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

by H. Anthe Davis

  “But y'can't!” The frustration welled up in him, and he found himself clenching his phantom hand, strange tingles running up from the missing space below his elbow as if it had been electrified. “I can't do anythin' like this! Pikes, crossin' Kerrindryr in winter would be hard enough in good health, but now—“

  “You're in splendid health. And you can keep yourself that way if you focus on the pathways the Guardian opened for you. Losing a hand isn't much when you have magic.”

  “Easy for you to pikin' say, y'still got all your parts!”

  Enkhaelen spread his hands and shrugged. “At the moment. I've lost miscellaneous limbs before. Granted, I was wearing corpse-bodies at the time, but it isn't as if that made it easy. I was still rooted in there, still had to make use of the structure and musculature to get me around. I remember when I was being Morshoc—the original, the mage—and had to make myself a prosthesis since I'd whacked off a leg by accident. It was good practice in bio-artificing, actually.”

  “Bio…?”

  “Making metal parts that mesh with mortal parts. Similar to what I did for Mariss.”

  It was a thought. Not about to ask favors of the necromancer, though, Cob looked to Drakisa. “So, can y'make me an artificed hand?”

  She blinked. “Well, yes. I am an artificer secondary. But those are complex pieces that must be custom-fitted. They take time. I don't have any spare arms hanging about my workshop.”

  “Because we still have t' climb a mountain, and this crazy piker thinks—”

  “Oh, no, you don't want a metal arm for that, dear. You'll give yourself frostbite and lose even more of it.”

  Cob grimaced and nodded, then shot a glare at the necromancer. “See? There aren't any good options. If I can't have a metal one, and I can't have a flesh one, and the spirit one jus' passes through things...”

  “You should be able to grip a few things with it,” said Enkhaelen. “Living rock and wood, thick ice, certain types of arcane fields. But yes, it will be dangerous to climb in your state. Most surface stone is dead and won't give you any purchase. Perhaps you should make yourself a wooden arm.”

  “How?”

  The necromancer shrugged. “I'm no green-thumb, but I imagine the same way you made your thorny armor. Fill the space with vines or a branch or something, pervade it with your soul, then manipulate it like a flesh-hand. Though I imagine it will be slower in this dark season.”

  Suppressing his annoyance, Cob tried to entertain the thought. He had formed the Guardian armor from ice and wood and earth before, and remembered how it felt to do so; it was possible that he could adjust it to fill the empty space—or if not, at least to cover it like a gauntlet he could manipulate. He glanced to his truncated sleeve, frowning.

  And nearly jerked from his seat at the sight of a bloodshot eye peering up from it. As if taking that for acknowledgment, the red vines began swarming out, forming into a twisted parody of an arm with that yellowish eye on the palm.

  Beside him, Enkhaelen scowled. “Go away, Tirindai, no one's talking to you.”

  Cob just stared. He could feel the cursethorn lattice from his elbow to the tips of his fingers, like a thin layer of wicker bound over his skin. And when he moved his phantom arm, it moved with him, the yellow eye tracking his gaze assiduously. “It's all right,” he said. “It's trying to help.” Maybe it could be convinced to act like a gauntlet...

  Enkhaelen exhaled through his teeth. “It has a mind of its own, Cob, and an agenda I can't claim to know. Do you really want to give a limb over to an alien intelligence just because you don't feel like crafting your own? Haven't you learned better?”

  Cob shot him a glare. “It's been more helpful than you so far. Anyway, I think… I think we're allies.”

  “What gives you that terrible idea?”

  “I didn't crush its eye when I was in Haaraka. It didn't kill me. Therefore—“

  “That's called tolerance, Cob. No more.”

  “Pike tolerance, it killed a wraith for me! And it protected Ilshenrir.” Instantly he regretted saying that, remembering how his wraith-friend had struggled in the cursethorn's grip, only to subside into a strange placid state before joining the haelhene. Worse, Ilshenrir had been Enkhaelen's apprentice in an earlier time, when Enkhaelen had been Kuthra and Ilshenrir hadn't yet died.

  But the necromancer's eyes narrowed only marginally, and he didn’t ask. “Think deeply on it,” he advised instead. “What is convenient now may harm you later.”

  “Maybe,” Cob said grudgingly. “But it'll serve as a fallback. It's in my skin, anyhow. If you really insist on me goin' with you, it's comin' too. But I guess I'll work on my own wooden arm as we go.”

  Enkhaelen gave him a long look, then gestured dismissively. “At least tuck it away for now. I don't like being watched.”

  The cursethorn eye still stared up at him, lidless and unnatural. “Would y'please unravel?” Cob asked it, not sure it would obey. After a moment though, the viney lattice loosened and retracted until only the eye's stalk remained. Then that disappeared too, leaving his lost hand prickly with phantom sensation.

  When he looked up, the table was fully cleared, just their glasses and mugs left. As the constructs trooped back into the kitchen, a last birdlike one plunked Enkhaelen's deck of cards next to him. “Game?” asked the necromancer, reaching for it. “I'd like to digest a bit before we leave.”

  A memory of his friends' bickering and laughter stung his heart. “No thanks.”

  “Augury, then?”

  “What?”

  “Augury. Foretelling. Prophecy.”

  He blinked. “Prophecy? What, really? I had an old lady read m' cards once, and things kinda happened after that, but I didn't think it was… I mean, it seems...”

  “Too unlikely?” Enkhaelen said, brows raised. “Even after running around as the Guardian vessel, destroying the Empire half by accident? Well, actually, it is rather a sham. No such thing as true prophecy, no matter how much the Trifold declares that they've seen What Will Come. But one can still foretell certain probabilities, potentialities—especially when a powerful entity is involved.”

  “So y'can tell the future?”

  Enkhaelen scowled. “Probability! I just said it! Not the future but a future, a possible outcome. Look, I'll deal for myself. What did this old lady read for you, the Six Gates? That's a standard foretelling, based around potential turning points but not trying to guess which way you'll go.” He shuffled quickly, slim fingers moving with a casual competence that hadn't been present before the volcano.

  “First card is the petitioner,” he said, slapping one down. On it, a dark-robed man stood behind a stone slab, a body cut open upon it. In one hand he held a bloodied gem, in the other a long knife. “The Mortician, Knight of Gems. Part of an old romantic tragedy, some fool who turned thief to woo a woman but swallowed the jewels when he was caught… Anyway, this one has been me for almost as long as I can remember. It always comes to my hand when I deal for myself. Most people don't have a card; what they get is random, and the fortune-teller must spin a story from it. It's a skill.”

  Cob nodded as he watched the necromancer deal the other cards face-down. “Mine was jus' a staves card, I think. Not one of the knights or anythin'. So was the readin' made-up?”

  “Not necessarily. You, as a person, are not a legendary force. The Guardian is, but the reading wasn't for her. It did involve her though, which means that anything it showed could be a true probability—or could just be filler.” He flipped over the first of his Gates and made a pained sound, and Cob leaned in to see it labeled The Nemesis, its picture an armored figure standing guard before a barely-ajar door. By the icons at the corners, it was the Queen of Swords.

  “Somethin' wrong?”

  “No, no,” Enkhaelen answered brightly, but the look on his face was strained, and he moved quickly to flip the next card, then the next, then just lifted the corners of the others, expression tightening each time. Cob managed to s
ee a Gem and a Cloud before Enkhaelen abruptly scraped them together and slapped them back atop the deck. “Let's pretend we never did that.”

  Cob eyed him. “Is it bad?”

  “We never did that.”

  “But what did they—“

  Enkhaelen stared at him, and he shut up.

  After a long moment, the necromancer exhaled and started shuffling again. “You said someone did a reading for you, and then ‘things happened’. Do you remember the cards and their Gates?”

  “Not many,” Cob mumbled. “There was The Lovers, which I guess was about me and Darilan… Don't start,” he added before Enkhaelen could comment. “Wasn’t like that, just about him maybe carin’ too much.”

  “To his detriment. Certainly true.”

  That stung, but he made himself ignore it. “My petitioner card was a stave. Um, the six, I think. And there was The Wildwood, which is maybe Tirindai? And...another numbered stave and the one with the guy struggling through the woods, and the One of Candles. And a sword card and a last one I didn’t get t’see.”

  “Swords and staves,” Enkhaelen mused, then started sorting them from the deck. Cob squinted at the growing pile. The woodcut prints looked different from the deck the old woman had used, and from Lark’s, but after some consideration he picked the seven of staves and the nine of swords, and Enkhaelen selected the Knight of Staves, called the Wayfarer. “No recollection on Gates?” he prompted.

  “Sorry. Jus’ that there was a Wood card for the Metal Gate and the candle was Air.”

  “Well, let’s try.”

  Arranging the cards took deliberation to the point of argument, and even afterward, looking at them, Cob wasn’t sure they were right. The petitioner was upside-down, which he remembered: a card of animals hiding behind trees, reversed to indicate emergence. Then came the Nine of Swords in the Gate of Fire, signifying moral indecision. With its image of a knight poised to strike down a fallen foe, it felt uncomfortably like confronting Enkhaelen on the Throne.

  Next, the Gate of Water with the Queen of Staves, called Wildwood. He remembered that one because of the wood-woman’s stance of offering, her cupped hands held out to the traveler; the old woman had referenced a ‘thorned gift’ and he’d already decided it was Tirindai’s. Certainly he appreciated the vines more than he had when they’d first infected him.

  For the Metal and Wood Gates, they hadn’t been able to decide between the other two Wood cards, the Wayfarer Knight or the seven. According to Enkhaelen, the Knight meant perseverance, while the seven meant an escape from bondage or commitment. Cob could have sworn one of them had been upside down but couldn’t remember which, so that meant there were two more potential meanings: surrender or continued dedication. Since he couldn’t remember what each card had applied to, he couldn’t say which meaning he preferred. The image on the Knight card kept drawing his eye though: that single figure struggling through a thorny wilderness toward some unknown future. If any of these cards was his life right now, it was that one.

  Compared to those, the last two were easy. The Gate of Earth was the Lovers reversed: a separation. The Gate of Air was the One of Candles, signifying some shunned idea or object or person to be either contained or released.

  “And you never saw the final card?” said Enkhaelen, tapping the blank space beyond.

  “I got chased off by the city guards before I could.”

  “I suppose it doesn’t matter. Even if this was a true reading, these are not futures; they are choices. The Fate card is supposed to sum up your journey, but I’ve never drawn the same one twice, even when the others stay the same.”

  “That's because you’re frighteningly erratic,” drawled Drakisa from where she'd lounged, watching, the entire time. “If you two are done dabbling in powers beyond your comprehension, perhaps we could relocate to the parlor.”

  Enkhaelen scowled at her. “I know what I'm doing.”

  “And you foretold something you don't like, so you’re prodding at this young man’s potentials to distract you. Come along, Shaidaxi. There will be drinks.”

  With a sound of annoyance, Enkhaelen heaved from his chair, leaving the cards behind to follow Drakisa.

  Cob considered the spread for a little longer, but couldn’t force any more sense into it or revive more of the old memory. Finally he scraped them all together and left them in a stack, and headed with Arik into the parlor. The mages had already ensconced themselves with a scrying mirror and were bickering in Gheshvan; Arik's ears cocked forward but he didn't translate, so Cob figured it was just mage stuff. He settled near them on the cushy couch, and Arik plunked down next to him.

  As he leaned back, he caught a glimpse of the image in the scry-mirror. It was night, of course: a landscape hemmed by stars and snow, with a steep sloping cliff-wall on one side and sheer emptiness on the other. A dark blotch showed on the cliff, and lights in the valley below...

  The breath caught in his lungs. He knew that place.

  “Where?” he hissed.

  Enkhaelen gave him a hooded sidelong glance. “The most convenient spot I know. I have no interest in making the full, frigid, dreadful trek from here to Howling Spire, so we'll shortcut with a portal straight to the High Country.”

  “Where?”

  “You know where, Cob. You'd best accept it.”

  He tasted copper behind his teeth. Already he could smell the thinness of the air and the sharp tang of fir needles, frost, goats, lightning—always a storm brewing somewhere in the Thundercloaks. The memory of rain on the hide curtain and cautious boot-steps beyond it ran down his spine like a cold hand.

  “We can't,” he mumbled.

  “Cob. It is by far the most recent place I’ve been in Kerrindryr, and too isolated to be effectively watched by our enemies. They might have agents in the village, but there are trails we can take to avoid it. I understand you're squeamish, but in this case—“

  “There has to be another spot. You've been to Howling Spire before!”

  “Briefly—very briefly—and a long time ago. If you still carried the Guardian, we could use her previous vessels' memories of the heights, but that's not an option now.”

  Cob swallowed thickly and glanced at the image again. With the cave mouth visible, it was like seeing his memory pulled from his head. He could feel the environment around it: the path to the chasm, the rickety bridge, the waterfall… “We'll just cross through then leave?”

  “We've no reason to linger.”

  Except there was, wasn't there? He'd seen the truth of his father's fall. Dernyel's bones lay among the rocks below, ungathered, unmourned for too long. He had an obligation.

  Enkhaelen must have seen it in his face, because he amended, “We can't linger. You know that. We've lost enough time by crashing around haplessly, and it will take even more to get to the summit. Just accept that this is where we must start.”

  Reluctantly, Cob nodded.

  “Good. Then the other matter: we can't bring Arik.”

  “What? No. We're not—“

  “It's pragmatism,” Enkhaelen spoke over him. “I've considered it and the dangers outweigh the benefits. While he can climb as a hybrid, it's not ideal, and I can't reconnect him without endangering us from Raun's anger. He eats more than you do, he doesn't have the lungs for high-altitude work, he can't use tools as easily or retract his claws—”

  “But you'll be asleep!” Cob snapped. “You'll be no pikin' help!”

  “I may fall asleep, but not immediately. Drakisa has graciously offered to ward us, and once that protection wears off, we can always scry her to get it refreshed. Meanwhile, I'd like to send Arik on toward Du'i Oensha so we can portal straight to there from Howling Spire.”

  “Y'can't scry it either?”

  “I wasn't there long enough to mark it, plus it's across Jernizan, in the Border Forest. Not friendly to me or to Drakisa's people, otherwise we'd be requesting an anchor-point from her.”

  Past his shoulder, Drakisa grimace
d apologetically. “I can get Arik to the edge of Averogne; I have a friend there. But he's right. We have no contacts in the western territories, and even our luuihene allies don't speak with the tiiahene of the woods. Too much bad blood. I could send one of my own agents, but the Senivaten could countermand me at any time.”

  Slowly, Cob restated, “You want t' send Arik alone across the plains, as a wolfman...”

  “A skinchanger,” said Enkhaelen. “I'll reconnect him for this.”

  “You jus' said it was dangerous to give him back to Raun!”

  “Dangerous if he's with us. Raun has no grudge against Arik himself.”

  “It's more dangerous for me t'be alone on the mountain than t'be with him and Raun!”

  “Again, you won't be alone. You'll have me and our magic.”

  “This is a shitty idea.”

  “And what would you have us do?”

  “Go up together! Connected wi' the Wolf or not, I don't care, but I can't jus'… I need someone to watch my back, and you bloody well can't!”

  “You don't need as much support as you think, Cob.”

  “I'm missin' an arm! And I haven't been in the mountains in years!”

  “Have you forgotten it all, then?”

  He hadn't. Night after night, he'd climbed dream-cliffs and edged along nightmare ledges, and his travels as the Guardian had brought many old reflexes and new skills to the fore. Still, even if he could read the rock through his spirit-hand, even if he could shape wood and ice, he didn't want to face Howling Spire alone.

  Enkhaelen and the Thorn Protector didn't count.

  He looked to Arik finally, pleadingly. But the wolfman wore a resigned expression, ears low and shoulders hunched, and refused to meet his eyes. “Cliffs,” he said by way of explanation, and shuddered.

  “Icefalls,” added Enkhaelen. “Seracs. Crevasses. Howling Spire is half inside the Kveliken glacier at the best of times, and this isn't one. I know there's nothing ideal about this, Cob, but you can't carry me and him.”