The Splintered Eye (The War of Memory Cycle) (88 page)

Eyeing the nasty spirit, Cob thought,
Revenge.
  "So he did it," he said.  "Opened the Seals and let the Outsiders in...because of this?"

"Opened them to a degree.  But such was enough.  We must see him destroyed, yet we can not do it ourselves."

"Why not?  I'm pretty sure the Guardian could kill me if it wanted to."

“
Unlike the Guardian, we devour our hosts,” said the Ravager, its voice lowering to a harsh purr.  “We seek out those with great power so that their skills and knowledge will become ours upon consumption.  But we made a mistake when we took him.  Somehow, he refuses to be digested.  He has been stuck in our craw for four centuries, Ko Vrin, and in that time he has learned to control us more than we have ever controlled him.  We can not permit this.

“
And now he places us in a position where we must be the prey—where you, who should be protecting the vulnerable and the gentle while we destroy the corrupt and diseased, are now forced to hunt us.  To hunt in our stead, as we have too long been used for tasks that run counter to our purpose.

“
This is why there are wolves in the Guardian, Ko Vrin.  They do not belong there, but she needs them—she has needed to take them so that she might learn to hunt.  So that she can do our job while we are caught in the prison that is Enkhaelen.  So that she can be both Guardian and Ravager in our place.

“
She can not bear both burdens.  We were split at the moment of our first kill, and it has taken eons for us to refine our ways.  Our world does not have such eons for her to learn.  She needs us, and we need to be free.”

Swallowing, Cob nodded slowly.  He did not understand much about the dynamic of the Great Spirits, but the Ravager was right; the newer Guardians like Haurah and Erosei were not like the ones that had come before Enkhaelen.  He had started to wonder if they merited the name.

But he did not like this.  He was not surprised that the Ravager would turn on its host, yet something nagged at him, something that slipped through his fingers when he tried to grasp it.

Something was not right.

“Ko Vrin,” said the Ravager softly, “he is everything that we oppose.  A corruptor of bodies and souls, a maker of monstrosities, of creatures that should never have walked this world.  He has conspired with the Outsiders and with the wraiths to ruin this land and destroy its spirits.  He uses our knowledge and power to spitefully undo everything we have wrought.  He has imprisoned the Guardian in you and made a cage of the armies he leads and the Empire he controls.  Worst, he is the firebird, the false Light—using our form to wrest worship from the true spirit of Light that once held the people's reverence.  You must release us from him, or this world will surely fall to his madness.”

Closing his eyes, Cob saw Morshoc at the Riftwatch towers, sending bolts of energy out as casually as swatting flies.  He saw Enkhaelen in Haaraka, raising the dead to do his bidding, and saw him in the forest outside Daecia City with the still-living head of a skinchanger in his grip.

He saw him in the cave-mouth, lightning streaking the black sky behind him, his eyes lit by some feral glee.

“
I already wanted him dead,” he said softly.  “You don’t need to convince me.”

“
We only wish you to know that you have allies in the true Light,” said the Ravager, leaning forward.  Its wings flexed oddly against the back wall, and its smile seemed at once carnivorous and strained.  “We will give you what openings we can make.  That is why we brought you here.”

“
What’s here beside nightmares?”

The Ravager opened its mouth to speak, but as it did, the light spilling in from the low windows went out, and the creature flinched backward.  In the loss of the light’s illusion, the wings became dingy, rotten things, its body desiccated and riddled with holes.  With a look of alarm, Lerien flickered into his hawk-form and vanished.

A black gauntlet clasped Cob’s shoulder.  Another clutched his arm.  They pulled him back into a forest of dark-armored bodies.  Erosei and Haurah stepped before him, raising swords and claws with grim purpose.

“
What did it tell you?” said Dernyel, holding onto him as the two vicious Guardians advanced on the Ravager.  The creature hunched forward, its long claws spread to fight, its wings wide and teeth bared in a monstrous snarl.  In the dimness, Cob glimpsed thin filaments running from its wings to the cocooned ceiling like puppet strings.

Cob looked at Dernyel, who was armored for war like the others, the oddly blurred silver blade clasped in one hand.  “Father,” he said.  “It was tryin’ to—“

The Ravager’s pale gaze fixed on him, ignoring the Guardians.  “That is not your father,” it snarled.

“
And you’re not our Ravager,” said Erosei.

His blades flashed down, and Cob felt the impact in his gut just beneath the end of his breastbone, like the swords had been driven into him instead of the Ravager.  It shrieked—a horrible sound, part raptor’s scream, part man, part metal being riven—but only strained forward with its claws as Erosei’s blades rose again, Haurah following.

And Cob saw that strands of webbing held its arms too, and its wings, its ribs and thighs, all pulled taut by the creature’s straining.  They kept it pinioned, unable to do more than thrash and scream as the blades and fangs tore through rotted feathers and weak bone, sheared muscle, sent shards of claws and talons flying as it tried to defend itself.

It was not a fight.

It was an execution.

Cob tried to step forward, bile rising, but Dernyel’s grip was like stone.  He could only watch as the two Guardians reduced the Ravager to a shrieking bloodless rag of feathers, and only when Haurah tore out its decaying throat did it cease its awful keen.

But it did not stop fighting.  It was a long, long time before the last joint snapped and the creature finally slumped, struck from its strings.

The Guardians turned to Cob then, Erosei grinning in that fanatical way, Haurah panting through her thread-striped muzzle.

“Go on, we saved the last shot for you,” said Erosei.

Beyond them, the Ravager lifted its battered head, its face half gone.  The torn flesh revealed an eye-socket huge like a bird’s, and the shattered jaw hung from a strand of sinew, exposing more pallid tongue and inner throat than Cob had ever wanted to see.  Its teeth were shattered, its wings no more than mangled stumps, its arms gone along with great chunks of its torso.

One cold eye remained, and it stayed locked on Cob as Dernyel pressed the blurry sword into his hands and pushed him forward.  Cob stared at the distorted blade, then at the Ravager, who somehow, in some ghastly manner, seemed to smile.

“
These are the bonds on you,” said Dernyel.  “This is their source.  Destroy it.”

With a silent nod, Cob raised the blade and brought it down on the Ravager’s skull.

The blade clove through with a sickening crunch.  Then white light flooded from every inch of the Ravager—searing, blinding, invasive light that jabbed its fingers past Cob’s eyelids into his head.  He squinted hard against it, because despite the glare he sensed that something was still there like a shadow in the radiance, caged inside the empty husk.  A form; a figure kneeling—

Something wrenched in his chest, as if someone had gripped his sternum and given it a firm yank.  From it came a searing pain, singular at first before radiating outward in a stinging net.  He gritted his teeth and felt it peel away like a layer of skin, and for a moment knowledge and sensation poured into the gap, filling him with flashes of lands unknown, of hidden cities, ice and heat and endless labyrinths, stone spires like needles, pain, glory, that first abhorrent sundering—

It cut off like a slamming door.  Darkness descended, the shapeless afterimages dancing on his retinas.  Darkness and absence; no crippled Ravager, no cocoons, no twining threads.  No sword in his hands.

No floor beneath his feet.

He acted before he understood, sheer instinct making him grab outward in mid-fall.  A slap against his palms, a near-dislocating shock through his arms and shoulders, and he hung perilously in the gap where the garret floor had rotted through.  Empty air stirred beneath his kicking feet.  Through the dissipating blindness, he saw the nearest intact floor: the stone foundation three stories down.

Swearing in panic, he looked around.  Dim light slitted through holes in the roof, and above where the Ravager had crouched there was no roof at all, only blackened spars piercing the sky.  The tight staircase he had climbed was in ruins, only a handful of steps still clinging to the central pillar.  He had grabbed onto one of the few remaining floor-planks, not more than an inch thick and two inches wide and slanted from where it had broken off its old mooring to nestle in a lower cross-brace.  The floors below had thoroughly collapsed, depositing a mass of splintered timbers and rotted furnishings into the basement beneath a thin dusting of snow.

The Guardians leaned over the gap above, no surprise showing on their faces.  He wanted to spit at them.

"You coulda warned me," he called instead, trying to stay calm.  The plank could not hold him if he gave in to panicked thrashing.  He had to feel through it, awaken it like he had awoken other broken branches...

“We were not here,” said Haurah, crouching at the edge.  “We only surfaced when the nightmare ended.”

“
If you say so,” Cob muttered, and concentrated on awakening the plank.  It burst into life so quickly that he nearly lost his grip, the grain writhing under his hands as it produced new bark.  By the time he told it to stop, it had already embedded roots and branches into both walls, a horizontal sapling.

He hung there for a long moment, blinking, then said, “Are the bonds broken?”

“Yes.”  He looked up to see Jeronek at the edge, and wondered where he and Vina had been while the others were mangling the Ravager.  Probably behind him.  “The large splinter is destroyed.  It is what maintained the soul-hooks.  The little one remains, but it is no longer a threat.”

So they can leave whenever they like
, thought Cob.  Hanging here in empty space, that felt more like a threat than a victory.  He glanced up to Erosei, who grinned in response—an avid grin like a spectator’s at a duel, certain of his entertainment.

Next to him, Dernyel stood with sword in hand, the weapon no longer a blur but a keen Muriae silver blade.  Cob’s gaze stayed fixed to his father’s face, though.  It was like staring at a mask: dark eyes allowing no window into his thoughts, weathered features showing neither approval nor concern.

‘That is not your father.’

He twitched, but it was just an echo in his mind.  Not the Ravager, not anything but memory.  Still, he swore he saw Dernyel’s eyes narrow.

His arms hurt.  He knew he should pull himself up to the garret and the Guardians, not just hang here like an idiot, but suddenly the idea of standing among them felt reprehensible. 
Is that what changed him?
he thought, still watching his father. 
Being among the predator-Guardians?  Do I really want to follow his path?

But he had come this far.

No point in going up, though.  Got to get down, got to find my friends.

It took effort, but he forced his gaze from Dernyel to the splintered wood around him.  Bit by bit, plank by plank, he force-grew his own ladder through the ruined space, hands aching, arms shaking from the strain of suspending himself.  He knew it was far more rapid than any work he could have done before being released from his bonds, but still it felt like an eternity before he could look down and see the tangle of debris in the basement only a few feet below.

He started to grow a branch sideways, thinking to clamber across it to a gap in the ground floor wall, but then glimpsed something glimmering in the shadows at the far end of the basement.  Something silvery.

Glancing up, he saw that the Guardians were gone, even Dernyel.  He frowned, but looked back to the glimmer and lowered himself onto the pile of furniture and ice.

His feet did not skid on the slick surface; he felt as steady on it as on flat earth.  Through the ice and old wood he felt the stone floor, then the earth beneath it and all the wood and rock of the manor, all the residual magic that kept it standing. 
Is that how I got up there?
he wondered, peering into the hollowed garret again. 
The Ravager working old magic through me?

Creepy.

Beyond the collapsed flooring, the basement was relatively debris-free.  Ice covered the ground in a thick translucent sheet and icicles rimed the tomb-like rows of stone slabs, but the chamber stretched otherwise unharmed for over a dozen yards, with rune-covered steel beams latticing the ceiling—obviously why this part of the structure had not failed.  Moving among them cautiously, Cob noted rotted straps hanging from steel rings in the slabs, and remembered waking up on such a one in Thynbell.

Not tombs, then.

Past the slabs were a few feet of bare space and then the rear wall.  A doorway gaped like an empty socket, rusted hinges hanging from the stone.  The dim light of the broken ceiling barely slid a finger in this far, but the glimmering thing he had seen was there.