72. Down the Drain (Gadarien)¶
Gadarien sweated in his furs as the flowstream surged through the Gyre, an intense pressure suffusing his body. The snow was so thick that he could barely make out Vaye’s glowing face. He couldn’t see Adranaya at all. A high whining tone, just at the edge of perception, wove through the creaking of the ice.
The flowstream spun through the Gyre. Oddly, it seemed to slow a little between Vaye and Adranaya, as though hitting a bump. He wondered if it had to do with the tension that had lingered between the two of them since they’d left Cantereia. The awkwardness felt clear to Gadarien, but Vaye and Adranaya had both denied its existence. Even his spy training hadn’t helped him prise free its source.
Suddenly, something shifted in the flowstream. There was a space that hadn’t been there before, an unplugged drain. This was the moment.
“Now!” cried Vaye, and he felt her open her mind. Planes of light blazed between the axes of their bodies, speeding up and growing brighter with each pass. He had already exceeded his previous limits, but he pushed on anyway, driving himself past the realm of safety or sanity. His extremities went numb, his arteries racing with power. It felt like a prolonged version of the moment of jumping between grips on a climb, terrifying and raw.
A brilliant shaft of light shot into the sky from the center of the ice, snowflakes glittering within its beam. Vaye half-laughed and half-screamed, stretching out her arms and throwing her head back.
The Gyre gave him a glimpse into Vaye’s intuition, and for the first time he sensed the flowstream the way she did. Far away, at the other end of the meridian, something pushed back like a marble stuck in a pipe. The blockage, although abstract and remote, possessed a tangible structure akin to the boulder they’d shattered with the war chord. He marveled as Vaye shaped the flow to match its resonance, feeding the echoes back upon themselves.
Abruptly, like a grape popping between his teeth, the resistance gave way. The Vorkyrda had fallen. With nowhere else to go, the flowstream bounced back up the meridian toward the Gyre.
He wanted to celebrate, but the pressure on his mind somehow increased. He realized belatedly that they hadn’t discussed how to actually release the Gyre. Hopefully Vaye knew. He had already dilated his awareness as wide as he was able, but the flowstream forced its way in, tearing the edges of his mind. Strangely, the energy had stopped moving around the Gyre, instead bouncing back and forth around the circle from a single point of resistance.
Vaye screamed, her fear spiking through the connection. Somehow, Adranaya had become a kind of mirror, forcing the flowstream to reflect back onto the other two. Gadarien felt Vaye try to shut it off, but he could tell she needed the full power of the Gyre to do so. Without the cooperation of all three of them, even Vaye was paralyzed. And if she couldn’t stop it, Gadarien had no hope.
Through the waves of snow, a second set of eyes and veins began to glow, as bright as Vaye’s and as cold as starlight. Adranaya muttered something, her voice strange and distant. It almost sounded like she was arguing with someone.
Gadarien fell to his knees, his muscles spasming uncontrollably. “Adra!” Vaye screamed. “Please! You’ll kill us all!” The Sarmalan was beyond responding, though. She was on her knees as well, her head thrown back and her palms open as though beseeching the sky. She ignored Vaye, her voice desperate and unintelligible as she prayed or begged or did whatever she was doing.
Vaye fell last, clutching her head. Then the swirling whiteness swallowed them all.
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