Garden of Embers: Beneath Devouring Eyes #2

Chapter 12, Part C

"You were holding Urbs Hostiae, and you don't know--" The old man broke off and shook his head. "Whatever, fine. Come here. I'll take you."

"What?" Daedalus swallowed and frowned up at him, spotting the glimmers of black glitter in the folds of cloth for the first time. A fellow worldholder, then. Daedalus doubted Praetor Obitus would forgive the old man for assisting him. "You... You should ask y-your praetor for permission f-first."

The older worldholder shrugged. "He wants that Tower claimed as much as anyone."

"But--"

"Come now," the man said, reaching down and gently pulling Daedalus to his feet by his good arm. It still hurt, and he barely heard the next words over the ringing in his ears. "I already saved you from the cold once and you're obviously too addled to use promenia to warm the air."

"Promenia c-can do that?" Daedalus murmured, then felt a little heat seep into his cheeks as the older worldholder scowled at him.

"What the hell has your aedificans been teaching you?" The old man shook his head. "Of course, it can. Come here, I'll show you as we fly. My name's Reus, by the way. Let's go."

<>

Daedalus's second experience flying was far worse than the first. His side felt like a hot mass of glass shards as Reus gripped him securely about the middle, all thoughts and most of the breath driven from him as he endured the agony in rigid silence.

The height, already a misery before, became a nightmare of terror and nausea as the blue-dotted, crimson-tinted snow streaked by below and one of the Devouring Eyes glared scarlet above. He felt too close to the evil planet, the weight of its attention sending shivers racing down his spine that had nothing to do with the chill Reus's promenia had subdued.

Your father is waiting, he thought he heard the planet whisper within his pain-paralyzed mind. Join him.

The intrusive idea hurt worse than any physical pain could. What had become of his father, he wondered for the thousandth time in recent weeks? He had thought he would find Ausus at the ruins. But there had been no sign of the forgeholder save a discarded consecturum, half-buried in the snow. He almost dreaded entering the tower, half sure he would find a frozen corpse instead of his living father.

"Shit."

The curse drew him out of troubled, fearful thoughts. Talking made his side scream, so he blinked at the old man holding them both aloft, then followed Reus's grim gaze down to the great expanse of snow below.

Eiulatus Vorago's ancient expanse of collapsed ruins sprawled beneath them, with the Restoration Tower--the only building yet standing--looming in silent sentinel over the devastation. "Chasm of Lamentation", the jagged wound in the earth was called now, but once it had been known as Egressus Navigii, "Barge's Landing". Heresy, of course. Some night-side curias prevailed in error, asserting that the Eternal Radiance first touched Aquarius not with a blazing hand on the day-side but a shining galleon here on the night-side.

Now, neither holy hand nor sacred barge hovered over the land, only a swelling sea of what looked like downy swan and bluejay feathers.

Daedalus knew with a sick certainty it was neither. "Is... What is that?" he whispered, hoping his concussion made him see things that were not there.

But there was no mistaking the irregular throb, like a failing heartbeat, that rose from the dandelion sea swarming the camp below.

"Clivia," Reus confirmed grimly.

"What?" Daedalus whispered, then jerked in the man's hold as Reus turned away, the speed of their flight already increasing as the old man summoned more promenia to him. "No!"