Meek

Eli followed the pressure of the Reach into a dim boulevard where the buildings' upper stories sagged toward each other. There was plenty of space at ground level for the horses to ride side-by-side, but only a slit remained between the roofs above.

The late afternoon sunlight shrunk to a faint bright line above them. The walls turned every sound into an muffled echo.

Then a shadow moved in the mist ahead.

Payde drew his axe. His mask of cheerful carelessness dropped and his gaze turned into a hawk's gaze.

"It's nothing," Eli told him, sending a spark to investigate. "A piece of cloth."

Still, Payde kept his weapon in his hand as they passed a hanging scrap of a tunic swaying in the breeze. Twenty yards farther along, they emerged from the tunnel boulevard into a courtyard of rippling stone with three melted statues.

And the pressure grew more intense. Not painful, exactly. At least not for Eli. But intense enough that inwardly, he braced himself against the sensation.

Payde drew a breath. "That feels like a cat's yowl sounds."

"Yeah," Eli said.

"Can you keep going?" Riadn asked them.

"It's not bad," Payde told her. "It's just a lot."

"Yeah," Eli said again, and spurred his horse across the courtyard.

As he passed the third statue, he drew level with an even wider boulevard. That one opened toward the heart of the city, letting him see farther than the surrounding blocks.

The mist hung thick and low. He couldn't see much at street level. But the boulevard gave him an unfettered view high overhead, where Heaven's Reach jutted endlessly upward from some distant point in the city. The sparser mist overhead barely blocked the awesome sight.

The Reach was too high to believe, and with a history that loomed even larger. For the first time, Eli truly understood in his gut that the Reach wasn't merely a myth.

It was real. And it was right there.

Well, it was a good distance away, inside the inner city walls, but still: seeing it from this close made the hair stand up on Eli's arms.

Atop that very tower, the last few Eld allies--before they'd become Dreamers--had gathered with human mages from every corner of the continent. Atop that tower, the Chained Angel had appeared. She'd guided them to cast the Great Warding. She'd saved every life in the valley, and condemned herself to an eternity in bondage.

From the cloud-shrouded top of that tower. Right there.

For a moment, Eli merely stared.

His spark saw a teary-eyed Payde making the sign of the Angel while Riadn made a southern gesture of awe or placation.

Lara said a few earnest words in dryn that his spark missed, so he somberly intoned, "Big tree high sky place."

"You," she said in dryn, with a grave nod, "are a burl."

"I didn't think I'd ..." Payde palmed tears from his cheek. "The Dreamers themselves walked on these streets and I ... I didn't expect to feel this way."

"You cry at every concert you drag me to," Riadn told him.

"Because I have a soul where you have a dinghy."

"There." Lara pointed to one of the melted fountains. "Look."

Riadn guided her horse closer and grunted. "Scuff mark from a wagon."

"Straight shot to the center of the city if we follow the boulevard," Eli said.

"Too exposed," Riadn told him.

So they paralleled the main street, wending through drooping alleys and rippling streets, through lofty townhomes hollowed into canyons and beneath the draping remains of an aqueduct. Twice they climbed the ramps of fallen buildings to ride across the rooftops, which had melted together enough to provide traversable surface.

The second time, Lara pointed into the mist. "Is that the inner wall of the city?"

"I can't see a thing," Eli said.

"To the right of that open space."

"Looks like," Riadn said.

When the breeze stirred the mist, a spark showed Eli a sliver of wall, maybe five hundred yards away. Maybe half that far. He was having trouble focusing, because his core ached with the force emanating from the Reach.

Fortunately--sort of--Payde had to stop twice to acclimate himself to 'bee stings under my skin,' which gave Eli time to acclimate himself as well. He breathed slowly and imagined a deep mountain cave surrounding his core, a massive weight that absorbed the growing pressure.

Lara lost the trail when they crossed the rooftops, but she found it again when they returned to street level. Halo, even Eli found it when they returned to street level. Scuffmarks appeared on every stone that bulged into the street, on every corner around which the wagons had turned. Also, bits of bark and leaves and twigs littered the road. You didn't need to be a skilled tracker to know that lumber wagons had passed this way.

They were getting closer.

As if the throbbing in his core wasn't enough to tell him that. He felt tendrils of the Reach's power slithering into his imaginary inner cave like snakes through grass ...

"We need to leave the horses behind," Riadn said. "They're too loud, even in this mist. We'll continue on foot."

She headed past a wall bulging with globules of melted stone, each one bigger than Eli's head. While he frowned at them, Lara hissed in alarm. His spark showed her staring at indentations in a stone trough between two curving crests: hollow shapes where a melting building had swallowed five residents of Ehrat Break. Nothing remained of the bodies, not even bones. Nothing but the imprints of the people they'd one been.

Caught by the flow. Though Eli had read that the stone hadn't flowed much faster than a beetle scurried. So maybe ... maybe they'd been murdered. Thrown into the Weep to drown in the pouring rock.

"Horses here," Riadn said, dismounting in the shelter of a splat of stone that must've splashed down from a high building.

Still a little shaken by the indentations, Lara checked her blowgun extra carefully. She frowned at the number of darts on her bracer.

"Doesn't matter if you're running low," Eli reminded her. "Darts won't affect the witch's risen anyway."

Which he realized, a moment too late, wasn't exactly the most reassuring thing to say.

"When you fight a mage, you don't fight their magic," Payde told him, sounding a little shaky from the Reach's power. "And you don't give them warning. You aim for their throat."

"I can hit her throat," Lara said.

"Course you can! While me and your fellow grab her attention." He showed Eli a strained smile. "What kind of witch could resist couple of comely lads like ourselves?"

"'Comely lads?'"

Payde considered for a moment. "Well, I'll stay in front. Oy, show me that sword of yours?"

"Sure," Eli said, and drew his blade.

"Looks perfect ... for a farmer who lost her scythe."

"I'm not good enough with a sword that it matters."

"What are you good with?"

"Not dying," he said.

"A mace," Lara said.

"Truly?" Payde asked her.

"Range isn't much of an issue for him," she said. "And he's even stronger than he looks. He'll break a sword. I don't know how he didn't break that one already. Plus he's, uh, good at coming at you from unexpected angles."

"You've thought this through," Eli said.

"Also, they're traditional dryn weapons," she explained.

Riadn said, "I didn't know that."

"Well, they're ceremonial, but Meek ..." Lara wrinkled her nose. "As a kid he was pretty traditional."

"I still am," Eli claimed.

"I don't have a mace, so take this." Payde rummaged in his pack and offered Eli a short sword with a curved, flaring blade. "A falcona. Chopping, slashing, thrusting--and as hard to break as Riadn's heart."

Eli slipped his hand into the sword's semi-enclosed grip and gave few experimental swipes. He liked the heft, he liked the balance. "Thank you."

"It's a family heirloom," Payde said.

"I ... I'm honored."

"Oh, not my family," Payde told him.

Eli snorted and sheathed the sword. "That sounds like a story."

"Later," Riadn said, and clicked her tongue.

Payde patted his mount fondly then started back toward the road with the bark and leaves. Eli fell in beside him and for ten minutes they picked a winding path parallel to the road, circling around sinkholes from which cool mist wafted, and clambering over rivers of immobile stone.

If he maintained his inner vision of cave surrounding his core, that served to muffle the intensity of the Reach from 'eye-watering' to simply 'barbed.' Or perhaps he was getting used to the sensation. Payde seemed to be--unless he was just pretending.

Eli kept his eyes forward and one spark in front, peering around the misty corners. But the other spark hovered high, intent on catching every possible glimpse of the Reach. The lowest section of the great spire wasn't visible from this angle, yet he gazed in awe at the central length whenever the peaks of melted cupolas and terraces didn't block his view.

The domes and mounds of the city grew more substantial as the remains of grand buildings lined both sides of the rippling street. Then the high walls joined together, giving the city the feel of a labyrinth. And the mist thickened so much that, even without obstructions, Eli couldn't see the Reach. Frustrated, he poured more attention into the high spark, trying to pierce the veil of mist--

Instead, he heard something.

A distant voice.

Shouting, but muffled.

"You hear that?" he asked.

Payde shook his head. "Can't hear a thing with these blessdamned ants in my ears."

"Coming from where?" Riadn asked.

Eli gestured northward. "A man. Shouting."

"Sounds like a fight?"

"No, just words. Wait."

The others fell silent and Eli concentrated. The voice kept getting louder--or the man kept getting closer.

"I think he's yelling 'won,'" he said, peering toward the sound. "Or 'tree?' Something like that. One, tree ..."

Then a man's head appeared high above, looking down at them from a rooftop two buildings away. "Run!" he shouted. "Run you heavensdamned saltdrinker and take your hound with you. RETREAT!"

"Lawrence?" Payde said.

"Fishhook?" Riadn said.

"... rooftops!" the man yelled. "And un ... the ..."

"They know we're here," Eli told Lara, as his sparks caught movement around a misty corner.

"Who?" she asked.

"A mob of the risen." He grabbed her arm. "Ten seconds away and coming fast."