The Splintered Eye (The War of Memory Cycle) (8 page)

“Talla...Talla, I am well,” said the Mother Matriarch, but the strain in her face was obvious.  “We must send him to Turo—“

“
We will, Mother.  Be at peace.”  With a sharp word, Sister Talla summoned another young priestess, who bustled up with a candle and bowed her head to Cob and Arik.  “See them to their accommodations—or perhaps the bathing room first,” Sister Talla said, “and then continue rekindling the flames.  We have much work to do to make this place a shelter again.”

“
Yes, Sister,” said the priestess, and beckoned to Cob and Arik.

Cob nodded, then pulled his tunic on properly and slung his coat over it.  The chill in the chamber had not dissipated.  The way this place had gone from stiflingly warm to freezing in mere moments frightened him, not least because he knew it was his fault.

When he closed his eyes, he could see the prison circles again.  See himself reaching out to touch them, break them, send the magic away.

Into the Dark.

His scar twinged, and he pressed his hand over it, wincing.  The Guardian was silent and still, as if sensing a predator, but if something really lingered in the temple complex, Cob could not feel it.  All he felt was cold and tired and scared.

With Arik close at his side, he stepped down from the dais and followed the priestess into the shadowed hall.

Deep in the uplands of Corvia, Lark huddled in the leafless brush and took another swig from the leather flask.  Pungent bitterstar liquor burned down her throat, but it was a welcome burn.  The rest of her felt frozen.

Dimly she knew that she should not be drinking—not while out in the cold and certainly not while perched on an overlook high above the valley floor—but it was the way of life with the Corvish, and she was adapting to it.  Anyway, she had plenty of reasons to drink, like being abandoned here by the Shadow Folk while her goblin child, Rian, was lost elsewhere.

Perhaps ‘abandoned’ was a strong word.  The shadowbloods did still whisper to her from time to time, requesting updates and giving new orders.  But they would not tell her where Rian was or let her into the Shadow Realm, and refused to assign her back to Bahlaer’s kai.  She had a sneaking suspicion that Cayer’s unblood control of the kai was being challenged.

When Radha’s painted hand reached for the flask, she yielded it reluctantly and tugged the scarf back over her nose and mouth.

Ever since attacking the convoy that had carried Cob and Darilan, Lark and her Corvish hosts had been on the run.  Nothing barred them from retreating to the cave-fort of Kanrath-Neirai, but the Gold Army was on their tail, and Corvishfolk did not stand still for sieges.  The plan had been to trek high into the Khaeleokiel Mountains where the thick snow and biting cold would dissuade the soft lowland Golds, but it was like they had kicked a hornet’s nest.  No matter how far they went, a swarm of yellow uniforms followed them.

Lark could see them now among the scrub forest at the edge of the valley.  She and the Corvish were situated at the top of a sheared granite cliff, concealed by snow and brush; it was not the first time they had waited in ambush, and by the Golds’ reticence to leave the shelter of the trees, it seemed they were learning from their mistakes. 

She touched the fletchings of her arrows absently.  Crow-feathered, with obsidian heads, they shattered on Gold armor as often as they penetrated, but the Corvish had plenty; runners came upon the war party every day, laden with gifts and supplies and news from allied clans.  Some said that there were other bands harrying the Golds from the flanks, but if so, the fighting was too far away to see.

She wished she had her crossbow.  She was better with it than the shortbow the Corvish had given her, plus she had a bit of special ammunition: the pouch of Trifold-treated bolts that Darilan had left with her.  They were meant to kill abominations like him, and she suspected that there were some among their Gold pursuit, but could not be sure.  She had not seen the obvious one—the lagalaina woman—since the caravan attack.

Which was good.  The lagalaina’s seduction-aura had nearly killed them all.

Radha waggled the flask at her again and Lark waved it away.  Further down the overlook, a few knots of Corvish had cuddled up for warmth, and the sound of smothered giggles and the occasional rhythmic grunt reached her.  She rolled her eyes.  This was the problem with waiting on the Golds.  The Corvish were easily distracted.

“Think they scryin’ us?” said Radha, pointing her narrow chin toward the yellow blotches in the trees.  She was covered in whorls of red and black paint, bone amulets, a few strips of leather and a white fur cloak for camouflage, yet somehow did not shiver.  One of the khirinain, the fox skinchangers, she seemed impervious to the cold.

“
I’d assume so,” said Lark through her scarf.  “They have the mages for it.  And they’ve gotten more cautious.  What do the spirits say?”

The red-haired woman shrugged and gestured with the flask, indicating the winter forest and cliffs and the ridges of great smoking mountains to the north.  “They quiet.  Listenin’.  This not magic territory, but still magic-smell in the air.”

Lark frowned and took a deep breath.  It just smelled cold to her.  She had felt a difference in the atmosphere down in the Forest of Mists—a tingle on the nerves, a strange astringent taste to the air—but up here it was too subtle to catch.

“
Well, whatever they do, I hope it’s soon,” she mumbled.  “Before my fingers freeze.”

Radha put her hand over Lark’s.  Her fingers were rough but warm, her nails sharp like little claws, and her sidelong look was bright though her eyes were black as inkspots.  “Yeh shoot bad enough already,” she said.  “Shoot any worse an’ yeh’ll be on their side.”

Cheeks heating, Lark slipped her hand away.  Out of all the Corvish, only Radha paid her much attention, and though it was usually brusque, she remembered how Radha had fallen under the lagalaina’s control at the caravan ambush.  She knew what that meant.  It made things awkward.

Though to judge by the Corvishwoman’s amused look, it was only awkward for Lark.

“Thanks, I guess,” she said.

Radha snorted.

“Hss! 
Ysanix ko
!” said someone suddenly, and Radha’s attention snapped to the woods behind them.  Lark, who had yet to get the hang of their language, squinted after her.

Her heart leapt into her throat.

Thick mist descended through the evergreens on the slope, swift and silent like a cloudbank falling to earth.  Before anyone could move, it poured in among them.  The world vanished behind a veil of vapor, and Lark held her breath superstitiously, shivering as it touched her face through the scarf.  For a moment Radha was a silhouette beside her, then she was gone.

Lark reached out in a panic but felt nothing but air.  “Radha?” she said, but her voice fell flat, like she had spoken into a muffle.

No answer.

Fear fluttered in her chest.  She swept her hands out only to see them vanish inches away.  Beneath her, the ground felt strange, and when she touched it there was no snow but bare stone—not cold, not warm, just neutral.  Indifferent.  Like there had been something in the land that had felt wintry toward her, but now no longer cared.

“Hoi?” she whispered.  Her voice went nowhere.

The mist stirred faintly.  In her mind’s eye she saw phantoms—monsters, abominations, every terrible story she had ever heard—and whimpered low in her throat, drawing her obsidian knife.  There were no shadows here, no way to call to her people, and the Corvish were gone.  She was alone.

Her other hand, still extended, brushed something smooth and flowing.  Something that had not been there before.

With a shriek, she lurched backward, falling on her rear where the concealing bushes should have been.  Knife raised, she stared ahead, heart hammering in her chest.

Slowly, a figure resolved through the fog, tall and hooded, its all-covering grey cloak as featureless as the blank landscape.  Only the lower part of its face showed beneath the hood—a fine jaw, the delicate curve of a white mouth—but though it was humanlike, it was in the way of a porcelain doll or a well-made mask.  A work of art, not of flesh.

A wraith
, she thought.  Her stomach did a terrified flip.

“
You bear the tracer,” it said in a soft, inflectionless voice.  “Give it to me.”

She stared uncomprehendingly, the obsidian knife trembling in her hand.

“The arrowhead,” said the wraith.

“
The—“  Lark’s other hand lifted toward the collar of her bear-hide coat.  The silvery arrowhead lay beneath, buried between several layers of shirts to keep its chill from her skin.  She had taken it from Darilan’s corpse, thinking to sell it at some point or tie it to a shaft if she ever needed a special arrow.  “What, why?  Who—“

The wraith extended one grey-gloved hand to her.  It had all five fingers, but they were unusually long and slightly crooked, spidery.  She leaned away, panting softly.  Instinct screamed at her to slice those fingers with the knife but she dared not.  Wraiths were monstrously powerful.  Anything she could do would only annoy it.

Its fine white mouth thinned slightly.  It stepped closer, the smooth fabric of its cloak rippling against her bent knees like the mist itself, and looked down on her from above.  In the hollow of its hood, its eyes were crystalline slits, pale gold like champagne and holding their own inner light.  There was nothing human about them.

“
Give it to me,” it said again.

Lark did not consider herself brave.  She had fantasized about heroism, but those daydreams always dissipated upon contact with reality.  Her few moments of valor—firing on the lagalaina and upon Darilan at the Bahlaer tavern, fighting alongside the Corvish—had been from cover, from a distance, for survival and for rank among the Shadow Folk.  She had no desire to put herself in pointless danger.

Defying a wraith would be just that.

She fumbled at her collar, trying to find the cord among the mess of straps and shirts and vests she wore.  “Why…why do you want it?” she said to buy time.

“That is not your concern.”

“
No, of course not.  But—  It’s a tracer?  Like to find someone?”

The wraith said nothing.  Lark stared up at it, still feeling around for the cord.  “The abomination’s dead,” she said.  “The one who had this.”

Still nothing.  She found the right cord and started to draw it out when suddenly a thought struck: Not Darilan, but—

Cob.

She saw his face for a moment, thin and tired and angry.  Stubborn, like when she had met him in the tavern.  She barely knew him, had been willing to go along with Darilan’s plan to kill him, but that had been with the Corvish at her back and the promise that the Great Spirit inside him would go free.

Her hand shook.

“You’re gonna kill it.  The Guardian,” she whispered.  “I can’t give this to you.”

The wraith’s head tilted marginally.  “You are misinformed.”

“Then what do you want from it?”

“
That is not your—“

“
Yes it is,” she said.  Somehow her voice did not quaver.  Her insides were a knot of fear, but she knew that if she aided in the Guardian’s destruction, her people would never take her back.  Even the Corvish would reject her.  The arrowhead hung like a lump of ice between her breasts, presaging her doom.

For a long moment, the wraith stared down at her, statue-still, expressionless, unblinking.  Then it lifted its head to stare into the misty distance, narrow form going stiff.  Lark glanced that way but saw nothing—no earth, no sky, just grey.

“They approach,” it said.  “Give me the tracer now.”

Lark shifted backward, feeling with her knife-hand for the cliff’s edge behind her.  It was gone.  “Who approaches?”

“The haelhene.”

“
The—  You’re not haelhene?” she said, surprised.  She only knew of the wraiths from stories, but with its pallor and threatening demeanor, she had been sure this was a white wraith.  A haelhene, an Imperial servitor.

“
I am of the airahene,” it said.  “The folk of the Mists.  One would think that was obvious.”

For a moment she just stared, hardly believing she had been sassed by a wraith.  Then its words registered and she looked into the mist again.  “They’re approaching us here?  Or in the…the actual world?”

“The living world.”

“
The li—  My friends, the Corvish, they’ll—“

“
They have fled,” said the wraith.  “You are alone.”

The words were like a shank to the gut.  In her head, a little voice said,
Don’t be surprised.  The Shadow Folk have abandoned you.  Why would a bunch of skinchangers be any different?

Even your mother did it.

Lark gritted her teeth.  “What will you do?”

“
I will leave.  I can not fight so many.  Give me the tracer.”

“
Take me with you.”

“
Why?”

Lark’s hand tightened around the obsidian knife, but she pulled the arrowhead from hiding at last.  “Because the Guardian doesn’t like your kind, but I know its vessel.  I can help you.” 
And Rian might be there too.

The wraith stared at her, then into the mist.  Squinting, she just made out five dark diamond-shapes, undulating faintly in the all-consuming grey.

“Very well,” said the wraith, tension in its soft voice.  “Take my hand.”

Lark obeyed.  The wraith pulled her to her feet with surprising strength and snapped the arrowhead from around her neck before she could react.  She thought to stab it, but it did not let go; whatever it planned, she was going with it.

Through the mist now she heard a sound like the beating of large wings, slow and muffled as if through many layers of cloth.  The dark diamonds grew in the sky, clarifying, their stingray tails becoming visible, while above each gleamed a pinspot of piercing light.

In her wraith’s hand, the arrowhead flared suddenly ice-white and leapt on its cord.

Fog roiled up from the ground, thick and dark as a stormcloud, and blotted out everything—wings, wraiths, her own extended arm.  Only the sensation of fingers on hers let Lark know that she was not alone.

At the pull of that small connection, she stepped into the unknown.