CHAPTER 10
The Snare
Elaina shook. They were surrounded by armed men in black coats, dressed exactly as Landon described—Watchers. There were others behind them, still farther away, but they weren't needed. Landon and Elaina were already trapped. The cold faces of the Watchers were expressionless as they moved warily around her.
She tried once more to clear a path through the prowling guards with Air, but the web just dissolved. It simply would not work. Landon circled her sword drawn, as grim as death, but the guard paid him no mind. If they are as good as is said, they don’t need to mind Landon. The thought made her feel sick. Oh, Truth! How’d there get to be so many?
Three more men joined them, reining their horses and leaping to the ground. She’d seen them before, in the spyglass. The vicious pleasure on their faces made her stomach turn, and she cast without thinking, a crackling web of pure Fire. To her complete shock, it worked this time. Three bonfires erupted on the plain. Before their feet touched the ground, before they could scream, the three agents were ashes drifting away on the wind.
The Watchers didn't blink. They must be protected somehow—Hetarth was right. The shock of actually killing men was dulled by heart-stopping fear.
A final rider in dark grey galloped toward them, raising a thin streamer of dust through the grass. He drew rein and leapt off his mount. Elaina knew those dark grey robes, everyone in Arith did, even if she did not recognize the face. Drethlord.
Striding closer, the caster unwrapped the bundle cradled in his arms. The Orb. Salfiron's inverted web. Oh Truth! As the Drethlord moved closer, Elaina felt the Orb tugging at her, drawing her to its incomplete form. It was over.
This was how her parents died, and Hetarth, and every other Guardian. Her knees weakened at the thought. Landon left off his prowling to keep her on her feet. She was grateful for his help—the last Creator was not going to die with her face in the dirt!
Soon we’ll be in Evermore, with Hetarth and my parents. Soon. I’m so sorry Landon!
Her hunter moved closer, and the circle of guards opened to let both him and his companion through. The Drethlord eyed Elaina cautiously, coldly. There was nothing of hatred in his face, only duty. It surprised her how normal he looked, this invading conqueror and Empire builder, this murderer.
Grey-streaked hair over a cold stone face. And his eyes. She gave a start to see plain grey eyes, human eyes, looking back at her. For some reason she had expected something different, something evil—red eyes, or black sockets like those creatures in the Book.
One of the Watchers broke off to stay at the Drethlord’s shoulder, heeling the him like a hound. His sharp eyes locked on hers for only a moment before flicking to Landon and back again. The Drethlord was moving.
He drew nearer, and Landon stepped forward to block his path. Even as the Watcher reached for his weapon the Drethlord slipped the Orb around Landon. It brushed her hand. Elaina flinched back, but it was too late.
Too late, too slow, too late, too slow, the words were a chorus in her head, chanting out her death.
She could feel her power flow out of her, and the air around them grew thick and quivered. Things began to look wavy, their borders fluid. Elaina stared in horror. There were at least a hundred webs springing from the Orb. Air formed solid, spinning wheels spread out across the plain like enormous scythes. Whole sections of sod and grass simply vanished, leaving deep scars in their place. Water snared the humidity out of the air, emptied wells. Fire snapped and popped into and out of existence.
The web of the Orb was working. Landon looked as though he couldn't breathe. Perhaps he couldn't. It can’t be working.
Hetarth had said so, back when they found out what the Drethlords were using. He had said an inverted web that powerful would not work, because no one was strong enough to cast it. He had said that to touch it was death, and his own death proved him right. She pushed away the memory the last member of her family before she began to imagine the flash of light and the awful hole it left in her life. He was gone.
But she wasn't dying. It wasn't touching her anymore, but the web was complete. She was weak with the energy that was being drawn through her. She could feel the strain of the web, building and growing, expanding.
The Drethlord was frozen where he stood, the Orb flaring in his hands brighter than the weak winter sun, casting black shadows all around them. He looked wary, which was probably close to panic in normal men. He had not counted on this. In his hands this thing had destroyed her entire people, had murdered her family. But I will survive. I will survive and he will pay.
"Landon?" she called, voice resounding oddly through the sluggish air. He clearly didn't know what to say. She was the strongest Guardian of the Age. She knew terror was written plainly across her face, but she couldn't help it. There was no energy to be proud and stern, not now. No energy for anything but the webs.
There was something the matter with it—more than the fact that it shouldn't have worked, something felt wrong. It felt like there was a twist where there should not have been, a blank where something ought to have bent into place. Elaina frowned.
The web was not going to work.
She had cast enough failed webs to know the feel of it. This one was flawed. Salfiron had never cast anything this size, he had not accounted for the way they would interact. It had to be stopped. A failed web this size could tear Arith apart, destroy it and everything in it.
"Get away!" she snapped to the Drethlord. He stared at her over the blazing Orb in confusion. She should have been dead by now, or dying, he knew. But she wasn't, and he couldn't quite believe it. Behind him a scowl darkened the face of the Watcher, and his hand clenched on his sword. Landon snarled at him wordlessly.
"Take that away, you fool! It's wrong!" She howled at her captor. He didn't move. Outside the ring of guards the world had gone mad. Spreading away from them, the ground rolled like a wind-blown banner. The black-coated men staggered to stay upright. Water was cracking free of thin layers of ice to rise out of wells in glistening ovals. The horses screamed in terror as solid earth billowed under them, snapping legs. It was a nightmare.
Power flooded through her in a torrent, freezing and burning into her bones. She groaned, bringing Landon back to her side, but she couldn’t stand any longer.
On her knees in the grass, her hair fell like a curtain across her face, but it could not block the fierce light of the Orb. Her muscles had turned to water. I have to stop this before it’s too late. Landon knelt beside her and she seized the chance to tell him.
"Landon, the web is incomplete—it's going to fail." She muttered. "I can feel it." Staring into empty space, she shivered. "I think it’s supposed to destroy Arith." The part Hetarth had completed destroyed a half a league before he was killed. How much would she destroy? Ten leagues? Fifty? Hundreds? Beside her, Landon was stared with horror shining in his eyes. There were only two things that could be done.
"You have to stop it." Elaina panted, gripping his collar fiercely. He had to listen, he had to. "Get the Orb away, maybe if it's far enough . . . or else, you'll have to—" he didn't let her finish.
"I won't let them kill you, Elaina," he shouted. "And you cannot ask that I do it myself!" Stumbling to the Drethlord over the heaving ground, Landon scowled. The man didn't even glance at him, eyes locked on Elaina.
" You have to take that thing away! The web is flawed, you'll destroy everything!" Elaina could barely hear him above the chaos. For a moment, the Drethlord's piercing stare shifted to Landon. On her hands and knees, shaking, Elaina was grateful to be free of that stare, even for a moment.
"You are trying to save her." The Drethlord said suspiciously, eyeing Landon. Furious, desperate, Landon grabbed the man's shirt. Elaina's heart sank—there was no way he'd survive it . . .
The Watcher did nothing more than narrow his eyes in warning. It was an understated gesture in the face of the dissolving reality around them.
"What's the matt
er with you? It's your life too!" Landon snarled, disbelief soaking his words. Elaina couldn't hold her head up to watch, but she could still hear the cool reply.
"You are like her Watcher, her shield, yes? Sworn to protect, your life before hers, that is the way with all the protectors in Asemal. You are trying to trick me and save her."
"I'm trying to save us all, you fool. Look!" From the ground, Elaina saw the Drethlord's feet adjust awkwardly. Had Landon really spun him around? Elaina managed to raise her head. Landon's hands were on the Drethlord's shoulders, and they both faced the chaos. She groaned.
The world has gone mad.
Water bubbles the size of small trees floated through the air, bursting when they struck anything, the only relief from the fires that raged unchecked. Those fires were sparked by the great flashes of lightning that arched among housetops and through the dead grass.
Thick black smoke choked the air, filled with the metallic smell of blood and the nauseating stench of burned flesh. Thunder rolled around them, never truly ending, an ominous drumbeat of ruin and death.
The ground crashed about in waves, causing great chasms to split open underfoot only to snap closed in the next moment, cutting off the screams of any who fell in. A city blinked into existence a half a league away, its banners flapping in the stiff wind, people moving along the walls. Then it vanished. Had she made that? Brought it from some other place, or some other time?
Elaina saw that the ring of guards had turned, facing the greater threat from a broken world before her head dropped again. It was too much . . .
"She said it will destroy Arith." Landon's shout was muted, hollow. The whole world sounded like it was leagues away.
"I know." The Dreathlord's response echoed strangely in her mind.
"THEN GO!" Landon roared. It was almost a normal noise, but Elaina couldn't tell anymore. Was the whole world coming apart, or just her?
"There is no stopping, once begun. If it is ended, she must do it. She must unravel the net." The Drethlord's voice was a whisper in the whirlwind, but Elaina could hear it clearly with the pillars of creation was roiling her.
"If she cannot, then she must die." The words were clear and ringing, filling her head like the power that filled everything else. Must die. Must die. Must die.
Landon yelled something, but there were no more words, only noises. Her eyes fluttered closed of their own accord, and silence closed in. Was this dying? Maybe she would die before they killed her. . .
A warm, rough touch on her shoulder broke into her peace.
Landon knelt in the grass beside Elaina, hand on her shoulder. She'd opened her eyes again, but he didn't think she heard him.
"Elaina, we can't get the thing far enough away. You have to undo the web, untie it. The Drethlord said it can be done." Her eyes drifted to meet his. Had she understood any of that, or had that thing already destroyed her mind?
"Untie, unweave. Can't undo." She murmured, squeezing her eyes shut. Landon felt sick, and it had nothing to do with the buckling of the earth. As soon as her eyes closed, he feared they wouldn't open again. He almost cried when they did—there was no focus in the way she gazed at the Orb. The dazed, lost sound of her voice matched when she muttered,
"Untie . . .”
Landon didn't know how she could stand to look at it, the brightness stabbed his eyes with pain. For his part, stone-face was focused on Elaina, watching her as closely as she did the Orb. The screams of the dying rent the air. Some ended abruptly.
"Hurry, Elaina." Landon whispered as he fingered the hilt of his sword. He didn't know when he had to make the decision, when it would be too late, but he didn't trust the Drethlord to tell him. That man had been waiting to kill Elaina for months.
At the moment, that murderer was gaping at Elaina, mouth hanging open in astonishment. Landon felt an odd rush of pleasure—so he does have emotions like a normal human. The earth trembled and groaned beneath them, as if it were as alive and in pain. His sweat slicked the hilt of the sword, making it twist in his hand. If she does not do it soon . . .