The Living Throne (The War of Memory Cycle Book 3) (59 page)

All options considered, he could accept that.

“I fell in love with Wards myself,” he said, turning again to his crates.  He had quite the pile of bundled robes now, his hands moving automatically through the process.  “I was sixteen.  I'd been in mentalist training since I was ten, but it was boring—so many ethics courses.  Can't do this, can't do that.  Completely necessary, just dull.

“But we started sitting in on other classes to see what we might want as a secondary path, and I ended up observing an upper-tier Wards class.  Hazard Reduction, I think, in the pre-military stream.  They were doing disaster drills, and just watching them weather all kinds of assaults and dangers while covering others—I adored that.  I wanted to be so safe that I could also safeguard the people around me.  And my patron Count Varen approved of it.  So even though I can see its flaws now, Modern Consolidated...I really respect it.”

“If you enjoy safety so much, why are you still here?”

So I can observe.  So I can keep others safe.  But mostly because—
  “You rescued me.  I'm not afraid.”

Enkhaelen didn't react, and when Geraad glanced at him, he was back to tapping at the mirror.  His motions revealed less frustration than before, though, and Geraad decided to take it as a hopeful sign.

If the necromancer could be influenced...

He smiled ruefully.  It was a long-shot, but he could try.

*****

In the ensuing quiet, Enkhaelen tried to focus.  The hawk in the mirror had yet to find Cob's trail, but when it did, the haelhene would follow.  He couldn't let them interfere.

But something nagged at him about Hlacaasteia and that smugness in Caernahon's aura.  About Geraad's cautious questions.  He'd gotten caught up in his own rambling and now he couldn't remember what had hooked him.

What had he missed?

*****

Mariss waited impatiently for the scrying window to clear.  She was using one of the haelhene's because hers—along with everything else she'd kept in her salt-walled chamber—had been washed away by the black water.

The 'window' was just a round protrusion from the deep red crystal wall, its liquid-like surface swirling with fog as it sought a connection at the other end.  She shifted on her feet and grimaced at the way her boots squished; the leather was ruined, mandating a visit to the human lands for a new pair.  Always distasteful.  The stink, the clamor, the prying eyes...

She had nothing against humans, but why did there have to be so many?

The rest of her attire would survive, though her dress clung soggily and she had noted some sprung threads, some damaged embroidery.  Her hand went to her torc, glad it was intact.  The gem that dangled from it was a piece of the Hlacaasteia spire, allowing her to pass through its walls at will—as befit a student of Master Caernahon.

Her silver kin were not so favored.  They had to dwell outside and do as they were told.  She pitied them, but they did not express regret.  It was not in their nature.

In hers, though.  It frustrated her to be part human, to have these emotions.  Her silver nails drummed an agitated tattoo against the frame of the scrying window, and it took great effort to stop.

So many questions plagued her.  And where was her master?

A ripple ran through the chamber, drawing her gaze to the door forming in the far wall.  The haelhene did not usually need such things; all the chambers in the spire were temporary, formed and collapsed at will, and she knew most of them were for her benefit.

The gap revealed four figures.  They entered in silence, three hooded and masked as usual but the fourth in just its naked substance and a pair of grey gloves.

She squinted at it.  Rarely had she seen a haelhene without its robe on, and this one mimicked humanity with some skill—its face androgynous but showing character, its flesh free of the intense crystallization that usually riddled its kind.  A young one perhaps, soft and vulnerable without its shell.

The leader approached one of the extruded portal-frames while the others led the young one into the center of the chamber and pushed it down.  It folded fluidly at the place where a human would have knees.  Bracketing it, the others stripped off their white gloves to show hands more like rakes, all crystallized finger and no palm, then thrust them into the young one's back.

A liquid shudder ran through it, disrupting its features, and panes of glassy material suddenly cracked up from its sides like wings.  As the two handlers continued to pull and twist, Mariss realized they were directly manipulating its dimensions—bringing forth the ones normally invisible to the physical world—and that it was resisting.

She frowned.  She had thought all haelhene were allies, their efforts coordinated against the fallen ones that had been their kin.  But this victim did not look fallen.  Despite its shape, it was not at all fleshy, and neither bled nor vocalized like a flesh-creature.

A turncoat, then?  It was an unsettling thought.

The two haelhene wrestled with the prisoner's dimensions for a while, until finally one of them jabbed fingers into its layers and drew out a long shard of green crystal.  It regarded the object, then looked to Mariss, and she realized that it was a piece of another spire—perhaps the cause of Hlacaasteia's defensive reaction.

“I'll take it,” she said, stepping away from the scrying window.  It could wait.

The haelhene nodded and offered it to her.  As she wrapped her hand around it, she felt a thrill of unusual energy slip under her skin, and wondered what spire it had come from.  Did it belong to the haelhene or to the fallen ones?

Could she keep it?

The other haelhene withdrew a stranger object: a long piece of wood carved into a sword, with green inlays that pulsed faintly as it came free.  Mariss held out her hand for that one too; she liked weapons, and it looked interesting.  But before she could say anything, the haelhene took it in both hands and twisted, snapping it into splinters and sparks.

She let her hand fall, trying to erase the frown from her features.  The haelhene were her superiors.  She was not in a position to gainsay them.

For a little while longer, she watched them dig through the prisoner's layers, but they found only some portal stakes.  Mariss requested those and again the haelhene permitted it, and she tucked them into her belt.  Her own had been washed away, and this saved her the effort of forging new ones.

Finally the portal opened, and the two searchers hauled the prisoner up and through.  She contemplated the empty frame in their wake, questions nagging at her.  If it wasn't a fallen one—if it was actually a turncoat haelhene—what did that mean?

A prickle in the air alerted her to a connection, and she turned back to find the scrying window clearing.  She moved quickly to touch it, keeping her other hand low—knowing instinctively that if she wanted to keep the green crystal, her master couldn't see it.

The image resolved into Master Caernahon's familiar crinkled mask, the scene behind him stark white as always. 
'Mariss, my student,'
he said in his mortal voice, and feigned a smile with his false mouth.

“Master,” she said, automatically mimicking him.  He had tutored her in fleshy protocol as much as magic.  “We had a disruption.”

'I have heard.'

Her lips compressed.  Of course he had.  Under that human mask, he was the ruler of the Hlacaasteia haelhene, and they reported to him regularly.  No doubt he had been speaking with one when she tried to contact him.  “Then you know about the sword?”

'The sword?'

“My mother's sword.”

His old-man brows rose. 
'No, there was no mention.  Are you certain?'

“Her metal is within me.  I know the feel of her,” said Mariss tightly.

'I see.  These disruptors had it?'

“Yes.  I want to know how.”

In the image, Master Caernahon spread his hands slightly.  He wore white gloves like the other haelhene, and a white robe like everyone around her, including her silver-kin—a trait that bored her near to tears.  She already missed her chest of colorful dresses, gone the way of all her other possessions.

'I do not know,'
he said. 
'Perhaps they had some influence, some power, that could bypass the entity that guarded it.'

“You shouldn't have kept me from it.  You should have let me confront its keeper long ago.  I had it in my hands, Master!”

“I could not let you put yourself in such danger.'

“If a handful of petty humans could have—“

'Were they so petty?'

Mariss clamped her mouth shut so she would not spit at the scry.  Yes, they were petty; they were flesh!  They had to breathe and shit and eat!  Even as a part-human, she was so much more than them, as evinced by how easily she had recovered from that girl's strike—how easily she had stripped the girl of her preservation-magic and sent her below.

Her heart festered at the thought of that girl, who had held her mother's sword.

But then there had been the boy who bore the Guardian, and no, that had not been a petty thing.  That had been an
answer
.  A power to add to her own.  And so she had grabbed at it, knowing that it might not fit comfortably within her but that it would still give her an advantage in pursuit of her goal.

It had resisted. 
He
had resisted.  And even with all her training, he had been stronger.

“No, Master,” she said through her teeth.  “But you would not even tell me my mother's resting place.  I deserved to know—to at least see the barrier before me.  What if you were wrong?  What if I could have taken the sword myself?”

'I could not risk it.'

She wanted to shriek,
Who made you my protector?
  But she knew.  Her martyred uncle Orrith, who had saved her from her murderous father, who had left her with his kin and ridden into the human lands to draw the madman off her trail.  Who had seen his sister annihilated before his eyes but had not acted in revenge, no, but in defense of the helpless child Mariss had once been.

She remembered pressing her face to his back-plate, her fingers hooked in his chainmail as the horse heaved beneath them, as the manor burned like a furnace and the hedges kindled from the heat.  She remembered her mother's dying scream, and the taste of her own tears, back when she had been more flesh than silver.

In her dreams, she still walked through the ashes of that house, every inch impressed indelibly upon her mind.  But in reality she had clung to her uncle and closed her eyes, never seeing the road that led away.

She knew the manor still stood, but she didn't know where.  According to her master, a dire force called it home now, born of the horrors her father had committed within.  That others could find it, could break in and take her mother's sword, when she couldn't even return...

“I want it back,” she snapped.

'Of course,'
said Caernahon soothingly. 
'Now that it has been removed, there is no reason for you not to have it.  But the disruptors have shown themselves truly dangerous.  Please, for my own peace of mind, allow me to send my agents after them.  Do not seek them yourself.  I promise that the sword will be brought to you as soon as we retrieve it.'

Mariss scowled but nodded, mollified.  As much as she wanted to go, she had work to do, like helping her kin remake their homes, and stabilizing the spire, and researching the Guardian and its ilk.  She had just one last question.

“My...  My father.  Has there been any sign of him?”

Master Caernahon shook his head. 
'You know that you are the first I would tell.'

She sighed and raised a hand to the window.  “Forgive my anger, Master.  I understand that you only want my safety.  But please.  Please.  I need that sword.  And when my father reveals himself, I need to be the one to face him.”

Caernahon nodded. 
'Of course.  You deserve justice.  Until then, take care.  These are treacherous times.'

“And to you, Master.”

She disrupted the scry with a tap of her finger, then raised the thrumming green crystal.  She should study it, learn from it.  Every trick she added to her repertoire was another to draw on for the fight that loomed ahead.

Gripping it tight, Mariss Ysara Enkhaelen thought,
Soon.

*****

The White Isle felt little different from when Ilshenrir had left it a century ago.  The salt air, the oppressive energy, the creeping sense of osseous growth.  The resonance of the Ahnvanir spire was slightly softer, slightly more scattered beneath its heavy plating of towers and catacombs, but he could still sense it through his feet.

His captors prodded him forward, into the massive courtyard over which the Great Houses loomed.  The midday sun struck down directly, picking out glints of water and shell on the broad white floor, while around him the lowest of the stacked towers rose in the partial shade thrown by the balconies and branchings of those above.  Most were white as bleached bone, but a few butchers' overlooks stood out, edged in red.  The next rainstorm would wash them clean.