The Gates of Memory, стр. 102
They appeared on the roofs of Landow, the place where Alena had spent far too much of her childhood.
Before the Lolani could gather their wits, Alena was on them, slashing and stabbing with the knife. She wasn’t a natural born warrior like her brother or Ren, but she made up for her lack of skill with intensity. She reminded herself that she didn’t need to win. All she needed to do was distract them long enough for the others to complete their task in the physical world.
The soulwalkers reacted quickly. Despite their disorientation and Alena’s attacks, she never managed to do more than scratch them. In very few heartbeats, they had their own weapons in hand and began to fight back.
Before the fight could escalate further, they suddenly vanished from the soulwalk. Alena couldn’t find them at all.
Jace and the others had done well.
She dropped out of the soulwalk and joined them. Just as she had felt, two soulwalkers lay at the feet of Jace and Ren. Her brother looked shaken, and she supposed for good reason. Distracted as they were by Alena’s attack in the soulwalk, they wouldn’t have put up any defense.
It had been years since she had seen a Lolani soulwalker up close, but there were several things different about these two. The ones in Landow hadn’t carried swords, but these did. And their soulwalking skill, while not weak, wasn’t as strong as those who had visited Landow. Their clothes were different, too. Alena wondered if there were different categories of soulwalkers serving the queen.
There was no time to consider the question, though. The sounds of battle echoed faintly from outside and they had one task above all others. They ran, led by Ren.
Every so often, Alena stopped to soulwalk ahead of them. She remained alert for traps and weavings, but it seemed like the priests had focused their attention only on the entrance.
She wished they had more time. This tunnel was even more fascinating than the others they’d passed through. It was lined with scripts begging to be translated, crying out their secrets to any who would open their eyes. They passed more knowledge and history with every step than she had even realized existed through most of her childhood.
They made it to a maze without encountering another soul, and Alena soon forgave Ren for every false staircase they had climbed. As Weylen’s Senki, he knew the path through the maze and led them through with unfailing precision, never once taking a wrong turn. Given its size and complexity, without him she wasn’t sure she ever would have found her way.
After a while, the now familiar blue light of a glowing gate appeared and guided them the last steps of their journey. There had been a heavy door here once, but it had been broken wide open.
Alena checked once more for weavings, but there were none. She frowned. This was too easy. Either they were walking into a trap, or their plan had been so unexpected no one had prepared for it.
Her greatest fear had been that she would run into either Regar or the queen at the gate, but the room was empty. She assumed that both must be down in the square fighting Hanns. That thought alone compelled her closer to the gate. Hanns would need everything just to fight the queen. He couldn’t deal with his son at the same time. She took a deep breath, reached out, and touched the gate.
It was time to take Regar’s prize away from him.
55
Brandt wondered if this was how the world ended. The power of a single gate defied comprehension. The power of three gates left him senseless.
The wave of fire, hot enough to crack the stone it passed over, vanished before it reached Hanns. Brandt took a step back. One moment, an impossible inferno had sped toward him. Then he blinked and it was gone.
How?
A vicious wind rose as the air shifted in response to the rapid changes in heat, howling against Brandt. Brandt lowered his center of mass, genuinely worried the wind might carry him away.
Hanns, still as a statue, lifted a dozen stones into the air and launched them at his son. The speed of the projectiles was almost too fast for Brandt’s eyes to track. But none came close to Regar. He stood like a boulder in a stream, the rocks passing to either side of him. The stones, now forgotten, crashed into the walls and buildings far behind the prince, cratering the fine masonry of those who had come before.
Incredible feats of strength and control passed back and forth between the two men as quickly as thought. Fire, stone, and air were all utilized, often in combinations Brandt had never dreamed possible, limited by the cost as he was. At one time, vortexes of fire formed between the combatants, the pull of the wind threatening to suck in both the fighters and anyone foolish enough to be nearby.
At first, Brandt had worried about the Falari taking advantage of the battle, launching arrows down on the emperor. But no attacks came. He caught glimpses of faces in windows, but most Falari had vanished.
He figured they were the wise ones.
Brandt couldn’t leave. He had a duty to Hanns. Beyond that, he wanted to understand. As far as he knew, a battle like this had never been fought before. He wanted to learn from it.
But Brandt could make little sense of what he saw and felt. Everything happened too fast. His affinities screamed at various pitches, the sounds a disorganized cacophony ringing in his head. Every time he sensed a pattern, it shifted away from him.
Slowly, one fact did become clear.
Hanns was winning.
Brandt wasn’t sure it was a matter of power, either. This close, and at the levels these two were fighting at, it was hard to be certain, but Hanns didn’t feel twice as strong as Regar. His advantage instead seemed to come