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

by H. Anthe Davis

  Green energy punched a head-sized hole in the glider's front, disintegrating its prow and part of its spine. Its enchantments broke instantly, leather wings flailing upward as it dropped like a stone.

  One-handed, he grasped for the reins of the cloud-serpents, but most of them had already fled—the peril of using unbound elementals against wraiths. A valiant few tried to lift him up, but he was too heavy and too low already, the pavement rushing up to meet him.

  In desperation he yanked for that last freed kite, the one still chasing its target. The rest of the rack was gone, severed from him in one of those panicked moments, and even this one might be too—

  Impact. Shock, constriction. Second impact, agony, darkness—

  Blood in his mouth. Fire in his legs, his shoulder. Gravel against his cheek, in his cheek, embedded there by the crash. The spine of the kite pressed to his back and skull, protecting them.

  Radiance flashing above. Alighting—too near, too near!—at the end of the narrow gash of alley where he had fallen. On the road there, in the open, its substance folded down into a humanoid shape, no longer porcelain shards but a white-masked, white-robed body with unnaturally twisted fingers that began to work the air like clay. Motes of light became strands, then wove into a lacy network that spread away to either side and up past the wraith's head, past first one story and then another, until it surmounted the buildings around it.

  From the corner of his eye, he saw the weave bend and stretch inward to shape a box.

  Wraiths, he sent again, glad for the link—unable to move his jaw to form the words. Not just haelhene—airahene too. Weaving a perimeter. Think captain's right. Need help, need help, need help now—

  'Lahngi?' Regna. 'Lahngi, hold on, I'm coming, I'll get those pikers—'

  The sky flared white. A wall of light sliced away his view of the street.

  From above came the crunch of the first breaking brick.

  Chapter 27 – Gloves Off

  As the shadowed walls began to hiss, Rallant thought hard at his hooked-in link. If you want me to carry out the rest of my duties, now's the time.

  'Yes,' came the mentalist's response. 'Just a moment.'

  Rallant gritted his teeth but kept exhaling the Call, the chemical-producing structures in the back of his throat burning with effort. What he was supposed to be Calling, he didn't know; his specialist comrades had long since turned against him to side with Blaze Company, and he almost wished he'd gone with them.

  Except it wouldn't have prevented this. Not with the hook in his mind.

  There was no one to influence now, no Shadow agent down the hall to summon and somehow envenomate—or just beg to let him go. His only companions were the bars at his back and the seething patches of darkness: in the corners, under the raised pallet, in his own shadow. Spiky and hostile and glinting with the suggestion of many eyes.

  There wasn't enough light in the detention hall to keep them off of him. His only choice was whether their sharp little teeth tore into his back first, or his face.

  Face, he thought. Throat. Make it quick. Send me to whatever afterlife exists for us—if any.

  As if they'd heard his decision, the chittering strengthened. The shadows stretched, melded and pushed into the badly-lit space around his feet, rough shapes rising from the stone like toothy inkblots. He pressed his back to the cell door and tried to hook his heel-spikes on the lowest horizontal bar—as if some height would help—but before he could get a foot-hold, they surged forward. Tiny claws bit into his legs and swarmed up his front, followed by much larger teeth—

  'Catch.'

  His eyes, shut in anticipation of death, snapped open in time to see a bright space before him. Something flew out of it, and he grabbed automatically, shackled hands clamping on a sphere of smooth glass. Brilliant light burst through his fingers, driving the shadows away with teakettle screams and momentarily turning his world to black motes and afterimages.

  “Now take this,” said an actual voice from close at hand, and he reached out hesitantly to where the bright space had been. Something metal pushed against his palm, oddly pebbled, then slid further into his grip: a sword's hilt.

  As his fingers clasped around it, he felt—

  —skin burning, muscle bubbling away to foam in this acid-bath. Limbs unhinged, sinews severed, thrashing uselessly beneath the weight on him—the creature, its jaws clamped against his cheeks, its tongue in his mouth, the bilious substance filling throat and lungs to disintegrate him from the inside out—

  Instinctively he bared his teeth and pushed with all his strength, no matter the boiling agony in his lungs. He felt his arms double, the acid-eaten ones straining out of sync with the weak, bitten, shackled ones, and focused on the later—on the reality of his body, not that noxious trap, that sizzling abyss.

  His lungs unlocked, and he gasped in a ragged breath and then coughed until that sense of invasion receded. He still felt the weight on him, those jaws like an imprint, but when he opened his eyes it was to the starkly lit cell. The hand-portal was gone.

  'Seek your target. Contact me when it is done.' Then even the mentalist left him.

  He looked down at his hands. One held a glass sphere, stark radiance emanating from it; the other was wrapped white-knuckled around a sword. Black hilt, black leaf-blade etched with yellow-green sigils that oozed a noxious-looking fluid down the fuller, weird pebbled texture along grip and pommel that reminded him of the bumps on a tongue. Hostility radiated from it, pressing at his senses until his stomach lurched and his mouth filled with sour bile.

  No, he thought at it, twisting his arm deliberately to keep the edge away from himself. He knew enough to identify this as an akarriden blade: forged from a human body and soul, tortured into malevolence, strong enough to cut any substance but ever-ready to turn on its master. This was the first he'd seen up close, the first he'd touched. To be given it now spoke of either his handlers' trust in him—foolish—or their desperation.

  Or simply a desire to sow chaos.

  That was fine. He would take any advantage offered.

  Name yourself, he commanded, pushing back at that mental pressure. The hallucinatory acid washed over him again as the weight tried to force him under, but he'd been held down by stronger. His teeth cut into its phantom tongue as it tried to invade again, causing a bloom of toxic blood in his mouth.

  It recoiled, its strength evidently predicated on dominance, so he forced himself in pursuit. Drowning, burning, dissolution—they meant nothing if withstanding them meant gaining mastery over that which had tried to overpower him. Even in this searing other-space, he still had his fangs, his claws, and this soul was no stronger than him. Its substance was rubbery, amphibian, and punctured easily beneath the strength of his grip.

  Name yourself! he repeated, one hand on its neck, the other delving for its tongue. Its tiny saw-teeth dug against his knuckles to little effect, its jaw stretching obscenely; the tongue itself felt like a wet, muscular rope. No matter how it thrashed and bucked, he kept his hold, curling his claws until they pierced that struggling flesh.

  It went still then, as if aware he'd tear its tongue out if it continued. A name floated up like marsh gas: Nehok.

  He released it then, and surfaced from the vision in a dank sweat, panting through his teeth. No more threat emanated from the blade, though it still oozed its caustic substance; when he brought it in to sever the shackle-chain, the remaining metal hissed and bubbled around the cut.

  It was such a relief to be unchained that he simply stretched his arms for a moment, grimacing at the strain it caused through his shoulders. Then he tore the old sarong from around his waist in disgust, casting it to the floor; he'd spent too long wallowing in his own filth to accept it for another moment.

  The cell-door gave way to Nehok with ease, and he pushed it open with a clawed foot, then glanced cautiously down the detention hall beyond. The light from his glass globe washed out every shadow; with luck, it would keep his captors fr
om tracking or attacking him.

  Now if I can just remember how to get back to the old complex…

  Naked, bleeding from multiple eiyet-bites, and trailing caustic destruction, Rallant headed out from the hall in search of his target.

  *****

  “I won't let you kill him,” said Lark, planting herself in front of Maevor. “Like you said, the presence is gone.”

  Scryer Mako gave her an exasperated look. “The captain told us to terminate the compromised—and he's clearly not doing well, even if he's no longer possessed.”

  “That's not a killing excuse,” Lark snapped, ignoring the faint senseless babble from behind her. “Whatever happened, it could probably have happened to any non-mentalist—“

  “Not likely. Not without physical contact, and if an enemy mentalist were down here, I could sense it. This one was infected by proxy, which means he's weak-minded, a liability. Anyway, we've no time to argue.”

  “You can't just kill him because we're in a hurry!”

  “I can keep him pinned from afar,” supplied Warder Tanvolthene. “Once we've dealt with the threat...”

  “Fine, do that,” said the scryer, and started for the door.

  Lark glared at Tanvolthene, who gave her a grimace but no apology. “That's just dooming him more slowly!” she shouted after the scryer, but Mako was already gone, followed closely by Izelina Cray and then Tanvolthene himself.

  Enforcer Ardent, trailing eiyets and game-stones from the maps she'd grabbed, beckoned sharply for Lark to follow. “I'll have him rescued if needed; the ward just covers him, not the wall. But we can't linger.”

  Lark gritted her teeth. The eiyets would be no kinder to Maevor, but they might not kill him if they were well-controlled. She didn't trust them to be, but right now it seemed she had no choice. With a last glance for her blank-eyed friend, she followed the others out.

  Mako had already vanished down the hall ahead, the others hustling in pursuit. Lark tried to match their strides, but with little heart in it, she soon found herself falling behind.

  All the more as they started down a stairwell and she heard a resounding crack!

  She halted in the archway, watching the concrete dust sift down. She'd heard about the crushing of the Shadowland, but everything in this complex seemed so much sturdier than there: no wooden structures, no brickwork in the underground, not many big open spaces.

  But the first crack was followed by another, then more, and her heart stuck in her throat as further plumes of dust spilled into the stairwell. Her old nightmare clutched at her—the quaking tunnel, Rian entombed in the wreckage—and she recoiled from the arch, raising her sleeve to cover her nose and mouth against the creeping dust.

  'Lark? Come on!' came Mako's thought, but she couldn't do it—couldn't push herself into that grey space. No blocks had fallen, but they would soon; she was sure of it. She retreated another step, another, then managed to turn away from the sight, intending to flee.

  And saw a thing in the hall behind her.

  She had no name for it except abomination, and felt immediately how insulting it had been to call Darilan that. For this was in no way human, though it once had been. Its six starved-looking arms had human hands, one of which still bore a ring, and the emaciated torso they were attached to in crazy-quilt fashion had a tattoo across the chest of a detailed bird of prey. The two lowest hands—attached badly at the hips—palm-walked the whole thing toward her, the others grappling at the near wall or thin air. From between the collarbones stared a single eye the size of a fist, the flesh hewn open around it with no sign of a head or neck.

  Her breath froze, an enervating shock running up her spine. Run! screamed her animal brain, but there was only the dust-filled stairwell behind her and some unknown room halfway between her and the thing. As she stared, another one dropped from the goblin travel-vent in the ceiling: a spindly mass of fingers, hands and teeth all spliced to a greenish severed ogre-leg that had split from sole to knee. Tibia and fibula walked separately on their portion of foot, constrained by lingering strings of muscle; above them, the patella bulged and deflated like an exposed heart.

  She retreated as they lurched forward and felt another burst of dust coat her back. Her hand went to the wraith-crystal under her robe, but though she'd studied furiously with the Blaze Company mages, it had been on wards and elementals—nothing she could use to attack. She tried to formulate a ward strong enough to push them back, but knew it would take only a few strikes from those hideous hands for all of her protections to burst.

  Another chunk of flesh fell from the vent.

  Then a burst of red.

  Then a spider-thing of bone and sinew, wrapped around a sleek dark shape with knives—a warrior-goblin, ears flat against its scalp. It had a scorpion-like metal stinger hitched to its prehensile tail, and gashed and bit at the spider-thing furiously as the other monstrosities turned toward it. Lark cried out, but there was no need; a moment later, another goblin dropped beside it and launched into a frenzied assault on the ogre-leg.

  Then came another, and a fourth, and all of them—dark, mottled or pale as chalk—piled onto the abominations, ripping with clawed gloves or blades and biting, stabbing, tearing, screeching.

  Even though she'd known of their ferocity, Lark had never seen it. Not like this. In moments, only struggling shreds remained of the abominations.

  “Big thanks,” Lark chirruped to them, drawing toothy grins.

  Another stuck its head from the vent, thin fine braid dangling. “Danger all places,” it chittered. “Wraiths above. Portals, crushing wall. Go, escape, go.”

  “Stairs bad, can't—“

  “Ramp,” one of the bloodied fighters chirred, pointing a long-fingered hand at a turn-off beyond them. “Left, left, follow down.”

  “Top floor cracks,” said the one in the vent. “Go now.”

  Lark nodded, then blanched, thinking of Maevor. “Need to get friend,” she said as she hopped around and past the still twitching abomination bits. “He—“

  A rush of air struck her from behind, filling her ears with the roar of shattering concrete as the stairwell collapsed. She flung her arms up to shield her head and just started running, but dust whited out the passageway in instants, and she didn't see the first turn-off until she was already past it. The goblins' shrieks became muted, then vanished entirely as she continued her headlong rush back the way she'd come.

  In what felt like no time, she was back at the meeting room, hauling Maevor upright from where he'd slumped. His ward had vanished—probably Tanvolthene choosing to defend himself instead—and the promised Shadow Folk were nowhere in sight. Lark cursed the Enforcer mentally, then immediately took it back; there were innocent lives at stake in the depths, all those civilians who'd yet to be moved to Rakut or Lakeshore. Weighed against them, she couldn't be surprised that Maevor meant nothing.

  Angry, yes. But not surprised.

  He was in no better state, but at least he moved when she pulled him. Out the door they went, black and white stones scattering away from their feet. Down the hall, toward where Lark vaguely remembered another ramp, wincing at every creak and distant crack! of the concrete above, trying not to imagine what was going on in the upper floors or anticipate how soon it would reach them. Past more goblins who popped from ceiling vents just long enough to scuttle to the access ports in the walls—and past more abomination parts, still squirming.

  It seemed the goblins had that situation in hand. Still, just to be safe, Lark drew out the wraith-crystal on its cord and tapped its energy to form a ward. Tanvolthene had taught her a few types, but she wasn't good with most, so she used the simplest form: a strike-ward, able to absorb a blow or two before it would dissipate. If she stumbled upon an abomination, it would at least give her a moment to run.

  Mako? she thought through the gestalt connection, and felt the scryer's attention flick to her, but the woman had a lot to handle and Lark was no longer sure where she was or which direct
ion she was headed. So she just sent the memory of what she'd seen and received a tense pulse of acknowledgment.

  Cautiously, nervously, she sought a way down, pulling Maevor along in her wake.

  *****

  “I've got eyes on her,” said Ardent. “She's a couple floors away but all right for now. Dare not grab her, not with the instability and the magic.”

  Mako nodded curtly, then focused on the task before her. A hundred soldiers and several hundred civilians were trying to crowd into this chamber, formerly the gathering-hall for incarcerated Blaze Company. The Shadow Folk were grabbing long chains of civvies, but not fast enough; Mako could feel natural space being cut off as the forward edges of the crush-ward approached. Soon magic would be the only way out.

  And, naturally, Lieutenant Linciard and Lieutenant Sengith were refusing to budge until the citizens were safe.

  At least they were good at clearing space for her and directing the civilians into lines for the Shadow Folk. She didn't know what she'd do if she had to fend off frightened people while trying to build portal-frames. Presh and Voorkei both had stakes planted at their respective sites, but a portal based on stakes alone would dissolve as soon as she moved away. She needed the frames as solid anchors—especially if the situation got dire and she had to trigger a dimensional warp.

  Izelina was a help. She'd sent the girl the assembly schematics mentally, and felt her satisfaction as each sigil-etched piece clicked into place. Zeli was stubborn to the point of self-injury sometimes, but there were constructive uses for that obstinate will; Mako's training goal had been to reveal those to her and let the girl's own determination force her to cooperate. It was so much easier when Zeli provided her own motivational push. By now, they were firm partners: Mako directing the girl past her fear, and Zeli turning that fear into anger—into will-force. If only she could project it outward, she would be a mentalist to reckon with.