The Living Throne (The War of Memory Cycle Book 3) (80 page)

Weshker let his hands fall, though when the Field Marshal looped it around another time, he could not help his anxious whine.  The foggy warmth still lingered and he felt heavy, torpid.  Like he couldn't fight even if he tried.

“Gaze into the Light,” said the Field Marshal, and Weshker obeyed.

At first it was no different from before, the refractions of the glass and gilt impressive but inanimate.  Then the Field Marshal began intoning some kind of prayer, and a new radiance flamed within the effigy, saturating the room.

The sigils around him kindled in answer.  He started to look down at them but was jerked up by the hair, attention forced back to the flaming wings.  Swallowing his protests, he squinted as the glow made his eyes water, dull spangles already dancing at the center of his vision.

Then the fire gripped him behind the eyes and he saw nothing else.

He felt things, though: crawling beneath the skin of his left arm, chewing at the bone, battering dark wings against his shoulder-blade.  Crows like an infestation parasitizing his body, their struggles muffled by the new-forged bond but persistent, horrible.

And worse, the solid shape beneath his hands.  The legs wrapped around his waist, the heat against his crotch.  The writhing, rhythmic tension so like drowning...

A line of fire tightened around his throat, and he felt himself being pulled away.  He tried to grip the shape—
her
—and felt flesh squeeze from between his fingers like clay, a too-familiar sensation that shot terror up his back.  The legs were roots now, dragging at him, the heat going cold and dark and hungry, and as he was hauled up by the neck he managed to look down...

Her eyes black holes, her skin a pale varnish over rotten wood, breasts like mushroom caps breathing spores, the copper vines of her hair splayed across a black expanse of grave-dirt and bones...

No.  Sanava's not like that.  I don't know what this is, I don't understand...

Then he was yanked from her, and felt all those Dark things recoiling into his flesh—hiding from the Light in the only place they could.  Black water filled his mouth and nostrils, welling up from deep inside.  It tasted of grief and loneliness and fear.

The cord tightened again, cutting off its rise.  Stars danced in his eyes.

“You see?  The Darkness brings only suffering,”
said a voice close to his ear. 
“These bestial desires, the demands of the wicked spirits, the rot and ruin that comes to all flesh—they exist because we give in to our weakness.  We serve the wants of our bodies and are tainted by them, rather than transcending these wretched vessels and becoming one with our master.  You feel it, yes?  The corruption in your soul, the degradation of your true self?”

His skin felt afire, pain striating his scalp, and the Dark things writhed and clawed and kicked in his throat and belly, roots cramping his guts and gripping hard around his heart.

It hurts, it hurts...

“Ah, my High Priestess,”
the voice intoned, and he focused enough to see a figure within the flames: pale, translucent, the radiance of the winged-light shining straight through it as it reached out with bright hands.  He tried to rise to it, but the rot-woman hung heavy inside him and the crows thrashed in the cage of his arm as if they could turn him away.

A fiery hand clamped on the back of his neck, lifting him.  Pushing him forward. 
“We are not born Darkened,”
the voice said. 
“As children, we are drawn to the Light, enraptured by it.  Our eyes are open to its vast glory.  Yet there is a taint within all of us, for we come from tainted flesh, and if we do not fight to free ourselves from it, we can never join with the Light.

“You are not unsalvageable.  You have lain with a Dark woman, but this is not strange, for women are, by nature, Dark.  There is a hole within them, and as they mature, it grows until it hollows them out, leaving them vessels for corruption.  All who lay with them are infected by it, and all they birth are tainted.  Even those who have been purified can fall to their wiles.

“That is why we do this.  The poison must be drawn and the desire ended.  You cannot stand before our master's eye, and so you must expel your taint the way it came in—to fling it into the furnace of a purified vessel, a burning crucible.  This will make you worthy of our purpose.”

Brought close, he saw the translucent shape no longer above him but on level, saw the hands reach out.  Felt them on his face.

Small.

Remembered the little girl.

No.  No, no...

His knee hit something solid.  Marble.  His hand fell from hovering near the cord, caught the edge of the altar then slid to find a bare leg—one his fingers could nearly close around.  One that twitched at his touch, transmitting fear.

Planting his palms on the stone, he tried to push away, thinking,
No no no no no...

The grip on his neck clenched, thick fingers digging into the muscle.  At the same time, the cord contracted.  Everything was fire. 
“Do not recoil, but embrace the Light through her,”
came the voice like thunder. 
“This is for the good of your soul.  Nerice!”

“I've already dosed him twice, sir, but he's been inoculated,”
came a fainter voice. 
“It just won't stick.“

“Give him another.  And you, mage, help him.  I will not have fear keep him in the Dark.”

The itch that had been hidden by the fire came to the fore, crawling along the base of his skull.  He tried to fight it but it was like being dragged through wet sand: nothing to grip, all the world slipping through his fingers as his body turned traitor.  In desperation he scrabbled at the Dark things he could still feel inside, and felt them redouble their struggles.  His left arm was his...

“Embrace the Light,”
growled the voice, too close,
“or else be cleansed in death.”

His heart quailed.  Since being pulled from the ashes of his village, he had always been a coward, compliant and skittish and weak.  But this—

Then needles sank into his shoulder, injecting molten lava to his veins, and he lost himself entirely.  A hand trailed down his chest to direct the flow—down to where the Darkness had collected, aching to escape.

That part in him still said
No, no
, but he could not speak, and the nails bit in again, and the vise on his neck forced him forward, and there was the little shape beneath him.  A haven, a blessing, glorious and bright.

And when they joined, he shattered.

*****

There were times, after that, when someone tried to wake him but he refused.  There was a blanket, and a bed beneath him, and he wrapped himself in that pitiful armor and curled into a knot.  His throat felt raw, his neck grooved by the white cord, and when his hand quested timorously downward he found himself sticky.

He wanted his knives so badly that he could feel them in his hands, but their phantom blades could not pierce his skin.  And so he stayed where he was, silent and whipcord-tight.

But Nerice wouldn't go.

“The Field Marshal is not satisfied,”
she said.  “He is unsure if you have been fully cleansed.  I'm to make sure the bonds on your Dark riders don't leak—to stress-test them, so to speak.  Don't worry.  I've been purified myself, though not enough to be a vessel.

“You should enjoy it while you can.  Once your purification is verified, you'll be cut.”

He wanted to drown, to disappear, but no matter how perfectly he imagined it, he could not make the air flee his lungs.  He could not get away.

And when she dug him from the blankets, her nails piercing through every layer he had woven around himself, he was too broken to resist.

*****

Captain Sarovy looked at the lieutenant's fledge, then to Linciard's strained face, and said, “Keep it.”

“But sir, I—“

“He ceded it.  In the Sapphire Eye, we challenge for rank as often as we are promoted, and I will run my company the same.  He ceded it, so it is yours.”

“But I haven't been worthy.  I went behind your back with Rallant.  I couldn't tell you in time—“

Sarovy cut him off with a sharp gesture.  They stood at the center of the small storage room where they had put the city's Houndmaster, Chelaith—or what was left of him.  Delimbed, eviscerated but still breathing, the turncoat ruengriin lay swaddled on a cot, his skin stitched thickly with Messenger Cortine's white threads.

Cortine had only recently left, taking the rest of the crowd with him.  Only Vrallek remained, arms crossed, leaning against the closed door.  His starburst eyes were fixed on his fellow Houndmaster as if oblivious to the other two.

“You informed me when you could,” said Sarovy, “and now I know.  Now I will take care.  The Messenger, the colonel...”  He shook his head.  “I have to think on this.”

“What does the White Flame want with you, sir?  Why do they keep trying to pike us?”

Sarovy opened his mouth to confess.  Despite his failings, Linciard was his most trusted man, and deserved to know.  No—all the men deserved to know.  Secrets and lies were his commanders' ways, not his.

But he could barely credit it, no matter the evidence, and morale was bad enough already.  It could wait.  “They are not 'trying to pike us', lieutenant.  They are doing their jobs.”

Linciard scowled.  “What piking jobs are those?  Cortine is trying to steal our injured away—you heard him.  'Converting' them at the Palace?  What's that supposed to mean?”

The unraveling floor...  “It is not my place to speculate.”

“We won't let him, right?  I know he's a priest, but...”

“It is not for us to choose.”

“I don't like this.”

“We must focus on the cultist threat, lieutenant, not our own side.”

On the cot, Chelaith chuckled wetly.  His once-handsome face had been ravaged as much by the loss of his illusion-pendant as from Vrallek's claws: cheeks deformed by chitinous plates, long hair stippled with fine needle-like spines.  “The threat is all from your side,” he gargled.  “You are not like them, captain.  You would not still have me if you were.  I see the marks of my Maker upon you.  Your masters are not his friends, nor yours.”

Linciard looked to him questioningly, but Sarovy said nothing.  He already knew that Chelaith had been assigned here by Prince Kelturin, the former Crimson General.  That he was also entangled with this Enkhaelen was no surprise.  But what any of it meant, or what he should do about it...

A change was coming.  He felt it.  He feared it.  And he had no idea how to react.

“You have no more to say?” he addressed Chelaith.

The Houndmaster sneered.  “I did my job.  Didn't ask about the city's other factions, because what did I care?  And I haven't had orders in months.  If you want to blame the Maker for your problems, or the Prince, or the city, or the cult, go ahead.  But I think it'd be wiser to look at the bastards behind you, before it's too late.”

It already is
, thought Sarovy grimly.

Chapter 21 – Snakes

Finrarden by day was no different than by night.  When Lark stepped out from the inn—the Ragged Hen, to judge by the shabby-looking garto on the sign—the streets were just as full.  A troupe of musicians held the center of the plaza, with dancers in modesty-bands and body-paint performing an elaborate mock battle.  One side was green, their scales striped with sweat, the other orangey-brown with faux tails strapped to their backsides.  An old man in a camp-chair intoned a slow oration in a dialect she could not follow.  They had quite an audience, some mouthing the words.

Daylight also picked out the self-segregation of the populace.  The shops and stalls bore distinct markers of allegiance: cloth banners hanging from windows or handcart-bars, used as display blankets, or worn as shawls, in a wide number of patterns and sigils that Lark guessed to indicate clans.  As she drifted through the plaza, she noticed the same marks on many of the shoppers, who moved together in loose packs and crowded rivals away from the stalls they visited.

Some gave her sidelong looks as she passed, but seemed largely indifferent, even making room if necessary.  Toward each other, they were not so hospitable; in one glance, she saw two pairs of packs facing off at different stalls, their outer ranks of leather-clad sword-bearers and wolf-dogs standing guard over the colorfully-dressed adults and children in the center, their leaders snarling insults.  Smaller altercations stippled the crowd, always between clan-folk.

She shook her head.  It reminded her of the street gangs in Fellen before she'd left—except that instead of small roving groups among a greater mass of unaffiliated shoppers, nearly the whole of the populace moved in these squads.  The few outlanders were ignored, but nowhere did Lark see an unescorted clan woman, or clan men moving in less than a trio.

She couldn't imagine living like that—but then, the entire Imperial East made little sense to her.  The sooner she left it behind, the better.

Scanning the painted walls led her back to the Shadow mark, and she made a mental note of where it pointed.  First, though, she wanted to get her other business out of the way: pawning the fake jewelry, buying the pilgrims' gear, checking for caravans.  The temptation to just run off with the Shadow Folk would be too high if she went straight there.

And, of course, there was the fear.

It had gnawed at her all night.  Even after a wash and a decent meal, and with an actual-though-tiny bed beneath her, she hadn't been able to close her eyes without tensing up.  Were there Imperial agents outside the door?  Were those goblin-fingers scratching at the walls?  What would she find when she got home, beside ashes and corpses?

She almost didn't want to know, but she had an obligation to her
kai
, and she had shirked it for too long.  It didn't matter what the shadowbloods said; they didn't speak for the unbloods.  Cayer had chosen her as his successor specifically to keep them from taking over, and if it meant she'd have to fight them for control...

Well.  After this disastrous excursion, she had enough anger to take on the world.

Plus a few new tricks and tools.  Her orange robe wasn't rumpled, even though she'd slept in it; just a little bit of will sent through its silver embroidery freshened it up like a wash.  She had refilled its defensive runes as well, and by the way the Finrarden folk deferred to her, she supposed she looked like a proper Circle mage.  She had no real plan to pursue magic—not least because the eiyets hated it—but she enjoyed the role and the new knowledge.

As for the water elemental, Ripple, it was a comfort but no replacement for Rian.  It lay looped across her shoulders like a long transparent snake—another reason for the Riddish to keep their distance—but though she'd taught it a few simple commands, she knew she had no hold over it.  Once she left Cob's company, it would probably vanish.

Just as well.  I don't think I can nurture anything ever again.

Making a face, she focused on her task and let the comforting buzz of city life strip away her gloom.  The painted signs led her through alleys and up side-streets, and twice a lurker started toward her from a sunken doorway only to back away when Ripple rose from her shoulders, shimmering in the dim light she managed to conjure in her fingers.  The second man even stammered an apology.

Eventually she found herself in a new district, the east side composed entirely of high wavy-topped walls with compounds nearly invisible behind them.  There was little graffiti, only what she guessed to be the owners' insignias painted at the corners—all involving snakes.  She remembered Dasira's confessions and quirked a smile, wondering which among these were the assassin's relatives.

The other side of the street held shopfronts with plain green awnings, no insignias showing, and while there were still the roving clan-packs, they were smaller and less numerous.  A different breed of Riddish dominated the crowd, many bald, others with slicked-back hair or tight kerchiefs, their clothes all close-cut over narrow shoulders and hips.  Though they walked singly and bore no visible weapons, their eyes followed her far more readily than the gangs' did, and her skin crawled.

Also present were a few threes and fives of Sapphire soldiers, who had been noticeably absent by the north gate plaza, and a scattering of white-robed pilgrims and priests.  She kept her distance from both.

The signage led her first to a ground-floor pawnbroker's, in which she haggled over the jewelry for a good half-mark with a toothless little tattooed man, feigning indignation at every offer and waxing rhapsodic about the imaginary Valent-based jeweler.  The little man was no fool, but she still managed to squeeze a few kifar out of him, and left in a theatrical snit.

Next was the tailor's.  Signs pointed to a second-floor shop with white cloth hanging from its window and a ladder leading up to the balcony.  A slick-haired young person leaned outside, smoking a cheroot; though the insolent gaze and the leather garb said 'boy' to Lark, the curve of the cheek said 'girl'. 
Jeten
, she guessed.

Just inside the door sat a blunt-faced woman, stitching in the natural light; she wore several layers of shawls and a blanket across her lap, no heating-brazier in sight.  No candles either, the shop beyond lit by skylight and tall polished mirrors.

“Mistress,” said Lark, somewhat puzzled.  “Do you make pilgrims' robes?”

The woman blinked, and Lark wondered if she should have stuck with a snooty mage-voice.  But then she rose, folded her work deftly, and beckoned Lark into the dim, crowded space.  “I might have a few left,” she said as she cut between racks of cloth and ribbon, the colors greyed out by the low light.  “Pilgrimage started just after fall harvest; you'll be lucky to make it.  But of course you should try.  It's inspiring to see your kind turn from the Dark.”

Lark's mouth compressed, but she squelched the urge to lecture about the southern Sun God and Moon Goddess.  “Yes, I'm sure.  Only they're not for me.  As you know, a Circle mage is not permitted to go without the traditional robe, even in this circumstance.”  She hoped that was true.  “I have attendants though.  Two men about this tall, and one for a woman about—“

“Man or woman doesn't matter,” said the seamstress.  They passed down a chilly hall to a mirror-lit room of shelves and counters, stocked with tools, cloth scraps and folded garments plus half-made pieces pinned to wicker frames.  The seamstress bee-lined for a stack of white cloth and began shaking out robes and holding them up.

“No?” said Lark.  “They're all the same?”

“All are judged equally by the gaze of the Light.  A bit of cleavage won't help you.”

As they picked through the garments and accessories necessary for the pilgrimage, Lark found herself wryly grateful to be an obvious southerner.  Ignorance that would have been suspicious in an Imperial merely elicited a teaching tone from the seamstress: these were the prayer sashes, stitched with scenes of the Light's ascension, and these were the penance cords, knotted and dyed for the weight of guilt upon the bearer's shoulders.  These were the blessed sandals, hand-coiled from the same fabric that made the robes, and for the barefoot penitents there were blessed foot-cords as well.

“Why are your lamps doused?” she asked finally.

The seamstress raised her brows, but continued packing the robes into a carry-bag.  “It is early, yes, but I have much to repent for, this year.  The ritual of Midwinter instructs us to face the Dark in the world and within ourselves, to purge ourselves of it, and to rise again with the Light at the dawn of the new year.  No candles 'til then, no fires, no lamps.”

Lark stared.  “So you spend half of Midwinter and Darkness Day in the dark?  You'll freeze!”

“Only those who lose their faith in the Light, who succumb to the Darkness inside them, freeze.  I have seen fifty-five new years, my dear.  All in this way.”  Canny-eyed, the seamstress handed over the bag, and added, “You should consider the rite of abnegation.  Magic springs from the Dark.  Its users know nothing of sacrifice, of the Light's pure grace.  Attend the rite and be transformed by his gaze.”

The hairs on Lark's arms and neck stood out straight, but she steeled herself and took the bag from the woman's grip.  Her fingers were like ice.  “I'll...consider it,” she said, and set the coins down on the counter, half-afraid the woman would grab her if she put them in her palm.

Instead, her seamed face broke into a businesslike smile.  “Thank you kindly, and may your path be blessed.”

“Yours too,” Lark managed, and took to her heels.

*****

Cob sat on one end of the narrow bed, Fiora on the other.  Down below, Arik was still snoozing—or at least making faint wheezing noises to convince them he was.  Despite the chill air that seeped through the slit by the roof, they had not managed to come closer than this.

The arrowhead glittered on the blanket between them.  At her request, Cob had managed to pull Fiora into the mentalist impression with him, but she had gleaned no more from it than he had.  They'd needed to hold hands for it, though, and now he couldn't even look at her.

“So what does this mean for us?” she said.

He sighed.  “Well, we know they hate each other.  We know vaguely where Enkhaelen is.”  He took their remaining vor from the deflated coin-pouch and set it on the bed, behind the arrowhead.  “This'll be him, and the arrowhead is the throne.  This's the prince—”  A bronze rakar, which he placed on the far side of the arrowhead.  “And these're the other people.  Mages and the like.”  A scattering of brass nar.

“In the memory,” she said.  “No doubt things will change.”

“Yeah, but all the important people concentrate in this area around the throne, or over here where the mages are.  So those are the two places we need to worry about.”

“What about the guards?”

He made a face.  Geraad hadn't really pinpointed those, too caught up in the drama near the dais.  “Let's pretend the bed's the throne-room.  The guards'd be along the walls, right?  Pretty far.  If we got up to the throne area before someone noticed us, the guards'd never reach us in time, especially if there's pilgrims in the way.”

“All right, but how do we make sure we get that far?”

“I could use some of the Guardian's powers, maybe.  There's a herd-mind that affects all of us.  I could use that to move us to the front of the crowd without makin' a commotion.”

“But won't they notice you?”

“Don't have to bring up the antlers if I don't want to.  Maybe they could sense or see the spirit—especially if they've got wraiths around—but they could probably do that even when it's dormant.”

“Not so easily, though.”

“Y'got a better idea?”

Fiora examined the coins thoughtfully.  With her messy braids and deprivation-sharpened cheeks, she looked so different from the girl he'd met at the temple.  So much a stranger, and yet the mother of his child...

“Is it a secret room?” she said, pointing at the bright-iron vor that indicated Enkhaelen.

“I don't think so.”

“But are you sure?  If it is, there has to be another path that accesses it—one we could maybe sneak down.  If it's not, then what?  He's in the wall?

“Seems like it.”

“So how do we get him if he's in a wall?”

“Well...break it.”

“How?”

Cob stared at the coin.  Having seen the strangeness of the Palace material, he knew better than to think there would be stone or wood around for his use, and doubted he could call any spirits or elementals to aid him.  It was questionable whether the Guardian could even operate in there.  Haurah's experience had only taken her as far as the Imperial City; once within the enclosed space of the Palace, the Great Spirit might lose its grip like in Erestoia.

It was one big blatant trap, yet he couldn't believe the Ravager was trying to trap him.  Not when it was a prisoner itself.  If it truly wanted to be free, then it must think he had a way to get to it.

Unless it's rolling the dice just as much as we are.

“The lever,” he said finally.  “The wall's not earth, but maybe I can still pierce through.”