Threading the Needle Read Online Free PDF Page A

to tell us, that this is the section where he was forced inside the distortion by the Wolves.”
    â€œIt doesn’t appear those shards are holding much ley.”
    â€œNo,” Artras said, “which is a good thing. My guess would be that fixing a shard that contains active ley would be more difficult than one without. We wouldn’t want to break down the walls of a shard flooded with ley, for example, only to have it rush unrestricted into a section of the city that may be occupied.”
    Kara shivered at the image. Ley was harmless in its natural state, but if it were concentrated, it could be deadly. She recalled the stories about the sowing of the towers in Grass before the Shattering, where some of the lords and ladies of the city and surrounding areas had risked exposure to the ley by watching from unprotected balconies. They’d been killed, their bodies consumed by the ley when it touched them.
    And then there was the Shattering itself. When the Nexus had exploded, the ley had devoured everything organic within a certain radius of the center that wasn’t protected in some way. Kara and most of her fellow Wielders in the Hollow had only survived because they were locked away in cells beneath the Amber Tower. The same was true for Allan, Morrell, and the Dogs in their group. If Kara had been out in the streets, doing her rounds as a Wielder, she would have been killed. Most of the other survivors that had found their way to the University and then the Hollow had also been protected in some way.
    She pushed aside the grim thought of what would have happened had she not been captured by the Dogs and shifted her attention to the rest of the ley. “It looks like the two rivers have settled into new courses.”
    â€œThey’re flowing through what were once streets, their banks now defined by buildings and the debris collected at their edges. But note these areas here and here.” Hernande pointed to two locations outside the distortion. “They appear to be stable points in the general chaos of the ley.”
    â€œHow can you tell?” They didn’t appear any different than the rest of the ley.
    Cory answered. “We’ve been watching them for the past few months. Everything else is shifting, reorganizing, but these two locations haven’t moved.”
    â€œSo the ley is attempting to establish a new system around the distortion, as we thought,” Artras said brusquely.
    â€œWhy hasn’t it stabilized, then?”
    Artras shrugged. “Who knows how long it will take? We have no point of reference. The ley system we were using was always there. Only recently did we humans have the arrogance to try to manipulate and change it. And look where it got us.”
    Kara glanced up at the older woman’s stern expression. For a moment, she’d sounded like Ischua, the Tender who had discovered Kara’s talent and guided her after her parents’ deaths.
    Kara motioned toward the map. “I don’t see anything around the area Allan found that will cause us any problems. The ley there appears relatively stable.”
    â€œYes,” Hernande agreed, “but remember that it is always changing. By the time your group arrives, it may be more volatile. Especially if the earthquakes have continued. We’ll keep watch here, of course, but we won’t be able to send word if something changes.”
    â€œI know.” Kara rose. “Allan and the others are probably ready now. We’d better gather our things.”
    Now that she’d seen the ley system, the fears and anxiety she’d felt before dawn had receded, replaced by resolve. The same resolve she’d felt standing on top of the building after being pulled from the distortion by Allan and seeing the blazing white lights of the unquickened distortions over Tumbor, Farrade, and the other cities in the distance.She’d set it aside over the past few months to focus on