Tane placed a furred hand on Vuldon’s arm. ‘We’ll see what we can do.’
*
It was carnage. Verain watched though tears as Dartun threw his magic about the city without reason or rhyme. Like a man possessed, he drove his arm into walls, ripping through stone to collapse houses into the street. Men and women ran screaming into the streets and watched in slack-jawed horror as their homes were decimated.
‘It’s good to be back, no?’ Dartun bellowed with a frenzied grin at his cowed order who shadowed his footsteps — too afraid to do anything.
The skies were darkening overhead, and lantern lights in windows indicated all the people looking on. She wanted to tell them to get out — evacuate — but knew they would think she was mad. Where else did people go when their world was falling apart? Home, of course. Citizens on the first level had begun to barricade themselves in, but the act hadn’t done them much good — Dartun was somehow rupturing the very ground, popping up cobbles and flagstones in street-wide spurts. She was numb to it now, they all were. They merely watched, inert, as he ripped apart the city of her birth.
The first show of formed resistance came on the second level of the city. Standing at an intersection, where two streets banked up identical-looking slopes, two cultists from an unknown order had brought a crate of relics and tried to conceal themselves behind a wide grey-brick well. Filtering in alongside them were soldiers she recognized as being from the Dragoons. They fanned out to form a shield wall, while behind them about a dozen archers took position. In the dark skies above, two garudas moved in slow circles, their wings barely discernible.
Please stop him…
After some brief orders echoed across the street, arrows were let loose. Verain turned to face them, opening her arms in the hope that one might take her. She closed her eyes…
Nothing.
Dartun held up his hands, generating an invisible barrier that sheltered the members of the Equinox. Arrows weren’t deflected, they were disintegrated. The archers turned and ran as they realized how utterly useless they were. The other cultists moved from behind their own relic-originated shield wall and planted a few objects just in front, before retreating. Safely alongside the military, they turned back to view their work. Dartun laughed and walked forwards. He bent down and lugged a stone at the invisible wall they’d put before him. He repeated the gesture with a handful of similar stones, all the time stepping closer and closer. Then, as if the wall had become water, he pushed himself through — much to the disbelief of the two cultists. The soldiers moved shields to one side and revealed swords before advancing on Dartun.
He crouched into a ball. Screamed. Stood and spread his arms like a prophet.
A wave of energy knocked every soldier back several feet, sending their swords and shields clattering about the place. The two cultists turned to run and Dartun caught one of them by his feet. He pulled slowly, dragging the man back. With one hand on the cultist’s waist, Dartun pulled again at one leg.
Verain could only hear the screams, which faded into a crunch as Dartun ripped him in two pieces. The cultist passed out just after he saw his own ruined legs sail back over his head and into the path of the military personnel.
‘Who’s next?’ Dartun bellowed.
THIRTY-SIX
Lan examined the army stationed between their current position and where they needed to be. Troops had perched on rooftops, and there were anarchist snipers firing at anything that moved on higher levels. Cultists were attacking each other, too, shown by the purple sparks of light that crackled between buildings. She didn’t think she could make any successful leaps with the priest on her back without being noticed.
Damn.
Time was slipping away and there was no other choice available: the safest thing they could do was head back the way they had come, back to Fulcrom’s apartment where they could work out another route or perhaps consult him on some alternative paths.
*
When they got to his apartment, they found the place was a mess. His door had been kicked open, his belongings had been ransacked. Papers and clothes were strewn about the place, drawers had been knocked over, pictures smashed.
Lan strolled down the marble-tiled corridor and knocked on the neighbours’ doors. Every one of them greeted her with some fear, whether it was because of her past or her attitude, she didn’t care. Only one apartment revealed anything useful. An interspecies couple, garbed in almost identical brown tunics said that people in long grey coats had started a fight with him outside the building.
Lan tried to hide her fear. Emperor’s agents. ‘How long ago was this?’
‘About two hours,’ the woman said.
‘What happened at the end?’ Lan asked.
‘Well, they tied him up,’ the rumel said. ‘It seems pretty strange to do that to an investigator if you ask me, and then they took him up-city.’
They haven’t killed him, she thought. They just want answers. Lan smiled politely and only then noticed the children running around in the room behind, that this couple had children — when rumel and human relationships could not produce offspring, and suddenly it hit her somewhere deep inside, a place she’d deliberately hidden away.
‘We adopted,’ the woman said, noticing Lan’s gaze. ‘In case you were wondering.’
‘Oh no, I… No.’ She composed herself. ‘Thank you for you answers.’
Stifling tears, Lan turned back to Fulcrom’s apartment.
‘We hope you find him,’ the rumel called out behind her.
Lan arrived back to the room to find Ulryk sitting on the bed studying his books once again.
‘Ulryk, if I can get you to the Glass Tower, will you be all right on your own for a few hours?’
‘Of course. Did you find out what’s happened to the investigator?’
‘I think so. He’s been taken by agents working for the Emperor. If so, he’ll most likely be in Balmacara somewhere, and I want to get him out of there.’
‘Of course, of course.’
*
They set off once again with urgency, taking a different route, a circular one around the outskirts of the conflict. It was longer by far, but for some way there wasn’t the slightest sound of military personnel. Much of the city had locked itself away. As night took a grip on Villjamur, lights began to define windows of numerous shapes across the city, and people could be seen looking out onto the streets below, marooned in their own homes.
Every now and then Lan would run up a wall and across rooftops to assess the route they were on. They managed to navigate furtive channels through the city, going backwards, and sometimes underground, in order to make progress past militarized pockets. It took them two hours to get somewhere that should have taken half an hour, and all the time Lan kept thinking that she urgently had to get to Balmacara, she had to break in somehow.
‘There it is!’ Ulryk exclaimed, pointing at the Astronomer’s Glass Tower. It was an impressive structure, like that of a gemstone half buried in the cobbled streets. A circular path ran around the base, and the surface of the glass was incredibly smooth, so that she could see the lights of the city reflected in its surface. It had eight equal-sized facets, about twenty feet wide, but none of them seemed to feature a door or window, no method of entry.
‘Do you need to get inside?’ Lan asked.
‘I don’t know,’ Ulryk said, sincerely. ‘I could be near it, or on top.’
Lan looked up, but couldn’t see the end of the structure. Somewhere not too distant were the sounds of skirmishing. Two rumels ran the length of the street behind, their footsteps echoing in the plaza before the tower. ‘I can try to get you up there,’ she said, ‘just to be safe.’