With the next two colors, which emerged from the dagger as sapphire blue and emerald green, he was more careful, though his nerves screamed with urgency.
Two more to go. Rafe hunkered behind his mental shields and waited. Time and time again he flashed toward a color, but it either got away or turned out to be one he already had.
Surely purple and orange couldn’t be that hard to find?
All the while the ka pushed at him, like the battering waves of the sea. He had to keep his barriers up, he had to hide most of himself away from it, lest it peel his skin and shred his flesh. Being in it was like going into a room full of poison gas.
He grabbed a clump of blackish-purple. It covered him in a mass of sticky strands. Rafe shook it into the dagger as much as he could, then tried to scrape the rest off him. The dagger glowed a sullen color while it processed this. The thread, when it came out, was barely visible and hard to grasp, as though made of spider silk. By the time Rafe got it into place, he was shaking all over from the tension. His hands—even though this was all mental work—were cramped and his skin was reddened and itched terribly.
Isabella emerged from the tunnel, the black dagger and her clothes bloodied. She met his eyes. “They sent scouts.”
It’ll be the main body soon enough and not even Isabella can hold against that.
Rafe nodded, and came out from behind his barrier. They were running out of time and it no longer sufficed to just stick his hand in for that last hue. He waded into the ka.
It slapped his calves and sent pin pricks all over his legs. The feeling intensified, and soon he could no longer feel his feet.
In a moment, his knees began to shake and buckle.
Orange nudged at his ankles, and Rafe threw himself at it. He fell into searing ka, arms outstretched. He scooped up the orange, clutched it to his chest, and scrambled out in inelegant, churning haste.
The dagger seemed hesitant to accept it, but Rafe shoved it in with sheer brute force. When the purified ka oozed out like thick honey, he guided it towards its pedestal. The pattern began to thrum with life and glowed, fueled by the purified ka, colors forming a vaguely dome-like haze within the cavern, enclosing quartz and Rafe.
Isabella was on the outside.
Rafe turned, started to call Isabella, saw her recognize what was happening, and begin to run for him.
And then the tainted ka that he had not sealed off behind him surged out in a tsunami.
The pattern must hold!
Without thinking, Rafe flung himself into its path.
And ka, electric and raging, outlining everything in a white so brilliant he could not stand it, crashed into him and through him.
It seared his muscles, screamed up his nerves, shocked his bones and scoured his skin. It was steelwool against his eyes and sandpaper against his fingertips. It filled him up in waves, and desperately, he flung it away, away from the pattern, away from the Tors Lumena. To the outside.
Rafe heard the screaming, high-pitched, agonized, and animal.
By the time he recognized that it came from him, his voice had fallen into a shredded whisper and the ka was gone, like a lightning flash. The after-image glared for a moment, then faded. Rafe pitched into merciful darkness.
R
AFE AWOKE IN A
dream. It was a dream of darkness, where he could see nothing and feel nothing. He was a disembodied consciousness, straining nonexistent senses.
Then the flashes came. Colors in the darkness, so bright that they hurt to look at, but he seemed to have no eyelids to close against them.
But there
was
something other than color in the darkness—a taste of meltwater, with something hard and mineral in it. A taste that if it were a color would be silver, edged in darkness.
“Isabella.” He didn’t know if he’d spoken until he heard her answer.
“I’m here.”
He felt dried out, like a bone, but he could not feel his tongue or lips. “What happened?”
She was a long time in answering and he nearly sobbed tears he wouldn’t be able to feel. Aside from the colors, aside from her voice, nothing else in the world existed for him. Not even his own body.
“You got the pattern working. You saved it from collapsing by taking the tainted ka into yourself. It worked for a long time, six stages, before it ran out of purified ka. By that time, Ironheart forces had engaged and defeated the Blackstone army. Apparently, you’d funneled the tainted ka into the Blackstone machinery and weaponry, breaking them. But without Ironheart’s timely intervention, we’d not have survived.”
“Coop… came.”
“He did.”
After a while he said, “Where are we?”
He felt the grimace in her voice. “Away from the Tors Lumena. We carried you out and took you away from it. When you stopped writhing in agony, we put you down and built a shelter over you.”
“I still see… the colors.”
“You always will, I think.” A twinge of sympathy. “I’m afraid you might never be able to go back there. Or any other big vein of quartz, Rafe. It made you hypersensitive.”
“You always will, I think.” A twinge of sympathy. “I’m afraid you might never be able to go back there. Or any other big vein of quartz, Rafe. It made you hypersensitive. In fact—” She stopped.
“What is it?” he asked.
“I think you’re more than a mere rohkayan or even a shahkayan. You shouldn’t have been able to do what you did at the Tower. Not with
that
ka.”
Was there a hint of awe in her voice? It was too un-Isabella-like. Rafe said, lightly, “You’re overestimating my abilities.”
“Am I?”
He didn’t want to think about it. Not right now. After all, he was just a younger son, a junior diplomat, another government agent. Not a hero, and definitely not a kay—someone possessed of special abilities.
He changed the subject. “And you?” He tried to lift his head, to turn towards her voice, but he had no idea if he did or not. “Will I always be able to sense you?”
She was thinking about how to put it. It was, he knew without question, a difficult topic for her. “When I healed you back in the cave, I used a discipline the Sisters of Selene have always practiced. It is the manipulation of an energy we call kyra. Every one has kyra, and we can use our own kyra to
enhance
ourselves in many ways.”
“Like incredible speed of movement and unnatural strength?” asked Rafe, with a touch of humor.
“Only for a little while. Enhanced senses. Ability to heal quickly, and go without sleep. Occasionally, we can extend kyra to heal others, but the person doing it always leaves a part of themselves behind. It’s not a comfortable feeling.”
“So the only reason I’m not howling myself into insanity in this darkness is because of this kyra you left in me?”
“Yes. I believe it saved you from being subsumed into the ka, as well. However, most of your other faculties should return, in time.” Her voice grew distant.
“Where are you going?” he called out, terrified. “You… can’t…”
“I gave you an injection. You’ll sleep for a little. Rafe, I need the space. Kyra was never meant to be shared between people. I can’t be apart from you for long but I can’t be near you always, either. Sleep, Rafe. It’ll give us both a little rest.”
And she was gone.
Alone in the darkness, he neither howled nor screamed.
He might’ve cried, but he’d never know that.
The next time he awoke, he could feel.
Light rough-textured blanket of military issue over him. Thin mattress under him. Heat rising from the ground. The ache in his body, a general ache that resolved into a myriad individual pains as various parts of him realized that he was awake and queued up to present their complaints.
And the presence of someone in a doorway, the shifting presence of someone uncertain how to get his attention, hoping to be noticed.
Rafe raised himself up on to his elbows, ridiculously glad to feel them digging deep into the pallet, the stretch and strain of his muscles, the flimsy support of a bolster pillow behind his neck. “Hello, Coop.”
“Rafe!” Coop’s voice was just a bit too hearty. Rafe winced, wondering just how bad he looked. “You can see again?”
“No, but your presence does—as always—take up the whole room.”
“My mother always did say I was all elbows and knees.” The boards shuddered under Coop’s booted feet. A chair scraped across the floor and Coop fell heavily into it. Rafe wondered if his friend was really this noisy or if his hearing was overcompensating.
“You got my letter, then,” he said, throwing the words in to fill up the silence.
“I did, but I was already on my way.” Rafe could almost see Coop leaning forward in that intense way of his. “Furin came to us.”
“Furin.” It seemed so long ago that Rafe had been sent to make contact with the Blackstone dissident. “How’d he escape Blackstone?”
“He and some others had been pressed into reopening abandoned mines, searching for very specific types and dimensions of quartz. The Protector himself came to commend their progress and receive the quartz. And then he had the mine collapsed—with the miners still in it.” Coop paused dramatically.
Rafe waited.
“Furin got out through a ventilation shaft he’d discovered, along with a few others. The rest were shot by Blackstone soldiers above ground, but Furin made it across the Barrens and into Ironheart, looking for my grandfather.” Another awkward pause. “Furin’s a cousin of some sort, apparently. He told us where to find the Tower. He wants Blackstone down, starting with the Protector and Karzov. But they’re holding his kid hostage.” Coop’s voice took on an undercurrent of dark bitterness, a new addition to his personality. “He came to the right people. Once we’re through, there won’t be two stones standing atop each other in Blackstone.”
Rafe shifted. “And you had a good trial run at the Blackstone forces outside the Tower?”
“Most ran away once they realized their machines were not working and their weapons turned to ooze. We have you to thank for that, I believe.”
“Don’t mention it.” Rafe’s thin-lipped smile was a match for Coop’s own black humor.
“We killed some, captured three.” Another pause. “Bryony was not among them.”
“Tell me about Oakhaven.” Rafe deliberately changed the subject; that wound was too raw. “What news?”
“Some, all wild, all of it bad. Roland is dead, killed, they say by Blackstone agents, his own ministers, the antimachinists, or the Machine itself, depending on who you talk to. The Oakhaven Quartz collapsed. The prince is missing. The Dewfleur government is in tatters. You may have been hoping to deliver the Tower to Oakhaven, Rafe, but they’re in no condition to hold it.”
“And Ironheart is? Blackstone will be back, Coop.”
“We’re smaller, more independent, recover quicker and maneuver faster. You picked a good place to stop, Rafe. We’re building one of five outposts around you, all ringing the Tors Lumena. They’ve made me a General.” Self-mockery colored his tone. “And all because I lived in Oakhaven and hobnobbed with a palace guard and an ex-soldier. Furin’s told us what he knows about Blackstone’s experiments with creating magic devices. They’ve had a program to identify potential kayan children for years. Furin will help us set up one of our own. If ka can be used… it’d change the world, Rafe!”
Rafe flinched in memory of the world-changing ka, running like bleach through him.
Coop went on, without seeming to notice. “You can help, Rafe. Oakhaven doesn’t want you, but Ironheart does. At least, there’s not much quartz there to bother you.”
“Quartz, no. Ka, yes.” Rafe closed his eyes. “I can sense five… no, six, definite clumps of ka in this camp. Not to mention the ubiquitous threads that are always floating around. They’re coming in on the currents from the Tower.”
“You’re that sensitive?”
“Apparently.”
Coop was silent for a moment. Then, “I know you, Rafe. Whatever you’ve been pushed to do, you’re decent and honorable and still loyal to Oakhaven. Ironheart doesn’t wish her ill, either. Your talents can help not just Ironheart, but all people. We live on a knife’s edge, tending our agri-caves, hoping that the next tremor won’t take them out. The Tower gives us both light and ka. It could feed Oakhaven and Ironheart both. We must keep it from the Protector and his kind.”
He rose to leave. “Think about it, Rafe.”
Rafe did. He thought for about three days, days in which Coop met with him briefly and Isabella not at all.
Finally, he set off to find her, using her kyra and the ka given off by her light dagger as guides.
Unfortunately, such a mental map didn’t take into account such things as walls, stairs, cook pots, boots, small machinery, and the other miscellany of an outpost under construction. After banging his shins into several wheelbarrows and apologizing to a tent pole, Rafe found a metal rod which he poked ahead of him for obstacles. A helpful sentry guided him to the gate by voice. Rafe was grateful no one took him by the hand to lead him about. His booted feet thudded on the short span of bridge—he tried not to think of the barbed wire or the depth of the trench below.
Once clear of the camp, he creep-crawled up the last of the slope, rock crumbling underfoot. He felt Isabella’s regard, but she didn’t rush to help him, and he was grateful for that.
Besides, he felt her slight tension when he veered off course and was able to use the subtle emotions she radiated to get up to the top where she crouched.
She was also displeased that he could read her that easily.
“I want you,” said Rafe, as he dropped to his heels beside her and stared sightlessly out into the distance, “to teach me how to use kyra.”
She waited.
“You said everyone has it. That it helps enhance senses, keeps balance, be aware of where your body is in relation to every thing else.” Rafe gripped his metal rod tightly. “I need that, Isabella, or else I’m just useless.”
“Teaching you,” said Isabella slowly, “will be hard. On both of us.”
“Then you need to master this as well as I do, don’t you?” he countered.