thought, without direction. Two fell, then three. A fourth joined them and the blade moved on. I was sure that I was cut, but could not feel it. There was blood in the air, black blood and red, cold blood and warm, but all I felt was the joy of the blade's dance and the opening of meat. They came and they fell away, they rushed and they fell away. The world around me was nothing but the path of the blade.
It was over before I realized it, over and I was still dancing. No one else came to fall against my steel. I did another pass of the room, arcing and scything and dancing, the water kicking up all around me, the air whistling against my face, rustling my hair. No one left but the separated fallen at my feet. I gave the sword one last whirl and then grounded it tip first in the earth, and all the wounds rushed at me as the momentum of the dance left me, shuddering through my arms and the blade and into the ground. I collapsed against the hilt, struggled to stand, heaving breath and life all over my blade.
There were many wounds. I had not come through cleanly, but I had come through. Leaning on the sword, I looked around the room. At the half-submerged bodies of my enemies, at the tangle of metal and stone in the deeper parts of the pool. At Cassandra, just standing up from behind a column of brick. She looked frightened. I understood that. She was talking. I didn't understand that.
A shadow passed over me and I looked up. Above us, a great section of the dome peeled away and, slowly, gracefully, bent toward us. To flatten us, to bury us under a world of brick and stone and metal. All that, and the building was going to kill us.
Suddenly, Cassandra was beside me. She put one arm around me and threw the other one up, as though shading me from the sun. Power surged through her. I watched as the wall leaned down to us and then, suddenly, the avalanche of tumbling brick stiffened. Around us the stones formed a dome as they fell, stacking tight. The Cant of Making.
I looked down at Cassandra, and her eyes were fire blue as she intoned the Cant. Her hair whipped around, as though blown in a wind that came from inside the girl. Even her clothes, the cuffs of iron, her metal collar, all hung as though without gravity. Even I felt light.
Before the new dome had finished forming, she threw an arm out in the direction we had come, back up to the top of the building. A physical shock wave, very concentrated, shot out from her hand. As it traveled, the avalanche of collapsing architecture formed around it. It burrowed a tunnel into the sky, bricks lining up and clattering together like metal suddenly magnetized. The avalanche roared around us, the ground shook, but that tunnel formed and held in the span of a breath. Far away, at the end of the new tunnel, I could see a ring of blue sky. The earth settled, and it was still.
She collapsed in my arms, sobbing. My own strength was gone, but I lifted her, and she lifted me, and together we struggled up the tunnel and out into the light.
* * *
Owen grasped my head in his hands, palms against my ears, and began to invoke. My skull burned like a coal. When he released me, long, gummy strands of blood trailed from his palms to my ears. I could hear again. It was loud.
'That was a very bad idea,' he yelled, though I could barely hear him over the rest of it. 'I mean, a good idea, but a bad one too. We probably could have made some earmuffs for you, or something.'
Owen had found us huddled in a ruined gazebo, on the shore of the copper lake where I'd seen the Feyr on my way in. The little men and their boat were gone, and the copper lakebed was punctuated with blast marks. The water had drained away. There was a lot of burning topiary, too. It looked surreal, burning green horses and spirals crisping away to nothing while I watched. This was as far as we were able to get in our condition. Owen and his patrol of Healers were fixing us up, one at a time.
'Where'd they take you?' I asked.
'Visitors' center. More like a holding cell for the curious. When that thing hit, though, everyone started rushing toward the center. We just followed.'
'What was it?'
'You tell me. You came out of where it struck.'
I looked over at Cassandra. Her face and arms were bloodless, and the two Healers who were attending her kept their voices low. I saw that her ruined hand was still sleeved in that contraption of steel I had first seen in the alleyway. How long ago had that been? Weeks? Days?
'I don't know either. We were inside, deep inside. Whatever it was cleaved the hell out of that sanctuary of theirs.' I sat up and rubbed my head. 'Doesn't make a lot of sense.'
A flight of valkyn screamed by overhead. The city's defenses had finally responded to the attack, and the island was swarming with Alexander's peasant army. Back in the dome the Song had been replaced by a chorus of gunfire and muffled explosions. The whole island was shaking.
'You don't want to go back in there, do you?' Owen asked, nervously.
'I'm a Paladin of Morgan, idiot. Of course I want to go back in. But my sworn duty is to her, and her safety.' Cassandra was sitting up now, looking around like a child woken from a nap. That Making had taken it right out of her. 'How long until they hit Alexander directly, you think?'
'What?'
'Whoever these guys are, they're doing this for a reason. They started with Morgan. Maybe because we're the weakest, maybe because we have some trick that could stop them.' I thought of the archive, but didn't mention it. I didn't know how that played into this game yet. 'Now they've moved against the Chanters. Arguably the Alexians' greatest weapons, thrown into disarray.'
'This is not the time for this conversation,' Cassandra said. She was struggling to stand. I rose and pulled her up by her injured hand, to test its strength. She grimaced, but the hand felt strong.
'Did you do this?' I asked, holding on to her sleeve. Her hand rested in a glove of wires and pistons, each joint articulated by minuscule gears that twitched and shimmered with motion, even when her hand was still. It reminded me of my sheath.
'The family didn't have any healers, and little medicine.' She pulled her hand away and hid it in her cloak. 'I did what I could.'
'Does it hurt?' Owen asked. 'I could do something for it.'
'No, thank you. I'll be fine.'
A series of thumps resounded out of the new chasm at the center of the island. Something deep inside the artificial ground collapsed, and the home of the Chanters clenched in on itself. Sirens began to wail in the distance, like the horns of the final battle sounding the ruin of the world. I grabbed Cassandra by the shoulder.
'This is the part where we run away,' I said. 'Come on.'
We were not alone in our intention. The civilian population had been fleeing the island since the disturbance had started. They were now joined by the broken legions of the city of Ash, the valkyn arcing high overhead, the foot soldiers trying to find the boats they had come in on being turned aside by unit commanders who insisted the battle wasn't yet lost. The only ones not running were the coldmen. They pursued, their stitched bodies clamoring forward even as the ground gave way and they fell into the waters of the lake.
We stopped at the crumbling edge of the island. The wall had peeled away, and raw machinery bristled out of the ground, trailing into the lake. Owen was on the communications rig, trying to find us a ride.
'It's a rout,' he spat, 'and the boats are already gone. They evacced the civilians when they dropped off their units.' He pulled off the rig and peered at the city. I could see a flotilla of transport boats steaming toward the docks. 'Ten minutes at least, before they get empty and turn around.'
'Where's our boat?'
'Commandeered to assist in the evacuation.' He nodded to the distant fleet. 'It's in there, somewhere.'
'You got any holy tricks that involve walking on water?' I asked him. He shook his head. 'Well. How about swimming? How does everyone feel about swimming?'
'A city on a lake, populated by gods, and people are trying to swim to shore.' Cassandra slipped between those of us who had gathered at the rough edge of the water, and raised her hands to the sky. She invoked.
'Amon and his Brothers Immortal were at that time traveling across the land, meeting with the leaders of the people to warn them of the coming fall. In time they came to a great river, deep and swift. Morgan and Alexander argued how best to cross it, and while they argued Amon gathered wood, and rope, and pitch.' She clapped her
