But he could hear it in his voice, knew that he had caused the earth to shatter.
“The gods are working through me,” he said, trying to stem the flood of panic in his chest. He’d said it softly, but most of those near heard, spreading the word through the ranks in a nearly visible ripple. Quotl frowned in annoyance, catching Tarramic’s gaze. “The defenses,” he prodded.
Tarramic snapped out of his awe, although Quotl could still feel its brittle edge as the Riders watched him out of the corners of their eyes. “Prepare to defend the ditches. And call in the archers.”
Half of the Riders dismounted and scrambled over the earthworks, the other half herding the gaezels a short distance away before converging on the open area between where the ditches ended and the cliffs of the Break rose to the south. Painted Sands had already begun digging in to the north. From behind, the small group of archers from both clans who had waited in reserve trotted forward and arrayed themselves behind the lines.
“Is it the Archon?” Tarramic asked. “Is he channeling Ilacqua’s power through you?”
Quotl’s skin prickled at the gruff awe in Tarramic’s voice, but he paused, took a moment to test this newfound strength. He could sense no connection between the power flowing through him and his sense of the Archon to the south. “No, it is not coming from the Archon. It’s coming from the Lands.”
Tarramic merely frowned. In the distance, the Alvritshai and the rest of the Wraith army had broken off their attack on the retreating dwarren and reassembled, the reinforcements that waited behind moving forward. As the new forces merged with the rest, close enough to see now, Quotl realized why they had appeared so strange.
“Orannian,” Tarramic spat.
Quotl grunted in agreement. The dwarren histories spoke of those with the skins of lizards. They had once been like the dwarren, but they had been changed by the cataclysmic Shattering that had destroyed the world and reshaped it. How the Shattering had come about, and how it had changed the world, was unclear, those oldest of oral histories fragmentary and obscure, but the mentions of the orannian were not.
And yet, Quotl could not sense them as he could the rest of the creatures of the Turning.
He frowned, but tore his attention away from the gathering forces. Wounded were dragged from their gaezels and led away, although there were few. Most of those grievously hurt had been left behind on the broken rock now beyond their reach, and those who’d managed to escape to the ditches weren’t wounded enough to be pulled from the ranks. Some of the shamans were passing among the Riders with vials from the Sacred Waters, the pink-tinged liquid healing the least of the wounds so they could continue fighting; others were passing out food.
Quotl felt sick at heart over those left behind, but there was nothing that could be done.
Azuka appeared with water and dry flatbread, handing it out among Tarramic’s entourage. The clan chief drank, handing the skin to Quotl. “It will be a small reprieve,” Tarramic said, voice somber. “The Wraith army already gathers.”
Warning drums sounded. The dwarren shifted where they stood, restless, eyes on the enemy. Quotl raised his head to the sky, the midday sun high overhead and shimmering down with a relentless heat he could feel against his skin. The power that suffused him had abated, but he could still feel it, thrumming in his blood.
Alvritshai horns cut across the desert. Tarramic tensed. The Wraith army marched forward, but this time the dwarren did not rush out to meet them. Drums sounded again, dwarren readying in their trenches, those to north and south scrambling to mount.
Tarramic glanced toward Quotl. “Can you do what you did before again?”
“I don’t even know how I did it the first time.”
“The Archon is going to be furious.”
Something seized in Quotl’s chest. He suddenly regretted his announcement earlier that the gods were working through him. But what other explanation was there? He had never done anything like that before, had only felt the gods’ presence during spirit walks and meditations in the keevas. This had been different. This time, that presence had filled him, and he had used it to kill the gruen, to shatter the earth.
He shuddered at the ramifications, both for the Archon and for himself, then calmed himself. The Archon hadn’t retained his position this long without knowing how to manipulate the clan chiefs and the head shamans. He would undoubtedly claim the power had been channeled through him. Only Quotl could gainsay him, and Quotl had no aspirations for the Archon’s position. He could let the Archon claim responsibility.
Yet even as he relaxed, a pang of uneasiness threaded through him, of doubt. This power
On the desert, the Wraith army suddenly broke into a run, the orannian outpacing the rest. As they approached, they spread out, the Alvritshai and other creatures coming up behind.
“They’re going to hit on all fronts,” Tarramic said.
To their right and slightly behind, a drum suddenly thrummed and two hundred archers snapped their bows to the sky, arrows already placed. The drum thudded again and bows creaked as they were drawn. The whirring release sounded like a thousand birds taking sudden flight. Quotl watched the arrows arc over the ditches, some of the winged dreun banking out of the way with harsh shrieks. They fell in a deadly hail, another swath of arrows already launched, but it didn’t slow the Wraith army down at all. They struck on all three fronts almost simultaneously.
Deep within, Quotl felt the power he held swell as his heart quickened.
Siobhaen cursed and Colin spun to find her stumbling down the last of the massive ridge of shattered stone that encircled the center of the city. It was like a wave caused by a rock cast into a pool of water had petrified in place. Debris avalanched down with her, disturbed by her feet. Eraeth took a step toward her as she neared the bottom, but she caught herself against a boulder twice Colin’s height, what had once been part of a building based on the detailed carving etched across one face.
She straightened and muttered, “I’m fine,” annoyance making her voice taut. She wiped sweat from her face with one hand.
Colin glanced toward the midday sun, felt the grit of dust mingling with the sweat on his own face, then focused on the broken towers ahead.
They’d found shelter in one of the half-collapsed buildings in the outskirts of the city when darkness fell, using the walls to conceal their fire. The night had turned chill. During his watch, Colin had ascended to the precarious height of the wall-the roof had caved in uncountable years past-and searched the wide valley that cupped the ancient city for signs of life, for evidence of the Haessari and the Wraiths and their armies. Most of the city had been lost in the darkness, the ruined buildings not even shapes in the scant moonlight. But the center of the city had glowed with a pale, bluish light, the shattered towers silhouetted in the distance. Colin had felt the power of the Source from his perch, had felt himself drawn to it. It had throbbed in the ground beneath him, and he knew he sensed the lake far beneath the surface, the reservoir that gave the Source its power.
And it was still awakening, its power growing. He shuddered at its strength.
That power had held his attention for at least an hour. He’d studied it, tested it, tasted it, trying to determine how he would manipulate it when the time came. Part of its power was already in use. He could sense the flow that attacked the Seasonal Trees. He would have to block that, but it would not be enough. The Source needed to be balanced with the other Wells. It needed equilibrium.
And it needed protection from interference by the Wraiths.
When he’d finally learned what he could from a distance, he’d turned his attention back to the city. It had been still, dark, lifeless. But to the north, fire dotted the landscape. An entire array of light, flickering against the black backdrop of the night. It had taken him ten minutes to realize that the fires weren’t spread out flat over a wide plain, as he’d first assumed, but were vertical.
Like the dwarren in the subterranean warrens, the Snake People lived in the cliffs surrounding the city. He’d wondered briefly why they hadn’t taken over the ruins themselves. Some of the buildings were still mostly intact, especially near the outer edges of what he’d come to think of as the city proper. The destruction where they had camped had not been as prevalent as what they’d passed through at the city’s edge. But as the city emerged into dawn’s light, he’d suddenly realized that he wouldn’t want to live in the city either. Even now, what had to be thousands of years after its fall, he could feel ghosts in the streets, in the buildings, as if an energy had been absorbed by the stone and was still seeping out. An energy that had nothing and everything to do with the Source.
He’d been concerned that he’d react to that energy as he had within the caverns of Gaurraenan’s halls, but
