The Living Throne (The War of Memory Cycle Book 3) (68 page)

Tanvolthene moved beside Sarovy and turned his attention upward, raising his hands to activate sigils in midair.  The next barrel to come down on them shattered against a pale orange ward shot thickly with white, like a spiderweb.

Hand on the hilt of his heirloom sword, shield tucked to his side, Sarovy scanned the fray.  The militiamen in the upper openings had noticed the change and were shooting toward Vrallek and Voorkei's team now, shouting to the ones above to alter their bombardment.  As heads peeked out past the torn floor, Nachirovydry and his comrades took their last shots.

Sarovy saw Voorkei form a whip of orange energy between his hands, then crouch at the base of the column.  Ruengriin, guided by Vrallek's spitting and grumbling, moved around to brace it.  A smell of boiling water and burning rock arose within a thin wisp of smoke.

The column tilted.  The ruengriin roared.  Sarovy winced, half-expecting the crash and crush of at least one man, but all that came was another roar as the monstrous specialists controlled the column's fall.

Wouldn't want to be punched by one
, he thought as they started hauling it to a wall.

First task done, Voorkei immediately started weaving a new ward above the ruengriin, orange strands of spell-stuff stitching together into an oblong.  In the opening they were approaching, Sarovy saw militiamen blanch and withdraw.  A moment later, Voorkei snapped out a mage-light and sent it up that corridor.

“Move on me,” Sarovy said, and started a slow pace after the ruengriin.  With Rallant dogging his heels, the infantry shifted like one organism, while the makeshift medics hooked the wounded under the arms and struggled to drag them along.

The high end of the column hit the wall with a solid thunk.  Brickwork dented inward.  Tilted, the span left three feet of clear space between its top and the opening, but that was doable.  One of the ruengriin immediately scrambled up, claws biting into concrete, the others bracing the column to keep it from rolling.

That vanguard swung up into the corridor and vanished.  For a few long moments there was nothing, then came a reverberating roar—not of pain or fear but victory.

“Get the wounded up,” Sarovy shouted as another few ruengriin made the climb.  His group merged swiftly with the specialists, the wards merging as well, and the circle opened on one end to let ruengriin hoist the injured and climb one-handed.  They made it look easy.

Under Vrallek's command, half the ruengriin stayed to brace and play rear-guard.  Tanvolthene slipped and slid up the pillar, setting small foothold-wards, then was hauled into the corridor by the men already there.  After him went Rallant and the infantrymen.

The middle of the column began to sag and shed concrete.  It was not meant to lean at such an angle.

Sarovy sent the archers up next.  Light-footed, it took each man mere moments.  The circle of remaining soldiers constricted around him, while the metal elementals—battered and chipped but all the more menacing—converged again.  From above, Tanvolthene threw down panes of energy to stand like barriers, and the ruengriin laughed and hacked and beat away those elementals that slipped through.

By the time the last archer went up, the column was sliding down the wall, its middle disintegrating to show its iron ribs.  A ruengriin hooked hands together and boosted Magus Voorkei into a short, awkward flight; two more caught him at the entry and pulled him in.  Sarovy followed, wincing as hard hands clamped on his arms and shoulders.  The opening was hardly wide enough for two and he was shoved down the hall so Tanvolthene could maintain the wards.  Looking back, he saw more ruengriin boosted up, then the one that had done the boosting.

Then a pair of hands clamped hard on the lip of the ledge, and Lieutenant Vrallek pulled himself into the corridor, blood caking him all over.  He garbled for them to move.

In the tight press, it was hard for Sarovy to force through to the front.  Mage-lights bobbed overhead but the largest ruengriin stood hunched, scalps scraping the ceiling, and the injured had to be held upright to keep from being trampled.  Blessing his own narrow build, Sarovy elbowed and shrugged his way through to find a storeroom at the end, all but bare.  No exit.

He looked up at the ceiling and said, “Make a hatch.”

In short order, a two-foot cube of dirt and boards dropped down into the room, cut cleanly by Voorkei's searing whip.  The first ruengriin used it as a stepping-stone and leapt cat-like into the room above, mage-lights whizzing past him to illuminate it.  At the all-clear, the other ruengriin started boosting soldiers up.

“Make a door,” Sarovy told Voorkei as the ogre-blood mage took his turn.

And so they stepped out into sunlight, bloodied and coated in dust and dirt, through the side wall of the warehouse and into a narrow alley.  A hush fell, and as Sarovy pushed to the fore, he saw why: at the far end, as yet unaware, stood another troop of men in militia green.

Anger rose in his chest.  How many men was the city willing to throw at him?

“Scatter them,” he told Vrallek.  The Houndmaster grinned bloodily and led the charge with a nerve-shattering roar.

By the time Sarovy, Rallant and the infantrymen jogged free of the alley, half the militia was in flight.  The other half retreated with a shred of discipline, shields and spears raised against the battered ruengriin.  With the infantry moving in for support, Sarovy tried to call Vrallek back; too many of his specialists were leaving blood-trails in their wake, their movements frenzied.  They were too valuable to lose to this lot.

Then a baying chorus arose from a side-street and he saw Vrallek's head whip up, saw him step back and snarl.

A moment later, hounds poured into the street, grey-skinned and gape-mouthed.  Their collars gleamed with the golden teardrop, their movements ungainly and hideous.  Half the mob broke for the ruengriin, the other half for the outer circle of infantry, and shouts of shock and fear rose from the human Blaze soldiers as they braced themselves.

The sound that came from Vrallek's mouth was like the end of the world.

Hounds skidded onto their tailless rumps, their heads swiveling toward him.  A few men stepped out to hack at the distracted beasts but were hauled back by Rallant.  A palpable tension filled the air, and a foul stink.

From down the alley came an answering howl-shriek, a ball-shriveling expectoration of rage and dominance.  Then a twisted form in olive-green streaked from the entry, a red badge jangling around its neck, and leapt upon Vrallek.

The rest of the militia took to their heels.

Sarovy wiped at his mouth as he watched the rolling, screaming, clawing pair of monstrosities.  The other was definitely Houndmaster Chelaith, the Lord Governor's bought man.  The tide of hounds encircled them, full of yawping and whining and snarls but no movement, no interest in the Blaze Company force.  Though he wanted to send his men after the fleeing militia, the fight filled the street, and his archers were out of arrows.

Then the green-coats changed directions, and lancers suddenly filled the intersection they had been trying to cross.

'What—  By the Light, captain,'
he heard Benson exclaim through the earhook.

“Run them down, lieutenant,” he said through bloodless lips.  His tongue felt like a knife.  “Do not let them escape.”

A silence, then the lieutenant turned his horse and pulled his sword free.  Orders rang out, and the horde of horsemen split down the roads where the militia had fled.

In the street, on bloodstained cobblestones at the center of the circle of hounds, Vrallek raised his gory face and howled his victory.  Chelaith hung in his grip, armor sundered, partially delimbed and thoroughly disemboweled yet still struggling.

One by one, the hounds ghosted up to Vrallek, making undoglike snuffling and grunting sounds, and Sarovy looked away.  He could feel the pressure of old mindwashes trying to paralyze him.  Some of the men stood stock still, others shook their heads vigorously.  Rallant, no longer radiating, stalked around smacking the dazed ones.

Tanvolthene met Sarovy's gaze with wide, wild eyes.  “What just happened, captain?”

“War,” said Sarovy, then sighed and cued the earhook.  “Lieutenant Benson, ignore previous order.  Back to me.  Garrison, we have injured; prepare the infirmary.  Scouts, disperse to the council hall and the governor's mansion in pairs.  Catch any staff you can, but be careful.  The cultists are watching.  Shield Two, be prepared to march.

“Scryer Yrsian, please scry the Crimson Claw and advise them of my intent to burn down the governor's mansion and place Bahlaer under military control.”

'...Yes sir,'
came the scryer's voice.

The soldiers closest stared at him.  Nachirovydry grinned the toothy white grin of a sadist.

Raising his voice, Sarovy called out, “All right, Vrallek.  You have your hounds.  Let us put them to work.”

A gurgling chuckle came in answer.

As the crowd of hounds and soldiers slowly began to move again, Sarovy felt a twitch at the corner of his mouth.  A smile?  Faint, angry.  He did not want to think about it—to revisit the pit of fire and smoke that he saw in his dreams, capped by that crushing red ward.

But it seemed that was what Bahlaer demanded of him.

So it would be done.

*****

From the eiyenbridge, Ardent surveyed the wreckage of the warehouse and considered what to do with the militiamen her agents had rescued.  The eiyets whispered in her ears about the Lord Governor in his manor, frenziedly throwing clothes and ornaments and papers into bags that his aides then rushed down into the secret tunnels.

She could leave him to that.  Leave this whole wretched city.  Madam Lirayen—in safe-keeping among the militia—had admitted to calling on the metal elementals for aid, invoking her goddess's connection with Brancir the Silver.  Commander Tonner, who had refused to stay in the Shadow Realm, had raged at Ardent for her interference in his fight, as if he would have won with his men and the metals alone.  And perhaps it was true; in the end, the Dark bite had hindered both sides and set a dangerous precedent.

But she wasn't done.  Not while the captain still had his head.  Commander Tonner might be an idiot but he knew how to start a fight, and if the captain retaliated, this scuffle might turn into a full-blown insurrection.  She thought of Shan Cayer in forced retirement, of the citizens trapped in this city—of her own man Ticuo, who had been born here.

The Kheri could extend their credit a little while longer.

*****

Not far down the trade road, a small wagon rattled north, the tools emblazoned on its flank identifying it as a tinker's vehicle.  The hammer of the crossed hammer-and-tongs mark was painted red, but nothing else was out of the ordinary.

Not the driver, a grizzled old man in a leather hat with forge-scarred forearms bared to the wind.  Not the tattered old rug of a dog in the footwell.  Not the big tawny Tasgard horse, its plodding steps quicker now that the city wall loomed ahead.  And not the girl who hunched on the far end of the bench, arms crossed tight, clothes desperately needing to be taken in.

Winter sunlight glazed the river that ran beside the road, throwing flecks along the side of the wagon and dappling the man's jaw.  It was firm-set, unsmiling, though the lines that mapped his weathered features told of happier times.  His deep-set green eyes were hard as stone.

His hands, rough from millennia of strife, clutched the reins as if wishing to strangle them.  And if he occasionally ran fingers through the tawny lion-pelt that covered his lap—complete with ears—that wasn't so strange.  There were many hunters in this land.

Stay away from Bahlaer
, Enkhaelen had all but told him.

To Jasper—to Gwydren Greymark, the Hammer of Brancir—it was an invitation.

Chapter 18 – Schism

Cob and his friends did not stay long in the spirit realm—maybe a mark—but it was still enough time for him and Lark to have a shouting match.  The subject was Rian's soul, and at Lark's insistence, Cob tried to reach out to the goblin's patron spirit.

The black water came instead, surging up through the realms as if it had been waiting.  Despite his familiarity with it, Cob panicked, and hooked his friends with the herd cadence then half-stepped half-plunged down into the physical realm to escape it.  Though they came through safely and left the water behind, the bad air immediately swept in to choke them.

Two days later, they were still suffering.

There was only so much that the Guardian's influence could do.  Cob kept it up at all times, but he couldn't conjure food from thin air or soothe the hacking coughs Lark and Fiora had developed.  Crystal Valley's poisons lingered in their lungs.  As a skinchanger, Arik was in better shape, though notably ravenous; sometimes he ran after the lizards and sand-spiders that peeked out at Cob, but never caught them.

For Cob, that was the worst part.  He knew he could lure animals in to be slain, but he couldn't bring himself to do it.  Not from squeamishness—he'd helped butcher goats as a child—but from a sense that it would violate some unspoken law of the world.

Fortunately, Arik never asked.

At least it wasn't difficult to find water.  Salt-slimes popped up from the sand everywhere he went, ready to contribute some of their substance in exchange for being raked clean.  When they stopped to rest or to hide from possible haelhene flybys, they were inevitably treated to a briny spring forming right beneath their feet.

More and more, their presence unnerved Cob.  None of them bubbled up black, but his imagination painted a churning sea beneath the dunes and pits and mudstone flats, a dark wave creeping over the knucklebone hills.  He was afraid to close his eyes at night—afraid to sleep, lest his mother's arms enfold him again.

Lark didn't sleep either.  She still carried Rian's body, swaddled tight in the remnants of her wolf-wool robe, and spent each night sitting up with him like a colicky baby.

But it was day now—their twelfth since setting out from the den in the Garnet Mountains—and things couldn't continue this way.  Sand-creep and yellow witchgrass speckled the desert around them, inedible but welcome, and thickened ahead.  They were nearly free.

That raised his hopes, but also his concerns.  With Fiora at his side, the words
you're pregnant
were never far from his lips; he'd have to speak them soon.

The prospect terrified him.  They barely knew each other, but he doubted she'd be happy.  From what she'd told him of her life, her goals, she didn't want a family; she wanted her sword and shield and her vendetta against the Empire.

But he could feel it inside of her, that tiny second life.  Too small for a heartbeat, too fragile for a war.  It sickened him to think how the Palace might affect it.

He had to leave her behind.

She would
kill
him.

And she'd be right to.  It wasn't as if they were in any more danger than before.  He was already gambling with their lives; what was one more in the mix?

Still, it changed things in a way he hadn't been ready for, and he'd spent his sleepless nights studying the information Geraad had implanted in the arrowhead.  It was difficult to make sense of the visions; they weren't always coherent, the conversations tangled and the emotions flat or overwhelming, the images distorted by their arcane perspective.  Nevertheless, Cob gathered that Geraad had fallen into Enkhaelen's hands somehow, and that Enkhaelen had taken him to the Palace.  It was clear that the necromancer's real body was there.

Along with others.  Vriene and Sogan Damiel.  Ammala and her children.

He had only glimpsed them.  The first time, the shock had been enough to kick him from the vision.  The second time—sifting cautiously through the divided strands of time and thought and feeling—he had managed to stay long enough to see the pilgrims subsumed and the prisoners left exposed before his nerve failed.

He knew he had to try again, but he couldn't bear to see them like that, trapped in memory as if in amber.  Just like he couldn't look at Lark or Fiora without feeling his heart twist.

I need to go alone.  This is all my fault, and I can't bring them down with me.

I can't get more of my friends killed.

“Hoi,” said Fiora at his side, almost making him jump from his skin.  He slanted a look at her to find her staring up at him, mouth creased in a frown, stray curls flailing at her temples as the wind whipped them about.  She'd lost her eye-guard in the black water, making her gaze direct, if bloodshot.  “You've got that brooding look again.  Out with it.”

“'M fine.”

“No you're not.  Cob, we all went through the same thing.  You can't pretend that losing three people didn't affect you.”

“It's not—“  He bit down on the words.  In the face of Rian's death, Ilshenrir's surrender and Dasira's disappearance, the rest of his concerns were distant and petty.  He should be focused on the survivors, not plotting how to escape them.

He was just so tired.

“I've held my tongue this long out of respect,” continued Fiora, casting a significant glance toward Lark, “but we need to talk about what happened.  That woman, and the wraiths and the metal folk, and
you
...”

“I know.  I foxed it all up.”

“That's not what I mean.  We're almost out of the desert, right?  We won't have much chance to talk privately after that.”

He sighed and looked forward.  Without a map, it was difficult to say, but his bare feet told him that the land ahead was marginally fertile, and the further hills increasingly so.  It would take less than a day to reach their moss-clad flanks, and then they would be in civilized territory for the first time in weeks.

But what would they do?  Dasira, who was supposed to lead the way, was lost in the Grey.  They had travel papers thanks to Lark's work in Turo, but with all the soldiers and mages that had been after them, he doubted they could stay incognito for long.  And while they could skirt the towns and go straight for the swamp, they desperately needed supplies.

He didn't know if they had the money for it, or even enough for a town's entrance fee.

“You've gone quiet again.”

“I'm
thinkin'
.  Pikes.”

“Think out loud.”

It took him a moment to stop grinding his teeth.  He cared for her—he really did.  Maybe not with an all-consuming passion; maybe not even enough to be called love.  But he wanted her safe and happy and close.  It was just difficult to hold onto those feelings when she kept badgering him.  “I feel stupid when I think out loud.”

“You do it with the Guardian all the time.”

“Yeah.  Exactly.”

She blew out a breath.  “Come on, Cob.  You're too private.  This isn't just about you.”

“I know that!”

“Then tell me what's going on.  The black water...”

“I didn't summon it.  It jus' crept up.  It's—“  He couldn't tell her about his mother, calling to him from the Dark.  To speak of it would make it real, and he didn't think he could bear that.  “It's not under my control anymore, if it ever was.  I'm sorry.”

She gave him a frustrated look.  “Why apologize if it's not your fault?  Anyway...at least it dealt with the metal people.  They weren't Muriae, were they?  I thought so at first, but then they started using magic, and Muriae don't do that.  Brancir doesn't allow it.”

“Yeah.  That's why they fought with Enkhaelen in the first place, because he was combinin' metal with magic.  Which means those couldn't be...”  He trailed off, blinking.  “Those couldn't be the ones who kidnapped his daughter.  But that was clearly her.”

“Mariss?”  Fiora reached up to touch the hilt of the silver sword, once again strapped across her back.  “She wanted this.  Said it was her birthright.  So yeah, it must have been her.  But then how did she get there?  Shouldn't she be in Muria?”

“I figured she'd been killed.  That's what Enkhaelen's in-law was planning to do in his nightmare, but...”  Cob shook his head, scowling.  “It was weird enough already, so maybe it wasn't true.  Just a fear, y'know?”

“But if she wasn't kidnapped, then why did he attack all our temples back then?”

“Maybe she was, but he was wrong about who did it.  Pikes, this is a lotta speculation.  All we know is she's alive, she's dangerous, and I think she wants to kill him.”

Fiora stared up at him.  “Her father?”

“He killed her mother.”

“But you said it was an accident.”

“I said—  Look, all I know is what I saw in his nightmare.  I don't think we can trust it to be the truth.  He could've lied, the Nightmare Lord could've twisted things, or maybe he doesn't even know, because he was out of his pikin' mind by the end of it.”

“Or he wasn't, and he just wants you to think he was.”

“Right.  So...”  Cob scrubbed a hand across his face.  “So she was there at Hlacaasteia, and she tried to get the sword and take the Guardian from me so she could fight him.  Maybe.  And he was there, because I saw the wings, so he might know now—or maybe he's always known.  Or maybe he doesn't.  I don't know!”

Fiora mulled it over, then said, “There's a lot going on in your head.”

“You asked.”

“Well, I don't think we can figure it out unless we go back and talk to her, which we can't.  So my question is, who's controlling the fake silvers?”

“The haelhene, obviously.”

“No, because they came and found me in the Grey after I called to my goddesses.”

Cob eyed her.  “You jus' said Brancir doesn't allow magic.”

“She doesn't!”  Clearly frustrated, Fiora looked away toward the hills.  “A long time ago, before humans existed, there was a war between the metals who supported the use of magic and those who opposed it.  The mage-metals tried to contact a great entity to use its power against their foes—something like the Outsider.  But it backfired on them, and they were annihilated along with half of the Metal Primordial.  The remaining half became Brancir.”

“If all the mage-metals died, then how—“

“Well, obviously they didn't.  I don't know anything about them, I just know that Brancir hates magic so much that she joined the Trifold specifically to get help against Daenivar's followers, back when they were infecting Kerrindryr and Muria with nightmare magic.”

“What?  When did that happen?”

Her look of bafflement matched his.  “You don't know?  But you're Kerrindrixi...”

He reddened.  “I lived in a cave, all right?  I didn't go t' school.  There was one in the village, but m'mother wouldn't allow it.”

“What?  Why?”

“She said it was dangerous t' go up and down the cliffs too much.  Plus there were the goats t' look after, and...”  He sighed.  “I don't know.”

“So your parents never taught you your own history?”

“M'father was never around, and mother didn't talk much.”

“But...  All right,” said Fiora in a tiptoe voice that set Cob's nerves on edge.  He hated thinking about the past, and that pitying look on her face was too much.  “Anyway, it was during the war that led to the Portal and the Seals.  Daenivar of Nightmares and his brother Rhehevrok were the instigators; they'd been the patrons of Lisalhan for a long time, and we think they wanted to bring the rest of the north under their sway.  So Daenivar's cultists started spreading this...nightmare-plague in the neighboring empires.  It made people paranoid and aggressive, and really took root among the soldiers in Altaera.  They started doing horrible things, massacring civilians and burning towns and starting riots—even in their own territory.  That was how Breana was martyred: she tried to stand up to her infected captain and was executed.

“It got so bad that Altaera began to fall apart.  All its barons were at each other's throats, and the northern ones started raiding Kerrindryr and spreading the infection.  Brigydde wanted to stomp it out, so she raised Breana and reached out to Brancir—who'd turned her down before.  This time, they joined forces and contained the nightmares.

“Except then the Sealing happened, which obliterated Lisalhan and nearly ruined everyone else.  Sister Merrow thinks the goddesses lost containment of the nightmare plague, and that's why Jernizan has been a crazy place ever since.”

Cob snorted.  “Sounds about right.”

“But anyway, Brancir would never work with a magic-user, and neither would Breana.  So how could the fake silvers find me in the Grey?”

“Maybe the sword?  It only resists Enkhaelen's magic.”

Fiora bit her lip.  “If so, then they can track us—but they haven't.”

“That we know of.”

“I don't think they're subtle.  But how would they have known about it?  The skinchangers wouldn't tell them, and Ilshenrir said the wraiths hate Daenivar so it couldn't've been him...”