Gideon Irondell and the Fragmented Fault Lines

The Gideon Irondell Trilogy – Book 2

Terence J. Murphy

For those who know that looking deeper always reveals more.

Chapter I

What Refused to Break

Kull Kalijan arrived at Marjon by another’s power. At least, that was how it seemed.

The Fault Lines spread beneath him in seams of broken stone and magnetic haze. The air tasted of rust. Above the rifts, rocks turned slowly in unseen currents, trailing curls of dust. Light bent along the deepest cracks.

He had walked these ridges since the Council exiled him eleven years earlier. He knew the ridges by their contours and the hum that rose through his boots. Marjon had always been unstable, but today the rhythm was wrong.

A sharp tremor struck. Dust hung motionless as Kull widened his stance. Thirty meters to his left, a crack opened. Another split the ridge to his right, lifting a slab of rock into the air.

The ridge bucked, spilling stones into the rift. Kull braced himself. Far below, pale flashes traced the fractures; each new break sounded like a hammer blow deep inside the earth. He felt it in his teeth.

He had watched Marjon shift through storms, seasons, and the aftershocks of the Excursion. He had never seen it convulse like this. A stone the size of a tower drifted past the ridge, turned once, and settled above a crack that had not existed moments earlier.

Stone erupted in three places. Broken columns shot into the haze, shards spinning in their wake. The roar struck his chest a heartbeat later. Above the basin, floating rocks slipped from their usual paths. Some fell. Others crossed so closely that sparks flashed where they nearly touched.

A fracture raced toward his boots. Kull stepped aside. The ground was coming apart beyond the reach of his commands.

At last the shaking stopped. New fractures scarred the ridge, and one great slab hung sideways above a rift, refusing to fall.

Across Marjon, the newly opened seams cut through ridges he had known for years. The world had answered what happened on the summit in Karthune. Gideon Irondell had somehow sent him here. Kull remembered the boy reaching for the Magnet, the pressure gathering between them, and then the sudden heat of Marjon beneath his feet.

He crouched beside a fresh crack and held his palm above the stone. Beneath the familiar hum lingered the trace of another force, something that had passed through and withdrawn. He followed it until it faded.

“The Magnet,” he said.

That strange object had rested at the heart of Marjon for longer than anyone could say. Gideon had carried it onto the summit, and the world had changed when their powers met.

“It recognized him,” Kull said, remembering the boy pulling the object while he was holding him on the summit. “But it also called to me.”

If the Magnet had called to them both, why had Fitzlin placed it in Gideon’s hands? Kull had spent decades mastering his abilities. The boy had barely begun, yet he had done something Kull could neither explain nor repeat.

Kull raised his hand. Three floating stones halted above a fracture. With a harder pull, he forced them into a straight line and pressed the broken edges of the ridge toward one another. The rock groaned. For one moment the gap narrowed. Then it split open again. He lowered his hand, furious at the effort it had taken. The fractures would spread unless someone mastered them. He would.

Fitzlin had answers. He always kept a few out of reach.

Fitzlin had led him into rooms forbidden to other students, shown him records buried beneath Karthune, then refused to answer the questions they raised. Every lesson ended at a door he was expected to leave closed. He had accepted it then, at least in Fitzlin’s presence. Eleven years had done nothing to dull the anger.

On the summit, Gideon had done something Fitzlin himself could never have demonstrated. The boy was strong, yes, but strength alone could not explain how a man with Kull’s experience had been moved across the world. He needed to know what Fitzlin had concealed.

Kull closed his eyes and returned to the summit. Wind struck his face. The boy stood across from him, the Magnet in his hand. Kull reached for the instant before everything changed. He remembered the pressure, the air tightening around them.

The summit slipped away. Kull stood in a narrow corridor deep underground.

He recognized Karthune’s lower levels, then saw himself as a younger man: a passage he had walked once, following Fitzlin into unmarked chambers hidden from guards and public record.

He fought his way back to the summit, but it lasted only an instant before the corridor returned. Fitzlin walked ahead, and a younger Kull followed.

Kull opened his eyes on broken, restless Marjon. Twice he had reached for the summit; twice the corridor had returned. No one was bending his thoughts. The connection came from within.

The summit. The Magnet. Fitzlin’s buried chamber. They belonged together.

This time Kull followed the older memory rather than fight it. The corridor formed: narrow stone, cool undisturbed air far below a living city, Fitzlin’s footsteps ahead. The younger Kull followed, his hunger for knowledge still too obvious to conceal.

The buried chamber held shelves carved directly into the stone, their recesses crowded with sealed cases. It looked older than the city above it.

Against the far wall stood several dustless cases. Fitzlin chose the smallest, its seal drawn tight.

Inside lay a scroll wrapped in metallic thread. The thread gave off a faint pulse against the stillness of the chamber, brightening once beneath Fitzlin’s fingers. Kull had sensed its importance before Fitzlin spoke.

One word from that day returned to him with sudden force. Prophecy.

“The Council recorded it,” Fitzlin had said. “When it failed to come to pass in their time, they called it an error. An anomaly. They decided fear had written the warning.” He lifted the scroll carefully. “Then they forgot it.”

“And you did not,” Kull had said.

“No,” Fitzlin had answered, holding the scroll between them, “this speaks of what will emerge. It never said when the event will come.”

Young Kull reached for it. Whatever Fitzlin had hidden, Kull believed he had a right to know. “I am ready,” he had said.

Fitzlin had begun to offer him the scroll, then held back. His Heartward sense turned toward Kull, searching beneath his careful posture. His fingers tightened around the scroll. Kull knew Fitzlin had sensed his hunger for power.

Then he had drawn the scroll back with deliberate care. “No,” he had said.

No refusal had cut more deeply. His hand remained extended in the empty air. “You said—”

“I said there was more I could show you,” Fitzlin had replied. “And there is.”

“Then show me,” Kull had said, his anger breaking through.

“You are not ready to understand it,” Fitzlin had replied.

“I understand everything you have shown me.”

“That,” Fitzlin had said, “is the problem.”

The memory closed.

Kull opened his eyes. Fitzlin’s refusal was as sharp as ever.

He remembered standing there after Fitzlin stopped speaking, trying to understand what the old man had seen. The scroll had been only a hand’s width away. Had he reached a little faster, he might have read it. Instead, he had watched Fitzlin close the case and return it to the shelf.

For years Kull had imagined what the scroll contained. A warning of another Excursion, perhaps. A description of powers the tribes had yet to discover. Now the Magnet and the boy had given those possibilities a shape. He would read the old words for himself.

The Magnet was tied to the prophecy. Kull was certain of that much, though he had never read the scroll. Fitzlin had kept both beyond his reach. Now the First Regent had entrusted the Magnet to an Uunder boy.

Marjon hissed below him. Kull raised his wrist, and dark lines lit across the communication sigil.

“My Commander,” a guarded voice answered.

“You will enter Fitzlin’s private archive,” Kull said. “There is a scroll, old and sealed, that he has kept from the Council. Find it and bring it to me.” He remembered the chamber far beneath Karthune, but Fitzlin had had eleven years to move what it held. Somewhere within his private rooms or archives, the scroll would be concealed.

“The tower is watched,” the operative said. “Since the summit, security has doubled. His private rooms are guarded.”

“You have access. Use it.”

“Access is not enough. His chambers are warded. Searching them could expose me. It is too great a risk.”

“You understood the risk when you agreed to serve me,” Kull said. “Find the scroll. I will not ask again.”

“And the contents?”

“You will leave the scroll sealed.”

“Understood.”

“I expect it soon.” Kull closed the connection before his operative could ask another question.

He stayed beside the fracture, thinking of the boy who had resisted him. Gideon had done more than survive against him. Under pressure that should have broken him, he had found a way inside Kull’s power. Almost as troubling was Fitzlin’s choice to give the Magnet to Gideon.

In Karthune, Gideon had stood with three other young Uunders. Kull remembered their faces: the girl watching for an opening, the broad-shouldered boy who kept close to the others, and the third who studied every movement. They possessed no abilities, yet Gideon had fought as though they stood beside him.

Kull had made a habit of studying whatever resisted him. A fortress had weak foundations. A regiment had officers who could be turned. People were harder to break, but everyone feared losing something. Gideon had revealed his without knowing it.

It reminded him of another person who had refused to yield.

Vetra Chertos.

Kull remembered her in a street in Spinehold after Atticus had taken Gideon east. He had pressed against her mind with enough force to crush a trained Zetash soldier. She had been frightened and in pain, yet she had held to her lie. At the time, Kull had dismissed her resistance as an oddity.

The boy was family. Vetra would protect him at the cost of her own life. Grief and loyalty to blood had hardened into commitment. She had built the rest of herself around it like a house around a central beam. Kull had found the one bond she would never surrender.

Kull touched the scar along his neck. Acklin Chertos had left it there in their last fight, a desperate slash before Kull lifted him from the ground and killed him. Acklin had known he would die. Still he fought for those he loved. Eleven years later, his son had become another obstacle.

Resistance seemed to run in the family.

His own family had spoken of the Excursion all his life. Their ancestors had expected shelter underground. When they were shut out, they were told the doors would open again. The doors stayed closed, leaving them to survive on the surface.

The stories had taught Kull that strength lasted longer than promises. Fitzlin had always disagreed. The old man believed loyalty could withstand fear. Kull had seen enough to know that loyalty could also be used against those who felt it.

Vetra would suffer for Gideon. Gideon would come for her. The boy had shown Kull exactly what mattered to him. And Kull intended to use that certainty.

Vetra could draw Gideon straight to Citadel Spine. The boy would bring the Magnet, certain he needed it to face Kull again.

Kull touched a second pattern on his wrist. Sereth answered at once.

“My Commander.”

“Find Vetra Chertos in Spinehold. The woman I questioned after the boy left with Litzgad’s people. Bring her to Citadel Spine.”

“She still lives in the lower district,” Sereth said. “I know the house.”

“Take her in daylight. Let the city see.”

“You want witnesses?”

“I want the boy to hear what happened.”

“And if she fights?”

Kull pictured Vetra in the dusty street, her face bruised and her eyes refusing to lower.

“She will. Bring her alive.”

“My people can be there before first light,” Sereth replied.

“Daylight,” Kull repeated. “Let her neighbors watch.”

“And the boy will hear of it,” Sereth said.

“He will.”

The sigil went dark. Kull faced the broken ridges of Marjon. Fitzlin had hidden the prophecy and handed the Magnet to Gideon. Now the boy would come to him, carrying the very thing Kull intended to claim. The world was breaking, and no one in Karthune knew how to answer it. “I am the answer,” Kull said.

Chapter II

The Hum That Answers

The four friends had been moved from their training quarters to rooms high in the tower. These rooms were quieter, with wide windows over Karthune’s terraced lights and walls thick enough to hold private things. More importantly, they were better protected. Someone had left water, bread, and a lamp already lit. Amber light moved across the stone.

Thea watched Gideon from the edge of the common-room bench. Bram had claimed the floor by the window, back to the wall, legs stretched out. The healers had already checked him and found only bruising, though his hand kept finding his ribs. Toma stood near the door, quiet and watchful.

Gideon sat at the table. The Magnet of Marjon rested in front of him, dark and still. His eyes lingered on the empty space around it.

Bram lasted barely a minute. “Okay,” he said to the middle of the room. “What did you do up there?”

Gideon searched for an answer.

“I don’t know,” he finally said.

Bram shifted against the wall. “You said that on the summit.”

“Still true.”

Bram exhaled toward the ceiling. “You made Kull Kalijan disappear. In front of all of us.”

“I know what happened. I don’t know what I did.”

“How do you do something and not know what you did?”

“I don’t know, Bram. That’s—that’s the whole problem.”

Bram opened his mouth, shut it, and dropped his head back against the wall.

Thea had watched him throughout. She said, “You did something with the hum.” She sounded certain. “And you used the Magnet.”

“It helped, I think. The Magnet focused something. I stopped fighting it and it seemed to guide what happened.”

Toma crossed the room and sat opposite Gideon, hands folded on the table. “And what about Kull?”

“There was another current in him,” Gideon said, trying to find the right words. “When Kull pressed on me, the hum reached into him. I could sense what he was feeling.”

Even Bram fell silent.

“That’s Heartward empathic sensing,” Thea said. “That’s what you’re describing.”

“I guess that’s what you’d call it. It somehow presented itself in the battle.”

“Gideon. Nobody’s trained you in that,” she said.

“Fitzlin was saving the empathic training for last,” Bram said. “He said it holds the others together.”

“Maybe there was a reason,” Toma said. “Maybe you needed it and that’s what unlocked it.”

The lamp flickered.

Bram pressed a hand to his ribs. “So, it just showed up. On its own.”

“I didn’t call it,” Gideon said. “I wouldn’t know how to. Kull was holding me, and the hum answered. Maybe the Magnet called it.”

As he spoke, the others’ emotions crowded into his awareness. His oldest friends were suddenly more than the faces and voices he knew. Their emotions pressed at him as distinctly as heat from the lamp.

Bram first. Bram’s jokes and careless sprawl concealed a knot of worry. His hand returned to his ribs, but the fear beneath it was aimed at Gideon. Gideon withdrew, ashamed of crossing a boundary Bram had never offered to open.

Toma’s usual quiet concealed a loyalty Gideon had never doubted. He withdrew before he discovered anything else.

Thea was last. He had been avoiding her without admitting it. Thea’s worry was sharp and restless, already turning toward what needed doing. Beneath it was something more guarded, something that tightened the instant he touched it.

Thea caught him sensing her. She allowed it briefly, then closed herself off. “You can feel us,” she said quietly.

“Yeah.” Gideon lowered his eyes. “More than I want to.”

Across the room, Bram’s curiosity was obvious. Toma remained steady. Thea gave the smallest nod. Later. Alone.

“Okay,” Bram said, most of the performance back in his voice. “Putting aside the part where you can feel all of us now, which apparently we’re not talking about—I saw her little nod to shut it all down. Where’s Kull?”

“Don’t know. Same answer as before. Been through this too many times with you, Bram.” Annoyance came through despite himself.

“Guess.”

“Marjon.” The answer surprised even him.

“How did you conclude that?” Toma asked.

“Something inside me points there. I can’t prove it. I just know.”

“Do you know if Kull knows what happened to him?” Thea asked.

“While it was happening, he didn’t. I saw it on his face.”

“Then he’s probably tearing the place apart trying to understand what happened,” Thea said.

Bram went quiet.

“You said you could see inside him,” he asked. “When you felt him, what’s inside that man besides evil?”

Gideon had expected the question, though he still struggled to answer it. “Telekinesis. Mind-bending. Both worn in. He uses them like breathing.”

“And?” Toma said.

“And there were spaces,” Gideon said. “Like the abilities I haven’t reached yet.”

Thea’s expression tightened. “Like more abilities.”

“Yeah, I think so.” Gideon searched the memory again. “They seemed untouched. He didn’t seem to know they were there.”

“You recognized them because you have them too,” Toma said.

“I think so. Near the end, when I began to understand what he was feeling and what I was sensing.”

“Great,” Bram said. “That’s—yeah. Exactly the answer I was hoping you’d avoid.”

Toma’s attention shifted to the Magnet. “Then the summit changed more than you.”

Thea folded her arms tighter. “And we don’t know what it woke in Kull.”

Bram let his head thump back against the wall. “Every time you two summarize things, the situation sounds much worse. I’m coping out loud. It’s a process.”

“Gideon.” Toma’s voice stayed even. “I saw Fitzlin talking to you afterward. What did he say? He always knows more than he ever says.”

“He said I didn’t have to understand what occurred right now. He said I have to understand what I am before I understand what I did.” Gideon turned his cup on the table. “And he said what happened on the summit was new to him.”

Bram lifted his head, his face full of disbelief. “Fitzlin admitted that? The man who knows everything?”

“Yeah.”

“That may be the worst thing you’ve told us yet,” Bram said. “Sly, you’re saving something. What is it?”

The name Sly carried the old lanes into the room: dust, familiar voices, and the person he had been before Karthune complicated everything.

Gideon hesitated. “You’re right. I also heard part of what Fitzlin and Atticus were talking about,” he said. “In the alcove.”

“What’d they say?” Thea asked.

“They said I was feeling Kull’s power from the inside. And Fitzlin said I didn’t really teleport Kull. I made Kull teleport himself.”

“You had Kull teleport himself to Marjon?” Toma said.

“That’s what he said. They didn’t say it, but I think the Magnet chose the direction.”

Thea rubbed a thumb over her knuckle. She did that when a problem had moved ahead of what she was ready to show.

“And then?” Thea asked carefully. “Was there anything else?”

Bram exhaled carefully against the pain in his ribs. Karthune’s terraced lights held steady beyond the window. The bells had stopped. Somewhere below, people moved through corridors, doing the work a city required after a bad night.

Gideon put both hands flat on the table. “There’s something else,” he said.

“Oh great, this story continues to spiral down a hole I don’t care to go down,” Bram said, shaking his head.

Gideon waited until all three were listening. “He said Kull’s a Quint too.”

Bram dropped his hand from his aching ribs. Toma barely moved his head. Thea kept her eyes down, her thumb still against her knuckle. Thea spoke first.

“Two Quints,” she said.

“Yeah.”

“That’s what Fitzlin’s notebook in the library was tracking,” Toma said. “Both of you.”

Thea rubbed her thumb across her knuckle. “He knew this all along.”

“Long before we did,” Gideon said, his hand resting near the Magnet.

Toma stared through the dark window. “We should go back up there,” he said.

Bram lifted his head. “Up where?”

“The summit. Where Gideon sent Kull away. We were all there. Maybe being in the same place will help him understand and give us something useful.”

Gideon glanced at the Magnet. It lay on the table as though none of this concerned it.

“Now?” Thea asked.

“Before everyone wakes up,” Toma said.

Bram pushed himself to his feet, wincing as his bruised ribs pulled. “Wonderful. A climb up a tower in the dark. I was just thinking we hadn’t done enough tonight.”

They climbed above the living quarters, passing closed training rooms and galleries emptied for the night. The lamps thinned as they climbed. A guard stood at the last landing beside a rope stretched across the passage. Behind him, workers had stacked broken stone and twisted lengths of railing.

“The summit is restricted,” the guard said as they approached.

Gideon stepped between them. “I was the one facing Kull. I need to see where it happened.”

The guard studied the four of them, then the bruises on Gideon’s face. “Fitzlin left instructions that you could return. Only you and your friends.” He lowered the rope. “Stay clear of the western edge. The rail is gone. And keep away from the cracks.”

Cold air rushed down the final steps. They emerged beneath a sky still crowded with stars. From the summit, Karthune spread in terraces below them, its lamps tracing bridges and streets along the mountain. Far to the west, the Fault Lines gave off a faint, restless glow.

The summit barely resembled the place Gideon remembered. A section of the outer wall lay in pieces across the floor. One of the tall stone pillars had split from top to bottom, and part of its crown rested several paces away. The ring of polished stone where Gideon had faced Kull was scored by deep cracks. Loose grit whispered across it whenever the wind rose.

Bram stopped at a broken slab. “That flew over our heads,” he said. “I remember because I had an excellent view of its underside.”

Thea crouched beside a crack wide enough to catch her fingers. She followed it toward the center of the summit. “This all happened toward the end of the battle when Kull vanished.”

“Most of it,” Gideon acknowledged. He stood where he remembered Kull holding him, though the broken floor made it difficult to be certain. He could almost feel the pressure around his chest again, the moment before the world seemed to fold.

Toma stood across from him, at the place Kull had occupied. “Try the Magnet.”

Gideon brought it out and closed both hands around it. He waited for the familiar pull, for the warmth that had gathered on the summit during the fight. The hum inside him was still there, deep and steady, but the Magnet stayed cold. Its veins remained dark.

At the center of the damaged ring, Gideon tried again, reaching toward the memory of Kull’s power and the strange opening he had felt within it. The wind tugged at his jacket. A distant bell sounded below. Nothing changed.

“Maybe it only answers when you really need it,” Bram said. “Didn’t you tell us that Fitzlin said to use it only when you needed it?”

“You did say Fitzlin told you to use it only when you needed it,” Thea said. “But that doesn’t mean Bram’s right about how it works.”

Gideon lowered the Magnet. “Maybe Bram’s right. I needed it when Kull had me. But I don’t know if that’s why it answered.” He could feel the hum moving through the mountain and sense the distant Fault Lines. The Magnet remained cold.

“We should get back,” Toma said. The sky above the eastern ridges had begun to pale.

They made their way around the fallen pillar toward the stairs. Someone stood in the shadow of the surviving arch, close enough to have watched them at the broken ring. Maerin stepped into the thin light.

Thea stopped. “Were you spying on us?”

“I’m a Councilor,” Maerin said. “I have no need to spy.”

Thea narrowed her eyes. Maerin offered no explanation. Her gaze settled on Gideon and the dark Magnet in his hand.

“It seems you’re more special than we ever knew.”

Gideon met her eyes and walked past her down the stairs. The others followed.

By the time they reached their quarters, the first light of dawn had touched the windows. Gideon set the Magnet back on the table. He was still trying to decide what Maerin had seen when the hum beneath the city changed.

The change rose from deep beneath Karthune, farther west than the green hills, beyond the Ferro Barrens.

The hum changed just as the tremor struck. Gideon caught himself against the table. He had sensed its size a half-second earlier. The hum had been low and quiet his whole life. What rose beneath it now was a flood.

The world moved beneath them. Waves rolled sideways through the deep rock, rising from somewhere to the west. The fragmentation from Marjon was reaching Karthune.

The tower groaned. The lamp swung hard, flinging shadows across the walls. A shudder climbed through the stone under Gideon’s palms and into his arms. Particles came down from the ceiling. The water in the cup by Thea’s bench rippled.

Then it stopped as abruptly as it had begun. No one moved. The lamp kept swinging. Dust drifted through the dim light. And then, through Gideon, through the door that had opened in him, the Fault Lines screamed.

The scream rose through the hum from deep inside the earth. It drove through the tower, the rock, Gideon’s second heartbeat, and kept coming, inundating his senses. He gripped the table as someone called his name from what felt like a great distance.

“Gideon.” Thea’s voice finally broke through. “Gideon. Look at me.”

Thea knelt beside his chair, gripping his arm.

“What is it?”

“The Fault Lines.” His voice came out low. “At Marjon. It started there and it’s reaching us now.”

“Kull?” Toma said from across the room.

“No.” Gideon knew it instantly. “Kull is part of it, but this is bigger than him.”

Bram was on his feet. Gideon hadn’t seen him get up.

“Is it hurting you?” Bram asked, his voice stripped bare.

“No.” Gideon released the table. His palms hurt. “It’s just too much noise in my head at once.”

Thea’s hand slipped from his arm. Her thumb returned to the knuckle of her other hand. She kept the thought to herself.

The Magnet remained dark. Gideon pressed his hand against it, desperate for some relief from the scream in his head. The stone stayed cool. Its veins gave no light. Bram had wondered whether it answered only when Gideon truly needed it. If there had ever been a moment to need it, this was one. Yet the Magnet did nothing. Gideon pulled his hand away, less certain than ever what had happened on the summit.

“We need to find Fitzlin later this morning,” Toma said from the window. “Tell him what you felt. If he’s been tracking this from the beginning, he needs to know this piece.”

“Agreed,” Thea said.

Gideon stood. His throat and ribs still hurt from the fight. Bram stayed near the table with one hand at his ribs, the humor gone again. Thea had already opened her notebook to a clean page. Toma stood against the wall, as steady as he had been in the lanes back home.

Gideon picked up the Magnet. “You’re right,” he said.

He closed his hand around the Magnet, its veins still dark. The hum steadied. Low. Patient. West. They would rest, then find Fitzlin.