“You want to start another war with me? Because that's what you'll get if you try to keep it.” The necromancer took a step toward the spokesmetal, fingers curled like claws. Despite his too-recent revival, the air around him was heating, his black hair and garments stirring slightly as if in a sluggish current. “It is mine. I will not tolerate you possessing it.”
Around them, the Muriae buzzed with hostility, blades and spikes sliding out from previously-smooth metal flesh.
“Wait, wait,” said Cob, heart in his throat. It didn't take a seer to know how a conflict here would go; these weren't humans to have their souls stolen or their blood boiled away. Maybe flame would melt some of them—but maybe it wouldn't, and there were far too many to fight.
Enkhaelen paused but didn't look at him. Neither did the Muriae. Cob went on anyway, fabricating frantically: “You can't keep it. You don't want his daughter comin' here—and she would. Layin' her hands on it is what she wants most in the world. Maybe y'coulda handled her when she was a little kid, but not now, because she's got his kinda magic and hundreds of years of training and none of his weaknesses. And if she comes here, it'll be with quicksilvers, and wraiths—maybe a whole wraith-spire. Imagine them plantin' that atop your mountain and beamin' out to the power that destroyed those other metals—and the lot of you trapped down here, wired in by what you are. Would any of you survive?”
The two instigators ceased glaring at each other to stare at him, Enkhaelen with mingled interest and alarm, the spokesmetal with flat contempt. The crowd hissed with unease, and after a long moment, the spokesmetal rasped, “This is cause for concern.”
“Leave the sword with me and none of that will happen,” said Cob, ignoring the sweat that trickled down his back. “We'll go; she'll chase us. You'll never have t'be involved.”
“I can't touch the sword lest it strip all my spells,” Enkhaelen added. “I've entrusted it to him for this long, and he has been a good steward of it—if not necessarily a wise one.”
Had to get a dig in, thought Cob. That snide habit made him feel less guilty about bowing to the assassination order.
After all, they're both too dangerous—to everyone. It's not wrong to want to curtail that.
“Very well,” the spokesmetal grated. At its gesture, the silver tendril tipped the sheathed sword toward Cob, and he extracted it carefully and slung it across his back via the carry-strap. He'd wrap new material around its exposed hilt when he got the chance. Serindas followed, and at his request, the tendril slid it directly into its belt-sheath without him touching it.
As more of his baggage emerged from the confines of the tendrils—the rucksack, the portal stakes, the bedding—Enkhaelen said, “We've gone off-track. You said...my sword.”
“Yes.”
“You mean my actual sword.”
The spokesmetal's face twisted in a facsimile smile. “Yes.”
“Where? How?”
In response, the spokesmetal started toward a silver-covered wall, which warped open to show a tunnel in the rock beyond. Enkhaelen turned to pursue it, then hesitated; following his gaze, Cob realized he'd finally noticed the sleeping goddess-face. A peculiar expression touched his features, then he looked away deliberately and stalked after the spokesmetal, leaving Cob to fumble one-handed at his gear before chasing.
The floor was icy against his aching feet, every crack and chip of it biting at the new flesh. He paused a few times to see if he was bleeding, but no—it was just pain, something his thick calluses had prevented for almost his whole life. By the time he caught up with Enkhaelen, he was limping.
“Here,” he said, and tossed the blanket onto the necromancer, who caught it before it could slip. Raised brows were all the thanks he got, then Enkhaelen's attention riveted itself to the spokesmetal's back again.
The tunnel curved, branched, descended. They cut through a handful of other chambers, none as large or bright as the main cavern with its goddess-face but all with walls of silver wire clenched around crystal lights, with Muriae in various shapes conversing or manipulating the wires artistically or simply drifting about. Cob wasn't sure what to think of it; he'd always imagined this place as a fortress and the people as soldiers, not directionless aesthetes.
But maybe that was the way of elementals. If they didn't need to eat, breed, sleep, breathe, then what did they do with their time? Cultivate their cult? The spokesmetal had claimed they didn't care about the sun, didn't care about Brancir's human followers—yet they'd charged Enkhaelen with their deaths, and let him live to continue his work. So maybe they did care. Maybe it was just bravado that had made the spokesmetal say such things.
Or maybe the goddess-face had intervened somehow. He had no way to tell.
He was footsore and Enkhaelen was flagging by the time they emerged from the last tunnel into a far darker place. The ceiling here arched away into a blackness that the silver wires did not try to pierce; except for a few strands, they stayed in a thin band around the perimeter, lighting up only a handful of crystals to illuminate the steps below. Those steps descended in concentric rings to a shimmering circle at the chamber's base, perhaps three feet across: water.
Cob saw Enkhaelen blanch as he took it in. “What is this?” he demanded, rooting in place halfway between the tunnel and the first step.
The spokesmetal had already started down, but paused, its voice floating up to them full of curious echoes. “Your prison. The place where we would have quenched you for all time.”
Enkhaelen made an incoherent noise and whipped around, then halted, wild-eyed. Cob glanced back to see that the tunnel behind them had filled in with silver wire. “I won't go!” Enkhaelen declared, turning to glare at the spokesmetal.
“We have established that,” it said. “Time served.”
“Then what—“
He fell silent as the few silver tendrils that trailed all the way down into the water began to rise like alerted snakes. The pool rippled as yard after yard of wire emerged from it, arching upward into the dark air, until finally another shape crested the surface. A white hilt, a dull black blade.
Cob recognized it with a jolt. Enkhaelen had borne it in Aloyan Erosei's last memory, upon the beach at the Pillar of the Sea. Along with him, it had been captured by the Emperor's white threads and servitor wraiths. So how…?
“You hid it in a well?” Enkhaelen rasped. “That's why I haven't been able to find it?”
“We believed that submerging half of your soul would limit your destructive capability,” the spokesmetal intoned. “This has since proven false, but we are gratified by your horror.”
“Half your—“ Cob started, but Enkhaelen waved him silent.
“How did you get it?” he snapped.
“The wraiths do not guard themselves against incursions from below—or did not, at the time we took it. The place, Akarridi—we would have razed it, had we the support of the woods and stones and local metals, but they refused to act in its vicinity, fearing the grasp of the Carad Narath. Our tunnel pierced the heart of their compound and we took it, destroying all other materials that we could reach before they responded in force. We see, however, that our attempt to disrupt their experiment was not successful.”
“It wasn't,” said Enkhaelen in an abnormally soft voice, “but I thank you for trying.”
The spokesmetal tilted its head. “We had meant this to punish you.”
“Nevertheless.”
At its gesture, the silver cords bent toward Enkhaelen, their coils slithering up the stone steps to offer the hilt. He reached out his left hand, hesitated, then wrapped his fingers around it, a shudder running through him like a shock of ice. Then the cords retracted, leaving it in his grip.
Up close, it looked uncomfortably similar to an akarriden weapon, with the same strange black blade etched deeply with unknown runes. The difference was the white hilt, which bore an elaborate handguard that even from a distance Cob could tell was made of fused fingerbones, curled inward as if ab
out to clench around the wielder's hand. It wasn't long—just over two feet from end to end—and Enkhaelen held it as if it was quite lightweight.
“The first soul-blade,” he said conversationally, examining its surface. “Should have been the only one. No—shouldn't even have existed, if I'd been wise. I told you I was cursed, yes? This is part of it.”
“You're...cursed with swords?” Cob hazarded.
The necromancer laughed without humor. “In a way. But no, it was meant as a prison. I just didn't fit."
“A prison? By who?”
That earned him a sardonic glance. “The Trifold. Clearly.”
Cob opened his mouth, meaning to say something like, No, not 'clearly', what in pike's name is this about? But the spokesmetal was already striding back up the steps, attention fixed on the reopening tunnel, and as Enkhaelen moved to fall in with it, Cob reluctantly did the same.
“I appreciate you returning this,” Enkhaelen told it, “but I must wonder—why? It would have been extraordinary leverage against me.”
“You need it.”
“Well, I've missed it in a certain masochistic way, but I wouldn't say—“
“You need it. Will need it. Now and in the future. There has been a shift in the realm, one that we can sense but not decipher. We acknowledge that it is necessary for you to investigate, and that it would be of benefit for you to possess your entire soul.”
Amusement entered Enkhaelen's voice. “Oh, now you need me?”
“We believe that you will uncover the source of this shift.”
“Doesn't have anything to do with the sudden lack of sun, hm?”
“No. We think not.”
Enkhaelen glanced back at Cob with one of those arch looks he took to mean 'these people are hiding things from us and also I am very clever'. He resisted the urge to roll his eyes. With all the rumblings of gods and spirits, it wouldn't surprise him if some greater danger was yet to unfurl—though with all the peril they were already in, he couldn't imagine what that would be.
“Portentous,” Enkhaelen commented. The spokesmetal did not respond.
Tired though Cob was, it didn't take him long to realize that the turns they took were not the ones that would lead them back. Nerves humming, he scanned the new chambers for any sign of pending treachery, and noted Enkhaelen's hand clenched tight on the hilt of his sword, but though they passed many more Muriae, none followed them—merely halted their activities and stared.
“Taking a detour?” Enkhaelen prompted finally, his tone light.
“No.”
“Then we're not subjecting ourselves to Brancir's gaze again?”
“You are here for the Seal. The sooner you have placed it, the sooner we will be free of you.”
“Reasonable,” said Enkhaelen, though he didn't sound convinced.
The prospect hit Cob like a load of bricks. He couldn't guess how far the summit had been when the silver cords yanked him inside, but it was likely thousands of feet, and he hadn't ascended even a fraction of that while in here. In fact, he suspected they'd descended. Reaching the Seal—even if they did it from within, like climbing a tower—was still marks away.
He couldn't walk that long. He'd hit his limit out there in the ice and wind. All he had now were the stubborn dregs of his will.
“How far?” he managed, hating to be weak but hating more the thought of collapsing and being abandoned.
The spokesmetal paused to regard them: Enkhaelen in his torn clothes and blanket, Cob with his good hand braced on the corded wall. Its features did not mimic humanity well, so in the flickering light he could not tell if he saw contempt, pity, concern, or something else. “Ah, the flesh,” it said blandly, then made a pulling gesture.
Cords leapt from the wall at shoulder-height, hooking around Cob and binding his arms to his sides. Alarmed, he tried to struggle, but more and more surged across him until he was cocooned inextricably. Ahead, he saw them do the same to Enkhaelen and the spokesmetal, the necromancer bearing it with surprising patience.
Just like being dragged in, Cob told himself, and tried to relax, but as the wires wove themselves across his face, the cloud-serpent's wings started flailing at his cheeks in distress. The air in his lungs thinned, making spots float in the darkness before his eyes.
Then it was moving him in that horridly organic clenching way, his metallic cocoon skimming along as the cords rasped around it. He had no real sense of his speed, just the irregular spurts and decelerations, the sudden swings and hoists, the panic of the cloud-serpent and his own climbing anxiety. The scent of lightning grew stronger with every movement.
Just breathe. The serpent can't get out, so the air won't go. Breathe and be calm for its sake, and maybe it'll calm down too.
It wasn't easy. He was used to suppressing fear with anger, not peace. But there was a rhythm to the rasp, minus the occasional twists and jerks, and once he clued into it, he found he could just listen and let it move him. It might not be a pleasant sound, but it was music of its own sort, no less alive than birdsong.
If he never heard it again, though, that would be fine.
Slowly, stealthily, another sound joined it—first just a buzz in the wires, then a hum, then a resonance that mounted until he could feel it in his bones. His teeth chattered not from cold but from involuntary jaw spasms, the electric stink strengthening until all his hairs stood on end. Sparks popped between his lips, leaving flecks of pain.
He had a moment to fear that the spokesmetal, for all its patronizing, really didn't know the limits of flesh.
Then the cocoon halted upright and unreeled, exposing him to air so thick with static it seemed to dance, so harsh with noise he couldn't hear himself think. Beneath him was a stone ledge onto which he slumped immediately, planting his good hand on it to keep himself from keeling over. Sparks wandered across his metal-laced harness, up the hilts of Serindas and the silver sword, and down the cord on which he kept the crystal arrowhead. Even through his layers, he could see its icy light.
Something touched his head then, and the static peeled away like a veil, leaving a pale corona around him. He blinked up to see Enkhaelen at his side, blue eyes flared wide, arms spreading as he drank in the ambient power.
Beyond him—and below, and far, far above—rose the silver cords in chaotic profusion, filling a gouge in the mountain peak several miles square. The bowl-shaped base was whorled with cables the width of houses, which twisted together along the walls until they reached the lip of the gouge. From there, they arched into the black sky, weaving and twining and tangling with each other like windblown trees taller than towers. Lightning danced on every surface, coursing down from the heights to disappear among the cords below, and the air was filled with the most abominable noise—a cycling of shrieks, humming and bone-deep vibrations that changed with every shift of the wind.
Enkhaelen's touch had dampened it somewhat, but it still shot pain through Cob's skull. He touched his ears, then his nose, expecting to see blood; fortunately there was none. The spokesmetal stood at Enkhaelen's other side, but if it was speaking, he couldn't tell. Enkhaelen, though, nodded once, then pushed off the ledge, dropping the blanket in his place as he fell.
Cob lurched forward, a cry on his lips, but it was unwarranted. Mere feet below the ledge, two skeletal white Ravager-wings snapped out from Enkhaelen's back, pulling his fall into a glide that sent him unerringly for the basin's center. As he dwindled from view, Cob squirmed back against the rock wall, trying to mentally prepare for what was to come.
He'd been warded, that much was apparent, but whether it could soak up the kind of power Enkhaelen would unleash here, he couldn't tell. The stone beneath him was thickly charged, as was the air, the wires, the sky itself. If the wards were breached, there was nowhere for that wealth of energy to go but into him.
He took a breath through the cloud-serpent, then coughed as it buzzed and fluttered in his throat. It was trying to help, but it was as energized as everything up here,
and he could imagine it inadvertently directing lightning right into his lungs. Anxious, he turned to the spokesmetal to ask to be taken back inside, but the noise washed out his words, and his gestures of distress garnered barely a glance from it.
They didn't understand—not the metals, not the cloud-serpent, not even Enkhaelen. Mortality was an alien concept to them, as was the danger of unrestrained power. Enkhaelen would replace the Seal and trigger some kind of massive reaction, and he would be washed away by its terrible current.
Current…
Abruptly he realized that the only answer was the Dark.
He'd done it before: in Thynbell, and at Enkhaelen's manor, and at the Palace. Opened himself to that endless emptiness and let the power flow over him like a waterfall, down into those depths to disappear. But those first two times had been with the Guardian to brace him, while the third had almost been his end.
The black door, the numbing Void, his mother's cold embrace…
Part of him still ached for that: for the cessation of pain and fear, the ultimate erasure.
No, he thought. I have too much still to do. I can't surrender to it. But I know what it wants and how it works, so if I'm careful...
He was running out of time. The pale corona of the ward had thinned, sparks eating away at its surface, and the sigils on his parka and Serindas' hilt were lit up bright from absorbed energies, the arrowhead throbbing against his chest. As his short hairs began to rise again, he closed his eyes and sought for that hollow place within.
Lerien, help me, he thought with all his might. You're all I have left.
He felt phantom wings unfurl inside him, his imaginary friend's spirit rising to the call.
Then the pitch of the cacophony changed from a wail to a roar, and he reached—
*****
Enkhaelen thrust the sword through his belt and braced his feet on the silver cords, their vibration turning to power in his veins. With all this resonance, the persistent cold couldn't touch him; he felt stronger than he had since Aekhaelesgeria and more stable without the fire to sing to him. And now, with the other half of his reservoir back under his control… It was time.
The Drowning Dark (The War of Memory Cycle Book 4) Page 68
