The Living Throne (The War of Memory Cycle Book 3) (7 page)

“So unless there is something else, this meeting is over.”

The various creatures looked to each other, but no one objected, so Cob took a deep breath and shook off his antlers and armor.  Eyes immediately turned from him and conversations kindled, and feeling suddenly anonymous, Cob stepped down from the slab to join his friends.

“Well, that was weird,” said Fiora, beckoning for him to sit by her.

He did, though kept himself positioned to see the crowd as he hooked an arm around her waist.  “More than you know.  But I don't think it changed anythin'.”

“So we're still going to the Palace?  Alone?”

Senses open, he felt how Lark flinched, and how Dasira's shoulders tightened.  “I think we all know there's only one way in,” he said.  “The way I've been tryin' to go all this time.”

Fiora stared at him.  “You're not serious.”

“I am.”

“
The piking pilgrimage?
”

He sighed.  They had discussed their plans last night, around the fire at the mouth of the wolves' cave, and he had floated the idea of just walking into Daecia City.  After all, it was getting close to Midwinter, and while pilgrims were admitted to the holy city year-round, the Midwinter and Midsummer celebrations were the biggest draws.  Perhaps they could slip in with the crowds.

“It's a solid option,” said Dasira with reluctance.  “We can't trek through the swamp, anyway.  It's too big.”

Fiora glared.  “I refuse to masquerade as an Imperial!”

“I thought your Order was keen on wearing others' colors and 'fixing' them from within.”

“It's not the same.  And what do we do once we get there?”

“Kill Enkhaelen.”

“Without weapons?  Without armor?”

Dasira smirked.  “I can hide mine.  What you do about yours is your problem.”

“It's
our
problem!  We're a team!”

“Maybe you haven't noticed, but you and I aren't exactly—“

“Stop,” said Cob.  “Fiora's right: we're a team.  But Das is right too: we need to go in sneakily.  And if Das thinks the pilgrimage plan will work, we trust her, because she's the only one who's been to the Palace.  She knows what it's like.”

“More or less,” Dasira hedged.  “It's...changeable, and I haven't been back in years.  The only constant is that the Emperor controls it utterly—Palace, City, and all its villages and roads.  If we do anything there to alert him, he'll catch us.”

“So, no Guardian powers,” said Cob.  “No Trifold prayers.  No shadows.”

“No shadows in Daecia anyway,” mumbled Lark.  “Too much light.”

He grimaced.  She hadn't looked up from her hands since the meal, and by the slump of her shoulders, she had already conceded defeat.  It hurt to see.  They had never been particularly friendly, but he had known her longer than any but Dasira, and he wanted her safe.  She deserved better than what his presence had done to her life.

“You don't have to come,” he said.  “Y'can call the shadows and have them take you home.”

“Home,” she murmured.  Her hands fisted in the orange fabric in her lap.  “Home is flaming ruins, Cob.  Didn't you hear?  Home is gone.  I asked those pikers to take me back but they said it was too dangerous—that I should stay with
you
, because you were doing something
important
.  More important than my city, my people, all of those lives—“

Dasira set a quelling hand on her arm, and though her shoulders shook, her voice tempered.  “I'm not going anywhere,” she said.  “Not yet.”

Cob nodded cautiously.  “And no one else wants to leave?”

“No, Guardian,” said Ilshenrir.  The others just favored him with looks of disbelief.

“Fine.  So we have our travel papers.  But we need pilgrim gear.”

“Easy,” said Dasira.  “Any city will sell some.”

“Then we need to get out of the mountains.  Back the way we came—“

“Absolutely not.  Trivesteans shoot on sight.  We go north into Riddian, then bend west, hit the Imperial Road and follow it in.  It should take...”  She squinted at nothing.  “Not sure where we are in the Garnets, but I would say about thirty days at walking pace.”

Cob looked to the mother moon, still hanging high.  The months followed its phases, and by its waxing face, he guessed it to be the 20th, give or take a day.  “That puts us into next month—next year, really.  And we can't use the shadows or a portal.”

“True.  But if you want to get there for the festival, then we've got sixteen days plus Midwinter's four, plus Darkness Day, and your Guardian pace isn't exactly walking.”  She gave a dry smile.  “I think we can do it.”

The thought of approaching the Palace at the dark of the moon, during the longest night of the year, gave Cob a shiver.  He wondered what would happen once they closed the Seals.  If there really was a new Portal within the Palace, situated on the Seal of Air...

If that was where the Light came through...

No, that's ridiculous.  There was light before the Portal, and there will be light after it.

Still, to finish the pilgrimage he had started months ago under a misguided sense of penitence would be a strange experience.  In his mind's eye he saw the white city as Haurah had seen it, pristine and silent, and could not deny his reverence.  He had lived in the faith for long enough that the idea of fighting it still felt wrong.

I'll manage
, he told himself. 
It's not about the Light.

“Then that's it,” he said.  “We hit the Imperial Road disguised as pilgrims, infiltrate the Palace, and kill Enkhaelen.  All by the end of Midwinter.”

His friends nodded, but he caught them glancing past him.  Frowning, he half-turned to find a line of skinchangers and beast-folk behind him, ears tucked and hands clasped around small parcels or else folded as if in prayer.  At his gaze, heads ducked and eyes averted shyly.

Fiora murmured, “They've been gathering since you stepped down.  I thought maybe we should give you a chance to cool off though, since you were scaring them before.”

“I—what?”

“You have these long silences.  I know you're talking to the Guardian, but they're still unnerving, and these people don't know you.  Plus you were getting angry up there, and you, um, gesture to yourself.  It's weird.”

Cob gave her a sour look, but she was right.  These people deserved better than his temper and the Guardian's secrecy.  Better than the Ravager's psychosis too.

But he didn't have anything else to give.  He hardly knew where he stood in this fight, and every new revelation made him want to change sides or run away.  He couldn't bind himself to the skinchangers' cause either, not when it meant they'd hunt humans.

He was beginning to hate this job.

That didn't keep him from rising, stepping away from his friends and beckoning the first skinchanger forward.  Obsequious and antsy, the wolf-man padded forward on paw-like feet to offer a bone charm carved with deer and a careful, close-mouthed smile.

Cob made himself smile back and accept the offering, and the many that followed.

*****

Time passed in a blur of gifts and well-wishes, requests and queries.  The owl-folk flew off to hunt after presenting Cob with two long white feathers; he stuck one into the cord that held his short ponytail and gave the other to Fiora, who passed it to Lark.  The cat-man slunk around but never came up; the lizard-person offered some kind of mantle of reeds and stone beads but couldn't get an explanation out through constant yawning.

The wolf-folk presented the travel-gear he had requested—a new quiver of arrows for Lark, hide bedrolls, preserved meats, bone tools and refurbished packs—plus more ceremonial ornaments than he could actually wear.  After the first dozen, he brought his antlers out to hang bracelets and charms on them, ignoring the girls' snickers because the wolves seemed to appreciate it.  The bears, blessedly, just seemed to want to sniff him over and then clasp his arms, and though their paws could wrap neatly around his biceps, he didn't feel intimidated with the Guardian inside.

A few asked for blessings, which after some concentration he managed.  It felt like when he had dragged his herd through the long run to the mountains, every hoofbeat infusing them with his own vitality—only done through his hands.  A connection, a release of tension.  A balancing of energies between the strong and the weak.

After the skinchangers came a crowd of stone-folk, who did not bother to stand in line but surrounded him and peppered him with overlapping comments about the Empire's depredations and their kin in the west.  To keep himself from shouting at them, he designated one as the spokes-rock, which told him about gems and metals torn from living earth and about kinfolk hacked to pieces, their bodies rendered for minerals.

It was difficult to hold his tongue about his past in Kerrindryr's quarries, but he promised to consider their plight.  What in pike's name they thought he could do about it, he didn't know.

Everyone asked such questions.  When would he stop the humans?  When would he return the bodies of their slain kin—the pelts and skulls, the jewels, even the stones from the cobbled streets.  When would he chase the hybrid plague from these lands?

Throughout his fumbled answers, the Guardians stood around him, watching.

The hogs sent a single representative, who told him that they would seek him in the morning when they could see.  The rest stayed at their bonfire, drinking and laughing, and he found himself wishing that he was over there rather than being berated by rocks.  But finally the spokes-rock stepped forward to pat his arm and said, “We know that the flesh does not share our concerns.  We will give you aid nevertheless.”

Then it and its brethren turned and stomped away, leaving a handful of tree-folk to stare at him from across the gap.

He beckoned them forward, but none moved.  That wasn't strange; most of his visitors had been anxious at first, more prepared for a blow than a smile.  These were the last in line, though, and as the silence stretched, Cob felt a weird itch in his chest, up by his collarbones.  He scratched it absently through the mantle of reeds and stones.

The skin broke.  Something emerged.

He grabbed at it in instinctual horror and felt a soft object squish between his fingers.  The thing retracted, slipping his grip with ease, then a sharp pain came from the other side.  Under his shocked gaze, a tendril of red vine grew from his skin, tipped with a soft red bud that spread into a tiny eye.

It stared at him, then swiveled to consider the tree-folk.  As one, they retreated toward the woods.

“Hoi—
hoi!
” Cob said sharply at the little eye.  He recognized it now; the Thorn Protector of Haaraka had stared at him through a much larger orb, then stabbed him with two thorns in the spots from which these growths had sprung.  Revulsion demanded that he rip them from his flesh, but he had already accidentally squashed one eye.  He didn't want to anger the other.

And still the Guardians watched.

The eye looked up at him, its bud closing around it briefly like a blink.  He didn't know what to say.  The tree-folk were still retreating, ungainly on knobbled limbs, and though he called after them, they didn't look back.

“Pikes,” he muttered, then told the eye, “See what you did?”

It blinked again.

“They don't like you, huh.  Well, I don't like you in my skin.  What in blazes d'you think you're doing there?”

Blink.

He exhaled heavily and wiped his hand on his breeches.  “Fine.  Not like I don't have enough parasites.  But y'better be more useful than the pikin' Guardian.”

It bobbed slightly—perhaps a nod—then retreated back inside him.  His skin sealed smoothly over it, and he shuddered.

The line was gone, so he started pulling off the ornaments as he looked around.  No one lurked in the moon-set dark; the hogs' campfire and his friends were all that remained.  Frowning, he wondered where the copper person had gone.  He still wanted to speak with it.

“I'm gonna take a walk,” he told his friends as he dropped the ornaments on the pile of gifts.  “Go join the hogs.”  There were a few nods, a few looks of objection, but no real argument; they all looked exhausted.  At least among the hogs, they should be safe.

Turning his back on them, he headed uphill toward the thicker woods.

Haurah, we need to talk
, he thought, and instantly she was at his side.

By the look of her, she felt contrite: ears tucked tight, gaze averted.  But she did not speak, and as they entered the trees, Cob mumbled, “You need t'tell me what you know.”

'About?'

He stopped and stared at her.  “I'm done askin' nicely.  You lot need to open yourselves to me and quit disappearin' any time somethin' sensitive comes up.  I don't know why you're hidin' things, but it's not acceptable.  We may not be bound anymore, but goin' after Enkhaelen could still kill the both of us.  Let me in.”

Her wolfish eyes met his, then flicked away. 
'It is not so easy,'
she said. 
'Since we did not mesh with you upon entry, we do not know how much we can show you without overwhelming you.'