi. “What did you do?” He raised a shaking arm, pointing.

Slumped against the wall, blood pouring from an open wound on his chin, Rafi looked dead, but what was worse—a million times worse—was the blaring blue light that surrounded his entire body. The lacy pattern that had once made up the magical barrier encased Rafi from head to foot.

And the lines that had stretched along and above the wall . . . they were gone.

Once in the library, Dom walked to the desk, where his father’s journal lay. He gripped the worn leather binding and threw the book against the wall. Notes, papers, diagrams, scattered across the room.

With a sweep of one arm he cleared away all the tactical manuals and battle reports. They hit the floor with a dozen uneven thumps.

He wanted to tear down the whole library, throw books through the windows, stomp and scream. His brother, his father, his mother, had forced him into a position where he was responsible for so much. Belem’s approach was a problem he couldn’t ignore or joke his way out of. And what scared him the most was that he didn’t want to. He loved Santiago and the people he’d come to know as he worked alongside them. He loved his estate and its stained-glass windows and white balconies.

This was his home and these were his people, and he didn’t know how to save them.

Leaning his weight on his knuckles, he closed his eyes and breathed deeply through his nose.

What options were left? What was in the pile of his father’s papers and in his mother’s imagination that could save them now?

“Dom?”

It was Brynn, her voice soft, her feet careful as she picked her way through the mess he’d made. In her hands she had a silver tray, which held a bottle of clear liquid, a small glass, and a basket of fresh rolls.

She set the tray down on the table, then uncorked the bottle and handed it directly to Dom, bypassing the glass. “I heard about Raul. And thought, maybe, you could use this.”