The Mask of Mirrors by M. Carrick; (lightest ebook reader txt) 📗

Like the Rook’s hood: something to hide the fear and the fallible human beneath.

Something in the dream answered her call… but not the way she expected.

Shadows flowed down her limbs, wrapping them in darkness. Not the Rook’s costume, though for a moment she thought it was; instead it was overlapping layers of black silk and leather, like the petals of a rose. Threads stretched across her vision and settled into place, a mask of black lace that was rough against her fingers when she touched it, an instant before gloves twined up over her hands.

What did I just do?

She didn’t have time to ponder it. She’d disguised herself; that was all that mattered.

The world was shuddering again, harder this time. She set her black boots against the stone of the Point and hurled herself at Serrado.

She took him by surprise, her hip coming in low and knocking him off-balance. He grabbed at her shoulder, but his hand slipped off the leather, and his startled exclamation faded behind Ren as the tunnel swallowed her. A heartbeat later, she emerged into a burst of light the color of a dying dreamweaver. Someone knelt within the lines of a numinat, visible only as a white shirt radiant against the color, and someone else lurched around him, body-blocking zlyzen and hurling them back.

This was only the sixth year of the cycle; Veiled Waters had come, but not the Great Dream. The wellspring existed only in Ažerais’s Dream—and so the numinat had torn apart the veil between realms, collapsing dream into reality.

Within its bounds, the waking world had no substance at all. And like ground eroding at the edge of a hole, the threads of reality’s fabric were coming apart, the thinness spreading through the amphitheatre and down the Point. What that would do if it persisted, Ren didn’t know—but it would hardly matter soon, if Mettore had his way. The wellspring had been forced into reality, and now it was vulnerable.

It shimmered at the center of the vanished stage, offset from the numinat’s center. Ren heard its song in her bones: the melody of Ažerais, a soundless hum. Its light shone pure against the poisonous glow of the numinat.

And beyond that light, movement. Three figures, emerging from behind the low facade that served as a backdrop for performances. Mettore Indestor, Gammer Lindworm, and twisting in Mettore’s grip, Arkady.

Ren hurled herself down the stairs, over the railing and the wall at the bottom. The figure kneeling in the numinat moved, reaching out to wipe a break through one of the lines, and she realized with a shock like cold water that it was Vargo, his face pale and set with concentration. And the one defending him—that was Sedge, doing his best to keep the zlyzen back so Vargo could work.

“Traitor.” Gammer Lindworm’s snarl echoed off the amphitheatre’s backdrop, reaching Ren’s ears with perfect clarity. “All my generosity, all my kindness—and you don’t want it. But I know how to break you, my girl. Break you and remake you, and then you’ll be a proper daughter for me.”

The swirling mass of zlyzen surged, flowing away from Vargo and toward Ren. Not all of them—but enough and more than enough, and the only weapon she had to hold them back with was a single throwing knife.

She ran toward Mettore and Arkady, praying she could outpace the zlyzen enough to at least pull the girl free. But one sticklike claw caught her ankle, sending her somersaulting forward, and a band of pure lightning burned across her back. Every muscle convulsed, leaving her sprawled on the far side of a glowing numinatrian line. She tried to suck air into her lungs, to get her legs to move, but they wouldn’t.

The hiss of the zlyzen surrounded her.

Then a sword flashed through the air, turning aside a sharp-toothed maw just as it would have closed on Ren’s arm. Blackness occluded her vision; a moment later she realized it wasn’t her sight going, but the long, sweeping skirts of a coat.

The Rook was standing over her.

“And people call me reckless.” He reached down a gloved hand. “Can you stand?”

With his aid, she forced her muscles to work again. “They’re going to throw Arkady into the wellspring,” she panted.

But Arkady was fighting back. Mettore had both arms around her skinny waist and was hoisting her into the air, but her wildly kicking legs unbalanced him enough that one of his heels clipped the edge of a line. Ren watched as the same lightning energy shot through his body. He and Arkady both crashed to the ground.

“Stay off the fucking lines!” Vargo shouted, not looking up from his work.

“And people call me rude,” the Rook muttered, blade slashing along a zlyzen’s flank.

The Rook. And Vargo.

Unless he could be in two places at once, her suspicions had been wrong. Again.

The Rook cast a quick glance at Arkady, who’d kicked the prone Mettore in the head before sprinting off, several zlyzen on her heels. “Getting to them is going to be hard. Do you have a weapon?”

A breathless laugh burst from her. She held up the throwing knife.

He coughed as though trying not to laugh. “An impressive thorn, Lady Rose. But maybe you should let me do the pruning while you deal with the worms.” He nodded at Gammer Lindworm, who was stalking after Arkady.

“With pleasure,” Ren muttered, and took off—this time staying off the fucking lines.

The Great Amphitheatre, Old Island: Cyprilun 35

Kaius Rex had tried for decades to destroy Ažerais’s wellspring. Did Mettore Indestor really think he could succeed where the Tyrant had failed?

Given the glowing numinat before him, Vargo had to take the possibility seriously. He’d wasted several precious moments staring at it—not out of fear, he told himself, but because he needed to understand the blasted thing. Everything about it was wrong, from the off-center decagram surrounding the wellspring; to the other numina, Tuat to Ninat counter-inscribed along the earthwise spiral, folding back into Illi, the one-that-was-all;