The Splintered Eye (The War of Memory Cycle) (60 page)

“
You’re a monster!” Fiora shouted hoarsely, still struggling.

“
Yes, whatever you say, little girl.  There, that should hold you.” The corpse withdrew to regard Cob’s arm.  Cob glanced at it too, but then the corpse’s cold hand caught him by the chin and turned his gaze to its own.

“
You will not do something so ridiculous again,” it told him curtly.  “When I tell you to stop, you will stop.  When I tell you to come with me, you will come with me.  You owe me your life many times over, child.  Don’t make me call in your debts.”

Cob could not help the snarl that formed on his face, or the rage in his chest.  Morshoc, Enkhaelen, the Ravager—whatever this monster’s name was, it had caused everything.  He thought of the Riftwatch towers, of Paol and Rian and all the soldiers, of the Haarakash who between glass and inferno must have died up in that casting chamber.  Of the dead Guardians, and Haurah’s mate’s reanimated head in the Ravager’s grip.

Of his father.

He spat in the corpse’s face.

Slowly, very slowly, Enkhaelen reached up to wipe the spittle away.  His eyes were glassy behind narrowed lids, glittering with reflected blue light.  “You should take care,” he said calmly.  “I am not here to be your enemy, nor have I ever been.  I offer you the same thing I did when we met: the road to the Palace.  Come with me and we can avoid all this messiness and all your future stumbles.  I’ll even leave your little girlfriend alive.”

“
What do you want from me?” Cob growled.

“
Your safety.  Nothing more.”

“
And for that, you’ve been trying to kill me?”

“
I never attempted your death.”

“
On the Imperial Road,” Cob said stiffly.  “When I snapped your pikin’ neck.”

“
That was—“  The corpse sighed and shrugged his remaining shoulder.  “The best option for a bad situation.  After all, it kept you from the haelhene.  And fixed your nose.”

Cob stared up at his enemy, once again struck speechless.  He hated this man with an intensity so great that it was physically painful to be this near and unable to beat him to death, but Enkhaelen had them trapped in a nightmarish situation, and though Cob did not trust his offer to let Fiora go, he could not discount it.

“Don’t you dare go with him,” said Fiora, as if she could hear his thoughts.

The corpse looked down the trail the way they had come, then back to Cob, scowling.  “We don’t have time for this.  Join me.”

“No.”

“
Then I’ll do what I should have done from the start. 
White King
.”

As if the words were a trigger, wings of fire swarmed Cob’s vision.  He felt himself thrust down and backward in the same disembodied way as when the Guardian took him over, all sense of his injured body receding into blinding light. 
That bastard’s soul-splinter
, he thought, and furiously struggled toward the surface of himself, but the weight of the Guardian held him down like a black anchor, unable or unwilling to confront the flames.

“
Are you in control?” he heard Enkhaelen say from far away.

Cob felt his own mouth move against his will.  The voice that rose from his throat was faint and hollow, a stranger’s.  “
I am.
”

“
Come, then.  I don’t have much time.”

“
No.
”

A shocked silence.  Cob stared into the light, trying to see through it, to understand what was going on.  Around the wafting mass of fiery wings, he thought he saw a smaller light fluttering in orbit.

“What?” said the corpse, blankly incredulous.

“
I refuse.
”

“
You can’t refuse!  You’re a piece of me!”

“
Well, what did you expect?
”

“
No backtalk!”

“
We are not prepared.  I have freedom that you do not.  I can operate without his surveillance.
”

“
And I suppose you have a plan, then?”

“
Of course.
”

“
I can’t believe I’m having this argument.”

“
Maybe if you were less obnoxious…
”

“
Shut up before I pull you out and eat you.  Piking—  All right.  If you have a ‘plan’, we’ll play it your way.  For now.”

“
Fine.
”

“
Fine!”

The world came back in a slap of shadows and nerve endings.  Cob reeled in the grip of the skeletons and saw Enkhaelen drawing away, staring back the way they had come.  With a stiff motion, he recaptured the blue image and collected the skeleton-controlling strands, then shook them lightly.  The skeletons rattled, then more rose from the earth as he drew his hand upward.

From down the path Cob saw figures approaching, the High Necromancer in the lead.  Her white gown was scorched and bloodied but at her back rotated a thorn-edged crimson wheel, and from her outspread hands trailed fine filaments of power.  The chains of her jewelry writhed at her throat and hips like fine snakes, seeming to channel the threads, and Cob realized that many of the Haarakash that followed her were ethereal—real wraithly ghosts drawn along in her wake by the shivering strands.

“
Cheater,” Enkhaelen muttered, and swept his remaining hand through a few gestures.  Blue wards glimmered into existence around him.  He glanced back at Cob and said, “Stay put, I’m not done with you yet,” then stepped forward to engage the approaching force.

Before he could, a vine whipped out from the hedges, snapped through three wards in an instant and wrapped around Enkhaelen’s tattered body, yanking him sideways into the brush.  Several of the approaching Haarakash dropped to their knees and dug their fingers into the dirt at the edge of the path, and the hedges where he had vanished twisted with sharp splintering sounds into a dense, thorny cage.  A spate of muffled curses came from within.

The High Necromancer strode forward, reaching out toward the skeletons that held Cob.  New threads unfurled from her fingers to claim them, and they released him immediately, sinking slowly to the earth as the High Necromancer guided them down.  Once done, she jerked her arms to leave red imprints on the air still holding those threads.

“
Are you well?” she said as she reached Cob, looking him over swiftly.  The ghostly wraiths lingered in her wake, eyes wide and empty.  “We must do this while we have the chance.  I do not know how long they can contain that monster.”

Cob glanced to Fiora, who had pried free of her bonds and was straightening her sarong, looking not much the worse for wear.  Relief hit him like a fist, and he looked back to the High Necromancer and nodded, keeping the place where Enkhaelen had vanished in his peripheral vision.  “Go ahead.”

“This will not be pleasant,” the High Necromancer said, and touched his face.  In the red depths of her eyes, her pupils expanded like inkspots, and a thrill of hot energy ran through him.  “But I will fix what I can.”

She pressed her nails into his skin, sending piercing points of pain through his face.  That pain reverberated across his scalp, down his back, through his limbs and further, crisscrossing itself like ripples in a small pond and drawing into stark relief the network of fraying bonds.  As the pain ebbed, the constriction remained.  Her fingers moved from his face to the bonds themselves, and with a sympathetic grimace, she began to tear them away.

The world wheeled around him and he wished the skeletons were still holding him up.  He saw the soul-surgery as much as felt it—blue stripes being wrenched from the darkness, sending spasms through the serrated hooks that covered him from head to heels.  He wanted to puke but could not locate his mouth.  Two lights screamed in his mind, high and glassy, and in the depths the Guardian stirred reluctantly.  He felt the earth beneath him, imprisoning a kingdom of bones and broken blades, and tasted the blood that bound it together—old and thick and all-pervasive, pulsing through this accursed land under the thinnest of skins.  Pulsing through the vines that served as its muscles and sinews.

In the depths, the sleeping eye opened.

And then the blue bonds were gone and there were hands on his shoulders, smoothing down the hooks.  Gently, easily laying those jagged pieces of his soul to rest.  He dared to open his eyes and saw the High Necromancer’s bloodstained face, placid as she ran her fingers through his and separated them from the Guardian.

Behind her, the thorny cage that held Enkhaelen shuddered.  Enervating cold washed out as energy gathered into it.  Cob opened his mouth, trying to find his tongue.

In that instant, the cage and the hedges around it disintegrated into a rain of shrapnel.  Splinters spattered on the High Necromancer’s red ward, and she raised her head in alarm.  The Haarakash shouted and started to weave new spells, but the ground heaved sickeningly and, with a sound like rending walls, the air filled with dirt and bone shards and metal.

The High Necromancer fell against Cob with a gasp as a rust-coated shortsword slammed through her weakened ward and into her back.  He caught her and eased her to the ground, trying desperately to shield her with himself.  Her arcane wheel dissipated into red mist, the ghostly wraiths vanishing along with her influence over the fallen skeletons.

Shards of steel and complete blades whistled past Cob to scythe into the crowd of Haarakash, drawing screams and flashes of light from those who had warded themselves.  He looked the other way, to Fiora, who had thrown herself to the ground again.  A few red scratches showed on her but the metal and bone had not been aimed at them.

From the ruins of the cage, Enkhaelen’s borrowed corpse rose again, the ground beneath him shaking and bucking as long-buried weapons tore free.  “I am not happy,” he said as the ancient blades lifted into the air.  Iron-veined crystal and rusted steel, they shivered with every motion of the corpse’s remaining hand.  “After all I’ve done to allow you this refuge, you people insist on interfering with my work.  It’s time to learn your lesson.”

Cob rose unsteadily, looking from the High Necromancer to the wounded Haarakash huddled along the path.  More were coming from the plaza, their hands moving to enact protective wards, some bloody-faced and some blindfolded.  He could not tell whose side anyone was on.

Between him and them, Enkhaelen swept a hand through the air, the broken blades rotating threateningly to hover points-forward at the crowd.

“Wait,” said Cob.

Enkhaelen’s hand stilled.  He turned slightly to regard Cob with one red eye.

Cob stepped forward and offered his hand, careful to keep it open and not clench a fist like he wanted.  The corpse’s head tilted, wearing a look of mingled doubt and satisfaction, and after a moment it turned toward him.  The blades lowered.

With his other hand, Cob swung a haymaker punch at Enkhaelen’s head.

Inches away, his fist bounced off a sudden starburst of steel—a shield of crossed swords.  The impact jarred up his arm and he bared his teeth, falling a step back.

“
Ah, treachery,” said Enkhaelen.  “You’re not very nice, are you, Cob?”

The blades swung in midair and descended upon him, one striking him flat across the chest, one at the knees, one at the throat, stapling him to the ground.  Shrapnel whizzed like hornets to nail his clothes to the earth, and larger blades bent to make shackles around his arms and legs.  Blood from the hundred tiny cuts and stings that Enkhaelen had not stitched now seeped through his clothes and into the dirt.  He dug his fingers in, panting through gritted teeth as Enkhaelen moved to stand over him, frowning.

“I’m starting to wonder if I made the right choice,” he said.  “But—“

Red light sizzled off a blue ward by his shoulder, and he sighed and turned, tugging at the air to bring blades up and direct them at the Haarakash.

Cob struggled against his bonds, cursing vehemently.  Beneath his hands, the earth pulsed weirdly, and he sensed that blind, monstrous eye seeking him from somewhere far below.  He could not get up, only stare at Enkhaelen’s back as the necromancer yanked more blades and bones from the grave-mound and flung them at the people who had tried to help him.  Lances of red energy struck at the necromancer, but he simply laughed and brushed them away like so much dust.

A sarong eclipsed Cob’s vision then.  A sword whistled through the still air and made an ugly
kthunk
as it hit meat.

The laughter died instantly.  Metal rained to the ground.

“’Little girl’ that, you bastard,” said Fiora.

*****

In the undergrowth, a hare with a splinter through its skull reanimated and skittered away into the thorn.

*****

The force that had held the swords across Cob vanished.  Panting, he kicked a few off and tried to sit up.  The blades slid away but he was still bound, and he looked to his arms to see root-like red creepers twined around his wrists and poking through the slashes in his sleeves.  They were hooking into him, prying his cuts wider.  He yanked but had little leverage, and it hurt too much to keep trying.  More red fibers wormed from the ground, and he felt them on his legs and through his tunic.