Shattering the Ley (17 page)

Allan frowned at Hagger’s derision, then dismissed it and entered the door to the left. He closed it behind him, even though he knew it wouldn’t help; the screams from one room were meant to be heard by those in the other cells.

The table in the center of the room was covered with crate upon crate filled with paper. For a moment, Allan was overwhelmed. There were more pages here than they’d collected from the Kormanley for the last four years combined. He didn’t know whose home the Dogs had raided, but it must have been one of the Kormanley’s main bases in the city.

At the thought, Allan’s heart quickened and he stepped forward, taking the nearest crate and beginning to sort through the documents. Like everything they’d discovered before this, the pages were coded somehow, covered in words and symbols and sketches of maps. Allan hadn’t been able to figure it out, although he still suspected it had to do with the Kormanley’s network. Not simply places they were targeting, but where their safe houses and meeting places were located. No organization could run as smoothly as the Kormanley’s with its members meeting only in pairs or groups of three, with no knowledge of the other members or the next meeting’s location. They must be passing along information somehow.

All he needed to do was figure out how.

He sighed, riffled through the stack, then settled into a chair and began sorting.

Ten minutes later, his concentration was interrupted by the first muted scream from Hagger’s room. He glanced up at the muffled sound with a frown, shifting in his seat. He thought he’d grow used to the methods Hagger and the other Dogs employed over the years, but in the last year he’d become more and more uncomfortable with them.

As the scream died into cracked sobbing, he turned back to his stacks of parchment and tried to focus through the noise. He found another flyer, one of the daily news sheets that were handed out on practically every street corner. He’d run across twenty of them already as he sorted through three of the crates. At first, he’d thought they had merely been in the same room as the Kormanley’s papers, brought there by the man Hagger was interrogating perhaps, but now he wasn’t so certain. There was something about them—and how they were mixed in with the other pages—that itched the back of his brain, but he couldn’t see what.

When another scream arose, he growled low in his throat and thrust the news sheet into one stack and pulled another handful of pages from the crate. Before starting in again, he scrubbed at his face with both hands, then blocked out the noises coming from the other room and leaned over them.

Two hours after that, he laid the thirtieth news sheet out in the center of the table, then surrounded it with the pages that had been above and below it; everything else had been shoved to the side. He couldn’t be certain the Dogs had stacked everything into the crates in the same order they’d rested in the home where they’d been found, but he knew Hagger had demanded that they be careful with them. This news sheet had been printed the day before the recent bombing of the ley barge. He stood and loomed over the pages, looking at the cryptic numbers and letters scrawled on the Kormanley papers, then back at the news sheet. Something connected them all, something blatant that he wasn’t seeing. . . .

He cursed and thrust himself away from the table, pacing around the room, then halted before one of the coded sheets. There was a rough sketch of a hawk, wings spread, head in profile with its beak open. A number was scrawled next to it. Nearly everyone who had looked at the pages believed the number was a date. This one corresponded to the date on the news sheet. After it came a series of interspersed numbers and letters.

Allan picked up the news sheet, read through the items listed yet again, shaking his head. The ley station that had been attacked had been in North Umber, and one of the items referenced North Umber, but it was about a woman who claimed she’d seen one of the distortions that had been appearing throughout the city. Nothing unusual except that she said it was the size of her head, not the fist-sized ones typically reported. The Wielders had failed to comment, of course. Nothing about the ley station or barges—

His eye caught the word “barge” in a separate article and he frowned. With another quick scan, he caught the words “ley” and “seat” and “Eastend.” The barge’s next stop had been Eastend.

He returned to the seemingly random set of letters and numbers, began breaking them apart, even though they appeared as one long string. He tried a few different combinations, shook his head, then began counting out words on the news sheet.

Twenty minutes later, he sank into the chair, his body trembling, his heart racing. He found it hard to breathe. He stared at the far granite wall, noticed there were dark stains on the stone, knew that it was blood from whoever had been imprisoned in the room before this. It dawned on him that he had not heard any sounds from the other room for quite a while.

And then Hagger opened the door and stepped inside. His face was grim, his uniform splattered with blood, although the dark brown, black, and red clothing made it hard to pick out without experience. The blood that stained the edges of Hagger’s fingernails and the creases of his hands was easier to see. It was dark—heart’s blood—and it hadn’t yet had time to dry.

Allan didn’t think he’d have the chance to ask the unfortunate ley priest any questions.

He smothered his reaction by declaring, “I’ve found out how they’re communicating with each other. They’re using this news sheet,
The Ley
. Their code references different words in the sheet, and when you piece them together it forms a message. This one warns them of the attack on the ley station in North Umber.” He picked up the page with the hawk. “I don’t know what the hawk is for.”

Hagger stepped forward. “There’s a statue of a hawk in the center of the North Umber station with its wings spread like that. But I’ve got something better.” He grinned, the expression cruel and victorious at the same time. “I’ve got a name.”

K
ARA RESTED HER
hands on the stone lip of the pit at the center of the Eld District’s ley node. She’d stared at the outside of the squat, rounded building from the street so many times, wondering what was inside, what it was that she could feel hidden here, that she barely believed she was here now, even though she’d been assigned here for the last month.

The pit lay at the center of the building, a round chamber like a well with a stairway circling down to the bottom below, where the mouths of channels pierced the wall beneath. Made entirely of river stone fitted together with the Tapestry and the ley in mind, it was one of the most natural buildings Kara had seen in all of Erenthrall. It had not been grown or manipulated or worked in any way. No hammer and chisel had touched the rock, no mortar held it together. The stones had simply been stacked precisely, all found and pulled from the river and the surrounding land and placed to create a specific pattern.

Like the stones she’d moved and placed for Ischua in Halliel’s Park.

She leaned forward onto the lip of the pit and stretched out her senses. No one was in the pit manipulating the ley at the moment; she had the chamber to herself. But she didn’t want to descend into the concentrated flow of the ley below either. Its eddies and currents could be powerful enough to overwhelm someone not prepared.

It had nearly overwhelmed her the first time she’d found herself in the pit four years ago.

She tensed at the memory, anger rising sharp and acidic in the back of her throat, but she quashed it ruthlessly and forced herself to relax. Her senses stretched out around the edge of the pit on the Tapestry, dancing along the patterns created by the river stones. She could feel imperfections in the construction, flaws created when the pit was first built by Wielders who had barely begun to use their powers. Those mistakes could be corrected, but they weren’t significant enough to force the issue. Most of the Wielders Kara had met couldn’t even sense them.

She let the patterns of the stones flow through her, eyes closed, even when she heard the door to the pit leading to the barracks and the rest of the node open behind her, someone moving to her side.

“Hello, Marcus,” she said, smiling.

“Ready for another day dealing with the ley and the demands of the citizens of Erenthrall?”

“That’s why I’m here. Trying to calm myself.”

He sighed. “I remember the first time I descended into the pit. It was anything but calming. I never realized the ley could be so wild, so chaotic. The other Wielders warn you, but you never really believe it can be as bad as they say.”

“I was never warned,” Kara said, her voice tight even though she tried to control it. She straightened and opened her eyes, met Marcus’ gaze.

“What do you mean? Your instructors didn’t prepare you for immersion?”

Kara shook her head, her mouth twisting in anger, hate, and regret. “They never got the chance. I came to the Wielders earlier than usual, so I was younger than the others in my training group. The others hated me for it, singled me out as being special, even though I was struggling to learn about the ley and the Tapestry. More so than the others. It wasn’t coming as naturally to me as it did for them. I wasn’t as connected to it, somehow. Three in particular decided that I needed to be punished—Devin, Robere, and Terese. They hounded me from the moment I joined them, nothing serious, but annoying. They made my life hell.

“The first day we were taken to a node, they had been quiet, their attention focused on one of the other Wielders. I remember being relieved and thankful, even though someone else was being tormented. I should have tried to protect him. Instead, I pushed him from my mind, tried to forget them and focus on the node. We were brought to the pit, of course, told to remain at its edge. I never even heard the three approach me, sensed them only at the last moment.”

Marcus let the silence hold, still at her side as she glared down into the pit. But then he shifted and asked, “What did they do?”

Kara grimaced. “They shoved me over the lip of the pit.” Her voice was rough and she cleared her throat, continuing on even as Marcus gasped. “I fell down to the floor below, landed hard, heard something snap in my shoulder. Thankfully, it was in Leeds, one of the shallow pits, not as deep as some of the others I’ve seen since. I remember hearing one of the Wielders shout, heard Devin laughing, but then everything—the sounds, the pain, the shock—was drowned out by the ley. It flooded into me, a torrent that drove me under, and I was swept away.”

“Of course you were,” Marcus snapped, his anger palpable. “You hadn’t even been initiated yet! I’m surprised you weren’t burned out!”

Warmth surged in Kara’s chest at his anger and she smiled thinly, gratified that he cared. The urge to lean forward and kiss him swept through her, but she resisted it. Marcus had spent nearly all of his free time with her since she arrived, but she still wasn’t certain how he felt about her.

Besides, he was two years her senior.

Ducking her head and turning away, she said, “It almost did burn me out. I know the Wielders expected it. They were shocked when they finally made it down into the pit to retrieve me.”

“So what happened?”

Kara hesitated. She hadn’t shared what had happened in the pit that day with anyone, not even the Wielders who’d pulled her from the pit, screaming as the broken bones in her shoulder ground together.

But this was Marcus. She hadn’t had a friendship like this since Cory.

She drew in a deep breath to steady herself, then exhaled slowly. “I was swept away, like I said, but I struggled. The ley surrounded me, but I reached out, trying to grasp anything that I could to save myself. I felt the resistance inside me that I’d felt during all of the training up to that point burn away by the sheer brute force of the ley and I reached beyond it, surged down the paths and channels of Erenthrall looking for something stable.

“And I found it beneath the city. There’s a reservoir of ley beneath the city, a lake of it. I remember sensing it when Ischua first tested me in Halliel’s Park. I stretched out for it and found myself in its waters. Unlike the channels in Erenthrall, its currents were calm, and so I submerged myself in them. It allowed me to catch my breath, to center myself. I regained control and then pushed myself back through the network of ley that riddles the city, through the rapids that we’ve built here, and back to the pit. It helped when the Wielders jostled me and I could focus on the pain from my shoulder.

“I suppose I should thank Devin, Robere, and Terese. After that, I had no trouble dealing with the ley. Whatever had blocked me before was gone.”

She turned to find Marcus staring at her strangely. Her heart thudded once, hard, and her smile faltered. “What? What did I say?”

He shook his head. “Nothing. I’ve never heard of anyone talk about a lake of ley beneath the city before though. I’ve worked the network of ley for a while now and never sensed anything like that.” Kara drew up defensively and he added hastily, “Not that I don’t believe you! I’ve just never heard of it before. Maybe it’s something you learn about once you become a Master Wielder, or a Prime.”

Only slightly mollified, Kara said, “I’ve never told anyone, not even my adviser at the college.”

Marcus sighed. “Well, I wouldn’t tell anyone else. You don’t want the Prime Wielders looking at you too closely, not until you’re ready to become one yourself.”

He grinned awkwardly, then his eyes widened in dawning horror. “Wait, I remember a group getting lashed before the entire college my third year. That was Devin and the others, wasn’t it? That was because of you?”

Kara grimaced. “They were lashed until their shoulders bled. They couldn’t walk for a week. The Master Wielders were furious.”

They both stared down into the pit, Kara reliving those horrible moments standing in front of the college as the Master Wielders meted out their punishment, Marcus merely shaking his head. Devin’s glare had been the worst of it and she’d feared his retribution for weeks, but the Wielders kept them separate as much as possible and the few times they’d run into each other one of the instructors had appeared out of nowhere to intervene before the altercation had gone too far, as if someone were always watching her, even if they weren’t seen. By that point, Kara could have defended herself with the ley if necessary, but she was glad she didn’t have to.

“We should probably head out,” Marcus said abruptly. “Someone is claiming there’s an issue with the ley stream at the Eld station. We were ordered to check it out.”

Kara nodded, relieved to escape the memories. “I just need to pick up my jacket.”

They left the pit behind, stopping only long enough at Kara’s room to grab her purple jacket. Then they descended to the streets of Eld, moving south toward the station and the Confluence District. Kara thought of Cory, now studying at the University there. She’d only seen him once since she’d received her purple, her age-old friend appearing haggard and strained with his new schedule, although still elated he’d escaped following in his father’s footsteps as a candlemaker. She half expected her superiors to forbid her to see Cory again in the future, now that he was part of the University. While both Wielders and the University Masters worked with the Tapestry, most of the Masters could barely sense the ley or its intricacies. They were better at manipulating the Tapestry, while the Wielders focused on the ley, and they spurned the Wielders as practitioners of a lesser art. The rivalry between the two factions had lasted since the Wielders first began working with the ley.

On the street, the pedestrians gave way to the purple jackets, stepping to the side to let Kara and Marcus pass, even though they weren’t in a hurry. A few called out to Marcus, waved or nodded, mostly shopkeepers. They passed by bakeries, a glasswright, a florist with a door draped in tied, multicolored grass from the plains, and a man who worked with metal, although he wasn’t a blacksmith. They’d repaired his ley kiln the week before.

Dodging wagons and horses and a few ley carts, they crossed a street and small plaza to the front of the ley station. The edifice rose in tall arched columns from the edge of the street, narrow windows with high peaks between them. The heavy wooden doors at the top of a series of wide, low steps were all open, people moving in and out in a steady stream. Kara and Marcus ascended the steps and entered behind a mother with two children in tow.

Inside, the building was the same as Kara remembered when she, Cory, and Justin had made their illicit trip to Shadow to see the subtower activated. Kara felt the old guilt sweep through her as she scanned the massive mezzanine, the stone columns interspersed at regular intervals carved to look like the trunks of trees. Overhead, the columns gave way to intricately woven branches filled with leaves. Sunlight slanted through the windows and lit the gray stone floor, cracked in a few places, but ley globes illuminated the farther recesses and lined the corridors that angled down toward the ley lines and the barges.

As soon as they entered, Marcus searched out the station’s guards, their dull gray uniforms easy to pick out from the crowd.

“We’re here to see about the problem with the ley stream,” he said, the guards straightening as they approached.

The elder of the two guards nodded. “Aye, the eddy. It hasn’t affected any of the barges yet, but it’s disturbing some of the passengers. I’ll take you down right away.”

He muttered something to the remaining guard, who nodded, then motioned them toward one of the corridors. They descended toward the platform below, the people of Erenthrall streaming past them in both directions. A few of them shot the Wielders curious looks, but most were too intent on reaching their own destination.

“I can’t say as I’ve ever seen anything like this,” the guard said as they hit the platform and he turned right, heading straight for the ley stream on that side. “Although I hear there have been other instances at other stations.”

At the edge of the platform, he halted and nodded toward the bed below.

Kara hung back as Marcus stepped up beside the guard. The ley pathway flowed past in a deep channel, the white light bright enough to illuminate the entire platform without the need for any globes. Normally, it held steady, carrying the barges from one station to the next.

But in this stream, perhaps an arm’s length beyond the edge of the platform, a vortex had formed, the light twisting and swirling like a whirlpool on water. Riptides had formed around the vortex, evident as ripples on the surface of the ley. Even at this distance, Kara could feel the disruption to the Tapestry that had caused it, like a wrinkle in fabric.

Marcus gave the guard a reassuring smile. “This happens all the time,” he said, even as he shot Kara a troubled look. “It’s easy enough to repair. If you’ll step back next to Kara, I can handle it myself.”

The elderly guard frowned, but moved back, hands on his hips as he watched Marcus kneel down and raise his arm toward the distortion. Kara wasn’t certain what the guard expected to see. What Marcus intended to do wouldn’t be visible to those who couldn’t sense the Tapestry. He’d only see the effects on the ley stream itself.

Marcus closed his eyes and then Kara felt him reach out toward the wrinkle in the Tapestry, felt him surround it, then begin to smooth it out. It stretched from beneath the surface of the ley stream to a height at about eye level, although there were no visible distortions above the surface. Anyone who passed through the wrinkle would feel its effects—a tingling sensation that would make them shudder—but nothing else. Kara reached out herself, ready to steady Marcus if anything happened, but knew she wouldn’t be needed. She’d seen Marcus handle problems much worse than this one in the past month.

Beside her, the guard’s face set into a grim expression as the roiling ley began to calm down, the ripples of hidden undercurrents vanishing. The whirlpool began to lose cohesion, struggled to maintain itself, and finally collapsed. Kara expected to hear a slap of water, like a wave breaking as it hit the riverbank, but the ley wasn’t liquid. It merely behaved like it sometimes.