The Splintered Eye (The War of Memory Cycle) (23 page)

The Houndmaster snarled again, but the wind had gone from his sails and he seemed to deflate, his human mien slowly returning.  That was his measure, then: less a bully unaccustomed to being thwarted and more a soldier, bound to the hierarchy despite his nature.  Sarovy had suspected as much from his file, but now in the curl of Vrallek’s lip, he thought he saw the same bitterness, the same betrayal he felt.

They eyed each other, then Vrallek said, “Yes.”

“
Yes what?”

“
Yes sir.”

Sarovy nodded, then let a long moment pass in silence as he considered Vrallek.  Perhaps a monster, perhaps a man-eater, he was nevertheless Sarovy’s lieutenant.  Not so different from a hundred other rough-minded soldiers.  Not so frightening.  And Sarovy would not let yet another us-against-them mentality get in his way.

“Neither of us are pleased with this assignment, Houndmaster-Lieutenant,” he said calmly.  “Yet this is our course.  If we are to succeed, if we are to make the General proud, I must know what you know.  I must find a way to integrate your people, whatever they are, with mine so that we can carry out our missions with open eyes and clear heads.  Thus I ask this as a favor—not only to me, but to my men, to your men, to yourself.  The more I know, the easier and more equitable I can make this.”

“
Equitable?” the Houndmaster said, incredulous.  “Favors?  Are you a madman?”

“
I have read your file,” Sarovy went on steadily.  “Your strengths are obvious.  Drive, control, leadership.  You have been heading this Specialist Platoon for five years, during which time your men completed quite a few nasty assignments, as well as rounded up and quelled rioters in Fellen without taking or causing casualties—one of the few platoons to do so.  Correct?”

The Houndmaster lifted his chin proudly, though suspicion still lined his face.  “Easy to scare slaves and civilians into submission.”

“Perhaps.  But not easy to restrain yourself, I suspect.”  Taking his sneer as admission, Sarovy said, “What I see is that you value your orders over your instincts—threats notwithstanding.  Are you actually permitted to eat people within the Army camp?”

Vrallek colored dark red, evidently embarrassed.  “No,” he grumbled.  “Minor crippling at best.  Never get to have fun anymore.”

“Good.  You are a Blaze Company soldier now, and I expect honorable behavior from you.  But I understand that this is an upheaval for your men.  If we are to mesh properly, humans and…”

“
Abominations,” Vrallek said.  “That’s what they call us.  Sometimes converts.  The stupid White Flame call us the ‘blessed’, but…”

Sarovy tilted his head and Vrallek looked away, ostensibly watching the runners slog their laps through the thin rain.  He had ceased to loom at some point, now just an ugly man in uniform, his face twisted by a knot of emotion—hunger, anger, and something like sorrow.

“Soldiers and specialists,” Sarovy decided.

Vrallek slanted a derisive look at him.  “Right.  Soldiers and specialists, shoulder-to-shoulder, fighting the good fight.”

“Yes.”

“
You know you’re crazy, yeah?  Taking this job, standing me down to hold it?  This will only end in blood.”

“
Then let it be the blood of our enemies,” said Sarovy.  “I have no quarrel with you.”

The Houndmaster sneered again, but as he stared down at Sarovy it slowly turned bemused.  “You’re serious,” he said.  “You’re piking serious.”

“I am always serious.”

“
Well then, Captain, if we’re trading favors, I’ve got some needs to be met.”

Sarovy smiled flatly.  “We are not ‘trading favors’.  I will do whatever I feel is necessary to ensure the productive and harmonious operation of Blaze Company, and will take suggestions to that end.  What I request from you is the cooperation to make it possible.”

Vrallek leaned close, broad nostrils flaring broader as he inhaled deeply of Sarovy’s scent.  Sarovy caught himself before he could recoil; doing so would be a sign of weakness to the beast in this man.  Instead he watched Vrallek’s heavy brows jump, an unpleasant grin dispelling his puzzlement.  “Heh,” he said from all too close.  “Interesting.  Maybe I’ll walk behind you after all.  See where this goes.”

Staring up at him, Sarovy said, “Good.  Shall we start with your explanations?”

The Houndmaster laughed like a landslide, all teeth and foul breath, then clapped Sarovy on the shoulder hard enough to skid him sideways in the mud.  “If you insist, Captain.  I will introduce you to my hounds."

Narrowing his eyes, Sarovy regarded the Houndmaster flatly.  Vrallek's grin was a shade too wide, too eager, and as curious as he was about the hounds, he did not relish the idea of going with Vrallek alone.  Past the Houndmaster’s bulk, he glimpsed the door to the main bunkhouse half-open, someone watching from within.  He could guess who, but it gave him no more confidence.

"Perhaps something closer to hand," he said.  "Your specialists."

The Houndmaster's smile faded, but he nodded.  "As you say, sir.  I'll see what can be arranged."  Serious as he seemed, the gleam in his deep-set eyes told Sarovy that this game was not yet over.

"I look forward to it," said Sarovy, and realized to his interest that it was true.

Cob walked, and his companions followed.  Sometimes the wolf ranged ahead through the snowless trees, so far that he could only be seen as a pewtery flicker among the trunks, but most often he stuck close and orbited the group like a herd-dog.  The others hung back to give Cob his privacy.  He could hear them murmuring amongst themselves but could not make it out.

It was just as well.  Though he had managed to unclench his fists, he still felt like he was wading through a troubled sea, tension and frustration dragging at him with every step.  At least for the moment no voices plagued him—no Guardian, no friends, no faint persistent whispers from his past.  Just the wordless grumble of his temper seeking an outlet.

Now and then he slashed at the brush with a stick he had broken off a young tree, but that was little release.  In their trek from the clearing, the forest around them had slowly reverted to winter-bare, the leaves first burning with autumn colors then thickening the ground beneath them, then disintegrating to mulch on the bracken-filled earth.  It was like striding rapidly through time, and it unnerved Cob—not from the increasing chill of the air but from the power it must take to preserve summer in the forest’s center.  With every step, he felt the tingling recede, but knew it would not be fully gone until he was free of the trees.

That the wraiths had claimed such a vast woodland and bent it to their unearthly will offended him.

Closing his eyes, he could see the steam boiling up from the lake again, the misty shapes of spires glowing within it.  This place was numb to him, but he knew that if he could feel it, those spires would be like needles in his skin.  No matter how harshly the native folk had retaliated, the wraiths had still started the war, and they still held fast in this, their refuge.  A place where no other creatures but birds dared dwell.  Such a waste.

A hand touched his arm and he twitched, then glanced sidelong to find Fiora watching him.  She had pulled her chainmail and the overdress back on and looked ready to dive back into the fray.

“
Sorry, were you thinking about something?” she said.

He scowled, then forcibly schooled his expression.  Fiora was the one he should be least angry at—the one who had come to warn him, to defend him, even though she owed him nothing.  “No, s’fine,” he said.  “You need somethin’?”

“Well, I thought we should talk.”

Grimacing, Cob glanced back over his shoulder to where Lark and the blonde woman, Dasira, trailed them by several yards.  The women were speaking in an undertone, and when they caught his gaze they both looked away.  Just beyond them drifted Ilshenrir, hood concealing his features, perhaps eavesdropping or simply bringing up the rear.

“Why?” Cob said, looking ahead again.  “Lark been tellin’ you tales?”

“
Not about that.  About traveling through Amandon.”

“
We’ll find a new caravan.”

“
No, listen.  You’re a westerner,” she said, face upturned toward him earnestly.  “Even if you think yourself an Imperial, you can’t understand the Heartlands until you’ve lived here.  I don’t want to argue like in the temple but there are things you need to know.”

Cob grunted and smacked a bunch of dead leaves off a bush with the stick.  He hated when people wanted to talk at him about the Empire, but it was true; he had never really experienced it.

His treatment in Thynbell did not count.

“
Fine.  Talk.”

Fiora cleared her throat, visibly preparing.  “So.  Well, first I want to apologize for what happened with the caravan.  I saw one of the carters throw something at you right before things got nasty.  You…you definitely scared them.  Around here we don’t talk about skinchangers or spirits.  They’re deadly heresy.  So to have you just pop out antlers—“

“No, I get it,” Cob said.  “Not like it’s any different from the west.  I never met a skinchanger ‘til I met Arik.”

“
Oh.  Really?  I thought the west was all dragons in the fields and spirits everywhere.”

Cob shook his head.  “I heard stories about spirits when I was young, and there’s goblins under the cities, but the ‘dragons’ in the grasslands are jus' big lizards.  I saw ‘em with the Crimson Army before we got driven off.  The real dragons are in the south.”

“You were in the Army?”

Cob shrugged stiffly.  “I’m an Imperialist, aren’t I?”

Fiora was silent for a moment.  Cob kept his attention ahead, not wanting to see the look on her face—pity, scorn, whatever it might be.  He was sick of all that.

“
Well, anyway, that won’t stop happening,” Fiora said finally.  “People turning on you, I mean.  Maybe they would in the west too, but from what Lark was telling me, there’s a lot of folks there who’re on your side.  The Shadow Folk, the Corvish, those goblins…  Out here, there’s just us Trifolders—and sad to say, but we have our own traitors.  We’ve worked so long within the Empire that maybe we’ve forgotten our task.”

“
Wait.  Jus’ you here?” Cob said, frowning.  “I thought the Shadow Cult could go anywhere.”

Fiora shrugged.  “Maybe they can, but they dare not.  We try to help them, but the Empire hunts them fiercely and the Gold mages know how to keep them out.  There are whole cities warded against them.  Us Trifolders can’t be warded against because we’re just normal people, but the shadowbloods, they’re…I don’t know.  Targetable?  Lay-followers like Lark might be overlooked, but the ‘bloods get caught the moment they show up.”

“And skinchangers?” Cob said, remembering a piece of his flying dream.  Haurah the wolf-woman, leading her pack into the Imperial City…

“
I don’t know.  They come around sometimes because we’re friendly with the spirits—Athalarr the Lion is courting Brigydde—but most of the time they stay in their own territories.  The Forest of Night and the Garnet Mountains and such.  It’s not that the mages can keep them out, since from what I hear, they can’t really ‘see’ them magically unless they catch them shifting.  They just…don’t like being in cities, I guess.”

Frowning, Cob said, “But humans learned magic from wraiths, and wraiths can kill spirits.  Our mages can’t even see them?”

“We think it’s one of the studies the Silent Circle banned.  I know necromancy was banned a long time ago, and a lot of spirit-knowledge was destroyed when the Heartlands converted to the Imperial Light, so maybe it got lost.  That’s a good thing, right?”

“
I guess,” said Cob.  “I mean, yeah.”

She glanced at him sidelong, a wry look on her face, and said, “You don’t much like being the Guardian, do you.  I understand that you’re an Imperial, but still.”

He looked away through the trees, uncomfortable.  As much as he still spoke of himself as a faithful Light-follower, he knew in his heart that it was hog-crap.  He had gone to the Dark, if only for self-preservation.  The memory of the river, of his black urge to see it break its banks and consume the caravan, was an uncomfortable weight in his chest—a concrete reason to fear the Guardian’s power.  Not that it would devour him, but that something inside him was all too happy to embrace it.  To let the cauldron of bitter rage bubble over in fantastic, catastrophic revenge.

Morshoc’s face loomed in his mind’s eye, smiling slyly, attended by a ghostly horde of lost friends and blameless victims.  It was the only thing that made the rage bearable—knowing that it had a target.  A monster to slay.

“It’s what I’ve gotta do,” he mumbled.

“
And after that?”

He held his tongue.  He did not know what the others would say about his plan, but he had no intention of sharing it with them; Morshoc was too dangerous, too wild to hunt as a group.  If the Guardian would stay with him, then they would take down the bastard alone, spirit to spirit.

“The Mother Matriarch gonna be all right?” he said to distract her.

Fiora winced.  “Well…no.  She’s dying.”

A jolt went through him and he stopped in his tracks.  “Wh—  How?”

“
It’s not you,” said Fiora, and touched his arm to urge him on.  “Maybe the Dark weakened her, but it was just a matter of time.  There are some things not even a Brigyddian can heal, and what she suffers is one of them.  It’s like…a little monster inside, feeding off her life.”

“
Like an abomination?” Cob said, thinking of the threads he saw beneath Darilan’s skin in their final fight.  More of them than he had flesh.

“
More like her body’s turned on her,” said Fiora.  “Not the blindness—that's just part of the job.  As the goddess of prophecy, Brigydde herself is blind, and when she possesses her priestesses, they become more like her.  In demeanor, in sight, sometimes in appearance.  Mother Matriarch Aglavyn did a great healing once, which demanded she host the goddess, and that took her eyes.

“
But the weakness, the thinning...  We don’t know why it happens, but we can’t stop it.  Brigydde’s power strengthens her followers, but that monster is a part of the Mother Matriarch, so any strength she draws serves only to strengthen it too.”

Cob shuddered.  “Guess that’s why Sister Talla was so angry.”

“They’ve been together a long time, justiciar and priestess.”

They walked a while in silence, Cob swatting at passing brush and trying not to think about the Mother Matriarch’s wan face, her attempt at a reassuring smile.  It hit too close to the heart.

Finally, Fiora spoke again, her voice strained.  “There’s so much I should tell you.  But it’s all so awful.  Not about the Mother Matriarch, but about the Heartlands.  The Empire.  I don’t want you to get mad, but it’s the truth.”

“
Out with it, then,” he said.  She was right.  If he snapped every time someone tried to warn him, eventually they would stop, and he would walk face-first into the enemies’ pikes.

She tucked a dark curl behind one ear, a nervous gesture, then said, “Well, since Ilshenrir took us south, that means when we leave the forest, we’ll be in the empty lands.  Maybe even at the Wrecking Shore.  There were cities, towns, villages scattered all throughout Amandon until about forty years ago, when the fire-season got out of control.  Some people say it was the Empire’s doing but no one really knows.  What matters is that everything from the Wrecking Shore to the Silverton Road burned up.”

“Is that a lot?”

“
About half of the province.”

Cob blinked, then blanched.  He knew little of the topography or population of the Empire, but he had seen maps before—and Amandon was big.  Almost a third of the Heartlands.

“Did, uh…  Did the people escape?” he said, dry-mouthed.

Fiora looked up at him with pity.  “Some.  The fires started along the shore, which is why people think they were set.  It took a few months for them to burn north to the road, so most of the southern Amands had time to pack up and flee, but a lot wouldn’t, or else they clustered in places they thought would be safe.  We had a lot of lakes with a lot of islands and island-towns, and thousands of people took refuge in them, but the fires were too big, too hot.  They jumped the water or just plain smoked the islanders to death.  It was only because of the Silent Circle that the fires were stopped at the Silverton Road, and even then a lot of mages died holding the ward.

“After that, southern Amandon was just ashes.  Some people tried going back—there are little hamlets out there, eking out a living—but the government never made a push to reestablish roads or rebuild cities, not even to regain control of the coast.  It’s just wilderness now.  All the Amands who were unhomed either settled in the cities like my parents did in Cantorin or went north to Daecia.  And most of those, no one ever heard from again.”

“
What are you sayin’?”

Fiora shrugged.  “I don’t know.  No one knows.  People take the trek to the Imperial City and never come back.  It’s crowded up there, I hear.  Everyone elbow-to-elbow in the Light of the Palace, such a sea of distractions that it’s easy to get lost, easy to get swept away.  We don’t know how they feed them all.  We farm all we can from the unburned land but the most fertile valleys were in the south, and now they’re abandoned.  Amandon’s always been the Heartlands’ bread-basket, so if we’re on short rations, I can’t imagine what things must be like in Daecia.”

“But how can you not know?” said Cob, frowning.  “There have t’ be merchants, or pilgrims, or someone t’ say what it’s like up there…”

“
Cob.  People go up there and don’t come back.  That means pilgrims and merchants too.”

He stared at her sidelong, unsettled.  Visions of white towers and verdant gardens, silver streams and robed pilgrims flickered in his head, so pristine, so perfect.  So necessary to his peace of mind.

“But people do come back,” he said.  “The Crown Prince is from there.  Most of the Army officers’ve been there.  Maybe it’s jus’ a better place.”

“
Better than being with your family?  Better than telling your family you still exist?”

“
Considerin’ how some people react when they know you’ve gone t’ the Light, doesn’t surprise me.”

He expected her to holler like his comrades had when they found him out as an Imperialist, but she said softly, “This is the Heartlands.  Everyone here but us follows the Light, and not even they know what’s become of their loved ones.”