Zach Brenner's Arc

Chapter 77 of 86

The airship touched the bridge, and Zach stepped down into the buried city. Blue fire lit the pale stone streets. The villagers walked past him without a glance, eyes empty, feet dragging. He could free them once he knew who held them. But he saw no jailer. No throne. Just silent people and cold light. "We attack blind," he told Raven, "we could kill the wrong thing and wake something worse." Raven crouched by a fallen villager slumped against a wall. The man breathed slow. His lips moved. She leaned close, her cat ears turning toward the sound. "He's saying something," she whispered. Zach knelt beside them. The villager's voice came out thin and cracked. "The fog answers to a keeper," the man breathed. "He walks the city. He rules the stone. Nothing moves without him." His eyes drifted shut again. Zach shook his shoulder, but the man had gone limp, back into the sleep the fog gave. Zach stood. "A keeper. One who commands the fog." He looked at the empty streets and understood. "I can't strike the crack, I can't free these people, until I know who runs this place." Lyra pressed her palms to the cold stone. Her purple eyes closed. "Let me find him," she said. "Every heartbeat down here beats the same slow way. Asleep." Her brow tightened. "All but one." She pointed across the black canal toward a tower at the city's heart. "One heartbeat is fast. Awake. It's moving." Talon dropped from the north ship, both katanas drawn. "Then that's our keeper," he said. He scanned the bridges and rooftops the way he read the northern trails. "Wide open ground between here and there. He'll see us coming." Garrok climbed down beside them, axe over his shoulder. He grinned at the silence. "Good. Let him see us." "No," Zach said. "We learn who he is first. We don't charge a thing we don't understand." He turned to Ayla. "Your light woke that man for a breath. Do it again, at the tower door. If the keeper's flesh, your light will show it." Ayla raised her silver staff. The crystal flared white and threw its beam across the canal to the central tower. The blue fire dimmed under it. And in the tower's high window, a figure recoiled from the light and hissed. Zach saw him clearly now. A tall man in gray robes, hood back, skin pale as the stone. Not a monster. Not the fog. A person, standing over the sleeping city like a shepherd over a flock. He raised one hand, and every villager in the streets stopped walking at once and turned toward the intruders. "There," Zach said. His fear drained away, replaced by cold purpose. He finally knew who ruled here. "That's the keeper. That's who we have to break." He drew his sky-tech blade. "Now we can fight."