The Drowning Dark (The War of Memory Cycle Book 4)

by H. Anthe Davis

  For a moment, he resisted. He knew enough of its origin to be sickened by it: a necromantic thing forged from the corpse of the gladiator whose maddened soul was trapped within. But Arik had vanished, and through the ward he could see the silver rapier grown from her one hand and the green crystal blade—Ilshenrir's—in her other. Both danced with power.

  It was a stupid idea, but he could think of nothing else.

  Releasing Enkhaelen, he dropped his hand to the hilt and—

  —red muscle clenched around him, cording tight, and there was something at his back—something pressed against him, breath hot on his neck, fingers piercing through flesh and bone and viscera to glove themselves in the stuttering valves of his heart—

  Pain shot through his arm, then his back and skull as he hit the ground, washing the red world white. A boot-heel cracked his wrist against the rock and Serindas' burning hunger fell away, leaving him to gasp and stare disoriented at the green crystal before his face.

  From up the wraith-blade's length, Mariss scowled. “You are nothing now, boy. Don't make me kill you. I'll have my father and my sword and you can run—“

  A furry grey blur took her in the side, bursting shards of ward-light in all directions. The crystal blade carved a line across Cob's brow as woman and wolfman fell away.

  Cob tried to heave up and pursue them, but agony lit his arm again and he slumped. Something still loomed above him, glinting in the wild light; it took him a moment to make out the whorled silver hilt and the sleek line of the blade, and trace the latter down to his arm.

  She'd stuck her sword straight through it and into the frost-hardened earth, splintering both bones in the process. The blood that welled up around the wound looked black. As his world narrowed in nausea and horror, he saw dark stains bloom all along his sleeve.

  Seawater-light flared again, printing an afterimage on his eyes: Mariss leaping back up the slope she and Arik had rolled down. Serindas lay only a few inches away, crimson runes roiling, but he couldn't begin to reach for it—couldn't even shift without his consciousness shredding from the pain. His fingers grazed the silver blade weakly, then fell away.

  She alighted by his feet, the green crystal pulsing in her grip. A kick to the leg shifted his arm enough to give him a moment's sickening greyout. “This is all it takes?” came her voice as if from some incredible distance. “I'm disappointed. I thought even humans were—“

  The blade wrenched free, and he fell.

  *****

  “—better than… Boy? Hoi!”

  She nudged him with her foot again, but he didn't stir. The whites of his eyes showed stark beneath their near-closed lids.

  Frustrated and more than a little confused, she looked around. To her right lay the blanket-wrapped shape she felt was her father, but it hadn't moved since the start. Downslope, she heard the wolfman trying to be stealthy despite wheezing through his busted muzzle; admirable tenacity, especially since he couldn't hurt her.

  And here was the boy, the former Guardian vessel, passed out at her feet from a little stab in the arm.

  It was not satisfying.

  She slid the green crystal back through its carry-loop, then raised the silver rapier to inspect it. The last half-foot was smeared with dirt and what appeared to be blood, but as she reconnected to this detached shard of herself, she felt the sickness in that unnaturally dark stain. Saw it spread as if it could sense her flesh.

  “What are you?” she murmured. She had been trained in both traditional necromancy and fleshcraft, but her focus had been on spirit-binding, and none of her tutors had shown her anything like this. It looked like some plagued bit of spellwork, but it kept spreading along the blade, sipping weakly at her energy for propulsion until she ripped a piece from her shredded dress and wiped it away.

  Casting it aside, she looked to the red-runed blade by the boy's hand, then to her father. So many questions, so many trophies to gather—and yet she didn't like this. It felt too easy. Unworthy of her decades of work.

  A press of her boot rolled the wrapped-up form onto its back, the tip of her sword separated the layers—and there he was. Shaidaxi Ranir't Enkhaelen, at her mercy.

  There wasn't much to see. A flaking black layer masked his features and obscured every physical detail but the concentric rings in his chest, the skin between them as charred as the rest. The tip of her sword scraped through easily, baring pink new flesh, but when it bit in, what welled up wasn't blood but a smoking, sparking ichor that hardened immediately in the cold.

  Calling upon her higher senses, she tried to see the spells that must protect him, the traps he would have woven around himself—but there was nothing. His soul lay pinned within the flesh, the Ravager wrapped around and through him in a glimmering web of feathers, talons, teeth and eyes. Both shivered faintly at the press of the blade.

  As she switched her sight back to normal, she saw his eyelids flicker. She willed them to open—willed him to sit up and say something, anything, that would let her swap confusion for hate and cut off his accursed head.

  But they sank shut again, and she felt his consciousness lapse.

  The rapier trembled in her hand.

  Reach down and take the Ravager, she commanded herself. Rip it out, subsume it, destroy it. This is your purpose. His time is clearly over.

  Yet she balked. If she did, he would never suffer, never weep at her feet. Never answer the questions that had driven her forward all these years. She might absorb his memories, yes—but they would be from his point of view, and she couldn't bear to see him as he saw himself.

  And if he couldn't fight back, she had no excuse for destroying him. Master Caernahon needed the Ravager's knowledge to open the Seals, and wouldn't take kindly to her ruining his plans. Not that she cared, but she wasn't ready to face him yet—not without knowing why he'd lied.

  Which meant talking to her father, which she couldn't do!

  A wet cough snapped her attention from the body, and the wolfman froze halfway to the boy, braced on all fours with his head down and ears tucked flat. Blood painted his muzzle from where she'd bashed him.

  “I don't care about the two of you,” she called. “Take him and go.”

  The wolfman's gaze flicked from the boy to the charred necromancer, then to her. “Can't.”

  “Some Ravager loyalty?”

  “No. Mission.” Red froth dripped from his maw as he spoke. “Seals. Sun.”

  “What about it?”

  “We have to bring it back.”

  She looked up at the soot-stained sky, all stars obscured as the volcano's reach spread. “I don't care,” she said. “I don't need it.”

  The wolfman's ears twitched, and he settled onto his haunches. She couldn't tell if it was to stay or to spring. “We all need it,” he gurgled. “Plants, animals, wraiths.”

  “Not me. Silver.” She flexed her flesh-stripped arm, the wires of her metallic musculature pulling smoothly against hidden bone. “I don't need light. I don't need heat. My father made a big mistake when he forged me.”

  “S' not about your father.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “It's entirely about him! He's corrupted you and the boy and who knows how many others, manipulated you into doing his dirty work, tried to doom the world— But don't worry. He's mine now, and I'll deal with him. Take your friend and run away.”

  “Can't. Mission,” he repeated, and flexed a clawed hand. It was laughable, but she restrained herself. At least this one had guts.

  “What did he offer you, that you'd die for him?” she said instead, raising her rapier.

  The wolfman blew blood-flecks through his teeth with a hideous noise. For a moment she thought it was a growl, but as it tailed off in a long sigh, she recognized it as vexation, more frustrated than angry. “Sun. Light. Survival, freedom, purpose, guidance, balance. Friendship.”

  “He's not your friend,” she snapped. “At best he's your master, and—“

  The wolfman shook his head then pointed to t
he boy at his feet. “My friend. He gave me my friend, and is helping him now. Mission is Cob's, not Enkhaelen's. Enkhaelen wanted to die.”

  All thought fled. For a moment she just stood there, staring at the wolfman, incredulous yet aware of the sincerity in his gaze. It wasn't true—it made no sense, it couldn't possibly be right—but this man believed it.

  “Manipulation,” she murmured through bloodless lips.

  The wolfman pointed a claw at the necromancer. “Ask him. Wanted to die until he knew you were alive. Tried to die. Brought us to kill him.”

  “Aid him,” she corrected faintly.

  He showed bloody fangs in aggravation and gestured to the object still slung across his back. She'd glimpsed it but disregarded it: a rough-wrapped hilt poking above a wooden sheath, a sword of no interest. Only in staring at it did she recognize the emanation of its silver, faint through the layers of leather and fur.

  “Kill him,” he emphasized. “He led us to this on purpose.”

  A flame lit in her chest. “You know where it was held. Where my mother's tomb is. Tell me!”

  He shook his shaggy head, pale eyes never breaking from hers. “Mountains. Woods. Hard to describe. He could show you, but not if wraiths have him.”

  “I'll tear the knowledge from his soul,” she growled, but the thought made her throat tighten. That was the memory she least wanted to see. To extract the words at sword's-point, to make him lead her there and then butcher him on the steps where Jessamyn had fallen…

  That was how it had to be.

  If she killed him now, or let Master Caernahon find him, it wouldn't happen.

  “Take him then,” she grated through her teeth. “Take both of them, and tell the boy he owes me his life. Tell my father nothing. I will have words with him in due time.”

  The wolfman bowed his head slightly, still not looking away. On impulse, she pressed two fingers to her brow and pulled a splinter out—a long, thin needle of blue-green soul-stuff—then beckoned curtly. He approached just close enough to let her slide it into his skull.

  “You know what that is,” she said. He nodded.

  Her gaze slid to the sword at his shoulder. She'd held it so briefly during the fight at Hlacaasteia, but she could still feel the impression of its hilt in her palm, solid and quick and somehow alive. Some part of her mother still existed inside of it, and she burned to have it.

  But she couldn't hide it. Master Caernahon would recognize it, confiscate it, demand to know how she'd acquired it. She couldn't tell him she'd let her father go.

  “Keep that for me,” she said instead, and the wolfman gruffed his agreement.

  It hurt to retreat, to leave behind the man and weapon that defined her existence, but she forced herself to recast the float-ward and rise into the seething sky. Master Caernahon would be here soon to see what had become of his subordinates. She needed to busy herself with excavating them, so he wouldn't question.

  I haven't failed, she thought. I'm biding my time.

  My way or nothing.

  *****

  In her wake, Arik shivered and pawed reflexively at his forehead. He could feel the splinter there, cold and angry like a biting beetle, just waiting for something to provoke it. With no way to dislodge it, he forced himself to lower his claws and focus on his charges.

  Enkhaelen was easy; all he needed was to be rewrapped, the charcoal layer keeping his native heat in. Cob, though, was in a bad state, sweating heavily, his wounded arm bubbling a foul dark fluid. The pulse at his neck came thready beneath Arik's fingers, and when he tore the stained sleeve apart, he saw that the bite-scars gaped open now, oozing blackness.

  There was no pulse at all in his right wrist.

  For a moment, Arik just stared. As a skinchanger, he'd never been so wounded that he couldn't mend himself by shifting. That moment of spiritual and physical synchronization infused him with the Wolf's boundless vitality, letting him shake off parasites, injuries and illnesses like so much water. There was no need to learn medicine like a petty human.

  But sometimes shifting wasn't enough. Sometimes a wolf got a leg caught in a trap and couldn't brute-force out of it, or took a sting of poison or magic that was too virulent to be shed. He'd bitten his own arm off to escape a wound from Erevard's rot-blade, because it was safer to regenerate the limb than allow the rot to persist.

  Cob couldn't do that. He would bleed out.

  Yet Arik saw no other option. Enkhaelen couldn't help—and this smelled the same as Erevard's stuff. It would turn Cob's insides to sludge within a mark.

  Panic fluttered in his chest. He'd wasted too much time arguing with Mariss. Remembering something about tourniquets, he fumbled at Cob's belt, but his claws weren't made for knots and buckles, so he gave up and just clamped his clawed hand around Cob's upper arm, sucking in a few harsh breaths in preparation. The black gashes reached nearly to his elbow, so if he wanted to be sure to get it all, he needed to bite at the joint. Separate the bones, shear the muscle as cleanly as he could.

  In his mind's eye, the hounds and hunters lay sprawled on the ground before him, eviscerated, mangled. The taste of human blood was hot in his throat.

  He whimpered, trying to suppress the memory. No other way. No other—

  Something intruded at the corner of his vision then, making him jerk sideways from its questing tendril. It recoiled in response: a tiny bloodshot eye at the tip of a red thorned vine, extruded out from beneath Cob's collar.

  Arik blinked, stared, then sucked in a breath of terror and hope. “Tirindai,” he enunciated carefully through the pain in his muzzle, “you owe me nothing, but you must feel something for him. Help him. The arm has gone foul. If this progresses, he will die.”

  The tiny eye considered him for a moment, then bobbed, and the cloth above Cob's collarbone bulged as an unseen multitude of vines emerged from the thorn under his skin. Soon dozens of them were swarming down from Cob's shoulder, and Arik ripped his coat- and shirt-sleeves further open to find the ends cinching hard just below his elbow.

  “There?” Arik whispered. It would mean taking the rot in his jaws, but the more they could salvage...

  His gaze flicked sidelong to the dim red light among the rocks. The akarriden blade might have overcome Cob, but Arik knew from observation that it made a good, clean cut. Much better than the damage he'd do with his jaws. And if it tried to take him over, Raun would—

  Raun could do nothing. He had been disconnected from the Wolf. He grimaced around his fangs, but he had to try.

  Yanking Cob's cloak out from under his legs, he reached with it to grip the malevolent weapon, and felt its hunger and fury clench on him like a bloody vise despite the fabric. He'd hoped some tactile distance would help, but the great skinless arms clamped around him, rancid breath hot against his fur, and—

  Teal light punctured the red membrane that held him. Chill detachment washed away the fevered heat. A sense of annoyance prickled around him, electric and biting, but it wasn't directed at him—not mostly. His eyes cleared and he huffed a breath of ash and rot, coughed, then set the blade's dulled-ember edge to Cob's arm.

  Instantly Serindas' focus snapped there. Before he could brace himself, it yanked his hand down, slicing through meat and bone and ice-clad rock like through a soft-skinned fruit. Blood poured from the wound—not down but diagonal, seeking the blade even as Arik wrenched it away. Droplets flew through the cold air to be absorbed by its runes.

  A moment later, the torrent quelled. The cursethorn vines sealed the wound, wrapping themselves around the stump like so many bloodied bandages.

  Arik looked down at the excised arm and the black wounds his teeth had made back in the sanctum. The rot was still spreading, eating up all untainted flesh within its reach, but in Serindas' furious red light the gleam of healthy muscle and bone showed at the truncated end. He exhaled thinly through his fangs, then set his other hand to Cob's cheek, feeling the warm breath against his palm, the pulse throbbing against his fingers just b
eneath his friend's jaw.

  Cursing himself and all of this, he forced Serindas back into its sheath, then wrapped Cob in the cloak and hefted him and Enkhaelen over his broad, furred shoulders. The faint sense of annoyance faded into the back of his mind, becoming the sorceress's silent splinter again.

  Behind them, the firestorm raged on. Ahead, westward, the land inclined toward the Rift.

  *****

  “Well?” said Field Marshal Rackmar impatiently, eyeing Caernahon's back. The haelhene had been working on this White Flame for what felt like marks, and though the whimpering had stopped, Rackmar had yet to see that fierce red light kindle in the man's armor.

  Straightening, Caernahon exhaled in an exaggerated manner that grated on Rackmar's nerves. “This cannot be rushed,” he said without turning. “Few take to these materials as swiftly or comfortably as you did.”

  With an irritated glance at the full infirmary beds, Rackmar said, “You expressed confidence that you could refine the process as you performed it. I have seen no evidence that this will sustain my men properly—“

  “None have died yet,” interrupted the wraith, gesturing dismissively with one attenuated hand. Blood streaked it to the wrist and dappled the white sleeve. “A successful baseline, which you may gratefully attribute to my long study of these matters. Further progress depends on individual adaptation to the implants—and the idiosyncrasies of the White Flame armor. There are many risks.”

  “That festering pustule Enkhaelen worked quicker—“

  “Beratement and belittling may work on your subordinates, Field Marshal, but do not try it on me. I will be only too happy to remove the crystals I have granted you.”

  Rackmar ground his teeth but fell silent. It had been perhaps four days since his crystal implants, and the euphoria had quite worn off, replaced by a nagging concern that he was blaspheming. Perhaps the failure of his own White Flame armor had been meant as a punishment, not a challenge for Caernahon's unnatural magic to surmount. Certainly he wouldn't trust Caernahon to work on a White Flame priest—if he'd had any.