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

by H. Anthe Davis

  “We need to go,” she told her companions. They looked at her slowly, a few managing to turn their heads but most just sliding their eyes, and she wondered how long it had been since they'd last moved. Since they'd talked in fog-hushed voices about their prospects in this realm.

  It's drinking us. Drop by drop.

  She heaved upright, forcing herself through the air as if it had congealed. There was no resistance, just the drag of her own body—yet the moment she steadied, she felt that numbness again, as if the entire realm conspired to keep her still.

  “No,” she mumbled, and winced as the creeping mist swallowed her voice. “No,” she said again, the word reaching no ear but her own. “I won't lay down and drift into death. I won't become one of your ghosts. Won't let these people die either. We're leaving. I don't care if we cross back into the storm. At least we'll die in the real world, and go to our gods.”

  If the Imperials even could, with the Light gone. There was a thought.

  She resisted the urge to ruminate, to let her focus fade. Instead, she clenched her hand around the crystal node, feeling its edges bite at her palm. The wraiths' struggle spilled into her the instant she reached for it, burning through her veins and making her breath hitch hard; the runes on her robe lit up as energy arced from her knuckles to the fabric.

  Maevor had warned her about burnout. She'd nearly experienced it the first time she'd tapped the crystal. But she needed enough power to break this greedy realm's stranglehold, not just on herself but on eighty-plus others. It was her fault they'd come here, no matter that it had saved their lives. If she had to die to win them free…

  The rush hit her thoughts then, sending them racing in all directions. Fire flowed through her, crackling on her skin and making her braids writhe; her back arched, the tendons in her neck straining against the urge to shriek. All was light and heat, the taste of smoke in her mouth, the power vibrating through her body in a way she could neither contain nor control—

  Too suddenly, something chopped off the supply. She collapsed straight down to her knees, head bowing nearly to the false ground, lungs too locked-tight in that first instant to take a breath. Dark glitter filled her eyes.

  Her heart thumped, and she gasped once, harshly, then fell into racking coughs that lit agony through her chest. A vise had clamped across her brow, strong enough to truncate her peripheral vision, while beneath her the ground heaved like a stormy sea.

  'You have no caution,' said a soft voice in her ears.

  She jerked her head up and nearly passed out as agony streamed down her spine. Something steadied her—not hands, or at least not visible ones. Blinking through the water in her eyes, she saw her companions still around her, silent and as numb as ever but somehow clearer, more lifelike.

  Touched with color. There was a hue to the mist, a musty gold tone bruised with violet.

  Looking to the crystal, she found a murky energy roiling off of it, freed from the conflict within. It coiled around her hands and caressed her wrists with tingling tendrils, its center a clear gold sphere that rose from the crystal like a sun. 'You cannot drink from us without preparation,' it whispered. 'Mortal flesh is too fragile to contain our light.'

  “Who…?” she murmured, and felt her lips crack as if parched.

  The radiance corded upward, weaving itself into the transparent semblance of a figure: tall, androgynous, with smooth doll-like features of dusty brass that darkened into deep purple at the brow and throat. Its anemone-tendril hair shifted slowly in an unfelt breeze, brown-violet tipped in gold; its chest and arms segmented into brassy scales that swept downward in a loose cascade, dark color visible through the gaps. No legs, the scale-fall narrowing instead to a base as wide as her palm. Long hands, emerging from the scales on its arms not like from sleeves but as an outgrowth of them, purple-veined and golden-nailed. Its eyes were yellow glass, a tiny sun shining through the bridge of its nose as much as through them.

  'Vallindas,' it said, its slash-mark mouth unmoving. 'Vallindas Varaia.'

  The name rang a bell, but she couldn't think of why—could barely think at all through the combination of throbbing headache and confusion. It was a wraith, clearly, and the one that had dominated the others in the crystal, but… “Why did you come out?” she managed.

  'I have wandered too long in search of my spire. You are a conduit sufficient to extract us from this realm, to bring us home. But not if you annihilate yourself.'

  “You're a Mist Forest wraith,” she said slowly. “That's far away. Why were you here?”

  It gestured at the crystal with an overlong hand. 'Conflict. Always conflict. We came to investigate troubles, breaches of treaty over mortal lands. I was brought down. These others, the haelhene...I do not know. They have weak memories. The White Isle takes from them. They struggle with me on instinct, blindly. I would bring them to my parent spire, Tantaelastarr. Let them be reborn stronger.'

  “Is that in the Mist Forest? I don't think I can get to it,” Lark said, then winced and backpedaled. “I mean, of course I'll try, but—“

  'Escape is enough,' it said. 'Merely bring this vessel within the forest's bounds and my people will retrieve it.'

  “Vessel—the crystal? I can't. It's a piece of a friend. He surrendered to—“ She choked on the words, then tried again. “This is the only thing he left us. I don't want to give it up.”

  'Ilshenrir,' said the wraith.

  “Yes. How do you—” Then memory struck. “Wait, you… I know your name! You're Ilshenrir's savior!”

  It tilted its head slightly, radiant gaze unreadable. 'Savior...no. Salvager. Over the Wrecking Shore I shattered many haelhene, and brought that one down half-ruined. Once the others fled, I patched it and caged it, though it begged to die. Death is forgetting, and we needed its knowledge of the Isle, of the Ahnvanir spire trapped within.'

  Lark stared. Ilshenrir hadn't talked much about his origins, and she hadn't pestered as much as she now realized she should have. She knew he'd been captured and cleansed somehow, and that his captor had become a friend and sponsor, but no real details. “You saved him just to interrogate him?”

  'We are at war. Not with our foolish kin: with the White Isle. There is much we need to know.'

  “But you were friends, right? After that. You weren't just a jailor...”

  It gave her a blank look, making her wonder how well 'friend' translated into wraith-speak. Despite being clearly the most outgoing and human-curious of the Mist Forest wraiths, Ilshenrir had found many concepts difficult. Sometimes it had seemed he was just mimicking the group to be polite.

  He hadn't fit well among the Mist wraiths either. He'd admitted that from the start.

  Don't delve, she told herself. You don't need to get into wraithly interpersonal shit, especially when he's not even here. But oh, Shadow, if even his best friend was this cold…

  No, don't make assumptions. This one's dead—has been dead for decades. Who knows what that does to wraiths?

  “Look, it doesn't matter,” she decided aloud. “You want out. We want out. We can make arrangements for your delivery after that. Can you help me control this? Leave the Grey?”

  'Yes.' And without another word, Vallindas bent toward her, its golden eyes sweeping down to align with hers then press forward as if for a kiss. Instead of lip-contact, its brilliant essence folded across her brow, nose, cheeks and jaw, then continued to flow down and over, covering her in a full-body shimmer. She gasped it in, tasting sun and lightning, and felt the current fill her.

  Then it calmed, condensing upward to play across the surface of her skin. With it went the remaining jitters, and her shoulders settled, a great tension leaving her frame as she exhaled. Ripple shot out from her robe-collar, hissing faintly as it looped itself over her sleeve like a snake; she gave it a wry smile, sure it wasn't happy to share space with a wraith.

  'Focus on your world as you left it,' whispered Vallindas, either in her ears or in her head—she couldn't tell. Her visi
on had gone faintly golden, the mist now like morning sunlight, and as she pictured the White Road and Daecia Swamp, its occlusion seemed to peel back further. Her companions became clear in her mind, the whole chain of them linked by belts and sashes and clasped hands, by exhaustion and hunger and fear.

  There was reality, pressing through the indifferent substance of the Grey like a knife through gauze. Fingers limned in gold light, she reached out to rip that opening wide, to pull the others with her as she stepped—

  —fell—

  —splashed down into shockingly cold water, a scream leaving her lips instinctively as she sank to the knee. All around her, bodies tumbled down to shriek and struggle as they snapped from their vague changeless state.

  Forcing herself upright, she shot a look over her shoulder, certain that she'd somehow walked them off the road. But nothing loomed above except ice-clad trees, the half-full mother moon caught in their branches.

  By that light, it swiftly became clear that not only were they in the water, but so was the road. It lay beneath them like shredded bedsheets, thick as seaweed and just stable enough to prevent a full dunking. Thinner strands still stretched above water-level, connecting the white-clad hummocks that hulked along the path, but the rest had spread and deflated into the mire. When she shifted her footing, she felt the layers squelch and compress. Fine white flakes swarmed through the water, pushed free of the mouldering structure.

  Judging by the moon's phase, Lark guessed it had been two days—maybe three—since they had passed into the Grey. It was chilly but at least the weather had cleared, though the water shoved icy needles up and down her legs.

  “Get— Get everyone to a hill!” she shouted. Ahead and behind, pilgrims floundered and wailed, clutching at each other in a column of human misery. At her back, she heard the soldiers curse, one coughing hard enough to bust a lung.

  “Move!” she shouted again, and felt Vallindas' voice reverberate in her throat. Dark golden radiance spread out from her, extending in veils until it hung like an aurora over the crowd. The crystal in her hand blazed with clear light, bright as a star fallen to earth.

  Slowly, painfully, the pilgrims moved. The long chain broke into clusters, cries dulling into groans and quiet weeping, neighbors' arms locked together for mutual support. Right in front of her, she saw Yendrah clutch her nephew tight against her side, leaning into him when she stumbled on the unseen fibrous path; he was whimpering, but with her hand on his shoulder, he didn't struggle, didn't screech as he'd sometimes done, just shambled on.

  The cold sank into Lark's bones all too quickly. She clenched her teeth to keep them from chattering and forced herself to put one foot in front of the other, to keep the crystal raised like a beacon. If anything could rally these people, it was light. The hummock ahead grew a crown of beleaguered pilgrims, people clawing their way up or boosting others; in their wake, the white material that still clad it shredded away like rotten cloth.

  Void's Teeth, how can we get home now?

  The hummock filled then spilled over before she reached it, shapes slipping off the far side. Her heart clenched, but she heard no cries, and by the time her turn came to be hoisted onto the rise, it was nearly empty—pilgrims pausing at the crest for just a moment before continuing onward. Straightening, she squinted ahead to see a patch of dry road in the distance, half-suspended above the water-line.

  Marshaling her strength, she crossed the hummock and slid down the other side, back into the water, to continue the trek.

  The road turned out to be less than welcoming, but that was the fault of too many sets of feet: by the time she arrived, it had been trod down until it was just underwater. Her toes were numb and her legs were caked with murk, but ahead loomed another hillock, lower and longer and flatter than the one before, and the silhouettes of her people went up then right back down on the other side.

  Progress.

  Slow, grinding progress. The aurora-lights faded as she struggled to keep the pace, not daring to look back lest she stumble on something unseen. She still felt the wraith's presence on her—or in her, impossible to tell—but it stayed silent, its contribution the continued light from the crystal. Up and down, up and down, over hills and brief flat stretches before descending into bog again, the water thickening with ice and plant-growth, mossy scum, tree-roots, mud.

  Then, miraculously, solid ground. The ragged white path rose from the mire by slow inches until they were walking about a forearm's length above it, the water receding behind them. Snow began to replace the patina of ice and bog; frozen reeds and ferns became frozen thorn-brush, and stilt-rooted trees became familiar sorens and firs.

  Lark remembered this, dimly. When she'd come through on the back of Maevor's horse, she'd looked out over the landscape and seen it turn from thin forest to swamp—

  Not far from Keceirnden.

  “The city,” she murmured, pushing herself to a better pace. With the advent of a decent road, the pilgrims were marching again. She had to admire their grit. To trek so far to the Palace only to be betrayed, then turn around and walk all the way back—no shelter, no rest, no proper food on either route…

  Still, the moon's light came at a long western slant by the time the trees peeled away and the wall came in view. There was no shout of celebration up ahead, no sudden rush of the crowd—just a murmur that reached back to her, shaking off her somnambulance and tugging her gaze forward.

  She understood the moment she saw it. The great pilgrim's gate had collapsed and the wall around it had buckled outward, with masonry scattered all along the embankment below. Some stones had been thrown far enough to knock down trees, and where the White Road had once passed through as a broad, sturdy thoroughfare, it was now a rubble-choked gutter. The watchtowers lay broken to either side. Along the base of the wall, scraps of Palace threads hung from the mouths of crushed tunnels, as regular and profuse as honeycomb-cells.

  “Flaming pikery,” someone muttered behind her.

  The end of the road sagged several yards beneath where the edge of the gate had been, but the avalanche of rubble filled that distance. Already she could see people trying to climb it, and couldn't blame them. Going around wasn't an option; despite the size of the city, its north wall only had this one gate.

  “I guess we go up,” said another man. “And then what?”

  She had no answer, just slogged onward. Others went up ahead of her, then she was climbing too, hissing through her teeth as patches of ice froze her fingers and jagged rocks bruised her knees. Up, up, and over with the assistance of her comrades—then across the ragged, tilted top of the wall to where the pilgrims were descending from a corner.

  Going down meant sliding on her ass a few yards at a time, then crawling over cracked and buckled blocks. She didn't look up, afraid to see the city beyond—afraid that it was all like this, just a pile of stones and bones, and that all the world had followed in its footsteps.

  Finally though, her feet found the ground, and a hand caught her arm to pull her away from the landing-spot. She stumbled over chips of brick and glass, across rucked-up piles of cobblestones, past a black gaping chasm on one side and a mound of brickwork on the other, to a blessedly flat spot already filled with milling pilgrims.

  Looking up, she found herself in what must have been a market square before the collapse of every building to the north. Other structures listed at a frightening diagonal, their windows punched-out, curtains dangling loose to the wind; even more had subsided perhaps half a floor, the tops of doorways now level with the buckled street. Great trenches split the cobbles in places, and the fountain at the square's center was dry, its statue shattered on the pavings, its rim forced up at an odd angle.

  Fortunately, the buildings on the south side stood firm, only a few balconies broken off. Lights showed through certain shutters, but not many; in the distance, a ruddy glow backlit rooftops and stained the low clouds.

  “Bonfires?” someone murmured.

  People were alre
ady drifting away. As Lark stepped up carefully onto the edge of the fountain, she heard someone bang on a door, saw silhouettes at the lighted windows. A feeling clutched at her belly, part concern, part relief. They didn't know what had happened here or whether they would find a welcome, but if they did, she was no longer in charge. No longer responsible.

  “Everyone,” she called out anyway, forcing the words past the dry clasp of her throat, “please wait for the stragglers. I know we all want to go home, but it's best to do so in groups, and...if anyone among us is from Keceirnden, I'm sure the rest would appreciate their advice. Please. Just a bit longer.”

  To her surprise, they listened. Some even drifted back. A door opened on the far side of the square, shedding warm light into the street, but though many of them looked that way, they didn't rush toward it; they just murmured amongst themselves, slowly shifting their ranks.

  She tried to count heads but couldn't concentrate, not with stragglers coming in and lingerers moving. Fifty at least. Maybe the full eighty-something. “Yendrah,” she called, and saw the Riddishwoman's weary face turn toward her. “Could you gather your people? And anyone from Wyndon—who represents the Wynds? Good, gather over there please. Darronwy? That side. Anyone from across the Rift? What am I missing?”

  A dark shape stepped up next to her: Maevor. “Trivesteans and eastern Amands to the left there,” he rasped. “Road to Valent, Turo and the tableland is out the southeast gate. Road to Finrarden and Riddian is northeast, Andrisden and Silverton straight south. Everyone else will be heading west with us to Fort Krol, Cantorin, Thynbell and points beyond.”

  “Us,” she murmured, glancing to him. He set a hand on her arm and just nodded.

  “Find your groups. Stay with them,” she added aloud. “Don't go alone. This is no time for independence.”

  More doors were opening on the south side of the street, and windows. Lark winced in trepidation, sure they'd see soldiers—but the figures who emerged wore heavy housecoats and bore lanterns, not swords. A murmur went up from the crowd, the words soon ferried back to her: innkeepers, caravan-stops. Lark blinked, but it made sense; so close to the gate and the White Road, everything on this square must be to accommodate pilgrims.