Realms of Shadow - Lizz Baldwin [26]
His love hated the city's darkness and would have left long ago but for Zossimus. At every opportunity, she begged him to transport them magically from the city to the sun-drenched plains below, where she ran through the waving grass and fragrant purplesnaps, laughing. He smiled at the thought of her long hair shining in the sun-
Without warning, the familiar presence of the Weave was obliterated. The vight hawk gave a shriek, alit, and left its bloody meal unfinished in the grass.
A void opened in Zossimus's being. Though a distant part of him sensed still the presence of the Shadow Weave, the absence of the Weave-his original mistress-tore a hole in half of his being. Spells prepared that morning went absent from his mind, erased clean. He opened his mouth to scream but managed only a strangled gasp. A roar filled his ears. His temples throbbed as if a red-hot coal burned in his brain. He fell to his knees, gripped his head in his hands and tried to jerk it from his shoulders, to stop the pain with death, to fill the emptiness with oblivion.
The minor cantras that preserved the flora in his courtyard began to fail with audible pops. The ornate gargoyle fountain ceased its magically-driven perpetual flow. The ruby and emerald dragonfly constructs he had so painstakingly crafted as a gift for Jennah fell inert to the lawn. The artificial illumination from glass lightglobes fell dark. In a flash of insight, he realized that all magic in Faerun dependent on the Weave-which meant all magic other than the experimental shadow magic practiced in Shade-was failing.
How? he wanted to shout, but he could manage nothing but a low moan.
Beneath his feet, the floating mountaintop upon which Shade had been built began to fall earthward. Zossimus's stomach lurched. His afternoon meal raced up his throat, but he swallowed it down, tasting bile. Birds of every color exploded from the trees and ferns of his courtyard and took wing, avian rats abandoning the sinking ship of Shade. Screams and shouts erupted from around the city, audible even in Zossimus's secluded inner courtyard. It sounded as though the whole city were screaming as one. Shade was falling…
Zossimus, paralyzed with pain and terror, waited for the impact that would kill them all.
After a few terrifying heartbeats, the city's descent slowed, slowed more, then stopped all together. It took another heartbeat for Zossimus, still disconcerted, to deduce what had happened.
Shadow magic. The disappearance of the Weave had not affected the Shadow Weave. The Twelve Princes must have been drawing on it to save Shade, to keep it from crashing to earth. Even as that thought hit him, Zossimus could see in his mind's eye the other floating cities of Netheril plunging earthward as the magic that held them aloft failed. Their apocalypse would happen in the bright light of the sun, while Shade's salvation would occur in eternal twilight, because of the eternal twilight. Netheril's other floating cities, once testimony to the awesome power of Netherese arcanists, would be nothing more than grandiose tombs for tens of thousands.
The city began again to descend, slower this time. Zossimus's sense of satisfaction vanished. The Shadow Weave must have been inadequate by itself to keep the city aloft. Zossimus guessed that in the Palace of the Most High, the Twelve Princes were even now struggling to tap enough shadow magic to keep Shade airborne. They were failing.
Zossimus bit back his frustration. He would have joined them if he could, would have shaken the cobwebs from his head, endured the loss of the Weave, and added his considerable magical skill to theirs, but his teleportation spell had been lost when the Weave had been destroyed. It would take half an hour to traverse the city by foot. By the time he reached them, the issue would already be decided.
The city continued to descend, picking up speed incrementally. Another thousand