Towers Fall Read online

  PRAISE FOR RADIANT

  “Inequality, economics, and postapocalyptic necromancy combine persuasively in Sumner-Smith’s ingenious, insightful debut.… With a clean, evocative style, a clever transposition of corporate warfare into a feudal future, and a strong, complementary pair of protagonists, Sumner-Smith’s Towers Trilogy is off to a captivating start.”

  —Publishers Weekly, starred review

  “This beautifully written page-turner is top-notch. A world that comes alive, rich and magical; character you want to spend time with; a heroine to root for; trust, friendship, and belonging—Radiant has it all!”

  —Ed Greenwood, creator of The Forgotten Realms® and New York Times bestselling author of Spellfire and The Herald

  “I can’t remember the last time I was as excited about the start of a new fantasy series as I am about Radiant, the first in a promised trilogy.”

  —San Francisco Book Review

  “In penning her novel Radiant, Karina Sumner-Smith steps into the top ranks of a burgeoning generation of authors who are changing the face of science fiction and fantasy. With characterizations that won’t let you go, deeply textured world building, and prose that sings, she offers a book that deserves to become a classic.”

  —Catherine Asaro, Nebula Award–winning author of Undercity

  “If C. J. Cherry wrote fantasy with a futuristic feel, it would have a lot in common with this book, especially the protagonist. Excellent work, and recommended.”

  —Michelle Sagara, New York Times bestselling author of Cast in Flame

  “Sumner-Smith’s writing is assured; her Xhea, prickly and inward-looking, feels right, and her world—a world where magic is currency, and the Towers that have most of it cast long shadows across those who can’t even ascend to them—feels lived-in and real. I loved it.”

  —The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction

  “Karina Sumner-Smith’s smashing debut is a page-turner of the highest pedigree.”

  —J. M. Frey, award-winning author of Triptych

  “Long story short, you need to read Radiant. It’s got the right blend between fantasy and sci-fi to appeal to fans of either genre, very realistic characters that you want to read more about, and enough mysteries and curiosity to leave me, at least, salivating over the sequel.”

  —Bibliotropic

  PRAISE FOR DEFIANT

  “Defiant is a compelling novel of character. Once I picked it up, I couldn’t put it down again, to such a degree that I walked to the train station still reading. Now that’s something I haven’t done for a decade. Tight, tense, and effortlessly readable, its climax is a thing of nail-biting intensity, and it ends with revelations, and more change to come. I can recommend it wholeheartedly.”

  —Tor.com

  “Like its predecessor, Defiant is a brilliant cross-genre piece that blends elements from many sources so that the result is something new and never-before-seen. Looks like Karina Sumner-Smith has scored another hit with her second novel, offering a spellbinding story and characters who are sure to captivate a wide audience.”

  —The BiblioSanctum

  “Impossible to put down! Sumner-Smith has outdone herself in this thrilling sequel with higher stakes, darker magic, and a bond of friendship that proves unbreakable—even in the face of war. Readers will be desperate for the conclusion!”

  —Jessica Leake, author of Arcana and the forthcoming The Order of the Eternal Sun

  “This novel is just as well written as the first one, and… it careens to an explosive conclusion that will leave readers hungry for more. It’s an excellent novel that is hard to put down.”

  —San Francisco Book Review

  “It’s one of the best post-apocalyptic urban fantasies I’ve ever found… I can’t wait to read the trilogy’s conclusion.”

  —Bibliotropic

  “The first two novels are riveting… after the brilliant start with Radiant, Sumner-Smith may have accomplished that rarest of feats, actually surpassing her first novel with the sequel.”

  —Nerds of a Feather

  ALSO BY KARINA SUMNER-SMITH

  The Towers Trilogy

  Radiant

  Defiant

  Copyright © 2015 by Karina Sumner-Smith

  All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without the express written consent of the publisher, except in the case of brief excerpts in critical reviews or articles. All inquiries should be addressed to Talos Press, 307 West 36th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10018.

  Talos Press books may be purchased in bulk at special discounts for sales promotion, corporate gifts, fund-raising, or educational purposes. Special editions can also be created to specifications. For details, contact the Special Sales Department, Talos Press, 307 West 36th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10018 or [email protected].

  Talos Press is an imprint of Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.®, a Delaware corporation.

  Visit our website at www.talospress.com.

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2015947592

  Cover design by Rain Saukas

  Cover images: Thinkstock

  Print ISBN: 978-1-940456-41-6

  Ebook ISBN: 978-1-940456-44-7

  Printed in the United States of America

  Dedicated with love to my Opa,

  Siegfried Schnepf

  1932–2015

  Sitting in a concrete alcove that had once been a doorway, her cane tucked beside her to keep it from the ash, Xhea stared at the ruin of the Lower City market. If she closed her eyes, she could almost imagine the market as it had been, a riot of sound and movement.

  Gone now. There were no tents there anymore, that familiar chaos of stained awnings and makeshift shelters; no ancient mall structure at their center, like an egg in its nest. There was no pushing crowd, no smoke from cooking fires or the stinking generators, no shouts of vendors hawking their wares.

  No buildings. No homes.

  Only a span of ash and absence.

  Xhea wanted to turn away. For all that she knew the market was gone, burned to the ground in Rown’s senseless attack, the sight of that empty, black stretch still had the power to rob her of breath.

  Even her alcove was but an illusion of the familiar. This corner of the building still stood, in spite of everything, but the rest had fallen, leaving only a pile of cracked and broken bricks to be picked over by scavengers.

  Illusion or not, the corner was a comfort. Xhea did not know how many days she had spent tucked away here over the years, making herself available to her ghost-afflicted clients. More, truly, than she could count. She knew this alcove in all seasons, soaked by rain, parched by summer sun, turned cold and uncomfortable by a rime of old ice.

  Everything comes to an end.

  The last time she had sat here waiting for customers was… Xhea blinked in sudden realization. It was that late spring day when Shai’s father had come to her with a quiet, meditative ghost bound to his chest. It was strange remembering her friend that way: a hesitant spirit, worth nothing more to Xhea than the renai—the magical currency—her care might generate. That was but a few months ago; it felt a small forever.

  The ghost that she had once so disdained now stood watch, scanning the burned-out market with a wary eye, magic flickering about her fingertips.

  Out in the rubble, lit by the early-morning light, some few people still searched. Not for much, anymore. The bodies had long since been taken for burial, and the few possessions that might have been reclaimed from the wreckage were long gone. Even so, some stayed, sifting through the ash and ruin for nails and bits of wire, the hardened puddles of melted plumbing pipes—she knew not what else. Their backs were bent, their hand
s stained black from the search.

  Yet it was not the searchers that drew Xhea’s attention, or the rubble through which they combed, but the other figures in the midst of that desolate black. Ghosts. People had died here—more than she wanted to think about. People had died here and some few remained, lingering, bound to this place or the memories that it contained.

  “They’re still here,” Shai said softly. Xhea didn’t need to see her face to know that she, too, watched the dead.

  “Ghosts aren’t all like you,” Xhea murmured. “Some are only pieces of their former selves.”

  Thinking pieces, of course; pieces that remembered being alive, being human—pieces that even kept some fragment of their personalities. Yet trauma hurt a ghost as surely as it did a living, breathing person; and trauma to a soul, without flesh to house it, was harder to heal. For many, there was no trauma worse than that of death itself.

  Xhea looked back to the market’s ghosts. Most, she thought, didn’t know what had happened. They didn’t understand that they were dead, or didn’t want to believe it.

  She recognized the ghost of an older woman who had owned a shoe stall. The woman was going about her business, as if her stall stood before her, as if her wares needed to be made or a customer was requesting a repair. Closer, there were a few ghosts that just… stood there. Staring, perhaps, in confusion, unable to comprehend that the desolation surrounding them was the ruin of their former homes.

  There were more, too—more than even she could see. Ghosts hidden inside the burned and fallen buildings that ringed this place; ghosts curled and cringing against what had once been the ground, buried now by untold layers of rubble. She could feel them, each like a distant ache, a bruise on the landscape.

  “I don’t like to see them like this,” Shai whispered. “Can you…?”

  Xhea shook her head.

  They would be aware of her soon, she knew, drawn to her presence as she was drawn to theirs. Once she would have avoided this place as if it were cursed—as she had avoided any place thick with ghosts for as long as she could remember. Medics’ wards. Edren’s arena, where the gladiators fought. The twisted streets and alleys of the contested territory at the ruins’ eastern edge, fought over by gangs like a single bone amidst a pack of hungry dogs.

  Once, too, she might have waded among the ghosts, cutting their tethers, freeing their hold on the living world and all its untold joys and sorrows.

  Once—but not anymore.

  Xhea watched the ghost of a young man wander though a fallen building, his face shining with tears. He called out; the name, a female name, could have been his wife, his sister, his daughter. A friend. Xhea did not know, only watched as he searched.

  “No,” she murmured to Shai. “Not yet.”

  She would speak to them; perhaps she would cut the tethers of some, or offer what release her dark magic could provide—when they were ready. That would be their choice, in the end. Not hers.

  Everyone needs time to mourn.

  Little though some were afforded that luxury. For casting a shadow across them all, living and dead alike, stood Farrow.

  Farrow had been the tallest and the richest of the skyscrapers, a towering structure some sixty stories high whose pale façade, wide glass panes, and broken balconies had been visible throughout the Lower City. While Edren, Orren, and Senn were clustered near the center of the Lower City core, Farrow had stood some distance apart, the ancient condominium watching over a wide stretch of territory.

  Farrow’s people were the Lower City’s magic workers, the strongest casters on the ground—and they had all been working in secret toward the dream of transforming their earth-bound skyscraper into a floating Tower.

  They had failed.

  Xhea had been there as Farrow rose into the sky, shaking, shuddering. She’d heard the wail of Farrow’s living heart as it was birthed by a century of collected magic—magic that had flooded through Farrow’s walls in an instant. So much planning, so much time and effort; so much magic and blood, so many lives. And for nothing.

  For Farrow had risen higher than any of the other skyscrapers, higher than Xhea had believed possible—and it had not been nearly high enough. They had not bridged the gap between the ground and the City above, where the Towers rose and fell as they slowly spun around the golden pillar of the Central Spire. They had failed—and, failing, had begun to fall.

  And the Lower City—or, rather, the living entity formed of dark magic that existed within her home—had reached up and caught the falling structure at Xhea’s behest.

  Farrow now towered above the blackened ruin of the market like a sentinel, its glittering windows and pale façade all but lost within a tangle of black that wrapped around it like huge vines. They were not vines, for all that they had been grown, but tendrils formed of asphalt and plumbing pipe, concrete and wire and earth. Dead things, inert things, given life and shape by the inhuman intelligence that existed within the streets.

  Looking at the ruin of the market and the broken people that searched it—looking at the ghosts that wandered through the ash, every one of them alone—was enough to stop her breath; but it was only as she looked at Farrow that Xhea understood that everything had forever changed.

  The Lower City was alive like the Towers were alive—and now it was waking.

  That entity was supposed to be sleeping—supposed to be healing from the damage that Rown’s weapon had wrought, and from the loss of Farrow and the sudden exertion of its recapture. Healing as she was, as they all were. No longer.

  Xhea closed her eyes, concentrating, trying to tune her senses with will alone.

  There.

  The living Lower City’s song had been faint within Edren’s walls, just a whisper of sound at the edge of her hearing. For days that sound had followed her like the memory of a song sung in dreams, only its echoes recalled on waking. Now, standing so close to the Lower City’s living heart, she could hear it, feel it, as she had but once before: shifting like a restless ocean beneath her feet, the rise and fall of its song all around her.

  And try though she might, she could not shake the feeling that it was calling to her.

  “Do you hear that?” Xhea asked Shai. “The Lower City. Its song…”

  What could she say? It sounded different than it had when the Lower City had first woken, she felt that clear as breathing, little though she could name the change. She couldn’t even describe the song; couldn’t recreate the sound, though she had tried.

  It just sounded wrong. That was the word that had come to her, time and again as she listened, curled in her cot in one of skyscraper Edren’s back rooms. As the days passed, that feeling of strangeness, of wrongness, had deepened. The living Lower City had not responded to the ribbons of magic Xhea had sent into the ground, imbued with question and concern. Or if it had responded, she’d neither heard nor understood its reply.

  She’d come here in the hope that its voice would be clearer.

  “There’s something,” Xhea started, then shook her head, frustrated. “It’s saying…”

  But Shai already understood. “Talk to it,” she said. “Take as long as you need; I’ll watch over you.”

  Xhea placed her hands on the ashy concrete beneath her. Her magic came easily now, needing no anger or pain to spur its rise. She sent small threads of power questing into the earth—then more magic, stronger magic, until it poured from her like a dark river. She felt that power as if it were a part of her, the tendrils of magic as real as her outstretched arms.

  Anxiety was swept away by that tide, and a feeling of calm settled in its wake. Xhea understood the damage that dark magic did to her body—she knew that it was killing her slowly, blinding her, inhibiting her ability to heal—but in such moments she could not bring herself to care. With magic running unchecked through her body, she felt strong. She felt whole, all her mistakes unmade, all her broken pieces joined.

  She was stronger now than she had been but weeks before. When she’d
been in Farrow’s care, the dark magic boy Ieren had called her weak—and had, later, been impressed by her growing magic. As if that diluted shadow had been anything close to what she’d been capable of wielding.

  Now, with Shai’s presence to hold her steady, it felt like there was nothing she could not do, nothing at all beyond her grasp.

  Steady, she told herself, willing away that false confidence. Concentrate.

  Xhea let her magic sink deeper into the streets and the tunnels and the earth that held them, reaching for the entity’s heart. As their magics mingled, she felt the living Lower City’s slow attention turn toward her.

  “Hello,” she whispered. “I’m here.” She pushed her words into the flow of darkness, making her power vibrate with meaning.

  A pause, and then the Lower City’s song surged in answer. It sounded like nothing human, that song; no human voice, no instrument, had such range or layered complexity. It was beautiful in a way that made her shiver and want to pull away.

  Xhea did neither. Instead she asked, “What is it? What’s wrong?”

  Again, there came that pause, as if the Lower City was considering her words. Its reply, when it came, was another surge of magic and meaning—flashes of images; impressions of sound, movement, emotion—that, for all their strength, Xhea struggled to understand.

  It was easy, it seemed, for a vast magical entity to understand one small girl; another thing entirely for her to comprehend the complexity of its thoughts. The idea was humbling, even frightening.

  A stream of magic was not enough, she realized. The last time they had spoken, when she’d first noticed the living Lower City’s existence, magic had been all around her, thick in the air; magic had suffused her body, her breath, and her thoughts. What was a little river of dark compared to that?

  For the first time since she’d left Farrow, since so much of her home had burned, Xhea let her magic flow freely. It roared up within her, a storm unbound, and she directed it to the ground. A moment, then she pulled, not just letting the power flow from her but also drawing back as much magic as she gave. From her to the living Lower City and back again, dark magic traveled in an unbroken loop.