“We keep looking,” she decided. “There may not be anything in the homes, but there has to be a warehouse of some sort, or a communal kitchen, or a temple—somewhere they'd keep supplies. Even converts have to eat, right?”
“I know I'm piking hungry,” said Vyslin, but Erevard didn't respond, just stared up at the cocoon with an evaluating look on his pocked face.
She didn't want to ask, because she was afraid of him and his sword, but soon—after opening over a dozen buildings of varying sizes and finding nothing, absolutely nothing—she couldn't help herself. They'd worked their way past the deflated dome, moving toward the far area where Cob and the Crown Prince had faced off, and Erevard had just turned away from another twisted cocoon, when she said, “Do you eat?”
He looked at her, poison-yellow eyes reflecting the light of the crystal. “I have.”
“But do you need to?”
“Yes. Now.”
The unnatural star-shape of his pupils unnerved her, but she forced herself to maintain a steady stare. She had no illusions about being the boss; Maevor and the few Illanic converts might back her against Erevard, but she couldn't be sure of Vyslin or anyone else who'd been an Imperial. “Does that mean right this moment, or as opposed to previously?” she prompted.
He let her wait the length of three full breaths, then said, “Previously. I had not been hungry since I joined with the armor, nor thirsty. I could run as far as I needed to without tiring, and fight the same way. But now I am hungry. Weary.”
“The armor—it fed you?”
“With energy.” He flexed his empty hand, still lightly encased in threads. “It's taking it back now; I feel weaker than when I put it on. No surprise that others collapsed.”
Lark frowned, considering him. Like all the White Flames, his armor had thinned during their trek, likely as a reaction to the deprivation. But whereas Vyslin's armor had receded from his spikily tattooed arms and two others' were even withdrawing from their chests, Erevard was still fully-clad. Because of the sword, or…?
“I thought this was supposed to help us,” Vyslin interjected, giving his false leg a slap. “You think it's a detriment?”
The pocked ruengriin shrugged. “Perhaps not for you. It replicates something you need. But these cocoons...” He eyed the one they'd just revealed. “They are like the armor, meant to maintain the person they encase. But now the Light has fled.”
Lark's stomach turned over. “So you think that's...”
“A corpse. Dead from the shock, or perhaps suffocation. My helm used to give me sight and air. It's stopped. If I hadn't taken it off when I did, I would have died.”
“Then they were all sustained by the Palace? They didn't need food at all?”
“I don't know. But there was none in the Imperial City.”
Lark had hoped it was because of the fasting the pilgrims practiced over Midwinter—though if the fasting was meant to cover the fact that there was no food, no festivities, just the bodily conversion… “Oh, I feel sick,” she murmured.
“This explains the priests, I guess,” said Vyslin. “They've got that white stuff in their eyes. If my eyes suddenly started eating at me, I'd tear 'em out too.”
“And it explains you, doesn't it?” said Lark, glancing to Maevor. “How you nearly died?”
The bodythief had been hanging at the back of their handful of explorers, further than he usually strayed from Lark. Now he grimaced and looked away, dark eyes fixed on the village interior. “I don't reside in this body,” he confirmed. “I'm in the bracer, and the bracer is made of that stuff. If I hadn't been able to hitch onto you, I would have unraveled. So...thank you.”
“Do you know about these villages?” she prompted. She'd asked before, but he'd shrugged it off noncommittally. By the change in his face, that wasn't the truth.
He stayed silent a moment, then exhaled heavily. “I never visited one, but I knew of them. There used to be villages all over this swamp, and some proper towns in the dry spots, but then the plagues came, or...some say it was because the fish died, the animals. Either way, everyone eventually went to Daecia City, and the White Road crawled out and took over all the old village shells. I heard things started growing in them: false people, little puppets that couldn't leave. Maybe that's just gossip.
“But when the High Priest came to power, he declared them holy sites. Had people moved in: women mostly, unconverted women. His sect talked a lot about...alternate methods of purification, proper forms of worship. Always sounded more like comfort stations. Sex camps, you know.”
For a moment, Lark couldn't speak. Then she managed, “Sect, there are different sects of the Imperial Light?”
Maevor glanced to her, mouth curved in a shameful not-smile, then nodded toward Vyslin. “He mentioned one. The old Firebird cult. Borderline heretical now, but since they still revere the Emperor as the embodiment of their Firebird, it's fine. Then there's what you might call the traditional sect—all purification and sacrifice, pilgrimage, cat-killing, spiritist-hunting, constant vigilance against the temptations of the Dark. That's the one you have in most of the Heartlands.
“Then there's the White Flame priesthood. The High Priest's darlings. Sterner, harsher. Talk about how the Dark is already in us and we have to scourge it out—burn it down to the roots. All those white-eyed priests, they're his. They replace their eyes with Palace stuff to see as the Light sees, judge as it judges. I hear some of them castrate themselves, skin themselves, to escape the lure of Darkness. They don't like women—say women can never be rid of the Dark. I don't think their movement's gained much traction outside the Imperial City, but they were first in the Emperor's favor before this.”
“The High Priest—who is he?”
Maevor smiled grimly. “You've met him. Field Marshal Rackmar. He's held both titles for five years now.”
“That man is your spiritual leader?”
“No, the Emperor is. Was. The High Priest just manages the temple's hierarchy and deals with policy matters below the Emperor's interest. Pushes his own agenda, yes, but he wouldn't get anywhere without the Emperor's backing.”
Lark shook her head. Just when she'd thought she was done with the Empire's insanity… “You White Flames here, you don't believe in that shit, right?”
The Bahlaeran, Sallos Mendras, shook his head vigorously. Several more murmured their denials. Vyslin said, “Guess I'm a Firebirder.”
Erevard said, “I don't care.”
“It's the priesthood that's the problem,” Maevor interjected, “not the White Flame soldiers. Theirs is just a prestige position—guarding the Emperor, wearing a physical embodiment of his blessing. I heard the Field Marshal wants to use the armor to end conversion entirely, since it rarely rejects anyone. But it's not quite perfect, so they keep it mostly for special cases.”
“Like missing bits,” said Vyslin sourly, then blinked. “Hoi, does that mean the rest of my comrades are alive? The ones who came in for conversion with me?”
“It might.”
“Unless they suffocated,” Erevard noted. Vyslin glared at him.
“All right, well, I think that means this is a wash,” said Lark. “If the villagers didn't need to eat, we won't find food no matter how hard we look. So let's head back, and—“
Something growled from the darkness.
The hairs on the back of Lark's neck stood up. She spun around, pushing energy into the crystal, and it flared out its warm light. Shapes flinched in the shadows, then steadied; eyes gleamed among the tattered buildings. Ten sets...
Twenty…
A figure moved to the very fringe of the light. It was humanoid in shape but with no humanity to its face: more that of a wolf with mange, its muzzle bare of fur and its teeth like bone shards. Raised patterns deformed its cheeks and brow, and its eyes were bloodshot, its clothes and mane of greying hair crusted with swamp-ice. Sickle-claws extended from its gnarled hands and paw-like feet, and something had been strapped to its back, with cor
ds of twisted cloth and vine crossing between what Lark supposed were withered breasts.
“Fresh meat,” it growled. “Come to Haurah, little morsels.”
The name struck her, but she wasn't sure why. Then the other creatures crowded in, and her heart lodged in her throat as she caught more glimpses of fur and bone, teeth and chitin. As much as she wanted to believe they were animals, their eyes were human, and the way they moved—cautious, cognizant, graceless in deformity—chilled her.
“Whoever you are, we don't want to fight,” she called. “Are you an Imperial?”
The she-creature chortled, harsh and gurgling. “Only if I am what I eat.”
“We're not Imperial either. We're renegades, just trying to go home.”
“Doesn't matter.”
More eye-gleam showed her monsters all around, encircling her team. Erevard had his broken black sword in hand, and Harbett and Vyslin brandished thread-blades, but the others could project only daggers, their white armor too thinned. At her back, Maevor drew a knife, but his face held no confidence.
“We're not tasty,” she tried. “All full of Palace stuff.”
Haurah barked a laugh. “Aren't we all? But I can smell you, lying child. Your flesh is pure. You will make a delectable feast.”
Lark looked around at the emerging creatures, and saw the white material tangled in their fur or drooling from their mouths, the misshapen human faces of the hounds. There were things that looked like wild hogs and things that looked like lizards, ten feet long and three feet high at the shoulder with maws full of broken glass. There was a bear-thing towering on its hind legs and several that had once been men but stood now, naked and hunched and grey, with heads pulled back and jaws hanging loosely to show swarming multitudes of tongues.
Between her and the men, it was eight against twenty-plus, and none of them was fit to fight.
“We're not your enemies,” she insisted, “but we won't make this easy. If you want real prey, go to the city. Eat the ones who refuse to leave. Everyone else just wants to get away.”
“Prey runs,” said Haurah, eyes gleaming in the crystal-glow. “Did you run?”
I tried to, she thought. I didn't want to be here at all. But aloud, she said, “No. We brought down the Palace and we left. If you're opposed to the Empire, the Light, then—“
Suddenly she remembered the name, and a visceral shock went through her. Haurah, of the Garnet Mountain wolves—Haurah, one of the former Guardians. Staring at the horrid creature before her, she almost couldn't believe it, but this was where her former pack had said she'd ended up: in the swamp, hunting Imperials.
“Haurah,” she said quickly, “we're not enemies. I was with Cob, the Guardian. He—“
The wolf-woman snarled, showing all her teeth. “The Guardian! Treacherous thing! Left me here, abandoned our task, let my mate fall in vain! And now your Cob has finished it—chased away the Light—and he is dead, my mate. After all these years, he is gone, and I am hungry. I will tear the flesh from your bones!”
Then there were jaws and claws coming at them from all directions, and Lark's heart clenched with the fear that she'd killed them all.
Maevor shoved her behind him, into the center of the armored circle. "Keep the light!" he cried, then yelped as lizard jaws latched around his arm and nearly yanked him into the mob. The man beside him rammed his short blade into the creature's left eye, forcing it to recoil—then had to recoil himself as another lizard-monster scrambled over its retreating fellow to snap at his face. Startled, he lurched back into Lark, who had just braced herself.
Their impact sent bright ripples along his armor, which responded by surging up his neck and scalp just in time to ward off another toothy snap. All around, the same was happening with the others, every swiping paw and battering flank imparting energy into the white substance.
Lark sucked in a surprised breath, then strengthened her light. If the White Flames could hold out, they'd soon be fighting in full suits, and what enemy could harm them then? She'd seen Cob himself get stymied by that armor, and at the time he'd been capable of collapsing cliffs. If they just stood their ground and let the monsters break on them like waves...
She saw the flaw the moment before it happened. Except for Erevard, they were new to this, and too caught up in the frenzy to see what she'd seen. So when the bear-thing barreled in, mouth open wide as a chasm, they didn't brace as they should have. One flinched aside; one backstepped; and Maevor, in the middle, could do nothing.
The bear buried all three under a tide of fur and muscle, shouldering Lark hard against the backs of the others. They couldn't turn; they were already hard-pressed, with more scrabbling horrors trying to bring down the ones who'd just been exposed at the sides. A boar-thing tried to climb up the bear's back, its mad eyes fixed on Lark, but the bear lurched upright at the contact, toppling it off with a squeal.
For a moment, it stared down at Lark, massive and stinking and scarred with white stitches. She couldn't move, the crystal guttering in her grip; those eyes held her paralyzed, human in its animal face and somehow familiar. It lowered itself slowly, great nose dripping mucus as it poked toward her.
Then a white blade knifed up from the region of its belly, and it roared and slammed its paws down on the bodies below.
Legs weak, nerves shot, Lark stayed frozen for a small eternity while it raked at the trapped men. Then a monster-limb hooked her hair from behind, pulling her hard against the man at her back, and she flailed and caught herself between two White Flames long enough for a blade to slice her free. The crystal slipped from her hand, dropping then rebounding from its cord on her wrist; darkness fell over the fray.
She crumpled low, terrified. There was nothing left to the world but the flare of armor, the hisses and growls of beasts, and the thick stench of them: swamp-water, sickness, rot and blood. She couldn't take it, not after the city and Hlacaasteia and everything else she'd been through.
Then a gust of hot, fetid air blew across her scalp: the bear, right there. It would take her head off in one bite, then these things would pull the White Flames away, peel them from their armor, chase down the escaping pilgrims—
No.
She hooked the crystal into her palm and forced everything she had into it. Light flared, blinding yellow-white, and with eyes squinted she struck up toward the bear's foul breath. Her hand hit spongy, bristly flesh, and the creature recoiled with a horrible noise—half roar, half-shriek—that made her head ring with its intensity.
Planting one foot, she followed its retreat, lashing out with the crystal again as she rose. This time she hit its neck and saw mange-bared skin sizzle black at the contact. It slapped at her with its huge paw, shattering a thin pane of light from her robe; fear-maddened, she struck again at its face, making it flinch.
A scream of rage came from below as it did so, then whiteness punched up through its shoulder, spilling sludgy blood everywhere. This time it reared on its hind legs to rake the weapon free, and Lark flinched back as Vyslin was yanked to his feet by the motion. As the blade popped out, he caught his balance, then lanced in again, still shrieking.
The bear retreated, roaring its fury. In its wake, the other White Flame it had taken down lay still, blood covering his neck and skull where his armor had failed to reach. Maevor had been flattened as well, coat shredded across the back and thighs with torn flesh visible through the gaps—but he rose anyway and lurched forward, cutting at another monstrous shape that was trying to reach in past the bear. Vyslin continued harrying it, tiny against its bulk; in its retreat, it forced more monsters away from them, raising yelps and snarls from its own side.
At her back, the line had somehow stayed solid; she glanced that way and saw a striped red-and-black afterimage follow Erevard's half-blade through the air. He'd extended a thread-blade from his other hand, and the crowd of monsters was struggling to avoid him; at his feet lay tangles of bones and sludge, all that remained of those he'd cut. To his left, Harbett slas
hed and hacked; to the right, a fully armored man punched with short blades and spike-covered fists. The last in their arc had managed a facsimile shield and was fighting to keep the monsters from slipping by. When Vyslin retreated back into the light, their circle was complete.
Lark glimpsed the woman-thing watching from among the buildings, lips drawn back from her sickle-teeth. Angry and shaken, Lark pointed the crystal at her as if she could cast a mage-bolt, and was rewarded with a flinch and a yowled command, untranslatable but clear as the monsters began to pull back. In moments, they had all receded into the dark, only their eyes showing. Then they were gone.
For a time, there was nothing but panting from the men. Lark pushed more energy into the crystal, and its glow stretched out across the gory scene: Vyslin half-covered in a mix of the bear's dark sludge and his own blood; Maevor a mess beneath his tattered coat; the downed man—Arron, she thought—clearly dead; Erevard gashed on one arm; Sallos Mendras, who'd made the shield, also bloody at shoulders and thighs. Only Harbett and the spike-fisted man, Talyard, seemed unharmed. Though the White Flames' armor had moved to cover their wounds, each one looked grey-faced, exhausted; meanwhile poor Maevor's injuries swarmed with suturing threads. Lark looked away, queasy.
Beyond their circle lay the enemy dead, no less awful: at least five rotting corpses before Erevard, three more with punctures and slices from the white blades.
Eight. We took down eight, mostly due to Erevard, lost one, and suffered what would have been fatal wounds to almost everyone else if they hadn't been converts and White Flames.
She wasn't sure whether to be relieved or unsettled. Any human group would have been monster-food. Instead, as the moments flowed on, she saw the armor begin to recede and the men regain their color and spark.
Vyslin was the first to shake his thread-sword away. “Can everyone walk?” he prompted. “Maevor?”
“Slowly, I think, yes.”
“You sure? You look like crap. Mendras?”
“Well enough.”
“Tough piker. Everyone else? Good, let's— Talyard, what are you doing?”
The Drowning Dark (The War of Memory Cycle Book 4) Page 22
