The Living Throne (The War of Memory Cycle Book 3) (16 page)

“I told you the parameters for the procedure.  No god-touched, no pregnant women, no sub-adults.  They disrupt the entire process.  And here I see two of the three.”

“I am unconvinced of the need for your 'parameters'.”

“Uncon—“  Enkhaelen exhaled harshly and dragged a gloved hand across his face.  “Emperor, I shaped this.  I know how it works.  You remember the rejection issues we had with the first batch of lagalaina?  Pregnancy.  The malformed ahergriin?  Children in the mix.  The complete failure of the attempt on the Trifolders?”

“As I recall, the issue with the lagalaina led you to create your first bodythief.”

“That was a fortunate accident and immaterial to this discussion.  These converts you've selected will ruin the templates if you put them through.  You know this; we've been over it a thousand times.  Why would you not consult me first?”

Amusedly—almost warmly—the Emperor said, “Rackmar wanted it to be a surprise.  Alas, it seems someone has spoiled it.”

There was a moment of silence in which Crown Prince Kelturin's thoughts declared:
And I'd do it again.
  Then the prince said out loud, “I remember Enkhaelen's instructions even if no one else does.”

“What is he trying to achieve here?” said Enkhaelen.

The Emperor sighed.  “As he expressed to me, he wants certain of these petitioners—including that girl—to be converted in secret so that he can use them against your little pawn.  It is within the rules to act behind each other's backs.”

Rules?
Geraad thought.

Enkhaelen made a sound of exasperation.  “You can't be serious.  You know there's only a ten-percent success rate without preparation.  If he wants to have specific people converted, I need to do it by hand.”

“I did mention that.  He said he preferred secrecy to success.”

“Piking wasteful.”  Enkhaelen looked over the crowd.  “Which ones are they?”

“Just a moment.  I shall put the rest out of the way.”

Geraad dared a glance at the Emperor, puzzled, and saw him settle back in the throne as if making himself comfortable.  His eyelids sank to half-mast as his attention turned inward.

The mob of voices Geraad had been hearing since his arrival swelled into an eager chorus, and he realized suddenly that they were not around but
under
him.  He looked down in confusion just as the floor began to flux with light, its substance roiling in nacreous waves beneath the solid film on which he stood.  The handful of independent minds raised their own chorus—
What is this, what's happening, oh no, oh Goddess
—and a single bitter thought came from Enkhaelen:
Showing off again.

Then the floor unraveled into thick tendrils, and the petitioners cried out en masse—some in worship, some in surprise and fear—as they were ensnared and drawn down into the viscous glowing substance below.  Geraad felt the girl's mind strain with horror and automatically pulled her close, clasping her head against his chest to hide the view.  She clung to him as every white-robed man and woman he could see was pulled beneath the surface.

If not for her, he might have run for a door.  As it was, he could barely keep himself together.  He saw now how the corridors could shift as they did, and why he kept sensing thoughts and feelings when no one was in sight.  The Palace was alive, and caged its worshipers in its heaving, smothering depths.

As the floor smoothed back to perfection, he looked around shakily.  A few souls remained standing: two women clutching each other in terror with a little boy clinging to their robes; a burly, hirsute man in a crouch, every hair on him standing up; a pale-faced yet calm woman with her hand on his shoulder, speaking soothingly; Enkhaelen; the Crown Prince; and several observers on the outskirts in embroidered robes or white guard armor.

“There.  Now you have space to work,” said the Emperor.

“My deepest thanks,” Enkhaelen replied caustically, then started toward the others.  Geraad clamped down on his desire to grab the necromancer's arm and cling; as much as he feared the floor opening up again, he knew Enkhaelen would not react well.

Instead he forced himself to separate from the girl and drag her along after Enkhaelen.  Stepping out of their undisturbed circle was the most terrifying thing he had ever done; he could swear that the tiles beyond it felt softer, more malleable.  Ready to sink.

Closest was the pair of women, but as Enkhaelen approached them, the burly man slipped his keeper's calming hand and surged upright.  Within two lunging steps he had gone into a full charge, his face bristling with fur, maw splitting wide to release a deafening roar, shoulders broadening with a crackle of joint and sinew.

Enkhaelen halted.  As the great bear reared over him, massive claws gleaming like sickles, he raised his left hand and clutched thin air, then wrenched it to the side.  The bear froze in mid-swipe, an indescribable expression on his furry face, then keeled over in the direction of Enkhaelen's gesture and began spasming wildly.

“Sogan!” said the pale-faced woman.  She did not rush to his side but strode for Enkhaelen instead, and Geraad saw fire in her eyes.  Literally.  A reflection of a phantasmal hearth-flame floated in them, and as she drew closer Geraad felt the heat rolling off of her.

Enkhaelen did not move, hand still curled into a claw aimed at the bear.  “Priestess,” he said.  “Or...ah, Mother Matriarch.”

“Yes.  Mother Matriarch Vriene Damiel of Turo,” she said, lips curled with revulsion.  Even with the flames in her eyes, she was a lovely woman, her hair long and black and smooth with only a few threads of white, her face aristocratic, figure shapely beneath the indifferent drape of the robe.  But her stare could have burned holes in steel, and Geraad knew that if it was turned on him he would be on his knees begging forgiveness.

“A pleasure to make your acquaintance,” said Enkhaelen.  “Now, if you don't mind—“

“I know who you are. 
Chiat'at ce-teil Caele.
”

Still eavesdropping, Geraad heard Enkhaelen translated the words automatically:
the Child by Fire
.  The necromancer's claw-like fingers tightened, and the bear seized on the ground, moaning horribly.  “You know I don't like it when your people mention that,” he said through his teeth, and even through the empathy-shields Geraad felt his surge of anger.

Vriene merely narrowed her eyes.  “Where is your sword, Caele?”

“Where is my daughter?  No—let's be relevant.  Why are you here?”

“I sheltered the boy, Cob.  From you, I assume.”

“Mm.”

Cob?
thought Geraad. 
This is all about Cob?

The two stared each other down, minds fraught with tangles of memory and suspicion that Geraad dared not pick at.  Then Vriene's expression softened, and she said quietly, “You are not beyond redemption.  Gwydren Greymark—“

“Is never where he's needed,” Enkhaelen sneered.  “Spare me your platitudes, 'Mother'.  Any last words?”

“First, stop hurting my husband.”

Enkhaelen relaxed his clutching hand.  The bear's spasms ceased, and he sagged in place, panting heavily.

“Thank you,” said Vriene, and the fire faded to reveal sadness in her wide, tea-colored eyes.  She turned her back on Enkhaelen, gaze seeking out one of the white-armored guards on the outskirts.  “Malin, my son,” she said, “it is all right.  I forgive you.”

The guard bowed his blank-helmed head.

Then Vriene faced forward again, looking down on the necromancer.  “Do as you must.”

“
Uvadha't ahranxaca
,” Enkhaelen said in an undertone. 
May your goddess bless you.

A small smile touched Vriene's lips.

Then Enkhaelen pressed fingertips to her brow and her eyes slid up beneath their lids, her mind vanishing from Geraad's perception.  Yet she did not fall.  A diagram passed through the necromancer's mind—a network of puppet-strings—and as he retracted his hand, she swayed then straightened.  At a flick of his fingers, she stepped back, face no longer peaceful, just empty.  On the ground, the great bear gave a roar full of pain and sorrow.

Geraad stared.  Was she dead?  The disappearance of her mind was the same as other deaths he'd witnessed, but it had happened so swiftly, so effortlessly.  And her
body
...

“No experiments today, Shaidaxi?” said the Emperor.  Enkhaelen did not acknowledge him, but crammed a hand into a robe-coat pocket and moved toward the bear.  As he crouched by the beast's head, he withdrew what appeared to be a silver ice-pick, and Geraad recoiled from the images that danced through his mind: a gory history of anatomy and mutilation distilled into a quick pacifying procedure.

Closing his eyes, Geraad cut himself off from all psychic input, then did the same for the quivering girl.

When he opened them again, the searchlights caught him.

He must have raised his head by accident, or perhaps there was some magnetism to the Emperor that drew his gaze.  But those were not eyes that held him.  They were windows into some other realm, and as Geraad stared, trapped, the light flooded into him.

His shields blew away like so much chaff.  There was no resisting the incisive glare, no holding himself together as layers upon layers of rationalization and self-deception seared away to expose his soul.  His actions and hesitations, his dreams and fears and follies and shames—

Childish pranks.  Worm-mashing.  Pitching rocks at the town pariah.  Falling ten feet from a dead tree and feeling the bone snap in his arm.  First psychic spasm, gossip, illicit assignations with friends' girlfriends.  Fisticuffs.  Classes, mental eavesdropping during tests, backlash from a fumbled spell.  His first day as a Warder.  Being ignored by Count Varen and belittled by the guard captain, winnowing through the petty thoughts of the court.  Boredom, disillusionment, the women uneasy around him, his own awkwardness.  Never being able to walk the streets in plain-clothes but always chained to the robe.  Restlessness, the nervous excitement at the call to the Riftwatch towers, the horse bucking, the shock and pain of hitting the road—

“Aradys, stop.”

Geraad hit the floor nearly limp.  His head rang with sound and emotion, the sharp probes of other mentalists delving into the vaults the Emperor's gaze had unsealed.  Down to the thoughts and visions he kept to himself—

“And call off your piking mind-rapists,” Enkhaelen added.  “Not enough that you gaze my assistant, you have to break him too?”

“He is relatively pure,” came the Emperor's voice, amused.  “A few shadows in the corners.  I will keep him.”

“I didn't bring him for you.”

“No?”

The probes burrowed deeper, puncturing memories of white wings and black antlers, a naked man being shoved through a cell door, the grating slide of stone on stone.  Geraad struggled to push them away and only dimly realized that he was also struggling against a pair of hands trying to shake him.  But the mentalists were too persistent—the three of them harrying from different angles, picking at different memories like birds stealing crumbs—and he clutched at the floor, seeing nothing, until his hand touched boot-leather.

A thread of cold ran up his fingers, igniting all the old breaks.

He gasped, then clamped his mind around that memory: the Gold dungeon, the little hammers, the bones in his hands splintering one by one.  All the pain and fear and bewilderment came to him afresh, with the pitiless faces of his tormentors above him as they chipped incessantly at his mind, the shackles biting into his wrists, the bands across his knuckles flattening his fingers in place.  Gathering them together, he thrust all those fragments and torments out in a projective spasm and felt them strike his eavesdroppers.

Their probes recoiled.  He yanked up a mind-shield and, as the traumatic memory receded, felt the hands fisted in his robe.  Heard a voice saying, “Sir?  Sir?”  It was a relief to know that he had not hit the girl with his projection, or that her own resistance had been strong enough to deflect a blow not meant for her.

His eyes would not clear, though.  Dazed, he decided to just lay there until they did.

“You can't take all my tools and still expect me to do quality work,” said Enkhaelen somewhere nearby.  “I need this one to help reclaim the dreamrakers from Daenivar, so unless you're willing to give up on them—“

“No,” said the Emperor sharply.  “I will not allow that slight to go unanswered.”

“So you can't have this one.  You have plenty already; don't get greedy.”

“Do not think that you can dictate my actions, Shaidaxi.”

“I don't.  I just need you to not stomp all over everything I'm trying to do here.  These projects are at your behest.  If you don't want me to make you servitors anymore—“

“Peace.  I value your work.”

“Then stop sticking your fingers in it while my back is turned.  Or letting Rackmar.  You know we don't get along; there's no need to add sabotage to it.”

The Emperor chuckled, somehow detached.  “Very well.  I shall allow you to proceed.”

“Thank you.”

Robes swirled against Geraad's forearm, and he felt the girl recoil.  Then gloved hands cupped his face, the cold radiating even through the leather, and he tried to look up at the necromancer but saw only white.