The Splintered Eye (The War of Memory Cycle) (29 page)

Ilshenrir stepped back as the white wraith flowed through the crystal façade.  At first glance, he could not identify it; like all haelhene off the White Isle, it wore a high-collared robe with hood, full gloves, and a white porcelain mask with slit mouth and narrow eye-slots.  No decorations, no identifiers.

As he opened his higher senses, though, the details came clear.  Even with the brilliant flux of the spire in the background, he could discern the individual flow of magic in the cloth, and with a slight adjustment to the lenses of his eyes, he focused past it to the soul.  Though the mask remained opaque, the slits in it were enough to glimpse a familiar light.

“Cousin Ilshenrir.  Such a surprise to see you again,” said the wraith before he could speak.  Its voice sounded flat in the higher aspect, the one humans could not hear, and in that restriction of resonance Ilshenrir recognized what he had once been.

“
Lycharvan sa Kirsannuin,” he replied, wishing for his own mask.  He had hoped he would be forgotten as one of the fallen, the
ninsyc’haithe
; it was unfortunate to have encountered a relative, artificial though those ties were.  “It has been some time.”

“
More than a century since you were lost at the Wrecking Shore,” said Lycharvan.  “We expected you to be slain and reembodied, but here you are, in the same fleshly cage.”  The bright gaze ran over him, and a hint of amusement entered the wraith’s physical voice.  “And using their tactics.  How native.”

“
It was necessary,” said Ilshenrir, keeping his higher affect flat.  After so many years among the airahene, restricting his aspect was uncomfortable, but he dared not give Lycharvan forewarning.  As stilted as the haelhene had become, they were not blind, and the fossilization of their essences had made them rigid but all the more powerful.

Lycharvan laughed faintly, a hollow sound.  “Of course.  And now you have shaken your captors and sought us out, at quite an interesting time.  One might almost think the two related.”

“I have been hunting the spirit you captured,” Ilshenrir said.  “It was my arrow that prompted its imprisonment in that vessel, my arrowhead still hanging around its neck.  I could not complete its destruction from within the Mist Forest, so I have followed it here.”

The white wraith tilted its head, regarding him.  “You would have us believe that you are still loyal to the Isle?”

“I know what I am,” said Ilshenrir, drawing off his gloves.  They were the only truly fabricated part of his garments; as Lycharvan had noted, he had adopted the airahene method of shaping his physical cage to mimic clothing as well as flesh.  It allowed for greater fluidity in appearance and easier gathering and manipulation of energy, but it made him vulnerable in ways that the haelhene and human mages, with their enspelled robes, were not.

And it made it difficult to hide fossilization.  As he removed the gloves, he saw Lycharvan’s gaze fall to his hands—to the knobs of crystallized essence that distorted his slim fingers and forearms.  In humanoid form, the hands were the interaction-points between essence and world; thus they were the first to deform and the last to lose their taint.

“You have kept in practice,” Lycharvan said, amused.  “Your handlers, were they aware?”

“
I was the first of our kind to not destroy itself in captivity.  They did not know the proper rate of defossilization.  Once I had earned a measure of trust, I continued my studies in private.”

All of which was true, and from the avidity in Lycharvan’s stance, Ilshenrir knew the white wraith was interpreting his words the way it wanted to believe.  They always expected the worst of others.

On the White Isle, they were rarely wrong.

“
Then have you come to rejoin us, cousin?” said Lycharvan.  “You know that we will take you back without reservations.  Your House has missed you.”

Ilshenrir spared a glance for the sea that shivered around them.  Beyond the ring of sea-creatures, the water stretched endlessly, unbroken—no sign of the White Isle’s filigreed spires.  It could move itself, and for decades he had dreamed of it mounting the shore like some titanic crab, scything through the forest to find him.  The thought of it there on the horizon, watching, still chilled him to the core.

He had been embodied there more than two centuries ago, into House Mallandriach, one of the preeminent forces in the constant struggle for dominance.  Though there were no bonds of blood between wraiths, the hostility between Houses forged each into a family, dysfunctional though it might be.  As Mallandriach’s Butcher, he had been responsible for the slaves—the detestable, fleshy human-beastfolk hybrids produced by the House arcanists in their attempts to create the perfect shock-troops.

He remembered it all too clearly: the crushing cruelty of the Householder, the snipes and sabotage from his fellow centenarians, the abuse from his elders.  Butcher was a safe point in the hierarchy, a shelter from the maelstrom of House politics, but it had given him no joy.

Getting shot down and captured on the Wrecking Shore had been a blessing.

“
You would take me,” said Ilshenrir, “and you would torture me for my knowledge of the airahene, whether or not I tried to give it willingly.  You would kill me and reembody me with no memory of who I had been.”

Lycharvan spread its hands slightly.  “Why would you wish to recall your failure?  A new existence will free you from that burden.  Perhaps I shall take you into my House as a kindness.”

“We can discuss that at another time.  Now I wish you to take me to the spirit-vessel.”

“
That will not happen, cousin.  We know that you are here with the natives.”

Ilshenrir smiled flatly, glad to drop the pretense.  Tossing his gloves to the sand, he reached into his cloak to withdraw his
tiianarathi
blades from their folds in space.  They were not swords in the human sense; the one of green crystal was a three-foot-long spike without pommel or grip, and the wooden one was broad and blunt-edged, like a natural-grown board with a basket hilt.  He saw Lycharvan’s gaze go to the green crystal and knew what his cousin was thinking:
They gave you a shard of Syllastria?  The fools.

Then the haelhene reached back to touch—and channel—the spire.

The bolt of pinkish energy that leapt from its jabbing hand would have fried a charging draft-hog.  Ilshenrir caught it on the green crystal and stabbed the wooden blade into the ground, and the connection between his two weapons jumped the full force of the blast down the wood to scatter across the sandbar.  In the same motion, he lunged forward, and the white wraith skittered aside as if terrified of being touched by the Syllastrian crystal.

Which would have been wise, had Ilshenrir been aiming for Lycharvan.  Instead he followed through with his strike even as the haelhene evaded him, driving the green crystal into the spire as if both were made of water.

A streak of green shot up the roseate façade as the blade vanished into it, the spire's resonance scattered into chaos as the substance of Erestoia fought the invasion of Syllastria.  Lycharvan recoiled from it as parts of the wall indented randomly into new facets, caught in flux between the spires' conflicting structures.  Ilshenrir gave chase, knowing that his weapon would not impact Erestoia for long.  It was too small to cause much damage before being ejected.

“
How dare—“ Lycharvan shrieked, right as Ilshenrir clocked it in the mask with the hilt of the wooden blade.  The white wraith staggered, then reached for him, its hands glowing through the thin cloth of its gloves.  Rather than dance back, Ilshenrir closed the distance, knowing that viciousness was his only advantage, and slammed the wooden blade broadside into Lycharvan’s head as the white wraith hooked fingers in his cloak.

Immediately he felt the drain as Lycharvan tapped his essence, but his strikes had dislodged the mask, and he tore it away to expose Lycharvan’s crystal-riddled face and the frozen lenses of its eyes.  Though not much older than Ilshenrir, Lycharvan was far along the process of fossilization, with a glittering crust over its skin and no motion in its jaw, its hair fine brittle filaments beneath the hood of its robe.  The frigid radiance of the Isle’s magic emanated from it, sending a shiver of need through him.

He slammed the basket hilt into Lycharvan’s face again, and this time the light behind its eyes wavered.  A crack ran down one cheek.  He felt it gather its energy for a destructive pulse and broke away just in time, jamming the blade into the sand and dropping behind it like a shield.  The burst washed over him, searing the front of the blade and popping salt crystals all around, but the majority had been grounded, and his garments radiated briefly with energy-overflow before he absorbed it.

When he raised his head, Lycharvan was in the air, unfolding light-ward and gathering power.  The white robe had been fractured by the shift but not damaged, like an image in a broken mirror spread across many surfaces, and Ilshenrir saw that even when closer to true form, Lycharvan was highly crystallized.  The angles and planes that should have been fluid had frozen, and though they shone with intense energy, he saw how much was dedicated to the effort of moving.

At the center, Lycharvan’s essence challenged him.  As it turned its manifold angles toward him, he let the sword fall and pushed up from the earth, unfolding himself in turn.  It was difficult so close to the ground, but the spire still masked the Guardian’s influence.  His sense of the physical world turned flat and simple as he opened to the lighter realms and saw more of Lycharvan—brittle, aching, sharp where he was curved, mechanistic where he simply unfurled.

He rose toward his cousin, only too happy to fight.  It had been a long time since he had felt so free.

*****

Dasira paused at the upper edge of the spire as the wraiths flitted into the sky.  They were as close to true form as she had ever seen—one a cubist jellyfish of crystal and wire, the other a razor-edged wildflower infused with light—and too hard to watch for more than a moment.  Parts of them kept flickering from existence and reappearing elsewhere, broadening, attenuating, in constant flux, but it was clear enough that they were trying to devour each other.

She fixed her attention on the spire.  Its substance had gone brittle when she cut the last foothold, its vibration arrhythmic, but she was fairly sure it was not her doing.  Serindas still glowed pinkish and felt eerily subdued, almost contemplative, but had yet to turn on her.

Through the thin crystal pane, she saw the chamber below.  There was no furniture, only erratic protrusions of the spire’s material and a dim scintillation in the center that she thought might be a Weave-knot—a connection to the Imperial mentalists’ information network, the Psycher Weave.  That would explain how the wraiths had found them.  Two vague haelhene shapes bracketed it, and on the wall opposite her hovered the black raywings, high up near the ceiling, with Cob’s cocoon hanging like a pendant between them.

She licked dry lips and tried to strategize.  Best would be to scramble over to where Cob was and cut through the wall there, but the diagonal planes of the spire’s peak were smooth and she doubted she had time to cut footholds all the way to his position.  She cursed herself for climbing up opposite him, though there had been no way to see through the spire at the start.

Yet she would have to fight the haelhene anyway—either in the spire or when they followed her out.  Grabbing Cob would put her at a disadvantage.

This would be so much easier if I still wanted him dead
.

But that madness had passed.  Though she sometimes wondered why she liked him, she could not kill him and would not let anyone else do him harm.  Not without retribution.

Of course, with the sun on that side, they don't seem to see me—or else I’d already be dead.  Which means...

She smiled as the plan coalesced.  Sometimes she still enjoyed this job.

Using Serindas, she hauled herself one-armed up the canted peak, boots braced to prevent backsliding when she withdrew the blade.  In the sky above, Ilshenrir and the other wraith fought like fireworks, and she only hoped that the haelhene within were too distracted to notice her.

The crystalline material thickened as she moved upward, the bubble of the chamber not quite extending into the apex.  When she reached the point where Serindas barely pierced through, she stopped and hacked two quick triangles from the spire to brace her feet in.  Sitting back, she stared through the translucent surface to see the wraiths still in position, the scintillating Weave-knot situated below her at a mild diagonal.

She took a deep breath, steeling herself for what was to come.  Then she buried Serindas to the hilt in the crystal, carving three swift lines in it—a triangle with a level base and both sides wider on the inside.

The severed chunk sat stable in its setting.  Sheathing Serindas, she shifted position to plant her palms in the footholds and pull her legs up before her, body nearly horizontal, terrifyingly precarious.  She drew her knees to her chest, then struck out with all the strength in her lower body, shoving the chunk of crystal into the chamber.

It made a short arc through the air then plunged down between the two haelhene, straight into the shimmering knot.