The Living Throne (The War of Memory Cycle Book 3) (96 page)

“You're going there to die?” said Fiora.

Yendrah gave her a pitying look.  “I'm going to pledge myself.  I've already set my affairs in order.  My life from now on is at the command of the Light and our Emperor.  And what about yours?  Why do you bear swords on the pilgrimage?”

Cob reached automatically to touch the wrapped-up pair of weapons stashed behind them on the bench.  “We're goin' to get them blessed.  To be prepared to fight the Darkness if it rises up.”

“Are you a soldier?”

“Yes.”

“And you, my dear?”  She looked Fiora over critically.  “You're a sturdy girl.  You want to fight too?”

Fiora lifted her chin.  “More than anything.”

“A shame you're Amandic—you are, yes?  If you were Riddish, you could've declared yourself a man.  Or are the Amandic militias allowing women now?”

“Any hand is welcome in a crisis.”

“True enough.  I wish you the best.”

For a moment, Fiora looked startled.  Then she smiled ruefully and inclined her head.  “Thank you.  And...and I for you.”

“Most kind.”

The silence that followed was almost comfortable, the road beneath the wagon smooth enough to lull them toward sleep.  Cob rested his head against the wall and stared into nothing, trying not to think.  Trying just to relax for this peculiar stretch of peace.

He knew it would be brief.

*****

The caravan halted in the early evening.  Snow still gusted down from the hills to the north, so instead of setting up bedding within the wagons, the caravan-owners had most of the passengers move into the shelter they had reached.  Cob and his friends declined; it was not a large building, though it was built more like an inn than the open-plan shelter they had found in the wilds of Amandon.  The caravan-master seemed happy enough to let them stay in their wagon with its little stove.  Yendrah, her nephew and the elders all disembarked, though not without a knowing look from the big woman.

“I wonder if she thinks we're all together,” murmured Fiora as they waited for the last pilgrim to climb down.

“Well, we are.”

“No, I mean
together
-together.”

Cob glanced to Arik, who gave him a flirty look and an eyebrow-waggle that could not have been more exaggerated.  Irritation rose—then abruptly deflated, and he found the nerve to say wryly, “We
have
been sleepin' together.”

The way Fiora beamed at him made him feel like a dog who had learned a trick.

The two of them wrapped up in blankets provided by the caravan-master, while Arik shucked his gear and begged off of dinner in order to go hunting.  Cob watched his tail disappear into the white with only a thread of worry.  By now, he knew the feeling of Arik's essence well enough to find him across any distance, and was sure that if he let the Guardian's aura flare, the skinchanger could find him too.

After he locked the door, he and Fiora made good use of their time alone.

*****

The wind slackened on the second day, though snow kept falling as if sifted through a sieve.  The trio sat outside as much as possible, more comfortable with the muted blankness of the world than the presence of the others.  They went long periods without talking, just watching the hills decline in the north and the inkwood forest scroll by, thickening and then thinning into slimmer, crooked-spined trees.

“The Daecian Swamp,” Fiora murmured once, as the wagon clattered across a bridge over a frozen stream.  The land beyond just looked like forest to Cob, though a forest full of trees bent nearly double by their load of snow.  When he squinted, however, he could see ice beneath the white, and telltale hummocks rising here and there.

To the southeast, the hills mounted toward the Trivestean Tableland.  The carter on the next wagon pointed out that on a clear day they could see Valent, standing at the border between the Amandic plains and the hill-country, but this was not such a day.

Around mid-morning, a cry went up from the lead wagon: Keceirnden.  Cob leaned out from the ledge to squint ahead, but saw only sun-glare on snow.  It took a mark or so for the wagons to pull up to the walls, then another for the gate guards to make their way down the caravan checking travel papers.

Then they were pulling in, past low walls and into streets so packed with people it was a wonder they could move.  Everything was awash in white: white robes, white festival bunting, white banners hanging from the high walls of the fortress that guarded the northward road.  Even the non-pilgrims, bustling about their own business or trying to flog merchandise to the crowd, were doused in white, from bonnets and feathered hats to snow-cloaks emblazoned with the rising phoenix.  Among them, soldiers in Gold and Sapphire uniforms stood out like jewels.

In this crowd, it was pure luck that Cob spotted a white-armored, blank-helmed soldier—and even luckier that the soldier was striding along as if on patrol, and never glanced at the wagons.  “Pikers blend right in,” he muttered to Fiora, who grimaced.

They ate their last free meal with the rest of the pilgrims in the caravan company's stableyard, all lined up on benches with the eldest set near the smoking braziers.  Cob tried not to stare at their neighbors, but he couldn't ignore the obvious trends: maimed men, hard-eyed women, bent old folks and moon-faced children, and more than a few wearing grey mourning veils.  A white-eyed priest came by to bless the food and the travelers, and though Cob thought for sure that they'd be found out, the man passed them without incident.

Afterward, they said their farewells to Yendrah.  “From here, we all walk,” she told them.  “I wish we'd started sooner, but it took my sister forever to decide.  Alas, we probably won't make it for the First Dawn celebration, but I'll be glad to get there any time during Midwinter.”

“The wagons don't go any closer?” said Cob.

Yendrah scoffed.  “Never.  The point of the pilgrimage is to travel the White Road on your own two feet, be granted entry at the gates, and gaze upon the face of the Scion of the Light.  It is
not
to be driven like a tourist.”

As they headed toward the street, Fiora took Cob's arm.  “We'd planned to walk anyway,” she murmured.  “This just means we'll be even more a part of the crowd.”

Cob nodded, trying to figure out where to go.  He had never seen such throngs—not even in the Crimson camp.  The balconies of the two- and three-story buildings were just as full as the streets, and signs hung over nearly every door to advertise vacancies or a lack thereof.  Streams of people moved in all directions, often blocking wagon-traffic, and the buzz of chatter and commerce and prayer made his ears ache.

Finally he spotted the north-gate fortress, and checked his friends' readiness.  Arik was on Fiora's other side, hood up and jaw clenched, with the silver sword strapped across his back.  Fiora carried her own in the same way, and looked resolute.

“If we get separated, we meet on the White Road,” he said.  “Move clear of the mob and wait somewhere visible.  All right?”

“Do you think we need anything?  Supplies?” said Fiora.  “If there are no wagons going north, there might not be waystations.”

Cob frowned and squinted at the crowd.  “Yendrah and the old folks brought no baggage, and I don't see much out there.  We're suspicious enough wi' the swords; no need t' add to it.  If there's no waystations, I can always forage in the swamp.”

Fiora grimaced.  “I suppose.  I'd still like to have something for emergencies.”

“Me too, but...”

“Yeah.  Suspicious.  All right, lead on!”

As they plunged into the crowd, Cob felt the urge to hold his breath.  It was like being swept along through rapids: bodies jostling, voices chanting and cursing, and an insistent push that occasionally gave way to eddies and side-streets and alcoves from which merchants screeched.  He was not the tallest here, not by far.  Men and women with ogrish heritage forded the crowd, trailed by opportunists, while rugged shaggy folk with dun-brown skin drifted like buoys in the current as if too shy to use force.

“Darronwayn,” Fiora told him when he leaned down to ask her, and he finally knew how he could be mistaken for one.

And there were hands everywhere.  He spent half his time steadying people he had jostled, or being grabbed by others, or pushed, or pulled—as if the great fingers of the crowd were trying to separate him from his friends.  Fiora finally hooked an arm around his waist and clutched his belt, and he put an arm around her shoulders, while on her other side Arik looked white around the eyes.  Cob sensed his anxiety, but couldn't do much beyond steer them into an alcove when he saw fur start to sprout from the skinchanger's jaw.

“You can't snap,” he told Arik in a low voice, blocking the crowd with his body.  “It's not that far, and then we'll be on the road and can spread out.”

“Maybe we should put him in the middle,” said Fiora.

He opened his mouth to object, but Fiora had that look in her eye again, and Arik was breathing through his teeth, hands trembling and shoulders flexing weirdly beneath the white robe.  His hair had already greyed back to its normal tone.

“Pike it,” Cob muttered, and nodded.  He hated the idea of Fiora being on the outside edge, but it seemed like do that or have Arik shift in the middle of the street.

They formed up quickly and stepped out again, hands linked behind Arik's back and his arms across both their shoulders.  It was hard to make progress with the three of them so closely abreast, but finally they rounded a corner to see the gate in the distance.

Then Cob's arm began to itch.

*****

Dasira, dressed like a pilgrim, paused at the mouth of an alley to sniff the air.  She had caught Cob's scent from her spot on a rooftop by the eastern gate, where she'd lurked since arriving in Keceirnden last night, but hadn't been able to spot him.  By the time she'd reached street-level, the scent had faded to a wisp and a memory.

It was frustrating, but also heartening.  She'd been right to come here, right to wait, and their reunion was just a matter of time.  Even if she couldn't locate him in this press, she knew where he was going.  The long road would give her plenty of opportunity to catch up.

Still, she could have throttled him for not sensing her.

The scenting organs in the roof of her mouth pointed her toward the north gate.  That was expected, and as she slid back into the crowd, she let her gaze prowl the sidelines.  Priests and templars were out in force, preaching from balconies or policing the plazas, and though she'd yet to hear any uproar, she didn't think Cob could stay undetected forever.  She almost wished he'd circumvented the city and gone straight into the swamp, even though that would have lost her.

She was just turning onto the wide northward boulevard when the blade at her hip gave a twitch.  Her hand fell to it, but she dared not draw; Serindas' light would pick her out plainly among the crowd.

You'd better not be hungry again
, she thought at it.

But the sensation beneath her palm was not the usual demanding throb.  It was sharper, tenser: an alert.

A ripple in the crowd ahead made her look up to see a patrol emerging from a side-street.  A mix of White Flames and mages, they were edged by glimmering wards that kept the civilians back—but what riveted her was the figure in the lead.  It was armored like the rest but held a sword, black-on-black, like a handler might hold a hound on a leash.

Erevard.

He didn't pause, didn't even scan the crowd.  Fronted by the dividing wards, he stalked straight down the street, the same way that Dasira had caught Cob's scent.

Her stomach sank.  She'd known this would happen.  As confusion swirled through the stalled crowd, she slipped between the pilgrims like an eel, hand hooked on Serindas' hilt as she angled after the patrol.

They might start the fight, but she would finish it.

*****

Catching a shift in the mood of the crowd, Cob tried to glance back, but it was like standing against an avalanche.  The press of pilgrims pushed him onward, the sea of whiteness too muddled to make much out.

“Keep moving,” said Fiora, her fingers vise-tight on his.  Between them, Arik staggered drunkenly, lips pulled back from wolfish teeth.

He could feel the skinchanger's phobia like a tick, swelling alongside the ambient unease.  There was a sort of communal spirit in the crowd, individuality squelched by close proximity and common destination, and any shift in emotion propagated swiftly through the mass.  Right now, it felt like a low-grade panic, but he couldn't tell why—

The itch in his arm flared again, and he remembered what it meant.

“He's here.  We have t'go,” he muttered, but when he looked forward, there were no openings.  Several streets converged before the fortress, packing the pilgrims shoulder-to-shoulder as they awaited their turn at the gate.  Gold Army uniforms stood out from the white mass, several handfuls of them spanning the bottleneck to check papers, while more lurked in the shadows of the through-tunnel beyond.  On the parapet above stood dozens of archers in Sapphire uniforms, watching the crowd with keen eyes.