Before the new dome had finished forming, she threw an arm out in the direction we had come, back up to the top of the building. A physical shock wave, very concentrated, shot out from her hand. As it traveled, the avalanche of collapsing architecture formed around it. It burrowed a tunnel into the sky, bricks lining up and clattering together like metal suddenly magnetized. The avalanche roared around us, the ground shook, but that tunnel formed and held in the span of a breath. Far away, at the end of the new tunnel, I could see a ring of blue sky. The earth settled, and it was still.
She collapsed in my arms, sobbing. My own strength was gone, but I lifted her, and she lifted me, and together we struggled up the tunnel and out into the light.
* * *
Owen grasped my head in his hands, palms against my ears, and began to invoke. My skull burned like a coal. When he released me, long, gummy strands of blood trailed from his palms to my ears. I could hear again. It was loud.
"That was a very bad idea," he yelled, though I could barely hear him over the rest of it. "I mean, a good idea, but a bad one too. We probably could have made some earmuffs for you, or something."
Owen had found us huddled in a ruined gazebo, on the shore of the copper lake where I'd seen the Feyr on my way in. The little men and their boat were gone, and the copper lakebed was punctuated with blast marks. The water had drained away. There was a lot of burning topiary, too. It looked surreal, burning green horses and spirals crisping away to nothing while I watched. This was as far as we were able to get in our condition. Owen and his patrol of Healers were fixing us up, one at a time.
"Where'd they take you?" I asked.
"Visitors' center. More like a holding cell for the curious. When that thing hit, though, everyone started rushing toward the center. We just followed."
"What was it?"
"You tell me. You came out of where it struck."
I looked over at Cassandra. Her face and arms were bloodless, and the two Healers who were attending her kept their voices low. I saw that her ruined hand was still sleeved in that contraption of steel I had first seen in the alleyway. How long ago had that been? Weeks? Days?
"I don't know either. We were inside, deep inside. Whatever it was cleaved the hell out of that sanctuary of theirs." I sat up and rubbed my head. "Doesn't make a lot of sense."
A flight of valkyn screamed by overhead. The city's defenses had finally responded to the attack, and the island was swarming with Alexander's peasant army. Back in the dome the Song had been replaced by a chorus of gunfire and muffled explosions. The whole island was shaking.
"You don't want to go back in there, do you?" Owen asked, nervously.
"I'm a Paladin of Morgan, idiot. Of course I want to go back in. But my sworn duty is to her, and her safety." Cassandra was sitting up now, looking around like a child woken from a nap. That Making had taken it right out of her. "How long until they hit Alexander directly, you think?"
"What?"
"Whoever these guys are, they're doing this for a reason. They started with Morgan. Maybe because we're the weakest, maybe because we have some trick that could stop them." I thought of the archive, but didn't mention it. I didn't know how that played into this game yet. "Now they've moved against the Chanters. Arguably the Alexians' greatest weapons, thrown into disarray."
"This is not the time for this conversation," Cassandra said. She was struggling to stand. I rose and pulled her up by her injured hand, to test its strength. She grimaced, but the hand felt strong.
"Did you do this?" I asked, holding on to her sleeve. Her hand rested in a glove of wires and pistons, each joint articulated by minuscule gears that twitched and shimmered with motion, even when her hand was still. It reminded me of my sheath.
"The family didn't have any healers, and little medicine." She pulled her hand away and hid it in her cloak. "I did what I could."
"Does it hurt?" Owen asked. "I could do something for it."
"No, thank you. I'll be fine."
A series of thumps resounded out of the new chasm at the center of the island. Something deep inside the artificial ground collapsed, and the home of the Chanters clenched in on itself. Sirens began to wail in the distance, like the horns of the final battle sounding the ruin of the world. I grabbed Cassandra by the shoulder.
"This is the part where we run away," I said. "Come on."
We were not alone in our intention. The civilian population had been fleeing the island since the disturbance had started. They were now joined by the broken legions of the city of Ash, the valkyn arcing high overhead, the foot soldiers trying to find the boats they had come in on being turned aside by unit commanders who insisted the battle wasn't yet lost. The only ones not running were the coldmen. They pursued, their stitched bodies clamoring forward even as the ground gave way and they fell into the waters of the lake.
We stopped at the crumbling edge of the island. The wall had peeled away, and raw machinery bristled out of the ground, trailing into the lake. Owen was on the communications rig, trying to find us a ride.
"It's a rout," he spat, "and the boats are already gone. They evacced the civilians when they dropped off their units." He pulled off the rig and peered at the city. I could see a flotilla of transport boats steaming toward the docks. "Ten minutes at least, before they get empty and turn around."
"Where's our boat?"
"Commandeered to assist in the evacuation." He nodded to the distant fleet. "It's in there, somewhere."
"You got any holy tricks that involve walking on water?" I asked him. He shook his head. "Well. How about swimming? How does everyone feel about swimming?"
"A city on a lake, populated by gods, and people are trying to swim to shore." Cassandra slipped between those of us who had gathered at the rough edge of the water, and raised her hands to the sky. She invoked.
"Amon and his Brothers Immortal were at that time traveling across the land, meeting with the leaders of the people to warn them of the coming fall. In time they came to a great river, deep and swift. Morgan and Alexander argued how best to cross it, and while they argued Amon gathered wood, and rope, and pitch." She clapped her hands together and then pointed them down at the water. The surface of the lake boiled and churned. "He built for them a great ship, which carried them across the river, and later to the far islands, and the people of heaven were with them."
The girl raised her hands and something loomed in the dark water. It broke the surface with much trouble, listing and pouring water out its sides. It was a boat, covered in black sludge. Those few surfaces that were clean looked to be charred wood. Eventually it settled on the water, and Cassandra hopped lightly into it.
"Nice trick. You sure that thing's going to hold us all?" Owen asked.
"Weren't you listening? It's been to the far islands. It should be able to get us across this pond here."
"This is Amon's ship?" I asked. "What happened to it?"
"Not his actual ship, no, but a noetic representation of it. And the ship hasn't been the same since…" She shrugged. "You know."
We boarded and the boat started across the water. Owen took me aside.
"Since what?"
"Amon's death," I answered. "They bound him to that ship and burned him alive. It sank eventually, with him still screaming."
"Ah." He looked around the charred hull and winced. "Cheery."
"It's not so bad," Cassandra said. "At least we aren't swimming."
The boat lurched in the wake of another explosion from the Dome of the Song, and I grasped its side. The wood came away in damp splinters in my fist. Hard to forget that the story arc of this particular vessel ended with its owner burning alive and sinking to the bottom of this very lake.