The Living Throne (The War of Memory Cycle Book 3) (86 page)

Only the portrait of the silver-haired woman remained in its place on the far wall.

“Clothes,” said Enkhaelen, tapping a chest.  “Food, water, fuel.  Weapons.  Geraad, I know you've been reading my books of old wards.  The rest are here.”  He indicated one of the bookcases against the wall.  “Make time to study them.  You may need the knowledge.”

“But...what—?”

“Everyone in?  Sit down and be quiet.  I have work to do.”

The metastatics immediately grabbed some cushions and made a nest in the corner.  Geraad chose a chair hitched up against the desk, his fingers drawn magnetically to the shroud.

“No touching, Geraad,” said Enkhaelen, and he flinched and sank into his seat.

To distract himself from the shroud, he fixed his gaze on the necromancer.  Enkhaelen wore unlawful gear: a short black coat, tunic and breeches that gleamed with silver embroidery, hard boots with runed heels, and an unusual amount of pins and rings.  Geraad had never seen him like this; it was disconcerting.

From his pockets, Enkhaelen drew two rune-etched wedges that Geraad recognized as modified portal-stakes.  He stepped into the still-open doorway and drove first one, then the other into the inner edge of the frame, penetrating the obsidian like soft clay.  Then he pulled two more stakes out and jammed them into the top of the frame, then two more into the floor.

Stepping back, he began to weave energy between them.

Why place a portal there when he has half a dozen frames?
Geraad wondered.  The necromancer's clawing- and pushing-gestures were unusual for opening a passage, and as he sent them in all directions, it seemed to Geraad that he was casting portal-strands into the chamber itself rather than focusing them on the stakes.

Then the sigils on the walls lit up, followed by a seismic shock.

Geraad grabbed at the desk, eyes wide.  He had felt mild tremors down here before, but this one came with a muffled crack of stressed rock.  No fissures showed on the walls, no dust sifted down from the ceiling, but the bowls of the braziers rattled and the stacked crates seemed to sway.  Another tremor struck as soon as the first one died.

“What's going on?” he said, trying to hold down his panic.  No one answered.  A moment later the room seemed to twist, a shuddering roar rising from floor and walls and ceiling alike, and the lanterns toppled from their crate to go rattling away across the stone.  One of the braziers tipped, spilling half its charcoal before Wydma managed to lunge and stabilize it.

Another twist, another gut-wrenching sensation of being reoriented along with the room.  Geraad reached out to weave wards around the lanterns and braziers, pinning them down, then added more to press the crates and chests into place.  Enkhaelen was still making his shaping, scraping gestures, and past him—through the faint shimmer of the stakes—the laboratory was gone, replaced by a wall of broken stone.

Then the chant changed.  The gestures became pulling instead of cutting, more like proper portal-craft.  The chamber ceased to shake, and Geraad exhaled but did not release his wards.

Tension flooded in: the familiar gut-knotted feeling that came in the first half-instant of a crossing.  But this one stayed, and Geraad shifted uncomfortably as it squeezed at his innards, his brain, his eyes—every soft organ pressed against some unyielding arcane membrane.  He heard Wydma groan, saw Tarren's eyes widen.  Even Enkhaelen's gestures seemed heavy, sluggish, as he continued his spell.

And then—

—freefall, heart in his throat, the image through the doorway no longer stone but stars that wheeled drunkenly through blackness, gravity a fine thread that could not keep him from rising like a kite from the chair—

—then slamming into that soft force again, his guts trying to turn themselves inside out, his back smacking into the arm of the chair as reality pulled him down.  The parcels slid into him, the crates knocked against his wards, and as the floor shuddered like a ship running aground, he felt it in his teeth, his balls, the space behind his eyes.  That horrible snap of portal disjunction, reverberating through his unprepared flesh.

Humans were not made for such things.

Nor were offices.  But the view outside the door showed snow-covered evergreens and rocky slopes, pale sky, grey ruins.

Nearby, Tarren made a strangled sound, then doubled over and puked on the floor.

Geraad clamped a hand over his mouth, but though he was used to portals, that long drawn-out crossing had already forced his guts up into his chest.  He managed to gain his feet and stumble nearly to the door before the vomit rose, and Enkhaelen propelled him the rest of the way out.

The energy in the doorway had thinned to a veil, and when he broke through, the cold hit him like a fist.  He stumbled to one knee among the rocks and heaved his last meal out, and the scything wind stole the stink of it like a mercy.  Tarren and Wydma stumbled out soon after, one green, the other pale, to lean heavily against the wall of their traveling chamber.

Geraad looked back at it, blinking through queasy tears.  The door-frame, which had been a handspan wide before, had been sheared away where the stakes split it, leaving them exposed in their settings like nails in splintered wood.  That split continued in all directions, so that the walls looked roughly peeled.  The ceiling was now a low domed roof, the floor a foundation resting on cracked slate, the sides curving into a circle.  He remembered the twisting feeling as the chamber had separated itself from the rock of its birth, and it almost made him ill again.

Rising shakily, he pushed the spoiled snow away from the entry with his boot, then applied a fistful of clean snow to his sweating brow and neck.  It helped a bit.

Beyond, old ruins stretched toward a high cliff with a notch of stairs running up it.  Evergreens stood thick at the top, disguising anything beyond.  The sky was occluded, the forest silent in all directions.  Strangely familiar...

“Everyone back in.  I've cleaned,” said Enkhaelen.  The disheveled threesome obeyed.

An acid tang still hung in the air but the necromancer was already burning herbs to deal with it, one of the braziers ablaze.  The floor by the couple's cushions held a fine patina of ash.  Once they had all slouched back into their places, Enkhaelen gestured toward the entry with his burning herb-bundle and said, “So.  I'm sure you're wondering why we're here.  This is...not a refuge of mine, but close enough.  The locals will help you if I don't return, just remember to drop my name frequently.  Would that I could leave you in a city, but—“

“Wait,” said Geraad, struck by a memory of the scrying mirror.  “This looks like where we were tracking Cob and his friends.  Before you returned with that arrow in you.”

“The Garnet Mountains.  My old home.”  The necromancer gestured vaguely toward where the cliff would be.  “Don't go up there.  It's in ruins now, unstable, and one of my enemies has been here recently.  He might return, but he shouldn't be able to bother you.  Just don't leave the chamber unless necessary.”

“Who is he?”

“God of Nightmares.  Vicious brat.  But you're a mentalist.  I've been told it's possible to block him out with your talents, so keep those mind-shields up on everyone.”

Geraad nodded.

“And I need you to reset your Sanctuary spell to here.  Immediately.  If I'm not back in four days, abandon this place; there's a portal-frame in that bottom chest with some pre-set destinations, so just set it up and go.  Understood?”

Geraad nodded again, more slowly.

Enkhaelen favored him with a crooked smile.  He had been distant since the start of this, but now he moved close and in his features Geraad read wryness and worry, excitement and fear.  “If I don't return, all my books are yours,” he said.  “All my trinkets, my tools.  Some are still in storage, and I've left notes on how to get them out.  Anything you're not willing to take, destroy.  This chamber won't move without me and its protections won't last forever.

“You two,” he said, looking to the metastatics, “you help and guard him.  Obey him as if he were me.”

“Yes, boss.”

“What are you going to do?” said Geraad, at a loss.  He had never sought power, only comfort, and then only enough to suit his needs.  The thought of all the tools and materials Enkhaelen must have packed away made his head swim.

Enkhaelen's smile turned a shade warmer.  “Don't be concerned.  Just prepare.  You're sensible; I trust you'll keep your head down and your wits together.  Soon, your enemies will no longer exist, and if you can hide from mine, you'll live long and well.”

His mouth went dry. 
My enemies?  The Gold mages?  What are you going to do?

“One more thing,” said Enkhaelen, and retrieved the parcels from the desk.  He pitched the grey-wrapped one to Tarren, the violet to Wydma, then handed the green one to Geraad.  “A few personal selections.  Didn't want you to have to rummage through my trinkets in a panic should you fall under threat.”

At Enkhaelen's nod, Geraad undid the cords keeping the parcel together.  The outside layer was a winter-weight robe stitched subtly with silver thread, its runes so neat and tiny that Geraad had to squint to decipher them.  But his hands knew the shape of their energies: layer upon layer of regenerating wards, the magic already infused into the threads to maintain themselves rather than leech from Geraad.  Enchantments against cold, against heat, and a few unfamiliar sigils at the collar—Gheshvan writing.

Within, a set of silver armbands covered in more Gheshvan runes, which felt to his senses like an absorption ward and a vent.  A notebook.  A ring of keys.  And a long knife in a sheath, enough energy humming within its amber hilt to kill a team of draft-hogs.

He looked up at Enkhaelen, overwhelmed, and the necromancer smiled slightly.  “Take care of yourself.  I'm for the war.”

“Wait,” said Geraad, rising.  He still had so many questions, and these changes clenched an anxious fist around his heart.  Under Enkhaelen's pale gaze, he tried to fit his thoughts together, but the first thing that came out was, “We don't even have a door.”

“The barrier there will keep out trouble.  If you must, you can put up an opaque field.  You know how?”

“Yes.”

“Good. 
Sanctuary
.”

Mouth half-open, hand half-raised, Geraad stared into the empty spot where Enkhaelen had been.  He almost couldn't believe it.

“Not one for long goodbyes, our Maker,” said Tarren.

Beyond the door-frame, the evergreens bowed their heads to the mountain wind; within, it was warm and there was food and drink and work to be done.  Geraad's lips shaped the Sanctuary spell, but even if he declared it, he would go to his Master suite in Valent—not to the underground complex.  He had never trusted Enkhaelen enough to reset it.

He'll return.  How can he not?

Yet in his heart, Geraad Iskaen wasn't so sure.

*****

Enkhaelen reappeared at his tether-point in the laboratory and immediately removed the spell.  It felt strange to be unbound after such a long time, but it was necessary.

The other spells on the walls, ceiling and floor had already been drained away, either into his reservoir or back into the magma pool.  Only the cooling-runes remained active to keep the great number of bodies in good repair.

He scanned their ranks as he moved to the deactivated portal-frames.  Over the decades he had spent down here, he had expanded his laboratory many times, so that what had once been a mere ten mortuary slabs were now two hundred.  At times, even those had not been enough, like when his minions had delivered him the Gold company that had tried to ambush Cob.  He'd needed to discard most of his old specimens to have space for them.

That inconvenience was now an opportunity.

On the slabs were the hundred-and-ten-odd bodies he had selected from that batch, most of them soldiers.  Before last night, they had lain open to the cool laboratory air, partially dissected; he had spent the evening and much of the morning finalizing his additions and stitching them back up, plus finding clothing.  Each now had a bundle at the foot of its slab.

It was time.

With a gesture, he brought forth his puppeteer's wheel.  Blue-white tendrils flowed across his back and shoulders, laced into intricate patterns down his arms, then collected at his fingers before separating into threads so fine as to be invisible.  The wheel itself hung in stasis at his back, and he snapped his arms out to the sides to release its layers.

Six blue imprints appeared at his shoulders: translucent images of his arms in three different poses, each holding a different section of the threads.  He examined them with his arcane senses, then decided on the upraised right-armed layer.  Moving his arm into position, he synchronized with it and collapsed the other layers down, leaving his left arm bare and his right covered in a mere third of its former strands.

He canceled the stasis, allowing the wheel to begin its slow complex rotation, then twitched his fingers and smiled as twenty bodies jerked in response.

For a few moments, he did diagnostics—each finger controlling four, sending him feedback from re-firing nerves to confirm that they were in operable condition.  Once satisfied, he switched back to crowd-mode and began standing them up.