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

by H. Anthe Davis

  He let them push him along to the base of the ramp, to the landing that led into the middle floor. From down the next curve came the sounds of shouts and steel, but the hall that stretched perpendicular to his spot was empty. In his mind's eye, he tried to judge the layout of Blaze's complex and the bend of the path that led toward it.

  Then he set out, alone, through the empty level, as bloodshed reigned behind him.

  *****

  Pain lanced through Linciard's head, originating from the earhook behind his right ear. His hand rose automatically to it, but he stopped himself before he could tear it off. At his side, Enforcers Ardent and Ticuo winced as well, their eiyets chittering angrily.

  “Edar!” came the scryer's voice, doubled—both physical and mental. He looked to her, registered the shocked pallor of her face, then shot his attention immediately to the hallway through which Tanvolthene and his third section had just departed.

  “Salvametron, Nothorence, back them up,” he ordered, drawing salutes from the two fourth-section corporals. As they and the men under their command rushed for the hall, he heard Sengith order some of his own after, saw Ardent sign Shadow agents in pursuit.

  “What happened?” he asked Mako, turning back.

  She'd pressed her hands to her face, shoulders shaking, but when she spoke, it wasn't watery, wasn't strained. Instead, it came as a growl. “Abominations. In the hall. And Rallant.”

  Icewater filled his veins. Instinctively he took a huff of air, trying to catch that honey-scent, but all he smelled was sweat and fear and the cold wind through the portals. Both were flickering in their frames, the magic fraying with Mako's distress; the lines had ground to a halt, the civilians too unnerved to chance them.

  “I'll deal with it,” Linciard managed, and clapped a gauntleted hand to her shoulder. “Our priority—“

  She yanked away, glaring at him through her fingers. “I know our priority,” she snarled, but for a moment just stood there, shivering with rage. Then a shout came from down the hallway, followed by a chorus of roars and shrieks, and she whipped around to place a claw-like hand on each frame. Instantly the portals strengthened.

  “Get to it, lieutenant,” she snapped. “And don't screw this up.”

  He nodded at her back and slid his hand through the strap of his sword. “Skinner, Stormfollower, on me—Virn, Wolfsden, with Sergeant Kenner. Benson, keep the people flowing.” Shouts of acknowledgment came from his first and second sections. Swords slithered from sheaths, maces unhitched from belts; shields were raised, not the big ones he would have preferred but the bucklers and arm-guard types the Shadows had provided. Crossbows were loaded, long knives drawn; Sengith's platoon was the archers, of limited utility in these close quarters but still ready to fight.

  “Any other complexes open?” he called to Enforcer Ticuo as he secured the strap around his wrist. Most of his grip-strength was back, but he had no desire to accidentally throw his sword.

  “Not connected to that hall,” said the Illanite. Despite the globe-lights, he wore a cape of seething eiyets like Ardent's, which popped in and out of his shadow at will. “We have eyes on the rest and aren't seeing trouble. There's been a roving blank spot though—so I guess that's him.”

  Linciard shot him a hard look. “You could've warned us.”

  Ticuo's black eyes narrowed in response. They'd managed to ignore each other since their fight in the shadow-box, but there was no love lost, and Linciard couldn't imagine a worse time to be working with him. “Space doesn't work the same way in the Shadow Realm, especially at the umbral wall, and we didn't expect we'd need to spy on our whole base. If you—“

  “Lockdown! Lockdown!” someone shouted, and both men's attention lanced that way.

  Soldiers thundered up the hall, led by a white-faced Shadow agent yelling, “We need to close off the complex!” She lunged for the ladder to the upper walkway as soon as she came through the entry. Sengith's patrol boiled in after her, followed by Linciard's fourth section.

  Followed by...things.

  Almost instantly they were in among the men: crawling, leaping, scuttling monstrosities made of body-parts. The defensive ranks shattered on contact, cries rising from a dozen shocked and horrified throats. Blades flashed, maces rose and fell, but there was no cohesion to the surge of creatures, just a chaos of limbs and teeth launching wildly at anything in their way.

  Cursing, Linciard scrambled atop one of the pushed-back tables to get a vantage above the forest of bodies. “Form ranks!” he shouted, and saw his men try, but few of the creatures came up higher than the knee and all were happy to leap on, climb and bite at anyone who struck for them. Some even scuttled straight past the soldiers to lunge at the civilians.

  Flaming pikes, Linciard thought. “Engage at will!” As if it wasn't already happening, short blades and maces more useful against these things than swords. At least the men were armored well, the claws and teeth of their enemies tearing at but not puncturing the heavy leather and thin plates they wore.

  Not so for the civilians. Shadow Folk pursued the creatures that rushed them, but the threat alone had scattered the people like wildfowl—some plunging desperately through the portals, others running for tables like Linciard had or withdrawing into frightened knots. A few of the civilians had knives, or lengths of wood that might once have been chair-legs, but their frantic swipes were as much a threat to the Shadow Folk as to the monsters.

  And still the creatures poured in like a tide of flesh. From his vantage, he saw no end to them: they filled the hall, clambering over each other in their eagerness to kill. With the hall's globe-lights still lit, there was no opportunity for the eiyets to strike.

  A grinding sound shuddered the air then, and he looked to the ceiling, expecting to see cracks. But there were none—yet—and he realized belatedly that the sound came from the entryway. Something shifted at its top, then fell with an avalanche-roar: the great recessed door that had once imprisoned them here. It crushed half a dozen creatures on its way down.

  In the wake of its impact, chaos still reigned—but less. He couldn't tell how many had gotten in, and the crowd was still frenzied with fear, but the soldiers were on it. The injured were already being hoisted onto tables where they could be better defended.

  For a moment, Linciard scanned the room, trying to think. The heavy door should hold the monsters indefinitely, and with the portals still active, they had their way out. Shadow Folk were popping in to take new chains of refugees even now, and all the doors to the neighboring complexes had already been closed. This area should be secure, at least until the crush—

  Then he spotted a woman in a medic's coat sprinting out from the dormitory area.

  Whatever she was shouting got lost in the general uproar, but Linciard saw another medic behind her, then several convalescent specialists being herded out by a third. Quickly he cast around for his men, but they were all engulfed by the fray; only Ticuo stood nearby, having climbed up on a table as well.

  “Enforcer,” he called, then beckoned when Ticuo glanced over. Not waiting for any objection, he hopped down from the table and raced for the dormitory hall. Beyond it was the infirmary, with no other exits, but he thought he remembered goblin-vents in there, and if the monsters were using those vents…

  Several sets of bootsteps hustled to catch up with him. He glanced back to see Ticuo and two Shadow agents, plus one of his own soldiers and one of Sengith's crossbowmen. He hated to abandon command in the middle of a fight, but there had been no managing that chaos.

  Something in the infirmary. Checking it out, he sent to the earhook, reminded of his responsibilities.

  'Understood,' came Ardent's response.

  The dormitory was dark, empty, their footfalls echoing loudly. Brightness filled the archway beyond, and Linciard caught a hint of voices raised in argument.

  “Keep quiet,” he hissed to his backup, and heard Ticuo sneer. Ignoring that, he eased his own steps as he approached the archway, trying
to catch the words or identify the voices.

  To his dismay, it didn't take long.

  “—away and leave,” came Savaad Rallant's all-too-familiar tone of command. Even from a room away, it sent a chill through him. It would only take an instant for Rallant to call upon his powers—to rob Linciard of his good sense and turn him against his own men.

  Anger bloomed at the thought, driving away his incipient panic. Won't happen, he told himself. Not a thrall, not controlled. Not retreating from him. Clenching his teeth, he swung through the entryway and took a step toward where he'd heard the voices.

  Rallant's gaze flashed to him, as dazzling as sudden sunlight. But that wasn't what stopped him. Rather, it was the ludicrous view of Rallant stark naked and trying to threaten Medic Shuralla with a dripping sword. If not for the coils of smoke that rose from the drip-spatter, he might have risked a joke—something off-color in an attempt to defuse this situation.

  But that was not a weapon to joke about. Noxious yellow-green runes seethed along its black length, all too similar to those he'd seen on Scout Trevere's. The scout's blade had pulled blood from its victims' wounds; this one clearly burned things, dissolved them, but like Trevere's it would also cut through anything in its way. Metal, stone, flesh. A huge chunk of concrete lay on the floor between his group and Rallant, corresponding to a still-smoking hole in the ceiling: the senvraka's point of entry.

  “Get away,” Rallant snarled, pointing the blade at him.

  Linciard held up his hands, trying to pretend the sword still strapped into his right was nothing dangerous. He wanted a reckoning with Rallant, but not at the cost of Shuralla's life. “Sav, whatever you're doing, whatever they're making you do—“

  “Stop. Crossbows down or I kill her.” Rallant angled the blade toward the medic again, and Linciard glanced back just briefly to see the two Shadow agents lowering their weapons, their dark eyes fixed on Ticuo's flicking fingers. Linciard had picked up a decent vocabulary of signs in the past few weeks, but they flew by too fast for him to understand from this angle.

  “They're down,” he confirmed, and took another step forward. As he did, he realized that Medic Shuralla had positioned herself in defense of a single bed and the body laying swaddled upon it. He frowned; he couldn't remember any specialist still hurt enough to be bed-bound. Unless…

  Messenger Cortine?

  What would Rallant want with him?

  “Now it's your turn, Sav,” he said aloud. “Step back. Let her leave.”

  The senvraka bared his teeth. “I tried, but she wouldn't go. How about you convince her?”

  “Shuralla...”

  “I won't abandon my patient,” she declared, chin up. “Nor will you get far with him. Lay down your blade and I will plead to the company on your behalf, but—“

  Rallant twitched the blade in her direction, sending a spatter of clear ichor down by her feet. “Silence,” he grated. “Linciard, take your little friends and get out. I won't warn you again.”

  At his side, Ticuo snorted. “What, you think you can just walk out past us? Hostage or not, controller or not, we've got you penned in—and the doors are sealed. What're you gonna do when your friends collapse this place, eh?”

  Rallant didn't answer, just stared at them icily. For a moment, Linciard thought he caught a sweetness in the air, a cloying honey-scent—but then it was gone, and he still felt normal. The captain gave the execution order, he thought deliberately to test it. I will carry it out. I cannot let his trust be misplaced.

  It felt right. Awful, but right.

  Still, he wasn't sure whether or not he'd imagined the thralling scent, and as he took the next step, he expected to taste it for real. Strong, overwhelming, as it had been at the detention block. Yet it didn't come, and as he slowly approached, Rallant's glare remained steady, his fangs hidden, his blade still pointed at Shuralla's chest.

  Keep his attention. Get within striking distance. Then...

  He couldn't visualize the kill without compromising his resolve. But he could do it. He knew that. And if not him, then one of the men who moved behind him like hunters stalking prey. Rallant's honeycomb eyes precluded any glimpse of whites, but from their wideness and the tension in his muscular frame, Linciard knew he meant to fight.

  Still, he didn't move.

  Another step, and—

  The air behind Rallant sliced open and spread apart, revealing a pair of white-robed figures. One stepped through the portal immediately, gloved hands rising.

  Linciard didn't hesitate. As a bright bolt coalesced and spat forth, he lurched sideways, slamming into Enforcer Ticuo and driving them both down behind the row of beds. Searing light and heat blasted by; an instant later, a second bolt blew apart the cot in front of them, sending shards of burning wood and fabric in all directions. Shouts rose behind him, then running steps—cut off by another brilliant lance.

  “Stay down,” he hissed to Ticuo, then lunged up, rushing across the debris of the nearest bed to shove over the next and duck behind it. A bolt burned the air just above his head and dug a furrow in the concrete wall; another blew apart the wooden frame just over his shoulder, spattering his arm and helm with splinters.

  Ignoring that, he reached with his shield-hand to yank the utility knife from his boot. He didn't know what he was thinking, rushing Rallant and the wraiths, but if he managed to keep their attention long enough for the others to flee, that was fine. Without looking, he chucked the knife toward his enemies and felt the backwash of heat as another blast intercepted it.

  Good: they responded to motion but not necessarily to hidden enemies. He'd heard they couldn't see well at ground level.

  Something smashed with a sound like crockery on stone. Another flare and a woman screamed, too close. His heart lurched. Reaching up, he yanked a splintered piece off the bed and flung that too, only to be knocked flat as the next bolt blew off a huge chunk of the bed-corner and thrust the rest down on him.

  Quarrels flicked by, impacting against substances that rang like glass. Lines of energy retaliated, thinner and less brilliant than before.

  Then the room shuddered, a horrendous groan emitting from the concrete ceiling. Linciard glanced up to see cracks spider out from the hole Rallant had made, with more shooting outward from a goblin-vent and spilling plumes of grey dust to the floor. He heard Rallant shout something as if from a distance, then the radiance the wraiths had brought with them retreated. A moment later, he felt the change in the air as the portal closed.

  Heaving himself upright, he stared at the empty space, then to Shuralla who lay crumpled by Messenger Cortine's now-empty bed. She was clutching her side, which bloomed red from armpit to hip: skin torn and pierced by broken bones but not burned.

  “Shit, piking shit,” he said as he stumbled over, afraid to touch her. She grinned fiercely at him through bloodied teeth, fingers still curled around a snapped-off ceramic handle. The shards of a water pitcher lay all around her.

  “Broke my vow...against violence,” she hissed.

  “It's fine, it's fine,” he said. “Oh shit.” Her whole side looked mushy, pulverized; any attempt to move her would only worsen it. But the cracks in the ceiling were spreading, so as Enforcer Ticuo and the remaining others rushed over, he said, “Get the bedsheets. We'll carry her like a litter. Quick, quick.”

  They obeyed, and soon lifted her on it despite her protests that they should run. Turning forward, Linciard winced to see his man who had fallen in mid-flight: Lancer Sorretis, a scorched hole in his back. The Shadow agent two steps beyond him had died the same. Why Shuralla had been struck but not burned, he could only attribute to her goddess.

  As they reached the archway, another chunk of concrete fell, triggering a cascade that thrust them out from the infirmary in a cloud of choking dust. Stumbling, hacking, they crossed the dormitory and plunged back into the common hall, only to be hit by another greyish plume. The rear wall of the chamber was rapidly disappearing behind a descending pane of lig
ht, ghostly-white in the haze; pieces of ceiling had fallen before it, driving the crowd toward the flickering portals. There were still over a hundred people gathered, but with the speed of the spreading cracks, there was no time.

  Nor were there any shadows left to give refuge. The diffuse radiance drove all away, not a single eiyet in evidence. Shadow agents were dropping from the balcony and running from the privacy screens to join the crowd, clearly cut off.

  “Mako!” he shouted, then shut himself up as he spotted her: standing braced between both frames, one hand on each, head bowed and energy crackling around her. Both frames now showed one image: a town square rapidly being cleared of its occupants, their torches and lanterns receding toward the buildings.

  People made way as he and the others moved in with the litter. Almost immediately, a feeling of distortion washed over him, making his stomach recoil and his head swim. It felt like the first time he'd crossed a portal and subsequently puked. The air wavered as if from heat-haze, the sigils on the frames flaring with hideous light—unnatural, indescribable, as if breaching through from some malevolent other dimension. That light unfurled from the metal like tentacles and reached out toward the crowd; as it passed over him, Linciard felt the moisture being sucked from his lungs, the warmth from his skin. All around, ice formed on sweaty faces and frost plumed from open mouths.

  Reality bent, warped, melted. For an instant, there was no chamber—nor even that empty square, nothing under his feet but blackness, nothing in any direction but empty void and the roiling, heaving, tormented sigils, the uproar in his bones and blood—

  Then the weight of the world drove him down, booted feet hitting brick pavings hard enough to force him to his knees. Somehow he still held the litter-sheets, and managed to keep his corner of them up enough to prevent Shuralla from striking the ground; the other end didn't do so well, and he heard her gasp as her legs dropped.

  Bitter air washed over them, somehow not as cold as the spell that had stolen their breath. Lifting his head, Linciard saw that most of the crowd had collapsed, some moaning, some retching—but everyone seemed to be there, civilian refugees and soldiers and Shadows alike. At the very center, grey-faced Izelina and grim Ardent struggled to hold Scryer Mako upright; Mako's eyes were closed, head back, limbs twitching as if in a terrible dream. At Izelina's throat gleamed the sigiled silver bars of the earhook network anchor.