The Living Throne (The War of Memory Cycle Book 3) (137 page)

“That's the problem.  Still...”  Enkhaelen's brows furrowed slightly.  “You shouldn't have gotten off so easily.  Perhaps the Guardian left enough of itself in you to ward off the worst.  Or else the Void did.”

Cob refused to think of that.  “What about Arik?  Can y'help the Wolf?”

“I can, but...again, after the Seal.”

“So that's it, then?  We wait?”

The necromancer smirked.  “You don't know how to rest, do you.  I, for one, don't do well in the dark, so I am going to close my eyes and pretend to be dead.”

With that, he settled back, and Cob sighed and climbed to his feet again.  Enkhaelen was right; an agitated energy still flowed through him, undaunted by the night and the pain and the quiet, and soon he found himself pacing around the slumping dais as if he could will it down.

A red glint caught his eye.

Serindas.

It lay where its wielder had fallen, unlit but for a single rune by its tip.  As he approached, he could swear it shifted as if aware of him, and recalled with unease the other akarriden blades that had touched him.

Detouring, he crouched beside the ashes to unbelt the blade's sheath.  No matter how necessary it had been, he couldn't bring himself to look at the rest of Dasira's remains—though there wasn't much, not even bones.  Just empty clothes, and something shiny and black, like a scale...

Puzzlement forced his eyes to it, and he realized it was an unburnt scrap of the bracer, about three fingers across and still faintly emblazoned with the scouts' crescent-moon crest.  He turned it over but the underside had been scoured clean, no life left in it.

He tucked it into his belt anyway, then took the sheath and caught the akarriden blade with it, not interested in touching the hilt.  Even through the leather he could feel its hunger.

Not comforted but at least reminded, he strapped the malevolent blade on and forced himself to sit by the others, and stare into the dark, and wait.

*****

Where the crowd went, Weshker followed.  He didn't know what else to do.  He had blacked out from the pain of the Guardian's exit, only to wake up in mage-lit darkness, the battle apparently over—the Emperor vanished, and the throne a ruin.

He walked now among the Crown Prince's entourage, unnoticed or just unimportant.  That was fine; he didn't want to fight.  All his limbs were still attached, which was more than he'd expected, but his skin seethed under his scout uniform like a thousand wings and the air that entered him did so through a dozen hidden throats.  The crows hissed in his head, demanding he break apart and fly after his great enemy, Field Marshal Rackmar—but who knew where that bastard had gone?

He didn't care about anything else.  Getting back to the Crimson camp and freeing the little girl was all that mattered now, and if he had to die for it, that was fine.  If he had to be transformed into this bizarre conglomerate of feathers and claws and black sludge and weak flesh, that was fine too.  The crows beneath his skin were welcome to take over as long as they got the job done.

And so he followed, past the battle-dead and into the corridors and chambers beyond, where corpses lay rot-eaten or unmarked—the latter mostly White Flames but some more standard abominations, bodythief and senvraka and ruengriin.  Cowering pilgrims crept out to join the crowd, and sometimes surviving White Flames did the same, but just as often they stood away, holding their heads or retching out from their peeled-off faceplates.

He almost felt bad.

The crows did not.  They gabbled about eyeballs, and he took care to steer clear of corpses lest they decide to make him go for some.  When none were around, they gave him visions of flying over the crowd, clawing at faces and necks, ripping out gobbets of flesh.  Fantasizing, he guessed, because they exerted no pressure on him.

Finally the winding corridors opened into a circular chamber, with a portal-frame at the center.

Small and compact, he managed to squeeze toward the front as the mass of followers pressed in.  Soon he was just a few paces behind the prince, who stood surrounded by women as he directed his mages in their magics.  None were familiar, though one woman stood out due to her dark Illanic features, and the youngest due to the tongue-lashing she was giving the prince.

“We cannot open a portal to a Watchtower that has been destroyed,” the prince told her wearily.  “And as far as I know, they've all been destroyed.”

“I won't go to a garrison,” she responded.  “I don't trust your soldiers.  I will speak to my superiors on your behalf, but not if you have me marched to the temple.”

“Then we're at an impasse.  Unless someone here has the coordinates to a civilian portal, I can't offer you any non-military option.”

“Valent is down,” said one mage.  “No help there.”

“My patron keeps a portal room, but it's in Silverton,” said another.

The girl made a face, but then shrugged.  “Silverton...that's better than piking Thynbell or some badlands camp.  Thank you.”

At the prince's gesture, the mage stepped forward to access the frame.

“Anyone else who requires a general portal, speak up,” called the prince, his voice cutting easily through the murmurs of the crowd.  “I and mine are heading for the Crimson camp outside of Kanrodi.  This young woman is heading to Silverton.  I believe Thynbell Castle has a working portal, as well as several of the Sapphire fortresses.”

Weshker bit his lip, torn.  In his uniform and with his hair covered, he might be able to pass through Thynbell Castle; from there, it was just a short jaunt north to Corvia, his homeland.  He hadn't seen it in eleven years, and the sudden homesickness made his eyes water.

No.  Not yet.  There's Jesalle to free, and Sanava.  I can't run away.

So he stood his ground as the portal opened into some merchant-lord's keep, letting the girl through along with a handful of others, and stayed that way as another clump of people crossed over into the garishly decorated second option.  A tall blonde woman at the front asked the prince if she and her two companions should go—one the dark woman and the other an older lady who hung between them—but the prince shook his head.

“I want to keep you close,” he said.

The third time, the portal opened into a familiar whitewashed chamber, and Weshker felt his shoulders settle in relief.  The Crimson camp.  No occupants showed on that side, and the room's runes were dim.  By his guess, it should be well past midnight.

“Take the rest wherever you can,” the prince told one of the mages, who nodded.  Then he stepped through, followed by the three women and a few White Flames.

Then it was Weshker's turn.  His approach was confident, but a foot from the portal he suddenly got queasy—not only in his own stomach but in the dozens or hundreds that now filled his altered flesh.  Though his previous portal-trips hadn't been pleasant, he couldn't think why this one suddenly scared him.

And there were people waiting behind him, so he stepped through, bracing himself against the disjunction and trying not to think about what he'd do if Rackmar—

Oh.

Oh shit.

He dropped through, choking down nausea, and tried to call out.

But it was already too late.  Only half of the chamber was unlit; at the back of the portal stood dozens of armored men and mages, swords out and hands sparking with energy.  In the middle of the mob stood Field Marshal Rackmar, grinning viciously with the good half of his face.

The portal went out.

Panic took Weshker over.  He heard the Field Marshal speaking but the crows screamed louder, and as he leapt away, they tore from his body until he became a cloud of them—a roiling torrent of wings and claws, feathers and shrieks.  For a moment he swirled en masse through the chamber, disoriented, but then one crow spotted the door and all others followed.

They hit it like a battering ram, shattering ward-magic and hinges alike.  Pale magic reached after him, but he burst into the sky ahead of it, scattering to freedom.  Only a last few crows saw the ranks close in on the prince and his retainers.

Then they too fled, lofting through the dark air to rejoin their throng.  They would seek shelter somewhere and reassemble into their man-form, useless though it was.

Recovery first, reassessment, and then revenge.

*****

The change in Hlacaasteia's resonance snapped Mariss from her reverie.  She sat up from the hard pane of crystal the haelhene laughably termed a bed and squinted in the dim vermillion light, confused.  The spire had been at low ebb ever since its fall into the cavern, with no alteration of its facets for what felt like days.

Has something happened?

The unusual resonance hadn't ebbed, but it didn't feel hostile.  Not a war-tone, then—more like a sudden vigor.  An alertness.

Awakening.

No, that's silly
, she thought. 
The flight key was lost long ago.

But this was a time of change, and so she slung herself off the bed and rebraided her long hair with a thought.  On the bedside protrusion that was meant to be a table, the green crystal blade hummed its own tune, blocked from contact with the spire by the cloak beneath it; she picked up both, deciding that even if this was nothing, she'd still get some fresh air.

Before she took two steps toward the door, it opened.  She stopped short.

“Master Caernahon?” she said, alarmed, because he never came to the spire.  Not since she was just a student; not since he made his deal with the Emperor.

His aged face crinkled into a smile.  Unlike the other haelhene, he knew how to look human, and she had learned much from him in that regard.  “Mariss, my dear.”

“What are you doing here, Master?”

The smile faded, and he shook his head ruefully.  “I fear we are in danger.  After all these years, your father has finally come forth—at the side of the one who stole your mother's sword.”

Her mouth dropped open, a flame of fury kindling in her chest.  “That boy!  I knew it!”

“We have prepared you as best we could, my dear, but the time has come for you to face him.  To slay him, and claim the Ravager as is your birthright.  Are you ready?”

She tried to say
yes!
but the word caught in her throat.  She had waited so long for this, but some part of her had hoped it wouldn't come.  Few memories remained from her childhood, but whenever she thought of that man, her father, she felt a pain in the place where humans kept their hearts.

“I—  I—  Yes,” she said, because she could not refuse, no matter how terrified she felt.

Her master smiled and said, “Good.  We start now.”

Coda

Marks passed as the throne room slowly collapsed around them.  The Palace's white roof slumped, then shredded, cold wind cutting through the great shrouds that hung from its ribs.  The walls peeled like old skin to reveal fine honeycomb patterns; the throne sagged bizarrely, seat collapsing, arms coming apart like skeins of yarn.

Cob kept watch as best he could.  With each passing moment, his burns hurt worse, making him grind his teeth and scratch at the floor to keep from scratching the injury.  The hollow numbness of the Void beckoned, but he knew what would happen if he gave in again.

He thought the others slept, but without the Guardian's senses he couldn't be sure.  They both needed it—Arik spiritually injured by his act of anger, Enkhaelen perhaps crippled by his ordeal.  When Cob had imagined the end of his journey, it hadn't been like this.

Hadn't been like anything, really.  Staring at the unraveling throne, he could admit to himself that he'd come here to die.  In that regard, he wasn't so different from Enkhaelen.

Now dying wasn't an option for either of them.  After the Seals, he would return to Cantorin, find Fiora, and fix whatever it was they had between them.  Find the others—Lark, Weshker, Ammala Cray—and apologize.  Make amends in some other way than flinging himself into the Light.

He didn't know how, yet, but he'd figure it out.

At some point, his eyes must have closed and failed to open, because he startled awake at a nudge to the shoulder.  Arik loomed there in wolfman form, muzzle still blood-flecked, and gestured forward with his clawed hand.

Ahead, the dais and wall had split, exposing the stone beneath.  Steps curved up into shred-hung darkness.

“We ready?” said Cob, levering himself up.  His whole body ached.  Arik nodded, then moved to assist Enkhaelen as he tried to rise.  The necromancer managed to get his feet beneath him, but when it came time to straighten and stand, his legs folded uselessly; only the skinchanger's grip kept him from the floor.

“Just carry me,” Enkhaelen said, annoyance written deep into his face.  “Don't have the strength to puppeteer myself right now.”

Cob traded a wary glance with Arik; for all the necromancer's apparent acquiescence, they both knew how dangerous he was.  But Arik nodded and scooped the small man up, then slung him across his shoulders for a one-handed soldier's carry.  The necromancer muttered a few curses, but didn't struggle.

On they went, their way lit by Enkhaelen's single dim mage-light.  A frisson ran up Cob's spine when he set foot on the stone steps—part cold and part tension, uncertain what they would find above—but it faded quickly with the monotony of the climb.  The first leg of it went on under a persistent shroud of loosened Palace material, which flickered and billowed with the wind outside.  It insulated them, and he dreaded the time when they would be exposed.

The Needle path spiraled slowly upward, sandy-colored stone pitted by the Palace's grip.  They walked in a tall groove that some unknown hand had carved here centuries or perhaps millennia ago.  Each step was nearly a foot high, and soon Cob's legs burned with effort—another reminder of the Guardian's absence.

The cold intensified the further they went.  Barefoot and clad in only an undershirt and breeches, Cob weathered it as best he could, but by the time the last Palace fibers peeled away, he was shivering, toes numb and scorched arm aching.  As the wind knifed in, he paused a moment to steel himself, then pushed forward again at a steady pace.

Above, the night sky wheeled slowly, bright despite the darkened moons: the Chain of Ydgys rising broadly in the east, the Eye of Night setting westward in its ring of leviathan and phoenix.  Between them, the vast panoply of stars winked down their sharp and distant lights.

Time passed like meltwater dripping, each footfall a universe to itself.  He never looked down; the stairs weren't broad enough to prevent vertigo, and he had no desire to see the city below.  His breath and the whistling wind became all he could hear, and more than once he checked behind him to make sure Arik was still there.  Each time, he was relieved to see the skinchanger's dark shape against the stars; even when Enkhaelen's mage-light suddenly winked out, he was there, climbing along in silence.

By the time they reached the top, the Eye of Night was long set, the Chain cutting a wide diagonal through the sky.  Cob had not raised his head in ages, too stuck in the rhythm of the climb, and so when clear space appeared at his side he nearly startled from the stairs.  The landing they had come to was not the true pinnacle—a final upthrust of rock stood at its back—but it was the last place with steps, and even in the starlight he could see the great circle carved into the floor.

Surmounting the edge, he stood there for a moment, staring around at the endless blanket of night.

There were other Needles out there, he knew—the lesser points of the Palace's tiara—but they were no more than shadows against the sky.  Nothing impeded his view, but neither was there anything to see, as if all the land below had been engulfed by a black ocean.

Arik nudged him inward then, and he moved obediently toward the circle as the skinchanger lowered his burden.  “Time to wake up,” Arik gruffed, shaking the necromancer a bit.  Cob saw the man's eyelids flicker, then open as if forced.

“Oh, 'lready?” slurred Enkhaelen like a drunk.  His pupils were huge, and the way he hung in Arik's grip did not inspire confidence.  “Take me t' the middle 'n then go 'way.”

Arik looked to Cob, who nodded.  With a huff, he hefted the necromancer again and moved cautiously through the carved rings, set him down, then scampered out of range.

For a moment, Enkhaelen just sat there, shoulders slumped and head bowed as if he'd fallen asleep.  Then a faint yellowish light kindled from the central ring, echoed by a glow beneath his borrowed robe, and spread swiftly across the stone in a network of twisting runes.  As the two outer rings triggered, Enkhaelen's dark hair curled up from his neck and away from his face as if moved by unseen currents, the golden light spreading through his skin to turn him molten.

Then it flowed out from his fingers into the stone, and a sensation of pressure clamped down on the Needle.  Above the faint rasp of his breath, Cob caught another sound: distant at first but rising, as if approaching at speed—

He stepped back from the edge, which was fortunate because when the wind hit him, it took him right off his feet.  In an instant the rising moan became a screaming gale, shreds of Palace stuff whipped along with it as it tore across the small plateau, and he threw his hands up in defense of his face as he was dropped to the stone then thrust along it by the force of the wind.  Strands and leaves and chips of stone stung at him.  If not for the overhang of the Needle's true peak, he might have been tossed right off the other side.

As it was, he fetched up hard against the rock, the wind alternately blasting and yanking at him with icy fingers.  He couldn't open his eyes, couldn't hear, could only curl up as much as possible against its raking force.

It seemed like forever before the wind ebbed, and even after it stopped hammering him he still heard it wailing among the Hag's Needles like a tortured thing.  He opened his eyes to see Arik sprawled flat, claws hooked into cracks in the rock, and Enkhaelen utterly unmoved.  The light had gone from both his skin and the sigils.

“Coulda warned us,” Cob grated as he got up.

The necromancer turned a hollowed look toward him.  “My apologies.  The cold and the dark are...not conducive to clear thinking.  Though I suppose we're fortunate it's winter, else the energy in warmer air could have made that last for marks.”

“The Seal's reset?”

“This one, yes.”

“What next?”

“I rest,” said the necromancer.  “Then...Aekhaelesgeria probably, in the Corvish mountains.  Though I would like to return to my sanctum first.  I can open a portal to there in the morning, which should be about...”

He looked up, and Cob tried to follow his gaze, but the stars had never meant much to him beyond his fear of the Eye.  He knew some people could tell time by them, or direction, or a hundred other clever things, but he wasn't clever.  Not at all.

“Cob?”

He squinted.  Enkhaelen's voice sounded strange, but he had not remade his mage-light and it was hard to discern his expression in the darkness.  “What?”

“Do you know how long we were climbing?”

So little had happened on the way up that it was difficult to gauge.  “Not really, but...  I guess maybe a mark before we got past the Palace scraps, then from Chain-rise 'til now.”

“And what time did everything...happen, down in the Palace?”

“I dunno, midnight?  Little later?  Why?”

Enkhaelen was silent for a moment, still staring up at the sky.  Then, in a slow, cautious voice, he said, “Eight marks since midnight, and it is still full dark.

“Cob...  I think we broke the sun.”

Continued in Book 4, The Bloodied Army