The Splintered Eye (The War of Memory Cycle) (12 page)

At last, the paleness stirred and shifted, and the Master Scryer sat up straight and wiped his mouth and beard in case he had started to drool.  The image resolved into the face of a stern, iron-haired woman in the yellow robe and silver-runed mantle of a non-Council Gold Archmagus.

“
Yes, Watchtower Cantorin?”
she said coolly.

“
Madam Archmagus.  I am Master Scryer Taxon Arloth, responding to reports KRD1184 and KRD1184A from the Gold Weave.  Both were imprinted with high importance, thus I—“

“
Yes, and?”
the Archmagus interrupted.

“
Ahem.  Yes, and the subject of the reports has been spotted in Cantorin, Madam Archmagus.  We have been informed that he left by the Rhiesten Road and are currently seeking his whereabouts through the beacon network.”

The woman in the frame frowned. 
“Be careful, Master Scryer.  I have been informed that the subject is extremely dangerous to all users of the arcane.”

“
Certainly not over such distances…”

“
That is unknown.”

“
Then I will take all precautions, Madam Archmagus.”  Privately, he scoffed.  Unless the fugitive could jump through a scrying frame, no one in the tower would be in any danger; open scrying did not even require a mental connection to the frame.  “Shall I keep you on-frame until—“

“
Sir,” said one of the journeymen, “I think this is the caravan.”

“
Please pardon me, Madam Archmagus,” the Master Scryer said, and rose when the woman waved her hand permissively.  He scuttled over to loom behind his journeyman, who was watching intently in one frame as wagon-wheels passed by.

The Master Scryer was about to ask why he thought this was the right caravan when a man came into view, leading the next draft-hog.  He was dressed in typical Amandic laborer garb—tunic layers and coat, breeches, scarf and hat, in plain colors with embroidered floral trim—and seemed unremarkable until the Master Scryer spotted the faint red band that glowed through his sleeve at the shoulder.  A Crimson slave's arcane tag.

Looking closer, he saw that the man was taller and leaner than an Amand should be, and just dark enough to be foreign.  From the reports, that seemed like their target.

“
Good work, boy,” he told the journeyman.  “Which beacon?”

“
West-Southwest 32, sir.”

A clap on the shoulder, then the Master Scryer scrambled back to the seat at his own frame.  The Archmagus looked as if she had neither stirred nor blinked since he left.

“Just passing West-Southwest 32, Madam Archmagus,” he said triumphantly.  “With some sort of civilian transport, most likely a merchant caravan.  My informant indicated that he is traveling with one other: a wolf skinchanger.”

“
Easily dealt with,” said the Archmagus.  “Continue monitoring the subject.  I will make arrangements for a retrieval team.”

“
Yes, Madam Archmagus.”

“
Leaving you on-frame.  Signal if you have further information.”

“
Yes, Madam Archmagus.”

With that, the woman rose from her distant seat and vanished from view in a swirl of robes, leaving the Master Scryer to stare into the Gold Army’s communication hub.  Just visible beyond the racks of scrolls and the bookshelves, the frames and scurrying assistants, was the great open chamber that held the Gold Weave’s master knot.  He could not see the knot itself, but the radiance it gave off bathed the interior like a new sun.

Reluctantly, not wanting to be spotted gawking, the Master Scryer rose from his seat and moved back to his journeymen.  He watched the caravan roll by on one frame and approach from a great distance on another, and wondered if this would net him a bonus.

*****

By mid-afternoon, Cob no longer needed to touch the hog.  It just followed him like a massive pet, constantly snuffling at his back.  Walking beside it had seen him sideswiped again, his coat streaked with slobber, and walking too fast had nearly made it ram the next wagon.  The only way to keep the right pace was to stay directly between it and the wagon, trying to pretend that no one was watching him through the rear shutters.

But they were.  Everyone was.  People strayed by on pointless errands, their faces turned away but their eyes on him.  Handler Rickent sat on the bench-seat despite the cold, and whenever Cob looked back, he saw the tension in the grizzled man’s face, the superstitious fear in the whites of his eyes.  And there was the whispering that he could barely hear through the shutters, the sounds of children talking about him.

He kept his gaze on the ground, trying to keep his temper in check.  This was obviously some side-effect of the Guardian’s presence.  He had not been around many animals since his escape from the Crimson Army, but his dim recall of those encounters was positive; nothing had bitten him or stung him or barked at him or run away.  Not Ammala’s witch-cat, not the lizard that had crawled up his shoulder in Illane, not even the birds.

And the hog adored him.

When he concentrated on it, he could feel that adoration like a sunbeam on his back.  He felt it from Arik too; little pulses of happiness wisping up from beside the long, slow glide of the freezing river.  Eyes closed, he could visualize a map of the creatures around him, with people and animals as warm spots crossing a thin, cold blanket that hid darkness beneath, yet the darkness was not the frigid one his father had warned him about.  It was fibrous, tangible, like hands with thousands of fingers linked together in sleep.

Plants?
he wondered. 
Wintering plants?

It was distracting and unsettling, and having sensed it, he could not shake it.  He tried to concentrate on reality but there was always something else nibbling at his perceptions.  A sett of badgers slumbering under a nearby hillock, a shivering dog tied up outside one of the farmsteads they were passing, a sluggish and confused school of fish under the river ice.  The Mist Forest on the opposite bank, its edge thick with new growth and the recent scars of logging.  The wagons, their wood straining between the frosty air outside and the portable stoves within.  The people, a mélange of emotions.

Those two spots on his forehead hurt—the ones where his antlers grew when he gave over to the Guardian—but he did not feel the spirit pushing at him.  He could only guess that the Trifolders’ breaking of his superficial bonds had given him access to some part of its senses that it did not care if he used.

He knew he should ask it for advice, but the thought of crawling back to the Guardian after telling it to pike off set his teeth on edge.  Instead, he stewed in fantasies of trekking over and punching the farmer who had tied his dog out in the cold, or punching the bearded carter who was on his third pass-by, or maybe punching Handler Rickent.

Too bad I can’t punch you
, he thought at the Guardian.

As usual, it did not dignify that with a response.

Despite his strange perceptions and the caravaners' leeriness, the trip proceeded quietly.  By mid-afternoon, some of the scrutiny had faded from his shoulders, and for his part he had managed to push the sense of roots and wildlife down to a nagging background murmur.  He still dared not move away from the hog, though, so was reduced to taking sparing sips from his canteen in the vain hope of avoiding a piss.

They had just left the bounds of another riverside village when Cob glimpsed Arik chasing something up ahead.  The wolf cut tight zigzags through the snow, intensely concentrated on whatever he was hunting, and it relieved Cob to realize that he could not sense either of them.  The wolf needed to eat, after all.

Then the unseen prey zagged toward him, and dread tightened in his stomach.

It came over the embankment in a greyish blur, tiny compared to the wolf that barreled after it.  Unlike the wolf, though, it did not halt at the edge of the road to eye the snorting hog; instead, it zipped under the wagon in front of Cob.  Cob glanced to the wolf, who quivered in frustration, then squinted down at the creature that now stared at him.

It was a hare, a shin-high snow-flecked ball of fluff and ears.  As the wagon moved above it, it sat still, allowing itself to be revealed until it was right in Cob's path.  Cob halted, unnerved by its beady black stare, then stumbled forward as the hog nudged him from behind.

The hare skittered aside, then fell into a hop next to him.

Why, why does this happen?
Cob thought, glancing around surreptitiously for any sign that people had noticed.  The wolf hung his head then turned to stalk off through the snow; no one else seemed aware.  He peered down again, hoping that the hare had been a hallucination, but there it was, hopping determinedly beside him.

Kick it
, he thought, then smacked himself mentally.  The hare and the hog heralded trouble, but it was not their fault.  Obviously suppressing his link to the Guardian's perceptions did not stop others' perception of him.

Instead, he tried thinking 'go away' thoughts toward the hare as they traveled—not reaching for that sense-link but just repeating the words in his head as he eyed it sidelong.  Sometimes it tilted a long ear at him, but it never strayed, and when caravaners passed it just skittered to his other side.

About half a mark later, two green ribbonchasers fluttered down to perch on his shoulder.  He brushed them off in a panic, but they alit on his head, then on the hog's head when he shooed them off again.  They chirped at him and he looked away, only to find a dog with a gnawed-up rope leash paralleling him from the embankment.

To his relief, Arik ran the dog off in short order, but the birds refused to disperse and soon were joined by another ribbonchaser and a big mottled Rogan's crow.  The hog seemed cheerfully indifferent to the birds and oblivious to the hare, but when a young deer approached from across the ice-crusted river, it bellowed a warning that sent the deer springing back into the trees, barely ahead of the caravaners' arrows.

By the time the sun bronzed the clouds, Cob was walking with his gaze fixed on the back of the wagon, unwilling to meet anyone's eyes.  A passing child had spotted the hare and started the caravaners spying on him again, and he had finally just picked the animal up to hide it under his coat.  It lay asleep in the crook of his arm now, nails hooked in the fabric of his tunic, a tiny bundle of fur and breath.

Ahead, the wagon began to turn.  Cob blinked and focused past it to see the head of the caravan entering the cleared central plaza of another small town.  The buildings made a loose half-square around it, and already citizens had gathered on porches or along the road to watch the wagons roll in.  Cob scanned the snow-blanketed fields beyond the low wall and spotted Arik lurking, close enough to keep an eye on him but too far to call.

He dropped back to lead his hog by the ear, following the example of the wagons before him.  There were no big caravan-shelters here, so instead the caravan drew into a rough circle in the plaza, turning until the first wagon was pointed south again.  Then, at last, the men and women and children of the caravan began spilling out from their confinement, stretching weary legs and popping vertebrae as they gathered to make camp.

“
Best stay where you are,” Handler Rickent said gruffly.  Cob looked back to see him swing down from the bench and unlatch the doors in the wagon's outer side, then pull them open and unfold steps.  Inside, the wagon looked like a pawnshop, with goods both new and used strapped to the walls or packed in bundles on the floor.  Townsfolk were already drifting near, and the Rogan's crow took flight in a gust of mottled wings only to land on a porch rail not far away, still watching.  The ribbonchasers stayed; they were bold little birds even without Guardian influence.

“
Should I do anythin' with the hog?” Cob said.  The other handlers were standing beside their beasts, watching impatiently as men hauled big troughs down from one wagon and set them in the center of the circle.  Several women followed with burlap sacks which they emptied into the troughs; from the look and the sudden smell, Cob guessed it was kitchen garbage.  Only when the trough-men and the sack-women had left the circle did the handlers start unstrapping the hogs.

“
Copy the others.  Think you can manage it?” said Handler Rickent, and Cob nodded sharply.  But the hog tried to turn with him as he reached for the buckles, and between it and the hare in his coat, he fumbled around for long enough that Rickent finally came to do the unstrapping.  The look he gave Cob over the hog's back was disconcerting: no longer superstitiously fearful but flat and calculating.

Even when freed, the hog did not turn toward the troughs like its fellows.  It rubbed against Cob instead, ignoring his quiet curses, until in desperation Cob headed to the troughs himself.  The hogs on either side turned toward him, but his hog shouldered between them as it pursued, and space was tight enough that soon the only way for them to move was to back up.  Still, it was nerve-wracking to be the target of dozens of fanatically adoring animal eyes, and as he scrambled up on one trough and nearly upended it, he had a horrible vision of being stampeded to death by the force of their love.