The Splintered Eye (The War of Memory Cycle) (65 page)

He felt nothing from it.  Nothing at all past the tilted ring of dying trees.

An Imperial station
, he thought, but that felt wrong.  This was no place for people, not even soldiers.  It was the sort of place that would eat at the mind slowly, at the soul, until whoever was assigned to that cold chunk of rock was no longer human.

He felt the others’ eyes turn toward it, the tingle of their fear reflecting his own, and he thought to cut sharply northward and circumvent it the long way around.  The land between it and Haaraka was pinched with agony, and he was loath to traverse it.

But to turn north now would be to lose his lead.  The hounds would catch them long before they could skirt the lake.

“
Can you call the mist?” he shouted.

“
No.  Not here,” said Ilshenrir.

“
The shadows?”

“
Pike no, not before they reach us,” said Lark.

Cob swallowed.  The lake drew closer with every stride, and the Guardian shrank deeper and deeper within him.  There was no time to dither.  Veer or go straight.

So he chose the gauntlet.  It preserved his only other option: pushing the others through the Haarakash barrier whether they liked it or not.

For their sake, he thought,
We won’t get caught.  I won’t allow it.

No matter what.

*****

Dasira tasted their prey’s fear, and so did the hounds, for they howled until their voices fractured into horrible human-like cackles.  She wanted to drive Serindas into the skull of the hound she rode, but knew that would be like cutting off her own foot in this race.

Instead she kept her eyes on the trail of beaten snow that Cob had left.

The cold wind raked through her hair and she thought,
They can’t keep this pace.  Cob can run forever but not fast enough, and the hounds won’t tire.  Not now that they have his scent.

This is my fault, so I’ll fix it.  How?

The lake was just coming into view, Akarridi small and forbidding at its center.  They were already riding at the edge of its defenses, she knew, and did not understand why Cob did not swing southward.  The Haarakash barrier should be miles away, giving him plenty of space to run without alerting Akarridi.

But it had been twenty years since her last visit.  Haaraka could have crept closer.

Silently she cursed the sentient Summerland, cursed Akarridi and all its denizens, cursed the Golds, Cob, herself.  Everyone with their stupid quarrels, always doing their best to close the distance and strangle each other, crushing every other option in their path.  If Cob was this close to Akarridi because the Haarakash barrier had moved north, then it was only a matter of time before he tripped Akarridi’s wards.  Only a matter of time before the sky swarmed with haelhene and the ground with akarriden wielders.

For the first time since her assignment to Cob, she knew she needed her maker’s help.

The shame and hate that arose at the thought nearly washed it away, but she clung stubbornly.  Whatever had passed between Enkhaelen and Cob in Haaraka, it could not have ended the bastard’s obsession with this project, so even if he laughed in her face, he had to help.  She would not let pride get in her way.

One eye on Calett, she reached back to slide Serindas from its sheath, then lifted it to her right ear to touch the flat of the blade to the stud.

Immediately the arcane device sparked, sending pain shooting through the side of her face.  She winced and tucked the blade out of sight but did not sheathe it, ready to try again.  The lake drew closer with each breath, and far ahead she thought she glimpsed fleeing movement among the trees.

Long silence passed, the stud still spitting the occasional spark.  Teeth gritted, she was about to lift Serindas again when she heard faintly,
‘What do you think you’re doing?’

“
Cob.  Akarridi.  Help,” she hissed, and saw Calett glance sidelong after her.

Another silence.

Then:
‘Strike team en route.’

The hairs on the back of her neck lifted.  Never had she gotten a response from him so devoid of mockery, so to the point.  She did not know whether to be relieved or panicked.

Instead, she jammed Serindas into its sheath and switched hands on the hound’s collar to yank her left glove off with her teeth.  The bracer twinged on her arm, then her left hand spasmed as tendrils burrowed beneath the muscle all the way to the fingertips.  She reached forward to clamp her hand on the back of the hound’s neck and concentrated on pushing the tendrils out from under her nails and through a gap in the chitinous plates, into its spine.

The beast yelped and jerked, breaking from the pack.  Eyes nearly shut, she sent the bracer’s tendrils up the hound’s vertebrae and into the base of its brain, and suddenly she had eight limbs, two sets of eyes, and a small spare mind that struggled against her pointed orders.  The hound stumbled and nearly fell, but then the control-strands took over fully, the same way they had for every body Dasira had ever stolen, and the hound was hers.

She saw through the hound’s eyes as Calett shouted at her in concern.  The other hounds rushed by, buffeting her with their plated flanks, and though the senvraka tried to come around, the pack mentality pushed the hounds onward together, letting him do little more than slow down.

Dasira took a moment to focus on the four limbs touching the ground, and make sure that the four that were not had properly locked in place so that she would not slide off.  Then she wheeled around and lunged for the trailing mages.

I should have practiced this more
, she thought as she went for one Gold-robe’s throat but only managed to whack him broadside with her uncoordinated bulk.  The impact knocked him free of his levitation spell and broke his main ward, though, and when she leapt on him again he put an energy bolt through the hound’s chest but could not keep her borrowed teeth from his neck.  Hot blood filled her mouth at the same moment that pain bloomed through her front, but she pushed that second sensation away, feeding the hound adrenaline through the thin connection to the bracer.

The other mages were still skidding along behind the hounds, but several had turned their attention on her, hands weaving nets of power.  Calett too had managed to control his mount and now charged her, regulation sword drawn, a look of confused fury on his handsome face.

Dasira got her four new feet under herself and took off perpendicular to the group.  She would not score another easy kill but she could definitely split the Gold team, and since conflict with Akarridi was now inevitable…

Akarridi’s haelhene liked the Gold Army no better than they liked anyone else.

She burst out from the dying trees, her paws pattering on untrammeled snow for only a moment before they hit the ice-coated rocks.  There was no barrier here, no sense of having tripped an alarm, but she did not have to feel it to know that her presence had been noticed.  Behind her she heard Calett shouting again and felt the tingle of his pheromone-influence trying to turn her, but she was as much hound now as she was female, and hounds lived only to kill and feed.  They had been people once—people who had done terrible things—but now were castrated tools, and neither senvraka nor lagalaina had the power to break her bracer’s hold.

Turning, she saw several ruengriin on hounds pursuing her, as well as Calett and one sledding mage.  With one of her human limbs she drew the blade from its sheath, reveling in its bloodlust.

Then she charged.

*****

The howls closed in on them and Cob realized grimly that he should have stood and fought outside of this zone of tortured earth.  His hold on the Guardian’s powers kept fraying, his steps losing their speed, and he heard his friends’ breathing turn harsh as more of the fatigue of the run seeped through.

As for the numbness, there was no end in sight.  Every inch of lake and shore was a blind spot, with Haaraka all but at his shoulder.

He looked past the frightened faces of his companions to the lean, horrid shapes that pursued them, and his heart clenched.  They were closing the distance quickly.  Lark, who trailed the others in her many layers, would be in danger soon.

In his head, the voice of Maevor—that opportunistic criminal who had tried to take Cob under his wing in camp—whispered,
‘All you need to survive is to be faster than your friends.’
  It unnerved him to suddenly think of that.

Won’t happen
, he decided, and turned around.

The others clumped about him, confusion on their faces.  Ilshenrir, unsurprisingly, had vanished.

“Go on,” he told them, and reached into the aching earth to strengthen the haphazard scales of his armor.  His boots hung from his belt, but even barefoot he could not connect without letting in the debilitating pain of the trees.  Grimacing, he tried to reach the deep dark earth he knew must be down there somewhere, but it was like trying to reach through a swarm of stinging jellyfish—so much suffering from so many angles, every new stab sapping his concentration.

No one ran, though Lark did scoot anxiously behind him.

“Go!” he snapped.

“
And where would you have us go?” Fiora retaliated.  “Keep running while they swarm you?  We’re here for you.  And if they take you down, they won’t have any problem catching the rest of us.”

He looked up to see her unsling her shield and draw her sword.  From his other side came the crackle of sinews as Arik shifted into war-form.

Gritting his teeth, he managed a nod.  Fiora was right.  It was stupid, so stupid to have gone from one conflict straight into another, and he had no idea how to get out of this—not when hiding in Haaraka would only save Fiora and Lark.

He could not bear to see anyone fall for his sake.

So don’t let them
, he told himself. 
Earth is in pain, wood is in pain, but there’s a third element you can touch.  Now’s a good time to try it.

“
Fine,” he said as the wave of hounds bore down on them.  “Jus’ don’t complain if your nice clothes get ruined.”

Fiora barked a laugh and pulled up the hood of her chainmail.

Lowering his head, Cob stepped forward and fixed his stance, detaching his attention from the suffering elements to focus on the snow around him.  It had fallen from the sky and thus had no connection to this pained land or that horrible lake, and though he had never tried to manipulate it, he had spent his entire childhood in the cold lands.  Ice was as familiar to his hands as stone.

The sensation of the Guardian’s scales swelled within him, withdrawing its aegis from the others to empower him as much as it could.  He buried his hands in the snow to feel its intricate crystalline structure, so fine and sharp and yet so malleable, and with a great yank he drew it unto himself.

Snow unfurled from the knee-high banks to clad him, layer on layer solidifying into a glaze flecked dark by particles of earth and bark.  Smoother even than the flow of mud, it washed along his legs and back and over his shoulders, down his arms to bristle with razor spikes, then up his cheeks to lock over his face as protectively as any knight’s helm.  Thin gaps remained for his eyes, black motes swarming beneath to cut the glare from the snow.  His antlers branched wider than ever, their fine wooden cores daggered thickly with ice.

All the hounds’ eyes fixed on him.  As they tore through the snow toward him, he noted the few riders yanking at their collars in a vain attempt to redirect them, and smiled slightly behind his ice mask.  They were the hounds and he was the stag.  Who else would they attack?

Not two yards from him, the lead hound hit something invisible that flashed with a pale, searing light.  The hound kept rushing forward, its slavering mouth opening wider and wider until it split at the jaw.

Then it fell at Cob’s feet, bleeding and convulsing, a line cut straight through its head and out the top of its spine.  The pale strand that had cut it hung in the air long enough to slice through another charging hound, then winked from existence.

Ilshenrir
, Cob thought appreciatively.

Then the third hound hit him, leading with its teeth.

*****

As the hound died beneath her, Dasira tumbled free, hitting the ice and rolling just ahead of the next arcane blast.  For a moment she could not remember how to use four limbs instead of eight, but then the last remnant of the hound’s nervous system cleared from her bracer and she flipped to her feet, just in time to dodge Calett’s hound.  The senvraka’s sword whistled down at her head and she ducked low, almost spilling onto her back but cutting a deep gash in the hound’s foreleg with Serindas.

The ugly creature yelped and skidded as its wounded leg buckled, the other three scrabbling for purchase on the lake’s glassy surface.  Another arcane flash caught Dasira’s eye and she raised Serindas just in time to intercept it, the malevolent blade drinking enough to send only a tingle up her arm.  From his spot on the shore, the Gold mage cursed then started weaving another spell.