Page 95 of Queen Demon
Kai wanted to howl his rage but he reached out through his pearl, found Ziede flying through the corridors, trying to find her way here. He sent,Stay back, he’s using the Well,and added,love you. Then he closed off his mind from her because he didn’t want her to feel him die in this body. What the focused power of the Well would do to him, so close, he had no idea. He thought it might shatter his consciousness entirely.
That sense of depthless power gathered under the platform again. Arnsterath’s face set with bitter anger, then she smiled, and laughed. Highsun’s brow furrowed as he looked at her. Then she rolled backward into the dark pit of the Well.
Kai’s heart froze in his chest. Baffled, Highsun said, “Now what was the point of—”
The platform shuddered and cracked right across. Kai jerked away from the rift that opened next to him and nearly fell in. He scrabbled away a little. He realized the stone under his hands was no longer icy cold. It was just stone, with a dull chill from the lack of sunlight. He lifted his hands and stared at them, wondering if his whole body had gone numb.
Highsun’s face was incredulous. “No,” he said, “No, no.”
Kai crawled to the edge of the pit. The liquid darkness was gone. It was just a gouge in the earth, a crevice of jagged dark rock leading down. On a ledge, just at the edge of the Blessed light, Arnsterath’s body lay, still and broken.
Behind him, Highsun cried out, “How?”
It was an echo of Kai’s earlier question, and somehow that was bitterly hilarious. Kai twisted around to face him and laughed.
Highsun stood there, breathing hard, frustrated and bewildered and so angry. His jaw hardened in thwarted rage and he said, “I should kill you.”
Kai’s only thought was a wail of loss for Tenes. He had enough healed muscle to fling himself forward, if he tried very, very hard. He rasped out, “You should, you absolutely should, just come closer.”
But Highsun wasn’t stupid, and took a step back. He shook his head. “You think Ziede Daiyahah will fare better against me?”
Kai grinned with all his teeth. Hierarchs and Immortal Blessed still needed to breathe.
Highsun wiped his face again, the tracks of where Arnsterath’s nails had ripped into soft flesh already healed. As if talking to himself, he said, “Then I should go.”
He stepped to the tools still scattered on the platform, scooped them into his bag, tucked the papers carefully in. Kai said, “There’s nowhere you can go that we can’t find you.” He meant inside the half-collapsed tor, the valley, the hills and plains around it.
Highsun straightened, slinging his bag over his shoulder. He had something in his hand, a small stone. Highsun said gravely, “Then I look forward to meeting you again.”
The platform blazed briefly with light. Light from the Well of Thosaren. And Highsun vanished.
Kai stared, and then wanted to laugh. Highsun had had a second key to the anchor stone near the camp. Or a different anchor stone entirely. He would travel away from here, stone to stone, to Ancartre or one of the stops near it. He might have concealed another ascension raft at one of those places, they had no way to know.
Ziede swept into the room and landed on the platform, bringing the clean scent of fresh outdoor air with her. Kai hadn’t realized how intense the miasma of death was until then. He said, “Highsun’s gone. He had a Thosaren anchor key.”
Ziede put a hand to her temple. Her clothes were stained with dirt, her face streaked with sweat and tears. “Are you—” she began, and then shook her head helplessly.
No, Kai wasn’t all right. “You saw?” he asked her dully.
“Part of it. Enough.” Ziede knelt beside Tenes. She was a crumbled little bundle, her face concealed by the fall of her hair. Ziede touched her neck gently and her jaw hardened. She pulled her hand back and stood.
“Arnsterath’s in the Well,” Kai told her. “She gave it her life.”
“Kai,” Ziede said, and something in her tone snapped him out of his daze. “She’s not in the Well anymore.”
Tenes stirred and lifted her head. Her eyes were all-black, demon-black.
The Past: the Pledge
The Hierarchs expected us to fight, like crabs clawing at one another to escape a bucket; they never expected us to fight together, all the east and west and north as one.
—The Serdar-kin, Light of the Northern Reach and Bearer of the Memory of Nibet
As the sky lightened with dawn, Kai sat on the steps of what was left of the Hierarch’s house. The clean sea wind was at his back, carrying away the smoke and stench of death.
Most of the platform and the bridge to the port was still there, but the demons’ troopship had pulled part of it down when it sank. Only the bow stood up out of the murky water, the rest had burned to the waterline. The other troopship was afloat but still smoked from the smaller fires that had raced through it. Kai hadn’t even had to help with that, the legionaries had done it themselves by panicking and knocking over lamps. Then most had fled down the bridge to die as they met the Arike troops sweeping into the fort.
Behind Kai, there was nothing left of the Hierarch’s house but pilings. In the panic and confusion of the fire, Kai had killed the Hierarch, and her severed head, somewhat charred, sat on the step beside him. Some of the servant-nobles had gone into the water, but Vartasias and the two other expositors with him had run out to try to stop the fire on the demon ship and died there.
