But in the other—flaking rust—they’ve found and disabled the charges. You taste the acridity of unspent chemical potential, and the sourness of bloodlust-sweat; they are making their way unobstructed toward Castrima-under, and are more than halfway to Scenic Overlook. In minutes the first of them, several dozen Strongbacks bristling with longknives and crossbows and slingshots and spears, will hit the comm’s defenses. Hundreds more file into the tunnel mouth behind them.
You know what you have to do.
You withdraw from this close view. Now the forest around Castrima spreads below you. Wider view: Now you taste the edges of Castrima’s plateau, and the nearby depression that is the forest basin. Obvious now that there was once a sea here, and a glacier before that, and more. Obvious, too, are the knots of light and fire that comprise the life of the region, scattered throughout the forest. More of it than you thought, though much of it is hibernating or hidden or otherwise guarding itself against the Season’s onslaught. Very bright along the river: Boilbugs infest both its banks and most of the plateau and basin beyond.
You begin with the river, then, delicately chilling the soil and air and stone along its length. You do this in pulsing waves, there and cool and there again and a little cooler. You drop the air pressure just on the inside of the circle of cold you’re shaping, which causes wind to blow inward, toward Castrima. It is encouragement and warning: Move and you’ll live. Stay and I’ll ice you little bastards to extinction.
The boilbugs move. You perceive them as a wave of bright heat that surges out of underground nests and aboveground feeding piles that have formed around their many victims—hundreds of nests, millions of bugs, you had no idea the forest of Castrima was so riddled with them. Tonkee’s warning about the meat shortage is meaningless and too late; you could never have competed against such successful predators. You were always going to have to get used to the taste of human anyway.
That’s neither here nor there. The ring of cold around Castrima’s territory is complete, and you direct the energy inward in waves, pushing, herding. The bugs are fast—and rusting hell, they can fly. You’d forgotten the wing covers.
And… oh, burning Earth. Suddenly you’re glad you can only sess what’s happening topside, not see or hear it.
What you perceive is painted in pressure and heat and chemical and magic. Here is a bright living cluster of Rennanis soldiers, bunched up within confines of wood and brick, as a swarm of blazing-hot boilbug motes reaches it. Through the foundation of the house you sess pounding feet, the slam of a door, the fleshier slam of bodies against each other and the floor. Mini-shakes of panic. The shapes of the soldiers glow brighter upon the ambient as the bugs land and do their work, boiling and steaming.
Terteis Hunter Castrima was unlucky; only a few bugs got him, which is why he didn’t die of it. This is dozens of boilbugs per soldier, covering every accessible bit of flesh, and it is a kindness. They do not thrash for long, your enemies, and one by one the houses of Castrima-over become still and silent once more.
(The network shudders in your yoke. None of the others like this. You steer them firmly, keeping them on task. There can be no mercy now.)
Now the swarms move into the basements, falling upon the soldiers gathered there, finding the hidden tunnels that lead down into Castrima-under. You lean on the spinel’s power more here, trying to sess which of the living motes in the tunnels are Rennanis soldiers and which are Castrima’s defenders. They’re in clusters, fighting. You have to help your people—ach—rusting—shit. Ykka bucks against your control, and though you are too embedded in the network to hear what she says out loud, you get the idea.
You know what you have to do.
So you pull a chunk out of the walls and use this to seal off the tunnels. Some of Castrima’s Strongbacks and Innovators are on the boilbug side of the seal. Some of Rennanis’s soldiers are on the safe side of it. No one ever gets everything they want.
Through the stone of the tunnels, you cannot help sessing the vibration of screams.
But before you can force yourself to ignore this, there is another scream, nearer-by, a vibration that you perceive with eardrums and not sessapinae. Startled, you begin to dismantle the network—but not fast enough, not nearly, before something yanks at your yoke. Breaks it, throwing you and all the other roggas tumbling over each other and canceling one another’s toruses as you come out of alignment. What the rust? Something has ripped two of your number loose.
You open your eyes to find yourself sprawled on the wooden platform, one arm painfully twisted under you, your face pressed against a storage crate. Confused and groaning—your knees are weak, being the yoke is hard—you push yourself up. “Ykka? What was…?”
There is a sound beyond the crates. A gasp. A groan of wood from the platform beneath you, as something incomprehensibly heavy stresses the supports. A crunch of stone, so startlingly loud that you flinch even as you realize you’ve heard this sound before. Grabbing the edge of the crate and the wooden railing, you haul yourself up on one knee. That’s enough for you to see:
Hoa, in a pose that your mind immediately and half-consciously names Warrior, stands with one arm extended. From the hand dangles a head. A stone eater’s head, hair a curling coiffure in mother-of-pearl, face gone below the top lip. The rest of the stone eater, lower jaw on down, stands in front of Hoa, frozen in a posture of reaching for something. You can see Hoa’s face in partial side view. It isn’t moving or chewing, but there’s pale stone dust on his finely carved black-marble lips. There’s a divot about the size of a bite wound in what’s left of the stone eater’s nape. That was the familiar crunch.
An instant later the stone eater’s remains shatter, and you realize Hoa’s position has changed to put a fist through its torso. Then his eyes slide toward you. He doesn’t swallow that you can see, but then he doesn’t need his mouth to speak anyway. “Rennanis’s stone eaters are coming for Castrima’s orogenes.”
Oh, Evil Earth. You make yourself get up, though you feel light-headed and unsteady on your feet. “How many?”
“Enough.” Flick and Hoa’s head has turned away, toward Scenic Overlook. You look and see heavy fighting there—the people of Castrima fighting back against the Rennanese who’ve made it down the tunnel. You spy Danel among the attackers, laying on with twin longknives against two Strongbacks as nearby, Esni shouts for another crossbow; hers has jammed. She drops her useless weapon and draws a knapped agate knife that flashes white in the light, then throws herself into the Danel fight.
And then your attention focuses on the nearer distance, where Penty has gotten herself tangled in a rope bridge. You see why: On the metal platform behind her stands another strange stone eater, this one allover citrine-gold but for the white mica around her lips. It stands with one hand extended, the fingers curled in a beckoning gesture. Penty is far from you, maybe fifty feet, but you can see tears streaking the girl’s face as she struggles to extract herself from the ropes. One of her hands flops uselessly. Broken.
Her hand is broken. Your skin prickles all over. “Hoa.”
There is a thunk against the wooden platform as he drops the head of his enemy. “Essun.”
“I need to go topside fast.” You can sess it up there, magic-feel it, looming and huge. It’s been here all along, but you’ve been shying away from it. Too much for what you needed before. Exactly what you need now.