Atlas Never Shrugged Read online

stepped forward, trying to drag Van Raighan with him. The thief somehow kept his feet planted, and the ground chose that moment to lurch again. Rel's knees buckled, and he pretty much fell through the Gate, fists clenched in Van Raighan's shirt. The shirt ripped open, then started to tear at the shoulders, before the little man's balance finally gave out and he toppled after Rel.

  Rel's head swam as gravity and the spin on their fall up-ended him, but Pevan grabbed him as he emerged from the Gate, letting it snap closed beneath him. His feet landed in soft grass, Van Raighan's weight driving him into a backward stumble. Pevan yelped as Rel barrelled into her, and for a moment he thought they might all end up on the floor.

  Somehow, Rel got a foot far enough back to catch the stagger, just as Pevan got a firm grip on Van Raighan's ruined shirt. Gasping for breath, they straightened up. Van Raighan's head lolled forward, his eyes wide and distant. Rel shifted position to take more of the thief's weight and lower him to the grass. Beneath them, the ground gave another, gentler kick.

  They were half-way up the long, slow hill that rose westward away from Vessit. A mile or two away, the tower blocks of the old city were visibly wobbling, like tall grass in the breeze. It seemed almost elegant, but Rel could make out the lumps of concrete crumbling off them and smashing into the street. Intermittent wind carried the distant, thunderous noise of the city's death throes.

  Beyond the city, the sea looked much as it had earlier, but choppier, feathered with the white tops of a thousand little waves. Seabirds swarmed over the water in numbers Rel could barely believe. They almost blocked out the truly impossible view of the North side of the bay.

  Where there had been a swathe of low fields almost to the horizon, there was now a slow, endless rise. Looking at it, Rel could guess where the Abyss lay belowground. From horizon to horizon, the North half of the Second Realm rose at a steady gradient for mile after mile after mile, until the haze of distant showers finally concealed it.

  Pevan had crouched by Van Raighan, shaking him, talking to him, peering into his face. She looked very clinical, brows pinched in a frown, lips pressed flat. The thief seemed unresponsive, his wrist flopping back to the ground when Pevan released it. He was breathing, clearly conscious, but something had gotten the better of him. From the sweat on his forehead and the grey tone of his skin, probably panic. Maybe fear of heights. Were all Southerners so easily broken?

  "Uh, Pevan, I hate to say I told you so, but..." Rel pointed North.

  Pevan turned to look, swallowed, and glared at him. She had to swallow again before she managed to speak. "Yeah. I was trying not to look at that."

  "We don't have time. We need to move now." He walked around to stand over her. "Leave him. He'll live."

  "We can't just-!"

  "Yes, we can." Rel cut her off, bent down to take hold of her arm. She shrugged him off. He rolled his eyes. "Come on, Pev. If we don't stop Keshnu now, it won't matter anyway."

  She shot him a look that had knives in it, then took a deep breath and turned back to the thief. Rel opened his mouth to speak again, but all Pevan did was straighten out Van Raighan's arm and pat him on the chest. Then she stood, her face hard but her eyes showing only focus. "The Abyss?"

  "Where else?" The ground might still be trembling under them, but it felt good to be working together, properly, again. Rel looked out at the bay and opened his eyes to Clearsight. Ice poured into his skull in striking counterpoint to the shiver of adrenaline running through his body. No more staring impotently at Keshnu from behind bars.

  The view across the water, enhanced by his Gift, was dazzling, a chaos of molecular turbulence and motion. On the miles-distant horizon, a trawler heeled wildly, fishermen clinging to its railings like rags. The sky filled with strain lines as the Realmspace above the Abyss crumpled. A bird caught as the fold spread further - Rel felt the lurch as the Realm shook again - imploded, its crimson remains weaving wildly as they fell through conflicting gravities.

  Pevan's Gateway spun open in the grass at their feet. To Clearsight, its rim sparkled with Second-Realm colours while the First Realmstuff of the grass crackled and recoiled in revulsion. The other side of the Gate was dark, with nothing to light the Abyss but a couple of torches. A torrent of water hid the far side of the chasm. Pevan must have placed the Gate in the back wall, facing the edge of the drop.

  Rel couldn't see Keshnu - Gift-Givers were invisible to Clearsight - but he could see power of some sort spooling up into the Abyss. That settled that question, then. The distorted Realmspace of the Gate blurred the details of what the Gift-Giver was doing, but it was a bit late to be giving him the benefit of the doubt. Close by, a couple of lesser Wildren stood staring at the Gate, their faces inhumanly static.

  Rel glanced at Pevan. She nodded. "Get Keshnu. I can take care of the others."

  He took a deep breath, let it out heavily, rehearsing how he'd cross the Gate in his head. If Pevan said she'd take care of the other Wildren, he didn't have to worry about them. It was hard to take the moment he wanted to focus without blinking, but he needed to keep his Clearsight. The sky roiled too much with the effects of the quake to offer him any tranquillity.

  Rel stepped forward and let himself drop through the Gate. His vision clouded for a moment as the threshold of the Gateway closed over him, too much chaos too close up for his mind to process it, but he held his eyes open by will and long-ingrained training. The dead, still air of the Abyss welcomed him, ever so slightly warmer than the wind on the hillside.

  Arching his back as his legs emerged from the wall, he bent so that his feet hid the ground first. He let his momentum stabilise him and threw himself forwards, carrying his body over his feet and allowing him to break into a staggering run. He got his balance and his stride on the third step, while the two lesser Wildren were still standing, perplexed, to one side. Their lifeless expressions told clearly of alien thought-processes churning behind their faces.

  Keshnu was a different matter. With the Gate out of the way, Rel could see the swirls and scattered glimmers of the Gift-Giver's power rising up into the dark ceiling of the Abyss. Great gales of Second-Realm power, spreading until Keshnu seemed to be holding the world aloft. No, not quite; Rel's Gift showed him the limits of Keshnu's range, less than a mile in either direction. The Wilder seemed to stand at the root of a vast tree of power, spreading its branches into the disaster above.

  Beyond him, the usual blackness of the Abyss was covered by a curtain of white water. Tracking the exact effects of Keshnu's efforts against the visual noise of that background was beyond even Rel's enhanced vision. It was all he could do to make out the halo of disturbed air that marked out the Gift-Giver's stance on the lip of the Abyss, arms upraised.

  "Keshnu!" Rel shouted, hoping to see the words transform into hazards. There was, after all, a Sherim just behind the hundred-foot slab of concrete beside them. Nothing happened; again, the mysterious Sherim failed to produce any Wild Power at all. Keshnu ignored him completely, or at least didn't stop whatever it was he was doing.

  Rel pushed his sight forward a second into the future, watching for hard patches in the air. It was the only warning he'd get if Keshnu moved to attack. Even then, if the Gift-Giver used some Second-Realm power - and he had to be powerful enough to pull off Negation, even if he had no skills the Gift-Givers had kept secret from mankind - a second's warning might not be enough.

  But the air stayed clear. Rel barrelled onward, the edge of the ledge now only a few strides away. He checked his run before momentum could pitch him over into the endless chasm. It would be easy to throw Keshnu off the ledge, but the Gift-Giver would recover before the Realmlessness claimed him and just fly straight back up. Rel would have no such luxury if he fell off.

  Still, there was no sign of reaction from Keshnu. Rel couldn’t look at how the Wilder would react to being attacked – it was too close to trying to see his own future, which would lock down his Clearsight instantly. He had to make his decision now. He planted his leading fo
ot hard to bring him to a stop, and it slipped. For a moment, adrenaline raced through his chest, so cold it burned, but the slide stopped short of the edge.

  Below, the glare of the Realmlessness, sucking and sickly, reached up for Rel’s eyes, but he tore his gaze away. Up close, the ripples in the air around Keshnu’s invisible form were like the swirls of an oil slick on the surface of a puddle, intricate and elegant. Rel focussed his gaze and let his mind spread out, following the currents that shaped the air into the coming second.

  For such a small interval, and such a small area, at the very limit of his abilities, Rel could see all the options. Three different body-sized tubes sent Keshnu flying backwards. Careful to keep his mind and his eyes separate, Rel worked them out. The one that dropped the Gift-Giver to the floor almost immediately had to be some sort of trip-and-shove. One leading directly away from Rel, through where Keshnu stood, would be a basic, if brutal, punch. The third lifted the Wilder into the air, but a second of the future wasn’t enough to see where – or if – he’d land.

  The trip-and-shove offered the most certain outcome. All Rel needed to do was absorb Keshnu’s attention to the point where the Wilder couldn’t concentrate enough to use any of his powers.